Unpopular Opinions

 There are lots of things I once liked that I no longer like. It's a pretty long list. Some of the things on the list have the potential to land you on the wrong end of the mob's flaming pitchforks. I know that, and I'm sorry. The cult of knuckle-headed sentimentality is strong and has an ever increasing stranglehold on society. I pity you, but that won't stop you from killing me. 

I would say from the outset that there are plenty of things I do like. But they're not featured here. That's a sunnier list for a happier day. This one is grey, overcast and the week before my birthday. So let's accentuate the negative. 

To start with...

I don't like dogs*. Let me clarify, I like SOME dogs - the dogs I know and am friends with. Those are the dogs I like. In the main I find stranger dogs, barking and snapping and shitting all over the pavement, annoying little pricks. Suddenly barking at me from behind a gate while I'm walking along and causing me to leap into the path of an oncoming car. "Woof Woof" says little Tyson "I'm defending the house!" Oh fuck off. You're eight ounces of hyperventilating fluff, all wet eyes, pink gums, and a saliva-stiff arsehole. A kick and a yelp and it's over. (I would never do this, of course. But some dogs have unrealistic ideas about their handiness.) 

You wouldn't say "I love all people", would you? You like the people you know. You like your friends. Of course, dog owners would see that comparison as inherently flawed, as DOGS ARE JUST BETTER THAN PEOPLE. They are saintly, prescient, inherently moral and shrewd judges of character. "I trust my dog more than any human, because dogs don't lie". No they don't lie. But they do vomit in your slipper and just look guilty about it. If your human friend does that he has the wherewithal to buy you a new pair. A dog will just run headlong into a tree and cost you a month's wages on Vet's fees.  

Let's face it - dogs are the best friends of people who don't have friends, who can't make friends, or reject human friendship because humans answer back or call you out when you're wrong. That's why people love dogs - they don't challenge you. They just adore you. I like a bit of adoration as much as anyone, but it's not always good for you. Human relationships are tricky. People let you down. They have different ideas to you. But that's worth having, I think. Human friends have not been genetically spliced to think you're just the best. If dogs ever did find out what we'd done to them there would be worldwide "Planet of the Apes" style slaughter. "We used to be wolves, Jenny. You've got me in a woolly hat sitting in your handbag. And why are my eyes always so fucking wet? They look like licked plums."

Dogs generally like me, by the way. I think I smell nice to them, like a chop or something. This is neither here nor there. Pick up their shit. These friends come with responsibilities. 

I don't like children. Again, I like SOME children. Children I know. And if I know you and you have kids I probably like them - don't come at me. But generally children can fuck off. I'm sure some of this is just jealousy. When I was a child we had comics, pick 'n' mix, bubblegum cards and sweatbands. Some kids had Stretch Armstrong and Star Wars figures, but not me which is great, because I'm not invested in that stunted man-boy Star Wars culture. Grow up you fat bearded twats**. Now children have everything, and the culture has switched from obliging stuffy middle aged men in grey flannel suits and horn-rims (like it was when I was young) to a sort of Televisual Tir Na Nog - where everyone is colourful and bouncy and enthusiastic, and they want you to join in all the time. All museums are for children, half the pubs are, (and dogs are in there too) most TV and film, and increasing tranches of the theatre. If a celebrity wants to extend their brand they write a children's book because it's easy and they think children are idiots. Call it "Stinky Granny" or "My Postman's a Pirate" or, if you want edge and controversy among idiots,  "Dinosaur Drag Queen" and it's straight onto the supermarket shelves and Julia Hartley Brewer's Twitter feed. Is that her name? I didn't look it up because fuck her. 

Obviously, these celebrities don't write the books themselves. Of course not. You wouldn't expect David Walliams to tile his own bathroom would you? He gets a man in. 

The world is for children and their entitled, infantile parents, their fat, colourful elbows pushing in front of you everywhere you go. In a cafe they're in full effect. Go to a restaurant and someone's little darling is running free and expressing themselves. It's not their fault. Like the dogs and their owners who don't pick up their poo, these kids are free to continually live their joy in a way that means I can never, ever enjoy a fucking meal. 

Being poor, and my wealth has traditionally been on a par with broken, first time parents, I can only afford to go to the sort of terrible places other poor people can go to. The park, the library, the cafe, A & E, the bus. All centres of excellence for desperate parents and marauding children. 

On the bus ride home from town today I was in the company of a gang of feral 11 year olds screaming, bouncing on the seats and VAPING. At one point they spotted an old Chinese woman on the phone and bellowed pretend Chinese at her for a laugh. They fucked off at the next stop en masse because the ticket inspectors were getting on. Am I supposed to like these loud, cretinous, criminal, racist, smoking pre-teens? They were genuinely monstrous. But, of course, if I'd physically killed them I'D BE THE BAD GUY. 

Children are never in school now. Whatever the time of the day they're loafing about on street corners or in cafes tucking into Bao Bun's with a degree of sophistication I wouldn't muster till my late thirties. 

I like the children I know. I but I need an introduction. And even then...

I appreciate its going to be tricky for them. We've destroyed the world. Sorry. They live with extraordinary pressures. The internet and social media specifically (I'll get into that) has presented opportunities to destroy them mentally and physically that I couldn't have imagined when I was young. Imagine if all the stuff you thought was great when you were 13 was in the public domain forever. I'd wake up screaming every night. What I'm saying is that it must be very hard for them. I'm so sorry. But please don't talk to me until you can buy me a pint in a pub. 

Except...

I don't like pubs now. I used to love pubs. Wow, did I love pubs. But I'm old and the sorts of pubs I used to go to are no longer for me, and the old man's pubs that should be my natural home are long gone, replaced by sticky carpeted Wetherspoons and an entirely different form of day drinker, getting their political education from beer mats and a sports sputtering plasma screen that is never ever off. 

And of course Craft Ale is everywhere. Go to Belgium, and there are literally hundreds of delicious, interesting, unusual beers. In the north of England too, and in Cornwall. So why is it wherever I go am I confronted by piss yellow, straw tasting, hoppy bollocks craft ale. I don't like it and it's ubiquitous. I go into a bar and it's a wall of taps and everything looks and tastes the same. And they want you to try them all and talk about them as if they were individual and fascinating, but they're all variations on the same spittoon. I don't want to go out and try new things and come up with opinions - my job is having to come up with spontaneous nonsense on the hoof. When I'm out I want a pint that tastes good and to talk to my friends rather than the bar staff. That should be obvious. 

The other thing that puts me off is the music. I don't want to sit in a silence broken only by the clinking glasses or the sonorous farting of a sleeping dog. I like music as an aide to conviviality. But a lot of bars are ashamed of being bars, they're now "spaces" that "curate" "events" and have bespoke "selectors" to cultivate ambiance. Consequently you're screaming yourself hoarse while some 19 year old Herbert cues up electro records like you've never heard them before. 

Also, in the city where I live there are no taxis anymore. So fuck the pub.   

I don't like gigs now. I mean, this one has been coming for years. When I was young and the mosh was new, I danced sweatily and with my elbows out - we called it "jostling" - and I loved gigs. Getting down the front, being in communion with people I adored. Look! There's Mark E Smith! I can't believe I'm in the same room as Kristin Hersh. Tanita Tikaram has run off stage halfway through her set at the Rucstall Hall - I hope she's alright! (She was fine)

After a while though, I started to resent the crowds, the anonymity, the queues for rudimentary toilets. And once again, I started to resent the public. Staring at the distressed denim of some enormous man-tree instead of the band. The stale sirocco of beer farts. The general chill and dampness of the venues. All the standing around and the distance from performers. Imagine seeing the Stones live. Paying hundreds of pounds to stand in a car park with thousands of bovine lummoxes, watching Mick Jagger's saddle of a face in harrowing 4G, while colourful ants throw arthritic shapes a half mile away. And everyone just filming it on their phones. 

It sickens me. 

I do like some gigs. I saw Robyn Hitchcock downstairs at a pub called McHughs. It was intimate. It was so intimate there were about twenty of us there and Robyn was able to incorporate a creaking door as percussion into his set. It was brilliant. Afterwards he talked knowledgeably about the roundabouts of Basingstoke in what was literally the first time I'd ever chatted to a musician after a gig. The problem is  what works for me doesn't work for the venue or artist. I like intimacy, a bespoke experience, nobody blocking my view. A failing concern, in fact. I'm sure Robyn would love to be up on that massive screen Radio Ga Ga-ing to a sea of M & Ms. He doesn't owe me anything. I'm not even sure I paid in.  

I don't like Football. This is a tricky one. I've never liked football. I was shit at it as a child so I never bothered with it. I've never had a team. My dad was always a rugby man. (I hate rugby too - all sports) And back in the day, women didn't like football either. It was smelly boy's stuff. So I got to hang out with women while real men punched the the air and hugged each other. I also thought the culture of football was disgusting, an insidious creeping thing, poisoning every area of society. Footballers were witless millionaire pigs, without taste or discretion, tabloid fodder, spit-roasting vulnerable teenage girls on the dance floor of China White, and high-fiving over her prone body as they filmed themselves, a line of coke describing her spine, huffed up with a fifty pound note they could burn without loss or censure. The fans were worse: knuckle dragging thugs destroying pretty European market places after all-day drinking sessions, tatted-up entitled skinheads, urinating freely in the street, indoctrinating their young into yet further tribal schisms unto eternity. 

But now football is good. Girls do it and are great at it. We can be proud of them. The women's game has none of the traditional violence and misery attached to it. It's a clean, impressive competitive sport, the way it always should have been. Also, football is now a tool of political decency. Marcus Rashford spent the lock-down showing the government up for its greed, callousness and cronyism. The recent Gary Lineker debacle - broadcaster calls out the government's hate speech in a Tweet and is suspended by the BBC - showed everybody but the footballer - the BBC, The Government, The Tabloids - in a bad light. Lineker's footballing pals stood in solidarity with him and turned Match of the Day into a twenty minute mostly silent YouTube clip. They're campaigning to have girl's football made compulsory in schools. These things are laudable. 

Footballers have turned from over-privileged rapists to social justice warriors, standing up to this odious government on equality, women's and human rights issues. They even feed the poor and call the authorities to account and, because they're hugely popular, people listen. The tabloids are in uproar, the BBC in crisis, the government look shiftier and shakier than ever. Thanks to football. 

It's a very confusing time to hate the game. I think I'll paraphrase the Church on sin: "Hate the Football, Love the Footballer."

I don't like music. That's a lie. I LOVE music. Just testing. I'm listening to music right now - Dave Bowie's "Everyone Says High" - and I'm liking it. It contains the line "And your big fat dog." It's a cross between "Kooks" and "Modern Love" and has that self-reflexive quality I wouldn't like if it was anyone but Bowie doing it. I love music. I just don't know any modern music. And I don't really want to know any. I think I've had enough. I'm investigating the old stuff I thought I knew, and I find I didn't necessarily know it at all. There's so much in there that I never paid attention to. So, I'm working backwards. In a way that's what I'm doing with all art. Perhaps that's cowardice or a consequence of being middle-aged. It's a cliche that all middle-aged men suddenly become obsessed with the Second World War, but it's not a cliche cause it's not true. I'm not especially interested in The Second World War, but I think the imperative is the same: a longing for the certainties of the recent past. The knowable past. The shallow now is unmappable. Things that have actually happened can be understood, can be placed in context, they display their causality. How warm it seems, how safe, compared to the fizzy too-muchness that's exploding all over your doorstep. 

I spent 29 years of my life in the noisy, poisonous 20th Century. All of my youth was squandered there. I missed the sixties and most of the seventies, and arguably only got the fag end of it - the 80's and 90's. But the music of that past is still with us everywhere. The past clings to us in ways it never used to. When I go to the dentist and am subjected to commercial radio, 70% of the songs played are from the last century. We're practically a quarter of a way through this one but we're still listening to my musical youth. That never used to happen. Careers could be over in months. People looked hopelessly old-fashioned and square almost over night. Now nothing goes away and one-hit-wonders can eke out tubby, silvery careers on nostalgia tours. Somewhere, right now, Belouis Some is earning a bit of money off "Imagination". Hollywood Beyond gets a nice cheque in the post every year. Tony Di Bart is pocketing residuals like a good 'un. 

I wish I'd had a hit. Just one. It wouldn't have to be good or anything. It'd just have to have been a hit. The curious prism of the past would do the rest. You'd never be rid of me. 

I don't like social media. The internet is the genie out of the bottle and on a rampage. There are loads of great things about the internet. I have a sort of career largely because of it, or at least using it. It's great for the sort of meniscus deep research I do. It's great for looking up minor players in the sort of terrible old films I like. It's fantastic for finding references, quotations or settling arguments. You can also shop with it or find out what the weather's going to do or a what an artists rendition of an oubliette looks like. (a "U") I can even write this blog no one reads on it. Thanks internet. 

But with it you get social media. And I think that's worse than the Spanish Flu. I use it, of course. And I try to use it for good. Entertaining people. Keeping them up to date with my "movements". Though my movements are limited. And, of course, living in exile as I do, it's a great tool for keeping up with my friends in the old country. 

But everyone else uses it for evil. For bullying, for coercive control, for crassness, thoughtlessness, mass panic, piling on, pushing agendas, shaming, lying, and generally destroying the social contract. Oh, and dick pics. I never thought I'd live through an age where people use photos of their genitals as a calling card. I hope they're guilt edged. 

I'm not saying it wasn't a life-line in the Lock-down, but we're out there now, baby...we should be meeting each other in person. I recently cast a film from Zoom calls. It's a terrible way of doing it. You don't get a sense of who that person is at all. I'm fairly certain I'm funnier and less annoying in real life. But most people only get "Facebook John", describing minor inconveniences and the films he's watching, living and dying by "likes" and "laugh" emojis. "Twitter John" gets less traction than i.r.l. John gets lying on a gurney in a hospital corridor with a broken leg. Deservedly so. 

I don't like films. Films are mostly shit, aren't they? I watch a lot of films, often quite terrible ones. I used to like bad films, but "So Bad It's Good" seems a bit last century now. Of course, a truly bad film has it's own energy, it's vibrant and exciting, clashing effects of underwritten dialogue and slack jawed acting. A bad film like "Horror of The Black Museum" or "Beat Girl" is a little miracle of wrongness. They're endlessly fascinating and I watch them again, relishing the weird tonal shifts, the ripeness of the dialogue, Shirley Ann Field's extraordinary performance in both films. So I'm not talking about "Black Zoo" or "Circus of Horrors", I'm talking about the awfulness of mainstream cinema. The tropes, the boring ideas, the received knowledge, all those film writing courses telling you how-to-do it, and churning out endless, identical cookie-cutter movies, as I'm sure they'd be described in those films. I'm just so bored by modern films. Like cars and wars, I prefer the ones from the mid-twentieth century. Maybe I need that patina of age, maybe I only understand them after the fact. Perhaps in twenty years the manifold joys of a John Wick film will be revealed to me. Perhaps the cinematic career of Vin Diesel will be a niche revelation and I'll suck the marrow from his movie bones. 

But it seems unlikely. 

There are good films being made. There are odd, unusual, interesting films happening all the time. But these are inexplicable outliers. The vast majority is by-the-numbers dross: over-extended franchises, the intellectual property of the past stretched to the diaphanous, like salt-water taffy or bad comedy.

 Comedy seems to be dying on its arse everywhere, presumably because of the meme-ification of the world. I remember when jokes - adhering to the specific shape of a joke: a set up and a payoff - were jokes. Now they're all "Dad Jokes" as though there were something inherently naff and forced and studied about that format. Dad as a prefix always denotes this sort of sad, tired and needy quality, as though having bred you have nothing further to offer society, except to be the butt of every joke, to be fat, ludicrous and unaware, but equally accepting of all of society's vicissitudes. The irony is that act of having sex and procreating renders you utterly sexless. 

And I don't even have any children! Seems unfair. Mine are prim-withered-on-the-vine bachelor jokes. Uncle jokes. 

A Dad Joke used to be one of those endlessly repeated breakfast table memes, a tid-bit repeated past the point of meaning. It's not meant to get a laugh - it elicits groans and rolled eyes. The only person laughing is the person telling it. That is a Dad Joke. Now it's any joke at all told by someone over forty. I suppose society's expectation is that people over forty should politely be dead to make room for a younger more vital generation. They shouldn't be attempting to solicit chuckles. It's just bad taste. Stop it. Roll over. Bury yourself in the garden, you're lousying the place up with smell of your corroded dentures, your yellowing knickers. 

It's my birthday this week. And I'm making a film. Clearly these things are playing on my mind. 

People. Ugh. What is WRONG with you? 

*This will be enough for some people to want to hunt me down with said pack of slavering beasts. Moron's best friend. 

** Marvel's fine though. Well, it was until they introduced this unwieldy multiverse story-line, which they're unable to translate into viable stories. But whatever.