THINGS I WOULD TELL MYSELF AGED 14

FACT OF THE WEEK: Everybody in the world has at some point claimed to love a film/book/band they have never heard of in order to prop up a flagging conversation they don’t want to have with a stranger they know they will never see again.

SEE THIS: People occasionally ask me why I don’t want to work in production any more. I normally tell them to mind their own fucking business and poke them in the eye, but from now on I’ll refer them to this… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIyg2a72uV4

Haiku Review

This Week, a critique of the Stacey/Bradley/Max/Tanya love-parallelogram that’s been the only thing happening in Eastenders since the late nineties.

Buxom blonde Sexpot

Borderline Downs Syndrome case

Not a tough call mate

MAIN EVENT

In ten days I will be 24. Amongst all the usual soul searching and void staring I’ve been thinking about myself a decade ago when I sported a floppy hair glasses and a stone too much weight (How far I’ve come). Young Matt - or as I like to call him, the moody little bastard who I no longer share any bodily cells with and could easily deck - like every teenager knew fuck all about fuck all and could have saved himself a lot of bother with a few simple bits of knowledge.

Here are some of the things I would tell the little Pissant if i had a time machine.

MUSIC

The following albums, whilst kind of fun at the time of purchase, will have you asking ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’ mere days afterwards…

The Darkness ‘Permission to Land’

Dodgy ‘The Dodgy Album’

Blur ‘The Great Escape’

Razorlight ‘Up All Night’

In fact, don’t buy any new music at all after 2001 – trust me it’ll be easier on you.

Oh, and there are four ten year olds in Manchester who are going to outsell the Beatles in a few years. Deal with the anger now, that way you can just enjoy the album when it comes out.

GIRLS

Girls are no more impressed by good guitar playing than they are by average guitar playing so don’t waste too much time learning to finger tap.

Quoting poetry to a young lady loses some of its impact if you pick one of the GCSE set texts that she is also studying.

Casual sex is a spiritually hollow meaningless pass-time, but then again so are most of the things you’ll do in the next ten years so go for it.

Anyone who listens to Sum 41 is a virgin and will be for a while.

SCHOOL

Geography/RS/Latin/Business Studies/Chemistry is a waste of everyone’s time.

In fact, the only piece of information your brain will actually retain from school is how an Oxbow lake forms, so keep it all in perspective.

CAREER

Sit down because this is a big one. The A-levels and GCSEs you’re shitting your pants over completely meaningless AND unless you want to be a doctor, solicitor or something like that (you don’t, many people would die and go to prison) it actually doesn’t matter where you go to university, or how you do.

In fact, seriously consider fucking uni off entirely when you’re 18. In three years you’ll have your own flat, a car and three years of experience and skills that will look a lot tastier to employers than a dissertation on the post-modern semiotics of Battlestar Galactica. You could probably even hire one of your mates who went to uni as a runner/PA.

Knowing me, by this point I’d have told myself to fuck off so that’s it.

With apologies to Woody Allen for accidentally nicking one of his jokes. Try to guess which one… It’s the funny one.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!PEACE OUT PLAYAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!