Jimmy Page’s Trousers

Part of me thinks this is cool but the wiser part of me acknowledges the incredible sadness of it.

The other night, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was a sort of apprentice CTU agent and was working with Jack Bauer. He was showing me the ropes, so to speak. Things meandered along as we tracked down this band of bad guys and I eventually had to accost them up as they, for some unknown dream reason, loaded bags of compost from a supermarket into the back of a truck. In proper 24 fashion, I managed to beat them all up (there were about six of them - I’m quite a guy) and I then gave the kingpin of the operation a sound trashing and left him lying in a pile of compost that had burst from bags during the scuffle.

Popping back to where Jack was (characteristically sitting on a hill looking at the sun set across the ocean), he told me I’d done a really good job and that I was ready for my own assignments.

Possibly it’s withdrawal since season 6 finished up on Sky.

Right. I have now resolved not to post after drinking cheap German lager any more. For reasons, please see the previous post about Ray LaMontagne. Now, while I don’t completely disavow my earlier opinions, in the cold and sober light of day, unadulterated by booze I see now that Ray, while certainly not in the same camp as your Keatings or your Mikas, is probably not the saviour of Folk. I reckon he’s not bad but I shan’t be rushing off to buy the album. Or even to download it on the cheap.

I feel like I’ve woken up, hungover and bleary-eyed, next to a lady that I can only vaguely remember going to bed with. Her make-up is smeared horizontally across her face and has left a Turin Shroud-like impression on the pillow. A memory hits - she’s the one that laughs like a donkey whose genitals have been smashed between two rocks. Now, I have to shakily gather my things and sneak out of the house, figure out where I am and where the nearest bus stop is. Sssshhh. Quietly does it.

Now, while this has never happened me, I reckon that it’d feel similar to my Ray Regret.

Ray, I’m sorry to have toyed with you like this. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m not really a bad person. It was the booze. Don’t blame me, blame Lidl and their fantastic lager-bargins. If it’s any consolation, I still really like the beard.

Isn’t perception (or rather preconception) a funny thing? You’ve probably heard that ‘Trouble’ song by Ray LaMontagne on your radio device as you drove to work or whatever. I’ve heard it on the radio and, for the most part, ignored it. Granted, I did consider that his voice was slightly different to the stuff that I’d usually hear but, being quite honest, I didn’t pay it a lot of attention (in common with most stuff I hear on the radio).

Tonight however, just now in fact, I saw the same Mr LaMontagne on the entertainment box in the corner of my sitting room. Pretty different than I expected. Much different in fact. There he is, as I type, sitting, playing an acoustic, with a non-popstar haircut and a proper folkie beard. No shit, a proper beard, not just a little arsey thing. A proper beard - one that a lighthouse-keeper would be happy to sport.

And he’s done some good shit. It may be the beers talking but I’m pretty impressed. It’s actual music and not the usual tossery that seems to sell records these days. It doesn’t even seem too girly (like Norah Jones’ Jazz For Young Girls). It seems, for all intents and purposes, like music. I’m shocked to hear myself say that it seems pretty good. He even had the common-sense to look embarrassed at the brass arrangement that, in my opinion, arsed up that ‘Trouble’ song that I’ve just watched him do. I could be wrong (I often am) but the brass feels like the work of a producer to me. If I’m going by the beard, I reckon that LaMontagne isn’t the kind of bloke that’s into French horns and the like.

Anyway, like I say, it may be the beers talking. Possibly this will be an important life lesson and I’ll, never again, post after a number of Lidl’s finest (I’m not proud and it’s actually pretty tasty). We’ll see. This post will serve as a reminder to my sober self to try LaMontagne’s music without the beer coloured glasses. There’s a good chance that I’ll hate it sober. Or an even better chance that the album will actually sound a million times more shite than he sounds live. A pox on record company producers and money-men. I know we’re a minority but some people actually like music. You remember music, don’t you?

Christ am I going to be embarrassed if I’m just too cheap-beered to realise LaMontagne is really shite.

Right, so I haven’t posted since my last rant a week ago. It’s not like I’ve been sitting around drinking tea all day though. I’ve been a busy boy of late. I said I’d like to do some writing and do some writing I, errm, did.

Have popped out a couple of radio sketches. Just short ones but you’ve got to start somewhere. They’re submitted so I’m crossing my fingers on that one. I am remaining practical however, and am expecting crushing defeat, complete loss of self-confidence and a lot of weeping and hugging my knees.

RockMother and some chums decided, through a red wine haze, to start a ‘Blovel’. This, apparently, is a Blog-Novel and is a sort of participatory novel in which each of the contributors writes a bit and then passes the reins to the next. It’s an interesting idea as, by the time it gets back to your turn, the whole thing is quite likely somewhere entirely different to where you saw it going. The thing seems to have started as a sort of Noiry type of thing. This wouldn’t normally be my cup of tea but I’m looking on that as a good thing as it will give me a chance to flex my writing muscles, weak and feeble though they may be. If you’re in any way interested, you can check it out. I did the second bit, by the way.

Busy little bee that I am I have also been working on a sit-com. I’ve an episode already penned that I’ve secreted in a drawer and will leave there for another week maybe. I’ll then have at it with a red pen and, likely, do some serious rewriting/revising. Second episode is in progress too. I feel it might have some legs and, should any of my, small but faithful, readership work in the televisual milieu, now is your chance to get in on the ground floor. Think of the fame and riches that await us (mostly me in fairness but I’ll mention you in my BAFTA acceptance). Feel free to contact me to discuss enormous advance payments and merchandising rights at pleasedontmakemegobacktomyrealjob@jimmypagestrousers.com.

Now I’m off to have a beer. Despite the fact that I’m on a career break and can, therefore, drink myself senseless any night I wish with no consequences, I still have a special spot in my liver for Fridays.

Graeme, over at Tokyo Music and (I think) the wonderfully titled, James Blunt Must Die was good enough to comment on one of my recent rants - the one about morons not being allowed to vote. He put me in mind of a long-held belief of mine that, as far as Homo sapiens is concerned, Darwinian evolution has ceased to apply.

Now, I’m not saying that our evolution has ground to a halt or, necessarily, that we have reached some sort of evolutionary dead-end. What I am saying, is that the Darwinian process of natural selection, or ’survival of the fittest’ no longer seems appropriate to describe the onward trudge of Homo sapiens.

At it’s simplest (which is where I’m best qualified to rant about it), natural selection tells us that favourable traits which aid in the survival or procreation of an organism get passed along more successfully to subsequent generations. In this way, those traits become more common and over lots of generations become the ‘norm’. Thus, the ‘fittest’, or better-adapted survive and those without whatever these traits may have been, don’t.

So, Homo sapiens would, for instance, in the past have gained an evolutionary advantage over his neighbours through the opposable thumb allowing a precision grip. Because he had this snazzy thumb and could put it to use in getting food or attracting a mate (get your coat, you’ve pulled), he succeeded in passing on his thumb to the next generation more successfully than his buddies. The next generation, in turn, used the thumb to their advantage and passed it along. Survival of the fittest. Beautiful. For a hundred and thirty thousand odd years, Homo sapiens has progressed along this principal, the weak being eaten by sabre-toothed tigers and the strong shagging their grieving widows to pass on their (fitter) genes.

That’s all out the window now though. Now we’ve gotten too bloody nice. Our altruism has progressed to such extremes that we’re going around saving the weak from the sabre-toothed tiger instead of laughing as it eats him. Instead of letting a moron kill himself while drying his hair in the shower, we put a warning label on the hair-dryer to advise against it. Instead of letting some idiot slice his hand off in the blender we add a safety feature and put a warning in the manual - Danger, do not insert hand in rapidly spinning blades. Instead of letting a fatty kill himself eating forty Big Macs a day, we make McDonald’s sell salads and cut down the size of their portions so you have to buy two bags of fries instead of one. It’s no longer survival of the fittest, because the fittest (i.e. the ones that aren’t completely stupid) are mollycoddling the weakest (i.e. the morons). No good can come of it.

And, then we should consider attraction. Attractive traits help an organism to get a mate and secure their genes for the next generation. You can still see the vestiges of this, now largely redundant, mechanism in Homo sapiens when you notice a particularly attractive person on the bus or whatever. You might think that this is great and that your attraction to that person proves that natural selection is doing its job. Nope. It’s a vestige, a remnant. For proof, you should firstly consider how often you approach an attractive person towards which you feel the ‘urge’ and, secondly, consider Homo sapiens’ current mating rituals…

Most of our mating (in my experience anyway) is initiated in the nightclub, after the pub and after a shitload of alcohol. Inhibitions are uninhibited - askers are more likely to ask and askees are more likely to slur “yerssss, awwright then” to the question. You don’t need to be the fittest or strongest, just have a big armful of alcho-pops.

Thus, our species is barrelling forward through evolution, hand-holding the morons so that they don’t hurt themselves as they rut their stupid genes further and further into future generations, and mating on the principal of ’survival of the drunkest’.

It’s ironic that Homo sapiens means something along the lines of wise man. Let’s see how many of the grunting morons that will likely outlast our species will be even able to pronounce their species designation, Homo fatuus.

I have returned from a small holiday on the west coast of this (sometimes) beautiful island of mine. Not literally mine of course. If it were, there would be far fewer people here and those that were here would mainly be pretty girls. I would only allow a small number of males and only those who were astonishingly ugly (far more so than me). They would perform those menial tasks that prove too strenuous for the pretty girls although this doesn’t mean that the girls will have an easy life. They too would work but would do so in hot pants and heels.

Anyway, I digress. I’ve been on holiday for the last week or so. Popped to Westport. Never been, oddly enough, but it’s a very nice place indeed. Some spectacular scenery along the coast there and some nicely impressive mountains. One of these mountains, Croagh Patrick, has some sort of religious significance and one day in July every year, thousands of religious nutters climb the thing as a pilgrimage. The more mentalist of these nutters perform the climb barefoot. There is a little chapel on the top and they have some sort of ceremony before hobbling back down and, no doubt, getting off their faces on pints of Guinness in the nearest pub. I didn’t climb the thing but I can report that it looks high and steep and rocky and that I believe anyone who climbs it barefoot to be in dire need of some more common sense. Crazy religious people.

So anyway, the holiday was as relaxing as any holiday with a two-year old can be, especially one that, although potty trained until recently, has decided to fall off the poo-wagon. Unpleasant underpants abounded. To make matters worse, Baby Trousers has decided that she will sometimes hold the poo in until it becomes, ahem, pressing. At this point, it becomes a bit uncomfortable for her and she expresses that vocally. You haven’t been embarrassed and scared until you’ve tried to manhandle a toddler from a playground she doesn’t wish to leave as she shouts, “my bum is sore, my bum is sore” at the top of her voice.

But, now the holiday is over, it’s back to the grindstone. Did I say grindstone? I mean the doing-whatever-the-hell-I-please-stone, for I am Career Break Boy. How great it is. Since the holiday, I can now find a routine. Bit of reading. Bit of writing (more of which later, perhaps). Bit of bass playing (I’ve played guitar since I was a kid but never really dabbled in bass, a fact that embarrassed me every time a bassist friend handed me his). Bit of surfing. Bit of sitting. This is the life I’m meant to lead. That ‘working’ thing is for the birds. Four more months beckon. Hurrah!