THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
Wicked City
There comes a time in every man's life when he has to stand up and be counted.
If that means showing your true colours as a lover of 80s Sunset Strip rock n roll, then so be it. Those of us who lived through it (and spent all their money on imported albums) don't call it 'hair metal' - that's a nasty buzzword invented by somebody who probably doesn't have hair anymore.
It was just rock - and It Was Everything.
Fast forward to present day and if you had told me you could make a crime show out of such a thing that didn't suck diesel all the way to the bank, I would have laughed in your face - and yet here I am loving every moment of Wicked City.
It started forever ago in the US (October) but over here, you can find it on SKY/NOWTV and it looks like this:
I'm only the pilot episode in so far, but it has a great soundtrack, 'fake' bands playing the Whiskey as a backdrop (two minutes in we have Mickey Ratt and a cameo by Stephen Pearcy - like I said, I would have laughed in your face...) and well, if you care about such things, you're already reaching for the remote to see what I'm talking about.
But... if you don't care for the hair, it's still a wonderful looking dirty crime show and that's not to be sniffed at. I should have written this show but I'm quite happy to sit back and watch the fruits of somebody else's labour.
Note: While it's not exactly True Detective or as authentic as Bosch (and if you haven't binged that, why are you still here?), it definitely good enough.
Talking of music, a decade or so later, Mark Lanegan turned up in Screaming Trees and is still making fine, fine albums today - this came out last week (I think) and in case it slipped under the radar, you should hunt it down and feel very pleased with yourself. Well, that's how I felt.
Meanwhile, a lack of posting here over the last few weeks is the fault of being busy and not watching TV as it may appear from the above. Things in pipelines, writing, writing, writing - with guitars as well as a pen - have kept me occupied in the best way possible.
More later in the week...
Be kind to each other.
The Dark Stuff
I finally went to the store and bought myself some glasses. Do you know how difficult it is to choose a pair of glasses? Half an hour later thinking I had made the right choice, I took them to the counter to do the paperwork thing for the lenses only to be told I had chosen a pair that meant I could get another pair free.
After half an hour in there already, I didn't much have the stomach for that, so I just ordered two pairs exactly the same. They will be ready for collection at the beginning of next week. Will they help me play better guitar? Doubtful. Will they spark a chain reaction in my brain that fires up great stories that will bring accolades to my door? Also doubtful, but they may sharpen the edges on things I come across in the world... like exactly how close the car in front is.
Last night, I discovered a horrible truth about myself. I have been keeping myself locked in an open prison made entirely of paper.
I dug out all of the notebooks I had ever begun projects in and laid them out on the table - there were a lot and it looked impressive. All of them contained either vague story ideas, a few chapters of a book that didn't have legs, half written songs, lists of things to do... some of them had good stuff inside too. Poems, chapters of value...
Anyway, I came to realise that somewhere inside of this head, I carry around the weight of all of these unfinished things like an albatross. Once I figured this out - and it was a bit of a lightbulb moment - I tore out all of the pages that needed typing up and threw all of the notebooks and whatever half-assed work was still in them into the box in the kitchen otherwise known as 'recycling'.
Liberated is how I feel at no longer having ghosts haunting me from the safe distance of a shelf. I have four notebooks left now. These have 'Big Work' inside of them that needs typing up but once I catch up with myself, these can go the same way and then, perhaps one notebook at a time is a good idea. I could always go digital, but that's not really me at all.
A man who wears glasses should always be seen to be writing with a pen.
Before I forget, I discovered the talents of Peter Callesen earlier today. On the off chance that you might be feeling pleased with yourself about how talented you might be, here's some of his work:
...which certainly put me in my place. Man, I love paper cuts.
Hmm. All of those words above, I wrote yesterday and meant to post it up this morning. The day kind of took over though and by the time I've gotten around to pressing the Go Button, my glasses arrived. That's pretty good in a world that's mostly not so good at doing what it says it's going to do. I'm impressed.
I'll take a picture sooner or later but I most definitely need at least half a shave before I attempt such folly. I have to tell you though... being able to see the edges on the world around you is quite the revelation. Who knew!
With what's left of the day, I'm hitting the 12 string thing for an hour or two and then I'm going to bury myself in this - which I swear I only glanced at earlier to see what it was like and lost an hour. If you're lagging behind under the covers with a torch at night, this has turned out to be a great crime series:
THE END OF THE AFFAIR
I have finally finished The Novel (one of them anyway). It's taken me something like four years in all... I thought I had finished it a couple of years back and let maybe a dozen people read that version of it because, well, feedback is important when you're working in isolation. Nobody was sick, died, did a United Airlines on me or sent it back, so I took that as a good sign that at least it didn't royally suck.
The best advice I ever saw about writing a book is this: when you think you've finished it, throw it in a drawer and forget about it for six months before you read it again. This I have done. Twice. I guarantee, the distance between you and that 'final' piece of work will dictate how good your book is. If you read a lot, you'll see the holes in it easily... and those are holes you really don't want an agent or a publisher to see that's for sure.
Which brings me to the point of this particular post. The book now needs to be out in the world doing what books do... and to do that properly means being represented by an agent and on that front I discovered something else equally as valuable as that previous advice.
Some agents will ask for a few paragraphs in synopsis, some will ask for a full page... but some will ask for a detailed synopsis: chapter by chapter. So requested one of the agents I would love to work with. Thus, I sat down to work through the book and do this very thing. If you've ever done this, maybe you found the same as I have:
Chapter Sixteen: Jesus. Hardly anything happens in this chapter. There isn't anything to actually write about it that I want to tell anybody... that I can tell anybody...
Then you have two choices. Kill it or rewrite it. If there are some things that are relevant but most of it is dull, I guess you could include the important information in the previous chapter or work it in somewhere else but I found exactly this scenario with of my two chapters. I threw them in the bin without a second thought and honestly, it didn't make any difference to the story. I'm not even sure why I wrote them in the first place. There was some good material in there but it didn't add anything to the big picture.
Just because there's chocolate in the cupboard doesn't mean you have to include it in the cake - particularly if there are stronger flavours already in there.
Being an editor of a magazine, I do this a lot. Regardless of personal opinion or who wrote it or what the writer says about it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. The only thing that matters - ever - is the person who bought your book/magazine. That's what the words are for... somebody else, otherwise you may as well keep a personal journal under your mattress and be happy with that.
And as odd as it may seem, what you leave out is sometimes way more important than what you put in. I've read novels (and ditched them) that are drowning in paragraphs and chapters that are so dense it takes all the enjoyment out of reading.
I guess at this point, we could all sit here and say 'but you've never published a book before' and you would kind of be right. My books here all went through this process anyway. I choose to publish them myself because there's a limited audience for afternoons I spent with bands and/or hard-boiled travel writing, but I didn't learn nothing at all from 14 years of editing magazines.
Just a few observations that might be useful if you're in a similar boat.
I've never been through this process before. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. I suspect being a literary agent is a lot like being Catherine Zeta Jones lost in an all male sports college. Everybody wants to ask you out just because they are male.
Note to self: Don't ever write a book about analogies.
Soul Guide
I have to say that in all my years of being drenched in music, I don't think I've ever seen anything as breathtaking as this, which is The Tea Party with Psychopomp.
Don't forget to turn up the volume before you press play and I'm not talking a little bit either. You need to go all the way.
I've seen it a few times now and repeated watching just pounds me even further into the ground. If the clip doesn't show up in your feed or the mailout, the link is here.
The day I get tired of hearing this is the day it's all over.
I added a road trip to Lublin in Poland today. I figured it was time I went somewhere I had never heard of to write the next book in my 'hard boiled travel writing' series. I have no idea what I'll find there but I'm hoping it will set a precedent for whatever may come next. It looks like a beautiful place so that's a good enough start for me.
Almost Human - A Prototype
It looks as though I have been doing not much around here but playing guitar lately, but things are perhaps not quite as they appear. A few days back I figured out I had almost enough stories curated to release another book. I wanted this collection to be bigger than The Day The Sky Fell Down (don't ask me why, probably some weird mental thing about 'getting somewhere') so it's taken longer than anticipated to pull it off and so far, everything is virgin territory to the world. None of the stories inside have been seen anywhere... in fact, some of them, I had even forgotten I had written.
Thus: I pulled together a rough/first proof to start going through it and here it is - at least in theory. This cover will likely go through some tweaks before I'm happy with it but essentially, that's what it will look like and if you happen to be curious as to why it's orange, that would be because I really like the way Kim Gordon's Girl In A Band looks on my shelf.
If you're a writer type and are wondering why this 'proof' looks like a book and not a huge bunch of pages churned out by Hewlett Packard, it's because I can. It's what I do. Much better to have something that looks like a book/finished product where I can better judge paragraph lengths and whether some of the stories need moving around for balance and you don't get that with a stack of paper.
I could be labelled a control freak for doing this but I would prefer to call it 'getting it right' - when you're out there by yourself - looking for readers to love what you do and hopefully spread the word - it's the least you can expect of yourself.
When The Music's Over
My new Ibanez arrived yesterday but I couldn't catch a break to spend some time with it so I checked it had arrived in one piece and put the lid back on until today... where we spent a couple of hours getting to know each other a little better.
I've been playing the 12 string for so long, I forgot how over-sized it was compared to a regular guitar. I think we're going to have fun together when we've ironed out some creases.
The idea of putting Deadbirds together (keep up) won't leave me alone. I know I don't want to do the 'full blown thing' - I can't go down that road again - but I've been wandering through some great old unplugged video footage this week and the fire for something like that excites me. Four or five guys/girls with a bunch of guitars having some unplugged fun? I could handle that in the extreme.
Pending.
The writing has taken something of a back-seat because of this new love affair but that's OK. The ideas have been building up and sometime in the last few days, I did this:
Trying to figure out a way to promote your work in a world in which people like to look but can't stop for a few seconds to read more than three words is tough, so I figured I had best start getting creative.
To wrap up, I feel a need to drop this into the run too. This is beautiful work from Léa Nahon and deserves more than a mention. You can find her here.
The Return Of The Analogue Man
This week has shaped up to be packed to the rafters . Two magazines sent to print, two birthdays celebrated, one guitar purchased, quest to save bears improved (more on that in a couple of days), the only two things I haven't done that were on the mental list are wash the car and get two years cut off my hair - both of which can wait.
Without going off the deep end here about the new six string addition to the family thats due to arrive tomorrow...
I changed my mind about the colour to go for. It's very possible that a man can own too many black things
...I realise that this year has so far been about a lot of analogue love. I've fallen back into playing guitar (a lot) which has led to writing (songs - but not as much as I would like), spending a lot less time in front of a screen (which sadly includes posting here - file under collateral damage) and generally feeling as though I'm putting my life back together when I hadn't even noticed that it had come (slightly) undone.
I think there are books out there that call noticing these things 'mindfulness' - but honestly, if this happens to you, it's just plain careless.
Not that I've got time to add anything else to the list of things to get up, I thought I might add something to the list anyway.
I've never heard of Lomo before - if I had, I might have bought somebody one for their aforementioned birthday. Now, I'm thinking it might be a great tool for putting together a book of some kind... maybe one of the poetry book ideas I've got lurking at the back of my head. Pictured here is the Lomo Belair X 6-12 City Slicker:
They have a huge range of cameras and what's appealing about this - as opposed to shooting on your phone - is no matter how lo-fi it is, you've still only got a limited number of shots to choose from, meaning you need to think about what you're doing and I like that a lot.
On the other hand, they also have a great range in instant cameras - this Lomo’Instant Bora Bora delivers credit card sized photographs on the spot which could also be fun:
I think it's going to be the Belair. My photographer friends would laugh me out of the ballpark if they read this but I don't want to be Fin Costello. I just want to capture a few moments in a different way.
And now I must write something before I go to bed because are the rules of the house - no matter how short.
Interlude: Something About Gods...
One of the finest books ever written surely? And if you happen to have mislaid your signed first edition of American Gods from back in the day... well, I guess this looks very much like a worthy replacement:
There's going to be a lot of press about this as a TV show when it lands but even if it's the finest TV ever made, it still won't eclipse the novel. If you're in the market for such a thing of beauty you can get yourself a copy right here.
Everything Neil Gaiman touches may turn to gold but everything Dave McKean works on was gold before it even left his head.
The Man In The Ruined Castle
Holy Moly. My Small Person will be 16 next week. I probably shouldn't call her that anymore but if you have kids yourself, you'll know that they will always be small people whether they be 16 or 46... though the very idea of her being 46 strikes fear into my heart. That will make me what I'd call an 'old person'. I'd like to think that I'll be finished with my laser tattoo removal by then (because no matter what anybody tells you, it hurts like a bitch) but most of all, I'd like to think I had achieved something of value in this life and that everybody I currently need to watch out for has it all figured out so I can revert to being irresponsible and hit the road now and again in some peculiar glam rock variation on Seasick Steve while funding the whole adventure with money from writing.
Pretty simple if you ask me.
Anyway - small people: over at the Big Bear Rescue donation page today, a tenner got dropped in the kitty... by an eight year old girl called Hope. I've met her a couple of times at family orientated tattoo shows around the country through her Mum, Sarah - she's very funny and for an eight year old, has a heart of gold along with a huge passion for art. I'm not sure I would have thrown £10 of my own cash into a project to save anything at eight, twenty-eight or even thirty-eight. This seemingly small, but really quite huge gesture, restored my faith in the whole project because frankly, if I can inspire a little girl who has better things to spend her pocket money on enough to dig into her own pocket, then it's entirely possible I can reach anybody.
I seem to have bitten off just about as much as I could ever chew on the reading front.
Because I'm writing, I decided not to read at all but I missed it, so I figured I would read something out of the ordinary and went down the rabbit hole into Russian lit with a Bulgakov novel which has been lying around on the shelf here for a while now.
But I also favour a good audiobook in the car or on a train, so I'm also letting Murakami's 1Q84 wash over me... except 'wash over me' is something that Murakami doesn't do - it's more like jumping into his fire and being consumed from the inside out.
I have to say though, neither of them are a struggle. I didn't know much about Bulgakov but with a rummage, I found that he began writing The Master in 1928 and it was finally published by his widow in 1966 - twenty-six years after his death... which provides hope for anybody that may be struggling even though you may never get to see your magnum opus in action.
...and now, back to work.
Should Have Known Better
Apologies to those of you like to check in natively at my site and blog... I took it back to its original design this weekend (broke it for a little while) and I see that a lot of the images are now running at 100mph in Full Size. I could go back and edit them but that's not a great use of time. I will post as much as possible and try and bury them in the depths of yesterday.
I still have a few bits and pieces to fix up here but it all works. I'm going reintroduce the calendar I used to have here too. I find it useful to know where I should be even if you don't - which is another way of saying, I finally got around to figuring out where I'm going this year, when and what for - although the little things I like to bolt on along the way are still up in the air for the most part. I'm working on raising the bar this year but I gotta tell you, with kids and dogs to take care of, it's tough getting out of the house sometimes.
This last few weeks has also seen me pick up the guitar more often than not and get quite serious about it. I didn't know quite how much I had missed it until we started spending a lot of time together and now I've got a serious hunger on for a new machine... namely this Ibanez:
I'll report back on what this beast is capable of later because there's very little online about it - though with a little research from my friend Mr Simmons, there may well be a couple of others in the running.
Having said that, old habits die really hard and I already have some ideas on where to go, along with a potential name for the project which will either be Deadbirds or Phantom Lullaby. I just can't help myself you know...
PLAN B FROM OUTER SPACE
It's the last day of the Big Bear Rescue for February and I have to say, it's pretty frustrating selling 'a few' and after the expenses of printing and mailing, pocketing what amounts to small change. That's not to say I'm not grateful to all of the people who have bought a shirt along the way so far - and it's not even saying that I think everybody in the world should want one. In fact, if I were to say anything negative about the whole thing, it would kind of cheapen it and I don't want to do that because I still believe in what I'm doing with it.
But there has to be a better way because when just 2% of people who visit the page actually make a purchase, I'm doing something wrong. There has to be a better way because when you ask the very organisation you're doing it alongside of to give you the briefest of mentions on social media as they have the hotline to the audience that cares the most - and they don't - I'm doing something wrong.
Seems to me that for all the fireworks in the sky over social media and all the Big Talk about 'everything being in your control thanks to the internet' - real media (radio, television and magazines) still rule.
I didn't want to take another break from the project but I might have to put March on the sidelines to figure it out. I feel guilty over the time the artists have put in that there's not more comeback from it. I've got guilt over the sanctuary I promised I'd support - but most of all, I'm beginning to wonder if my time wouldn't be better spent handing over cash out of my wages and lying around watching TV in the evening instead of trying to save a tiny corner of the world.
Somewhere inside, I know I'm just not reaching the right people but you get where I'm coming from right? People get famous in 2017 for being filmed watching TV and that's what I'm up against.
But the truth is, being like everybody is the same as being nobody and that road never was for me.
Time for Plan B - because this is still unacceptable.
Meanwhile, on the writing front, aside from Neil Gaiman, I seem to be the only person in the entire universe who is still keeping a blog alive. I saw in the last week that Nikki Sixx had even given up his .com domain in favour of solely using instagram and he's not the only one out there. People of the world have so much information to consume, they don't have time to read anything properly let alone get involved on a grand scale with anything even if they wanted to, which mostly, they don't.
It's tempting to hit the instagram route. Twitter is dying on its knees - I lost 15 followers in the 15 minutes I chose to write about my own funeral... go figure, but I think I might be able to do some damage on instagram if I made that commitment.
Food for thought huh. I need to get some solid ground under my wheels if I'm going to crack this writing lark the way I want to.
Which means Plan B on that front also.
Every which way I turn, there are Plan B's lying all over the floor just waiting to be picked up and inspected.
Sometimes, when you listen to the world, it doesn't have to shout at you. Let's get it on... soon.
Broken
Dear blog fans/people who arrived here by accident:
I have nothing to blog about right now. I've put myself on a schedule of something called 'Actual Work' which involves umm... writing mostly. This is where a blog falls flat on its face. When you don't go out of the house other than to get more coffee or occasionally go to the gym so you don't seize up entirely, there's not a whole lot to say. I haven't even picked up a book since the beginning of the month.
I could post about the dog walks - there are plenty of those - but there's very little to report in this rainy season in which we are the only stupid people who still go out three times a day.
Thus, I shall proactively - though temporarily - retract myself from my own timeline because knowing it's here not being done is like wondering you let the gas on when you go out.
I shall return in a couple of weeks with updates, some news, travel plans for the year and with the wind behind me, I should have gotten very close to the end of what I'm up to.
That said, I'll also add this: yesterday I decided to close my flickr account where - because they kindly handed the whole world 1TB of free storage space - I opted to stash over 13,000 images. It took all day for a bit of software to download everything but now it is done and that's one less thing I belong to/worry about.
Mostly, I knew what was in there but there were a few surprises (not those kind of surprises) and a pic of something I had completely forgotten about. About eight years ago, I wrote a rough draft of a pulp-style detective comic-book story called Broken and a guy - whose name I can't remember but I thought was pretty good with a pencil - said he was up for illustrating it. Many, many, many months later, this one image found its way to my inbox so I mocked it up to see if it had legs.
...and even though it did have legs, that was where that story ended. Shame.
Now my interest is piqued, I must dig back in the Box of Words and see if it's still around...
Time To Play The Game... Almost
I always know when things are going well because time I usually spend writing things for here is swallowed up by writing things that will appear somewhere else. To reveal very little - I'm a third of the way through the first draft of novel that didn't exist two months ago. The idea came fully formed and wouldn't go away - not that I wanted it to.
Running, running, running... not fallen over yet and neither am I running with scissors. Just a fountain pen that's proving to be quite the work-horse. Here's a thing that I've learned over the last few weeks: when you buy a sexy notebook to work in, such as a Moleskine type-thing, you will want to write sexy things in it neatly and make it into the sort of notebook that looks like del Toro created magical wonders in there. Who knows, maybe one day an important library might want to archive it because you rocked so hard.
But what you really need to do to get rolling when you're nowhere but standing on a cliff with your face to the wind, is buy a negasonic truck-load of yellow legal pads on which to hammer your words out without worrying about messing up your sexy Moleskine... and when you are done and have typed all your words up, you can burn them in the garden because The Dead need stories to relax at night too.
This is what I have learned to be my truth - and if you try it out, I think you might find it's yours as well.
Talking of The Dead needing stories too, I got wind of this coming down the line in the next few months. John Connolly's work is such a massive buzz for me, its one of the rare occasions I take two days off work to 'do it'. This one will be no exception - and so far, the man has never let me down.
The Independent quote on the cover does not lie, but like I say every year, if you're going to do this, you have to start at the beginning (which is Every Dead Thing).
I got nothing else to add right now. Busy doncha know.
File Under 'Fucking Wonderful'
Writing is going great this week (thanks for asking) but I won't set the Jinx Monster loose by saying anything else on that. It's enough to know that my head is together and work is being produced at a rate that pleases my soul. Is it coincidental that my iPhone has been on holiday to Apple HQ for some TLC and I have been without a pocket sized comms device for a little while? Perhaps.
It came back this morning. I synced it up, checked in on a few things and then put it out of the way but I guess there will come a day soon when we will have a showdown - and I kinda like the way I'm feeling about having written a lot. Maybe I should just learn to discipline myself.
Anyway, this evening, as a 'treat' for doing what I'm supposed to be doing and having kicked the hell out of the thing I wanted to get done today, I thought I'd watch a movie to celebrate. Something with monsters perhaps... but I get sidetracked when I found a film I meant to watch a couple of years back, never did and subsequently forgot all about.
It's called The End Of The Tour which is, more or less, a conversation between two writers: David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace - and yeah, that's where the title comes from - it really is fucking wonderful - even the poster is fucking wonderful:
It's on Netflix if you're of a mind to check it out.
A few weeks back, while I was working on some Big Bear Rescue things, I found this great advert:
I've never heard of this campaign before but sometime soon, I'll dig a little further and see what they like to do. Fucking wonderful advert regardless.
To wrap up... I also found this pic of the handwritten lyrics to Soundgarden's The Day I Tried To Live which I'm going to repost here just because it's cool as hell and if nothing else, goes to prove you don't need anything beyond a pencil to write a fucking wonderful song...
So in a nutshell, this post is nothing but some semi-interesting stuff I found when I wasn't doing what I should have been doing. In Writer-Land, we call that 'taking a break'.
And then I shaved.
28 Days Of Time Travel
February - which appears to have arrived a little faster than expected - was the month I had assigned to temporarily abandon all other projects and get my act together to finish/rewrite the Doctor Who script I started far too long ago and 'put to one side'. At the start of the year it seemed like a good time to go back to it... and then that Capaldi guy handed in his notice earlier this week, so either a) it's the worst time ever with Mr Moffat leaving as well or b) it's the best time ever because we'll be looking at a clean(ish) sheet.
Coming back to it after far too long a break, I was pleased to find - unfinished as it was - the damn thing more than stood up for itself. It would be dumb in the extreme to write any detail of it here but regardless of something or nothing happening to it, if it gets finished and is as good as I think it is, that's going right there in the win column because there's nothing like a bit of positivity to keep the writing spirits afloat.
I haven't found many albums in recent weeks that fired me up too much. In fact it's been something of a audio graveyard out there - until yesterday when I came across All These Countless Nights from Deaf Havana. If you're looking for some an album that's written properly (i.e. doesn't run out of steam by track four) spend a few hours in their company - it's been time well spent around here.
More later... I have to confess, I am missing my iPhone (which is due back at the weekend) when it comes to posting here. I didn't realise quite how much I used it for keeping things updated.
Back Into The Deep
As promised a month or so back, I took some time to rework the Big Bear Rescue project for maximum effect. Thanks to Everpress for getting with the programme and making it easier for me to do just that. So...
The third Big Bear Rescue shirt is now alive and kicking and you can buy it right here. It was created by my most excellent friend Federico Amaterasu and it warms my heart to see this one out in the world. Please buy thousands of them just because it's that wonderful... I'll take care of the rest. It looks like this and for maximum impact down the line, is available for women and men in white only... it suits the design and gives the best kickback in the financials - and that's what its all about. If you want a red one, wash it with your pants. If you want a blue one, wash it with different colour pants. Simple.
A fair old whack of time ago, some of you might remember I adopted a Hammerhead Shark - I still 'have' it, though in the real world, it's taken a back seat to the bears when it comes to figuring stuff out. Today, I found this great story about Hammerhead DNA and wound healing which includes the quote:
“The immune system of sharks and rays has been battle-tested and evolved over hundreds of millions of years”
Which gives me licence to post a pic of one of my favourite creatures of the deep:
Posting a picture of a shark is always a good way to start the week don't you think? Maybe soon - once I'm into a good routine with the bears - I'll investigate how to get back on track with some ocean conservation.
For now... Le Fin.
Darkness Falls
For those of you who are with me on the merits of Scandinavian/Nordic Noir, this is excellent:
Currently screening on NOWTV - and presumably SKY somewhere - it's about politics and energy supplies, Europe and Russia, friends who are enemies and probably most frightening of all, how smartphones have allowed people that normally wouldn't be allowed to own a fish to make themselves known to the world.
Standing between Norway and an avalanche of destruction is the man seen on the cover of the DVD here. So I guess it's kind of like an intelligent 24... only slower, better thought out and with subtitles. It also comes from the mind of Jo Nesbo and if you know Harry Hole, you know what you're in for.
Killer TV from every angle.
This has been a public service announcement on behalf of those bored with the status quo.
I have a show to fire up over the weekend, but as soon as I'm back on dry land, the new Big Bear Rescue shirt goes up for sale and I'm really looking forward to this one. So much so, that I might buy two this time around. After a year of this, bear shirts is the only damn thing I'll have in the drawer.
Just a little reminder that this is what it's all about. It's not a good look for a bear.
Slight rewind... I hadn't finished on the subject of Noir.
New read this week is the latest instalment of Ragnar Jonasson's Dark Iceland series, Rupture. This is one deceptive series. It never seems as though anything has happened as you drive through the pages - then you come to an abrupt halt at the end only to find everything has happened. I like the guy very much...
Thus ends the propaganda machine for all things Nordic. Now I must write.
(It's a shame Welsh-Noir doesn't have quite the same ring about it. I can't remember if the BBC threw that description at Hinterland when it came out, but if they did, they should have thought much harder about it.)
The Ghost Of My Own Funeral
I bumped into a friend heading out to a funeral this morning.
"Gotta dig the out suit, huh?"
"No, I’m going like this…"
And he opened his jacket to show me he was wearing a t-shirt with the cover of Friday I’m In Love by The Cure splashed across it.
"He wanted everybody at the funeral to be wearing a band t-shirt..."
I’ve never thought about my own funeral before now. I’m hoping it’s at least fifty years away and/or I get to see the end of Game of Thrones, but this struck me as being the finest idea I’ve ever heard.
I would stand there, a majestic, towering spirit dressed in black, behind my cardboard box of a coffin looking out at you all - or those of you who weren't busy washing what hair you have left anyway. I always liked the idea of a beautiful mahogany coffin but cardboard is good. I would rather my kids went on holiday for a few grand than set fire to it behind a curtain. There will be black Sharpie pens on a table just to the right. If you wish, you can write me a message on the box like we all did on our shirts when we left school.
Inside the box with me are some things I might need. Hector's lead and harness. That pair of broken binoculars from an earlier story because they'll only get thrown away if I leave them behind. Yeah. That's probably all. I ain't no Tutankhamun.
I look out across at the people gathered here today. Some have come to celebrate my life and some have come just to make sure I’m dead and won’t write truthful things about them anymore.
Most people have turned up in a band t-shirt as requested. Even my mother, who still thinks I should have gotten a hair cut, even now. I look out and I see who it is that knows me well, who knows me fleetingly and who doesn’t know me at all. There will be a few people who think it’s a ridiculous idea and have turned up in suits. These people are not welcome here. The suit is fine, but the rules are… you must be wearing a band t-shirt - not a shirt and tie.
There will dozens of Kiss t-shirts. These are my people. This is my crowd. They know me very well… or at least those who turn up in a t-shirt in which Kiss are wearing make-up do. There will also be dozens of Twisted Sister shirts. I will smile to myself and raise a salute to the person that went out of their way to find a Love Is For Suckers shirt. There will be dozens of Alice Cooper shirts too with Alice’s face from the cover of From The Inside gracing the room.
This is the Holy Trinity of Rock n Roll. Thanks for keeping me company on lonely days, lonely nights and long car drives. (That's a good song title. You can have that.)
But there will be some who will dig out the deep cuts. Amongst this sea of titanic giants will be the odd anomaly. A Warrior Soul shirt. A Marionette shirt. A Mother Love Bone shirt. A Zodiac Mindwarp shirt. An Adam and the Ants shirt. These will be the people who have known me the longest - who know me inside out and back to front. Who know that the box is empty. That the thing in the box was just a visible indicator that let you know I was in the room when we wanted to share a coffee or head outside for a cigarette.
The music plays and I kick back in a swivel chair. The kind with wheels on it so I can get some speed up as I spin.
Everybody sits down and we play a tune to get started. This is my last chance to talk to my people - my crowd - and I've been permanently disabled inside a box! Jesus, that’s a lot of pressure. Four songs to say everything I might have forgotten to say when I had a mouth and a jaw to work it? Do I bring on the tears or the laughter?
The people walk in to Psycho Circus - a later track by Kiss but the lyrics transpose onto my funeral well and it has a great beat.
Somebody says a few words and then everybody stands for You've Got A Friend by Carole King.
Somebody else says some more words and everybody stands again for Spaceball Ricochet by T.Rex.
At the back, somebody whispers to the person sitting next to them that there sure is a lot of sitting and standing at funerals. That's the kind of thing I would say to bring the world back into focus.
For the grand finale, I hand the mic over to my hero, Paul Stanley. He was the guy that made the bad days worth living for more years than were probably necessary. I pluck something from his first solo album and there’s nothing more fitting here than Goodbye.
This is my swan song to the world. I’ll see everybody soon enough I guess.
Outside, Ravens sit in a line along a telephone wire and do not say a word...
Wait! I’m still fucking here damn it!
This is how a life ends. Don't forget to live your life while you still have a choice.
Be cool to each other. xxx
Footnote: I am not sick or dying so far as I know. This track listing is likely to change if I have better ideas sometime in the next er... forty years will be good enough thanks.
Footnote 2: But if I do happen to fall from grace and you're stuck for ideas, it's good enough.
Monsters Of Summer
“Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
This coming Monday, my iPhone needs to be shipped back for battery replacement - if you have an iPhone 6s, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, even though they told me it could take up to two weeks, I know it will probably be more like two days but I'm determined to exist without it or a temporary replacement. I'm almost looking forward to it. I'll miss the music part of it when I'm out for sure but will I miss the maps/SatNav when I make a road trip next weekend? Will I miss having a camera on me all the time? I'm sure I made it through most of my life without one. Will I miss the ease of which I can check my email on a whim? Maybe, but I shouldn't...
There's a lot of questions that could be asked of myself here but I'm going to quickly figure out a new status quo and when the phone comes back, keep as much of that status quo going as time moves along. I don't like being a slave to anything but the slavery a phone brings you is stealthy in the extreme.
We will see...
In other findings at the end the week here, I have a feeling this could be my movie of the summer...
Or maybe this:
And now, I must write. My work is done for the week, I have an empty weekend ahead of me and want to get rolling. By the time I hand my phone to a courier, things need to be off the desk again and onto somebody else's. Game on.