Smoookin'

Picture the scene, it's Thursday evening, you've just had dinner, you get a text, one word "pint?"

Is this from some kind of curious milkman?
No, it's your mate Andy asking if you would like to join him for a drink in a pub.

Cracking idea, yes, just what I need to let off some stress. Excellent.

So, you meet up with him outside your favourite pub.
"Hey man"
"Hey!"
But just before you go in, Andy decides to light up a cigarette. Right, well that's cool. I'll just hang here shall I in baltic space?
Or will I go inside and make sure there's a scrumptious pint of Tennent's waiting for you when you decide to come in?
Fuck it, I'm just going to put my headphones on and listen to a song. Yes, I could have done that on the way here, but I decided not to. This particular song lasts 4:24 just so we can reschedule the beginning of out evening around it, I'm sure you'll understand. If you finish before me, just go in, I'll be in after this. Mine's a Tennent's.

I look like a arsehole.

Anyway, twenty minutes later, the night is underway, half empty glasses, conversation, then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Andy just gets up and leaves. Just leaves the pub. No sign of him for a good while, you're just there on your own, exactly like you were when you were in in your house an hour earlier - only then you had things you could be doing.

He returns ten minutes later,
"Oh I just got talking to this guy outside who works in that other bar, you know, nice guy, he was telling me all about.."
"Oh hold on mate", I interrupt.
"Excuse me for just a moment!"
I leave the table.

Ten minutes later I return.
"That must have been a big shite!" Andy jokes.
"No Andy, it was not, I actually went to the internet cafe across the road as I am addicted to Facebook. Anyway, got chatting to a mate of my cousins who randomly added me, nice guy, we both like Battlestar Galactica, although he hasn't seen past season 3."

Again, I look like an arsehole.

So about half an hour after that, we're over it, two fresh pints, but Andy is clearly tiring of so much continious conversation.
"I won't be long, can you just watch my pint", as he gets up and out the front door again.
Aye, no bother. I'll just guard your pint, make sure nobody takes our table, our seats, or our jackets, that's why I'm here. I will make sure that the everything here is safe. I'm good at that.
Ten minutes later he re-enters, walks right past to the toilet, and is back in his seat another five minutes later, having stopped by the pub cigarette machine to spend £47 on twenty Benson and Hedges.
"Right Ross, sorry about that, where were we..."
Well Andy, I was just saying that this device here is the remote control to the C4 explosive vest that woman over there is wearing. It's motion sensitive, so don't drop it below shoulder height, anyway, just hold on to that for a wee bit, cos I'm going to pop back over the road to tag myself in some photos."

Arsehole. I am thee.

By my own admission, it is a strange way to react to smokers, but I feel it's justified. Besides, I'm a lot better than I used to be. Before the indoor smoking ban kicked in, when Andy sparked up a cigarette in front of me I used to just release a cobra into the pub to see if it bit anyone.

Focus Hocus

A lot has happened in the two months since I posted last, just nothing that I have a page worth of hilarious things to say about. So in the style of the popular science magazine Focus, here is a numerical run down of what's been happening, yo.

2 - the amount of times I moved house in the first two weeks of January.
22 - the most amount of episodes of American TV series "Entourage" I managed to watch in one day.
4 - the amount of things that actually happened in those 22 episodes.
8 - the number of buttons that have fallen off my H&M Sgt Pepper funeral coat (some repeat offenders).
Too many - the number of times I've been back in Aberdeen.
£2.25 - the cheapest pint of Strongbow I can find in Glasgow (The State Bar).
£3.00 - promotional drinks price on a leaflet I was handed in Edinburgh.
155 - minutes I've spent on stage telling jokes.
0/20 - the amount of Scottish people in the crowd at a recent gig in Edinburgh.
10 - the number of times I've turned on the wrong ring on the cooker due to my hob dyslexia.
7 - the number of times I've re-watched the sketch where Dee Dee goes to Yoker from Limmy's Show.
127 - The number of hours James Franco spent traumatised and unable to move, after finally watching Spiderman 3.
9 - the number of months it took me to submit a tax return saying I had no tax to pay for 2009/10.
£100 - the fine I got for such a tardy submission.
0.005 - the number of seconds my face appeared in the new Mogwai video.
3 - the amount of times I have started going to the gym every week.
11am - the time that a student gym gets too busy to go to.
5 - the amount of words this Total Wipeout application form wants me to describe myself in. Can't we make it syllables? Sar Cas Tic Dick Head. Submit.
18 - cubic metres of hot ashes I have poured into wheelie bins to be a renegade.
12 - grey hairs I have on my head - on the cusp of fatal mass multiplication.
30 - the controversial wattage of a rare fluorescent tube bulb for the bathroom that I had to travel to fucking Drumchapel B&Q for. It's worth it to be able to see my thighs during a dump now though.

I did have something important to say but it's gone. I think it was about making friends and meeting new  people.



Or it might have been about my bowel movements.

Happy New Near

Today is January 1st 2011, time really does move forward after your born doesn't it? I remember when it was 2000, it literally feels like years ago.


This entry has been entitled "Happy New Near" as a tribute to my sister, who genuinely thought that was what the phrase was until she was at least 10. One day she just looked down at what she had written and realised something wasn't right about it. But hell, I didn't realise a budgerigar was a budgie until I was 15, I thought it was part of a fireplace.


Anyway, I have made a new years resolution to make £200 this year from performing stand-up comedy between now and December 31st. Having amassed a credit-crunch beating £30 in 2010, I think £200 for 2011 is a challenging but realistic target that will serve me well in getting where I want to be going with comedy. But I already need to try a lot harder, because no less than 12 hours into the new year something awful happened.


I spent this Hogmanay in a wigwam by a loch in Perthshire. I then drove back to Glasgow, passing through the town of Callander. My ears prick up, as there was surely some comical connection to be made. The cogs in my brain twist slowly, still lubricated with mulled wine and whatever other shit I was drinking and I manage to come out with...


"It will be a new calender for the people of Callender today."


What the fuck? I seemed to have turned into a dad. The dad with no children. The worst kind of dad. Should I just ditch my wardrobe for a selection of comfortable "The North Face" garments now? Am I going to start going up to comedians and suggesting a few horrendous joke-book gags that they might want to consider adding to their set?


"Hey that was good, see after you do that routine about interspecies sex, you should say 'and of course, the difference between a buffalo and a bison is... you can't wash your bands in a buffalo.'"

Mmmm, practical.


Anyway, this is my last day in my current flat, marking a year I have lived here and in Glasgow. Tomorrow morning I'm throwing everything in the van I have borrowed from my father (The North Face spokesman for the North East) and will be clearing off to Aberdeen... then moving back to Glasgow next week. This computer is the last thing to put away so I'm going to make this one short.


I had planned a bit of a speech about how sickening Christmas is - the injustices of the millions on the streets, starving and hungry whilst the rest of us stuff our faces and decide which copy of Inception to watch afterwards - how Christmas seems to be for the benefit of HMV, how New Year seems to be for the benefit of 02 and how new year is when your nearest rip-off gym starts tractor-beaming you to their 12-month membership contracts. But now we've all got the stuff we want, and all the stuff we don't, it's over for another year, so I'd rather just forget about it and look forward to the non-landmark days. Tuesdays, the middle of the month, the rest of the day after a dental check-up - they all have potential to be great. I like looking-forward to doing what I want with my time, which is why I'm not even going to bother trying to stop sleeping so much because sleeping is fantastic and makes the time you are awake more enjoyable. I don't even mind working either and I'm not dreading it's return at all as I treated myself to a new wide-screen monitor for my computer over the holidays.


So in reality my new years resolution is 1920 x 1080.


Thank you, thank you, I will be here all... fucking... year.

Winter Monsoon

This post will probably be an excellent reflection of what a dick I am.

I am currently sitting in my bedroom with my immersion heater on, watching I-player, blogging about the fact that my upstairs neighbours pipes froze over the last two days and ruptured this morning, creating Niagara-Living-Room. I say living room, I've described what it's like before - to be honest the new water feature has Feng Shui-ed the fuck out of this shit hole.

Yesterday, Mr Upstairs came down and knocked on my door, waking me up at 9.30am (thats, nine thirty in the morning), to tell me that his pipes had frozen, asking if he could check if my water was running OK. It was, so a hurried him away so I could have a warm shower followed by a delicious glass of Robinson's Orange and Pineapple juice, topped and and diluted by beautiful tap H20.

As he left, guess which one of these I said?
"If you need a shower or anything, please feel free to use ours mate."
"There is a swimming pool 5 minutes down the road, looks like you'll be scrubbing up there pal"

Neither, it was too early to really speak properly.
(But for the record, I was thinking the latter one).

So anyway, this morning (closer to 11am this time) this guy starts banging on our door again, frantically. 'Sake. My flatmate is in the shower, so I resentfully ignore him and stay in bed. Should have got a two day pass at the pool buddy, now bugger off, I'm dreaming.

But about five minutes later I get awoken again by a commotion in the hallway, I leap to action in my new tartan lounge pants and Blind Guardian t-shirt to see what the din is, only to find Ben, my flatmate in the living room, where it is raining.

"There's a massive leak in the living room!" he says. I concur, that there is in fact a leak in the living room - that is massive. So we assemble the bucket troops and a few bins and place them strategically across the living room. Ben picks up the TV to move it and drops it, as if to destroy it on his own terms.
"The TV hated sea-life documentaries, but loved wrestling - it's what it would have wanted"

I update my facebook status.

I am really not that bothered at all, there is nothing I can do but change the bucket every 5 minutes. Then Ben's dad turns up and is not very happy, so I just stay out of it, occasionally showing face to move a remote control one foot further away from the living room.

This is nothing like 'nam.

The main reason that I don't care is that I told Ben about two days ago that I'm moving out in January to a lovely new place off Byers Road with my darling girlfriend. I'm also going away to Dubai on the 21st to see my mother for Christmas, then immediately going away over New Year as well, so I literally only have a week and a half left living here. Unliterally too.

The BEST part in this story is when I go through to pretend to help and Ben says "there's a girl coming over to look at the flat at midday, is it OK if she has a look in your room?"
"Of course man, that's no probahahahahahahahahahhaa, are you serious!?" The living room looks like an aroused whale's vagina, but yeah she can look in here, just let me know so I can minimise this blog I'm halfway through.

The plumber is apparently going to be a while, so what can you do really, other than have some cornflakes and maybe start watching last nights Apprentice? Oh hold on, incoming phone call from the viewing flat-hunter.

Ben picks up "Hello... hi yeah... the back door is open (because he have to roll a wheelie bin full of water outside every quarter of an hour) so just come in."

They eventually turn up and Ben opens communications with "Hi, do you like running water?" Not sure if that is funny or stupid. I come out to be nosey and to observe that this person is the fucking POLAR opposite to me. I'm a thin, white, sensible, Scottish man who had corrective laser-eye surgery two years ago - but this is a large, black, loud-mouthed, American woman, with glasses. She got very excited and loud, and it felt a little like the backstage area of the Jerry Springer show - but with a strong stream of water falling from the roof, into some buckets. Anyway, the short of it is I had to run back into my room to smirk, because I started thinking how funny it would be to say "Yo mamma so fat, she wet herself and flooded our basement flat".

So it's still pissing it down. The guy from upstairs has just turned up and met my new replacement, Oprah, so Ben goes "This is Steve, he lives upstairs". It doesn't click with her at all.

Room with a Review

Here's a fad for you - from about March 2009 to February 2010 I wanted to be a music journalist, reviewing and writing about (heavy) metal. I started by interviewing a band from Aberdeen who were actually very good and doing well for themselves (considering their location) called "My Mind's Weapon". I produced a piece that was heartily approved and encouraged by the Writer's Bureau, of whom I gave £300 to for a complete writing course that I never ever submitted anything else for. I went on to do 100 word reviews for various websites like Shazam.com (proof: http://www.shazam.com/music/web/track?id=234975) where I built up a bit of a folio and even got some shit free CD's from the arrangement. Then eventually I started writing at least four good-sized reviews a month for a rather reputable and well run outfit called Metal Review (proof: http://www.metalreview.com/reviews/browse/ross-main) which was brilliant at the time as it exposed and gave me access to the music of a lot of really cool bands that I would never have found otherwise.

I also had stuff published in The Skinny (proof: http://www.theskinny.co.uk/article/38811-mastodon-glasgow-abc-7-mar) but eventually gave up trying after unsuccessfully trying to get anything remotely coherent or useful out of their spastic music editor. Also, I didn't fit in because my reviews were probably too literal, ie; mentioned the music.

Meanwhile, I was constantly e-mailing the major metal magazines (Metal Hammer, Terrorizer, Zero Tolerance etc) with my latest work and reminding them that I wanted to work for them. I took it very seriously. I first met the lady who is now my ladyfriend at this time, and she has since admitted that I was somewhat intense and totally humourless when the subject of my amateur musical journalism first came up.

A lot of it had to do with having a shit job and not much else going on in my life. I was in Aberdeen and it would take me 35 minutes to drive to work, so I had plenty of time to listen to new stuff and I spent my lunches in Tesco car park making notes. In actual fact, the decision to move to Glasgow was heavily influenced by me wanting to be closer to live gigs and hopefully making some useful contacts to get a writing job, but something else happened.

I simply ran out of synonyms for "brutal".

I had always considered my "work" to be quite creative and funny at times, but I simply ran out of ways to describe how good a riff was, or how mental the drumming was, or how ferocious the vocals were. Everyone on the website already knew the latest news and history of every metal band ever, so all I could do was make funnys about the bands name or members, than when it came to trying to convey what the bloody music was like I'd just have to say it sounded like X mixed with Y, partaking in Z. Where X was usually Black Sabbath, Y was a kudos-gaining underground group of nobodies, and Z was murder.

Eventually the whole thing became a chore and I had totally lost sight of why writing about music was important. Because it's not, is it? Trying to tell someone about a subjective audio art form, in writing, is never going to work properly. All you can hope to do is give some interesting background to the record, say weather it's good or not and hope someone holds your opinion in high enough stead to take your word for it. Afterall, listening to samples online yourself would take longer - and require the engagement of your own judgement.

I think music reviewers are essentially people with a taste of their own who find some sort of value in listening to heaps of music, then filtering out the crap for everyone else. In this day and age of instant music access I think the book reviewer is saving more of our time.

But live music reviews are probably the tip of the shit. Let me take this for example, it's the first thing on the first page on The Skinny website just now and is a very recent review of Badly Drawn Boy playing in Glasgow.

“Not exactly playing the hits am I?” notes Badly Drawn Boy after airing tracks from 1997’s EP1. That’s not quite accurate – in tonight’s mammoth set, a patchily-scattered Fruitmarket audience is treated to the Santana-cheese riff of Disillusion, Silent Sigh (given added guitar and oomph), and an opening run performed solo and acoustically that includes cuts both early (The Shining) and more recent (last year’s Is There Nothing We Could Do?).

Damon is on affable form, though the self-deprecating banter is in full flow (he introduces ex-ad track All Possibilities by apologising to “anyone who bought a shit product from Comet”). Later, he teases by alternating between intros for You Were Right and Once Around the Block but is forgiven since both get played eventually, while mixed-bag tracks from his recent seventh album are received politely. But while offering value, his lengthy set could survive pruning – with an odd karaoke Thunder Road finale the first for the shears. 

I'd have started that with "Not exactly going to say anything useful am I?", but excluded the speech marks. This basically just tells you half his set list - in ten times as many words. Who needs this? People who were there know already. People who weren't there don't want to know - because they weren't fucking there. It's like an Eastenders fan who religiously follows the show through newspaper synopses (correct plural). Nobody sends in reviews of what they were doing at the time when everybody else was at Badly Drawn Boy.

“Me and Carol were too skint to buy tickets, so she made dinner. It somewhat lacked the rawness of her dinner-making debut and rather lazily had some similar elements to the last dinner she produced. Her self-depracting banter was in full flow though and she later teased me by not saying what was for dessert until it was infront of me"

This is probably why I don't watch the news, and pity people who waste hours of their own day reading about what's going on in other places.

But looking back at my own live review for The Skinny, I'm glad I at least tried to make it an enjoyable read and characterise the setlist a little, but to be honest, anyone who gives a shit about the band Mastodon knows exactly what they are like live. Anyone who doesn't like Mastodon just wants to make a "cut your hair" comment and get back to masturbating over the latest Glasgow band who sing with an over emphasised lochy accent.



footnote:
What really jogged my memory about all of this was when I got a spammy virus spyware thing in my email account last month that hijacked my address book and sent out a bunch of links offering medical sex products to everyone I have ever emailed in the last five years. I noticed the editors of a fair few magazines were in there, but was delighted when I got an e-mail back from Alex of the Writer's Bureau saying

"Hi Ross, I no longer accepts writing submissions to this email address."

I know Alex, that's why I used it tell you how to get 20% of InstaErect.

A Text Message From 02

Dear Customer, we've checked your mobile usage to see which of our tariffs is best for you. And the good news is that you're already on it. However, the bad news is we detected a sadness in the tone of your girlfriends voice that only increased every call you failed to tell her you loved her. We analysed a 27% drop in calls made to your father John and your mother Christine since 2009. They aren't going to be about forever Ross, make the most of the time you have. Stop being selective about which friends you will answer when they call. Communicate with the people around you, Ross - reach out to those who are important or you're going to end up alone. You don't want that – and neither do we.

Keep tabs on your bill any time at 02.co.uk/my02.

Boy Story

What has everyone been up to this week? Working hard ...or hardly working!? Oh, what are you like?. Myself, well I've been sitting at home eating impatiently microwaved baked potatoes and trying to decide who is best - Johnny Depp or Leonardo DiCaprio.

Before I embark on this, let's just lay down some ground rules. I suspect this will come down to raw acting skills, so I just want to check with everyone; being good at acting is directly proportional to how many accents you can do. Right? Yes.

Here's some background information for those who are ill-informed.

Despite the gift of almost eternal youth on both parts, and an eleven year difference in age, both of these talented men started their acting careers in the 1950's just before colour film became usable for commercial photography for publication.

The 50's gave both notoriety early, their almost featureless good looks and Britney-mic hair-dos striking a strong chord with the styles and fashions of the times. Depp first achievement notability in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1951), a character study based on the the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 1800's/early 1900's, but it was DiCaprio who caused the biggest stir, rocketing to fame one year later in James Cameron's Titanic (1952), an epic retelling of the infamously tragic vessel-sinkage, distastefully released a mere forty years after the event, much to the protest of the survivors who in reality needed another 47 years to all die off.

From there, the staring roles kept coming for both. Before becoming a total typecast victim of Tim Burton, Depp enjoyed a blockbusting run as Captain Keith Richards, in the top-grossing Pirates of the Carribean franchise. Meanwhile, DiCaprio bit his teeth into the world of character acting, which is different from normal acting, portraying a number of infamous real life personalities like international imposter-come-fraudster Frank Abagnale in Catch Me If You Can and unstable visionary Howard Hughes in The Aviator. Here we see DiCaprio on set, standing behind a jet engine.

 

I jest of course, but there is definitely that Michael McIntyre "hint of Asian" going on there.

But seriously, the best thing about Leo and Johnny D is that they are worldwide heart throbs - and the reason I like this, is because they have worse facial hair growth than even me. All I have ever wanted to do with my life is grow an awesome beard, and can't, but I get a warm sense of comfort and shallow victory watching these two try and do it.

I get that bald bit under my nose in the centre as well, but you two are a couple of patchy sons of bitches. I've cast them in my 2012 screen-writing debut Four Pubes and a Prit Stick, the story of Felix Flannél (Depp) and Jackeriah Wordsworthy (DiCaprio), two middle aged men trying to get summer jobs as wrestling lumber-jacks.

Woeful. But as much as this is becoming about why I think I am better than them (better beard growth, better blog, better Scottish accent, better at Halo, have an iPhone etc) I did originally ask who we should favour between them.

But, I have lost momentum on this one and don't care anymore.

Hell, make it DiCaprio - he's not been an associated friend of Oasis and his name sounds like juice.