London is Dead

Gene Kelly is one of my favourite actor singer and dancer and this clip from the film "It's Always Fair Weather" shows why

Hopefully this will put a smile on someones face

Enjoy

The whisky had steadied me but the world was swaying and tipsy, it was always such a lightweight.

My ability to walk in a straight line was undaunted by my liquid acquaintance but the world was jerking the street all over the place and I was fearing for its head tomorrow morning.

"steady down, I think you had too much" I tell him but no reply was forthcoming as the world's drunkenness renders it mute.

The night was cool and my belly full and content from a meal of mushroom soup.

Tescos had not restocked their shelves so I had purchased the mushrooms from an independent trader in the area. He had assured me of their quality with calls that they were class A.

I was hesitant due to the poor ventilation and dubious clientele of his secret plantation in his mothers garage but demand and supply economics had deemed his product of extreme expense so I was certain of their excellence. 

My full belly had its disadvantages as I had discovered it had made me see everything in a strange colour and upside down and had led to my friendship with the world to become compromised.

He was always so angry, and unfortunately violent towards me after a whisky drink. I was jerked and pushed and bullied around and battered against the pavement, the lampost, a car and an owl.

Such cavalier abuse of my physical being had left me sore and feelings of sickness from my vegetable meal had left me in need of a toilet.

I entered the nearest building, through the door as was the socially acceptable method at the time.

Unfortunately I narrowly missed the toilet with my vomit by 100 metres but due to the ferocity of the said illness it made up a good twenty metres of that distance, which diminished my embarrassment by 20%.  Those using the urinals in line of my illness seemed impressed with my flighted sick. In fact they were now dripping green with envy.

I left the facilities and to my horror I realised I was now in the confines of a library. In my panic I drowned my throat with the whisky from the canteen in my pocket and slowly tried to find an exit.

I was a man of vocal words and this was the land of the written word- I knew my sort was not welcome here.

Signs of "silence" and "do not talk in the library" were to be seen everywhere which furthered my fears and segregation and I knew I was in the minority. 

Thousands of books stared down at me as I stumbled through the library. They read titles like "The lost art of a great speech", "The Brilliant Written Word" and "Earth Dogs dont Speak" which further reinforced my paranoia.

But maybe it was the belly full of mushrooms or the whisky in my throat that made me resolved to stand up to this bigotry and make my voice heard.

I marched straight up to the librarbians desk, with several slight detours to the floor along the way.

"Lissssten upp, youse li..li...barbarian, I will not be taunted by your hardcovered army"

"sshh"

"How dare you, I will not be..."

"Ssssshhhhh"

"You cant silence me- I demand to be heard"

"Sir this is a library, there is no talking"

"and it has been like this for too many generations- the people of the spoken word must finally be heard here- I demand my say."

"Sir, I will call security if you do not shut up"

"You have hurt my feelings lady- I am not made of a hardcover like your books but merely skin and I am sensitive to being discriminated upon in this place due to the method of my communication." 

"Audio-books are in the basement floor in the corner"

"Of course, hide us away and sweep us under the cover- I know my place in your eyes but one day the world will be full of libraries that selve audio-books and printed books next to each other, a place that does not discriminate between the two. Maybe in generations to come there will be an audio-book that wins the Booker Prize......I just hope I am alive to see it."

"Sir- you are scaring me and I am calling security" she laughed

"Dont be afraid of change my dear- I must be allowed freedom of speech"

"ssshhhhh"

I am set upon my two security guards of the Books Nationally Promotion and thrown out of the library to the exile of the street.

"Go back to where you came from" one of the guards yells as the world lands on my head and my blood makes the escape from my nose that I feared it had been plotting for a long time.

I walk the street shaken by my ordeal but determined to fight on. My next stop would be a Waterstones or Fleet Street and the old order would burn....

But first I wanted some more vegetables to freshen up my brain which I feared had been left depressed and vulnerable after the escape of my blood.

I guess you can try but sometimes living together just doesnt work out and you have to move on.......

 

Joy is firing your marketing team for coming up with a fantastically stupid ad campaign

Absolutely love these guys

This is Flight of the Conchords and the song Beautiful Girl

Always makes me smile.

I recently have become a bit unhealthily addicted to my keywords. I love when I get a weird one and spend far too much time thinking about who that person was and what they were looking for and how annoyed they probably were at getting my dumb blog.

Here are mine this month:

Here are a few of my favourites:

"pee desperate wet"
I have a theory about this one. I think some guy got back late after a heavy night on the town and was really drunk, so drunk in fact that he forgot how to go to the bathroom so whilst on the couch in front of the computer and getting more hysterical decided to try and call for help. Hope they made it.

"doble meaning quotes"
No wonder this person is looking for quotes by wordsmiths- he cant even spell double.

"swine flu room of smoke"
Sounds like a David Lynch film- I would bet my laptop on this being the result of two stoners talking. "Dude, swine flu is like smoke hiding society from questioning the government covering up aliens." "Deep, dude, deep" I had too many of these unfortunately.

"what's that drink they make in friday"
I love the way this person sounds like they are talking to the computer in a conversational way.

"what happens if you smoke weed when you have swine flu"
You really crave a bacon sandwich

"whats referred to as the 'Dole' in the UK"
Is this David Cameron?

"fuck youth abused"
Sounds terribly violent unless you put a comma in there- fuck, youth abused- it now sounds like they are from greenpeace (gotta hold on to the idea that I have no rapists reading this blog)

"I love smoking mothers"
This person obviously has not been watching those disgustingly manipulative NHS adverts with the children and the smoking mothers. Viva la revolution- I love them too. 

"loves his hard long strokes"
This person really knows what they want in their porn- they know the level of grip, the length and the stroke-whatever happened to handjobs? People are way too particular these days...

Any one got weirder ones?

Mitch Hedberg

Stand up I always think is best when the comedian takes something you see or do everyday and then completely flips it and makes you see it differently.

Noone was as good at that as Mitch Hedberg.

"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long." "Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus or just a really cool opotamous?"

"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."

"I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."

"My roommate said to me, 'I'm gonna go shave and use the shower; does anyone need to use the bathroom?' It's like some weird ass quiz where he reveals the answer first." 

He died in 2005, aged 37, of an overdose and I will certainly miss him.

Stand up is my favourtie art form and possibly the only one that gives complete freedom of speech with no censorship.

While Mitch Hedberg was not the most controversial or anything he was one of the funniest. His delivery is so bizarre and I would recommend everyone to buy his cds as they are some of the best stand up performances around.

RIP

Enjoy

After my previous post on the Strokes I could hardly not post this.

It is The Strokes lead singer Jules' first single from his solo album out very soon.

Absolutely love it and can imagine dancing to it very badly in indie clubs across London very shortly .......and scaring lots of kids.

 

These are all genuine comics of Superman that prove once and for all that Superman is such a dick!!

 

For so many more reasons why Superman is a dick go here: http://superdickery.com/

"I want a career in writing really badly"

2001 was a bad year

I was bittersweet 16 then and I was going through the horror of the best years of my life. I was lucky that I had avoided the pitfalls of the teenage years- never got acne, my voice didnt go all squeaky when it was breaking, I washed enough not to be the smelly kid and the strangers in my area only offered me Mars bars and seeing as I was more a snickers kind of guy I avoided the molestation.

But then again it wasnt all great as no kids life is.

I had a nickname at the time; people at school called me "Irish" because I was the only irish person in the school (I know not the smartest year) and growing up in a pig-ignorant part of the London statelite towns wasnt great with a broad Northern Irish accent during the 90s I can tell ya.

When I was ten, I moved to England and the first two things that were said to me on the first day at school in the playground were "You are Irish? you must be stupid!!" and then another kid said "you are Irish? dont blow me up!!!!" and then the little shit ran off to the teacher and told her I threatened to blow him up so I got detention.

I remember thinking to myself then that one day I would laugh about this or it could be the catalyst for a serious drinking problem, whichever didnt matter because karma translates that this kid would get his comeuppance one day.

I facebooked the guy who told on me last week hoping to find a facebook status that read something like "john is homeless now" or "john went to the sex clinic and got some bad news" or "john is up for nomination this week in the big brother house".

However, what I got was "John went to Cambridge University and is now a lawyer living with a beautiful model girlfriend in a loft apartment in Chancery Lane London with a holiday home in Greece, well tailored suit, good looks, well conditioned hair, trust fund just kicked in last year and a recreational cocaine habit." Ouch- a lot of sips of whisky could not get the sour taste out of my mouth that night.

Yeah well, he will always be a little shit to me...........................and I am resolved to kick him in the balls if I ever see him again so panic over.

Anyway, back to what I was saying I was 16

I hadnt discovered girls yet or more I had but they certainly had not discovered me. Metaphorically I was America in Biblical times. At least now I am Uzbekistan, everyone knows where it is but nobody wants to go there.

My only place of refuge, like so many others, was my room were I was whatever I wanted to be.

I listened to music continiously there it was heaven but unfortunately it was 2001 and all the music was awful. Britpop was dead and overrated anyway, everyone in school wanted to be a DJ and had decks, garage music and fucking craig david was huge and Nu-metal was seen as the future of music forever with Fred Durst seemingly the new Frank Black.

I had lost my faith in music and had retreated to only listening to John Peel on the radio and wondering what on earth he was talking about half of the time and the other half wondering why he was playing a swedish band who only used kettles as instruments.

I love John Peel and always will but jesus he played some weird shit. I had almost given up on being a music fan altogether and was in the process of looking through a decks magazine one night in my room when suddenly the Strokes came on.

The song was Hard to Explain and, whilst now every third teenage with long hair thinks they are in a band like the strokes, at the time they were bizarre and it was a revelation to me.

I instantly fell in love with the band and it ignited my love of music that has lasted ever since. It was amazing to me at the time after years of Limp Bizcuit or Korn that I could never relate to or cheesy dance songs from europe that finally there was a band that I could understand and spoke to me.

Suddenly there were bands like this everywhere and luckily  I got the chance the same year to see the Strokes a few times in the astoria and later at Leeds University (with a very early days Libertines in support which is probably still the best gig I ever went to)

The Strokes might mean nothing to you, they certainly mean nothing to most people I meet.

I once told some guy at a party that I liked them and the conversation went like this:

"I really like the strokes"
"The strokes, they are shit, I hate them"
"I disagree I like there sound a lot and so many have copied it"
"you are wrong, you have terrible taste in music, do you know what you get when you look up stupid in the dictionary?"
"um.....a picture of me?"
"no, the definition of stupid which you are."

That was a great line I thought, especially as some girls laughed at me too which gave the guy an in to proceed to chat them up and get their numbers. It was good until I watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring Robert Downey Jnr and realised that he just stole it from the movie.....just another guy to add to the "kick him in the balls" list.

But the Strokes meant a lot to me, made me seek out new music like them which got me into a million other bands I love, gave me a million bad fashion stories as I tried to dress cool, made me buy a guitar and fail miserably at learning to play it and got me to go to more gigs where I was infinately better at meeting girls than clubs with garage music playing.

I truely believe after a tough day at work or something there is nothing better than coming home putting on your favourites albums and drinking some cheap whisky.

I dont want you to all to suddenly love the Strokes that would be silly but do yourself a favour and put on your favourite album from when you were growing up (especially one that has lots of memories or you have not heard it in a while) and I promise you you will feel great.