I love the New Yorker, but it does seem ridiculously pretentious to purchase it given that I don’t live in the city its generally concerned with. Everything about it, from the writing to the design, is pretty much perfect, and as a local high brow general interest magazine, it makes Time Out look like it was put together by monkeys (which, let’s face it, it probably is).

There are many fine things about The New Yorker – the elegant type face and layout, the beautifully designed and sometimes provocative covers, the brilliant criticism (Alex Ross on music, Anthony Lane on film) – but the bit I always turn to first is the last page, where they showcase their cartoon caption competition.

This is always a great read, and makes me furious with envy at the comical imagination and sophistication of so many of The New Yorker’s readers. However, the only thing that’s funnier than The New Yorker’s Caption Competition is the Anti-Caption Competition hosted by Radosh.net.

The idea here, of course, is to provide the worst possible caption to the exact same cartoon printed in the New Yorker. As the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (which I’ve also written about here) proves, writing something that is deliberately bad is as much a talent as writing well. And it’s often a whole lot funnier.

I’m building up to making my first entry in to the competition, but, frankly, the other entries are so good its almost futile.

Anyway, the rash died down, but left me feeling awful – feverish, achey, and with a mean sore throat. I soldiered in to the office on Friday, mostly because I had a lunch date I wanted to keep, but I made such a sorry sight that even my usually unconcerned boss commented on it. It gave me the welcome opportunity to tell a few more people about my poisoning, and to make sure that the reputation of Inn 1888 was thoroughly stained.

I felt a little better over the weekend, but the prospect of a shivery day in the office made me decide to stay in bed all day. Well not quite all day – I wandered out for some fresh air around lunchtime and soon wished I didn’t. I can’t believe its August. London in the summer time can be so gloriously uplifting, but on days like today you find yourself questioning why you bother living here in the first place.

There’s only one thing for it. An escape – which is why we’re off to Copenhagen for the weekend. The fact that the weather over there is forecast to be even worse than in London – not to mention the imminent baggage handler’s strike – is going to have to be overlooked. In the summer time in London, the only sensible thing is to get out.

Everyone’s second favourite London free-sheet used to feature a column every Monday, written by a so-called City Insider with the pseudonym CityBoy. His columns were punchy and smart and, even allowing for the fact that he had a pretty easy target for comedy, they made me chuckle wryly. In CityBoy’s columns I saw so many people that I knew, because, in essence, working in the City does something to you. Something evil…

I used to go to school with a couple of people who now work in the City, and, while some of them were undeniably arseholes the moment they took their first breath, some of them I used to call my friends. Now, though, it is exactly like they have signed over their soul for a ludicrously large packet of money and they just aren’t the same people. Hell, they’re barely people at all.

Last summer I was at a good friend’s birthday party. It was held in a small room in a fairly run down old pub near Baker Street and a lot of us all got together for the first time in ages. It was a great evening and it was great to see so many old faces. At about ten o’clock, though, Dave turned up. At school, Dave was the sort of guy who rarely made his presence felt. He was harmless, and we tolerated him mostly because he was an alright sort of guy. I hadn’t seen him since school, but on the evening of this birthday party, he changed the whole dynamic of the evening within seconds of arriving. He waltzed in wearing a very flash pin-stripe suit, and he kept waving the jacket like a matador, the better to show everyone the ludicrous lime-green silk lining he’d had put inside. He made a big fuss of being late (“Come straight from the office… the markets were all over the place”) and then made an even bigger fuss of not being able to stay long (“I’ve parked the TT on a double yellow… I can pay the ticket, but I couldn’t face them towing the thing”). As if to make up for his lateness, he shouted to the barman to bring two bottles of Cristal “sharpish”. Needless to say, the pub being towards the seedy end of the spectrum, there was no Cristal behind the bar. But, not to be dissuaded, and even though everyone was drinking pints, Dave insisted on ordering a bottle of champagne. He stayed long enough to show everyone his new watch (which cost more than my car) and tell us all about his ludicrous bonus, and then, gratefully, fucked off.

It wouldn’t be fair to tar everyone who works in the city with this same brush, but I’d wager its true of about 98% of the bastards. We all know someone like Dave, and we all hate him thanks to a mixture of jealous insecurity and good, human, common sense. Which is why CityBoy’s columns are reasonably entertaining. They’ve now been collected in to a book, which I suppose would make for some reasonable toilet reading, but I can’t help but feel that the people who are marketing the thing aren’t going down the wrong road. Instead of treating it as a collection of light humour, its being publicised as though its somehow a piece of vital undercover reportage, shedding light on an industry and a group of people who have previously been held up as shining examples of the human spirit. It’s basic argument – that city people are shits – is as obvious as Julian Clary’s sexuality. Writing a book on the subject seems entirely pointless, unless its to add to the library of the obvious, filed next to ‘The Shitting Habits of Bears’ and ‘The Pope: An Insider’s Guide to his Religious Leanings’.

Yet, thanks to the PR-driven world in which we live, CityBoy is currently on a frantic publicity tour, and being touted by everyone (Sky News, The BBC) as some sort of At the moment he’s on a frantic publicity tour for his book positioning himself as some brave libertarian whistleblower – a stance that CityBoy himself seems only too keen to encourage. In his final column, he compares himself to Martin Luther King, and suggests that by revealing his identity (he’s a specky ginger wanker who looks like a city twat) and breaking the “long-established code of silence that governs the Square Mile”, he will almost certainly be targeted by contract killers “sent by the ‘men in grey suits’”. If by this, he means the smug-bastard police, he may well be right.

CityBoy has now stopped writing his columns, but, you’ll all be pleased to hear he isn’t going to stop being a self-aggrandising idiot. “My pen ain’t gonna rest in my hand until I’ve helped foment a revolution that makes the world a fairer, more just place”. Which just goes to show, you can take the boy out of the city, but you can’t take the cuntishness out of CityBoy…

I’ve just listened to the now-vaguely-famous interview with Chris Martin on BBC Radio Four’s Front Row arts programme. You can still listen to it by downloading the 13^th July Front Row Podcast from iTunes – I highly recommend doing so, if only so that this post makes any sense.

Now call me a snob if you like, but if Chris Martin isn’t a stone cold wanker then I’ll seek out and eat a copy of Coldplay’s new album ‘Viva La Vida – or Death and All His Friends’ (see, I’m already safe!).

The last time I deliberately listened to a Coldplay song was when their second album came out back in 2002. Now, I’m not trying to pretend that I liked them back then and that now that they’re popular and successful, I’ve conveniently changed my mind. I remember buying the album on release day and listening to it on the train on my way home from work, and I quite liked it. As seems to be my way, I immediately declared it a classic, listened again to a couple of choice tracks and then filed it away in my CD rack. Where it stayed.

The thing about their music is that, despite Chris Martin’s best efforts, it really doesn’t have anything to say, to the point where I’ve never felt an urge to pull out one of their albums and put it on. Lyrically he’s all over the place (most famously, “I drew a line, I drew a line for you, oh what a thing to do, and it was all yellow”). To Chris Martin, lyrics are an irrelevancy – they’re there only because the majority of people who listen to Coldplay need something to sing along to, however banal. (An exception to the rule – I did enjoy, and still do, one of their first ever singles, ‘Shiver’, a marginally chilling song about a stalker. But other than that, nothing of theirs that I’ve ever listened to has ever grasped hold of me and shaken me up.)

Listening to the hype around the new album (and, for that matter, the last one), you’d be forgiven for believing all the PR claims that Chris Martin is one of the world’s most gifted songwriters, and that all his songs are deeply layered with metaphor and embedded with social criticism and satire. The thing is, listening to Chris Martin on Front Row, I’m not sure he actually believes it himself.

Now if you’ve never listened to Front Row before, let me explain something – the interviews on there are hardly interrogations. On the spectrum of tough interviews, they’re a bit more spiky than Michael Parkinson, but nowhere near the accusatory invective of, say, Jeremy Paxman. For some reason though, Chris Martin wasn’t having any of it. He responded to every question with answers that make Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell look like a sparkling wit. And, despite their being not even the slightest hint of malice in any of the questions, Chris Martin seemed determined to see every one of them as a poisoned dart aimed straight for his head. Asked about the number of references to death on the album, Chris Martin reacted as though the interviewer just called his mother a whore. “I object to that, you’re trying to journalistically twist my words”, he said, which left the interviewer somewhat baffled. He tried again, all the time flattering Chris Martin and talking him up, giving him every opportunity to proclaim his own genius. Instead, he walked out of the interview. The BBC wrapped things up with the words “Coldplay’s Chris Martin, reluctant popstar”.

(This, let me remind you, is the man who married Gwyneth Paltrow and called his daughter Apple. But perhaps that’s not relevant.)

Reluctant Popstar he may be. But he’s also a massive tool.

So, last night I went to a comedy show. It was a stand-up gig at the Soho Theatre, starring American comedian Todd Barry.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that comedy is definitely the best night out. Usually you can sit down, meaning you can enjoy the entertainment in comfort, unlike, say, at a concert. Its usually reasonably cheap, another bonus when certain artists are now happy to charge you £75 for the pleasure of watching them sing. And – here’s the best bit – even if the comedy is really really shit, you can still have a great time.

I remember going to an open-mic night at a pub near me around this time last year. It was truly, unforgettably, terrible, with six or seven brave souls each facing the inhospitably stubborn crowd for ten minutes or so, before being booed off. But, despite the obvious lack of talent on display, it was truly entertaining. Curiously, most of the ‘comedians’ on show that night were so unfunny they were hilarious. We still talk about that night with much fondness. So even when its bad, live comedy is still great. The same can definitely not be said about a bad gig or a boring play…

Anyway, I knew that last night wasn’t going to be bad, because I’d seen Todd Barry before. He’s a very funny man, whose humour is really all in the delivery. He has a sort of Jack Dee meets Stephen Wright kind of shtick, delivering observations on life in a gruff monotone drawl.

So I was in a good mood all day yesterday. I was going out in London, doing something entertaining away from the cultural effluvium of the ‘mainstream’. I’d seeked out one of the exciting morsels of entertainment that London has to offer on a nightly basis. All day long I had told people I was going to a comedy show, and delighted in the fact that nobody had ever heard of Todd Barry. If I’d been going to see, say, Ricky Gervais or even Jack Dee, the effect wouldn’t have been the same. I was going to see an unheard of comic – how shit hot was I?

And it was all going so well. I arrived at the theatre with plenty of time to have a beer. I was first in line when the house doors opened, and I got myself a good seat – close enough to the front that I looked interested and influential, but not too close that I would get picked on by Todd Barry. As the theatre slowly filled up with other cool young Londoners, I allowed myself a brief moment of indulgence; was I not at the very cutting edge of London culture? Indeed I was.

And then the arse fell out of the evening. Not two minutes before the show was about to start, I noticed something terrible. Creeping along the front row, and heading for a couple of empty seats right in the centre, were two friends of mine from university. I say friends, but I mean very loose acquaintances. A couple of guys from my course who never failed to piss me off during lectures with their hopeless pretentiousness and artificial enthusiasm. Two guys who were, in short, wankers.

I have no idea if the show was any good or not. I hardly heard a word of it. Instead, I spent the hour irritated at how my cultural secret had somehow managed to leak out and cross the radar of these two highly irritating dicks. How did they know about Todd Barry? They’re not supposed to know about this sort of thing. The only way they’re allowed to know is if I told them (thus scoring highly valuable credibility points!), which is something I’d never do because they are both wankers and their credibility is not something I’d ever knowingly seek. I sat through the show obsessing about how terrible it was going to be if they saw me at the bar afterwards. What if they’d heard about Todd Barry before I had? Obviously, I’d never have let them know if this was the case. But wouldn’t that be awful?

I allowed myself a look down at them. Both of them were laughing especially loudly, as if to let everyone else know that they got every single joke and understand every single nuance that Todd Barry was trying to imply. Competitive laughing is despicable, and I wasn’t going to join in.

I couldn’t bear it. As soon as the applause died down and the house lights went up, I shot up the aisle and out of the theatre, and went straight home on the tube. All I learnt was that perhaps there was a way in which a night at a comedy club can be far from the best night out…

See, up til now, I’ve not really posted here. The very real possibility of being able to post anything has, of course, lead me to post nothing. Which is why we need rules. Or at the very least, a Manifesto.

Only I don’t really like that word – the very last thing I want to suggest is that THE COMFORT OF STRANGENESS has any sort of political intentions, or indeed political relevance. It most certainly doesn’t. But I do feel the need to define where I’m trying to go with all this…

Leaving aside any particulars of my biography, I’ve reached a stage where I’m somewhat confused and nderwhelmed by certain elements of my current position in life. This is, perhaps, to be expected – after all, who hasn’t felt this way at some point? And, as you may come to understand, I am almost pathologically negative when it comes to weighing up any scenario, so it is only right and fair that, when looking at my life as a whole, I recognise a large degree of bumness.

Lets say, seeing as we’re trying to define things here, that I’ve got a decent, reasonably well-paid job, which lets me afford to live in a nice flat in a good part of town. In addition, let’s say that I’ve got a solid(if small) group of good friends, and a healthy relationship with a lovely, beautiful girlfriend who loves me very much. On paper, everything looks rosy.

And it is. Very much so. I can afford to do most things that I want to do; I eat well, enjoy frequent holidays and keep up a CD and book buying habit that I should really be ashamed of.

To get to the point, things are okay. Better than okay. But yet, I still want for something more.

Having over-thought this somewhat self-indulgent dilemma, I’ve acquired a few philosophical nuggets and concepts which I hope I can patch together in to some recognisable over-arching philosophy, or at the very least, a way by which I can attempt to make sense of this restlessness.

And it all centres on this – what if all those things that we do to try and make our lives more easy, more comfortable, are actually somehow holding us back? What if comfort is really not such a great thing after all?

We work jobs, we put in time, we spend our lives working for pay day in order to afford to do the things that we know we enjoy, and that make us feel comfortable. We furnish our homes, we sit in and watch our favourite shows, we go on holiday to places, and we make all these decisions based on parameters set down by what we know we like.

Of course we do. It would be perverse to do the opposite, and only indulge in activities that we actively hate.

That’s not right. But what I think I’m trying to say is that we get the most reward, and perhaps the most pleasure, from doing those things that we don’t know if we’re going to like or not. From the strange. The trip abroad to somewhere you’ve never been before, and perhaps have great apprehension about, only to discover that its an exciting, friendly and welcoming place. That cafe down a side-street that’s not Starbucks and which only serves two types of coffee (black and white), but which is somehow more alive than any corporate coffee-house can be. That CD by a band you’ve never heard of before who seem a little old-hat and crusty, but which somehow totally reels you in…

Its this constant ongoing battle between the comfortable and the strange things in life that provide us with so many anxieties. And yet, without wanting to get ahead of myself or sound too grand, I think its in an understanding of the relationship between these two contrasting factors that we might find a more reliable source of true happiness than by just simply relying on the things we think we want.

These aren’t original thoughts by any means – which is a good thing when it comes to posting to this blog. Out on the web, I’ve come across loads of sites with a similar outlook to this one, and loads more with an entirely conflicting standpoint. I hope to use this blog as a forum to air these ideas and to pull together a lot of these opinionsto try and make something resembling a coherent argument.

It will probably add up to a lot of pretentious nonsense for which I apologise in advance.

His website is full of similar awe-inspiring photos (I particularly recommend the superheroes series…) – displaying an imagination and a sense of humour to be admired.

Enjoy.

So many months have passed since I first decided to start this blog, and a general and all pervading fear of writing crap which no one will want to read has so far prevented me from actually posting anything.

Until now.

So I hereby declare a change of management. The London Particular will henceforth be an occasional spot for posting things that catch my eye, falling under a general guiding philosophy that I can’t be bothered to explain now, but which will become gradually apparent over the next few posts.

Enjoy.