Get It Quietly

Football, bollocks and a bit of poker if you're lucky.

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Location: Enfield, London, United Kingdom

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Art For Art's Sake

A change of pace last night as several of us attended an artistic bash. After a quick trip to the S&M Cafe to perk us up [1] we rolled up to the Great Eastern Hotel where a colleague of ours was exhibiting his massive fuck-off Tesla Coil.

A few words of explanation. Colin is ever the mad scientist and his latest project was to while away the winter evenings constructing a giant Tesla Coil with which he could take out half the electrical equipment in Enfield, strike down his enemies, etc. etc. Having completed his work, however, he found that there wasn't actually much he could do with it except show it off to admiring nerds (as many of us as there were). By the time 'er indoors started giving him GBH to the 'earole about having her garage back, he was almost ready to toss it out when a mad artist rode over the horizon to save him.

Thanks to the latter's contacts in the world of modern art and ability to come up with pretentious psychobabble to accompany it, they were able to flog it to Damien Hirst for a tidy sum (yes really). Correctly realising the correlation between money and old rope, they collaborated to produce a super-duper uber fuck-off Tesla coil which they were exhibiting in the Great Eastern last night.

So we rolled up to fill out the crowd a bit but there was really no need as it was packed with sallow, goatee-bearded artist types. The machine itself was mightily impressive, sparking away in a sort of Ghostbusters "don't cross the streams" effect, and brilliantly set in a Masonic ritual Greek temple-esque chamber, deep in the bowels of the hotel. Psychobabble was in full effect, my favourite being "One could consider it a super-neuron, disconnected from a gigantic brain, firing off into the darkness", and the artist types affected elegance and said things like "Even the valium doesn't kill the pain any more" [2].

Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin were in attendance, I am assured, although I wouldn't have recognised either of them unless they cut a sheep in half or threw their knickers at me. There was some debate as to whether we could convince Tracy Emin to "just stand here for a moment", thus simultaneously doing the world a great favour and doubling the asking price, but even without that it was an interesting change of surroundings for one night.

[1] Sausage and Mash, settle down ...

[2] Yes really, one of our number overheard this.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

How do you know the wanky artist type wasn't a martyr to piles or lung cancer?

4:16 PM  
Blogger Andy_Ward said...

You're right that I shouldn't mock ... but I think that an attack of the Chalfonts is probably funnier than clinical depression.

Andy.

9:04 PM  

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