I would post a story, but I prefer to express myself through the medium of dance.
(Elizabeth Duke at Argos, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 14:53, Reply)

On my first interview commission for a newspaper,
I had to speak to a 'live artist' (ie. performance artist, although I was curtly reprimanded for using that apparently outdated name for fucking about an stage in front of loads of people who pretend not to be freaked out/weirdos/bored). We got on alright though, and after half an hours' chat he invited me to go and see his show the following week. Which - although I'll never know quite why - I did. Alone.

Anyway, he personally greeted me when I arrived 15 minutes late - he'd delayed the start of the show to wait until I turned up, fuck knows what he'd have done if I'd decided not to come - announced me to the rest of the tiiiiiny room, sat me down front row, centre stage (people who'd actually turned up on time had to move, which was just excruciating - Alan fucking Partridge eat your heart out...), and began the show.

Over the next two hours, he layed out various bits of paper on the floor, jumping from one to the next and screaming something about lost children as he did so. Then he cried for a bit, cut his trousers off with knives, smoked 6 cigarettes in a row in absolute stony silence (that took nearly half an hour), threw some weird shapes in front of a slow motion video of a live ram being decapitated in a garage, and cried again. Then the house lights came up.

I looked around, and everyone except me, a fat guy with his hands down his pants and a sleeping woman had left. "Christ", I thought..."well, it's finished...".

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. For the big finale, I had to go up onstage and help him put a tourniquet on and stuff a fucking drip into his arm with a special video camera attached so that he could perform a 'live bloodletting'. When it was over, there was blood everywhere, about thirteen failed puncture wounds in his arm, the sleeping woman had woken up and left in horror, and me and the fat pocket puller were each handed a bag of this guy's blood so that we could 'feel how warm it was' while he told us a story about falling off a cliff, and cried a bit more.

In the words of Vulva in Spaced: "It's not finished...it's finished."

I went for a drink with him in the bar afterwards. I thought it seemed like the polite thing to do. He had a pint of Guiness. I had red wine, and regretted it instantly. I still had blood on my leg.

Turns out he was a dead nice bloke, and now I regularly go and watch him chew his own feet off and stuff in public. Top stuff, you cocking nutbag! :)

/LONGER!
( grey kid is breakdancing to save a community centre, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 15:43, Reply)

Let me take you on a lovely journey...
I did vaguely media related gubbins at university and as such saw my fair share of utter (and sometimes hilariously drunken) wank passed off as art. By far the best was a showcase from the Photography students. There was the usual portfolios of pretty ladies and the even more usual walls full of pictures of goths trying to look moodily at trees whilst looking more like the bastard offspring of Gene Simmons and Alan Titchmarsh.

One display caught everyone's eye however. It was a flip chart, being slowly turned over from page to page by the artist, a girl looking very pleased with herself. First was a photo of black, then a photo of the inside of the toilet, then an underwater photo, more water, more black, some sky, some sea and so on and so on. Eventually the final sheet was turned over to reveal the title, as if you haven't guessed.

It was called "The Journey Of A Poo".

Several points need clarifying here.
1. This is honest to god true.
2. I instantly started laughing my ass off. This girl was a comedy genius! As I did so the 'artiste' turned and stared at me with a look of such hatred I felt as if I must have just raped her dead mother. She wasn't a comedy genius, she was being serious.
3. She got a 2:1 for tackling (again no word of a lie) 'a brave subject in an interesting way'.

So there you have it, turns out modern art is quite literally shite.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Wed 28 Sep 2005, 20:33, Reply)

Open nite shite
I used to go to an open mike evening in a pub where sometimes there were some pretty good acts.

Once these two fellas walked on "stage", sat down and started tuning their guitars, turning the little pegs up & down, the odd note here and there. One had a tuning fork which he would occasionally bang on the mike stand then hold against his guitar.

Everyone present watched for no more than a couple of seconds then noisily resumed their conversations while waiting for these guys to finish tuning up.

After about two minutes they stopped, one said "thank you" into the mike and they started looking around the audience and doing that smug nodding-smiling thing.

Everyone assumed they were joking and a few people laughed out loud. However it was only the gradual change in their expressions from "cat-that-got-the-cream" to "seven-year-old-whose-hamster-just-died" that caused people to gradually realise that this had actually been their act.

There was then some more laughing out loud.
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 17:57, Reply)

Sort of counts...
People who think they're sophisticated by going to see Shakespeare.

Obviously they don't realise it was written for medieval peasants, most of whom couldn't read. Well done morons, that's very fucking sophisticated.
( Iki I think my camel is dead., Wed 28 Sep 2005, 17:34, Reply)

Some actual bollocks, displayed for pretentious purpose - an art / testicle double whammy
The Tate Modern, the official English home of pretentious bollocks, features several modern installation pieces.

Loops of video are a favourite medium; usually abstract images fluttering around the screen and some nice trippy music.

I wandered into one such enclave out of which was emanating soothing classical music. 'Aha', thinks the IMD, 'a chance to sit down and get cosy with my cute French ladyfriend.'

Alas, no. The video was of a skinny, bearded man dancing merrily away in somebodys trendy artist's loft apartment, completely starkers save for a pair of trainers. Check one: We have bollocks, swinging away as they 'perform their own interpretation' of the music.

The 'art' element was the subtle irony that while the listener was cosseted by smooth strains of classical music, the dancer was in fact, raving his very visible hairy bollocks off to stomping techno music, which of course, the audience can't hear. Check two: We have pretentiousness.

I award myself a whopping 2/2 for my answer and therefore command you click...
(incrediblemonkeydoctor www.rantatsomeone.com - go on, have a rant, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 15:19, Reply)

The Greatest Living Artist of his Generation
About 8 years ago I had a bit of a turn and thought I'd re-invent myself from a web page monkey into "The Greatest Living Artist of his Generation."

I photoshopped up X-rays of my arse with objects shoved up them. Did an alphabet, "A is for abacus" etc. Printed it on acetate and backlit it. I titled it, "My arse, a retrospective. A retrosepctive, my arse."

I sort to follow on from my fantastically successful first exhibition (er.. Insisting it was stuck on my mates wall, and sticking a 50k price tag on it.) with

* dreams of building a huge wicker Model T and filling it full of cars and burning it. Some kind of protest againts the Oil industry or something.

* a huge statue of me with my bronze cock out in the centre of Wolverhampton. "Portrait of an artist as a well hung man" It would spunk ball bearings on national holidays I think.

* there was definately something about getting my head on stamps. I remember posting letters to friends with my own stamps.

Then I calmed down a bit a realised I was being a pretentious twat and realised I could muck about on the web instead and we don't have to call it art, we can call it bollocks.
Huzzah.
( rob, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 14:54, Reply)

That Alison Lapper
thing in Trafalgar Square. What a pile of fucking shite. "It liberates disabled people....they are finally represented..." Blah blah fucking blah. How can people say that disabled people are under-represented in the public eye? LORD NELSON WAS BLIND IN HIS RIGHT EYE AND ONLY HAD ONE CUNTING ARM. Moaning shits.
( Laughing Boy, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 19:49, Reply)

I was dragged to one of those art thing places once.
It was all bollocks until I saw one particular piece that grabbed my attention.
It didn't have a title so I named it
"Confused-looking northern bloke with kebab remnants on shirt"

Oh, how we laughed when I found out it was just a mirror.
( Zak McFlimby Twibbling @McFlimby, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 15:18, Reply)

Pretentious? Yep. Art? Yep. Bloody stupid? You betcha!
Those of you from Oop Naaarth might remember this from the news several years ago.

Whilst I was attending the wonderful University of Sunderland (god forgive me I was drunk) a written exam was taking place for the performing arts students. Half way through said exam it appears that one of the students taking part went a little bit postal and stormed to the front of the hall brandishing a gun and started telling everyone present he couldn't take the pressure and was going to kill them all.

Once the inital panic had subsided, one of the other students realised that they were indeed still in Sunderland which, despite being a bit rough, is not exactly the bronx. Remembering this he guessed the chances of the gun being real were slim to none and so calmly walked to the front of the hall and decked the twat.

The first I knew of this was when the armed police suddenly swarmed the entire campus. It turned out, however, that the gun wielding pschyopath was in fact just a plain old pretentious arty tit end who decided instead of waiting till the following week to perform his solo piece he would incorporate it into a real life situation to make it more believable.

Strangely enough the judge was not a fan of his art either and gave him quite a sizable sentence.

Ha.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Thu 29 Sep 2005, 14:41, Reply)

stupid photo art woman...
I suffer from the wish to produce art that looks like things that are recognisable and stupidly thought that doing a fine art degree would aid me in this endeavour... However, if you happen to tell an art teacher that you know what you want to do, and that's to paint still-life or portraiture, they get very upset and express that you couldn't possibly know what you want as they've not yet shown you how to think. I'm from a very rough council estate and am about as pretentious as a manhole cover - which meant that there were lots of arguments between lecturers and me - because I refused to draw without looking at the paper, paint with my left hand or many of the other stupid, ridiculous bollocks that they spewed out...
Anyway, we once had to watch a video where a woman lay on a big piece of glass, naked, twisting her body around whilst a bloke took photos. This was supposed to show how womens bodies have been distorted by men through history. At the end of the video the lecturer asked what we thought. Nobody said anything. She insisted that we must have an opinion - so I piped up with "Pretentious art wank", which I then had to justify - fair enough, so I did (mainly through pointing out that the supposed artist was the one distorting her body and she was the one paying the bloke to take the photos - so how come men were getting the blame?). This phrase (unfortunately for the lecturers) then became the standard response for most of the class when we were asked what our opinion was..
I didn't last very long at art school... but have had my (boring, unoriginal) stuff on display and people have offered me money for it - so I think I'm doing OK, despite the fact that I don't know how to think properly...
I love a lot of art, but cannot stand most of the artists I've met - self-deluded imbeciles who talk rubbish and can't bleeding draw..
(thebadangel, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 18:41, Reply)

Apocalypse now
A shrieking "look at me" actress friend of a friend was involved in a play at a small theatre in Hoxton (of course), that explored the notion of "life following the apocalypse".

It began predictably enough with the sound of howling wind, and a girl in a white dress centre stage slowly moving her arms and sobbing.

All kinds of things happened, but the high spot was when one man with a giant fork attached to his head fought a man with a giant spoon on his. They were broken up by an angry chainsaw-wielding bearded man wearing a black strap-on prosthetic cock.

Our friend's role was "girl in sandpit". She had to sit in a sandpit in a nightie shouting "WHY? WHY?" every so often. It was quite good because you could see her nipples.

Afterwards she bounded over and asked what we thought; we shuffled nervously and said it was very interesting - how was she finding it? She replied "It's so rewarding but God it's draining - I have two performances per week".

If this is the apocalypse then roll on doomsday.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 15:26, Reply)

Media lecturers and bad poetry...
Oh boy… Having gone to university on a media production course, I was hoping to avoid pretentious arses talking about film. Instead I got pretentious arses making films. Bugger. Although the students were vastly annoying (90% of them were there on daddy’s money anyway) it was the lecturers that took the biscuit. On pitching our five minute thriller our lecturer came out with a suggestion that will forever echo in my brain:

“Instead of them pulling out baseball bats, couldn’t they pull out enormous inflatable bananas instead?”

Arty cnut. However, the crème de la crap came when attending a short film / poetry evening where all manner of farty pretentiousness was on display (including my own). There was one woman who read poetry. Now, the poetry in question would have been bad enough in itself had it not have been for her occasional outbursts about her privates which were done at three times the volume, right in the middle of a sentence. The first time she did it, we all jumped in out seats but by the end of her poem, we were under the table pissing ourselves laughing. We thought she might have tourettes or something but I think she was just trying to be controversial. Or maybe c*ntroversial if you like.

To give you a feel for it, I have composed the following example. It is by no means as hilarious as the original.


I am a million dewdrops
I have eternity in my hands
I live on a dozen shellfish C*NT!

The woods know my pain, my wants
Clouds mask my pity
IT SMELLS FISHY!

Heavy headlamps in maple syrup
Yearning FANNY over furthermost hills
With no remorse
PUBIC LICE!

Separated from heaven with daffodil raindrops
FISH-MITTEN!!!
No bicycle can live in my way
No man knows my
HAIRY COD PIE!

I’d go on, but I think you get the picture.

Yay, there goes my cherry…!
(Mr Evian, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 13:25, Reply)

Pretentious bollocks
In my long forgotten past I was a criminal defence lawyer in a piss poor northern town. One of the regulars at court was the most pretentious streak of piss that you could find; educated at Oxford don't yew know. Lost no opportunity telling everyone how clever he was.

Twat.

One of my collegues was a timid little thing who now teaches the piano to kids. Lovely girl called Lucy. Made virtually no impression in the rather coarse world of the criminal fraternity due to a lack of swearing, lying and overt bribery but will allways be remembered for the following.

Following one of my clients going down for a very long time (deserved it, guilty as a chav) I was walking out of court between the pretentious streak of piss and Lucy and he rather loudly said something to me in Greek (not modern greek, oh no, but ancient, fucking, greek). Cue me looking slightly blank. Cue Lucy leaning across and saying uncharacteristically loudly "Right sentiment, wrong tense". Cue streak of piss going red. Cue much laughter.

For the next two years before I escaped that particular pergatory everything he said was greeted with the question "right tense?".

Toodle pip
(Mediaslut, Mon 3 Oct 2005, 19:18, Reply)

2 hours of my life
my actor buddy raved about this brilliant play, so along i went.

There were 3 player – angry fella, crazy woman, and soldier type.

Angry rants a lot for half an hour, to no-one in particular, takes clothes off for no reason, rapes crazy woman.
Crazy woman disappear briefly, brings back dead baby, leaves it on the windowsill and wanders off.
Enter the soldier – he rapes angry bloke for a good 10 minutes, then tears his eyes out. There was much squirming in seats and a couple of people even walked out at this point..but I was going to get my money's worth, gosh darn it.
Angry comes round, feels around for the baby and tears the baby’s eyes out.
The end.

Cue massive standing ovation.

WTF?
(Carravanquelo, Fri 30 Sep 2005, 11:49, Reply)

Ah yes!
"And now, please put your hands together and give a huge Blackpool welcome to...The Conjoined Hitlers!"

I had come here not knowing what to expect. All I had been told prior to my arrival at the North Pier was that I was in for an electrifying sensory overhaul not dissimilar to having my body turned inside-out, laid out on a bed of salmon and delicately licked by a troupe of hungry Armenian boys. So here I was.

Before me, beneath the starlit summer sky, was a four-piece band consisting of three men and one woman. They had a selection of musical instruments, some of which appeared more familiar than others. The frontman, a thin, mule-like young fellow with an equine mane, forelock and all, stepped up to the microphone and promptly switched it off with a click. "We need not such artificial means of amplification!" he announced proudly. "For we sing with the lungs of God and we play with the fingers of Satan!" The band then lurched into an uncomfortable blend of skiffle, chamber music and morse code.

The amputee percussionist, eyes closed and face contorted, was using his arm stumps to pound out a disjointed rhythm upon a selection of malnourished primates. In addition to the percussive sound of stump upon mammal, the beasts were wailing painfully with every blow, except for a colobus monkey that seemed to be cooing blissfully, glad of the attention. What the percussionist lacked in upper limbs he more than compensated for in lower ones. His formidable legs protruded out towards either side of the stage like angular, denim-clad stage-pythons. His left foot was sheathed in a hefty black boot, and this tapped merrily at a tambourine suspended from the stage ceiling by a thin rope wound entirely from beagle hair. His right foot was bare, and the spindly toes moved in a wonderful contra-rhythm, tickling the female band member's puckered quincy. This caused her to hoot sporadically while she strummed a strange electric guitar/French horn hybrid instrument with her unfathomably pointed knees. Her wiry hands brandished an emperor penguin and common cormorant, and she used these to strike violently at a large, ornate harp. The shrieks of the birds would have been more audible had they not been muffled by the musician's firm grip around their beaks. Nevertheless, the force with which they bounced off the harp's mighty strings sent feathers billowing out around the stage and over towards the brass player. His brasses were crumpled and bent. His moist, pink face was swollen and scrotal. Brown sweat poured from his slanted forehead. His eyes were mere slits while his mouth was thick and wet. The odour of vinegar emanated from his every pore.

"Glorious, is it not?" a young lady asked from behind. I turned to face her.
"Pray, fair nymph. What is this rare spectacle before us?" I asked.
"Thou art either naive or elsewise thou hath head cancer, sire," the harlot guffawed.
I humoured her. "Indeed, I am afflicted by both of these conditions! Please teach me about this music."
"Canst thou not tell with thine ears?" she answered. "'Tis the story of the bible told in music!"
Suddenly it all made perfect sense. With a swift arm movement I sent her bellowing like a pregnant she-ox over the edge of the pier and into the steaming Gulf of Morecambe. I then returned my attention to the music.

The frontman was staring at the stars, the little finger of each hand inserted firmly and deeply inside the corresponding nostril. He seemed to be pushing at his eyeballs from the inside, causing himself to emit such a sound (and stench) that the assembled throng spontaneously dropped to their knees and twitched awhile. But not I. I remained steadfast. I resolved to bring this nonsense to an end. I stepped forward and was going to mount the stage and send them all into the bubbling brine of the great Gulf. But I had not anticipated what would happen next.

The stage began to rise beneath an onslaught of strobe lighting. It was only when this happened that I realised the band had been playing for all this time inside a giant revolving brothel. Women writhed all around, fellating middle-aged men and committing hand robbery. Young whorelets were being jimmynudged as they teasingly screamed, "Please don't hurt me," while elderly scrubbers were wildly educating young men in the ways of jugflappery and flapwaggery.

I took a run and managed to leap onto the stage, fully intending to join in. And I would have succeeded had I not been so disaster prone, stepping on a gibbon and causing an almighty brawl to break out. One young man threatened a young lady with a broken Moet and Chandon bottle, and the lady replied, "Sorry. I only allow myself to be gored by men wielding Bollinger!"

Pretentious little slag.
(stusut79, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 14:52, Reply)

You forgot the word " Wanker" I added helpfully!
I went to an exhibition launch recently - lots of free wine, beer and occasional tiny bits of food wandering past on tiny trays. Anyway, one of the people I was with was talking to her slightly more pretentious friends:

"How is Tarquin*?"
"Ooh, he's got a new project coming out. It's called 'Smoking My Blood'!"
"What's it all about?" (No really, they had to ask. Stupidity recognises no irony).
"Well he cuts himself, bleeds into a bowl, dries the blood out until it's dust, then rolls it into a cigarette and films himself smoking it!"

There was an awed hush into which I felt the word "Wanker" should be helpfully inserted.

*Can't remember the guy's actual name. If you are called Tarquin and this stereotyping offends you, then I have two words for you. Deed Poll.

My sister had an exceptionally pretentious and extremely evil teacher at primary school, whose children delighted in the names Tarquin, Leander, Merrily and Gay. We made it into a song and pissed ourselves laughing for a long time on that one. Mind you my sister went to Art college ten years later and I bought a crushed velvet purple coat once, so I guess her evil work was done...
(Wascally Weasel now with 100% fewer jokes., Wed 28 Sep 2005, 16:38, Reply)

During my student days
spent being a little less whistful than everybody else in Cambridge, I observed an art exhibition, the "main" (Artists in Cambridge do that "with fingers" quote thing alot) piece of which was a room full of cotton reels with a red fire extinguisher in the middle of it. I over heard two people having a conversation about the "significance" of the red fire extinguisher and how it created a "promenance" and in itself generated a real sense of "value" to the piece. Whilst leaving i overheard the caretaker explaining to (presumably) the owner how the "new fire extinguishers" had been delivered and how when he went back to the "main" room after his lunch he found "shit loads" of "cotton reels" everywhere, and that's "why" he'd "left" "that" "fucking" "fire" "extinguisher" "there" "you" "arty" "mincer".

ahh what a classic flourish....
(C.J Hixon L.I.P, The drinking man's shipping forecast., Wed 28 Sep 2005, 16:32, Reply)

Meltyyyyyyyyyyy
A couple of years back the girlfriend dragged me to a University drama show that one of her friends was taking part in.

After an hour of shite about two girls living in a flat, the ladies involved came to the front of the stage, stripped
naked and proceeded to wank each other silly while the lights strobed and they screamed that the world was melting.

Best £2 I ever spent.
(electrichamster, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 17:01, Reply)

Leave it out!
Hester Blumenthal. Unbearable at the best of times, but in a recent column I was quite impressed. He was suggesting that people used dandelion leaves in salads. Being a bit of a food-for free fan I thought 'nice one'.

However.

He then went on to advise his readers that dandelions could be obtained only by mail order from Selfridges, though Harrods occasionally stocked them.
(clapper, Mon 3 Oct 2005, 13:49, Reply)

Kebab + Art
Went to an art exhibition thingy at college and I was eating a kebab from the kebab shop round the corner. Kebab, tasting like shit, was to be disposed of. Saw a bin full of rubbish so I threw the kebab in the bin making a wonderful "splat" sound as it landed.

5 minutes later and I hear a scream. Some lass is screaming how somebody's ruined her art with a kebab. I never owned up. Still, it won 3rd prize, kebab included.
(wonderbrawl was pronounced dead on, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 16:50, Reply)

art students
A friend of mine, while studying fashion at a london art school, often came across truly pretentious wankers. The weirdest was Rachel, a girl who had fits whenever she wasn't getting enough attention. One day, Rachel decided to have a fit in the middle of a busy courtyard. So while she's convulsing on the floor of said courtyard, rather than seeking medical assistance, a wanky art student proceeds to strategically place rocks around her, then stand back and admire his ground breaking work. Pretentious cockmonkey.
(something clever about willies and sex wee, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 7:45, Reply)

The most pretentious thing I tried to see in the name of Art :
I put on a curly/frizzy wig, sang Bright Eyes from Watership Down and tried to get in to see Paul Simon for free at The Royal Albert Hall.

I got turned away despite protesting loudly "Don't you know who I am ?"
( beaubodor blogless, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 20:11, Reply)

Surely you remember this
Those reading books in primary schools? The most pretentious (and patronising) book was the first. It's called 'Look'. On every page there is one word. Look. This continues for several pages, possibly taxing the reader to search for more words. On the last page, you will find them. 'Look at that'. Yes, look at that, you've just wasted my fucking time, and now I'm last in line for the tuck shop you WANKER!
(hamstrungbarber chris, 1990, united kingdom, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 19:59, Reply)

I love art.
The belgrade studio in cov... won't go into too much detail, same old bullocks, lots of ugly nudity, some screaming, lots of confusion. Generally the audience were being patient, trying their best to get it, lots of chin rubbing. We don't get much kultcha in the midlands, and so you have to try and absorb.

But there was a classic moment when the main "character" had a red flower pot on his head, and walked to the front of the stage, and a series of black strings fell from one of the lights, gently resting on the flowerpot. Yup, a perfect Tommy Cooper fez.

My friend and I turned to each other and remarked: "Jus-like-that"

The whole audience creased with laughter, ruining the "climax" to this "performance"

The Q+A session afterwards was fun...
(kev.cc, Wed 28 Sep 2005, 17:20, Reply)

When pretention pays
I did Art at Foundation level, and the pretentiousness of both the tutors and students was unrivalled. In the long-run it killed my enthusiasm for art, and for that, I'm still pretty furious. Lord knows what it must be like at degree level.

Anyways, one of my major pieces was a hastily cut together video collage of random animation I'd done during the year, and to be frank, it was a big steaming tub of shite. In the session where we were obliged to justify our work prior to marking, it became clear that the tutors weren't particularly impressed, and I was in no mood for pissing about, having finished the editing at around 5 the same morning. So when asked to explain the flaccid work, from behind red eyes I simply bellowed: "How DARE you ask me to justify the art I make? You have no bloody RIGHT!" and marched out of the room.

I later learned that it was this defiant outburst that swung an improbably good mark for me, as "no artist should have to justify their work to anyone except themselves" as one tutor put it.

What utter, utter wankers.
( the_other_jeff_lebowski Croutons on my tits, Tue 4 Oct 2005, 13:04, Reply)

Pretentious Names
Not art, but here's a short list of pretentious and unoriginal naming foolishness:

- Hyphenated surnames: pick a name already, Mrs. Washington-Brown, why are you wasting our time?

- First initials: J. Stuart Wankerbottom, you are a pretentious prick.

- Families whose first names all begin with the same letter. Judy, John, Jack and Josie. Christ.

- People named after crappy american cities: Madison, Cheyenne... how about Walla-Walla?

- Parents who get cute with the spelling of mundane names. "OK, we'll name him Ronald, but we'll spell it Ronyld". Excellent.

- People who insist upon pronouncing their mundane names in a "special" way: "That's CLOW-dia, not Claudia".

And then there's Cirque de Soleil...

Yours Truly,
J. Dallas "Splatpig" Gerhardt-Mosely
(Splatpig, Mon 3 Oct 2005, 17:41, Reply)

Not in the name of art..
But my friend John has some friends in the higher echilons of society around where I live, as a result we were invited to the 21st Birthday party of some aristo in West Sussex (for anybody who knows the area, it's the people who own Borde Hill). It was fancy dress, so we went as Slipknot, using overalls my other friend Dan had nicked from work and 99p Haloween masks. For an idea of how much effort we put into our costumes, here is John and Dan with some of the lovely ladies at the party -



We took advantage of the free bar, to the extent where we took 5 litre bottles of Smirnoff and hid them under our car so we could get them later. This is me sneaking about behind the free bar getting the bottles -



Everything started going a bit pear shaped when we decided to go for a wander, I pissed in the swimming pool, John and Dan found the car park and started letting tyres down. I was stood off to the side of the car park gathering my thoughts when I heard somebody yell "What the fuck are you doing?!" and saw John and Dan sprinting into the bushes, so I dove into the nearest foliage, twisting my ankle in the process. I hid there for a bit, then walked back to the party, but couldn't find John or Dan anywhere. I ended up chatting to the birthday girl's father for about 45 minutes about how wonderful his patio heaters were, then got a call from Dan saying "We're in big trouble Norris, abort, abort, meet us back at the flat!" so I walked down the drive calmly and phoned for a taxi back the their flat.

As I was waiting for the taxi 3 BMWs screeched to a halt next to me and three rather large rugby players jumped out, and one of them grabbed me by the collar, and started yelling at me to tell him where John and Dan were, luckily I was drunk enough not to be shit scared, so I chuckled a bit and said I hadn't seen them for about 2 hours, and he was just about to hit me when his mate pulled him off and said they should go and keep looking.

By this time it was about 4am so I just got the taxi home and slept. When I finally caught up with John and Dan the next day, it turned out they had been chased through woods and over fields by angry posh people, Dan also twisting his ankle in the process (but a lot worse than mine, it was about the size of a basketball), but luckily hadn't been caught.

A few days later we snuck back into the car park to retrieve our car, and, lo and behold, the bottles of vodka were still there!

I have a load more pictures somewhere, I'll see if I can track them down and post them.
(Jon Norris, Fri 30 Sep 2005, 22:53, Reply)

Not all artists are pretentious wankers...
...I work with a couple and live with one and they are all okay.

Pretentious types are all over though, in my final year of Uni we organised a piss up for the freshers of our course and the arty sister course. Que me ending up standing chatting to a guy who did his entire A-Level Art project by drawing hentai and was seriously discussing it like it was breathtaking.

Another story told to me by a friend who was studying Fine Art. Since this is second hand I can't verify the truthfullness though. They were scheduled to go and meet a local artist and the lecturer was showing the class some of his work. One painting was of a red boat and the lecturer asked the class to explain the significance of the colour choice. Que lots of bullshit reasons why someone might want a red boat.

On visiting the artist the lecturer then asked again about the significance of the red boat. The artists reply, "It was a red boat."

Pretentious wankers, its all a load of tentacle-cock.
(mehmeh 0% witty, Fri 30 Sep 2005, 14:39, Reply)

Tracy Scumbag Emin
I was unfortunate to get dragged down to Tracy Emin's display of complete twuntery in Shoreditch a few years ago by my then girlfriend.

The exhibition was called "You Forgot to Kiss My Soul". I remember walking around in complete and utter disbelief, my jaw dragging around on the ground out of sheer amazement of what I was seeing. The shite on display was inferior to that as might be offered by a disinterested 15 year old with a crack problem. The studio was packed with shoreditch wankers; ironic mullets, metrosexual handbags, drinking frappucinos, etc etc.

The anger starting building up quite nicely, until I happened to see a Japanese tourist accidentally knock over a display of crappy jars or something. She was about to pick them up when this twat minces over and says "No! leave it. Oh my God!" with his hand over his mouth as though it's the most profound thing he has ever experienced.

"You forgot to kiss my arse, morelike!" I shouted as I barged through everyone out the door. I stood outside and chain smoked rollups until my girlfriend finished fucking around. As she came out, she made some comment about me not appreciating art, to which I replied something witty like "you're a cunt for liking that bullshit so fuck you."

I didn't get laid that night
(geegee, Fri 30 Sep 2005, 10:37, Reply)