Month: August 2005

Apparently – and why wasn’t I told about this before, because you know what a good little joiner-in I am – there’s a gi-bloody-normous pan-global mass participation stunt going on today, by the name of BlogDay (via). The premise of BlogDay is that:

Bloggers from all over the world will post recommendations of 5 new Blogs, preferably Blogs that are different from their own culture, point of view and attitude.

Anything to spread the love, I guess. Or, more to the point: I was already planning to introduce two new blogs to you today, so why not add three more to the list?

So, if you’ll forgive me for paying scant regard to the “different from your own” part of the assignment, here are five blogs which I have never linked to before.

• Argy Bargey. It’s always nice to be inspirational. This was created just yesterday, by no less a figure than The Other Gay One In The Office, as a direct response to my recent “I like staring at ladies’ bosoms” posting. As a result, I shall have to stop referring to him as The Other Gay One (which would have made a nice little acronym: TOGO), and shall instead use his new blog name of JP forthwith. Welcome to blogging, JP!
• Reluctant Nomad. Although this was created over a year ago, following his three-week stint as a guest blogger on Troubled Diva, my erstwhile midweek drinking partner Alan has let it lie dormant until today. About bloody time and all! Welcome to blogging, Alan!
• Anchored Nomad. He’s reluctant, and she’s anchored; how unfair life can be. Sarah lives in Chicago; she has a Portuguese husband; she’s rather partial to my podcasts; and I like the cut of her jib.
• eachman.com. Anybody remember prolific.org? Well, this is where veteran Amsterdam blogger Caroline ended up next – and frankly, it’s a disgrace that I haven’t linked to it sooner. Caroline has been in this game since 1999, which makes her one of the First Bloggers Ever – and, when the history of our illustrious medium comes to be written, she will surely be remembered as The Inventor Of The Permalink. Oh yes! We have also spent a couple of very pleasant evenings together, supping beer and chuffing fags in one of the Irish bars on the Rembrandtplein. OK, so she absolutely loves U2 and Joss Whedon, and I absolutely do not – but diversity is key, don’t you think?
• Guyana Gyal. But if you really want Cultural Difference, then this might be just the ticket. This blogger from Georgetown, Guyana has a style all of her own: a kind of African patois, which I find most evocative. Watch this one: she’s gonna make waves.

Oh, she’s such a tease. Today on Naked Blog, Peter deigned to supply us with sub-headings only. If we wanted the full post, then we would have to write it ourselves. There might even be a small prize. A Port Of Leith T-shirt, most likely.

Pity I don’t do T-shirts, except when hiking or gardening. Still, I never could resist a challenge…

Port In A Storm

Controversy reared its head in the Port yesterday, as Mary solemnly re-tuned the telly from the gee-gees (C4) to the rolling coverage of Katrina (Sky News). Howls of protest from the Star Wars end. Hie thee to the bookies, says Mary. Show some respect. (She has rellies in New Orleans, dinnae ye ken.) Scowls exchanged, at point blank range.

Down at the other end, two of my bingo ladies had wandered in. Flushed with success from a modest win, they were already onto the second gins. And we all know what gin does. Makes a girl maudlin, see.

So there they were, moist-eyed supplicants at the altar of Murdoch’s wall-to-wall disaster p*o*r*n, fishing in their bags for hankies, and wondering if there was a number they could ring for donations. Ever noticed that it’s always those who have nothing, coming to the aid of those who have lost everything? There’s your “community”, Tony.

As for this old girl, she just sat there betwixt the two camps, nursing her Guiness, biting her lip during the endless ad breaks. Accident insurance, mainly. Oh, the irony. Or if not that, then it was all shrill cross-promotional plugs, strictly for the benefit of that ghastly billionaire tyrant and his pushy mail-order bride. The rich serve only themselves. Sic transit gloria mundi.

On the jukebox, someone put on Led Zep. Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good, when the levee breaks mama, you got to move. That shut them all up. Audible snuffles from the auld bikers in the corner. Oil prices through the roof, said the silent rolling ticker. Time passed.

My mam and my da taught me never to show emotion in public. Sign of weakness. So I had a wee blub when I got home, the wasps my only witnesses.

Much love to all who have been affected by this horrible tragedy.

Naked Ambition

Then the call came. Big media, wanting in on a slice of my estimable organ. The lure of mammon. The glint of greenbacks. LSD signs in the eyes – and we ain’t talking microdots, hon.

As older readers will know, we’ve been down this path before. Rocky road. Vale of tears. All too much for a white woman. Why, I can hear you all now. She’ll flounce before the ink is dry. No staying power, that one.

Que sera sera, as Dorrie’s mam used to croon, back when the world was young. Alea jacta est. (It’s Latin. Look it up in a book. You remember books, don’t you?)

Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown

Monday, September 19th. The date when yours truly makes his debut on the national airwaves. Oh, there’ll be none of that “community radio” tree-hugging hippy shite for me now. Strictly mass media, darlings. I’d love to tell you more, but wild horses and all that. (And, more to the point, legally binding non-disclosure agreements. These boys and girls leave nothing to chance.)

So, will it be sink or swim? Triumph or tragedy? Apotheosis or apocalypse? Place your bets now.

More details as we get them. Don’t go changing! Natasha hen, get those sofa cushions plumped!

Weight a Minute

So, if all this stress is destined to bring me nothing but heartache, then at least it should be good for whittling away a few inches around the girth. For as my media advisor always says, the camera does add ten pounds (4.5 kg). In which case, there’s work to be done.

The Guinness is right out, for starters. What do those skinny bitches in OK and Heat drink, anyway? Vodka, I do believe. Never could see the point of that vile brew. But needs must when big media drives.

Celebrity Blogger Fat Club. The meme starts here! Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye!

One happy outcome of the whole Big Blogger experience has been making the acquaintance of a whole bunch of new-to-me bloggers… such as the Girl With A One Track Mind. Naturally – and because I make it my business to track such trends – I was aware of her “raunchy” reputation, and of the “buzz” which surrounded her (mugs to camera, Norton-style), but I had been operating under the glib assumption that nothing on a heterosexual woman’s fairly explicit sex-blog could possibly be of interest to me.

(We’ll leave Belle De Jour out of this. Please see what I said below about rules and exceptions.)

I was wrong, though. To me, the most interesting of The Girl’s doubtlessly vast array of skills (mugs to camera again) is that she is able to write about sex in a way that amuses/enlightens/informs, rather than merely titillates. (Although having said that, titillation is not exactly shied away from. And quite right too.) The overall effect is akin to reading a travelogue of an exotic far-off country which you know you’ll never visit. (Or something. I’m extemporising wildly here.)

Anyway, there I was, reading all about The Girl’s annoyance with some random bloke who couldn’t stop staring at her tits, when I suddenly realised that, blimey, I actually had common cause with the random bloke in question. Yes, readers! I admit it! Sometimes, I find it almost impossible NOT to stare at female cleavage – and I speak as someone who is well aware of the mixed messages which this sends out.

In my case, I think it’s a reflex reaction born out of a shyness in making direct eye contact. Much safer (for me at least) to let the eyes drift downwards, and into the warm safety of the female bosom. Why, sometimes I can almost hear myself think… “Mummy”.

Terrible, really. Especially when you realise you’ve been busted, as the woman in question hastily, nervously rearranges her decolletage – like something must be wrong down there. After all, what other explanation could there be?

My name is Mike. I am a fully paid-up homosexualist, and I like staring at women’s tits.

(Bloggers! You know those days when you feel like you’ve said everything there is to be said? Well, today isn’t one of them.)

It’s good to see the “collaborative mix project” ILMiXor revived again, after a few months’ break. Disc 5 of the project is entitled “Around The World In 80 Minutes” – the premise being that each track should in some way lie to the East of the track which precedes it. Thus far, we have moved from London to Benin, Stockholm/Nigeria, Italy, Russia, Israel and Iran/Ukraine. OK, so some of the geography has wobbled a bit – but if you’re sufficiently broad-minded, then the music is all good.

Having registered my interest fairly quickly, I’m nearing the top of the queue, and should be making my own contribution to the mix some time towards the end of next week. I just hope that I don’t get stuck somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Anyone know any good tracks from Fiji?

My favourite blog post of the last week? No contest: it has to be Willie Lupin’s tribute to Mo Mowlam, which contains some delicious personal reminiscences of her pre-political Gay Disco Years.

(This also helps to explain why she chose Blame It On The Boogie as one of her Desert Island Discs, a few years ago. At the time, it seemed like such an unlikely choice – but now, I have context.)

Hypocrisy, thy name is Mike. By telling you last week that I was off to see a drag show at Cabaret, then failing to come back and tell you about it, I have come perilously close to breaching one of my own seven deadly sins of blogging. However, since Miss Mish has spared me the effort by providing her own write-up, all I have to do is link to it, and move on. Isn’t blogging wonderful?

(We don’t call her “Miss Mish” in real life, by the way. Because that would be just silly.)

Oh, go on then – just a couple more observations. The audience was about 80% female, about 60% over 50, and about 95% heterosexual. There were lots of large, jolly groups of ladies who probably worked together: Mary from the post room, Barbara from the help desk, Margaret from catering, all mock-bashfully hooting and screeching at the remorselessly “blue” material from the drag queen compere-cum-DJ. (“We do use some rude words, like f**k. But we could use some worse ones… like murder.”)

After a wobbly start from the “Slinky Minky” troupe (two girls, one boy, one glamorously svelte drag queen lead), consisting of some rather underwhelming strutting and synch-ing to some rather forgettable old show tunes, I was beginning to wonder whether staying in town on a Friday night had been the best move after all. However! The whole evening turned round in an instant, the moment that the next section was announced: a tribute to the Eurovision Song Contest, from the 1960s to the 1990s. How I whooped! How I shrieked! How strangely quiet everyone else went!

They didn’t disappoint, either. From Cliff Richard to Clodagh Rodgers to Abba to Bucks Fizz to Gina G to Dana International, with costume changes galore, it was as if my entire life history was flashing before my eyes. This stuff goes deep, people.

From this moment on, the Slinky Minkys could do no wrong. Such verve! Such panache! Such taste! Oh, I just feel that it’s so vitally important to keep these folk traditions alive, don’t you?

Saving the best till last, the much vaunted “Grand Finale” section turned out to be a tightly choreographed 15 minute montage of songs and routines from Chicago. With this, the Minkys raised their whole game, and excelled themselves. Clever staging, imaginative moves, perfect split-second timing… and all this at the end of a show which had lasted for the thick end of two and a half hours. One had to salute their diligence and stamina, if nothing else.

(Besides which, anything related to Chicago was bound to get our table of former George’s Bar regulars all gee’d up. The soundtrack to last Autumn, that was. You had to be there at the time, though. Honest to Betsy, I’m not the sort of queen who normally goes ga-ga over show tunes. Perish the thought! But to every rule, it’s good to have an exception.)

As the show finished and the disco kicked in (“No drinks up on the stage, girls – and please wait until the crash barriers are in place”), and the Marys and the Barbaras and the Margarets stepped up and shimmied to a stream of thirty-seconds-at-a-time 1960s classics (Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Phil Spector), so we grabbed our things and sloped off to NG1, for our own step-up-and-shimmy. Ee, it’s been a while. These places work best when you’ve kept away for a few months. The trick is not to start thinking it would be a good idea to visit more regularly. Diminishing returns and all that. Strictly high days and holidays, that’s me.

(Um, this was meant to be a single-paragraph hit-and-run link-post. I must be congenitally incapable of brevity. At this rate, we’ll be here all night.)

Tsk, why don’t people TELL me these things? Magenta is an alternative club night for Nottingham’s alternative poofs/lezzers/bothways/trannies and their hetty mates, which runs on the third Friday of each month at the Bunkers Hill Inn, down at the bottom of Hockley. (Last pub on the right before you get to the Ice Stadium, and it’s in the room upstairs.)

Despite minimal publicity (ie. no-one I know had even heard of it before yesterday), the event is now into its sixth month, with people turning up from all over the place… and it’s happening again tonight, between 9pm and 1am. The music policy is “rock, indie, punk, electro, alternative 80s”, and the previous setlists look well cool, and if I wasn’t going out to watch some dodgy end-of-the-pier glamorous and talented drag acts at Cabaret tonight (with Mish, Alan, Moviebuff and the usual suspects), then I’d be getting my one and only “rock and roll” black T-shirt out of the bottom drawer (it glows in the dark; mucho Gay Goth points), sucking my cheeks in, strapping my 18-hour girdle on, and popping along myself.

If any of you do make it down there (because obviously, the Nottingham Gay Goth constituency of my readership is HUGE), then please let me know what it was like, OK?

Who says pop and politics don’t mix? Don’t Close The Post Office, JonnyB and MC Mr Mitt’s official anthem for the Post 8 campaign, is now available on video – and what a splendid video it is too. In fact, the attention to detail is quite mind-boggling. What’s your favourite bit?

(Really, seriously, honestly: if you only click on one link from one weblog this week, then make it this one. I’m over-selling again, aren’t I?)

Calling all bloggers! Or at least the ones who decided to shell out for their own domains, rather than relying on “dangerous”, “unstable” services like Blogspot! Have you backed up your sites recently? Or do you simply place your trust in your hosting companies?

If you fall into the latter group, then might I strongly urge you to back up your site at the next available instant, and then to continue doing so on a regular basis? Because, let me tell you, when your hosting company experiences a server crash, losing every single one of your files in the process, then you really don’t want to have to trawl back through a whole year’s worth of archives, carefully piecing your site back together from various directories on three different computers. Because it’s very boring. And it takes hours. And even then, you still won’t be able to find everything.

(What? You thought that hosting companies took regular backups of their own? And why, pray, would they bother to do a thing like that? Let the scales fall from those innocent, trusting eyes!)

Still. When life deals you a lemon, then why not turn it into another promotional stunt?

Yes, that’s right. It’s Win A Troubled Diva Mug time! Again!

Your task is a simple one. Of the small number of files which I have been unable to locate since July’s server crash, there is but one whose absence significantly troubles me – and I’d like to enlist your help in finding it.

The file in question is called forest2.jpg. As its title suggests, it was the laboriously hand-crafted photo-montage which illustrated my lovely “Kissing Forest” posting, in which such up-for-it celebrities as Cate Blanchett, Rene Russo and Brad Pitt were to be found lurking in the greenery, ready to offer transgressive Not The Gender I Usually Fancy snogs to the readers who had nominated them. It took me ages to put together, and it was really rather beautiful, and I’d really rather like to have it back, please. (The schoolboy error was to save the file to my USB drive, forgetting to copy it to any of my hard drives before deleting it.)

Please sally forth and search your caches. The first person to e-mail me with the file (mikejla at btinternet dot com) wins a mug. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?

Media = me, dear.

As if the excitement of appearing in The Independent wasn’t enough, last Friday saw me gather mentions in two more daily newspapers.

Firstly, the whole How Dare They Call Me Anonymous Woman hoo-hah was deemed worthy of an extended (and charmingly catty) write-up in the Essential Gossip column of the Nottingham Evening Post’s weekly arts & entertainment supplement, in which I am outed as “a fortysomething gay man named Mike”. (I’d love to link, but it doesn’t appear in the online version.) Many thanks to Miss Mish for saving me a copy.

Secondly, while reading an article in the Guardian Review about musical offspring of famous musical parents, I came across a quote from Stylus magazine, describing Kelly Osbourne’s recent hit single One Word as “rather like Ms Osbourne herself … utterly preposterous and strangely captivating at the same time”.

Ooh, varda them adverbs, I thought to myself. That could almost be me who wrote… hang on a minute. And lo and behold, it was. (Original source here.) Except that The Guardian had made two significant alterations: changing Miss to Ms (they’re not The Guardian for nothing), and omitting the phrase of which I was most proud, in which I referred to Kelly as a “pouty-faced strop-pot”.

So, with The Independent naming my URL but quoting Vitriolica’s words, The Guardian quoting my words but not using my name (*), and my local paper loyally quoting all three, my sights are now set on the ultimate accolade: an article in a national daily newspaper which also delivers the grand slam of name, address and accompanying self-penned copy. How about it, Daily Telegraph? (And blimey, gift horses: what huge mouths you all have!)

Whilst younger people spend their summer holidays getting all too publicly plastered in Faliraki, San Antonio or Ayia Napia, homosexual gentleman couples of a certain age prefer to get discreetly plastered in the comfort of their own weekend cottages, night after night after night, as they fondly gawp upon the endlessly entertaining antics of the Big Brother 6 housemates. However, such easy delights have their price. In our case, this meant having to watch (gasp!) terrestrial TV, in (shriek!) real time, far removed from the comforts of our Sky Plus box back in Nottingham.

This meant that, for once in our lives, we had no option other than having to sit through the adverts. (Goodness, but aren’t there a lot of them these days?) This experience also made me confront yet another sad, inescapable truth of middle age: that I didn’t understand where half of them were coming from. Time was that I could cheerfully fire off sneery armchair-pundit deconstructions of the lot of them; no longer is this so. But then, that’s how they work: by ensnaring people who are young and impressionable enough to still be forming their brand loyalties, using techniques which are overtly designed to drive a wedge between the generations, thus fostering the illusion of a personal/tribal identification between consumer and brand. Or something. I am, as I say, a little rusty in such matters.

So, tell me this; because we have both been wondering. Why is it that cosmetics adverts are always recorded with some sort of slight out-of-synch quality between the actresses’ mouths and the sound which comes out of them? It’s a subtle effect, and easily missed – but once you spot it, you realise that it’s ubiquitous.

Also, tell me this: what’s with this new obsession for sticking the word “nitro” into adverts for male-targetted products, and “fructose” into those for female-targetted products? Is nitro butch, and fructose femme, or what? But WHY? What do they MEAN? Does anybody KNOW? I mean, it must WORK, or else they wouldn’t do it, but what kind of weird meeting did I miss, where nitro and fructose were introduced into the popular consciousness as desirable elements in grooming products?

I know, I know: save it for the letters page of The Daily Mail, Grandad. But if you were wondering why I had retitled the blog troubled nitro-diva power plus 4 (with active fructose micro-ingredients), then there’s your answer. To reel in the youngsters, by means of a series of subliminal yet powerful affirmative signifiers.

I missed my calling, didn’t I?

(*) Update: On a more serious note, and lest there be any confusion, I should perhaps just clarify that the Guardian piece did correctly attribute the quote to Stylus; I didn’t mean to suggest that the journalist was trying to pass it off as her own. So, all comedy glass-half-empty Drama Queen rants aside, I wasn’t actually pissed off in the slightest. Quite the reverse, in fact.

Ooh, nice toy! (via) I knew that Flickr would eventually come in useful for something.

This could also enable me to use Horribly Rude Words, without troubling the delicate sensibilities of those pesky corporate profanity filters. But I don’t quite care to be so vulgar.

Bored now. Next craze please.

Update: Aha: a practical use! I’ve been meaning to set myself up with a 404 Not Found page for, like, years.

Look, you don’t want me to churn out the obligatory What I Did On My Holidays piece, do you? Because, although I could, I suspect that it might come out looking like a slightly grudging homework assignment, and that would never do.

But, yes, very nice holiday, thank you for asking. Yes, very relaxed. Yes, it could have been a little bit sunnier, couldn’t it? Still, I’ve somehow managed to end up with a tolerably tanned face and forearms, plus that little “Old Man’s V” just below the neck. However, the rest of me remains pasty white, as there’s virtually zero privacy in the PDMG, and I’m not having my flabby middle-aged tits on display to the village at large.

(Ten years ago, I could barely keep them under wraps. How times change.)

I’ve also put on yet more weight, as evidenced by a shopping trip to Manchester towards the end of the fortnight, where I was obliged to purchase my first ever pair of 33-inch waisted trousers: biscuit coloured cord jeans, with that ever-fashionable “low slung” look. Thank God that high waistbands still haven’t made a serious comeback. Maybe this will be like the “untucked” phenomenon, which kicked in around the time of Acid House/Madchester, and has never gone away since?

(To my chagrin, it has to be said. Tucked in looks so much neater, and it gives you a clearer view of, well, you know. I’ve had the most awful faces pulled at me over the years for saying that. But I speak as I find.)

Anyway, there comes a point in many people’s lives where they stop trying to keep up with the vagaries of fashion, and instead stick with the clothing style that suited them in their prime. (You used to see this a lot with former debs.) To this end, I think that “low slung” is where this boy will come to a graceful rest.

(The other great rule of fashion: never wear a revival of a style which you were wearing the first time round. Revival styles should only ever be worn by people who were too young to live through the original period, as a kind of idealised tribute to a lost golden age.)

33 fricking inches, though! This is further evidence of the dismayingly linear progression which led me to purchase a pedometer earlier in the year. Standing in front of the mirror, I feel like the King Canute of my waistline, powerless to stop the surge.

(There again, I could always stop drinking pints. But, as Peter says today, who wants to be a skinny hermit? I suspect that the ultimate solution may well be vodka-based.)

And another thing. We went to Manchester specifically to schmooze round Selfridges and Harvey Nicks – but, sheesh, when did high-end fashion become so boring? Now, you can spare me your “designer labels are evil” rant, as I fear you might be confusing exquisite production values with the conspicuous branding of the High Street mid-market: your Hacketts, your Hilfigers, those ghastly little Polo ponies. Furthermore, it doesn’t have to be about swanking off, if you’ve got a genuine interest and a particular aesthetic sensibility – and besides, the best labels are always worn on the inside.

With all that said, why should two such formerly devoted style bunnies find themselves mooching past the racks in such a desultory fashion? Because, try as we might, it was all either Same Old, Same Old, or You’ve Got To Be Kidding. In the end, we made our actual purchases in a shop called Gant, which had nicely styled classics, free from excessive adornment, and bright, personable staff who clearly had lives beyond clothes. Hence the biscuit coloured cords.

Time to stop flogging that dead old clothes horse, then. Just give me Paul Smith for the decent classics-with-a-twist stuff (suits me perfectly; fits me perfectly; beautiful attention to detail; lasts for years), and good outdoor clothing stores for the really hard-wearing stuff (puffa jackets, fleeces, lightweight waterproofs, non-stick T-shirts, comfy shoes), and I shan’t need to bother with anywhere else again. Lack of imagination? Nah, blessed emancipation!

(This isn’t what I meant to write about at all. Never mind. Freestyle is valid.)

K (breathlessly): Can we slow down a bit? You’re going fractionally too fast for me.

M: Oh, am I? Sorry. You know why, though: there’s a pub lunch waiting for me at the end of this, and the thought of it is propelling me forwards.

K (pointedly): It’s that stomach of yours again, isn’t it?

M: That’s right. But it’s all progress. Ten years ago, I was led by my dick; now I’m being led by my stomach. It’s all moving up the body, you see. Who knows: in ten years’ time, it could be my head…

K (witheringly): That’ll be nice. I’ll look forward to that.