Andrew Reid: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Here is a picture as grainy as my memory of the night in question…so bare with me. Its a story of a punk, in a nightclub.

The punk starts out with his mate “1980’s mullet man” who had just stepped off the stage of Miami Vice. So Andy Pegram and I reached the pub where Freddie Mercury emmerged with his mustash. He looked like he’d eaten felt tip pens for tea.

The punk had his groupies along, two girls dressed in neon 80’s clothes, from Top Shop…oh the irony! Amy had pink leg warmers on, lots of neon. The pub at this point was quite empty. We were definately the best dressed. 2 hours later after helping ourselves to all the free drinks we hot footed it to a nightclub down the road. So here I am, a punk out of water.

The music was a mix between a latin night at Chav Central and a 60’s night at your local pub. I would have killed for some Killers!! Andy and I got up to dance on a stage and I was talking to a girl from Manchester. It appeared she’d come up for a hen night, however she was in fact NOT a chav (would you believe it!) Judging from what I’ve seen of hen night chicks the institution of marriage is firmly alive and well on the council estates.

So Leeds - here is a place where youthful shinnanigans go hand in hand with a entire generation of old people who are sick and tired of youthful shinnanigans. Leeds is like a city which has been invaded by students. Its a wonder there are any street signs or traffic cones left in the place. Anyone above the age of 45 has a glare in their eyes of hate held back by constant restraint - with only the occasional outburst, for example the tramp sat outside the pub on Sunday who was shouting out Pink Floyd lyrics in defiance of all the youth of today music such as those nasty monkeys from the artic.

Anyway - back to the night club. Andy went to the toilet. I was now on my own at the bar holding the drinks in my punk outfit. Like the laws of physics in a black hole, the laws of fancy dress break down at the singularity as well. For now I was officially a mental health hazzard.

Stood there on my own, a couple looked at me like I dress like this for trips to the super market as well. I laughed and nodded at them, but they kind of did that look which has ‘ooookkkaaay’ written all over it.

FUCK EM!!

Recently, a 79 year old scientist named James Watson (above left) was misquoted about Africa.

It is considered taboo to talk about differences between races. So therefore, we must all be white men.

It is only a taboo because most people are cowards and closet racists. I call their daft thinking the ‘Tesco Value Society’. They think we all come in little bland white packages and its up to our parents to cook us into something interesting. The actual genetics we’re born with, some people believe, is the same whether you come from Mombassa or the Moon. Of course there are genetic differences! And combined with cultural differences this means Mr Jones is better at his job in Finance and Mr Bekele is better at winning gold in the Olympic 10000m. OK - thats a huge generalisation - and there lies half the problem with our culture and science in general.

Anyway, James Watson who helped to decode the human genome has become a harmless old man trying to pass on a bit of wisdom in newspaper interviews. Big mistake.

He was almost definately tired and his incontinence bag was probably full so he didn’t take the greatest care in the world when he formed the following sentence:

“I am inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.”

Uh oh. You can see how people got a bit upset at this point, but it gets worse.

He was further quoted as saying that his hope was that everyone was equal but that “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true”.

At this point, the police knocked down his door, ransacked his house and strung him up by his tie. But if only they understood - put someone of a completely different culture into a job interview, in a stale office environment and how do you think they’re going to perform compared to the poor sods in England who have been indoctronated into this way of thinking since they started school? Not very well, is the answer!

And when he talks about inteligence tests he actually meant that he is against the arrogent and stupid white men who sit in stale London offices inventing IQ tests which mean absolutely nothing to people not brought up under our education system, with our culture. He is worried that powerful politicians actually believe what these tests say - they imply that native Africans don’t have the same level of IQ as the average white european. Which of course, is complete bollocks if we’re talking about ‘agility of mind’ rather than ‘ability to do maths at school in Gloucestershire’.

An IQ test is only a indication of how well indoctronated you are into the type of thinking which went into create the test in the first place. Of course someone of the same culture as the person who wrote the IQ test is going to do better at it than an alien from planet Zaza, even if the alien has invented teleportation in order to come to London and take the IQ test. Do you get my gist? If we form our social polcies around such benchmarking, of course we’re going to have a gloomy outlook toward Africa…African culture is NOT like ours - thank God for that!

The scientist was completely correct, but not if you take his words at face value. He has of course been portrayed as a complete racist and an old bat. The irony is, the really truely thick people are the ones who don’t see beyond his quotes and see the meaning of the words. If the people who are hounding this poor old 79 year old would be capable of understanding the bigger picture of what he was talking about, they would understand the gist of it. But then, they can’t be arsed to do the research or look into the science - they’ve got newspapers to write.

In part thanks to the media our ignorant western culture has invented a way of thinking which we see as being superior to all other cultures. It does not allow us the time or flexibility of mind to understand other cultures so we see their behaviour as being either callous or stupid. We are incapable of seeing the context of their behavior or the chain of history which shapes their culture…we can’t even be arsed even to cook meals or bring up kids, never mind explore African culture.
While western nations such as ourselves continue to chain people to desks in stale offices in an effort to drive the entire planet into climate catastrophy, it will be Africa who (as before) take the brunt of our stupidity and list making.

Fuck girls, fuck egos, fuck politics, fuck work, fuck Chinese girls, fuck money, fuck beer, this was the night where creativity took to the stage and fucked me over with their sheer amazingness.

The lead singer, unexpectedly pint sized as she was, was as sexy as hell. Her stage presence and confidence defined new boundaries of cool. She made the other people, those in the audience feel somewhat inadequate. She’s clearly had a stratospheric sex life since Manchester Metropolitan University.

To the stage left, a keyboard player who looked much younger than he probably actually was. Those honed chords simply don’t fit into 19 years.

To the stage right, a guitarist who’s tool sported a number 9. A black guitar, with the number 9. Reminded me of my dream radio control car.

Centre stage (but behind the singer) The Double Bassist. He deserves all the capital letter he can get. Behind him again, but unlike society no less significant, was the drummer (don’t know much about him).

Present in the audience were:

Cue 4 pints later, this blog.

Right then - the band was incredible.

215,872

This is the number of copies their single Prince Harry sold on on Amazon.co.uk

At the gig, Andy was talking to a Scottish girl when something odd came over me - apathy toward attractive girls. I found it more forfilling and personality building to read an interview with a music journalist who covered Joy Division, on his experience of working with the producers of Control, than flirting with an attractive girl in her young 20’s.

Maybe it’s my age, maybe I have always been like this to the core - maybe it’s both - but my attitude has become ‘fuck off…’ to a worrying degree.

Why is this?

I put it down to a combination of  experiencing something better, something a bit worse, then better again, then worse, then better, then before I know it here I am at 27.

I think that sums up pretty much my attitude toward girls these days…proper girls - you bore me. People, who happen to be women are more exciting.

The thing that girls don’t get is that their confidence is totally misplaced. We don’t find you sexy or outgoing if you flirt. We don’t REALLY like your brightly coloured leggings or your extrovert personality - it glosses over who you really are. When you dress in a strappy black dress for a night out we’d actually rather you wore a t-shirt and become a fucking human being.

It bores me so much, I feel asexual. What’s even worse is other people’s relationships - they’re advertised like a Cillitbang commercial. Engagement parties and weddings - in literal terms its like being forced into oral sex…except in this case, the ego boost is all social.

Such is the sheer agony of being social.

Fuck being social…bring on the music.

The night started in a sweltering crowded bar watching the rugby. I don’t care for it at all. Being pinned in a rowdy crowd between 4 grizzled mugs and hundreds of beer bellys is - whats the word…shit. I love sport but I have about as much interest in the rugby as I do in chewing wool!

To make matters worse my stomach then started playing up and I felt violently ill. I left the pub and grabbed some tablets from the super market, sat in Subway with a coke and waited to recover. The evening got a lot better after this.

Andy and I went to another sports bar to meet Kristina and the French girl Elodie. With them was a guy called Dan, a top bloke. We headed off to the northern quarter. Sitting talking over a beer with Kristina in the northern quarter was great and we chatted about music and German beer, then I suggested we all headed off to the 42nd Street because she’d like the music - she was really up for that.

I went to see Control at the cinema with Lindsay the other day.

It’s a story of the Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis. A wide eyed teenager with a love of David Bowie, brought up in Macclesfield - then he marries early to a earthly and soulful but undemanding girl, he realises he’s made a huge mistake. His predicament isn’t helped by his epileptic fits either, a dark and frightening spectra which could hit at any moment.

Then he meets an attractive Belgian girl and falls in love with her…he’s overcome by terrible feelings of guilt toward his lonely wife, left at home to bring up the baby in grim Macclesfield while he lives it up in Manchester and tours the continent.

Well, its no secret about what happened to the lead singer of Joy Division but I wasn’t prepared for the effect the film had on me. In the end he was cremated in the same Macclesfield crematorium as my dad…so there it was, a place I’d not seen since that funeral 8 years ago, suddenly on the cinema screen in one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

I am fascinated by dark stuff like this movie - because this relates more to life and what you experience than anything else. and the thing I remember most from this amazing film is the fact that nobody truly has control…and that there comes a point when everything you value will come to an end.

Ashes to ashes.

I have a friend called Joe.

Because I like to be kind to the disadvantaged people of society I invited him down to the flat in Manchester for a night of jollity and frivolity. The experience was like letting a monkey out of it’s cage at the zoo and then forgetting where the keys are.

We started off our pub crawl in my treasured local, Trof in the northern quarter. We were sat at the table, Andy, I and Joe. Andy joked and Joe responded by pretending to hit Andy. Andy flinched so much his arms flung out of their sockets sending a full southern comfort & lemonade into what could only be described as some kind of pub orbit. The poor lads sitting opposite us drowned like Leonardo DiCaprio at the end of Titanic with the facial expression to match. Andy looked like he need incontinence nappies and Joe may have well been swinging from one hand from a ceiling beam. My lovely new diesel jeans managed to avoid the worse of it but I still needed sand bags to keep out the lemonade. The water flowing off the table sent blooms of spray soaring into the air above and at one point a rainbow appeared and a seagull flew through it.

A jaunty man in the crowd shouted ‘wwaaaahahhhhhheeyyyyy!’ like he’d just seen up the skirt of Britney Spears (it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he hasn’t already along with at least 600 million other people).

I hung my head in shame like Johnny Cash after shooting that man on the horse by accident. What was left on the table? Not a lot, but one glass was fatally injured in the accident and like Humpty Dumpty and Heather McCartney couldn’t be put back together again very well.

After this we moved on to my other favourite piss hole - 42nd Street. I like the music in this night club but it does seem to attract larger women for some reason. It’s like going to a balloon convention.

The other problem with 42nd Street is that the DJ turns into Johnny Chav at 1am. He might as well stand there with his mobile blasting out R&B but until this moment I was happy-dancing to CSS, The Killers and Oasis, legs and arms flailing about like a flaming terrorist running from his failed suicide mission. The vodka and red bulls were flowing like Niagara Falls and I was having plenty of fun. Andy went off with a girl and I felt a terrible surge of paralysation. Oh dear I had passed the blurred and fuzzy line of paralyticity.

Good night Vienna and for all I knew I may as well have been in fucking Austria.

The next day I felt like Lindsay Lohan. In fact we all felt so rough we could have been sold in B&Q as sand paper. Joe ordered a meal at a restaurant and ate two bites.

Tomorrow we are going to watch the Rugby and meet Kristina and Elodie.

Another season, another rant. The moaning Spaniard is at it again, biting the hand that feeds him - the many hands in fact, which slog away in the factory and design offices to provide him with the fastest car on the grid. So what does the McLaren team get in return? Well, snide comments like this mainly:

“I was expecting a lot more, we all were,” Alonso said. “From the outside, the team had a different image: serious, but very professional. And I arrived here after two titles; I improved the car as much as I could.”

“Last year they were fighting to make it into Q3 and this year they are going to win the championship, and the truth is that the treatment has not been very good.”

When asked if the treatment he received was that deserved by a two-time champion, Alonso said: “Not a double champion, but a normal person.”

“…all the lies that they leak to the press, both British and German, to go against me. That, inside my own team…They have to do something to improve the situation.”

To say Alonso and McLaren have not really got on would be like saying Bin Laden has had a few disagreements over the West. Such is the break down in the relationship between Alonso and team boss Ron Dennis, Fernando might as well be living silently in a cave. In fact, such has been the civil war in McLaren this season it has resulted in the team being fined $100 million after Alonso threatened to reveal his emails to test driver De La Rosa regarding stolen Ferrari information to the governing body. In the end, team boss Ron Dennis had to ring the FIA and come clean. Fair enough you might say…but Alonso’s agenda was never exactly whiter than white (some may call it blackmail) - it was hardly an apolitical approach or what you might call ‘team spirit’.

So Alonso may want to go back to his beloved Renault for whom he won his 2 world championships in 2005 and 2006. But wait a minute…who said this after last year’s Chinese grand prix when he stood on the brink of his second title?

“For sure, it is like you are in the Tour de France in the mountain, you have a puncture, and your team and your rival go uphill and don’t stop. That was a little bit difficult to understand…I felt lonely and unsupported”

Alonso’s constant moaning puts my back up, because none of it is justified.

If Lewis Hamilton wins the title at the final race in 2 weeks time, he would have done so purely on merit and off the back of his hard working team. Alonso has already been outclassed by a rookie, and rather than admit as much he just blames his team.

COME ON LEWIS!!