SoccerAM.

Do people remember what it was like when it was good?


Tim Lovejooooooooy. Helen Chamberlain (looking rather lovely), Sheephead, Rocket, Tubes. Topless Weather. Fixtures and Fittings. Feed the Goat. Oh the memories.

When Mr Lovejoooooooy left for...erm...something...it just wasn't the same. I tried, in vain, to watch it over the years following, but it's just a bit...well...well it seems like it's living off of its former greatness.

I used to get up every Saturday morning to watch Soccer AM before going football. Now I get up to watch Saturday Kitchen Live. There's nothing wrong with that in my book, but as far as I can tell, if Lovejoy was still on Soccer AM then I'd still be watching it!

I have nothing against the new bloke...whoever he is...Max I think. But he just isn't Tim. I miss the Geordie Dancing. I miss the Vegetarians. Ah it's all gone a bit soft around the edges now :/ bit like SkySports in general. Not that I was his biggest fan, but Andy Gray getting sacked for saying what we all know to be true?!?! Hahaha I joke. Still...bit pathetic really. Sodding Rupert Murdoch. Wanker.

Anywho, for today's weather:

In Scotland it'll be cloudy with a chance of snow. And as we move down to Leeds we can see it's gloriously sunny. In Warsaw there's a nasty storm brewing. And down South: light drizzle.

GeorgeOfTheJungle.

I don't really have anything to add to this really. Other than the fact that this is a truly epic film, and we as a civilisation should be ashamed that it seems to have passed out of favour and knowledge.

There's gonna be a whole generation unaware of the wonders of this Tarzan spoof.

As a society, can we tolerate this!? Can we live with this terrible truth?!

We should be ashamed...that is all.

Urgh.

Kids eh?


Is it me or do they want to just grow up far too quickly these days? Or at least LOOK more grown up.


You walk down any high street in London (and I'm sure across the wider UK and perhaps the rest of the Western World) and you'll see barely teenage girls in clothes more suited to a nightclub than a classroom/shopping mall.


Why are they so determined to look older?


I remember when I was their age, all I cared about was playing football and getting home to play some Gran Turismo or International Superstar Soccer Pro (known now as Pro Evoluton Soccer) or whatever else I had on my old PlayStation.


I don't mean to come across as prim and proper at all...it's just when I was a kid I was entirely pre-occupied with being a kid! Perhaps it's a boy thing, but if the girls in my class were dressed for a night out in Oceana I certainly didn't notice!! And to make matters worse, they smoke from such an early age that it just strikes me as pure idiocy, and the people providing these kids with cigarettes should be locked up for child abuse or something...


Is it because the clothes are widely available? I don't think so. I saw a BBC Panorama investigation into the matter that showed most shops don't stock what could be construed as revealing or 'overly sexy' clothes for kids...which begs the question: where do they get them from? But that's not what I'm interested in.


Perhaps it's due to the increased sexualisation of life: cars are advertised in a 'sexy' way; pop-music videos are very suggestive, and the lyrics are oftentimes outright blatant. I'm not beating up on this...as my last post says: I love pretty much all music. But I'm older and wiser than a 14 year old boy who hears his favourite rapper talking about what he did with a girl he met in a club...and I know how competitive 14 year old boys are when it comes to...well...anything. ESPECIALLY sex.


I'm not saying that anything should be done about this, and I'm certainly not suggesting some sort of ban on dressing how you like, but it just seems like kids and early teenagers want to be the same age as me now...but I can think of nothing more dull, dreary, and tiresome.


I want to be a school kid again...they have Power Rangers........

Music.

What does music mean to you?

To me, music literally provides the soundtrack to my life. There's not one moment when I'm awake that music isn't playing. When I'm at work, the radio is on. At home: iTunes. En route: iPhone. I cannot imagine my life without music.

I'm not picky with my tunes either. I like anything and everything. As long as it's good and I can relate to it. I prefer songs (i.e. with lyrics) to pure beats, which leads me to essentially debunk what I've just said...because I cannot, will not, abide 'house' or any of it's derivatives and sub-genres. It's crap and literally just noise. Urgh. Other than that, not fussed. I like everything from dubstep to grindcore, and grime to classical.

It is well known that I like to sing. And my singing repertoire is as extensive as the music I listen to. I don't sing because I have a good voice, or because I want people to compliment me or anything like that...I just genuinely love singing. It's such a good way to release emotions that are otherwise difficult to express. Sometimes I wonder if my life isn't actually just a musical from the 40's!

When asked the conundrum 'what would you rather be: deaf or blind?', aside from the obligatory 'neither', my answer is blind. This is based on the fact that if I were deaf I wouldn't be able to enjoy my life as much without music I think. Of course this is only hypothetical, and does not mean to say that I think blindness to be a trivial matter. It's just a demonstration of how much I feel music means to my life.

Recently, a friend has asked me if I want to start an acoustic project with him on guitar and me providing vocals. I love acoustic songs...they really catch the essence of the moment I think. So it was a no-brainer for me. Hell. Yes.

Anyways, the point is that when we get it up and running, I'll take some videos and pictures and post them on here for y'all to see. So watch this space! Thanks :)

School.

It's funny how we never really appreciate school for what it is: an absolute doss.

We've all been told that school is the best time of our lives...and that it only goes downhill when you enter 'the big bad world and get a proper job.' But did we ever really listen...? I certainly didn't.

At the time, secondary school seemed ever so important to me. Not necessarily the GCSEs and exams, but the friendships and connections I'd made over the four/five years I was there.

They seemed like relationships that would outlast the dying of the Sun. We all planned our lives in conjunction with each other: it was implausible and impossible to imagine a future without my gang of friends.

How poignant it is now then, that I speak to but one of those friends on anything resembling a regular basis, but even then, nothing like enough for us to be considered good friends based on anything other than our former closeness. Today I reacquainted myself with one of my oldest friends...over a drink in Edwards Bar in Wimbledon, while I took a break away from my other friends. He's one of my oldest friends, but now we're so very distant and different that what seemed like a friendship cast in stone, now seems like a distant, faded memory. Like a quote from a book I'd read during my studies that no longer mattered now it was of no immediate concern.

I raise this as when I was on the bus this morning on the way to work, I saw the current student body of my old secondary school. And I saw on their faces, and in their mannerisms, the same juvenile outlook as I possessed at their age: this is all that matters...I have my friends and the relationships we build and break now will last forever. God, how naive I was back then.

I assume we all felt the same to some lesser or greater extent, or at least I hope we did. It was odd running into that old friend. He had no worries or cares beside his basic desire to satisfy himself. While I constantly have to concern myself with the need for a good degree, and what I plan on doing after graduation: a postgraduate study perhaps, or should I search for a graduate internship somewhere?

Such questions were well beyond my means of worry back at school, and I sometimes wonder if I were wiser then for not caring, or now for caring as much as I do. Perhaps it was not naiveté back then, but a more innocent, less corrupt, more honest view of the world in which we live. Perhaps it was all meaningless.

All I really know is that without the profoundly superficial views of life I harboured back then, I wouldn't hold the superficially profound views I now do. And I probably wouldn't be as drunk. But hey ho, here's to schooling! Enjoy it while you can kids: it's probably going to be the best time of your life. Shit..........