Youth Football Scotland

I have currently been in talks to come on and work with Youth Football Scotland. A great site that provides the Scottish football scene at youth level with the best platform to present itself, get people involved and constantly develop the game in this country.

I'm very pleased to be involved, there are so many benefits that come with contributing to a site that highlights all the people that tirelessly and thanklessly try to promote the game and help young players enjoy football.

Take a look at the site, the forums and the great work that is ongoing over at YSF by clicking on the title or clicking here:

http://youthfootballscotland.co.uk/

Time out on the blog front

Since the last post my work has taken me back to my roots, the sole reason I got into the journalism game. Youth football, the movie scene and stories that matter on a social level to the people affected by the current cultural climate in the UK.

It's not been easy or highly paid but it had to be done in order to make one end meet the other.

After a number of horrendous articles, incredible experiences and tremendous let downs and pick me ups, it's time to get back in the saddle web-wise.

The main reason for the radio silence is the same reason I got into this game. To perform, to make my bills go away and to do what needed to be done to make my career stay more on the rails than than the job adverts...I'll write, pour pints and fight to the last just to keep my head up above the water mark.

Catch ye Versace :(

BDM

BAD PRESS

Bad Press is based in a great studio in Glasgow, great people and great talent reside there in abundance. As well as the dimension bending coffee, the place is graced with a welcoming busy atmosphere. The friendliness of all the guys who frequent the studio is one of the first things you recognise when visiting.

In the past I've mentioned 'WASTED'. It is a British adult humor comic with two of the most experienced heads at the front of the ship, 2000AD's Alan Grant and Northern Lights and Eisner Award winner Jamie Grant as Editors.

I will be taking on an in-house role at the magazine and hope to bring even more success to the publication and if you click on the title of this post you will be whisked over to their website for more info on the future of the magazine as well as the who, what and indeed the why...

Happy reading true believers!

EIFF

The Edinburgh International film festival is generally billed as a stage for the UK's best and brightest young talent in the UK film industry to take center stage. However the reality is an altogether different beast. I had just finished covering it for a number of publications and was amazed at the amount of petulant and utter failures that shuffle around the event trying to get their names noticed, bags full of CV's, CD's and anything else to grab the attentions of the money men that have turned their positions at the festival into rescue boats for the eager young failures of tomorrow.

For the lucky few who are scouted and drafted to be the next big things in film. Scotland, Edinburgh and this film festival is generally left behind, never to be graced again as Hollywood and London await. A part of their careers that is referred to the 'spring board' or the 'big break'. However for the grand majority of those who aren't so lucky or indeed talented, they have the joy of becoming faded outlines that wander the festival like attention starved children. They are the radiation burns on the wall, next years volunteers, then the next and the next until they finally give up hope of ever making it in film. It's competitive in the film industry, just as it is in my profession of journalism and especially that of writing in general.

Degrees mean nothing if you can't, on your own initiative get your product, point or piece out there and make people take notice. It won't be handed to you and it certainly won't be easy, but the rewards are incredible for anyone with the determination to make their voices heard.

In short, the festival is an opportunity for the young directors and writers of the UK to make their mark. It is competitive and a frenzied market, that is both intimidating and incredibly pressured. If you can't stand the heat, hand out fliers...

Just a thought!!

A big yellow tea pot at the end of the earth

Upon meeting a fellow writer of note at the weekend, a proposal was made to continue the fine night we had been having. Little did we know that the further down the rabbit hole we stumbled, the more adventure would seek us out.

From sitting drinking peppermint tea with the psychotic mega rich solvent abusers of Edinburgh's upper crust to standing in the maelstrom of a bad night in a bad house on what seemed at one point to be the end of the world. Columbus was staring back at us, dothed his cap and put one foot forward into the abyss. Our hearts sank, rose and sank again as we knew it wouldn't end well for the two travelers that only wanted to look in on this house of opulence.

The fat black bodied flies at the base of the building looked over their shoulders at us as we made our approach, before starting anew at the miasma that waved above the trash heaps. For a minute I thought I could see writhing bodies in the muck, a single hand reached out to us as we came upon the intercom, a punished trespasser or a man seeking his luck at recording the insides of what must be the most insane scene in a long time.

Drugs, drink and the occasional violent sexual encounter sprang up sporadically and without warning. Men straying too close to a parlor that held any vice were draw, beckoned or forcibly taken into these warren like vents.

The eye of the storm is the most secure place in a cyclone, which after gaining the relevant provisions is where we set up our base camp. In the eye my friend, where the stretched out angular faces of the rich whirled past with high giddy laughs in our direction, their tongues clicked and whirred and some made the sound that only beaks can, or the chitinous hides of a grasshopper can chirp.


Like in all dens of iniquity there is a prize, a gift or an offering that no man can resist in large volumes. That very instrument of our downfall and rebirth came in the form of a massive yellow teapot. The biggest ever seen, a bright painful yellow shot back at us in the middle of the room. Some men came and tasted the contents and left, never to be seen again...did the dogs, the abyss, the flies or something more sinister envelop them?

To this day I will never know. But all I do know is I drank the contents and held onto the last vestiges of my ever dwindling sanity. The room grew dense and the floor had some how come to meet me with lurching vellocity, my eyes snapped shut as I seen my companion fall likewise from the safety of the eye and into the maelstrom and warp that was a constantly mutating warp of shape and shadow...

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: `But why did they live at the bottom of a well?'

`Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'

`You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joann_Sfar

The Harlots House

We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.

They took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,
"The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust."

But she--she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of Lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,
The shadows wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.

Toth

Looking

It's not worth thinking about...