I'm too young to have gone to any proper old skool raves, so it turned out to be quite a mad experience - 10,000 fucked up gurners bouncing away with whistles, white gloves, glow sticks, horns, etcetera in a listed building, it's a cool way to spend a balmy spring evening. It'd been ages since I'd had a good dance, too. There's actual mobile phone footage of me in action, which is bound to be a laugh now the weekend has worn off.
Anyways, my parents were down visiting for the weekend, which meant a coupla days of heavy boozing. God, I was working on both days too, I didn't start until 4pm. It was a merry old time. I was supposed to meet them in a (very heavy duty) Ranger's pub to watch the Old Firm game on Sunday, but I got there so late it was full. There was a whole swathe of guys jostling to get in, and after talking to a few of them we decided to get a taxi to another pub showing the game. It was a strange sensation watching the game with a load of random crazy Scotsmen, none of whom knew one another an hour before, but I had a good laugh. And the 'Gers won.
It was ok, not at all 'laugh-out-loud' funny, but still pretty good for a first episode establishing it's characters and setting the scene. It was quite slow and subdued, not what most people would be expecting from 'Meedja Terrorists' Morris and Brooker. The dialogue was more reminiscent of Brooker's stuff, I thought, but it did bear the hallmarks of Chris Morris' direction. The bit when Ashcroft was being interviewed for the Weekend on Sunday was excrutiating, almost Jam like. And speaking of Ashcroft, I thought Julian Barratt's acting was excellent. Nathan Barley himself was pretty obnoxious, but not how I imagined him from TVGoHome
'Dangers in the Kitchen' that the Home Ec teacher taped off Bitesize Revision on BBC 2 the night before), takes a tatty, Asda's own brand VHS from his briefcase and proceeds to show you every silly and embarrassing thing you've ever done. And you have to watch it all, with him cackling over your shoulder like the twisted bastard he truly is. Imagine it, having to explain all your idiotic behaviour to the Creator of the Universe. All your late night drunken phone calls. All your piss poor chat up lines. All the unfunny shit you were spewing while stoned or gouched or wasted. All your totally pathetic emo moments - randomly punching walls and all that shit. All those wasted opportunities. All the times you done fell over, durrr. Those times you were sick....through your nose. All of it. With JAHWEH sat there pissing himself. "What the fuck were you trying to do there?", he'd say, "How exactly was that going to work?"
He proceeds to noise up the poor bear by poking him with a stick he found. I go over to intervene and the little fucker jumps up and attacks me, jumping all over me, hitting me with his little stick. He even attempts a few bites, and that's the last thing I need - fuckin' rabies. I manage to fight him off, even though he's unnaturally strong for a small primate, and hurl him over towards a large oak tree. He scrabbles about in the grass and somehow, he finds a knife. One of those stilletto numbers, proper fuckin' nasty. He advances towards me, screaming and screeching like a monkey possessed and lunges at me, stabbing. At this point, and I swear to God, my mobile goes off, waking me up. A fuckin' shitty text message. How annoying is that? I really wanted to know how I was gonna disarm that monkey, and if I was gonna release the bear. I read the text message, then conked back out. My dream this time was far more bizarre, epic and unresolved. Why can I never finish the good dreams?
They don't even make sounds like a proper bird, with all that hissing and cackling - it's like someone decapitated a bird, then stapled a feathery snake onto the body, in place of the head and neck. And that thing about them being able to break a human arm with their beak? What the fuck is that all about? Is that even true? Let me tell you, the fucker wouldn't get the chance. He'd have his neck broken with a well aimed brick from 30 yards. So yeah, fuck 'em.
This, while pretty cool, wasn't exactly what I was looking for - so up on the wall it did not go. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do with the 21 sheets of A4 that this baby used up. I imagine they'll be used by Drunk Me to scrawl messages to Sober Me, to remember to buy milk or some shit.
I decided to piss about and waste some more ink by putting Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks above the kitchen door:
It's a clever wee video and the song's pretty cool too, though I think they start to lose it towards the end (the video I mean, not the song). I mean, since when did anyone really consider whiskey to be a drug? Though, come to think of it I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a narcotic beginning with 'W'. Actually, no - fuck it, that's easy - Wormwood, as contained in Absinthe. There's yer drug beginning with 'W' (which is still, technically alcohol). The video was filmed in Fabric, and I was actually in the DJ booth that Soulwax are seen DJ'ing in, with paper bags on their heads. Not that I was actually doing anything productive when I was there, no, because I am a talentless fuck when it comes to music. I was mostly getting in the way.
Buy his new book. In fact, fuck it - buy all his books. If it wasn't for him, Britain (and in particular, London [and in particular, Shoreditch]) would be even more of a soulless grey fuck-up of a place. If it wasn't for him you'd be even more aware that the place is inhabited by brain-dead robots and cunts. If it wasn't for him you wouldn't be able to giggle like a girl at the drawing of the cute wittle wabbit on the wall. Aw look at his itty-bitty bomb, he's wuvvely.
You know what it's like, you're rushing out to meet someone, just about to cross the threshold and leave the house, when you realise you have no shoes on. So, you throw on your favourite trainers, tie the laces, then bound out the front door like a giddy schoolchild. It's only when you're halfway down to the train station that you realise something ain't right. Your feet don't feel symmetrical, with every step you feel a nagging unease. Fuck - one of the laces is tighter than the other. You stop, loosen off the shoe then re-tie it. A few steps later you it's becoming apparent you've made things worse. Try as hard as you can, but no amount of tweaking or fine tuning can get both your shoes in sync, and it'll be smouldering away at the back of your mind for as long as have the shoes on, cutting into your soul like a big sharp thing.
Talking of New Year, how was it for you? Did you go to some shitty party and get depressingly drunk? I'll bet you did. My body's still reeling after the shitstorm of abuse I subjected it to over the weekend. The Hoxton Pimps night was pretty fucking cool. It started off in appalling fashion as no one seemd to know what the fuck was going on - it was wall-to-wall bawbag as people were jockeying for dance floor position and fighting like crack-addled hobos to get a drink. The bells came and went with very little fanfare - WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH LONDON PEOPLE? After midnight everything calmed down and it turned into a very respectable wee night. We were proper fucked, and continued it on throughout Saturday, too. All in all - good, but it really didn't feel like a Hogmanay night due to the lacklustre, 'I'm too fuckin' cool to jump about like a loon at the bells' attitude of the Hoxtonites.
