Promises, Promises

"My baby's pretty as a car crash, subtle as a splinter. Yeah, my baby's smooth as sandpaper, warm just like the winter."

I've fulfilled last week's fiction promise with a new story, The Reassuring Weight Of Closure, now playing at Flashing In The Gutters. It's not erotica, but it's not for the kids, either. Go read, it's the first new thing I've written in a while.

And just so this isn't the shortest post ever, I thought I might share some of the music that's currently keeping me sane. Some of it's recent, some of it's not. Any track that's a link can be listened to/downloaded.

1. Good Weekend - Art Brut
2. Sabotage - Beastie Boys
3. Suffer Well - Depeche Mode
4. Wooden Nickels - Eels
5. Lolita - Elefant
6. Saturday - Go Betty Go
7. Are You Gonna Be My Girl? - Jet
8. Club Foot - Kasabian
9. London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines - Panic! At The Disco
10. Little Razorblade - The Pink Spiders
11. Modern Swinger - The Pink Spiders
12. Ghostwriter - RJD2
13. Much Against Everyone's Advice - Soulwax
14. Paranoia Cha-Cha-Cha - The Soviettes
15. MakeDamnSure - Taking Back Sunday
16. Nowhere - Therapy
17. Anti - The Vandals

New Rule

"Everybody join in the magnificence. Yes, everything is absolutely making sense. Every time you turn around your soul gets sold to the highest bidder."

In the absence of Bill Maher, I feel it's important that - at this particular juncture - somebody proposes a New Rule. It is as follows.

New Rule: The next baby born to a celebrity couple must be named Dave. Or Sarah. Or Jack. Anything really, so long as it's a name that you, annoying celebrity parents, would be happy to have written on your birth certificate. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about the Gwavins and Brangelinas of this world naming their offspring the way they might name an exotic kitten they'd just had delivered. If you love your kids, for God's sake give them a fighting chance. Imagine trying to get through life with the name Shiloh. Christ, imagine trying to get through the first day of school with the name Shiloh. You may as well paint a target on that kid's forehead and line her up alongside such ludicrously-named rugrats as Apple, Moses, Jet, Speck, Heavenly Hirrani, Fifi Trixibelle, Rumer, Sailor, Salome, Denim, and - of course - Kingston, the kind of name you want to punch in the face.

Now, I'm not one of these people that gets all gooey over children. I hate the little fuckers. But they're people, not fucking accessories. The only way those names aren't going to come back and haunt those poor little bastards is if they're raised in a home-schooled, insta-celebrity bubble, thereby ensuring that they become inadequate mutants with a future that will so clearly require lengthy spells of rehab, you may as well start making the payments now.

Celebrities and this whole celebrity-worshipping culture we're living in have gone so far now that it's beyond any kind of humour. I have, however, long since come to terms with the fact that society is composed largely of humourless teenagers who care only for fairytales, conspiracies, and their idiot idols. I accept this. But if I'm going to have to live in a world where every screen and every magazine cover is a grinning, dead-eyed vision of all that is foul and forsaken, can I at least get a show of hands for stopping these whores from breeding?

Won't you think of the children?

NFADR In Cute Cat Pictures Scandal

"Just for the record, the weather today is slightly sarcastic with a good chance of (a) indifference or, (b) disinterest in what the critics say."

Trying To Be Not-Fat

"Have you ever been struck by lightning? It hurts."

Saturday is weigh-in day. I mean, I weigh myself every morning anyway, but Saturday is the one that counts. Those Monday to Friday moments on the scales are my way of giving myself a little pat on the back and a rub of the shoulders. "Go get 'em, champ."

The past three Saturdays have been a bitch, mainly because I seemed to have hit a plateau as far as the regime I've been following was concerned. It fluctuated a pound or two, but by and large, I've been stuck on 208lbs since the beginning of the month. How it works is you come back from your Monday workout, step onto the scales, and you're around 211. Not bad. You eat what you like on Saturdays, stay as far as possible from the gym on Sundays. But you can drop 3lbs in two days, leaving you a further three to play with. By Wednesday, you're a healthy 208. But then something happens. Maybe it's a motivation thing, but on Thursday, you step onto the scales and you're some bullshit weight like 207.7. Friday, you're 207.9. You half-arse it on Saturday because you always half-arse it on Saturday, and by the time you hit the scales, you know you're going to be somewhere in the late 207s, and you are.

Three weeks of that left me in a state approaching despair. Despite Jennifer's insistence that I was disappearing, not being able to see the weight coming off both in the mirror and on the scales stole a large amount of my motivation. There were still awesome moments like doing up my jeans or suddenly realising that I could wear a certain t-shirt, but the momentum I had for the first couple of months of my attempt to lose however many pounds it takes was falling away.

This week, I cranked my exercise regime up a rather large notch and discovered that the weight lost and the hours put in at the gym have left me considerably fitter than I'd realised. It's not easy running for half an hour instead of hiking with the occasional bit of jogging, and it's certainly not easy keeping the exercise bike going for the same amount of time on a setting one-and-a-half times more difficult than the one I started with. But then back in March, those original settings used to leave me wanting to crawl away and die.

Forgive me for sounding like a twat for a moment, but if you don't feel the exercise you're doing, it probably isn't doing a lot for you.

I was an inspiring 205lbs today. 205 is the official "I've lost twenty pounds, motherfuckers!" weight, and I fully expect to maintain that until Saturday, even if I slack off until then (which is possible). For the record, that'll be twenty pounds, just over two inches off my waist, and four notches on my belt.

Honestly, you don't realise how fat you are until you start trying to be not-fat.

The Pop Idol Syndrome

"I bet that you look good on the dance floor. I don't know if you're looking for romance or what, don't know what you're looking for. Well, I bet that you look good on the dance floor, dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984."

The Arctic Monkeys are a mildly amusing novelty act. No more, no less. They are not the saviours of British rock, they do not write working class poetry, and they should not be compared to the likes of The Jam, Blur, or even The Smiths. I loathe Morrissey and the whole Smiths phenomenon, but they clearly captured something that spoke to a lot of people in a time when such a thing was still possible. Now? It's all marketing exercises. The Arctic Monkeys are so clearly and obviously the creation of somebody far smarter than the four gobshites who make up the band that it's almost embarrassing to have to sit and watch transparent hype translate into sales. Here's the formula: Take one ready-to-explode scene revival, add media hype, made-to-measure indie swagger, and an audience so gullible they'd listen to three fat blokes having a farting contest if you told them it was the next big thing, stir, and serve to a nation so starved of good music that a twat shouting about robots to less chords than Sid Vicious ever learned can find himself doing that shouting on the CD holding the record for the largest first week sales of a debut album in UK history.

"In terms of sheer impact," said a spokesdrone for HMV, "we haven't seen anything quite like this since The Beatles."

Come now, there have been hundreds of overhyped, overrated pop bands since The Beatles (Sorry, Jammie). That's not what's important here. What's important is that The Arctic Monkeys somehow rode that wave higher and further than anybody has in a long time. Why is that?

I like to think of it as the Pop Idol syndrome. The music industry, like anybody else in the business of selling us culture, runs in cycles. Fashion is all important. Now, I'd argue that we're not currently in that part of the cycle that celebrates all that is plastic, squeaky, and immaculately-coiffed. Britney married a bum and squeezed out a psychiatrist's dream baby, Christina's making a jazz album, Justin's acting, and the the rest of them have vanished the way they usually do when we all get a wee bit cynical and fed up. They will, of course, be back with new names and new faces when we've had enough of being cynical and want fat singalong choruses and stupid dancing back in our lives.

I think finding out it's all a big marketing scam, that the boy bands and girl bands and teen idols are tools big corporations use to sell you shit you'll hardly use and don't need is getting a bit like finding out there's no Santa. Being the bearer of such knowledge no longer means you are possessed with searing insight. No, all it means now is that you watch TV and use the internet. In theory, this should promote a healthy level of cynicism as regards what we watch/listen to/surf, yet for a dizzying variety of reasons, it doesn't.

As I pointed out a long time before American Dreamz (Jesus Christ, is there actually anything out there with a worse title?) bombed, more people vote for the contestants on shows like Pop Idol than in most elections. These shows are, of course, an offshoot of the explosion in reality TV, a phenomenon that is (sadly) proving to have some serious legs. It makes sense, when you think about it. We've become cynical enough that we'll no longer put up with plastic primadonnas being forced down our throats, and this has instilled in us a sort of cultural affinity with underdogs. Thus the original heroes of reality TV, back when the boom was just beginning, were the antithesis of the pop stars we were just getting tired of at the time. They were not especially beautiful or glamorous or mysterious. They were not owned by faceless record and film companies. No, we watched them on TV every day. We saw their triumphs and their tragedies, their laughter and their tears. They were ours.

Fast forward a few years and of course that formula has been watered down and bastardised about a million times over. It's still popular, though, and it's still immensely marketable. Popular shows like Lost owe a lot to the reality TV model, and some of the most intelligent and perceptive people I know are absolutely riveted by the current series of American Idol. Everyody has a favourite, the one they want to win. Everybody adopts a contestant. And once you have an investment, no matter how trivial, you've been hooked. Simon Cowell is, as we speak, reeling you in.

But that adoption aspect intrigues me and reminds me of my teenage years, specifically that point where my tastes crossed over from pop into alternative. One of the great things about being into the independent scene is that you can discover new acts your friends have never heard. Catch them early enough (as I did bands like Radiohead and Ash), and you can watch their careers blossom from those first demos and EPs and gigs in dingy basement clubs all the way to platinum selling albums and worldwide success. The sense of adoption is the same, to the point where fame for the 'adopted' act can become a source of resentment for the fan. I can still clearly remember a girl at school being absolutely horrified that I owned both Suede and Manic Street Preachers cassettes.

"I can't believe people like you are getting into them," she whined. People like me, in this case, being everybody that wasn't her. I know this because I have since had occasion to feel the same way. I think a lot of people have. If you've ever had occasion to say, "It's not their first album," in an exasperated tone of voice, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Which brings me nicely back to The Arctic Monkeys, the DIY revival, and the internet revolution. The Monkeys, it's safe to say, would not have happened without the rapid and continued growth in cable internet use. They would not have happened without the advent of MP3 and the plummeting prices of the technology used to record and upload digital music files. They would not have happened if a buzz had never sprung up around a scene that has already dissolved due to oversaturation. And they sure as fuck wouldn't have happened without a massive assist from the media and particularly a British music press far more concerned with turning profits than promoting quality music (shame on you, NME). Above and beyond all that, though, They would not have happened without the sense of ownership that comes with feeling you're one of the first to discover band x, to nurture them and watch them grow like some kind of hairy northern pokemon with dubious personal hygiene.

In the end, it's not viva la revolution and let's bring down the record companies, It's just the same marketing tool that sells Pop Idol, the celebrity magazines, and all those daytime chat shows. Strip away all the marketing bullshit and the hype, and The Arctic Monkeys are a mildly amusing novelty act. No more, no less.

A little perspective, please.

Oh

"I think you should strangle it quickly before it starts trying to make friends with us."

Posts unfinished, promises unkept, photo unaltered. Words soon.

Book Review: Saturday's Child - Ray Banks

"Your mind will find another, and that's where the days have gone, and all you can hear is a stereo somewhere playing a pig of a song."

Before we go any further, you should know that I'm not, generally speaking, a big fan of crime fiction. James Lee Burke? Sure. Anyone that knows me will tell you I'll read anything with the kind of loping, lyrical prose that Burke trades in. Elmore Leonard? Naturally. I'm more confused by people who don't enjoy a writer with that kind of gift for character and dialogue. But these are exceptions where a reader like me is concerned, popular talents that transcend the genre. When I look at crime fiction from my ignorant point of view, I see an awful lot of mediocre writers churning out formulaic dross I wouldn't dream of wasting my time on. I'm well aware that this is almost certainly not the case. My point is that I don't have the necessary love of the genre to go digging for diamonds in a pile of shit.

And so to noir. Brit-noir, if you want to whip out the labels and get specific. We could, I'm sure, initiate an endless discussion as to what noir is and what it entails, but for the purposes of this review, 'Brit-noir' is the black coffee to the traditional British crime novel's milky tea, and a genre defined by cynical characters, bleak settings, and all manner of unpleasantness. It doesn't deal in heroes and happy endings, instead inhabiting a world where morals come in shades of grey and the best choice is sometimes the lesser of two evils.

Which brings us nicely to Cal Innes, the protagonist of Saturday's Child. Innes is an ex-con with a murky past working as a self-styled PI in some of the more sordid parts of Manchester. When local gangster 'Uncle' Morris Tiernan asks Innes to track down an errant casino employee on the run with a hefty chunk of money, he has little choice but to take the job. The trail leads to Newcastle, where Cal learns some unpleasant truths about the Tiernans when he comes into conflict with Morris's pill-popping psycho of a son, Mo. With a case wrapped in moral dilemmas to resolve, everyone involved apparently after his blood, and more than enough problems of his own, Innes has his hands full, and a date with some unpleasant truths about himself never seems far away.

Let's not fuck around here, Saturday's Child is one bleak bastard of a novel. If you're looking for redemption, resolution, and a world where you're ultimately sure the sun's going to come up in the morning, there's not much here for you. From first to last, this particular chapter of the Cal Innes story is relentlessly downbeat, the darkness punctuated only by some neatly timed bursts of black humour. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and Banks never makes a big deal out of it. Cal's voice and view are dark, yes, but never to the point of parody. There's a dry wit and a matter-of-fact boredom with it all at work in Cal's part of the narrative, and that's enough, I think, to carry the less cynical reader through.

The addition of the semi-coherent, borderline psychotic Mo as a second narrator is a bold step on the author's part, and one I wasn't sure he was going to get away with in the early going. But, while there are still a few moments where I felt Mo was making synaptic leaps he probably shouldn't have been capable of making, and at least one rather suave metaphor I couldn't begin to imagine the lad coming up with, it does work. This is mostly because, in narrative terms, the inside of Mo's head is an almost comically obscene and violent counterpoint to Cal's more considered thoughts. That said, Banks does eventually elicit a degree of pity from the reader for the younger Tiernan, and you never feel that his viewpoint is unnecessary or contrived.

The same can be said for Saturday's Child as a whole. There's a good bit more meat on this than there was on Banks's debut, The Big Blind, but very little in the way of fat. The cover blurb from Russel McLean describes it as 'dirty, hard and fast', and that's about as accurate a description as you're going to find.

Criticisms? Just a couple. Firstly, I've already noted that Banks is most comfortable when he's in the well-worn shoes of Callum Innes. With that in mind, it's worth pointing out that the women in this man's world come off sketchy and underwritten. Even the flimsiest of the male characters comes complete with motive, mood, and colour. The ladies are not so fortunate. Whether some of that is deliberate (Banks is, at times, clearly poking fun at the noir cliche) isn't for me to say, but it's certainly noticeable. Secondly, it does all get a bit much at times. We've come far enough for you to be sure I'm going to tell you that Saturday's Child is an entertaining and well-written book, but there are times when you find yourself really wishing that Banks would ease up on Innes for just a minute and give him a chance to win one. It seems that everything the protagonist does, no matter how noble his intention, gets turned around on the poor fucker. I'm not the kind of reader who thinks everything is clear cut and the hero should be a hero and always win, but Innes never seems to catch a break. Ever. In those terms, I think this may well be the harshest thing I've read in years.

But lastly, and perhaps most importantly for a word-junkie like me, you should read this book for the wonderful things Banks does with prose and dialect. Whether it's playing off hard-boiled PI cliches or climbing inside the drug-addled heads of scally scum looking for trouble, Saturday's Child is never more than a few paragraphs from a sentence or a turn of phrase that'll leave you smiling, grimacing, or just watching in awe as Banks paints graphic pictures with so few words it's occasionally startling. It isn't always graceful - sometimes it's downright brutal - but it's clearly a labour of love and, perhaps most importantly, no little talent.

As I said at the start, I don't know a whole hell of a lot about the crime genre, and I'm at a loss when it comes to any in-depth discussion of what constitutes noir. I do know a thing or two about writing, though, and I do know that Saturday's Child now comes with an official NFADR recommendation for anybody that thinks they're hard enough. Anyone who doesn't is free to go and sip their milky tea over a Ruth Rendell. Wankers.

Tales Of Woe

"Oh, now I do recall, we were just getting to the part where the shock sets in and the stomach acid finds a new way to make you get sick. I hope you didn't expect that you'd get all of the attention."

Some of you may be wondering where the hell I've been. Some of you may not give a fuck. Either way, I come bearing tales of woe. Okay, not exactly. I was too lazy to post all last week, then Jenn and I had our Saturday off with the usual accompanying avalanche of alcohol and fast food. I overdid it slightly and woke up on Sunday morning with a mighty urge to paint the bathroom with projectile vomit.

So I did.

Needless to say, I spent the best part of Sunday in bed, silently lamenting the fact that - since I quit drinking six days out of seven - my tolerance for the hard stuff has plummeted. Six months and twenty pounds ago I could have consumed all the booze I had on Saturday in one hit and then staggered back to the bar for more. But I am smaller now, and less of an alcoholic. I'd do well to remember this.

So I stumbled through Sunday and woke up this morning feeling much better. I got up, did some writing and some reading, and then, to my horror, began to feel sick again. This is now the second consecutive day I've spent a large portion of in bed.

Still, at least I'm not as much of a pussy as I thought. I hardly ever puke from alcohol consumption (those readers who have been in my presence during a JD inspired barfing session are hereby banned from the comments box).

There are posts coming this week. I'm planning on finishing up a monologue on the DIY music scene and why the internet is sucking the world's creativity into its maw of mediocrity. It's called Quality Not Quantity, Or How The Arctic Monkeys Broke My Train Set. I'll also be reviewing Saturday's Child, the latest novel from my link-buddy Mr. Raymond Banks. So if you like your book reviews sprinkled with a hint of awkwardness and a pinch of barely-suppressed jealous rage, check back here tomorrow, or possibly Wednesday. And hey, it's been way too long since this writer threw up anything that wasn't yesterday's whiskey-soaked pizza crusts, so maybe, maybe you'll get a little fiction out of me before the week is through.

Oh, and a little bird told me there were interesting things going over at The Curve Ball Conspiracy. Dunno what, though. That fucker never updates.