Herald & Post Columns The Herald & Post, and anyone related to them take no responsibility for anything I write on here. This is all my own work, and consequently, my own fault.
I received a rather belated birthday present from my friends JD and Fundar (they’re nicknames, obviously), the other day. It was pretty impressive, as it was the punchline to a running gag started some eighteen months ago when we went to the Tate Modern.
They passed me a cardboard tube, and with some trepidation, I slowly opened it and unravelled what was inside. It was… it was… a print of The Snail by Henri Matisse.
This filled me with so many emotions. I was delighted that they’d bought me a present, but on the other hand, The Snail is shit. Look at it:
This isn’t art. It isn’t even a snail.
What really winds me up about it is the back-story - perhaps it’s excusable and almost is art if it has an interesting back-story, or is covered in all sorts of meaning and depth. But from the Tate’s own website, here’s an explanation of it:
At first sight it appears to be an abstract arrangement of vibrant coloured, geometric blocks on a white background. The blocks of colour are arranged in a loose spiral suggesting the shape of a snail’s shell. Instead of being painted directly onto canvas, the blocks of colour are made from pieces of paper that have been painted in a water based paint called gouache. The brightly painted paper has been torn and cut into uneven shapes and stuck onto a white paper background. The whole composition has then been stuck onto canvas.
In other words, Matisse has matched the artistic abilities of a child with learning difficulties.
Although at first sight The Snail looks entirely abstract, Matisse’s art was always based on observation of the world around him.
It’s a good job we had photography in the first half of the 20th century, as it means that nobody had to commission a painting to illustrate great historical events for prosperity. If Matisse was told to come up with a picture of the 1943 Tehran conference, historians might all think that Franklin D Roosevelt had a red square for a face, and Stalin had a crescent moon where his body should be.
Maybe I just can’t appreciate great art, as after all, my favourite work of art is Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Gray.
Why do I like it? What could be better than waking up every morning to see a ginger woman being beheaded?
If you’re wondering why it has been quiet on my blog lately, its because last week I was in London with my internet mates. Here’s a video diary of what happened:
A spectre is haunting Britain - the spectre of Conservatism. All the Powers of Middle England have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Big Business, The Countryside Alliance, Fundamentalist Christians and large swathes of an uninformed electorate.
Horrifyingly, I learnt today that one of my oldest and closest friends appears to have joined Conservative Future, the Tory youth organisation - judging by the Facebook groups he’s joined anyway (I’m hoping to retract this when it turns out he’s joined it to troll).
Its perhaps unfortunate that I now have an official Tory Friend. This means that every time I talk about him, he’ll be labelled with the prefix “my Tory friend”, to differentiate him from the Guardianistas I usually hang out with.
I’m not sure what horrified me more - the fact that someone I know has outed themselves as a Tory, after experiencing years of me railing against the party both on my blog, and in my sweary real-life self, or that an apparently well educated, relatively young person can be indoctrinated by Tory dogma, and actively support the party.
It’s weird - its like when you find out one of your friends is gay, only worse, as him being a Tory will actually impact upon my life in a negative way, if his votes in elections are counted - and like when you find out that someone is gay, it contextualises history and suddenly it all fits together, like explaining why someone has spent so much time kissing men.
It does all make sense now though - the lack of political views, and silence during political discussion for all those years wasn’t due to being uninformed or lack of interest… it was because he was too afraid to admit to being a Tory. Until Cameron came in, they were the Nasty Party - they still are, but Cameron has inexplicably made it acceptable. Which is why its only now he’s come out Tory. Maybe the reason his appearance at the party at the local Conservative club was so fleeting because he was scared that his two world were colliding: the one where he knows me, and his secret Tory life with his evil Conservative friends?
Who knows what is going on inside his brain now? And worse still, what does this mean for my opinions? If others think like this, why don’t I? Maybe leaving the standard of living on the poorest people to the whims of the free market is the best way to do it? Maybe the market never does fail? Maybe an overpowered, sabre-rattling military is the best way to achieve world peace? Maybe immigrants are coming over here and doing the awful thing the Dailies Mail and Express say they do?
Please, readers, tell me: has the whole world gone insane or I am the mental one?
My friend Barney is currently on his gap year, but rather than faff about in an impoverished third world hell-hole, he’s done the wise thing, and taken a gap year travelling around Britain (I told him to give Birmingham a miss to make sure that he definitely avoids hell-holes). He’s been in London for the past week, so on Wednesday, I went down there for the day to meet up with him, just for the fun of it.
As you might have noticed - I liveblogged a lot of it on Twitter and my blog’s sidebar.
I met up with him in Trafalgar Square, where, as it transpired, were some sort of St George’s Day celebrations - whilst this display of patriotism obviously sickened me, I was delighted to spot Giles Dilnot from the Daily Politics doing a live OB.
Anyway, after a wander around London we eventually ended up the Sir John Soane museum - he was the architect who designed the Bank of England and loads of other stuff. What was unusual about it, was that aside from it being a small museum (it was Soane’s old house), you had to wait outside for someone to let you in, and then had to sign in, which made it feel all the more exclusive.
You could tell it was an old house - the walls were caked in tat, like all of the paintings and old Roman stuff he’d collected. There was a bit towards the back where there were loads of old Roman head statues overhanging a drop down to where there was some sort of old sarcophagus - it was unbelievably tempting to push them off, but somehow I managed to resist the urge.
After this, and a brief jaunt to the British Museum, we headed to the spiritual home of PKMN.NET meet-ups (this is how I know Barney), The Rocket, where we met up with Mushroom (or “William” as he’s also known). He was somewhat startled when I phoned him and asked if he wanted to go to the pub, considering that both Barney and I both live over 100 miles away from London, in different directions.
After this we headed to another pub, which was something of a personal triumph for us. Only a couple of people reading this will appreciate the significance that we found “The Shakespeare Pub”! On previous trips to London, we’ve (well, I’ve) consisted failed to find The George Inn, which is thought to have been Shakespeare’s and Charles Dicken’s local pub. Considering we were there on April 23rd, it seemed particularly relevant, as it was not only St George’s Day, but Shakespeare’s birthday and death day. It was literally the most relevant place in the world to be at that time.
(Wearing someone else’s hat doesn’t mean that I endorse St George’s Day or the volkisch concept of ‘patriotism’.)
After leaving this pub, we ended up encountering some Morris Dancers just before heading to the pub next to The Golden Hind - the, er, fourth pub of the day, which was the other spiritual home of PKMN.NET meet-ups. Barney bought four pints of a specific drink just to get a free St George’s Day hat. Just goes to show that marketing works.
The Morris Dancers were appalling, have a watch of this:
I had an excellent day yesterday - I went down to London to meet my nerdy mates from my other website. Here are some exciting photos of me looking really popular in the company of other people:
Chris, Lottie, Barney, Kyron, Ant, Me, Sam, William, Shark, Kat and Dan. Not pictured: Katy.
Dan bothering a mime.
It being Easter, we thought we should respect the religious aspects, and celebrate Jesus’ death by recreating Leonardo’s Last Supper.
As luck would have it, Barney looks a bit like Jesus. And Sam looks a bit like Mary Magdeline. And I played the part of Judas. The other apostles were perhaps a little less enthusiastic.
Spending about eight hours with me is difficult enough for anyone, really. Unfortunately, William’s Jamesomalley tolerance was slightly less than eight hours, so he ended up punching me.
But it was fun. I may have another tale to tell about this in a few days.
I went to London today with my friend Bouff, and have unexpectedly got three interesting, yet unrelated stories out of it. I’ve ranked them least interesting to most interesting - which is incidentally also chronological order - to keep you reading to the bitter end.
STORY ONE
Bouff suggested we go to London a couple of weeks ago, and I readily agreed, as I bloody love London. A few days ago when discussing what to do there, I suggested to him that we could, say, go to Highgate Cemetery, and have a look at Karl Marx and Douglas Adams’ graves. Bouff replied “I was thinking of H&M”.
“Nah, we won’t end up simply shopping”, I thought. Then we ended up in the Vans shop on sickeningly fashionable Carnaby Street, so he could buy the sort of shoes skateboarders wear to show that they’re totally sticking it to the man, from a large multinational corporation. Here is an “action shot”, and I use the term “action” incredibly loosely, of a man you don’t know purchasing shoes to validate this story as truth:
STORY TWO
I was shocked this evening when I checked the news earlier and found out about that massive fire in Camden. Why? Because I was there only a couple of hours earlier. Its a bit weird switching on the news and seeing the street you were just on (the one with the shop with the aeroplane on the front) covered in flames.
We went to The World’s End pub, which is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page. Well, some people do predict that the world’s end will be in a hellish scene with lots of fire and destruction.
Whilst not technically in Camden so not relevant to this half-baked story, but it’s not like it was actually going anywhere in the first place. We also ventured to Holloway Road, which is basically just a suburban street somewhere in north London, but we went there because it was all about the destination: the club Nambucca, which is apparently some sort of famous Indie venue - I vaguely knew of it because its referenced in a Frank Turner song. Yeah, its horrendously obscure, but Bouff was excited, going through his phone book, texting everyone he knows. All I really saw was a closed building. Here is another exciting picture:
That’s right - the main thing in the photo is blocked by a massive shadow. I am an excellent photographer.
STORY THREE
This is the best story. If you’ve skipped the other two to see what’s here, then it was worth the effort. You’ve seen Shaun of the Dead, haven’t you? Well, do you recognise this newsagents:
“Just look at the face: it’s vacant, with a hint of sadness. Like a drunk who’s lost a bet.”
No? Its the one from Shaun of the Dead. Really, it is. That’s why we took what looked like an unlicensed mini-cab half way across North London to a small parade of shops in a heavily residential area devoid of a Tube to take photographs of ourselves standing outside a newsagents.
Annoyingly, the shop was sold out of Cornettos.
Here’s Shaun’s house. It’s changed a bit since the film:
Amazing.
It was dead exciting. See, that’s a pun there. Sort of.
On Saturday, I went down to London to go to the pub with some of the people from my other website who are old enough to get into pubs. It was most excellent, because it means I’ve got 90 photos on Facebook like this, which make me look really like a really popular and easily likeable person:
Adam, Rex, Shark’s hand, Me, Dan, Steffan and Sam. Not pictured: Katy, Matt, Chris, Barney, the ghost of Christmas past.
It was also excellent because I got to meet my friend Matt for the first time - after knowing him online for very nearly seven years:
Despite being in London, we didn’t do anything particularly touristy - we just went to three pubs and a Pizza Express like locals may do, largely ignoring the spectacular views of central London around us.
As the day went on, things got progressively louder, culminating in a drinking game in the last pub (which didn’t really work on me, as I wasn’t drinking alcohol), and Barney, Dan, and Sam getting approximately very, very, drunk. They’d been drinking since 11am, having gone to a pub at Liverpool Street Station before meeting the rest of us, so by 9pm, weren’t walking in a straight line. This meant that me, being sober (I’m straight-edge), and Katy (who I’d dragged along for the day), who was only tipsy, had to try and guide them back to their train stations so they could get home.
I’ve been to two gigs in the past two days. So here is me writing about them and that:
RX Bandits
On Thursday night, I went to Birmingham Barfly with Bouff to see RX Bandits - a band who I’d previously only heard one song by, but the one song is one of my favourite songs. Birmingham verified its place as worst city in the world, with the relatively new and shiny Bull Ring shopping centre merely confirming that you can’t polish a turd. It isn’t that I have an irrational dislike of Birmingham or anyone living in it, it is just the most unpleasant place you could ever have the misfortune to end up in. But these were desperate times - the band weren’t going to come and play somewhere more pleasant (Belsen?), so we had to brave it.
The support were pretty forgettable… by which I mean, I saw them on Thursday, yet can’t for the life of me remember who they were.
RX Bandits were really good - I’d perhaps liken them to Reel Big Fish if they were just really happy rather than funny too. The singer had a big beard and long hair. They did the predictable thing and played some songs whilst a large gathering of people looked on. I particularly enjoyed a slightly slowed down version of Overcome (The Recapitulation). In summary: “Pretty good!”
Hadouken!
I wasn’t expecting to go to this gig until yesterday afternoon when Sarah asked me if I wanted to go. Being hopelessly out of touch, I had no idea who Hadouken were, but I went anyway, because she’s endured a few punk gigs in the past for my benefit. They’re quite unusual - I think they play, er, sort of dance music off of a tape, but with live guitars and keyboards and so on. Its hard to describe.
The audience were subtly different to most of the gigs I go to. Or at least, they would have been subtle if they weren’t all loudly dressed and covered in glowsticks.
One of the support bands had a bloke wearing a silver vest and a red tinted visor over his eyes. His instrument? What looked like an array of buttons that triggered samples, which he tapped periodically between doing the robot.
They were alright though… I… I… don’t know what else to say apart from that as I’m not familiar with their music.
Last night, my friend Bouff and I went to see Send More Paramedics on their last ever tour - as they’re splitting up next month. They’re a fun band, because their gimmick is that they claim to be zombies. They dressed up as zombies, bantered about feasting on the audience, and introduced every single song by saying something like “this one’s about brains”, “this is a song about cannibalism”, “this song’s about zombies”, and so on. They had a varied repertoire.
Their music is much heavier than a lot of stuff I listen to - they’re hardcore and cross-over thrash, whatever that means. They call it “Zombiecore”. Regardless of genre placement, they were excellent. Or you could say they were dead good. Here’s a picture of a grown man dressed as a zombie:
At one point, the singer urged everyone to move forwards into the pit, specifically asking (well, telling), “you in the NOFX shirt and you in the Bane t-shirt” to move forwards. That was us. So I confidently strode forwards before having to make a humiliating retreat back away from the pit as I realised that I was going to be mauled by the nutter standing next to me who was jumping and waving his arms about as if he were being electrocuted.
They only played for about 45 minutes, which felt a bit short - especially as there was no encore. Although they did finish on Zombie Crew, which is to Zombiecore what Hey Jude is to big charity gigs: the big finishing song. Its actually better than Hey Jude because its about zombies, and Paul McCartney isn’t in the band.
After the gig, Bouff has the bright idea of going to Mosh, which for the uninitiated is an awful nightclub in Leicester. Its just about tolerable when its playing agreeable music, but last night when we went there thinking it was metal night, it turned out it was terrible indie night. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover this until we were inside.
I made the following observations:
There were a lot of glowsticks. According to Bouff who is less cripplingly out of touch than me, this is apparently because “new rave” is in. If I’d have known this, I’d have bought mine and (figuratively) made a killing.
Out of everyone there, I’d probably spent the least amount of time preparing my hair (approx 0 minutes)
Going out in fancy dress still makes you look like a twat. This is practically a scientific law as it has been proved countless times throughout history.
But Send More Paramedics were ace, which is the main thing. More exciting gig reports soon!
People came almost literally from all over the country - we had people who’d come from Scotland, Wales, East Anglia, Kent, the south coast - almost everywhere really. My friend Jeroen, who’s from the Netherlands, had even given up a day of his holiday in London to meet us all.
Nearly everyone who was there.
Being the webmaster and technically the owner of a major website has its perks. In the afternoon, when we were all in Hyde Park, my fellow administrators and I managed to persuade a couple of the lesser proletariat to go and buy us drinks. The other interesting thing was that because I’m the webmaster, the bloke at the top, I sort of assumed the leadership position. I was making executive decisions about where we should go and where we should go and so on.
Jeroen, Mike, Me, Steffan and Terry - the PKMN.NET Administration team.
It was when I was speaking to the group as a whole and leading people to a spot in the park that I realised that I had created an army. I’d re-iterate that it was amazing, but I fear that it could be (correctly) interpreted that I was enjoying the power trip and megalomania more than I was the meeting people.
Most of the gang lasted until Leicester Square.
After the “official” meet in Hyde Park, about fourteen of us took a trip to Leicester Square to acquisition some food, before (at my command) heading to Westminster via Trafalgar Square. It’s not a trip to London if you don’t see Big Ben. It wasn’t until we were sitting in an underground bar in the former Greater London Council meeting (just across the Thames from Parliament) that we realised we were missing someone. Whoops.
We found him eventually though. As the evening went on it ended up with seven of us, the most hardcore of the gang going to another pub near Euston station - which coincidentally, was a Scream pub. In other words, the same brand of pubs I go to all of the time - and it was just like the ones in Leicester, with its stacker, video jukebox and pool table. The only difference was that it was charging London Prices.
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