recepticle=Saturday, May 29, 2004
hello, wembley!
if you're in or around grantham on sunday 18th of july, would you like to see the fine young cannibals in a reunion gig? my guess is, probably not. however, would you like to see lawrie filling in for the drummer of their support band? i thought so.
the original drummer would, apparently, rather spend his weekend on the isle of wight. so i will be in his place, playing some classic-style rawk in front of approximately six thousand people. which will be nice.
additionally, i've done a couple o' new illustrations; a chocolate holepunch, and a disconnected pair of lips spitting out candy-coloured hearts.
- posted by lawrie at 12:37 PM ~ comments
Friday, May 28, 2004
true story
i once trained to be an acrobat. none of this namby-pamby tra-la-la swooping through the air on highwires; i mean in the original sense of the word. and by that, i mean i trained to be an assassin.
one morning as i was meditating on the mountainside, a year and a day after my tutelage under the ancient and wise ling tso tau began, a young boy who was walking home from school (taking some kind of inexplicable detour across the side of a remote mountain) asked me why i meditated so long and why i trained so hard when there was nothing to kill on such a peaceful mountain range.
i opened my eyes and stared at him for the longest time. as his impatience with my pondering grew i, with the swiftest of movements, removed his beating heart from his chest and began to eat of it as he watched in fatal wonder.
"a squirrel has no immediate need of the dozens of nuts he collects," i told him as he sank to his knees, "but he knows that there will soon come a time when he will need them. now die."
- posted by lawrie at 1:02 AM ~ comments
Thursday, May 27, 2004
join our club!
that's right, we want you to join our club! the rules are:
1. you do not talk about nonuglyemos.
2. you do not talk about nonuglyemos. har har. we're xcorporatex.
3. you must only like emo bands that we like. we do not like diversity.
4. you must be attractive, by our definition. we are creating a new world order.
5. we reserve the right to tell you to fuck off because it makes us look cool.
6. whoever applies, whenever you apply, however you apply, we don't care. we say NO.
as far as i can tell, these are the rules for joining nonuglyemos on livejournal. scroll through their posts; the entries where someone has listed 10 bands and a link, that's someone applying to be a member. they'll be rejected by default, and mocked by the most elitist group of neonazi emo-aryans i've ever come across since i journeyed to boston to start a fight with everyone on makeoutclub. that's the rules.
it bothers me that a bunch of cliquey little kids who don't move normally, who don't walk anywhere, just pose at every possible opportunity, amuse themselves greatly by slagging off other people who want to be a part of this masturbatory little group fuck. instead of actually being themselves, they spend all of their time perfecting poses for the camera and the club, styling their hair-based works of art, listening to the right bands (or at least claiming to), all the while exuding this two-tone self-deprecatory, open-armed, sensitive emo child who won't talk to you unless you own every 'the plot to blow up the eiffel tower' ep and wear the right fucking belt.
these people aren't being themselves; they're killing themselves to be perceived as the epitome of cool. it would be too easy to write them off as empty shells, but i'm sure they are/were nice people who realised that the easiest way for them to be seen to be cool would be to berate everyone that wasn't. and it fucking pisses me off.
we've decided to run a competition: if you don't have one, get a livejournal account and apply for membership to nonuglyemos. all you have to do is list ten of the most obscure bands you can think of, then post four pictures of yourself, preferably taken in a mirror, with the camera in-shot. the contest is to see who gets the most insults from the rivers cuomo-wannabe moderator. the loser gets membership.
here's my entry. so fgar, it's been a steady barrage of 'no' with no explanation. i'm almost positive that the only reason i'm being no'd is because the two main moderators said no first.
i've said it before, and i'll say it again. elitist emo kids, go fuck yourselves. read a book and get some fucking sun, rather than sitting in front of livejournal for 18 hours a day waiting to tell people that you think they're rubbish. you fuck me off.
- posted by lawrie at 2:57 AM ~ comments
Monday, May 24, 2004
worship me, for i am a god. of sorts.
yesterday was my birthday. i got older. it has to be said; not one of my most favourite days ever. compared to the time i was on tour with my old band, say; we went to some really wierd venue in leamington called 'kelly's bar', which was owned by a liverpudlian woman called mary from leicester. go figure.
we turned up on time and, as we were loading our gear from our a-team van into the venue, mary came up and told us that she had taken the liberty of hooking us up with a local support band, and while we had a rider of £60 on the bar, it would be nice if we shared this with the support band. we laughed.
we were set up and soundchecked by 7:30, by which time our manager was already utterly wasted, and out driver was well on his way to being completely legless. "you.. are.. zuh fuggin beztest drummy in 'ole fuggin' world, lawrie man." said manager joel. "thanks, joel" i said as i went over to the bar to get a free coke, only to discover that our rider had almost entirely disappeared within half an hour. apparently this didn't matter; we had accidentally stumbled upon every band's dream gig: an infinite rider. who cares what the venue was like (shit)? who gives a fuck what the crowd was like (cro-magnon philistines)? we had an endless amount of free drink!
"this reminds me of a gig i played with my old band," said simon, the pathological liar. "'the pillow men'. the venue was shitloads bigger than this, though." i raise my eyebrow, not really listening/bothered/wanting to know/caring if simon lives or dies. "yeah, 'cept it was fucking packed. two thousand people, all screaming 'simon!' ath the end of the set. i got me nob sucked by at least four different girls that night. i don't remember anything after that - i passed out and woke up two days later in a dress." picking up my drink, i said, "wow, i bet that's true."
the support band played. they were shit. we weren't that much better, but we were better. "gerrof! you're fookin shite!" screamed a women to my left during our entire set. she was the girlfriend of the drummer of the previous band. afterwards he apologised profusely; i suggested it might be politic for her to be escorted from the premises forthwith. he agreed.
mary staggered over at around eleven as the bar was closing up, clearly fucked off her face. "i'm goin for a lie-down. feel free to use the bar - i've left a pile of change in the till if you want to play pool or anything, okay my darlings?" and unbelievably, off she went, leaving a bunch of 18 year-olds with an entire pub at our personal disposal. you may be thinking "but lawrie, you don't drink. how was this any fun for you?" and i would respond, "you have clearly never had an empty pub at your disposal full of drunk friends and no consequences to your actions." we very quickly used up all the change on pool tables and arcade games while i played bartender. after an hour or so, kav went off to find mary and see if she would change a five pound note into change for the arcade racer. she came down two minutes later with about £30 in change. she clearly didn't pass her maths class.
at around 5:30am, we woke charlie from his drunken sleep so he could drive us home. kav and i went hunting for mary, and we found her in the cellar, being shagged from behind by her boyfriend. "uh... we're off now, mary." "oh, okay then love. i'll lock up after you in a minute." she said, not bothering to actually stop what she was doing. on the way home, we all slept like babies. charlie as well, probably.
so, no. my birthday wasn't quite that good. but fuck it; it's only a day. on the plus side, someone did make me an idol, and i made a photocopier.
- posted by lawrie at 2:47 PM ~ comments
Saturday, May 22, 2004
give me things to make me happy
it's my birthday tomorrow. buy me stuff. that is all.
- posted by lawrie at 2:32 PM ~ comments
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
'haw haw haw' said lawrie, eater of corporations
i've had a bunch of hits over the past two days for 'channel five art competition' and variations of, for which i come up first, above not only channel five itself, but also deviantart. which tickles my humour-area.
speaking of deviantart, i've got two more illustrations; 'furlique' and 'a fire inside'. you can see them both here. i've been busting a gut to try and do something i liked since completing 'furlique' three days ago, and i've littered my hard drive with several half-formed eyes and unfinished lip-shapes. i wonder if i could do a wierd science?
- posted by lawrie at 10:31 PM ~ comments
Monday, May 17, 2004
the turbulent life of an artiste
i turned my hand to vector illustrations a mere four days ago and already i've cut off my ear and sketched spaghetti hanging from trees to symbolise my limp and ineffectual willy, and i was considering sumbitting a piece for a national competition. but no longer.
the story goes; i was watching the rocketeer on channel five, and during each and every commercial break they threw up an advert for a national art competition it was running. i didn't take any notice the first time it flashed up, but the second time lodged a wee nugget of an idea in my brain, and after the third time around, my brain began to nurture this tiny sprog of daydreaming into an actual plan: i was going to submit a piece for channel five's art competition.
there was a premium-rate number listed, and in slightly smaller text, a web address where you could apply online. so today i dutifully logged on to find out how to submit one of my three whole illustrations. i have to tell you right now that i had absolutely no delusions about winning any grand prize; we're talking about a two-dimensional, digital illustration of a girl, with some stuff. not a fifteen minute, looping, backwards video of someone smoking, not a pile of shit and piss-stained sheets in an unmade bed, and not a lightbulb turning off and on; a rectangular picture of a girl. instant fail. but i wanted to submit anyway.
so i log on and begin to read about how i can enter the competition. after reading the most bullshit, take-advantage-of-people's-hopes-and-dreams, commercialized and all-out whoring document i've ever laid eyes on in relation to art, i close the window and log in to blogger to tell you all about it. read for yourself.
"Enclose a cheque for £12 plus VAT (£14.10 in total) to cover associated administration costs. Please make your cheque payable to BIG ART CHALLENGE." and "If you do not hear from us by August 2004 assume you haven't been successful."
let me get this straight; they want me to send a cheque for £14.10 to cover 'administration', but that doesn't cover the cost of them sending me a courtesy letter to say "i'm sorry but we think your artwork is a bit rubbish, so you can't play with us." assuming that only a thousand people enter the competition, channel five have just made fuorteen thousand pounds without lifting a finger. and that's without taking any kind of corporate sponsorship into consideration. they have instantly covered the cost of the grand prize, plus an extra four grand on top.
when i was sending demo tapes off to record companies, even chrysalis/emi wrote back to say "sorry lawrie, but we didn't bother to listen to your tape; we set it on fire and threw it into the the shredder instead." and they didn't need me to even send the price of a stamp. the fucking least channel five could do for all the aspiring artists who genuinely just want some honest critique would be to tell them whether or not they're going to be entered.
so in summary; channel five, go fuck yourselves. how about offering up some decent programming and make some advertising revenue, rather than trying to scam people with a little bit of talent and hope?
- posted by lawrie at 1:22 PM ~ comments
Saturday, May 15, 2004
you like me! you really like me!
nick has turned 'softly' into a new layout. what a lovely thing to do. i'll put down a quid that it lasts for at least four days.
- posted by lawrie at 4:06 PM ~ comments
Friday, May 14, 2004
happy feet
here's another one. i call it 'firebrand' because... well, clearly i'm shit at naming my own pictures. it took me about five and a half hours. i i think i want to do a photocopier next.
i decided to join deviantart. it was all jez's idea.
- posted by lawrie at 8:35 PM ~ comments
Thursday, May 13, 2004
honesty, please
as congratulations to myself for completing a big fat contract last night, i've done someting that *i* wanted to do today. i've just spend four and a half hours slaving over this.
it's my third-ever attempt at a vector illustration. what do you think? noncomplimentary comments will be deleted.
- posted by lawrie at 7:54 PM ~ comments
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
fuck it all
i'm in a bad fucking mood for no specific reason at all, although various things have, i'm sure, contributed to my mind feeling like a sore, ulcerous mouth full of sand and jagged, broken glass.
firstly, everyone hopping on the adonis complex wagon. go fuck yourselves.
i hear and read more and more pseudofeminist columnists suddenly realising that, shock-fucking-horror!, some men see magazine photos and billboards of athletes and male models with perfect bodies and chiselled jaws, and it affects our self-esteem, making us question our own appearance and want to look slimmer, sexier and generally like a clone of brad pitt after someone has injected his taut, sleek buttocks with anabolic steroids.
what bothers me is the tone that has suddenly been taken. for years and years we've heard about models and magazines projecting a harmful image to women and girls, forcing them to turn to ever more drastic diets, slimming plans, feeling so pushed as to developing nervous disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. so, these same women who condemn the very media for which they work for projecting an unattainable and potentially dangerous female image now turn around and say "ha ha! shoe's on the other foot now, boys!" well. fucking. done.
immediately stereotyping every single western man as a lager-swilling, beerbellied football-mad scrote-scratcher, these 'columnists' consider the fact that men and even young boys are developing neuroses based on a distorted view of their physical appearance as our 'just desserts', and 'it's about time'. of course, to qualify such blatantly callous remarks as 'just having a laugh', each column is invariably finished with a swift "as long as you're nice, we don't care if you're fat". which quite clearly flies in the face of everything they just said and simply goes a long way to make me a lot more fucking angry.
you know what? some of us have actual issues with this. some of us sit in bed at night thinking over and over again "god i'm fat... i'm so fat". trying workouts, buying ineffectual exercise equipment, crashing on fad diets, watching our weight creep slowly down, only to rocket back up the second we have a cheese sandwich instead of a watercress leaf on a fucking lentil. some of us even know that out self-image is distorted, but that doesn't stop us from feeling how we feel. every time someone makes a 'little joke' about me being fat, i feel my blood rising in embarassment, as though i've just been thrown into the centre of an arena full of thousands of people with just a pair of sack potato pants on. the direction of my shame being inversely proportional to the direction of my ego, which drops below cloud level. everyone brace for impact.
some of us have got the adonis complex, to whatever extent, for real. and it really isn't that fucking funny.
- posted by lawrie at 5:46 PM ~ comments
Monday, May 10, 2004
die mike diana, die
have you ever sat there wondering what might happen if you took a nazi, a black woman, a hippy and a bunch of other random people and made them rape and defecate on each other while cutting and stabbing their adjacent 'partner' with knives and chainsaws? well shit, now i can show you.
this 'drawing' is by mike diana, a man who has been jailed, fined thousands of dollars, banned from going near minors, forced to seek psychatric help, and is subject to random searches on his property by authorities because he is banned by law from ever drawing again. even charles manson was still allowed to write songs. even if they were shit.
- posted by lawrie at 8:03 PM ~ comments
Thursday, May 06, 2004
true story
the water in leicester is polluted by anger and remorse.
legend has it that in the early seventies CHIMERA, grandson of the infamous czechoslovakian GOLEM, rested in leicester for a single night in the basement of a local tavern. after escaping the eastern block he had wandered much of western europe, leaving behind a trail of lentils, on each one an intricately carved pictograph denouncing the mormon faith as a load of fucking balls.
when he arrived at leicester, weary from his hard travels, he intended only to sleep for one night, undisturbed and unseen. but in the wee hours the inn-keeper came down to the basement to check on the fermentation of his leek hooch, he discovered the hideously ugly but surprisingly gentle chimera who, upon waking, bleary-eyed and confused, stumbled to his feet, yawning and stretching his enormous arm-span. alarmed, the innkeeper grabbed the nearest thing to hand, clubbing the chimera to death with his own sack of lentils.
with his last dying breath, sputtering forth thick black blood and lung tissue, the chimera cursed our city for all time, claiming that where he fell, anger, resentment, apathy and remorse with no real basis or reason would plague people of the city.
and so it came to pass, shortly after the chimera's eyes exploded from their sockets, spewing forth the black ichor of his liquidized brain, that the innkeeper and his wife, fearful of the chimera's curse, threw his body into the canal in the hope that he would finally come to rest and rot in the deep, deep ocean.
but the chimera's curse remains.
- posted by lawrie at 2:45 AM ~ comments
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
shaun of the dead (funny)
over the last two evenings jon, liam and me watched both seasons of one of the best comedy series ever made: spaced. vis:
Daisy: Oh hi Mike. Yeah, he's here, I'll just get him.
[to Tim]
Daisy: It's your boyfriend.
Tim: He's not my boyfriend.
[picks up phone]
Tim: Hi babe.
Mike Watt: Hello Timmy.
Tim: Where are you?
Mike: Err, Sheffield.
Tim: What are you doing in Sheffield?
Mike: Fell asleep on the tube.
Tim: The tube doesn't go to Sheffield, Mike.
Mike: Yeah, I know. I, um, must have changed at King's Cross.
simon pegg is a fucking genius.
Tyres: Mine's a pint o' the black stuff!
Mike: ... you can't drink a pint of Bovril.
- posted by lawrie at 4:31 PM ~ comments
Monday, May 03, 2004
in the future, there will be robots
i've just become a fortune teller; in the future, i will be the only result in a phrase search for "joel schumacher is a twat". why there isn't a website dedicated to this phrase in and of itself, i do not know.
- posted by lawrie at 11:08 PM ~ comments
Sunday, May 02, 2004
viva las lawrie
yesterday mumfy and i went to the wedding of one of my best friends, helen moseley. the ceremony took place in a victorian art gallery; a jazz pianist played 'it had to be you' as she walked down the aisle; lunch was served as a barbeque in a cocktail bar, and in the evening we all went to the ymca theatre where, after the obligatory cheesy disco, elvis came on-stage and gave one hell of a show.
if that isn't getting married in style, i don't know what is.
- posted by lawrie at 12:43 PM ~ comments