Sharon'll Fix It...Hopefully.... Now I actually got a lot done today so no thinkin' I'm doing nothing but watch telly these days, right? However I do have to mark an auspicious day in UK TV history - the inaugural Sharon Osbourne Show. It has the teatime slot occupied normally by competent people like Paul O' Grady whom indeed she appears to have cribbed every facet of her show from. She was a regular guest of Paul's in the past and she must have just thought she could give it a crack. She shouldn't have. Now,the beauty of people like O'Grady is that they are able, simply, to be themselves in front of the camera - and they are blessed with likeable, watchable character. What to do, then, when "yourself" is, well, let's face it - a total cow. Sharon plumps for reading cue cards woodenly, relying upon a full suite of heatstring-jerking, lowest common denominator items and kissing the arse of celebs. Families with medically struggling progeny are handed foreign holidays by auld aunty Sharon in a sort of down-at-heel Opprah gesture. Sharon sits curled, seductively on her plush couches - shoeless of course - the picture of the princess in her element. She is pathetically inept at interview with her famous guests - relying so far on nudge-wink references to where they have met before etc. Her competition segment - a popular device of O'Grady's show - is woefully thrown together to the point where she doesn't even appear to understand the mechanics of it herself and the contestant, plucked from the audience, didn't stand a chance. Sharon herself appears hellbent on portraying herself as friend of the working class woman, one of our own despite having acted a stuck up bitch at almost every opportunity on The Osbournes and, yes, on X Factor too. Shaggin' Osbourne is everywhere on TV - a fact that really only serves as a caution to those with sufficient money and influence to do anything they want. There is a limit to what one person is good at, which is not much of a problem to most of us. However, when you're willing to discover this over a twelve part series in front of the world - a reigning in is required somewhere. Is there nobody can tell her how dreadful this is? An absoutely excruciating experience all round. If Sharon hasn't ripped ITN a new one upfront for allowing this show to happen, then I predict "the yank" for this show in under five episodes. Backta the Factor, Shaz.

Brethren, I Just Want You To ROCK OUT I just spent a breathless hour fervently watching my first episode of Rockstar : Supernova featuring Tommy Lee. The almost incredible premise is that young rock hopefulls plucked from the proletariat compete for the dubious honour of becoming front person of a rock monster supergroup Supernova. The hard rockin outfit is described thus; "Cream, Blind Faith, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Velvet Revolver, Audioslave--what do these bands have in common? They're all super-groups, rock outfits comprised of legendary musicians who took their varied qualities, seasoned expertise, boundless creativity and just plain kick-ass rock chops and melded them together in a mélange of virtuosity that's been, for the most part, tough to equal in the world of rock." The contestants, with nary a soupcon of skin unpierced nor ink free, are so earnestly born to rock that I found myself quite caught up in their earnest pledges to rock ever harder and use the word "bro" more often than anyone else in christendom to get the prize. Tommy Lee and his cabinet of ministers of all things that rock were the most partial jury I have personally ever witnessed and appeared so in carnal thrall to the Gods of rock during each performance that their qualifications to judge must come into serious question. Worse yet, the facially be-jewelled combatants were so obviously enamoured of their jury that they missed nary an opportunity to say how much they loved x or y-album by each juror who in turn obligingly proclaimed them their "seriously, like my favourite act of the night, man, seriously." There was a lot of rock love in the carefully constructed gothic room, in which TL and his brethren sat on gilded thrones. That is no embellishment on my part either. Gilded! Thrones! It all reminded me of a guitar store on 16th Ave in Calgary we used to go into sometimes - though I cannot for the life of me think of a reason we would have now. It was called Guitarworks and it was staffed almost entirely by Rock Goliaths with names like Brett and Randy. They had the skintight lameblue jeans with hi-tops suitably tongue-out and louche. They had manes where most people have hair and their skin was tanned to hues impossible to maintain anywhere in Canada. They spoke in a vernacular I had never heard before but which would later be lampooned to effect in Waynes World. they spoke earnestly to each other of "like totally shredding, man" or perhaps they would speak of a notable live show, beaming and hardly able to speak for smiling. Having said all that, they were really, really nice boys. Girls' mothers would have loved them. they were so innocent and the way they always greeted any young, single male entering the shop "hey brethren" or simply "brethreeeeehhnnnnn" made me feel a strong longing to forget the smiths and indie music, grow my hair, de-shine my brogues, burn my 501s and be part of their number immediately. See, the thing is that, I'm a person who, as it stands, will go to his grave not knowing if he ever truly rocked or not and there's an inadequacy that comes with that. I feel pathetic watching Tommy Lee and his rock school and seeing how much they love to rock and indeed make the very word "rock" come alive, make perfect sense. You can see the rock in the air on that set. Still I am haunted. How does a body rock out? And have you seen how much female attention guys that rock get on a salver? What is the power of rock? I'll be tuning in again anyway, this was awesome viewing and I'll be shredding 'er up with TL and the brethren again.

Prime Minister Of The State Of Things Warning; long post Well, it’s been a long time even by my standards. Sorry to those of you who tuned in hoping for an update. Sorry too, to those who took it a step further and emailed to ask what was up, would I be posting again etc. It’s been a period of upheaval, to put it mildly. Let me try to explain. As I intimated at the outset of New Soup – I had just gone through a separation from my wife of fifteen years, Melanie. I had come back to my roots here in Scotland to find a steady platform upon which to base any possible leap into what came next for me. It went okay for the most part, and really, continues to go okay on the face of it. The big thing is that, well, in March this year, the troubles that Melanie had been having in coming to grips with our new reality, became too much for her and she took her own life in Canada. How I felt about this tragedy was complicated by the fact that we had separated with no obvious hope of reconciliation. What was I allowed to feel? What were people expecting me to feel? What did Melanie’s family feel about me and any part I may have played in this dreadful set of circumstances? And at the ed of the say, alone - how much of this mattered? None of it. I just felt sad, incredibly, crushingly sad. Angry at the finality of it all. Frustrated that none of my words (and there had been many) had had any meaning to her, had taken any bearing on the result that she had, in her own mind, forecast and settled upon such a long time beforehand. Above all, I felt this despairing sense of responsibility. I won’t use the word guilt – it's a selfish word bathed in negative connotation and implied or inferred blame. I’m intelligent enough to realize that when people say “you have to understand, it’s not your fault” – that they are speaking the palpable truth. On the face of it, I understand that sentiment perfectly. Still, there is this sense of responsibility that a life, a wonderful, successful and, yes, beautiful life was no more. The life of someone I’d shared a large part of mine with was ended before the whistle, by a cruel twist combined with, perhaps, a long dormant and troubled way of thinking that I had, (ostensibly or allegedly – you choose) held at bay by my presence in that beautiful life. Still, let me not get too hung up on the why and wherefore. It was a new reality I had to face. The last memory of Melanie is of her going though the departure gate at Centrair Airport in Nagoya, Japan with our little dog, Moe, on their way back to her home and family to sort through what was left, what had to be done etc. On the way home from the airport, I stopped the car suddenly on the Hokuriku Expressway north of Maibara, knowing that some heavy weight was about to fall upon me. I doubled over onto the passenger seat and heaved with grief, for there was a strong, strong feeling in the pit of my gut that I would never see them again. The well-worn phrase about having a carpet pulled from under you had a meaning to me. No matter that it was me who had failed to see any future in our relationship and that I was as sure as ever that it was the right thing for both of us, I cried as I have never cried before – not even at the merciful few funerals I have attended in my life. In retrospect I suppose I may have been crying for the death of something I had once felt so sure was invincible. Something that I had thought endless, had had its end. I had been wrong. Either way, it was a grief that was to revisit in spades less than a year later, to cripple me intermittently and to usher in another wave of the responsibility blues. I’m coping these days. There has been a lot of solo time interspersed with some beautiful time in the company of people I really love and whom I’m lucky enough to have love me. There has been a lot of procrastinating about getting in touch with people, friends of ours, some of whom know already the terrible news and some of whom will have no idea. I’ve looked at emails from all of them and thought about them, about how important they are in my life, were in our lives but I can’t bring myself to write anyone. I hardly call anyone. It’s something I need to let happen in its own time. I feel that, one day, when I’m feeling better, I will wake up and snap to at the keyboard, ready to move on. The day hasn’t come yet but finally I feel it may be close. Writing in this thing was something I thought would never happen again. I felt too many shameful feelings about what was going on in my mind to chance letting them slip forth on a blog, reading them myself and them shocking me to stone. I was already in the pig of all slumps with writing anyway. Keeping a blog had already gone from second nature to seventh or eighth in my list of natures and this terrible thing just knocked it out of the ballpark. I had given up on any idea of myself as someone who might be able to write. The other night I went to the GFT in Glasgow to see the film version of my absolute favourite book of all time “Ask The Dust” by John Fante. I had heard it was shit, that it had not even seen wide release in the US and I already felt protective of my book, how could anyone do such poetry justice given the current climate in movies? I was wrong and I was glad I made the 1.5 hr drive. The film was a delicate, subtle and honest treatment of the book that had made me want to throw away all the pens in the world the day after reading it. Colin Farrel and Salma Hayek turn in lifetime performances but I don’t want to get into reviewing it – later maybe. The thing is that, for the second time in my life, Arturo Bandini, the protagonist, made me look at myself differently. He made me want to pick up my socks and give myself a fucking good shake. I DO want to write, I DO still have something to say and, by fuck, if it takes every gram of determination in my being, I’m going to write. My reality is changed forever with the death of Melanie, I accept this. There will never be the sitting down to coffee in years to come, no “ah where did we go wrong, eh?” conversations that inform so many movies and TV shows, there will never be polite dinner with our new partners of several decades at which we tacitly acknowledge that it was for the best. But then these are the salve of the guilty conscience anyway, aren’t they? These are the dreamy balms that make everything possibly okay for the one doing the leaving. They are borne of the “guy wanting to stay friends” syndrome. I’m finding myself a new balm now. I’m sticking to my guns and reminding myself of what it was that led to my leaving and most importantly, I am working hard at dismantling that sense of responsibility. I’m prepared to carry a small amount of it but I cannot go on hodding the full thing plus tools and scaffold. I’ll try to maintain New Soup and, indeed, plans are afoot for a new blog altogether. This new domain will be more in the vein of the original Gaijinworld, complete with music, video, pics etc. You’ll have to promise to bear with me and forgive me if I sometimes stray to the maudlin – your eyes will be my audience – witness to the workings of a recovering mind. Speak to me about what you read and give me a kick in the shitter if I’m being a total nonce. Mainly – speak to me about what you think this new world of ours might be called. I’m ashamed to report that my writer’s block even extends to the naming of the place I’ll write in.