Being Picked Last At Sports

I Write, Right?

2010-07-21T14:32:00.007+01:00

So yeah another lame entry just to flag up other stuff I've been writing.

Have a piece for Empire here:

Plus I have also become a regular contributor to the Sunday Times in South Africa who have been publishing some stuff in their magazine. Here are the online links (much more to come):

Me And My Super 8

The Old Never Looked So Good

The Force To Be Reckoned With

I'm sure this is better than me babbling on about bad dates and getting annoyed with people on the bus...

Nothing But Words

2010-05-27T18:06:00.005+01:00

Been a bit quiet on the blogging front of late. Mainly because I have been busy writing other stuff (for like money and shit).

If you care, here are some links:

Vice - piece about films based on objects

Little White Lies - review of SUS

Killing Bono blog - first piece in character
- second piece in character

Also the Guardian piece was randomly re-printed in the Sunday Times in South Africa and I have some more pieces coming soon.

Kthxbai.

I Knew That Watching Sleeping With The Enemy Over 20 Times As A Kid Would Finally Pay Off

2010-03-26T10:20:00.003Z

My childhood of watching lurid thrillers has finally come to fruition.

My second article on The Guardian went up yesterday:

READ HERE

Haters to the left.

I Hate Valentine's Day (The Movie)

2010-02-14T12:41:00.001Z

I know, I know. I should have known better. I should have used those two hours to read, or clean, or self-harm. Pretty much anything would have served as a better alternative to enduring Garry Marshall's drunken recollection of what Love Actually looked like. Also known as Valentine's Day.

A year ago, two films were released that seemed to decide the fate of VD. Friday the 13th and He's Just Not That Into You. During some coke-fuelled brainstorm, execs must have examined the success of both and come to a terrifying conclusion. What if they combined the glossy/greedy ensemble cast of one and the opportunistic release date of the other?

The rush was then on, as with all great pieces of art, to achieve a specific release date. In this case, VD weekend 2010. Any working actor who had a few hours spare was corralled into taking part and the producers made sure they appealed to EVERY demographic with their casting choices.

Tweens - Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner (the latter, still chilling as some sort of baby/bodybuilder hybrid)

Old people - Shirley Maclaine and Kathy Bates (both putting one finger up at the Academy that awarded them Oscars)

Guys, dragged along by their girlfriends - Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel (neither even coming remotely close to showing any flesh though)

Girls that read Heat - Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner (playing best friends - hey, stop laughing back there)

Black people - Jamie Foxx and Queen Latifah (offensive stereotypes - check)

People that watch Grey's Anatomy - Eric Dane and Patrick Dempsey (McSleazy and McGreasy or whatever the fuck they're called)

I'm still missing out Julia Roberts, Anne Hathway, Bradley Cooper, Emma Roberts, Topher Grace, your mum, your gran, that guy you sometimes see on your way to work with that hat, you etc.

It's one of those films I watched, while mentally trying to make a list of reasons I hated it. Never a good sign. This is what I can remember, although I should have brought a notepad.

1. Jessica Biel plays a totally underwritten attempt to appeal to 'normal' women. An amalgamation of Liz Lemon and Bridget Jones - the kind of woman that falls off the treadmill, spills stuff everywhere, stumbles her words, is eternally single and is constantly eating. In other words, things that Jessica Biel would never, ever do.

2. Jamie Foxx is black. This means he has to try and teach Jessica Biel how to fist bump.

3. The film is like really modern and shit. This translates into the word BlackBerry being involved in every other scene.

4. There is a 'cute kid' that falls in love with Jennifer Garner, and by cute I mean 'so precocious, you feel the urge to force your entire arm down his throat just so you can make his heart stop beating'.

5. Poor, poor florist Ashton Kutcher gets dumped by Jessica Alba and has to settle for Jennifer Garner in the same day. We're supposed to feel sorry for this douche?

6. Apparently every Indian restaurant turns into a Bollywood musical after 10.

7. Julia Roberts plays a soldier on the way back from Afghanistan. Ranks as one of the most ridiculous star/job match-ups since Tara Reid played an archaeologist in Alone in the Dark.

8. Queen Latifah is sassy, a massive departure from her other performances where she has played quite sassy, very sassy and only sassy when provoked.

9. This exchange between Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx: 'I need more chocolate' 'I am the chocolate'

10. Anne Hathaway plays a poetry major who moonlights as an adult sex line operator. Enough said.

11. Taylor Lautner has a 'hilarious' in-joke where he states that he isn't very comfortable with taking his shirt off in public. Yes, well neither are we circus freak.

12. Despite being a film about how some people hate Valentine's Day as it can be a tough day for single people to endure, we never once see a believably ordinary singleton, battling their debilitating loneliness while weeping into a large glass of wine. Instead we have numerously over-styled glamazons whining about nothing, while showcasing their best side to the camera.

All of this complaining is totally irrelevant though. The film has just opened to what may be the biggest ever opening for a romantic comedy in the US - an estimated $58 million. They're already plotting the sequel - entitled New Year's Eve. When will this end? Will the follow-up just be called Tuesday? Is any holiday, day, time safe?

What's depressing is that the success of VD and the continued success of Avatar (biggest film ever etc) shows that, more than ever, scripts are in fact totally pointless. VD could have consisted of the big-name cast all reciting nutritional information from cans of soup and it still would have been a hit. It's the most horribly manufactured film I have seen for a long time but no one seems to care.

It went down a storm in the cinema when I saw it. Everyone laughed throughout at the increasingly tortured attempts at humour. They also laughed at the gay storyline in the film, which wasn't actually funny, but two men on screen together is apparently hilarious. Also, the racial cliches (that bordered on offensive), coupled with the narrow-minded xenophobia in the upcoming travesty Leap Year highlight a worryingly parochial worldview for films that are marketed as lightweight entertainment.

Perhaps I'm taking it all a bit too seriously. But someone has to. The majority of our fellow cinema-going humanoids have gone out and accepted the putrid force-fed garbage that VD offered up this past weekend, but at what cost? We still don't know about the long-term problems these films cause. In 30 years we'll look back, shaking our heads at the lack of medical warnings attached to movies such as this. Think about what all this sugar is doing to your teeth.

My Life As A Sitcom

2010-01-11T10:59:00.005Z

Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if it were the plot of a sitcom? If every other sentence you said or heard was a pithy one-liner, immediately followed by increasingly strained canned laughter? If all of your friends and family members were easily compartmentalised into various stereotypes such as 'wacky, new-age elderly person' or 'overly precocious yet wise blonde child'?

Well, I do.

Looking at my life as it is, there are a number of key changes that would need to be made before it could become endlessly repeated on UK Gold.

ME: The fact that I'm gay wouldn't be a total problem but the fact that I'm not 'fun gay' would be. Sitcoms tend to prefer gays when they're bursting into song and designing jewellery. I'd need to replace beer with apple martinis, hip-hop with show tunes and sarcasm with, oh hang on that one works.

It's important to introduce more catchphrases into my everyday vocabulary which wouldn't be a total problem as I'm hugely repetitive as it is. But as it stands, the words and sayings I exhaust might have to be tampered with a bit. Lately I have a habit of overusing 'harrowing', 'rape' and 'your mum'. Having never seen a sitcom that has utilised the word harrowing JUST yet (although I haven't watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond all the way through) it might have to go. Instead of describing events as such, I could refer to them as 'fabulicious' and say something T-shirt friendly like 'not without my appletini sister!' or 'puh-lease, that's what I said'. I might have to work on those a bit though.

My current dress sense, which resembles a cross between a 1970s hustler and a kids TV presenter, will need to go and I'll have to start wearing more slogan t-shirts and tight jeans. In other words, I'll need to start shopping at Top Man.

The beard will have to go, unless I'm depressed for an episode, and I'll probably have to smile more and maybe get a job as an interior designer. Oh and I'd have to start swearing like an Eastenders character, e.g. 'You can sod off and keep your poxy job!'

MY OFFICE: The workplace is hugely important and although, like most sitcom characters, I will still have numerous, unexplained days not working, it's vital to create a comedy-friendly atmosphere.

I'll need to tamper with some of my colleagues. In my department there is a Spanish, a French and a Swiss. International characters are fine (although probably not that many) but they'll need to become more offensively stereotyped to work. So, my Spanish co-worker will need to eat Paella for lunch EVERY DAY, hilariously try to play The Gypsy Kings in the office all the time and in one episode, teach everyone how to salsa dance (with side-splitting results). Plus she must be re-named Maria.

I'll need a new boss too. Either a hard-nosed older bitch who will make ridiculous demands, to which I'll typically respond with a dramatic eye-roll behind her back as she calls 'I saw that!' or a zany older man, who always gets my name wrong and confides in his pet parrot.

MY FRIENDS: I'll need to streamline my friends and single out a couple of constants to get involved in the occasional sub-plot and help to appeal to different sections of the audience.

One of my friends will need to be 'hella sassy' and perhaps even be black, just to try and make sure everyone is catered for. She will call people 'girl' and 'sister' (including me, hilariously) and do that clicking thing with her arm that you see on Montel. She will probably be a beautician and she will most likely be slightly overweight (another demographic crossed off). She'll pretty much be an old white producer's idea of what a young black girl is like. Oh and let's call her Taneisha.

In contrast, I'll also have a nerdish male friend who is clearly soap-hot but wears glasses and occasionally makes a reference to something totally geeky like reading books or watching the news. He will be straight but useless with the opposite sex. Taneisha will make him over in one episode and the audience will gasp as he'll look like well dreamy. At the end of the episode though he'll discover that beauty is on the inside and the glasses will return. It will also never be explained why on earth he would be friends with two totally opposite people.

MY FAMILY: They'll only really appear in the odd episode so can be played by vaguely familiar faces. I could perhaps have Felicity Kendal as my wacky, new-age mother who is constantly using words like 'karma' and 'feng shui' and being embarrassing, but never in a serious way. Whenever she appears, she'll always have baby pictures to show my friends and will be overly affectionate with me, causing many dramatic eye-rolls. She'll tell me I'm her favourite son, to which I'll respond 'But mum, I'm your only son!'

I'll have a wild sister, probably played by someone like Denise Van Outen, who will turn up every now and then, always with a bottle in her hand. The fact that she is a raging alcoholic will be used for laughs and we'll only ever see her stumbling and saying outrageous things, rather than witnessing her vomiting through the nights and alienating everyone in her life. The studio audience will love her and every time she peers around my door saying 'Can I borrow your corkscrew?' they will whoop and holler.

IN SUMMARY: Life would be a whole lot more entertaining. A simple trip to Tesco would only exist for something hilarious to happen, like witnessing my boss having an affair while trying to hide behind a stack of cans, which would obviously all fall over. It would also be rather tiring. I'd never be allowed to do things like take a shit or pay money into my bank or sleep. Every moment would be punctuated with a joke.

In looking at the sitcom version of my life, it bears absolutely no resemblance to things as they are now. I'm clearly not ready to be sitcomised, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Admittedly, it gives me a higher chance of developing cancer and means I still have to clean the toilet every now and then but it also allows me the freedom to never use words like fabulicious. Every cloud...

Visibility Is Overrated

2009-11-22T12:54:00.004Z

For some (known) reason, I hardly ever get approached by people when I’m out. The combination of my furrowed brow, unintentional frown and ‘hate you’ eyes generally seems to scare people off. I try not to do this but any deliberate effort to change my natural look results in unimaginable awkwardness.

Recently however, this seems to have changed. Now, I’m not bragging, not in the slightest. As the guys who have been coming up to me have been total, ‘wank while watching holocaust footage’ freaks. Monstrous would be an apt word. Guys that look as if they stumbled out of the Hell-mouth in Buffy. So, instead of this being a brag, it’s the opposite. I’ve clearly been batting above my weight in recent years and am being told by some ethereal dating force that I need to re-think what league I truly belong in.

This has all resulted in variously squirmy incidents where I’ve genuinely prayed for some sort of nuclear attack to serendipitously interrupt the horror. There was the guy who decided to tell me about his recent trip to a strip club and his surprise at how wide a vagina actually opens, then there was the guy who genuinely thought I was interested in his job as a flight attendant oh and then the guy who talked at me about how he worked for Cheryl Cole in a job to do with Cheryl Cole and how he met Cheryl Cole, oh and did he mention he worked for CHERYL FUCKING COLE.

My face, clearly unable to fully display my increasing repulsion, has soldiered through these occasions until the one moment I have now learnt to dread. The question which means I have to start lying my ass off, something that I not only suck at, but I also hate doing.

'Do you have a boyfriend?'

This has led me to create a new invisible other half who always, for some reason, is never anywhere to be seen when I'm out. I should have the guts to tell the truth and just say 'I don't but I'd still rather swallow a kettle than go home with you', but I always admire the confidence of people who have the balls to approach someone so I can't bring myself to be that honest and also that much of a douche.

Now, having pretended that I'm all coupled up, one would assume the attacker would then back off, tail between legs. But, no.

The first time I tried it was with the 'wide vagina' guy. A man who looked like a cross between a small-town lesbian and a lizard. After informing him of my fake relationship status, he then told me that he'd like to take both me and my boyfriend out for a drink just to 'be friends'. I then had to squirm out of giving him my number as I don't give it out to people I've just met (this rule is cancelled out when ugliness isn't directly involved) and also, when pushed, I said that my 'boyfriend' wouldn't approve.

The next time, the flight attendant then asked where this mystical being was and I chuckled knowingly and said he was at home. Why I chuckled I don't know. It suggested that he was perhaps bed-ridden or agoraphobic or something.

Then the other week, after making the statement, the recipient told me he didn't believe me. Whether this was down to my appalling lying skills or the fact that he didn't believe anyone would choose to be in a relationship with me was unclear. I kept insisting and he finally seemed to accept it, only to then ask 'But what if you didn't have a boyfriend, what would you think of me then?'

I panicked and unleashed a whole bucket-load of utter bullshit...

'Well you see, erm, the thing is that I just, I just love my boyfriend so much that I, erm, I just can't really see past him right now'

Despite the circumstances, I would have gladly accepted a knife in the chest for such a smug and sentimental retort. Instead, he just asked for a hug. I'm still trying to wash the residue off now.

So from all this, we can gather that my invisible boyfriend is a bit jealous, likes staying at home or is possibly restricted to just staying at home and is totally loved by me. It's not much to go on and next time, if someone asks, I might throw a wild card in there and casually, unnecessarily add in the fact that he loves going potholing or is cousins with Yvette Fielding or something.

I did consider how he could help me out in other situations. At work my office is pretty much 95% coupled but unlike in, say Picture Perfect, pretending I am with someone wouldn't really do much for my career.

Then there's my family. One of the few, few good things about being a gay, other than the odd bout of sympathy, is that my extended family don't ever ask me about my love life. When it comes to Christmas or other occasions where people usually get asked if they are 'dating someone', I manage to escape probe-free. I think they'd rather see me as an asexual gay who is destined to live with cats named after actresses from the 1940s.

Although, I'm going home in a few weeks for my annual festive family thing and being the only single, I'm usually reserved the worst, most uncomfortable night's sleep. I'll probably be placed in the downstairs toilet with a bag of onions for a pillow. This year, I might tell them that my faux-beau is joining me and when he doesn't actually appear on the Saturday, I can tell them that I had totally forgot that he was agoraphobic so wouldn't be able to make it. By that time I would have already secured an actual, human bed.

As much as I deplore having to lie, this one is kind of a 'good will' lie. I don't think there's ever a need to be cruel to someone dumb enough to start a conversation with me in a bar, no matter how unimaginable their face might be. I even managed my way through the whole wide vagina conversation without a curse word. I think, until I actually man up and actually approach someone myself, I shouldn't judge those that do.

Now, I have to go, I'm going potholing with Yvette Fielding's cousin. (Did it work? Did the specific details help?).

Big Head, Small Brain

2009-11-15T16:04:00.000Z

It's been a constant fear of mine for many years now that I'm actually a total idiot.

It has even been confirmed to me by others on quite a few occasions. Whether it's been dressed up as retard, tool, doofus, spazz or just plan idiot, I'm no stranger to the feeling of intellectual inferiority.

It sometimes feels like I missed out on a class where a whole heap of important things were explained to everyone. The ins and outs of various wars, political conflicts, geographical locations, medical terminology, you name it and they all know more about it than me.

I'm 25 now so I feel like I should have amassed a relatively strong knowledge of the world around me but I'm still desperately lacking. I'm losing the few shreds of information left of my university degree and instead my mind harvests anecdotes about the production of The Thing or the names of Jordan's kids. It's depressing.

This descent into total idiocy was highlighted earlier this year on a first date. It had been relatively successful for the most part; a walk in the park, a drink at a pub, a meal at an Italian etc. After we finished eating, we headed back to his place to watch TV (no, really) and encountered his housemate. A number of jokes had been made throughout about the 8-year age gap between the two of us. This made him 32 by the way, not 16. I was therefore, determined to show that maturity didn't have to be measured purely by age.

We had been chatting about the Italian restaurant and the fact that it was owned by a local businessman, who also owned a few other eateries. While talking to his housemate, she made a comment about Berlusconi. I responded by saying 'Is that the guy who owns those restaurants?', to which she replied 'No, he's the Prime Minister of Italy'. Also worth noting that she worked for the Foreign Office - great. We made it to a second date but it all sort of fizzled out rather quickly...

Now, of course I know that he is who he is but my stupid, date-ruining brain clearly doesn't have the speed or agility to work it out in time. I often wonder why I'm so poorly trained. What the fuck was I doing at school, other than getting hit in the head with footballs and re-arranging my locker to look busy at lunchtimes? Maybe I should go back or maybe I should have never left, like Screech or that paedophile who got arrested for pretending he was 16.

I'm sick of being caught in conversations where I spend the duration panicking about how I'm going to respond. As well as being borderline retarded, I'm also terribly traveled. When people start vocally masturbating about how 'like totally amazing' Thailand is, I have to pray that no one asks for my opinion. All I can offer is how I generally prefer green thai curry to red.

Is everyone else really that much smarter and more developed than I am? Or is everyone else living on the edge as well, hoping that they won't be found out? I have this terrible knack of assuming others are infinitely more well-rounded and adjusted than I am but what if I'm not the only one who thinks like that?

I think the solution might be for me to spend more time around dumb people. People dumber than me. People who refer to words with three syllables as 'long'. People who watch Most Haunted, without irony. People who would make me feel better about myself.

I could impress them with my historical knowledge (that I learnt from movies), tell them about the time I went to a museum or brag about the tens of books I own. Maybe I'm not the stupid one, everyone else is just too fucking smart for their own good.

To quote my favourite dead person ever Richard Yates...

"I like being "born yesterday," because it gives me a pretty good chance of being alive tomorrow, when everybody else is dead"

Aggressive-Passive

2009-11-03T14:57:00.004Z

Most people in my life would probably not describe me as a particularly placid person. There are some days when it seems as if I'm raging against an imaginary machine. For example, last night I told the television to fuck off when it suddenly got too loud.

But there are times when I find myself a surprisingly weak-willed individual. This usually occurs in situations where I'm feeling rather uncomfortable. I know I've previously criticised people who blog about their haircut and I'm not going to start posting pictures of it or describing it in great detail but yesterday I went to get a haircut. It's a ritual that I absolutely abhor. Like making small talk in lifts or feigning any form of emotion over baby photos.

Any confidence I had before I enter the hairdresser's evaporates immediately once I step inside. I don't really have a great history with the place. There was that time I almost put my gum in the coat-stand, thinking it was a bin or the time, as a misguided 13-year-old, I brought in a picture of Ethan Hawke and asked my regular hairdresser to 'do that'. Her smirk still stings to this day.

All of this unease translates into me feeling rather paralysed by the time I've reached the chair. I usually begin with a weak 'It's just getting a bit long' while I play with my hair to illustrate this complicated point. I then follow whatever advice I'm given, no matter what my personal thoughts are. I simply don't know what to say or do so hope for the best.

The result is that I normally resemble a member of a late 90s boyband, and not in an attractive, boyish way but more like the 5th guy in the band, who no girl fancies. So, a thinner Joey Fatone then pretty much.

It also doesn't help that I go for the cheapest option out there. I end up in a place called Dare or Slash or Ego or something equally aggressive but non-specific as I just don't see the point in spending over £10 on something that is gonna grow back, almost instantaneously in my case.

It gets worse each time as I spend the duration looking down at the increasingly silver hairs that are coming from my head. It reminds me not only that I'm getting old but also that by this age I should have developed a more adult way of dealing with a fairly innocuous procedure. I frowned so much yesterday that my Eastern European 'stylist' kept asking me if I was okay, to an embarrassing extent.

With this new haircut, I decided to further my humiliation for the week by going to another place which turns me into a creature more passive than a Fritzl child...the gym.

I bored you months ago after I had just joined with a certain amount of vague hope that I would actually commit to a new life of activity and protein shakes. Predictably, not a lot has really come from it. I forget, until I get there, how teeth-pullingly dull the whole place is. Repeated bursts of that evil Cascada bitch drowning my surprisingly small ears in drivel also doesn't help.

Well anyway, I finally booked in my first, free training session and attended this morning. I nodded along to most of what was said as luckily this was just a consultation which meant the whole reliving high school P.E. nightmare is being reserved for next week. I've been informed that I need to eat 6 meals a day (not a problem) and consider taking up Yoga (a problem).

It's only Tuesday and I've already approached two potentially toxic events with relative ease. I may look like the ugliest member of A1 right now but I'm taking baby steps on the way to becoming a fully-formed, non-phobic regular person. Score.

Halle Berry Saved My Life

2009-10-02T18:11:00.001+01:00

So, I actually got some paid work writing for The Guardian. For shizz.

My first piece went live today (and the commenters are already calling me a racist).

You can take a look HERE

The Worst Film We May Never See

2009-09-21T23:46:00.009+01:00

Every once in a while, you happen upon the development of a film which begs one major, unshakeable question: why?

Why did anyone ever come up with this idea? Why did anyone then green-light this? Why did any self-respecting actor decide to say yes? Not since I read of Ron Howard's proposed Caché remake have I had such a profoundly unsettled feeling.

Then came Frankie and Alice.

Any lover of bad cinema as art will already know the name. As will any surviving Halle Berry completists, if in any sick, depraved part of the world they actually still exist. That's right, one-time Oscar winner turned Razzie mainstay Halle Berry is top-lining this one. She seems to be on some sort of self-destructive mission to wreck whatever career she used to have by starring in films like Catwoman or 'sexy' cyber-thriller Perfect Stranger. It's a shame, as even in her lowest moments, if you squint, you can still see some of the raw talent that lit up Monster's Ball.

Whether or not that will be visible in Frankie and Alice is questionable. Firstly, here is the official synopsis to whet your appetite:

A drama centered on a young woman with multiple personality disorder who struggles to remain her true self and not give in to her racist alter-personality.

You read that correctly. Halle Berry is playing a woman with multiple personalities, one of which is a racist. Doesn't this sound like some sort of Dave Chappelle sketch? Or at least the plotline of a raucous comedy, rather than a serious psychological drama.

What shocking events are to take place? Will we see Halle burning crosses on her parents’ lawn? Or having heated arguments with her reflection? The possibilities for unintentional comedy gold are endless. The entire exercise simply boggles the mind. Does Halle actually want the Academy to take her Oscar back? Who is this film being made for?

On paper the combination of Halle Berry and 'racist split personality' makes it sound like a tailor-made wet dream for those of us who proudly own Showgirls on DVD and have a stack of favourite lines, ready to recite ('What are these, watermelons? This is a stage, babe, it's not a patch').

With The Room mania currently seeping through the UK and Best Worst Movie gaining critical acclaim on the festival circuit, bad cinema is finally getting the unintentional respect it has long deserved. Because to create a truly bad film, a filmmaker must genuinely believe that he or she is creating a truly great film.

The signs look good for this one. A friend had seen a promo at Cannes and described Halle's performance as 'earnest'. A 'boob-slip' on set was all over the tabloids at the end of last year. It arrives from the writer of Save the Last Dance, a film where blunt racial stereotypes reigned supreme. Worryingly though, it is yet to possess a distributor either here or in the US.

For all of those people who re-watched Lindsay Lohan's performance as a one-armed, one-legged stripper in I Know Who Killed Me, consider yourself implored to write to your local council and get something done about this. You see, in years to come, Bad Movie Clubs will need new fodder to be mercilessly ripped apart. We can’t keep talking about brown rice and vegetables forever…

Why Do I Have a Blog Again?

2009-09-17T22:59:00.005+01:00

I've been getting extremely lazy with this damn blog. My problem is that I take it a bit too seriously. I think that every post I write should be of some substance. Okay so I realise that I have previously written about my iPod and how much I hate everything about Renee Zellweger, but there was at least some vague point to it all.

One of the reasons I hate blogs is because they're so incredibly self-important. I need a haircut, I'm going to get a haircut, I had a haircut, what do you think of my haircut? NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT YOUR HAIRCUT etc.

So I've tried to wait until I've had something semi-interesting to talk about before I splurged all over this thing. But, this has meant that I never update as I'm constantly waiting for this rush of inspiration which may never happen.

I have so many half-written posts here that will probably never be complete. Like parts of my life that I never fully saw all the way through. Fuck, I was gonna be a criminologist for a while. Seriously. I even applied for a criminology degree. I've also been saying for the past 6 months or so that I'm gonna do some sort of 'looking after kids' in a non-Ian Huntley way sort of thing. But I'm still to get past the application form.

The point of all this rambling is that I really need to write more on this blog. Not that anyone will actually give a shit, but I should. Just to write more often. I don't write enough anymore.

Anyway, this is turning into one of those self-indulgent 'me, me, me' rants. I'm turning into the very reason why I hate Twitter. I'm sleepy and I'm going to bed. If anyone needs me, I'll be that guy with the bug eyes, waiting for inspiration, while drooling on the firmest pillow.

Get a Room (Preferably In a Burning Building)

2009-07-26T13:32:00.002+01:00

Last night, on the bus home from town, I happened to sit behind a couple who were in love. How did I know this? Well, they were so in love that they wanted to let me and anyone with clear vision know about it. This meant that the journey was poisoned by an aggressively affectionate chain of events that caused almost unbearable levels of bile to travel into my mouth.

The guy, who for these purposes we will call 'Cunt', had his arm around his girlfriend, who for these purposes we will call 'Tumour', and was kissing her again and again and again and again and again, while moving his grubby little hand all over her. Tumour was faux-resisting but Cunt was persistent.

For most of it, my ears were protected from the chaos but out of some sort of misplaced curiosity, I decided to press pause for a brief moment. I quickly regretted my decision when I heard the ear-smashing crime of 'baby voices' being sickeningly used. I'm not sure if my ears will ever forgive me.

It was so horrendously over-emphasised that I was close to saying something. But, what exactly would I have said and what grounds would I have to make them stop?

I've always had 'strong feelings' on public displays of affection, aka PDAs. I don't have any problem with the concept, more the variously devious ways in which it can be abused. There's nothing worse than being on the tube next to a couple decorating their faces with saliva. I guess love is blind. And obnoxious.

I guess it's about a lack of awareness for what is and isn't acceptable in public. Some couples think that by putting on a live sex show for all to see, they're really showing how truly in love they are and how we should all be eternally jealous for not being as happy as them. You can almost feel one of them checking for an audience, midway through a wet kiss.

I've been in situations before with previous exes who have wanted to indulge in PDAs and my reaction has been varied. See, the thing with fags and PDAs is that they don't just do it because it's natural and they want to. Sometimes they do it to 'prove a point'; to show everyone just how comfortable they are with being gay. That's one type of PDA I will flat-out refuse to indulge in. I'm not determined to 'prove a point' when I'm with someone. I'm not Harvey Milk.

Or there's another type I'm not a fan of; the 'trophy wife' PDA. An ex was once being more affectionate than usual in public and I asked what was up. He told me that he 'wanted everyone to know I was with him', at which point I slid away and revelled in my own space.

To me, a PDA should be instinctive and unplanned, without any ulterior motive. The less it relates to the person you're being affectionate towards, the more pointless it becomes.

I'm sure I just sound like an awful Scrooge and it's true that some days I genuinely enjoy walking through couples who are holding hands but I just think that people should be allowed to travel and live in safety. Many people confuse graphic displays of affection as sure signs that they are really, really in love.

It's all about the little things. The ones that just happen, without thinking. It's not about the ass-grabbing, breast-caressing live porn films. Those simply display insecurity. A worry that without the constant, visible touching and kissing any signs of romance might die. At a recent friend's wedding, the least believable couple was also the most affectionate and inevitably the most alienated one also. Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton anyone?

While it might not be acceptable for me to say to couples like Cunt and Tumour to keep their tongues in their mouths, I can at least rest in the knowledge that things probably aren't as rosey as they seem, or won't be down the line.

It's partly my fault for being such a people-watcher. I find the general public equally fascinating and disgusting. Maybe no one else noticed Cunt and Tumour or maybe some misguided tween looked over and went 'awwww', confusing graphic heavy petting with romance.

As it stands, until they develop earphones for the eyes, eyephones if you will, these situations will persist. Or maybe I should just mind my own fucking business and stop casually staring at the constant, fiery plane wreck that is other people.

Puppy Love Lockdown

2009-07-19T09:35:00.011+01:00

When I was 6, I got married to a girl named Molly. The ceremony took place in the playground, next to the woods where, years later, kiss chase would become the more obvious way to spend the lunch-hour.

Sadly, it was never meant to be. Around the same time that my parents got a divorce, so did hers and Molly moved away to the big city and our marriage began to feel the strain. From then on, it consisted purely of fraught small talk at the odd birthday party and before we knew it, we had become just another statistic.

My next memorable relationship was with a girl named Alexis. Alexis was mute to everyone but me, which gave me a fantastic feeling of power and I flaunted it whenever possible. No-one knew Alexis like I did. I was the only one who really knew what her favourite colour was. But alas, it didn’t last. Dating a selective mute makes dinner parties a struggle.

I hadn’t thought about Molly or Alexis for a long time. The only reason they dropped back into my memory was because of something my little brother had said recently. He’s 10 and is turning into quite the womaniser. He had recently told me about ‘dumping’ his most recent girlfriend ‘because he felt like it’. All of this said with a casual shrug of the shoulders.

He had then gone to a birthday party recently and upon entering, grimaced and muttered to my father, ‘Oh God, my ex is here’. Now it’s an understandably tough situation when you arrive at a party and see that your ex is also in attendance but it’s not one that you typically expect to arise when you’re in your first decade. I can just imagine the tension that then pervaded throughout the party that day.

‘I saw you with a new girl by the climbing frame’ or ‘You still have my copy of A Bug’s Life and I NEED it back’ etc.

It frightens me that the word ex and the concept that comes with it is even in my brother's head. Maybe date-speak is more commonplace these days with kids. I can guarantee (divorcee jokes aside) that I was unaware of such complications at the age of 10. I was too busy wearing waistcoats and making my own radio shows.

I'm rather old-fashioned when it comes to what kids should and shouldn't be aware of. Being a kid for as long as possible is paramount in my mind. I'm not talking about being breastfed until 11 or wetting the bed at an age where you can wash your own sheets but just avoiding growing up too fast. Avoiding all the shit that inevitably pours down when you start caring about the way you look and what people think of you.

Although maybe all of this might be a good thing. Maybe I was too much of a kid for too long. My little brother is already more romantically experienced than I was at the age of 18. Maybe this means that when he does start dating proper actual women, he'll be a pro.

I, on the other hand, spent my middle and high school days in the wilderness. As puberty kicked in and I lost the ability to walk 5 metres without tripping over my own shoe, the brief flings of my younger years started to dry out.

In middle school, I spent most school discos awkwardly shuffling from side-to-side and then spending the duration of the 'slow dance' eating strawberry laces with the fat girls as I waited for my mum to pick me up.

Things went from bad to worse in high school. In the 5 years I was there, I got asked out just one time. I'd come from a different area so I carried a certain 'mystery' in the initial stages. This mystery led to me spending many a lunchtime huddled, alone, over a notepad in a classroom, willing the time to pass quicker.

It did also cause some romance. I was approached by a questionable girl from my class who told me that her friend wanted to go out with me. A friend who I later discovered to have the nickname 'Thirsty Cunt' - no kidding. I panicked and said I was too busy with my homework. Even at the age of 13 I was putting my career first; an admirable trait, even if TC didn't quite see it the same way at the time...

All of this meant that when dating finally did begin, I was hopelessly inexperienced. All of the mistakes and heartaches you're supposed to go through as a teenager, I encountered much later. I don't regret it though. It allowed me to spend my high school years relatively untroubled by the problems which plagued many of my classmates. I wasn't worried about anyone calling or not calling or whether I was really shit at kissing, I just pleaded ignorance.

It also meant that I avoided the fake girlfriendery which many homos go through. I didn't break anyone's heart or cause some girl to forever think she turned a man gay. Sure, I made out with enough and, in one head-smashingly embarrassing moment, turned down a bizarre bathroom threesome with two American girls, but I never made it all the way.

From my brother's nonchalant attitude towards 'dating' and the opposite sex, I'm pretty positive that when it really starts to matter, he'll possess all of the cool dating know-how that I didn't learn until much later. He'll be spending his high school years making a list of all the girls he's dated, rather than making a list of all the films he owns.

Anyway, maybe I'm just bitter because I was a 6-year-old divorcee...

Anatomy of a Trailer: Couples Retreat

2009-07-12T11:02:00.007+01:00

1. If I have to watch another movie where Vince Vaughn confuses loud rambling for being funny, I'm going to drown every single person named Vince in the entire world just to prove a point. Four Christmasses wounded me. Deep.

2. How fat is Jon Favreau? Wasn't there a time when he was a legitimate love interest? Now he looks like if he laid on top of Kristin Davis he would literally crush her ribs.

3. Any film where someone winks and a sound effect occurs, I know that we can never be friends.

4. Films such as this highlight how sexist Hollywood is. Would the female equivalent of Faizon Love (aka Monique) or Jon Favreau (aka Roseanne Barr) ever be cast in this film?

5. Jason Bateman needs to develop better script reading skills fast. Oh no hang on, his next project sounds like a winner. He's starring in a film where Jennifer Aniston impregnates herself with a turkey baster. Great, sorted.

6. I like Malin Akerman but she is seriously pushing the limits of our friendship. If she doesn't end the film by setting fire to every other character then I'm deleting her from my Facebook.

7. Vince Vaughn gets into a dangerous situation with some sharks and survives. Stupid fucking sharks.

8. I always assumed that Kristin Davis spent her non-Sex and the City months asleep or cryogenically frozen but this film proves me totally wrong.

9. There is something so asexual about Kristin Bell. Sure, she's cute but can you even imagine her having a vagina?

10. Oh look, a sleazy, foreign yoga instructor named Fabio who makes overtly sexual gestures towards the women AND men! Who the fuck finds this kind of shit funny? I want names. I want names and addresses now.

Look, Watch! I'm Mourning!

2009-06-27T09:41:00.003+01:00

This week saw the death of Michael Jackson and with it, one of the ugliest forms of participation sports began to rear its malformed head: public grieving.

It's always struck me as a bizarre practice. When a celebrity dies, one with a mass appeal, ordinary, seemingly sane members of the population turn into irrational fools. Crying on the news, lighting candles in their windows, posting over-emotional Facebook status updates and generally making me seriously consider emigrating and never coming back.

I just fail to understand how you could feel such grief for someone you have never met. I'm pretty sure a lot of these MJ mourners have poured out more emotion over his death than they have for real-life family members or friends who've died.

In my lifetime, I first remember this form of mass hysteria when I was 13 and Diana died. Admittedly it was a tragic event but the ensuing "Great British" reaction was one of the most embarrassing periods of recent national history.

From the radio stations not playing anything but classical music to the public weeping to the constant, mind-crushing news coverage it was a sad time for all the wrong reasons. Around the same time, Mother Theresa also lost her life but received about one hundredth of the attention. But then she didn't dance with John Travolta at the White House...

It's at times like then and now that I feel incredibly alienated from people as a whole. It's not that I'm denying the tragedy of death at all but I just don't feel linked enough to someone I have only ever encountered via the television to feel much emotion.

Along with Madame Tussauds and autographs, it's a side of celebrity culture that I have always failed to understand. I think it's another example of people desperately trying to cling to something they're not really a part of. By grieving for Michael Jackson and by telling EVERYONE about it via Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, messages in bottles, you're implying that you're part of this special community. Membership to this community puts you one step closer to the celebrity you're idolising, whether they be dead or alive.

If it was real grief of course, it wouldn't be so disgustingly public. It's this very reason why I despise RIP Facebook groups for classmates/colleagues/family members who have died. If I died and someone created a Facebook page to commemorate me, I would haunt them severely. Like proper Poltergeist haunting, none of that Truly Madly Deeply shit.

Another reason for this sort of insanity is linked to mortality in general. When Jade, Peasant Princess, died a few months back, people were scared by how young she was when she died. They projected their fears of their own death onto her and this whipped itself up into a frenzy of black-topped OK! covers and yet more public weeping.

This whole, horrible form of group grief will only worsen with time. The closer people get to their idols, by following their Twitter feed and pretending they have some sort of interaction with them, the more they can fool themselves into thinking they're allowed to wear black for a week when they die. I'm not denying that a lot of these people do feel genuine sadness when someone like Michael Jackson dies. I'm just worried by the frightening lack of perspective this might suggest.

Maybe I'm just a heartless bastard? I was labelled 'Tin Man' by an ex before. But personally I think real, genuine grief should be private and should also have some sort of basis in reality. To play me out here are some sample 'Tweets' on MJ's death:

RIP Michael Jackson never cried for someone as much as I have for you.

Why is it Pres. Obama is not making a statement over the death of Michael Jackson?

Dedicated my last two evenings to remembering michael jackson

cant sleep still thinkin bout mj.....

he reached across space and time, across genres and cultures, upward, outwards, beyond...a star on earth, now a star in heaven...RIP MJ x

MJ I MISS U MORE TODAY,THAN YESTERDAY....

Oh and just to point out these were all from the last 4 minutes...

Being Picked First at Sports

2009-05-10T12:12:00.004+01:00

With the major highlights of my sporting life being the 'darts/dance' confusion and the time I won the silver medal for fast-walking at the age of 12, my expectations remain low for any future opportunities of redemption.

But this weekend, I set in motion a chain of events that will probably lead to me becoming one of the major British hopes at the 2012 Olympics. How did I do this? Well, I joined the gym.

I've joined the gym before and had brief bouts of obsession with it. Extremely brief. It's always been sort of intimidating to me. There are so many torturous ways to humiliate myself within a gym. Falling over on the treadmill, dropping a medicine ball in one's face, using a machine so poorly that a member of staff has to come over and 'teach' you how to use it...I've done it all.

But anyone who knows me will know of my severe phobia of obesity. I seriously come out in hives by the very sight of Beth Ditto. So even though I am still lanky, I'm keen to combat my diet of beer and biscuits by working out.

I think it's an age thing. I'm worried that everything will start turning to shit after I turn 25 next month. With 6 weeks or so until that dreaded day, I knew that I needed to start doing something. So, I headed along to my local gym yesterday wearing my new £5 sweat-pants and ready for whatever soul-crushing embarrassment might face me this time.

On the walk there I couldn't decide whether I wanted to say 'I'd like to join' or 'I'd like to sign up' so of course my stupid, stupid mouth gave some sort of bizarre mix of the two as I reached the reception. I was greeted by a look of bewilderment and my new start had reached its first hurdle.

I was seated and told I could get three personal trainer sessions for £35 with my membership. If I attended all three, they would give me the money back. I was convinced that they would make the first session so wrist-slittingly cruel that I would be a fool to attend any more. But I needed to stop viewing the gym as an extension of high school. Did any of it really matter anymore? Wasn't I over this?

I signed up and started right away on the treadmill. I had the horrible misfortune of seeing my reflection the entire time which allowed me to fearfully dissect every possible aspect of my running style. Ben, your left leg is careering wildly to the side. Ben, your arms are moving like those of a puppet. Ben, your face is a sweaty mess.

One of my main problems with the gym is that I find it all so incredibly dull. There doesn't seem to be much point to it at times. I generally hate gym culture. People bragging about how many bench presses they've done (that's a thing, right?) or flexing in the mirror while emitting a loud growl. Dull.

After my 'session' I had of course forgotten to bring another t-shirt or a towel so I had to leave, looking grotesquely perspired. Plus the sheer trauma my legs had been through meant that I had to walk down the stairs, looking like I had been raped. I went to book in my first personal trainer session even though my brain was telling me this would only lead to wrong things.

A typically buff and blandly attractive personal trainer tried to book me in but was unable to work the computer. He called off for help and a small, ginger, bespectacled, out of shape guy came. He then told me that instead, he would be my trainer.

This was perfect. I was totally fine with this. My feelings of inadequacy would be wildly improved with this one.

I do have this fear still that I will go in next weekend and make such an utter twat of myself in this one hour session that every time I go in after, there will be chuckling heard from reception. Then my 'trainer' will say 'Oh yeah that's the weird one who couldn't lift a pencil' and I will never return again.

But fuck it. I'm gonna try this time. I'm even considering joining the softball team at work just to really show everyone (myself) that I can do it. The only thing that is preventing me from taking part is my crippling inability to play a game without turning into the most competitive person in the world.

This is going to be the new me. The sporty, active guy who growls in front of mirrors. Fuck, it's 12:30 and I was supposed to go to the gym this morning...

Matthew McConaughey and His Stupid Smug Face

2009-04-26T11:20:00.004+01:00

While watching the trailer for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, an inane new romantic comedy spin on A Christmas Carol, I was struck for the umpteenth time by how much I wanted to punch Matthew McConaughey in his stupid smug face.

It's an urge which has existed within me for quite some time now. Having moved on from his attempts to be like an actor and stuff, McConaughey decided to regurgitate the same tired, tanned persona in a series of films aimed towards women who drink Lambrini and actually listen to Ronan Keating without throwing up.

These films usually start with McConaughey playing an attractive, successful, attractive, slick, attractive Lothario who women not only adore but would gladly throw themselves under trains just to catch him in the buff. He is then confronted by a vivacious, but not very attractive, woman who changes him etc.

For McConaughey, acting seems to be a public form of masturbation where he reaffirms to audiences that yes he is attractive and yes women do want him. When confronted with a new script, his agent must insist that at least 5 people in every scene comment on how hard his stomach is or how well-developed his calf muscles are. To those of us who are immune to his questionable charms, it's all incredibly tiresome.

This formula seems to be alive and well in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a film aggressively plastered over bus-sides in London. This means a simple walk to Tesco can become clouded by a gruesome daydream where I giddily extract every single one of McConaughey's teeth before drowning him.

In the trailer we see him dump three women via a webcam while a new squeeze is already in his apartment. See women are clearly vacant fuckwits who choose sex with an orange, preening Ken doll over possessing any dignity or self-worth. Good job there's a vivacious woman around the corner to sort that womaniser out...

What he desperately needs is a film where he doesn't play the man about town and doesn't feel the need to take his shirt off at every available opportunity. He needs to play a horribly disfigured creep that lives under a bridge and eats his own feces in front of disgusted passers-by. He needs to shave his hair off and replace it with pipe cleaners. He needs to pile on the pounds and tattoo himself with nonsensical Looney Tunes characters.

It could still be a romantic comedy. He could fall in love with a shoe or a tree or a magazine. Maybe then, maybe after the grin had finally disappeared, I would stop feeling the need to punch his face. Or, even better, the finale of the movie could be me repeatedly thumping him for every rom-com flavoured atrocity he has ever committed (the very thought of Failure to Launch makes me worry that the violence may never ever end).

So Matthew McConaughey's agent I implore you to search scripts such as this out. Your target audience of Baileys-drinking women won't love him as much when he starts to age. But for those who like to see some grit and genuine ugliness, hobo him up and force-feed him some cakes. We'll stick around once the tan has faded.

Worst Date Topics 2

2009-04-21T16:08:00.003+01:00

My Accusers

My criminal record is fairly beige. By that I mean that I don't have one, despite a brief and wholly unoriginal foray into stealing road signs when under the influence back at University.

I therefore generally expect the same from those around me. I don't tend to hang around in crack dens or forge meaningful penpal relationships with convicted killers so expect a uniformity of good behaviour from my friends. This rule also applies when enduring a first date with a newbie.

A while back, I went on a date with a seemingly normal, albeit slightly irritating, guy who didn't seem to show any signs of a criminal past. He didn't carry around the carcass of a recently slaughtered kitten and neither did he offer me heroin at any point in the evening.

It was a pretty uneventful date. He was a nice enough guy but had the habit of speaking as if he were scripting some piss-poor ITV documentary about the decaying state of modern society (e.g. 'We're living in an increasingly fast society so these days people want everything fast. Fast food, fast news and even fast relationships...yawn).

Oh and plus he wore an earring.

Anyway it wasn't awful enough for me to totally hate him plus I wasn't sober enough to not end the date with a brief, unsatisfactory kiss goodnight.

The day after, he invited me to go away with him and his friends to Brighton for the weekend. Now I'm not known for my slow pace when it comes to this sort of thing but even this was deemed as too fast in my books. Friends, weekend away, already? Really?

I politely declined and it wasn't until a month or so later that I agreed to go on a second date. It was a mistake. All of the things which had annoyed me before were amplified this time. The general, unnecessary comments on 'current affairs' ('I just think the media doesn't always show us the full picture at times') or the weird transatlantic accent that made him sound like Mark Ronson's even more obnoxious younger brother. It was all wrong.

The date ended luckily, as at one point I feared it never would, and a request for a third followed soon after. I sent a polite, if slightly wimpish, 'I don't think so' sort of text back. What I received in return was a bizarre 7-message long diatribe that I sadly deleted. I can therefore only remember portions.

It was fairly insane, which is the main thing you need to know. There were lots of badly worded Hallmark statements about how important love and trust was in this day and age and other hugely unwarranted remarks about disappointment and expectations (after 2 bad dates!).

But then things got really weird.

He started to say that he wasn't on his best lately so feared I hadn't seen the full picture. The reason for this was down to the crime he had been falsely accused of. He spoke of it in such an off-hand manner. As if he might have forgotten to wear his watch one day and blamed it on, oh you know, that crime he was falsely accused of.

He went on to say about how his life had been disrupted by the 'accusers' who had plagued him of late. My mind was obviously racing at the possibilities. He didn't go into any description of what the crime actually was which was infuriating.

Intending to ignore the sheer insanity of the text novel he had sent I couldn't resist the chance to find out more.

I believe I texted something back as plain and lazy as 'what crime?' but he sent back another diatribe, refusing to go into description.

What had I kissed? A paedophile? A rapist? A child murderer? A zoophile?

If there were a group of accusers it must mean he had done it more than once or done it to a group of people. All of these questions only served to frustrate me even more. How dare he dangle something as tantalising as this in front of me and then refuse to divulge the juicy bits?

Anyway, I'd not thought of him for a while until one day, while walking down Tottenham Court Road I heard my name called. He was standing behind me, eating a pizza slice. I only mention this fact as a clump of said slice was stuck to his teeth for the entire conversation, making it hard for me to concentrate on anything but that.

We shared a short, inane catch-up which was only cut short by me semi-pleading for him to let me go to whatever plans I had made. It happened once more, a while after. He was moonlighting at a bar and we bumped into each other outside. He suggested we go for a drink at another time and a part of me, the horribly curious part that once stuck a button up my nose as a child to see if it would fit, wanted desperately to say yes.

If we started dating for real I could finally broach the subject with relative ease. Christ, I could even ransack his flat for proof. But I declined the offer. I also physically restrained myself from shouting 'But what did you do??' as he walked away.

I'll never know what the crime was or even if he got away with it. If you're reading this possible criminal, please just leave a comment with some details. They allow some Internet access in prison these days right?

Anatomy of a Trailer: All About Steve

2009-04-13T11:07:00.005+01:00

1. Sandra Bullock plays a crossword puzzle constructor. Officially the least believable job in movies since Sarah Jessica Parker played a 'woman who gets men to move out of their parents homes' in Failure to Launch.

2. Appears to promote a terrible lesson. If you go on a date with someone and they don't like you, follow them across the country and pester them until they change their mind, possibly out of exhaustion.

3. Sandra Bullock is like totally quirky. This translates into snorting when she laughs and carrying an umbrella around like all the time. In real life, eccentrics don't look like her. They look like Rose West.

4. Oh haha All About Steve, haha it sounds like haha All About Eve haha. Hilarious. Totally and utterly nonsensical but still hilarious.

5. Bradley Cooper romanticises her insanity by saying 'she sees things that other people don't' - fuck, I wish this movie had been set in a period where women like that were burnt at the stake.

6. When a movie tells you it's coming out in March and it's already April and it hasn't come out, well something is ermmm, wrong...

7. 'From the producer of Miss Congeniality and Two Weeks Notice' - wow, so the same person helped fund all of these movies. That must mean they have so much in common.

8. Poor Thomas Haden Church. He's like that sad old dog that's given up on life and just placidly lets you do whatever you want to him. He clearly knows better but has lost the will to fight anymore. I bet in-between takes, all he did was weep.

9. It's set with the backdrop of a hurricane because like Sandra B is like a total crazy force of nature and ermm hang on a minute...

10. Struggling to end your trailer? Why not get Sandra Bullock to fall into a mine? Oh and don't forget to leave out the following scene where her limp, bloodied and broken body is stretchered out, screaming for help.

Going Up To People In Bars

2009-04-12T21:45:00.004+01:00

Having reached the middling age of 24, I've managed to feign a slight air of confidence in certain social situations. Even if this has resulted in just talking louder and making deliberately obnoxious statements for effect, it's still a far cry from my younger years.

Because in reality, I'm painfully awkward. My greasy curtained hair and spotty face which both plagued my youth were indicative of my social stature.

This is most apparent in the 'bar' situation. Surrounded by strangers and influenced by alcohol, I'm a barrel of nerves and mixed up words. With my friends I'm comfortable but when it comes to breaking down the wall to let others in, I falter.

You know those people who just befriend randoms? You'll ask them how they met their new friend and they'll say 'oh we just met one night out!' and they'll even go out by themselves, ending up with a whole new group of mates. I'm not one of those people.

The only time I'll willingly talk to a stranger in a bar is if they're sitting on my jacket. Maybe. This means that meeting new people, including potential future break-ups, is a challenge for me.

How do you start a conversation with a stranger? Anything I ever think of would make me seem like a possible serial killer. In my life, I have only ever employed one chat-up line. It was back in 2005. In New York. To a girl.

It ranks as one of the most depressingly awful lines ever to have left my mouth. A fellow nominee is me, at the age of 9, asking my Mum if she had still rented Housesitter mere minutes after she told us our Grandmother had died. That one gives me shivers still to this day.

So imagine if an incredibly drunk faux-straight guy came up to you in a New York bar, saying the following:

'Have you ever kissed a British guy? Do you wanna?'

What would you do? Other than projectile vomit in his stupid, cocky face? If you're a drunk college girl you'll annoyingly giggle and then kiss him which only serves to encourage his pathetic over-reliance on his accent overseas.

Quite what took over me that night, other than extreme amounts of alcohol, is unknown. My one moment in the spotlight is a fine reminder of why me, words and any form of spontaneous seduction are all uncomfortable bedfellows.

In recent weeks, a friend and I have tried to overcome our lack of natural confidence in bar situations by trying to go 'on the pull' (cue gagging sounds). It was more of an attempt to talk to people when out, other than the bar staff, and be more open to the idea of meeting someone new.

We met with mixed results to say the least. I found that while I was still unable to approach people of course, the ones who actually came and approached me proved that I wasn't really missing out on a great deal.

There was the 'jacket guy' whose entire shtick revolved around my jacket. Is that jacket made of leather? (It was paper-thin nylon) Can you wear that jacket inside-out? (No, you couldn't) My answers replicated the exasperation his bizarre line of questioning created within me.

Then there was the 'coke guy' who seemed unable to talk about anything other than cocaine. Do you have any coke? Do you know where I can get some coke? Do you wanna share some coke? I assured him that he was asking the wrong person. But on a separate note, why do people always approach me for drugs? I'm always the worst person to ask. I might have a spare paracetamol but that's it.

Anyway, all of this proved two things to me. The first was that I'm no more boring than any of these enigmatic 'other people' I romanticise from afar. The second was that while I'm not making much of an effort to get to know them, maybe I'm not missing out on too much.

These days, do people really meet in bars anymore? Excluding people who go out, looking to wake up to someone the day after. I don't think I know anyone who met their significant other at a bar anyway. It's tiring. I'd rather go out and drink and go home early and eat leftovers, than talk about how many siblings I have and what I'd really like to be doing with my life.

It reminds me of the 30 Rock episode where Liz and Jenna go to a club. A guy attempts to make a move on Liz but she's totally unaware.

'I think that guy wanted to buy you a drink'

'But I already have a drink. Do you think he'd buy me some mozzarella sticks instead?'

People always say that you find love when you'll least expect it, which I've always found to be a face-smashingly vague comment. If it's true then I shouldn't worry too much about talking to guys in bars, a predictable place if ever there were one. I should spend more time talking to guys doing their recycling or cleaning dog shit off the street. No one'll see it coming then.

I Hate Your Movie

2009-04-10T12:06:00.000+01:00

Back in the days when I was working as a journalist and giving my opinions on movies, whether or not anyone actually listened, I was made to endure one of the worst films ever inflicted upon man.

Caffeine is one of those movies that is so bad you sort of wish it was a tangible being, so that you could cut it and hurt it and make it bleed profusely. A film that starts making you question humanity and how any part of it could have created something so wrong.

It was a faux-British comedy starring predominantly Americans murdering English accents. Every time Mena Suvari said 'ooh piss awff', like a retarded My Fair Lady, I wanted to rip off my ears, hunt her down and then force them down her throat.

It was set in a coffee shop where various 'quirky' and 'zany' characters indulged in various 'quirky' and 'zany' activities. I shan't bore you with the entire review but here are some snippets to give you an idea:

'Cheaply made and acted, Caffeine is thankfully destined to a life of anonymity'

'It’s early so I’m not going to say it’s the worst but Caffeine can proudly revel in the title of the most embarrassing film of the year'

In other words, I hated it. It made a non-impression at the one or two cinemas it was released in and I quickly forgot that it had ever even existed.

Then, a few months later, at a different job, I received an email from one of the cast-members. Not it wasn't Katherine Heigl, or Mena Suvari, or even Breckin fucking Meyer. It was Daz Crawford. Oh c'mon you know the guy who played Lighthammer in Blade II? Or 'Casino Thug' in The World is Not Enough?

Okay so yeah a nobody. But my caustic review of the film caused him to send me an incredibly angry email in response.

So here's a look:

My names Daz Crawford,

I was one of the cast in ‘Caffeine’ strangely enough you chose not to write my name in the article, not sure why because I am as ‘British’ as can be, born in Liverpool and lived in the UK all my life, until recently moving to the US. I would have thought you would have mentioned all the British actors in this movie as its hard enough for us ‘Brits’ to land an acting job in an American funded movie as it is. Also the writer is a Brit.

Hmmmm I wonder why I didn't mention you in my article. Maybe because your role is entiely insignificant (he plays a 'quirky' and 'zany' bad date of Katherine Heigl's character) and also why do I owe something to every other British person? In any review of a film, English or not, should I start by listing and congratulating every fellow countryman? 'Here's to the catering which really shows them yanks what we can do.'

I don’t mind criticism, in fact its how I learn, but your article is terrible, you must get your facts right before you decide to write your opinion, and I would like to say that again, ‘your opinion’ and yours only.

I quote:

"Caffeine" is about as appetizing as a pot of dishwater coffee (LA Times)

None of this is sexy or funny. Just head-scratchingly dumb (The Hollywood Reporter)

It's so boring that even a double-shot espresso isn't strong enough to keep your eyes open (filmcritic.com)

But ermm yeah it's totally just my opinion and no one else's.

This movie is a ‘C-O-M-E-D-Y’ it’s not meant to be ‘real’. Maybe it wasn’t funny to you; you are taking it way to seriously.

Really? A film with a gun-toting grandma, a man wearing a nappy, a guy shitting himself and someone who dresses up in his fiance's underwear is supposed to be a comedy. Wow, I guess this sophisticated brand of humour must have slipped past me...

I notice you are still at Uni, maybe at the age you are at it is difficult for you to be ‘open’ to different genre’s of movies, maybe you are the ‘action’ type guy. I would be interested to know what type of movies you do like.

Well firstly I wasn't at Uni and secondly just because I didn't like one shitty comedy, it doesn't mean that I must hate all films of that genre. His inability to take criticism was ridiculous. Did he repeat the same spiel to all other critics who equally loathed his movie? Do we all just not 'get' it?

I have performed in a few movies, all different characters, I saw this as a great opportunity to show some diversity which casting don’t normally give me the chance, being 6’5” and 16 stone, of course I work in action mostly, but not through choice.

I like how he explains that he has performed in a few movies but as different characters. What, so there hasn't been a Daz Crawford franchise just yet?

You say it was ‘bad acting’ can you be more specific?

The email started to feel like one of those horrible 'but why don't you like me?' discussions with an overly insecure bad date. Since he had already slammed my opinion and my status as a writer, I'm not quite sure why he cares for my definition of what 'bad acting' really is. I'm pretty certain he wouldn't enjoy hearing it.

You called me a ‘misogynistic idiot’ I don’t know what you were watching but in no way was my character a ‘woman hater’

I must have missed the extended cut of the film where characters actually existed as three-dimensional people, rather than laboured stereotypes. Plus, that was the one mention he actually got in the review so he should feel lucky.

He then finished it off with a link to his resume. If you'd like to take a look at the breathtaking wit of his performance in Caffeine check out 1:51 on this video:

I wasn't sure how to take the email. A rather large portion of me was pleased to have caused such great offence with something I had written. Despite him claiming my review was 'terrible', it had clearly struck a nerve. It also proved that at least one person, other than my mum, read my reviews.

I drafted a response but for some reason never got round to sending it. Okay so I didn't really wanna piss off an actual Gladiator (Diesel if anyone remembers) who could quite easily pulverise me in a fight but I also felt that Daz was somewhat entitled to critique me back. I guess I wanted to prevent an unstoppable back-and-forth of malice over a film as inconsequential as Caffeine.

Despite having written a number of scripts, I've never had anything produced so while I did have a right as a critic to give my opinion on the film, my 'position' in the film industry has always been semi-invisible.

If I were in his position, I would probably be equally enraged but then if you put yourself out there, especially in a film as deviously bad as Caffeine, you surely have to take the rough with the smooth.

I'm sure he's probably forgotten about the brief bout of anger my review caused but somewhere out there, I still kinda hope he truly does hate me. Just not in my vicinity of course...

Worst Date Topics 1

2009-04-06T00:54:00.001+01:00

Do dogs have souls?

On a particularly mind-numbing first (and last) date, I was treated to a tiresome amount of dog-related discussion. I can't quite remember how it came up but I can remember that it came at a 'Point of No Return' AKA after I had made my mind up that I would choose water torture over ever seeing this one again.

I like animals. Sometimes. But I'm also aware of their limitations. I realised this again while watching Marley & Me a few weeks back. As Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston collectively masturbated over their destructive, dirty animal and praised him for how much he had brought the family together, I had a pleasing image. I saw one of their young children coated in gravy and the dog viciously ripping them apart, limb from limb.

My point being that, at the end of the day, an animal is just an animal. They're perfectly happy not to wear that new jumper you forced them into or to miss out on your sister's wedding.

The date in question started bringing up his dog. It was actually once owned by his ex and desperately needed a home once it had been booted out. His ex was quite the villain. I always find that talking about your ex is a fantastic ice-breaker for a first date. Right next to talking about your parent's abusive relationship or reminiscing about the time you caught salmonella.

Anyway, his parents took in this dog but he had like 'serious emotional problems' which meant that the date would always recognise and worry about his dramatic mood swings. He asked me if I thought dogs had souls. While I'm usually a believer in trusting my first impulse, I decided to ignore it this one time. Stabbing him in the eye with a fork might not have been the best reaction. Instead I mumbled a diplomatic reply.

He was by far the wettest person I had ever had the misfortune to meet. He would have made Orlando Bloom seem like a construction worker, just let out of prison for raping and murdering his entire family.

Since 99% of my conversation revolves around finding the humour in something I was starved. The only way to find the humour in dogs and their souls was to mercilessly rip the idea to shreds but I was worried he might cry. Plus every sarcastic comment I had made throughout the night had been taken in total seriousness. This was a problem. He might as well have had pencil sharpeners for ears and smelt like rotting flesh. This was never going to work.

The date limped to an end after only 90 minutes or so of torture. As we quickly hurried away from each other onto our respective trains, my mind produced all of the sarcastic remarks that had been forbidden before. All of the paedophile jokes I usually use to impress a first date.

Do dogs have souls? In a word, no. If the 'emotionally challenged' dog had been in possession of a soul he would have known that the only way to save it from eternal damnation was to eviscerate the simpering wreck that was my date, thereby preventing the severe waste of time that was that night.

Pet-talk is down as a no-no for first dates. Unless the story revolves around a cat fighting a hamster to the death or an anecdote about accidentally murdering a pony. It's just not a subject I consider that serious so I can't be relied upon to listen, without pulling a face. On the plus-side it's a good way of writing someone off in the early stages.

I'd much rather go with this timing. Imagine having just moved into your first house together, you settle into your new bed for the first time and your partner looks into your eyes and asks 'Do you think dogs have souls?' Utter, uncontrollable despair.

Radiant

2009-04-01T00:08:00.004+01:00

After watching the putrid awfulness that was The Haunting in Connecticut tonight, I endured the painful ritual of squinting for a bus on Oxford Street. Too proud to wear my glasses all of the time and too freaked out to attempt contacts, I instead choose to damage my eyesight even further by going it alone.

While squinting, I was approached by a seemingly innocuous member of the public. I usually feel that my crazy-meter is fairly accurate. Admittedly it is somewhat swayed by the simple things. A man with a shirt and tie is far less likely to disturb it, compared to say a man in a dressing gown made of banana skins.

My visitor barely registered on the crazy-meter. He was a middle-aged black man with smart attire. He didn't smell of whiskey and he didn't carry an axe. His first words to me were as follows:

'Excuse me, I'd like to tell you that you look as radiant as I do tonight'

In the history of 'words that have been used to describe me', the word radiant doesn't feature. The words arrogant and heartless have but never radiant. I accepted the compliment graciously and an odd conversation started.

I told him I was tired and squinting for a bus so was feeling less than radiant. He insisted that my radiance shined through. I studied him, trying to ascertain what religion I was about to have forced down my throat. Surprisingly his motives seemed harmless. After we chatted briefly and he realised he was at the wrong bus-stop, he called me radiant one final time and then we shared an awkward fist-slam (initiated by him of course), which made me feel all young and street and stuff.

I still haven't quite worked out the science behind this little meeting. Firstly, I always assume that I give off an unapproachable persona. I scowl and sneer and avoid eye contact with members of the public. Yet I am frequently asked for directions, money, help and often offered spiritual enlightenment. The most recent of which came from a member of the Hare Krishna who spotted me, smiled and cried 'Are you a good person?' to which I promptly replied 'No', evaporating his silly grin.

Secondly, me and the word radiant are not comfortable partners. My skin is pale so it might have been that but it's also drawn and lethargic. I don't have a glow or a radiance to speak of.

And finally, the most puzzling thought of all, what was he after? People in London don't just give away compliments or even non-judgmental statements without there being some sort of agenda. Why wasn't this comment followed up by an attempted sale of blessed heather? Why wasn't my radiance immediately suited to Scientology? I just don't get it.

I suppose some idiot could say that it's a 'sad state of affairs' when someone can't accept positivity from a stranger without second-guessing where it came from. But said idiot probably lives somewhere like Devon or Jersey.

Okay so I should probably stop being such a cynical cunt and embrace my radiance. My friend has already tipped it to be a new nickname. Radiant, like a fabric conditioner. It's certainly a step up from prior nicknames.

Fuck it, even if it was a practical joke or even if I failed to see his loyal eye-dog, I'm taking it. Radiant. These days, I'll take what I can get.

- Oh and I just realised the date of this post and wanted to add that it really isn't an April Fool's. Really.

I Love You Teri Fox

2009-03-22T11:57:00.006Z

Somewhere in-between Christian radio stations and 24-hour quiz channels, there lies a fascinating Sky-endorsed wasteland, populated by surgically enhanced girls, glued to cordless phones, writhing around on urine-stained camp beds.

It's become my latest obsession, following Petits Filous and pretending I'm Holden Caufield by using the term 'crumby bastard' to describe everyone. I simply can't get enough of it.

It manages to be both depressing and hilarious. Like listening to Jordan being interviewed.

There's an impressively wide selection of channels to choose from so if one girl doesn't do it for you, another can replace her instantly. There is a definite skill to the job and some are simply more adept than others at maintaining my attention.

It's a tough job. Your main task is to look interesting enough to get a call. A call that will probably cost the same as a blowjob from a whore, but without the satisfying climax or possibility of contracting herpes.

You have to look both sexy and capable of possessing an expensive phone manner simultaneously. So, when you come across a girl who can genuinely hold your attention, you develop a great deal of respect for her.

Which brings me to Teri Fox, Babestation's answer to Lauren Bacall, except without the liver spots.

I first discovered Teri on Babestation MILF, a channel which implies a hostess of maturity and class. But Teri, despite possessing both, was of an age much younger than that of a typical MILF. Although in Babestation terms, motherhood may come at a younger age than the norm...

Teri was a vivacious young lady with what I later found out to be 32J assets. She wasn't your typical call-girl. For one, she didn't appear to be Eastern European. She was also refreshingly curvaceous and not dangerously malnourished. She was also incredibly uncomfortable and slightly bored which only served to make her even more compelling.

Shaking the phone up and down in her right hand while attempting a pout, Teri was quite simply transfixing. Her face, with its frequent, fleeting glances of desperation, hinted at a back story that I craved to uncover.

If I wasn't a tightwad, I would have called her up and asked her all of the questions I was yearning to know. How did you get here? Were you bullied as a child? Do you work on commission? Can we please, please be friends?

I wanted to save her. To extract her from Babestation MILF and plant her in secretarial school. Of course it would take time to adjust. The leather corsets would have to go, or at least be kept until the weekends, and there would have to be less phone spinning. In time though Teri would settle into it. She'd stop dying streaks of her blond hair black and resist the urge to pull her breasts out on demand.

But this is way in the future. For now, I'm taking baby steps. I've joined her Facebook group, I've taken pictures of her on my phone and, take a deep breath, emailed her.

I've shared my obsession with a friend who recently had a birthday and I emailed Teri to ask for a special message for him. I didn't expect a reply but then stranger things have happened. I once emailed the producer of crazy monkey film Shakma to ask for a birthday surprise for a friend and I ended up with the final copy of a 15-year-old press kit for the movie. Embarrassingly he mistook my feigned fandom for the film as genuine. Little did he know of the hours of ridicule we had launched at his movie (tag-line: Softly, softly, catchee, monkey).

Anyway, walking home on Friday, I checked my emails on my phone (check me out) and discovered that 'Teri Flux' as she now referred to herself had got back to me. My heart skipped a beat. This is the feeling Lionel Richie had told me all about.

Teri was willing to send signed birthday prints to my friend. SIGNED BIRTHDAY PRINTS. SIGNED. BIRTHDAY. PRINTS.

I'm still to get back to her. I need to take things slowly for once. To play it cool and not confess undying, unwavering love for her just yet (I've made that mistake before).

But now, the world is alive with possibility. Teri Fox. Teri Fox. Teri Lee. No, stop it.

I Hate How Funny I Find This

2009-03-22T11:29:00.001Z

Suspicious Mind

2009-03-22T10:22:00.003Z

I have a problem with trusting strangers. I mean, their very nature is implicit in the title. They're not referred to as nicepeoplers or notatallweirders, they're strangers. Strange.

This week, I was taking the bus into town with a colleague and a group of kids were being obnoxiously loud and causing me to retaliate by rolling my eyes, almost in their direction. All of a sudden, the comforting wall between us was torn down when one of them called over to us.

'Excuse me, excuse me' but not in the accent that those words imply.

My immediate thought was, he's going to stick a knife in my gut and ask me if I have an iPhone. Then it was, please don't let me die on a bendy bus.

Begrudgingly we turned around and the least likely question emerged.

'Does the desert get cold at night?'

My mind started working overtime, trying to think of how this could be some sort of joke question. The vocal equivalent of when someone pretends to show you something on your chest before hitting you in the face.

My colleague answered (my knowledge of the desert is as absent as my knowledge of musicals or Darfur) and a bizarre, friendly discussion started on why the weather in the desert might change and then also why the sky was blue.

I felt guilty. These kids were more socially adept than I was and meant no ill whatsoever. I'd been reading too many shock stories of evil hoodies and knives that look like pencils.

I do that a lot. I generally expect the worst from strangers. Someone will approach me on the street and before they've had the chance to ask for the time, I've already told them, abruptly, that I don't have any change. I could blame my mistrust on how decaying our society is getting but the truth is I've always been pretty bad.

6 years ago a friend and I were driving back from the cinema late at night. We reached some traffic lights and the driver on our left was making wild gestures our way, well pointing and moving his hands about. Immediately enraged, we started making gestures back. Convinced he was some sort of pikey, hoping for a race, our anger was steadily rising.

As the lights went green and we drove off, we finally managed to decipher the word he was shouting our way. Lights. Our lights weren't turned on. We lowered our middle fingers and sheepishly looked forward, right, backwards, any possible direction but left.

It could be argued that this sort of attitude is beneficial to things like, you know, staying alive and not being shot. But it's also a little dramatic. I don't live in Gotham City. I'm not Jodie Foster in The Brave One. Not everyone is a villain.

I'm gonna try this thing of being more open. Maybe even expecting the best out of people, rather than the worst. So next time someone in my neighbourhood of Hackney approaches me, I will welcome him with open arms. I'll smile as he stabs me and takes my wallet, knowing that I'm taking a step in the right direction.

Anatomy of a Trailer: Management

2009-03-21T10:44:00.001Z

1. What wild animal did the director of Management catch Jennifer Aniston fucking before she agreed to star in this?

2. Woody Harrelson plays the wacky comic support. Hang on, what year is this?

3. Imagine Angelina watching this trailer with Brad, smirking. 'No, honestly I think it looks good! I mean, it's not gonna win any awards but no, this looks fun, honestly!'

4. If Steve Zahn stalked me, I would buy a gun and shoot him in the face, not let him touch my ass.

5. The film is opening against Angels and Demons. Hey, stop laughing back there!

6. How cheap does this movie look? And not in a cool 'Discovered at Sundance' Indie way but in a 'Hey mum, check out this film I just made at college' kinda way

7. There's a reason why no one hires Steve Zahn anymore. He should have stayed back in 1998 with Morcheeba and Furbies.

9. 'It began with a knock that led to a drink that started a conversation that ended in a proposition' - and winner of most tortuously convoluted tagline of the year is...

9. After Marley And Me, He's Just Not That Into You and this, Jennifer Aniston is rapidly becoming the queen of the plane movie. Watch out Katherine Heigl!

10. Probably a horse.

No, Really I'm Not. Oh Okay Then I Am.

2009-03-14T11:33:00.004Z

A while back, in some powerful piece of literature like the Metro or the London Lite, I read that English guys are so appealing to foreigners because of their overwhelming self-deprecation.

It's common for Brits to play it down, to follow up a compliment with a piece of self-criticism.

'I don't believe it! You've just cured cancer!'
'Well, ermm yes, but it took me so damn long'

In the outset it can be charming. It's an anti-arrogance of sorts. An inability to blow one's own trumpet. But the more it progresses and the more frequently it arises, it can become extremely off-putting.

I am a victim of over self-deprecation. I've always had problems accepting compliments. I've been raised to lack arrogance and deflect positive statements with a casual aside. But the older I've become and the more aware I am of what I can and cannot count as my personal qualities, the self-deprecating comments have become a little over-egged.

There's become something horribly deliberate and rehearsed about it all. I have this internal check-list of 'counter-compliments' that I use at opportune moments. If someone says I'm funny, I'll say I use humour as a defense mechanism. If someone says I did a good job on something, I'll say it was an easy task to begin with. If someone says I'm attractive, I'll say my head is too big and my ears are too small.

When someone begins to get to know me, this may not cause offense. But the more times these familiar statements arise, the more tiring it gets.

This is terribly pretentious but I have a quote from the 'Handbook of Positive Psychology' (vomit) which I'm more comfortable with using, than stealing:

'...the excessively self-deprecating person can be seen, in some important respects, as lacking humility...the person remains at the center of attention, with the self as the focus of consideration and evaluation'

It's true that the more you deny a compliment or positive attribute, the bigger the deal you're making out of it. Just think, if you accept it straight off then the conversation is over and you can move on. There is less attention and less embarrassment.

I've tried to counter this by developing a faux-arrogance. If someone tells me I'm good at something, I'll say I'm better. It works for a while, with the right person, but it also reflects an inability to take anything seriously.

I'll master it in time. Even this blog posting is slightly big-headed as it suggests I walk around, literally running into one positive statement after another, which is not the truth. But then, hang on, doesn't that sound sort of self-deprecating...

Shut Up

2009-01-18T14:43:00.002Z

I wouldn't call myself an overly private person (I am writing a blog after all) but I still like to keep to myself in some respects.

For example, in public, to those who don't know me, I'm happy to blend into the background. If my fellow tube passengers know nothing about my personal life then perfect. This is why I'm always amazed by how obnoxiously loud and open strangers can be.

I feel as if I know far more about random people I've shared bus journeys with than close friends.

See, I tend to reject calls I receive when I'm on buses or trains as I hate being 'that guy'. You know, the guy who is HAVING A PHONE CALL and talking about REALLY COOL THINGS just in case anyone happens not to be deaf.

It's usually the guy who is going to the most AMAZING party that night with the FITTEST girl around and we're all expected to simply die with jealousy at his exciting life. But if by chance we happen to look over or make any sign that we are listening, the loudspeaker will berate how nosey we all is.

It's not even a case of eavesdropping. When someone talks so loud that it starts to threaten my mental state, I can't help but listen by default.

It isn't just phone conversations either. People have the most intimate discussions or arguments with one another at the highest volumes when everyone around can hear. I've been raised to keep such matters close to my chest. Growing up, I wasn't even allowed to chew gum in public as my mum worried it made me look common on the street.

Due to others seemingly lax rules on privacy, I have heard some fascinating nuggets while walking or travelling around...

'I mean it was the first time she'd ever had heterosexual sex before!'

'But that's what I love about you Jerry! I love that you're comfortable with your body and open with your sexuality!'

'Then I just threw her out of the fucking cab when I was done!'

I sometimes wish I'd thought ahead and wrote these profound statements down as they occur but then no one likes a smug guy chuckling into his notepad.

I guess it's a problem with volume control. I don't generally have a very loud voice and tend to surround myself with others who are similar. So when that group of students start talking about how like totally WASTED they were last night on the bus, I'll usually have a companion who I can turn to and share an 'I wish they'd shut the fuck up' eye-roll with.

I also think it's a way of seeking attention. A friend of mine came to visit me when I was living back in New York and I took her to a vintage shop in the village that I would often frequent. As we were looking around, the woman behind the till was having a VERY LOUD conversation on the phone. It went something like this:

'Yeah like LINDSAY LOHAN was in here yesterday and she bought LOADS of DRESSES like totally'

We were the only potential customers in the store at the time and after we left we convinced ourselves that this conversation probably took place at least 50 times a day, or depending on how many people came in.

She would see someone head for the entrance and pick up the phone, repeating the Lohan story in order to impress the poor deafened shopper. Lindsay Lohan had probably never even set foot in there.

I also admit that it's my own insistence on being so invisible in public that affects my feelings on others being so loud. When I'm safely seated, I always enjoy watching someone run for the bus. Every now and then you'll see a real sprinter who will make a dash for it and then dramatically bang on the door as the bus is departing, shouting at the driver.

Me, I might walk a bit faster and if I miss it, I'll usually sigh perhaps or awkwardly check the time on my phone to show any observers that I kind of needed to get that bus.

I think most people fall into one of those two categories.

I'm happy to be in category 2. I'm happy to be involved in non name-dropping conversations at inoffensive volumes. I'm happy to attend parties and not be called a 'bit of a character'.

Because these 'characters' tend to also fit into another easily defined group: 'cunts'.

Anatomy of a Trailer: New in Town

2009-01-10T13:03:00.007Z

1. Didn't Hollywood stop making 'yuppie city folk get stuck in small town America' comedies like 20 years ago?

2. Renee Zellweger's facial expressions make me want to go back in time and punch her pregnant mother in the belly until she bleeds

3. Slapstick comedy seems to prevail throughout with Renee running into glass doors, skidding on ice and generally feigning being comfortable with physical comedy yet seeming to sadly avoid any serious injuries

4. Harry Connick Jr plays her love interest which hints that every other leading man in Hollywood turned the role down first

5. When Renee says lines like 'I will not get personally attached to this town or anybody in it' you know full well that this will turn out to be total horseshit by the end

6. There looks to be a comical sequence where Renee gets drunk and is taken home by Harry, who plays a small-town tow-truck driver, and even he doesn't want to rape her

7. Even though she plays a rude, uptight, snobby bitch, the Bush-voting, sexist, right-wing locals seem to welcome her with open arms

8. 'She may not be where she expected, but she's warming up to the possibilities' says the voice of the trailer - what the fuck does that even mean?

9. The film is populated by a collection of wacky elderly women with token Minnesota accents as including any younger women would highlight how repulsively unattractive Renee Zellweger really is

10. Its released in January in the US - the same month which in the past has seen Bloodrayne, Kangaroo Jack, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton and Codename: The Cleaner come out

Unhealthy Competition

2009-01-10T11:33:00.003Z

Somewhere near the top of my list of negative qualities lies my horribly competitive streak.

An old 'foe' of mine at film school once claimed that my willingness to accept and name all of my foibles made me arrogant. This led to a long, drunken argument and even to this day I'm not quite sure how self-awareness leads to arrogance.

Anyway, my intense passion for games and for winning in general has made me unsociable in certain circumstances, to say the least. Thinking far back to middle school it banned me from playing hockey for a short period after I accidentally 'tapped' an opponent with my hockey stick. Her fault though for getting in my way.

It made me insufferable on sports day. I may have been picked last but I was determined not to come last. For anyone who was near me, any possible shred of fun or enjoyment that could be gained from 'taking part' would be eradicated by my merciless desire to triumph. If I was shotputting and a one-legged cancer-ridden child was in my way, I wouldn't tremble.

This didn't make me any more skilled though. I was still utterly hopeless at most sports. I remember my first sports day at high school, the PE teacher kept giving me a patronising arm around the shoulders for every sport I completed. As if I was Forrest Gump, finally walking straight.

I won three awards throughout school, all with varying levels of shitness. The first took place when I was around 11. It was district athletics time. There was one category no one had yet been chosen for. Fast-walking. An impromptu 'race' was organised to see who would qualify. If your feet were off the ground at the same time, you were out. Since, everyone else was disqualified, I made the cut.

Somewhat proud that I would soon be part of the district athletics event, I decided to not focus on the event which was taking me there. I also decided to ignore the advice of my PE teacher who showed me how to move my hips to perfect the ideal fast-walk. I knew at once that this move would get me killed.

At the district athletics, the laws of disqualification meant that I made it through to county. When it got to county I came away with a silver medal. Okay so there were only two of us guys in the race but it was still quite an achievement. Plus the good thing about the fast-walk is you can share a nice conversation as you're making your way around.

The second, was as I left middle school. It was for possessing '4 C's' - care, consideration and two others I can never remember. In other words it was pretty much the gayyest award out there. Looking back, winning an award for being a nice guy seems rather ironic.

The third came at the end of my first year of high school, a period where I was still trying to desperately impress my new classmates, with little success. Winning an award for 100% attendance didn't help. It confirmed the suspicions of most that I was just the loser they feared I was.

Nowadays when it comes to unleashing my competitive streak, I tend to stick to what I know. A game of Poker or Cluedo is enough to turn me into a cursing, red-faced train-wreck. The problem isn't just that I get angry if I lose, I also get horribly smug if I win. It means that my opponents usually end up creating an alliance, promising that above all else, I absolutely cannot be crowned the winner.

I recently got a Wii which has brought out my nasty side, yet again. My housemate claims she has never seen me so angry during a recent game of Mario Kart while her boyfriend thought I was genuinely pissed off as I swore at him throughout another race. Its one of my characteristics that I find absolutely impossible to quell. Like my greed for food or my hate of morbid obesity.

My ex used to hate games which I found almost impossible to compute. It meant the one time I forced him to play cards with me and then won, I had absolutely no pleasure to derive from my victory. He couldn't have cared less either way. My smug remarks did nothing to anger him. Even when I brought his mum into it.

But I usually surround myself with others who take a game of Rummy 'very seriously' and who are not adverse to violence, if needed, during a game of Connect 4. My competitive streak is welcomed within these quarter and allows me to take great pride in winning.

I guess my awareness of such a negative quality plus my total lack of willingness to change does make me sound kind of arrogant. Maybe my 'foe' was right. Still though, even acknowledging this won't prevent me from not caring about a win or a loss. Deep down, everyone cares.

Even though my collection of awards is hardly anything to brag about I'll still proudly hail myself as a considerate fast-walker who will always show up. There are worse things to call yourself.

Streets on Fire

2009-01-05T22:29:00.005Z

Tonight, I had a brief altercation with a total stranger.

This isn't like me. I'm really not a confrontational person, opinionated perhaps, but I rarely get into that many serious arguments. Especially with people I don't know.

Walking to catch our bus, my housemate and I were heading across a short, rarely used cul-de-sac when a female cyclist started calling for us to move, in an unnecessarily aggressive tone.

'Excuse me! Excuse me!'

We moved and, exasperated, she cycled through. Its worth noting that there was space on either side of us for her to pass.

She muttered something under her breath as she passed and, almost involuntarily, I spoke.

'Fuck off'

It had meant to be a quiet aside to my housemate but my voice projected more than I had intended and her bike stopped ahead of us.

My heart sank and the coward inside of me desperately searched for an alternative excuse for why I might have sworn with such sudden aggression. Maybe my housemate was my girlfriend who had just told me of her recent abortion? Maybe we had been trying for a child for months and after the accident the doctors didn't think I could make babies ever again? But in a frenzy, I decided to be stubborn and use my mounting hatred for all cyclists to get me through.

'Excuse me?'

As we reached her, I reacted, rather weakly.

'We were just walking across the street and you started shouting at us'

Surprised that I wasn't apologising, she shook her head and started to cycle away, but not before one final retort.

'If I was a car, you'd be dead'

This luckily tapped into the biggest reason why cyclists annoy me. They take all the benefits of being a pedestrian and also all the benefits of being a car driver. I couldn't help but half-shout one final, rather childish reply.

'Yeah, well you're not a car!'

Ever since moving to London, cyclists have joined the ranks of child rapists and musical theatre actors in my hall of profound hatred. They're all like, 'Look at us, we're getting in everyone's way and causing multiple accidents but we're getting great exercise and like totally saving the planet!'

Tonight, I stood up for all those poor wheel-less walkers who probably had the better sense to lower their cursing when addressing strangers.

This is the beginning cyclists. Mark my words. Red lights are meant for you but the pavement isn't so keep the fuck away. The next time I almost get hit by a reckless cyclist, I might even use two swears. Like Fuck Shit or perhaps something a little less nonsensical perhaps.

Watch out.

I Was a 19-Year-Old Pizza Chef

2009-01-04T11:16:00.000Z

During my second year of university, I took on a job at Pizza Hut. I was soon followed by a close friend of mine and we would often 'wittily' refer to ourselves as teenage pizza chefs. It was our way of publicly recognising the awfulness of our jobs, as in reality, defrosting dough and smothering it in processed cheese does not amount to the work of a pizza chef.

I began my life at the hut with a surprisingly laborious interview carried out by an obnoxiously camp member of staff, referred to only as Snowy. I had to undertake a lengthy psychometric test which included such tough questions as 'I would steal from my place of work - true, somewhat true, somewhat false or false.' I breezed through it, somewhat smugly, convinced that my education and life experience wouldn't fail me under such puny circumstances.

The job was mine and I feigned both surprise and pleasure at the decision.

The next time I came in, Snowy sat me down, his eyebrow raised at the papers beneath him. He told me, with a little too much amusement, that I had scored a red in my work ethics section for the test. Red was the worst, meaning my work ethic was deemed by Pizza Hut to be undesirable. It spoke volumes that I still got the job.

This annoyed me. Not just because I'm unsociably competitive but because I always thought I had a strong work ethic and who were they to tell me otherwise? Needless to say, I started my career there with a point to prove.

As the job began, I soon realised that there was a strict division between three warring fractions. There were the natives, Nottingham born and bred, most of which had been at Pizza Hut for a considerable amount of time and considered it their life. Then there were the immigrants, who worked there as there were few other options. Finally there were my fellow students, who represented the smallest and probably most hated of all the groups. The reason? We all had an exit plan.

My outfit consisted of a black branded t-shirt, a black branded apron and a black branded cap, together with my own black trousers and shoes. I looked as if I were attending a funeral, sponsored by Pizza Hut.

I glumly took my position in the putrid kitchen, loading up the pot wash, making up variously disgusting pizzas and cutting them up for human consumption. During one of my first few shifts, one of the more excitable and endlessly enthusiastic managers, sorry the only excitable and endlessly enthusiastic manager, Malcolm gave me an intriguing new job: to make a stuffed crust base.

Eager to learn the every facet of the pizza industry, I prepared myself for this exhilarating new challenge. It involved folding tubes of processed cheese around the edges of a defrosted base and then sealing it shut. Despite being a job that a retarded monkey could easily carry out with little trouble, Malcolm was stunned by my crust-stuffing abilities.

'Hang on Ben, is this your first stuffed crust?'

'Yep'

'Wow, that stuffed crust is shit hot'

'Erm thank you'

'Wayne, come over and see this. This is Ben's first stuffed crust!'

'That is shit hot Malcolm'

I'm bad at accepting compliments as it is but when they're based around how well I can fold cheese, I become even more awkward.

The levels of excitement circulating from this one stuffed crust made my heart sink. Would I ever get to the stage where I managed to feel genuine giddiness from something so inane? I knew that while I was here I must try to maintain perspective.

Despite being allowed a free pizza in every shift, I soon started to loathe my job. I would work 12-10 on Sundays with a 40 minute break. It was the kind of shift that made you question every single element of your life and the steps it took to get you to this place.

The soundtrack was a collection of inoffensive pop songs that usually had little effect on me. However on one fateful day, a Kym Marsh (she of Hearsay) song decided to torture me. The song was malfunctioning and would play up until the first chorus and then begin again. It must have repeated like this about 10 times. By the 10th time, I was coming close to being a broken man. The worst thing was that no one else seemed to notice. Was this sort of musical rape deemed okay in this lawless wasteland?

I was quickly unpopular at work for my resistance to the Pizza Hut camaraderie. I just wanted to get into work, do my job and go home but this wasn't enough. I had to laugh when a man in his 40s would stick his hand in the tuna and ask me to guess where his hand had been or to pretend that once I finished my degree, I had no ambitions to gain a career.

When I went home for Christmas, I was told that I was 'letting the team down.' I had to physically restrain myself from shouting out that I couldn't have cared less about the team and would gladly let them down at any other opportunity.

Despite knowing that my time there would be limited, I was forced into an induction day, meaning I had to begrudgingly give up an entire Saturday to learn more. Told that I would have to wear my uniform, I kitted up and headed to the other location in town. Getting there, I discovered that I was the only person to have arrived from the area who was in his Pizza Hut get-up. I was also the oldest person there by a good year.

The day included variously soul-destroying exercises such as getting into a group, drawing a giant pizza and making up slices for what really mattered to the customers. Most of the day's jokes revolved around pubic hair and farting. I made sure to sport my best attempt at a fake smile, in case they also thought I was resisting the fun too much.

My problem with Pizza Hut is that I never cared enough to fake it. I wanted there to be some sort of silent agreement between me and Snowy and the rest of the staff that I was doing this for money and not for some unfulfilled wish to come home smelling of cheese most nights of the week.

By the time I was working more than I was studying and had gained enough extra weight from all of the free pizzas to look Michelin Man-esque, I decided to call it quits. I may very well have been a shit hot crust-stuffer but my tolerance for the hut was weak. Maybe Snowy was right, maybe my work ethic for that particular job was deserving of the red section. Looking back, I now see that as a compliment.

My Secret Soundtrack

2008-12-31T12:01:00.003Z

In one of the few acting classes I endured when I was at film school, our teacher lambasted the usage of iPods and musical devices for they didn't allow us to truly appreciate the sounds that the city provided us with.

Personally when it comes to a choice between listening to music of my choice or overhearing a conversation between two girls about how Laneisha is a total slut or how Zac Efron is like the cutest thing ever, I know what I'd go for.

As much as I will often pause a song to hear a tempestuous argument or a drunken speech, I generally prefer to disappear into my own world. I hate that I've become such a yuppie but I am pretty much always attached to my earphones. Granted, it could be worse. My earphones are your standard dictionary definition of earphones. They're not 'ironic' headphones.

I enjoy soundtracking my life. Certain songs at certain moments can have an overwhelming effect on me. Whether its sinking into a pool of self-pity or actually being in one of those rare good mood things, my iPod always knows how to accompany me.

What I also like is the total secrecy of what I'm playing. There's no greater joy than being on a bus full of elderly people while Peaches sings about fucking the pain away. I sport a sly, clandestine smile as I think, damn, if they only knew...

There have been a couple of occasions when I have been called up on this. I do have this weird, irrational concern that someone is suddenly going to stop me on the street and say 'what are you listening to right now?' and I'll have to skip the currently playing Girls Aloud song to a lesser known MF Doom track to feign being remotely cool.

Clearly this has never happened as the world doesn't revolve around me. One time, however, I was on the subway back in New York with a PI (pre-iPod) discman. An older, seemingly respectable couple, probably in their late 50s, were sitting below me and the man, who was particularly crotchety was complaining about me to his wife.

It was one of those rare occasions where I gladly turned the volume down.

He was using me as a whipping boy for youth in general and lambasting my musical choice of 'rap' for glorifying guns and violence. He kept looking up, with a sneer, and his wife was trying, unsuccessfully to calm him down. It culminated in this odd line:

'He doesn't know what its like to have a gun pointed at his face though, does he?'

Quite what was happening beneath me was a total mystery. I hadn't spoken a word to these people, I was dressed inoffensively (like a white, middle-class student) plus most importantly, I wasn't even listening to hip-hop at that point. In fact, I was playing the Slow Runner album, a band who would make Coldplay seem like heavy metal giants.

The whole situation puzzled me and I took little responsibility for any of it. I was clearly the straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe he'd been mugged the week before by a kid in an Eminem t-shirt? I kinda liked that, unknowingly, I had caused so much aggression in a person without opening my mouth. This was unusual, even for me.

One time, when I was commuting into London from Hemel Hempstead, out in Hertfordshire, I had made an error in volume control. Surrounded by overweight suits, I was already outnumbered. Dressed in my usual scruffy, unimpressive ensemble, I wanted to wear a neon sign on my head saying 'No, really I am going to work too.' Typically, I chose to zone out the overblown 'I hate work' sighs and turn on my music.

I had pitched it too loud though as the next thing I knew, a fat finger was poking me and asking me to turn it down. This display of confidence was clearly a lot for the suit to muster and would probably make a great story across the dinner table later as his mousy wife was laying the table. 'I tell you Karen, I'm not gonna take that kinda crap in the mornings from punks like that.'

Embarrassingly I believe it was Rehab by Amy Winehouse that was disturbing the peace at that very moment and even though his request for a volume shift was in fact totally warranted, I still reverted to a teenager and hated his very existence.

I'm now more careful to keep my volume down low in order to maintain secrecy at all times. It does mean that I can't always block out Tanya and Alicia talking about their periods but it still allows me to remain somewhat enigmatic to those people who I fear will be questioning what I'm listening to. In reality, they probably don't exist but just in case they do, I have my finger on the dial, ready to invent the pretence that I'm actually pretty cool.

Being Picked Last at Darts

2008-12-29T15:38:00.006Z

If I had to single out an embarrassing memory from my high school days, I would struggle. Not because I was the model of cool throughout but because there are so many, hundreds even, to choose from.

There is one memory which always sticks out though. Its not as obviously humiliating as many others but for some reason it still causes my palms to sweat whenever it comes into my head.

Back in school, I was ‘impaired’ when it came to sports. The title of my blog really isn’t an over-exaggeration. The other choice was ‘Being the only person left to pick at sports and having to partner up with the teacher’ but that seemed a little clunky.

When it came to the start of a new term, we were all seated in the gym as our PE teacher read out what sports were available over the coming months. A list of students then followed for each sport. I was placed in Rugby, a hellish choice. The other options were no better – football, basketball etc. Every sport provided endless opportunities for humiliation.

But then, an oasis appeared. Darts.

Darts would be perfect for me. It did strike me as an odd choice for PE and I would still suck majorly at it but I could stay pretty stationary throughout and manage to avoid the group showers after. Perfect.

When lunchtime came around, I went to see my PE teacher and asked if I could change. He looked up at me, slightly confused. ‘You want to change to darts?’ he questioned. I nodded, totally confident in my option and surprised at his reticence to add me to the list. ‘You do realise it will be mostly girls in this group?’ he asked. ‘Its fine. I want to do darts,’ I insisted. He begrudgingly added me and I walked away.

It was at this point that I started to question what had just happened. Why would it be mostly girls doing darts? Since when was darts seen as a predominantly female sport? Come to think of it, since when was darts even considered a sport?

I found solace in my friends and told them of my decision. My friends looked at each other, confusion pervading. ‘Darts? Darts wasn’t an option Ben,’ someone stated, ‘But dance was.’

At this very moment, I craved more than ever for the earth to crumble under my feet and engulf me, erasing any memory the world ever contained of my existence. There had been a terrible, terrible misunderstanding. A misunderstanding so terrible that I wasn’t sure at that moment, I would ever recover. My reputation at school was hardly solid but the last thing it needed was another sucker punch like this.

I raced back to the PE teacher, suitably amused friends in tow. It all made sense now. The all-female group, the reticence to add my name to the list...

An image of Michelle Ferguson, an odd girl from my class, playing darts in the gym entered my head and at any other time, I would have laughed. At this point of utter, repellent despair I was concerned that I may never laugh again.

I fumbled a messy explanation to the teacher as I spoke of my confusion and he removed my name from the list. I nervously laughed to show him that it really was a misunderstanding and I hadn’t just changed my mind after discovering what social suicide dance would be for me. He was skeptical. Understandably so as well. How many other idiots would actually believe that darts was a feasible option for physical education in school?

I walked away, doing what I do in these type of situations, making jokes about it to my friends. ‘Oh Ben, he’s just so goofy, he thought dance was darts!’ would be the common line and it was a fairly ridiculous story which would be easy to laugh off.

But still, it haunted me for an unnecessary amount of time. What replays in my head even now, is the reaction of my teacher to my bizarre request. He must have known that this was a terrible, life-destroying choice of mine but had to comply out of some worry that he might see his name splattered across the local paper: LOCAL BOY REFUSED DANCE CLASS SUES SCHOOL FOR SEXISM, coupled with a picture of me holding up a pair of ballet shoes and sporting a concerned face.

And in those 10 minutes between my name being added and my sudden retraction, he would have genuinely believed that I was willing to sacrifice everything to pursue my love for dance. Even now it makes me shudder.

Although now I am able to laugh at it. When I’m in need of a smile I’ll think of a group of 14 year old girls lining up to throw darts while they were taught about positioning and aim.

My Life as an Actor

2008-12-29T15:27:00.010Z

In my younger years, like many, I nursed a desire to become an actor when I became of age.

Daydreams would have me insisting that ‘being nominated was all that mattered’ to Parkinson or calmly telling paparazzi to ‘just give it a rest today.’ When it came to reality, my ambitions resulted in the combination of after-school drama classes and spending my Tuesday night with an ageless woman called Miss Brown, who would teach me the rules of pronunciation above all else.

What I soon discovered, however, was that as I aged, the less comfortable I was performing in front of others. Something which was somewhat detrimental to my acting dreams. It was reminiscent of my urge to collect clocks at a young age. After arranging them all in my room, I found that I was a terribly light sleeper and couldn’t rest with the sound of ticking.

So as I became more aware of myself, I could no longer mime being on a water-ski without worrying how I looked or what others thought of me.

The dream had died.

Years later, I enrolled at the New York Film Academy (something I wouldn’t recommend others to do) for a year’s course in screenwriting. A writer’s life was much more suited to me. I could nestle in the shadows, watching others perform my words. Admittedly, I still wanted to be at the forefront of the shadows. Like William Goldman or Joe Eszterhas.

The major downside of this course however was the once weekly ‘Acting for Screenwriters’ class which dominated my Friday nights in New York. Fresh off the boat and knowing no one in the country but myself, I was ill-equipped for such displays of naked confidence.

The first day of lessons culminated in the dreaded acting class. Still unfamiliar with each other, my fellow classmates and I were all nervously quipping about how we were ‘writers’ not actors as we made our way up the stairs to face our fears.

Our teacher was a woman in her 40s who’s career highlight was a whore in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. A film you’d have to re-watch to remember when a whore would even fit into the story.

She was typically egregious and keen to strip us of our inhibitions. This meant I hated her from the very beginning.

Our first task was an ‘overall body sensation,’ a term which seemed more suited to a shampoo commercial than an acting class. It involved us closing our eyes, seated, and making a humming noise as we ‘searched’ our bodies for tension. We would move our heads from side to side, lift our arms up and down and most embarrassingly, thrust our pelvises in a circular motion. It would then climax in a loud grunting sound.

Being the immature child that I am, I was unable to keep a straight face through most of this. She spotted it immediately and told me it was ‘okay’ to laugh as it meant that I was expressing myself. This somehow made it less amusing.

The body sensation soon turned into a ridiculous repetition exercise which had two of us sitting in opposing chairs and stating ‘searing’ observations back and forth. A sample interrogation would sound like this:

‘You are tapping your foot’
‘I’m tapping my foot’
‘You are tapping your foot’
‘I’m tapping my foot’
‘You are tapping your foot’
‘I am tapping my foot’

In other words it was an utter waste of anyone’s time. When my turn came in front of the class, my partner didn’t ‘delve deep enough’ so the teacher decided to take her place. She said there was something in me she needed to unlock. I wanted to punch her in the face for doing this to me.

She managed to ‘uncover’ that I was nervous. Something a blind, deaf mute could ascertain.

As the classes progressed and as my classmates and I became more at ease with each other, the boundaries started to disintegrate. Although in reality this meant that we were more willing to mess around than shy away from the spotlight. Each week we competed with our grunting to see who could make the loudest noise. Our repetitive observations became deliberately more inane.

‘You are wearing a blue t-shirt’
‘I am wearing a blue t-shirt’

The purpose of the class was to put us in the mindset of the actors we could be writing for to help us to better understand their process. If this was the case then we were sure that actors had it easy. While we toiled away at our laptops, carefully constructing plots and nurturing characters, the actors were having a whale of a time, grunting competitively and generally pissing around.

We moved onto the art of performance and I was forced into acting out a scene set in a strip club from Bachelor Party (Paddy Chayefsky not Tom Hanks) with a fellow Englishman from my class. Our teacher once complained that I wasn’t acting as if I was believably in a strip club. ‘Imagine my finger is a stripper and watch her dance,’ she said at the height of her stupidity as she waved her hand around.

The acting classes, as deeply embarrassing as they often were, helped me in one important way. While my childhood dreams of acting had dissipated, I still, deep down, told myself that maybe they would surface again one day and I would rightfully take my place at the top of the A-List.

What I discovered was that my desire to act was nothing more than a childish whim, based on my youthful need for attention and love of film, but nothing else. I could finally store it away alongside my dream of talking to animals or my ambition to become a different race for a day.

So these days, while in the thick of a daydream the interview still goes on but this time it's less Leno and more DVD special features.

The Blind Date

2008-12-28T11:14:00.001Z

For the first time in my life, I allowed a friend to become involved with my 'love' life.

A few weeks back I received an excitable call from my housemate. She was Christmas shopping at Spitalfields Market and the following, hugely unlikely, set of events had taken place...

She was buying a gift for me and discussing the decision with her boyfriend by the stall which housed the potential gift. The guy working behind the stall asked her if she was buying it for a gay guy to which she said yes. He then asked if this guy was also single - another yes. A series of questions followed - looks, education, interests etc.

It culminated in my housemate taking the number from the inquisitive stall runner and passing it onto me. This whole situation unsettled but intrigued me. While the thought that my crippling 'single' status had proved too important to ignore even during a friend's festive shopping trip was slightly alarming, I thought that this could prove a great story for dinner parties when people asked how 'we' met.

I quizzed her when she returned home and found out the following. He was called Peter (fine), he was 29 (fine), he was good-looking (fine) and he lived in Essex (hmmmm). I jumped in and later that evening sent an ice-breaker text. The day after he replied and the ensuing back-and-forth resulted in a drink being organised for the Tuesday.

You can tell a lot about a person from the way they construct a text message. Peter's texts were, well, disappointing. The to's were replaced with 2's and there was a heavy reliance on smiley faces. But I tried to quell my judgment and hope for the best.

This wasn't helped by a further interrogation of my housemate the night before the date. I asked her how 'gay' he was. She told me that her boyfriend said out of 10 for gayness (10 being Alan Carr gay) before he spoke he was a 5 whereas I would be a 3. Then after he spoke he was an 8 while I would go down to a 1. This did give me a personal sense of satisfaction but worried me about Peter. Was he going to be wearing man-scara and would his conversation consist of making crude sex jokes all night? Again, I tried my very best to stay positive.

The following night I waited, nervously, for him to arrive. I had organised a get-out text to be sent about an hour in, just in case I really needed to leave asap. I would tell Peter that my friend had fallen down a well and needed me to rush to their aid immediately.

As Peter approached me, there was only one thing on my mind. How I would manage to get away with the murder of my housemate without spending my life in prison.

He was wearing a Ushanka, aka those stupid furry Russian hats with flaps on the side. I knew from this very hat choice that we would probably have little in common. He was also incredibly posh. Not a massive problem of course but it was the sort of 'holidaying with the royals' posh that had a domino effect on the rest of his personality traits.

We made worthless small talk as we looked for a suitable bar. My main criteria being a place that was dark and where no one would recognise me.

He was originally Slovakian and had spent most of his life travelling from country to country. I could tell that he had never had a real job as he referred to working in 'retail' for 2 years there or in 'airline' for 2 years. I loved that - it was his way of masking menial jobs by referring to the industry as a whole instead. He was clearly from a great deal of money so never needed to search for a real career.

We sat down and ordered our drinks. Glumly he wanted to sit by the bar. This meant others could see and hear our awkward date. I would rather have no witnesses.

He spoke for 99% of the time about how his mother was a 'very famous' artist in Slovakia and about the book he was writing on Champagne. I drank faster than usual as a way to cope with the inanity of the conversation and also the disappointment that I had wasted a valuable weeknight with this idiot. I could have been at home watching The World's Fattest Dog, eating an entire bag of mini poppadoms.

I received the get-out text and depressingly he said 'oh is that your get-out text?' to which I nervously laughed a 'no' in reply. I knew I couldn't get out easy.

The date reached an all-time low when the following words emerged from his mouth: 'Do you get horny?'

Okay so I can be a bit too old-fashioned at times but still, I wouldn't put that down as a standard first date question. I told him that I didn't shag about and preferred to keep that sort of thing within the boundaries of a relationship. He told me I was very 'un-gay' and then proceeded to tell me how much he loved 'shagging' and that there was a 6 month period when he 'shagged everything he saw.'

I'm not a dating expert but I would put that line down as one of the worst things to reveal on a first date. I also wanted to ask what the limitations were in this 6 month period. Did he literally shag everything? Animals? Household objects? Family?

Instead, I told him I should probably stop drinking and get something to eat as a fourth pint would make me go 'crazy' to which he replied 'I'd like to see that.' I held back the vomit engulfing my throat and insisted I should go home and eat and we left.

We walked to my bus-stop and he asked if I would like him to wait with me. I politely declined and he said 'we should do this again' which caused me to bemoan how busy the Christmas period was so maybe in the new year. He then left and I dropped my fake smile and picked up my phone.

I berated my housemate for setting me up with such a tool and also berated myself. After all, I should have known better. I also swore to never let someone set me up on a blind date again. Or at least not one with some stranger who had a gay voice and who intruded on a conversation at a market stall. After all, I do need to be open to these things.

Just a Small Town Boy

2008-12-28T10:06:00.004Z

Despite having a lawyer and a journalist for parents, I hate lying.

I suck at it and will avoid a lie at all costs. I might as well be Catholic for all of the ensuing guilt a lie will cause me. As a result, I often tell a half-truth instead. A few of them I use regularly when confronted by a similar situation. The most annoying of which is that I’m ‘just a small town boy’.

When confronted by something such as two guys holding hands or a man wearing a dress, I will blame my stare on being ‘just a small town boy’. The stare isn’t manufactured however. I do still tend to gawp at open displays of affection between two men or two women, despite being gay myself. It doesn’t make any sense, I realise, but I still find it surprising to see in public.

I am however not strictly a small town boy, at all. I was born in a city, moved to a posh village and then was finally transplanted to a small town at the age of 8 or 9, where I had to take the plum out of my voice and turn glarss into glass. After finishing school I moved to university in Nottingham, after which I moved to New York for a couple of years, only to return to England where I promptly moved to London.

Not the simple boy raised on a pig-farm that I might pretend to be. I’m not totally sure why I do it. I think it might be a way of me trying to explain away my often overly traditional values. When it comes to relationships for example, I'm the modern-day equivalent of a 50s prom date.

Having returned home for the festive period, I can definitely attest that I'm really not such a small town boy. Okay so I did scour the empty shelves on the final day of Woolworths but I did so without my three illegitimate kids in tow and all of my teeth still pretty much in place.

My knowledge of this half-truth won't prevent me from still using it however. When I return to Sin City on Monday I will keep it prepped for the next sighting of a transsexual lesbian stripper kissing an elderly gay midget. 'We certainly don't get that in Kidderminster!', I might add for effect. Deep down though, I fear that may not be true.

Being Propositioned by Whores

2008-12-28T00:53:00.008Z

Whores fascinate me, they always have. Oh and yes, I'm going to use the word whore. Not prostitute or escort or lady of the night or even hooker. Nothing else fits quite as well as whore.

I once got told by a co-worker that I must hate loose women as I used the word whore. This is untrue. For one, whores aren't loose women. Loose women don't get paid to have unsatisfying sex with ugly men named Darren or Kevin. Whores do. Secondly, I think even whores themselves would appreciate a word which has a little bit more of an auditory impact. For example, I'd rather get described as a fag than a homosexual.

Anyway, I'm off-topic here.

I'm interested in whores. Purely in the same way that I'm interested in sharks. If there was some sort of aquarium where they were all kept, I would have a season ticket.

The first time I got propositioned by one was when I was living back in New York. I was walking around the village and it was dark and relatively quiet. I saw a woman, dressed in what I practically deemed to be unsuitable for such harsh weather. She stumbled my way and asked if I would 'like to party.'

I reacted in the way I would have reacted had someone offered me a marshmallow at the point where my stomach just couldn't let me say yes. A simple 'no thanks', coupled with a thin, courteous smile. Inside, of course, I was booming. I felt flattered. A woman who makes it her business to have sex with men, asked ME if I wanted to be her next client.

This initial jubilation soon gave way as my mind picked apart exactly what it was which caused her to approach me. Firstly it was a cold, quiet night. Apart from the pimps and drug dealers, I was probably the only dick around. Secondly it was an area populated by students. I was wearing my preppiest Abercrombie shirt and looking whiter than white. She was safe to assume I had money (If only she had known that I was a gay journalist). Finally, I realised there may not be any grand planning behind her simple request to 'party' - she was after all at work and needed to fulfill her quota for the night.

Regardless, I walked home proud that night. I was a real man, turning down whores left, right and centre.

The second occasion happened just a few weeks ago.

I was walking down 'sex alley' in London (a small stretch of sex shops and strip shows located in Soho which also serves as a useful shortcut) when I spotted what looked to be a lost housewife at the end. It is worth noting that my eyesight is piss-poor at the best of times.

She was in her 40s, had a long purple coat on and looked as if she had been shown the wrong way to John Lewis. I was positive that she needed someone to help her find her way back to the safety of the olive counter. As I approached, I could see her saunter closer and just as I expected to hear a kind request for directions, the words 'do you wanna cum?' emerged and fell on the pavement between us.

Again, I resumed the marshmallow defence and kindly declined, walking away.

I was pleased to think that I looked like someone who had the sort of disposable income that would allow for the occasional whore here or there but in 'sex alley' that wasn't a tough image to portray.

My fascination continues but from afar it will remain. Sharks and whores will forever remain enigmatic creatures to me. Soho can at least be my Sea World for now. Looking but most definitely not touching.

Kylie Minogue Made me Cry

2008-11-15T11:50:00.003Z

Firstly, this isn't as gay as it sounds.

Back when I was about 5 years old, I had a 'crush' on Kylie. It was clearly a perfectly innocent infatuation and involved not a lot more than me keeping a signed photograph of hers under my pillow. At any other age, it would have bordered on creepy.

My father worked for the local news at the time and one of his colleagues had been working on an item about Kylie opening up the Alton Mouse - a rickety new ride at Alton Towers. A surprise was being hatched for my upcoming birthday.

The first I knew of it was being sat down on the day, in front of the TV. It's odd that my memory of the day is still relatively vivid, considering my knowledge of that time is pretty hazy on the whole.

A video was started and Kylie appeared, causing my young heart to flutter. She was sitting in the Alton Mouse and looked directly to the camera saying 'Happy Birthday Ben Lee' and then 'I Should Be So Lucky' played as she rollercoasted for the umpteenth time that day.

My immediate reaction was completely natural.

I ran upstairs to my bedroom and burst into tears.

I put it down to shock. Having your name spoken out on tape by someone you idolised was an experience that my 5-year-old brain found troubling to process. The fact that my birthday had somewhat entered the mind of a celebrity was enough to evoke steady tears that day.

Weirdly, I never watched that video again. It's whereabouts are unknown to me. Since then, a lot has changed. The Alton Mouse closed down after an alleged death. Kylie lost her place as my #1 crush to Kim Basinger (you know you're a child of the 80s when you have a childhood crush on Kim Basinger). Finally, Kylie moved on to a level where she wasn't having to promote deadly rollercoasters to the local news audience.

It's an odd memory that sticks out to me from my childhood more than many other 'important' ones. It was my first real brush with celebrity, albeit a distant one. I think it taught me that they weren't totally out of my reach, that they did exist in a world I could be a part of.

Okay so I'm hardly spending my weekends snorting cocaine off Lindsay Lohan's firecrotch but I'm more aware than I could be.

One thing I vowed after that day - never to let a celebrity make me cry ever again. Surprisingly, I'm doing pretty damn well...

If I Could Marry a Trailer...

2008-11-08T10:04:00.003Z

The Trick is Not to Stare

2008-11-07T10:49:00.006Z

When I first watched Nathan Barley back in 2005, it all appeared to take place in an almost futuristic world. It shared characteristics with ours but was full of so many extremities that it seemed suited to science fiction.

Having now moved to East London in 2008, I have realised that the show wasn't set in some far-off vision of the future. It was set in Shoreditch.

When I lived in West London there was a certain type of pretentious twat. The Sloane Ranger. Privately schooled, usually kitted out in semi-golf wear and called something like Crispin, they were at least honest about themselves. They were posh and they made no effort to hide it. They dressed smart because they wanted to appear well-bred and upwardly mobile.

What irks me about the Try-hards who populate the East is the lack of honesty. Many times they are just as middle-class as the Chelsea brigade but they so desperately want to be seen as 'down-to-earth' that they deliberately 'dress down' to appear as if they were poor. Although mostly they shop in over-priced vintage boutiques where they will spend £60 on a ratty cardigan that would probably be considered too ratty even for Oxfam.

They'll profess hatred for all major corporations and like totally hate the man because he's like totally killing polar bears and controls like oil and stuff. In reality their lifestyle will be mostly funded by their corporate whore of a father who sighs mournfully every time he sees the hobo that his son/daughter is turning into.

They'll populate Shoreditch bars that exist solely to be cool. The music will be loud and consist of animal noises and beeping or both. The staff will be aloof to the point of rude and the clientele will look as if they wandered in from a fancy dress party, around 20 years ago.

They'll over-dress themselves with as many 'quirky' accessories as they can find, no matter how ridiculous they may look. People will praise their creativity for turning orange peel into earrings or for wearing three watches on one wrist.

If you took any of these idiots and placed them in Dudley, for example, they would get laughed out of town and quite possibly lynched. I know that we're supposed to be encouraging difference here in the capital but there's only so much I can take. I'm not calling for everyone to be dressed in the same pair of gap jeans but there has to be a limit.

The irony is that all of the Try-hards who spend their mornings desperately dressing themselves to look wildly original end up looking exactly the same as everyone else. It's like they haven't properly grown out of their 14-year-old goth phase yet.

I can remember a friend and I being classed as 'ordinaries' by the high-school goths because we didn't dress in faux-Matrix gear and didn't listen to Placebo.

I'm happy with that. I dress in clothes because I like them. I listen to music because I like it. I'm not trying to fit into a particular type. Isn't it easier this way? To just sit back, relax and not worry that others may deem you uncool? Mustn't it hurt to constantly wear an expression that says 'this is my Myspace picture'? Mustn't it be annoying to always be hiding the Nestle products?

The Try-hards won't go away for a while. They have a majority stake-hold in Shoreditch. For now, they are relatively contained. If an area is economically deprived but still contains ironic canteens that sell edamame beans and quail eggs they will be there. What scares me is that in a couple of years the Shoreditch tube station will be opened. If they can travel, well then what? The infection will spread.

As it stands, I have developed a coping mechanism. The trick is not to stare. Don't encourage them. If you encourage them then they'll think it's okay. It's really not okay.

Vote Tracy!

2008-11-04T13:46:00.002Z

I'm Not Gaspard Ulliel

2008-11-03T20:34:00.008Z

I received a weird email yesterday.

It requires a bit of background first. In one of my previous incarnations I worked as a writer for a film website in New York. The site encouraged 'reader participation' so with every article I wrote there would be a link by my name which would lead to my email address.

This led to a number of interesting emails. I received a few from Sylwia who lived in Warsaw and wanted to become a journalist. She was very sweet and would write in broken English to me. For example...

'To have work, job which is at the same time our passion, love is the most wonderful thing all over the world'

or

'I would like to say that net is amazing thing that enable us to contact, to find (in some way), to share for examples passion'

But yesterday, having not worked on the site for 18 months or so, I received a random email. Once before I had been mistaken for one of the actors I had written a spotlight on. Ben Foster actually. That guy who seems unable to portray any other emotion but anger in films such as 30 Days of Night and Alpha Dog. Some teenage girl added me to her msn believing I was he. She was rather disappointed.

Which brings me to yesterday's odd email.

It read:

hello you don't no me but i love the film Hannibal rising you look well fit and you are a proper good actor ..xx
everyone says that they think i would be come a killer when im older coz i keep on having dreams on killing people and talking bout killing people
lol big fans jacy xx

Obviously confused for Gaspard Ulliel, the star of Hannibal Rising, the email was some attempt at a prank, I assume and hope. Jacy is obviously not the smartest person around since you have to actually click on my name to get to my email address. Jacy also thinks of him or herself as quite the comedian. But quite why a teenager would choose to prank Gaspard Ulliel is beyond me. I can hardly imagine Jacy's friends being impressed. 'Oh you know he was that one from A Very Long Engagement.'

Or perhaps Jacy is as unhinged as the email initially suggests. Maybe he or she was using this email as a cry for help. Maybe I'll stumble upon a story detailing Jacy's vicious crimes as an adult. Maybe they'll all be modelled around the killings in Hannibal Rising. 'I tried to stop! I warned Gaspard that I would do this and he did nothing!'

Or there is the possibility that one of my friends is using this to take the piss out of me and this blog posting will prove that I was totally suckered by them. I stupidly sent an email back saying 'good luck with that' which, if we're going with the second explanation, means that I really could be to blame for Jacy's future killings.

If you're reading this Jacy then please please just do one thing. If you're going to base your entire killing career upon a movie then at least think about your choice first. No one will remember you for this.

The Fucking Credit Crunch

2008-11-02T10:45:00.007Z

Granted, I'm not known for my knowledge of the financial world. I have a bank account and a credit card and I'm pretty sure hidden somewhere in my bag of 'things I should keep but don't know what to do with' is a cheque book. Because of this, I tend not to participate in conversations revolving around money or banks or stocks and shares and all that stuff.

Which means that in the past couple of months I have found myself with very little to comment on regarding everyone's current favourite topic - the credit crunch.

No one loves a panic as much as the Great British public. No one rushes out to Asda and stocks up on bread and gas 'just in case' as much as we do. So in recent weeks, my eyes have been on a constant roll as I overhear Londoners explain all their actions away to the credit crunch.

'Oh I'm going to buy my lunch at Tesco today because of the credit crunch'

'I'd better not go out this weekend because of the credit crunch'

'Pick up that penny! I need to start saving because of the credit crunch!'

It's one of the many reasons I constantly wear earphones.

It's also meant that people, who like me know nothing about the financial sphere, have started trying to add their thoughts on the current state. 'Yeah I mean like stocks are down and yeah like banks are being sold and yeah like recession and yeah' - in other words whatever buzz words they found in today's issue of the London Lite. If you don't know what you're talking about then shut the fuck up.

Because in all truth, the credit crunch hasn't actually hit most of us directly yet. People are complaining about how poor they are but then didn't they always? The credit crunch has become the new excuse for every problem we have, whether it is actually accurate or not. If you don't have enough money this month then it's probably got more to do with spending £100 on a pair of shoes, not the selling off of a bank no one has heard of.

The dumbest connection made so far has got to be the story reported in the press of Daniel Craig blaming the credit crunch on the possible lack of a third Bond movie. If the credit crunch really was going to wipe us all away as some are speculating, I'm pretty sure we'll be a little pre-occupied to care about another James Bond film.

Personally, I'm not going to let it get me down. I have other things to worry about. For the time being, I'll continue encrusting my trainers with diamonds and nibbling on truffles because that's what I've always done right?

Underground Insanity 2

2008-11-01T13:15:00.001Z

The well-dressed homeless man

It's a given in New York that the further you travel uptown the chances are majorly increased that your subway ride will be intruded/enlightened by a homeless performer. The performance is usually the same and can rely on a number of constants:

1. Our entertainer will usually be male, unshaven and have the eyes of a hungry wolf

2. The speech will usually sound something like this 'Excuse me ladies and gentlemen. I don't mean to interrupt your journey today but I have been on the streets for 5 years and I just need something to eat tonight. If you could spare some change please'

3. There will usually be an added gimmick such as having AIDS or having one leg or at least pretending to have one leg

4. The average New Yorker will not give any money to them

I used to admire the sheer invention of some. They knew that as passengers we were hardened to this form of begging. It was common and dull to us and so they needed to differentiate themselves as much as possible. Fuck one broken leg, try two! How about some cancer as well? A dead wife perhaps? Maybe the dead wife could be dragged into scene as well?

Which brings me to one of the most memorable interchanges between homeless performer and audience member. Our performer was not the standard archetype for starters. He was healthy-looking, didn't have any track marks on his arm and worst of all, was well-dressed.

He delivered the typically impassioned speech for what was probably his fifteenth performance of the day and while he looked around for the expected apathetic response, a voice could be heard in immediate opposition.

'You're a little too well-dressed to be homeless'

It came from a young woman, clearly suspicious of our performer's motives. I couldn't help but support her (by staring and nodding on the inside) and awaited his response with eager anticipation (New Yorkers are nothing without their confrontational streak)

'What? So just because I'm homeless that means I can't be well-dressed? That I can't make an effort?'

To further sway 'our' argument, the performer was also peculiarly well-spoken. We had come to expect a certain number of characteristics from people such as himself and this expectation-crashing gentleman was unsettling to say the least.

'Well, I just think that you obviously can't need money that much if you're looking so smart'

Any chance that our performer had of scraping even a mentoe out of the audience was completely squandered. We had all silently agreed with our spokeswoman. We may not give money to the one-legged man wearing a blanket but we respect him. This intruder was testing our patience.

The conversation began to take on a more hushed tone as our performer realised he was on a losing streak.

'Its just the apartment prices in the city. I mean how are we expected to afford them?'

Cleverly picking a topic that any New Yorker loves to complain about, the woman leaned in conspiratorially.

'Tell me about it. I mean I moved from Florida and can't believe the difference in price'

And they continued to bitch as if they were two close friends taking the subway back home together. I'm sure our performer learned a valuable lesson that day. Honesty is not a valued commodity in the homeless performance. I'm sure the next day he made sure to rub some dirt into his face, to rip his jacket and to take just a few too many sips from his hip flask before stepping on the train.

Only then would we have felt safe and comfortable on our jouney home. Pitying the poor smelly homeless man with the bad style but still keeping our hands firmly in our pockets.

I'm Just Like You Gaz

2008-11-01T10:48:00.003Z

With my recent move from Chiswick to Hackney and my inability to throw anything away, I was stuck with a large amount of belongings to shift.

Gaz, a man with a van I found on the net, was my saviour. Part of me dreaded the entire rigmarole. I knew that me and Gaz would have a journey of at least 45 minutes in which we would have to make small talk. I loathe small talk. I can feel myself cringing at every inane topic I come up with. The weather, the fucking credit crunch, house prices in London...nothing of any weight or interest.

So the day started with me trying to find a car parking space for Gaz, a perfectly polite stereotype of what I imagined he would be. I found myself somewhat keen to make Gaz like me. I knew we were different but I had this overwhelming urge for him to think we were on the same level. That I was totally down to earth and not at all 'Chiswick' material.

As we were looking for a space in the van Gaz criticised Chiswick as 'mumsy' and 'dull'. Even though I loved living there and didn't share the view entirely, I immediately agreed. Gaz then moved onto how rude he found drivers. The posher ones were the rudest according to him. He recalled a story about a well-spoken woman in Kensington calling him a cunt.

I sighed and said 'I guess that's what they call women's liberation.'

In the space of mere minutes I had already become a simpering wreck. Spouting whatever shit I thought would fit the occasion. I've spent the majority of my life living with two women who would both surely be as perplexed by my comment as I was.

After my belongings were packed and the journey progressed, I nodded along to Gaz's comments on the credit crunch and the energy crisis. My knowledge of how oil is farmed is about as extensive as my knowledge of how to drive a van so my reactions were limited to 'oh yeah totally' or 'I mean yeah its ridiculous.'

I felt like I was losing Gaz.

We started on how pretentious East London was and I got into my stride more. We both agreed on how much we hated hipsters with their stupid hair and their stupid faces. We both hated the private school twats that would add a hole here and there to their expensive clothing to make themselves seem more 'real' and how they moved East to escape the trappings of their sheltered lives.

I thought to myself, see me and Gaz can be friends. We really do have a lot in common. But when we would make our statements Gaz would often start with 'When I worked on my first building site' or 'When I lived in Walthamstow' whereas mine would be 'When I was in university' or 'When I lived in New York.' I would stupidly try and make the same points as Gaz but I worried that he was grouping me with the posh idiots that pretend they're rough.

I tried to imply that by living in Harlem or by not going to private school, I really was aware of how tough life could be. Gaz appeared to buy it. Or at the very least he was humouring me. Our trust seemed set and the boundaries were breaking down.

In the final stretch we spoke of how untrustworthy certain people had been in Gaz's van before. Gaz confided in me that 'I know it sounds bad but the worst are usually the Africans.'

It was at that very point that I knew me and Gaz probably couldn't be friends. No matter how much I wanted to appear laid-back and open to Gaz's perspectives, there was no way I would start down this road.

We unpacked my boxes and said our goodbyes and I found shelter in my new home. I returned to the safety of silence. Maybe Gaz felt the same. Maybe he found me to be a hard task as well. Undoubtedly, we both settled back into our lives, Gaz returning his Nazi flag to the dashboard and me taking the f back out of every'thing'.

How I Might End Up Ruining My Best Friend's Wedding

2008-10-12T10:39:00.004+01:00

The first of my close school-friends is getting married this December and earlier this year I was asked to do a reading of my choice in the service.

Quite why I have been picked is rather inexplicable to me. I am one of the least proficient public speakers in the Western world, and when I say public speakers I don't mean speaking at a public event, I mean literally speaking in public. I also don't mean this in a charming, foppish, Hugh Grant sort of way but in an awkward, stuttering, nerdy way.

I'm useless at speaking on some days. I mix up words frequently. I'll be in Tesco, taking my change off the monosyllabic inbred behind the till and I'll end with a 'Chanks' or a 'Theers' - it's one of the many reasons I choose to use the self-service option.

Some phrases consistently prove too problematic for me so I will try my hardest to avoid using them. Film titles with more than three words usually do it. In company, I rarely pronounce Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Sex and the City without someone responding with total confusion. So I'll use the initials as if it's totally normal to. 'Oh so have you heard that they're remaking TMNT and doing a sequel to SATC?'

The thought of me trying to make it through a poem in front of an audience is challenging to say the least. The trick for me is not to rush it. I speak way too fast. But then I worry if I slow it down too much, it will sound like a sermon and people will get even more bored of me. I also worry about my nerves. This day is incredibly important to my friend and if I ruin the reading it will always be 'Oh and do you remember when Ben did that awful reading - yeah that was the low-point of the most defining day of my life.'

I still haven't even picked what I'm going to read. I'm a Philistine when it comes to poetry. But then I also don't want to pick anything anyone has ever heard of. I found a Czech poem in a dusty old book recently that was perfect, at least with it's heritage. What better than a poem by an author that no one can pronounce? But I showed it to my friends and received a slightly apathetic response.

I'm aiming for the moment in In Her Shoes when Cameron Diaz reads at her sister, Toni Collette's, wedding and invokes tears from pretty much everyone. I want it to look like a funeral when I'm done. If there's anyone not crying, I'll hurt them until their eyes naturally water.

I think perhaps I need to practice speaking like a normal human being first before I start to worry about the after-effects of my reading. Even if the poem is incredibly moving, the audience will need to actually hear the words before they have any form of reaction. My nightmare is that everyone will have this confused, 'what did he just say?' look and no one will ever mention it again.

My friends have an alarming confidence in me and my ability to pull it off last minute but then this is also counter-acted by a sly smile whenever the topic of me reading at a wedding is brought up. Maybe they're instilling me with fake bravado to ensure I don't puss out. To ensure that I will be providing them with a moment of amusement to recall at future weddings.

Or maybe it will actually be fine. Maybe I will carve out a niche as a skilled wedding speaker. Maybe this will be the first of many readings I am handed. I think I should start off by focusing on the small things first. No more self-service at Tesco. No more initials for those tough to pronounce film titles. Next time I go shopping this is what I need to say...

'Hello there, may I ask if you sell Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sex and the City? Thanks and Cheers for your help!'

Once I've done that, I'll be half-way there...

Size Doesn't Matter

2008-10-09T19:23:00.009+01:00

When I was around 4 or 5, I had my first brutal encounter with the animal kingdom.

It was a warm Summer's day and I was exploring the garden. This was a time in my life when the garden was large enough to merit the word explore (these days didn't last long). I met a wasp, a creature I wasn't familiar with, and did what any courteous, naive boy would do. I introduced myself and asked if the wasp would like to play.

I was of course immediately stung, both physically and emotionally by the wasp. The red bump on my arm, a bright reminder of the harsh refusal of my kind offer. From this moment on, I knew that I should be far less trusting.

Animals exist in the world by our side rather than the other way around. We are the ones who believe we are in the position of power due to our intelligence and quite often our size. But there seems to be a revolt occurring...

I've long thought that many pets simply put up with us rather than 'enjoy' our companionship. It's only because of their size that many of them don't kill us. Many times my cat, when offered my hand, would grab it and then hopelessly try to engulf my wrist into it's mouth. Dogs have started to work out that we're not as impossible to eat as we may seem. Remember the wave of 'Dog eats baby' stories that swept the nation a few years back?

My interest in this bizarre conspiracy theory was peaked by an intriguing story I saw today in The London Paper...

A small mouse was thrown into a cage to be duly eaten by a viper but turned the tables on it's killer. The vicious 30 minute battle left the snake dead and the mouse totally unscathed.

This shouldn't be happening.

Smaller animals are gaining in confidence at a rapid rate. I remember squirrels being generally terrified of humans. As a kid I was desperate to stroke one but they were equally desperate to get the hell away from me. Nowadays things are very different. Recently I had to side-step two of them having a fight in the middle of the park while (on a much more frightening level) a gang of them set about gutting a dog in Russia back in 2005.

The story (one of my all-time favourites) told of a pack who were starved by a 'lack of pine-cones' so teamed up and attacked a stray dog. In the article, available on the BBC website, a local told of another event where a gang of chipmunks 'terrorised' local cats.

I'm not the only one to have noticed this. A new Hollywood disaster movie, so far titled 'Animals', takes a look at what would happen if animals turned on humans. I'm sure we can expect a sexy veterinarian, probably played by Hayden Panettiere, teaming up with a rugged farmer, probably played by Zac Efron (with stubble), to solve the mystery. I can see the opening scene now, as a school-bus is set upon by a gang of bloodthirsty raccoons.

I'm currently living with two house rabbits who are alarmingly subtle in their demeanour. Unlike cats or dogs who clearly show anger or pleasure, rabbits give away nothing. They show no emotion. Behind the eyes it's impossible to see what's going on. In other words, they're the perfect terrorist.

We're safe for now (at least if we keep out of Russia anyway) but we need to be prepared. 19 years ago I was perfectly happy to negotiate. Now, I know better...

If I Had Your Job...

2008-10-08T23:50:00.004+01:00

On the bus into work the other morning, one of my weird tendencies reared it's odd little head and spent the journey niggling away at me.

For some reason, I often get overly interested in other people's jobs. I don't mean that I'm curious and desperate to know about all the ins and outs but rather I get strangely empathetic towards those that I perceive as having stressful careers. So, for example, on the bus that day, as the typically frantic mid-morning traffic piled up around us, my thoughts and prayers were with the poor beleaguered bus driver.

How will he cope with this? What if there's an accident? How will he manoeuvre the bus around those roadworks? These and many other inane questions filled my head.

So the result being that I find myself getting stressed on the behalf of the person who I think will be getting stressed at that very point. In reality this morning is surely like every other one to the driver. He could probably steam on through the rush hour in his sleep. But as every customer with a defective Oyster card boards, I find myself unable to sit back and relax.

I don't know why this happens. I wouldn't classify myself as a bleeding heart. I don't give money to charities or homeless people or watch Oxfam adverts without switching the channel but I do find myself feeling sympathy for people in situations that I would find insurmountably nerve-wracking.

I'm sure if I was around environments which contained actual, proper stress I would probably faint. Imagine shadowing a doctor or a fireman. The internal empathy would be too much. It's a nightmare of mine to be in one of those 80's 'switching bodies' comedies like Vice Versa or Like Father, Like Son. What if I suddenly woke up as the bus driver? How many people would die that day?

What does all this say about me? On the surface it might make me sound like a heartfelt, thoughtful guy but in reality all of these fears are centred around how I would react and how I would find it stressful. Not once have I ever spoken out to a stressed out barman and asked him if he's okay. I'm far too busy worrying about how I would deal with making a mojito when I've just run out of mint...

The Joys of Mum Jokes

2008-10-01T15:38:00.003+01:00

Even though I am now 24 years old and many people my age are fathering children or owning property, I still find the words 'your mum' to be hugely indispensable. There aren't many situations which you can't come out on top of when you bring someone's mother up. Even Tina Fey agrees (and she is never wrong)...

Why Do I Hate Cinnamon So Much?

2008-09-28T11:25:00.006+01:00

If someone gave me the choice between eating either a giant pile of animal shit, complete with greedy flies or flesh from the decaying corpse of a close friend of mine or a cinnamon stick, there is only one meal I would easily be able to take out of the equation.

I absolutely loathe everything about cinnamon. Even the name makes me cringe. I could imagine a stripper called cinnamon, hissing the word at her overweight audience through her luminous red lips. Having never been to a strip club, my main source of knowledge of what it would be like is from watching Showgirls. I can now of course never go to one as I don't think any stripper would dance with as much unnecessary fury as Nomi Malone.

I've never liked cinnamon. It's not one of those hatreds that has grown out of a childhood event or a bad experience - it has always been there. It's like being born blind as opposed to becoming blind at a later stage. I can't ever imagine being in a world where I liked cinnamon. Where I could casually walk past Cinnabon and not wretch at the putrid smell. Where I could easily accept a slice of apple pie without quizzing the maker as to the ingredients. Just imagine.

People are confused by my irrational feelings on cinnamon. 'Oh, but it's so sweet', is the most common retort. I feel like one of The Witches in Roald Dahl's book and also Nicolas Roeg's sick, sick movie. Whenever they see a child all they can smell is foul shit so others around them fail to see why they hate children so much. I must be smelling something wildly different from what everyone else smells. If people only knew then there would be a worldwide ban. Cinnamon would be lumped together and sunk to the bottom of the ocean and from then on all references to the substance would be made illegal in all forms of literature.

I used to be obsessed with Jelly Belly, the 'fancy' jelly beans that offered a vast myriad of 'quirky' flavours. One of the more repugnant choices was 'sizzling cinnamon'. Quite why anything sweet should also be made 'sizzling' is beyond me. The worrying thing was that the 'very cherry' flavour (one of my personal favourites) was extremely similar in colour which meant that on a number of harrowing occasions I made the horrible mistake.

I like to refer to my hatred as not just that but as a phobia or an allergy. It gives it extra weight and helps to highlight just how strongly I feel about the stuff. This isn't like me hating fat people or being late - this one really means something.

Oh and wikipedia agrees that its totally recklessly dangerous to like cinnamon as well...

'Excessive use of cinnamon bark may cause inflamed taste buds, tender gums, and mouth ulcers. Large quantities can change breathing, dilate blood vessels, and cause sleepiness, depression, or even convulsions'

So yeah you all enjoy sitting in your rooms, breathing all funny, unable to stay awake, clutching your tender gums and feeling totally down. I'll be studying my very cherry jelly beans, making sure they don't have a sizzling aroma to them.

Underground Insanity 1

2008-09-27T12:35:00.007+01:00

One of the many things I miss about living in New York is the higher quality of crazy people on the subway. In London, despite having lived here for a year now, I can barely muster up a semi-memorable tube story. But thinking back to NY, there was a treasure trove of 'characters' that populated my journeys around the city.

The 'you're my husband' woman

Now her name might sound a little misleading. She didn't make any attempt to propose or even suggest marriage to me but what she did do was act as if we were a couple, albeit very slightly. As was usual on the subway, I was listening to my iPod in an attempt to make the journey uptown go a little bit quicker. Listening to my music on the subway was also an attempt to envisage myself as a character in the opening montage of a studio comedy but anyway that's off-subject.

YMHW sat down beside me with her copy of the New York Times and gave me a quick glance up and down. 'He'll do', she must have thought. She started speaking to me so I politely took out my earphone (just one, note) and she asked if I wanted the sports section. I kindly declined and returned to my music and also the warm vanity that she actually thought of me as someone that would read the sports section.

The next disturbance began with a loud chuckle which broke through to my cosy, soundtracked world. This was then followed by a nudge and the paper was suddenly being held over my lap. This time, both earphones were displaced and YMHW said 'Oh you must read this, this is so true' as I focused in on the letters page.

It was one of those letters you might share with your spouse on the train and both laugh together as it's witty observation. It was something bland about chinese takeaway menus. I struggle to even remember why it was deemed 'funny'. I read it intently though, or at least pretended to, as I could see her checking my face, eagerly awaiting a reaction.

Anyone who knows me will know that I am awful at fake laughing. Even a fake smile feels like a betrayal to me. But she seemed so desperate for me to share in her joy for this inconsequential little letter that I turned to her and gave a knowing laugh as if to say, 'Yes, I totally agree with that and I totally find that funny.'

She seemed happy enough and I returned to my iPod. Luckily I also looked up and found it to be my stop. 'Goodbye' she said as I left the train and I waved. I then wanted to go back and reassure all of the fellow passengers that we really weren't together. That I had no idea who she was and that I really didn't find that letter about Chinese takeaway menus remotely amusing.

But I thought about her later that day. Maybe her social contact was so limited that I was her main source of conversation for the day. That depressed me, as thinking back I had only said the word 'no' to her. This was also somewhat arrogant of me. Maybe she was just being kind. Maybe I'm the weird one for being so unsettled by a stranger wanting to share a joke with me on the train.

Either way, I think she knew that long-term we wouldn't have been happy together. My fake laughs at her increasingly inane 'it's funny because it's true' letters would have started to grate and my insistence on choosing my music over her would have broken us up. But for the 20 minutes of that subway ride, we were dynamite.

I Hate That I Just Started a Blog

2008-09-26T22:56:00.001+01:00

Honest to blog, I can't believe that I've become that guy.

The self-obsessed self-confessor who uses the internet to reveal all of his dullest secrets. I always hated blogs from afar as I felt as if they were for people who deemed their uneventful lives worthy enough to shove in the faces of people they didn't know. But I haven't written anything other than my name for so long that I have started to feel guilty.

Worryingly this was the easiest solution. I admit that the idea of starting a blog has also come to me in a week where I am procrastinating at an all new level. I'm moving out of my flat so I have sensibly put aside childish tasks such as flat-hunting and packing my stuff up and decided to focus on blogging about nothing.

Its a tough call this morning. Buying masking tape or writing a rant about how much I hate text speak aka txt spk. Fuck, I'm choosing the tape. Maybe I really am growing up.