Sunday, November 06, 2005

I HATE YOU, TOM CRUISE!!!

*waves fist*

From IMDb:

Tom Cruise is terrifying film-makers on the set of Mission: Impossible III, by insisting on carrying out his own death-defying stunts. The superstar actor has refused to allow a stunt double to take on the dangerous high falls necessary for his part as secret agent Ethan Hunt in the sequel - and his willingness to push himself to the limit even scares legendary stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong, who is working on the film with him. Armstrong tells Total Film magazine "He did a 70 foot fall for us last week. He's amazing. He did about seven takes. It absolutely terrifies me - I can see the headlines! What a way to finish a career."

Most of you already know this, but I hate Tom Cruise SOOOOOOOOO much. Seriously, his current mid-life crisis thing is really nauseating. It's like he thinks that performing his own stunts will convince me, personally, that he's straight [as an aside, I will admit to finding the whole Katie Holmes pregnancy debacle most vexing. Or at least I did until someone reminded me of that miraculous turkey basting device.]

Anyhoo, if I was the stunt coordinator on Mission: Impossible III I would be all like, "So you wanna jump that 1,000 foot-wide precipice on a BMX? Sure! Knock yourself out." And then , under my breath, "Die! Die!"*

Of course, you know that if I ever had to work with him on a high-falutin' PR project I'd be all like, "Tom! It's so nice to meet you. Can I get you a cup of tea?

And then, under my breath, "Please touch my face!"

*If, at some point in the next few weeks, Tom Cruise dies performing a 1,000 foot jump on a BMX for Mission: Impossible III, I will feel really, really bad. For five minutes and then I'll probably get over it.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Ten things that happened to me this week ...

  1. I have been incredibly inspired by my new board director (after four days of him scaring the crap out of me)
  2. I worked alongside people I last worked alongside eight years ago
  3. I attended a party where George Clooney was present
  4. I learned that an inverted fork provides a better ride (!)
  5. I went to two tres, tres expensive restaurants for lunch
  6. I got to buy expensive desk furniture
  7. I was given a really cool pair of black leather biker boots
  8. I was twice told I am much nicer than my predecessor (although it should be noted that my predecessor was sacked for embezzlement)
  9. I was told by my first ever boss (who, after nine years, is my boss again) that I am like a completely different person
  10. I had sex five times with the same person (and I still really like him!)

Friday, November 04, 2005

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

So now that I'm a motorbike petrolhead, does that mean that I get to date guys like these?

Pic1

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Saturday, October 29, 2005

Even though I come from a family of motorbike petrolheads (my Mum, Dad and brother each have motorbikes) I have never, ever been even slightly interested in them. Motorbikes all look the same to me. Then there's also the fact that they are very, very dangerous.

At least that was what I thought until this morning, when my new account manager, Bill (who I took out for an introductory breakfast) informed me that the motorbike brand we will be representing will be paying for me to take my motorbike test. And not only that, but the brand lends us actual, real, shiny bikes to take to show the press and we're TOTALLY allowed to look after them in the interim!!!

After breakfast Bill and I stopped by the office and I picked up a sales brochure for the bikes. As I flicked through I still found myself having trouble distinguishing each model from the next - two wheels, handlebars, seat, yadda, yadda, yadda.

So I asked Bill, "If [motorbike] was a car, what would it be?"

"An Aston Martin."

And so in the moment that followed I became a baby motorbike petrolhead.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Last night I dreamt that I was working on a publicity stunt for the new Harry Potter movie, where J.K. Rowling, herself, would drive the Hogwarts Express into King's Cross Station.

In my dream I was standing at the end of the platform, the furthest end away from the front of the station. As the train motored past me with J.K. at the wheel, waving to all the children lining the platform, I thought to myself, She's not paying attention! She's going too fast! She's not going to be able to stop in time!

Sure enough a couple of seconds later there was a huge explosion and lots and lots of steam. Suddenly I was surrounded by hundreds of TV crews and reporters screaming and yelling at me, "J.K. Rowling is dead because of you! Who's going to write the final book now!" And then all the kids who had been in the station started to bawl and cry.

It was a MESS!

In fact it was so realistic that it actually woke me up.

Is my subconscious trying to tell me something about my PR / Event Management / Celebrity Liaison skills in advance of starting my new job next week?

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

While I was at home I berated my Dad for not having set aside the first weekend in December for coming to London to see his number one son, in advance of Christmas (when I will be in Thailand) as he had agreed he would do over three months ago.

Dad emailed me yesterday suggesting that perhaps, instead, he could come up from Bath one evening, take me out for dinner and then drive home afterwards. I emailed him back and agreed to the evening and time.

I received this email back from him:

Great! It's a date! x

This is WAY too exuberant for my Dad who usually responds with a singular "OK" or a "Good" and NEVER with a kiss. I mean we only started hugging about two years ago and even that feels forced and uncomfortable.

Of course it's made all the worse by the fact that I have been told that I am going on a "date" with my Dad.

I feel nauseous.
Today I met Jess, an old friend from my last company, for lunch.

Jess had recently been dumped by a long-term ex-boyfriend, shortly before they were supposed to move in together. Apparently he got cold feet. Last week he asked to see her because he thought that he had made the wrong decision.

By this point Jess was pretty sure that she didn't want to get back together with him, but agreed to meet up with him anyway to hear exactly what he had to say.

After a few minutes with him she was reminded what an ass he is and it cemented in her mind exactly why they were not meant to be together.

She told me, "You should have heard me! I was brilliant! I said to him, 'Do you want to know why there is more chance of Hell freezing over before the two of us get back together? Because there is more chance of Hell freezing over before the two of us get back together.' He didn't really have anything to say after that."

She crossed her arms, pretty pleased with both herself and her fait a'complit.

After a pause, I said, "Well I'm not surprised he didn't say anything. What you said doesn't actually make any sense."

"What do you mean? I was saying that there is no way we're getting back together."

"Well, it seems to me that what you actually said was that the seemingly high chance that Hell will freeze over before you get back together means that you do actually think you'll eventually get back together again. That is providing the Hell Ice Age occurs before you both die. Either way, the high-chance of Hell freezing over doesn't in itself validate the high chance of Hell freezing over, before you and Mark get back together. To be honest I don't really know what you said."

She responded with a frosty stare and I reminded myself that a good friend just nods sympathetically. Always.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I went home to Bath this past weekend so that I could help my brother, Stephen, my Dad and my Aunt scatter my Grandma's ashes.

After my Granddad's funeral, which was earlier this year, my Grandma told me and my Grandpa that she wanted her ashes scattered by the brook in Holt which she and her brother would play in when they were both kids.

This might sound a bit silly, but we were all a bit unsure how to actually go about scattering someone's ashes. Like, what do you actually do? In the end we all took it in turns to take the urn and the whole thing turned out just perfect and, weirdly, not at all sad.

Here is my Grandma's view ...

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In other news ...

My Mum has just had an extension put onto the back of her house and on Friday morning she got up extra early to paint one of the walls in the extension white. Before she left for work she gave me one very simple instruction:

"Don't let Henry into the extension, because the wall is still wet!"

In my defense she told me this about 0.5 seconds after she had woken me up. Needless to say, I forgot. While Henry didn't seem to be that bothered by the subsequent incident, Mum certainly was:

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Finally, please give it up and put your hands together for yours truly, as I am pleased to announce that I have bagged myself a hawt new job with a really cool PR agency just off Oxford Street. I am going to be directing the UK PR for a famous motorbike brand and a famous SUV brand. I start next Monday. Even since I left my last permanent job, back in April, I have been freelancing and while it has paid well, it has not provided regular-work "security". I cannot begin to tell you what a weight it is off of my mind that I now have a steady income to look forward to, again.

Friday, October 21, 2005

Today, while attempting to learn what homosexuality is on Wikipedia, I discovered the most amazing and simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking thing ever!

Gay penguins!

(I'm not going to post a direct link to this information, because that would ruin the impression that I am something of a gay penguin expert, which for the purposes of today's post, I am.)

Meet Squawk and Milou, a pair of gay Chinstrap penguins. They are one of several pairs of such penguins kept at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan.

Gay_penguins_NY_Zoo

(Squawk is looking rather flamboyant in that picture. I bet he's a bottom.)

Like their heterosexual counterparts, gay penguins mate for life. However, while the strong instinct for raising and co-operating in caring for a brood is still very much present, obviously gay penguins cannot have babies. Therefore once they have mated and built their nest together, gay penguins often use a stone as a replacement for an egg.

A stone! Seriously! Is that not the cutest thing?! There's something almost Dickensian about it. Like when I was little boy all my parents would give me for Christmas (because we were poor) was a lump of coal or a log (not entirely the truth) and I was always happy. Just as I am sure Squawk and Milou are with their stone.

A few years ago the gay baby Jesus (albeit in the form of some meddling, but well-intentioned zoologists) shone down on another pair of gay penguins at the same zoo. Silo and Roy's rock was replaced with a fertilised egg which they continued to incubate. Once the chick had hatched they raised and nurtured it as if it were their own.

Or at least that was what happened until Silo left Roy and their adopted chick for a female penguin.

I think the interesting point about all of this is not the proof that homosexuality is valid and accepted in other forms of existence, but that there will always be some utter bastard just itching to break your heart and abandon both you and your children.

That particular instance also just goes to prove that bisexuals are tossers (just kidding!!)

Thursday, October 20, 2005

I've just got around to putting Just the Way You Are by Billy Joel onto my iPod. While the short-term analysis of the song could be that it is a criticism of perfection, albeit in the best possible way, it's still pretty much the perfect love song. It says exactly what you would want to hear from your partner: that they don't want you to change your hair and they don't wish you were smarter and they don't want you to go trying "some new fashion". To them you are perfect. They couldn't love you any more than they do.

Billy Joel wrote Just the Way You Are about his then-wife and manager, Elizabeth Weber (who he then went on to divorce, four years later). He's saying that he loves her because she's not perfect and that he could never leave her in times of trouble. The fact that they didn't stay together seems to make the song even more poignant.

When I got back from New York I was nowhere near being over my ex-boyfriend, Will (we had broken up just before I left.) Shortly after I moved in with Vix I asked her to look after all the little notes, love-letters and emails Will had written to me when we were together as I had a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night, read them and make myself really upset.

It took me almost a year to properly get over Will. It was in February of this year. I knew when I received an email from him and for the first time ever my heart didn't flip - I just loved him as a friend. That feeling of emotional release is such an amazing sensation. For so long I thought that I was never going to get over Will, that I would never meet anyone like him and that I would always love him from afar. Then suddenly I realised that I had moved on.

Yesterday I remembered those notes and decided to ask Vix for them back, lest they got lost in the annals of time! Aside from a Valentines Day card and a couple of emails, the notes mainly consist of musings that he would have written before leaving for work and then left on his pillow for me to find (he is a nurse and often starts at around 6am.) Obviously I'm not going to write them all out for you, because they're private, but one of them that I looked at yesterday read, simply:

No morning is a bad morning when I wake up next to you. I love you. W.

In his book Sex, Lies and Cocoapuffs, Chuck Klosterman talks about how songs like Just the Way You Are make him think about all of the perfectly romantic emails and notes he has written over the years for various girlfriends, each of them proclaiming his profound and enduring love.

Like him, in a way I hate the fact that those notes and emails that I penned for Will are still out there somewhere. Not because I didn't mean them when I wrote them, but because I meant them when I wrote them.

The good thing is that they are all a reminder that I have felt love and that I have been loved and that very possibly I'll feel it all again some day.
I can't think of anything particular to blog about today, so how 'bout some gratuitous man action instead ...

blackxs1024-2

His name is Will Chalker and he's originally a builder from the east of London. He makes me feel all swoony and weak in the knees [insert crude joke here].

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Today I went into town without a coat and for the first time in months I seriously regretted it. It was COLD! As if that wasn't enough, by the time I got home at 6pm it was almost dark. In fact as I type this it is pouring with rain outside. It's beating down so loud that I can actually hear it.

I kinda have the winter blues.

To try to cheer myself up I have been reminding myself that in eight weeks time I will be spending almost three weeks here with four other fabulous gayers, for the whole of the Christmas and New Year holiday.

It would have worked if it weren't for the fact that the occupiers of the apartment below us are playing Unchained Melody on a loop and so loud that it is almost making the room shake.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

So I go to Fiction with my friend Matt, where I meet a really hot guy. We call him Dan. While Dan was a little on the short side, he was what I thought to be a dead ringer for Tom Ford, albeit ten years younger. He even had the same hairline. Result.

So we eventually hooked up and we ended up spending the rest of the next day in bed, chilling out, doing a lot of the fun naked stuff and having those great little chats that make you think, "Click!"

Aside from my making a quick pit stop at my place to shower and change, Dan and I carried on like that. We went out clubbing again that evening with some of his friends who were all, also, really great and friendly. After the clubs we went back to his again where we cooked, drank wine, talked and spooned infront of the TV.

Later, before we went to sleep, for the umpteenth time that weekend, we had sex. In the middle of the sex I felt the condom break.

After a quick, "I'm, er, 'ok'. Are you 'ok'?" chat and a moment of awkwardness Dan smiled at me and said, "Well, we could carry on anyway? If you're cool with that?"

I told him that I was not really cool with that. And then I asked him, "Is that something that you do often?"

"Well, not 100% of the time. I guess 80% with, 30% without."

After he said that I kinda lost respect for him. I will admit to the odd careless slip-up when I've been really, really drunk or whatever. None of us are infallible and when it has happened I've certainly not felt great about it. But it's never happened so frequently that I could actually offer up a statistic like that.

And then there is, of course, the important fact that I am not going to spend my everafter attached to a guy who thinks 80% and 30% equals 100%.

Friday, October 14, 2005

On Wednesday I went to see the new Rachel Whiteread exhibit in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern.

For those of you who haven't been to the Tate Modern, the Turbine Hall is the huge space that you walk into as you enter the gallery, which itself used to be a power station. The space is enormous and to completely fill it is an equally massive challenge. The most impressive installation I have seen to completely fill the space was the Anish Kapoor exhibit, over two years ago. The picture, below, only shows a third of it. Apparently it was actually physically impossible to view or photograph the whole piece at once.

in-turbine-hall4

The Rachel Whiteread installation, while much smaller than the Anish Kapoor, is completely amazing in a totally different way.

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The work was inspired by an old, worn cardboard box that Whiteread found in her mother's house shortly after she died. Whiteread remembered the box from her childhood as it used to be kept in her toy cupboard.

For the installation itself Whiteread filled a number of different sizes of similar boxes with plaster. She then peeled away the exteriors, which left her with perfect casts, each recording and preserving all the bumps and indentations on the inside. To retain their quality as containers, they were refabricated in a translucent polythene.

The title of the installation, Embankment, refers to the riverside location (the Tate Modern sits on the Thames) as well as the nature of the installation's construction, with the piles of boxes forming barriers which you can walk around. Looking at it from above I was reminded of piles of sugar lumps, but when you start walking amongst them it's kind of like being in a maze, with lots of branches and dead ends. Then right in the middle is this huge towering structure, which makes you feel really, really small.

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The thing that really affected me was how empty the installation made me feel. I don't know if that was Whiteread's intention, but I kept reminding myself that these boxes weren't actually boxes at all, but impressions of the nothingness inside boxes that themselves really existed. It was really profound.

I love stuff like this. For me, this is what art is all about. Anything that make me feel something: even if that feeling isn't necessarily good, or even comfortable.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

If my housemate, Victoria (we would usually call her Vix, but Victoria serves us better for today's tale), was a literary character she would probably be something of a cross between Cathy from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Fanny Price from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Fiery passion trapped within a romantic and sensible young woman. Looks-wise, she's very "English-rose" with long red hair framing an almost heart-breakingly beautiful face. She is a gentile lady in every possible way. However, I have not known her to run around Clapham Common, brandishing a parasol, calling out, "Heathcliffe!" at the top of her lungs.

Well, not yet, anyway.

Now that you know my housemate intimately and understand her deepest motivations, let me share with you the following discussion that I just overheard her having with the scaffolders who are currently noisily constructing outside our bedroom windows.

Victoria [remember now ... gentile English lady]: "Erm, hello! Hello! Oh yes, hello. I was, um, wondering how long you're going to be building out there for."

Scaffolder: [loud, rough, gravelly, Dartford accent. Americans: watch an episode of Eastenders on BBC America and notice how the men speak]: "Wot's that my luv?"

Victoria: "Er, I was just, er, wondering how long you would be building out there for."

Scaffolder: "Well for a start we're not builders now, are we darlin'? No, we're scaffolders. But don't you worry! We'll be finished by four, my luv!"

Victoria: "Oh, lovely. Sorry! Sorry for bothering you."

Scaffolder: "Yeah, we'll definitely be finished by four my darlin'. We 'ave to be 'cause I've gotta get dahn Soho way latah to get the missus a pair of them rubber knickers."

Victoria: "Oh!"

(The other scaffolders laugh)

Victoria: "Well, maybe she might like some nice underwear from somewhere else as well."

Scaffolder: "Yeah, well. She likes them rubber knickers don't she! Yeah, she loves 'em, she does! But not as much as I love 'em when I'm doin' 'er from behind, ya' know, doggy-style, like."

(More laughter from the other scaffolders)

By this point I knew that the conversation had reached an critical impasse and that it was up to me to save whatever was left of Victoria's purity. I dove into her bedroom and gently spirited her away from the window.

She looked at me quizzically. "Did you hear that?"

"Oh my God! Er, yes!?"

"Rubber knickers? Isn't that a bit unhygienic?"

She's ruined. Ruined, I tell you.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Morph: 1977 - 2005. RIP.

morph1

Clearly I have been otherwise occupied as I have only just learned of the demise of Morph, who burned to death in a fire during the early hours of Monday morning. A part of my childhood is dead.

Obviously when something terrible like this happens one has many, many spiritual and philosophical questions to ask. For example:

What does happen to Plasticine when you set it on fire?

Because if it just melts then surely that means that Morph can be resurrected. I remember that he would always get into scrapes where he would melt and shit and then he'd just pop back up and be all fine and make that noise that sounded like,"Mnupel!"

I fear I may have to let go.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Last night I went out to dinner with my friend Anthony who I haven't seen in, like, forever. Anthony and I used to live together when we were students at university and at the time his nickname was Sonic, due to his blue Mohawk. But these days he's all suited and booted and strangely attractive, in that "Ew, I would never go there," kind of way.

Anyway, we met at Piccadilly Circus and couldn't decide where to eat. So we wandered around for a while before finally settling on The Stockpot, which is an ultra basic restaurant directly opposite the theatre on Panton Street. It serves a three course meal for about seven quid and a bottle of wine for about eight quid. The food is very school dinners - processed but comforting.

So we sat there and ate and drank for about two hours, catching up and reminiscing over old times. Meanwhile, like any well-trained gay boy, I simultaneously checked out the uber-hot waiter (unfortunately not designated to our table) all the while not missing a word of what Anthony was saying to me.

Now this waiter was seriously hot. I know I mention hot guys on my blog a fair bit, but he was hot in a "I've just celebrated my 18th birthday and I'm pretty sure I'm gay cause I once fooled around with my best friend and I think I liked it so maybe you'll show me the ropes," kinda way (I know what you're probably thinking if you're straight, but this is actually a pretty standard and ageless gay fantasy.) Blonde / mousey spiky hair, tall, gangly and lean. But the best bit?

He was French!!! Speaking English!

Sacre bleu!

So eventually we finished the wine and decided to move on. As we left our table we said goodbye to our waitress and then, in the most non-sexually aggressive but nicest manner possible, I smiled and said "Bye," to Le Hot French Waiter.

To which he responded by folding his arms, before huffily looking in the opposite direction. In the manner of a spurned lover. Which would have been hot, had it actually been the case.

Anthony and I spent the next however long attempting to deduce why I'd pissed the waiter off. In the end I decided that it was either:

a) He was indeed a spurned and forgotten lover who I'd picked up at G.A.Y. several years ago and I hadn't called him since

or

b) Our eye contact had been badly synchronised and he had actually been trying to get my attention for the entire time I had been there.

At which point Anthony said that I was being really self-involved and it was more than likely just because he was French. Which is even more hot! For crying out loud! Le Hot French Waiter, being all French with me! "J'taime Le Hot French Waiter!" etc.

The other explanation, of course, that neither Anthony or I dared to broach, was that Le Hot French Waiter was actually Le Hot French Straight Waiter and Anthony had been too queeny (because while I was admittedly wearing a huge pink knitted scarf over a cowboy shirt, I naturally give off a devastatingly masculine and heterosexual vibe) and had pissed him off.

Le Hot French Straight Homophobic Pissed Off Waiter. In a f**ked up way, that's so hot that it doesn't even register on the scale.

Monday, October 10, 2005

For a number of reasons I'm feeling a bit down in the dumps, so to help lift the funk I decided to moisturise my hands using the very expensive efficacious Anthony Logistics for Men Glycerin Hand & Body Lotion that my friend Richard bought for me for my birthday.

As I picked the lotion up my grip failed and the tube began to fall to the floor. As I went to catch it the sharp corner hit the palm of my other hand and inflicted this:

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It looks like a superficial wound, but it totally bled out and it still hurts like a mofo.

Hand, injured by hand lotion. My life sucks.

Friday, October 07, 2005

My aunt and uncle, my mother's brother, have been married for about 20 years. Rather than starting a family each chose to pursue careers. My Aunt is a barrister and my Uncle owns a surfboarding shop. They live on a farm in the New Forest on which they breed horses.

I have always thought that they were one of the few couples in my family who were genuinely happily married and in love with each other. That was until my Mum told me the following story.

The other day my Uncle visited my Mum in a bit of state. My Aunt, for one reason or another, had become cold towards my Uncle and out of loneliness he turned to a friend, a married woman, for comfort and the relationship eventually grew into a fully fledged affair which lasted for just over two years ago.

About a month ago my Uncle and the other woman decided to leave their respective partners and live together. As he drove home to break the news to my Aunt he received a phone call from another friend to tell him that the woman he had been seeing had just had a heart attack and was critically ill in hospital. She died later that night. She was only 36. (My Uncle would later deduce that the heart attack had occurred before she had the chance to tell her husband that she was leaving him.)

My Uncle immediately made the decision to never tell my Aunt the truth about his adultery, his decision to leave or about the death of the woman he had fallen in love with. He realised that he would never meet anyone like the woman who had died and couldn't bear the idea of a life alone. For him, the prospect of a life spent in a cold marriage was better than the alternative. He also knew that the combined circumstances of his adultery combined with his grieving, would put my Aunt in an impossible situation and would more than likely break her own heart in an entirely different way.

When she finished telling me the story my Mum took a pause before saying, "I don't think that honesty is always the best policy."

I agree and I think that my Uncle is one of the bravest people I know.

[Addendum - my Mum is the only member of my family who knows about my blog. I asked her first if she was ok for me to write about this, which she was. As for my Aunt and Uncle, they probably don't even know what a blog is.]