The Entertainment

I'd be pretty fascinated to know what my ancestors did for entertainment. Although it's possible they might not even have had one entertaining moment in their entire lives. Not knowing has allowed me to develop a hypothetical feeling of loss for long and in depth Wikipedia articles about each and every one of them. In lieu of those articles, I've got a few hunches that I work with. One hunch I have is that I'm descended on my mother's side from slaves who were kidnapped from Ireland and spirited to captivity on the Barbary Coast. Not being anything I can verify, I've officially catalogued that hunch under Bullshit Intuition™

Aside from contemplating my ancestors, I'm currently contemplating my next move as my mum often says while she flips through the Aldi catalogue avec coffee and cigarette. Though for some reason, I very often fail to instigate a constructive next move. To remedy that road block I'm looking for a more ergonomic balance between my internet usage and my involvement in real life situations, and as a first step towards this balance, I constructively took myself recently to see Battleship the movie. Which I knew would be a non constructive use of my time, but mindlessly went anyway.

It's pretty boring, nay, it's hollow and unsophisticated. On the surface I'd describe it as only marginally better than it's genre predecessor; Skyline. Albeit with higher production value and a more refined malevolence from the invading aliens. Not particularly hard to achieve if you spend a little more than 5 minutes conceptualising with all your creativity. It's frustrating how a lot of science fiction material gets it so wrong, blockbuster and independent alike. There's little reading between the lines that needs to be done in order to complement your experience. Nota Bene for the industry: increase the mystery, for vitality's sake. I've been crying over episodes of Star Trek since the 90's, so my opinion comes from the heart, as well as the mind.

I went along to be entertained and the aftermath was hopelessness.

But there's an upside to this story...

...in the absence of meaningfulness unfurled the urgent desire to draw pictures and write words that weren't going to entertain anyone else but me. Either it was Battleship that did it, or it was the adult-onset side effects of being reared on milk formula.

Drink it in...

THE PADDLER

"The Aurora was the first to leave, then the Borea, followed by Eos Astra, which was the last.

...in a sea-ish accent, he asked what was my skin name? To wit he came strangely to me.

...and I had the heady sensation that I'd been there before.

 

 ...as I approached the Entertainment."

THE ENDS

How That Shit Went Down™ - Part 3

"En route to meet the girlfriend we made a reservation at the posh restaurant De Aalmoes which had set up temporarily in the museum café. I'm currently a food snob as a result of my kitchen porter career, so I was like "acceptable". Waiting for this woman that I'd received so much analysis on was giving me the jitters. She got pointed out to me from like half a mile away so I had plenty of time to soak it up before she was right in my face. She seemed like a hotter version of a 21 year old Claudia Schiffer from that distance. The gradually revealed reality was a freckle faced, sorta Irish looking, plain jane (not that there's anything wrong with that). So we dicked around town and the girlfriend became visibly isolated the more we talked about art and issues affecting daily life. Later we rocked up back at the museum café for dinner. I ordered the beetroot salad which literally (and I use that word literally) turned out to be 3 slices of beetroot, 1 piece of lettuce, a slice from a goats cheese cylinder and 2 pieces of a satsuma. No joke. As a child I would eat beetroot in large volumes and even drink it's juice so my pee would come out weird, hence I was underwhelmed. It was tasty though so I built a bridge, and got over it. All the restaurant staff were Flemish and our waiter had a pretty gross cold sore that kept repeating on my memory."

We continued on for party times

"After that we went and had a few beers in the street which was stacked with cranking techno sound systems. Techno, house and dance constitute Dutch folk music and are a cultural glue to which young and old relate. Period. Come to think of it, each host I'd stayed with had asked me if I loved it, which they all most certainly did. People were raising their fists in the air and dropping them to the beat. Mostly it was women in the 40-50 age bracket who were doing that. Dutch women with big hair, weathered orange skin wearing large knitted ensembles with joke/oversize buttons and collars. That was the landscape. People must have been trashed but I can't prove that assumption cause they could just have easily been stone cold sober. The apex of the situation was when an early 2000's 'anthem' came on, everyone looked at each other knowingly and jammed out 10 times more than they were jamming out already. That was Rotterdam in a nutshell. During all this there was some obvious distance between my companions and I was made pretty homesick by the surroundings. I felt for her but as my host had said, she didn't tend to express anything, or react to stuff. Her job was so boring I can't even remember it, yes I remember it, she gathered financial data from the media about the activities of companies. Being able to remember that doesn't make me feel good."

And now, the riveting conclusion...

"I was happy to walk home but my host wanted to take the tram. We got that whilst she biked. He bitched and complained about her the entire journey. When we got back there was a 'singing legend in concert' show on the telly that we watched. It was exceedingly boring. The next morning as me and my host ate chicken saté for breakfast I made my decision; I was gonna get the F out of Holland. I didn't think I could handle the lifestyle anymore. I bought my ferry ticket then and there. The girlfriend woke up about an hour later and we all talked about techno music."

That's How That Shit Went Down™

How That Shit Went Down™ - Part 2

"I got an instant sick feeling in my tummy when I knew they were going to accept me. On the way back after the interview I stopped for a wee, feeling completely torn. It was instantaneous indecision. It was pretty annoying actually, after having come all this way. Hauling my worldly belongings in a ramshackle cluster of awkward satchels, a plastic bag from Forbidden Planet and my broken suitcase that weighed a tonne, literally halfway across the Netherlands. Fuck I hate that suitcase. I couldn't believe how Natalie Imbruglia's Torn kept repeating in my head as I urinated, but it totally was. It didn't stop for like 45 minutes. Back at the flat I contemplated my feelings to the tune of the rain and Star Trek: Enterprise. The visual metaphors were coming at me thick and fast as T'Pol decided between staying on the Enterprise and exploring outer space, or returning to Vulcan to take up a post at the Science Academy. I bought my host a Kinder Bueno and left a post it note saying I'd been accepted in to art school, then bailed."

I left to go stay with the final host I had lined up, after that I was on my own..

"When I got there he invited over his neighbour who had previously lived in Australia, I'm assuming to make me feel more at home. The neighbour turned out to be someone you'd encounter smoking a bucket bong behind the surf club with a wild dog and it's pups. He suggested we watch some Rodney Rude on YouTube which rung alarm bells in my head. I remember thinking 'Shit this is gonna be really boring' as I'd had several Rodney Rude cassettes growing up. I ended up laughing so hard though that I actually felt like a reject and had to cover my mouth cause it looked weird when I laughed. My lips were stretched so tight across my teeth it hurt, it was both surprising and embarrassing. We continued on to a snooker bar where it was ladies night but there were only like 3 chicks there, all wearing boob tubes in order to highlight their saggy, middle aged assets. I managed to win 2 games out of 5 which is pretty amazing shit for me. I still felt unsure about committing to art school here, and talking to the guys about it gave me no answers"

"The next day the girlfriend rung saying she wanted to go to the beach but my host told her he'd rather hang out with me, a total stranger, and go see a gallery in town. So she decided she'd hook up with us later. During the tram ride in to town he talked about how she didn't enjoy taking on new situations and was bad at expressing her feelings. As it turns out he's had like a million girlfriends, he met this current one on the internet. The tram took no time at all and we legged it to the 'cool area'. The galleries were time well spent, the best thing I saw was a painting of the lyrics from the Sesame Street song. Surrounded by all the art I was feeling more like I should commit to art school. Crossing over the canal en route to the Sonneveld museum we were accosted by a woman who actually looked like a Muppet character, with massive spherical eyelids and heavy blue eyeshadow, I marveled at her face and insane accent as the infamous girlfriend called to say she just had rocked up in town! We bailed on Muppet face and went to meet her, my anticipation was palpable."


Stay tuned for the third and final installment of How That Shit Went Down™

How That Shit Went Down™ - Part 1

I once had the idea I would move to Rotterdam and go to art school. Here's How That Shit Went Down™...

(diary excerpts, selected highlights)

"The ride to Rotterdam was suitably futuristic, upon a small new train, the likes of which I'd never seen before. The people were bugging me out a little. It seems strange to think of most people's perception of the Dutch as free thinking stoners when in reality, they're conservative Americans from the Midwest who shop at Abercrombie & Fitch. That's a phenomonal case of mind control right there. All the rail staff had been incredibly stroppy, although this seems to be a worldwide situation and I myself have been one of the stroppiest rail employees known to humanity. I'm surprised I'm not even in jail. Everything reminded me of a Dr Who television set, particularly at the time when Sylvester McCoy was the Doctor. But that's not the first time I've said that about something which made me worry about my prevalence for cliché."

I had arranged to couch surf that evening and after a few wrong turns found my way to the guys place

"My host made a quiche, seemed to get a bit tipsy and then we played PlayStation 3, which I felt too rude to say I wasn't in to. It was so banal. I don't really see the appeal in computer games. Alex Kidd in Miracle World maybe, actually, that game wasn't that amazing. I think I just became obsessed with it. Then I slept in the spare room listening to the rain, praying it wouldn't rain all the following day. The next day my atheist principles were all up in my grill as the sodding rain had intensified. I came to understand that my prayers are worth about the same as a 1x1 millimeter piece of white plastic that got chipped off a derelict and deserted book shelf originally from IKEA, now wedged in the dirt in deserted wasteland east of the A12. The second night was cool, this time I made puttanesca and we listened to music instead of the video games. He felt like more wine but to be honest I'm not really feeling wine lately. We chatted and drank the wine. He played more bad music and talked about techno."

I had arranged to stay at several different places

"The following day I walked all the way to my next host, complimenting a lady on her intimate knowledge of the city whilst en route. She must have looked at me and thought: "what a cheese ball". The weather was still butts-ville, but at least it wasn't pissing it down. On the way there I stumbled across a comic book shop which ensnared me for about 15 minutes. Run by an exceedingly obese man who has relatives in Perth. His inability to pronounce Perth interested me. I would want to tell the people in Perth How That Shit Went Down™. I can imagine the repulsion and the disinterest etched in to their faces right now. There were some cool comics in there such as Altur; the interplanetary civil servant Elf who gets recalled from one planet to attend a language course on another planet, where unbelievably, 'something happens'. The illustrations were ram-a-jammed with Tron-like native American Indians. I thought it was the coolest thing in there. I got to the guys place and my first thoughts were: this guy seems to forgo style and theme in preference for function, to the point where it's actually become a style statement. He'd gone full circle. Emphasised best by the most striking feature in his flat which was a ginormous light bulb for a ceiling light. I couldn't really look at it for too long. It's intention and the intention that I should feel something by looking at it, was too distracting."

The next day I was to apply at art school, I had an interview arranged and my portfolio was prepped. Stay tuned for the next installment to see........ How That Shit Went Down™

24 Hour Soho

Wandering aimlessly around Soho at any time of day, on any day of the week, should be my emotional identity. My ample rear lumbers so often through it's streets and lanes, that Soho shop owners have undoubtedly started calling me The Idle Toad by now.

I love Soho to the max, it's the big fat, juicy cherry on top of life's heaving stress cake and as some high powered TV Executive in the midst of a nervous overload might say, is just..

"Amaze!"

I came across this curious coffin like entity on a recent episode in town. My foolish brain took quite a while to figure out what was going on..

..but after what seemed like an eternity, it identified it as a sleek new variety of street bench


According To The Internet™ they have been designed as the ultimate crime resistant addition to our apparently hellish streets. Anti-rough sleeping, anti-skateboarding, anti-graffiti, the list of kill joys goes on.


'Amaze' I hear you say?

Considering that pure function has resulted in a subtle expression of modern design, then yar, it's a little amaze. Let's take this design concept a little further though, and see if we can introduce full blown artistic mayhem onto our pavements.

Here's my next generation street bench concept..

 

Get that shit happening on the streets of Camden. I wouldn't mind some spinning light boxes attached to my FACE.

Continuing my... 'Yar I'm in Town' ....session, I headed deeper in to the woods and loitered around the bottom of Centrepoint for a bit, admiring the Centrepoint Apartments on St Giles Street and hoping that somebody would throw me down the deed to one as I did so.

I remarked that their style was not unlike the street bench I'd seen earlier, smooth white granite with a vaguely artistic quality. A little bit like the early 80's film Krull as well as a matter of fact.

Some Krull flavours...

                                   You pickin' up what I'm puttin' down?

Starting to feel artistically stimulated, I popped in to Cass Arts on Berwick Street, but found myself slightly irritated by the whole chain-store vibe, their twee sloganism and the fact that those are the things we go to Soho to escape from. So I got the fuck out of there as quick as humanly possible.

Which led me A. Past that Soho stalwart Bill Nighy and B. In to Walker's Court.

Seeing Bill Nighy in his trench coat, all louche and enigmatic restored my heart. He inspired me to imagine an even better Soho, one filled with poor people, artists and prostitutes. A place where women wear shiny plastic raincoats and men wear black eyes and hangovers.


                                                    
                                                    
The Soho look

                                                                  Ronnie

Zhora

The King

Feeling exhausted by the humanity, I decided it was time to eat.

Worth a visit for the name alone, The New World on Gerrard Street in China Town offers not only scrumptious dumplings, but probably the only opportunity in the UK to feel like you're on the set of Seinfeld. I summarily ordered some dumplings as that was all I really cared for at the time, at which the look on the waitresses face turned from loving, naive child to..

'We're both in the Warsaw Ghetto, it's 1944. If you don't order any more food, you die'.

I ordered more.

Where have you been David?

David didn't know, but his brain plugged in to the computer sure did. As it scanned through various star charts to the shock of the extras in Flight of the Navigator, it pulled up systems that weren't even in NASA's databanks. The answer David's brain gave to where he'd been all this time: In analysis mode on Phaelon.

Sounds fab.

Click on image for some analysis mode action

My mind has been pondering over that line since I saw the film 25 years ago; Analysis mode. There's something quite reassuring about that concept. Like as in I wouldn't be expected to mow the lawn or anything. Which, by the way, I did a lot of as a child and is just about the least favourite activity available to me in this universe. Although something inside me says I'll probably really love doing it when I'm 55. Proof of Satan's existence? I'll leave that up to you.

The other least favourite activity available to me in this universe goes to........ shopping. Shopping in general, but with particular emphasis on shopping down the British High Street. High Streets are hell. We all know it. Now let's start talking about it.

If it's not the High Street beating the emotional crap out of me, it's a mall/retail park death zone. Take IKEA for example.

No sooner have I walked in to the place than my eyes are force closing all over the show. Not that I'd ever go there of my own free will, but I went recently in support of someone else and thought it a choice opportunity to hoe in to some meatballs for like a quid. Contrary to all the efforts of IKEA's merchandising team, the standout moment of the day for me (apart from the meatballs) was when a woman complained that her 50p hot dog was getting cold whilst she waited for her 50p chips to come out of the deep fryer. My heart literally bled for her.

                                      
                                                    mmm hmm girlfriend

Far out IKEA really needs some spicing up doesn't it? Like a store re-design from the team behind Cirque du Soleil. Or some pumped American chic screaming at grunts fighting over a 99p toilet brush. Or Holly Hunter playing the role of a sexually repressed, secretly lesbian drill sergeant.

Or Corporal Ferro from Aliens...

Or maybe Joy Behar from The View?

SHIT I'm getting totally carried away! There's something about strong black (but white) Jewish women that makes me feel ALIVE man!

Post IKEA-haze I managed to haul my fat white arse atop my bike and bumped and wound my way through the peaceful and sunlit Lea Valley Regional Park. I felt totally at ease. A bit of a rarity considering I live on an estate sandwiched between two retail death zones of propaganda, Canary Wharf and Stratford. Both places could really do with a Lea Val injection. Or in lieu of that, a David Bade exhibition. Bade's work has all the colour, freakishness and curiosity that Canary Wharf is devoid of, and all the thought, questioning and character that Stratterz refuses to let in.

Art and expression. AKA: A woman with 6 tits.

Another piece by Bade. Check out his piece y'all.








To stay the descent into madness I repeat my mantra as often as possible;

"Don't Let The Suburbs Get You Down".

Although the suburbs can be a bit wild and frontier-ish in a vague sort of way, it's the mentality of the burbs that'll ultimately fuck with your soul.

A girl I know said to me recently...

"You can't really succeed at being ethical in society, all you can do is reduce. Reduce the amount of shit you're consuming until you're stripped back down to the basics"

In all honestly I would LOVE to see that last line enscribed on a cast iron arch over the A11 as you pull in to Stratford.

Either that, or...

"Get some standards bitch"

PS: I love Joy Behar to the max.

I ❤ Algerian Soccer Moms

Zoning out and being screamed at by their kids. That’s Paris in a nutshell.  I went there for my birthday recently, which happens to be Bastille Day, France’s national day. Hopefully future historians will have the ability to distinguish between motion picture event and real life situation, because Bastille Day ain’t no Amelie. In reality it’s a lot more Children of Men. It’s fathers on the metro whispering prayers to their crushed child, grim faced police with guns forming impassable human walls and mothers screaming so deeply from their lungs that it sent a chill down my spine. Never go to France on La Fête Nationale, it’s apocalyptic. They even had 30 year old men in trousers and knitted vests watching 50 Cent videos on the free internet at the Georges Pompidou Centre. Now that's grim.

The hottest act in Paris right now. Before YouTubing, please ensure you have at least 3 buckets ready to spew in.









If only I could have beamed myself up to the Snog outlet in Covent Garden, which I’m not sure if anyone’s noticed lately, is where the spirit of G.A.Y has been transferred since the destruction of the Astoria.


There it lives on until the Astoria can be rebuilt and its ‘Katra’ can be restored. Seriously though, it's full on. They're cranking Euro Trance and Electro Dance like it's going out of fashion. I think it must be something to do with the 16 year old party animals they're employing as management, cause I've been to the Soho branch and it's like the chill out room for the Covent Garden one. I’m literally gonna go there as often as I can, nowhere else is documenting gay rave culture in the 90’s quite like it.

Senior management meeting at Snog Covent Garden.

I’d love it if they had one of those Blue Plaques for notable past residents on the front of that place you know, that’s an amazing hypothetical photo opportunity waiting to happen. You could read all about how John Knox hatched plans for the Protestant Reformation there in 1532 whilst twinks dish out frozen yoghurt to thumping Jungle Trance.

Fierce.

It’d be excellent if people wrote any old shit on the outside of their house for the entertainment of the public, like ridiculous YouTube comments for example. Which it would seem, happen to be a window to the human psyche that has never before been available to science. Some examples:

 “If God created the heaven and hell then heaven can you can find somewhere on earth can the afterlife but hell you find in my soul”

“why do i watch these, i know ill always cry because, i may be a 13 year old boy, i still cry every time i see one of these vids, i hate how i always end up watching these, its ruin's my day”

Next time I try to get some group therapy sessions out of the NHS I’m gonna take along a print out of some 13 year old Armenian boy's YouTube account.

They might offer it to me that time.