Jacob Kelly's Funeralopolis Vol 2. Issue 10: All Things Must Pass by Jacob Kelly

Vol. 2 Issue 10: All Things Must Pass

Double Feature

All Things Must Pass

Countdown to Ecstasy The incoming New Year brings back the signature style end of year list done as prose and mixed in with a few of the key events leading up to the final day of the year. Will Kelly get his list in before the countdown comes?

The Happening The last film to be reviewed in this volume will be Sofia Coppola's Priscilla. One of her finer studies in privilege without power but as always stronger in its depictions of boredom, isolation, Freudian fears and abandonment. Afterwards an attempt at wrapping up I Dream of Mushroom Clouds (Vol.2 Issue 5) cliffhanger ending.

Two Tales Two Spectacles...

Countdown to Ecstasy Another sink. Another bathroom. Another regurgitation. The time is 5am and I'm in another tight spot. A sickening case of food poisoning. It's not my first and it probably won't be my last. Although, this will go down as one of the worst. For the last 7 hours, Jacob Kelly has been puking his guts up. Kitchen sink blocked, bathroom sink now blocked. Things do not look good.

Check the calendar. I'm ticked off until January the 2nd. Today is 20th December. 13 days to adopt the position of public menace. Was I up to the task? We choose to be a public menace. I see Leather Lung have a new single out, Spit in the Casket. These are a relatively new band who have transformed the idea of being a drunken fool spilling drinks and annoying just about everyone around you in to a true art form. Perfect for such an occasion. Soon as the riff kicks in, I'm calling the boys and getting the cans in. 'Tis the season after all. Lucien Cramp is in town, we make our way through the tinnies, sit back and watch The Big Lebowski. And to think I was supposed to be in work today. Happy Christmas, Kyoko.

If we are to regain full health, we must come up with a better system. Consider the facts. Evidence has shown excessive consumption of water and movement to be adding to the problem. However, lack of water is causing intense dehydration. So must drink. Yet, the journey back and forth to refill a glass of water is taking its toll. Note to self, must do better. Ok, my hypothesis is that if I can find my gargantuan flask from the old hiking days and have 3 sips every 5 minutes on the dot, this will reduce movement, conquer dehydration and most importantly stop the sickness. Well, enough fucking around. Time to put plan in to action.

Now could be time to get the first movie in of Funeralopolis's top 20 of 2023. Before we get any whining, I am yet to see the following: Napolean, Ferrari, Anatomy of a Fall, Fallen Leaves, The Boy and the Heron, The Holdovers, Hit Man, The Beast, Rotting in the Sun, Last Summer, The Zone of Interest, Thanksgiving and Poor Things. So no doubt this list will be subject to change once they all come available, such is the problem of being a British cinephile. You know how to change this though people. Get Mr Funeralopolis himself sent to some film festivals. Only way to do this is to increase readership. Funeralopolis isn't Fight Club so absolutely talk about it. When you're firing off those work emails, maybe send out a link to Funeralopolis, I guarantee it will ensure it finds the receiver well. Also, we're on the verge of embracing a physical format too, so get some copies in and then piss your neighbour off by posting them through his letterbox.

Success. Success. Success. From planning to execution. A well worked move from top to bottom. "Trust the process", as Jose Mourinho would say. Only thing for it now is to get some sleep and rest up. I take a few days off work and make my return on the Wednesday. Just 3 more days of this shit and we're done for Christmas. About an hour in comes this complaint call that's way above my pay grade. Quick message to the help chat, not the finest way to begin any morning. Manager responds with, "aren't you supposed to be on annual leave?". "Am I?", I reply. "Get gone. Disappear", he demands. I don't need a second request to leave work. How had this happened? How had this transpired? Whilst I was off ill, work took the liberty of putting through all my remaining holidays. They just forgot to tell me. Oh well. All I have to do is get this complaints call dealt with. Never been happier to take such a call. You say hello, I say goodbye.

You may say that's far too many films left to see to be doing a year end list. Times up, I'm afraid. We can't go backwards, we can only go forwards. My list from last year mostly remains the same except, The Master Gardener and Pacifiction turned out to be two of the best movies of the year that weren't accessible at the time. Next year, I will probably mention a few if there's any drastic changes. But for now just take a seat and hear me out.

In at number 20, we have Ernesto Diaz Espinoza's Fist of the Condor. You may or may not be familiar with this Chilean filmmaker. He's picking up where Robert Rodriguez left off with regards to Latin America exploitation filmmaking. Not that I was disappointed with Hypnotic (it was too amusingly bad and Ben Affleck stinkers is my recreational drug of choice) but if you were, Espinoza is your ticket back to movies like Planet Terror, Desperado and From Dusk Til Dawn. He regularly collaborates with Marko Zaror, a partnership similar to Jesse V. Johnson and Scott Adkins in terms of director and fighter. With Fist of the Condor they've taken all the ingredients of a classic martial arts movie then woven them in to a very singular direction complete with chapters like Kill Bill. Espinoza makes them fast and delivers all goods. He does things the Funeralopolis way. Show him some respect. A few days go by after seeing Lucien Cramp and I'm ready for my next evening of drinks. Enter The Highwayman. First on the agenda is dog walking. The Highwayman hardly ever leaves anywhere without their trusted dog companion. Who wouldn't with a powerful dog like that? To hold that doggo's lead is to become as hard as Giorgio Moroder on his underrated debut album cover, Son of my Father (listen to the track Tears and tell me that isn't primed and ready for a giallo). We traverse all round Bidston Hill. Weirdly, my first time there considering I've been a Wirral head half my life. Respect from a Royden Park fan.

We track down symbols and figures carved in stone. We locate ladders leading to abandoned tunnels. We come across mysterious ribbons. To top it off, a trip to the farm. Goats have left me a little cautious since Black Phillip so I'm already on edge. A woman throws carrots directly at a pig's ribs like she's Rory Delap. A disturbed teenage boy sits on a wall by the entrance and informs me he's "going to kill them all". I pray to God he doesn't mean the animals. The world doesn't need farm shooters. Was this normal Bidston behaviour?

We drop the dog off and I take a tour of Oxton. My knowledge of the place has never really extended past the bus routes. Oxton Bar and Kitchen looks like one to avoid but generally the rest looks up to scratch. We're getting towards the afternoon and food needs to make an appearance. You can never go wrong with a mighty burger and Texas BBQ sauce. First comes the food and then the drinks. We stop in at The Library. That's a bar not a book borrowing spot. I'd have made the same mistake too had I not been given the lowdown on the place. It's main pull is the fact there's vinyl records and you can choose them yourself. Very appealing to a man who used to run a few music nights back in the day. My fingers take over, flicking away at each album cover from front to back. That's when I find her. Grace Jones Nightclubbing. I think we'll begin with you. Careful with dropping the needle this one doesn't have that smooth lift up and down thing. A few scratches as it drops shakily on to the record, shit how much have I had to drink? With Grace playing we work on the drink situation. Sadly, The Library is more of a cocktail place and I want pints. There only options beer wise is the ale or San Miguel. Not an expert on the ales but I'm not touching San Miguel. Still scarred from the first lads holiday away when that was the only beverage available. Whenever it touches my lips I can still taste that whole disgusting holiday and the immovable stain of regret. Safe to say, I avoid San Miguel like the plague. I'll take my chances with the ale. Film number 19 on the countdown. Demian Rugna's When Evil Lurks. This is the very definition of a facemelter. Not much in the brains department. Little in the way of originality but it gets by on sheer brutality. Extremely fast paced and unrelenting. Places you right in the action from the outset and rolls the credits when it's over. You can't complain with that. Stand out scenes are the dog going to town on a child's face and sprinting off with the child still in his mouth. As well as the car that takes out a woman and child. This film is willing to get nasty where it matters.

Next song needs selecting. Aretha Franklin Chain of Fools step right up. What's that? It's time for the waterworks? Where's the nearest toilet? This is when I find out just how bizarrely The Library is shaped. My natural inclination is to head up all the steps. On the second floor, I think I can see someone from the old school days, about a 65% probability, too heavy, that's too high for me, ignore them, stay focused, keep moving towards your intended destination. I go up an extra floor and somehow end up in the kitchen. But this is no ordinary kitchen, it's like someone's flat bedroom. Who puts a kitchen here? What is going on? The chef just points down at the ground and goes, "first floor", I nod and do the walk of shame back down the steps.

Let's take a stop here and head in to film number 18. Chris Smith's Wham! Documentary. You may not find that in anyone else's top 20 but you're dealing with a George Michael stan here and I'm not going to apologise. Given the resources, I would happily make the George Michael biopic, anything to just recreate the Club Tropicana music video at Pikes Hotel. The stuff of legend. Easily the best bit in this documentary is when George comes out to Andy as a homosexual. They build it so well that Andy's thinking George has been banging his ex and then it just goes the complete other way, a stellar moment of comedy. I could pass this on hangout vibes but Chris Smith has genuinely made some of the best documentaries od recent years such as Fyre and Jim & Andy.

Moronically, I'd walked straight past the toilets, which were only a few yards from our table. The waterwork display commences. On my way out, I realise Aretha's almost done so I need to get the next record on quick time. I come out the toilet a little quickly and knock a small child out with the door. Why the fuck was he standing there the muppet? Thankfully, the kid's father sees it the same way and doesn't give an opinion on the matter only tending to the nipper's nose. I let out a "sorry" and head back to the turntable.

Rumours were that the trusted local pub round the corner from The Library, "The Cock and Pullet" had re-opened following refurbishments. The good news is it's back, the bad news is it's now called "The Royal", which is a disgrace to all boozer names. Should be illegal to open a pub and not have either "Swan" or "Cock" in the title at least somewhere. How ever way you look at it, it's bad business. It didn't match with the information I'd been given on the place. It had been re-invented over night as a sports bar and it was rammed with people. They had the Liverpool Arsenal game on and I was very disappointed Klopp's boys didn’t put more past that arrogant Spaniard.

Is it time? It's time. I load up Steely Dan's Do It Again on the record player. With those two smooth jazz rockers jamming in the background, The Highwayman and I exchange a few Christmas and birthday gifts. The Highwayman ended up with a copy of Anna Biller's Viva. I ended up with a Dopethrone T-shirt (I couldn't be Mr Funeralopolis without owning this shirt so those who were wanting to strip my title away for this, you can't now), an Under the Silver Lake t shirt and a book on psychotic women in cinema. What can I say, The Highwayman has my tastes figured. I love Electric Wizard, I love Under the Silver Lake and I love psychotic women. The big three and maybe in that order.

The Highwayman gathers a few friends round and for the second year running, I managed to get dragged in to a pool game. This was a whole lot more successful than last year's game with Balthazar when we were simply a disgrace to the sport of pool. Unexpectedly, I won all three games I was involved in. Then again, we've been practising these last few months courtesy of The Highwayman, who has a reputation like "The Rocket" himself. When The Highwayman doesn't have a dog lead in her hands, she has a pool cue, so she's been keeping me to a high standard of play.

Our next stop would take us from Oxton to Liverpool for a few drinks in Pogue Mahone. A very lively place on the run up to Christmas. Fairytale of New York being played was an emotional moment given the recent death of a much loved poet. Sinatra was swinging, all the drunks were singing. As is customary, I told about 5 people in the toilets how Kirsty MacColl came to her end. One guy dressed in red just handed me the end of a bag and went, "Merry Christmas", then left out the door he came. I felt touched by the Christmas spirit and danced enthusiastically for the next 20 minutes. I was so drunk I agreed to go to "Woodys", Liverpool's infamous karaoke bar. Karaoke and I have a heavy history. Stemming from a rendition of The Weeknd's Earned it many years ago. A deranged woman took the microphone out my hands and proceeded to beat me over the head with it, screaming, "you have murdered The Weeknd". Maybe he does have some high notes in the arsenal that I failed to reach but it's go big or go home, right? Another time I did what I believed to be a perfect cover of Underworld's Born Slippy. I really upped my game on this and developed my stage work to turn this into some sort of performance art. I believe the Christmas spirit may have kicked in there too and I put my own spin on it by swimming across the stage (believe it was front crawl) whilst screaming over and over, "lager! Lager! Lager!". This may have been a little too "rock and roll" for some as another deranged woman took the microphone off me and yelled, "I've been coming here for 20 years and that was the worst thing I've ever seen!". I take pride in my work, both good and bad. So this was taken as a compliment. My last outing didn't fare any better. I opted to do Madonna's Holiday, which led to my kids's mum's mum being so embarrassed she went straight out the door and got the next taxi home. So yeah, me and Karaoke not always worked out for the best but that hasn't stopped us.

Luckily, this time I came prepared. I had this genius idea that I'd tone it down by picking something closer to spoken word and making the delivery count. Elvis's Trouble seemed a wise choice. I waited my turn and heard out the other singers. The DJ made the announcement, "Can Elvis come to the stage. Elvis come to the stage, please". I make my way over and grab the microphone. That Christmas spirit made the snarling lip curl a little easier but truthfully I was looking more like Stallone out there. Another disaster on the stage but for all the haters who want me to stop doing karaoke, all I'll say is, "I don't take no orders from no kind of man". Right and for film number 17 then we'll go with Waterfall TV. A follow up to Tree TV that comes from the Joe Pera corner of comedy. As part of his missions to get you to sleep, here is a half hour special that focuses on nothing but you guessed it waterfalls. It's as though they really learnt from Tree TV that looping 30 minutes of footage for 5 hours is downright criminal and so in that regard I have few complaints for Waterfall TV. It also features an absolutely hilarious sketch during the intermission that could be Pera's magnum opus. A fake trailer brought to us "from the dark and twisted minds of C. Christopher and J. Pera", an amazing gag that really parodies when people like Matthew Vaughn use such a tag. Its set up to be like a socially conscious thriller with some potential for revenge. The usually soft spoken Pera plays this hard man throwing out lines like, "coming back here after you screwed me" and "get out my house". We are then told this is for a movie called "Doing Business at the End of the World". Please Joe, make that movie.

Christmas comes and goes. Out of nowhere, an invite to a gaff comes through. The host, a lovely Fraulein by the name of The Orb, had been living elsewhere these last 5 years and had now moved back to the Wirral. Since, she hadn't kept up with the nearly impossible task of maintaining a track on familiar faces still in the neighbourhood, the invite list turned in to this real rogue's gallery that featured your least favourite film critic.

Upon arrival, there appears to be two rooms going on in this gaff. All the birds are dancing in the kitchen and all the boys are in the front room watching the football. Since, I'm still relatively sober and not ready to test my shapes, I choose to join the fellas. I notice a man I'd met perhaps a couple of times eating a pizza, it merely takes a bit of eye contact and I'm offered a slice. Everton went 1 up against City and this made things interesting but it didn't last long. In an unusual incident, I'm surrounded by Everton fans, who all react furiously by leaving the room and abandoning the game. The Orb comes in and asks if anyone wants to chip in. It's not even 10pm but I like the organisation and hand over some notes. In a completely unprecedented move, said notes are then handed back to me about 10 minutes later. As it turns out there was a dominatrix in the gaff who'd been given the full money needed by a mysterious donor in exchange for being granted permission to kiss her toes. The Orb gives me a full tour of the new gaff, fills me in on the events of the last 5 years and introduces me to the rest of the guests. They were mainly people who I'd gone to school with years ago and hadn't seen since. Those who I hadn't met I still had some connection to, the shocking mystery each time was figuring out the connection. I discussed the recent death of an old teacher whom we respected. A man who once said that I'd inspired him to be more "relaxed in life", which is a very kind way of saying I probably pissed him off in to submission.

My phones ringing. It's Barbie, she's on her way. She asks if I can meet her by the bus stop. I get my coat back on and head in to a literal storm. Faster than you can say "Kenough", she's gone through her wine bottle and moved on to a her vodka stash. The Orb's playlist erratically switches between songs like She Wants Revenge's Tear You Apart and Britney Spears Baby One More Time. I can't say no to either. Any Twilight fans would have been thrilled by it.

Barbie claims the dancefloor. Everyone backs off for fear they may be caught by a flailing limb. On several occasions, I have to step in so she doesn't knock herself off balance. She certainly didn’t have the elegance of a ballet dancer, let's just say that. One man doesn't seem to mind so much and he likes what he sees, I step back, happy to be relieved of watching Barbie duties. Stripped of responsibilities and able to take a breather, I can now present to you film number 16, Magic Mike's Last Dance. The third in what has been a breathtaking trilogy. He defeated toxic masculinity and now he's back for his final shake of the hips. The general verdict amongst the fans is that it’s a quiet somewhat disappointing but acceptable closer but I have to say I really like it. Putting him in with the high class London arts scene and making a mockery of theatre is too funny to pass on. Channing Tatum is always committed with these all being very personal to him. The whole fantasy of having this sugar mummy like presence in Salma Hayek is very sexy. At its lowest it always has that camp value to fall back on like dry humping against giant glass windows. Even the opening shot, which is just Magic Mike staring out across the lake with some hack job narration cracks me up. Clearly more of a character study than XXL's ensemble. Perhaps, it doesn't quite reach what Paul Schrader did with his Walkers of the Night trilogy but you can see where they're trying to make it like those in the balance of high and low art. I've always seen great potential in Michael and would love to write another chapter given the chance. I have big big things in store for Michael. Try to understand, he's a magic man. And like that, rather fittingly I encountered the gaff's dominatrix. This turned out to be someone I recall knowing for a brief period of time when I was about 15 because they were dating a mate of mine. I stopped them and said, "Hey, can you get me up to speed on the last 12 years and how you ended up getting men to pay you just to come round and kiss your feet?"

As though preparing for a Channel 4 documentary, I hammer every question I think of at this dominatrix. Ranging from craziest sexual act requested to the hygienic issues that present themselves with such a lifestyle. Of great curiosity was how long do males leave it in between sessions for recovery time. I've seen the videos, there's no way you could give your cock such a pounding and expect to maintain any sensitivity down there. As it turns out the cock is stronger piece of gear than I previously believed it to be. Recovery time really isn't that long at all. Normally, it's the money that restricts them not the pain. Interesting. What I still can't get my head round is charging by the hour not the act performed but I assume there are bigger experts than myself that see the benefits of an hourly/flat fee rate.

Need to distract myself from the monstrosities occurring in that kitchen sink. Right, film number 14. We have VHS 85. This is not being talked about enough for my liking. I was all near tapped out on this series with the last one. Usually, I take the good with the bad because these anthologies usually raise the profile of up and coming horror directors. They're like going to gigs, sometimes you have to put up with the shite to find the good at grass roots level. VHS 99 was pretty weak. They've come back strong with this entry, every segment is tight and there isn't a bad one to be found amongst the crop. Scott Derickson comes out top though and what I appreciate is his dedication to experimenting with old technology from the time. He belongs with Joe Begos as someone who actually strives for authenticity with the visual and sonic qualities. Whereas, the majority of horror today settles for cheap nostalgic recreation that looks nothing like its time period. Derrickson bringing out Throbbing Gristle's Hamburger Lady over a home invasion is the single most disturbing thing I've seen all year. Still shocked that he found a way to film one of my nightmares. Talk about this film more, it deserves it.

Our conversation is interrupted when our mysterious donor returns to kiss some more feet. One visit isn’t enough, this guy wants more. I stand by the window, peering out in to the street, ready to burst in to a fit of laughter. I wonder if that's a little harsh to ridicule our poor foot fetishist but then I remember he thrives on humiliation. It be rude not to let him get what he wants. This time he has to kiss the host's feet. Although her first time, she handles it like a natural. I tell The Orb, "you may have a future in this line of work".

I encounter the gaff's dominatrix again and after all her tales, I can't help but ask, "Do you think I could get in on this dominatrix business?". "No", she replies without giving it a moment's though. "Whys that?", I throw back. "Well, first of all you kind of need to be a woman", she answers. "Ah yeah. Of course. Women really do get everything don't they", I respond. Disappointed, I walk off.

Back to the end of year list. Film number 15, Sofia Coppola's Priscilla. Fully reviewed in this issue so stick around for that. I'm of the opinion it's her best work since Lost in Translation. I will let the review do the rest of the talking and not keep you for longer than I need to here.

My memory of the remainder of the evening gets hazy from here. There's a whole lot of drinking and a whole lot of dancing. Then someone cracks the shots out. This asks too much of my stomach after having food poisoning and I have to run up the stairs to race the puke. Some of it goes in the sink. The rest goes all over the back wall and bath. Give my apologies to The Orb. As there's no lock on the door Barbie is able to walk right in and laugh at my Jackson Pollock painting.

Inside the kitchen, an unholy abomination is taking place. Barbie has somehow found herself stuck in the sink with her legs airborne like two Boeing 757s and is repeatedly eating away at a man's face whilst clawing his chest. Unsure what to do or say about this, I turn to the nearest person and engage in a lengthy conversation with absolutely no regard as to the subject matter. Anything to take my eyes off ...that.

There is no time for laughing, must clean the crime scene. I wipe away with no care for how disgusting all of this must be. When you cross the line, you must put it right. Whatever the cost. Before the evidence can be erased, Barbie's latest Ken walks in through the open door. He loses his shit in a rather overprotective fashion and tells me to, "On behalf of The Orb, get the fuck out the gaff!". "Sorry, pal. I don't leave without The Orb's direct say so and besides I've not finished cleaning up yet", I add. Ken doesn't like this and so Barbie has to have a word separately with him outside giving me the time to finish clearing the sick. Somehow, I end up in a taxi with the dominatrix. I'd forgotten she lives like 10 minutes from my parent's place. Could not for the life of me work out the vibe of how things were left at the party. Were we all kicked out or was it generally just time to leave? My head had kind of gone by that point. Too much to drink all round. Between us, the dominatrix and I must have discussed every white sender on the Wirral. 12 years of history all caught up on by the end of the cab ride. See you in another 12 years. I wish you all the best. The next morning I'm ill again, the same thing happened after Pogue Mahone. In the past 4 weeks, I'd had 3 separate colds and food poisoning. Being sick had become a permanent fixture this Christmas. Comes with the territory. We jump now to New Year's Eve and time is desperately running out on the end of year list countdown. In at number 13 is Nicolas Winding Refn's Copenhagen Cowboy. Positioned somewhere between the Olga exploitation series and Point Blank. It sees Refn continuing his own unique style of silence and pauses. Slow cinema that really tests the patience but the random kung fu fights spliced in are definitely not typical fare and catch the viewer off guard. Other than approving of the technical innovations, there will be those that dwell on the pacing and dismiss this as empty but these very same people should not disregard how much of an oddity this is.

New Years Eve commences with a Spoons breakfast. An eggs benedict for me. Prepared what I believed to be a perfectly good birthday speech that will be talked about for generations. I attach it below: "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too".

My good pal Balthazar, who shares the same birthday as myself, also made a speech, I attach his as well: "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridias, commander of the armies of the north, general of the Felix legions, loyal servant to the true emperor Marcus Aurelius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next". Shorter but possibly sturdier, this will also be quoted long after we depart this mortal coil.

"Alexa, play the greatest dance song of all time", I ask and she puts on Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust. Sorry I Feel Love and Windowlicker stans, you can fight for 2nd and 3rd. Between the hours of 5 and 9, I make my way through the remaining Guinness and try to arrange some plans for the evening. I'd left them very last minute this year and I was paying the price. The night before I'd met up with Lucien Cramp and Long Tall Sally who were up for having a few drinks on the Wirral, then heading off to Liverpool after. Come the day though, unable to get hold of either of them.

Once back at the parent's house, my 5 year old Weng Weng aka The Impossible Kid, and I get to work on his Christmas present, a 1000 piece jigsaw. His reaction to receiving such a present was comedy gold. He dropped to his knees, head in hands like Pep Guardiola and keeps shouting, "1000 pieces!" as if shocked that they actually exist. There was a look of horror that reminded me of the idea that a fantasy realised is essentially a nightmare. One could argue this gift was a little out of his age range but he requested it and so that's what he got. I did ask If he believed he was capable and he just said he was built differently. Would you argue with him?

In the meantime, Weng Weng and I gave Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem a watch. Hard not to love a movie that has a Nine Inch Nails score, kung fu references and hip hop nostalgia. A proper '90s capsule but made lovingly by people from the era not those trying to cash in on popular trends and recreate something they have no connection to. That whole montage of training clips from The 36th Chamber of Shaolin made us lose our shit. I often get that movie on for the kid in the background during our boys nights so I can identify some moves for us to work on in the dojo. Progress report: the young padawan is excelling in classes and shows great promise but you can never have too much training.

An hour in and the furthest we've got is building the borders. I suggest we take a break. Unsure as to whether this was for his sake or mine. During that time, I give The Meg 2: The Trench a rewatch and by the credits rolling, I've already sunk 5 Guinness. We'll come back to this because, get ready, this genuinely appears on the Funeralopolis top 20 list. Alright, film number 12, James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Marking Marvel films is a dirty job but someone's got to do it and if anyone was going to create the greatest thing to come from the MCU it would be Mr Gunn. He's the only one I would consider an actual filmmaker, an auteur in the subversive vein of Samuel Fuller and Samuel Peckinpah and not some stupid studio puppet. He's a terrorist working from within. Our mole. Our rat. Whatever you want to call him. Being the guy who's creating films within the most popular genre of today and turning them into his own visions, that makes him one of the most important filmmakers currently working if you ask me.

Sadly, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem falls just short of the top 20 and next up at film number 11, we have the one you've all been waiting for The Meg 2: The Trench. This film is literally Like a Virgin by Madonna. If you can make it through the wilderness, if you can hold on just when you think you're beat and incomplete, then you will witness one of the greatest third act saves in all of cinema. Buddy cop chemistry, kaiju battles and a terrific shot from inside the shark's mouth as it chomps down bodies. This third act has everything you need for the perfect dumb fun summer blockbuster creature feature. I'd argue it's the best of its kind since Piranha 3D and for someone who's seen countless Syfy channel garbage a really blessing and beacon of hope. I look forward to when Jason Statham next straps up the wetsuit and dives on a jet ski with a spear in hand.

9pm rolls in and I give up all hope of hitting a few boozers up in West Kirby. The future, whatever that may be, lies in Liverpool. Now, we just have to get there. Trains? Buses? Not running New Year's Eve. Of course. Ever feel like the unknown forces are just working against you? I secure a lift and take a few Guinness for the journey. Seven style rain greets me as I exit the vehicle. A speedy run to the flat door is required to avoid the soaking. Once inside, I drop Danger Mouse a message to see if he's up for anything. The rain has made him lose all ambition. Understandable but for a sinner like myself, New Years Eve holds great meaning. In the morning, my father had mentioned that he doesn't care for the whole shebang, the countdown all of it. "But what of change?", I ask? "I think I'm pretty set in my ways", he answers. Call me continuously discontent but I don't ever want to get like that. I was born on this day, I am what this day means. I take all its rewards and atrocities. What is the plan for the evening?

The Highwayman swoops on in. She's out with the rest of the insect nation and extends her invitation. I throw my safety overboard and accept the offer. But first we need more beer, more music and a change of clothes. Outfit choices, I need them now. It's kind of tough to tell a scruff the big mistake he's making. Better Stand and Deliver. Your money or your life. Alexa, play Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass by IF. Kelly, tell us film number 9.

Film number 9, we have Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1. Can a title alone make you horny? In this case, it seems it can. Tom Cruise is back doing those preposterous stunts for our viewing pleasure again. Oblige him. Due to Covid shooting conditions, this has a really weak opening that looks irritatingly cheap. However, once the prologues over and we get to the airport it improves drastically. Train movie guys will get their fix with pretty much the last hour being set on a train. Equal parts Hitchcock and Frankenheimer. Is this the first MI film to really be about something? Admire The Matrix like direction and the focus on AI. All ties in with the big metaphor of Tom Cruise saving cinema and that extends to the current issues of the day. Any way you look at it, cinema is saved. Still, there's no beating the best MI movie, that remains Mission Impossible 2. Generally loathed in all eyes but mine. Yeah, I'm a John Woo guy. Motorbike jousting, come on!

While we're waiting, film number 10, Infinity Pool. Ti West let us down last year with his Pearl prequel. A move which originally came off as superb quick filmmaking straight from the exploitation days by going from one film right in to another in a short space of time. Then he went and fucked it up by wanking off to Wizard of Oz when he should have been in porno land. Proper geek behaviour. With Infinity Pool, Brandon Cronenberg brought successfully brought back that quickie production. Since, his JG Ballard adaptation of Supercannes was on hold, he went back and had a trial run doing his version of another JG Ballard book, Cocaine Nights. Cronenberg Jr's examination of Freud's Civilisation and Discontents has largely been missed by viewers. How intellectual the project is and the level of success achieved is up for question but at its worst, it's very funny and very peculiar. Even as a psychedelic oddity it more than delivers the goods of a nasty 70s exploitation style shocker.

Alexa, play me something sexy that will get me in the mood for the evening! Never Let Me Down Again boldly pumps out the speakers. Then suddenly the room turns blue and I have this overwhelming urge to embrace the Robert DeNiro in Heat position over by the window, staring out across the town, reflecting, contemplating, stargazing. One must be extremely careful when they adopt such a position, you may end up fixed here all night long.

In these quiet moments of reflection, I give you film number 8. Todd Haynes May December, winner of the biggest swing of the year award. The master of mixing trashy tabloids with European arthouse is back and he's here to wipe the floor with unadventurous cinema. Looking at the cover, you'd think this was your yearly dose of Oscar bait. Far from it, friends. In fact, it's a reference to Persona, a clear inspiration for the entire project. We have these two women entangled in a battle of selfabsorption and the troubled boy (Charles Melton has given the finest performance of the year for me) cast to the sides. Imagine Sunset Boulevard but added camp, so basically What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. Easily one of the most fascinating approaches to a movie I've ever seen in that it begins by intriguing you with this unexpected dark humour that's somewhere between DePalma and Solondz and it sneaks up on you when all the trauma pours out. It's a technique I've been trying to teach for years, never go in with your full intentions. Hold back all emotions but comedy. Anything else that does come should be out of nowhere, authentic and found mid-way through. If the trailer gives the game away on the serious side, you've lost. May December wrongfooted me more than any film this year. Out of everything we got in 2023, this could be the most interesting. If I have scored it too low on this, it will be because I'm still shocked by it and am still coming to terms with its daring originality. Incoming message from The Highwayman, "when will you be out?". I check the clock and it's nearly half 11. How long had I been standing there? Jesus Christ, why do I let it happen? You know what adopting the DeNiro in Heat position over by the window can do to you, and you still do it? Lost in that endless blue. Swept by the seas of thought. Detached from the bindings of time. My Achilles heel. Once again, yet to learn the great philosopher Radric Delantic Davis's wise message of, "if a man does not have the sauce, then he is lost. But the same man can get lost in the sauce". I demand Alexa play David Bowie's I'm Afraid of Americans, tear my eyes from the city skyline, locate the remaining Guinness can and inform The Highwayman I will set off when David Bowie has stopped ranting about being terrified of the damn Yanks.

Film number 7, Errol Morris's The Pigeon Tunnel. To everyone a minor piece in a brilliant career that near borders on self-parody. To an addict of the form, the fuel that ignites my bones. Play me some Philip Glass and have someone explain their unexplainable life theory shot in weird Dutch angles and I will ensure you a high spot on the end of year list. Unclear whether I am rating the comparisons between documentary filmmakers and the government to God and the violation of memories through the imagination or just the coke fuelled paranoid yarns. Either way, I like it. Kelly, get your coat, we're out of here.

Rain falls on my head like a cold night in Basin City. My chest is pumping on over time like every beat could be my last. Trying to squeeze in a few more than what was promised. Need to get to this club before 12. Need to get end of year list locked in before the hands strike the top. My phone vibrates and I nearly mistake it for palpitations. False alarm, it's Lucien Cramp wondering when I'm getting to The White Lion, bit late but better than never. No time to reply, must get to the club for the countdown. Gotta really hammer these out now. Film number 6, Ari Aster's Beau is Afraid. Horror movie people take note, this is the best you're getting all year. The attic stairs paralyse me every time. Strangely this has divided people but A24 providing this with the budget they did and allowing a 3 hour horror comedy to be released in this commercial climate is something to be celebrated. Near reminiscent of the strategies deployed in times of New Hollywood, when people had faith in auteurs and did things out of artistic respectability and not just profits. I dart down alleys and side step across taxis. High Heeled giraffes wobble across uneven streets. Promoters dangle cards in my face and I shake my head at every last one of them. All the animals are out tonight and the jungle is hot but I have just one place in mind.

Serious numbers, film number 5, Silent Night. I told you I was a John Woo guy. A rather humorous exercise in connecting the dots of a modern day action movie without the aid of dialogue. Where we're going we don't need words! Finding that connective tissue each time to go through the essentials scene to scene was just a pleasure. Many action films promise the stripped back no bullshit but my guy went out and did it. Remember that. It's simplicity and it's near mockery of action cinema is just a comedic delight. That final third of balletic action is the old days, the all or nothing days. The well-respected attraction, Planet Woo, has been closed off these last 20 years. Leaving people like myself standing outside the doors going full Eric Andre screaming, "let me in!". Ladies and Gentlemen, I have returned to Planet Woo once more and it's a joy to be back.

I see the club ahead and seconds later I see the queue. This wasn't on the agenda. This wasn't on the cards. Could this mistake cost us dearly? Could this mistake have been foreseen? I check the time, 11.46. This is pushing it. Better get back to the remaining movies while I'm stuck here. Roaring in at number 4, Godzilla Minus One. Did you think my lizard friend wouldn’t be showing up soon enough? He came, he crushed, he conquered. And it's his 38th time doing it. Seeing him destroy Tokyo and New York never gets old and for all I care this twisted like sitcom can continue marching on. This is a near perfect adaptation that deserves points for presenting the monster as the nightmarish fantasy that more than ever can't be distinguished from the horrors of post-Second World War. That whole side to it is beautifully dreamlike in the way it sidelines the monster and questions its existence early on. Critics are calling this the best since the first one, do I have to remind them that the last one was Shin Godzilla? A film which was far fresher with its refusal to accept any shot reverse shot business and the most satirical script targeting bureaucratic failings since Dr Strangelove. Proof that you can be both funny and have a point to make. Still, watching this at the cinema with The Highwayman, then getting drunk with a couple of Coen Brothers lookalikes in a tequila bar was a real highlight of 2023 cinemagoing.

By 11.53 I have wiggled to the front of the queue but now we have a serious problem. They're taking IDs on the door and as always I never carry mine. Inevitably, the bouncer asks for ID and all I can say is, "don't carry it". We're relying on the good faith of a bouncer, never a good thing. If he's a real stickler for order this guy could send me packing. If he sends me packing, I am not making it in time for the countdown. He glances across at his colleague and calls him over.

Film number 3, John Wick Chapter 4. Holy fuck. And I thought I was all tapped out after the last one. You think you've seen John Wick? You've not seen John Wick. Not 'til you see Chapter 4. This was all its ambitions fully realised. The David Lean. The Akira Kurosawa. The John Ford. The Tarantino. The Blade Runner that turned in to The fucking Duellists. Throw in some bloody Holy Motors this time. Fucking hell it even went fully Batman in the techno club with a fat suit wearing Scott Adkins. This is it. The graphic novel. The fucking manga. Best pop entertainment since Mad Max Fury Road. My favourite movie I've ever seen in a cinema this. They have made The Good, The Bad and The Ugly for Daft Punk heads. I am on my knees. Johnny's doing donuts round the fucking Arc de Triomphe to Gesaffelsteins Hate or Glory mate. Oh my lord. I thought I'd buried my alter ego Kung Fu Kelly but John Wick Chapter 4 has awakened him. If you want me, I'll be by the Eiffel Tower shadowboxing and waiting to be tested by some 1 on 1s. My weapon of choice? My bear hands! These bouncers could be seeing some hands if they don't hurry up. They confer and have their little mother's meeting and decide my fate. You don't have to be a mind reader to understand the question being asked, "does that guy look over 18 to you?". It turns out he does. I overhear one of them say, "he looks closer to 30". I ignore the insult and keep moving forwards.

The sounds of Absurd's Fluke fills my ears. Ok, so we're in but where is The Highwayman and the rest of the insect nation? Message comes in on the phone, they're over by the toilets. Just 4 minutes to find them but first I need to make my way across a packed dance floor with drunken dancers. Time to sharpen the elbows. They don't call me the buffet raider for nothing, I know how to make my way across a crowd. I scan the space by the toilets. Optical inspection negative. No signs of them. Drop another message asking whereabouts. "By the green sign" is fired back at me. What green sign? I survey the area and find what I'm looking for. It's by the toilets on the other side of the room. 2 minutes to go. I stick out both elbows and go back to work.

Film number 2, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. I'll always remember this as great this movie for one reason. It's proof that a visual stylist on the edge of auteur and craftsman regularly criticised for a lack of substance could handle what is widely considered one of the most important stories of the 20th century without totally abandoning his signature approach. It's pure technique. The walls shaking. The quick cuts to skin peeling off people. The feet slamming against the floor. In effect, he's made a hybrid of horror and documentary that seems very much its own thing. I want to hear interviews on how long he holds the shots, when he cuts, when to throw in one of those disturbing images. An absolute masterpiece in rhythm recalling Sidney Luhmet's Fail Safe and 12 Angry Men. It's a Schraderesque character study as gripping as Citizen Kane, Michael Corleone and Daniel Plainview but in his own distinctive style. Personally, I find that very inspiring. Right where are these people I'm looking for? I stand directly below the green sign and still can't find them. With just 1 minute on the clock to go, I'm suddenly ambushed by The Highwayman herself. She rapidly introduces me to the rest of the insect nation, a whole of new characters. "10, 9, 8..." there goes the countdown.

Across every screen in the room I can see giant images of Rick Astley's face. Is this some kind of sick joke? There's one in there somewhere but it's too late to find it. "7, 6, 5..." My mind flashes back to an incident earlier in the day when a black cat crossed my path, stared me dead in the eye as though delivering a message and wondered off. Not the kind of night for those antics that could be perceived as superstitious meddlings. Was the cat blessing with good luck or bad luck? I cast the image from my mind. There can only be one! In at the top, film number 1, Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. It's simple really, if Marty makes a movie there's only one place it can go. Give me a break, the French always have reserved spots for Godard. Killers of the Flower Moon marks new territory for the western. I've seen some attacking it as being too much from the whites perspectives and not from the Native Americans perspective. Well in this we get the three perspectives, those two mentioned and then the cops and it's not always clean whose perspective we are getting. It's not structured to split them off and to me that's the beauty of it. All the signs for me are in the early bits when they're talking about the blood lines getting dirty. The families have become so mixed. If you focused on just the native Americans you'd lose the point it's trying to make about how power remains in the same hands and is never really lost or shifts hands. You need all 3 perspectives and you need them confused and overlapping. We've had the ignorant westerns of John Ford that have no sympathy for the native Americans. We've had the revisionist ones that recognise the massacres and then this. Scorsese's approach still seems relevant not just to the genre but to the way it would be today. It's about a more systemic version of hate and racism that's harder trace. It's not war in the open any more with loud slaughter. It's not words. It's a much quieter form of genocide. Accepting that there is no clear lines in family at this point and manipulating it. Scorsese's vision is one that blurs and masks but does not erase. The fact this is a whodunnit where you know whodunnit and so in a sense becomes this sick joke where you're complicit. You have to laugh.

"4, 3, 2, 1... Happy New Year!". Imagination's big hitter Just an Illusion fires out the speakers. Everybody's a huggin' and a kissin'. Dancing in and out of each other. Rising to the occasion and spreading the love. Infectious happiness as though we crossed over to another planet, another plain of existence. Land of the 1000 dances. The Twist, The Alligator. The Mashed Potato. The Watusi. The Pony. All last time I checked, still in fashion. No need to check pulses out here, you dance or your dead. But suddenly the thrill has gone. I no longer want to sing and dance. When those hands hit the top what changed? What really changed? Did I miss it? I better not have fucking missed it. Everything still looks the same. It's just another day in the neighbourhood and I realise my hands are empty. There's only one thing for it. I make a beeline towards the bar.

The Happening "When I grow up, I'll turn the tables", once sang the underrated alt rock outfit Garbage back in the '90s. Sofia Coppola has taken this mantra to heart and promised this since her 1999 debut effort The Virgin Suicides. Adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides 1993 novel. A semi well written for what is but also inherently trashy novel. Eugenides does his best but there's no denying the immaturity of the material.

Now, I couldn't tell you if he's part of that literary Brat Pack of Brett Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney but he should be. This is more my ex's field so you'd have to ask her but even though they're sort of disconnected by decades, they're all connected to me because of how juvenile I believe they all are (a source of many arguments back in the day). At best they make edgy teenage rubbish that you could either champion out of nostalgia or ironically. Should have known there'd be trouble in that relationship from the start when I gave her a copy of my favourite book at that time, JG Ballard's Crash, and she gave it back 2 days later and deemed it to be the most vile crap she'd ever read. To put it respectably, different tastes and sensibilities. Anyway, minus the odd shot fired back and forth here and there for comedic purposes, I wish all my ex's a good day. Whether Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides is a good movie remains to be seen but what is clear even from the outset, she's a phenomenal director of musical sequences. Every time I watch it, I care less for its feminist angle, teenage boredom and its critiques of conservative parenting and more for the scenes of the formidable Josh Hartnett walking up and down the school corridors to Heart's Magic Man. Trip Fontaine was exactly the kind of vibes a young Jacob Kelly wanted to exude after discovering the movie in his sixth form days in an all girl's school. Legend has it I brought a much needed sexiness back to that school but I'll let you be the judge of that.

Considering she was only 28 at the time, there's a lot I can forgive about The Virgin Suicides. Perhaps she wasn't as mature as Orson Welles, Dennis Hopper or my own personal favourite Paul Thomas Anderson (who gave us the actual best film ever made aged 27) but she had talent behind the camera, that much was clear. The conversion from The Virgin Suicides in to Lost In Translation is just perfect career progression. From flawed but one to keep an eye out for to arguably a masterpiece. She displayed a maturity on that one, which she hasn't displayed since. It was a false hope. People make the mistake of thinking the feminism is the strongest aspect of Sofia Coppola's filmmaking, it isn't. The truth is, it's what brings her down. Her greatest weapon is social alienation and father/daughter relationships. Lost In Translation is her least overtly feminist, has all of these elements and is widely considered her masterpiece so there's your proof. On the other hand, Marie Antoinette, her follow up in 2006 is a return to disappointing naivety. There's been a sort of critical revival for Marie over the last few years with some now considering it a masterpiece. An interesting turn of events as I have seen myself go from being on the side of 'its underrated' to 'it's overrated' without my opinions on it not changing. Honestly, Marie Antoinette is a very fun film with a great use of an anachronistic soundtrack. Adam and the Ants Kings of the Wild Frontier is an exceptional song choice and Kirsten Dunst is a fucking star. However, this film could be her weakest study of privilege without power. A middle class family with children of low agency? Tolerable. A photographer's wife disregarded and abandoned in hotels? Fantastic and very personal. An Australian princess? Come on, you're really pushing it, Sofia.

Neither capitalism or feudalism can provide true emancipation for women. Such a task can only be achieved through addressing the material and economic roots of women's oppression. Consequently, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is nothing other than the product of a rich kids take on feminism without any understanding of class politics. Proper princess fairytale feminism. Fully enjoyable for the over the top camp and lavish ridiculousness but let's not fool ourselves in to thinking it's anything more than just that. If this is considered a serious feminist piece, we should all be very worried. How does one be so clueless with regards to the material and economic issues contributing to women's oppression? In 2010, this was made abundantly clear with Somewhere, when Sofia Coppola reminded us who her father was, the incredible Francis Ford Coppola. A story about a young girl travelling around various hotels with her famous rich actor father. Undeniably warm, personal, raw and passionately written. Yet, it disobeys a few essential Funeralopolis rules. Never make your own biopic and never write your own story in such an unfiltered manner. Hide it under layers and layers of whatever project you're working on. The story should never be you but the viewer should be able find you. It's more creative and gives your audience something to decode rather than some boringly complete package. This is why Lost In Translation is a superior work, there's a photographer's wife suffering abandonment and boredom in hotels and there's the older figure present, both appear to be Francis in some way. A contradiction of two halves making a whole. One can locate Sofia in there and her life-long fears but it's in someone else's story. The feelings the filmmaker understands are there but without the annoying inability to understand class status. Quite frankly, Somewhere, as well intentioned as it is, is too explicit. For some reason, she also loses the ability to direct, putting far too much focus on the writing. Where are the slick sequences? An ability she would lose for a long time.

Working with an ignorant liberal like Emma Watson was never going to help the situation. The less said about The Bling Ring, the better. An extremely low point. Normally, I can defend each piece as a fun hangout movie, this cannot be said for The Bling Ring. An ineffective stab at a generational statement. As time has gone by, it has only become more apparent that Spring Breakers wipes the floor with any film that wanted to say something about the 2010s. There's no competing with that kind of vulgarity so fuck off The Bling Ring. If you thought The Bling Ring was misguided, wait 'til you see The Beguiled. A pointless and soft remake of Don Siegel's 1971 ballsy psychosexual fantasy, in which an injured soldier is taken in by a house of women. Many critics have argued over whether this is or isn't a feminist film. Siegel said himself, "women are capable of deceit, larceny, murder, anything. Behind that mask of innocence lurks just as much as evil as you'll find in members of the mafia. Any young girl, who looks perfectly harmless is capable of murder". Whereas, Kass states, "the women in The Beguiled are not all bad". Personally, I think it's a fascinating film because it depicts its women as terrifying and unwelcoming whilst still presenting them as these strongly feminist characters. When you've got the elite male in the ever snarling Clint Eastwood taking them all on, it's the ultimate battle of the sexes. Erotic, comedic and challenging in a way few movies are today. Sofia's remake is an absolute wimp of a movie. Her problem is she tries to clean up what is essentially a dirty picture, removing all the complexities and in the process it loses much of its bite. By giving the women greater depth and agency it loses the mystery and somehow becomes less powerful. Also, what kind of casting is the feminine Colin Farrel to represent the alpha male type? No, what you're looking for here is a troubling bastard of a man who probably believes assaulting women is still acceptable and worse, could get away with it cause they're so good looking. Colin, whilst an attractive fellow, you're too much of a nice man for this kind of work, sorry.

Delicacy is what ruined The Beguiled remake. Entire strands were removed that could potentially be taken as uncomfortable racial elements such as the erasure of an African American slave. Basically, forgetting the entire context of the original movie, which was the American civil war. Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that fought over slavery? So why are we eradicating a fundamental part of the story? Why is Sofia Coppola through her overly sensitive direction, reshaping a history more appropriate for a modern white audience? Cause she's a coward finetuning feminism to appeal to the widest possible audience that will bring in the bucks, appease herself and not make a single bit of difference to the world. Respect for it being her most ambitious material she has tackled and the sort of project she should gravitate towards but the results are unmistakably spineless.

On the Rocks passed with little fuss in 2020. Haven't got round to watching it, so I'll refrain from commenting other than to say her previous two duds (The Bling Ring and The Beguiled) put me off severely. Priscilla then is a somewhat return to form and perhaps her best film since Lost In Translation. She has successfully managed to turn the story of Priscilla's marriage to Elvis in to one of her privilege without power narratives. There are some interesting things going on here though that I commend with how she navigates the toxic relationship and it is undeniably miles better than Baz Lurhmann's Elvis movie which had very little to do with Priscilla or arguably Elvis either. My relationship with Priscilla was at first similar to The Virgin Suicides in that you see technical greatness with the direction but on some level you are constantly fighting and disagreeing with the material. In order to embrace it you almost think you have to promote Elvis antipathy. Ok, so yeah he was a nonce, he couldn't write, he was a staunch conservative and treated her like shit but he was the King goddammit! At this point, it's hard to say whether my love for Elvis is in or out of the ironic zone. Only a fool would say though there isn't this power about him.

Exactly what I appreciate with the manner in which Sofia has gone about her most recent film is that she never tries to deflate Elvis or deny him over his dominance in the public sphere. To do so would simply be false and inaccurate. Instead, she uses his greatness to propel the Elvis entrapment. Proposing the question of, "Who wouldn't want to be Elvis's girl?". One of the sexiest scenes in film history is in Goodfellas, when Karen says, "I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't. I got to admit the truth. It turned me on". To me, that's cinema. A real, ok game on kind of line. Priscilla has a similar moment of irresistible sexiness where she is trying to cheat on a school test by staring over at her neighbours answers. Since, the paper is too shielded from view, she resorts to asking the person sat next to her, "are you an Elvis fan? How would you like to come to one of his parties?". Slowly, that test paper gets shifted to a more readable angle. Later, there's fantastic scenes where Elvis is taking pictures of Priscilla and wrestling. This soon switches into Elvis accidentally attacking her and taking the game too far. She then blames the incident on his pills causing a confrontation. Perfect scene that really establishes the dynamic at play here. Priscilla being taken in by his cool dominance, Elvis's strange childlike mentality being a little momma's boy and those mysterious pills he's always taking.

These scenes are the movie to me. One could accuse Sofia Coppola of being at her most plotless with Priscilla; the film is mainly made up of set pieces. Each does not increase in intensity but the sheer number of them adds to her final decision to depart Graceland. Look out for the strange play on Vertigo, where Elvis and his boys dictate Priscilla's outfits. That and Elvis constantly calling Priscilla's father about his "honourable intentions" is pretty sickening in Sofia's hands and recalls her own Freudian angst.

Semi convinced that Sofia Coppola hates her father artistically so much, her entire cinematic style is intentionally closer to Martin Scorsese's. As though sat with him doing the test together and asking, "Hey Marty, you wanna get invited back to the big house to see your old pal Francis again?". She rejects the wordy theatrical near Shakespearean prose of The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now for elaborate camera work and non-stop music choices (Santo & Johnny's Sleep Walk even makes an appearance). If this is the case, she needs to develop further as a visual storyteller the way Martin Scorsese did.

One may notice my ratings and my reviews of her work never completely line up. I can criticise her all day long but when Sofia finds the right image with the right sound in that single instance she can create a moment so achingly beautiful it lingers in the mind way after the credits have rolled. Once again resorting to anachronistic with the shoegaze and noise pop creeping in (Spectrum's How You Satisfy Me). She can't help herself, no-one's ever forgetting MBV's Sometimes and The Jesus and Mary Chain's Just Like Honey's use in Lost In Translation. Sofia honey, Slowdive are performing in February in Liverpool at the 02 Academy, I've got tickets. Get down, I'll buy you a whiskey. Heck, I'll even make it a Suntory cause you know what they say about a relaxing time. Sofia gets off to a wonderful start on the soundtrack with Ramones Baby I Love You but the highlight for me is Crimson & Clover. Always thought that needed to be the big number in a rom-com about a hugely famous couple one day. It's the way it just goes on and on until it destroys its own beauty with these very artificial but hypnotic vocals that make you question the authenticity of the whole thing. "Over and Over" repeats on a loop until it gets damn near scary. The falseness of the message mimics Elvis and his numerous phone calls to Priscilla's father about his "honourable intentions". It wasn't that Elvis was even all that terrible physically, it was that he made all these promises to a child and then cast her aside. There was simply no room for her amongst his greatness and it harkens back to father Francis, Christ this girls got some serious Daddy issues.

The final scene being this long take of her leaving Graceland had me a little on edge. We've seen this one before in Pablo Larrain's god awful Spencer. For those that don't know, Pablo Larrain is probably the second worst director currently working after Emerald Fennell. His handiwork isn't too far from Marie Antoinette but it's a whole lot more annoying. He turns utter victim losers Jackie Kennedy and Diana Spencer, both effectively the Royal families of Britain and the US, in to these rebellious punks. Catch him humming Camelot or singing, "Lady Di, why did you have to die?". As brad Pitt says in Killing Them Softly, "Don't make me laugh". In Spencer, he continuously makes these embarrassing connections between the "nation's princess" and Henry the 8ths wives, turning palaces in to The Overlook Hotel. Ah yeah, I'm feeling total sympathy for you, roaming the corridors of your castle prison. Then, when you didn't think it could get any worse, Diana gets in her car, picks up her kids, escapes the castle and shows her solidarity with the working class by driving to McDonalds. From castle to Maccies drive thru, she's one of us! A true spokesman of the people. The greatest character arc in cinema that one. Down on the ground, tears streaming down the face, bellowing out at my TV screen, "LADY DI, WHT DID YOU DIE?". My princess. Honestly, they should have put Pablo Larrain in prison for that one. What's the charge? Being an utter yellow belly. Priscilla's drive is not a false freedom drive. None of Larrain's fake agency as the victim drives off like some Texas Chainsaw Massacre final girl in to the sunset and escapes their tormentor. In fact, Priscilla's is quite melancholic with this acceptance that, "If I should stay, I would only be in your way. So I'll go, but I know, I'll think of you every step of the way". Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You is an absolutely perfect choice that couldn't fit the mood of the departure any better. "Bittersweet memories that's all I'm taking with me", "We both know I'm not what you, you need" and "I hope life treats you kind" sum up the experience brilliantly. This is not the Elvis hate story it's been made out to be but rather the story of an artist's wife insignificance.

Therefore, this is not a typically strong feminist ending because it's an acceptance of weakness and inferiority, an inverse of The Bodyguard's ending but there is some power in choosing not to be subservient and to go your own path. There's some truth in it. Perhaps, Priscilla is Sofia's artistic love letter to her father saying, "Fuck you, Daddy. I choose Marty. He's my Daddy now". And so this great cinematic battle between father and daughter, patriarchy and matriarchy wages on. Where is it next for Sofia? Time to grow up and mature already. Funny enough this path is going to lead her right back to her father. If she wants to get away from him for good, she's going to need to get in real close. Every time I watch The Godfather Part 2 and Part 3 now my attention drifts to the women caught in the mafia life. Those who sit outside the closed office doors, playing with the children and cooking the meals. How is it Connie is so able to kick Kate out the house on Michael's demands? Don't these women share entire lives together? Finally in The Godfather Part 3, they address this when Sofia herself and a few of the other girls discuss some actual memories together of what happens in their quarters. We all know Sofia belongs behind the camera, it's about time she re-did this one scene as a whole movie and we actually got the lives of the women excluded from the offices. Sofia's Married to the Mob, where she can mature as an artist, finding the perfect privilege without power story that understands class, building on social alienation and bring a close to the battle between her two artistic fathers, father Francis and Marty.

Meanwhile at a barbecue at Featherhead Moss during the height of summer..."What are you filming", I ask. Nobody answers me. I turn round to face the horror. Everything was blindingly white as though the clouds suddenly took over like a swarm of flying saucers. Then came the black. Total darkness. When I came to my senses, there were no longer erect houses only debris.

Where had the other guests from the barbecue gone? I wiped ash from my face and set out looking for them, calling their names as I went. Under our hosts front living room wall, I found a trapped Bonehead Bill. Together we lifted the heavy weight off his chest. The signals on our phones had dropped and we decided it best to get to higher ground in hopes of being able to communicate with the rest of the world. We didn't want to even think about the possibility that there wasn't even a rest of the world. We just kept moving. Before Bonehead could get to asking what he had just experienced, a nearby pool of water began to ripple and the ground began to shake. Persistent thuds could be heard in a perfect 4/4 time signature. If we survived whatever was coming our way, it would make a hell of a sample. How could I think like that at a time like this? We increased our pace up the hill, reminding ourselves not to look back. If I couldn't convince myself, how could I convince Bonehead? We gazed upon the beast not from this world. A reptile bigger than all reptiles. A prehistoric dinosaur in the time of man. Two people cannot dream the same monster. The destroyer of worlds let out an almighty roar, loud enough to wake the dead, deafening the pair of us and bringing us to our knees. Was this stentorian howl the voice of God?

That's when the fighter pilots descended from the skies unloading round after round of firepower. Every missile struck the monster like a blunt knife. I looked in to the eyes of the holy behemoth and did not see pain, at best only mild irritation. My line of sight drifted to its tail, which was slowly beginning to turn blue. The electrifying blue spread up its body. Were its damn veins going to pop out its body? With every passing second, I knew the money shot was coming. There was no point running. The end was imminent. Death by electric blue ejaculation. I could die satisfied with that on my tombstone. The discharge blew me back in to an endless drift across the skies.

"Oh no, they say, he's got to go. Go go Godzilla, yeah. Oh no, there goes Tokyo. Go go Godzilla, yeah!", I scream in to the microphone over and over as the rest of my band, The Tokyo Bay Dwellers, unleash hell on their instruments. We're performing at a level we haven't reached in ages and this is turning in to a genuinely productive practice...until we are rudely interrupted by a restless scruffy urchin by the name of Russell. He sits us all down, informing us he had urgent news to deliver that specifically couldn't wait until after band practice.

"They're gonna put it down. Right on the strip. They're gonna put it down. On the Vegas strip! At 6.36 on December 31st". That's what Russell says. He'd been telling just about anyone that would listen. It was the typical heard it from a friend, who heard it from their cousin, who has a friend that works for the government type of situation. I didn't doubt that Russell genuinely believed Aliens would be visiting us just before the new year was coming in. From the look on his face as he told us, he wasn't trying to mess with us either. This was something he was totally convinced was going to happen. Of course, when I first heard it my initial thoughts were simply, "bullshit". I might have even said, "what the fuck do Aliens want with Vegas? What they gonna do bet 50 on black, blow all the winnings and get married in downtown Vegas by sunrise? Come on, Russell". As you'd expect, I wasn't alone in having such a response. My right hand man, fellow songwriter and bassist in our band, Denny Collins, Couldn't help but bring Russell's track record under question. "Russell may I remind you, you're a serial conspiracy theorist and chain smoker of Marijuana". All of this was true. I think we all have a few conspiracy theories we half ashamedly believe in. You're allowed one or two as far I'm concerned but having several was very much over the line. Frankly, it was outrageous. That's when you become that kind of person. It's tin foil hat behaviour and time the men in white coats pay a visit.

Russell was a man who wore the same clothes for about 6 days straight. He regularly stank of shit. He hadn't been able to hold down a real job for more than a month in his life. We'd all taken turns housing him on our sofas. The rotation was so regular now it was like a ritual. You barely even questioned it anymore and he didn't even need to mention he needed a place to stay. All of a sudden you'd remember it was your week to house this unhygienic individual and you'd be like, "right Russell, get on the sofa". By all definitions, he was pretty useless. You might ask yourself why we'd hang round with a reprobate like him. We'd probably tell you, it's cause occasionally he could be really funny. Now Russell, he wasn't the most moral character in the world but he could get away with a lot, purely on the basis that he could be fun to be around. As I've learned in this life, those who are funny often achieve freedoms few of us could dream of. Russell definitely would fit in to that category and certainly took advantage of such luxuries.

Many in our town could not stand him and had cut their ties long ago. He was what some would call a "social parasite". Perhaps, we were just patient or rather stupid, take your pick. When I say he was funny, it wasn't like he was some comedian or anything, it was more that he would unintentionally do and say things that would make you laugh. His head didn't work like ours. He was something else entirely. A different breed. Sometimes shit would just come out his mouth and you'd be asking yourself, "did he really just say that?". We all have our dialects and ways of speaking but his combinations of words, his idioms he seemed to create on the spot could be truly magical at times. He put words together that shouldn't belong together and made them poetic in a sort of deeply disturbing way. If he could channel it into something maybe he might get his life together at some point. However, the guy was just far too unpredictable from one day to the next. For just about everyone else (and sometimes I hate to admit even including ourselves), he was without a doubt a walking nightmare.

Truthfully though I think the real reason why we kept him around was because he provided us with a lot of free weed over the years. So there was that. Normally he didn't add much and didn't take too much away. He barely ate and definitely didn't use up the hot water. He would just sit and hang round a lot. Leaving wasn't really his thing. Outstaying his welcome was common practice for this man but we didn't mind it so much. As for him being a funny guy, that was definitely something that could be challenged right now. In fact, I would like to readjust my previous statement. He used to be a funny guy. Mostly, these days the guy was just lost and had been for quite some time. Other than the free weed, I'm not too sure why we kept him around. I think he was our friend, I guess. A force of habit I don't know. As you can probably understand, when this man turned up unannounced to my garage (as he often would when we were jamming) I struggled to take his ludicrous claims of Alien visitations seriously. I'd be lying though if during this episode, I couldn't help but let out a brief snort or momentary chuckle at our drummer Foggy's response. After my repeated retorts of "Russell get a grip!", Foggy loudly exclaimed, "and next you'll be telling me Area 51 exists!". Denny had to explain it's proven that Area 51 exists, the debate was over what exists inside Area 51. Other than a few embarrassed mutterings of "ok. Ok", Foggy was absolutely silenced by Denny's explanation and did not continue to contribute to this discussion. As a group, this was not one of our finest moments. Stupidity was firing out from all corners today. I mean, we were never really an intellectual outfit like the mystery gang or anything but today was particularly bad. Since we were all left a little baffled by Russell's latest bag of tricks he'd chosen to unravel on us, we decided to end the jamming session a little early today. It seems when someone lays on you that aliens could be coming down in just a few weeks time, it's quite difficult to go back to plucking some strings.

Foggy picked up his drum kit and heaved it home. Naturally, Russell needed some extra persuasion to leave but eventually he went off to where ever he was meant to be staying that night too. That left just me and Denny. Unsure what else to do and remembering it was Friday after all, I threw the question out to my good friend, "wanna go for a drink?". My friend could only shrug and say, "why not?". I fired up the van. We were greeted by the sounds of Frank Zappa screaming about being a rock and in desperate need of assistance. Despite the loud volume I had no urge to turn the song off and began bopping my head along as I rolled on out. Denny almost instinctively does the same. No words are spoken between us be we seem to be on the same wavelength, he turns up the volume some more. As soon as the song finishes, Denny replays it from the start. I could not think of a reason to stop him. Even when he played it for a third time in a row, there was no objections from myself. A good bassline is a good bassline. Denny breaks into this dance in the passenger seat and mocks all Zappa's made up words. I look over and shake my head smiling. I pulled up and switched off the engine. Even with the vans speakers now off, I could still he Frank Zappa's utter gibberish ricocheting about the walls in my head as I strolled along the street. I was ready to welcome my first drink of the Evening.

It wasn't until around drink number two that Frank Zappa's nonsense had finally departed. That was when an even bigger problem began to form in my mind. We got a few more rounds in down at our local sports bar The Admiral. Denny was watching the baseball, I was too distracted by our mutual friends extra-terrestrial ramblings. Don't get me wrong, he had not convinced me. There was no U-turn or 180. I was mainly concerned about his mental state. Perhaps when one of your acquaintances decides to blabber on about the green men maybe it is time for the white men in coats to step in. Was it time for an intervention? Did they only do those in movies? I was plagued by many questions.

"Do you think Russell's heads come off?" I thought aloud. "It's never been on" answered Denny almost instinctively without turning his gaze from the baseball. "No but do you think he's getting worse?" I added. Finally Denny faced me and said, "Probably yeah... But he always comes through. Ain't nothing that can kill him... Russell the Muscle". We both giggled at that one. Russell the Muscle was a nickname given to him I cannot remember who by but it had stuck. It was what most people knew him by. Russell the Muscle was actually a baseball player for the Mariners. The real Russell the Muscle that is. Russell Branyan. He was only with us about 2 seasons in total but he left quite the impression with the number of home runs he hit.

You have to remember the Seattle Mariners are the only major ball team not to ever play in a world series. Forget winning one. We're not exactly known for our baseball skills. There was a glimmer of hope in the 90s but then...well... it passed. I do like to remind people though that there was a brief period where we could have been considered... not embarrassing. We're a team that really celebrates its players rather than the full team, if that makes sense? It's a different kind of celebration of success but when you follow a team like this you kind of have to celebrate something. The Russell the Muscle thing always amused me though. Our companion and the pro baseball player could not be more the opposite of each other. Our Russell was a proper scrawny kid. We're talking super skinny like in Captain America before he gets the surgery. The pro baseball player though he was massive. Absolutely huge. Big like Batista. If he hadn't been a ball player he could have definitely been a wrestler. Unfortunately he used a lot of that strength and power in a bad way.

Apparently he used to beat his wife and slap her around a bit. After a restraining order was issued preventing him going within 500 feet of his wife and kids, he wouldn't stop there. He was always breaking in to her house and playing mind games. Fucking with the thermostat was one of the things he liked to do. He would make it like unbearably cold in that house. Make no mistake, he is a man of violence. One of our biggest hitters of the last few years and he turns out to be a wife beater. Oh man, it really bums me out. If it wasn't for the grunge scene, I'm not sure if we'd been known at all across the globe. People seem to forget though that we had a helping hand in developing jazz and garage rock. Everyone always talks about New York for jazz. I don't want to take anything away from them cats but we did launch the careers of Ray Charles and Quincy Jones. As for the garage rock, I won't pretend for a second I don't love The Stooges but I really think we need to talk about The Sonics more. The god damn Sonics man! They were full of energy. We would often try to work some of their songs in to our sets. Usually we'd reserve something like Psycho for the end because whenever I went for those vocals my voice was finished for the next like 3 days. Nothing made me happier than the time Denny made me watch this film called Henry down at the Rodeo drive in and some serial killer was dancing along to our song. I can see it now, that guy from Guardians of the Galaxy showing his best moves. Wow that dude has really mellowed out since, hasn't he? Denny's cousin from London, England informs us that one of The Sonics songs is on some British car insurance advert. I know we're supposed to be punks and against adverts or whatever but I like the exposure. Denny's cousin also says Iggy does car insurance adverts now. If he's allowed The Sonics are allowed. That's all I'm saying.

The game finishes. We lost. Imagine my shock. Suddenly, Barbara Lynn's 'You'll Lose a Good Thing' begins playing over the bar speakers. My thoughts are back with that rogue Russell. Denny returns with the next round. I don't reach for my pint when he places it in front of me. Instead, I fold my arms and ask, "do you think there's more that we can do for Russell?".

Finally, he explains himself by saying, "No. No. No. It's not like that. I think I love him but I also fucking hate him". Barely even able to finish his sentence, my drinking companion breaks in to another fit of laughter. This time ending with him choking on his own beer and spilling it down his prized Sunn 0))) t shirt. What had happened to us today?

Following a loud exhale, eye roll and shake of the head, Denny takes his own drink off the table. Before raising it to his lips, he half frustratedly says, "you still on that one? If Mike Blowers had turned up to your garage and predicted Aliens are coming down on the 31st then maybe, just maybe I might have believed it. Russel's... a fuckin'... a fuckin' bonehead. He's always been that way. You know that. I know that. He ain't gonna change. Ain't gonna change". I hated to admit but Denny was right though. Some people just seem destined to make the same mistakes over and over. Unfortunately that didn't mean I could drop this quite like Denny could. For some strange reason this could not be shaken off so easily. "If we could do more, we should do more right?" was all I could muster.

Having said good night to that unhinged and unrelenting drunken clown, I opted to take a stroll round Lincoln Park. Sleeping was a gift I could not fully manage just yet. My body would not allow it. There was too much to unravel. Luckily, I didn't have work tomorrow or any gigs happening this weekend so there was no worry about getting to bed early or any of that shit. I had the whole night to get to the bottom of things. Sometimes you need nights like this to try and figure this fucking mess out. No distractions, just the beverage and whatever's on your mind. A bit like free writing I guess but free thinking. Just letting things flow. Whatever enters your head, enters. By the end of a bottle, you either made some big decisions or forgot about everything and fell asleep. Either way, with each sip any problems you had seemed to fade away. For better or worse. The best part of the system was by the next day, I didn't want to drink. As soon as I laid my eyes upon a beverage the morning after, it made me physically sick. On that basis, I think you could call the method a success. It even got the old steps up on my phone. Can't complain with that one, can you? On this evening, I found myself listening repeatedly to Maurice Williams and The Zodiac's, 'Stay'.

Denny did give this some thought as he sucked on his beverage but could only come out with, "What more could we do?". He looks at me and shrugs. Since I didn't find this to be the answer I was looking for, I decided to push further and ask, "do you not like him or something?". This caused Denny to break into some kind of manic laughter. A manic laughter that went on for longer than was natural. Momentarily, there would be pauses as he proceeded to take a few gulps of his beer but he would eventually return to uncontrollable laughter. It seemed, he simply couldn't resist the urge to break into the giggles. What was wrong with him? How long was this shit going to go on for? Unable to bear it any longer, I burst out with, "what?". Denny grabs his ribs, coughs in pain and wipes his eyes clean as he attempts to regain control of his own body.

I'd left the car parked just round the corner. It was going to have be a morning pick up job. It was only about a 5 minute drive from the park to my house but I was not in a fit state to drive. It was scenic enough out here anyway. When you've got this on the doorstep, let's just say you'd be a fool to turn it down.

I kept resorting back to my mental files on Russell. Who was this man? What was his story again? I'm a man who gets confused by time. I have to keep going back and going back. Sometimes you forget things. Sometimes you revisit these memories and you get back on good terms with them and lose where you're at in the present. You have this overwhelming urge to get back to the way things were. How on earth does one keep track of all this? I recall Russell's past and I feel a kind of sympathy wash over me. Originally, he had these parents who killed themselves when he was young. A double hanging suicide. Really nasty shit. I'm told Russell was the first to walk in on the bodies. He refused to let his little sister see what had happened and called the police. The last thing he wanted was for her to bear the constant scars of seeing something like that. He bear it for both of them. Maybe there are some things you just don't recover from. After this he gets fostered and ends up living with these rich parents in Ballard. One would think he had a kind of second chance but this life simply wasn't for him. I'm not sure if he keeps in touch with his adoptive family or what happened to his sister. Come to think of it, I don't even know if I know this man at all. What does that say about me? This man had sat with us for hours, heard all our bullshit and we'd barely even listened to him. Some of us were kind of angry about how he seemed to fuck up such a guaranteed easy life. However, thinking about it, would I really want to live anywhere other than West Seattle? Deep down I am a beaches kind of guy. Call me the fucking sand man. Whenever I go inland further, it kind of freaks me out. I need to see the sea. It's where I feel most comfortable. I need beaches. I need trees. Otherwise it's not home. I didn't mind playing gigs in the centre but I could never live there. Settling anywhere else just seemed crazy. How could I judge anyone else for making the same decision? There's no answering these questions.

The alcohol takes its hold and about the most intellectual thought possible is, "Jesus Christ that's a nice tree". I was gawping at this big boy for what seemed like hours. If anyone was walking past they would have been rather baffled. I hadn't moved. I couldn't move. It was so big. My eyes stretched out as wide as they could. I stared this giant out from top to bottom. Drunk or not drunk, we do get some gorgeous trees out here it must be said. Agent Dale Cooper would be right at home. We have plenty of Douglas Firs. A very popular tree out here it seems. My favourite hands down had to be the Giant Sequioa. That's a fucking gorgeous tree you know. No question about it. Top tier tree. My mind goes blank and I half sober up for a second. What the fuck was I thinking about trees for? It was almost certainly time for bed. The early morning birds made their presence known. I heard songs so delicate and graceful, they weren't meant for human ears. They had spoken. The message was clear. The time of the human had passed, it was bird time. An evacuation of the premises was necessary. Vision all blurry, movement jagged and brain completely fried I somehow managed to make it home. That night I dreamt of stray dogs. Well just the one dog actually. It wouldn't leave me alone. This rough looking salt and pepper miniature schnauzer. It didn't look like it had seen a house in some time. It's fur coat poorly kept and in desperate need of a wash. A job that I did not want. A constant barking followed my every move. No matter where I would try to go, this dog could be heard. Even if I could not see it, I could hear it. To be clear, this was an aggressive type of barking. There was nothing inviting about this. It was loud and noisy. Had it been a welcoming call perhaps things would have gone differently. As soon as the sound could be heard, I was turning my body in another direction. All efforts made to leave and pay no attention to this trouble seeking stray in the hopes it would soon give up became increasingly futile. This dog was not going to leave and it was something that just had to be accepted.

So the next time he barked into the night, I weirdly decided to return a "woof woof". Whether this meant something in dog language was impossible to tell. After all, I was no expert in the language of dogs. Had this been said in the correct tone or manner? How could one know? In that moment it seemed the perfect thing to say. Before I could fully question my actions, the stray was at my heels in a flash. A quick stroking meant we were bonded. Despite the first impression with the loud barking, it was soon clear this good dog posed no threat. Once this had been established, a name was needed. There was no way of explaining it but "Danny Boy" just seemed the perfect name for this dog. It felt right. No matter how far he drifted from my side, I spent the rest of the night feeling safe and protected by this one dog. He was my assigned escort and nothing could distract him from his duties. Assigned by whom, I could not say, all I knew is this was happening. The sun slowly began to rise and I would call out much like John Lennon, "Oh Danny boy!", without fail my four legged friend would appear. The next morning was one filled with regret. Sure I needed the alcohol but was that much necessary? Ladies and gentleman, I have to announce...it was a rough one. My whole life I had been searching for the perfect amount of alcohol to drink before stopping. There had to be a perfect amount. I was convinced. Maybe one day I would find it. My green ray so to speak. It was out there. After spending way too long in bed, I decided to go for a walk across the beach. The crunching sounds of the sand was too much for my distorted noodle and so headphones were an absolute necessity. These strange sounds needed to be drained out and drained out fast before insanity washed over me. Normally the ambient sounds were all that were needed but in this fragile condition they could not be handled or trusted. I was on the ropes. One unexpected noise separating me from total madness. One unusual sound and I might just be finished. Risks could not be taken. All stations on death con one. It was that kind of hangover. I remember feeling briefly sad that no dog attached themselves to me like in the dream. Reality could be so cruel sometimes.

Alright so maybe I didn't have a dog but Bob Dylan was sure doing a lot for me in that moment. I was listening to, 'All I Really Want to Do' on my little sea side adventure. I watched the kids running past and the adults trying to keep up. Frozen to the spot in mere confusion, the thought crossed my mind -how could they have such energy at this hour? I hadn't even had my fucking coffee yet. Not even a god damn Gatorade. A big mistake from myself. Since when did I get this fucking sloppy? Maintaining a standing position and putting one foot in front of the other was a struggle for me right now. These kids were relentless. They never seemed to run out of energy. It was a different world for them. At the age of 26, I was just an intruder here. The morning is their time so you have to play by their rules. This meant saying hello to the imagination and bye bye to reality. A kid stuck gun fingers out at me and screamed, "pew pew". Instinctively, I knew I was dead. On the outside, I was giving the performance of my life. I theatrically fell to the floor, giving the kind of performance that would have got me an A in Drama. On the inside, I was cursing this kid, wondering if once down, I'd ever be able to get up again. The kid was off in a flash. He'd forgotten about me already and moved on to terrorising the next person he could find. I lay on my back watching the latest victim awaiting a similar fate to my own. Slowly I crawled over to the nearest bench. Usually I'd be asleep at this hour, I felt like a guest in their world. All I could do was smile and watch. Time wasn't acting like time should right now. There was a sense of freedom in the air. How could anyone grow tired of watching this? We have this gift for the first few years of our lives and we don't even know it. Then we spend the next 10 years or so running from it. Scrutinising every single aspect of the way we were raised. Staging our own personal rebellion. Our own war with the past. Trying to put as much distance as you can between you and it. Running and running in total rejection of everything that has come before.

Then one day all that stops and we spend the rest of our lives trying to... come back home. But you can't, it's too late so you have to try to re-do the same experiences. Walks across the beaches. Trips to the local drive in. Retracing all the old steps of what physically remains unchanged just to capture one drop of that feeling you once had. I even managed to get a few lyrics written up. You could say I was feeling inspired. What a turn around. Everything's coming up Millhouse. The notepad was out, Cup of coffee in one hand and pen in the other. Oh yeah that's one thing about us Seattleites. We love our coffee. Other Americans may joke about "don't talk to me til I've had my coffee" but out here we really fucking mean it. It's engrained from birth. It's pure petrol. Gives the much needed energy to keep that pen scribbling away day to day. The original Starbucks was out here. Going all the way back 1971 when the green mermaid first made her mark. Back then she was brown though and she had her boobies out. The name itself came from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. A very well chosen mythological figure but Starbucks is so big and universal now you could almost forget its origins. I definitely didn't. As my mum constantly reminded me, the original Starbucks was where my father first took her on a date. I'm sure the situation could be the same for many Seattlites like myself, we owe our existence to Starbucks. Times had changed and the identity was no longer the same with the massive expansion. However, for a time you could say in the late 70s Starbucks achieved their intention of creating a utopian hang out spot which could be deemed what urban psychologist Ray Oldenburg referred to as 'the third place'.

My first place was on 34th Avenue South West. My second place was Forever roofing (or whatever roof my boss put me on that day). My third place? What was that? I don't know. Maybe The Admiral? Ah the good Admiral. How I loved her. When I wasn't with my boys having a drink, I did have a place I went for some peace and quiet. A very specific part on Alki beach. This was the spot. Right on the rocks. The sea just a few yards from myself. This was where it became easiest to write.

They say every Seattleite has a relationship with the sea. Since the beginning of our time here it has presented such enormous difficulties. For those who have met it so head on though have found they have been repaid by it. They found their comeuppance or retribution. Some great reward. We are the Seattle Mariners for a reason. Years back, we had a vote and there were over 600 names suggested for the team. Although, he wasn't the only one to suggest the name, it was Roger Szmodis beautiful explanation that won everyone over. He said, "I've selected Mariners because of the natural association between sea and Seattle and her people, who have been challenged and rewarded by it". Some of the most poetic shit I've ever heard. Many of us have often wondered what happened to Szmodis. The prize at the time for his contribution was free season tickets. Yet when it came to collecting the tickets Szmodis couldn't be found. It was like he never even existed. The man who had collectively captured the spirit of Seattle had vanished. He'd gone. Completely disappeared without so much as a word. I'd like to think this was just a one off but people did have a habit of just disappearing or just getting up and leaving in a flash round here. We were a place of great mystery. "Writing something good there Pike?" called a voice from somewhere behind me. Being so distracted, I hadn't even noticed Russell advancing towards me. "Let's hope so", I through back at him. "Can I see it", he asks. "Sure", I said and gave him the pad. Russell had a glance through the scribblings and read aloud, "Once there was the old man and the sea, but now the tides wash away the debris. His boat became his coffin, it's a tale we speak of often. Of how every man has a debt to the ocean and you can't interfere with what she has chosen". I always got a little nervous when people read my things and they weren't ready yet. Russell did have weirdly good instincts about what was good or bad though.

Before I could even work out what he thought of the lyrics, Russell responded with "Wow. That's fucking beautiful man. Can't wait til it's finished". I looked him in the eye and said, "Thanks. It's definitely a slower one. I think I was going for something like Leonard. I don't know if it fits what we normally go for". Russell waved all that to the side with just one comment, "Hey Pike. What's good is good". It was all I needed to hear. All doubts left me. Russell could do that sometimes. "What brings you round here, pilgrim?", I asked him. It turned out these were his stomping grounds, especially at this time in the morning. Shared it with the kids. He would regularly go exploring the land. Miles and miles all round Seattle. He knew every single street name. Every short cut. Since he didn't have a fixed address, it was all he could do. It was all he had. He told me, "a place can't let you down, just it's people". Shit I thought, you're not wrong Russell, you're not wrong. He then proceeded to go on a rant about how this morning he'd come across a load of smashed glass not far from here. People had been having a party last night and left a dangerous mess only a few yards from where the kids normally play. That strangely bothered Russell, that bothered him a lot. He'd spent his morning trying to clear some of it but as he said, "the people having the party had really gone to town smashing bottles for fun". It seemed like a two man job and something that had really irritated him. I don't know whether just to shut him up or because I also cared about the kids, I decided to give him a hand. Maybe a bit of both.

Once reaching the site of the damage, I instantly came round to Russell's way of thinking. Kids definitely would be coming through this way any minute and it was absolutely a two man operation. We carefully picked up the individual pieces of glass and placed them in the nearby bin. As delicate as I was trying to be, I still managed to cut myself and let off a sharp, "ah!".

Russell returned from the bin and glanced over. He picked up the next big chunk of glass in front of him, whilst still looking at the sliced skin on my fingers and said, "stings don't it?". I stopped investigating the trickle of blood and focused my attention on Russell. That was when I noticed the numerous cuts running down his fingers. Christ this man baffled me. His track record was far from perfect. His reputation in this town was that of a scrounger. Someone who owned money all over town and could cause quite the scene when drunk on a Friday night. Yet here he was a on Saturday morning clearing broken glass and keeping the children in his community safe. The anonymous protector from the shadows. I didn't get this guy. If other people were to see this, what would they think? Was this the duality of man? Was there sense to be made of this? After the two man operation was complete, Russell made a passing comment about the paint coming off the boat in the children's playground. Without even hesitating, I told him that we would have to make a stop at the shop for some paint. While we were on it, we were on it. We'd crossed over to the other side as decent respectable citizens who provide for the community. It took the rest of the morning to finish re-painting the boat but we managed it. There was always the fear that the council might come over and ask us what the fuck we were doing. We'd have to promise them our intentions were good. Would they have believed us? We didn't get to find out. Not even a parent questioned us. Then again, I was something of a handyman labourer type. Perhaps we looked professional. The thought did occur to me that maybe I should look in to seeing if I could get Russell a job at my work. As I was attending to the last touches of going over the letters on the side, Russell stopped and stared as though caught in a trance admiring our work. "Sasha Eli. Who's Sasha Eli?" asked Russell.

For the first time, having been going over the lettering for the last 5 minutes, I stopped and really took in the name of the boat. Who might that have been I wondered? Was there a story here wrapped on this boat that I'd walked past so often and yet never bothered to think about? I shook my head at Russell cluelessly and replied, "I don't know". Together, we admired our handiwork. Our only hope was the kids would enjoy it and whoever Sasha Eli was, she could rest well knowing her legacy was intact. Unsure of what to say, Russell and I stood in silence. I think Russell was close to breaking out a smile. We were males on the brink of emotion, unsure what to do or say in that situation, I asked my companion whether he wanted to go for a drink. Russell accepted. Since, I wasn't really feeling up for a drink after last night, this changed to lunch at Ampersand by the beach. I went with the Ham and Brie sandwich and a soda. Russell seemed a little nervous at the prospect of switching to food and it took me a little longer than it should have to realise why. "You not got enough money for this?", I asked Russell. An awkward shake of the head was his response. "You want me to stick this on the Russell tab?" was my next question. This was greeted with a smile and a nod of the head. I nodded too and asked the waiter to "make that two". There was no way of determining what the Russell tab was at that point. Could have been hundreds, could have been thousands. Was it ever going to be paid back? Probably not. They say in life you make deals, based on what you can receive back. You do for others in the hopes of receiving yourself. This can be straight away or even at a later date. The idea is that of reciprocation. Fundamentally, we give so we can get. I'd given Russell a lot over the years and seen very little back. Yet I continued to give to Russell time and time again. This could mean three things. Either that system is bullshit and a load of scientists are wrong. Or maybe it was that I believed Russell would still one day pay me back at a later date. And then there was a final possibility. Russell's payback was a different form of currency that I didn't fully understand.

I considered all three possibilities whilst eating my sandwich but came no closer to finding the answer. It was a good sandwich though and Russell's reminiscing on some of our previous nights out together meant I was never far away from giggling. What could I say? I was in high spirits. We were like Walt and Jesse sharing a welldeserved meal together having completed a difficult mission. Even when I was walking back to my van, having said goodbye to Russell, I was still laughing to myself. Laughing about what I was unsure. When you're in that kind of mood, you're in that kind of mood. After about an hour of walking, I made it back to the van and smiled as I laid eyes on her. Such a beautiful thing. She'd never looked more gorgeous. Just where I left her the night before. I gave her a good old pat as I entered and sat down.

It suddenly dawned on me that I had the rest of the afternoon and evening to engage in a form of 'social activity'. Such is the gift of the weekend. That nasty work business could wait. It was like for a brief moment, I had forgotten what weekends were for. I remembered that I had a phone in my pocket and took it out to check what was showing at the Rodeo drive in. Following a brief double take, I saw they were reshowing The Blob (1958). A drive in classic starring Steve Mcqueen. In an over excited manner, I began cheering. A passerby looked at me confused. There was no explaining this one. I simply loved The Blob. I'd seen a few monster movies in my time and had always taken pleasure in seeing a town be destroyed by whoever the titular creature was. It had to be said though The Blob was something else. It has this surreal effect on you. Watching that fucker go to work could not be described. I managed to get a hold of myself and started to drop Denny an invite. Just before I started typing, it came back to me that he was out of town over the weekend seeing family. It was time to message our other friend. This was to be an adventure I'd share with Foggy. Filled with excitement, my fingers typed away. Once it was completed, I tucked the phone back in my pocket. Before driving off, I put my hands together on the steering wheel, looked up with my eyes closed and held a cheeky grin. As though thanking some unknown higher power for curing me of a dreadful hangover.

The next day, I arranged to meet up with the future wife, Laura Cotton. We'd been dating just a few months but I could tell there was something here. Normally, I wasn't the dating type but sometimes you have to make exceptions. If it wasn't her looks, it was that she could hold a conversation for more than 5 minutes and she knew who Quincy Jones was. This meant a lot. We met officially after one of our gigs in the centre but we'd known of each other for years, such is the one single pleasure of social media. On our first date we found we both shared dreams of being signed by Southern Lord, the greatest record label in the country. She was in a riot grrrl band called Supercoven and envisioned herself as the next Courtney Love. She played fast and she sang poorly, if her music wasn't going to make her a success then her fists would. As she said, if the demos didn't work she could always physically intimidate Greg Anderson in to submission. She had the reputation for being a brawler when the crowds invaded the stage or heckled once too often. I found this out myself only hours in the first date when she piled straight in to a bar fight.

By date number two we were already discussing our intentions to buy a house together in Los Angeles once our respective bands got the record deals that would soon be coming our way. We would spend our summers there, taking walks along the star paved paths and performing in every bar The Doors had set foot in. Laura was obsessed with the idea of performing live. "That kind of energy. It's raw. No-one knows where it comes from, where it goes. It's momentary and then it's gone. But it's just about the closest thing to something real", she told me. Her favourite movie was Green Room. According to her, this was the closest a movie had come to capturing the true spirit of punk since Repo Man. She had plans of permanently relocating to LA but there was only one home for me. Having said that, this was the kind of girl you could break your own rules for, your own routines for, your own dignity for. Why didn't these girls come with a warning label? If they did would that even stop me? Laura had me from the start.

Sadly, we'd been a little off these last few days and by we, I meant her. How had we gone from such a glorious honeymoon, living life as one to this? Pangea was splitting from the seams. Surely we hadn't reached our expiration date. Not on my watch. Checking for a pulse might be difficult in the dead silences we shared that afternoon. You wouldn't want to get in that close. Not even the waitress stood around long. There was an undeniable awkward aroma in the air that neither of us were commenting on. Nervous another silence may cause her to blow the whole thing off, I went in with a wildcard, I gave her the preposterous news Russell shared with us recently. Of anything said in the last few hours, this produced the greatest reaction. She thought it was hilarious so I pushed it further and we began fooling around and fantasising about the idea of heading out to Vegas for a road trip to go meet our visitors. "It would be the polite thing to do", I said. As I walked out the café, Hank Williams's Ramblin Man was playing out the speakers, I looked up to the skies and wondered are the aliens really coming? Then I laughed at the thought. Oh Russell. And that was how we ended up driving east across the country to go see some aliens on the account of a joke. I called up Denny and he just said, "Well I'm not doing anything this week so I could do that, yeah". Foggy's one request was that there was a good playlist. As for Russell, he was always planning on going, although I'm unsure how he would have got there. With the new year coming, we all headed in to my van, turned up the sound on The Kingsmen's Louie Louie and hit the road. We referred to the on-coming visitation as, "The Happening". It was never how long until we get to Vegas, it was how long until The Happening. None of us, other than Russell, actually believed we were going to encounter some aliens, each of us had our own individual reasons, ranging from perpetual boredom to trying to save a failing relationship. They call America the land of opportunity. A place where you can make things happen. I needed some of that belief right now. Our forefathers had travelled out west in order to build this country. Now we were on the return leg in search of similar greatness.

We drove to Portland and just kept going south east passed Oregon and Nevada, eventually stopping at Yosemite National Park. I spotted a few giant sequioas and nearly lost my mind. This led to an uncontrollable rant to Laura about how these trees are on the endangered list with only about 80,000 of them left standing. She didn't seem to mind, being a bit of a nature freak herself. "You know the oldest giant sequioa is meant to be somewhere between 3,200 and 3,266 years old. If we can't keep something like that going. What does that say about us?", I told her. After our brief detour, Russell spun round with his hands on hips and said, "Let's get back on the road, boys!". Our spiritual guide. Our problematic leader. We piled back in to the van and I let the Pixies pump out the speakers with Down to the Well. Denny whispered in to my ear, "You know how you said you and Laura were having a few issues lately. I think you two might just be back". I tapped the steering wheel a few times and nodded. The forefathers must have been watching over us. By the time we were going past Death Valley, we realised we weren't alone on this journey. In the scorching heat, everything became near apocalyptic with waves and waves of cars and hikers going past with one destination in mind. No regard was paid to the laws of the road, the only rule was get to Las Vegas by any means. Personalised t-shirts with messages such as, "we welcome you green men!", humoured us greatly. We honked our horn at every walking party we saw, we raced cars across the desert strip. Pirate radios had let the news slip and eventually it became a social media craze. At first, the government tried to deny it was happening and went to great lengths to control the hysteria but eventually gave up and embraced the jokes online. I couldn't recall a moment in my life time where people came together more united as one. All work stopped and people were glued to their tellies and phones. Managers didn't even bother to berate their staff. Everyone rallied behind it. The people decided this was a good thing. Why would such an event cause people to react with such joy and euphoria? No-one even knew for sure whether the aliens were coming and if their intentions were friendly.

There were of course still some who would destroy the jubilant celebrations by resorting to violence and looting. We found an old man lying in the road, having been physically assaulted and left for dead. He told us some youngsters had stolen his car so we decided to give him a ride. Along the way, he filled us in on his life story. He referred to himself as Max, the oldest ecoterrorist in California. Wherever he went, he planted seeds and monitored the growth of various plants. "It wasn't that I hated people, it was just that I preferred to spend my precious remaining time with plants. Ok, so maybe I had become a little of a misanthrope in my old age but with the kids these days how could one not? I mean you guys seem ok. But they confuse me so it was for the best. Here in my own little bubble things made sense. Things were able to go at the speeds I could handle. There's a time in your life when You're Jim Stark. You're a rebel without a cause. Then there's a time in your life when you become the forgotten grandparents in Tokyo Story. Unfortunately, I'm moving towards the latter", he informed us. He went on to discuss some more cinema that had impacted him too, adding, "The other night I rewatched one of Scorsese's lesser appreciated works. Gangs of New York. Nothing can prepare you for that final shot. It could be perhaps the most poignant closer in cinema history. The two big characters lie in coffins side by side. Their legacies are forgotten about. A scrap heap of rubbish piled on and piled on. These are two men that arguably made America becoming erased from history, as though they weren't even there. I am just an old man from California who has achieved almost nothing. The second I go in to the ground, I'm done for. It's a sad thought to take in but it's the truth. And we all know it. I think everyone wants to leave something behind. Death is so final, that's what scares us all. We need to let some part of us survive. One final cry that we were here and made some kind of difference...

...What that is and what that could be is difficult to say. I've thought more and more it over the years as my time in the ring draws to a close. I still don't know. All I know is that it has to be something. I can't go with nothing. Something has to stay. The only way through is to distract yourself as long as you can. Hopefully along the way figure it all out. Was it all worth it in the end? Was anything achieved? Did it mean anything? None of this is clear. When it comes to leaving some kind of personal item behind as a mark of presence, what is that going to be? I can't stop thinking about any of this. I am just a scared old man. A scared old man waiting for the end".

Banners waved in the wind. Families sat in porches and gardens with their eyes glued to the skies. We heard ecstatic voices on the radio, they were getting interviewed by some good man whose name was Bonehead Bill. We're almost there to Vegas where they're putting on a show. They've come so far, I've lived this long at least I must go and say hello.

Max's words had a real impact on me. As though I wasn't meant to hear this, as though the information had come to soon. A premature crisis intended for a later date. What a horrible way to die. When my time is to come, I want to go surrounded by people. There was a certain sadness and loneliness in Max's voice that unnerved me. As a group, we'd mainly done alright so far, having all been friends since school. Yet, there was no denying that maybe the gang was on its last days and people were beginning to go the separate ways life takes them. Denny would soon be leaving for Berkeley to do a masters, Russell was Russell, Laura and I were on the ropes. On some level I hoped this trip would keep us all together. Was that foolish of me? Foggy asked Max why he was wanting to see the aliens. "my wife would have wanted to come, she was always fascinated with space. She died of the cancer. I owe it to her in some way", he answered. We all had our individual reasons for coming. Rain began to fall from the heavens but we took no notice of this and the rain drops fell where they fell. I soon forgot the break and hammered the accelerator. It got so crowded on the road, so I started driving in the sand. My head was feeling scared but my heart was feeling free. The desert turned to mud under the weight of a thousand tyres. Everybody was remembering to forget they had the chills.

We find a spot in the crowd, as close to the action as possible, roll down a blanket on the ground and pass round a pair of binoculars recently purchased by Russell the Muscle. I was honoured to call him my friend. The aliens took their time but sure enough at 6.36 on new year's eve, a spacecraft slowly descended on to the strip. Three of them came down to greet us, they waved to their spectators and were surprisingly media trained. One woman handed over a baby and an alien raised it to the sky. A symbol of peace between galaxies. An image that would stick in time for centuries. One of hope and positivity to combat children running from nuclear bombs and point blank executions. All three aliens would later be awarded Times Man of the Year. Nearly as soon as they arrived, they departed again. We shall never know the reason for their brief visit. Leaving Earth's citizens to repeatedly strive to find some meaning in The Happening. Throughout all this, Old Max sat in a deck chair, barely saying a word but he had this strange goofy grin on his face going from ear to ear. Lost in his own world listening to Brian Eno's Silver Morning. Later, he would tell me, "We're all just passing through. Nobody really knows anything. We want the answers. We want to control everything but everybody has their own course. Fate may play into your favour, it may not... accept the mystery. When you're young, You think this sort of thing will happen a lot in life. These things don't come along often, kid". Something told me he wasn't talking about the aliens.

The partying went on for 4 days. People filled the streets and danced from sun up 'til sun down. We passed around a guitar and sung 'til we could no more. Foggy hammered away at his drum kit and never failed to stay on beat. Laura and I went in to a duet singing, "There's a starman waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet us. But he think he'd blow our minds. There's a starman waiting in the sky. He's told us not to blow it. Cause he knows it's all worthwhile. He told me. Let the children lose it. Let the Children use it. Let all the children boogie!".

Two friends get up and leave the quiet diner. Their rest stop is over and life truly begins. A waitress heads over to clear their plates. In the corner, a disregarded jukebox that has seen many strangers come and go with its glass screen eyes, as though with a mind of its own, begins to play George Harrison's I Live For You for no-one in particular.

In the hordes of partying people, we realised we had lost Laura. She text us on the day we were leaving to pick her up from some diner. I turned down Townes Van Zandt who was mid-way through singing Dead Flowers on the car speakers and switched the engine off. Everyone stayed in the car, whilst I went in to retrieve our lost comrade. I scanned the room for her and she waved over at me to get my attention. There was a free seat opposite her and we sat down just the two of us. "You know, I somehow thought doing all this would save us", I declared. "You thought coming all the way across the country to see a bunch of aliens land would fix our relationship?", replied Laura. "Well, yeah", I fired back unable to disagree with the statement at hand. "I guess if aliens are real that opens a door for a whole new way of thinking. Things that we thought weren't possible could be possible", conceded Laura. "I think maybe you're coming round to my thinking", I proposed. Laura leans back in her seat and takes a long sip of her beverage and saying, "what if you had this whole thing figured out wrong? You thought it was one thing and all this time it was another". "I don't know what it is but I just don't want to lose it", I state. "Nothing's lost. Just transferred maybe", says Laura. "I just wish I could see what you saw. So I could be sure", I follow up. "But if you did then maybe this would have ended differently. Somehow I think everything's lining up perfectly. The forces in the galaxy moving us along in the exact way we're supposed to. Maybe it's hard now but in time...sunrise doesn't last all morning. A cloudburst doesn't last all day", shares Laura. "All Things Must Pass?", I query. "All Things Must Pass", repeats Laura. "I guess so", I concede.