New York City Had a Lot To Do With It

No more unalloyed joy - as Montherlant put it "happiness writes white".

I'm still pissed I made these idealistic plans to see at least one gig out there - but came back empty.

And Morningwood were playing on the Sunday as support to Scissor Sisters.

I'll just have to wait til they make it to London.

One last thing: we did a terrible thing Saturday night and put in two hours in Hogs & Heifers. Dancing and singing some to Dolly and Elvis and . . .

But this cool brother in there gave me and a friend his NYCTA gloves in appreciation of our shaking our asses to the King et al.

And hey - come to think of it what's so bad about Elvis and Tequila?!?

Appletinis & David Hockney

New York yarbles again. Sorry - still tripping off of it.

We were in this place somewhere round Ludlow and - having read a whole lot of stuff on the web via the Metro, Village Voice and others re: where to go and what to drink - I had this posey desire for an Appletini.

Meanwhile a friend pulls out these comedy glasses (oh the lame things we men do to interest girls - just this detail probably tells you all you need to know about our group on this trip) and we take turns sticking them on.

My turn comes.

Friend 1: You look like David Hockney.

Friend 2: Yeah - a fat David Hockney.

Friend 1: (to a gaggle of girls stooling at the bar) Doesn't he look like David Hockney? (They smile, but start shaking to leave.) O yes he does.

Me: A fat David Hockney? What are you talking about? Have you seen him lately?

Oh - and just before leaving I asked the brother shaking up the cocktails re: what drinks he'd recommend.

"Well," he said, "for one thing I wouldn't go round town drinking those. That's a girl's drink."

Yeah, I was that cool.

BBC Comedy Links

Loads of details re: comedy shows aired available here

Lower East Side & Out

Yeah it was a sodding horrorshow of a trip.

Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink.

And I fucking loved it, man.

Not going to go over it all, as other people's good times can be so boring and I have vowed not to go there.

Suffice this: I came back with bruises and I've no idea how I got them.

And it was HOT - okay only five or six degrees up on London if you go by the thermo, but that five degree hike hits you double. Add all those air cons feltching out their hot air . . . and you feel like you're being broiled.

Peep Show Writers Interview Link

Courtesy of the IDEAS FACTORY site (see BOAT DRINKS for link) there's an interview with the writers of Peep Show.

Peep Show Cast & Crew

They're listed here

- and no, I was not responsible for organising the "flowers and chocolate".

Issues With Croydon

Yeah - I am aware that the blessed Peep Show is based in Croydon. And I suppose as such it's partly milking the instant comedy vein of The Office and Slough but . . .

Shit is shite and excellence is excellence. And they're both great.

As for Croydon - me no likey. You kinda love or loathe Ikea and the idea of Ikea . . . and I fucking loathe the whole idea. Let alone the merch; I can't abide being all-but-told which way I should walk around a shop/store. How can anyone?

Oh - and I think this shall be my first and last mention of Surrey and its environs. Please correct/verbally whip me if I renege.

The Fantabulous Peep Show

This is the brief blurb on the Channel 4 E4 site concerning the first series of Peep Show:

Doublethink:

Welcome to the private world of Jeremy and Mark - two very ordinary weirdos.

Wannabe popstar Jeremy is a lazy man with big ideas, mostly about himself. His old friend and flatmate is the astonishingly tragic Mark, an obsessive loser with a no-pain, no-gain view of the world.

In an inventive twist, Jeremy and Mark's inner thoughts can be heard - whether they be dark, stupid or embarrassingly over-blown. Or sometimes all three.

Full of cringe-making embarrassment and excruciating faux pas, much of the show's humour is best described as 'close to the bone'. But if you like jokes about onanism, sex, death, and misshapen genitalia - this could be right up your alley.

Now it's time for everyone to badger the bastards to get their chops out of their alleys and get Peep Show out on DVD.

Viddy Yarbles!

When one has no particular aptitude for anything,
one takes to the pen and poses as a talented person

- Honore de Balzac

That puffed up old dog of a man wrote those sneering words in 1835, after one of his many amours had tried to push forward one of her own young suitors (oh those French . . .) with deluded ideas about literary greatness. (Now that's quintessentially French!) So Balzac reluctantly sniffed him out, then dismissed him as being painfully "characteristic of our times".

Of course, in our times we seldom reach for the pen; indeed, if you read chunks of this article courtesy of Private Eye you shall no doubt recoil at how some of our current delinquents can't be arsed to carry a pen to school. The future? Be afraid, be very afraid compadres.

No - nowadays we hit the net, and naturally I've been loathe to join the moronic inferno out there, Jorge Luis Borges' Library of Babel on high resolution - why even toying with Dr Google prior to this opener I came upon a blog by a nine year-old Brazilian girl (and no, you latent and not-so-latent sickoes out there, I'm not schtupping a link to her!) and some sorry old dear warbling on about her Arkansan grandchildren. Full story and pics and an inability to break or paragraph her guff - urrgghh. Blah blah . . . Enough already.

The trouble is, most of the time they're deathly dull. Pure Korma ie mild, way too mild. And gooey. See it? Feel it? I believe I can smell it! Believe me: the slide into worldwide infantilism continues apace (just look in your local bookshop).

But not here, my brand new friends.

No - we have no ned to care about what's dribbling out of young Alfie and Zeta's various orifices this week. Nor do we need to care for the 'trials and tribulations' of anyone else's work. It's simple: either your work really is Mcshite ie infra dig - or else you pick up a sizeable wad for arse-licking half your life away. That's the way it is in London, baby. Brutal, but true.

I SWEAR BY THIS MANTRA:

Keep your head down and do your bird;
then when you get out the door, turn up the boosters . . .

So: why am I bothering to do this?

• For a laugh
  
  
• It's something to fool around with when your head's "beating like a fucked clock" through the mongrel hours of a Saturday or Sunday afternoon (BTW need I signal each and every reference used from one of my favourite movies, Withnail and I ? I think I can assume that anyone who hangs around here is completely down with that work of genius)
  
  
• As I said, so much else out there is pure korma
  
  
• Oh - and because whole Big Brother concept gets on my tits. What I hate most about it is the idea of enforced fun - almost as bad as having it forced on yourself is watching others going through it. And no question about it: all the contestants are duffers!

Right - that's enough of my mini-manifesto. I'm off to NYC to have a ball with some friends (one of the fools is getting married next month) - so this time next week I'll no doubt be stagggering on my hands and knees round the Lower East Side.

Until I return, you all hold tight out there . . .