bernans is a legend

Bernans is a legend. Most of you don't know Bernans, but he's a dear old friend up here in Manchester.

Monday night and several of us are in 5th Avenue, my long-standing favourite Manchester club. Bernans, as is not at all unusual for him, eyes up a - shall we say - significantly plump girl. He goes over, has a bit of a talk, bit of a dance, things are going pretty well.

The end of the night arrives, and things are going well enough for them both to be heading back to her flat together.

They get a taxi there, and walk up to her front door. She opens, turns around, and says: "You're Bernans aren't you?"
"...yeah"
"You shagged me in first year and never called"

And she slams the door in his face.

As I said, Bernans is a legend.

I want the new Killers Album

Having not really cared up until now, I am now really looking forward to the new Killers album. The reason? In Planet Sound's 8/10 review today, it says "it's too hysterical to be concerned with notions of cool", which just about sounds like the blueprint for my ideal album. I'll have a painful, probably illegal, love for them if this is true.



Hot Fuss was an odd album, The first half as good as music can get, the second average and painfully dull. To be honest if this one has six more classic indie-rock tunes I'll be more than happy. And it sounds like it might have.





Who's On Orange?


Housekeeping time. Orange, my begrudged choice of mobile network, has launched some random feature called Magic Numbers, where I can call one other Orange customer of my choosing for an hour at a time for only 15p. For ever like. I would very much like to do this, but have no idea who's on Orange. So please do let me know if you are. I like to keep in touch and that.

Read or die in horrific plane crash tomorrow

OMG! You've opened this Blog post!! That means that you must email it on to 10 people you know or else you will have bad luck for the next 5 years!

Not really. Please God don't forward this on to anybody. Unless you hate them or something daft like that. And if you do hate them, you can probably think of better vengeance then via forwarded emails. Maybe try slapping them round the face with a kipper? Or doing a dirt in their shoes?

Anyway I digress. Everybody gets them don't they? Chain emails and Myspace bulletins saying you should forward them on so your crush will ask you out, or so you can avoid a plane crashing on your head tomorrow or something.



Or maybe ones that threaten you'll have your Hotmail/Myspace account deleted if you don't repost the message? Or maybe those ones that like to pull on your heartstrings a little? "Forward on this email to 30 people to help save the life of Little Sarah, a 15 year old from Richmond, Virginia that got tragically hit in a car crash whilst 8 months pregnant with her boyfriends baby who is now dead after being killed in the Iraq War 2 years ago. Please forward this on as it will somehow help to pay the $30,000 needed to pay for her operation"



My current favourite is this Myspace bulletin. I've had it 5 or 6 times to date...



For those who are on my friend list...I totally have to agree with all of you who say people are getting fake In here. So I gave in and let's see who really reposts this. This is a test to see who's paying attention. It serves to eliminate people who are desperately trying to add "friends" like its a popularity contest in High School. This is a test to see how many people in my friends list actually pay attention to me. Copy and repost in your own bulletin. Lets see who the true friends are and I think I know who you are.. Repost this if you are a friend.. if you don't, you get deleted.. Don't reply... just copy and paste this in a new bulletin as BYE MYSPACE!!



Now it may be too early to tell, but I suspect that this could actually be the worst Myspace Bulletin of all time.



I mean that's really going to upset the typical 12 year old girl that posts that isn't it? She sends out this bulletin to 60 odd people saying do this to prove you're my friend or you'll get deleted, and she only gets 4 people who are bothered/stupid enough to actually do it. Not going to do wonders for the daft eijit's confidence is it? She's going to have to get started on some serious friend-deleting tonight.



Now of course the real genius/stupidity (I can't decide which it is) behind this bulletin is that it gets you to repost the bulletin as it's method of response. Thus everybody thinks you're being a complaining spanner when you post it, when actually you're probably just hoping not to get deleted off the person who you knew's list.



But why not just send the bulletin poster a quick message instead? Will that somehow be less effective in letting them know you're their friend?



Course not. If I ever meet someone who makes up these things in the first place, I'll do a dirt in their shoe. And it will be big, and it will smell. That'll teach the little pricks.

In defense of Myspace

Joe is a friend of mine, that has a blog. Recently on said blog he wrote this:

Myspace My Arse 17/09/06

I hate Myspace. I hate almost everything about it. Firstly, I hate the way it looks. Fact: no matter how much you customise what little HTML they let you play around with, your Myspace page looks like shite. It offends my eyes. Secondly, you listen to music when you're on the net, right? Yeah, me too. So why on earth did Myspace have the bright idea of resurrecting the ghost of embedded audio? Thirdly, there are as many people on Myspace as there are living in Mexico. And Rupert Murdoch owns all their personal profiles. Does that not creep anyone else out a little? The man's a lizard.
If you hate Myspace as much as I hate you- sorry, as much as I hate Myspace, then join the Myspace Kills Webring. We're going to take the fuckers down.



Now Myspace sure has it's critics, but I think a lot of what's thrown at it is a tad unfair. A simple but overlooked fact to begin with: if you don't like the embedded audio on the site, there's an option within Myspace's settings menu to stop it from playing when you open a page. Now that's fair enough for Joe, as he's not (I presume) a member, so he wouldn't of known that.

But I don't necessarily buy into this "OMFG Rupert Murdoch ownz me!!!11" stuff either. I don't recall everybody being so hesitant to open up a hotmail account back when every man and his filthy dog was doing so. What's the difference, guy? From where I'm standing Myspace is just the easiest and most enjoyable way of keeping in contact with all my favourite people.

Meanwhile, you can read the lewd ramblings of the usually very logical and interesting Joe here.


Gig Review: Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family, Manchester Academy 2

This gig review is a bit special, as right this second it is on air as the gig review of the week on Teletext's Planet Sound, netting me a crisp £10 prize for my efforts. Read hither:



It's unnerving, you see Frost & Co in any other city, they'll be lucky to garner an audience bigger than 70.

Set the gig in his home city of Manchester though, and it'll be pull in 700.

Playing like it's all he ever wanted to do, there's a rich jovial talent here that seems wasted on smaller venues. Surely it's only a matter of time before the rest of the country catches up? 9/10.

awful film knowledge and me

My filmbuff friend and I were on Wednesday night discussing films. More specifically: Films I haven't seen. The resultant off-the-top-of-my-head list scared her into loaning me two such films: Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting. This also set me off thinking about some of the other classic films I'd never seen. And so, with the help of the Channel 4 Greatest 100 website, here's an entirely non-definitive list:

Jaws, Top Gun, The Godfather Trilogy, E.T., The Shawshank Redemption, Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now, Jackie Brown, Reserviour Dogs, Gladiator, Schindler's List, Goodfellas, Alien, The Exorcist, Terminator 1 or 2, Back To The Future, Four Weddings And A Funeral, Psycho, Get Carter, The Usual Suspects, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Bambi, Mary Poppins, Beauty And The Beast, Jerry Maguire, Being Erin Brockovich, Lethal Weapon.

Shocked? Appalled? Sympathetic? Let me know using the comment button below.

Saturday night hijinks

You know when you're at a party and you hardly know anybody? Good opportunity to have some silly fun I always thought.

One such occasion was Saturday night, and my friend Julie's housewarming party. Knowing as I did only two people there, when asked how I knew Julie I said I went to University with her. In 1996.

To back up this lie I then had to make up a further backstory of how I was a English Lit graduate, and had been working in a crap library job for the last few years.

Next person who asked how I knew Julie? She's was my Aunt. They were suprised, but still brought it wonderfully.

Next person? She was one of the handful of groupies of my promising local band.

After 5 minutes of discussing the band an aforementioned party-goer comes to me and announces what a liar I am. Cue everybody finding out everything to a probable 50/50 mixed response of glee and puzzlement.

I had a fun time at the party anyway. If by 'fun' you mean 'sexy', and if by 'the party' you mean 'filthy Joe's crack 'n' whore house'

Yeah so I'm poor

£2200.
That's how much money I spent this summer. Not ideal I'll admit.
Still, I haven't actually been paid yet for the work I did in Dublin (thanks to the enormous amount of difficulty I had setting up a bank account there), which I worked out the other day should probably total about £1100. Which will make things less bad. Still a bloody expensive summer though.

Elsewhere in life, last night I had the pleasure of spending my evening in, of all places, Walkabout bar. There's a strange aura to that place, one that makes me feel both 17 and 27 at the same time. Certainly, there's that moment when you're on the dancefloor, you take a look around, you realise you're the only male in the room under the age of 25, and you feel your heart sink a little bit.

Still, any bar where the DJ attempts a segue of Arctic Monkeys - When The Sun Goes Down into Micheal Jackson - Black Or White is all good by me.
Anyway, this whole blogging thing went well this summer, I thought. If it proved a similarly exciting experience for you, then prepare your loins for good news: I'll be keeping it up. Keeping it up, and settling into a more traditional format of mixing posts on what i've been up to, with opinons on what's going on in the news and that, and general day-to-day musings.

Sounds dull? Well it won't be. It'll kick off when I'm back in Manchester, which is all of 3 days away.

Muldoon.

you find me in a reflective mood

It's Day 84, and the penultimate day of the trip.

Tomorrow morning, 10am to be exact, I'll get a coach out of here back home. And so, I find myself reflecting on how this summer's gone.

I could bore you on what I've been up to since the last blog (and trust me, bore is the operative word), but I'll be merciful and condense: quit two jobs, had a couple of nights out to celebrate the fact, spend a couple of days in Galway, visit my godmother who I hadn't seen in 18 odd years. Instead I'll do the aforementioned reflecting.

Mostly this summer was a success I think. Finding work and a flat were the two most important things, and (2nd time lucky, admittedly) I did both. The problem, though, is that I was actually having more fun before I set out, working in Rescue Rooms. Whilst I've enjoyed this summer, I would've presumably enjoyed it more if I just hadn't gone anywhere.

That's not to say I wished I hadn't done it. To do so would be to forget the other reason I did this. Back around the start of the year, I was faced with the possibility of this being a year where I sat around and achieved nothing, while my coursemates were off on their placement years earning sackfuls of experience and CV-boosting goodness. In short, I wanted something to show for this year. And rocking up in another country on my own and making something out of it? That might do it.

Plus of course, there's the issue that I was born in this city, and yet, previous to this summer, had barely any memory of it. And now I do. Which feels good.

So: a 7.2/10 success I'd say. Which I'll take, thank you.

And on that note, that's pretty much it for the trip, and so that's pretty much it for the accompanying blog. Except for one thing. There was another aim for this summer: Not lose shit loads of money. So, did I achieve that? Well I have no idea. I've long forgotten the login details for my online banking, so the last time I checked my account balance was the day before I left for Tenerife back in June. Then, it stood at this: £2000. Money earned from working at Rescue Rooms, and to be saved for getting me through the final year of uni.

Logic suggests that 2 and a half months of this, combined with just over 5 weeks of work, means that I've probably lost a sizable chunk of money. To find out if I have, there'll be one last blog post in the next few days detailing just how bad it is. Suffice to say, I'm bloody scared...

Yes yes, it's the second vBlog in a series of two. Marvel at live Daft Punk footage! Chortle at hilariously named local landmarks! Gawp at incredible hair loss issues!

Actually, it's not very good. Once again lots of stuff filmed in dark noisy pubs and such places was unusable. Watch it anyway though, if only to amuse me.

For extra enjoyment remove clothes before viewing.

Scene rundown...
1 - Back at Marley Park for Daft Punk
2 - Entrance
3 - During Daft Punk part 1
4 - During Daft Punk part 2
5 - My amusingly named local fishmongers
6 - Hanlons, the pub where I work(ed)
7 - Amusingly named local street
8 - What happens when you get drunk regulars to talk on camera
9 - What happens when you let drunk regulars have your camera for half an hour
10 - Young co-workers
11 - Before...
12 - ...and after
13 - Flatmate Tom says hi

..>