I listen to Greyhound by Swedish House Mafia. I love them. I try to write again and find another flow to let go of all the things of the day... find a way away from the boring humdrum again. I was pale when I got home. I almost fell asleep to the voices in the Sales meeting talking about Juniper's Simply Connected Story.... not sure how much longer I can take this. I smile as I think about the world I've gotten myself into. I didn't have the one on one review with my boss but I did book a meeting which means abother £65 in my pocket. It felt like old times... I rocked up to the job not knowing what the hell I was doing and blew them out of the water.... 15 meetings, 19 meetings, 18 meetings in the first few months with a target of 12. I shone, I drove, I led. I was the man..... I was coming home every night worried I had lost my dream and I would even cry. Now I don't. I have my goals being written for me and I need this outlet to understand them further. I am ready to do something exciting again, I'm ready to write again and I need the practice here. I got in to work 20mins late after blaming the bus I was on but it was because I was watching Jackass 3.5 on Sky+. I didn't have any fear. Phil Beesley mentioned "what time do you call this?". I smile thinking "the time I can be fucked coming in to this bullshit job". I don't mean it but it makes me happy to think this way and I'm motivated to get on the phones again and sell my little heart out. I e-mail, I text, I call.... I make all the organisational decision I have to make and I castrate Rob Neep a little more for annoying me. He is seen as something he is not.... I know the truth. I carry everyone's ass here. I lead the selling in to our other accounts and I have to report to no one until I start getting told to do so. The pressure is on and its really fucking boring, I don't give a fuck... I want to earn money... I want to be given more than everyone else because I deserve it. I've never fucked anyone over and I've always kept my integrity. I think I am ill though. I found out today that I passed the credit check for the new flat. I'd already organised moving out of this flat before I knew the other one was secure. Plan B was to move all of our possessions into a Big Yellow Storage and live in a double room hostal while looking for another flat... Thank god that didn't happen. I just want to get back on the phone and feel that buzz when I book a meeting and make the money. I want to make a friend out of Eugene Flood and I want Rob Neep to shut the fuck up. I want Will Lugg to be as good as I think he'll be and I want the girl I am interviewing on Wednesday to be what all the Sales guys have wanted for years. A female TM. Hmmm. Mixes things up. I want out... I want out on the road to make money. I want to make more money than everyone here and be on top of my game. I then want to buy all the film equipment I could ever want and make things, then buy all the training I need and the editing package I need although I have something I've never used. I am in IT Sales and think I'm a bit of a technophobe like my mother. I sit on the tube reading about useless bullshit in the Evening Standard thanking the lord I didn't pay for it and I wonder what to do next. I end up playing Klondike on me company Blackberry and thinking about being with Marlene in Portugal. I will book the time off work as soon as I finish typing this thought pad for the day. I practice and I practice in the hope it rubs off and makes me hungry to continue with every other writing project I have in my mind. I have ideas and don't write them down, I have film ideas and don't write them down I have thoughts about stupid situations that would enrich people's lives but I do nothing about them.... I'm arrogant, I'm self obsessed and I'm a freak of nature but I'm also none of those things, I'm a normal human being in London riding the fucking tube to work everyday doing almost nothing worth while and ruining the time I have on the planet. What is the point? What is the goal? What is the meaning in all this chaos? Why is everyone around me a fuck-head? Why are they not nicer? Why are they not good to each other? I am confused. Britain is the most fucked up place I know. No country is quite like it... we are bored out of our minds.... we have no pride, we have no dignity and we have no truth.... we hide, we moan, we complain, we do nothing to make our hearts better.... where are all the good people here? The ant race in London I only know of the bullshitters that believe their own lies. What the fuck is going on here?
Monday, 14 May 2012
Sunday, 13 May 2012
How I Did It - Blog 27 - Sunday 13th May 2012
Keeping this up has taken a back seat... or more acurately its been in a coma for over a year, shot in the head and left for dead at the side of the road... What is going on? I sit blogging thinking about a review I'm going to have with my Sales director. I work for an IT Sales company. Been there for over 11 months... I rose from telemarketer to team leader to overworked blackberry baring member of the London Rat Race. I listen to Swedish House Mafia as I write and it gets me in the right mood. I get on a tube everyday at about 8am and ride for 35mins before getting off near the Gerkin and entering the cheapest building in the Square Mile. I sell ideas to people. Our products are good. Our products are better than everyone else's, our way of doing things will save you money and your emplyees will do their job better meaning you may make more money along the way. We pitch, we speak, we talk, we liaise, we get food, drink and thinking about technology that makes the beating heart of every industry in the UK thrive... we drive the economy, we dig into tales of the future where data will become more common place than paper. In most aspects it already is. I dress it up as sexy, I dress it down as practical, I inspire a team of guys to get on the phone and pretend to think their job is important... or worse that it doesn't hang in a momentary balance of being lost if you don't hit the mark. They love me, I love them as much as I need to, its quite manipulative, I'm not there to be liked but I am, everyone hits their target with me and I am constantly interviewing the freaks of this world either face to face or more recently on the phone so I don't waste any more of my time. I've enjoyed it but lost the will to do the other.... The other is the film making.... I've managed to move flat with some major complications.... I've managed to get a car, although this was given to me by my parents who still subsidise a small part of my life (this annoys me greatly). I haven't managed to pay of any debts, I haven't managed to write any more short films, I haven't managed to engage in any further extra curricular activities to make my dreams happen other than get a job that could earn me in excess of £100K in 5 years time. I've had to learn more than I've ever learned before, I even have to teach and keep the status quo between many departments and people who are far more self important than they should or deserve to be, they're not exactly saving the world or finding the cure to cancer. They are arrogant, single minded and a little treacherous. I fit in well.... I love what I'm doing, I love having the experiences of working like I'm constantly on an episode of the Apprentice... I wear a suit everyday apart from Fridays when its our dress down day. I sell the job and my place in the company to everyone around me. I constantly sell my worth through e-mails and words to everyone around me, I make it known that I am the best for the job and they can see the return on their investment in me. I've gotten back into drinking. I've gotten a team of guys I call friends and the line between being their boss and their friend becomes more and more blurred. I've paid for less drink than I drank by some considerable margin.... expense accounts are signed off, salesmen aren't trusted and everyone takes advantage of the money that flows through the company. £20M turnover per year. The parent company is turning over £100M oer year. I've learnt words like Run-Rate, Telephony and Topology. I understand how a Storage Area Network is virtualised and how it works. I understand things like load-balancing, throughput and latency. I know the difference between redundancy and resiliancy although I mix them up from time to time. I bore family and friends who want to know what I do.... you can see the colour in their faces drain away. I'm a talker, a blagger, a scum-bag only interested in circumventing the drawn out route to riches to pay for an aesthetic materialistic dream rather than the life fulfilling dream I've been yearning for and I'm now at a connundrum. I have the same connundrum every few months and I always end up asking myself whether I want to invest or forget, invest or forget? I always invest but my pay fluctuates a little more than I'd like it to. The plan was to have the solid job and make films around it until I got paid enough to make the films or one of them broke through, if one brakes through then I would be set for life. Set in a high life for the rest of mine and enough time to do it again, and again and again. Set for my childs life, my parents life, my parent in law;s lives and my wive's life. SET FOR LIFE! how much time would you devote to getting that?
Monday, 20 December 2010
How I Did It - Blog 26 - Sunday 19th December 2010
I sit here watching a programme on Cliff Richard wondering about what happened over the past few weeks to follow my goal. After the Pizzaman showing I had to get a bus back to London from Cardiff at 4am in order to go straight to work at 9am in Wimbledon. I felt exhausted but happy that I’d done this crazy schedule. I seem to thrive on challenges. I went home after work and slept for 14 hours straight before having to go back to work again and finish the ticketing week. I had a great Sunday with my special lady and wake on the Monday morning with the most bizarre kind of flu. My body tingled all over, I was dizzy, hot and cold, sweaty and my muscles ached. I phoned into work to say I wasn’t going in and spent a difficult day feeling horrible. I reminded myself of an old man when I made my way to the kitchen to get hot honey and lemon or effervescent paracetamol. I put a DVD in and pause it half way through so I can sleep. I wake, I take drugs and then I sleep some more. I feel terrible.
I know I can’t afford to take more than one day off so get into work the next day feeling like I’m going to die. I feel like I’m going to be sick, I’m convinced I have bird flu that H1N1 thing but ignore my need to go to the GP and stick to the plan of earning money through selling tickets. I’m coughing, blowing my nose and joking about having ‘man-flu’. In truth I shouldn’t be there. I completely hate the next few days. I make the flu last longer by working a full week. I know I’ve got to send a few e-mails and contact a few people in order to tie up the loose ends of Pizzaman. I can not be bothered to do anything. I’m not writing any more, I’m not reading, I’m not motivated to do anything connected to working out what to do next or even think about how to make a feature film. I know I’m going to my parent’s house for the weekend with Marlene to celebrate my great auntie’s 100th birthday but have warned my mother that we may not make it due to my illness.
For some reason I decide to go to a friend’s flat on Thursday evening to participate in his on-line radio comedy show. Whilst there I get a call from my heart to say she is having the same flu symptoms as my self. I make my apologies and get myself home to be a good husband. She is very ill. I call my father to really say we may not make it to Cardiff. We’re both gutted. I maintain my nurses roll and make sure we’re both feeling as best as we can by Friday evening. Luckily my special girl is feeling well enough to think about going to Cardiff, I’m also feeling a lot better so we call my parents to say we’re going to make it and they’re very happy. I’m happy too, we’re going to have a very early Christmas with them on Saturday night and then go to my Grandmother’s house on Sunday for the 100th birthday party. I still haven’t done anything to further myself up to this point.
We get on the bus and I spend the whole trip playing angry birds on my iPhone. I sometimes get hooked on games and end the plague on my life by deleting said travesty on my iDevice. It actually makes the journey go by very quickly. I’d bought a paper and brought a book to read on the journey. Far from opening my mind I’ve wasted my time but enjoyed it as I did. Is there any difference?
My father greets us from the bus and we get to may parent’s home where we relax and chat over MacDonalds we pick up on the way home. I love the chatting, it’s the first time in over a year where I’ve gone to just visit family. Usually I’ve had something to do for Pizzaman or had a meeting to help myself in some way. Spending a relaxing time with family is a new experience for me. I really like it, I don’t feel in such a panicked rush to get things done. I nip to Blockbuster to get a few movies to watch after we’ve exchanged some presents and get back to talk more with my parents and have our family Christmas. It’s a lovely evening. Everyone is all smiles. As the evening goes on we watch the film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice which proves a very entertaining, vibrant and well made movie. I enjoy it very much. We’d also hired Inception but didn’t manage to watch before we all went to bed.
I take a break from recalling the past to clean, cook, organise and arrange my abode before I go to Portugal for Christmas. I sit here past midnight watching Lions For Lambs directed by Robert Redford. The script is incredible. Matthew Michael Carnahan. The same man who scripted The Kingdom and other political satires, the man is a masterful writer. I am in awe. Even Tom Cruise gives a good performance in this film. All the elements are there. Also in that break I hired a movie from the library, Solitary Man with Michael Douglas. I’d never heard of the film before but loved it again because of the script that went along with it. That’s how you get people involved, that’s how you get money to follow, that’s how you get your film made. A script that will make your eyes bleed with the want of more and more and more. I want to spend the time to write something that good. It will be a hell of a journey I’m sure.
I can’t help but think about the journey I’ve just been on. A two year venture that didn’t make me money. I say an episode of Jackass where they talk about what they are doing now and at the end Steve’o said that after the first series of Jackass he was famous still had no money and was unemployed. Even the Jackass boys made nothing from the first series. It gives me hope. I think about what I could become if I gave up. I would be the Pizzaman. The guy who made Pizzaman, the guy known for a small art work on a platform that isn’t fully formed yet. I’d be a wet blanket; I’d be a hypocrite. Because I have thought about leaving it, leaving the dream, going on with my life. What direction would that be? What does it make me to continue? Big forks in the road.
After having a day with the family for my great auntie’s 100th birthday I go home. I loved it, my wife loved it, my parents loved it and then I’m back in work on Monday morning waiting for a day of on Friday. I can not be bothered to try and sell memberships, its my rebellion. It’s also ironic that by rebelling I’m effectively losing money; £1 commission per membership, I got good as well. I realise I absolutely despise the job. On Wednesday I think about becoming a Runner again for a Drama series, start from the bottom. On Thursday, out of the blue, I get a call from someone in Sky asking if I were free to work from January to April on a programme called This Is Jinsy, a new sit-com for Sky TV. Turns out I’ve had my number given to the Production Co-ordinator by Stephanie Burke a Production Manager I worked for almost four years ago for the first time. Again I’m surprised to get a recommendation from her as I’d worked for a friend of hers a few years ago and resigned a week into it because I hated it so much. That was a drama series too. Stephanie happens to be the Production Manager for This Is Jinsy. I call back and arrange to meet them in the morning. Friday happens to be my day off. My mind begins to spend the money before I meet them. I just hope that Steph wont remember my quiting. Funnily enough I also worked for her on ITV’s House Gift and commuted from Cardiff to London to do the job, she only found out very late on into the process. I effectively held the truth back so I could get the job. This was over a year ago now.
I get to the interview early and wait until twenty minutes after the meeting is due for the Production Co-ordinator to meet me. I go upstairs where I see Stephanie again, she’s pregnant. We exchange niceties and I keep my dignity by being honest and straight when if I really wanted the job should have lied about everything, as is the way in London. A fabricated story is more likely to get me a job rather than telling the truth. A small part of me likes Steph so I stay true to myself and of course get a call at the end of the day to say I didn’t get the job. I’m gutted for about four seconds before I let go of it completely. It’s good to feel secure in regard to finance but the job was driving, making coffee and working long hours for bad pay, no respect and no chance of promotion. I broke my own rule of never becoming a Runner again by harbouring these thoughts of actually doing this job. I knew it was a waste of my time and talent but I was about to sell myself cheaply to it again. I wonder why I’d do that. I continue to. For me it would be to make money only when I really need to progress into some sort of career. It’s a strange way this path.
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
How I Did It - Blog 25 - Tuesday 7th December 2010
I’ve got to get myself back into writing and practicing writing as much as I can. Motivation to sit down and do so will no longer be such a big problem. Most of the people I seem to talk about in regard to writing don’t necessarily do it and are always after the answers as to what makes it easy. I know there is no quick fix. There is no process or piece of infrastructure for this one, you’ve just got to do it in any way possible. So I resolve to looking back at the night we showed Pizzaman.
To see Pizzaman on the big screen is a wonderful experience more for the fact of being able to observe reaction from people. I think a lot of people thought I might be disappointed by either the turn out or the reactions I was getting but I managed to put it all into context. This is a bar/gig venue for bands with projected imagery rather than for short films. The type of people there were either people in Pizzaman or who have an invested interest in me or Teilo. People had not paid to see a movie and there were no seats. The age range was early 20s wanting to listen to the music being played. By the time the first episode had played most had lost interest. By the time the fourth episode was playing there was a handful of people left watching. The attention span in a bar is pretty low now, not that it wasn’t before, but when you consider that most people never finish a movie in a cinema without looking at their phone at least once the odds of holding attention in this space are slim to none.
With that said the highest point came during episode 4. Two guys I’d never met before were standing in the middle of the dance floor together transfixed to the screen laughing at Pizzaman. Its what I needed. An outside opinion to see if what I thought was funny and worked actually was funny and did work if you paid attention to the episode. I was lifted by the compliment. Then one of the bands came on and started quoting from Episode 4 as they were setting up, making people laugh more. Although this is not full justification for spending the last two years working on a singular project it instilled confidence in me. It gave me a resolve that I could do this for a living, all I need to do is monetise my skills.
Little tricks to grab attention was to put the volume up far louder than it should be, forcing people to either speak louder to each other or watch. As I suspected the impactual scenes were the attention grabbers; the scene with the girls screaming at each other, some of the darker topics when they were heard and the car chase. All the cleches worked. What didn’t work was the big screen. It was obvious that it wasn’t directed for a big screen audience and, at points, felt very amateurish, things that you may get away with if watching on a computer screen on your own.
I enjoyed the night on the whole and I was also filming all of the music acts as they performed, with Teilo’s camera. As the final band was going on it was time to show Pizzaman episodes 13 and 14. Throughout the episodes band members stood in front of the screen and even strummed guitars for tuning and sometimes strummed for no reason. I was livid. I also didn’t want to cause a scene but made the decision not to film them. I refuse to mention the name of the band here as they are all complete a**holes and don’t deserve any kind of publicity. What made my blood boil was the lack of respect for another artist’s work especially as I was the one that got them into the centre pages of the South Wales Echo that day. It really sickened me and destroyed the evening. I knew there was a lack of organisation but this was too much. It really signalled the end of Pizzaman for me and now whenever I am asked about the band in question I am sure to lie about the quality of their work, down right shoddy.
Monday, 6 December 2010
How I Did It - Blog 24 - Saturday 5th December 2010
I’m not sure where to go. I’m free. I’m very, very tired. I’m relaxing. Thursday was a success. I get to Cardiff and get a lift to Canton with my father immediately. We wait for 30 minutes for Teilo to get back in touch as I’m meant to pick up the Pizzaman episodes on discs from him. The plan is to then go to pick up my mother from work and drop both my father and mother home so I can go to Penarth to have tea with my cousins. I get a little impatient as Teilo doesn’t get in touch so I decide to do the next part of my journey. As a back up I asked Gareth Sturgess the Pizzaman editor to drop the series onto DVD but I made the mistake of leaving it too long to ask and he wasn’t able to do it although he e-mails me as I’m going to pick up my mother that he is starting to do it at that moment. There are no guarantees that he’ll have it finished in time for me to get to Newport and back.
En route to my mother I also get a text from Teilo to say he’s actually at home on the other side of Cardiff. His phone’s battery had died earlier on. I get to mum and then drop mum and dad home so I can take the car. I go to Teilo’s home to realise he’s now living above a florist. I get the Z1 HDV camera, tripod and the discs from him and head to Penarth. I’m on a bit of a schedule as if I’m five minutes late I’ll be stuck in traffic for best part of an hour. I see it ahead but it’s moving continuously and I feel I’m lucky with the lights.
At my cousin’s home it’s really great to spend some time with them. I have an hour there before I’ve got to get myself to Cardiff. During my tea of scrambled egg and beans, which I don’t feel is quite enough for me, I’ve also not eaten properly all day and was looking forward to a decent feeding that never comes, Gareth the editor texts to say the DVD will be ready in an hour. This puts me in quite a predicament, I could leave immediately and get to Newport and the evening in time or I could honour my word of staying for an hour with a part of my family I feel I’ve neglected due to Pizzaman for the best part of two year, and with children two years is a long time to have no real contact. Of course I stay. I learn something very important. Pizzaman may not have worked due to parental control. Censorship is regulated by a national body on the internet, that being the mum and dads of this world making sure their children are not adversely influenced by images or videos on the internet. I find this out when my cousin Jenny tells me she’s been reading my facebook messages and I ask if she’s seen the series. Instead of an answer from her there is a subtle but very quick ‘no’ from Jenny’s step father. This says it all to me and I realise that getting into school’s was almost an impossibility for Pizzaman. It was never going to explode very easily at all, our task quashed by something so far out of our control that if I wanted to do any better I needed to invent a kid’s version You Tube.
Thankful for the lesson I say my goodbyes and jump into the car. I call Gareth to see if the DVD will be ready anytime soon. He says it will be so I say I’m on my way and take his post code. I hang up and call James Morris who I’ve been in touch with all day letting him know about bands and artists I’ve found, to tell him I’m nipping to Newport. He tells me he needs a DVD player so I hang up and call my folks to bring their spare one. I’m amazed how disorganised James is and fear that the night will happen only a few times and fizzle. I hope it doesn’t. I then drive as fast as I can to Newport, time is very tight. I’m all go go go. I’m using my iPhone as a sat nav so going a little slower than I want to in order not to crash whilst following it. I finally get there and hear a voice calling me as I walk in the wrong direction. Gareth with the DVD saying one of the episodes doesn’t play properly so has dropped it onto another disc. I tell him I love him and get back into the car. I have 15 minutes to get to Buffalo Bar in Cardiff. I call James to say I’ll be there in 20.
I race the motorway and get there to meet my parents who help with the kit and I go off and park over the road running myself back to the bar from the car. I find James standing on a stool adjusting the projector with no luck. The video image is fuzzy and buttons are pressed to no avail. I run back to the car to get my laptop in case its the DVD player. I get back and James is still on the stool, for a moment there it comes into focus perfectly. I go to the DVD player again and fiddle with the wires they’d plugged into the back, presto it becomes a crisp picture. We tape the wire into a position that will hold it in place to replicate the image on the screen. With that done James asks if I’m all ready to go. I say yes and he asks if I could announced the start downstairs in the bar. I raise my voice and feel like I’m at a church fate as I bellow ‘ladies and gentleman’. People make their way up.
CT and Hilly from Radio Cardiff jump up onto the stage and I go with them feeling a bit like a gooseberry with nothing to say. I ask that they bring Teilo up there as well. He comes to stand next to me as CT & Hilly introduce the night, I whisper to Teilo that I have no idea why we’re on the stage at that point. Then we’re properly introduced to the crowd of about 50 people and we say our thank-yous to cast and crew and audience. I then run to the DVD player and press play and there it is, our creation on the big screen.
How I Did It - Blog 23 - Thursday 2nd December 2010
I’m in a café above Victoria coach station… I was in a café above Victoria coach station when I tried to kill some time catching up on the blog but I got a call from an ill Bobby Singh saying he can’t make it tonight. Tonight is the big screen showing of Pizzaman in Buffalo Bar in Cardiff. The original artist pulled out due to illness as well and Bobby was his replacement. I’ve hit the phone, finding people to help out and come close to success. Actually I was in the queue for the Megabus coach while on the phone to Betsan of the group Freshold Crew. I felt impatient as I had to get off the phone to her asap as I needed to go into my phone’s e-mail and show my bus ticket to the driver. In face as I write this on the bus to Cardiff I’m getting calls from people asking questions about the night or apologising for not being able to cover the band slot. It gives me hope that people still like me enough to call me about something to do with Pizzaman considering the e-mails I’ve been getting. I even had one guy threaten to hurt me on facebook.
This morning I made the unwise decision to look at who had unsubscribed from the Chimp Mailer. It was quite a shock. I’d never thought I’d be so affected by knowing that certain people did not support what I did. I admit that I rinsed every contact I had to spread the word but I never thought I’d be left by some of them. You really do learn who your friends are and who you can trust. During the facebook side of the campaign my number of friends diminished considerably as well. I only noticed by accident when I wanted to see how one of the writers from Pizzaman was getting along. Suddenly I needed to ask permission to be his friend again. I checked someone else and found the same. I realised I am a human being and remain upset with them. My resolve is that you really can’t trust people you meet in London no matter how closely you work with them or consider them friends. Other shocks were from people I considered mentors and people who’ve been supportive. They have every right to stop hearing about it but it does leave a sting.
In between writing I’ve taken yet more calls, one to say a rap group is able to cover the slot. This is great news. As I ‘m on the call I get a text that I read after I hang up. It says that James Morris has found another band and accepted them. I reluctantly call the rappers back to say it’s a no go and fell a bit shitty about it as it was so good of them to accept at such short notice. Life goes on and I feel like I’m on the path to Mount Doom to destroy the ring, there will always be a part of me wanting to hold on to it. I know I must let go.
In other news my film review I did with Jim Gault was accepted by WalesOnline and I can have it shown on their site. I will be doing them once a month and they’ll provide the images I can use due to their rights issues. Jim has really done me a favour and I found it incredibly ironic as I’d not wanted to do it in the first place when it came to the crunch. I said I’d see it through but I had no burning desire to make it a success. I even met with Jim again to go over the edits he’d done. I softened a lot of the edits and had him rearrange the order I spoke and it eventually paid off. This is a very good platform as I was looking to keep a hold of the great contact I have with Media Wales and WalesOnline. Maybe one day they will have a pay wall to be jumped over but for now the future is enough.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
15 Days Of Pizzaman - Episode 15 - The End
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