they seek him here, they seek him there

Roughly one million years ago, I was the manager of what Jeff "The Apparatus" McDeath would laughably refer to as an Art Shop.  He would only do this when he was trying to convince girls to sleep with him; a curious habit, since although girls might be put off by the true nature of his employment (working part time in a wargames and toy soldier store), it's far more likely that they would be put off by his insistence on anal intercourse on a first date.

Anyway, I was the manager of this shop.  There was a period during which Matt (the most Aryan of all my minions), left my curious employ to spend a year building important things to protect us from the Communists.  However, a combination of my own laziness and an ineffectual HR department meant that Matt stayed on the books; and Matt made the most of this by continuing to use his staff discount despite having worked precisely zero hours for over seven months.  This didn't sit too well with me, so I had a quiet word with Matt and told him that I didn't want to see his name cropping up in the staff sales book until he came back to work for me.

So when one day he suddenly ran out of black spray paint, Matt did what any loose-cannon maverick part timer with nothing to lose and everything to gain would do; he came in on my day off, and asked Pat (the most Elven of all my minions) to put a different name in the book.  Matt had expected Pat to frame Willard (the most gin-soaked of all my minions); he did not.

And so a few days later, I became the first of many to noisily ask "Who the fuck is Eduardo Monteaz?"

Eduardo Monteaz became like a collective imaginary friend.  His name could often be found on sign up lists for events and new releases; and occasionally on toilet doors with a suffix to indicate that he had at some point been there.  A few years later, when Paul (the most RoboJew of all my minions) got a job testing online flight booking systems, Captain Eduardo Monteaz was used as a dummy passenger; and so at some point the polite lady trapped inside the public address system of an international airport will have proclaimed it to be "the last call for Captain Eduardo Monteaz."  And this was all super and fun and doubleplus good.

Then Eduardo Monteaz appeared on Facebook, requesting that all the former minions of the Art Shop (and a select few other associates) be his friend.  Except for me, I'm far too anti-social for social networking.


At which point many voices noisily asked "Who the fuck is Eduardo Monteaz?"  Fingers were pointed.  Conspiracy theories mooted.  Tea slurped.  Toast eaten.

And a few weeks ago the plot got tar thick when this arrived on our doormat.

For those not given to squinting at computer monitors, it reads as follows:

Dear:

Lady Rebecca, Mistress of the Lovenasium

Ben "Lord High Sideburn" Brooks

Dominic "Benevolent French King" Sugrue

You are cordially invited to attend an evening of eating, drinking and talking.

The eating will be at The Glass Boat in Bristol at 6pm on the 16th June.

A two course meal has been paid for, but I'm afraid you will have to pay for drinks and service.

Reguards,

E. Monteaz esq.

Similar letters were sent to the other minions.  And if anyone knows exactly what's going on, they're not telling.  "Reguards?"  A clever play on words, or a clumsy spelling mistake?  Why the 16th of June?  Who the fuck is Eduardo Monteaz?

The general consensus is that either a) we will all die in a bizarre and improbable boat disaster, or b) we will enjoy a very nice meal on a boat, sat around a table with an empty chair at it's head.

gnome mercy

Has been while, so bullet points.

• Work

Still not been fired yet, so I guess it's going okay.  Spent much of the last month away on training in such exotic locations as Toulouse and North Wales.  Plans to spend the final quarter of the year on secondment to a maintenance, repair and overhaul outfit in Canada were scuppered when they selfishly went bankrupt.  Now I'll have to go somewhere even more sinister and foreign.

• Gigs

Many.  Helmet toured to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their seminal Meantime record; they were excellent, but I was crap and spent much of the gig standing way at the back trying not to black out.  This was just after the trip to Toulouse, so I'm going to assume the dastardly French poisoned me somehow.


Thankfully my iron constitution meant I was fully recovered in time for Meshuggah the following week.  Support was provided by We Are Knuckle Dragger, who made a delightfully shambolic clattering noise; and Animals As Leaders, who were astonishing.  Tough acts to follow; and of course Meshuggah absolutely killed it.  And almost killed me as well, when I collided hard with some other guy and cut my head open... the next day I had to get three stitches and a tetanus shot.

A powerful show indeed.  The following night we saw Pelican at the Cooler.  It's been a while since I've seen these guys, and I'd forgotten just how massive they sound live.  First support was Death Of Her Money, which was a very pleasant surprise; second support was Black Elephant, whose bluesy classic rock shtick seemed more than a little out of place between the vast swirling post-whatever majesty of the other two.  They played well, I guess - just not my thing.


And then a couple of weeks ago we managed to catch Nedry playing the Croft, in all their dubsteppy bjork-esque indie electronica glory.  Since we saw them last (supporting 65daysofstatic a couple of years ago) frontgal Ayu's vocals have got even stronger, while her dancing has stayed exactly the same - she still has all the  rhythm and grace of a toddler that's had too many fizzy drinks.  And she still dances better than me.

• Mouses

Are both still alive, but Megatron is doing his best to rectify this situation by annihilating all that stand before him (ie. Barton).  Conventional wisdom (or whatever passes for conventional wisdom on the internet) suggests that they should either be separated, or not separated.  Thanks, internets.

• Weddings

Matt (who has never traded in Nazi war memorabilia) and Laura have decided to merge for the kill.  Good for them.  Displaying an uncharacteristic lack of judgement, Matt has asked me to be his best man; now I have to work out the best way of working his failed career as a car thief into a speech that will surprise and delight his family and in-laws.

dramatisation, may not have happened

Maybe if we spent more time brushing up on trivia and less time drawing stupid pictures, we'd do better at the quiz.

crowdsurfing is strictly prohibited

I had a dream the other night that I went to a zoo. Instead of being kept in cages and enclosures, each animal was contained within a wicker effigy of itself; and the animals could all speak, but only in the manner of their keepers. So all of the goats were trapped inside wicker goats, and had Polish accents.

I've checked this out with the Pixie; it definitely means I'm gay, apparently.

Meanwhile, in real life, manly stuff has been happening. A couple of weekends ago, we went to watch a game of live action subbuteo; AFC Wimbledon vs Bristol Rovers.

Despite this kind of being our home town, we were there to cheer (very quietly, as we managed to end up at the home end surrounded by Rovers fans) for AFC. And here's why.

Ten years ago, first division Wimbledon FC decided to up sticks and move 56 miles north to Milton Keynes - home to grid road systems and concrete cows. This was (quite understandably) unpopular with their fans; supporting Wimbledon was already a lot like being trapped in an abusive relationship, and having to make a round trip of over a hundred miles to watch a home game was taking the piss. So they decided to start their own club, holding open trials on Wimbledon Common for anyone that fancied trying out. A team of players was selected, and AFC Wimbledon went on to get spanked 4-0 in their first game.

AFC Wimbledon eventually finished third in their opening season in the lowest division of English football, and had a higher average attendance at their home games than Wimbledon FC (by this time referred to by fans as "The Franchise") who were still playing games 7 leagues above AFC.

Since then AFC have been promoted five times in the last nine years, hold the record for the longest unbeaten run in all senior English football, and are presently just one league below the old Wimbledon team (now the Milton Keynes Dons). They also lost 1-0 in the cold and rain-soaked match we went to see; but it was still a fun day, and we're looking forward to doing it again next year.

We had more fun a few days later, when we took the track slag out for a day of trying-not-to-crash around Castle Combe. We soon discovered that it was just a couple of weeks before the start of the racing season, and that the vast majority of track days up and down the country had been booked out by "proper" racers trying to get their machines fine-tuned; which meant that a) there were a lot of very cool modern and classic race-spec cars in attendance, and b) we spent most of our time trying to avoid them on the track.

We're continuing to tweak the slag after each run; since I drove it last the brakes have been modestly uprated, and the old steering wheel with its boring airbag has been replaced with a spiffy little steering wheel with a neat yellow stripe.

So now the car stops a bit better, and has more yellow stripes on it. Next on the list is tweaked suspension, to stop the car from wallowing about in the corners like a fifteen year old Bavarian executive coupe; and a few cosmetic issues, to stop us from looking like a bunch of chumps that don't really know what we're doing.

We made a start on this at the weekend; the now superfluous studs and brackets that the rear seats connected to were angle-grindered to oblivion, and made a start on removing the big black patches of tar-like sound deadening material with the aid of a Dan Dare style heat gun and a scrapey thing.

The heat ray was merciless.

muchos rock qualitat principal

The worst thing about the doubles tournament came at the end of the event, with the creeping realisation that we all had to go back to be being grown-ups the next day.

Thankfully I didn't have to play at being a grown-up for long, as at the end of the week there were gigs. Lots of gigs.

Friday

Decapitated, supported by Aborted and some other band I can't remember the name of. All very death metal. The band with the forgettable name favoured a guitar tone that sounded like white noise; but they did have a cool bastard of drummer who gave not a single fuck. Aborted sounded less dreadful, and Decapitated were amazing; but I don't remember much as by this point me and the guys from work that I went with were sufficiently full of beer and metal that dancing seemed like a good idea. And so it was that I spent the evening throwing down alongside a Cambridge graduate and a doctor of engineering. It was a good time, and the many many bruises are still fading.

Saturday

Earth, supported by Ô Paon and Mount Eerie. Ô Paon was a delightful little Canadian one-girl band, with a million loop pedals and lots of pretty songs with French lyrics. Mount Eerie was also a one-man band, but to me he was more reminiscent of this guy. Earth were probably the weakest that I've ever seen them, but even an average Earth gig is pretty awesome. It's not that they played badly at all; I just prefer the stuff they were doing a few years back, when all the desolate country drone had more of a bitter doomy edge to it. The newer stuff just seems to slowly and repetitively build and build and stop without ever really getting anywhere...

Sunday

Mark Lanegan Band, supported by Creature With The Atom Brain. CWTAB were kinda cool. They had the kind of songs that had a verse chorus bit at the start just to tick the box and act as a precursor to spiralling psychedelic desert blues jams. Nice. Mark Lanegan and his band pretty much just stood there and played their songs; but they're great songs, so that's fine.

Monday

Bastions, supported by The Break Out, BatsAboutBats and No Omega. One of those quality gigs in a dingy little venue where the bands play to a crowd consisting mostly of the other bands, one man and his dog. And each of them went out there, played like it was their last night on earth and totally fucking killed it.

Tuesday

The Acacia Strain, supported by TRC and Brutality Will Prevail. To be honest, my main excuse for turning up to this one was to see Metal Terry, my erstwhile and often flaky gig buddy. A good few years have passed since I last saw him, and it was nice to catch up. Meanwhile, the aforementioned bands played hardcore by numbers for kids with flailing arms and conspicuously clean trainers. The stench of testosterone hung heavy in the air, and there was much posturing and chest beating and commands for the crowd to go fucking crazy... it was all kinda gay.

Still, five gigs in five days is pretty good going - although I seem to be paying for it now, as my humours are all out of whack. Time to peruse the leeches aisle in the local supermarket, methinks.