"Mad" Alan "Two Partings"

Alan at Reading 2000
Originally uploaded by Dolores Luxedo.

As requested, here's a picture of Alan in the olden days. See, the main differences;

1. Quiff
2. Alan Shirt

replaced by
1. Renaissance Model Hair
2. Hippy bandana "stringy threads" thing

"tales of ale and angst"

IMG_0348
Originally uploaded by nickbeardo.

So the picture is because Lisa was trying to describe to me what she imagines Rob Focuz to look like. So here is the man himself, DJing at the Horn Redbourn (last night, in fact). There are 80 photos on flickiir tagged with "robfocuz". That's so cool.

So I didn't go see Rob Focuz and his fellow DJ co-stars last night, despite being back in the fair city of St. Albans for a brief time. No, in fact I spent Monday in a field close to Sarratt Village. Campfire, Polynesia, and other such jazz and funk. All I need now is a feather in my hair and a dream catcher and I could aura you to my heart's content. I did sleep out by the campfire, but that was cool. Plus my tent is a bit festy at the moment.

So Andy wrote me an email saying "Anyway you should black out more often. ... will find it sexy.". Ha. If there's one person who finds me blacking out sexy (without having date-rape plans) then please, do give me your telephone number. I shall not disappoint you, I can black out anywhere you like.

DJ Sandals came down to visit us. He has gravitated from being the cleaner at Embassy Court to making a new life to himself as a rude bwoy ragga spinner of the black circle and mocker of false circus performers. We ended up in this dubious pub at the top of a big hill where we sat outside and were cold whilst a game of pool went on and some football game took place on the television. A concerningly Rats Castle esque tavern. Down and up the hill again, and then to this party where I spent much of time guarding the doorstep and protecting it from harm. After taking in some of the sunrising level and leaving Doug lying on a wall we took a cornish and a shirefolk home which is when the whole blue bread thing took place.

The title is how my bloggue was described by a kind lady. Apparently I'm being blogrolled. This isn't as dangerous as it sounds. I say this with the confidence of a naive beginner.

Teenage Angst has paid off well...

I should stop complaining so much. The idea that complaining is going to get you something good only works when you're writing off to food manufacturers with some kind of fabricated 'lepoard paw' that you 'found' in your 'tin of baked beans'. Seriously, I've never seen Heinz spaz out so much as when I suggested they could be contaminated by 'big cats'. Otherwise, it's reasonable to think that sulking is up there with other such negative vibes and essentially unproductive and like playing a mournful tune on my own trumpet.

Metaphorically speaking, anyway.

I ordered a Death Prod on the internet today. £32.95, I think it cost, and I don't even know what it says. But, dude. Sometimes you just have to do that sort of thing. I lost my wallet yesterday as well and what with one thing and another, it's been an expensive weekend. On the plus side, I'm in St. Albans and have just had a QNI with a VHS.

Apathy is so alluring. Creativity so often comes out of boredom. Perhaps what I need to do in order to do something properly creative (ie; with an ending) is to lose all my friends so I don't have the option of going out and having fun rather than staying in and trying to work, but not in a way that I get depressed and end up churning out second rate teenage angst poetry hand over sand filled hand over fist. Maybe I need to be comfortable with my own company. I doubt it. It spins me out. I can't even sit still for an hour, I don't know how I'd expect to come to terms with my own company. It stresses me out.

Anyway, enough introspection. Let's change the subject.

Thinking someone is hot has so much more to do with almost everything else that isn't appearance. I hope that makes sense. For example, if you were jealous of someone then you certainly wouldn't say that they were hot. Or if someone was hideously dull, there's no way you could possibly think, "Dude. They're a hot slice of pie". Or equivelant expression. Or if they were really nice to you. I know it's a totally subjective thing, but you don't just look at someone and think that they're hot and click your fingers under your breath (or similar expression. God, I don't think I've ever done that. I imagine it'd be a bit like when you make chewing gum click, or when you eat salad cream and you haven't got a lower jaw). I don't really know what the heck I'm talking about actually.

I realised this ought to be something more than just me talking about what I've been doing. Because no-one wants to hear me talking about myself for a start. Well, actually, if I was actually of that opinion then I don't think I'd be having some kind of bloggue site. I'd be covering my mouth with masking tape in a great puddle of self-hatred and other such trauma. Instead the great puddle of self-hatred and other such trauma makes itself manifest in this delightful little bloggue site. By definition, I think, it's got to be a little bit self-indulgent. On the other hand, it's easier to deal with than if I was being a little bit self-indulgent in real life.

And yet the tortured monologue weaves itself on. Daniel Taylor made us a loaf of blue bread. I cycled to the house where this party was to try and find my wallet. Alas to no avail.

Anyway, I'm going to go mock the pretensious on Flickear. As Laurie Anderson once said, "it takes one to know one".

Teen Wolf and other bullet points

- Someone said I looked like Teen Wolf yesterday. It's been over 10 years since I saw Teen Wolf. But they could be right.

- "I have this problem; I think we might be too-close friends. Do you mind if we become less-close friends in future?"

- Setting yourself deadlines is so much more difficult than being set deadlines by others.

Hmmm. I have to go to work and then masking tape a bottle of Gin to my leg.

Waking up with a bitten lip

1968, Yoko puts a spanner in the works.
Originally uploaded by Dolores Luxedo.

I have to stop forgetting where I've been. It's the metaphorical equivelant of buying a massive record player when you're too drunk to know what's going on. Like when Andy and Maya stumbled, wide eyed, into the computer show, coming out with an ill-functioning motherboard.

Alice walked into the Basketmakers Arms on Saturday. Slightly surprising considering we thought she was in Thailand. That family sure do have a thing about surprises.

Annie Hell came down to visit this weekend also. She knocked one out on Daniel Taylor's pillow and then pushed his toothbrush up her ass. That girl is cool. Tommy has grown the most excellent moustache. He looks quite the English Country Gentleman. Moustaches are once again hip. Makes my mutton-chops quail in panic. My beard of bees took flight and left, exposing my feeble flaccid jaw.

Shige is on the cover of the Source. I might have mentioned this before. Not content with stealing all DJ Tea and MC Cake's ideas (he even throws scotch eggs at the crowd in a manner mildly remeniscent to how we used to throw sponges with the words "rats" "boke" "lust" and similar phrases upon them), but he has stolen Tom (our new housemate)'s chicken head. (A head Rosanne made for him, without eyeholes it fits tightly over your head. Like a gimp mask, but chicken.). Shige, you have stolen EVERYTHING.

It's Brighton festival. Many unusually dressed people in the streets. I saw a man wrapped in sackcloth taunt some person-sized flies. I saw a man with ginger hair and a can of special brew play the harmonica for money. I saw a couple of really really tall stiltwalkers giving out fliers. All the marvels of the festival.

Peter Shaffer was 79 on Sunday. We went to go see Amadeus at the Little Theatre. After the drama of getting Jacob in there (not helped by our lateness) it was incredible, especially Salieri. I haven't gone to the Theatre in about 3 years so I might be biased / have nothing to compare it to. Who can tell.

Anyway, I must go and collect my photographs from the shop. Life is so busy.

In response to Nick's question.

Yo. So I found a list of the complete body count on Nick Cave's Murder Ballads.

oh!

75 humans and a dog shuffle off this mortal coil on that album. But O'Malleys Bar doesn't have the most deaths, just a meagre 12. Shorely not!

What's the best thing about a park full of hippies?

There's more than 20 of them. Um.

Yeah, Bank Holiday Sunday. Queens Park. hundreds of hippies, all using Phone Mast Dave as a maypole.

Alan and Henry and Nick sing Red Fly your Banners, Ho!. Including "Thirteen for the holes in Trotsky's head". Deary. I spaz out for a bit. Rae turns up, another Albanian refugee.

Jed has a big shisha pipe from Egypt. We smoke it. Tom gets us some mystery crisps.

I fall asleep in the Ocean Rooms and miss the 25 piece samba band. For the 5th time running I mutter in my sleep at departing Lisa.

Blank Holiday Monday

grrr...tiger
Originally uploaded by becksy bee.

Another poetry night. Sam more entheusiastic than ever. Jacob also compering, invites whole contents of Fridge Bar back to his house afterwards. Tommy helps a small man through a high window. Some good poets. Note: Make sure, if you're doing a poem about menstruating, that it's really really good. Because otherwise it's just going to be terrible.

Fortunately I didn't do any poems about menstruation. Probably never will. Instead the unconscious is fundamentally a crowd. And some po-mo-bo-ho po po poetry about gravel and words that rhyme. Good as the Cardinal might have been at choosing the new pope, he didn't like it. Didn't do all that well. Like the poem though and various hip hop / poet types did.

So, we go back to Jacobs afterwards, and I meet this girl called Coxy who it turns out I have met before when I was stumbling through the Lanes pretending to be a drunken stumbling cornishman. She saw through my disguise then, however, and we shared recollections of 1740-1830. A good 90 years, that was. I remember it well.

Dave "the" Machine and Lucky Strike Henry

Henry is playing at the Park Crescent on Tuesday. I get there at about half past eight. Alan and Murali are propping up the bar and they both punch me in the arm. Henry has the most growly 40-lucky-strikes-a-day Tom Waits (one day he will be free) voice. This is quite surprising.

Dave the Machine plays at the Fitzherberts on Wednesday. First on is a Hungarian Folk Band. They are cool, harmonies and hungarian singing. Then Dave plays his flute and makes electronic noises whilst this singer songwriter guy sings and writes songs. Flutes are cool.

Sorry, it's obvious I'm never going to write for the NME.

Nursing owl-inflicted wounds.

God, I feel like I've been burning the candle at too many ends. It all begun on Saturday with Rosanne's birthday party. Well, it actually probably began with staying for a slightly-too-long lock-in at the pub the night before. But then by the time Rosie's party begun, we had spent way too long in The Great Yeastern and the Albert and then hanging out with Tommy and Daniel Taylor. Too much Pale Ale and Irish Cream and tool and suddenly the house is full of doctors (proper real medical doctors) and they have a bottle of port and I've made a joke about pregnacy scares that turned out to be horribly ill timed and Dawn from downstairs is mocking me (in a kindly rather than cruel way) for mixing my drinks. So I wake up in my bed but apparently it was the 4th place I ended up sleeping, many of which were floors. Up the next morning, Sunday Market. Rosanne gets taken out for lunch by her mum dad and grandma. Then I meet them and we walk along the beach and then go to the Victory for a couple of Gin & Tonics and pints of Old Peculier and then make a load of Peculierbergs and then go to the concorde and meet daniel taylor and I get thrown into a wall and then we watch boom bip and then i lose rosanne and go look for her outside and find alex and then jed and daniel taylor dissappear off in a car to cosy up and then i go look for rosie and she calls me and she's fallen asleep in the cubicle of the ladies loo in the concorde and this bouncer thinks shes having a drug induced fit but i think shes just exhausted and really drunk and then we find alex again and some people with bikes and its tipping down with rain and we only make it home because we're singing beach boys cover versions for the obese boys

help help me fondue

and then we get up the next morning and anna and bummy and victoria come round and we eat cake and drink tea and then go to the fiddlers elbow with tommy and tom and nick and lou carpy and lucy and go to the beach and sit on the beach and try to have a fire and sam comes along and alex and then i lose my tooth on the beach joff stylee and then we go to the lion and lobster and then i go home and they go out to the pav tav and nick sicks up on himself and rosanne gets covered in the sweat of others

home we all come in the end

happy nineteenth birthday

Want to come back to the Vatican for some pope pourri?

Sheffield
Originally uploaded by Dolores Luxedo.

It's been a very busy week. On Satuday I worked in the pub. Iffy air conditioning. Very hot. At about 7 a load of people stumble in wearing Brighton football shirts and singing "Oh! One nil! Oh! To Brighton! O, the Albion! One nil!". They buy a massive round. £36 or so. And then stumble about singing football songs. However, it turns out B&H Albion were playing in Doncaster or something like that. In fact, they were a bunch of drunk Irishmen on a pub crawl who had bought a load of cheap football shirts from a shop. They start wreaking havoc, and eventually we throw them out. They go up the road to the Railway Bell, where, about an hour later, they flag down a taxi and try to run into it with a load of chairs they've stolen from The Railway Bell. Needless to say, the taxi driver tells them to bugger off. The Railway Bell call the police, I think, and they all run off down Trafalgar Street.

Rosanne ended up going clubbing in London on Friday night and passed out in this club, being helped home by Rob Focuz and and a bunch of 30somethings. As Rob puts it, "It must have looked so dodgy, 4 men in their 30's carrying around an unconscious teenage girl at 4 in the morning." Dude. She woke up in a house in London, boked up on the Underground, and made it to work only 5 minutes late. That girl is hardcore. I had a really nice day on Saturday sitting on the beach with Elizabeth. Beginning to think it might be actually summer and I can stop wearing thick coats and scarves and bobble hats.

Heh, I just kid. I own no bobble hat.