Joey Sarajevo Rides Again - by, er, Joey Sarajevo
Well, yes, and here we go again (again)…
It’s been a goodly while now since Liam R first announced his intention to set up his own website and invited (yes, actually invited) me to write a weekly column for him. At the time, I was feeling hugely invigorated by the discovery of Transmetropolitan and was really, totally convinced that maybe I’d been wrong to give up on wanting to be Hunter S. Thompson, or at a least a male British Candace Bushnell. Don’t laugh – I hadn’t been laid in over two years and she seemed to be getting plenty.
Only trouble is, well… titanic appetites/addictions are all very well if you’re either a) fictional or b) a former US Airman with the constitution of an ox and a manic need to write compulsively nurtured throughout your younger life. If you’re talented but fundamentally lazy with a tendency to put things off until tomorrow and a hellishly addictive personality, you just end up writing next to nothing and trying to work out how serious the pains in your liver have to get before you go to the doctor’s.
As such, my output over two years ended up consisting of:
1 - Laughably poor attempts at serious op-ed journalism, most of which started off funny and contained a couple of good links (JackinWorld and GameSpot’s History of Controversial Video Games] are the two that spring immediately to mind) but ended up drifting off into vague platitudes and confused conclusions (imagine the first two editions of The Hit Parade, only longer). The first article was actually ok, apart from being very noticeably re-written on the fly thanks to poor research (I was so pissed I didn’t realise Americans For Purity was meant to be a joke).
2 - Equally shoddy attempts at Sex-and-the-City style ‘truth about human nature through blatant self-promotion’ pieces which essentially amounted to an intermittent (and very dull) blog – a bit like this column, in fact – and were hampered by neither me nor my friends really getting any often enough to provide the requisite material. I did have one really good story about the underground sex parties at a now sadly-defunct Cardiff second hand shop (no, seriously) but I never got around to asking XXXX and XXXXX if it was really true about the hermaphrodite.
3 - Lists – again, a bit like this one – most of which were quite dull and some of which involved some really unnecessarily personal information. I gave up in horror when I realised that Googling a particular girl’s name brought up an article in which I revealed my undying love for her (I haven’t seen her in over two years, and that was at a school reunion).
So, there you go – just say no, kids.
And what about now, now that I’m (relatively) sober and no longer obsessing about girls I can’t have (well, not that one, anyway)? Well, to tell the truth I’m not really sure, but since I’m committed to one piece every two weeks (on top of The Hit Parade when I’m doing it and possibly a couple of other regular features currently in the pipeline) I’m going to have to come up with something…
So, laughably poor op-ed, equally shoddy sub-Sex and the City pastiches and the odd list it is then. See ya in a couple of weeks.