Jamming on the One

There are many things I could write about today.

I could write about my day out of the office yesterday, and the I.T. seminar I attended in Fulham Broadway. I could tell you that a room full of well-groomed suits-and-ties turned to glare at me when I walked in with my five o’ clock shadow, jeans and leather jacket. Fuck ‘em.

I could tell you that the seminar itself was Snoresville. I felt like Jeremy Northam in Cypher, struggling to stay awake during speech after speech. I could tell you how I flinched every time a bit of Business BallsSpeak was uttered. My favourite: business should plan “for the valley not the peak”. They should be shot for crimes against the English Language.

I could tell you how I decided not to return to work in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day enjoying a sunny afternoon in W1. I lay in the sun in Green Park, thinking that, a year ago, I would have been lying in the same spot with Beckett and Coupland, trying to avoid being hit in the head by a stray frisbee.

I could mention that I went to see and enjoy the much-maligned Be Cool in Leicester Square, with John Travolta reprising one of his signature roles as the effortlessly cool Chilli Palmer. High fives also to Vince Vaughan, Cedric the Entertainer, the late Robert Pastorelli, and especially The Rock in a superb turn as a gay wannabe actor slumming it as a bodyguard. A funny, cute and entertaining film, which nevertheless is never quite as funny, cute and entertaining as it thinks it is.

I could mention that I cruised the cheap bookstores and comic shops looking to snag myself some bargains, eventually walking away with £30-worth of books for £10. In Forbidden Planet, the overpoweringly sweaty stench of “Eau de Geek” assaulted my nostrils. Damn, can’t these nerds take a shower every once in a while? They are totally to blame for the continual perpetration of the stereotype of freakish basement dwellers, oozing all over their weekly stack of four-colour power fantasies. You know, all the comic lovers that I know are amongst the coolest, smartest and cleanest people I have ever met. Why can’t we be the template for the comic-reader stereotype instead?

I could also tell you that I wandered past my old office, now an empty husk of a building on the verge of being razed to the ground to make way for a “plaza”, which is just fatuous fancy talk for “mall”.

I could tell you all these things. But I won’t. Because there is something Bigger than all that on my mind:

Today marks the First Birthday of Sucker Punch. I’ve blown out the candles and toasted this momentous occasion, so let’s grab ourselves a slice of cake and look forward to the second year of the Punch. Shit, I’m just getting warmed up.