damn vice road

Thursday 8th October 2009 11:04 PM

It's a marvellous morn for car-booting,

Out in Murton we'll get some good buys,

A fantabulous place to find bargains,

'Neath the cover of October skies.

On Sunday morning I went to the car-boot sale in Murton with my Mum, and for a while we were both convinced that one of the stall-holders, in the covered bit, was none other than the great Irish singer, Van Morrison. He was stout, barrel-chested and swathed in Donegal tweed. A big, brown, beaten-up, broad-rimmed hat was trying to shadow his eyes, but they smouldered through, burning up the dry-leaves of the surrounding darkness with their icy Celtic fire. Mum bought some vacuum bags for a Henry off him and I nearly bought a Thunderbirds mug that incorporated a picture of Father Tracy and Virgil standing in front of Thunderbird 2, which if you screwed your eyes up, looked like Gary Lineker and Alan Hanson presenting Match of the Day, but he wouldn't come down on the price.

Mum had a little Casio keyboard with her that she'd just bought that morning, and when she noticed that Van had a cheap Spanish guitar on the stall, she asked him if he fancied a jam, and he said no. The fact that he declined to make music with us cast the first seed of doubt into our minds that he really was Van Morrison. Later on, remembering his strong Brummie accent, we both decided, on reflection, that it probably wasn't him.

Am I craven, odd? Do I 'av cred, man? I'm Don Cadaver, am void dancer, a man divorced, cream and void. Yesterday, while I was in Sainsbury at Jacksons on the Fulford Rd, waiting for the dawn of a new civilisation, I started thinking up anagrams of our future prime minister, Demonic Vadar.

Barring assassination, getting knocked off his bike, or the truth coming out, I'm afraid it's going to happen, and neither the labour party nor brown God can stop it. The satirist part of me quite looks forward to being a parishioner under his pastoral guidance, O damned vicar, Rev. Odd Maniac, while other parts are distinctly less keen. Hold on to your pineal glands, folks, the Caveman Droid cometh.

Posted 11:04 PM | 157 Comments | Permalink

where is the majesty

Saturday 3rd October 2009 10:29 PM

As an under-employed comic and struggling artist, I thought I'd take some time out to slag off other comics and artists who've had more commercial success than me. I've been a bit poorly recently, so rather than coming up with any new material, or painting some more painty paintings, I thought I'd vent some angst. I'm told that creatively done, it can be very beneficial to the auto-immune system.

Tracey Emin says, ''To all the people who think I'm not talented, I'm the only artist in history to do a book of 1000 drawings. Let's see them do it."

Obviously these are the end times, as prophesied by the I Ching, the Mayan calendar, that Women's Institute calendar, the Bible, and the Daily Mail, and when I lift my voice to the heavens and cry, 'Yes, Tracey, you did a thousand drawings, but they weren't very good, were they?' there's no reply, except for the lazy hum of a late-season wasp, called Rosie, getting lost in the curtains.

Rosie, by her size, stately gait and coat of burnished gold, is obviously a queen, and the way she moves her membranous forewings it's as though she's trying to say to me, 'I think Tracey Emin is a model not only of self-absorption, but of ignorance, exhibitionism, rudeness, ugliness, and vulgarity'.

I'm quite shocked by Rosie's stinging indictment, yet at the same time impressed by her fearless iconoclasm, and if she's still alive tomorrow I'm going to ask her opinion on Ricky Gervais. I heard him being interviewed by Mark 'normal' Lawson on Radio 4 this week, curiously, at the same time as I happened to be reading an article about him in the Guardian.

On the radio he's saying that even though he's a member of the national secular society, he thinks there're some good things about Christianity, especially forgiveness. He says that forgiveness is very, very important to him. Simultaneously, and quite deliciously, I read, 'When Private Eye editor Ian Hislop attacked Gervais's stand-up show Animals on Newsnight Review in 2003, Gervais thereafter closed each gig by calling Hislop an "ugly little pug-faced cunt"

Tomorrow, after a sturdy bowl of muesli, possibly involving fresh mangoes from Aldi, transported via Mozambique, hopefully by wooden hand-carts, I'm going to lift my voice to the heavens and cry, rather long-windedly,

'Painting pictures and making people laugh is my livelihood and art and comedy are my sovereign aims, so if Tracey Emin is my queen and Ricky Gervais my king, I ask you, how should one be noble and true in this wasteland, this bastard-usurped realm where dysfunction wears the crown?'

If Rosie the wasp is listening, I suspect she'll be less harsh on Ricky Gervais than she was on Tracey, mainly because she feels less threatened by him. Queen wasps are notoriously vain about their looks, believing that their petiole, the constricted region joining the first and second segments of their abdomens, gives them the appearance of having maddeningly slim waists. They consider bees, and probably Ricky Gervais, to be fat, hairy and oafish, and therefore no competition.

If, however, by some careful, cryptic juxtaposition of her metasoma and mesosoma, and a certain twinkling in her ocelli, she does express an opinion on my predicament, I reckon she'll say something like.

'Don't worry about Ricky Gervais, Rory. He's obviously much richer than you, and more acclaimed, but at the same time he's plainly unhappy and his best friend is Jonathon Ross. You've had a damn good whinge, now get on with it!', and because I'm worried that she'll sting me if I don't, I will.

Posted 10:29 PM | 161 Comments | Permalink