Friday Mick Jones Alert

This is an intermittent series in which I track the movements of Clash guitarist and punk idol Mick Jones, asking the question 'Am I stalking Mick Jones, or is Mick Jones stalking me?'

I know from this photo it looks like I'm following him, but he's clever, that's one of the things I've noticed about him.

It is frankly weird how often I see Mick Jones.

I don't just see him in west London either, in fact the sighting before this was in Shoreditch.

It's ironic too, because he is the member of the Clash that I am least excited about seeing. Can I just stress, as I do every time I see him, that he looks terrible, it's like his face is being drawn up and away from his teeth, by a giant invisible hand, and up close, like when I saw him in WHSmiths (he was buying all the papers, all of them), he smells just the way you'd expect a dying rockstar to smell.

He wears black suits on sunny days. I would hazard a guess that mercifully he never, ever wears shorts.

If I have a vision of Joe Strummer on the H&C line I will be sure to snap it on my trusty mobile phone.

The Jones/Strummer dynamic is a good model for a particular kind of creative relationship. One disgusting sentimentalist plus one intellectual with an axe to grind. Lennon/McCartney also fit this model.

I'm having a seriously good time at the moment and people keep sending me interesting stuff. Look, here's a reading group where you can read DFW's Infinite Jest over the summer. And here is my friend Andy's blog about failure and art which as you can imagine seriously rings my cherries.

Also had an enjoyable online discussion with an Australian on the Ideal Murder blog yesterday. I was slightly embarrassed to find myself on the front page of their site (not too embarrassed to link to it obviously), but I don't have a password, so I can't see if my article has sparked a lot of spluttering indignation in the comments from whoever at Mother was on here reading yesterday. (Yes, I'm watching you).

I'm doing a longer feature piece for the next issue that has so far involved interviewing Dan Germain from Innocent. He gave me a lot of free smoothies without asking to touch me inappropriately or anything. I'm also meeting the writer at Malmaison, so perhaps you can guess what the piece is about.

Happy Friday.

Friday Mick Jones alert

Brother Stevie has bent space and time to produce this week's illustration because he's also pitching and raising a family (including three semi-feral wolves) - that's what I call commitment, not sloping out of bed at 11.00 in the morning to moan and whinge to a virtual audience of 8 about not having won a meaningless online popularity contest that you didn't even want to win anyway and were disgusted by, as if advertising isn't so totally overwhelmed by bells and baubles anyway so that we even have to have rosettes for advertising blogs - that's not called commitment, that's called Sour Grapes.

The winner, in the end, was flat-bread wearing planner Eoan with his post about Noam Chomsky and I don't know, I stopped reading after that bit. I suspect he must have used some sort of underhand social networking mechanic, or at least an all-agency email. All I can say is, yes, you may have won, and, yes, you may have the 606th most influential ad blog according to AdAge Power150, but AT LEAST I'VE GOT A REASONABLE NUMBER OF CONSONANTS IN MY NAME.

That's not a name, it's the noise you make when you stub your toe.

In fact, although voting has now closed, I see I'm now in the lead by 57 votes to 55. And fuck it, I've never been one to let a democratic result get in the way of my thirst for empty acclamation, so I hereby declare myself this month's "Biggest Nazi in Advertising". Heil me.

In other news, I saw Mick Jones in Rough Trade yesterday - I see Mick Jones so often that it's actually become slightly embarrassing for both me and Mick Jones. I got his autograph the first time I saw him (in the Notting Hill pharmacy), and I winked at him in WHSmiths (also in Notting Hill), so I've more or less run out of plausible fan interactions without actually trying to become his mate. Last night I considered offering him the use of my umbrella in the snow but ended up thinking that would be just too disgusting so instead surruptitiously took this picture of him with my mobile. I didn't want to get much closer than that because these days he looks like a Halloween pumpkin in mid November.


Also, you basically have to work in Rough Trade Shoreditch to successfully rock this gentleman's look:



Anyway, Happy Friday everyone - although basically it's another cheese-eating bath-robe wearing day like any other as far as I'm concerned.