What Are Friends For?

Mates, eh. They come in handy sometimes.

They lend you tools, or buy you drinks. They offer you advice and keep you company. They tell you jokes and share things with you.

But sometimes they excel themselves. Sometimes they do stuff for you, you just don't deserve.

Like when your mate gets you a TICKET TO SEE TOM WAITS in Edinburgh in July!!!!!

Fucking. Yes. Nice one son.

(What am I talking about? - 'course I bloody deserve it...)

Beats

I'm full of nostalgia today, and I've just suddenly remembered something that really made me laugh.

I once had a "wacky" idea for a sitcom based on the lives of the Beat writers/poets living in Tangiers in the 50's/60's. Any shit biography of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs (especially) will wax lyrical about the escapades of the Beats in North Africa. Very exotic, very liberal and very, very cheap, Morocco was the No.1 destination for any self-respecting artist with a penchant for cheap weed and sodomy. Burroughs famously produced the manuscript of Naked Lunch in Tangiers, whilst the rest of his mates spent a lot of their time conducting either elaborate experiments with tape recorders or attempting to harness the power of ozone (don't ask). For the most part they were all completely fucking pissed.

Anyway, my sitcom idea revovled around all these boozey bohemian exploits. I seem to remember a storyline where Jack Kerouac drunkly falls asleep naked on his latest novel. The manuscript is ruined, however the ink has been transferred on to his arse and has to ask Burroughs to help him transcribe it. In walks sage old Paul Bowles*, shocked and appalled to find Bill peering up Jack's arsehole with a pen in his hand, and so unfolds a "hilarious" comedy of errors. I even had Thomas Pynchon in there as a recurring character. He'd be in the corner of a bar behind a newspaper - we never see his face, just the collar and cuffs of his navy uniform- a bit like Wilson in Home Improvement.

[Actually, if me old mate Lisa is reading this, can you remember any more details about this? Ha ha - remember our Holy Grail-themed nightclub, The Chapel Perilous? Genius.]

So, do I get my own series or what?

* I bloody love Paul Bowles. Go and read his short stories. They're fucking incredible.

Forgotten (?) Classics

The sun is shining and I've finished early for the bank holiday. There's a whiff of "don't give a shit" in the air.

So, shambling round the house this morning I dug out my old copy of Telephone Free Landslide Victory by Camper Van Beethoven.

I'd say it's ten years since I last played it. I feel 17 all over again. The best fake Greek/jewish punk instrumental album ever... Crackin' stuff.

Ghost Brands

One for all you planners, this.

Just read this in the NY Times. Fascinating stuff. Especially all the false memory gubbins. Hmmm...

In fact, why not employ your false brand memories over at Brand Tags - kinda like the Hot or Not of marketing.

Another Shit Update

I'm pressed like an orange for time again (look at that freshly squeezed time-juice in your glass!)

So here's some random shit for you.

A long time ago -well, not that long ago, but a good while ago - I invented a football team called Crabscarfe Town FC, who came from the (also made up) borough of Crabscarfe and Shithouse in Yorkshire (they had a colliery band together).

Anyway, I imagined Crabscarfe Town FC had a manager called Ken Wide, and I decided he looked like this:

The chairman/owner of the club was called Bernard Elellersley, and had made a lot of money selling Volvos. He looked like this:

But when Bernard was younger, he looked like this:

Not long after making all this up, I met a woman and promptly stopped thinking about football altogether.

Trendspotting: Chandeliers Are Shit

Here's a draft of a piece I've just done for this Liverpool job.

Hey there all you tastemakers – check out the megasexy-superfunk style craze that’s taking the city by storm. Oooh, it’s simply to die for my darlings. (No, literally, I mean it – you simply have to die).

Yep, in every bar, in every shop, in every nook and cranny of Liverpool-cool there’s a calling-card of chic that is (again, quite literally) priceless…

…You mean you haven’t seen them? You haven’t spotted all those multi-coloured plastic chandeliers everywhere!? Jeez man, and I thought you were cool… Sigh. But take a look around you – they’re all over the place, from the Phil to the docks. Like a hydra, you ignore one and ten more spring into view. Black ones, pink ones, giant ones, dwarf ones – there’re chandeliers everywhere. Everywhere! It feels more like a regime than a trend… albeit a nice regime based on fun and quirkiness. ‘Cos that’s what plastic chandeliers are, aren’t they? -they’re fun and quirky… like garden gnomes.

See, when you mention design, you automatically think of the greats: Philippe Starck, Terence Conran, erm… Linda Barker. And great design is great because of its timelessness. Great design lasts. Like a DFS sofa, or a Burberry check baseball cap. And the coloured plastic chandelier is no different. A chandelier evokes scenes of decadence and grandeur – the execution of Louis XVI perhaps, or Nazis banqueting at the Berghof. The coloured plastic chandelier is pure unadulterated class, man.

You think they’re naff? Tasteless? Tacky!? No, no, no you philistine pig. They’re not a beguiling urban folk-art phenomenon, at all. We’re the Capital of Culture –duh! You don’t get any more cultured and refined than chandeliers, mate. That bar you’re in now, yeah, with a black plastic chandelier over head? It might look and feel like a particularly shit Christmas in limbo, but that’s bleeding-edge, 21st century, no-expense-spared über-chic. That is S.T.Y.L.E, man. And if you’ve got a coloured plastic chandelier, you’re a paladin of taste. (Although most of you plebs won’t even know what a paladin is).

The Otherwise Excellent Taste of Liverpool exhibition is on across the city as we speak. Admission is free.

Alphabet of Advertising (Part 2/26)

B: A great big breasted bitch of a breif.