Pain, So Much Pain

I'm reading Nikki Sixx's "Heroine Dairies" and it has made me feel a good deal healthier about my measly  nicotine addiction. 

Favorite quote so far, (as he is sharing his bed with a porn star):

"The only problem we had was that my dick didn't seem to be aware that she was there.  She kept asking me what was wrong, I was so out of it I though she meant wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit." 

Nikki's crazed diary entries are truly saddening, but I mention it mostly for it marks another notch in my return to metal, a love last abandoned somewhere around 1991 when hip hop took hold.

It started a couple of years ago, Iron Maiden, Metallica and ACDC on tour and picked up again with a Kiss concert in April and series of festivals over the summer.  There I punch danced my enthusiasm to, amongst many others,  'Girls Girls Girls' by the mighty Crue themselves. And by mighty I mean fat and bloated.

"He looks like a pig in leather" Sam drawled with her delightful Sydney twang, pointing to Vince Neil who was surely vaselined into leathers that laced up at the sides, exposing small squares of exhausted flesh.

The metal fans have not fared better, gone are the hair teased big titted slut groupies of yore and in trudge the overweight big titted purple velvet wearing hordes.  I am watching Motley Crue and simultaneously attending a village fete in Middle Earth.

As a direct consequence of this unsightly affliction to the scene, myself, Kristen and Sam were hand selected to attend the Rammstein after party admitting even to ourselves how sad it was that we represented the best.   

Naturally, we accepted our fate insisting that token boy Jamie remain in the fold. And herded like groupie bitches after the show we were, weaving backstage behind the tour buses and kept in lines before being released into a frigid tent with an open bar and welcome collection of leather couches.  I blame heavy intoxication for my shameful attempt to slutify, knotting the loose white beer stained tank top above my naval in a provocative display of somewhat flat belly.  The substances wore off when the cold of night took hold, bringing with it an acute awareness of my ridiculous state.

The band arrived and made polite conversation in clipped Germanic brogue to all those who approached, all aside from the lead singer Til who disappeared shortly after myself, Sam and Kristen hovered around him with our mobile phones held aloft.  This respectable gathering is far removed from the debaucherous sleaze of a Motley Crue backstage fuck fest. There were no speed balls, unripened bananas or heroine infused psychosis.  Just delightful chat, my knotted tank and "Bigmouth Strikes Again" easing out of the speakers.

These succession of events were for the most part free passed through a reputable contact I had befriended at a certain heavy metal magazine with which I never spent an advertising dime. Love of metal was my currency and remains a formidable relationship builder, a guaranteed acceptance to the club.  This connection allowed me the privileged entry into the Classic Rock Music Awards a few weeks ago where I got to breathe the same confined air as Jimmy Page, Slash and Alice Cooper to name but a very few.  

And it was at the second after party in the smaller hours of that night that I finessed my way onto a certain man's lap, whose gentle nature so beguils his formidable size and impressive long haired metalness.  A passing acquaintance whose conversation and eyes had an effect that landed as unexpectedly as I had on his lap. Promises to meet again in a couple of weeks proved a gestation period of affection only to be cut down in of all pathetic ways, a celebratory Facebook relationship status update.

In a weakened emotional state I blame on late office hours, I decided to send him this note:

"Pain.  So much pain. x " I typed repeating his hangover claim to me the day after the Classic Awards.  His return was prompt assuming a physical injury had motivated my random communication.  The response I hastened professed heartache and merited the void that followed.

Shame woke me before my alarm the next day and burns bright in the bottom of my somewhat flat belly these four days later.  It seems as though this return to my adolescent music of choice has brought with it adolescent behavior as well.  

Well, I've recently also started buying jazz on vinyl for the turntable I am getting this Christmas so who knows, the Motley Crue T-shirt I am currently sporting may morph into a tweed jacket and composed demeanor before long.

But fuck that shit.

your fan,

a.

/m\

As yet Unfinished

Nico and I are standing on the platform of a Berlin train station paralyzed by the overhead speaker barking German with frenzied authority, "and we're boarding a train to Poland" I say. 

The train was in fact heading for Frankfurt, the lesser known village of Frankfurt that borders Poland.  From there we crossed the border on foot.  "Germany marches into Poland again" says Alex in his clipped German brogue twinged with a gay panache that saves his comment from poor taste.   How strange that what I saw of Poland should remind me so much of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. No 90 pound musicians or baseball capped graduates high on the enthusiasm of living in New York but rather those teenage prostitutes in the making wearing colourful squares of mesh and a sequin.  The older folk were thick featured and shuffled about in all manner of sandals and brown toe nails.  Women came with hair in the three colours, black, peroxide blonde and burgundy, all smoking as though it earned them money.

After an evening of laying in a field recovering from our previous nights revelry, Nico, Alex and I decide to spend our remaining Polish currency on ice cream sundaes that we ate while observing a family sat across from our table.

It was the little girl that caught our attention for at the age of 4 she wore the lined face of a middle aged woman.  We stared at this poor child in disbelief spoon feeding ourselves with mechanical regularity.  The girls family, of which there were several members, sat chain smoking beneath a cloud of smoke that hovered above while the old faced girl ran round and around the table.  Nico declared this to be a "horrible tableau" and we vowed to never smoke again, or at least cut back.

In Berlin I had tried to contact Dirk, a friend of a friends I had met last New Years eve in New York, but after several failed attempts for us to get in contact I turned my attention to Yoni, aka "The Party" an old acquaintance from the Williamsburg party days labeled as such for his prowess on the scene.  If he was there, it was a party, but he was never there for long for there were always more spots for him to get to.  If he came back to finish his night at your venue, that meant it was the best.   The Party only chose the best.

The Party answered on the first ring and even knew it was me.  He said he'd be meeting a few friends for Tapas in the neighbourhood and that Nico and I should join them.  Five hours, four large wines, a schnaps, a shot of vodka and thirty cigarettes later we are at Nilgun's place playing the card game Asshole.  Bettie who works for a fashion magazine, Nina who's head of marketing for Addidas and her boyfriend Matheus who is rolling us a fattie are all sat around the table.  The Party is ever slouched  by the corner balancing his hand of cards, a constant text and his cigarette habit.

"Two bitches" he says slapping down a pair of queens.

We played for 3 hours and all the while serenaded by The Whitest Boy Alive, the band Nilgun's husband plays bass in.  Nico buys the band's t-shirt and we both buy CDs while the drunken group dismantles.  

 "Get your stuff," says The Party, "We're going out."

"Parcour!"

Otherwise known as free running, most of you will now be aware of this urban pastime brought to us by The French (its how they get around Paris to buy bread and cheese).   Madonna tried to ride that wave of street in yet another tragic attempt to be down with the kids (and warrant an excuse to sport a leotard and knee pads.)

My friend Clay told me about this spectacular parcur fail executed on a night out in Brooklyn.  Clay witnessed the attempt, fueled by a sense of alcohol and coke drenched super-power,  of this guy jumping from the top of a building onto the hood of a parked car in the street below.   He promptly broke his leg upon impact and was carted off in an ambulance in a fit of roaring pain and shame just as soon as everyone stopped laughing long enough to summon the medics.  "We just couldn't get over the fact he had yelled the word "parcour!" on his way down" said Clay.

I've invented a lower impact, safer form of parcour which involves jumping over say, a fallen paperclip.   But the trick is to shout "parcour!" whilst performing the act, lest anyone doubt your level of commitment.  

Urban.  

This has caught on with a few individuals in the office who will triumphantly sound the cry while getting out of their seat, or tap the edge of an office wall with their pointed foot as they walk by.

We salute you our fallen urbanite, your antics were not in vain.

Peace.

your fan,

a.

Cintra for President

Worship, fools.  

Cintra Wilson I can safely say is one of my fave authors penning such classics as "A Massive Swelling:  Celebrity Re-Examined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease" which devotes, amongst many others, an entire chapter to my nemesis, Celine Dione (please die) starting the chapter with the words "all those terrible bones under the angora".

I know, right?

I'm reading her latest right now, "Caligula for President, Better American Living through Tyranny" with a "plot" that essentially provides a vehicle for socio-political commentary spanning from ancient Rome to Bush spawn in waiting. Plenty of Lindsay Lohan and Britney references thrown in, natch, since they are more noteworthy than politics and certainly attract more media attention.  

Her description of Ryan Seacrest and his "startling inability to ever look sincere about anything" should be etched into stone, dipped in gold and flavored with saffron.  

The entire book is one run on sentence and at times my attention shifts to the guy in the tube who's breathing too loudly, but mostly I am engrossed and occasionally do that annoying little burst of involuntary laughter, that "bet you wish you were reading what I'm reading" guffaw that usually grants my book cover with a second glance.

Thanks for helping my January, Cintra.

your fan,

a.

My place in the line

Getting a head start on Christmas shopping over the weekend. Waiting in line at HMV scannning the criminal inventory I hold for purchase.

One Susan Boyle CD (for mother), one Michael Buble CD (mother again), I book - Eclipse, 3rd in Twilight series (guilty).

And I was wearing Ugg boots. Why don't I just tattoo a Starbucks logo on my arm?

Your statistic,

a.

p.s team Jacob all the way!

Dying to be Thin

God damn its been a while.  

So long, I had to change my username and password in order to access my blog after failing to log in a number of times.  But enough about my great lapse, and onto pro-anorexia, a world for which I have recently developed a small obsession.

It all started when I came across a documentary Fearn Cotton had done on pro ana websites. For those not familiar with the work of Fearn, she is a young female British radio DJ and presenter who lives up to her name delivering news and banter with all the intelligence and charm of a plant and/or plant product. 

"I just can't believe, like, that girls are actually starving themselves in order to be thin" she states, getting to grips with the whole concept.

But a fascinating subject nonetheless, not to sound completely clinical, but I find fascinating the world of obsession for I can understand how easily it takes a hold and warps the shit out of everything.  And this particular affliction is the mother of them all, affecting so many women,  killing a staggering amount.   All from a compulsion that obtaining a goal weight will fix all the ills.  And it never does, so the compulsion spirals out of control until there's nothing left to lose but life itself. 

And I totally get how it could take hold for I  myself am prone to a wee compulsion now and then, nothing drastic - little bouts of cleaning when I get stressed, certainly nothing that prohibits consumption.

This new found obsession led me online where I became a frequent visitor of a pro anawebsite and specifically, the guestbook where all the girls chat.  I became fascinated by their stories, as they detailed the limited food items they had ingested for the day in pitiful detail, share tips on how to pretend they ate so their families don't get suspicious and the like.

Night after night as I climbed into bed, I'd check on their "progress" and as I grew to know the girls, where they lived, what boys they liked, what their stats were and their goal weights,  the anthropological stance from which I launched this venture shifted.  I became concerned for their safety, increasingly so and would be relieved when they returned the following night.

Especially one or two of them.  Especially the one called Perfect Disaster who if we are to believe her stats is 5'10 and 105 pounds.  That's 7.5 stone my British friends.  She's the one who cuts just for good measure.  She's the one they all look up to. 

Then there's Patty who throws up 30 times a day, who throws up blood and the other girls tell her to stop but she can't and I wish I could drive her to a recovery center and sit by her side as she mends.  But clearly that will never happen.  

I don't even drive.

I contemplated logging on myself in an attempt to infultrate, befriend and eventually, guide the ones I could away from the sites.  But conscience took over, I clearly wouldn't know what I was doing and these girls are fragile, fragile things, trying through their weight to control the pain of life they can't escape.

So I logged off and left them to it. 

...plus I started really noticing the amount of food I was eating and lets not even get near that slippery slope.

Once in a while, you'd find an entry from a girl who wanted "tips on how to lose 10 pounds really quickly".  For the most part these would go unanswered, especially if it was a model claiming she had pounds to lose before a photo shoot in a few days.  Probably not sort of thing a miserable girl in Idaho wants to hear.

"Dying to be Thin" by the way is this terrible made for TV movie about a girl training to be a ballet dancer who ditches food when her dance instructor makes one too many fat comments. As with all made for TV movies, it was completely awful so I watched it all the way to the end.

Thus ends my first entry in almost 2 years.  not a cracking start, but a start all the same. 

I promised a friend I would try.

your fan,

a.

Back with Another of those Block Rocking Blog Entries

Its been a while, I know all two of you have been wondering where I've been all this time, well let me tell you, it takes a while to get used to the whole new job / new apartment / new country / new life dealio but I'm handling it like a fucking pro, its like I've always lived in England though to be fair, I did sort of spend 15 years growing up here, but lets not split hairs.


I'm enjoying my new job a lot and thats pretty much all I've got to say about it, and I'm enjoying the new man in my life who understands fully that the way to my heart is bacon sandwiches and shark movies.

Which leads me neatly onto this knowledge bomb:

Simply put, Shark Attack 3.



Don't even bother with Shark Attack 1 or 2 (we fast forwarded the "plot" until it got to good shark bits) its all about no. 3. This movie, made in 2002 which is unbelievable (I thought 1985 max) has a budget of about 50 bucks and the main starlets lips appear inflated / deflated from scene to scene. If thats not awesome enough, the shark is a megaladon which simply put means its about the size of NY state and swallows entire ships whole making Jaws look like cranky plankton.

More awesomely, all the killer sharks in the movie make groaning noises when they swim about because thats just how evil they are, the literally go "grrrrrr" and it never ever gets old. The shots are cleverly intercut with national geographic footage of real sharks but only a film major like me could spot the subtle differences like the fact that the real sharks are swimming in tropical waters in the daytime one minute and choppy waters at night the next.

Obviously, the movie is all about the attacks and while I don't want to ruin it for you or anything, I think you should have a little taster to......whet your appetite?

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Thats not even the best bit. Cuz the best bit is the dialogue, and its not just B movie dialogue (that necessary noise bridging one shark attack to the next), no no....Shark Attack 3 is home to the best single line of dialogue ever written..nay, improvised, ever. You can youtube the clip if you must, its under shark attack 3 with a header of something like "THE LINE".

I was warned that the reel of watery genius that is Shark Attack 3 is home to the best line of dialogue in movie history. I kept thinking I had heard it but I was calmly reassured that just like my first ever orgasm, I would know when it happened.

There's really not much more I can say about Shark Attack 3 except that you should all buy it as I have, even if part 1 and 2 come with, it should only set you back a couple of dollars/quid and in some stores, you might actually be paid for its removal.

More movie gold coming soon cuz now I've got a partner in crime who doesn't think its weird to watch werewolf movies upon awakening on a sunny spring day.

your fan,

a.