Of course, I felt I had to reciprocate the stupid.
This is also an experiment in internet stupid.
Why is it that the absolutely stupidest things get seen, passed around, emailed, facebooked, tweeted, etc.'ed more than other stuff?
So this is my bit of stupid, dedicated to all the stupid on the internet. I fully expect it to go viral. Unlike anything else I ever bloody do. *sulks*
A really beautiful song by idiot johnson with a video by me. Hope you like it. The song is available on iTunes, just search for Idiot Johnson. myspace.com/idiotjohnson
If you like my films, please retweet them, embed them in blog posts, facebook them, anything to spread the word,.... otherwise it's just going to be my 21st birthday party all over again, and we DON'T want that....
I have just got out of bed after getting home at three and spending half an hour scrubbing the shit (well, dust) off. I still have grit in my eyes, my throat is coated in a fine layer of stoneware, and my snot is as black as a Londoner's. This is what it is to go to festivals and outdoor concerts in Portugal - dust. Not the knee deep squelchy mud of festivals in Britain, but all-pervading air-borne dust, this time from a mix between sand and earth in a big field near Lagoa de Albufeira, which is normally a twenty minute drive away from me.
Yesterday afternoon, it took an hour to get to Super Bock Super Rock, even taking the back roads that not that many people know about. We left at five, because I was going to have a tantrum if missed Stereophonics at seven oclock. I have had fantasies about putting tiny Kelly Jones in a cage in my kitchen so I he can sing gravellily whenever I prod him .... but that's what ipods are for, I s'pose. Driving in to the enormous car park field, it was impossible to see much other than dust. Dust in the air, dust on the staff, already wearing facemasks and scarves, dust on the parked cars. Me being the slob I am, I think this is amusing. The friend who went with me is more Portuguese about dirt.
After a quick feel-up by a sour-faced policelady who confiscated the lid to my bottle of water ("Why?" "Because blah blah blah blah" "oh, ok..." well, she had one of those faces that you don't ask more than once) we were in with time to have a wander before Messers Stereophonics began. It was all very Super Bock, BES, EDP, etc., and a shit LOAD of food. One could have been forgiven for thinking that the only reason the Portuguese EVER go out is to eat (it IS the only reason the Portuguese do ANYTHING) .... where there's food, there's queuing.
Them there Stereophonics were great. We were right up front, and I finally realised just HOW tiny tiny Kelly Jones is, but just as adorable and just as gravelly... I don't know how he manages to not lose his throat entirely. The five of them on stage and the crew all had a great time between themselves, which compensated for the not exactly huge (but enthusiastic) crowd and everyone was very happy that they played "Maybe Tomorrow" and "Have a nice Day".
When they finished, we wandered off to enjoy the dust a little more.
More dust.
Some more dust.
Then a beer. OH, god, I shouldn't have, because then there was THE LOO, which, although not the latrine of the eighties, WAS absolutely grotesque, like an individual plastic sun-warmed latrine full of poo.
Some more dust.
Some sitting and some sitting and some sitting, which included a lot of taking the piss out of everyone. We are bad.
As the evening went on, The Nationals and Spoon did their thing, which we ignored - I have energy enough for jiggling about and "woooooo-ing" for only two popular beat combos per day - and the crowds grew and grew, until there were a good 30,000 people there.... and the crowds WERE ALL OLD PEOPLE.
So, old means over 35. But when we were 17, that was damned old. That was "holy shit, who's that loser, why's he hanging round with US?, he's always got some dope, I s'pose, but damn, he's weird and creepy" old. There WERE people under 35, but more fun to see were the older ones. There were people in their forties (yes, me), a woman who I recognised from somewhere, probably some "famous people are great" magazine, whose teen daughters were incapable of eating with their mouths shut, plenty of leathery tias in their fifties who would be horrified if I told them that they looked like the gypsies they despise, gentle looking people in their sixties, and some in their seventies, looking at odds with their doner kebabs.... a very un-festival crowd. It was funny.
Half past eleven, and we wandered down towards the main stage which was already pretty full. We were close enough for Prince to be slightly larger than a large ant. That was ok.
Just before midnight, that ludicrous symbol appeared on the side screens and the backscreen and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
More WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! and some intro music played as the New Power Generation (they're STILL called that) got themselves onto the stage.... bear in mind that I had decided that this was going to be a heap of shit, that Prince has gone too far up himself and Jehovah to be even remotely enjoyable (see here) .... Prince stepped onto the stage and my mouth, entirely of its own volition, grinned like a mad box of dominoes (my mouth IS that shape). I remembered all of a sudden that when your hero from when you were fourteen steps onto a stage in front of you it doesn't matter one fig roll that he is the biggest kook EVER and his apolitics and religion and conspiracy theories are kind of questionable and idiotic....
I had no idea what he was going to play. Convinced he was going to do his latest album which I haven't heard, but hear is pretty much THE BIBLE, and that it was going to be a bit dull, I planted myself in my horribly gritty-on-the-inside shoes, prepared to be slightly bored but happy, because I was just a hundred metres from Prince... something I never thought would happen.
"Dearly belov-ed, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life...."
HOLY SHIT, everyone realised, he was actually going to do THE HITS, the good stuff, the sugar.....as he started on "Let's Go Crazy", did "Delirious", went on to "1999", "Little Red Corvette".... oh who GIVES a shit that he's a Jehovah's Witness Conspiracy Theorist Nutjob, he's still absolutely bloody well the best showman.... "You Got the Look", "Kiss", "Nothing Compares 2U" and some crowd pleasing stuff with the absolutely gorgeous Ana Moura (she's a fadista... but she's a GOOD fadista. There's a difference) .... ok, things about his lyrics and style don't match up with his religion, he's weird, he's lost in Planet Prince (see Kevin Smith's talk about Prince on ytube) but FOR GOD'S SAKE, A FOUR MINUTE INTRO TO PURPLE RAIN HAS JUST BEGUN, I have goosepimples ALL OVER, and I KNOW that, as soon as he gets back on stage and starts to sing "I never meant to cause you any sorrow....", I'm going to CRY.
A huge paisley shaped tear fell down my cheek.
Prince thought it was a GOOD idea to get 30,000 people to do the "woooooooo, woooo, oooo, ooooo," bit of Purple Rain.... for about five minutes, until we all felt very VERY silly doing it.
After that there were a few more songs - he KNOWS how to work a crowd, that fellah, and his smile still lights up the stage - and he finished after two hours, having screamed out "DO I LOVE YOU, PORTUGAL???!!!"
"YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!"
"DO YOU LOVE ME, PORTUGAL??????!!!!!"
"YEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!"
"DO WE ALL LOVE GOD, PORTUGAL?????????!!!!!!!!"
"er... well, yeah, well, I guess, meh.......kinda"
"DO WE ALL LOVE GOD, PORTUGAL?????????!!!!!!!!"
"yeeessss"
He is mad. He is still tiny but beautiful in a not very-masculine-at-all way with a horrible taste in satin pyjamas. He is still a total nutjob. He is still quite far up himself.
[disclaimer: I am a musical know-very-little. I can't and don't know or care what is "cool" or even "good" in music. I just know what touches me]
I'm a bit excited.
I'm very excited, actually, but I'm trying to retain a tiny bit of cool (the tiny bit IS quite tiny, I know, I know I'm the uncoolest person ever, I've been reminded of this regularly ever since I was a teenager).
I'm going to see Prince perform on Sunday, at the Super Bock Super Rock (pron. SoopAIR Bock SoopAIR Rrrrrrock) thingy, at Meco. Holding it at Meco makes it sound groovy for Meco has mysteriously attained a certain air of grooviness about it.... but the festival is actually next to Lagoa de Albufeira, which is not groovy and a bit icky, but hey, that's PR for you.
Stereophonics are also playing on the same bill on Sunday, which I'm equally excited about, but I'm not WORRIED about them....
I fell in love with Prince when I was fourteen. In love with his music, at least. I have never really been able to fall in love with him because he is TOO short for me. I've rarely had boyfs who are much taller than me, but I feel like an ugly horse when I'm with someone shorter than me. So I decided never to date Prince. His music was never short, though, so I loved him for that. It was the insane of it that I loved and the this-does-not-sound-like-anything-elseness of it... that is, until Sign of the Times came out and he went way to far over to the R&B scale of things for me. Modern (80's onwards) R&B sends my head into a bucket for its dreary predictableness. 1999, Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day were what I loved and still love.
I've been avoiding reading any reviews of the shows he's done on this tour, because I don't like to be pre-disappointed. I WANT to love it. I'm worried that I'll hate it.
I'm hoping that he will have returned to doing stuff like he used to, pre-R&B-and-faux-rapping, making sounds that noone else could, being utterly kooky, and mad, and oh.... but he's a Jehovah's Witness. Jehovah's Witness are annoying. Jehovah's witnesses have some very silly ideas. Prince has two hips that need replacing, but he won't because he's a Jehovah's Witness and they, as we all know, if we've ever watched an episode of Casualty or ER, don't do blood tranfusions. Which is silly. If they want to be silly on their time, FINE. But this is Prince, my childhood musical hero and I want to be screaming "THANK YOU, PRINCE, FOR BEING GOOD AGAIN".
Do the sub standard fashion designers of this world get together in a smokey room and think up ways that they can make the non stick insects of this world look really goddam stupid?
Ok, so this woman should really have looked in the mirror, but you know, I almost admired her for having the balls to go out wearing this tshirt.
The history professor was invited by a friend and colleague who lives on Terceira, in the Azores, to go to a conference. The rest of us insisted upon going too.
Although I adore travelling, I HATE flying. My imagination is just too good, I'm afraid. To get me through and up in the air, I'll usually knock back a few gins or pills, but this time we were flying at eight in the morning and I was going to be driving as soon as we got there. No gin. No pills. I always have a sketchbook with me (it is the law if you have ever been an art student, even if you hardly touch it when you're out and about (like me)) so I scribbled instead. I used to do this for every trip when I was younger and thinner. I'd forgotten what a good aide memoire it is for later. From the scribbles you might think we had an AWFUL weekend, though. We didn't. It's just the flying bits and the occasional German child with his hands in the cereal. It was one of the best weekends away I have ever spent, and I am hopelessly in love with Terceira. We're going back.
Last time was when I last went to the States. Hmmm, need to go back there too.
So odd, when one is used to only going to other countries, to see animals on planes. Poor little buggers... can't know what's going on. What must they make of the hour's time difference??
The bulk of the tourists (in more ways than one) were busload excursions of mainland Portuguese, the kind that will decimate a restaurant buffet (be it breakfast or dinner) in seconds, like a team of highly skilled piranhas. Then there were the Germans. Germans are some of the nicest people in the world, but on holiday, they become weird, aloof and a bit sullen. Which is weird. Ugly haircuts abound. Then there was a small Saga-load of English who were pleasant, light pink and grey coloured and quite shy of foreigners. Luckily, on Terceira, tourism is quite a small business, so the tourists that were there were well absorbed into the island, although it wasn't hard to bump in them in passing.
Well, you would be, wouldn't you?
The more I looked at it over the four days, the more it resembled a mix of mid-Scotland, Cumbria and Devon. The dry stone walls were made of black volcanic rock, that were a hot haven for thousands of small lizards. The walls seemed to wriggle as you got close to them, with the lizards scurrying away from humans.
See the photos (above)
As a rule, don't do anything with a Portuguese family if you want to be punctual. It goes against the laws of physics.
I'll say it again: Portugal is being destroyed by itself, by people with no taste and too much money, rubbish EVERYWHERE, lack of care, show-off architects, and dog poo. And squished cats on the roads.
The girls tried out the indoor pool. But with the outdoor one being a salt pool by the sea and the air temperature being a pretty constant 20º, outside was the winner.
These are the Ilheus das Cabras. Just off shore.
One of only two empty volcanoes in the world, and this is the only one you can go inside. It was only discovered in the fifties, when someone noticed that cows were disappearing. They were falling down the hole which was covered by bushes and undergrowth. Kind of funny (poor cows).
My favourite bit of taxidermy EVER.
Little bastard.
The people of the Azores (Açores, really) really are the sweetest, friendliest and funniest people. They treated us as visitors, as people, not as stupid blood sucking tourists. It's quite expensive to get to the Açores from the mainland, so most people have never been. I wish I could buy them all a ticket, to go just once.... especially the grumpiest ones.
Oh dear, getting distracted.
It's humid, and not hot. Perfect for sleeping all night with the windows wide open, listening to the ocean. The Atlantic Ocean.
And really AWFUL plaid it was too.
And then, we had to come home...
Terceira will be seeing us again. We're going back. We're going to São Miguel, then Terceira, then São Jorge, then Pico. Don't know when, but I've decided.
It is done. I took my girls to Rock in Rio to see Miley Cyrus and I will never have to do it again.
My friend, Filomena, and I arranged to leave home yesterday with plenty of time to compensate for the inevitable traffic and queueing, with a picnic in her people carrier and pep talks to our four girls (8 to 16) about getting lost and "calming the hell down there in the back, we're more wired than you lot" (and for different reasons!). We drove across the big bridge into the Lisbon, sure that we would immediately hit traffic once onto the ring road, safe in the knowledge that we would arrived at the gates well after the ghastly D'Zrt (a trying desperately to be hard and tattoey boy band who produce the blandest of "hard" pop, who were created in the equally ghastly kids' telenovela, Morangos com Merda), having had to drive an hour away from the park, get the metro, keep the smaller ones entertained, and queue for hours in the baking sun, willing it all to end. But no. We got a parking space ridiculously close to the venue, and the walk up the hill was the fasting moving queue I've ever seen. We were inside the gates at ten past four... ten minutes after the gate opened, or rather, two hours earlier than we had hoped.
It was supposed to be prohibited to take food and drink into the park, and the sixteen year old's friends had assured her that everyone got pretty much strip searched on the way in, so to avoid the disappointment of getting our sandwiches taken away, we left them in the coolbox in the car. As we sailed in through the gates without so much as being looked at askance by a security guard, I mourned my sandwiches that were now a mile away, imagining just how much we were going to have to fork out to eat later.
A sea of marketing was inside waiting for us, Millenium bank, Vodafone, Pepsi, with piles of plastic rubbish to wave in front of us and make the kids go a little bit madder. At one point the girls were given some glasses in the shape of crossed guitars. After a while we had to put them away, so fed up was my eight yr old with the envious glares. Even what would normally be sober looking parents came up and asked in a frenzy "WHERE'D YOU GET THE GLASSES!!!!!?". There were wigs, glasses, straw hats (the only one we growed ups actually would have liked, with our burning faces) inflatable guitars, tshirts, inflated plastic things with "Brasil" written on them to bash together and make a noise, LED lit finger rings and the worst: Vodafone were giving away inflatable armchairs that soon became the scourge of the whole thing. Couch potatoism soon became the festival goers' mode of choice. Families all around were setting up their own living rooms on the dusty dried up old carpet of fagends and dead grass.
The sixteen year old and my ten year old, our respective "cool" children, were abandoned in the growing throng in front of the stage by the thirteen year old and my eight year old when the latter two finally understood why I wasn't going to allow my smallest to stay there once it hotted up, a good half an hour before D'Zrt were even going to start, with increasingly stroppy peri-pubescents gathering around them. The sixteen and ten, though, were NEVER going to leave... because they are so cool.
At first, it was ok. We were hot. We weren't hungry yet. And no one wanted the loo. I had banned the eight year old and myself from drinking except in exceptional near death dehydration. We suffer the same bladder. I still have the terrible memories of the Glastonbury latrines from the eighties, so the loos were going to be the last resort. It was a blazing hot afternoon for a while, and people kept walking past me with glistening cold plastic cups of Sagres... OH, I WANTED ONE... but I knew that I'd be in the loo queue five minutes later... beer does that to me. Pathetic, I know.
D'Zrt came and went. Dull as dishwater.
The first "I'm HUNGRY" came soon after. Filomena and I braced ourselves. This was going to cost us.
There was KFC and Pizza Hut, in two or three huge long marquees. Normally I refuse to buy the girls Pizza Hut when we're out in some food court or other in some mall or other. Firstly because it's AWFUL and because it costs SO much money for a bit of dough and slathering of cheese-shaped lava. 4€ for a slice of pizza and some watered down coke is too much for me. At Rock in Rio, however, the consensus among the girls was, of course, Pizza Hut. Get this: €7.50 for a slice of crap, a cup of watered down crap, and a bag of crisps.... OR €28 for a whole pizza and three cups of watered down crap. F and I steeled ourselves and handed over the cash. This "hey, we've got a captive audience, we're going to fleece them" attitude really REALLY makes me sick.
Amy McDonald was being unimpressive on stage as we ate off the top of a rubbish bin [super classy, that's us] and watched the huge queues about us for a big wheel, a slide and stuff. It was still only seven o'clock. I was missing Eurovision for this.
Then McFly came on. "Meh", I thought. Just "meh". They were passable in a McFly kind of way (I could have sworn they'd already given up) and teenage girls seemed to adore them. But kind of dull.
I was still watching the glistening half litres of Sagres going by... We'd been to the loos once by now, and it wasn't TOO traumatic, so I weakened, and snipped off to buy myself a beer. OH GOD, IT WAS SO GOOD. I came back to F and the two girls (the cool two had buggered off again to be cool in front of McFly). The beer had cheered me up a bit. McFly started to play "Fight for the right to party"... which was a fuck awful song when it came out in my youth, but oh lord, was it good to hear something familiar and I screamed along in a half litre of beer brave kind of way. My eight year old looked at me... askance.
At the very end, one of McFly burped into his mic. Rock and Roll.
About three quarters of an hour to go until Miley Cyrus was due on. Eight year old was easily persuaded that being able to see at least one screen and having room to breathe was preferable to being crushed in between thousands of people and not seeing anything, so the two of us moved back behind the mixing tent thing.
She was SO excited and I had to tell her a minute by minute countdown. I was aching, my feet burning, exhausted. I wanted to go home.
"25 minutes"
"25 minutes"
"25 minutes"
"25 minutes"
"24 minutes"
"24 minutes"
"24 minutes"
"24 minutes"
etc. untill finally, 10:15pm finally happened (I must say that yesterday was REMARKABLY punctual, this IS Portugal afterall where nothing has ever happened on time EVER)....
... and Miley appeared.
I knew she was going to put Hannah Montana in the bin, but I thought there'd be a vestige of her. But no. Miley looked liked she'd "gone Britney" in a chartreuse one piece and a tiny leather biker jacket... and shaggy uber-Shakira meets Farrah Fawcett hair.
80,000 little girls went mad.
She started to sing some stuff. New stuff that no-one knew well enough to sing along with (by osmosis, I know pretty much her whole Hannah Montana catalogue... ugh) including the one where she's trying to do a Lady Gaga in the video, what with being a bird in a cage, trying in vain to be sexy and with some big CG wings. I was immediately bored. She sang three songs before stopping to say for the first time "Hi y'all, it's wunnerful to be here in good ol' Lisbon, it's such a privilege that you let me play here for you.... yadda yadda blah blah, off a script, I don't even know where Lisbon is and I can't be bothered to think up anything gen-u-wine to say to y'all because huh, y'all don't unnerstand English and do I sound bored to you? because, y'know, I am" before launching off into something else noone knew. I was SO bored. She carried on. Being SO dull. The girl CAN sing, but the songs are so unbearably dull and she does lack charisma. But, hey, she's seventeen.
She has a Hannah Montana move that she has evolved for her grown up Britney-Miley, that's kind of cute once or twice, but it's her only move. It's a diagonally down and up hair flick, right to the ground and back, and when she does it over and over again it's reminiscent of Janis Joplin on a bad night... but she was doing it during some unfeasibly dull ballad or other and it started to irk.
Miley went off for a quick change and her two guitarrists did an unbearably unimpressive soloists duel that delightfully the crowd of eighty thousand eight year olds didn't understand, not realising you were supposed to cheer them on.... the first guy had to tell them to cheer him. hahahaha. Awful.
Miley came back in some sub Shakira leather cave girl top and some hacked up tights, wearing the same godawful shoes she'd worn for the first bit... those dreadfully ugly shoes that are all the rage, with open toes and heavily clad ankles.
Just like when McFly did "fight for the right", Miley's band suddenly played the intro to Joan Jett's "I LOVE ROCK AND ROLL" and the terminally bored parents all around me all perked up and as Miley sang, we YELPED it out, joyous that finally there was a. somehting we recognised and b. it was something good. All our children looked at us again. ... askance.
She only sang half of it, part of a medley of "old people music" I guess. The next bit I didn't recognise and the last was a very famous song that my poor addled brain now can't remember... (I've just remebered it was "Bad Reputation"...sigh).
FINALLY, it was pre-encore time and Miley went off, having spouted the same script in a bored kind of way about being a privilege to play here (what on EARTH does that MEAN?) and went off. The 80,000 eight year olds didn't know the encore etiquette, why would they? Some parents tried to get "Miley! Miley!" chants going just so that we weren't embarrassed.... but it never really took off... and Miley had to go back on stage without really having been called back... it was just expected of her. I was amused.
She sang ANOTHER song noone knew, and then finally sang "THe Climb", the schmaltziest schmaltz fest ever sung by a country and western singer's seventeen year old daughter that everyone could sing along to, for we have all learnt the words by osmosis.
AND IT WAS OVER.
We met up with the sixteen year old and my ten year old who regaled us with stories of the pizza-strewn floor and parents who told them off for standing in front of their children, who couldn't SEE MILEY.. if ONLY I'd been there.... I'd have had a field day.
100,000 thousand people left all at the same time, and F and her girls held hands, I and my girls held hands and felt quite threatened for the first time. People really can be hideously stupid.
All day I had bumped into one friend, Isabel, spoken to another, o Arcebispo, on the phone.
As we sat in the back of the people carrier, waiting for the traffic to calm down a bit and eat a couple of sandwiches, my friend Claudia and her kids crawled past into the traffic jam... I knocked on the window and we whinged about the whole day for a couple of cathartic minutes.
We drove home and arrived at 1.30 in the morning, the girls full of tales about their first ever concert, and me, my nose full of black snot.
Apparently there is another livin' drawist, a Lúcia Pimenta and she went and did this this afternoon, because she's QUITE angry about something the government (the prime minister) is doing when Portugal is in a very precarious place (and not just hanging off the western edge of Europe). The Portuguese one is first, then the Englishly subtitled one is next, for you sillies who don't speak the Portuguese.
On May 15th, I'll be hanging out with my book, "O Livro das Receitas Nojentas" at Lisbon Book Fair at the Guerra e Paz stand, from 4pm. Come say hello, if you have a strong enough stomach!
No dia 15 de maio, vou estar no stand da Guerra e Paz na Feira do Livro de Lisboa a partir das 16h. Vem dizer olá, se tens estômago forte!
One, http://lucypepper.com is now my FAR simpler, web and iphone capable portfolio site for the purposes of getting some bloody work in.
The other is this one, and nothing has changed, either with the URL, which is still http://lucypepper.com/pt or with the RSS. And it'll be just BLOG 'n' stuff.
However you have found this brain dump of mine please note that:
a. this is a blog. It is a bit of fun. It is written on a certain day then left behind, I never go back and edit... ANYTHING.
b. before you take it upon yourself to tell me off for being misanthropic and awful, first, remember you might be missing something in my ridiculous writing, second, stop going out of your way to be offended and go and find some mermaids and fluffy things to look at.
c. then again, if you're moved to express your contempt of me, then good... at least I have moved you to SOMETHING.
