Random Thought: Nick Cave's Balding Head and Moustache Mystery

Some people just seem to be above reproach in the blood-soaked, victim-strewn fashion arena. While Madonna gets torn to pieces for wearing fetish gear at 50 and Paul McCartney gets slated for dying his hair chestnut brown at 98, some people can just get away with anything. Well, when I say ‘some people’ I actually mean Nick Cave.

Don’t get me wrong, I venerate Nick Cave as one of my all-time favourite rock gods. However, the moustache/balding pate/lank long hair combo is never a good one. I watched agog as his scalp shone under the studio lights during his performance on Friday Night with Jonathon Ross and reflected that there must be a more dignified way to respond to male pattern baldness. After all, any ‘look’ epitomised by Mick Fleetwood circa 1989 can’t be excused. Yet somehow the usual media bitching is oddly mute. Is Cave somehow so innately cool that he can do no wrong?

What’s that? Yes, he is? Shit, you’re right…

Nice hair, Nick!

"I woke up this morning and mah hair was gone..."

Thanks to LRobin on Flickr for pic

last.fm Usability Grumbles

I’ve been playing with last.fm some more, done some scrobbling (I now realise that last.fm can just tell what you’re playing on iTunes and adds it to the data it has on you) and tried to find my way around the site. I use the word ‘tried’ advisedly because as lovely as the interface looks, navigating last.fm is a fucking ‘mare.

For instance, if you want to see your list of friends, you’d think it would be shown somewhere in the ‘Users’ section – which is, after all, about people. But, oh no, you have to click on ‘Dashboard’, then ‘My profile page’ and finally the ‘Friends’ tab. Similarly if you want to search for existing members of last.fm, you have to go back to ‘Users’ and use the search window there. Surely including it on the ‘Friends’ page makes more sense?

You’d think that after CBS bought last.fm for £140 million, they’d be able to afford some decent information architects…

Social Catch-up Continues: last.fm

My Johnny-come-lately adoption of social networks continues today with last.fm. I’ve been listening to stuff on there for a while now, but have never got into the social side of it. However, my friend Pete and my wife’s cousin Jeremy both invited me to hook up with them in the last week, so I’ve finally acquired 2 last.fm chums! Hurrah!

The coolest thing about last.fm, apart from laughing out loud at the moody US Emo kid profiles, is called ‘scrobbling’. God, I’m sure you already know this stuff – but, for those who don’t, scrobbling is adding the songs you’ve got on your hard drive to the last.fm database in order to better to judge your musical tastes, recommend music and suggest musical compatibility with other people (I bet algorithms come into it somewhere, hey kids?). This could be considered social suicide if all you have in iTunes is ‘Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits’ (or, indeed, the follow up smash ‘Crazy Frog Presents More Crazy Hits’. This is, of course, why I haven’t scrobbled yet.

Other interesting bits are the fact you can build and share playlists and leave messages to people in their dirtb – sorry, shoutbox – which performs the same function as the wall on FaceBook.

I’ll report back again after I’ve scrobbled on the MacBook at home. I was only joking about the Crazy Frog, honest…

Belatedly Twittering On...

I’m beginning to worry that I’m not surfing the interactive zeitgeist. Indeed, I’m also concerned that I’m suffering from a shortage of memes. I’ve only just started using Twitter, for instance. I mean, talk about being late to join the party. Mind you, very few people I know use it, so there’s not much of a party going on. Does this mean they used it and then went away, having realised that it is essentially pointless?

For those even further behind than me, Twitter is a microblogging service that allows you to tell people what’s going on in your life in 140 characters or less. It appeals to me as a copywriter, since economy with words is a skill to which I aspire. However, if you haven’t got a big network of people linked to you all doing the same thing it gets boring very quickly; the online equivalent of muttering to yourself on the tube. This is always the risk with any online community – lack of critical mass. If you could peek at what random unconnected people are up to in an immediate way, instead of having to search for people, it may be more fun.

Having said that, I like the widget that you’ll see on the right – particularly as I can feel less guilty about not posting on my blog…

Stan's Morning Commands

Now that Stan can talk a bit, he's enjoying issuing commands. It must be pretty cool - he can now tell us what he wants, whereas he used to wail, bibble or grunt and it was pot-luck whether we guessed the request correctly. In the morning, there's a set list of one word commands in his repertoire. Here they are in chronological order:

1. "Buk!" (may I have book to read?)
2. "Milkel!" (I want a bottle of milk)
3. "Mummy!" (my dummy has been misplaced and I demand it's immediate insertion after removal of bottle)
   
4. "Coat!" (remove my gro-bag, I wish to be mobile)
5. "Cuggle!" (give me a cuddle)
6. "Bek-fast!" (I wish to eat now)
7. "Cake!" (no, not that substandard fare - give me cake)
8. "Choc-la!" (actually, give me chocolate instead)
9. "Shoes!" (I'm ready to have my footwear put on)
10. "Coat!" (ready my outer garment for me)

As Stan appears to be entering the 'terrible twos' early, god help you if you don't comply quickly, let alone say 'no'. There's an indignant fit of tears and fury. It's hard to refuse him, as he is very cute, but we're teaching him that he can't always get what he wants, especially if he forgets to say 'please'. We'll no doubt be dealing with a fair few tantrums before that's fully sunk in!

Ashes to Ashes: Oh the Glory of Bowie in Days Gone By

I've taken to screen-grabbing random images from videos on YouTube, tarting them up in PhotoShop, then using them as desktop pictures. Here's today's: a shot from Ashes to Ashes, possibly Bowie's last truly great single...

Oedipus Strikes!

I’ve noticed that I have to re-bond with Stan every weekend at the moment. Sadly, I'm used to that with Mila and Frankie, as they're at their mum's 11 days out of 14. However, it seems that even with Stan, his mum is a more consistently present figure in his life. My access to him is limited to an hour or so in the morning, where I’m concentrating on ironing shirts and finding my wallet as well as giving Stan the attention he needs. By the end of the week I feel I’m a bit of peripheral figure and he’s a little stand-offish, but by the end of the weekend, after I’ve chased him around pretending to be a monkey for hours on end, he’s really cuddly and affectionate.

Admittedly he’s currently going through a bit of an oedipal phase, so mummy is very much the parent de jour. Like a lion separating a wildebeest from the herd, he physically tries to keep me away from his mum and gets rather miffed if I do get near to her. For instance, when he’s in Emily’s arms, he actually pushes me away so he has her to himself!

Mind you, Stan’s stereotypical male obsession with big machines – cars, trucks, trains, diggers and planes – suggests that he’ll soon be enthusiastically joining the patriarchal order!

Wired at Lunchtime

The more time one spends with the internet, the more boring it seems to become. That’s perhaps because my exploration of the content on offer runs in ever diminishing circles, limited to whatever’s in my bookmarks. It could also be down to the fact that most of the web is full of trivial crap – probably featuring Lindsay Lohan.

However, I recently rediscovered the Wired website and I’ve got to say that there’s a thought-provoking article on there every day. The one that caught my eye today (as I ate my standard-issue Saatchi canteen fodder at my desk) is an article on why people do evil things in institutionalised environments, specifically Abu Ghraib. Take a look and wander around the rest of the Wired site. Genuinely fascinating stuff…

Madonna's New Album, Short and Sweet

I’m interested to see that elderly pop-maven Madonna’s next album is going to be called ‘Hard Candy’. Strangely enough, this is the title of a very dark crime novel by a favourite writer of mine named Andrew Vachss. The eponymous Candy is described as ‘a whore with a heart of cyanide’. Hmm…

Lindsay Lohan Fetish: A Confession

Lindsay Lohan is by far my favourite fucked-up celebrity. For someone who professes to hate the ‘Heat’ culture of celebrity-watching, I must admit to a bit of a Lindsay Lohan fetish. There’s a weird kind of pull that a story about Lindsay Lohan has. I wouldn’t go as far as describing it as an obsession, just a vague sense that she’s actually rather attractive and a low level curiosity about what she’s up to.

So what does Lindsay Lohan get up to that’s so interesting? Oh, just normal girl-stuff, you know. A typical week seems to consist of: going into rehab, coming out of rehab, substance abuse, rehab again, inappropriate men, car crash hit-and-run, back to rehab, alcoholism, ankle tags, more rehab and then a day of rest on Sunday.

Note that acting doesn’t appear to feature. At least Britney Spears managed to get an album out in between that unfortunate visit to the hairdresser and being admitted as a psychiatric patient. Lindsay Lohan doesn’t appear to do anything but conduct a completely dissolute life in front of the paparazzi. Sounds like an easy living, apart from selling one’s soul sliver by sliver to the insatiable media bacon-slicer.

I suppose part of the reason I have a soft spot for Lindsay Lohan is that she reminds of the sort of women that I used to fall in love with as a lad. Pretty, kooky, whack-job girls used to really ring my bell. The more damaged and hardcore head-fucked the better. They held a magnetic fascination; despite the fact their company was tedious, as they were so relentlessly self-obsessed. I really bought into that ‘I can rescue her’ romantic bullshit.

On the other hand, I might be fascinated by Lindsay Lohan because I dig girls with freckles. God, why do I have to over-complicate everything?!

Lindsay Lohan, clearly in need of rescue

The Worst Video on YouTube EVER!

Obviously, as a creative at the razor-sharp bleeding cutting edge of digital communications, I'm keen to project an innovative multi-format online presence. Therefore Pete Costello, our freelance art director, and myself made a totally awesome movie yesterday and posted it on YouTube. It has since gone viral with a massive 20 views. It's also charted as the 74th most discussed movie in the Automotive section! We rule!

Demons and Pitches

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last week or so – I’ve been involved in a pitch and between that, family and Devil May Cry 4, time has been at a premium. Mind you, most visitors to this blog are arriving via Google having searched for Conan the King and then going away disappointed when they discover that I’m talking about my old gym trainer. I therefore suspect my lack of posting isn’t causing much wailing or, indeed, gnashing of teeth.

On the subject of pitching, I think it’s my favourite type of work. You build a great camaraderie with your fellow pitchers as you all sweat to bang it out on time. The ridiculous deadline is attractive - the job is nicely, neatly finite. Another benefit is that you’re not constrained by crushing brand guidelines or, er, reality. In a way, the work is as good as it can ever be – before limited budgets and endless rounds of amends bite. Of course, you never know when your idea is going to sink like a battleship recycled from colanders, but that’s part of the fun.

Oh dear, I realise I’ve written a thoroughly positive post! I’ll be back to my curmudgeonly ways in the next one.

iPod Shuffle: Resurrection

A year or so ago I had the sad task of writing an obituary for my 4G iPod, but today I can happily report a resurrection. After a 30 degree wash cycle, my iPod Shuffle seemed doomed – but, no, it came back to life!

I use my shuffle at the gym, listening to a mix of Old Skool Hardcore dance music (The Ratpack and DJ Slipmatt seem to give me a lift on the treadmill). I left it in the pocket of my shorts and slammed them in the washing machine without thinking. I suppose the trouble with Shuffles is they’re just TOO small, at least for a forgetful idiot like me. I thought I’d lost my last one, but found it in a drawer after buying a replacement.

So, anyway, I came home from work last night to see the slightly battered Shuffle laying forlornly on a kitchen work surface. My fears were confirmed when my wife Emily told me the sad news about its unfortunate interaction with the washing machine.

After a futile initial attempt to use the Shuffle, I did not surrender hope. And, after an hour in its little charger, my optimism was confirmed. The little green light shone and the unmistakable beat of Take Me Away by Jimmy J & Cru-L-T blasted from the Apple headphones (which also survived the wash!)

Amazing! I know many Infinite Loop fanatics think that Steve Jobs can walk on water, but last night I witnessed a genuine Apple miracle.

On Me Tod

I’ve just had a Weekend of Solitude. When you’re a dad (and, moreover, only child), this isn’t as terrible as it sounds. As much I love my wife and children, look forward to coming home to Emily and Stan every night or spending weekends with Mila and Frankie, it’s a release to have some time purely to myself doing things that only I would want to do. I think most dads can empathise with this. It’s why we have sheds.

So what was I up to while Emily and Stan were up in Manchester visiting my sister-in-law? Gaming, the gym, liver and onions (Emily hates liver), ‘I Am Legend’ at cinema (enjoyably dark for a Hollywood blockbuster and Will smith single-handedly and brilliantly carries the film), bloody-as-hell steak and sautéed mushrooms, taking over the entire bed at night and sleeping in until (gasp!) 9am…you get the picture.

Of course, ultimately it’s an empty freedom to have – I missed Emily and Stan terribly – but for a few days it's a priceless luxury...

Funny Art Foundation?

This morning I was reading about an exhibition of humorous modern art, which has sparked a debate about whether art can be funny. It reminded me of one particular evening, many years ago, on my art foundation course.

(A brief bit of background on my foundation course at Mid-Warwickshire College circa 1987: it was, undoubtedly, the most disastrous thing I’ve ever done in my life. It started badly, as I’d cut my own hair badly and was covered in hives after becoming allergic to a virus. So much for first impressions. I also had a feud with another student that led to my becoming an outcast. Then, finally, there was the course itself. At 18, all I wanted to be was a comic strip artist. I was totally focused on this. The lecturers were all abstract expressionists and surrealists who thought comics were crap. This led to me attempting, half-heartedly, to adapt to their thinking and failing. Add demotivation to extreme laziness and it became inevitable that I was going to drop out.)

Anyway, the flipside of the foundation experience was another student who was revered by the lecturers as a prodigy. I forget his name now (possibly Paul something), but he’d got the whole modern art thing right. The zenith of his work, for me, was a performance art piece that he staged for the lecturers and other students one evening.

Picture this: a large branch, some may call a bough, from a tree resting in a large pool full of mud. Now imagine the prodigy naked, his skin plastered in feathers perched on the bough. The 80s video camera, at least the size of a small car, is rolling. He shivers and mimes a tentative preparation for flight, momentarily lurching forward and then rocking back.

Unfortunately from where my friend Amy and I were sitting, we could see that a twig on the branch was poking his balls every time he rocked. Then he repositioned and the errant bit of wood was working its way up his arse-crack. We were both fighting a massive fit of the giggles as everyone else was sitting there taking it all terribly seriously. Every time he rocked, we had to avoid each other’s eyes and cover our mouths as the twig poked deeper where it shouldn’t.

The performance reached its denouement when the bird-man finally did jump from the branch and mimed dying in the mud. I suppose the message is “we all long for freedom, but we’re also all doomed to fail”. This serious subtext was lost on me, however, as I sat hyperventilating, desperate to suppress my laughter.

So can art be funny? I’d say only when it isn’t trying to be…

Humbled

I was humbled yesterday by our neighbour, who I spotted hauling a load of bags back from church. I offered to help and found that she was collecting clothes for inmates (detainees?) at the local Immigration Detention Centre nearby. I knew that conditions were scandalous in these places and made a note in the ‘Guardian reader’s outrage’ lobe of my brain without bothering to do any more about it. I do this with most things that trouble me morally, yet never anything practical or even symbolic about it. Yet the congregation of the local church in a staunchly Tory area are mobilising to help. I feel ashamed of myself.

It’s possibly a hyperbolic analogy, but I suspect that there were people in the communities around Nazi death-camps who were morally – but passively - offended about what was going on nearby or just chose to ignore it for the sake of a quiet life.

What I find most shocking about what my neighbour told me was not that entire families, including babies and pregnant women, are kept in appalling conditions. It’s the fact that the detention centre is run by a private company. Someone in a boardroom somewhere is making a fat profit from keeping families – people who have committed no crime – in squalid captivity.

So what am I going to do? Well, I’ve just joined Amnesty International, I’m giving clothes to the church and researching which organisation I want to join to campaign against these centres. It’s not much, but it’s better than my usual complacency…

After Conan Comes Mr T

"Work that butt, fool!"

After having King Conan as a trainer at the gym, I now have Mr T. Jan appears to have gone back to the Czech Republic, so they came up with Neves as a replacement. He's a short black cuboid of muscle with a stutter and he's caused me a world of pain over the last week or so.

He basically decided that Jan was 'going too easy' on me and that I needed a more rigorous, challenging programme. As he showed me through my new circuit of the gym I began to realise that the man was a vicious sadist and I was politely submitting myself to a self-imposed cycle of torture. It's strange how, as a man, one goes along with the alpha personal training male while inwardly thinking 'you're deranged if you think I can do this and a number of your jokes are highly inappropriate but I'll smile sheepishly anyway'.

I'm now expected to go round practically every machine in the gym. The worst machine is the one that exercises your arse. You have to lay on your stomach and push your leg outwards and upwards like a stroke victim going for a swim on dry land. This exercise is necessary, according to Neves, so I can 'have a butt that your wife is going to love'.

Anyway, the next time I went to the gym, I thought that maybe I'm being too negative and Neves has the measure of my capabilities. I did everything in my new programme. Afterwards I could barely move my mouse across the mouse mat and I ached for 3 days like I'd been cage-fighting with Jabba the Hutt.

It's enough to make me nostalgic about Jan!

The Decline of Western Civilisation Part Deux

Sometimes I do think that Al Qaeda may have a point when they rail against the decadence of western civilisation. Not that I think that a caliphate would be a good thing either, particularly for women, homosexuals or anyone who enjoys freedom of expression. However, occasionally, I am given pause for thought. I had one of those moments this morning, walking from King's Cross. I passed a newspaper kiosk and caught a glimpse of a porn magazine tucked into one of its racks. The name of this illustrious periodical? 'Arse Wrecked'.

One assumes that the title is a reference to anal sex, of course (and not, for instance, actually a medical magazine aimed at people who suffer with piles). Now I'm no prude, but how bankrupt and debauched is a culture that can produce a commercial publication named 'Arse Wrecked'? Jesus, if this is freedom of expression, I say bring back Victorian hypocrisy and repression...

First Capital Disconnect

I sometimes consider myself to be a little bit unlucky. Indeed, to paraphrase Shakespeare: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They piss us about for their sport."

Take this evening:

• I cycle to Kings Cross from Charlotte Street and congratulate myself for reaching the station in time to catch the 18.36 to Welwyn Garden City
• Find, to my chagrin, that all services in and out of Kings Cross are suspended due to "massive signal failure". I'm told to make my way to Finsbury Park, where services are now terminating and departing.
• I count myself lucky having my bike with me, as they've closed the tube station at Kings Cross due to overcrowding (no doubt due to the masses of people trying to head north via the underground).
• Start cycling up Caledonian Road to Finsbury Park, passing kids on mountain bikes trying to destroy a bin by ramming it with their vehicles
• Get to Holloway Road, thinking that at least I'm getting some extra cardiovascular exercise, and my fucking tyre gets punctured
• Cursing like a Tourettes sufferer with piles sitting on a spike, I trudge up the Seven Sisters Road to Finsbury Park
• Get to the station and find police turning passengers away. A copper tells me that no trains at all are running from Finsbury Park. He has no suggestions for what the fuck I do next
• I see loads of people still getting into station, so nip past police and get to platform
• The announcer seems as confused as everyone else, but tells us that there IS now a bloody train running from Kings Cross - rendering my cycle ride and walk entirely pointless
• Fold up bike, train eventually arrives and I join the crush of people desperate to get home. Despite the train already being rammed, we all make it onto the carriage
• Finally - two hours later - get home

Now, what infuriates me is not this country's crap transport infrastructure, it's the muddled communications and sheer cluelessness of First Capital Connect. I wonder if they're planning to form a partnership with Virgin Media?

Wired at Work!

Wires and chargers are taking over my life. It’s like a snakepit of cables on my desk at work, with headphone wires, charger cables and leads for USB devices tangled together like an electronic version of the Gordian knot. It’s no different at home, where I have two stack-and-stores full of cables and chargers for various devices around the house, probably half of which are phones that we don’t actually own any more.

I suppose it may indicate a geeky addiction to electronic consumer goods (as they call them in marketing), but I have a feeling that everyone except the most ascetic individual is experiencing the same thing.

So what’s the solution? Well, we now take wireless internet and bluetooth for granted (gone are the days when I had to run a 20m cable from the phone socket to my bondi-blue iMac upstairs!) and there’s been talk of wireless delivery of electricity to devices for a while. Ah, imagine it – an entirely wireless household!

I suppose the other solution is to simply own less stuff, but I’m not quite ready for that at this precise moment!

BTW: Fuck me, isn't the Apple MacBook Air breathtakingly beautiful?