Fight The Good Fight Dear Students Of The Weedge

Days off on Friday and Saturday this week. Traditionally (may be a bit of a generalisation I suppose. Ah, the never ending appeal of romanticising gloom and despair) if I do nothing on my days off I am prone to going to the dark side. Sitting in and getting fed up re yer surroundings can never be a guid thing of course but I reckon that, over the years, I've made more of an artform of it than others. I mean, there is an appeal of sorts to loungeing in yer own space as a matter of course and the feel of sic a reverie can be quite addictive in it's way. The problem is , of course, the biggest age old vibe of them all- LONELINESS and ISOLATION (very much a singular entity rather than a pair) . I know that in discussing this with you I will start to feel hell of a self conscious, mainly because these things get appropriated by the mainstream shall we say so that the very concepts are cheapened and their impact softened. I do genuinely believe that we are 'meant to' or have evolved to be (I need yer input on this KB. Ha ha...oh fuck, I've started writing for the benefit o' my pals. I'll be singing the praises of The Country Teasers or The Rebel (just fuck right off now) next) around/with other people but the crucial flaw is that we haven't evolved anything that GUARANTEES the provision of said facilities/closeness/companionship/ physical needs/connection etc. So if, for whatever reason, (I've already spoken too much re what I think the reasons for my loneliness or lack of ability to keep people around for too long might be...anyway) you feel bereft of a presence or a body around you then panic! Ocht at least I tried to fight this on Friday. Aye I ended up pottering around a wee bit and thinking of doing things that I never got round to etc etc . Went to the GPO (no one calls it that any more!) and collected a package o' DVD's. A coupla cricket things (!!!), the seminal 'Wolf Creek' and the shite '9 Songs'. It is of course impossible for a single male to publicly evalute this fillim as it will come across as if he will inevitably be reviewing it on it's merits as a 'pornographic' wank piece as opposed to it's artistic standing. It's clearly not 'intended' as a porno! but it doesn't cut the m-m-mustard as anything else either imo. It's main protagonists are of course buff young bucks who love their crowd pleasing/mediocre music and who have nae probs in terms of 'pulling'/conforming to the established modes of life for buff young bucks. It would of course have been a challenging film if the shaggees had been 'average looking' folk and/or had been 'social misfits' !! (I am currently obsessed with that phrase and the respective criteria for it's 'award'- TLK once described herself as one and I obviously am one!!..natch..) but of course social misfits 'cannae get a lumber' and the mean can't handle seeing them in states of undress so that fucks that up really...or so it would appear...anyway, it is an oddly mainstream fillim that should be avoided..so there. Drifted for a while on Fri but kinda managed to maintain a reasonable balance o' mood. Headed through to Glasgow with CH later on, initially for scran at one of my fave places on earth- Mono. This is a vegan eaterie/shop/record shop (ran and staffed by the living legend and nice man that is S. Pastel)/bar/ venue. It is simply a nice space- bright, airy and welcoming. It can house the boho and sceney of the Glasgow way but it appears to syphon off the bullshit therein (they all seem to leave that behind in the physical embodiment of farce that is 'Brel' and the 'ostentatious tea room' that is 'Tchai Ovna' or whatever it's called) and that fills a real public service. It is the sorta place that masel and KB used to sit in Fife shitholes and dream about opening up ourselves. It is a lovely pliss and one of the principal reasons for my occasional wish to move to Glasgow! Anyway, after a rather great veggie burger and spicy chips it was on to the way legendary Art School to see the sound of now or Broken Social Scene as they are only slightly more frequently called. 'Fraid they werenae much cop! ..and as for bloody students? The pliss was full o' many exemplers o' the speeshiss. Not indie types just students! There is a difference. The latter is equally shaggy but far less rigidly defined and way more perky and lacking in a sometimes useful sense of defeat. I don't feel at home in this vibe. Thought BSS might produce the goods in a homespun quirky epic kinda way but alas. They started off with 3 and a half nice numbers which featured good elements of understatement and some nice crisp Tortoise-y drumming but lost it quite spectacularly in a bevvy of bombast, superflous instrumentation, Bono-esque vocals and atmospherics, fist pumping, unnecessary female vocalists, wanky between song 'rants' and stage presence, numbers that sounded like 'lost' Avril Lavigne out-takes, guitarists that looked like what Aussie members of the Waterboys would look like (some going considering they're Canadian!) and of the sense that the drummer seemingly forgot how to play in anything approaching an interesting fashion. There were 9 of them on Friday, a number which seems to represent something approaching a cutback for them (CH said extremely pertinently that they would make a good 4-piece band) and after a while you just felt bashed into submission by never ending extraneous and uninteresting/samey noise. My ears were pleading for less and less and they got exactly the opposite. I'm a big fan of music which has economy and contains therein just as much as there needs to be and nowt more but this sure as hell ain't it! The tunes and character of the songs got lost in the melee and whereas on the odd song the presence of 3 or 4 guitars (!!) did create a nice beefiness, for the most part they just bloated and confused to an unacceptable level. It was poor poor stuff lacking in thae rather important dynamics and in yon equally important sense of variety and diversity which they're probably trying to achieve by having a' thae players. Anyway...the female singer had really bad hair too!!..something I don't usually pass comment on of course but then I'd never seen hair like this up to that point! The kids loved it all and went ber-serk. The singer went a bit nuts at the end too- all pumped up on Pino Grigio and pretense. He did seem genuinely happy at the way they were received but did a few odd things eg leaving the stage and going into the crowd seemingly purely to hug folk and take the plaudits he felt were deserved and going on and on in a way which seemed to indicate he was trying desperately and kinda sadly to come across as 'one of us'. It was all a mite uncool...imo...I felt rather 'out of step with the world' as I often do. Went hame on the train. There was a man on there who WAS 'fuck me' Bobby Peru (if he came frae Nitshill somewhere near Peat Road Motors) and who spoke at a blonde lass all the way hame without drawing breath. As ever when I've just seen a band I didnae like very much I feel odd and drained/let down. Walked up the road frae Haymarket, bought chips and cheese, got freaked re being seen by a mutant 3-headed couple, came hame, cried, thought about phoning 'premium rate' numbers, put on my 'sleeping hoody' (it's true!!) and slept like a... 20-stone 30 something social misfit!- heavily yet warily...sheesh...Saturday dawned. Had a guid lie-in and met KB. I think we know each other pretty well (!!) so there tends to be the feeling that we can say a fair bit and it'll be taken the right way. I think I have that certainty with 2 and a half people in the whole world so it's nice to be able to have a whole day's worth of it at the one time. We did our usual wandering and coffeeing and conversing and it was most welcome. KB has a lot of faith in me (!) and having that kinda feeling coming back at you is invigorating after a fashion. Met up with Mrs KB later on and almost forgot I was with ' a couple'! SB is a good lass. She's a kind and empathic sorta person who takes a benevolent interest in how you're doing and I like that. We ended up having a few grogs in one o' thae 'big city pubs' and it was a pleasant evening all told. Had to fight off some rather heavy TLK pangs at times tho' and almost without knowing it I found myself getting rather mental re the thought of 'bumping into her' and of avoiding that happening. Not sure what that was about quite frankly. Think my head has considered me to be an abomination for so long that it's starting to try to make me act in the manner that I believe I'm 'expected' to. The feeling that TLK 'has a man' seemed to be producing this impulse to avoid/ 'licence to confuse' etc. It vexed me a lot towards the end of last night. What was I fucking doing? I reverted back to the status of that Countdown conunder (when I were 12 that's what I thought Vord On The Board and St. Chalky were actually saying(!)) hammering away inside the Mcluckie head to the effect of...'shit, I'm in love with someone and SHE DOESN'T LOVE ME' and so forth way beyond the mere ad nauseam. Came hame too scared to walk past traffic or twoses with a takewaway to hand and phoned for a pizza in a sheepish and decidedly 'stupid assed' and uncute way. Scoffed it very quickly. Felt fat as... Felt way too much in love and yearning with TLK for comfort. Became aware I had to work in the morning. Got down. Thought re the usual late night bull etc etc (I never feel right last thing at night!) and ended up having an online chat wi a lass frae a dating site that I'm on!! . Never mentioned this nonsense before but I carry on the absurd pretense of 'finding a berd' via the Interweb. The very recollection that I actually do this makes me giggle! Been a member of quite a few o' these sites. The vibe is mighty depressing and crushing, it really is. Feel increasingly like Glenn from 'Nighty Night' too (Personality: Scottish). I've managed to meet a few folk via these ower the last coupla years. They've all been decent sorts but we've..shall we say...'never hit it off' (the fucking amount of understatement implicit in there is bewildering!!). I could go on forever re the very vibe of trying to contrive a 'date' but maybe I shouldn't! Anyway things seemed quite nice while we chatted. We had a few rather large 'it's a small world' moments which were oddly cool. We probably have nothing at all in common. Like the last person I met frae a dating site she says 'lol' way too much which wasn't the only thing that set me off thinking that she's too normal (!!) but hell we manged to converse for a while and that has to be something, I think. Crawled into bed somewhere past 2AM. Up at 7.30. Strangely wide awake. Expected a busy morning at work. This didn't quite emerge. Spent good time wi a couple o' the clients. Also spent some good time with TLK who was back to being friendly (!- I accept now that my 'perception' of her supposed state of mind has tended to automatically and unrealistically/madly/irrationally veer somewhere towards the negative of late as a matter of course. You reckon?! so therefore I now have to supply instruction that you take anything I say negatively re TLK with a huge pinch of salt but I hope you knew that already. Good lord). I'm still totally flipped over her. I hope I'm starting to get a bit of perspective over the way I 'interact' with her. I feel today as if I am and not just because I felt she was being 'nice to me'( fuck's sake. I am indeed 12.5 yrs old) more that I didn't look to turn everything she said around and over and through the nearest hoop- I felt more as if I knew accurately what she intended to convey and get across. More often than not this was just good, solid chat and goss and it felt easy and 'FRIENDLY' (I'm totally obsessed with that word re TLK amn't I?..shit). Long may that feeling continue. So after a' that I came up the road and back to this caff where they play Les Ferdinand on a loop and where the lovely lovely French Chloe Sevigny lookalike who works here during the week is sadly on a day off...shit..perfection or in my case satisfaction (I seem to confuse the two!) is truly impossible ain't it?! ha ha...