If you screw your eyes up really tight, this could be me

Mel Gibson, ladies and gentlemen. A phenomenally successful actor and director, with a seriously acute sense of humour, immense charm, loads of money, yet is a complete and absolute nutter. He’s almost exactly four years older than I am, which accounts for the fact that he is old and wrinkly while I retain my youthful good looks and general lack of baldness.

Lovely Mel who, in our younger days, was often compared to me in the looks department (shut up at the back, I now who you are, bitch) and who for the longest time I wanted to be. The picture to the left is him in his mid thirties. Take a look at him now and you see the toll that the drinking, smoking and general screwed up living has taken on him. He isn’t ageing well.

Remember “Gallipoli”? Fabulous movie. I never saw the Mad Max flicks but the Lethal Weapons and his gig as William Wallace, though as historically inaccurate as it’s possible to be, is a flamin’ ‘tour de force’ at getting the blood up after a couple of beers. Or in my case, a claret or two!

But what the fyck is going on with the plonker now? Married to the same woman for, how long, 28 years or something? 7 or 8 kids? Up to now a fairly private man, with a particularly strange brand of catholicism which is clearly anti-semitic and, anti gay. Now, as an aside,  the bible has fairly clear  guidelines about people who don’t conform to the “norm”, for example the gay community. Strong views are held on both sides, if there are only two sides, but unless a firm theological point is being made then a person should keep their gob shut. Telling a magazine that one’s arse is only for shitting didn’t do him any favours. Personally, I think the whole God/gay/ Christian thing is between God and the people involved. The important part of active Christianity, for me, is loving people, no matter who the fyck they are. Unless they they are wilfully ignorant and have big nostrils. That’s not totally biblical but we all have our faults.

A few years ago Mel admitted to suffering from manic depression (now known as bi-polar, which sounds far more adventurous). That fact has been missed in his whole recent character assassination, in which, to be fair, he played a major part. He is also clearly mental when he has a drink in him, then it’s all “Jews are bastards” and “what are you looking at sugar tits?” to a POLICEWOMAN? I think he’s admitted his battle with the booze quite openly now.

I think it's clear from this picture that Mel is no longer in the same league as me or Clooney

OK, he went over the line in some of the shit he came out with. Most even. But as a man with a tempe,r I know only too well how easy it is to say all sorts of bollocks you don’t mean, in the heat of the moment. Which of us hasn’t said something out of order in a fight, who hasn’t called names or huffed and puffed like an idiot? OK, maybe it is only me, but I can honestly see what is going on and I can understand the upset (not about the BJ before the jacuzzi though, that’s went too far, as Greg Hemphill would say).

Certainly he is culpable for what has gone on, but I think his “mail order” Russian girlfriend knows ec=xactly what she is doing and why she is doing it.

Gibson’s crazy. He’s an alcoholic, religious nut-job with a God complex and a huge fear of getting old and ugly. Oksana appears to be a gold digging tart with fake lips, tits, teeth and who knows what else. Maybe they desevre each other, but I don’t think Mel deserves the shit he’s getting for having anger issues (which his family agree with).

If we looked into the private lives of all our Hollywood heroes I suspect we’d find much worse stuff going on. Read the biographies of the actors of the 40s and 50s for goodness sakes, they certainly won’t be any calmer or less crazy these days.

Feel free to hate on me, I’m just in the mood for a fight!

Then there’s the

Life’s been odd. This floating back and forth between home and Brussels makes me feel as if I am never really either one place or the other. Anything that needs done can always be put off till “the next time” and then it gets forgotten about. My memory’s going, K?

So we seem to be living in a new world these days, or at least one with the potential to be new… ish. I have been a fan of Barack Obama but my fanship is tempered with the hindsight that I was also a fan of Tony Blair, and look where that got me. So, I do feel hope but it’s with a bit of cynical realism, the guy is a politician after all, and we have lots of exerience of politicians, don’t we?

I am planning on stopping smoking again, yeeehaw! But i can’t decide on whether to use nicotine replacements or just go cold turkey. Any advice?

Events of this summer (which I will write about another time) have made me look seriously at my life and the people I have in it. Also those that, for one reason or another, I am no longer in touch with. I have cntacted some old pals over the last few weeks and, by and large, it has been a positive thing. I will keep doing that and see how it all turns out. There’s definitely something sort of comforting having friends who knew you when you were young and stupid. It’s grounding and, at the same time, heartening to know that they still like you and you still like them.

Still and all (to borrow a phrase from the colonials) it is still jolly nice to meet and get to know new people too… like you, and you.

We’ve got war, politics, famine, pestilence, crime, the collapse of capitalism, the death of music, celebrity wisdom and kinky sex… and that’s just for starters.

If you know me you’ll know where I’ve been. If you don’t, you’ll just have to take it on trust that I have been around for a while. I won’t be linking to old stuff though, as the old has passed and a new thing has been born, conceived in the very foothills of Kilimanjaro (as I was).

If you like it here, hang around, join in the debate. If you don’t like it… accept my apologies and move on to something with more pictures.