Lift me up out of this illusion
Life occasionally throws up sets of circumstances of such alienating capabilities that you wonder how it was ever possible that you were placed on the same planet as the rest of the general public. One such set of circumstances arose on Saturday night when I found myself drinking in The Printworks: a horrific, garish mecca of braindead consumerism. I'm simply not designed for such places. I knew it had nothing for me before I went in - it boasts a succession of awful themed bars and charmless international food chains like Hard Rock Cafe, Nando's, Henry J Bean's and Tiger Tiger, all of which burst to life at night by attracting hordes of vain, conceited lemmings to 'Manchester's premier entertainment venue'.
'The entertainment venue from hell' (copyright Richard Lewis)
My peers seem to derive unwavering pleasure from descending upon these kinds of places like flies to massive neon turds. Manchester has many fantastic taverns and ale houses, but instead they choose to go here. My excuse for being there was that Kieran - visitor for the weekend - had arranged to meet an old friend for a quick drink, and an awful 'Irish' bar called Waxy O'Connor's was their location of choice. I stood outside in the 'shopping mall bit' with Matt, 25, and sipped an agonising pint of Guinness from a plastic glass while looking on as gangs of inane, permatanned simpletons with no notion of taste or decency swarmed in, often shrieking. It was intensely sad; more depressing than genocide. The revolution is a million miles away. Human evolution seems even further. There is no hope.
Morrissey once sang: "It's not low-life, it's just people having a good time."
He was joking though.
'The entertainment venue from hell' (copyright Richard Lewis)
My peers seem to derive unwavering pleasure from descending upon these kinds of places like flies to massive neon turds. Manchester has many fantastic taverns and ale houses, but instead they choose to go here. My excuse for being there was that Kieran - visitor for the weekend - had arranged to meet an old friend for a quick drink, and an awful 'Irish' bar called Waxy O'Connor's was their location of choice. I stood outside in the 'shopping mall bit' with Matt, 25, and sipped an agonising pint of Guinness from a plastic glass while looking on as gangs of inane, permatanned simpletons with no notion of taste or decency swarmed in, often shrieking. It was intensely sad; more depressing than genocide. The revolution is a million miles away. Human evolution seems even further. There is no hope.
Morrissey once sang: "It's not low-life, it's just people having a good time."
He was joking though.
posted by Paddy at 9:33 pm
3 Comments:
Very Douglas Coupland. I know what you mean though. A while back I thoughtlessly agreed to go on a night out with some lads from our work's football team. I've never felt so alien. They were all exagerating their drunkenness. Their tans were exagerated, every song's drum beat was exagerated and drowned out any trace of melody. The decor spoke of wealth and splendor but every moron there was pissing up their daughter's child allowance. Never again!
Pfft. Tans are always the giveaway, especially when artificial. I bet most of these clowns would order a pint of fake tan if these bars would let them.
Nothing much worse in this world than a lad with a fake tan.
Is it that people with fake tans wear more white or is it simply that the tan makes the clothes look brighter?
I wonder if you could plot the tan vs white clothes ratio on a graph?
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