Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Eternal Reek of Damp Wool


I'm not sure what it says about my teenage years, but much of them was spent idolising a cartoon sheep. Nestling in between adverts for bottom brackets and reviews of the latest knobbly tyres, the Mint Sauce strip in MBUK was a voice of reason amongst the unintelligible clamour of pish that constituted the rest of the magazine.

I've been trying to think of a way to describe why I should care about a comic strip featuring a mountain biking ungulate, but I love it far too much to write anything approaching sensible about it. So all I can say is have a look at this, this and this.

And if you can still see through the tears of joy then just look at the whole damn archive of them.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

The Rain Drops

A gawdy chinese take-away at the end of a field

If you look on this here internet for reviews of Radiohead gigs, you'll find about 8 billion gushing testimonials to both the quality of the music and their showmanship. And with good reason too, scientific experiments have shown that they are totally fucking amazing.

So instead of recounting how berrrilliant their gig in Glasgow Green the other night was (although I will mention that they played the theme tune for the best climbing movie of all time) I thought I'd have a jolly good moan about some of the downsides of the experience. they are thus:

- Massive Crowds - Being a bit of a misanthrope, any large gathering of humans is likely to rub me up the wrong way, but when I actually have to interact with the bastards I often feel soiled. Why they all seem oblivious to this and still continue to be IN MY WAY I'll never know, but I suspect it's something to do with me not being at the centre of the universe.

- Tall People - When I'm a famous rock star I'm going to make every fucker over 5'9" stand at the back like the giant freak that they are.

- Glasgow rain - It was wetter than an otter's pocket.

- Pickpockets - Some unspeakable urchin filched my ticket from my trouser pocket forcing me to patronise the evil black market in surplus tickets. May a mighty pox cripple the urchin for the rest of its days (and may I remember not to wonder around with gig tickets hanging out of my pocket like a twat).

- The Drunk - Instead of turning to face the rest of the crowd to shout loudly about how this is your favourite song, how about shutting the fuck up and listening to the band we've all paid the best part of fifty quid to see?

- The Security - Firstly, they wouldn't let people back out of the gate so that they could go and get one of the sorely-needed ponchos for sale outside. And then they tried to throw out a guy who'd had the audacity to smuggle in ONE CAN OF BEER. He didn't even protest when they confiscated it from him, but they still tried to oust him. Luckily the rest of the crowd were having none of it, and I witnessed some of the upside of mob justice, as they all told the security nazi to get all the way to fuck.

Anyway, it was still brilliant. Go and see them if you can.