Disgracebook

Hi out there. I’ve been up since 6.30am and I’ve just been running (actually more jogging) to Canary Wharf. The highlight of the route is the big flight of steps at the end of the run and I challenge anyone to run up them without whistling the music from ‘Rocky’. What I love about running is that feeling when you eventually stop. Exercise is like making a deposit in the bank of smug.

I had a friend request on Facebook when I got home. It was from someone I sat next to at school when I was ten. Back then, we had a lot in common; Lego, being children, pretending we were aliens. But now I don’t know if he can be classified a ‘friend’. Then again, we never formally ended our friendship by having a fight or arguing about who got to be E.T. Does he still think we’re friends? How long do you not have to be in contact with someone for until the term ‘friend’ can be downgraded to ‘someone I knew’? Is it 5 years, 10 years, forever? Facebook is forcing me to take one of three choices. What should I do?

(a) Accept the friend offer and hope we never have to meet up in real life? My blood chills at the possibility of that awkward conversation

“ Wow, great to see you! remember when we used to pretend to be aliens? This is my partner Shirley, do you still like Lego? Me neither, I’m a regional sales manager…more nibbles?” .

(b) Reject the request,

I may as well send an email saying ‘I hate you now and possibly never even considered you a friend even as a child’. So I’m left with

(c) ‘Facebook-limbo’; the purgatory of the social networking generation. How many requests are out there drifting in the limbo of never being approved or denied? Although (c) seems the obvious answer, it’s the coward’s way out. How long will his friend request stay there haunting my home page like the ghost of friendship past? To be honest, any fool must know that a lack of any response after a reasonable passage of time amounts to the same as (b). This person will assume I’m a bit of a twat, which, on reflection, I probably am.

It’s been a busy week. We shot a Farrah video at the weekend which was hilariously low budget. Instead of a dolly we had our ‘cameraman’ (otherwise known as Andy our guitarist) sat in the bottom of a wheeled flightcase. This was then pushed down a corridor by our manager as I attempted to mime to the song. It was difficult striking rock and roll poses when this ‘Bobsleigh on wheels’ occasionally veered into a wall. The sense of absurdity was heightened by the fact all the miming had to be done with the track playing double speed to make the camera moves more ‘fluid’

The video location was a deserted record company building that we managed to blag by bribing the security guard with a bottle of whisky. The place was eerie. Even though the offices had been deserted for a few months all the paperwork was still on desks, employee’s photos and rolodexes still in place. It was a corporate Mary Celeste. The guard told us that the employees all got laid-off one morning and all decided to go to the pub, get hammered and not come back.

I wonder if there’s anything more ironic than a band on a low budget independent label shooting a video in the ghostly offices of a moribund major record label? Let me know Alanis.

Andy and myself storyboarded the video. I play a hungover office worker who overdoes the booze at the office party. I had to play both ‘drunk’ and ‘hungover’ which is lucky as these are my usual two states of mind. It was method.

The band performance element of a pop video is possibly the stupidest a human being can feel. Playing to the camera is beyond ridiculous. You pretend to sing, try to mean it, attempt and look cool and try to ignore the lighting guy eating a croissant in the background. The song finishes and you sit around for ages and then you do it again and again.

I can’t complain though. This clip was a breeze compared to the last video we made for the song ‘Fear Of Flying’. For this clip we decided (due to artistic reasons and budgetary restrictions) to take 9000 still photos of the band. This took three months to complete and only cost 18 pounds and our collective sanity. Twenty Five Photos for each second of video.. If you’re bored feel free to check this out on Youtube by searching Farrah and Fear Of Flying.