Lowlights of 2011

Here are The Arbitchuary’s least favourite things about the past year:

-Not getting laid for the whole of January.

-Being shhh’d by a room full of doe-eyed, romantic patriots whilst making facetious remarks during coverage of the royal wedding. I missed the actual ceremony, because I didn’t realize it would be on so early.

-Americans relishing the hi-octane execution of Osama Bin Laden, reminding me that we live in a miserable age where violent resolution of conflict is still celebrated by the majority, and international politics are approached with moralistic overtones akin to those of a Stan Lee comic book.

-Not getting laid for most of February.

-Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and a host of other cinematic disappointments, such as The Rum Diary and The Tree of Life, which played out like a 140 minute Nokia advert.

-Marlboros costing within the range of £7. It’s been Pall Mall (£5.30, if you’re lucky) for the last six months. Ugh.

 Farewell, old chums!

-The death of Nate Dogg. His soulful baritone crooning provided a fitting soundtrack to my youthful days of marijuana intoxication and hustling Pokemon cards. He will be missed by myself and the rest of the O.G community. 

-The death of Gil Scott Heron, one of my few genuine heroes.

-Being told off for not having heard of Downton Abbey, then being told I was arrogant for not having a television.

-The London riots. A time when people of all races, genders and classes came together and united, in the name of…free trainers?

The thrill of speeding down Portobello Road, one hand on my handlebars and the other on a 999 call, pursued by a faceless mob, was outweighed by the fury I felt, watching my city immolated by hordes of greedy lowlives looking for plasma screens. My then flat in Ladbroke Grove was surrounded by teenagers brandishing makeshift weapons. Thankfully, they weren’t aspirational enough to loot the high-end furniture shop downstairs, and I live to tell the tale.

-Having to pay £15 to watch the re-release of Jurassic Park at a Vue in central London. 2014 prices for 1993 cinema?

-Bob Dylan. Seeing him live for the third time, in Sweden in June, was a disappointment hat-trick. The Tom Waits impression - and total disregard for his fanbase - that he’s adopted into his repertoire, made it the third distinctly average performance of his that I’ve seen.

-The Box, in Soho, being full of Hermès Belt wearing fuckheads every time I’ve been there. It supposed to be a seedy burlesque hideaway. Where are Lemmy and all the tattooed pornstar babes?

-Not being able to get a proper view of 80-year-old Mr Burns impersonator, Rupert Murdoch, being smashed in the face with a novelty cream pie during live televised questioning. However, his crazy wife, Wendi Deng, did not disappoint with her Hundred Hand Slap, learned courtesy of classic Street Fighter character E. Honda.

-The increasingly successful career of Drake. How have we let this cunt become so wealthy and popular?

The last point probably sums it up. That’s where we’re headed for o’twelve; more smug fucks bragging about their money through autotuned vocoders – in and out of the music charts – while the rest of us smoke Pall Malls and kill each other for free Reebok Classics.

...Bye bye, two-thousand-and-eleven!

#11: Nut Roast

-I am punished annually for my commitment to animal welfare with nut roast, a depressing alternative to Christmas turkey.
-I don't know who came up with this bright idea. Unlike the tasty bird cadaver that everyone else is guzzling, it seems that vegetarians have to put up with a meal that tastes like a Tracker bar swimming in vegetable stock.
-I might as well satiate my appetite by gnawing on the shit-flecked bristles of a toilet brush, for all the enjoyment I get out of Christmas dinner. But I'm thankful for it all the same, and wish Christ a happy birthday.

#10: Santa Hats

She's actually not wearing a Santa hat, but if the 

great Gil Elvgren had wanted to put her in one, this

little lady would have got a free pass. 

Not you, though. 

-I doubt I need to go into too much detail here. They have nothing to do with goodwill, peace on earth, compassion, altruism, or a newborn Christ covered in hay and placenta, which is what Christmas should be all about, if you choose to get on board with it, which I don’t.

-They are most commonly coupled with a can of Super Tennents and a request for spare change, which makes me very sad during winter.

-I’ve never gotten over the discovery that Father Christmas isn’t real, and these hats are an annual pinch of salt in the wound.

-For those who don’t have any irritating, cynical lefties in their lives, you may not be informed once a year that our modern day notions of Santa Claus were invented by the Coca-Cola company in the 1930s as an advertising ploy. It’s a brave move trying to market soda with an elderly, fat, ruddy-faced, bearded man who squeezes into your home at night and messes around with your children’s socks, but I think the people at Coca-Cola are getting by okay.

-Ultimately, Christmas ain’t about getting drunk in red and white hats, throwing tantrums over Marc Jacobs bags or eating a fuck-ton of defenseless turkey. It doesn’t even have to be about Jesus (he was born in September, apparently). If anything, it’s a time to practice universal benevolence and be nice to others, which is something I try to practice every day, and so should you, you cocksuckers. So, with regard to Christmas and its Santa Hats, I’ll refer you to the words of another hat-wearing sellout, Flava Flav, and advise that you ‘don’t believe the hype’.

#9: Tyler The Creator [and the collective hipster love affair with his mediocre music]

-Trendy white guys have decided that Tyler the Creator is the new messiah - or perhaps more aptly, the new anti-Christ - of black music, and that excites them very much.

-I have listened to his album, and though, as an (ultra) trendy white guy I might be breaking from tradition in saying this, I think that Tyler the Creator is a waste of time, and I don’t buy any of it.

-This is not because it’s too violent, or too provocative, or not provocative enough. But because it’s the literal definition of mediocre hip hop music, just with a bit more rape fantasy. And actually, rape fantasy isn’t that fun, especially when deployed by 19 year old boy, with a voice like a larynx replacement, against a monotonous drone that I’m constantly being told is a revolutionary new sound in music production.

-Call me square, but in and among all the mind-numbing mediocrity of the album, I did actually find some of the misogynistic stuff mildly offensive. Maybe I’m getting soft in my early twenties, but it just seemed a bit of an affront to hear the word ‘cunt’ deployed at me every few seconds in such an unimaginative way. Now, in my day, Ol' Dirty Bastard or Eminem could tell a violent, misogynistic fantasy yarn and I’d be all over it like bitches on Kool Keith’s dick. But there’s something about this little Tyler the Creator squirt that doesn’t quite work. I could be slightly tied up in a resentment that the kid’s probably getting laid more than I am (though only marginally more, I reckon). And I’m sure anyone who disagrees with me will try to convince me that my being offended just shows that he’s made his point, and that I ‘just don’t get it, maaan’ (or ‘bruuuv’, depending on what side of the Atlantic we’re on, or more specifically, whether it’s Brooklyn or Dalston). But that line won’t fly with me. I’m not offended because the album is an unexpected and inventive assault on my middle class sensibilities and respect for the fairer sex. I’m offended because, within the context of it’s own…shitness, I suppose – the fact that it isn’t really anchored to any tangible sense of real originality or creativity - the album’s pointless attempts at being abrasive just seem to accentuate how fucking dull the production is overall.

-I also can't stand the fact that English people feel that they are allowed to talk about Tyler & Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All in stylized, 90s hip hop slang, using phrases like, 'word is born', and ending sentences with 'son', as if they are part of the cast of New Jack City, as opposed to having grown up in Gospel Oak and working a Saturday job at the Stussy store in Seven Dials. 

-Anyway, I said it. Tyler the Creator is no big deal. And if any of you Supreme cap-wearing, top button-buttoning, sneaker-collecting, ‘street art’-perpetrating whiteboys try to convince me that OFWGKTA are the new Wu-Tang, or that I’m being a pussy and don’t understand, I promise I’ll shove a pair of Limited edition Air Jordan hi-tops down your throat, son. And then knock ya gurl's boots. Whilst listening to Raekwon.

Paaayce.

#8: Hermès 'H' Belt Buckles

 

-I dislike Nazi uniforms almost as much as I dislike the people that wear them, ie. Nazis. And to a lesser extent, Prince Harry and like-minded giblet-heads who want to make an edgy joke at Halloween parties.

-Similarly, I dislike Hermès belt buckles almost as much as I dislike the people that wear them, ie. disproportionately wealthy English toffs, international bankers, Russian oligarchs and Arab oil barons at leisure.

-The only reason I can gather that these people choose to wear such a gaudy statement above their crotch is to display that they are moneyed enough to drop 500 quid on something that effectively stops your trousers from sliding down your arse.

-What it actually displays is that they are stupid enough to waste money on such sartorial trivialities, and insecure enough to have to follow the lead of their ‘Tod’s loafers ate my brain!’ peers.

-I get resentful about how often I see beautiful women cavorting with men wearing Hermès belts, as they are, for the most part, some of the most unattractive specimens of masculinity you are likely to encounter. And while I would like to believe that perhaps they are having meaningful, loving relationships based on trust and mutual affection, I am sadly far more convinced that the ‘H’ belt is a signifier of the unwritten jet set couples’ contract that follows the form of ‘I will provide you a lavish lifestyle with little-to-no difficulty, and in return you will allow me to display you as a wife to my family and friends while I pursue my appetite for undernourished prostitutes and cocaine’.

-This bothers me, as I’m sure it does you. And for the record, Hermès in general are a fairly naughty little institution. I once found a small white face cloth in the Hermès store in Oslo, which was priced at 2950 Kronor, which is roughly 300 pounds. You didn’t read that wrong. A face cloth. For 300 smackers. Gotta have something nice and soft to wipe the sweat from one’s brow after a hard day relaxing on the yacht, wouldn’t you agree?

#7: White Girls Singing in a 'Soulful' Growl

It looks like she mistook the paper shredder for the laundry basket when she tried to wash her jeans.

 -This is the aural equivalent of dry ice to the genitals.

-Fortunately, dry ice to the genitals is something I have never experienced, but the thought of it, like the sound of white chicks attempting the whole “urghhh-hurghmmmmm yeaAaaaAhhh-ooooww-hmmmmm I’m a diva huurgghhhyeahhhh I don’t take no shit from no maaaaannnnnn” thing, makes me cringe a lot.

-The technical musical term for this is melisma. One word or syllable of a vocal line is elongated over a range of notes, often to dazzling effect. It’s the thing that’s likely to send groovy little shivers down your spine when listening to the opening of James Brown’s version of Bewildered. When attempted by less gifted singers, it is not dazzling, as the vocal melody becomes more of an aggressive yodel.

-The accompanying vocal tone generally sounds a bit like the thing that sometimes happens when you’ve just eaten a chocolate bar and your voice unintentionally comes out sounding like Fozzy Bear. Think of that Anastacia song from the late 90s where she was “hhhhowtta lllurrve [out of love]”, presumably you’ll get what I’m saying.

-This usually obscures the lyrics – which isn’t really a problem, because they are, for the most part, completely vacuous anyway. Not always – Christina Aguilera’s diabolical warblings were deployed at us with wholesome intentions when she tried to reassure French-kissing gays, bald transvestites and skinny weightlifters worldwide that they are beautiful, no matter what [people like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and…50 Cent] say. But if she gave that much of a shit, she could have done it without assaulting our ears, and just volunteered for Samaritans or something.

-The physical actions that accompany the growly-whitegirl vocal style always involve the head being thrown back and the hands desperately pulling at the hair, as though it’s not actually hair, but an obscure furry animal with peroxide highlights that is digging its claws into the bald scalp of the singer. This is quite funny, but also a bit unnerving.

-At its worst, this style of singing is basically just the noise that children make when they impersonate motorbike engines, but rather than ‘vrrooom, vrrooom’, there are words about sexual autonomy and refusing to have one’s heart broken (again).

-If you have never encountered someone who breaks into this style of singing, impromptu, eyes closed and holding out their hand, palm facing down, moving it up and down in correlation with the varying pitch of the melody, then you are very lucky. You’ll feel obliged to tell them that they should record a demo, even though you can’t quite look them in the eye ever again.