15 November, 2011

Arabrot Interview

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , — spiderwebdesign @ 20:49

I’ve been neglecting this blog a lot lately, and recently I even deleted my facebook and twitter accounts – and everyone knows how much I love to tweet. I’ve just felt that my heart’s not really in it at the moment.

Still, it’s not all been doom and gloom – I’ve had some really fun nights out in the last couple of weeks.

Two weeks ago on Halloween, I was sent to a gig at the Shacklewell Arms, in trendy Dalston. My mission was to interview Arabrot, about their latest album, Solar Anus. They’re from Norway and they play “Noise Rock”. I shit ye not.

I was slightly nervous beforehand, but being cool young stud that I am, I handled it in my stride, and conducted the interview with style and professionalism (honest, I did…).

The band were actually really nice and friendly – very down-to-earth – and they had lots of intelligent things to say. You wouldn’t expect that from a band who just released an album called Solar Anus, now would you?

They were decent enough to hang out with me before the gig , and introduced me to various people – their girlfriends, the support acts, some PR people and the editor from Mojo magazine, no less.

The gig was brilliant, and I got very drunk, needless to say.

The interview and gig review (as well as some other music reviews I’ve done recently) can be found on the Penny Black Music website here: http://pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/AuthorPage.aspx?id=120

They’re mainly made up of cliches and Spinal Tap quotes…

4 July, 2011

RIP Ryan Dunn

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , — spiderwebdesign @ 21:58

11th June 1977 – 20th June 2011

I haven’t had time to blog lately, but I just wanted to say a few words about Ryan Dunn who died in a car crash last month.

Ryan Dunn starred in Jackass, CKY and Viva La Bam – all of which I used to be a big fan of. Out off the Jackass crew, most people like Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera or Steve-O the best, but for my money, Ryan Dunn and Chris Pontius were the coolest.

Dunn had a quiet, dry sense of humour and a very impressive grizzly beard (something I aspire to one day). He also of the the best collections of assorted random tattoos I have ever seen. I get a lot of hits to this site every day from people search for “Steve-O + tattoos” – but try doing a Google search for “Ryan Dunn + tattoos”; not a lot comes up. And that makes me a bit sad.

RIP Ryan Dunn

16 May, 2011

15 Minutes of Fame

Being the boring sod/IT dweeb that I am, I check my site stats in Google Analytics daily. I was interested to see that I’m getting quite a few clickthrough hits from a Russian live journal site. I have no idea what any of the text says (it’s all in Russian) and I haven’t bothered to translate it – it’s probably better NOT to know. Anyway, I am grateful to them, so I include a link back to the page here: http://chehonin.livejournal.com/395383.html

The same picture of me and my tattooed torso (Russian Criminal style, a la photoshop) features in a flickr group called “Tattooed Gay Men”. I found this pretty funny as a) I’m not gay and b) most of the tattoos in the picture aren’t real. They actually emailed me to ask permission if they could use the picture, and I just couldn’t say no (warning: the group features many willies): http://www.flickr.com/groups/32213764@N00/pool/page3/

Incidentally, “15 Minutes of fame” isn’t just a quote by Andy Warhol; it’s also a reference to a song by Sheep On Drugs (great band). The former lead singer – Duncan X – is now a tattooist. Which leads me back to the first line of this post: being the boring sod that I am…

29 April, 2011

Russian Criminal Tattoo

I’ve been doing too many home tattoos on myself lately (3 in the last week).

I started this skull on my thigh ages ago, but stopped as it wasn’t very good. Then a few days ago I decided to have another crack at it, so I added an oak leaf to it and started sharpening up the outline on the skull.

I’m going to try and fix the crown and cigar next, before finishing the skull outline fully, and then lastly I’ll try and add some shading.

It was inspired by the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia by Sergey Vasiliev and Danzig Baldayev. The best thing about “criminal” tattoos – is that if they turn out to look shit – they still look authentic.

In other unrelated news, this evening I managed to block up my bath plughole with my pubes.

17 April, 2011

I’m Back! (new job)

So I’ve not been blogging much in the last fortnight – most of you who follow me on twitter will know that I’ve been “coding some php”, but that’s about it. Well I can now announce that I as a result of this – I have a brand-spanking-new job as a junior web developer. I really cannot put into words how happy I am about this (and not just because I won’t have to do any “tech support” any more). The team I’m going to be working with are really nice and cool (if they’re reading this – Hi guys!), and I’m very excited about the projects I’ll be working on.  I totally messed up my interview test but they hired me anyway, which was nice. I have 2 weeks to get to grip with Zend framework before I start, wish me luck…

In addition to this I’ve had a barrage of good fortune lately that started after that pigeon shat on my head (which just goes to show that it WAS good luck after all).

Firstly, after I complained about the lack of cleavage on National Cleavage Day – a beautiful girl sent me a picture of her lovely cleavage. I love small gestures like this – although the cleavage wasn’t small –  totally unexpected and really made my day. She lives in America but she she’s coming to visit the UK in May, so I’m determined to meet her and get her to tattoo my leg.

Then on the following day I had a double-dose of good luck; a very nice chap agreed to let me do some online journalism in exchange for some free gig tickets and CDs – something I’ve always wanted to do. Then a horse I bet on in The Grand National came second and won me a tenner. A small victory, but a victory all the same.

This was followed by a phonecall out of the blue that made my night. Abbie is an ace web designer/developer/seo expert who I’ve been bantering with on twitter for a while. This banter led to a drunken telephone conversation at 2am on a Sunday night (technically morning) f. I really enjoyed the chat and it was laugh-out-loud funny – I instantly felt like I’d been mates with Abbie for ages, although we’ve never met. Again, sometimes it’s the small, unexpected gestures that really count in life.

It doesn’t end there – I have more stories to tell – but I’ll continue tomorrow night..

Thanks for reading..

29 March, 2011

That Bloody Shard

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — spiderwebdesign @ 22:52

Has a walk through central London yesterday, and walked past The Shard. This building has annoyed from it’s outset; as far as I’m concerned, London shouldn’t be a city of skyscrapers. New York exists already.

Still, it’s pretty hard not to be impressed by The Shard when you’re confronted by the immensity of it, up close. Even so, I haven’t warmed to it. You can see it looming from pretty much anywhere in London, and I hate that. It simply spoils the view.

They seem to be knocking things down all over London at the moment, replacing everything with glass and shiny white slabs. As far as I’m concerned, they’re robbing London of it’s character. People come to London because there’s history here in it’s streets – you can feel it as you walk around.

I like London to be grimy, seedy and old.

My grandad was a builder and he laid some some cobbled pavement at the Elephant & Castle donkey’s years ago. They ripped those up recently, and it looks really mundane now.

I was glad when the protesters started smashing things in London the other day; not because I agree with their plight (I don’t); nor because I’m an anarchist – but simply because I hate what London is becoming.

3 March, 2011

Late Night Ramblings From the Void

Filed under: Random, Uncategorized, Video — Tags: , , , — spiderwebdesign @ 00:40

It’s gone midnight and I’m still up trying to code a CMS (content management system) for work. I’m using the CodeIgniter framework – which I usually enjoy – but tonight it’s just not happening. I’m drinking red wine at the same time and that probably doesn’t help.

I was supposed to get this finished 2 days ago, but I’m having real concentration problems at work lately.  As soon I get into some PHP someone asks me to looks at their blackberry, or moans that Outlook is slow etcetera etcetera ad infinitum. The really good thing about working from home is that it’s peaceful and it’s much easier to concentrate. But then again, I suppose the good thing about working from the office is that you’re never tempted to pull your pants down and have a wank. (Well, not often anyway).

And on that note, here’s a favourite clip of mine. I remember seeing this on a TV show called The Word, on a Friday night, back when I was about 13 or 14.  This was in the early-mid 90s, before the days of The Spice Girls and their frequent, annoying “nip slips” – and after seeing it I decided I wanted to be a punk. I also instantly fell in love with L7, and have been ever since.

If you’ve not seen it before – it’s worth watching till the end – even if you hate the music ;)

Tomorrow night I’m meeting up with a friend for a drink, which I’m really looking forward to. The fact that the friend is attractive, funny and clever helps of course, but even so – sometimes I still wish this was the mid-90s and I was 14 again.

24 January, 2011

Upcoming Gigs – 2011

I found out on Friday that Suede are playing 3 consecutive nights at Brixton in May. They’ll be playing their first 3 albums (one album per night) and I’m quite excited about it. The best thing about them playing only their first 3 albums, is that it means they won’t be playing She’s in Fashion. I’ll probably be going to all 3 nights, but I draw the line at rebuying their “digitally remastered” albums. Balls to that.

I saw Suede twice last year, blogged here.

I’m also going to see Chas ‘n’ Dave’s fairwell gig in March and the mighty Iron Maiden in the summer. Hell, yeah!

I’m also hoping that some more gigs get pencilled in soon for Joana and The Wolf, Electric Wizard and Sheep on Drugs (and if you don’t know who any of these bands are – shame on you).

20 December, 2010

Airguns For Sale

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , — spiderwebdesign @ 22:17

Impress your friends by packing heat – carry an airgun today!

I bought these a few years ago – with the intention of selling them on the black market to local punks and hoodlums. Yet here I still am trying to flog them through my blog.

You can’t buy these in the shops any more – as they realistic replica guns – and you could wave them in the face of shop-keepers and demand they empty the till. Or something.

Anyway, they’re for sale – so if you want one, just email me (sensible offers please):

tom@tomfogarty.com

Desert Eagle, as used by Vinnie Jones in Snatch.

8 November, 2010

Terry Alderton – World Travel Awards Gig

Filed under: Random, Uncategorized — Tags: , — spiderwebdesign @ 21:55

Not blogged much last week as I’ve been really busy at work. Not had a day off in 2 weeks and I’ve been doing really long days too.

The company I work for (World Travel Awards) puts on Awards Ceremonies for companies in the travel industry. This Sunday was the 2010 Grand Final, hence all the work. The event was held at a swanky hotel in Park Lane called Grosvenor House, and my main role was to do the IT; set up a network/printer and such. On Saturday I worked from 9am – 9pm. Then on Sunday, 9am-1:30am(Monday!). Then back to work at 9:30am on the same day…

I got to help out at the event too, ushering people around, and general arsing about at the “Photo Wall”. I also had to work behind the stage with some models (whose job was to collect the punters and take them to the stage). I have to say, I had some bad preconceptions about the models beforehand. I thought they were going to ignore me or be snobby, but in actual fact they were really lovely down-to-earth girls. I didn’t get to sleep with any of them though.

The event host was a stand-up comedian called Terry Alderton. He was really funny and a really nice bloke (as was Bobby Davro last year). I got to to talk to him behind the stage between segments and he was so laid-back and cool.

His comedy talents were totally wasted on that audience though, who mainly just stared at him aghast. Bearing in mind that the audience consisted of clients from all around the world – Terry Alderton basically ripped the piss out of the whole world, nation by nation.

Example: Opening gag of the evening. “Are there any Germans here tonight? Well I can recreate a few sounds to make you feel at home..“. He then proceeded to do a spot on impression of an air raid siren. Bloody brilliant!

He’s well worth checking out, and he’s bald like me too:

Update: 12th November 2010

Found this article online about the event:

http://www.hoteldesigns.co.uk/industrynews/news_8321.html

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