Hey, I always say that there's nothing wrong with a personal touch, providing they don't notice you doing it and call the police.
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Well, that was pretty boring. So now I'm going to do my own version of NME's 'On the Couch' feature, where instead of actually interviewing musicians about, y'know, music, they just ask them a load of stupid questions about cooking. What a great idea!
What song describes you best?
'Helicon#1' by Mogwai gets
pretty close because it's really quiet, but has bits which are very loud
and distorted, and this resembles my life, if not myself exactly.
What
is heaven?
This is probably very shallow
of me, but I suspect the heaven is a place where all your favourite TV
programs are always on.
What
is hell?
Well, if that's heaven,
then I suppose hell must be a place where they always cancel your favourite
TV programs because of the bloody cricket. Yes, it appears I am shallow,
but then at least I'm honest about it. Alternatively, hell is the place
where you lose your contact lenses, and are forced to search for them for
enternity.
What
is your earliest memory?
Of eating weetabix, and
my dad coming home and me thinking he was the gas man or something.
What
is your greatest fear?
That I'll never find love.
Oh, and death, that too.
Who
is your all time hero?
I don't go in for hero worship,
although I always felt an affinity with Ghandi. Quite possibly only because
he was thin and wore glasses, but that's beside the point.
Who
was the first love of your life?
A girl called Helen who
spent a lot of time on top of me during judo practice. Sadly I was only
about 10 and therefore not fully equipped to enjoy the experience. Actually,
no I'm lying, I was about 12 and loved every minute of it. Especially the
biting. But we won't get into that.
What's
the worst trouble you've been in?
Probably being late for
nearly all of my exams. All the time. For some reason, I just can't get
there early.
What
is your greatest talent?
Probably writing, I'm not
much good at anything else. Well, not much else except maybe drawing and
making dissonant shrieking noises with an electric guitar. I also do a
pretty good impression of Jimmy Stewart, although not in front of other
people.
Upon
whom would you most like to exact revenge? Why and how?
They are so numerous...
but I suppose I could force certain people in the popular music industry
to listen to, say, Mogwai at a volume which would deafen them for life.
Although then again it's often said you don't need ears to work in the
popular music industry.
What's
your most treasured possession?
I'm not a very material
person. Although I think I'd be a bit pissed if I lost my credit card.
And I'm starting to get quite attached to my Indian-made copy of a Fender
Mustang, even though all the buttons keep falling off and the low E string
never stays in tune.
What's
the best piece of advice you've received?
In order to receive advice
you must first listen to the sort of people who like 'advising' you. I
don't. Failing that, probably something along the lines of 'It helps
if you plug it in first'.
What
have you most regretted doing while drunk?
I once threw up on the floor
in a pub after downing a pint, but it was middle of the afternoon, so it
didn't look good.
If
you were invisible for a day, what would you do?
Steal things, obviously.
If
you had three wishes, what would they be?
That I could communicate
in any language, that I could get a decent publishing deal, and that animals
could talk. Although not all the time, that would be freaky.
ROOM
101
Ah
yes, Room 101. The BBC's program where
usually very boring minor celebrities choose predicable things which to
put into their own personal chamber of horrors, Room 101. This is
my own version of it; I can't remember exactly how many you're supposed
to choose, so I've just added to it gradually. Actually it's getting a
bit too long now... But as they say you can learn more about a person
from what they dislike than what they like, well, then after reading this
you'd probably know more about me than I do.
Nostalgia
Some people seem to be under
the illusion that if something is old, it is therefore better. Quite clearly
this is nonsense; equally nonsense is the commonly-held view, by all people
over 40, that you could 'always leave you doors unlocked in the old days
and no one steal anything'. Obviously, what actually happened is that the
burglars just went in and nicked your stuff, whereas now they have to break
in first. The past wasn't better than the present, and at best it was only
more or less the same. People who ramble on about how safe and clean and
moral it was in the past, generally tactically forget certain minor factors,
like the two world wars.
Daddylonglegs
Otherwise known as the crane
fly, these are a particularly horrible and incredibly pointless family
of insects. In the their fly state they live for only one day, in which
time they have to breed, because otherwise they starve to death, not having
a mouth or any digestive system. They also think that lightbulbs are the
moon, which is fair enough except when you considering they keep flying
into
the moon rather than just navigating by it, like they're supposed to. They're
incredibly spindly, and break into pieces when you so much as brush against
them. I don't dislike really any other species of insect, but these are
just evil as much as they are idiotic.
'Comedy'
Records
The main problem I have
with these is that they really aren't at all funny, or at best they're
funny once, then never again. My general belief is that if you can't
take your music seriously, then you should just fuck off and do something
else. The worst thing is that in Britain we have an inexplicable love of
these talentless pieces of recorded shite, and frequently buy enough of
them to get them into the top 10.
At this point I would like
to make the distinction between comedy records, and records which are humorous.
The main difference is that comedy records are NOT FUNNY, whereas humorous
records are. Take Half Man Half Biscuit, bits of Pavement, Kid Koala or
the Blue Jam album as good examples of humorous records.
Socks
WHY? I'm not one
of those people who wander around barefoot, or in sandals, but there's
something very frustrating about socks; there are always mornings when
no matter what I do, I can't quite get the heel of the sock lined up with
the heel of my foot, so I have to spend several minutes faffing about,
trying to reposition them. Simply, they are evil, and should be replaced
by something more sensible.
The
concept of the guitar solo
Look up 'solo' in the dictionary
and it says something about it being the musician showing how good he is.
Great. So not actually music, then, but rather just showing off. I don't
think there's any room for the guitar solo in a civilized society. I'm
talking to you, J Mascis. Stop it. Now.
Dubbed
laughter in sitcoms
I'm not against laughing
in sitcoms, because after all the sitcom is just the TV version of the
comedy play, and laughing from AN AUDIENCE is natural. A load of crappy
recorded stuff is not. It's always easy to tell when the laugher is dubbed
or not, because if it's live, the performers have to stop on occasion while
the audience compose themselves (see any episode of 'Fraiser' for an example
of this). But sadly often it's the case that laughter is recorder afterwards,
and quite frankly I think this is mental. Many TV series ('League of Gentlemen',
for example) would be much much better without the laughter. Equally,
though, the audience can be really irritating; for example I despise the
way American audiences start whooping like baboons whenever some minor
starlet makes a guest appearance in 'Friends'. I makes me feel very odd,
because quite frequently I have no fucking idea who the guest actor actually
is.
Underwater
things especially sharks/whales etc.
Thanks to my parent's liberal
ideas of parenting, I was shown 'Jaws' at the age of about 5. Since which,
I'm completely incapable of swimming in deep seawater and am utterly terrified
of sharks, or even more benign creatures such as whales and so on. Dolphins
I can handle, but anything big moving underwater really freaks me out,
and I find a wildlife documentary on the habits of the blue whale more
frightening than any suspense horror.
Musicals
There's something subtly
wrong about musicals. Though it's true that the Bollywood musical is entertaining,
the same cannot be said about anything made by Hollywood. Their hideous
twee campness makes me physically ill. The only exception to this rule
is the excellent 'Rocky Horror Picture Show', but that's much more perverse
than is the norm. I'm not opposed to singing in movies entirely, just in
musicals.
Loud
music in pubs
If you ever watch anything
on TV or in the movies, people seem to be capable of talking in their normal
voice, perfectly audibly, in loud pubs or clubs. This is bollocks. The
sad truth is that in noisy pubs, no one really talks much, because no one
can hear what's being said or make themselves understood. The only reason
the place doesn't seem deathly quiet is because, yes, the music is so fucking
loud. People don't go to loud pubs to talk, they go there so people won't
know they aren't talking. I, on the other hand, find it nearly impossible
to talk over loud music, and thus prefer places where I can actually be
understood. But I'm odd like that.
Beauty
contests, esp. child beauty pageants
According to a recent (crappy
tabloidy) BBC series, beauty is measurable, and anyone who doesn't measure
up cannot be considered beautiful. Which is a bit like Nazism, if you ask
me. But anyway, everyone who isn't an idiot scientist knows that beauty
doesn't come from some total perfection, but from the imperfections,
but
these imperfections are only beautiful to certain people. So, beauty contests,
ala Miss World, are a bit stupid. Rather like the contestants, actually.
But though these kind of
soft-porn events are crap, that's nothing to the great paean to paedophillia
that is the child beauty pageant. Ever wanted to really steal someone's
childhood away from them? Well, then put them in makeup and teach them
to act like an adult to win prizes! Yay. Not only do these kind of events
produce the most annoying children in the world, they also take away the
unselfconscious aspect which is at the heart of childhood; when you're
a kid, you don't care about how you look so much, so forcing children to
become obsessed with their appearance is just sick and wrong. Any parent
who puts their child through this process robs them of the most carefree
years of their life. Which isn't nice.
Old
women wearing makeup
I'm not strictly sure why
this annoys me so much, but let's face it; old women wearing makeup is
just horrible. Old women who wear the same makeup they did when they were
20 make themselves look older, rather than younger. And really hideous,
too.
Stereotypical
theme music
This sounds odd. But here's
what I mean; often in old films when certain stereotypical characters appear
they use 'theme music' for them to show that they're open to ridicule.
Take the little 'chinese' thing (which sounds like the start of 'Kung Fu
Fighting') which gets played whenever someone oriental appears. Or there's
a sort of parping horn sound when a fat person comes into the story. There're
other less obvious ones; some vaguely lounge-jazzy stuff plays to signify
that such a woman is sexy. Most national stereotypes have their own music;
organs going DUN-DUN-DERRR for anyone Romanian or vaguely Eastern European
to signify they're a bit like Dracula and therefore 'scary'. There have
even been 'jungle' bongos for a black person, to signify how 'savage' they
are.
Obviously today these aren't
used as much, but that's not to say they aren't. They just annoy me, and
the only thing they signify is that the filmmakers are wankers, and incapable
of thinking up any jokes of their own, so they just use a few crude national,
racial and social stereotypes.
People
who whine about the English language being 'corrupted'
Of all things this is the
one which actually has to potential of getting me swearing at people to
their face. Those who go on about how English is being corrupted by regional
accents or by informalities, abbreviations, jargon or 'foreign words' are
quite possibly the most stupid people on this planet. After the people
who invented socks, obviously. Anyway the English language is a mongrel
comprised of several hundred other languages, and has never been 'pure'.
Equally THERE IS NO
'NEUTRAL' ACCENT. The so-called 'BBC English', or received pronunciation,
is just an accent which has happened to have gained popularity, due to
the printing press being developed by Caxton, who came from the South East
of England. If he'd come from Bolton, we'd all think Boltonese was 'normal'.
Caxton and friends uniformed the spelling, in such a way that words were
spelt in a SE England way; thus creating the illusion that they should
be pronounced that way.
The English language has
become the most spoken second language worldwide because of it's assimilation
of other languages. That's why I'm glad I speak English, but it's also
why I find people complaining about the language evolving extremely annoying.
It's a language. New words are added, and old words take on new meanings.
Unnecessarily
long books
One of the disadvantage
of doing an English degree is that you have to read things you wouldn't
otherwise want to. I don't dislike long books on principle; but I think
it's true that you can pretty much always say in 250 pages what certain
authors (hello, D H Lawrence and Charles Dickens) do in 500. It's not fun
reading books when they just go on like that; it serves very little purpose
except to really piss off English students. 'A la Recherche de la Temps
Perdu'? Fuck it, that's what I say. Length does not signify quality.
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