005.

Snobbery annoys me.  It especially annoys me when it comes to reading.  I love to read, all the time, almost anything.  I've read books walking down the street, while travelling, on the beach, in the bath, sitting on the pavement, at a gig in between bands, once even during a band, but I think that says more about the band than it does about my love of reading.  When I was in Primary School, my reading age was advanced I was allowed to bring my own books in.  Yes, I was the geeky 8/9 year old reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography while other kids read, well, I don't know what they read because I wasn't reading it.  What do normal 8/9 year olds read?  Remember, this was pre-Harry Potter!

Reading is one of my favourite things in the world to do.  It allows you to escape into another world, it lets you learn about people's lives, different experiences, other countries, pretty much everything in the world can be learnt about from a book.  Even how to fight zombies, which is obviously a necessary skill to have.  I encourage everyone to read, whatever you're interested in, find a book about it and get stuck in.  It's so much fun.  Join your local library before the Tories close it and discover shelves and shelves of free books!  Why, yes, my perfect gift would go something like this clip:

Look at all the books!  Beauty And The Beast was released when I was about 7 years old and it was such a great movie to me because Belle read and didn't take crap from anyone.  Even studying media and the evil Disney machine didn't put me off loving that movie.  Books!  Reading!  Yay!

Anyway, my lack of snobbery when it comes to books means I have no shame in saying I own a large collection of Sweet Valley University, Nancy Drew and CSI books.  I have biographies and autobiographies about people from the aforementioned Mr Mandela to Tommy Lee to Robbie Williams to Jeffrey Dahmer to Pamela Des Barres to Bret Hart.  I read Camus' The Stranger when I was 13, but I also enjoy trashy chick lit.  Chuck Palahniuk rests next to Kevin Smith who rests next to Mick Foley on my bookshelf.  Heck, I've even read a couple of Katie Price's fiction books.  Which does make me wonder if I'm the only person to have read Camus and Katie Price.  Anyone else out there?

This year I decided to keep an ongoing tally of the books I read, just so I can look back and see both what, and how much, I actually read because I've never paid attention before.  So, here's the list.  Re-reads are indicated by an asterisk and if I read the book again during the year, I simply list it again.  It's been an interesting experiment so far, we'll see how it progresses.

1. My Appetite For Destruction - Steven Adler
2. Assholes Finish First - Tucker Max*
3. Notting Hell - Rachael Johnson
4. Strip City - Lily Burana*
5. Kill Your Friends - John Niven
6. Bye Bye Baby - Caroline Sullivan*
7. Tattoos and Tequila - Vince Neil
8. No Angel - Jay Dobyns
9. Assholes Finish First - Tucker Max*
10. Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes*
11. Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married - Marian Keyes*
12. Dirty Cash - David Southwell
13. A Lion's Tale - Chris Jericho*
14. Undisputed - Chris Jericho
15. Got Fight? - Forrest Griffin*
16. CSI: Skin Deep - Jerome Presler*
17. CSI: Brass In Pocket - Jeff Marriotte*
18. Can You Keep A Secret? - Sophie Kinsella*
19. CSI: Blood Quantum - Jeff Marriotte*
20. The Godfather - Mario Puzo*
21. Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis
22. Palo Alto - James Franco
23. CSI NY: Four Walls - Keith R A DeCandido

I always have to have more than one book on the go.  Right now I think I have about 4 or 5, a couple of autobiographies, a book about Hells Angels and a couple of CSI books.  I never know what I'll be in the mood for, and it means reading never becomes dull, there's always something else I can pick up if I get a bit tired of what I'm reading.

xo

004.

There are many things that irritate me about job hunting.  These are the top ones:

1. Lack of proof reading  Recently I looked at a job advert that stated hours were "12am-8pm".  Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they meant midday, which, as most semi-intelligent people know, is 12pm.  This begs the question, if you can't tell time properly, why are you in charge of hiring people?  Then there's the little things, like 'teh' and 'wto'.  Really, people, if you don't start proof reading your adverts, I will.  Your in-boxes will be full of me correcting your mistakes and asking if your three year old typed it up for you.
2. Internships  I have no problem with internships as a concept, for some professions they're the only way you can get your foot in the door, but when I see companies advertising for interns every 3 months, to do the same work, I can only assume they're bastards who don't want to hire someone to do the job.  They'd rather use unpaid labour in the form of a bunch of people who hope this will lead to a job, but never does.  The worst one I saw was someone asking for an intern to, essentially, run their business.  Stop being cheap.  Hire people.
3. Degrees being essential  Now, I admit I might be a little sensitive about this because I left Uni halfway through and, now, even if I wanted to go back, I wouldn't be able to afford it.  There are some jobs where you need a degree in a subject that relates to that particular profession, and that's fine.  It's the rest that bothers me.  I'd love to know what use a degree is for being a secretary, or a receptionist.  Or, in fact, a sales assistant.  What exactly does having a degree bring to those jobs that would be missing if someone without a degree was hired?  Not many people want to hear this, but having a degree doesn't make you smarter than everyone else.  Doesn't make you better than everyone else.  It just means you have a piece of paper that shows you studied a subject for three years. 
4. Inability to spot interchangeable skills  I used to work at a club in Camden.  I've also done a lot of voluntary work that involved dealing with a wide range of people in a very professional manner.  Between the two, I've probably dealt with any sort of customer you could care to throw at me, but for most employers this doesn't translate as experience.  Personally, I think the fact that I worked at a club in Camden and was never arrested for punching someone shows just how excellent my customer service skills are, but when they look at my CV and see that I worked at a club, all they think is 'Hostess'.  And I don't want to be a hostess forever, it's tiring, your hours are funky, you spend 80% of your time being hit on and then you have to get nightbuses home.  Besides, I'm almost 26, there's a whole new group of hotesses coming up the ranks, I'm over it!

So there we have it.  Job hunting, especially at the moment, is all too often a thankless task with no result at the end of it.  Make you wonder why we bother, doesn't it?  Oh, wait, to survive.  Can I not just marry a rich man instead and spend my days writing and watching movies?  No?  Oh, alright.

xo

003.

It's not often you get to travel back in time and assess a certain period of your life.  This year, with the announcement that Special Needs were reforming, myself and many other people got to do just that.  They were to play a show at Proud, Camden on the 15th of February.  Sadly, since that night happened, news surfaced that a young girl many of us knew died at the age of 21.  I saw her at the gig, but didn't get a chance to say hi.  I wish I had.  Rest In Peace, Louise.

It's strange to look back at that period of time.  I've spent a lot of time running around the city within many different scenes, with several bands, but this scene and these bands were different.  While I was once a teenage companion to rockstars, with car service and 5* hotels amongst the luxuries that brought, this was a world away from that.  Last minute gigs, nightbuses and house parties were the order of the day.  It was a democratic scene, you'd trip over someone at a party one day, and the next week NME would be hailing them as the future of indie.

As with all scenes, the bubble burst not long after the record companies got seriously involved.  Ridiculous demands being put on bands who had never built a significant fanbase outside of London.  Demands to sell 40,000 records at a time when physical sales were already dropping and no one had yet worked out how to capitalise on music being available online.  Demands to give sensible interviews, devoid of crack psychosis (there was only room for one crack addict in the press and Peter Doherty had that sewn up).  Demands for these kids to treat what they were doing as a business when they mostly just wanted to play music with their friends.  Bands were dropped, bands split up.  Members went back to the home counties, nursed the drug habits they'd picked up.  Some stuck around in the city, managing to carve out a life for themselves.  Many left the music business altogether, preferring to take their chances in the 'real world'.  The rest of us picked up the pieces of the music we'd loved, attempted to stay friends with the people we'd actually liked and carried on with life.

February 15th was a very strange night.  Of all the bands who had been involved in that scene, Special Needs were the ones most people thought should've Made It.  They weren't like so many bands around at that time, hashing together imitated Libertines riffs with a frontman putting on a phoney London accent.  Special Needs were 60s pop meshed with gang vocal choruses, guitars with a nostalgic feel and an Irish singer.  They were bright, vibrant colours who stood out against the crack smoke haze most of the other bands were spewing.  Their reunion made people happy in a way that I don't think any other bands from that time could've accomplished.

Special Needs - Sylvia (live at Proud)

It was like 2004 again, right down to having to yell at a Jarman brother to get out of my way.  The Cribs may well be selling out venues like Brixton Academy now, but to me they'll always be idiot boys with stupid haircuts managing to get in my way.  There were plenty of people I wasn't too keen on seeing, the feeling was probably mutual, and thankfully any awkward moments were avoided.  The people I wanted to see were around, though some I missed, and while the surreal feeling never really dissipated, it was really quite lovely to see that people I'd spent a lot of time with years before were doing well.

When Special Needs hit the stage I, and many other people, were hit with a reminder of a time when we were never at home because there was always a band like this playing some corner of London.  When you could go out by yourself to see a band, safe in the knowledge that you'd know half the crowd once you got there.  There were cliques, fights, grudges and problems, but it was still a community.  At that time, bands were still working out how to use the internet to market themselves and to build a fanbase.  It was still in it's infancy, being tweaked and played with.  You could log onto a message board, get cheaplist for a show that night, go and see a line up featuring bands playing songs they'd given away for free on YouSendIt.  That's what Arctic Monkeys did.  It was the internet that made that band big, not the music press.

Special Needs were the catalyst for a lot of people to come back together and relive that period of their lives, but their reformation shouldn't be looked upon as nostalgia.  They have new songs, they have damn good songs that deserve to be heard by a wider audience than before.

Special Needs - Nobody's Darling (live at Proud)

The old songs deserve to be heard as well, who wouldn't want to hear a large crowd of people singing along to Blue Skies, Sylvia and Convince Me?  If one thing can come out of this Tardis trip to 2004, let it be that Special Needs get their chance to shine.  Let them have a happy ending.  They're a band who were better than that scene.  They should have the chance to finally prove it.

As for me?  I look back at who I was in 2004/5 and am glad I'm not that person anymore.  I had a hell of a lot of fun with some fairweather friends and made some long term friends, but I'm not one to live in the past.  Life moves on.  Being able to look back and see how much I've grown and changes is something I'm thankful for.  Nothing but Blue Skies ahead...

Special Needs - Blue Skies (live at Proud)

xo