Long unnecessary post about McGregor, just because

Me looking like a fat McGregor, last NYE

A lot of friends over the last two or so years have asked me the same question “What do you think of Conor McGregor?”.  Knowing that I’ve been following the UFC for over seven years and having trained in both Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu extensively (I’m not saying I’m any good at either, or that I could scrap my way out of a paper bag, but I’ve learned a few things over the years) enquirers have taken an interest in my opinion with presumption I’ve got some vast insider knowledge which would provide some ground-breaking insight on MMA’s mouthiest fighter.  I’ve always found my opinions quite conflicted on the Dubliner’s success, so decided to write a blog post examining this point of view and somehow managed to ramble on for over two thousand, five hundred words.  So, if you have literally nothing else to do with your time, please feel free to read what follows.  If not, I can only congratulate you on your intelligent selection of priorities and time management, may you have a pleasant evening, afternoon or morning.

Let’s go with the most obvious bias I may have towards McGregor – we share first names.  One of the first things people now say to me when I introduce myself is “Conor?  Like McGregor?”  Which is somehow a welcome change to “Like Sarah Connor?”  It also means that they’re more likely to be able to spell my name correctly.  As with many Gaelic names there are sometimes a handful of ways to spell it, Conor, Connor, Coner, Connaire, Conchubar (there’s a lot of silent letters in the Irish language), Conar.  One of my personal hates are when people who are writing an e-mail or Facebook response to me can’t even spell my name right, despite it being on screen.  Mac’s success has somehow prompted a drop in the occurrence of this.  So, I’ve got one thing to thank him for.  We’ll get back to the other obvious of being Irish a little bit later, but I’m going to delve a little into a lesser known bias I may have: gym affiliation.

McGregor’s team, coached by John Kavanagh is based at the Straight Blast Gym headquarters in Dublin.  It has been so successful that Kavanagh has been able to expand, opening up several gyms with great coaches all over Ireland.  One of which (previously Maeda BJJ) is based in my hometown of Belfast and I’ve had the benefit of training in from time to time over the last year or so.  Not only has the gym been a boon to me developing my Jiu Jitsu abilities, but it’s allowed me to try a range of classes – striking, yoga, even a movement class taught by a ballet teacher.  There’s a great vibe in the city centre gym, with an environment conducive to building a supportive team and the skills of the team members, so with that in mind does that me even more biased in his favour?  The answer to that is – no.  In my six months of living in Dublin, I didn’t get to train at the SBG HQ once.  My hectic work schedule didn’t give me much opportunity to the massive dojo and even if I’d been able to make the trip, the gym has earned enough prestige to charge a premium rate, which may have been outside of my attempted “save money whilst getting wrecked at the weekends” budget. 

Instead, I found myself gravitating towards closer, smaller gyms which offered potentially more focused instruction.  I can’t comment on the quality of the coaching in the SBG HQ as I’ve never been there, but I’ve mostly good things.  Kavanagh is heralded for his expertise as one of Ireland’s first black belts in BJJ and his dedication to the gym are unquestionable.  The few bad things I’ve heard largely connected to the complex being a victim of its own success – such a large number of students eagerly coming in, can be a little bit chaotic, but I’d rather not comment to much on the circumstances of the gym as I’ve only ever been at the gym for a competition.  Much more suited to me price wise and geographically were Andre Ramos’s gym and Hugo Borim’s Arena MMA were two gyms that I got to practice BJJ with instructors who not only made me feel like part of their Jiu Jitsu family, but showed an interest in making me improve my game.  Andre, having won the SBG Fighter of the Year Award in 2007 had good things to say about McGregor, having trained with him throughout his time at the gym, commenting on how McGregor was largely humble during their time training and would take an interest in his teammate’s progress as much as his own.  During those months, coach Hugo Borim, though he seemed to have nothing personal against McGregor,  was dismantling .  TThat is to say that the European IBJ         JF Rome Open and Euro No Gi Championship winning brown belt had been building a reputation for calling out McGregor’s team mates such as Philip Mulpeter and Cathal Pendred in  professional cage grappling matches.  MMA fighter Joe McColgan, whom I occasionally trained Muay Thai with and have only the utmost respect for has been doing the same with MMA matches, performing at a high level in Clan Wars against SBG fighters such as Peter Queally, going so far as to call out Artem Lobov.  So, when all said and done, my loyalty to McGregor on a more local level is kind of split.  He’s a team mate of my team mates, whilst a rival of past coaches or past team mates of mine.   It’s a bit like having a third cousin twice removed.  E.g. You have no earthly idea who they actually are.   One could argue I’ve only got myself to blame, flitting from one gym to another, partially out of interest and out of convenience.  If we’re honest though, there’s enough ugly politics in the big bad real world that I’d much rather keep something as fantastic as Jiu Jitsu free from it.  I also believe that to really see personal development, you need to train with as many different people as possible, so you can learn different things from each of them, incorporate different techniques both offensive and defensive. 

  As for the Irish connection, this is something which has made things a little more difficult to make a firm decision on whether I like what the guy does.  I could go on about my own personal opinion of Nationalism for another ridiculously long blog post but, as stand-up comedians like Doug Stanhope have argued is simply taking pride in the achievements of other people, purely because they were born under the same politically defined borders as you.  It’s a little bit difficult to argue against this, but yet there’s something so intrinsically fun to considering yourself Irish and wanting to relish in the excitement McG has when he invokes Irish pride.  We’re considered some of the friendliest people on the planet and we’re somehow able to turn the negative stereotypes of being alcoholics into being sociable charmers with sexy accents.  McGregor has been able to tap into a different part of the Irish identity to promote his  – that of the Celtic warrior.  He’s harnessed references to the Viking TV show (filmed in Wicklow), haunting melodies from Sinead O’Connor (though you could say it was incredibly cheesy depending on your point of view, this was the first time there was a live performance of an entrance song for a UFC fight was when Conor took on Chad Mendes weathered a storm of ground and pound and came back with a stunning TKO victory) and made statements which have made everyone from the classic “My great grand pappy was from Tipperary” Yank to people with not one Irish relative feel Irish.  When Notorious made short work of Dustin Porier and declared “We’re not here to take part, we’re here to take over” he had the entire crowd on their feet.  Go on any given post on the UFC Facebook page and you’ll see random Eastern European McGregor fans harp on about how he could beat literally anybody, sometimes following it up with Irish flag emoticons.  The ghost of Bruce Lee, the dragons from Game of Thrones, young Mike Tyson.  For this reason, it’s hard to deny that McGregor is anything short of a cultural phenomenon. 

It’s hard to name a sport star that has generated as much hype as the result predicting Dub.  Messi might make more money, but his fans don’t suddenly want to become Argentinian or Catalan because of his beautiful ball handling skills.  Mohammed Ali is probably the most charismatic talker in sporting history, but it didn’t cause a whole heap of Polish people to convert to Islam and support the black civil rights movement.  Now, it’s easy to argue that McGregor’s trash talk lacks the class that Ali’s talk had.  Ali didn’t have to engage the sailor mouth that McGregor has, but this is a different era, a post-Limp Bizkit, post Stone Cold Steve Austin vs The Rock at Wrestlemania era.  Use of the word ‘motherfucker’ is so prevalent in today’s society that it has lost almost all of the shock value it would have had back in the ‘60s.  It’s also notable that McGregor has used homophobic or even sexist language to get into the heads of his opponents and upsell fights that in a society where political correctness is a point of contention.  Whilst I generally believe that political correctness is necessary, especially when you’re going to stoke that feeling of Irish pride, you need to remember that it wasn’t too long ago the signs were saying “No backs, no dogs, no Irish”, it’s easy to see how going against the grain to drum up controversy is still a valid tool in trash talking, increasing ticket revenue and running mind games despite its arguably abhorrent and hypocritical nature.  Let’s try to remember who the competitors in the sport are – fighters aren’t typically from affluent, well-educated backgrounds (well, aside from the American collegiate wrestlers), McGregor has said himself gave up plumbing and had to survive on the Irish welfare system until he was successful as a fighter.  It seems a little bit bourgeois for someone like myself coming from a middle class background to take massive issue with language used by someone from McGregor’s working class one, even when there are a few question marks over the actual level of how working class his background actually is. 

The trash talking has led to two other effects though.  It has inspired whole swathes of other fighters to start running game with their mouth to generate interest in their bouts.  With a few standout exceptions prior to McGregor’s big mouth emergence – Chael Sonnen, the Diaz brothers, Michael Bisping, Tito Ortiz, UFC fighters have had a tendency to play the “humble warrior” card.  Whilst it may be a fairer representation of their personalities, or of the martial arts philosophies, it’s unlikely to appeal to a wider, layman audience.  Now everyone from McGregor’s team mate Artem Lobov to relatively unknown Jeremy Stephens (now better known purely because his words in a press conference prompted McGregor to sneeringly ask "Who the fuck is that guy?") are trying to get their own slice of the pie.  Whilst not exactly the Irish fighter’s fault, the volume of insults thrown around press conferences and fighter’s social media accounts have increased exponentially.   Some of it is enjoyable, but considering McGregor at times sounds like a budget version of one of the Rubberbandits, the vast majority of it is cringe worthy and has transparent as a large chested woman’s t-shirt in a wet t-shirt competition.  Or in another words, as awkwardly spoken as that last sentence was written.  The second effect, perhaps a by-product of this professional wrestling style atmosphere, or by the expanding fan base has meant that fight purses have gone up.  The UFC may be a business, but by most accounts, it’s been underpaying the vast majority of fighters for years.  Considering these fighters are putting not just their long term health but their lives (there are only a handful of MMA related deaths and none in the UFC, but with any sport involving head trauma, there’s a risk) on the line, those not on the upper echelons of the sport are typically grinding and barely earning enough to pay living expenses and trainer costs until they make it to the top five or top ten of their division.  There’s often more money for fighters in lesser known organizations like Bellator and One FC than the UFC itself.  With UFC’s recent sponsorship deal with Reebok, the organization has also made it impossible for fighter’s to get paid good money for wearing other brands of MMA gear such as Affliction, Sprawl, Bad Boy or even Tap Out for instance.

That being said, I do take great issue with the aforementioned bandwagon fans.  More so because I’m a long term UFC fan than for any other reason.  I may not have been around there at the beginning when Royce Gracie was choking out strikers two hundred pounds heavier than him, but I was around when a Mohawk sporting Chuck Liddell was savaging people with deadly combos and refusing to let the fight go to the ground.  I’m happy that these days the likelihood of me being able to have a pub conversation about the sport has grown massively, but I’m not so happy that Johnny come-latelies will decide to turn every conversation about the sport into a conversation about Notorious.  McGregor might be the most successful fighter in terms of pay-per-view sales and purse size in UFC’s history, but when I hear ridiculous statements like “He’s got the best kicks in UFC” and challenge those statements with “What about Anderson Silva or Mirko Cro Cop?” and have nothing but blank expressions fired back at me, or get told that McGregor was once a successful bare knuckle boxer who killed a man with his bare hands I have to suppress the rage from building up.  I’m just plain baffled by the level of ignorance I’m subjected to.  It may not be the most important issue in the world, but it’s my own personal gripe.  I’m sure if someone said that Christiano Ronaldo was the best defender in the history of football, it might enrage a few football fans as well.

So, there you have it.  A ridiculously long blog post no-one is likely to read about the double edged sword that is Conor McGregor.  Other than a series of yeses to questions the few people who’ve actually read it might ask.   Yes, I think he’s a very good technical fighter -  though he could work on his jitz game more and learn to tie that belt!  Yes I think he barely won the last fight against Diaz, but he just about edged it and lastly, yes he probably was about to get sparked out by Nate in the first fight only going for the take down because he was aware it’s a lot more ungracious to be knocked out than it is to be tapped out.  And yes, I am looking forward to the fight against Alvarez.  It could go either way.

Meth-Gregor.  AMIRITE?  (Please don't hunt me down and punch me in the mouth.)

My teenage years described in pretentious prose

The chubby boy scurried home that day in a sweaty hurry.  Dark patches had formed under the arms pits of his scratchy white shirt, as the straps of his school bag laden with worn out textbooks and trading cards dug into his shoulders.  As he pried open the door of the Victorian terrace house, the package lay there in wait.  He tore into it with the dirty nails on the end his chubby digits, clumsily shredding through the brown exterior of the parcel, into the bubble wrapped contents.  There they were: three CD cases, each containing the soundtracks of the teenage years that lay ahead of him.  One bore the image of a cockroach, another a flaming skull, the third and final one had a cockroach rubbing its fetid legs together, looking some how as eager to spread its disease as the boy was to delve deep into the music.  This music was aggressive.  Sometimes whiny.  It was his whiny though.  Undeserved self-pitying whiny.  He'd return to his quarters, those which contained that adolescent stench of wet towel, used underwear and discarded tissues to play each of them in turn to complete  ad nauseum.  As the music would begin, so too would the familiar screech and bleep of the old telephone modem.  56 kbps was all he needed to dial into his virtual worlds.  Aside from the ignored maternal or paternal enquiries of "Have you done your homework?", he was free to partake in whichever form of Walter-Mittyism took his fancy.  Wizard, starship commander, lothario.  Why leave these realms when the material plane held no such respect for him.  Social status and the insecurities which accompanied it held no baring on his success here.  The cacophony and the words on his thick screened monitor encapsulated him in a blissful vacuum.  This was his realm and no others need enter.

Domino Gate

I've recently been made aware by a colleague of mine that you provided him with a pizza with both anchovies and pepperoni as toppings. I want to know what world you live in where this could ever be deemed acceptable. I'm appalled.

This flavour mispairing is not only in very poor taste but potentially dangerous. I've a good mind to contact my local MP as this is surely infringement of several clauses of the Geneva convention.

I'm going to beg you to reconsider allowing this in the future as this diabolical construction should never have seen the light of day in the first place. And before you say anything, yes I think it was wrong of him to make the order but it was even worse for you to let him purchase it.

Until this happens I cannot advocate the purchase of any further pizzas from your establishments.

Regards

Conor Charlton

Scraps, near scraps and drunken bolshie confrontations, Part 1

There are a few ways you've stumbled across this particular blog. The most likely one is that you're a Facebook friend of mine and presumably know a little about me. You probably know that I live up to the Irish stereotype of loving drinking and loving fighting. The drinking is a given. I enjoy few things more than a good session. With regards to fighting its a little bit more complicated than that. I love martial arts. I've trained in run down boxing gyms, Muay Thai camps in Thailand and stretched my limbs out with the most aggressive form of yoga known to man: BrazilIan Jiu Jitsu. That's not to say I can fight well. I'll whole-heartedly admit for the length of time I've spent getting my ass kicked in dojos, sports halls or make shift rings over the last ten years I'm still as soft as cotton wool, no more able to take a punch than the next slightly doughy-round-the-edges guy. More to the point, I like my fighting well contained, to the environment of sporting venues and action movies. Street and for that matter bar fighting is messy and nine times out of ten almost completely pointless. Why risk hurting your hand trying to smash somebody's skull in when you can kick back, relax and have another drink.  UFC legend Chuck Liddell's first two pieces of advice to anyone wanting to win a fight are simply "Don't get into fights". If The guy with a Mohawk and a Chinese famed for dropping wrestlers with a baseball pithing style overhand letter tattooed into the side of his dome advised not to start scrapping with the guy who stares at you too long, you should probably take his advice. What do you have to prove? That you can physically hurt someone? That you can assert "alpha male" dominance over another drunken fool in front of a crowd of strangers. Behave yourself. Your testosterone fuelled outrages impress almost no one. Any woman aroused by outdated displays of barbaric "masculinity" are probably entirely defective, her mal aligned decision making process are cruel missteps in our evolution. Or at least that's what I try and tell myself as my fight or flight reactions kick in and I find myself firmly on the flight end of the bargain, trying to puff my chest out and flare my nostrils in order to conceal my inner desire to plead "please don't hurt me. I'm too pretty!" So generally speaking I play pacifist, sometimes even drunken Jesus as I foolishly step between two warring factions but very rarely the hard man, I just don't have the stones to back it up. 

Despite all this, sometimes my judgement is still poor. I'll say the wrong thing or decide I'll stand up to perceived bullying, or believe I'm capable of teaching some clown a lesson. Sometimes my levels of natural social awkwardness will provoke disdain in others. This is the beginning of a series of posts about times in my life where alcohol, poor judgement, bad luck or just general dumbassery got me into scrapes or almost scrapes, Narrowly avoided punch ups or rare occasional full blown ones.  For the actual street brawlers this may seem tame and for the sanctimonious some of these things may seem tedious proof giving examples of why drinking is a pointless leisure pursuit, but Id like to believe these fables will provide mirth to some.

Let's begin with my first night of drinking, 

Conor learns basic boxing combinations, goes out on first actual night out

Amongst some of my friends who have endured me during my extremely awkward teenage years (and later general wanker years of which I still progress through these days) there is some confusion as to when my first drunken night was. Some would point to an Easter "fling" night. A school committee organised underage drinking session in a hotels ball room, where bar staff refused to serve me, knowing full well most of the other students were underage, they had feigned being of legal age by dressing the part - stripey shirts, glitzy dresses and Lacoste polos. I had rocked up in a skull and crossbones embossed skater hoody, as acne ridden as I had been the year I bought the scruffy, bleached by whatever doctor prescribed ointment damn jumper. Made an example of, I was forced to ask others to buy pints for me using the measley £10 coins Id scraped together from my paper round. Four pints in and I was mine sweeping, abducting any wayward pint left unguarded more than 120 seconds. Thankfully no bad came of this grand theft pinta other than being warned by a friend not to open my pig swill filled gob on the journey home, lift granted by her father.

The other grand popping of the inebriation cherry came when I decided I'd head out to meet some potential friends. I say potential friends because Id schooled with them for six years, had shared hobbies and wanted to be part of their group. Maybe, just maybe, if I spent some outside of school time I could prove my coolness and say some witty things. They'd want my trading card shuffling ass in their gang and would want to play all those great games I tried to force upon them. Alas, it was not to be. I soon got brushed off with questions like "what are you doing here?" And "who did you come with". The "you guys, I guess" suggestions quickly became scorned, sniggered at and I stood around feeling out of place. Thankfully, more accepting folk were in that bar. A young Niall graham, whom id become acquainted with through the aforementioned world of collectible card game geekery and his friend Daffy, whose real name is unknown but stands as a pillar of the people nicknamed after looney toons community. They were buzzed, bouncing around the place like they'd drank the maximum sugar squishy from a very specific Simpsons episode you should go watch again (and if you haven't seen it, you're a wankdog, get a life, fuck face).  In their haze they seemed far more interesting than those who shunned me and invited me to join them on their level ten hallionry.

After more beers we headed off to nightclub famed for its disdain for anything bright: The Venue. This haven for goths, moshers, metallers, fishnet wearing pale skinned princesses and chain smoking make up wearing men and generally unwashed folk was disregarded by . Though no doubt many cherries of the other kind were popped over the years in the bar, my main concern was being the drunkest bastard in there.

Being that it was a particularly shady club for quite sometime it made a point of not selling alcohol. It sold tickets instead, that could be traded for drinks. I don't know how exactly this got around whatever legal restriction it was faced with but for years it dived right through that loophole reasonably successfully.

Firstly I'd need to buy drinks tickets, then I'd exchange those drinks tickets for vodkas. Straight double vodkas in fact. I'm not entirely sure how I managed to stomach one of them, let alone four of them - not all subsequently but certainly within the space of two hours, the Russian poison had infected me, turned off most of the part of the brain that says "don't do that, it might not be such a great idea...". Id taken up boxing only a few months previously. Now it was time to remind everyone just how skilled I'd become - by busting out my three punch combos at the air. Jab, cross hook! Cross, hook, cross! Hook, cross, hook! With a combination of cheap alcohol and adrenaline coursing through my blood stream, I deemed myself unstoppable, capable of knocking out Mike Tyson with one well placed punch. I needed to show the world how this air in front of my face was no longer any threat to me, how I could dispatch the once mighty foe like it wasn't even there. Maybe then the chicks would flock to me, bountiful breasts bouncing free from their corsets as they leapt towards me.

I had to be sat down multiple times. A group of older guys who I also knew from geeky gaming aimed to ensure I was safe from bouncers disdain, or from landing a stray punch on some unfortunate fat girl's jowl. I'd stop momentarily, gorge on the paper-plated curried chip produced in the restaurant's seedy kitchen, a delicacy made solely so the could maintain "restaurant" status but I couldn't be held down for long.  A single back turned and I'd spring to my feet, launch myself towards the dance floor and start drunkenly comboing off again, sweating vodka and dribbling luminous yellow curry as I did.

With the help of the older goths, I somehow made it to the end of the night without anyone doing anything to truly get beaten up or thrown out of the club on my first night of getting steamed. I managed to provoke only one drinker into doing anything giving me any kind of negative response.  When the music ended and the lights were up I found myself dancing circularly round the dance floor with a punk shouting obscenities, taunting me, seemingly intent on getting me to fight. I was game, this drunken fight was the one I had been preparing for all night after all.

For the third time that night my wisened goth and metaller friends stepped in to lead me away from the potential fray, intercepting the punk and physically motioning away from the scene. It was utterly anti climax but it would mark the beginning of a series of booze fuelled idiotic adventures.

I'd later go home to throw up a fusion of straight vodka and curried chips or a combination I like to call currodka.

The Worst Jobs I've Ever Worked - Part One, the Teenage Years

I'm almost 28.  This means I've pretty much missed my opportunity to get famous and die of a heroin overdose/motorcycle accident.  Whilst I've been close to the latter form of death, I've never been close to achieving fame or fortune.  That's not to say I won't achieve them, who knows - I could well live my dreams of being DR Actor-Model-Lead Singer-Superstar DJ-MMA Fighter-King of Humanity-Alpha Male-Love Machine-Superhero but until then I may continue to pass my time in part time jobs gaining enough money for the next travelling experience whilst trying my hand at a few different activities along the way.  Whilst others from my school peer group may be in positions making £30-40k a year, I'm currently shifting sideways and having fun doing it. I've done all sorts of low paid jobs, some great fun, others horrendously stressful for wat they were providing me with.  So here's a run down of some of the worst.

Paper Boy - Ormeau Newsagents

The owner of Ormeau Newsagents was by all means, a nice old guy trying to run a shop which the western world was beginning to have no use for.  Who needs a newspaper when the internet will provide you with up to date coverage of world events?  Perhaps those of older generations still want to play sudoku or do their crosswords with a biro on an actual piece of paper, whilst truck drivers still get a kick out of page 3 of the Sun but sales of paper editions are on the decline.  Meanwhile confectionery and soft drinks can usually be picked up on offer from any of the twenty million Tesco's that seem to dot the city-scape of Belfast.  So old Stevie had to keep his primary source of income keep running whilst he entered his retirement phase by acting as an old school newsagent, providing services like you've guessed it door-to-door paper delivery.  If you lived near the Annadale Flats building or on the Ravenhill Road area you could have the service just by paying the daily price of the paper plus an additional weekly 20 p delivery charge.  The money from that delivery charge went to the courier, in that case - 16 year old me.  Even with nearly forty people per area this didn't amount to much.  Especially when you consider how long it would take you to deliver that many papers.  Now the job wasn't as difficult as playing the NES classic - I never got mauled by any dogs or knocked over, but the whole affair wasn't exactly easy.  Papers couldn't be thrown, they had to be dropped onto the porch of every paying customer, on time - or there'd be complaints.

Classic my hole, hated this game almost much as I hated that job

On a few occasions I'd be late to the job either due to having to stay late at school or because I wanted to stay home and wank over Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  When these academic/masturbatory debacles kept people from getting their papers before their 5.30 supper they'd start whining.  Customers would ring the newsagents up, demanding that the paper would be left there on time.  Some even came out of their houses to tell me to my face that I wasn't doing my job properly.  I'd typically freeze up in my teenage awkwardness, unable to respond with anything other than stuttered apologies.  In the same position today, I'd love to tell those cunts to fuck off, but unfortunately it's an opportunity I will never have.

The job took too long to complete every day and often meant striving through horribly wicked weather just to complete it.  It also on a number of occasions put my back under immense strain.  Have you ever lifted a stack of 40 newspapers, including all of the extra magazines and  glossy adverts?  Now imagine trying to jam that same stack into a PVC bag and cycle it around for an hour and a half.  Not exactly a comfortable bike ride.  When I tried suggesting to Stevie's wife who ran the shop that she should have dumped the advertisements before I picked up the load she would roll her eyes as if to say "why should I waste my time doing that".  Splitting the load into two piles and delivering them in two runs would have increased my delivery time to about two hours an evening.  I might have been a loser teenager with few friends and no romantic prospects but even two hours a night for a measly £7.50 a week.  Not to mention I seemed to spend half of my miniscule pay packet on sweets as soon as I received it at the end of every Saturday afternoon. 

Whilst the job was generally awful, I think the absolute lowest point was meeting some drug addled smick in the Annadale area and having this conversation

"'ere mate, my aunt lives on Lower Ormeau and they all know I'm a protestant and they'll get me if they can.  Lend us yer bike would ye?"

"No, I can't."

As I cycled on he delivered this threat

"If I see ye again, I'll chase ye!"

Now at 16, I was far too old to be starting that job - a job that was meant for a younger kid, who didn't have as much AS Level Coursework as I did at the time.  I think the main reason I stuck the job out for a full year was that I was told the last paper boy had received big money in tips that previous Christmas.  Maybe it was my occasional lack of tardiness that meant only half of the customers seemed to give me anything at all.  Maybe those that didn't tip didn't realize they should have been tipping their paper boy.  Or maybe those well off middle class types of the Ravenhill area were just tight as a duck's bum and if that's the case then I hope they end eating breakfasts of microwaved dog turd. 

I made a lot more money when I was ten going door-to-door offering to wash people's cars for a quid and I was my own boss.  God I miss those days of being a small business owner.

Sales Associate - TK Maxx

In the summer of lower sixth, I decided it was time to get a "real job".  At least one that paid at least minimum wage and provided shift work.  This meant filling in a job application form, lying a little about experience and gaining the position of Sales Associate.  I don't know how long the position of "sales associate" has had the title "sales associate".  Really it should be "teenage cunt that works the tills" or "shelf stacker/bitch that has to clean up the entire store after grown women have trashed it on their hunt for a bargain.  This was my first and last play in the retail sector.  

Whilst I still shop at TK Maxx from time to time as it genuinely is a good place to pick up reasonably priced fashionable items, I would recommend working there to no-one.  It desperately tried to follow the corporate stylings of its American brother "TJ Maxx" and in doing so encouraged its minimum wage paid staff to be Shiny Happy People saying "have a nice day" with a shit eating grin to every customer who traipsed through the doors.  I still remember the badly acted "educational" videos shown to us how to detect store thieves, price ticket-swappers and what to expect if we were ever caught "skimming".

The job was full of things that plagued it - incompetent mangers, rude customers and awkward hours.  I was typically scheduled to work 6-10 on a Tuesday and Thursday night.  The store would close at 9, much like all of the other stores that shared the retail park.  However, whilst all of the other employees would get away within ten or twenty minutes, TK Maxx had a long "recovery" process required.  Because of its layout and the fact it stocked such a varying range of clothing, customers (more often female than not) would pull things clothes off of the rails and throw them out of the way like packs of shit tossing chimps.  I think the latest I ever got out was around midnight, whilst my father sat in his driver seat waiting for me to emerge.  When the Christmas period ended, I decided focusing on my raising my dreadful grades was far more important than enduring red shirt slavery.

Sandwich Artist - Subway

If Sales Associate sounds like a made up position, the official job name of a regular Subway employee brings things to the next level.  I made bread sculptures, painted them with a variety of thick sugary sauces and filled them with freshly prepped, insecticide covered vegetables and heavily processed reconstituted meats.  I was another pimply faced teenager in a American chain fast food franchise and I hated it.  The late night shifts were the worst, feeding drunken students the means to soak up some of the cheap alcohol they'd spent the night guzzling.  When they were finally ushered out by a security guard (the fact these places sometimes need a security guard is simply hilarious) the dreadful clean up would involve taking a scrubber to a meatball marinara encrusted steel saucepan.  

Unsurprisingly my co-workers tended to be unskilled Eastern European workers whose limited English skills prevented them from getting better tipped hospitality roles and archetypal stoners.  I quit to focus on my studies and spend more time involved with a much more enjoyable part time position: Officer Cadet.

On the upside, I got a free Sub on every shift I worked.  Within reason I would create Scooby Doo style monstrosities which would tie me over for the seemingly never ending six hour shifts.  For most employees, this perk of the job was quickly ignored.  The GMO flavoured garbage would become intolerable.  As a result, I now only  eat Subway about once every three years.  There are rare occasions the smell of that preservative enriched pre-rolled dough baking drags me in and I just can't help myself ordering "Sub of the Day" or steak and cheese with extra bacon.  I may never have a fantastic "Veggymax with Ham" on honey oat again though. C'est la vie.

I do not miss this one bit

The Mephedrone Mystery - The time I tried to start a novel

After doing some room cleaning, I found a couple of scrappy pages with a bit of writing I'd done a couple of years ago. It was the start of a novel set about five years back, when a certain drug was legal in the UK.

What's the price of a good time these days?  Back then I'd have put it around twenty five quid.  That and a small portion of my emotional well being for up to three days after but I'm less willing to make that exchange these days.  Sure, I might take the odd bump for old time's sake, a pungent nostalgia but it just isn't as good as it was.  That was back when a certain plant fertilizer took over the drugs market of both UK and Ireland.  For a mere three quid you could have a little parcel of nastiness shipped from China right to your doorstep.  It was an unregulated substance that for a small period of time was allowed to slip past our Majesty's drug hating law makers to provide sensational highs and crippling despair inducing lows.

It was in the midst of one low that I experienced the loss of a good friend.  I had been up all night before, bouncing from shite bar to shite club to an even shiter student after party in the centre of my home town: Belfast.  Ah Beal Feirste, a town that could be heralded not for its greatness, nor its shiteness but of its overall mediocrity.  Danny and I had ended up chasing after two well off law students in sparkly dresses that led us to their gaff on the Lisburn Road.  One of those bare basic toilet room at the top of the stairs, three bedroom, 80's carpet and a kitchen full of plates stained with Tesco's basic curry sauce.  We'd picked up some Buckfast from an illegally open bar on the Ormeau road en route to the shitty little place.  Danny had scored with the 7 whilst I had kissed the 8 before she decided her combination of Bacardi breezers and the soap bar spliffs Danny and I toked at were too much and she sulked off back to her room, presumably for a tactical boke.  Yes it might seem horrible that I remember those girls more by the score out of ten I had attributed to their physical appearance but really that's all they had been to me.  I didn't have a chance to delve too deeply into their inner psyche and chances are I may not have liked what I saw had I done so.  I'd taken an interest in them because I found them attractive and more importantly willing to listen to the drivel I spewed into their ear on a busy dance floor.

What remained of the situation was me, some skinny gay guy, his fat Manchester-Chinese fag hag friend and our friend in common - Mr Meph E Drone.  Don't get me wrong, they were nice people but once we got rid of that point seven of a gram, I'd probably never see them again.  One thing you could expect from the drug was the sensation of feeling a residue drip from the back of your throat into your mouth in a salty sweet kind of way.  When flavour became too intrusive, I'd wash it back with that previously aforementioned bottle of Bucky.  Definitely against my better judgement.   Indeed there were many clues on the label as to why consuming such a beverage was a bad idea.  Despite being produced by the monks of some abbey in Devon, there was a clear reminder that there were 37.5 mg of caffeine per 100 ml of liquid.  This quality only gave the imbiber the illusion that they were perfectly sober with only the clearest mind, despite all the outward signs suggesting otherwise.  I was surprisingly acting very well behaved for a man cock-blocked by vomit and under the influence of two substances capable of leading the user to make very bad decisions.  

"The name tonic wine does not imply medicinal properties," I read out loud musing over the yellow label's largely unheeded advice.  Seeing that a recent news story had emerged stating that out of every 1000 Glaswegian cases of alcohol related crime report the word Buckfast had appeared on average 932 of them.  Buckfast was medicine for the sober, the bored and the stupid. At that point in time it acted as an antibiotic to the malaise of the cheap vodka wearing off.  It was in a ropey arm chair probably purchased by a cheap landlord in Oxfam where I sat Youtube DJing on a laptop.  The music ranged from the Dubliners to MGMT.  At about 6 am I retired to the spare bedroom.  It was like the spare bedroom I seemed to end up at all those so-called parties complete with a dingy sheetless mattress in a room with a shadeless light so bright it invaded not just my eyes but the corners of my brain that just wanted to be left alone.  I had two lose/lose options - turn the light off and risk the soap bar joints putting me into a slumber too deep for the faint bleep of a £10 pay and go phone to rouse me, or leave the corrosive light on thus binding me to an unpleasant twitchy experience bereft with paranoia and the feeling that time was slipping away all too quickly.  

I'd find myself in work less than three hours from whence I'd made that decision to leave that sun-like ball of self loathing on.  It was my second job since leaving university and was only marginally more shite than the previous one.  Thankfully I'd worn a shirt and a pair of jeans dark enough to fit under the "smart casual" requirements of the office dress code.  I kept a bottle of non-alcoholic mouth wash in my desk drawer to masque the stench of booze and plant food on my breath.  Call centres were as one friend put it "The Devil's Workshops".  You have to sign in five minutes to the hour to get paid for and almost certainly didn't get paid for the fifteen minutes you worked after your shift ended to resolve a complicated call.  How many souls can attest to a real sense of satisfaction towing the company line and informing single mothers that the couch bought on credit was going to cost them thrice as much as it was worth.  It wasn't that I was having to endure Bukowski style industrial madness, it was that I had to be the bearer of bad news on almost every single call.  I answered the phone around eighty times today.  Ten times higher than the average person in the office.  I was good at what I did but my God did I hate doing it.  Allow me to break down for you what my company did..

Here's where the story ends.  Worth reading?  Probably not.  Too much preamble.  Plus the entire novel's concept was self-loathing.  We may have enough misery already.

Complaint letter to DX

I'm e-mailing as a complaint with regard to the poor services you are currently providing me.

I was supposed to receive my passport on Wednesday and was surprised to receive not my passport but a letter saying you have failed to deliver.

As there were two people in the house throughout the day and neither the doorbell or the knocker were used it seems your delivery man invested very little effort in obtaining my signature or delivering the item (which thankfully isn't that urgent but if it were, I'd currently be very alarmed).  Furthermore on receiving the letter I immediately texted the number referenced in the letter and received neither the passport or even a confirmation text message.  This begs the question - when do you intend on delivering my passport?  Also, do I have to be sitting on my porch on a rocking chair brandishing a shotgun and occasionally firing spit into a bucket in order to ensure I'm able to collect this passport?

Regards

Just a note to my followers

There's only 3 of you - Dave, Rachel and Rodney but if you want something (hopefully) fun to read, try my fictional Asian blog

www.ranchocontrol.blogspot.com

The part where my blog ends up as my dream journal.. again.

You only have mere hours to record a good dream.  Otherwise it'll be gone for good.  That's my theory anyway.

Last night I dreamt..

I was competing in some sort of Grand Prix form of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (Cage Fighting to those not in the know).  A Grand Prix is essentially when fighters compete in multiple matches in a small period of time - either a night or a weekend.  These kind of tournaments do not allow time for injury recovery or training to adapt to the next fighter's style, it's simply the best on the day.  These kind of fights don't really exist in UFC any more as it's adapted a league style of tournament but if you watch the film "Warrior" you will see what kind of competition I'm referring to.

During this tournament I was getting pretty far, despite being absolutely terrified of having to compete, knowing that despite my years of training I'm vastly inferior to the majority of professional or even amateur fighters.  Hell if you walk into my class having never trained Muay Thai before, you're probably better than me.

In the smaller weight category though something extraordinary was happening - an eight year old boy was winning every match by decisive swift knock outs.  That was until he faced up against a ten year old in the final.  The ten year old however didn't fight him, he pulled out a childish game, one I remember from my childhood where you hold a hand over somebody's head and say a number, which was referring to the number of boyfriends the other person had.  The two boys then started acting not as fighters, but quite rightly - as kids.  The eight year old ran off to get a jumper because he was cold and the ten year old was declared the winner.  The eight year old wasn't angry or sad to lose, kind of just happy to be a kid again.

Turned out that in the dream the whole story was part of an audiobook collection written and performed by the prodigy, despite the fact I was seeing everything very visually.  I then looked on Amazon in the dream and found out that the story had rave reviews.

That's all for now folks.

Charlto answers an online application question

 Question 1: We like people that are interesting. What would you say is unique about you?

Well first off, I'm not going to answer this question by starting with "I am unique because..." I don't want to give you a starchy ego driven response to this listing off all of my greatest attributes, how I'm so intelligent, enthusiastic and goal orientated.  I'd rather illicit a response from you (whoever is reading this, whether that's plural or singular) that makes you say "Hey, I think I like this guy" because generally when most people meet me, they do.  I'm in the habit of treating complete strangers like friends after all a little bit of empathy can go a long way.  We're all human beings after all and we're all unique in our own way despite 99% of our genetic coding being exactly the same as the person beside us, in front of us or ten thousand miles away from us.  We all witness good times, bad times and everything in between.  I've experienced personal tragedy from being around a dying family member in his last days.  I've lay in bed with the person I loved probably just as much as anybody likely to read this.  I could tell you about my hobbies - how I love martial arts like Brazillian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai, playing obscure card games and arguing with racists on youtube videos.  I could tell you about my charity work, teaching asylum seekers English and helping out with ecological concerns in a stretch of countryside that runs through my own city but its all part of a bigger picture.

 As you may be beginning to see, I'm a little eccentric.  One good pal who I lived with for a few years stated "The thing I like about you Conor is that you don't do anything overly eccentric it's just that every little action, every behavioural quirk you exhibit is just a little bit eccentric in it's own right".  I stand out from the crowd because I'm not afraid to.  Allow me to give an example. A few months after I graduated, back in 2009 I attended an open interview day at a graduate sales recruitment agency, the boss asked the attendees to one by one, stand declare their name, their star sign and their greatest achievement to date.  I stood and delivered the following quip "I'm Conor and I'm an alcoholic.  Oh sorry.. wrong room!"  Immediately the room erupted into laughter and that's exactly what I sought.  Nothing fills me with a greater enjoyment than knowing I can cause a whole crowd of strangers to laugh because as soon as you do, everyone can relax a little and start remembering that we are just humans and that we don't have to put ourselves on some pedestal to be judged.  We can do our best but worrying about whether our best is ever good enough only increases our chance of having an early heart attack and I intend to make it through my forties at least.

February Reviews

It's been a while since I've had time to sit down and churn out some reviews.. or rather I've been watching far too much crap to spend the time writing about what I see.  Excuses aside, here's a break done of some of the TV shows that have been emerging in the states over the last month or so.

Sitcoms

 

I got introduced to the extremely offensive Australian comic Jim Jefferies just before Christmas.  His stand up is arguably inspirational in its crass but beautifully crafted manner.  His routine is storydriven, layered with awkward pauses, intejectory comments and sickening crudeness and he displays his abilities on stage to such an extent that I would count him as one one of the top ten stand up comedians performing today.  However this new venture, where he plays a charicature of himself isn't quite on par with his stand up routines.  This is partly due to his realiance on those stories he has already told in said routines.  Some of these work brilliantly, namely in the first episode where he brings his severely disabled friend (played by the nerdy guy in American Pie-like teen comedy Roadtrip) to a brothel to receive his first blowjob.  It's a story that I feel wasn't concocted by Jefferies but one I genuinely think he lived through, making the whole event picture perfect for a comedy seeking audience and it's recreation on screen gives the viewer the most perfect feel-good comedy experience.  Others don't quite hold up to these fables on stage, the retellings been forced into awkward situations ensuring that for the viewer they can feel somewhat misplaced: urinals and park benches, the latter place has Hughes declaring after one story "it's alot better on stage". 

The show has a fair  bit in common with American comedian Louis C.K.'s show, "Louie".  Both are semi-autobiographical and both rely on the wit of the starring comedians to fuel the shows' scripts.  In comparison though, Legit feels a little bit stale to those familiar with him.  The jokes that aren't taken from his stand up feel too obvious already - centering on him being a young, obnoxious Australian man dropped into a pond of American civility and seriousness.  Louis on the other hand is a little bit more subtle and surreal, we aren't laughing at C.K.'s obnoxiousness, rather his hopelessness.  The live audience sections show us that C.K. is far from running out of things to say about society or his place as a balding, overweight forty something year old within it.  It's his nervousness and haplessness in a hostile environment that generates a comfortable awkwardness that we empathize with the writer/main character.  For these reasons, it's understandable how C.K.'s critically acclaimed show has made it into its third season.  I can't quite say the same thing about Legit.  Whilst there is hope yet and without doubt the first two episodes have provided me with some of the most euphoric feel good moments a sitcom could, the comedy has largely wavered in episodes 4-6.  They haven't been entirely laughless but I don't see the show making enough waves to warrant much more of the same thing.  Legit is unlikely to gather the same cult following as another recent Australian/American collaboration, "Wilfred" has. 

Action/Drama

It's a few months away before HBO's and AMC's big guns come back on US television screen's/laptops everywhere of every telly addict, ever.  Whilst we wait for our Breaking Bad/Game of Thrones/Boardwalk Empires, we've got a little bit of things to enjoy in between.  Perhaps I should start chasing after the subtitled Danish thrillers after shows like "The Killing" and "The Bridge" made a big splash with more experienced reviewers but I've opted for the lazy man's route: look for something forgetable and American.  On the top of that list is Banshee.  Brought to you by the maker of Twilight-for-adults "True Blood".  I have to admit, I despise True Blood.  It's not that it's written extremely badly because I do humour the concepts of the supernatural forces playing out in a more realistic world.  I don't think it's that bad in terms of intrigue and suspense either.  I just hate every damn character on the entire show.  I would quite happily tie every one of them up around a big wooden stake and shove cotton wool in their mouths.  I don't want to see them die, I just can't bare to listen to them for any longer than I have.  For this reason, I'm surprised to enjoy Banshee, which takes on the similar stylish cinematography as its supernatural sister.  If Banshee had been realeased when I was fourteen on Channel 5, I would have waited for my parents to go to sleep and sneak downstairs to watch it every single night.  It has everything that a growing boy needs: a stereotypically badass male protagonist, vicious amounts of violence, blood and brutality and most of all a softcore porn level of sex and nudity.  Forget watching reruns of "Red Shoe Diaries" and "Compromising Situations" (who does that anyway), this is the show you were crying out for when you were sprouting pubes for the first time.  Taking place in the fictional midwest town of Banshee, ex-con sees New Zealand born actor Antony Starr stars as an unnamed protagonist who after being released from prison,  flees from his vicious Eastern European gangster nemisis, Rabbit to locate his former lover and partner in crime and the diamonds that they stole.  When it turns out that she is now married and  the diamonds are gone, he goes to the town's saloon, witnesses the brutal murder of the new town sheriff and decides to assume his identity, allowing him to act as an edgy "play by his own rules" cop. 

If you were ever a fan of the 1980s hit movie "Roadhouse", you're probably going to be a fan of Banshee.  Parallels between the two are easily drawn: both feature lawless towns in the pocket of sophisticated villain who are not just money making sophisticated schemers, but violent, sexualized psychopaths, both feature bold, martial arts practicing protagonists who aren't afraid to kick a man in the back of the knees and lastly both feature sex scenes with attractive big titted women (Lili Simmons has a lovely body on her).  Like Roadhouse, Banshee is primarily an action driven viewing.  Although its not quite as monster of the week as the similiar albeit softer superhero show, "Arrow".  It's fairly obvious how the ongoing storylines with the multiple villains and multiple love interests are going to develop. 

It will never be heralded for its intelligence and the number of wide open plotholes present probably urged HBO execs to pass the show on to the smaller sister network of Cinemax.  That's not to say we won't be seeing Banshee on our torrents list for quite some time.  Only half a season through and Banshee has already been renewed for another ten episode season.  Likely to be viewed by the same people who watch the tedious "Sons of Anarchy", this fun, fast paced romp of a series will attract its own crowd for its energy and slickness.

My first restaurant review

The Barking Dog
Look ma!  I'm a food critic!  No, but seriously.. the Barking Dog, great place, great food.

This photo of The Barking Dog Restaurant Belfast is courtesy of TripAdvisor

In the nature of my vagabound ways, I'm only home about half of the year.  As many of you know, I spend the rest of the time trying to survive in the streets of Barcelona or more recently, teaching Spanish students some sort of strange language I like to call English.  As a result, what time I spend with my mother on a one to one basis is appreciated for the both of us, which means a nice meal on those rare occasions we're not tied up attending to other things.  Originally we planned to go to Made in Belfast, since we appreciate its deliberately tacky/eccentric decor and the controversy causing naked lady art which act as an utter insult to the good taste of the fun hating Presbos,   however a quick google of "Made in Belfast restaurant review" yielded only negative reports of its cuisine.  A comment on the Guardian review suggested a number of places, one being one of Belfast's few Gastro restaraunts, "The Barking Dog".  A second google search gave me the positive feedback I needed to decide that this so called dog would be the very place that our three courses would be so delightfully consumed.

And what a dog it is. 

Located on the lower part of the Malone Road, the restaurant is decorated in a classy but unpretentious rustic fashion.  Having made no reservation we weren't given exactly the best table in the building.  Its round shape made it a little bit tricky to get our legs under one hundred percent but a pint of the home brew meant I quickly forgot about this minor indescretion.  It's a pretty flavoursome Belfast lager, maybe not as crisp as I'd hope for in a pre-dinner pint but it seemed to pack a bigger punch than I was preparing for, quickly illustrated by my sudden lack of vocal volume control a mere quarter of an hour after I sat down.  The candle lit interior had a fairly lively atmosphere punctuated by a series of very animated waiters.  The gesticulation of the head waiter led me to believe that in the best possible sense he might have been a little bit wired - not necessarily a bad thing; a little bit of free entertainment doesn't go amiss and to his credit he upsold the menu items like some sort of Egyptian God of second hand car salesmen.  The menu was quite well presented, in a readable but original font listing six or so items for each course which is in my eyes, just enough to appease every taste without clouding a customer's judgement with a barrage of over variety.  There was nothing on the menu that came as a particular suprise for a standard gastro restaraunt.  Lamb, steak, pork, chicken were the obvious options for the carniverous customer, whilst a pescatarian could opt for hake, fish pie (don't put that into google) and scampi.  The usual linguini or risotto could be selected by more discerning vegetarians.  I opted for a starter of potted chicken, garnished with probably the most perfect colseslaw I've ever tasted.. and the most ungodly tasty toast.  My mum opted for the special - a carpaccio of beef with salad.  In her words, this was probably the most delicious starter she had ever eaten.  When it comes to food reviews, my mum doesn't deal in hyperbole.  Take from that what you will.  No suprise in saying the starter plates returned to their point of origin completely bare.

From a reviewer's perespective the gap between starter and main course was a good bit longer than optimal but it gave us a good chance to enjoy the simple but pleasant Chilean merlot and gas about everything in life.  By the time the gap was over we were ready to get stuck into our plato segundo.  In a restaraunt like this, I'm a sucker for rump of lamb - the idea of its taste is impossible to shift from my head once I get it stuck in my head.  This time though, the lamb exceeded expectations -  it was the medium rare that all future medium rare rumps should be cooked to the standard of, beautifully crispy on the outside, salivatingly pink on the inside.  Five spices gave an uplifting kick to the juicey meat sauce, differentiating it from the norm  This was complemented by a pee and bacon puree and a gorgeously layered creamed potato.  My mother's only one complaint about her fantastic plate of scampi was that it was a little bit too peppery and shift the pepper/lemon ratio slightly in favour of lemon you'd have again, a perfect dish.  After seeing that it was only just after nine, we decided to make a rare venture into the realm of deserts.  I convinced my mum to opt for a rice pudding with a balanced garnish of caramalized pineapple and mint cream over her usual choice of creme brulee, a decision she did not regret.  I on the other hand, took the advise of the waiter and opted in favour of chocolatte assiette, which was a lot more subtle than I originally suspected from the menu's description.  Feeling decisively indulgent we finished the meal with a cappucino and an americano.  I can't complain too much about my cappucino but the beans in my mother's americano were definitely a little bit burned.  When I'm not influenced by the grape or the grain, I tend to be a bit more of a coffee snob, a testament to the barista training I received prior to starting my employment in the MAC.  The bill including tip totalled just under £90; fairly typical for restaurant of this caliber and fairly reasonable when you compare it to other establishments that from what I gather appear to provide a poorer standard of cuisine and service.  Ahem *MADEINBELFAST* Ahem.

Now go get your feed on.

A Few Best Men

A Few Best Men
- A few mediocre at best men more like it

  My friends and I had originally geared ourselves up for the high octane, cheap-thrill-heavy Expendables 2 but after failing to get tickets we opted to buy tickets for this Australian/British Hangover style comedy we opted to the the bar to have a second pint in the interim period.  Maybe rather than enhancing my enjoyment of the film, the Hoegaarden numbed my funny bone but when you're not expecting too much, you're not likely to be disappointed.  Truth be told, I hadn't heard much at all about A Few Best Men before I went and saw it.  I couldn't have told you who was in it and after reading the cast list on the cinema "What's showing" pamphlett, I still couldn't have told you any of the films the stars had previously appeared in.  With the exception of Kris Marshall, famous for playing a man-boy-child character in long running, largely inoffensive BBC sitcom My Family and appearing in BT adverts for the last dacade, there was no-one in the film who registered more than "I think I recognize that guy, but from where".  Only by cheating and looking on www.imdb.com have I been able to ascertain that Kevin Bishop was in Grange Hill and had his own show that ran for two series on Channel 4 and the long suffering groom was played by Xavier Samuel, who apparently appeared in some Twilight sequel which I have never seen because I have some vague sense of self respect.

That's not to say any of the cast were particularly bad but by and large the acting standards ranged from at  best "quite good" to at worst "a little bit bland".  Marshall continues his streak of playing immature, old-enough-to-know-better batchelor characters, whilst Bishop plays a Woody Allen/Mort Goldman style neurotic bumbler (ironically with a Hitler moustache).  Laura Brent and Xavier Samuel do the best with the script that they're given, acting as likable but largely forgettable protagonists in a film that seems to opt to be just that: amiable but unexceptional.  Perhaps credit is most due to Olivia Newton-John for playing out of control mother of the bride, acting as the leftist opposite to her on screen, politically right husband.  On the political note, the whole film was suprisingly left with both soft and hard drugs being used with only minor consequences for the characters and hilarity ensuing from said consequences.



Kevin Bishop's character, complete with moustache and allergies

Hilarity as a whole though, didn't really ensue.  Comparisons between this film and the Hangover will inevitably be drawn and the producers were obviously trying to draw in the same crowd, however whilst the Hangover was fresh and strangely satisfying, more or less everything in this Aussie/Brit clone has been done before - the groom's party wake up to find an animal wandering about their rooms, they have shenanigans with their crazy drug dealer and ultimately are charged with the task of rectifying all of their mistakes.  The thing that annoys me about both of these films is that none of the characters ever seem to actually suffer from a hangover.  At no point in this film did any of the main characters complain about having a pounding headache, dizzyness, nausea (aside from a character who downs three bottles of champagne on the day of the wedding) or even "The Fear".  I would love to see some character get the 5 O'Clock in the afternoon of the next day paranoia spells I get from a heavy night.  Seriously, just once I'd like to see a character appear jittery, sweaty and nervous as they try to contemplate the purpose of their existence whilst trying to "get their shit together."  Instead they run around having their hijinx to some increasingly bland quirky Australian ska covers of existing songs, often mixing it up with close up shots of the spanking blonde wedding singer as if the director wanted to launch her to musical stardom through this film.

The film's biggest flaw is its predictability.  It starts with a shallow sentimental "I love you moment" between the two lovers and more or less ends with the same moment.  You could yell at me for saying that's a spoiler but the film is shot in such a way that nothing other than the last fourty seconds pre-credits act as a suprise.  The slapstick jokes are so often delivered as "visual set up", delay, "visual punchline", with the punchlines very rarely being anything other than exactly what you expected it to be.  For me this meant the laugh factor was much lower than it ultimately could have been.  Whilst I could hear a lot of laughs from the rest of the audience, the four of us watching were compartively silent, I can only presume they were the twenty or so people in the western hemisphere who haven't seen the Hangover. 

The bottom line is that this film is just too average to buy a cinema ticket on any other day than a £3.00 Tuesday or whatever your local cinema's variant is.  It'll be better suited for those nights where you and your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/moose/wookiee are tired after a long week of work, want to stay in rent a movie and fall asleep on the couch three quarters of the way through.  Despite the odd moment of gross out comedy involving a sheep's rectum, this is inoffensive old hat, not without its charms but not exactly full of them either.

Breaking Bad Break Down Season 5, Episode 5: Dead Freight

Breakdown
So this is my very first Breaking Bad Break Down on this site, previously I posted this on a forum I frequent.  Yes, yes, forum frequenting - geeky shit.  Get over it.  These will be SPOILER HEAVY so I will create a deliberate gap just in case you don't want anything well.. spoiled.  Scroll down if you've already seen the episode/just want to read.


























Here's a quick summary of what happened:
- Walt has the kids stay with Hank and Marie, trying to win Skyler's faith and trust in him again
- Walt bugs Hanks office and phone in order to extort information from the DEA
- Walt, Mike and Jessie deal with Lydia and find out she has been honest about the tracking devices placed under the methlamine barrels
- The three rob a train with the help of Todd
- Todd shoots a young boy when he accidently happens on the crime scene

Breakdown and Predictions:
In classic Breaking Bad style, we are presented with an opening that seems completely detached to the rest of the episode. Seemingly irrelevant to the episode we are watching, we discard the information of the intro and try concentrating on the rest of the story line which we tend to regard as much more important to the lives of the characters we are following.

Midway through the episode we are introduced to Todd. He came on as too much of a goodie two shoes to act as any real threat. With his Josh Homme look, the worse we could have seen him be would have been a police informant. After all, Jessie and Walt seem content to explain their devious plan in a James Bond-villain style summary. Whilst he at first appeared to have been used as little more than a narrative device for the viewer to understand what the pair were actually getting up to, I wasn't completely convinced.

Likewise, when Walt really pushed his luck with the train and refused to have Jessie and Todd disconnect the two liquid transferring cables and just about succeeded, I knew that the episode could not end without incident. The extremely late timing of the incident was on the other hand pretty shocking.

I suspect the fate of the young boy carrying the tarantula in the next episode will determine the true nature of the main characters over the rest of the series. In all likelihood, the boy is dead, meaning that the characters will have to find a way to dispose of the body. Walt seems fairly un-phased about death any more. He has had less and less qualms about killing since the first murder he commits in the first series, choking the chained meth dealer up in the basement. The show is truly about his complete descent into darkness (hence the title, Breaking Bad). Jessie on the other hand, has never found killing easy. He is like an insecure child that on some level wants to do the right thing, just is completely misguided. In season four he became incredibly adept at killing. We saw him slaughter Mexican gangsters like he did the bad guys of his computer games. Over the last season, he has shown remorse, a desire to prevent anyone else from dying - innocent or otherwise. For him, the death toll shouldn't rise. It's as if he is trying to "break good".

If the child is alive, he will do his best to save him, get him to hospital even if he jeapordizes himself in the process. I think the end of the season will either have him do something completely heroic and self sacrificing or have him behind bars, confessing his past crimes. In this season, guilt has already forced him to break up with his girlfriend and panic about the missing ricin, in the past it has made him make far more drastic decisions. If the child is dead, he may just completely lose his shit.

Admittedly, I just haven't cracked the whole imagery of the jar-ridden tarantula, perhaps it represents incoming captivity.

Again in this episode, I respected Skyler's strength, sticking to her guns, even if it seems unfair. She asked whether Walt was off to bury bodies and despite his honesty, this episode could prove that her prediction was right. Walt will have to see a point where he can't continue because Jessie understands the death toll has to end somewhere.

This is perfect mid season drama.  Walt's character development never slows down, he plays with Hank like a puppet, his use of deception is ungodly.  In previous seasons we saw him jittery, letting his nerves get the better of him causing him to make rash decisions like crashing his car to prevent Hank from getting any closer to the laundromat operation, in this one he just walks into his office and bugs the shit clean out of it.  We are being shown his arrogance time and time again though, ignoring the advice of others just to push everything to the limit.  When he succeeds we are jubilant with him when he fails, we grow tired and angry of his stubborness.  I found myself yelling "GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!  GIVE IT UP! GO GO GO GO GOGO GO!"  Perhaps this is the writers' way of reminding us that Walt is his own character, we don't have a say in his behaviour.  We have lost control of him like he is a run away car.  One minute he is cool and calculating in his interactions (i.e. with Lydia), the next making rash decisions and acting like he is above contempt.

Howard Marks and John Sinclair: Breathing Air Tour

I first became aware of "King of the Hippies" Howard Marks whenever the biopic starring Rhys Ifans was released in 2010.  Whilst I never saw the film, I picked up Mark's autobiography when I went Christmas shopping last year.  These days I'm guilty of reading very few books.  Those that I do read tend to be written by the late, great Hunter S. so when I did decide to give the book a spin, I was pleasantly suprised with its humour and read the book just about everywhere, occasionally roaring with laughter in the chairs of the dole office much to the confusion of the spides.  Having seen a few of his stand up videos on youtube, I decided there was no way I was passing up an opportunity to see him perform in my local.  The poster stated that he would be appearing with John Sinclair, a name I was not familiar with but assumed he would be either a warm up for the great Mr. Marks as the most famous Welsh stoner of recent history (arguably second only to the members of Goldie Looking Chain) would be a hard act to follow.

Unfortunately though, I was to be sorely disappointed.  With the doors opening at 9.30pm, I figured that either an acoustic set or a warm up act would be on stage for 10.00pm.  As it transpired, Marks and Sinclair didn't appear until around 10.30 where they would sit side-by-side on stage with what seemed like an unscripted ramble.  With the bar bunged and sticky with the Summer heat, this wait wasn't the most particularly comfortable experience sitting around waiting for the pair especially as I was suffering from a recurring shoulder injury due to Muay Thai/BJJ training.  When they finally were welcomed on stage it was by a portly fellow from down south who's forced complimenting session of the audience - "Beautiful people of Belfast.  Wonderful wonderful city" quickly wore thin.  I found him a little irritating due to the fact that when I asked if Marks would be around for autographs after (I had brought my book) was answered with the assertion that "merchandise would be on sale during the interval."  The first thirty minutes of the act felt like an introduction to John Sinclair.  With the entire audience familiar with Marks and his multi-million pound smuggling exploits, the beat poet felt much less important in comparison.  Don't get me wrong, Sinclair by his own right has lived an interesting life - an old school hippy of the '60s, he was one time manager of band MC5, leader of far left, anti-racist group "The White Panthers" and was in prison for three years after giving an under cover police woman two joints.  John Lennon even played at a concert thrown in the prisoner's aid back in 1972.  Here's Lennon's song for Sinclair:

Maybe not one of his finest, but with that Skynyrd twang, arguably a grower.  As lengthy introductions go, this was one of the self indulgent kind.  Marks made some funny quips along the way but they lost some of their impact as the Welshman proceded to laugh at everything he said.  I was left checking my phone for the time, pondering "when will they get to the good stuff?".  Unfortunately, they never seem to get to the good stuff - the mainstay of the performance became a Q+A session, the audience were given cards prior to the first half and told to write down questions for the pair.  When these questions were posed, the whole set quickly became a "Legalize drugs" debate with only the pro-legalization side being presented.  In the time since I smoked my first joint at 17, I've read pretty much every argument for the legalization of drugs countless times.  I could probably shit out a thesis on the subject in about two days, backed up with the scientific findings of Professor David Nutt, all the while under the influence of half of the drugs available on the black market.  Had I known I was paying £13 in to a session of "preaching to the choir", I probably would have spent the money elsewhere - even paying £25 to see thrash metal legends Machinehead performing on the same night would have felt less of a sting and that's coming from someone who's  job has him on a 0 hour contract.  As for the choir, I can't say I enjoyed being part of it much.  Having given up cannibis activism after nobody showed up to Belfast's attempt to take part in the international legalize cannibis two years ago, I was irritated to see a whole bunch of green sticker wearing "Cannibis NI" supporters fawn over Mr Marks like he was Jesus of Nazareth.  An angry heckler didn't do much to add much the aptmosphere I felt somewhat distant from.  I got a few laughs from some of Sinclair and Marks' story telling but I wasn't in complete dismay when they left the stage after another measly forty minutes of stage time post interval.  I stuck around waiting to get my well-read copy of 'Mr Nice' signed but was waiting a good twenty minutes for the pair to finish their second smoke break.  Marks did actually come across as nice as his alter-ego's name sake but rather than bore him with details of my own exploits or ask questions that I now wish to know the answer to, shook his hand and left him to deal with the orderly queue of young hippy girls forming behind me.  This was kind of the height of my experience.  Despite a pair of reasonably good acoustic singer song writers performing together, it wasn't enough to keep me from wanting to go home and drink another beer.  Future gig throwers would be well advised to put these sort of acoustic sets at the begining of the act to entertain the audience waiting for Marks and Sinclair to appear.

Had the whole show been half price, I might have been more inclined to write a more positive review of this overall frustrating affair.  If my Dad were still alive, I would have invited him along, had he come he might have been a lot more vocal about the entrance fee.  I had to dissuade my accompaning friend not to pose the question "If money is a construct then how can you justify charging £13 for this shite?"  No doubt it costs a fair bit to organize a tour of Ireland but the act was already plugging an album Marks and Sinclair have recently released.  I'm not sure how to describe the music - kind of like 'Grateful Dead' with spoken recordings of Marks and Sinclair played over the top of them.  Despite the pair having awesomely rich, deep voices designed for Morgan Freeman style narration I can't say I was willing to dig deep after feeling so ripped off.  If a scripted, well performed stand up by Marks had been followed by Sinclair performing some sensational beat poetry was given, I'd probably have been happy but delivering less than an hour and a half of shite just didn't cut it I'm afraid.

Charlto

The Raid

Film Review: The Raid The Raid is like one of those films that pretty much doesn't need a review. Most people read reviews to decide in advance whether the film would be suitable for them - whether they should go and see it. I'm going to speed the process up with a quick insertion of a decision

You don't have time to watch Ong Bak before you go see this film? How do you have time to read this blog? The Raid is a story light action film with minimal dialogue and maximum bone crunching, neck slicing elbows to the knees action. Although the film is in Indonesian, I would be suprised that in the 5-10 minutes of dialogue throughought the whole 101 minutes of screen time, we lose much in the translation we are given in the English subtitles. Maybe some of the insults might be a bit more creative and culturally specific than "motherfucker" but aside from that, not much else. Character development is one of those haphazard thrown together at the last minute affairs that presumabley in the writer's eyes would detract from the banging people's heads off. We're introduced to the main character early, shown his motivation to stay alive and see him respond to a test of morality in an obvious "he's the good guy" fashion. Pretty much everyone else is on screen for so little time that we haven't got time to warm to them - they're cannon fodder. Just like the villainous assault rifle firing, machete wielding gangsters we're typically laughing about the horrific fashion they're shuffled off the mortal coil. There aren't a lot of suprises when the "plot twists" are so unsubtedly presented to us. There are some also glaring plot holes that are to be expected with these kind of films too - it's as if the good guys never heard of mobile phones and only some of the bad guys liked using guns. People sustain ridiculous amounts of physical damage and awkwardly walk it off as if every bone in their body wasn't shattered. With movies like this, it's best to have understated plotlines. Think of the movie Taken - see that first twenty five minutes where we learn about Liam Neeson's relationship with his daughter? Commando could sum that up in a ridiculous montage involving eating ice cream and feeding deers. If you want to create an aptomosphere of suspense in a violent movie, don't do it by trying to tug on the heart strings with cutesy Holly Vallance is my idol moments, just get stuck into the warzone. It's not supposed to be a well written, realistic story of the hardships of modern times, it's supposed to deliver bullets to the face. So that's all the negative points. Let's talk about the great things. We're given an obvious likable character that kicks ass in every way that counts. Smart, dutiful and able to break your spine he goes through this film, crippling and killing cunts until the story reaches its inevitable conclusion. The fights are fast paced and si savage that they will either make you cringe, sigh in a why-am-I-here-fashion? or chuckle in the way a sniggering schoolboy would, spitting out his coke as his friend tells him what felching is for the first time. There are some little audio/visual tricks though that make this film more enjoyable than a cheesy Sonny Chiba film from the 70s. Moments of silence or implementations of high pitched ringing noises add to the impact of explosions, gun shots or fear. Staggered hand held camera angles allow us to feel the sting our protagonist endures for a short time. I could go on but I was mesmirised by the displays of the Indonesian martial art silat on screen. The whole film just delivers in the way you would hope a mindless martial arts flick would. And if that's not what you're after don't even bother. If you are after an explosive tornado of sheer brutality. I had a lot of fun.

Two Sides to Every Story

If you have been on the internet to read my blog then you have been on the internet to check facebook, browse youtube etc. There is a minute possibility that you haven't been acquainted with Kony 2012 - a drive by charity Invisible Children to rid the world of tyranny from Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony. Kony is accused and undoubtedly guilty of kidnapping children and forcing them to mutilate and murder to keep himself in power of the LRA (Lords Revolutionary Army), a marauding 30,000 (or so the video states) force of causeless rebels. Whilst I am by no means saying Mr. Kony is a wonderful guy, the film seems to over simplify the problem in many of the third world countries of Africa. Filmmaker and charity owner Jason Russell is shown in the film to break down the problem to his son that everything is caused by a Voldemort character that that must be stopped at all costs. He goes on to advocate direct military involvement from the United States military and explains that he was successful in lobbying the government to provide an advisory force sent of US troops to aid the Ugandan army. Call me cynical but as soon as I heard this bit in the video I thought back to watching Team America: World Police. I'm hearing beer swilling, sweat dribbling rednecks from Louisiana to Arkansas yelling in unison "AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!" My second thought came to mind that if Kony's army is comprised of child soldiers then sending Ugandan troops to combat the LRA means countless numbers of dead child soldiers ridden with bullets. Sure, they claim they just want to "arrest" this man but do you really expect him to lie in a six foot deep hole for three days so he can be tried and hung? Even arresting him, will that just solve the massive numbers of problems that Africa faces on a day-to-day basis? What about Mugabe? What about the Congo? Should US troops be deployed in all of these situations where human rights are routinely abused and horrendous atrocities are committed on a daily basis? Where do you draw the line?

Of course that's not going to happen because America doesn't involve itself in wars that don't involve "protecting its economic interests" (extreme paraphrasing of the video and an almost century old Wilson Woodrow speech) but why should this Ugandan situation be any different? You could sit and study the problem Rwanda faced in the nineties and whether humanitarian intervention actually works for four years and still not know whether the answer is "yes" or "no" but I see so many of you on facebook are willing to dive in head first in to the fight to spread awareness of this man and make him famous so that he can be captured and put to trial. You might even donate money to the cause but is this really the answer?

I want you to review the following websites before you come to a decision:

Chris Blattman's review

Tumbler: Visible Children

Both of these sites do a far better job of providing information from the other side of the story than I do. Again they don't make Kony out to be a hero, they just question the true intent of Invisible Children's mission, that even with their heart being in the right place their actions won't necessarily result in the desired result.

I don't want to talk you out of giving money for charity. I am no Ayn Rand character - altruism and concern for your fellow man is in my eyes a beautiful thing. Just consider what you are giving more before you donate. Don't jump on a bandwagon because all your facebook friend's posted it and don't kid yourself into thinking by signing up to something like this you're saving the world. People like Kony are a bit more complicated than the 2D computer game villain the video makes him out to be. Shooting him isn't going to mean rainbows and happy times for everybody. Do you really think that the Ugandan army is made up of good natured white knights (not in the literal sense, obviously)that ride to battle to bring justice and restore order to the land? No army is perfect and there is no evidence to suggest that the Ugandan liberation army is anything but far from perfect. In a war torn African country, Kony is a symptom of economic and cultural sickness. Curing this illness is going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of time that this fad won't cure overnight.