Ride me ragged in a rusty old rickshaw, readers, but another crazy-hazy fortnight has passed and gone, and we’re all still here to write and read about it! Reason enough to crack open a crack vial, pop a cork and pill, and erratically chop our way through these 60% proof lines of Samuel J. Snort.
Ireland’s ice-coolest, best-hung and hardest-living rock journalist (in other words, me) had been planning on devoting all of this fortnight’s column to the sticky subject of Channel 4’s forthcumming ‘Wank Week’. I figured I could easily toss off 1,000 words on that subject.
The three Foghat roadies who stay with me between tours (i.e. since sometime back in the ’70s) have been practising non-stop for the ‘Wanking Marathon’, and the hallways of Snort Towers are beginning to smell suspiciously like the frustrated corridors of Arbour Hill Prison.
Apparently the world record for continuous choking of the chicken is a straight eight-and-a-half hours. However, Ernesto, Raul and Pablo are confident they can beat if off. Personally, I really wish they’d fog their hats somewhere else, but who am I to stand between men and their wet dreams?
I may yet complain about their chosen soundtrack, though. Pearl Jam and Thin White Rope might’ve both named themselves after semen, but I don’t see how their music actually aids the act of self abuse. On the plus side, it’s definitely drowning out a lot of noises that I certainly don’t want to be hearing.
But I digress. As I was saying, I was going devote the entire column to this subject until I pulled some surprising news off the wire, and all thoughts of wanking and wankers flew straight from my mind like a thin white rope of pearl jam from the raw knob-end of a spotty teenager lost in the process of turning Japanese.
“What news is this?” I hear you ask. Well, Samuel J. Snort was utterly shocked, totally gob-smacked and seriously appalled to hear that my old mucker Colin F. Farrell has gone on the wagon. I shit you not. Apparently, the man who once boasted a weekly drink and drug intake that would almost rival my own (breakfast) has been clean and sober for six months. Six fucking months!!!
Grotesque. Unbelievable. Bizarre. Unprecedented. Who’ll be next? Shane? Keef? Ernesto?
Speaking of my own breakfast, this morning’s consisted of a litre of vodka and freshly squeezed orange juice, two four-inch lines of pure MDMA powder, a baby’s arm sized spliff of Ernesto’s Purple Haze, and a twelve minute blowjob from the luscious and lusty lovechild of a prominent Irish clergyman. For lunch, I’m planning on having a magic mushroom omelette and her equally eager sister.
Young Colin probably had muesli and fruit or some shit like that, before a long and sweaty session with his personal trainer. And I don’t mean the good kind of sweaty session. Or the good kind of personal trainer either. Yet he’s about to release a movie with the word Vice in the title. Ha fucking ha!
Still, that’s what happens when you spend too much time over in La-La Land. The sun turns your brain to mush, and you suddenly decide to stop turning your brain to mush. One moment you’re tearing up your deluxe suite in the Chateau Marmont with a big bag of Bolivian Marching Powder, a crate of beer, a case of Jack Daniels and six Sicilian strippers; the next you’re rising at 5AM, ordering crunchy green things in daft restaurants and only drinking Evian water.
Well, I’ve got news for you, suckers! Evian is ‘Naïve’ spelt backwards. And those waiters wipe their arses with that $45 lettuce!
Take it from your Uncle Sam, a life that isn’t spent wasted is nothing but a waste. Look at moi! I’ve been drinking, smoking, snorting, injecting and ingesting all manner of legal and illegal narcotics for as long as I can remember and, as far as I can recall, it hasn’t done me the slightest bit of harm. Ever!
Having said that, I can’t remember much further back than yesterday. However, at the amphetamine-fuelled speed at (and on) which I live my high-flying, muff-diving, deadline-dodging life, this is probably a good thing. Besides which, I’m a professional journalist. My memories are preserved in prose, and collected in my press cuttings.
If I could only find them, I’d be grand.
Actually, if I could only find them, I’d be more like two hundred grand. Earlier this week I received an unexpected phone call from Cut & Paste Books – an extremely reputable just-outside-London-based publishers, who do a lucrative trade in cookery books, marine almanacs and rock and roll memoirs.
“Hello, is that Ireland’s ice coolest, best hung and greatest living rock journalist, Mr. Samuel J. Snort?” asked a plummy male English voice.
“The one and only,” I replied, pushing young Attracta up off my lap.
“Mr. Snort, my name is Colin Cut and I’m co-owner of Cut & Paste Books,” he said. “We’re an extremely reputable just-outside-London-based publishers, who do a lucrative trade in cookery books, marine almanacs and rock and roll memoirs.”
“I’ve heard of you,” I said. “You did that Dana book, All Kinds Of Everything (Goes Into Stew). And the one by Daniel O’Donnell - My Mother’s Favourite Pancake Recipes.”
“That was us,” Colin affirmed. “Daniel’s book is doing particularly well, thanks to the Germaine Greer foreword. Anyway, Sam, we were wondering if you’d be interested in writing your memoirs for us? You must have many wild and crazy tales from your years of living on the frontlines of Irish rock & roll.”
“I could tell you shit about Dave Couse, Nick Kelly, Tom Dunne and Liam Coade that would unravel the hairs in the Afro that Niall Stokes never actually had,” I assured him. “About Ferg from Whipping Boy so fucking unbelievable that you’ll never fucking believe them. I have the stuff about Edge’s time on the ledge. I could tell you stories about Jim Corr that would, em, make you go...‘Corr blimey!’ Em...etc., etc.”
“And would you be interested in writing such a book?” Colin asked.
“That would obviously depend,” I replied, coolly, “on how much you were willing to pay me to write such a book. I’m a very busy man. Attracta – stop that!”
“Well, what we were thinking...”
“Excuse me, Colin,” I interrupted. “ERNESTO, RAUL AND PABLO – STOP FUCKING WANKING YOU SHOWER OF FUCKING WANKERS!!! Sorry, Colin, you were saying?”
I’ll spare you the details of our intense contractual negotiations, but, needless to say, the employees of Cut & Paste won’t be receiving their annual bonus this year. Provided I can find my war stories chest, that is. My entire life story – and therefore the story of the rock and roll life of this very nation - is recorded in there, yellowing away on brittle sheets of old newsprint. To paraphrase my old mucker Howard Marks, it’s an archive of a life well wasted.
But anyway, enough of all that. Next issue, I may cum back to ‘Wank Week’. And as for Colin (Farrell, not Cut), I wish him well, I really do. Not meaning to be Petty, but don’t come around here no more. At least not until you’re off that wagon.