September Blur

Desk Sergeant: Turn that thing off.
[points at the guy's radio]

Guy with radio: [without pausing] I'm listening to the weather report - why haven't you found my dog - he's vital to my income - he paints such marvellous pictures with he's paws!

- Bizarre line from Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson.

Bit of a rushed month, and October will be more so, so let's make this snappy.

1) Harry Brown
Ages ago, I saw the trailer for Harry Brown. Awesome, I thought. Caine is back on-form being a hard bastard again a la Get Carter. Revenge movie, huh? Vigilante story, right? Well, Caine wouldn't get himself involved in another Death Wish clone. Would he?...

Shit. He did. He's the only decent thing in the movie- playing Brown, the ex-SAS serviceman pensioner who is a surprisingly good shot, even though he appears to have arthritis in his old age. And hasn't held a gun for decades. And that's the ONLY surprising aspect of the fim. Spoiler alert, not that you should be arsed. You know he's going to live. You know the police are going to let him off and cover up his killings. (Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey got the same treatment in Death Wish.) You know the disbelieving male cop will die. You know the fragile, unconvincingly vulnerable female cop will live. You know he's going to kill the people who sold him the gun, burn down their weed factory, and self-righteously drop the overdosing girl off at the hospital. The only reasons people liked it was because a) Caine was back to playing his hard-bastard archetype characters, which he has always done well and still does, and b) so they could say, “Yeah, I see shit like that happen every day. If only Harry Brown would emerge in my neighbourhood, knock off a few scrotes and make it a better place.” But the film doesn't actually expand on our knowledge of the world. It doesn't enlighten us or say anything new about the situations most of us face in society.

Harry Brown is also very similar to Without Remorse, a Tom Clancy novel about a Navy SEAL who seeks revenge after the gangsters/pimps who employed his ex-hooker girlfriend abduct her and murder her. Both of these stories include a torture-a-sub-character-to get-answers scene.

Thinly plotted and predictable. Opportunities to say something profound about our time were drastically overlooked. Without Caine the film is nothing.

2) UCC 3: 'Night Breed'
Friday, 17th September. Syndicate nightclub, Blackpool. The rotating dance floor is not switched on, but placed on top of it is a full-sized Mixed Martial Arts cage. Tonight, Quannum MMA's Danny Cullen will be competing in his début fight against Tommy Hall. Not only is it Cullen's first fight, it's also the first fight of the night. From the opening bell, Cullen comes out firing. He dominates Hall with kicks and punches, getting caught only once or twice. At the start of the second round, Cullen goes for a takedown and, after a grapple, floors Hall. Cullen fires a few shots off on the floor and takes the back, finishing Hall with a Rear Naked Choke. Awesome.
After this, we go out on the lash around Blackpool. At the end of the night I sneak into Danny's BnB, sleep on the floor for a good 2 hours, then hide behind the door in the morning when the manager comes in. I dart out of the front door once she's gone, and run all the way back to Syndicate where I left the car.

Hunter S Thompson once said, “And there was a certain bent appeal in the notion of running a savage burn on one Las Vegas hotel, and then just wheeling across town and checking into another.”

Well. Not entirely relevant, but it was for some reason in my mind as I darted down the main strip back to the club in an attempt to track down my car.

Anyone with Youtube videos or other points to add in, feel free to comment.

There's only one Danny Cullen. Team Quannum all the way.

3) The Hot-tub
I made a splash this month at Wahoo bar in Oldham. Literally. I couldn't resist the hot-tub party. I also couldn't resist stripping down to the boxers and diving in with DJ Katie. The tub was on stage at the back of the bar, for all the voyeurs out there. And why not? There were two ridiculously good-looking people in it...

4) Rififi's Dancers are SHITE
Here, I mentioned that, at local nightclub Rififi, I was offered a job as a dancer:
http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/09/july-moments.html

I then mentioned that nobody got back to me about the position:
http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/09/august-missions.html

Well, recently I was in Rififi and two girls had been hired as dancers. And guess what? They couldn't dance for shit. Your loss, Rififi. And sorry, but I'm moving to the far side of Oldham soon, so Stalyvegas will be out of my reach. You shoulda called...

5) Manchester Literature Festival
Ending on a high note, Manchester will be deluged in the written word and all things pertaining to it over the next few weeks. The Manchester Literature festival includes book signings, discussions, fiction, poetry, amateur creative writing, blogging and much more. I've been given the nod as an official event blogger, and my account of the “Carbon Diaries” event will be shown on the website.
http://www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/
Keep your eyes peeled! I'll also be writing up a few of the events for my own blog right here.

I hope my paws have painted enough of a picture for you...