IkoStar

click for big version

This is the last one of these I think. It’s an engraving by Hogarth - it lives on the back wall of the Lamb and Flag pub near the Garrick Club (which once banned Jeremy Paxman who goes Nyeesss and who is my hero etc. “Did you threaten to overrule him” he says. Genius).

Anyway, I’ve been going to see this picture for about the last 20 years or so. It is the most repulsive depiction of drunkenness I have ever seen, and I recognise myself in each and every character. It’s too ugly to look at for long… but it keeps luring me back. I have this phobia about accidentally being transported back in time… and this is an era for which I have a particular horror… but the scary thing is, perhaps, something that I can’t quite catch, but there are fleeting glimpses etc… the essence of what I find frightening about it, I’m gradually pulling towards myself. I am become gout, destroyer of limbs.

It would be funny but it’s not funny. You try to laugh it off or weave stories around it to make it ok… and sometimes it is ok, but if you can’t remember, how do you know? And sometimes it’s definitely, definitely not ok.

So I’m sitting in this restaurant in Brighton using the free wifi and trying to eat this dippy thing with bread that is not fit for purpose, and I feel weak and broken and paranoid. Last night I got drunk (and not even that drunk) for the forty thousandth time and shot my mouth off on various internet things, ranting etc… and although nothing was aimed at anyone in particular I feel awful. I’m sorry.

Back down the years… the first time was like being born again. Now… I don’t know. Something like the opposite, repeated in endlessly in hideous caricature.

Still, tomorrow is tomorrow. I shall be on a plane. Away, away.

See, this is what I was on about before:

I came in last night and there was this massive spider in the bath - I’m arachnophobic… and my hands were shaking so badly as I took the photo that it wound up looking like it’s got about 20 skittery legs. It actually looks more like a spider than an actual spider does. Art you see. Exaggerated reality.

Anyway, I never ever kill them - I persuaded this one to climb into an empty cardboard tube thing, and then I chucked the whole lot out the window. If I fell from that height I would surely die etc, but spiders have a low weight to wind-resistance ratio, so can fall out of airoplanes and be all right. Thank fuck they can’t fly. Doesn’t bear thinking about. I wonder why they can’t fly. There are about a billion species of them and all the other bugs can fly, apart from worms and so on.

Now there’s a conundrum.

Anyway, if I up the contrast it gets even worse:

Damn. That makes me feel extremely uncomfortable.

Birds trump spiders, birds trump spiders, birds trump spiders…

Birds will save me, and although birds aren’t automatically my friends (I don’t think) owls are quite close to cats and cats definitely are my friends, especially snow-cats, and this is a snow cat.

Grrrrr….. etc.

These are the worst and best photos I took yesterday

and

Although on reflection I quite like the first one as well, even though it was kindof a bungle. I had that shirt made for me. By a proper tailor. The second one is clickable.

I’ve been taking quite a lot of photos recently, and they’re all blurry. Not sure what to do about that… or even if I should… although it’s kindof annoying in some ways. I don’t want them all to be blurry, even though Monet himself made all his blurry (and his were a lot blurier than mine)

In fact that’s downright scribbly in parts - the man couldn’t paint a straight line to save himself. Mine are not generally a scribbly as that, though it’s often a similar effect… and sometimes the scribbly ones have more of a vibe than the clear ones… like this for example:

which is photo of a band I saw in London the other night - or more accurately, a photo of a bloke watching a band with his fingers in his ears, which for some reason I thought was incredibly funny. The non-scribbly version is technically better, but non-technically worse.

Still, it would be nice to have the choice - like the Vikings… whenever they had a big descision to make they’d make it sober, then get incredibly drunk and make it again - so they had a second opinion. Well my camera is like a permanently drunk Viking, not being able to make a descision about something.

I had a Swedish girlfriend once. Used to call them “Wikings”, which was fairly endearing. I wonder where she is now etc.

PS: I just tampered with the ear-finger one, and now I like it even more than before:

This is a picture of a balloon hiding behind a big plant thing - it’s hiding from the other balloons (who are like, gay balloons) and so on, but they’re too knackered after the weekend to pay it much attention in any case, so it really has nothing to worry about, even if they were going to hassle it, which they so weren’t anyway.

I know that probably sounds a bit repressed and homophobic and whatnot, but it’s not as repressed and homophobic as the balloon hiding behind the plant thing.

Most balloons are gay, and there’s nothing strange or unusual about it. I mean yea, they are made like totally out of rubber (which is a totally different thing)… but you know… have you ever met a straight balloon? Apart from those long thin ones in the shape of bafflingly uncooperative (but cheap) condoms? Well those ones are in denial, and so are you. You’re in denial. Don’t try and deny it. Everyone knows.

There’s nothing to worry about though - even if (like me) you live in Kemptown in Brighton which is like the gayest part of the gayest town in the whole of Europe, and last weekend was gay-pride weekend. You’re seriously flattering yourself if you think you’re going to be hassled by balloons. WTF? They’re balloons!!!, and look at the state of you. You’re even more of a mess than they are, and they’ve been partying all weekend… and they REALLY know how to party, believe you me, especially the helium ones.

Anyway, across the road from the pub is a plant shop called Planted, which was started by Robert Plant after he left Led Zeppelin.

That’s not him in the photo btw, that’s someone else. Doesn’t even look like him, and I should know because I’ve met him. Not that one, the other one. The real one.

The NPG

We just went to the National Portrait gallery, because that’s the sort of bloke we are.

The annual portrait competition was on again (as it was last year, and the year before) and the only one I liked was the one that won second prize, which I liked better than the first prize one on account of the woman looking a bit grumpy. In fact the only one in the whole exhibition that didn’t look a bit grumpy was the one I liked which came second, behind the first, which was too grumpy. What’s the matter with these people? Why do they all look so fucked up?

The one I liked was of a kid who was with his main friend, a pet monkey made out of wool. Both looked, if not cheerful, then at least calm and level-headed, apart from the monkey who looked a bit scatty.

I would (of course) provide photos, but can’t because they ban cameras, being the memetic eugenecists that they are… utterly self-defeating and pointless - dooming thingummy-what-ever-her name was to a life of obscurity because the thought-police have neutered the meme. We saw that Henry Wriothsley again as well… an unneutered meme (that one however) because it’s escaped onto the internet (mainly because of me)… although I would’ve liked to have taken a much bigger picture. I did ask, but they wouldn’t let me. And you know what? The bus on the way there had TEN fucking CCTV cameras on it (I counted them : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. 10!) . Where’s my permission for that then eh? They’re all in it together these people. Control freaks.

Here instead is a picture of someone else… snatching the moment… photo-bombing photo-bombing or whatever you call it.

A (soon to be taken over by ugly, mean little American frat-boys) thing for which (in these fast, fleeting moments) I find so funny that on several occasions now I’ve laughed until I literally died, and when I’ve woken up, it’s taken about 15 minutes to work out what happened - same thing as the standinguptoofastthenhyperventilating experiment I did a while back next to a lake.

Whatever.

There’s an escalator that goes up the side of the NPG - and (although it’s quite posh there) it’s one of those ones where the handrail goes faster than the bit that you stand on… so you start off more or less upright, but wind up completely horizontal, being dragged along, holding on with your fingernails etc. The caf at the top is quite good though so it’s worth the extra effort. We saw that John Snow up there once, and he’s much taller than he is in real life, and something of a hero of mine - even though he quite often wears quirky ties. I prefer sober ties - or no tie at all in fact. I do have some fairly pissed shirts though, so perhaps I ought not complain.

(some fact-checking occurs)

Actually, forget about every thing I said above. None of the above is true, apart from the thing about the escalator - The NPG have put all the pictures online, so an unreserved apology there then. This is the one I liked :

The ones with the 2nd and 3rd prizes on them seem to be different from the ones in the actual gallery - but like, what do I know?. Consistency is for insects. Maybe I read the signs wrong. Anyway, the full list is here , but as I was saying, everyone looks a bit… you know, fucked.

Is it the recession?

My favourite one of these (of all time) ever is this :

… which in real life is massive, and she’s beautiful and from Syria : http://www.sarashamma.com and paints excellent pictures of herself. Man, I can’t even take decent photographs of myself. I look like this:

Which is truly frightening, especially if you turn out to be me. It’s like being stuck permanently photo-bombing your own photographs, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The more you try to self-correct, the worse it goes, believe you me.

This was what the future was going to be like back in about 1970.

There will be sexy space chicks wearing shiny purple wigs and sexy space chick outfits with detachable sleeves and whatnot. (why did she put on that outfit if she was just going to take it off again 30 seconds later? It makes no sense). My brother got the boxed set of this TV program - it rocks. Everyone smokes pretty much all the time, and calculators weren’t even thought of yet, so the main dude uses a slide-rule.

It’s a bit like Star-Trek in this respect… there is not one single prediction that actually came true - which is quite a result. To be completely wrong about absolutely everything. What are the odds? I mean what sort of maniac designs a pseudo-military type uniform and includes shiny purple wigs? These people are crackpots.

Here’s a German version which makes it even better than the English one

There’s 3 dimensional chess and they haven’t made the doorways big enough.

And I’ll tell you another thing : This was set in 1980. 1980? I had a digital watch with a calculator in 1980, that’s how cool I was. I don’t have the watch any more, and am (as a direct consequence) significantly less cool than I was, but that’s by the by etc. Whatever. Hey nonny nonny.

This is what 1980 was really like:

This is a Welsh band called Freur - and one of them is playing a stripey broom. They didn’t really have those in the future either - not even now, 28 years later, and to be honest, I’m not really surprised. What were they thinking? Musical Brooms? Hatstand. Freur eventually turned into Underworld who played this:

which has Obi Wan Kenobi in it before he was Alec Guinness… which happened in the 70s as well - several decades before he was younger than he turned out to be several decades later - put that in a bottle and you’ll be a gazillionaire overnight. Anti-aging juice.

That’s how you do it. Make a sequel 20 years after the original, set 20 years before the original. That way you get the future bits right as well. Probably.

Anyway, we had to use slide-rules (and logarithmic tables) at school. I’m one of those technological cusp people. We were forced (even though we knew it was stupid) to use fountain pens… but were the first year to be allowed to use calculators (which we knew weren’t stupid, but were frowned upon by teachers because they were probably just a fad). My year narrowly avoided punch cards. And so it goes.

I have this nagging doubt that my generation will be the first to see actual anti-aging juice (or a convergeance of technologies that amount to the same thing), but I’ll miss it on account of having gone out on too many drunken benders.

“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk” (said Hemingway to me, (and not for the first time), waggling his most under-control finger in front of his main focusing-eye). So to the best of my ability, I do. Well, I try to.

So um… in exchange (I think) for a cigarette, or nine, I said I’d recommend some music - which is not much of a sacrifice because I am quite attached to the stuff, but where to start? It’s a conundrum.

In the middle then.

The best gig I’ve seen in my life (and I’ve seen literally thousands of them) was Neil Young at Finsbury Park in London in the early 90s. The manager of my band at the time (who also managed Oasis and various Mancunian gliteratti) said it was the best gig he’d seen since The Doors in 1970. It was at the height of the Grunge thing and Neil played heavy metal guitar like the fucking wind. It was wild - and he’s got a back catalogue of absolute classics going back forever.

Can’t find footage of that gig, but I was once driving from Nashville to this party in Green-County Kentucky with a (nother) grunge band who were unaccountably invited to play. I was 25 and drunk and utterly indestructable. There were clouds of crows in the sky - beer and fireworks-stores along the way, and this was on the stereo:

Which cannot possibly be played loud enough. It was one of “those” ultimate moments. Forgive the fan-video.

Which kindof falls naturally on several different levels into the next : The Doors, fictional presidents, drunkenness (Martin Sheen wasn’t acting in this bit) and violence and so on. I never saw The Doors but I’ve seen this movie about 20 times.

And don’t I know it. I still have a scar on my wrist from a drunken window-punching spree in the 80s. Don’t try this at home kids. That old thing about “I wouldn’t recommed alcohol, drugs or insanity to everyone - but they’ve always worked for me” eventually wears a little thin.

Anyway, to go straight from that to the next is kindof an injustice to both… but I think they’re kindof related in some ways - they certainly sound similar at the beginning, but the Jeff Buckley one is like some rarified sublimation of the Doors version. Related too in various ways - that whole fallen angel thing, droney start, twangy bits - but Dream Brother is like Paradise Lost compressed into about 5 minutes. Does my head in - and the chorus comes of of fucking nowhere man… gives me goose bumps - then there’s the final line which is also as chilly as fuck given that the guy did actually drown.

A foot in both worlds.

All of which is a bit kindof heavy and serious etc, so here’s this:

Same droney start, but gone a bit clinky clonky etc.

What’s good about this one is that John Lydon managed to persuade Steve Vai to play on his album and wouldn’t let kick-off on lead guitar on any songs except the end bit of this one - so he tries to fit as many notes as he possibly can into the last 2 minutes. Christ, if that doesn’t give you tinnitus, nothing will. I haven’t heard this in years. Youtube is fucking great.

But actually the main reason for that one is that I think mental guitar solos are hilarious… not a fav song or anything, so I’d best find another one.

Ok - same droney start etc, but completely different from the others. This does my head in a bit as well - she plays her voice like a rhythm instrument - and she’s really good at it, and the lyrics fit and the tune is excellent as well. And she does it in one take, on her own. Incredibly clever.

View Larger Map

Ok, this was going to be the last one of these things because I’ve run out of things that I keep going back to see, and there was only one to go, and procrastination took a hold of me…

… but then I remembered another one, which is up in London so next week I’ll go up and take a photie and talk about that as well. In the meantime however, here’s number 6 : Budapest, Anonymous.

Anonymous was an actual person - a monk who err… has a statue etc, and the statue rocks. Check out the photies on flickr. That’s K for cool.

Anyway, it’s at the back of this castle in Budapest… down the end of this incredibly long road, that gets posher and posher the closer you get. Not as posh as Beverly Hills mind, but those people are idiots. This is the castle:

Which is pretty rad in a Transylvanian sort of way. Bits of it reminded me of Narnia actually. I walked around the outside of the castle, going crunch crunch in the snow etc… there was a corner up ahead with a sort of statuette thing in it… got closer… hmmm… looks familiar… hmmm… who’s that then?

IT’S ONLY BELA LUGOSI !!!

Normally I don’t use exclamation marks, but this time I will. Bela Lugosi…

The archetype of silver-screen vampires. It was so cool I could hardly stand it. I sunk to me knees in the snow etc… then recovered my presence of mind and quickly stood up again (having made sure now one saw me etc).

Bauhaus made this video in the 80s about him, almost:

Although I fail to see the connection. It’s been viewed about 1/2 a million times though, so that’s something.

–

I got pissed up a couple of nights ago and went into this massive crying jag (when I got home) and had a dream that all my bodily organs were like little pets etc, and I was treating them really badly and they were lost and afraid. So now I’ve decided to care for them really well to make up for all the stuff that’s gone on before… and I woke up today feeling positive and sortof happy, for the first time in years. I’m off into town to get a smoothie in a bit. They like smoothies.