As James Brown once said, this is this is this is a maaaaan’s world. The evidence is clear. Tom Selleck. Lemmy. Lando Calrisien. Windsor Davis. What common quality did all of these fine, upstanding gentlmen share?

That’s right; the soup strainer. The cookie duster. The Mo.

This year, the gauntlet has been laid down for the men of Blackbridge to participate in the charity fund-raiser known as Mo-vember.

The rules are simple. Grow a ‘tache. That’s it. No running, climbing, sitting in a bath of beans or any of the usual charity tomfoolery. If anything, Mo-vember will SAVE us all valuable minutes in the morning as the razor is cast aside for a month and our top lips are allowed to grow wild and free.

So, the rules are simple. But the cause is good - The Prostate Cancer Charity (www.prostate-cancer.org.uk).

Discussions abound regarding which style to rock - i myself am still undecided. I’m picturing myself as James Hetfield circa ‘Ride the Lightning’ era Metallica, but we shall see. Rock behomoth, or camper-than-christmas Mercury-alike. Only the Mo can decide…

if any of our blog-reading friends would care to donate to this worthy cause, you can do so right here.

Expect regular updates on the progress of Mo-bridge on this very blog…

Last week, while my Blackbridge colleagues’ collective liver was visibly twitching at the prospect of the annual trip abroad, I packed my bags and headed for the exit. Not as a tactic to swerve the company of my delightful co-workers you understand, but to Serbia, where for the second year running I was to attend the Exit festival.

For the past 9 years, Exit has been held in Novi Sad, Serbia’s third largest town. But unlike the bleak British festivals that seem to be multiplying faster than rats in a Viagra factory, there’s no damp fields and dung-dodging to be had here. The festival is held in the Petrovaradin fortress on the banks of the Danube, an imposing site that dates back to the 1st century and looks out over the entire town. This, along with temperatures that are almost as hot as the local ladies (around 38 degrees on one day), makes it about as far from the corporate misery-swamp than is Glastonbury as it’s possible to get. Having learned my lesson from the previous year, I’d left the tent at home (trying to sleep in a canvas oven is an experience I’d rather not repeat) and along with 4 friends booked a nice air-conditioned apartment in the town centre. Around 15,000 Brits had apparently also made the trip, and with beer not exceeding more than 100 Dinar (that’s 1 shiny English pound to you and me), the potential for carnage was pretty high.

Although, it wasn’t really. For the entire week I was out there, not once did I see any of the traffic-cone-on-head, pissing in the street, ENGGG-ERRRR-LUNNNDD cringe worthy behaviour that usually follows our countrymen abroad. Exit is different from the more traditional festivals in that the diversity of the music on offer means that everyone is there to explore new sounds and have a good time while keeping an open mind. Inside the site, walking from the top of the fort to the bottom is like a long descent from refinement to madness. Each night, thanks to a fluttered eyelash and flash of cleavage from my friend Tina, we managed to get into the VIP cocktail bar and relax with a few ‘Challenges’ (vodka, white rum, absinthe, orange juice and some other forgotten ingredients) while listening to some rather soothing jazz. Take a step outside, and you come to the dub / reggae stage, perfect for lounging in the late evening with a few beers. Which is what we did for all of the four nights. Make your way down through the tunnel that links the upper fort to the main festival site though, and the tempo starts picking up. Small stages are dotted everywhere, with full line-ups of everything from Romanian gypsy-punk to Latino salsa, to the sort of death metal you might expect to find in the Eastern bloc, to the obligatory euro house.

But it’s at the main stage where the real action happens. As you walk into the field, you’re greeted by imposing speaker stacks and huge video screens and a sea of people packed into every corner. Getting to the bar is no easy feat but despite this, the Tuborg flowed freely. Over the next four days, the main stage hosted N*E*R*D’s unique brand of hormone hip-hop porno-rock (quite entertaining if a little cheesy), followed by the Streets’ cockney moan-fest on the Thursday night. The festival doesn’t really get going until around midnight, so once the more festival friendly bands finish, the main stage is given over to Djs, playing until well after the sun is up. Night one saw Noisia’s industrial drum & bass followed by DJ Hype’s jump-up jungle. Friday night was the strongest line up, with Paul Weller kicking off proceedings, followed by Primal Scream who were pretty amazing, never letting up from the frantic pace they kicked off with for the full 90 minutes. Followed by Roni Size and Reprazent, staying still wasn’t really an option. If you’ve heard of dubstep, chances are you’ve heard of Skream and Benga. Their ribcage shaking brand of bass heavy party tunes kept everyone moving until the sun was well up, and was probably my highlight of the entire weekend. Saturday had gypsy nutters Gogol Bordello opening proceedings followed by Manu Chao and High Contrast, before Sunday night’s closing line up of the Sex Pistols (who were pretty awful to be honest), and Shy FX’s usual reggae-tinged jungle to see the sun rise for the final time over the giant main stage.

Further into the site, and you come to the Dance stages. Now I’ve been to quite a few of the dance music festivals in this country (Global, Homelands, Creamfields et al), and I can safely say I’d never seen anything like this. There’s none of the sweaty wide-eyed fake camaraderie that this sort of thing usually brings, and despite not really being a fan of the deep progressive house / techno that I heard coming from the giant speaker stacks, I defy anyone to walk past that field as the sun comes up to see 25,000 people still dancing their socks off, and not get a little shiver down the spine.

I realise I’ve rambled a bit with this post. And as it’s taken me nearly a week to get this writte, it was actually nearly 2 weeks ago that I left these shores. But no matter – it all boils down to this; go to Exit. In fact, just go to a European festival. Believe me, if you’re disillusioned with the sub-standard overkill that has become the UK festival circuit, it will give you renewed passion for all things musical. Although, I am going to Bestival in September. Bring it on. See you down the front.

Exit 08 (mostly in serbian)

It’s an absolute, undeniable fact (for me anyway) that the 1980s were the golden age of cinema. The Back to the Future trilogy. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Teen Wolf. The Terminator. Monster Squad. The Karate Kid. I could go on. I’m the sort of person that will drop everything to watch Back to the Future 2 when it’s on TV (pretty much a bi-weekly occurrence it seems), even though I’ve owned the VHS box set, and in later years upgraded to DVD, and never, ever get bored. I can recite pretty much every word to Karate Kid, even down to belting out “YOU’RE THE BEST! ALL ROUUUUND! NOTHING’S GONNA EVER KEEP YOU DOWN!” straight after executing a perfectly timed crane-kick to the unsuspecting chin of my younger brother (my parents had to confiscate that video, along with Rocky 1- 3 due to the outbursts of violence that would inevitably follow). You just don’t get films that inspire that kind of brutality that anymore.

Which brings me to Indiana Jones. Arguably the greatest action hero of all time. I dread to think how many hours of my 29-year total have been spent watching everyone’s favourite archaeologist whip-cracking his way through Egypt, India and Germany. If I’d used this time more productively, I could probably be a classical pianist, sculptor, or be fluent in Mandarin. Maybe even all three, and more. Which is why, when a fourth instalment was announced, I regressed to being 8 years old again, grabbed a tie and nearly whipped my flatmate’s eye out.
George Lucas had a lot to live up to. I’ve managed to forgive what he did to the Star Wars trilogy – flexing the CGI muscle of Lucasarts was pretty inevitable with a science fiction series, and the kids that made the original films so successful by shelling out their hard earned pocket money on merchandise in the 70s and 80s now have kids of their own, so they were always going to be children’s films. But with Indy, it needed to be a different story. I’d already made my peace with the dodgy title before the trailer had even come out. And I can accept that Harrison Ford is no spring chicken, so wasn’t expecting to see him doing his own stunts. All I could do was put my trust in there being some truth behind all the clichéd interview quotes like “I’d only do it if the script was just right” and “we’ve gone to great lengths to stay true to the original films”.
Well, it turns out, that they were lying all along. I’m not going to spoil the film for anyone by revealing any of the details of the ‘plot’, but if you share any of the childhood sentiment I’ve described above, you’re not going to like what you see. It’s as if Lucas and Spielberg had commandeered Doc Brown’s Delorian, travelled back to 1980’s Wiltshire, found the young, innocent, short-trousered Rhys, poked him squarely in the eye, and mugged him of his sweets. It’s a clumsy, pointless, poorly written, abysmally acted shambles of a film. It’s not that I’m too old for this sort of thing – I watched ‘the Last Crusade’ the day before I went to the cinema, and enjoyed it ever bit as much as I had 19 years ago. It’s because it’s like an episode of the X Files, but written and filmed by baboons. If I’d know 20 years ago what I know now, I’d have spent all that time more productively and could be putting the finishing touches to my first symphony right now.

You’ve still got to go and see it though. It is Indy, after all.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. So said someone infinitely wiser than I am. Still, it’s starting to become something of a life-motto for me (although may just be a cop-out for my general level of disorganisation). I can’t help but think that by planning things in advance and putting oneself in a world of diaries, itineraries and schedules, you’re missing out on all the excitement that comes with stepping into the unknown, and the rush of blood to the head that gives birth to those hair-brained schemes that make life more enjoyable.

And where would we be without those visionaries, willing to jump in with both feet to tasks that most other people just see as ridiculous? It’s a bit of a cliché, but without the oddball who thought it was a good idea to get underneath a cow, squeeze the dangly bit and drink what came out, your breakfast would have been a much dryer affair this morning. And society seems too quick to pour scorn on those willing to stick their head out of the window of life’s moving car. Just take John Darwin. You’ll have seen him in the news lately being lambasted for faking his own death whilst apparently on a canoeing trip, and using the insurance proceeds to hotfoot it with his wife to a new life in Panama. Sure, it was irresponsible, reckless and downright illegal, but there’s a significant part of me saying “good effort mate”. Schemes don’t come much more hair-brained than that.

So it’s with that in mind that myself and a long time croney have decided to nick off around Europe for a few weeks, armed only with a rail pass and an appetite for strong continental beer. This is both an exciting and worrying prospect, but at least I know it’ll be entertaining. I speak no languages. I don’t even have a big enough bag to get me through more than a weekend away. I think I’ve got a passport….

It’s this same spirit of foolhardy adventure that found me on the other side of the world back in 2002 with dangerously insufficient funds and a “how’d I get here?” look on my face. But that was one of the best years ever, so I guess that’s proof positive that the best plan is not to have a plan. I started writing this blog under the assumption that I’d have a lot to say about my impending adventure but thinking about it, if I did, then that would be something of a contradiction in terms. All I know is that for a fortnight next month, I’ll be in a foreign land. After reading this entry, you pretty much know as much as I do.

Oh and Jamie… if you don’t see me for a few weeks in March, now you know where I am.

So January’s nearly over. That’s not wind blowing over bins, Monroe-ing skirts and removing toupees across the city, it’s the collective sigh of relief that we’ve nearly made it to pay day relatively unscathed. But has it really been as bad as everyone expected?

No doubt about it, January’s the month to stay indoors, draw the curtains, whack the heating right up and generally do whatever possible to preserve an already bruised overdraft. Forget about ‘black Monday’, my bank account’s still dreaming of a black Christmas. And the end of January will spell the end of the self-imposed £2-a-day lunch rule – if I never see another can of tesco soup ever again it’ll be too soon. Even through the festive season, the spectre of January loomed over us, and by lunchtime on Boxing day the sense of foreboding toward the lean month ahead had almost made me forget why I wasn’t at work in the first place.

But there’s a certain feeling of freedom that comes with an entire month with no expectations at all. In any other month of the year, spending every weekend in a pair of ragged trackie-bottoms and a Glastonbury ’95 t-shirt with more holes than the plot of an average episode of Lost, with only DVD boxsets of the Mighty Boosh and Operation Goodguys for company would mark you out as a bit of a loser. But in January, it’s not only accepted, but encouraged – the rest of the population are doing basically the same, so why waste energy on going outside. You’re only going to get blown headfirst into a puddle anyway.

And until January 17th, I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since new year’s eve. Well, more like 7am new year’s day, but it’s the same thing. And that’s not through some pointless lip-service to the tradition of meaningless resolutions, slurred into my latest beshtest mate in the worrrrlld (hic)’s ear in the last hour of the previous year, it was just through complete lack of both motivation and opportunity to kick my liver when it’s down. And it can only be a good thing really (of course, the Blackbridge 3rd birthday party more than undid any good this detox may have done, but it was more than worth it. Well, once Friday the 18th was out the way at least.).

The more I think about it, as an inherently lazy person, the more I’m starting to rate January. There’s still plenty of reading material left from Christmas presents to keep rubbish TV at bay (Phillip Pullman’s ‘Northern Lights’ is currently keeping my inner child entertained), and there’s plenty of good music around to feed the soul (if you’re interested, Burial’s ‘Untrue’ for the dark days, Geiom’s ‘Island Noise’ for the sunny-ish days, and Boxcutter’s ‘Glyphic’ for a spot of evening bassline confusion). And not only that, we seem to be being spared the annual Big Brother tabloid hype as the current manifestation of the human-cesspit-with-portholes is being roundly ignored.

So, as I realise I’m on the verge of an O.Scott-esque ramble, I’ll wrap by saying more power to January. Vote for me in the mayoral elections, and I’ll promise to shoehorn another lazy month in somewhere between May and June. By then, I think we’ll have earned it.

de·bauch [v.] tr. (dĭ-bôch’)

1. To corrupt morally.
2. To lead away from excellence or virtue.
—Related forms
debauchery [n.]
a wild gathering involving excessive drinking.
too much indulgence in pleasures usually considered immoral, especially excessive drinking.

eye-opener [n.]

1. something startling, surprising, or enlightening <”her biography is a real eye–opener”>
2. something that reveals an unexpected fact etc.

prank [n.] (prāngk)

a trick of an amusing, playful, or sometimes malicious nature.
—Synonyms: caper, escapade, antic, shenanigan.

mintox [adj.] (mĭnt-ŏks)

1. possessing outstanding quality or superior merit; remarkably good.
—Synonyms: worthy, estimable, choice, fine, first-rate, prime,