On Vacation With The Wrathful, The Avaricious & The Sullen

Taking shelter in the rain-lashed and windswept Stadio del Ballast the other night, during the hooped marvels pulsating encounter with the footballing enigma that is Queen of the South, the mind occasionally wandered from the enticing spectacle of watching beleaguered ballboys chasing footballs as yet another misdirected pass careered over the advertising hoardings towards Coatbridge.

Thoughts of escape to a more congenial climate and where to spend my summer holidays. Not for me the sex, sand and sangria combo favoured by the lumpen-proletariat. The lure of lager louts “having it large” on some once-idyllic island turned dumping ground for the detritus of our nation’s youth should once again prove resistible. Barry from Barnsley and his beered-up buddies baring their backsides in the Balearics to skimpily dressed slappers from Scunthorpe called Shirley and Sandra who, in turn, are seeking squalid sexual shenanigans with a moustachioed married Latin lothario called Manuel who waits on tables at some squalid local cantina which serves chips with everything. Nights of pills and passion with pasty faced pre-pubescents leering at live sex shows in superannuated Ibizan discotheques playing pumping house music. Is that Judge Jules on the decks or is he the one in flagrante delicto with that slack-jawed slut from Shrewsbury? The Manumissionary position, no doubt, choreographed to the insistent 132bpm pulse of a computer programme masquerading as music. Come on Judge, the reputation of the judiciary is at stake! Shouldn’t you be dispensing short sharp shocks to parking ticket defaulters, and acquitting mass murderers on technicalities, rather than “larging it” in the Balearics?

Ibiza is out and Ayai Napa is even worse. Packs of gun totin’, gang bangin’, ho pimpin’ homeboys from Hounslow enjoying a spot of recreational car jacking and drive-by shooting set to a resistible speed garage soundtrack.

On the subject of the Souf London massive: it’s good to see Pat Kane lambaste Ali G in the papers this week for stereotyping hip-hop culture. Po-faced Pat makes a hue and cry about the a nice white middle class Jewish boy impersonating an Asian impersonating an L.A. gangsta rapper because he’s “debasing black American culture”. I thought pallid Pat did a good enough job of that already when he subjected his band’s second-rate sanitised white boy soul onto an unsuspecting public.

What’s the fuss about appropriation anyway? Hip-hop culture is based on theft, or sampling beats as it’s known on “the street”. However appropriation of white suburban kids money is the name of the game. The people who want to buy into this gangsta shtick (the black community wants to buy out) are the same nerds who bought into Kiss and Whitesnake back in the day. Comic book caricatures introducing a vicarious element of danger into sanitised suburban lives. Who’s more black and white minstrel: Ali G or P.Diddy lounging poolside at his Hampton’s hideaway kickin’ that ghetto playboy millionaire vibe? Layin’ down some phat trax in his Cape Cod crib to pick the pocket money of his pasty-faced pre-pubescent homeyz.

It seems wherever you go in the world you can’t get away from imperialism. Us Brits have exported corporate clubbing to every corner of the globe. Cream Kabul is on the cards I fear. Now they’re calling Las Vegas the “new Ibiza”. From Frankie, Sammy and Dino treading the boards at the Sands casino accompanied by the swinging arrangements of the Count Basie Orchestra to Pete Tong “rolling another phat one" at the Luxor and giving a shout out to stag parties from Stockton-on-Tees and hen nights from Huddersfield. Progress? I don't think so.

Our society has been lobotomised by the crushing conformity of a popular “culture” in which a cartel of corporate cash accumulators and chartered accountants masquerading as mediators of taste (Cowell, Tong and their cronies) annex the airwaves, tabloids and t.v. channels, populate them with their sycophants and flunkies and peddle their lowest common denominator crap. Then they export the brainwashed progeny of our infernal zombie nation to unsuspecting lands overseas to spread the virus. Lager louts and alcopoptastic text-messaging minions are multiplying like a mestasicising tumour.

I too am a loup-garou. A zombie host carrying the parasite of popular culture within my diseased carcass. My fixation with Miss Minogue’s pert posterior attests to my addiction to InTraV (the fix of popular culture, infotainment and propaganda delivered straight into my blood supply by the media conglomerates). I’m hardwired to the pop mainframe and I can’t escape.

My stepmother was clearly an agent of evil and introduced me to the dark side at an early age. I remember in chilling detail her early exhortations to watch the televisual output of the pop anti-Christ himself Noel Edmonds: The thing I like about Noel is he appeals to young and old alike. Unlike Tony Wilson I didn’t spend the 80’s having it grande with the likes of New Order and The Happy Mondays down at the Hac. I was one of “Edmonds' 24 hour House Party people.”

And what a grim party it was. A middle-aged man with a mullet and a comfortable sweater luring small children into his lair with promises of plentiful pranks with a pink prat called Mr.Blobby. Perhaps my pursuit of the posterial perfection promised by the perky pop princess is a shallow attempt to exorcise the ghost of Edmonds and consign Crinkly Bottom to the crapola. Post-Traumatic Edmonds Syndrome is surely to blame for my fevered dreams during which I imagine I’m the rear end of a pantomime Anne Widdicombe committed to an eternal summer season in Margate and my fetishistic fantasy of being ensnared in the Widdyweb while the cat-loving conservative composes putrid poetry about her pussy.

But back to the subject of holidays. Even my old Vegas hideaway has been bastardised by Brits on tour. The Axis of Evil Tour is a tempter though. An enticingly Brit-free 7 countries in 7 days with the ever-present danger of a tactical nuclear strike from Dubya to add a certain adventurous frisson for adrenaline junkies.

I think I’ll stay at home this summer while our yobs are exporting themselves world-wide like a particularly virulent case of bubonic plague. It’s a good job the sycophantic goon we’ve got for a Prime Minister has turned us into the 51st state of the union otherwise our status as a cheap steel producer and breeding ground for al-Qa'ida terrorists would undoubtedly place us on the short list for a “goodwill nuclear message” from Dubya.

eugene ionesco