Check out her not so serious alter ego, Superhilbo here

But now its The Gypsy Rose. With Bruxelles having revamped and upped their prices and with Fibbers ‘not being as good as it used to be’ for the past 20 years, this new pub is swarming with rockers looking for a new home. And that’s understandable really. But this is also the reason why I was moved to write about it.

I love studying group psychology and dynamics, like in every classroom there is the messer, the kid that can draw, the smelly one etc becasue we readily seek and adapt new roles in a group environment. We’ve all been in a situation where you find yourself vying for role of funny guy. I served on a jury before and there three lads who wanted to be leader, after an hour one of them chose to be the funny bloke and the second in line just admitted defeat and became the leader’s lapdog. We’re all idiots. Naked apes the lot of us.

And in the Gypsy Rose you could write your sociology thesis. Take a new ‘rocker/metaller/I’m different’ friendly venue and throw in every dope who considers himself a bit of a character or an eccentric rogue and watch them strut,pose and lay claim to this new territory. Maybe one lad always wanted to be known as the bloke who drank tequila in Bruxelles or the best headbanger in the Rock Garden and now is their chance to get in first. It’s a gold rush. A race to take up the vacancies for phoney personalities and characters.in In The Gypsy Rose, which is only open a few weeks it’s open casting. The majority of metallers think they are so out there, hard drinking heroes when in reality they are immature twits. Just as, if not more guilty of vanity and snobbery than a bloke who gets his haircut twice a month and irons his shirts.

I got stink eye from a bloke who obviously wasn’t impressed to see another muscular bastard with short hair drinking Guinness. HE wants to be the bloke with short hair who drinks Guinness in The Gypsy Rose. I was stealing his fake thunder. I saw one bloke come in with a red bandanna, see that loads of men were wearing a red bandanna so he goes in to the toilet and takes it off. There was also a lot of people with scribbles all over their face but I think they were probably relieved to see others in the same boat. The same sinking boat. You are now 35-40, unemployable and vacant. You used to be the mad one, maybe in your group you still are but it’s over for you.

It’ll probably be another year before I return to Dublin and I will eagerly visit The Gypsy Rose on Aston Quay to see how the ant farm worked out. I wish I could watch it all on a time lapsed camera from here. Grown men preening themselves. Staking their claim. Cultivating characters.

It’s over. Give it up. Cut your hair, extract all those shit piercings and conform. I did years ago and it was the best decision I ever made. Don’t paint yourself into a corner. Move forward.

(Read one of my comics about the same thing here)

I was gazing absently at the floor when I saw a tiny spec crawling along. I then noticed another and another. But they’re so small that you have to look for them. On each large floor tile there is an average of two. I’m sort of into it. I love insects,especially ants.

A panel from one of my 2000AD stories

It reminds me of the time I had headlice. The initial revulsion turned into curiosity about the little colony of creatures living on my head. I was 20 or 21 and working nights in a bakery, at the end of the 12 hour shifts I’d pull off my hair net and overalls and walk home dreaming about a shower. I worked between the extremes of the ovens and the freezer-house so you were caked in grime and grease by the end. One night I yanked off the hair net and I noticed the black dots clinging to it here and there.

I was freaked out. I couldn’t sleep because I could feel them crawling all over me.

After nearly a week of scalding my head with water I had to go the chemist and I was more embarrassed than buying condoms, tampons and small dick cream combined. In fact I chickened out at the first one because the girl was too good looking. The Lyclear cleared them up straight away.

Then they came back. I got rid of them. Then for a third time they came back. A notice appeared in the locker room and I realised it was from wearing the freezer suits which were shared. I had been eliminating them but some scruffy dope let them fester for over 2 months. Plus I was running out of chemists in Tallaght to nonchalantly score my goo.

The outbreak was quelled eventually. Then around a month later I’m mooching around the kitchen at home and I see three different sprays and creams for headlice in a press. So somebody else in the house was infected before me and maybe I brought them to the bakery. I lived with 3 girls and one of them was a proper slut, unbelievably so. I asked a house mate who I got on really well with if she ever head lice and she says no, but Mrs X (the hooer) keeps getting them, ostensibly from all the men she brings home.

So that was the first and hopefully only sexually transmitted bug I got. I think about this now and then. Was I ‘patient zero’ in the bakery? Did somebody from the bakery bang Mrs. X? Was it two independent colonies? It’s interesting once you get past the creepiness of the whole thing, how these tiny blood sucking creatures flourish in this sterile modern world, despite ipods and hover-boards we are still hairy apes, transmitting parasites through contact.

To quote the poet:
“He fucked the fleas off a bitch
He shaked the ticks off his dick
And in the booty, he buries his motherfuckin bone
And if there’s any left over
He’ll roll over and take a doggy bag home”

Amen to that.

Is Top Gear fake and scripted? Yes.

A strange topic to bring up here but it needs to be said. I’ve been watching it and enjoying it for 3 weeks in a row but when I hear people talk about it I want to slap them.

I’ve found myself watching telly on Sunday nights again and I like the programme. But this is what kills me, their ad libs and wacky stories are so rehearsed and contrived that it should be glaringly clear to most people but it’s not. I said it to a bloke I know and he just couldn’t accept it.

The hosts have freely admitted that they rehearse and write their lines and loads of the stunts are phoney. Look at this, the famous Reliant Space Shuttle stunt and it’s fake explosion.

Now again I’m not dumping on the show just the ninnies who take what’s presented on screen as fact and not as the silly but enjoyable pantomime it is. They admitted that this caravan scene was pure fake and it even got a mention on Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipes as a prime example of this kind of nonsense.

This was described to me by a friend and he was so sucked into the whole thing. It’s worrying, that perfectly normal intelligent people don’t know when they are being played. I don’t think I’m stating the obvious with this one.

Don’t believe the hype.

There’s maybe a decent 30 minute programme in there somewhere but it’s stretched out to a feature. A long, smug feature. It avoids the etymological side completely which would be probably most people’s reason for watching it.

Who is this aimed at? Me probably, 30 something designer who has dinner parties and owns several pairs of shoes. But it’s just the smugness of the whole thing. Jeanine Garofalo and Kevin Smith are in it…anything with them two MUST be witty and urbane. Billy Connolly is in it as well. I used to really love him until I listened to every album he has one weekend and realised his act is so phoney, if you were to plot the time codes on a graph of how far into each show he mentions he was a welder it would give you a straight line.

If this was 1989 it would be sought out and devoured by 10 year olds from all around the world, from London to Bombay. But the 10 year olds of today see more hardcore porn on their phones on the bus to school than my generation ever amounted in 20 years of scruffy magazines, dirty tapes and now the appalling vista of online filth. Nobody is interested in the F word now. I’d watch a documentary called GEEBAG though.

It’s probably not as bad as that absolute waste of time, energy, air, molecules and the little things smaller than molecules; ‘A complete history of my sexual failures’ but it should be filed beside it in the pretentious, “I’m going to France to see Leonard Cohen live and I’ll read Hunter S Thompson on the plane” folder for idiots who really should know better.

You’re life is ending one shit download at a time. Skip this one and tidy up all the wires under the television.

Cicada Killer Wasp meets Adversary from ACTnow! on Vimeo.

I’m going back to Dublin next week. It’s going to be so hard getting used to wearing real clothes again as for the past three months all I’ve been wearing are boxers. Like a little baby, I get up and shower then but on a pair of snuggy boxers for the day. The last time I went to Dublin was before Christmas and it felt like I was walking underwater or on the moon with the weight of my boots. No I’m looking forward to being back, I really miss the Yorkies with raisins and peanuts. Blue Tack too.

A few weeks ago all my posters just slithered off the wall with the heat. Like they just gave up. I went into town looking for Blue Tack and ended up buying these stupid things called Power Dots that look like contact lenses. Absolutely crap. Power dots my arse.

They kept landing on my screen and nose and it’s impossible to concentrate. And worst of all was my daily visit by El Gordo, this massive humming bird/hornet nearly two inches long that would swoop in with a dentist drill like shrill and I swear to God more often than not I’d let out a scream.

Even by Spanish standards it has been a bad year for flies. The tiny increase in global temperature has made insects larger and live longer. They’re loving it.

But like Jennifer Lopez in Enough, I had had…enough. And I took the war down to my level. First weapon was the good old fashioned flame thrower. I had promised myself I would never use it again after nearly blinding my ex girlfriend but I need it. I waited in the centre of the room, poised to strike and as they swooped down…

I feel guilty for enjoying it but I do. I torched around twenty one week, some while sitting down from 4 feet away. Next was the sonic boom. I saw her nephew catching them with his hands and I was just too slow to use that method, even when I calculated how far ahead to strike, half of the time I’d miss. Then I realised that if you clap your hands together really hard on front of them it creates a little shockwave that stuns them enough to try again. WHAMMMO! WHAMMO! SQUISH!!

One day I boomed one so hard that it’s wings fell off, turning it into a ‘walk’ rather than a fly. I probably skewered him on a toothpick to finish him. Little bastards. She hates fly paper so I can’t use that but we bought these little pink granules that you leave out in a tray for them and they eat it. It drives them mental, they just start spinning on they’re back at such a speed all you can see is a fuzzy grey globe.
I stand on them. And I start spinning around too. No, they squish.

So after a year of living here I have earned my stripes. Never again will I be held hostage by these flies. But I have a bad feeling the ants that I drove out a few months ago are regrouping and next month will be Armageddon.

I’ve been into Jackie Chan for years, happy for him that he finally broke through in the West even though he’s making lame films. The Smith family however have worn out their welcome with me after years or loving Fresh Prince and Men in Black. He’s such a phoney. Listen to him on the Oprah show where he refers to himself not as a person but as a being, about not being an icon but an idea.

(This video is part of 1 of 3)

And then after Karate Kid I put on Anvil.

My girlfriend was too tired to object but I knew if she got past the first 10 minutes she’d love it. What a great documentary, I’ve seen it a couple of times now and it’s emotional and inspirational stuff. I read a review when it first came out saying it had elements of a mockumentary and there definitely a few classic weird moments that you’ll notice the second time around but it’s all for real. You couldn’t fake it. It’s not about metal so don’t worry if you’re not a fan. These lads are the exact opposite of phonies.

I have Catcher in the Rye in Spanish and phoney translates as ‘falsa integral’!

New page on Spazzmoid too