Feeling Faintly Fuzzy on Friday
Hrrgh. I left a gig early last night because I was so tired from constant late nights this week, editing Samamidon session videos (3am every night, and one early morning meeting at Proper Job thrown in for good measure). The plan was to head home and get some sleep, but it didn’t work.
What are your plans this weekend then, Toadlings? Since the session our house has gone to hell, because I have been too focussed on the videos to do things like clean or tidy, and Mrs. Toad does fuck all unless I particpate. And, frankly, who can blame her. We need a wife. Then on Sunday there will be football and some music plotting with a couple of friends of mine. Not very exciting, I have to admit. There probably won’t even be much drinking because, honestly, I’m too tired.
I am currently listening to the new albums by Antony & the Johnsons, Animal Collective and Andrew Bird, all which are no better than okay. I’ve not listened to them all that carefully yet, nor, crucially, in the right order. My phone is old and has a bizarre quirk of only playing songs in alphabetical order, which can be good for albums, but often just messes with the artist’s intent. So I am not writing them off just yet, and will almost certainly review them once I’ve given them a proper chance.
So, please de-lurk and chip in with your Friday Five, and if you want to suggest next week’s five email me at the address on the contact page.
1. Best work hangover coping strategy.
2. When you give your house a ‘mother-in-law clean’, just how clean does it get? If there’s no mother in law, who is your closest approximation?
3. Most trendy/haircutty band you actually like.
4. Most famous/stadiumy band you actually like.
5. Most annoying word people add ‘y’ to because they can’t be arsed thinking up a suitably adjective.
These all come from my time living on a fantastically cool Humber Keel Barge on the Thames, during my wild youth. They look a bit like this, but without the mast and are deceptively large on the inside. It was very, very cool. This is a compilation I made of albums I wasn’t all that into, but which had some very good songs nevertheless. I like that kind of mix – they make you remember an album quite fondly when otherwise you might never play it again.
Preston School of Industry – Straits of Magellan
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Dan Bern & the IJBC – Crow (IJBC apparently stands for International Jewish Banking Conspiracy – the card)
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And, just to send you off into your weekend with a snigger, try this little snippet on for size. Barack Obama might be cooler than I thought – the dirty little pervert:
1. A fried breakfast, lots of sugary drinks and caffeine and a macaroni pie and danish pastry for lunch, plus loud music on headphones to relive the night before is usually enough to get me through. I must point out though that i am currently off the booze so a feeling of smug, verging on being healthy self-satisfaction is the height of it at the moment.
2. It gets sparkling clean as long as you don’t look too closely/It is not fit for human habitation
3. I don’t know if I know any trendy bands anymore. I liked Bloc Party’s first album, does that count?
4.Queen, of course.
5. haircutty
1. Apart from the internet, I don’t have one. Mrs. Toad, on the other hand, strides off with some Important Looking Papers, sneaks into the disabled toilets, and has a nap on the floor with her rolled-up jacket as a pillow. Brilliant! In fact, she’s probably there now because was rat-arsed last night.
2. Again, I don’t really care, but Mrs. Toad goes mental days in advance and starts barking orders, issuing assignments, and dousing everything in the house in fucking bleach. You could eat your dinner off our used toilet paper by the time she’s finished, the place is so clean.
3. Erm, tricky, this. As soon as I see one of those pictures I start to love bands just a little bit less. My honesty doesn’t have the power to defeat my inner snob.
4. REM, I think. It was going to be U2 because of their work up to and including Zooropa, but REM came back with such a strong album last year that they’ve beaten them to it.
5. Do I not win this with ‘haircutty’?
I must point out though that i am currently off the booze so a feeling of smug, verging on being healthy self-satisfaction is the height of it at the moment.
Cunt.
(Bloc Party’s first album really is good.)
1. songbytoad’s friday five.
2. very clean always at the moment. the nuerotic cleaning nut I married, but who work had diluted slightly, has returned with avengence since going on maternity leave! think Monica from friends. but it’s not just specific to mother in law visits.
3. Depends how many members of the band have to have a haircut of style – Thom Yorke has always had some trendy cuts – does that count? Radiohead!
4. Never ever seen a band in a stadium before so I don’t know. Do REM count? I assume they are Stadium rock.
5.I second haircutty.
1. Going for a really good, long dump in the work toilets whist leaving the cubicle door open. The adrenaline rush coupled with the smug satisfaction that work are paying for it can give you a warm glow lifting the toxic smog of booze.
2. a) When there is no dust on the top of the door frames or on top of the kitchen cupboards. You can’t see said areas. But the mother-in-law-clean gets to all these places. And under the fridge. b) A gay man.
3. The Editors. I know. But I like them.
4. REM, but I imagine should The Flaming Lips play a stadium it would be lovely.
5. Panic(y)
1) well first of all i have a couple of strong cups of coffee….that gets my bowls moving….so i then have a couple of very large beer shits….i then need to have a can or two of irn bru….then i sit in front of my computer with a serious look on my face!!
2. i don’t really get that bothered…tho i do like a clean kitchen.
3. Blink 182…awesome band (Toadface, last night you were talking to some pretty outrageous haircut holders)
4. Kings of Leon…(tho i am tempted to go and see Coldplay and Jay Z later on this year)
5. Fucky offy
Does panic(y) have a k? As in panicky. I think it does, and I think it’s actually a proper word, not just people being lazy. Honestly, you can lead a Chimp to the library but you can’t make him read.
You can’t see said areas. But the mother-in-law-clean gets to all these places.
Meet Mrs. Toad. No wonder she and your missus get on. Both nice on the outside, and buzzing neurotics on the inside.
1. Don’t drink much and am not fully employed. I find a stagger to the local shops wonderfully theraputic after the odd hard night though.
2. The “oh shit my dad who is also the landlord is coming round” clean happens every couple of months. It doesn’t accomplish much beyond uncovering the kitchen sink and evicting some of the more enthusiastic moulds.
3. MGMT. Not sure how ‘haircutty’ they are, but judging from the album cover, they’re not frequent visitor to the barbers. And they’re definitly uber-trendy
4. Blur..
5. Not sure, but haircutty is definitely a strong entry. This week’s tshirt perhaps?
1. Don’t go to work.
2. Never tried.
3. MGMT. They all need a good haircutty though.
4. ??
5. ‘it was a kinda lighty-bluey-greeny colour.’
Was just talking to my sister about an upcoming gig and I described it as ‘some festivally type thing’. So festivally will also do the job for no. 5.
And good thinking for no. 3 there Dave!
by the way….the new animal collective album is awesome….and what i heard of the new Antony & the Johnsons in Fopp the other day, it’s sounds pretty good also….
huh huh…she said fisting!!!!
You’re quite right. Replace it with “Breakfasty”. As in “Breakfasty type food”.
1. Talking to Archdeacons on the phone usually snaps the mind into focus pretty damn fast.
2. Everywhere visible gets clean and sparkly. The “private” areas of the house get everywhere else’s junk piled high in them.
3. Florence and the Machine, while acknowledging I’m in danger of being the geography teacher at the disco.
4. Pink Floyd. Articulate middle-class boys from Cambridge – what’s not to like?
5. Tempted to say minestrone-y (vide Green Wing).
4.
1. Walk around a lot (The “carry an important looking piece of paper” trick often helps with that.) Drink gallons of tea.
2. I think it’s really clean. Then when the VIP guest arrives I notice the cobwebs on the light fittings.
3. The Go! Team. I love The Go! Team, stupid exclamation mark and all.
4. REM then, if we’re going with them as a stadium band. Although seeing them at Hammersmith Appollo a couple of years ago was fantastic. They actually did Seven Chinese Brothers. You won’t see them do that at Wembley!
5. Wembley.
Florence and the Machine are great. I’d have thought they’d be rather the sort of thing Mr Toad would quite like. Has our esteemed leader eschewed any mention due to his afore-mentioned inner snob?
And thanks Agnes. You too.
Mr Toad has an inner snob as well?!
1. Lots of water and sneaky naps always seems to do the trick.
2. I’ve so far managed to avoid the “inspection” by the GF’s ‘rents, but I do tidy before inviting over any friends I want to keep. And all that means is that you don’t stick to the floor quite so much…
3. Art Brut.
4. For some inexplicable reason I’ve been thoroughly enjoying vintage, stadium-era Springsteen lately.
5. My hatred of …y “words” is universal; there’s no specific main offender.
*And fisting?!?! Golly gosh..
1. I haven’t yet had to come to work as a teacher with a horrible hangover. The ‘curled up asleep on the toilet floor’ dodge was one I used when I was a lawyer although our office had a PA thing to chase up people who weren’t at their desks and it wouldn’t leave me alone. Cold does better than hot as a cure for me, very cold coke and a walk in the cold, possibly even in the rain. My best ever hangover cure involved a freezing cold can of coke and a very long walk up and down the platform of colchester railway station (very long, that platform) over and over again.
2. I also live in a fairly permanently clean house which is very little to do with me. To the extent that ‘extra special super VIP visit cleans’ are effectively more redecoration than cleaning.
3. I’m very bad on trendy bands now but I also like the first bloc party album a lot and the second one quite a lot too, although the third ones a bit wee-y.
4. Dunno. Maybe Queen, I saw Queen at a big stadium gig in 1982 and then spent most of the late 80s / early 90s in denial pretending that I’d gone there to see The Teardrop Explodes, who were one of the support acts.
5. I was quite pleased with wee-y – anything which appears phonetically unfeasible from the spelling can’t be bad.
1. Irn Bru. Cures. All.
2. Our house isn’t very clean. And we tend not to entertain very much. These facts are probably related.
3. I really like the first CSS album. Though I understand that they aren’t cool anymore. And I’ve not heard the follow up.
4. Lionel Ritchie.
5. That really doesn’t bother me. I’m quite easy going with the whole ‘-y’ based vocabulary.
It’s all your fault. All your fault.
What stadium would Lionel fucking Richie sell out?!!
Bart you can fucky offy
Stirling Albion.
http://www.ents24.com/web/artist/9179/Lionel_Richie.html
There seem to be one or two tickets still available – best acts fast, Dylan.
1. Just back from a nap in disabled loo. Soon irn brtu and cheese sarnie time. You can’t rush these things.
2. We discussed last night whether we could get a thai bride and make her clean for us. Seriously. Thats how bad our house is.
3. I like haircuts. I can’t see the problem with haircuts and don’t cross reference them to which bands I like. So none.
4. I saw Gn’R live in Vienna in 1992. Get in the ring motherfuckers.
5. “y” doesn’t bother me that much but people who use it to try to sound faux cute deserve a stern and benevolent kicking for their own good.
And just because I like the name, I reckon Lionel ritchie would sell out at Bon Accord’s stadium.
“Cunt”
That’s what the mother in law said when she saw the state of the flat as well.
I don’t think we’ve ever entertained anyone in our flat, perhaps the fact that “Granton” appears in our address puts people off?
(1) Preventative rather than reactionary, I find, is always best: vitamin B1 being the proven & best preventative. Best method is to get some insect repellent vitamin B1 patches (any decent chemist/pharmacist should have these) & stick 2 on exposed skin (like you would a nicotine patch) 2 hours before you head out for your binge. The slow release of B1 replaces & stabilizes the loss of B1 in your liver, which is caused by the processing of alcohol &, in turn, causes dehydration/hangover. You wake up the next day a little tired but the hangover is nowhere to be seen. I guarantee this will work (as long as you aren’t the one in a million who have an allergy to B1) as I’ve not only tested the stuff I’ve done a ton of research on the side a/effects of B1 as an insect repellent.
(2) TWoTH is an expert cleaner & whips about the place like a Mrs Muscle. That said, when TWoTH-in-Law appears every other Sunday we do our 1000% best to de-dust the living & dining rooms as TWoTH-in-Law has a habit of ‘finding’ atom-sized/unseen by the human eye dust, on mirrors & the like, & tutting like a goose fart.
(3) I’m quite partial to a bit of The Kabeedies, I have to say. They done growed on me.
(4) Radiohead. Mainly because that will piss off Yorke for being labeled as such.
(5) Cunty. It’s cuntish, ok?
Tom, you can’t just randomly insult people on here.
You have to justify your insult by picking up on a weakness in their argument, such as suggestin some ridiculous MOR cabaret crooner who would struggle to sell out the dining hall at an old folks’ home is a ‘stadium act’.
Lionel fucking Richie indeed.
Actually there’s a great line in one of the Rush Hour movies when Chris Tucker’s talking to a posh hotel owner, and asks when they last had a black performer. The hotel owner says something like “Why, we had Lionel Richie only last month..” and Chris Tucker says “Lionel Richie?! Lionel Richie ain’t been black since he left The Commodores!”
First album I was bought as a kid:
Lionel Richie: Dancing on the Ceiling.
great stuff.
Lionel Ritche last sold out a stadium on December first last year. It was the one five hundred metres out my back door. Bunch of forty year old afrikaaner accountants.
1) Keep breathing. As long as you continue to do things and pretend like you don’t have one, vomming incidents are decreased.
2) A clever tactic of making things look clean, but in reality are still dirty, and that’s just the visible areas. Fortunately, I don’t expect my parents to check under the counch.
3) Oh, I could stomach a spot of Kings Of Leon every now and then.
4) What’s wrong with stadium Springsteen?? It’s the Boss! A bit of early U2 is ok with me as well. All this REM love is just an easy way out. There are some dark stadium band passions not being revealed I reckon..
5) As with Bart, I’m not too bothered by this, but if people continue to use “random” in situations were it is definitely not applicable i.e. “I went to this really weird party last night where the only drink was ginger beer” “God that’s so random”. It is not random. It has a defined purpose and is not without logic or reason or organisation, you idiot…. I may be forced into aggressive action.
http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/uk_auctions/lionel_richie.html?spotlight_ren_od=1&tm_link=tm_homeA_3_f1
He’s more an arena type fella.
I agree with you about REM, Fergus. It’s just a lame half-arsed cop out for everyone.
I’m the only one who means it.
1.Soup, fuck loads of soup. As long as you’re drinking soup you will be ok. DON’T let the soup run out.
2. Very clean, my missus seas to that. It makes me feel really quite guilty.
3. Probably the yeah, yeah, yeahs, does that make me a cunt?
4. I love the boss, love him.
5. I say everything with that daft wee y bit on the end, my volcabulary is shite. Thats probably why I also swear so much.
tutting like a goose fart. A what? Christ!
Cuntish is just flat out wrong, though.
Alright then, embarrassing stadium bands if you prefer. In which case I shamefully submit… erm, The Dave Fucking Matthews Fucking Band – or at least their early stuff. Stadium-era Bruce is NOT shameful. Ooh, and I quite like a lot of Dire Straits. They used to be stadiumy (DOUBLE WIN!) back in the day.
The last stadium rock show I actually went to was Bruce Springsteen in Amsterdam, and it rocked.
Now, Dire Straits. Do you actually like the music they released during their stadium era, or is really that you like the pre-stadium releases they popularised during the heady mid-1980s stadium days?
Hmm?
i love Dire Straits…….
Dylan that’s a distinction that is far too detailed and subtle for me. I like Telegraph Road and Making Movies – what category are they in? I didn’t realise you took such an interest.
i think i managed a grand total of 12 minutes sleep upon your barge. and that wasn’t because you were keeping me up talking about Cantona, Gin and Jenny McCarthy
.
Yes, the creaking of the pier and the rocking up and down, and the violent dancing about whenever a boat went by too fast and so on did take a little getting used to.
1. going to hide in the cupboard at work and lying down on the floor and going to sleep seems to work well for me.
2. it gets very clean except for the bits you cant see which remain filthy.
3. i quite like pete and the pirates. they cheer me up but i think theyre a haircut band. ive never actually seen them but i get the feeling they are.
4. my votes going to the boss. unbeatable.
5. sorry i like words with y on the end. i think haircutty is great!
I’ve seen Pete & The Pirates courtesy of the immeasurable hospitality of DC & TWoTH.
And a splendid live proposition they were, too. Most enjoyable.
I think we should all conspire to bring them to Edinburgh without further ado.
Any nation which invented such a brilliant expression as cunty-baws can’t be entirely down on the notion of spurious y’s being added to words.
For the foreigners, cunty-baws translates as cunty-balls, which is a suprisingly affectionate way of addressing someone. This, of course, in a country where ‘Awright, ya cunt’ is also a term of endearment.
fanny-baws is one of my faves sayings
Morgan, who did a lot of the early Toad Session film work and is just an all round general good mate, has this argument with me all the time. He prefers fanny-baws, (Americans, fanny means cunt over here, not arse) and I marginally prefer cunty-baws. There’s not much in it though – they’re both pretty special.
A pal of mine called me feltch face the other day. I think thats a step too far.
Isn’t it felch?
I used to work with a chap whose surname was Felgate. Well all called him Felchgate. Grown men, in their thirties, calling a colleague Felchgate and laughing at it. I think I was more mature when I was fifteen.
Aye, excuse my spelling.
A guy I work with spilt water over his crotch the other day and I can honestly say, without a shaddow of a doubt, it was the highight of my week.
I was definetly more mature when I was fifteen but I’m not sure that it isn’t a sign of the times, I had a 16 year old explain to me, a grown man, what space docking is. Kids are radge.
why were you talking to a 16 year old about space docking dav is that not a bit wierd?
He was chatting her up.
Smooove!
It was a festival
Apart from something Dav uses to chat up teenage girls at festivals, what actually is space docking? Assuming it’s nothing to do with actual spaceships, of course.
God, don’t you know anything, Matthew?!
I can’t be arsed going to Wikipaedo, so someone is going to have to explain it. Is it a sexual term, maybe referencing either an extremely slack fanny or an embarrassingly tiny penis? Like rattling a pencil round inside an old slipper.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=space-docking
This is the shit spelling thread, isn’t it.
Dav: feltch & shaddow.
Michael: wierd.
That urban dictionary entry, however, takes the cake with: “each others ass or other orpheuses.”
Which leaves the question unanswered: Dav, were you trying to chat her up?
“This is the shit spelling thread, isn’t it.”
Boom-tish!
and dave be honest now you do look like the kind of chap who might do something like that dont you?
I can honestly not think of any reason I was talking about space docking, but I wasn’t trying to pull her.
I’m writing this because even I find my silence incriminating.
Do you like it up your orpheus, Dav?
Wasn’t orpheus the greek god of music? If thats the chap you’re talking about then yes, I love it up my orpheus.
If he was I should change the name of this blog to ‘Taking It Up the Orpheus’.
1. I embody temperance.
2. My mother-in-law is a slob. She puts dirty dishes back into the cupboards. As long as there’s no visible liquid feces on the fridge handle, she’s happy.
3. Do bands have haircuts anymore? I do like The Kabeedies, though.
4. Funkazoidal Rocktagons.
5. Spongey.
1. i drink a lot of water and OJ when i get home – for every drink of alcohol, at least 8 oz of water – and if i’m gonna drink heavy i stick to vodka tonic. so i’m never hung over, at all.
2. no mother-in-law. but the guests that absolutely make me hyperventilate and have panic attacks and go into a fetal position are my Japanese friends. i lived in Japan when I was in high school. in Japan (at least among the snotty types i somehow ended up in school with), if you place a book on the table, you should align its sides to the table’s. placing it at an angle, or with a corner hanging over the edge, is considered sloppy. so yeah. i often become suicidal when Japanese friends threaten to visit.
Japanese guests are rare; collaegues are a close second. i’ll never forget the horror when, after cleaning furiously for some colleagues to come over, i sat on the same side of the room with them and saw how the afternoon sunlight was illuminating disgusting giant dustbunnies under the couch that had not been visible earlier.
3. i can’t think of anything haircutty, trendy, or even… i don’t know. sorry. but i love my DJ friend Dollyrocker and his lovely wife, and they’re pretty damn hip. does that count? or are they indie? i don’t know. i’m not one of you. i freely admit it.
4. gotta say probably U2. some time in the past though.
5. “prezzies” “nappies” brits are the worst with the cutesy “y” endings (yes, i know you’re not brits). but those are nouns. you said adjectives. um. “talky.”
Orpheus wasn’t the god of music but the greatest musician ever. He also went to hell and back to try to save his wife from death. It’s pretty romantic. Wiki-search it.
1. No drinking and no job
2. No scum around the bathroom sink and bathtub, kitchen all tidy and entire house vacuumed of dog hair. Bed made, laundry stashed behind closet door, and M.Chutney’s den of iniquity/office hidden from view. Rarely a mother-in-law, as she lives thousands of miles away, but at times a fuckbuddy (more often one who calls and never shows up! we suspect my mother has a deal with him – gets him to call once a month or so to make us clean the house, grrrr).
3. Oh fuck it all, I’ll be honest and say Pink, ok… I love Pink, what of it?
4. Rage Against The Machine
5. “thingy” hate. it. so. much.
…and for the record, I can never understand how you can have fanny-balls? I mean, cunts don’t have balls, that’s the whole point of being female ya goofs! Do I need to go into the evolution of genitalia and fetal sexual differentiation? See… this is what happens when you go adding “y”s to everything!
Thingy is perfectly okay, but drinky and lunchy on the other hand are not just hateful words in themselves but almost exclusively used by the sort of unbearable cunts who are not quite as genteel or posh as they wish they were. And turd-munching media-types. Not sure which is worse.
Tart, until you have been jovially hailed as ‘Hoi, cunty-baws’ by an inebriated Glaswegian you really haven’t lived.
Do I need to go into the evolution of genitalia and fetal sexual differentiation? See… this is what happens when you go adding “y”s to everything!
Tart, I think you just signaled yourself out as the wittiest & cleverest commenter on here. Definitely worthy of a virtual Hi-5.
Tart has long been the wittiest and cleverest commentator on here. She really is the Yoda of the Song By Toad universe.
My favourite bit is when she’s wrestling with R2-D2 over the little flashlight thing after Luke’s X-Wing crashes on Dagobah.
I will gladly accept the nomination and swear to uphold the duties of said office with stout perseverance :-p
But I want my own t-shirt.
The one about the site becoming a haven for middle-aged lesbians?
Do I need to go into the evolution of genitalia and fetal sexual differentiation? would make a fantastic T-Shirt.
See.. I found that Wikipedia article fascinating, but I’m left with a crushing feeling of disappointment in myself for giggling like a schoolboy every time they mentioned the word ‘gonads’.
The one about the site becoming a haven for middle-aged lesbians?
Hasn’t it always been, sister?
OK, make that two t-shirts, one for being a Yoda, one for being a middle-aged (albeit still good-looking and sexy as hell) lesbian.
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