Baby and quiz!

Well, my sister has given birth. Baby, probably to be called Liam, arrived at 4:38am today, weighing in at 6lb 10oz. To celebrate I took the "Which Ant Are You?" quiz. Click the pic to take it yourself!

It’s my birthday, hurrah!

Yes, boys and girls, today, yours truly is 37 years old. On this day in 1970, I took my first breaths of Earth air.

It's been quite a ride so far, let me tell you, but I'm pleased to be able to say I'm in a good place right now. The best ever. The love of a good woman is a wonderful thing.

On that note, I'd like to wish every happiness to my blogmates Suze and Alex. For those of you who don't know, Alex proposed to Suze via a blog post a few days ago. And although she kep us waiting for her answer, it was a resounding yes.

Well, I promised you pictures, and pictures you shall have. Herewith, before and after shots of Stage One of my latest tattoo (paid for by the missus for my b'day prezzie), which -- did I mention? -- is a cover up of a tattoo I got almost 16 years ago, with money I received for my 21st birthday.

Enjoy!


This is the "before" shot. I took this image off a postcard for fetish club The Torture Garden, which I picked up at Kensington Market when I first visited London in the early 1990s. For me, it tied in with the imagery of early Adam & The Ants' songs. Unfortunately, the tattoo never came out that great (difficult picture, shit tattooist). For those of you into art, the original image was by British artist Allen Jones. I found this out years later, but the following coincidence was not lost on me: Adam Ant's unfinished art-college thesis was on the work of Allen Jones.



Before you ask, yes, tattooing makes you bleed! What you see here is mostly blood and plasma wrapped in clingfilm. Well, no one ever said it was going to be easy!



You can still see the blood and gunk here, but you also get a sense of the tattoo.



And this is how it looked this morning, after removing the dressing and giving it a good hot shower and soap-down. I think it's pretty fucking excellent, and tattooist Xam at Frith Street Tattoos has done a great job.



Here's a close-up detail of the panther's face. You can also see the great claws here, too.



And check out the beautiful green of the snake's head.

BB and blog targets

I'm sure anyone living in the UK already knows that Adam Ant did not enter the Big Brother house, and I'm glad about that, cos he's still a bit too loopy to be putting himself in line for public ridicule, even if ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

We did get Donnie Tourette, though -- frontman of terrible "punk" band Towers of London. I like good punk music, but I find Towers of London to be a bit ridiculous, and their reality show, which you can find occasionally on some channel or other in the dead of night, is simply insane. But Donnie looks like he's going to be good value for money, so I'm looking forward to his progress.

I had set myself a goal for the early part of this year. I was hoping to get my post count up to 730 before 11 March. Since I'm only at about 520 or so right now, that looks incredibly unlikely, especially since all my new movie reviews are now going up at Such As They Are.

Why 730? Why 11 March? Because that will give me a total average of two posts a day for my first year of blogging. I don't think there's any chance that I'll make it. I've got about 60-something days to do 200 posts, so I'd need to be hitting three to four a day every day from this point on. No way, José.

Well, I've got some work to do. Maybe I'll be back later...

New Year’s resolution: I really must moan a little less. (Yeah, right.)

It's a new year, and we all have to get used to writing the correct dates on our cheques and bills and stuff.

So far, so good. I've written "2007" about three or four times, and no mistakes yet. See, that takes a special kind of genius, I'm sure you'll agree.

Feeling a bit uninspired in terms of blog posts right now, though. Don't know why. It may be because I'm way behind with my movie reviews (such as they are), and I feel I can't move on with my life until I get up to date with that. I have seven to do.

In other news, leaked mobile-phone video footage of Saddam's execution is causing quite a stir, but only because it has embarrassed the Iraqi government by showing the world what a fucking sham it is, unable even to kill a man properly, without the place being full of Shi'ites heckling the Sunni Saddam. Small wonder, then, that the official video that was released had no audio track.

And dangerous dog kills five-year-old girl somewhere in the Merseyside area of England. Sure, that's right, blame the dog. Owners who are cunts is the bigger problem, of course. How about we start sterilizing some of these motherfuckers with no brain?

What else? Oh yeah, the last episode of season 1 of Torchwood aired here last night.


For those who don't know, Torchwood is the first spin-off series of Doctor Who, starring John Barrowman (with whom Red has danced) as the charismatic Captain Jack Harkness. I'm loathe to include any spoilers here in case any readers have yet to see it, but there's a great ending that should lead us nicely into series 3 of Doctor Who. All good stuff. On the whole, I've quite enjoyed Torchwood, and I hope they commission another series.

The missus and I are heading off for a few days' holiday soon. It's fast approaching, so there's shitloads to do around here in the meantime, which means less time for blogging and fun. But it's a fair sacrifice, don't you think?

Last three things:

1. I've got to head into the West End tomorrow, which I so don't fucking need or have time for.

2. Is Adam Ant going to be in Celebrity Big Brother? He was on the shortlist for a while, so I'll have to watch tonight just to be on the safe side.

3. Lovefilm is really fucking me off right now, not sending stuff out promptly enough. They are cunts, and they do this with increasing regularity. We always keep at least their recommended minimum number of titles on the list, but I'll be buggered if I'm going to boost our choice list with dross, just so they've got something to send us. Wankers.

Nothing much else to add right now, except keep an eye on Such As They Are. The latest review was Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke.

Oh yeah, that thing about not moaning: never gonna happen. You do know that, don't you?

Untitled post with an unrelated picture of me in it

There's a documentary about Adam Ant on TV tonight. It's the first episode of a two-parter. But it's only on ITV London, which we don't get as a default channel. However, I have a sneaking feeling that I should be able to see it on channel no. 900-and-something on Sky. You just have to keep on going past all the porn channels and past about a dozen regional BBC variations and you'll find it tucked away there somewhere. Fingers crossed it'll work.

What's the name of the show? Well, you remember this post from September, where I mentioned the book, audio book, and CD compilation all called Stand & Deliver? Now they've made good on the promise of the DVD collection too, but have cut some of the most desirable tracks and retitled it from the sublime Digital Tenderness. They're calling it Stand & Deliver, with the same picture as those aforementioned three products. And the documentary tonight: Stand & Deliver.

For fuck's sake: I've got more imagination in the tip of my cock. Can you believe some lame-ass marketing motherfucker must've come up with this shit. FUCKWITS!

So, why not watch it if you can? You can laugh at how fat and psycho Adam looks these days. Yes, yes, I know it clashes with Night Watch on Film 4, which also came recommended by yours truly... Well you can't blame me for bad scheduling. That really is beyond my control.

Anyway, I'll probably try to do another post before the end of the day, since I think this probably isn't everyone's cup of tea. Good news about the DVD collection, though, isn't it? It's on my Christmas list.

Happy Birthday, Adam Ant

Adam Ant is 52 years old today, not 83 as Lee suggested in yesterday's comment. I've been a fan since 1980 and the "Kings of the Wild Frontier" single. I still buy everything new that comes out. My first tattoo was one kinda like the one you see here: a heart with a sword through it, and the words Pure Sex. I got it done in 1990 to celebrate ten years of listening to Antmusic.

Happy Birthday, Adam!

Photograph © Mick Mercer. mickmercer.com

(I’m) Almost Famous (too)

This is for Camie, in response to her post about celeb encounters. They are in no particular order except that the first ten are people that I've actually met, while the rest are people I've passed in the street or seen round and about.

1. Paul Daniels, British "magician" (I was a kid)
2. Adam Ant, fucking icon
3. Derek Jarman, gay film-maker extraordinaire
4. Mark Wingett (DC Carver from The Bill); he saw a play I was in and complimented my performance
5. Jane Bodie, who is apparently now one of Australia's most important playwrights; was one of my closest friends for a couple of years in my mid-20s
6. Valerie Colgan: she was in Aliens and was one of my acting teachers
7. Esther Hall, from the UK Queer As Folk and the recent BT ads; she auditioned for a play I was co-producing/co-directing
8. Rhino from the UK's Gladiators show; he complimented me on my Manics T-shirt
9. Debbie Isitt, film-maker
10. Susan Powell, BBC weathergirl; not seen her for about 20 years, but we used to live in the same street and go to the same school

11. Marc Almond (almost bumped right into him on Camden High Street)
12. Diego Abatantuono, Italian acting god
13. Lucio Dalla, Italian singer
14. Keith Flint of Prodigy, dressed in country-gent garb at the airport
15. Mark Addy, eating pizza close by
16,17,18,19. Ian Broudie, Kylie Minogue, and two people from EastEnders at a Manics gig at the Royal Albert Hall
20. Carol Vorderman
21. Russell Crowe at Wagamama
22. Justine Elastica at an Adam Ant gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire
23. Jackie Mason, eating at Artie's Deli in NYC
24. Chris Lowe, Pet Shop Boy, on Islington's Upper Street
25. Gary Olsen (RIP), of 2 Point 4 Children fame: sat next to him on the Tube
26. Ken Livingstone, London Mayor, on Old Compton Street, Soho.
27. Robert Powell, aka Jesus, on his way to the video store where Red used to work
28. Sister Wendy Beckett
29. that bloke out of Crowded House trying to find his guitar at the airport
30. Stefan Dennis (Paul from Neighbours)
31. Jennilee (from Britain's Next Top Model); she was entering our local Sainsbury's supermarket as we were leaving
32. some bloke out of Hollyoaks in Tesco Metro, Covent Garden
33. Shadow from the UK's Gladiators show outside Tesco Metro, Covent Garden
34. Tom Baker, former Doctor Who
35. Simon King, BBC wildlife genius
36. Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow: I spoke to her on the phone; does that count?
37. Ricky Gervais at an ATM in Camden Town
38. Bill Paterson, British actor, in Soho Square not long after Truly, Madly, Deeply came out
39. Phil Davis, excellent British actor and star of Quadrophenia and Face; he was standing in the doorway of the now-long-gone Dillons bookshop on Long Acre. He's short
40. Samantha Morton
41. Graham Norton
42. Giorgio Locatelli, celeb chef, at his restaurant; he signed a leaving card for a friend who was going back to Australia
43. Simon Callow, genius Brit actor and Orson Welles biographer, who is sadly probably most famous for Four Weddings and a Funeral. Saw him at Leicester Square Tube station
44. Helen Baxendale, actress from Cold Feet and Friends, outside Ed's Diner in Old Compton Street, with a man and a baby in a pushchair
45. Jason Priestley, of Beverly Hills 90210 fame, in The Maple Leaf pub, in Covent Garden, one lunchtime

Don’t dream it, be it

Isn't that a great image? Surely, even without seeing the title
of the CD, everyone knows what those lips represent, piercings notwithstanding.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show had a huge impact on me as an adolescent sex-obsessed virgin boy. It was a perfect accompaniment to my burgeoning porn collection, the sexual content of Prince records, and the S&M imagery of early Adam & The Ants songs.

Although bisexuality was never my thing (I just find the average male form too unappealing, frankly), it fit so perfectly with Frank N Furter's alien perspective and sex as recreation, regardless of gender and conventional barriers, just as the lyrics of those aforementioned artists challenged the vanilla flavour of sexual norms.

Wife discovered the existence of The Rocky Horror Punk Rock Show CD -- full of Rocky Horror cover versions -- while investigating the back catalogue of one of her current fave acts, Alkaline Trio. When
she gave it me as a gift yesterday (two gifts in one week; who's a lucky guy?!), she prefaced it with: "You might think this is a bit of a bowling-ball present." Don't you just love a woman who references The Simpsons in general conversation?

Anyway, I didn't think of it that way, and I am psyched to hear these new renditions of songs that I have loved for some 20 years. And it's another album to add to my various versions of the Rocky Horror songs -- my third, in fact, behind the film soundtrack and the original Roxy cast recording.

If you like Rocky Horror, I urge you to try to track down The Rocky Horror Punk Rock Show. I've not listened to it all yet, but what I've heard is great fun -- just as you'd expect.

My Chemical Romance

You ever get one of those moments when...?

Okay, a couple of weeks back, this comment was made about me by someone who doesn't know me:

I think youre one of those guys that likes the original no matter what, so people will think youre "old school" or something along those lines. You liked it before it was famous. I bet you'll stop listening to music if a lot of people like it dont you?

My own response was that most art is better before the artist becomes too successful, and so, yes, I do tend to go off artists once they get big, saying something about how they were better before they were big (which isn't necessarily the same as selling out).

I came to the My Chemical Romance party a little late in the day myself. Wife and I saw the video for "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" at about the time it was released, and she quickly bought the album, which was the band's second one. I listened to it more than she did, though, and so she gifted me the debut album a few months later, which at that time was not easy to find, because I guess it had been pressed in fairly limited numbers.

Since that time -- probably the best part of a couple of years ago now -- MCR have become pretty bloody huge. So huge, in fact, and this may surprise some US readers, that their current single "Welcome to the Black Parade" is at No.1 in the UK singles chart. Click the header to check out the promo vid over at Wife's blog.

Last week I spoke to my brother. My brother likes some really bad music. He likes Jason Mraz, for fuck's sake, and KT Tunstall (Cuntie Ton o' Stool, as I like to call her), and Sting, and probably James Blunt and all that faux singer/songwriter shit produced by fakers for the masses. He told me how much he liked the new My Chemical Romance track. I could have died. I could have burned my CDs right there and then. But I rose above, clinging on to the hope that he will forget all about them in a few weeks. Let's hope.

But this sort of thing always reminds me of that line in the Adam & The Ants track "Don't Be Square (Be There)": You may not like us now, but you will.

The Ant Invasion continues...

In his post of yesterday, my blogmate The Cappuccino Kid writes "wear your badges with pride! and once in a while carry an old album around. i bet someone will strike up a conversation! you never know, you may just make a new friend!"





Here are some pics of the jacket I wore almost non-stop for three or four years at least (1989 to 1992), and then on occasion even after that. I had it on the day I trekked up to Birmingham to get my first tattoo in 1989, and someone did indeed come up to me and start chatting. An Adam Ant fan himself -- a big one. When I got my jacket signed by Adam in London in 1993, this lad was there at the signing too, and he mailed me photos that he had taken of me getting the jacket signed. What a nice chap. David was his name.

A Positive Pessimist also expressed interest in seeing pics of this jacket in her comment here a couple of months back, so here you go...

The ant-icipation was killing me

Even though Cynnie said I must have some "humungous huevos" to admit to liking Adam Ant, I feel no shame. After all, who was it who taught us that "ridicule is nothing to be scared of"? Adam fucking Ant, that's who! To that end, I'm just going to fill everyone in on my recent purchases.

1. Stand & Deliver: The Very Best Of Adam and the Ants CD. Despite the fact that I'm fairly certain (I haven't yet compared) this CD has THE EXACT SAME tracklisting as the last greatest-hits package I bought some 12 years or more ago, I got it anyway. Partly because it came with a DVD of eight of Ad's vids. You'll remember how pissed off I was about the Digital Tenderness DVD being cancelled...

2. Stand & Deliver: The Autobiography book. Well, you know, I've waited a long time for this. It arrived in the post yesterday. Lovely and hardback and full of words, apart from the bits where there are pictures. I figured I should get tucked in ASAP, unless I decide instead to listen to...

3. Stand & Deliver: The Autobiography audiobook, as read by Adam himself. I ordered this yesterday, and it was dispatched today, so it should be in my grubby mitts within a day or two. I'll put it on the iPod. Saves me reading, doesn't it? Heaven forbid. That said, in the excerpt I listened to online today, Mr Ant didn't exactly sound inspired. He sounded a bit too much like he was reading rather than telling, if you know what I mean.

This flurry of Ant activity reminds me of when his okay-in-places Manners & Physique album came out, back in 1990, I think. I bought it on CD, vinyl, and tape.

Some of you, including my dear Red, are undoubtedly wondering if I've gone as loopy as Adam himself, but no. The truth is, those Antfans that remain loyal desperately need to show that there is a market for new product. Only by so doing will we ever see the release of the mooted Demos Box Set, among other things.

So there is a "method in our madness", after all.

“Money makes the world go round / the world go round / the world go round”. Oops, guess I’d better change this heading...

A few months ago, I heard an interesting news item.

Not content with having been victorious over Napster and other file-sharing websites, The Big Global Corporate Music Machine had devised another plan to bring in more money.

Don't get me wrong here. I appreciate that an artist should be rightly rewarded for his or her work. I believe that copyright theft is a bad thing. Indeed, I feel quite uncomfortable using other people's images on my blog as frequently as I do. However, I do it because I feel that no one is actually losing out here, and no one is making money they shouldn't be. That is, I make no money from my blog, so I'm not making money off of someone else's efforts; and if I were to be asked to pay for images used, I wouldn't use them. Simple as that.

So what is it that The Big Global Corporate Music Machine had/has planned to do? You know, this is so simple it's genius. I can hardly believe they didn't come up with it before...

Just as it is illegal for me to put an mp3 of a published song on here -- let's say "Stand and Deliver" by Adam and the Ants, since that's also the name of his autobiography, in shops today -- The Big Global Corporate Music Machine proposes that it should also be illegal to put lyrics of published songs on sites without paying the appropriate royalties.

Yes, yes, I know, this is still someone else's copyrighted material, and as such it should rightly be protected. But come on. At the end of the day, most sites posting lyrics often use people's best guesses where songbooks have never been made available. These are the online community's version of sitting down with paper and pen and hitting pause on your tape deck every couple of lines, which I'm sure we all did as kids. Who knows what the fuck Joe Strummer, Shane McGowan, and Tupac Shakur are saying half the time. Check out the lyrics on two different sites and the chances are you'll get two different interpretations.

AND NOT ONLY THAT... Of course, all of this is also applicable to fan sites that offer tab notes for guitar players. The Big Global Corporate Music Machine believes it is losing out because people are learning their guitar parts from free online-community websites instead of going out and buying the sheet music or songbooks. That's a semi-fair point, but if I want to learn how to play songs by guitar-based artists such as Bright Eyes or Elliott Smith, there aren't any fucking books available for me to turn to. What then, Big Global Corporate Music Machine, you dumb cunt?

Am I being naive, or is this whole scenario just really fascistic?

Bitter, bitter disappointment yet again

I just have to get this off my chest, even though I know many readers will not give a toss.

Once again I have to suffer the bitter, bitter disappointment that comes with being a life-long Adam Ant fan. Never does any new release appear when it is promised, but this new blow takes the cake, I swear.

The DVD Digital Tenderness, a comprehensive collection of Ant videos, has been on the cards for three years. Not only does it contain all the videos, but also videos and performances previously unseen. This is the Holy Grail -- the Ant video collection to end them all. I could not be any more excited.

Last week it popped up for pre-order on Amazon. I dutifully placed my order, awaiting its release, on or around the same day as the Adam Ant autobiography Stand and Deliver. This book has been hotly anticipated by Ant fans for a decade or more.

Today I learn that the DVD has been cancelled. Not postponed; not suspended indefinitely. Cancelled. Fucking fucking fucking fucking cunts to it. This is such a bastard fucking pain in the bollocks that I can't even put it into words that aren't curse words.

It's down to licensing problems, apparently. Umm, hold on... This disc has been in the planning for three years. The covers are printed and the discs are pressed, presumably. It's on Amazon for pre-order; it comes out in two weeks' time. DO YOU THINK YOU SHOULD HAVE SORTED THESE LICENSING PROBLEMS OUT A LITTLE SOONER, YOU PRICKS?!

Furthermore, there's even suspicion that the book may get pulled too, since the serialization due to have commenced in a Sunday paper this past weekend did not show up. People are even asking whether the audio-book version has been recorded.

All of this stuff was due to come out in a crazy flurry of Ant activity on 11 September. And now we Ant fans are sat here holding our cocks waiting to see what the fuck happens next.

Fuck.

Still, I managed to lift my weary depressed ass out of the sofa and go to Sainsbury's to buy some groceries. And on my way there I spied a good sign. A van, presumably some sort of courier, had written on its side something to the effect of "There are no delays with Stand and Deliver". How fucking weird is that?

Well, I'm about done here for now. Later...

“Well, there’s Technicolor and Cinemascope / A cast out of Hollywood”, part 3

You can find part 1 of this post here, and part 2 is here.

In this third post, I'm going to talk a little about the pirate and bootleg "industries".

When I was in my mid-teens, so we're talking 1985/86, I loved bootleg audio tapes. I would buy concert and demo tapes of bands I liked (Adam & The Ants, Bauhaus, The Cure, Sex Pistols) and discover songs that were almost legendary among fans but that had never been officially released.


Before long, I found that a similar market existed for film, and I began looking into it. It's funny... I said in a previous post that The Wicker Man being aired on BBC2 in late 1986, I think, was the film that sparked my interest in cinema, but I have just realized, now that I put my mind to it, that I must have already been interested in "video nasties" and the like, since I was still at school when I ordered my bootleg video tape of A Clockwork Orange.

This Kubrick classic was not officially available in the UK, for either cinema or home video, for some 30 years. Kubrick himself withdrew it from circulation shortly after its original release in the early '70s due to bad press blaming it for some street violence of the time. It was not until after his death that the self-imposed "ban" was lifted. So getting a copy on tape was a hugely significant moment in my film collecting. It was probably the most bootlegged movie in the UK at the time, I'd guess.

I paid £12 for this tape out of the classified ads in the back pages of the NME. It would have been a tenner, but for an extra £2 I could have a second film on the four-hour tape, too, so I chose another banned classic: Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. I hadn't seen either movie when I ordered the tape. I watched A Clockwork Orange many times, though, once it arrived. I don't think I watched LHOTL more than once. Bit grim, I thought.

I wish I still had that tape. Not least because the recently released-for-the-first-time-in-the-UK DVD of LHOTL is still missing footage that was probably on my tape version. And those old habits -- of wanting unreleased goodies -- die hard. Even though it's not a film I've returned to since, I still bought it cheap on DVD. Y'know, for the collection.

You see, for years, we in the UK have been treated like babies when it comes to the cinematic arts. Violent films and pornography have long been subject to cuts or outright bans. Ostensibly these bans are to protect the young, into whose hands they might fall. No thought was ever given to the possibility that an adult might not let his or her kids have sight of them. Or that a couple might not have kids, so why shouldn't they be able to watch what they want. No; the kids come first, even at the cost of the rest of the nation's civil liberties. Grrr. (By the way, Melon Farmers is a great source of information regarding cuts made to UK film releases.)

But it's not just "extreme cinema" that suffers. The UK releases of the Indiana Jones and Rambo trilogies are both cut, for example. I never knowingly purchase a cut copy of a film or TV show,* unless it's at a bargain price. As such, websites like Rewind are totally invaluable.

At this point, I'd like to make a distinction between bootlegs and pirates. Some people argue that they are one and the same. Those who are interested in collecting bootlegs feel otherwise. A bootleg offers something to the collector that is not available officially (or legally, if you want), while a pirate is a straight rip-off of an official release.

If something I want is available officially and legally, I will buy it. If it is not, then I resort to bootlegs. Simple as.

So, with that in mind, there is something I just don't understand. Back in the '80s and most of the '90s, we had video tape. It was a bit shit and it wore out before too long, but it was better than nothing, right? The advent, though, of the DVD in the late 90s (via the clunky and inconvenient LaserDisc format), coupled with the Internet's global marketplace, has led to a wealth of films being available to us all in pristine quality.

If I want to buy Ichi The Killer, I don't have to buy the UK version, which is cut by more than 3 minutes; I can import an uncut copy from the US, Australia, or Holland. And yet, with all that is available to us, and with release dates of discs getting closer and closer to the cinema release dates (indeed, we can often buy US discs of films before they hit UK cinemas), why do people still buy pirate copies of films from car-boot sales or Islington street corners?

The quality is shite. Someone I know -- in fact, a couple of different people -- constantly say to me that they have this film or that on DVD and do I want to borrow it. It is always a film that has yet to come out at the cinema, and it is always a pirate copy.

Do these people not realize that the point of DVD is the great picture and sound quality. That is the reason we have switched to DVD from tape. So to get a DVD with a shit picture on it and crappy sound -- not to mention no extra features or subtitles -- and to pay £10 for it is ridiculous! If I wait four months I can pick up a legit copy with fuckloads of extras for the same money.

If we wanted bollocks quality, we'd've stuck to the old ways, you buffoons!


* On the subject of cuts, but of a different kind, the US releases of the second, third, and fourth seasons of Quantum Leap, one of my all-time fave TV shows, have all had their music altered. Y'know, the period music that helped set the scene. It's been replaced with generic music cues. We in the UK were spared this abortion ... up until season four, and now the cunts have done it to us too.

“Oh lovely tagland, it’s a wonderful brew / A tag for me, and a tag for you”

Pie at Stuplicated has tagged me, so here goes. Be aware that some of this is likely to be rather similar to the list at Red-Letter Day.

10 Years Ago: August 1996
Red and I were hanging out loads and doing lots of things that resulted in lots of lovebites (tee hee). Watching lots of films, too. It must have been around this time that I first saw Scarface and decided it so hadn't been worth the wait. What a stinking pile of poo. Lots of getting-to-know-you stuff. Good times. (They still are, but those first few weeks are crazy, aren't they?)

5 Years Ago: August 2001
Who knows? Probably on a beach in Italy, which is always great. Maybe if we'd know then what we know now, we would have been in New York...

1 Year Ago: 9 August 2005
Again, I just don't know! What does Red say?

5 songs I know all the words to
I know the words to shitloads of songs. To me the point of a song is that it has words. If you like the song enough you should know a good chunk of the words, no? Anyway, I digress...
"Whip in My Valise", Adam & The Ants
"That Makes It Tough", Buddy Holly
"Anarchy in the UK", Sex Pistols
"The Man in the Iron Mask", Billy Bragg
"I Ain't Mad At Cha", 2Pac

5 snacks
Chocolate Digestives and black coffee
Ciauscolo on crusty bread
Boursin cheese on Ritz crackers
Beer
Pitta and hummus

5 things I'd do with $100 million
Buy some wicked property in some great locations
Help out family and friends with their finances
Give to some charities that I respect
Build myself a great little cinema, or buy a lovely Art Deco one
Keep a little for a rainy day

5 places I'd run away to
New York City
Venice
Koh Samui
Some of those cool places that feature on Survivor
Anywhere with Wife

5 things I'd never wear
A toupée
A yarmulke
Dr Scholl shoes
A cock piercing
My heart on my sleeve (yeah, right!)

5 fave TV shows
Seinfeld
Quantum Leap
Oz
Survivor
The Simpsons (maybe?)

5 greatest joys
Wife
Tattoos
Good music
Good films
Animals

5 fave toys
Blogland
iPod
HD recorder
DVD player
Wife -- well, not a toy, but she is a doll ;-)

5 peeps to tag
Do it if you want.

Five things: I’ve been tagged

ACT has tagged me to do this five-things thing, and it's been a while since a tagging so what the hey, eh?

Five Things in My Freezer
1. Lots of ice because the freezer badly, BADLY needs defrosting
2. Two ice cubes in a cracked ice-cube tray (must remember to fill it up again)
3. King prawns
4. A frozen quiche that has probably passed its use-by date
5. A little baggie of prawns that were a gift for Cat from a neighbour about four years ago

Five Things in My Closet
1. Not me. I'm straight, got it?
2. A box of Manic Street Preachers T-shirts
3. Some clothes that are absolutely covered in Cat's hairs from when he used to sleep there. Before he went over to "the other side"
4. A great Sailor Jerry shirt that I bought in New York but is about 19 sizes too big for me
5. A leather jacket decorated and painted with Adam & The Ants badges and logos

Five Things in My Car
1. A gearstick (are you jealous, my American friends?!)
2. A steering wheel
3. Seats
4. Foot pedals for accelerating, braking, and "clutching"
5. A roof that doesn't leak

Five Things in My Purse (umm, well my "manbag" when I use it)
1. My wallet
2. Mobile phone
3. Pens
4. Shades
5. Sunglasses

And the five I'm tagging are...
1. Camie Vog at Perfect Blue Buildings
2. The Cappuccino Kid at The Tranquility of Solitude
3. Tanya at Start Wearing Purple
4. The Wanted Man at Are You up to the Test!?
5. Suze at AlexSuze.com

Songs with long titles

I don't know about anyone else, but I always find it interesting when songs with quite long names appear on music TV channels. The channel often opts to abridge said song name in some way, much as it does with band names. But whereas abbreviated band names have become part of the pop lexicon (SOAD; QOTSA; RHCP or The Chilis), this is less the case for song names.

Sure, if people know which artist you are talking about you can abbreviate song names and album names when chatting or writing: Dirk and Kings for Adam & The Ants' Dirk Wears White Søx and Kings of the Wild Frontier albums respectively, for example.

But going back quite a few months ago, when I first started seeing Trivium (right) on the Kerrang! channel, I noticed that the name of their song was very long: "A Gunshot to the Head of Trepida". Who or what is Trepida? I wondered. Is is a mythical beast? A Greek or Roman god from the old days? No, neither. It was a few weeks before I realized that the song title should rightly be "A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation". For me, though, it will always and forever be "A Gunshot to the Head of Trepida".

Great websites #2

It's been about a month since my last "Great websites" post, which you can find here, so I figured it's about time I threw another one together.

This time, I want to bring your attention to Grammy.ru. Now, before I go any further, I must first say that I can't vouch for the legality of this site. It seems perfectly above board, and maybe it is ... in Russia! But my guess is that it's not something that non-Russians should know about. Why? Because it offers free mp3 downloads of songs by hundreds upon hundreds of artists. You can pick up virtually anything by Prince, for example; there are some 800 songs each by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; seemingly everything from this year's Eurovision Song Contest... Well, the list goes on and on. There's even a four-CD bootleg box set by Buddy Holly on there, called What You Been A-Missin'.

It's not fully comprehensive, of course. What would Russians want with Elliott Smith, Bright Eyes, Adam & The Ants, and the Black Crows? And some albums mysteriously have one or two songs missing(!). Even so, it's got to be worth checking out if you're looking to top up your iPod.

I wouldn't want to be seen to encourage piracy, so I can't tell you which buttons to push. I will say, though, that the link in this post will take you to the English-language version. And that will make everything look far less scary.

Would it be worth buying the Internet for just this one site? Well, no, possibly not. But it is fucking cool nonetheless.

So, without further ado, Grammy.ru, for services to music, the Web, and the world, A Blog About Nowt salutes you.

Ten things about my tattoos

1. I got my first one in September 1990. It was done in Birmingham by a man who, apparently, is called Hagar. I nearly fainted. If not for hearing the Anthrax cover version of Joe Jackson's "Got the Time" on the radio, I probably would have.

2. My second one was in 1991. It's from a flyer for London S&M club The Torture Garden. I later discovered it was from a work of art by Allen Jones.

3. I had one more tattoo between 1991 and 1997. That one no longer exists. It is the only one so far that I have had covered up. I may have my second one covered at some point. I'm in two minds. I still like it, but it doesn't fit in with my ideas for my right arm.

4. Most of the tattoos that I've had done since 1998 feature Japanese imagery. This koi carp tattoo was my first large undertaking. It took four sittings to complete, between June 1998 and February '99. I have no record, but each sitting would have been at least two hours long; some probably three hours. The temple dog on my lower left arm is my Chinese horoscope sign.

5. I have one Adam Ant-inspired tattoo (my first) and one Manic Street Preachers-inspired tattoo (my fourth).

6. Wife and I had mirror-image tattoos of the same picture to celebrate our engagement.

7. I like words. I have eight words on my body and one word in Chinese characters. It's supposed to say "slave", but it could say chicken chow mein for all I know. (It's not Prince-inspired.)

8. I have a sacred heart on my left ribcage. Instead of a crown of thorns around it, it says Wife's name in graffiti script. The flames rise up through my armpit and almost to my elbow.

9. I have a Twin Towers tribute tattoo. It was done in May 2002, two months after I visited Ground Zero.

10. I didn't keep a record of the costs of my early tattoos. I started doing this only towards the end of 2000. Since then I have spent £1,150 (US$2,150) (not including tips) on getting tattooed. Given that two of my largest tattoos are not included in that figure, a more realistic estimated total is around £2,500+ ($4,700+) in almost 16 years. Although this sounds a lot, bear in mind that I don't smoke. The average price of a pack of 20 cigarettes in the UK seems to be £5 ($9.40). Someone who smokes one pack a day will spend £1,825 ($3,425) on fags in one year.

Adam Ant, Derek Jarman, and autographs

It will be 11 years next week (7 April) since I last saw Adam Ant perform live. The venue was Tower Records in London’s Piccadilly Circus, and I had taken the morning off work to be there. Two weeks previously I had been at three consecutive shows at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, too. These dates were the first opportunities I had had to see AA live, having grown up in a small town a billion miles from anywhere. Indeed, I had hoped to see him back in ’85 (?) on the Vive Le Rock tour. I would have been 15 at that time, so the likelihood was slim enough anyway, but then the majority of the tour was cancelled due to an injury sustained when AA fell during rehearsals (if memory serves). Wife, cynic that she is, would probably say it was due to poor ticket sales; she says similar things about the endless postponement of the release of new material, too. Maybe she’s right, but we true fans from way back have to keep the faith.

I remember trying to get a good view at Tower Records in order to take some photos. To do that I had to hold the camera up high, not being the tallest person in the world, so they were not that great. Still, they were better than the ones I’d taken at Shepherd’s Bush. I also snuck a tape recorder in to Tower, just as I had to the three Empire gigs, so it’s a well-documented period in my Ant fandom.

But my hopes of getting an autograph after the three-song set were dashed. The queue for the signing table was immediately enormous, and I was growing ever more aware that I needed to get back to work. I had taken with me to get signed the sleeve of my “Deutscher Girls” 7-inch, which I had previously had signed by Derek Jarman, the director of Jubilee, the film from which the song was taken. So it would have been a great addition to my collection. But I just couldn’t get there...

The Derek Jarman signing was interesting. It was held in March 1993 (I believe) at the now long-gone Dillons Art bookstore on Long Acre in Covent Garden. I was unemployed at the time, so buying a copy of his book and getting it signed was totally not an option. I asked the counter assistant if it was necessary to make a purchase, knowing that some stores insist you do. The guy said he was sure Mr Jarman wouldn’t mind. And sure enough he didn’t.

There were a lot of people present who seemed to be old friends or acquaintances of the director’s – a lot of “how are you? We really must get together some time” kind of conversations. Anyway I approached with my record sleeve, which had a still – a close shot of AA’s face – from Jubilee on the front. I said something dorky like: “I just wanted to shake the hand of the man who gave Adam Ant his first acting role.” And we shook hands. He spent a few minutes chatting with me and asked how Adam was doing and what he was up to these days, kind of as though I might have some real knowledge on the subject. He said he hadn’t seen him in years. I don’t remember what I replied exactly, but I’m sure something along the lines of “working on a new album; doing a bunch more acting”.

He was very friendly and didn’t seem at all fazed by the line of conversation; it was really as though he had time for me and not at all like signing events so often are, when you are rushed through the whole thing as quickly as possible. He signed my record sleeve as well as an article about him that had recently been published in sex magazine Forum. I still have both items in my collection. And that’s the end of this story. Jarman passed away in February of 1994.