I feel I haven't been angry enough recently on this blog. Just as I felt I've been mellowing and getting soft in my old age, something comes along that makes me properly angry and feeling all energised again. The thing in question occurred tonight while making an exceedingly rare visit to
E4 to watch the new Smallville series (its OK, but disappointingly teeny - nowhere near dark enough). I saw a trailer for a new series skulking its vile way on to our airwaves. That programme is Gok's Fashion Fix. Now, just the trailer had me hopping mad. Here's a precis from the Channel 4 website.
"Looking for exclusive access to celebs and their wardrobes? Insider access to top end fashion and the best designers on the block? Trying to achieve 'that' look for less? Well look no further, as the fashion juggernaut that is Gok's Fashion Fix has arrived! "Long-term readers of Nine Tenths Full of Penguins will know I despise the whole 'fashion' thing(those who have met me in person will also know I am one of the least fashionable people to walk this fair earth).
For some reason that escapes me, normal people queue up to take fashion advice from this man, his coterie of Z-list nobodies and a co-presenter who looks disturbingly like a coat hanger. Just look at him, I want to take that self satisfied smirk and smash it into a wall.
I am sick to death of people on TV and in real-life telling me what to do.
"Wear this, don't wear that, have your hair cut like this, don't have a beard - its soooo 90s" blah, blah, blah......
I don't need anyone's advice or to follow anyone's fashion 'rules'. If I like it, I will wear it - I don't care if its out of date or if it makes me look older than I am. I apply the same rules to the films & TV I watch, the books I read, the computer games I play and the music I listen to.
There seems to be a weakness in some people that doesn't allow them to make their own choices. They will moo contentedly at Heat magazine or Big Brother and allow f***ing idiots like Gok Wan to dictate their wardrobe and lifestyle contents while their brains and free will dribble out of their ears.
By way of example, I was speaking to someone a couple of weeks ago who asked me if I'd been watching Big Brother. I was delighted to be able to say that I haven't watched any of it. They asked me why, in tones that suggested I was clearly criminally insane to have missed a houseful of misfits making toast and bitching about one another for 24 hours every day. When I replied (diplomatically I thought) that it wasn't really my thing; they asked what was on TV that I liked. I thought for a moment and said I was really enjoying Dr Who and Battlestar Galactica. They looked at me with pitying eyes and said "Oh, nerd programmes"
So I brutally beat them about the head with their own copy of Heat....
After which I felt an awful lot better.
I love being considered a nerd by 'trendy' people. I like that I have the freedom to like whatever I want. So here is a list of some of the things I like (some or all of them nerdy), and I don't care if you don't like them. You can sneer all you want. You have my permission.
Battlestar Galactica
Top Gear
Dr Who
Reading actual books
Good movies
Really bad movies
My goatee beard (12 years old and counting!)
Cricket
World of Warcraft
Sigur Ros
Mock the Week repeats on Dave
Comfortable shirts
My games consoles
That I'd rather go to my local with a few mates than go clubbing
Wildlife documentaries
Playing cards or Yahtzee with H
My mad scientist eyebrows and the fact I'm starting to get grey hairs
Yes, feel much better now.....
