Feedback Friday :: Taking Control

bulk :: 18st 2 (every cloud has a silver lining – stomach lining in this case but it all counts)
cigarettes :: 0
alcohol units :: 12
runs :: 2 (by runs I mean me lumbering through the park of course; not ‘the runs’)
the runs :: 500
stars out of ten for Control :: 1
stars out of ten for Juno :: 10
Colleen McLoughlin’s IQ :: 4
Get Well Soon cards received :: 2 (awww)

Well, I’m pretty much all better now. I’m still a little flimsy in the stool department but the running and the retching are over, thank God. Thank you for all of your kind wishes and warm words. Ange did come over last night, after work, and she made me leak and sweet potato soup. Then Keith came over with a copy of Juno, which made my heart bleed. ‘You’re just a big old softy, aren’t you?’ said Ange, but I couldn’t answer because I was blubbing into a cushion. I recommend it. Not blubbing into a cushion, but… actually yes, damn it, I recommend that too. Ange and Keith had never met before. They got on very well. When they left, they left together. Ange gave Keith a lift home. It gave me a peculiar and not particularly pleasant feeling.

One thing to have come out of the last few days which is particularly pleasant however, is the weight loss. I’ve lost much more than I would have, had it not been for the constant expulsion of stuff. And although I feel weak now, and still with the occasional twinge, I do feel somewhat purged. Not exactly born again, but certainly wide awake. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that the norovirus has actually done me some good. For a while there it was like being eaten alive from the inside out by a double-headed anorexic poltergeist, but at the end of it, I feel positively lithe.

Ooh, something else that made me feel good through making me feel bad - Control. I watched it yesterday afternoon. (I was malingering a little by yesterday, and needed to treat myself.) Ian Curtis. What an incredible bore. Never have I watched a man drift toward suicide so slowly. ‘Do it, Ian! For God’s sake, man! If you want to bore yourself to death, that’s fine, but please, please don’t take me with you.’ And I’m sure he couldn’t have been so horribly unsympathetic in real life. I bet that in real life, he had a sense of humour. I bet there was something in him to make you care for him, something to make you melt a little just to see him suffer. But no. In the film, nothing. Just a flat, stale coward of a man, with one halfway decent song. Horrible film. While I was watching it I actually had to walk away and be sick at least three times.

‘It all looked so vividly real to my fortysomething eye that, frankly, I thought I'd died and gone to Q-magazine-reading 50-quid bloke heaven. And when John Cooper Clarke came on playing himself, a support act to Joy Division when they were called Warsaw, I pretty well levitated out of my seat with sheer happiness, and had to be tied back down with guy-ropes. What a fantastic film this is… a film about England, about music, about loneliness and love; there is melancholy in it, but also a roar of energy. I thought it might depress me. Instead I left the cinema walking on air.'

- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

‘This loveless farrago made me puke up my guts and shit myself. And not in a good way. Six thumbs down…’

- Bête de Jour, Hell's Bells and Elbows

And don’t even get me started on Colleen. I caught the last half hour of Colleen’s Real Women last night. Never was a woman so unintentionally antagonising as Colleen McLoughlin. Or maybe it is intentional. You can see she has a mean streak. Either way, she riles me. It’s not just her tiny brain and glans-grater of an accent either. It’s more that she’s just so unfit to be on TV. She can’t do any of the things that the job requires. She can’t think on her feet, she’s unpleasant on the eye (and yes, every single TV presenter should be physically adorable) and most importantly, she’s got no discernable personality. Let alone talent. She’s not even an average civilian. She’s like Max Gogarty. She’s there because of who she knows. TV should be about genuinely interesting people, and Colleen McLoughlin is anything but genuinely interesting. And it really gets my goat. I could crush a grape, I really could. I could pulverise a plum.

Speaking of small, sweet furry things, no word back from Grace as yet, but I did get another card from Sally. Wishing me good health.

God, I feel spicy.

It’s a horrible, vile day outside, but I think I need to venture into the air today. I’ll have to spend the weekend catching up with work, so for now I think I might drive somewhere nice, eat something hearty and hale, and prepare myself mentally for the challenges ahead. I don’t know what, exactly, but there are always challenges ahead. So I’ll just do some fairly vague mental preparation. Then I might watch This is England again. Now there’s a film.

Here's wishing a good weekend to all and sundry.

Max Gogarty :: The Ugly Side of Travelling

I’ve just spent the last couple of hours or so reading about Max Gogarty’s brief stint over at Comment Is Free, the Guardian’s attempt to gather readers and cachet from blogging and bloggers. It’s a life-affirming read on the whole. Not Comment Is Free, but the Max Gogarty drama.

Here’s the first post.

Here’s the official response.

In both cases, it’s the responses of the people – the comments, which of course are free - that really lift the soul. And it’s not about spite and meanness, and it’s certainly not about ‘threat and reputation savaging’ as the apologist, travel editor Andy Pietrasik suggests. Rather, it’s about people standing up and shaking their fists at such obvious mediocrity and such bald-faced nepotism. It all really pongs.

Here it is in a minuscule shell of some description: hack’s kid lands fairly plum role at the Guardian online; writes first instalment in such a way - i.e. very, very badly - as to immediately rub his readers up entirely the wrong way; readers annihilate him in their hundreds; editor and father turn up in sequel, only to make matters much worse.

According to his father (or at least someone having a damned splendid stab at pretending to be his father, which is certainly good enough for me), Max’s Guardian debut will have no offspring of its own. No tiny descendants for whom it will have to warm lavatory seats and scratch old school backs. And that, in my opinion, is a damn shame, because this has been fun. It really brought me out of my post-Valentine malaise.

I think they should at least let him have one final opportunity to show them what he’s made of. On second thoughts, I'll do it for him. I’ve got nothing else on... no exotic destinations to rush off to, no dusky dysentery or runny maidens to keep me busy. So what the hell. I’ll give it a shot. I imagine stirring music, as Max, in a moment’s respite in some Thai hostelry or other, scribbles frantically on a scrap of parchment he brought with him from Rymans…

This is my dad, Peter Gogarty, a self-made media mogul. He's quite a guy. This is Mr Pietrasik. He's gorgeous. He's one Guardian editor who knows how to take care of my dad. By the way, my name is Max. I take advantage of both of them, which ain't easy, ‘cause when they met, it was murder. Or attempted murder at least. My poor career. But I’ll be alright, I’m sure. I’m well in. A couple of months here in Thailand, couple more in India, I’ll get back in the summer, brown as a berry and ripped to the ribs, my synapses still throbbing from cheap and powerful hashish – and WHAM! I’ll spring back like a springbok, unharmed and horny for media, right into the lap of success. Lap my shitting arse! I’ll get right in the gusset of success, nestling in the very clitoral hood of public adoration, exactly where I belong. I’ve already got my novel deal in place. Simon Trewin is a tennis buddy of father’s. They love tennis, but they like to keep it real.

Shame Daddy had to be such a bleating pussy really. If only he’d butched out the storm and persuaded Uncle Andy to keep me on, kept me writing every week, me telling my edgy tales of teen excess, being all bawdy and lusty, burning the candelabra at both ends, just like in Skins! Guardian readership would have shot up. Like a bloody rocket. But I think that’s what they were afraid of. I attract success. Me in my skinny jeans with that awful supercilious tone - like a freshly oiled and fluffed Bruiser de Cadenet - which is how I imagine people rightly imagine I speak when they read my delicious words… words like ‘kinda’, ‘partying’, ‘bullshit’ and 'shitting'. Plebs love that shit and Rusbridger knows I’d have his job by August. He’s such an arse-diver. At least that’s what Daddy says, but I’m probably not supposed to say that either.

If only that bastard Alex Garland hadn’t written The Beach already. I could’ve written that. If I had any talent. Actually, he was somebody’s son too, wasn’t he? Pffft. A mere cartoonist. Makes sense actually. Like father, like son. But I bet Nicholas Garland doesn’t have his own a PR company. I bet he isn’t uniquely positioned to deliver maximum exposure. Like my dad. I bet he doesn’t know that knowing the right people is key. Like my dad. But by the looks of him, neither is he a brash, self-centred, jumped-up little money freak. Like my dad was saying just the other day: ‘I’m uniquely positioned for maximum exposure. Just write any old shit. As long as it’s got an exotic location, I can get some shit-hot young director to spunk a promising career on it. No worries. Lovely jubbly.’

This is why I rather enjoy the free comments I get over here. Because I’m so strong that I actually learn from them. I grow more powerful with every fresh barrage of your abuse. And I thank you for it. I feel good. Actually, I feel wonderful. My pummelling at your hands has rejuvenated me. I don’t know what it is about Thailand. Always manages to pummel me into a state of bliss. That or the opium’s kicking in…

I’d better stop there actually. I leave my critics with the single, really quite profound thought that while tales of Thai sticks and stoners may break your cohones, your words can never hurt me. You know why? Cause I got loadsaPR. Loads of it.

Of course the egg will be on all of our cynical chops when it turns out that we’re being played for prime chumps, but not quite in the way we think we are. That’s right, Max Gogarty is actually a brilliant writer, a nouveau nepotistic techno-Dickens and delicious little weaver of games. It’s all a scam, a writing showcase, all of it: from his seemingly gauche, foot-chompingly awful prose, to every single last comment – all written by him, crafted and honed to satirical perfection. The boy is a genius.

But probably not. More likely the big nobs at the Guardian haven’t got a clue what they’re doing.

Can't wait for his play.