Tuesday, September 19, 2006
I love this time of year. You go out for an evening stroll and come home in the pitch black… if at all.
Greetings cats and kittens. It’s festive season on planet aido, so it’s all been shits and giggles punctuated with brief hyper-stressed spells in work to clear the backlog that accumulates in my absence.
First up was Mr Mark’s stag do in galway. I had a dead good 2 day dose of boozy blokey fun, despite not arriving at 11 o’clock on the Friday night to be greeted with the news that we had nowhere to stay. Apparently the stout yeomen of the B&B weren’t informed that it was a stag do they were booking, and were none to pleased when they found out. After another hour or so of failed attempts to get a roof over our heads, we decided that if we drank enough, Joe’s minibus would suffice. And indeed it did. The following day, Mark sweet-talked the gorgeous Sebastian (Call me Saba) at salthill’s ibis, who said he was ‘only to happy to squeeze you all in’ in a comedy camp german voice, and then we were set. Galway’s packed full of freaks. No-one gives a shit. Anyone with a glove puppet, facepaints, facial abscess or a dirty child thinks they can make a living panhandling. I love it. Cutest bit: a very very pissed mark, coming home from a heavy Saturday night wailing: “I don’t want to be here with you fuckers, I want to be at home with me wee nedo”, and trying to exchange his credit card for a taxi ride back to Augher.
Next up was Edinburgh, where I watched films and marvelled at the substantially superior calibre of freaks on offer. This time they had a unionised, ‘I don’t fuck with you, you don’t fuck with me’ attitude. Everyone else was a trendy. Except for Dylan Moran, whom I saw perched outside a coffee shop apparently muttering deaththreats to the world at large under his breath. I suspect he would be like that anywhere though, so it’s probably no bad reflection on Edinburgh. One of my favourite freaks had to be the guy in this bizarre vegan hangout/drug-den/restaurant (have you got coke? No, we have organic sugar-free cola) where myself and Andrea were dining. He came onstage while I had still about ½ of my burrito to finish, and opened his ‘act’ by yelling at everyone to “SHAT THA FACK AP!” Anyone who didn’t comply got hounded from their seats into the street; “SHAT THA FACK AP… I AM PERFORMING HERE- YOU OUTSIDE!!!!!” etc. Then, he began yelling “BASTARD” repeatedly, by way of introducing himself. Apparently, ever since being a young lad back in Croatia, everyone he has ever met has called into question his parentage, and his response is to seek out otherwise inoffensive hippies in British centres of culture and nail them to their seat, mid-burrito, with spikes of pure fear. Unsure how to proceed, we sat there for a time, until he collapsed into the back corner of the stage, facing away from the audience (still yelling “BASTARD” of course) and we scurried out like the cowards we are. In my defence, a significant portion of the audience had the same idea.
Back on the old green sod again, and it was off to electric picnic (the best kind of picnic ever). This was sweet. There’s little to beat leaving work early on a Friday in a car full of mates, to go and sit in a field all weekend listening to music and getting arsefaced. Doff of the cap to the lady Farrell and the P-Monster and the all-in-kid and the rest for making it happen. It was the fooking shit. The bands I saw, if you are interested, were; PJ Harvey, Massive Attack, Gary Numan, SFA, DJ Shadow, Sparks, 2manyDJs, Dublin Gospel Choir (nice work, alan), Alabama3, Warlords of Pez (check them out- they’ll blow your mind, exactly like a big bag of drugs), YeahYeahYeahs and the Basement Jaxx. But to be honest, I think my most enduring memories will be just twitting around, taking in all the weird shit (as fine a selection of freaks than even Edinburgh could boast), bumping into folks and having a most agreeable collection of mates all within urinating distance of one another.
And mo, you were missed most thoroughly, as was sunny and riley and gil and tom and all there rest of the absentees.
Then it was back to the brown fields of Augher to meet me niece, Aoife, and say hi to Edel and Luke. I’ll spare you all the typical boasts of how cute and precious she is, since earlier today she sprayed me with an emulsion of her own drool and my sisters breast milk. As insults go, that’s pretty hard to top.
A few days later I was back here again to see another sister (sinead) wed. Twas a great day all round, everyone looking fabulous (even me), and everyone, finally, beholden to the dancefloor legend that is mr ultan courney. So good was it that it almost made up for the three days of solid girl-noise (that’s my false tan/where the fuck are my slimming-knickers?/tell mum to go out there and sort them bastarding flowers out… etc) I had to endure leading up to it. The upside of all these sisters getting farmed out is, there’s a gradual influx of blokes coming into the family to redress the balance/share my pain. Mark, if you are reading, welcome to the family (not that you weren’t already part of it), and I hope my sister is some compensation for now being the 2nd best dancer in town.
So that’s what I’ve been up to.
Raves o the month: A Scanner Darkly (moist) and Shadow of the Colossus (Hairy)
Aido ‘Skee-bi-di-be-bop’ Potato
Nedo and Marcis Donnelly- wed 16/9/06
Greetings cats and kittens. It’s festive season on planet aido, so it’s all been shits and giggles punctuated with brief hyper-stressed spells in work to clear the backlog that accumulates in my absence.
First up was Mr Mark’s stag do in galway. I had a dead good 2 day dose of boozy blokey fun, despite not arriving at 11 o’clock on the Friday night to be greeted with the news that we had nowhere to stay. Apparently the stout yeomen of the B&B weren’t informed that it was a stag do they were booking, and were none to pleased when they found out. After another hour or so of failed attempts to get a roof over our heads, we decided that if we drank enough, Joe’s minibus would suffice. And indeed it did. The following day, Mark sweet-talked the gorgeous Sebastian (Call me Saba) at salthill’s ibis, who said he was ‘only to happy to squeeze you all in’ in a comedy camp german voice, and then we were set. Galway’s packed full of freaks. No-one gives a shit. Anyone with a glove puppet, facepaints, facial abscess or a dirty child thinks they can make a living panhandling. I love it. Cutest bit: a very very pissed mark, coming home from a heavy Saturday night wailing: “I don’t want to be here with you fuckers, I want to be at home with me wee nedo”, and trying to exchange his credit card for a taxi ride back to Augher.
Next up was Edinburgh, where I watched films and marvelled at the substantially superior calibre of freaks on offer. This time they had a unionised, ‘I don’t fuck with you, you don’t fuck with me’ attitude. Everyone else was a trendy. Except for Dylan Moran, whom I saw perched outside a coffee shop apparently muttering deaththreats to the world at large under his breath. I suspect he would be like that anywhere though, so it’s probably no bad reflection on Edinburgh. One of my favourite freaks had to be the guy in this bizarre vegan hangout/drug-den/restaurant (have you got coke? No, we have organic sugar-free cola) where myself and Andrea were dining. He came onstage while I had still about ½ of my burrito to finish, and opened his ‘act’ by yelling at everyone to “SHAT THA FACK AP!” Anyone who didn’t comply got hounded from their seats into the street; “SHAT THA FACK AP… I AM PERFORMING HERE- YOU OUTSIDE!!!!!” etc. Then, he began yelling “BASTARD” repeatedly, by way of introducing himself. Apparently, ever since being a young lad back in Croatia, everyone he has ever met has called into question his parentage, and his response is to seek out otherwise inoffensive hippies in British centres of culture and nail them to their seat, mid-burrito, with spikes of pure fear. Unsure how to proceed, we sat there for a time, until he collapsed into the back corner of the stage, facing away from the audience (still yelling “BASTARD” of course) and we scurried out like the cowards we are. In my defence, a significant portion of the audience had the same idea.
Back on the old green sod again, and it was off to electric picnic (the best kind of picnic ever). This was sweet. There’s little to beat leaving work early on a Friday in a car full of mates, to go and sit in a field all weekend listening to music and getting arsefaced. Doff of the cap to the lady Farrell and the P-Monster and the all-in-kid and the rest for making it happen. It was the fooking shit. The bands I saw, if you are interested, were; PJ Harvey, Massive Attack, Gary Numan, SFA, DJ Shadow, Sparks, 2manyDJs, Dublin Gospel Choir (nice work, alan), Alabama3, Warlords of Pez (check them out- they’ll blow your mind, exactly like a big bag of drugs), YeahYeahYeahs and the Basement Jaxx. But to be honest, I think my most enduring memories will be just twitting around, taking in all the weird shit (as fine a selection of freaks than even Edinburgh could boast), bumping into folks and having a most agreeable collection of mates all within urinating distance of one another.
And mo, you were missed most thoroughly, as was sunny and riley and gil and tom and all there rest of the absentees.
Then it was back to the brown fields of Augher to meet me niece, Aoife, and say hi to Edel and Luke. I’ll spare you all the typical boasts of how cute and precious she is, since earlier today she sprayed me with an emulsion of her own drool and my sisters breast milk. As insults go, that’s pretty hard to top.
A few days later I was back here again to see another sister (sinead) wed. Twas a great day all round, everyone looking fabulous (even me), and everyone, finally, beholden to the dancefloor legend that is mr ultan courney. So good was it that it almost made up for the three days of solid girl-noise (that’s my false tan/where the fuck are my slimming-knickers?/tell mum to go out there and sort them bastarding flowers out… etc) I had to endure leading up to it. The upside of all these sisters getting farmed out is, there’s a gradual influx of blokes coming into the family to redress the balance/share my pain. Mark, if you are reading, welcome to the family (not that you weren’t already part of it), and I hope my sister is some compensation for now being the 2nd best dancer in town.
So that’s what I’ve been up to.
Raves o the month: A Scanner Darkly (moist) and Shadow of the Colossus (Hairy)
Aido ‘Skee-bi-di-be-bop’ Potato
Nedo and Marcis Donnelly- wed 16/9/06
