There's Nothing like A Well-Dressed Wino

One Hell(yeah) of a Missed Opportunity

In June I went to the Download festival, as it was my birthday, and Metallica (the greatest band of all time) were headlining, so it was a no-brainer.

Through outrageously good fortune I had VIP passes, which allowed me access to the snakepit at the front of the stage, and also to watch the gig from the side of the stage if I wanted.

I was determined that fate was conspiring to enable me to meet the band. James Hetfield is like a god to me.

Sadly, I didn’t get to meet the band. All the same, it was an unbelievable show, and undoubtedly the best gig I’d ever been to.

Before Metallica took to the stage, I found myself in the backstage area, outside the band’s ‘Tuning & Attitude’ room, where they tune up etc before the show. I have watched many, many videos of the band in this room before gigs, and I couldn’t believe that I was right outside, and I could hear them riffing away on the other side of the door.

I thought that this would be the closest I’d ever get to my musical heroes.

That was until I got home and looked at my photos.

See that guy behind me? That’s Kirk Hammett, Metallica’s lead guitarist. And you know the worst thing about it?

I NEVER EVEN KNEW HE WAS THERE.

I will meet Metallica one day. And I’ll make sure to look in the right direction when I do.

Nervous Breakdown

I think I’m falling apart
I’m at the end before I start
Round and round and round I go
Cresting the wave of an all time low

A suicide watch with no minute hand
Around my wrist like a toxic band
Hours and days merge into one
And all that was has come undone

Terrified, I often think
An aching thirst unquenched by drink
An endless humourless kind of joke
Ashes to ashes, up in smoke

It’s always darkest before the dawn
Except when the night just lingers on
Scars don’t heal if they’re too deep
Paths unclimbed on hills too steep

A static stone consumed by moss
Short term gains, but long term loss
An empty can rattles the most
That’s a confession, not a boast

And so I’ll try to start again
Whilst circumventing potential pain
I know inside it’s for the best
To be isolated at my own behest

Black dog
Thick fog
Have to let him in

Violence
Silence
Have to watch him grin

Shameless
Blameless
And nipping at my heels

Madness
Sadness
Are all that he reveals

“I know your face-I’ve seen you about”
He said over sterling silver frames.
“A lot of folk think you’re lost your clout,
Wasting time on frivilous games.”

In a way what he said had a ring of truth
And it cut me to the core
But what he’d missed, this amateur sleuth,
Was I couldn’t play any more.

The rules had changed, the goals had moved
And the sides were often uneven
And lo in time, the point was proved
As more and more were leaving.

He said “You showed some early promise,
And you had so much to gain
And yet your only remaining premise
Provokes a faint air of distain.”

As I looked around the room I was in
I saw no windows in the wall
I wished that I could leave my skin
And go cower in the hall

Where people wander here and there
Without a backward glance
And have no time to feel or care
For victims of circumstance

My Final Thoughts On The NI Choice Awards

There is no NI Choice Awards.

And I’m guessing nobody won the “car of your choice (max value £23,000)” either.

I think it’s at the point now where I can say that. Months of uncertainty have led to weeks of confusion, which have ultimately ended up at what seems to be a brick wall.

If you’ve been following this saga, you’ll know that it hasn’t been straightforward. The responses given to questions from nominees by the Chairman of NI Today (the less said about this strange conglomerate the better), Mr Antony Carville,and other members of his ‘team’, have been confusing, vague, at at times downright rude.

I personally was strung along by Mr Carville, with assertions that confirmation emails would be sent, and information would be released. I’ve been accused of things by Mr Carville which, other than being quite offensive to me, have no basis in reality. He has done ‘research’ on me, according to tweets he has sent to people. Weighing all this up, coupled with the general attitude of NI Today, queries about an online award ceremony have turned into something a lot more.

Lots of people have asked questions of Mr Carville and his organisation, and all have been met with dead ends. A week of filibustering from Mr Carville led to people being blocked on Twitter, and now on Facebook.

The NI Choice Awards Twitter account is now locked.

The NI Choice Awards Facebook page has deleted all questions and comments from members of the public, many of which were along the lines of “Who are you?”, “What exactly is your organisation?”, and more generally, “What the hell is going on with this whole awards thing?”.

At this stage I still wonder how many of the “39,000 votes” were received by text, and will these people ever have the cost of their texts refunded?

So, in summation, I’m now going to just assume that it’s dead in the water.

It’s a shame, because as the people I have spoken to regarding this, and taken the time to meet up with in person will know, I would have loved nothing more than to have been proved wrong, and for the whole thing to be genuine.

I reached a point where I started to worry I was just being some sort of pompous prick, demanding answers from somebody I didn’t know. I began to worry that “Maybe this is just a guy who perhaps does just want to run a successful awards ceremony, and I’m stamping all over it because of the amateur way it’s proceeding”.

I started to worry that I may end causing trouble for people. Perhaps Mr Carville IS a budding web entrepreneur, and some idiot from Twitter has turned up and started shitting all over something positive he’s trying to achieve.

Perhaps people from the businesses and other organisations that have asked people to vote for them and take part in the NI Choice Awards, will end up having to explain it all to their customers and clients, and the thing that was meant to promote their organisation ends up damaging them.

So I’m done. I’m assuming I’ve been stripped of my nominee status, and I won’t be having any more contact with Mr Carville or his organisation-unless they want to make any more disparaging remarks about me, or even maybe to sue me. I can’t rule anything out when it comes to this bizarre organisation. They did, after all, threaten Twitter user @keithbelfast, last week-“we are requesting the PSNI interview you”.

NI Today claimed to have “successfully defended our brand of NIToday against Cool FM, UTV and the BBC”.

Perhaps the BBC, UTV, or Cool FM would be able to shed some light on this.

Maybe the Belfast Telegraph (who Mr Carville claims to have been in contact with) could run a piece on the awards.

Perhaps Stephen Nolan, whose show was also a nominee in the awards, could get Mr Carville on his show.

Or maybe Watchdog might end up having a look at the whole thing. But as far as I know, nobody has been in touch with them. Yet.

Because I’m not having anything more to do with an organisation that relies on private threats and besmirchment in an effort to prove its point.

And as for the Wish NI Foundation, that’s for somebody else to look into.

(Also,I want to say a big thank to all the people on Twitter and Facebook who have supported me in trying to get to the bottom of all this-they know who they are. Thank you!)

Some thoughts on the Escher-esque Northern Ireland Choice Awards

You may have seen me wondering about the Northern Ireland Choice Awards.

At first I was thrilled to have been nominated, what with the promise of a ‘star-studded gala event’ to mark the actual awards ceremony itself. An awards ceremony, I might add, that will be “recorded in front of 1000 VIP guests, and thousands of lucky ticket holders, witnessing an event hosted by two A-list presenters and performances from many of the world’s top artists.”

But as time went on, I started to wonder whether it was actually a genuine thing.  The preliminary voting has been going on for a long time (since May, I think?), and there was very little communication from ‘them’.  Then the list of ‘finalists’ that was released was identical to the list of ‘nominees’ that was released a few months ago.

I was nominated for ‘Best NI Tweeter’, an entirely online-based activity.  So why would I need banners and ‘promotional material’? Also, does a ‘Best Tweeter’ or ‘Best Facebooker’ really need a  ”special ‘Your Page’ feature where All Official Finalists are given their very own custom page within The NI Choice Awards website. This comes with a unique url (Example:www.nichoiceawards.com/yourname).  This page is what we call a mini-site , it will carry everything about you, from photos, videos, logos + information on your products, services and facilities”?  

Isn’t that just the creation of another social networking website?

(The above quotes in bold are all taken from the NIC Awards latest press release, available for download here.)

I’m not being at all self-serving here.  I didn’t think I’d stand a chance of even winning, considering some of the people I have been nominated against.  But there are several people who would actually stand to gain quite a bit from something of this nature.  I’ve seen businesses, nurseries, youth groups, all sorts of people, saying how this would be a good thing for them and their organisation.

Are these decent people being taken for a ride? I really hope they’re not. Not only have people voted by text (therefore costing them money), but many businesses and other organisations have aligned themselves with the NIC Awards, by asking for votes, giving publicity to the NIC Awards, etc.  Free publicity and awareness for an organisation which (and correct me if I’m wrong, but this is just my opinion), just seems to buy up domains with ‘NI’ in them. (Since 2001, apparently.)

I’m still waiting to hear back from Mr Carville, but I’m not holding my breath.

UPDATE: Since the last post, I have been in touch with Antony Carville, which only served to muddy the waters even further.

When I basically asked about the ‘VIP event’, he told me that the venue had been provisionally booked for May 18th.  I took it upon myself to telephone the venue to make enquiries about the supposed ‘event’.  The venue were able to tell me that they had never heard of it, and had nothing pencilled in for that date-or as the girl on the phone told me, “no awards ceremonies, anyway”.

When I put this to Mr Carville, he began to tell me that the venue would not release any info to the public, as it was ‘confidential’.

Other info given to me by Mr Carville includes:

• There have been 39,000 votes received, from over 10,000 voters
• The NIC Awards are now communicating by “using press now” (no details have appeared in the press to date)
• When I asked why the NIC Awards were threatening people on Facebook that the NIC Awards would have the people ‘removed from Facebook’, he said “NICA removed people who took it2 far & were stating slanderous and misleading statements”
• When I said I was only asking questions, which he was consistently failing to answer, he said my tweets “all seem2 talk as if your opinions are true”, which is something I never claimed.

Mr Carville then sent me a series of tweets, which I’m going to combine into one ‘statement’, for ease of reading. (Although all spelling mistakes and ‘txtspeak’ are reproduced exactly as received by me. All comments in bold are mine):

“It seems the issues all fall into the following:- 1.Tickets 2. Voting packs 3. Event concert (which will involve money?) Let me address the previous 3 issues I stated 10 mins back regarding money and scam. You can decide if you post on ur wall. [I had already told Mr Carville I don’t have a Facebook account.] POINT 1: No money will ever be taken from the public until such time as the ate and location are confirmed in press. POINT 2: We are merely trying to run an awards online which helps promote everything NI. POINT 3. Voting Packs r not4 every1. Pubs. groups, etc asked us, we replied. Only section ‘Peoples awards’ may benefit.  Free options wr given. All other sections including yours wouldn’t require them & wr nevr told2 use them.  POINT 4: Tickets for finalists are free. Tickets would not go onsale 2others until dates + venue announced. No scamming.  You are claiming we don’t have terms & conditions which is incorrect & misleading to the public. [At this stage I asked him to let me see the terms & conditions, which he failed to do, completely ignoring my request.] POINT 5: If we took away voting packs, tickets + venue then this would be like the wonderful online NI Social Awards. [This just confused me.]  Which means thr is no reason2 claim its a scam as wht r we scamming? Just running an online awards 4 ni. I accept sum have taken up the packs, tickets other charging services wrongly which has lead2 ths issues but as I’ve said, at no time is money requested from any1 until NICA announce the date& location of concert. We r not scamming. The event will be confirmed via media long b4 tickets go on sale. If the event is confirmed then no tickets r sold. [What?] terms&cond 4 tickets, packs r given b4 tickets go onsale. We r not providing services at present which involve money trans [What about money spent on voting via text?] We’ve confirmed with O Arena 18 May12 (penciled in with them ofwhich they will confirm) [All they were able to confirm when I rang them was that they had never heard of the NIC Awards, and nothing was pencilled in] but r also looking at shane’s castle.  We’ve been in contact with a performers managers which press can confirm for 18thmay12. We will not release details yet. [And here comes the kicker…] Trust is important2 me Dave, if we dont have it then we will have 2look in2 wlkng b4 we run. Allowing ppl2 get 2 no NI 2day 1st [By this I think he is referring to this website, which seems to have done nothing since 2001 except squat on domain names with ‘NI’ in them].”

There is more of this sort of stuff, but reproducing all this txtspeak verbatim is frying my brain.

In the end he said “Hi, we’re issuing a full UK press release shortly n I will have a full statement this week covering everything”.  Hopefully he’ll find time to write it in between tweeting Miley Cyrus.

So the saga continues.

2nd UPDATE: This morning I received the following tweet from Mr Carville: “listen that’s ur opinion.  But iv had ur posts read by 2legal parties & they r far from it. They said Misleading & slanderous.”

3rd UPDATE: I’ve now been blocked on Twitter by both Antony Carville AND the NI Choice Awards. This might get awkward when I attend the Super Duper Star-Studded Big Gala Event (or whatever) in May (or whenever) as a finalist.

4th UPDATE: After doing a check for NI Today, which seems to be the ‘mothership’ of all these “NI etc etc” websites, and I found this: http://companycheck.co.uk/company/06853870

5th UPDATE: I also found this after a quick Google search.

It seems that on the 2nd December 2010 a guy named Simon Todd purchased a web domain, ‘nitoday.info’. Three months later, ‘NI Today’ got in touch to tell him that as they owned all trademarks to the name, they would be launching legal action against him for damages if he attempted to launch a live website at that address. The last sentence seems the most intimidating though- “We have set a 24/7 scan on this domain and will continue to monitor it over the length of your registered period.” 

In a second message to Mr Todd, they ask him to transfer the domain name to them, and they will then refund him the cost he paid for it.

And in this third message, they seem to have not got the result they were after, and draw Mr Todd’s attention to the fact that they have “successfully defended our brand of NIToday® against Cool FM, UTV, and The BBC”. 

It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

A Decade-long Disagreement

I like to think I have a good musical ear, and can pick up lyrics quite easily upon hearing a song for the first time. However, for the better part of a decade, I have had a long-running disagreement with my wife, my family, my friends, and generally everyone else I bring this matter up with.

You may or may not know the song ‘Escape’ by Enrique Iglesias. But it might be better if you don’t, as it will help you have an unbiased opinion of the question I’m going to pose.

Now, I have ALWAYS maintained that the chorus of the song is:

“If you feel like leaving,
I’m not gonna make you stay,
But soon you’ll be finding
You can run, you can DIE,
But you can’t escape my love”

Everyone who I ever ask about the lyrics to this song always says “Oh, no, it’s ‘you can run, you can hide’”. Obviously, common sense suggests that it is ME who has got this wrong, and that everyone else is right.

But I refuse to accept that.

I will now explain why in a completely non-technical way (as I don’t know any other way).

If you actually listen to the song, you can clearly hear that in the line in question, before he says “But you can’t escape…”, that the preceding word ends in a soft “-aye” sound, as in “die”, and NOT a hard “-ide” sound, as in “hide”.

All lyric websites say I’m wrong, and so does everybody I ever ask about it.

But I’m not.

Make your own mind up by listening to the song below.

And then feel free to tell me I’m wrong. But I’m not.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Here today, gone tomorrow
So the saying goes
And in the shock of sudden sorrow
My memory of you glows

Here today and gone tomorrow
It’s tragic, but it’s true
I only wish that I could borrow
One more chance to laugh with you.

What I did today - Dave & Gerry, The Kitchen Session

I’ve just spent a lovely day in the company of one Gerry Mulvenna, jamming on guitar and ukelele. Here’s the fruits of our labour. Believe it or not, the alcohol came later. These were all spontaneous first takes, no practising.

I hope you like these. And thanks to Gerry for a great afternoon!

Heart Of Gold Shared vocals/guitar

Could You Be Loved Shared guitar/vocals, Gerry - Lead vocal (Excuse the awful photo)

Twenty Flight Rock Shared guitar Me - Vocals/Guitar, Gerry - Harmonica (Excuse my singing)

Seminole Wind Gerry - Vocals/Guitar, Me - Guitar/Improvised lead guitar

Hotel California Me - Lead vocals/ukulele/whistling, Gerry - Guitar/vocals

I Will Survive Me - Ukulele/Vocals, Gerry - Guitar, Vocals