I'm a perfectionist and perfect is a skinned knee.

Short while after Christmas I got called King of Blogs. Way to go. They gave Cuba Gooding Jr. an Academy Award. Look at him now.

I'd like to think that when my blog was good it was better than Jerry Maguire, but the truth is now it's bad it's not even as good as Chill Factor.

Thanks Davey.

Thanks a bunch.


So what's going on today? Snow Dogs or Boyz in the Hood?

On my wardrobe door I got a couple of pictures of Christina Aguilera. The decorations in my house aren't particularly sophisticated. It's mostly just blu-tacked postcards and things torn out of other things, though I bought a glass frame for my awesome Use Your Illusion 2 poster - that looks pretty special at least. My room is the least impressive; some movie posters I've had since 2001, four girly calendars, a bunch of action figures and a sort of Superman flag thing. Here and there you might see a doodle of mine plopped on the wall, or a photo of my dog. When I moved here my mum sent me an article from the Evening Standard about my new address - the headline is kinda clunky, but it reads "Nearly 15,000 stabbings, robberies, muggings and even murders...most linked to 300 yards where £1m of crack cocaine is dealt each month. Is this the most dangerous street in Britain?" - I have this stuck up behind my door.

Anyway. My room reflects my adolescent sensibilities. So on my wardrobe door are these pictures of Christina Aguilera. And I kind of accept them like everything else in my room. The poster for Vertigo I see every morning ('Nel capolavoro di Alfred Hitchcock'), the soap 'X' I drew on my mirror at eye-level, the post-it note with my monthly budget mapped out, glued up next to a picture of Lake Geneva. I've stopped thinking about what they represent. They are the back of my hand.

But I didn't want that to happen with my Christina pictures. I was smart and put my Robert Downey Jr. poster on the inside, that way I don't always see it (I tore the other door off the wardrobe in a tantrum, so there's only one door to talk about, and I rarely even open the Downey Jr. side as all my day-to-day stuff is at the open end. ) So I see it every so often and go 'Hey, Robery Downey Jr. Nice.' But I've stopped seeing my Christina pictures in the way that 'hearing' things isn't the same as 'listening' to things.

One picture is from a Maxim shoot she did a few years back. The one in the swimming pool, with the inflatable ring, the tiny pants and that wickedly mischeivious expression. This particular photo blew my mind when I first saw it. Christmas and Birthdays rolled into one. Now I see it when I pick up my shoes and my tongue doesn't come rolling out my head like a Tex Avery cartoon. My captain doesn't get restless. And this is wrong.

So now we get to today's class - Why don't we always like stuff the same as when we liked it the first time?

It's no secret my favourite band in the world ever is Faith No More. It's as constant as the North Star. It's an immovable object. They came at the right time in my life and offered the perfect product. Angel Dust will always be the best album I've ever heard, and Midlife Crisis will always be the greatest song in the wo-o-orld. I'm confident nothing will change that. Ok, it is possible something might yet beat them, but the odds are so slim. They've had something like a fifteen year head start, unchallenged.

But, Midlife Crisis doesn't make the hairs stand up on my neck anymore. I know it every inch of it. I can play around with the EQ when I listen to it to try and uncover new riches, but it's never going to sound new again. When I first heard it it wasn't even like a song. It was more like something happening to me.

(Is that what those hipster cats meant?)

I knew of Faith No More already from a metal compilation I taped from Orpington Library. Run DMC/Aerosmith's Walk This Way and FNM's Epic were one after the other on the A-side and I would rewind and play just that bit on car journeys to Darrick Wood swimming pool or the dentist. When Angel Dust came around, I heard a snippet of Midlife Crisis, released as a single, on Top of the Pops. I was lucky that my library were quick to stock the album and I borrowed the thing and got it home and listened to track 3 with my headphones on.

I'm not going to convert anyone to worship it like I do. I can talk some way as to why I love it. It's unconventional - the drum intro, the weird beat, the clarinet sounding effect from the guitar (an e-bow maybe?), the gruff verses - and it's ugly and dark. But it's also anthemic. It's pop; the structure, the breakdown, the catchy chorus. But beyond that there's a magic I hear, that might not be the case for everyone and magic is hard to articulate. The same musical moment in someone else's life might have been filled with something else that I don't get. Like anything by Oasis.

Here's my song anyway.




It's a radio edit so it cuts out some of the intro, and a section in the middle, but you get the idea.

That video made me miss my beard. Give me a minute, will you?



It's ok. I'm ok now.

Why is it we can get conditioned like this? My libido is probably wrecked because of the vast numbers of Playboys and FHM/Maxims/Loadeds I ate from 15 to 25. I've seen thousands of pages of models in a state of undress. My babe geiger-counter is fucked, or so my friend David tells me. I'm so used to seeing these things, that the wonder has sort of stopped. But why? Why didn't I enjoy Playboy as much in 2002 as I did in 1997? Why doesn't Midlife Crisis blow my fucking mind each time I hear it? Why doesn't my Christina picture stay new? What's the function of having this joy diminish? Or any joy? People get restless with their perfect girlfriends, or move on to harder drugs, or get sick and tired of eating pizza every fucking day. It's a nuisance. There's no evolutionary need for me not to feel all the emotions I did when the song/picture/movie was first made known to me, so why can't I keep them? You take away the comfort of things I keep around me for comfort. If I find I'm watching Wrath of Khan and I tune out because I've seen it so often and all of a sudden Spock is dead and I'm not moved...then I feel totally cheated. I want to always like these things. GIVE THEM BACK. (It's only happened once, the not getting choked up about Spock. But that's one times too many. 'I am...and always shall be....your friend.')

But on the other hand there's those things that grow on you. The things you didn't even like to begin with. Maybe this is the compromise.

"You can't enjoy sex as much as you did when you were in your twenties, sorry. BUT...remember how you didn't like peanuts as a kid? Well now you love 'em! Here have Snickers."

Ace.

On my friend Matthew Crosby's MySpace page it's set to play Samson by Regina Spektor. It'd get as far as the 'You are my sweetest dow...' before I'd shut the thing up. For weeks that was all I could stand to hear of it. Twee little soft piano music, gentle voice and unusual imagery. Cutesy sentiment and heartfelft playing. I don't want that. Switch it off, shut it down. Why can't it sound like this?



But then the wretched girl grew on me, didn't she? I listen to the whole thing, now. Thought I might give the album a try, if I could convince myself it wasn't another soft and old thing to do. I need to balance it against something. Maybe get Phil Anselmo to punch me in the mouth as I buy it. That'd be hardcore.



Gah! I should fucking hate it. Why don't I hate it?

I didn't like Teri Hatcher either, when I first started watching The New Adventures of Superman. Something was amiss with her eyes. But time went on. I started to feel different. Don't know why.

Sometimes it's easier to explain. You just start to 'get' things. Movies are always the best example, the second time you see it you know what it's about and it's less to do with your expectations and more about what it can achieve. When I first saw Withnail and I, I was taken aback. This is meant to be a great comedy? How's that, then?

But in an almost paradoxical fashion the more times I watch it, the funnier it gets. When I watched it with a guy at University and his two red-haired girlfriends it was maybe the seventh time I'd seen it. Half-way through I had a six-pack muscle definition from doubling over, and they had begun to talk amongst themselves about fisting or whatever it is they got up to.

Jokes aren't a one-off thing, not always. Especially slapstick. There are dozens of gags I know are coming in Simpson repeats or films I still watch and they don't stop being funny. There used to be a sketch show called Glam Metal Detectives on BBC2 about 15 years ago. In it was a segment called Colin Corleone, about a guy who lived on an estate who thought he was a mob boss. The title sequence for this had one bit, one tiny bit, where a kid throws a shoe off a balcony at his head. I'd have to be revived after the shoe bit. I fucking loved the shoe-hit-head bit. The rest of the show was utter crud. But guy gets hit on head with shoe...man. Gets hit on head with shoe. Weird how I can get an increase in pleasure from these things, but a diminished pleasure from my other loves. Surely all jokes die once you know what is going to happen. Why do some jokes get better?

Why is this? ANSWER ME.


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So I might have work.
Here's an unusual thing. When I was killing time before the interview I didn't get the job for, I sat in a Caffe Nero and read for a while. Also took in the Italian girl behind the counter. Slender, expressive eyes, a big, but attractive nose. On the back of her T-shirt it said 'Trainee Barista'. I thought about spending your first few days on a job, and how this girl was doing ok, that I might drop some change in the pot whan I left. Then I remembered I'd spent a day as a Trainee Barista, boiling milk, taking orders. I didn't get the job because I wasn't prepared to shout out what people ordered - "I'll have a Grande Latte, please." "GRANDE LATTE!" "Uh, and a Panatone." "PANATONE!" - and that wasn't in keeping with their vision, or whatever. (This girl didn't shout anything, so perhaps it's no longer policy.) I thought about where I'd worked that day, which franchise. Yeah, it was a Caffe Nero. Ho shit, it was this very one. I'd come here before to try out for a job and didn't get it. I wonder what kind of omen that is going to be?

Well, a strange one. Like I said I didn't get the job I went for, but in the rejection email it was mentioned that there was another vacancy they assumed I wasn't interested in. This one was closer to work I'd done before so I offered to come in for a 3rd interview. This went well and tomorrow I do a four day trial to see if I'm happy with it and they are happy with me and then they'll make me an offer. So provided I don't fuck up, I'll start on a grand more than the original vacancy I went for and two grand more than the salary I enjoyed before Christmas. Fancy that?

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Made some adjustments to the links up there. Give you all a chance to acquaint yourselves with the network of blogs and other things that spiral out from this point. It's evident to me I am the most egotistical blog of them all. The Dead Fish make up my two closest buddies, David N (who used to be referred to in these pages as The Dark Knight Detective, but I guess he's less bothered about anonymity than I thought) with We Can Rebuild it For You, Wholseale, or something. And Capuchin and his Vaguely Simian. Both of these feature mostly objective reviews of things, with the odd fleck of personal warmth. None of the angst and self-obsession you find here.

Matthew Crosby, the friend I've known the longest, and his we(blog) Stand-Up Geek is far more subjective than those two, but is often short and anecdotal. A reflection of the man himself, except he isn't often short. You don't have to trudge through his blog like you do mine.

Daveysomethingfunny and his Research is the Key to Success is a tribute act to this blog. So again, not as egomaniacal as mine. But funny and warm nonetheless.

Daily Spam from The Fatman gets updated about as often as James Ellroy puts out a novel. And when it does happen it's usually just a clip from YouTube and nothing else. Not that it really matters. I'm currently crossing space at near-lightspeed to punch him in the balls. I imagine the shock when I finally connect will cause him to combust. You might hear it.

Outside of my friends' blogs there are links to Chris's Invincible Superblog which makes me laugh until my poop comes out like silly string, and from there you can go to Cracked.com which is also way more funny than swamp of me you are currently stuck in.

And, not forgetting my comic at www.skullcopica.co.uk

I've been working on something for it, but it's also an experiment and it might not succeed. I wanted to put it up today, but it's been more difficult than I anticipated. You'll maybe see it soon, but I might abandon it altogether if I feel it detracts from the main show. It will go up here, and on my MySpace and on my comic.

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My best-friend/flatmate/ex-girlfriend/consigliere kindly pointed out to me this week that I haven't been romantically linked to anyone new since the year 2000. I'm quite moo about this. She's right. Everyone I met either was that year or before. Nobody new has come along since. This sucks.