Thursday, November 16, 2006

Rubbish. My ancient mood ring just broke. It cost about £1.99 and doesn't even work anymore, but I loved it. Now my middle finger is bare for the first time in four years and I feel all off-balance. Hmm.

When I come back from bankrupting myself in Scotland seeing The Singer this weekend, I might go and cry on someone and see if they can find me a similar ring. Some of my friends are becoming Important. I don’t mean in a Neo/Bono/Jesus sort of way, rather that employers have seen fit to give them responsibilities that would ordinarily require several pounds of Valium and a Russian mistress to cope with, so I think finding a mood ring wouldn’t exactly prove a trial.

It’s lovely to see friends you’ve known for a long time getting what they deserve. If you don’t agree with that, then either you’re jealous and impotent, or they’re not really your friends. Of course that works the other way. I hold grudges very rarely, mostly because my temper is so explosive that I’ve usually forgotten about it within half an hour, but there are a couple of people who I could quite happily, coldly watch fail, based purely on actions done years before.

It’s not a mature attitude to have, which most likely goes someway to explaining why I am not a head-hunted opera singer, teaching the world-runners of the future at Eton, telling businessmen how to run their companies, or running the internet. Then again, if I were told to go and do any of those things I’d probably throw myself off a bridge screaming, so that’s all for the best.

Film Joe has recently become one of these sorts of very important people, and last night I went round to doss at his work before we trooped off to see a late screening of The Return (commonly known as fog, or Fuck Off Grandad, screenings after Empire’s Dan Jolin had a kid and couldn’t stay out late anymore). Dossing around meant I got to check my MySpazz in one of MySpazz’s headquarters which is just hilariously absurd. More excitingly, Film Joe got to meet Tom at the weekend. Yes, that one, your first friend. He’s not a fable, kids and they didn’t nick some dead man’s school photo.

“What’s he like? What’s he like?” I asked, nearly choking on the charitable important-person-to-poor-person fag that Joe had given me. “Has he proved he’s the second coming for emo kids, or did Rupert Murdoch have him crucified already?”

“American. Looks American. Speaks Americanly. He’s very Americanish,” said Joe, considerably more excited about superheroes and the fact that News International’s building has little paper-carrying robots running around everywhere.

We talked about Neko Case and played on Guitar Hero 2 with his ridiculously attractive co-workers. Whoever said working on the internet attracts ugly people was clearly lying, although the brocade wallpaper in Joe’s office probably makes people 99% more seductive. (Why else would you have wallpaper so expensively stiff you could walk on it? I find the concept of office workers having Donald O'Connor moments in unison charming but unlikely.) The wallpaper in the boardroom where they’d set up Guitar Hero was black and covered in mirrored silver swirls. Joe said it reminded him of me. If this is true then I am Quality Street incarnate so I punished him by blitzing 'Message In A Bottle'.

We sloped off to Yo! Sushi for some expensively decorated ventures into fish. I still don’t quite get sushi, but I bought RBT a cucumber roll flash drive for his birthday so it’s alright I suppose. Our waiter (of such heavy accent and flamboyance that he’d probably escaped out of someone’s Eurotrash nightmare) was obviously a VIP manqué. His being wound up tighter than a mechanical corset suggested success was eluding him. “When I am waaaalking, I am beezy,” he flounced at one of the lesser waiters. If you’ve ever seen Singin’ In The Rain rip-off America’s Sweethearts, think Hank Azaria wanting to go to the “hoooonket”.

While I snacked off the conveyor belt weighing up the likelihood of there being food at the screening (and, joy of joys there was), Film Joe ordered proper food which never turned up, and eventually we nicked some off the chef. After 15 minutes, Hank Azaria traipsed back and set down chicken katsu curry with the patronising smile of Mother Teresa feeding unfashionable orphans. Joe gave it back and apologised. Hank Azaria’s face slid down into a sneer of annoyance.

“Neeev'r mind,” he sighed airily and stalking off. “Aaay am sure it wasn’t your fault.” (At this point Joe and I made the fatal error of catching each other’s eye and collapsing into the sort of incredulous giggles you get when your auntie’s sat on something awful and hasn’t yet noticed.)

“Teeem!” called Hank Azaria imperiously as he flounced away, in tones that suggested Teeem was in for a serious bollocking.

“I’m sure it wasn’t his fault,” I said, shaking.

“There’s no I in Teeem,” Film Joe whispered and we fell off our chairs. There's no room for being important on Poland Street, innit.

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