jeff bridges is aces

This post, incidentally has nothing to do with Jeff Bridges. I just really, really like him.

I’ve done a few things in my time that I’ve regretted but this weekend was the first time I’ve regretted not doing something I might later regret.
Ever woken up the morning after the night before with that small beast of dread curled tight in your stomach and an anxious clawing in your throat ?
‘What the hell was I doing last night ?’ you think dramatically as you search the room and your phone and your body for clues.

This is how I woke up ten o’clock on Saturday morning, having crawled into bed only three hours previously. Realising I (a) wasn’t in my own bed and (b) wasn’t alone I felt those first familiar shreds of sober self-doubt.
‘What the hell have I been up to ?’ I thought, before realising I was not only fully dressed but, as far as I could make out, non-violated. As I rolled over I discovered – in the punishing daylight – that I was in bed with an impossibly handsome man and clearly, nothing had occurred.
“Damnit.” I thought, hunting for my coat.
(Incidentally, if anyone wants to know what wakes Mikey up in the mornings the answer is nothing and no-one – not my phone ringing, not me searching for my coat, not my crashing into a bookcase. Nothing.)

It was only as I was walking home that the events of the previous night slowly filtered back to me. I had a flash of someone’s lounge, and music and lots of people I’d never met.
‘A party !’ I groaned, ‘Oh God, a party, what the hell did I do at the party ?’

Uh, nothing, as it turns out. I think I secured myself a seat, drank some cans and talked to some people. Nothing too outrageous, unless you count ranting at Doogle, and no-one counts that, not even Doogle. Briefly, I tried to remember if I’d danced, but not unless you count a brief running man which was out in the garden for no-one to see.
‘Oh.’ I thought, slightly disappointed.
Then I reached the probing fingers of my memory a little further back.
‘The pub!’ I recalled, ‘Jesus, what was I saying to that fella in the pub ?’
I remembered his face, slack jawed, eyes a little glazed with boredom. Could picture his downing his drink in lethargic despair as I’d talked and talked.

Then I realised I’d been talking about my trip to America, which I’ve been doing enough to bore my closest friends, let alone someone I’d only just met. Nothing too terrible there.

By the time I’d got home I was slightly annoyed that I hadn’t taken more advantage of my drunkenness and sleep deprivation to do something I might have, even only slightly, regretted. There’s no point spending all that money and going to all that effort only to domesticate what, I’m sure, are my wilder urges.
Next time I’m dancing like an idiot, caining shots and stumbling over in public. Only then will I awake the next day feeling rightly regretful.

i just wanted to make your ears smile

Anybody remember mixtapes ?
Well done. You’re either as old as I am or older, which makes me feel better.

They were complicated, mixtapes. A friend of mine is making one for me at the moment and he has this to say on the subject;

‘doing this for girls is hard work... "will she like this one? hang on...she might take that the wrong way....don't put that on there she'll think you are stalking her"”

Here’s hoping he’s going for some obscure tracklistings;

track 1 - Without You by Air Supply
track 2 - So Fucking What ? by the Anti Nowhere League

or

track 1 - Song to the Siren - This Mortal Coil
track 2 - Too Drunk to Fuck - Dead Kennedys
track 3 – Hallelujah - Geoff Buckley

Chuck ‘Suspicious Minds’ by Elvis anywhere into that mix and you’ve got yourself a situation, buddy.

I was recently looking through a bag of ‘stuff’ from my past – a vipers nest of old tapes, photos, and assorted clutter and came across a mixtape from my ex-boyfriend who was both my first love and one of the hardest lessons I’ve learnt. He’d designed the cover himself and being a bit of an arty sort had drawn a picture of the two of us together. It was a strange mix of songs, culled I think, mainly from his dad’s record collection, and now if I ever hear Procol Haram’s Whiter Shade of Pale even now, fifteen years later, I’m transported to the wooded lane by his house with the taste of strawberry bubblegum on my lips and tongue and long licks of tall grass brushing the palms of my hands.

The mixtape is the past and the future people, and sticks in your mind even when you’ve long forgotten why ‘Love is a Battlefield’ meant anything to either of you. I suggest you make one for those you love today….they’ll thank you for it, I promise.

woefully mis-cast miscreants

I love vampires. I love comics. I love films. So imagine, if you possibly can, the sheer scale of my excitement when I found the film ’30 days of night’.

It had it all – asinine, aesthetically pleasing leads which lent the whole gory thing an air of flawlessness, as though the actors had been picked from the rejects of a Gillette commercial. This is no bad thing, as none of us want to see some boss-eyed harridan looming into the lens like a seahag at a porthole.

Blood guts and gore splattered hither and thither to such a degree that at one point it felt as though both of my eyes had ruptured and I was staring at the world through an oozing, scarlet screen.

Night vision – as the title suggests, most of the film is rendered in near darkness and shot on what appeared to be cutting-edge-o-matic cameras, the sort of MTV friendly cinema scope which, to my aged eyes was so bloody modern I nearly recoiled in fear. It’s all very well when music promos make me feel as though the future is accelerating into the distance without me but when films do it it makes me want to doctor my birth certificate by about ten years.

That aside, the film was going well, I’d settled into my friend’s ridiculously comfortable leather sofa, opened a can and kicked off my shoes. It was a shame then that they choose to cast a clone of Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys as the head vampire, Marlow. Much to my chagrin I found I kept hearing bursts of ‘West End Girls’ every time he swaggered, swathed or slithered onto the screen. It got to the point where I couldn’t look for laughing.

This got me thinking about other roles in films which could, and should, be remade with woefully mis-cast leads. The best we came up with was This is England with little Jimmy Krankie as Shaun, or Schindlers List with Kris Marshall as Oskar Schindler. If anyone can come up with any better ones let me know, I’m intrigued.