Hip Hop Is Not A Spectator Sport

Many moons ago, before getting caught up in the soul sucking machine that is professional television, I was a carefree youth stumbling through college with a series of ramshackle programmes (or shall we call them 'short films'?). The last of these, being a hip-hop documentary entitled Hip Hop Is Not A Spectator Sport.

It's far from a masterpiece, as the drunken organising of a documentary is not a good idea. There's quite a few technical errors, too; some poor white balancing; a load of cheesy moments; and, some frankly laughable graphics, but it was all good fun, and got me my HND at college.

I managed to digitise it some time ago (albeit from a shonky VHS copy), but had never got round to actually doing anything with it. So, without further ado, I present it to you now:

[ Youtube Video removed,

gie's a shout if you want to see it ]

I've got some more of my shit kicking around somewhere which you may or may not be subjected to in the future

Shifty eyed goddamn liar

Two years today I moved to London. How fucking bizarre is that? Imagine me, turning up at the airport, fresh faced and full of wonder. No idea what the fuck I was doing. I remember my first few weeks - I was fuckin' terrified. Glasgow's a reasonable sized city, but it can't prepare you for the enormity of London. 'Thrown in at the deep end' doesn't even begin to describe it.

But that's always the best way to teach a drunken baby to swim. Look at me now. Haggard. Cynical. Sporting a beard and dressing like a homosexual. Talking about house prices and congestion charges and production houses in Soho. I don't bat an eyelid when I pay 4 quid for a pint in some faux trendy wankhole in Hoxton. I don't bat an eyelid when I careen down the wrong stairs in some grubby tube station, fighting against the tide, knocking some pregnant banker down, clattering onto the platform. Just to shave 15 seconds off my commute. I have never earned so much money, nor been so skint in my life.

And I fucking love it.

COVER YOUR SHAME

WWW.ESSENEM.CO.UK GOES LIVE

Hello peeps. After 6 months of drunken fuckery, the t-shirt site is finally up. Go and have a look, and if you see any shirts you like, for fuck's sake BUY THEM.

Conversely, if you see a design you like, but we don't have the particular syle or colour you want, let me know and I'll rectify the situation.

Here's a small selection from the site:

TELL YOUR FRIENDS

www.essenem.co.uk

marc(AT)essenem.co.uk

Don't mess with me, lady, I've been drinking with skeletons

Fuck me, I am useless. What with having a full time job, making music, designing t-shirts for the site, working on a treatment for a short film and being a raging drunkard, I just haven't had time to talk shite on here that nobody wants to hear. Poor you.

I am sitting here eating a Twix, and it's been in the fridge. I think I've broken my fucking teeth chewing through the toffee bit - it was rock solid. Bastards.

My nonce-ear (as Craig so lovingly put it) is pretty much gone. I filled it full of far too much Otex and went to a 65daysofstatic concert. That fucked up the wax good and proper. I swear to God, you have to invest in some Otex. It's expensive (~£8 for a wee bottle), but it is most definately the shit.

T-shirt site should go live at the end of the week - expect me to plug the shit out of it.

Byeeee

Corn Beef

I awoke at around midnight on Monday in screaming fucking agony. I hate ear infections, and have not had the displeasure of one for quite a number of years. After a rather brisk 2 hours at Accident & Emergency I was furnished with ear drops and some nifty codeine tablets for the pain, tablets that ensured the week at work stumbled by like a drunken hobo.

The infection itself is pretty much gone now, but as I sit here bored shitless in work, I am deaf as a fucking post in my left ear. This is a further annoyance, as I've come to realise that my left ear is my good ear, so basically, I can't hear shit.

Everything I am somehow able to hear sounds as if it's underwater, due to gunk and shit floating around in my ear canal, but I don't know if I have the time or patience for another trip to A&E for a syringing. My flatmates have that Audiclean stuff, so I may give that a shot.

And why should you give a fuck about my ears? Well, I was going to write about my brand new, super awesome funtime happy box that has just arrived in the post - My FM3 Buddha Machine:

It's a cool wee box that plays 9 different loops, and from what I've heard, is lovely and soothing. Obviously I'll need working ears before I can give a decent view on the thing.

Fuckin' ears

Motherfuckin' bird flu

I bought my first CD of the year on Friday night. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me, I've usually bought a fuckton of albums by now. It's not even like I'm downloading a lot of shit from Soulseek, I'm just being generally shit when it comes to music.

But yeah - I bought my first CD of the year on Friday night. It was an Ove Naxx tour CD, bought from the man himself at esteemed breakcore night Trash Trash Noise Next Door. It was fucking bedlam. Ove was so stoned when he got up on stage he fell over and broke his microphone. And DJ Scotchegg had 4 Gameboys on the go at one point. Good fun.

I will have to buy some music now.

Mogwai - Mr Beast,
Liars - Drums Not Dead,
B.Fleischmann - The Humbucking Coil
Battles - Ep C/B Ep
65daysofstatic - Radio Protector EP

Yeah that'll do for now.

The t-shirt site I've mentioned a few times will be up and running very very soon, I'll keep y'all posted.

Laters

2005 - That was the year that was

I had to go and get a blood test done, what was it... last Thursday. Now, I watched the guy do it, and he seemed to know what the fuck he was doing, and it didn't hurt (it looks cool as fuck when the vacuum in the vial kicks in and it whips the blood right out of your vein), but I've ended up with a massive fucking bloody-yellow bruise on my left arm. It's actually impinging on my fucking tattoo.

It looks like I've had part of a junkie-biker-whore's arm grafted onto mine. I can see people look at it in work, too. Whatever must they think? Fun fun fun. Really though, he made a right fuckin' meal of it. Hopefully, it'll fade in the next, oh... week or some shit.

Anyways, back to the task at hand. Last year I decided to have a little fun with my calendar. Each day, when the day was done, I wrote one, two or three words down to describe each day. Some days were cryptic, others were blatant. I honestly didn't think I'd keep it up for the whole year. But I did. And what do you do with all that data? Well, if you're me, you put it into an Excel spreadsheet, allocate each day a rating between 0 and 13, then you graph the fuck out of that motherfucker.

Here's the raw as fuck data, untouched and graphed:


As you can see, it's pretty much all over the shop. That blue line is the general trend, but it doesn't give the full picture. I had to do some fucking ninja shit on the data to get an awesome graph. And here it is, my overall happiness throughout 2005, month by month:



So that was 2005.

Shit man, I need a new fucking hobby.

And now for something completely different

I don't think this site was primarily designed for this sort of shit, but...well...here:

--Bombay Bullion
--Saucy Nurse
--YAMS
--Lollipop Man
--Project Mayhem

Sorry for the appalling lack of humour (not to mention words) in this update. I'm a tired panda

Liz Hurley has shoulders like a rugby player

I fucking hate January, I swear to fuck. The whole month is just a hangover from Xmas and Hogmany. I feel like I've been underwater for the past 2 weeks - I have no money, my health is shot to fuck from over-indulging and I have this sort of creeping dread that washes over me every now and again. I think last year it wasn't so bad, 'cos I'd just been dumped so I had every reason to feel like shit. But this year... Fuck. This year I am in a good place. Things are going well for me, and I have no reason to be in a shitty mood. Which just makes it worse when I feel like rubbish.

On the plus side (of this laughable emo fag outpouring), I am feeling much better today. Maybe it's the methamphetamine in the coffee; maybe it's the fact it's payday on Sunday; maybe it's the fact I have a lovely girl who lets me do stuff to her; maybe it's the limited edition Japanese Adidas I bought yesterday made from FUCKING NILE CARP! Whatever it is, I'm feeling rather damn spiffy.

It's probably the meth, actually.

Yeah, anyways, you didn't come here to listen to me moan about this shitty month, you came to hear me rant about moths and keyboards and poorly trained killer whales, didn't you?

And on that note:

What the fuck is the deal with that smell? You know the one - when you leave your clothes out to dry and they don't dry properly. What the fuck is that? It doesn't exist anywhere else in nature and I'd like to know where in the everliving fuck it comes from. It's deceptive, too. You grab a fresh tee shirt from the cupboard, you think everything's hunky dory, then BAM - you're sitting at work, furtively sniffing your sleeve to see if that pungent, corpse-like aroma is emanating from your supposedly clean clothes. I'm too poor and lazy to be washing shit twice, but I'm too fucking cool to be out in public smelling like Bernie after he's been left out too long in the sun.

It's very annoying.

Don we now our gay apparel

Happy Fucking Christmas

Diagnosis : Music

Hogmany is fast approaching and 2005 is drawing to close. Now is the time for the music critics, the journalists, the celebrity DJs and presenters and the average everyday music fans to come scurrying out of the woodwork and force their music tastes on a disinterested public. Now is the time for "Best Albums 0f 2005" lists, and their brethren, to run rampant across all forms of media. And this particular shit pool of the media is no different.

I present to you:

"17 Albums Which Were Released
In 2005 And Were Very Good"
(It's probably in order, but who can really say?)

1. Xiu Xiu - La Foret
2. Sigur Ros - Takk
3. 65daysofstatic - One Time For All Time
4. Arab Strap - The Last Romance
5. Buck 65 - Secret House Against the World
6. Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger
7. Minotaur Shock - Maritime
8. HORSE the band - The Mechanical Hand
9. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
10. Kevin Blechdom - Eat My Heart Out
11. Patrick Wolf - Wind in the Wires
12. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
13. DJ Koze - Kosi Comes Around
14. DJ Scotch Egg - KFC Core
15. Jason Forrest - Shamelessly Exciting
16. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
17. Hrvatski - Irrevocably Overdriven Break Freakout Megamix

I'm pretty sure that's way it should look, but there's still some time left in the year for a young pretender to stake a claim. Here's the 'Honourable Mentions' and why they missed the cut:

• kid606 - Done With The Scene EP : it's an EP, innit? So, not technically an album, so not on the list. Still fucking awesome though
• Arcade Fire - Funeral : I've not listened to this enough for it be included. It is good, though. Oh, another thing, I'm pretty sure this was released in 2004?!?
• Fantomas / Melt-Banana [Split CD on Unhip Records] : well, this only clocks in at about 3 minutes long, so I could never justify listing it. It is cool as fuck, though
• Animal Collective - Feels : again, I've not listened to this enough, either, but after seeing them live earlier this year, I had to give them a mention
• Test Icicles - For Screening Purposes Only : see above. Fucking shite name, though. Band and album
• Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm A Machine : much like Arcade Fire, I'm pretty sure this was released in 2004

So that's about it. I may come back and edit some comments onto the list, it looks a little sparse at the moment, but other than that, we're done here. I've got a big fuck-off pile of CDs strewn about my room now, and will spend the next hour meticulously putting them back in the right order. I love my life.

I'm sorry, but what's creative about further harshening tequila?

A couple of years back, at Christmas I made this monstrosity:



That's two hot-ass motherfuckin' chillis, tops cut off, then left in a bottle of Smirnoff in a dark cupboard for a 2 months.

On Christmas Day my Mum decided it would be a good idea to harrass my wee brother's pals into doing shots of it. Jesus fucking Christ I thought we were going to have to go to the hospital. After sampling it straight myself, the only word I could use to describe it would be 'AHHHHHH! Dear God why are my lips not made of asbestos? Why God, why the pain? Take my eyes, take my fingers, take my balls, just stop the burning fucking agony'.

My ex did say it made an awesome Bloody Mary, though. Through her burns mask.

This year, rather than use pure, pussy, untainted vodka I'm going to do it slightly differently. I'm doing it with dirty, dirty, slutty tequila. Two chillis rammed up her and papped in the cupboard for a while, that'll get her all hot and heavy. I canny wait to dish it out on Jesus' birthday.

Feeling quite zlaradno

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I've abandoned this blog, and my life, and ran off with Cappy, my gorgeous kangaroo concubine. You'd be dead wrong... though she does look lovely in taupe lipstick and kitten heels, and she is always asking me to come away with her. Anyways - I've had three weeks off work; three weeks of laziness, drunkenness, debauchery and only minimal creative output, so I've not really had much of worth to write about.

That's not to say that even minimal creative output isn't a huge step up for me. I managed to actually get some music done, which was a bit of a shock. I also got some t-shirts designed, and there will soon be a website selling said designs, in the near future. Not entirely my thing, my good buddy is doing shirts too and is in the process of doing the site, but it should be cool. See if you can find a link on this page, you fucking internet detective, you.

Since 2005 is drawing to close I'll be compiling my end of year album list, which may or may not be of interest to any of you fuckers. All the cool kids do it, and I've done one the last few years, so it would be churlish of me to miss it out this year. There's been some awesome shit released, though I haven't bought my usual amount of CDs this year. Still - it'll be hard to whittle it down to 20.....24.

On the first of January last year I started a daft wee project (well, I say wee - it has been a year long thing), which I expected to get bored with, but which looks like it's going to arrive at completion come the first day of 2006. I'm gonna start fucking around with that very soon, and if it looks vaguely interesting I may put some parts of it up here. Oo - cryptic.

Fun Fact:
Irritating as fuck, kids programme Bodger and Badger was originally pitched as a saucy late night farce, entitled Todger and Badger. It would follow the misadventures of a tatty badger puppet and a large foam phallus as they embroiled themselves in all sorts of hilarious japes. When it was picked up by the BBC and switched to a pre-watershed timeslot, it had to drop most of the racier elements; but some traces do remain. The creamy 'mashed potato' facials, for instance.

That's yer lot - cock off

A little late, he staggered through

Since this blog is almost one year old, and this DJ Scotch Egg album I have on isn't really conducive to shitting out new content, I think I'll do the lazy and thing and link to some of my favourite posts of the last year. 'Cos, you know, I'm a literary genius and some of this pish needs a second airing.

The Early Life of Venetian Snares - this is all 100% true, I swear to fuck

Shoelace Tension Discrepancy - The Facts - who says only the children and the spastics have trouble tying their laces?

Science! Part 1 - shit, I forgot about this. I really must try and do it one of these days

schlechte Tätowierung - wherein I rant about Friendster

They all float down here - spending an hour in a floatation tank.....I'm such a fucking hippy sometimes

Scuppered at the last hurdle? - yes yes, I'm worried that god is videotaping all my hilarious fuck-ups to he can show them to me upon my demise

Some advice - last but not least. Come have a look at my most ill advised rant which garnered more feedback than anything else I've written

That's your lot. Everything else I've written has been fucking dire. Indeed, most of the stuff linked to above is shitty too. A good writer is not me. Enjoy

"The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies"

Whenever I come back from Glasgow I always feel (and look) like I've been raped in the face with a bus. I've been back about 3 or 4 days and only now do I have the strength to type out any sort of coherent shite.

So yeah - Animal Collective in Glasgow was a laugh riot, they were really fucking good and odd and good. Pick up their new album if you like, I won't fucking bother. I went to see my current favourite band 65daysofstatic on Wednesday night, and spent a fuckton of the Queen's pounds on merchandise. Christ, I've probably got a 65daysofstatic toothbrush kicking around somewhere. They rocked the fuck out of the place for what felt like an hour and half (it may have been a wee bit longer or shorter, 'twas hard to tell), playing pretty much everything off their first album and some great stuff from the new album.

On Thursday I went to the NFT to a thing called Antenna, where they show new music videos. Who was on the panel? None other than Spike Motherfuckin' Jonze. Jesus Christ. He was a bit nervous and shit, I think he must be terrified of people, but he came across as a likeable, talented guy and he provided the people questioning him with nice wee anecdotes as answers to their questions. Garth Jennings (part of Hammer & Tongs) was there, too, and he was one funny fuck - he looked incredibly comfortable up there on stage, witty bastard. In addition to the star studded Q&A, they showed some awesome new videos, the highlights being Tiga's new one, and one from Venetian Snares' new album. The track itself was a sub-par orchestral Squarepusher rip-off (I'm not that keen on the album...as a whole), but it was saved by a moody, inventive and downright crafty video. Shit, have I just badmouthed my hero on national internet?

As a companion piece to my Amazon list, "CDs I Lost When I Went Back To Glasgow And Got Drunk", I've just knocked this bad boy up:

"DVDs I lost when I went back to Glasgow when I went back to Glasgow and got drunk"

Yes kids, that's right - my idiot tax is increasing. Bye for now

Welcome to the afterfuture

I was standing there, in the toilets of the moving train, handrail in one hand, cock in the other, trying desperately not to get piss all up and down myself, when it came to me - Sprayvy! Aerosol gravy. I swear to fuck it could revolutionise the food service industry. I want to be known as the "Aerosol Gravy Magnate", how cool would that be?

On to more pressing matters. I'm back in Glasgow, and I got tattoo number 3 today. Fuck me gently with a chiansaw, it is badass. I would furnish you all with a photo, but I forgot my digital camera, and it's still a little raw and I canny get a decent photograph of it with my phone. Also, I was away seeing Japanese darlings Afrirampo last night. Christ they know how to rock. I really must get everything they've ever done.

I'll leave you with this poem, about the joys of seducing a ferret:

Oh handsome ferret with your eyes so blue
That watch me dance in front of you
Lying, supine, on your back
You watch me head to the red wine rack
With Beaujolais, I dash back quick
And out, you've got, your ferret dick

I think we'll leave that one right there.

"Okay, I need one each of the following tapes"

• Whispers In The Wind
• To Each His Own
• Put It Where It Doesn't Belong
• My Pipes Need Cleaning
• All Tit-Fucking : Volume 8
• I Need Your Cock
• Ass-Worshipping Rim-Jobbers
• My Cunt Needs Shafts
• Cum Clean
• Cum-Gargling Naked Sluts
• Cum Buns 3
• Cumming In Socks
• Cum On Eileen
• Huge Black Cocks With Pearly White Come
• Girls Who Crave Cock
• Girls Who Crave Cunt
• Men Alone 2 : The KY Connection
• Pink Pussy Lips
• All Holes Filled With Hard Cocks
• Happy Scrappy Hero Pup
  

Mistaken Tourist

Just out of curiosity (and also to satisfy my planet sized ego) I signed up to one of those sites that track visitors to your blog/website/hilarious toast eBay auction. Fuck me, over the past few weeks I've realised - there are actually people that read this shit on a (semi) regular basis. More than I would ever have guessed.

I'd like to give a big shout to the lone guy from Vietnam who checks it every week, and the sick fucking bastard who got here via a referral from some search engine while looking for "gay pictures of Optimus Prime". You, sir, are a class act.

I pretty much just got pissed off my fucking arse for my birthday. Drunk Marc was in full effect. And I didn't get many presents at all. Being 25 sucks almost as much as this lame ass blog entry.

Back to Glasgow on Tuesday. Hopefully I'll have something humourous to say then. Maybe I can punch a nun in the cunt on the train up, or something. I'm sure that'd get a few hits from Google.

Oiseau mort

Hey fuckheads, how's things? God almighty, there is something wrong with me, I swear to fuck. Almost 25, and now, now of all fucking times, a wisdom tooth decides it's going to start putting in an appearance. What the hell?

Anyways - I've managed to pull my shit together to actually get a ticket to see Squarepusher, so that's one out of the list of many that I'll definately be going to. Whoop-de-fucking-do. God, I hope he steers clear of playing anything off Ultravisitor. Also in keeping with the 'got my shit together' theme, I've pretty much finished designing the new tattoo I want for my birthday. Don't worry - you'll see it when it's fucking done. Christ you're impatient.

Right, onto the point of this update ('cos these updates always have some awesome purpose) - I've been seeing an awful lot of dead pigeons kicking around the pavements of London recently, so I did what any self respecting halfwit would do; I started documenting them with my phone camera. This is the first one I took, the day John Peel died:



The quality isn't too hot, but I'll make up for that by showing you my favourite one so far:





If you click on that picture, you can have a higher resolution copy of it. Though, why in the fuck you'd want that I don't know. You sick fucking bastard. Do you think he died of lung cancer? Maybe that's the last pack of fags he ever smoked, sitting right there next to him. Will the tobacco companies stop at nothing?

If I get anymore good pictures of dead pigeons, you'll be the first to know.

Cometh the month, cometh the man

As 2005 rampages towards its inevitable, logical conclusion (an inappropriate drunken pawing at a Hogmany party), we draw ever closer to Rocktober - the month of my birth. I will be a quarter of a century old this year, and I still have the brain, thoughts, sexual desires and hand-eye coordination of a high-voiced acne-ridden 16 year old. We men never fully grow up, do we? It's sad really - women my age are thinking about babies, marriage, buying a house, and here I am wondering what Playstation 2 game I want for my birthday (The Warriors, if you were wondering), and whether or not my chocolate cake should have a He-Man made of icing on it, or an Optimus Prime.

I'm a fucking a child, basically.

But enough of this maudlin nonsense, what I really want to talk about is gigs. Oh yes. Gigs. Due to my inability to get time off to go back to Glasgow for Instal, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for some hot shit down here in sunny London. Here's what I've found:

• 26 October - Rhythm Factory

65daysofstatic & Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies

Not only are 65daysofstatic releasing a new album, but they are fucking touring too. Ahhh. Having only heard about them at the beginning of the year, they have quickly become one of my favourite bands. Get yourself along to one of the other UK shows (or this one) for a heavy dose of post-rock breakcore nonsense.

• 31 October - Scala

Patrick Wolf & Friends Halloween Spooktacular

Patrick is supporting Bloc Party all over the land, but if you want to see him headline this seems to be your only chance for a while. The Bloc Party dates are all sold out anyway, I think. Expect him to be dressed as a gay Robin Hood-esque goth while he belts out his angsty electro-ballads. Probably.

• 04 November - Cargo

Minotaur Shock, Radioactive Man & more

Folktronica is such a dirty word. But hey, if lazy journalists can use it - so the fuck can I (and I can split infinitives with profanity too). Minotaur Shock is fucking awesome, and is supposedly named after a discredited type of therapy that they used to dish out to mental patients during less enlightened times. The head doctor would charge into the lunatic's room, gibbering, with a minotaur mask on. Yeah, that'll cure them. Radioactive Man, too. That's all I gotta say.

• 04 November - Overkill @ Elektrowerks II

Mistress, Trencher, Charlottefield, Modeselektor, Tim Exile, Phil Collins 3, Sharkattack, Ceephax, Shitmat, V/Vm, DJ Scotch Egg, The Gasman, Chevron, Ebola, Mully & Bunglegushcore, Miss Hawaii, Cutting Pink With Knives, Ommm, Romvelope, D/J Rupture

Jesus Cunting Christ. That line up makes me want to weep with joy. Almost every one of my favourite (at the moment) electronic artists (ok, so VSnares and Jason Forrest ain't there, but don't be nitpicky) are playing this gig. I'll really only be going the Minotaur Shock gig if I canny find someone who'll go to this with me. I reckon this could kill the last vestiges of adequate hearing I have left. Jesus...just...Jesus.

• 05 November - Camden Barfly

Robots In Disguise & more

The 2 chicks from the Mighty Boosh (Electro, Nanageddon and probably another couple of episodes too) will be dishing out their brand of punk-funk to the drunken Camden bastards. Lovely.

• 14 November - Trash @ The End

TIGA! Erol Alkan will probably be there too

If ever there was a time to make an effort to go to Trash, it would be this night. It will be oh so very trendy. And gay. Very very gay.

• 17 November - Koko

Squarepusher & Luke Vibert

Having never seen Squarepusher, I really should try and make this. I'm just worried he'll only play stuff from his most recent album (Ultravisitor), which I thought was shit. Luke Vibert is cool though.

Now, going by my track record I reckon I'll make it to one, maybe two of these nights. Why oh why must I be so fucking shite? Because I'm a fucking wean trapped in the body of a slightly bemused adult.

Come on, birthday. Come on