But before I get on with it, I must address the few unfortunate souls who somehow endured my previous instalment and might remember me going on about that floating chalk rib I had. If you are lucky enough to have no idea what I am talking about, now would be a good time to skip to the main article, but if you do, there has been an addition to the story since then. After said former post, I received an email from a friendly bloke named Francis from Charring Cross, and he frantically detailed a similar phenomenon he experiences in his day to day life. He too had some floating bone structure, and he too believed that it grew in power once coming into contact with celebrities, just like mine. Eagerly, I agreed to meet up with this average looking guy in a pub called The Porcupine. Here, we briefly discussed our matching anatomy, he bought me a drink, and I don’t remember a goddamn thing after that.
I woke up groggy on the infinite loop that is the Circle Line, with a neat surgical scar just above my pubic region. This motherfucker had removed my rib, no doubt to keep it for himself and increase his potential superiority. You might think this would anger me, but it doesn’t whatsoever. For starters, I have finally stopped shitting blood. And besides that, my insane desire to meet people who are more famous than me has not wavered in the slightest. Perhaps my power didn’t come from my insides anyway? Perhaps I am just a typical celebrity junkie after all? Regardless, I intend to keep on meeting these social heroes at every turn I can, and I also intend to (hopefully) keep writing a new instalment every year. Anyway, enough about me, let’s talk about you for a minute. How do you feel about me? Fuck-off, read:
Totally by accident one day, I just happened upon Jamie Lynne’s Twitter page. No idea how that happened, I swear. But I did notice that she was very good at answering her fans back, even going so far as to say “I can’t keep up with ya'll, the best way to get hold of me is through my email”. I thought this was very nice of her, so I mailed the given address with quite a long message, mostly asking her about the kid she had recently given birth to. I figured it might be a topic close to her heart or something, hopefully encouraging a response.
And motherfucker, she replied! It was a very short email that read “Maddie’s [her baby] doing good. i've been extremely busy with her.” Which was lame, so I left it at that. But still... RAD.
The thing is, I have come to terms with the fact that I will never get to fuck Britney Spears. She is far too super famous and rich for me. But Jamie has hardly had any success in life at all, and yet looks just like Britney. I reckon I could get her, is what I’m trying to say.
The reason why this entry is so low is because the Twitter account wasn’t verified, meaning it could have been just some adolescent boy wanking to someone else’s fan mail. But if you want to try this at home, you can use this address here: jamielynnmb@aol.com
Here’s one for the Saffas.
The first ever South African Big Brother was huge news in my hometown, and my family loved to gather around and watch ordinary people live in an ordinary house on an ordinary day-to-day basis. The concept is ridiculous to me now, but at the time it was unlike anything we had heard of before, and I used to watch the shower scenes in a separate room from my parents.
Anyway, as with every year, there was an undefeated fan favourite whose name was Ferdi. He was a funny guy, full of shit and loved by all, which was proven when he eventually won the competition and the million rand that came with that.
Many months later, I went to some fancy dinner for my friends 21st, and sitting at a table close to us was the main man himself with a very hot date only a million bucks could buy. Me and my friend couldn’t stand for that, so we went over to shake his hand. I looked at his eyes and dreamily said “Good to meet you man, I’m a huge fan” to which he laughed in my face. In hindsight, that was pretty stupid. A fan of what exactly? Some guy who lived in a house? And I paid the price, as the rest of the evening my mates ripped me off and made me feel like less of a person. I guess I deserved it, but it’s a story anyhow.
In my quest to find THE GREATEST 2011 ALBUM EVER, I stumbled upon something quite close to that in February, namely Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy by a man called GhostPoet. This Experimental Hip-Hop release was so good, I frantically shoved it into all of my friend’s faces, most of whom ate it right up and continuously spoke to me about it.
This encouraged me to find out more about this guy, and I fell upon his Twitter page. I couldn’t stop there and sent him a message saying “You are something fresh buddy.” to which he responded “thanks very much matey!” Here is the proof:
Nice. I am a huge fan and was even more so back then, and once again this solidifies the grand power of Twitter.
I doubt most of you know who Justin is, so allow me to educate you.
I consider Mr. Pearson to be one of the modern fathers of the Post-Hardcore-Grindcore-Noise scene. Not only is he a front member of The Locust, but more recently is fronting a band called All Leather, who are fucking awesome. Besides this, he has been in the bands Holy Molar, Head Wound City, Ground Unicorn Horn, Brain Tourniquet, Struggle, Swing Kids, The Crimson Curse, and Some Girls. He is also the owner of Three One G records who were the first to sign one of my favourite artists The Blood Brothers. Not to mention, he has done work with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Bloody Beetroots. His other achievements include releasing an autobiography called From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry, and was once on Jerry Springer making out with a boy. So yeah, despite being stupidly underground by choice, his CV reads like an essay.
Many years ago, there was a P2P program called Soulseek, which also featured a chat element to it, filled with elitists and wankers who hid bravely behind their screens. Some guy started chatting about noise music, and really knew his shit. When I asked him if he knew The Locust, he was like “I am in The Locust”. Pretty soon I was chatting to this guy privately all about this, and he introduced himself as Justin. I began to pester him with questions about Mike Patton until he told me to fuck off and we never chatted again.
Years passed, Facebook came about, and I joined a group called “Justin Fucking Pearson” because he is still all that. A year later, Justin himself joined Facebook (add him here) and HE fucking added ME. It was purely for promo reasons I found out, but it’s definitely legit, and so I couldn’t help asking him this:
LOL. I have since spoken to him after that (a post he has either deleted or Facebook has swallowed up) and I said something along the lines of “Justin, please can I have a free signed copy of your book?” to which he replied “No, don’t you have a job?” So I giggled like a schoolgirl and then touched myself to pictures of him. He’s a good looking guy, it’s not gay.
Last year I compiled a list of My Top 50 2010 albums, something I am very proud of and still stands as one of the most testing things I have ever written. Before and since that time, I have seen a lot of those bands live, and one of them would be Sleigh Bells who sat at number 3 for their release Treats. Very intense Noise Pop styles, check it out.
So yeah, I’m a fan. The guitarist Derek E. Miller produces all of the music, and is most famous for formerly being in the post-hardcore band Poison The Well. But the real star is Alexis, the singer. This is because she’s adorable, and her sweet vocals are in huge contrast to the chaos that backs her up. And I am in love with her. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I went to see them all by myself, I pushed my way to the front like a boss, and managed to stick my hand out just far enough that she grabbed it OF HER OWN ACCORD. I then put it down my pants, which is kind of a theme for most of these stories I realise.
Afterwards, I managed to obtain their set-list from the stage and then writers from NME interviewed me about Beyonce for some reason. I said some cocky shit and then strutted out of there with middle fingers blazing. I never found out if NME used my words or not, but I’m still pretty amped about how this whole event went.
On the very same night I went to see Sleigh Bells, a very interesting Dance-Punk band opened for them called Men. Their sound was really weird and the lead singer guy wore this cubic hat thing and sang about sex and money a lot. Needless to say, I was an instant fan.
In-between bands I was walking around, and happened upon the merch store where the singer was just standing there, minding his own business. I walked right up to him without fear and said “You fucking rock, you have a new fan” and shook his hand. We chatted a bit more about online places to hear their stuff, and I left feeling chuffed that I had just met someone so talented.
A few weeks later upon researching this band, I found out that not only was this singer the same singer from Le Tigre (a much more famous band than Men), but HE actually happened to be a SHE. Oops. Her fault though, she has been taking hormone medication which gives her a nifty moustache (as you can see above).
But the real reason why this entry means so much to me is that JD is currently in a lesbo relationship with Sia, pretty much my favourite female vocalist of 2010. I love Sia so fucking much, and (as I type this, according to Last.FM) she is my most listened to solo female artist EVER. Do you understand what this means?? I SHOOK THE HAND THAT NO DOUBT GETS STUCK INTO SIA’S FUCKING VAGINA ON A REGULAR BASIS. I could die.
When it comes to Limp Bizkit, nothing really needs to be said that hasn’t been said before. That said, Wes Borland has somehow escaped the vicious and unforgiving claws of the general Nu-Metal backlash, and is still regarded as an alright dude. Probably something to with his face-paint or the fact that he has quit the band twice already. I like him anyway.
But all rockstar’s are douches, fact. And on one particular Twitter occasion, Wes was feeling extra egotistical and said this:
To which I replied with:
To which he replied with:
So yeah, I got permission to suck Wes Borland’s dick. I would do it too you know, but I wouldn’t swallow. What kind of person do you think I am?
I love Alice Glass. How much do I love Alice Glass you ask? Well, enough to label her the 2nd hottest chick ever in my blog "The 30 Hottest Girls Ever”, which is a decent position I guess.
Anyway, the 15th of October 2010 was a special day for me. My first tattoo had been started 2 days previous, The Funpowder Plot had been launched that morning, and it was my birthday the very next day. To celebrate, me and my mates went to watch Crystal Castles, and I shoved my way to the front because that’s what I do bitch, damn.
Once there, I just stared at Alice Glass as she jumped around like a monkey and screamed like chav, making me feel all sorts of things in all sorts of places. She then whipped out this bottle of Jack Daniels and started pouring it into the mouths of random peeps from the crowd. Like a hungry baby bird, I lunged forward and stuck my open mouth towards her, whining loudly as I did so until she took notice. She reached over and proceeded to pour my favourite drink into my stomach, which meant the world to me. Then she jumped into the crowd. Happy fucking birthday Jared Woods.
Of all the albums I heard in 2010, The ArchAndroid was by far the greatest, proof being in the blog mentioned earlier, here. So when me and my friends found out that she was playing a show with Ratatat and Vampire Weekend, we promptly bought our tickets and then took a scenic stroll to the venue when the time was right.
Needless to say, her show was impeccable. Her voice reminds me of having sex with a real women, not just these High-School Girls or Supermodels that I’m used to. Seriously, if you don’t know her in all her talent and glory and eccentric perfection, do yourself a fucking favour mate.
Vampire Weekend followed her, and they weren’t as good. However, we enjoyed the show standing right next to the VIP section which was nothing more than an elevated floor with stairs guarded by a grumpy security man. We were having a nice time, when my friend Reiko tapped me on the shoulder and said “isn’t that Janelle over there?” Lo-and-behold, it fucking was! She was leaning against the VIP railing, literally a few metres away from us, enjoying Vampire Weekend do their thing. The groupie in me took over, and I hastily approached her, reached up and poked her arm. She looked down on me in that diva kind of way and I stuck out my hand, which she gracefully took, shook, smiled, and then turned back to watch the show.
To be honest, the vibe I got from her was very “oh cute, you little boy, I am God and you want to touch me”, but that isn’t very far from the truth I suppose. And since then I have had much more sophisticated conversations about current events, and have developed a taste for red wine. She has that effect on people.
I know what you’re thinking - impossible, right? Wrong! I have made contact with a cartoon character, allow me to show you how this is very possible and how to achieve this yourself.
Cartoon characters don’t exist, duh. However, they are created by an artist and then copyrighted and owned by a company (in this case Warner Brothers). Which means in order to make contact with one of these guys, you have to somehow communicate with a writer who has official permission to speak on behalf of the character itself, otherwise they will more than likely get sued. This does not mean that if you go to Disney Land and speak to someone dressed as Mickey Mouse that you have officially spoken to Mickey Mouse. That’s just some fuck in a suit. You need to actually communicate with the character on paper, as that is where they live.
This is how I did it: When I was about 8 years old, I collected Animaniacs comics, which invited readers to write to Pinky and The Brain and tell them their plan to take over the world. I came up with some elaborate (yet 8-year-old-stupid) scheme which involved collecting all the flowers in the world until you found the most beautiful flower that ever existed. With this flower, everyone would pay all their money to see it, which broke down to: all the money on the planet = taking over the world.
Much to my great excitement, it got published with a little response that read something like:
“Obviously you must own that flower yourself. If not, I shall claim it for myself and take over the world!” - Brain
So I made contact with the official Brain, according to all copyright and ownership laws put in place to protect the character from misuse. Beat that shit bitches.
Well, what do you know? The second entry from a Limp Bizkit member. I don’t like them! I promise!
Truth be told, I follow Fred on Twitter. I’m not even sure why because he is as boring as fuck. However, on one occasion it all became worth it, and it went like this:
Fred posted a video for his fans which featured the man himself driving his car whilst listening to the up-and-coming Bizkit album Gold Cobra. The sound quality was bad and I wasn’t impressed, so I felt compelled to tell him so. I believe my exact words were “Haha, this album is going to fail so hard.”
Understandably so, his groupies were pretty mad, one of whom even threatening me with violence by altering the lyrics of Break Stuff and directing them at me. Creative! But what really surprised me was when Fred himself sent me a PRIVATE MESSAGE saying:
This is a bigger deal than you might think. When it comes to Twitter, you can’t send someone a Private Message unless they are following you. This is to protect celebrities. It means that not anyone can just send some mail to their favourite star, and it keeps their Inboxes clean and reserved for people they actually want to speak to. But by sending me a private message, Fred opened the door, and I have the power to just click “Reply” whenever I want to send him a private message myself. This will go directly to him and he WILL read it because it won’t get lost among all the other countless ways his 1,530,044 followers are trying to get his attention.
I haven’t sent him anything yet though, because with great power comes great responsibility, and I can’t think of something good enough to nail him with. If you have an idea, let me know!
Besides this, there was another time when Fred Tweeted @ himself, to which I replied "Did you just Tweet yourself?" and he embarrassingly admitted "By mistake!" and then deleted it. Amateur.
Like him or not though, he is more famous than you.
In 2010, I lived in a great house on Brick Lane, London, with some of the key members from The Funpowder Plot. We affectionately dubbed this house The Rad Pad, and to say this place was insane is an understatement. Every weekend (and often during the week) we would spend our time getting all-sorts of fucked-up and literally destroying the home we lived in. We smashed chairs on a weekly basis, punched holes through the walls, and had about a thousand hippies at any given time sleeping in our lounge. All too often I’d wake up with music blasting far too loud from empty bedrooms, whilst a bunch of strangers were doing cocaine off of our kitchen table. “No thanks,” I’d say. “I’ve got to go to work now.”
So yeah, we made a fuckload of noise for sometimes up to 70 hours in one go. You would imagine this wouldn’t go down too well with our neighbours, but they were actually pretty chilled, probably because the area itself was so fucking raucous anyway.
Except there was this one guy. Every weekend he would walk onto our property and no one would even notice. He would ask around until he found one of the housemates, and then tell us to “please turn it down! I can’t sleep!” I’d always be like “Hey man, come and join us, have a beer!” to which he’d laugh for the first few hundred times, but by the end of our stay you could see he was pretty fucked off with us.
I’m sure you can tell where this is going. Eventually we moved out of that house, and settled into where we are now, The East Village, totally forgetting about this guy and almost everything that happened in that house anyway. Until one day my buddy Ash was watching a documentary about Dexys Midnight Runners, that band who had that hit Come On Eileen. There, talking on the TV, was the same bitter old man who always told us to turn our music down. A so called rockstar, the lead singer Kevin Rowland, who couldn't even stand our noise.
This blew us all away, but more than that, made me super bleak. If we had known, I would have blasted that fucking song all night. Every time he came over to bitch, it would be “Come On Eileen” over and over until he actually cried into further insanity. I love the track, but fuck him, the world is my nightclub.
It is also such a lol to watch him do this.
Much like any self respecting South African who has even a slice of local music awareness, I knew of Ninja before $O$; before Good Morning South Africa; before The Ziggurat; before The Fantastic Kill; and before Memoirs of a Clone. It was one of his first releases from the outfit Max Normal called Songs From The Mall that really planted into my brain, and I have been a fan ever since.
He has come a long way since then, bouncing over monikers like a child with ADD, but I have always followed him like an obedient puppy-dog and loved everything he has touched. All of my friends did. Unfortunately our love for him; his experimental dabbling; and his venture into a toy-line weren’t paying the bills, and he eventually decided to go (almost) back to the name that had made him fairly well-known in the first place: Max Normal.tv.
It was around this time in 2008 that I was surprised to see he had joined Facebook, and I quickly clicked his name and sent him a message. The conversation went as follows:
I was stoked and showed all of my friends. He then released Good Morning South Africa (my least favourite album of all his shit), and after that didn’t work, he grew as frustrated as he always seems to. He quit Facebook and I was sad. My social status had dropped once again.
Then a few months later he came back, his name now changed to the much simpler “Waddy Jones”, his birth-name. I was literally the first person on Facebook to notice this and posted on his wall saying “Welcome back, sir.” He posted back onto my wall saying “Thank-you kind sir” and then announced to the world that he had thrown away Max Normal.Tv as fast as it had come. He was now working on something very special which he called Die Antwoord.
Of course we all know what happened next. He blew up to stupid proportions and became the biggest act South Africa has ever seen. And I loved it. Shortly afterwards, he wrote an angry note about how Facebook wouldn’t allow him to change his name to Ninja, and he quit the site for good, hence why you can’t find him any more.
My story with Ninja doesn’t end there either. The second time I saw Die Antwoord live in concert, he dived into the crowd, and his knee slammed into the back of my head. My glasses fell onto the ground and shattered into 5 different pieces, some bits I never found again, the rest of it warped beyond functionality. I was pissed off, but if there was ever a way to lose glasses, that is a damn good one. I have since switched to contacts because of this incident, which suits me much better, so I'm grateful in some way. But if I ever get to speak to him again I will tell him that he owes me a pair of specs, that shit was expensive for fucks sake.
My housemate and fellow buddy The Freewheelin’ Troubadour is a poet and he definitely knows it. He can be found doing gigs all around London, shouting about important topics to anyone who will listen. We all try to attend these things as often as our schedules allow us to, and one particular gig at The Social in early-2010 is where this story takes place.
There we were, drinking away, as Mr. Troubadour had just finished up his set and we were applauding him as he did so. He then introduced the next band called Where’s Strutter by saying something like “These guys just came off of tour with Pete Doherty - or Pe’Do as we like to call him” and we laughed. Literally a second later, Ash tapped me on the shoulder and said “Dude, no jokes, Pete Doherty is right behind me.”
I turned around, and yeah, so he was. My first impression was “Shit, he is a lot taller than I thought!” For some reason he looks really short in pictures, but the dude towers above me.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye until he walked to the bar, and I followed. I went right up to him and said “Hey man” and stuck out my hand. He stuck out his and shook mine, gave me a wink, and that was it. Needless to say, it didn’t take long until everyone in the room was following him everywhere he went.
At some point in the night, he got on stage and played Fuck Forever with Where’s Strutter. That is a very beautiful thing. You are talking a very small venue with less than 100 people in there and no security - not what you would normally get from a Doherty gig. Kris filmed it and you can watch it here. If you keep an eye on the background, you will see The Freewheelin’ Troubadour bouncing his head underneath the disco ball.
Pete hung around quite a bit after the show, but I didn’t speak to him. I had my fix, and it was awesome.
One day I will stop telling this story, I promise.
http://www.HelpJaredWoodsMeetLilyAllen.com
CONCLUSION?
I am awesome, ask anyone.
OUTTAKES
Ashleigh isn’t famous per say, but as his name suggests, he is fucking brilliant. He is known for genius one-liners, stuff that make almost every other Tweet in the world look like shit. I urge you to google his stuff, or look here or here or here.
My top 3 Brilliant quotes are:
"If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you."
"My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating."
"Things are gradually falling into place on top of me."
Anyways, one day I stumbled upon his website which is SHIT, just look at it: http://www.ashleighbrilliant.com
I felt he needed to know my opinion, so I mailed him explaining how much I threw up at the sight of his site, and how it didn’t properly represent his content. He replied saying “Please tell me exactly what is wrong with it and what I should change.” So I sent him a list of a thousand things, brutally picking apart why it looks so kak in my humble opinion. He never responded or made the changes I had suggested, but it doesn’t matter. Contact was made and I’m a huge fan.
I am in love with Hannah Murray, or more specifically, her character in the first 2 seasons of Skins named Cassie. This is the second time I am telling you this, the first time being when I mentioned her in position 4 on my blog "The 30 Hottest Girls Ever".
Anyways, during my first initial obsession, I googled the shit out of her and found a Twitter page claiming to be her. This page linked to a Formspring account, where the answers seemed pretty legit, so I asked her “How alike are you in real life to your character Cassie?” She responded with “Not that much alike at all!” which is probably true.
Of course, this could all be fake, so I couldn’t justify putting it on the list. But on the off-chance it was real, I couldn’t help but mention it. Yeah, it’s probably fake.
Follow @LegoTrip
