Paul Newman-we'll miss ya.

Paul Newman. A tribute.

In honor of Paul Newman.

A pint, hoisted in honor of Paul Newman!

tonight could get messy.

Tribes.

My high school was a very easy place to become lost in. Being your own person at that age leads to mockery and stone throwing. At that stage in life it's easiest to find a gang or group, or as the current parlance has it "tribe". You make yourself fit in by standing out. By dressing the same, having the same kind of hair styles and most importantly listening to the same kind of music.

It's always been this way I think, you were either a mod or a rocker, a greaser or a preppy an Emo or a goth. Back in caveman times you could probably be a mammoth or a Bear.

It's how we set a place for ourselves in society, how we define who we are.

When I was at school there were only two groups you could join. The first were the fashionable clothes wearing Ravers, and this was prepolished club Dance music which was, to give it its due, unlistenable shit without drugs. That was never going to suit me. I couldn't afford the clothes, I don't take drugs and the music didn't connect with me at all. All bleepy and cheesy and uninvolving. little did I know that most of the popular modern dance music would just be recycled eighties songs over a crap dance beat. I think I actually look back on that time now with a touch of nostalgia

So I joined the other 'gang'. The metal heads. We definitely weren't cool. but the idea was we weren't trying to be. The music was awesome for me. All that power and aggression, the inner oh-so-trite teenage rage I was unable to express came through in the music and it was something I felt I could relate to. Oh the inner turmoil of being a moderately intelligent successful middle child of a happily married (at the time) couple who were fairly well off. Can nobody understand my pain?

I'm actually embarrassed now to think I thought my angst was raw and painful and could only be soothed by crunching riffs and anguished vocals.

I never got the hair thing though. It will come as a surprise to no-one, now I'm a slap head, that my hair was totally unmanageable. I tried to grow it into a proud lions mane, just like I'd seen on the back of all these albums. Graceful locks of blond and black, silky tresses falling almost to the waists of these metal behemoths. However it just ended up growing out and up not down giving me a bizzare top heavy white afro. Quite frankly I looked like one of the toadstool heads from the Mario games. Not a pretty sight. However I was still accepted as part of the clique and we used to just hang out, listen to music (Slayer, Queensryche, Pantera, Faith no More and the mighty mighty Metallica) and do some role playing. (Oh yeah, I was a chick magnet. I used to have to beat them off with a stick.)

Metal is something I grew up with and to be honest, grew out of. By the time sixth form hit (I would be about 16) Rave was dying and it was all about Indie bands (Shed Seven, Ocean Colour Scene, Early Oasis, Menswear). I had begun to suspect that metal was a little bit silly even before corpse paint came in. So I cut my stupid mop of hair and discovered girls, clubbing and music that wasn't played at breakneck speed .

Now there's very little modern metal I listen to but Metallica were always there and I've continued to buy their more 'experimental' albums until "Death Magnetic" dropped through the door this morning. And it took me right back to my teenage years because it sounds like "...and justice for all Part 2" Its got the speed of St anger without the retarded lyrics and $5 drumkit. Its a piece of metal genius and I solidly recommend it for anyone who may have let Lars James et al fall out of favour in recent years.

Now I'm older, lets face it we all are, I'm much more comfortable being myself and not having to buy in to an entire lifestyle just to fit in. I can occasionally listen to metal, but it doesn't preclude me from listening to other stuff. and I won't be growing my hair again anytime soon. Not until they develop a cure for male pattern baldness at any rate!

sunday afternoons suck

So, while I'm trying to work through some narrative problems I've got I thought I'd better get the old fingers a-tapping with an update. Thats right, Not dead yet. Just fueled up on pent up rage and a really bad bottle of grappa someone once bought me as a joke. 

"Duke, " He said " This'll stop your drinking problem."

"Nat, this time you have actually lost what little mind you had?" I replied to the grinning fool " How's buying a man a bottle of booze going to help his drinking problem?"

"Well," Says he, taking a slug off of his bottle of Miller highlife" When you've drunk the cupboard almost dry at home on a tuesday night sitting alone in your darkened apartment, wearing just your pants.. When that happens and you look into what's been left till last, when you see this here cheap bottle of awful, awful booze, you'll see this and think 'Well thats me on the wagon because there's no Goddamn way I'm drinking that shit!"

Funny. I've had that bottle for about 5 years now.  I bring it out at parties to show to people and say 'When you see this bottles open its time to run for the hills.' It took Palin's nomination before I finally cranked it open and forced half the bottle down my protesting neck. When the world gone to complete shit in front of your eyes and you've already let it, that's the time to try anything to blot out what's left of the world.

Palin is dangerous. Palin is a publicity stunt. Palin is a clever move by a party with their backs up against the wall and they can hear the oncoming freight train that is the Obama campaign. 

Palin is their shot at gaining the McCain campaign some seriously needed publicity, she works for the party on so many levels.

1) being a woman they feel women can relate to her.

2) being a Hot woman they can appeal to the redneck bastards who've never looked a pretty woman in the eyes. 

Its turned the Presidential dog and pony show into a fashion parade. Guys have it easy when it comes to sartorial elegance. The most difficult question we have to ask ourselves is 'What colour tie do I need to wear today?'. In the coming months countless rainforests worth of paper are going to be wasted on her choice of shoes for Christs' sake. 

Her policies worry me as well. Lets not even talk about her poor daughter. Its a family issue and should have no bearing on anything. Have you tried to talk to teenagers recently? Its like they've just got off the boat from mars. Lets just be grateful the baby isn't already hooked on crack. 

They could have brought out a faceless no-body. A old man candidate, a grey suit who only the people in the know knew and we wouldn't have given a shit. Palin has injected vibrancy into a campaign that was bleeding momentum like jam out of a doughnut (I think the munchies have kicked in )

I'm not trying to say a woman shouldn't be VP or even President but seriously? Thats the best woman the republican party can find?  What kind of skeletons must the other serious female contenders have in their closets? 

Oh and if they win wait for Palin to go from MILF to WTF in about 6 nanoseconds. Look at photos of Blair just before he got in to just after he got in. He was a comparable age to Palin at the time. Something about politics at the highest level just sucks the vitality and fight out of you. Maybe its because you realise that when you're in charge you're not really in charge at all. There are a thousand people that put you in office and each one of them wants a piece of you. And when the shylocks have had their share of your soul there's not much left to take home at night. 

So thats why I'm here, because how ever fantastical my fiction, however fucked up and doomed I make the human race, we'll just find new real ways of making it worse for ourselves.