You are allowed to enjoy this…

Have you ever had a dream that is told in the third person, in which you do not appear and which is cinematic in scope? I have. Last night’s sleep was notable for the fact that my entire dreamtime was spent stuck in some kind of zombie movie. The undead had risen and were slowly feasting on the occupants of an office building. It was a bit like “Land of the Dead” but with more chrome and white space. I am not a big zombie movie fan as I find the protagonists to be quite dull – more of a werewolf guy, myself, enjoying the duality of the lycanthrope. But anyway, I was stuck watching various people being chomped, eviscerated and turned into the shambling walking dead. It wasn’t particularly fun, it was particularly gory and I woke in a bad mood.
So this evening was the finale of the TV series “Life on Mars”. Though I was a big fan of the first series, I found the second series much better written and still love the initial premise. However, there were moments when I lost interest in the stories and the 70s shtick wore me down a little. As a kid from the 1970s, it wasn’t that great. Yes, life was a lot more simple and things weren’t as complicated or as shallow as they are now and this was borne out by the ending. Without giving it totally away, at one point I thought I was heading for the most depressing end to a series since the bloodbath at the of “Blake’s Seven” but the inanity of modern times weighing on Sam Tyler made the real ending somewhat predictable. On the roof, I heard the Missus mutter “Oh no, here comes the ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ ending…” If you know that pop video, you’ll know what she was getting at.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed parts of “Life on Mars”, but it didn’t play around with the format enough. I wanted it to get a little wacky or as I kept saying “When’s it going to go all Dennis Potter” – alas, it never really bothered with the surreal and that’s a shame because I think it had the potential to strike out in similar areas that “The Singing Detective” or “Cold Lazarus” did. Still, it was an interesting premise and I look forward to the return of Gene Hunt in the 1980s, with a female partner from the 21st century in the follow-up “Ashes to Ashes”.
Meanwhile, much has been written about John Simm appearing in Doctor Who. Some say he is going to turn up as the Doctor’s nemesis: the Master, despite being billed to appear as the politician Mr Saxon. Funnily enough, last week’s “Life on Mars” featured “Master of the Universe” by Hawkwind and tonight’s show clashed with a show on Channel 4 hosted by Harvey Goldsmith in which he tried to improve the fortunes of ailing heavy metal band Saxon. Whoooo…spooky – do you see the synchronicity there?
And here’s that “Owner of a Lonely Heart” video, so you can understand what The Missus was hinting at. Scroll to the end if you have to.

There’s been lots written out there in the general blogosphere about how to control people who post offensive remarks on blogs. This all stems from someone called Kathy Sierra getting “death threats” on her own blog after she managed to tick off members of her particular online community. This gives me much food for thought, as I don’t think I am too offensive on this blog, nor do I suffer such nastiness by those few people who visit and post messages. However, on another site I am not so nice and for a while, deliberately set out to piss off as many people as possible – the rationale being that it was my site and if I put a big enough warning on the door, you could express yourself as you wanted. The whole thrust of the net is that should be able to express yourselves freely, as long as you stay within the limits of the law.
However, offending people is subjective and once I remember calling someone “a big girl’s blouse” in jest and then found myself being accused of being a homophobe. So there you go. The thing about words is that if you string enough of them together, you can offend just about anyone. Sure – death threats, racism, sexism and all manner of -isms are bad, but a good old fashioned slanging match never hurt anyone. But like most things in this world, the march of the feminisation of the media marches onwards, now coming to the net. While I have never wished physical harm on anyone, I have been threatened myself and I scoff at it. It’s all just words.
The downside is that there are many people out there who can’t distinguish between reality and this ‘ere virtual reality. When I first started on the web, I got talking to someone who gave me a lesson. They basically said that none of this was real and to trust none of it. For all I knew, the person I was chatting to at the time could have been a prisoner on death row or an eleven-year-old at the library…such is the blurring of reality. I took this lesson to heart and subsequently have taken none of this too seriously.
Unfortunately, later users of the net have increasingly swapped the real world for the virtual one and now the lines are truly blurred. They see every posting on a blog as reality and true. Every word, line and sentence is the equivalent of a real action or deed. I find this incredibly bizarre. For example, when you read an opinion column piece in the newspaper, do you really believe that the writer is 100% committed to those words. No, many writers delliberately heighten their experience to make their opinions even more reactionary, to get a response, to shake things up a bit.
For example, I tend to listen to Iain Lee on the radio when I do the evening meal and he can be quite sharp when he wants to be. I remember one night an irate caller got on the line and berated him for something he said and Iain Lee replied something like: “Do you really think I am like this? Do you really think this is what I am like? This is a performance because if I was really me, it would be incredibly boring.” And that kind of sums up many webusers contributed to the blogosphere. Some are genuine, while others create personas are somewhat removed from their own real life. That really is the insidious nature of the web and I am guilty of being a contributor.
Now what you get here is 99.9% me. But on that other website I run, I play up a bit. It is deliberate. Yes, it is childish. Yes, it is immature. But so is becoming reliant on the Internet for your social network and many other strange character traits the web seems to nourish. But I don’t get easily offended by words. I think it is because they are the tools of my trade and words are cheap and virtuous actions are like spun gold. I can understand why people might get offended at certain things I’ve posted, but the Internet isn’t a place for the weak minded. I wouldn’t even let my own children use the web without adult supervision because I believe it is an open sewer.
But this new “Blogger Code of Conduct” that has been proposed just makes me shake my head in disbelief. You can’t control people. Dictators and fascist regimes have tried and (mostly) failed. So this code of conduct is a supreme waste of time. It is really simple. All you need to do is delete what you don’t like and make sure posters stay within the laws of the land. Easy. I agree with maybe posting warnings, but you won’t be able to root out fake accounts and anonymous posters. It is an impossible task. Now to end on a quote:
“The Internet is not for sissies.” (1994) Paul Vixie, computer programmer

The world must be coming to an end. Is that the four horseman of the apocalypse at the door or the beginning of the rapture I can hear? Whatever it is, this has been the warmest, sunniest Easter holiday I can remember. In an effort to stave off falling to the flu germs The Missus keeps spraying about my general direction, I have been self-medicating with gardening duties, sitting the sun and cans of Kronenberg 1664. It appears to be working, though I would not recommend my unorthodox methodology to anyone else.
Awww crap, I accidentally started recording my new collection of songs at the weekend. I wasn’t intending on doing anymore proper recording for a long while (a cheer goes up from those poor cyberspace travellers who have encounted my crappy tunes) but it came quickly and it was too late to stop the creative impulse. And once I start one, you can bet another one will follow and another and another until 40 or so minutes of mind-numbing noodling is captured. I apologise in advance. The intention was to move away from instrumental and maybe do some proper songs like “Here Comes the Future” that I demoed recently.
This one is a short little tune, recorded quickly and not messed around with too much to keep its spontaneous energy. I spent more time trying to get the mixing right and I’ll probably keep tinkering with it until I am happy, but this is basically what you’ll hear. This is called “In the Sun” and it is inspired by the weekend of sitting in the sun…obvious, really. Enjoy!

The lack of entries is down to two things: general apathy and the fact that The Missus has been very ill with flu for the past week. So I painted a yellow cross on the door and have been running around like a common skivvy in an attempt to ease her passage back to rude health. It reminds me of that Steptoe and Son episode where Albert cons Harold into caring for him.
Meanwhile, been working my way through the recent Genesis boxset and listening to those album remixed into 5.1 surround sound. A full report will appear when I finish auditing those recordings. Initial impressions are very good.

Whilst reading the epic “Guardian” local newspaper, I spied a topic that was unusual and somewhat baffling. It seems that the Harlow music venue “The Square” has adopted an age restriction policy to bands who are booked to perform there. Now this venue has seen the likes of Blur and Oasis as well as many other famous (and not so famous) groups playing there, but the age restriction is literally going to kill off any kind of music scene. You see, those who make the rules have decided that the maximum age of band members booked at “The Square” is to be 19 years old. Yes, that’s right…nineteen, n-n-n-n-nineteen (oblique Paul Hardcastle reference permitting).
Now I’m scanning my brain for famous bands that had made it by the age of 19 and I came up with a couple – I think Ash and Supergrass were both quite young when they broke, but this rule is just stupid. We are supposedly to be living in an age of political correctness and tolerance to all races, sexes, creeds and religions but this is just pure age discrimination. I know it is just a music venue, but I wonder what the bosses there are actually trying to achieve with this new age policy. Of course, they could give preference to younger bands and still have slots open to those groups who have entered their twenties, but this is so stupid it’s gone off the Foolish-o-meter. Oh well, I am glad I’m an old fart and not some twenty-year-old whose hopes have been dashed trying to get a gig at “The Square”.
Mind you, there’s a lot of ageism when it comes to rock. A lot of venues refuse to allow entry to music fans who are under 16 – even if they are accompanied by an adult and I think that kind of thing sucks. The venues say it is because they are a licensed premises and they sell booze, but you don’t see children being refused entries to theatres that also sell alcohol, do you? It’s a real shame this age policy because when you are that age, music is the fuel that feeds the heart in some youngsters. Stupid rules…
Also in the local “Guardian”, I read that Tre from “The Apprentice” is in fact a local Loughton boy. Awwww crap….

And so the new series of the Apprentice began last night and it was somewhat comforting to see Sir Alan Sugar hurrumphing onto our screens in his guise as a Nookie Bear tribute act. Whaever happened to Roger de Courcy? So anyway, the usual collection of business knobheads and hoity-toity pretty bitches were paraded out in front of us and it was so bleeding obvious who was going first. It had to be Nice Guy Andy – the friendly northern car salesman whose eyes conveyed the same look of uneasy fear a gazelle on the Serengheti gets just before the lioness strikes and breaks its back. From the outset, it was clear he was a goner – as there are rules to The Apprentice that must be obeyed, like there are rules in slasher movies (the pretty virgin lives while all the sluts die horribly). In this case, here are some handy Apprentice rules to look out for:
1) Never say “I am willing to step up to the plate” – that’s almost the same as saying “Sir Alan, call me a cab”.
2) Never say “I do this for a living, so I would make an excellent project manager for this task”. All so-called experts end up F-I-R-E-D.
3) Don’t be nice – nice equals “fuckover” in business speak
4) Don’t be bitchy – bitchy equals bitchy in business speak. There’s plenty of space in The Apprentice for characters to bitch to the camera about others as this makes fun TV, but when it comes down to the crunch, bitches never win
5) Don’t be a posh twat – posh twats never prosper – partly because they are posh (remember who Sir Alan is) and partly because they are the type of posh twat that is so divorced from the real world that they look down their nose at any minority, such as blacks or northerners.
6) Be bland – because at the of the day, Sir Alan wants to employ people who aren’t going to take stupid risks, aren’t going to backchat him and aren’t going to lose his companies loads of cash
Follow those rules and you’ll be OK.
But I digress, last night’s show was a little predictable and I felt sorry for Andy because we all know it should have been the posh stupid spoonfaced bint who wanted to order 1000 litres of milk. Then there was the plump lady who resembled a cross between a badly stuffed DFS sofa and the cat from Roobarb and Custard – if you have a mobile shop and you aren’t selling MOVE IT. Another life rule is to keep on moving – if you stand still you wither and die, no?
So Andy got it in the neck, failed to fight his corner and proved once again that nice guys come last.
As a seasoned The Apprentice fan who has watched all the US series, thanks to my uncle Don Load, I do find the overblown production of the UK version quite amusing. The US series has the vistas of New York (and Los Angeles for the later series) – our version has downtown Brentwood, but somehow all notions of geography are thrown out of the window when it comes to exterior shots because in SugarWorld Brentwood lies really close to Blackfriars Bridge (or any of the bridges of the Thames) as whenever someone gets fired the last tracking shot shows the taxi traversing one of London’s bridges, instead of showing it stuck in traffic in Brentwood High Street.
I literally squealed with delight when Sir Alan got his own helicopter to make his big dame-like entrance. Donald Trump, his US-equivalent and the godhead of The Apprentice franchise, eats helicopters for breakfast and shits private planes (so I am told). Trump is also “The Man” and makes Sir Alan Sugar look like a second-hand car saleman, which is also part of his appeal – it’s strange. The US show has a multi-millionaire and we get East London’s attempt at “Del Boy Trotter”. When the US contestants win their task, they get to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger or visit some ultra posh restaurant, when our contestants win Sir Alan gives them all a tenner and tells them to meet Su Pollard at the Brentwood Wimpy. Of course, I jest.
It’s too soon to tell who will win, but I can tell you it won’t be Tre – a man who from appearances looks like he’s been cloned from cells taken from Craig David and a parsnip. This guy is the kind of bullshitter the show needs and is cut from the same cloth as the legendary Syed. I hope he doesn’t get ejected too soon because he is going to bring the entertainment. In terms of the other guys, they were all pretty bland and too posh for me – though there was one fellow who looked as if he might make it to the final round – his name is Ifti and he looks a little shifty – I reckon he’ll provide many laughs too with his incompetence. As for the ladies, they are all a little too pretty for my liking (except for Gerri the Sofa Face) and none of them have much character.
But these are early days and like the many skins of an onion, it’ll only be around week 5 or 6 that we’ll be able to really pick favourites…
Meanwhile, the US show is just superb. The producers have mixed up the format and made it so that the losing teams have to sleep in a tent overlooking Los Angeles…it’s a real morale crusher and cranks up the tension in the teams as the winners get to stay in a lovely mansion and have excellent rewards. My only complaint this time around is that the tasks are a little dull…but I’d still like to see a UK-US special with Sir Alan and the Trumpmeister General going head to head. I’ve been spouting that for years and I’m waiting for it to happen so I can sue the TV people for nicking my idea.
On a separate note, I knocked up a quick tune to accompany the lyrics for “Here Comes the Future”. It’s nothing grand, just a three-chord trick and I kept it rough and ready, leaving the mistakes in. Enjoy!