Queens of the Stone Age

Well that was all rather long winded and slightly odd. We take a break from our scheduled viewing  to bring you some awesome. Namely some Queens of the Mother-Fucking Stone Age. Now i am a massive fan but watching their recent Glastonbury show i had forgotten just how balls-to-the-wall cool they are. With most of the bands at glasto this year either being ultra-established long runners like U2 or upstarts that are basically just a slightly shit indie band with a synth turned up. With this in mind seeing their blistering set was pretty jarring. QOTSA are real rock-stars where there really are few this year (Dave Ghrol Gets a free pass for being Dave Ghrol)

Listening to the crowd noise you can hear the QOTSA audience has a distinctly manly flavor, i guess this where they were all taking shelter from Beyonce. I would make a snide remark about them being on at the same time as Beyonce but to be honest she put on one HELL of a show and god knows how she dances and sings like that for that length of time, she does have at least a respectable number of ok songs and failing that just puts in the effort. Much of what surrounds her music is the usual industry guff but as a person and as a performer she is pretty dammed good. 

I guess will never see i QOTSA themed Glee episode, but i hope it would feature 30 minutes of someone just continually punching the little auto-tuned pounces in the face. Ok maybe not, Josh Homme is kind of big and the glee kids are kind of soft and breakable but you get the idea. In a world of pretty prescribed pop hits old fashioned hard-rock bands don't seem to have a place on the regular menu, there has been this slow decline in something that at one time seemed everywhere at once, the rock-band of old is an almost dead breed in the charts. They manage to be big enough to recognize but still be staunchly an alliterative to those who need it. Paradoxically despite being on one of the biggest stages in one of the biggest slots at one of the biggest festivals they are remain feeling underground. They totally aren't but they FEEL like they could be.

The re-release of the first album has caused a real buzz in some circles i was really not expecting, there seems to be a real ground-swell around the band and their music again. Despite not having a new album or even an EP or single to promote since really 2007 the band are still invited back to the big festivals. Hopefully their sixth album currently in the works can grab hold of the agenda and grab what has become the most prescribed musical agenda to date on the mass-market by the balls and hi-jack it for a second. Giving the n-dubz chart scene a real nuke up the rectum, if only for a fleeting moment. Just for one second, one tiny second i would like it feel like real music is winning again.

Part 3; Ben Affleck and other Mutations of my Mind.

Many many many many people hold this unrealistic, simplistic idea of relationships. Yes you. I'm, talking to you Mr. Jenkins from Surrey. Don't think you can hide or pretend. You should be ashamed! The rest of you are just as bad. Walking around doe-eyed looking for you 'one true love'. Of course we can hardly be blamed for this, we are pumped with expectations of relationships from childhood. Disney is a great proponent of this idea (and has actually managed some exquisite self-parody of late with "Enchanted". Mmmmm Amy Adams...) so are many lite-hearted family films but this light escapism is nothing compared to the crushing damage that is caused by one entire genre of film. The Rom-Com. 99% of Romantic Comedies are BUILT around this idea and go to great lengths to spin it in the audiences mind.

 On one of my insomniac excursions into late-night viewing led me to an **angry sigh** Ben Afflek romp entitled Forces of nature. That would usually be enough for me to go into "DO NOT WANT" mode and get the fuck out of there but i was curios to see where the movie was going. Mr. Afflek plays a man on the way to his wedding who ends up in a plane crash for.... some reason and meets a Girl (Sandra Bollock [hurr hurr]) who is what a hack film producer would call "Quirky". They have some miss-adventures, she gets him into a bit of trouble, there is some nice scenery on a train and they begin to bond. This is the point where i think i know where the movie is going "Well played movie" i thought "You are doing a slightly different angle on the whole thing". The man here has decided to marry the first woman he fell in love with and might just be finding out that there could be hundreds of compatible women out there that he could love or that might even make him happier and he would be being cruel just to settle for someone who his mistook for being 'destined' for and live a life of "What if" just because of the pressure he feels under. 

The second act is.... actually not bad, it's not great but you get the feeling the movie might be going a "We live in the 21st century, we are adults who make our own choices" route. But there keep being moments where it cuts back to his fiance with a weird blue filter and her looking all mopey and said. The film is obviously trying to make us feel sorry for her. The whole thing looks like it is going on in some other movie but if set of alarm bells for me and sure enough the third act rolls and just smacks the audience in the face. "NO" it says "we're not going the route we seemed to be setting up!". Some bullshit about a bagel shop, a kid and a husband come out of nowhere and the film basically takes a great big steamy dump all over its self ending in Affleck's character deciding that re loves again his mopey faience simply by looking into her eyes for a second. That's right folks, this film just decides that Affleck should blindly marry because... the universe wants him to? Oh and there is a hurricane. Well i guess for of a storm since all it does it blow some peoples hats about and knock over a marque and some other hi-larious hijinks **rolls eyes**

Think they look like a good screen couple? Well fuck you! He defied the gods of fate and now we are going to drop a hurricane on him!

Now the storytelling issue of setting up a relationship for an entire film then pushing a "nope" button and having it totally just end in a wet fart of nothing aside the film typifies the message of most rom-coms. Namely the "You will find you true love and everyone else will make you miserable and is not meant to be" school of romance. The issue seems so pronounced in this case because the second act of the film felt like it might actually going a mildly thought provoking route. Afflecks character nearly learned something, the universe almost worked as it does in real life. You feel a spark of would could have been and then feel the utter failure when they snap back into "Traditional Rom-Com" mode. In the end he learns nothing, his journey comes to nothing, he is with the one he is 'supposed' to love rather than the one you saw him develop a relationship with and it nails home what is wrong with the format and much it falls sort of reality. Why does the happen? Well many writers in Hollywood hold the idea of a more 'traditioanl' view of romance. i.e. they have wives and children and want to instill the idea of "one man, one woman, no buts" at every turn simply because they missed the boat on the whole "Unconventional relationships" thing becoming basically the convention.


Romantic 'Comedy' is overwhelmingly a genre squarely aimed at the female demographic. Decades of this type of shit have taken their toll, I'm sure you might unironically here "But is he THE ONE?". No he isn't, because there is no such thing as "THE ONE" (**insert matrix reference here**) and the unrealistic idea that a relationship will just fall into place if it is 'destined' and not having to work at and WANT a relationship with some one if you want it to work is toxic. The person you are with might very well make you happy for the rest of your life if you both decide to work at it, there are legions of women out there who will positively BURN though men because they have an overly idealised image of romance. You know what i take it back, he might well be the one but if you don't get your head out of your arse you certainly won't be. I'm sure this isn't just a female problem, so this goes for anyone; no body is perfect. A relationship is about finding common ground, putting aside differences and working at it. And Working at it. And working at it some more. It is callous to get rid of someone just because you think it "should be perfect of prefect if he/she is THE ONE".

There is a lot more to be said on this subject but I'm leaving it here for now simply for the issue of WALL OF TEXT. But ill be back! And with more tangents! 


In Part 4; Mormon Abstinence Vampire Porn!



Oh and go give someone a hug, everyone needs a hug.

Relationships Part 2; The part where he Rants at you

That part.

So yeah, relationships are fucking everywhere. We are bombarded with them and wallow in our own inadiquecy before them. There are the real ones you know, the people whos idealised facade you mainly see that you secretly know has a good chance of not actually being a facade and them being genuinely happy. Our image of these relationships is in turn warped by all the fictional ones or idelaised ones we are bombarded with. One man, one Woman, in the whole universe there is one person out there for you. This is how it works, you will search for this person and may or may not find them (don't worry if you don't find them im sure you will become some endering silver haird novelist or some other varient on the "content but alone" formula) but chances are fate will bring you together. Who would have thought it? It must be fate to feel like this. There is a path set in stone by the unyeilding power of love and by god you are going to tread it. You going to read the fuck out of it and be disgustingly happy for the rest of your days.


And If you fuck it up its totally over. Your in doomed romance territory looking wistfully of a hilltop or some shit, destined to regret not being that bit more perfect or that bit more like they wanted you to be. You have commited a cardinal sin, you have both defied and missed out on fate and since it was a 'destined' deal you must really have scewred the pooch. You are so bad at relationships you have bent the universe to the point that fatr has said "Well fuck this" and taken a piss on you for being such a terrible human being. You deserve this and you will never find love again. One shot and you blew it.

Sometimes, you can only express things with Ponies.

Of course this is all unfathomable shite. You may be able to enjoy the company of many different people and some of those people would be very compatible people with you if you gave it a shot. If it fails to work out try and get out with some degree of dignity (this will be useful later), use what you have learned from the whole affair nd grow past it. Let go of the needless bad feelings and keep the ones you learn from. You are an adult and life is waht you choose to make of it and if you're not then you have even more reason not to blame yourself, there is still plenty of time to grow.

Desipte my tone im not really a cynic, more posing as one as not to look like a gulable fool. Relationships can work out, im not going to give you the movie speech of "Long shot... Percentages.... blah blah affirming blah". You are proably reading this thinking i've just gone through a rough break-up. You would be wrong. Im just a haunted man who can outrun his ghosts (to quote what im listening to) and like all good givers of advice it is more "Aspirational" for me as well than anything. I guess you would call me a hopeless romantic, the well meaning sensitive loner type. I did do some soul searching a few months back, what i leanred is that i am a well meaning person, sometimes to a fault, i have a lot to learn. One thing i have learned is that relationships are truely two sided. They have to be strong on both sides to work, it takes one side to end, two to maintain if you follow me jibbering. Seems obvious but it would suprise you. I learned that i can try as hard as possible, make the utterly perfect moves and have hings fall apart through no fault of my own. Yep folks, shocker, i think it was the other sides fault! (oh my!) To be honest circumstances have consipred to make me look like a saint, if you know the circumstances (which you never will) you would probably agree. I know i sound like a self righteous prick but i can but tell the truth.

If you are having trouble following this then it is understandable, i barely do. Relationships are like that, they are hard to put into words and events tkae on a life of their own. Which is why the fiction we are pumped full of about them is so damaging.

Coming up in Part 3. Blame Ben Affleck!

'Relationship Syndrome' and other slightly pretencious things i could put as a title.

I was going to put the finishing touches to my three part epic about 'Anonymous', its roots, its implications, my (partial) past involvement in the 'Project Cahnology' thing you have probably never heard of and then segway neatly into my sweeping history/deconstruction/education about Scientology, its terms, its baffling celebrity involvement and general balls-out headfuckery that can borderline on the DMT trip insane and make you need to stare blankly out of a window for a few hours whilst you digest what this means for you world view. And then i was going to do a little dance.

But fuck that, I'm going to moan about not getting laid. If i sound like a destitute man's Yahtzee or Charlie Brooker who in turn are a tame world weary hipster ercho of Hunter Thompson or Bill Hicks then you realise that my natural writing style is basically nicked wholesale from them, or at least shares a 'common ancestor'. Writing is like evolution in that it mercilessly copies what is successful and runs the fuck away with it waving its arms about. The "Writing snide bullshit from a dark room" sub genre has gained a sizable nice and thus is able to speciate from the mass market copy like a Galapagos Finch who eats nothing but hope and shits slightly superior cynicism. 

But (as i do best) i digress. This is how my hands tend to want to write and im so very Meta i might even post a screnncap of me typing thing with screenwipe and The Escapist open knowingly below.

See im so fucking Meta i shit the 4th wall. In this world of post everying its hard to fight off some kind of eggistential crysis (hurr derp) and muster up the courage to leave the house nevermind find someone who is willing to put up with you and your miss-spent, frujstrated intelectialising. Im sat here doing what every other midly knowing, witty internet jerk-off is doing and being all derrivative in my bitterness, rage and doing it in a sickeneningly self concious way, whithh broken spell check no less! But this is how i want to relate, im mad as hell and... i have nothing better to be doing right now. Im kind of the totally fake anti-blogger, reveling in my total obscurity yet putting material out there anyway. Im tht underground, anti-capitalist band who are signed to a major label expect without the money. My distain for the bloggosphere in all its wretched "Look at me! Look at ME! I only matter when people are looking!" is underpinned by ar urge to simply he heard and apreciated in that way. If im shouting into the void then im doing it in the same vain hope the others are.

But anyway, since ive turned this into a stealth peice that is really about writing i'd better swing it round and justify it being about relationships so i  don't get bitching comments. I don't get comments anyway but what the hell. The internet has rules. I can but obey. Comming up in part 2. I get the fuck on with it!