Here is Assinder Report No.5. Like Chanel No.5, but instead of leaving your eyes burning, it goes straight for the gut. Yes, quite. Anyway, this was meant to be Assinder Report No.3, but then the joke wouldn't have worked.
Was
I going to jump or was I just on the bridge admiring the view?
By James Assinder
So it has come to this, the fifth Assinder report. This debacle has been running for five weeks and I still haven’t seen a penny of the fortune that Quiff is making through his website. I’m not bitter though, I am forming the foundations of a successful career in interpretative journalism. It may be a high-pressure career that means that none of my wonderful thick, flowing hair will remain by the time I’m 25 but I may well work for the Guide section of the Saturday Guardian. Speaking of pressure, it seems like only yesterday that the second instalment was uploaded onto the website and already the self-proclaimed ‘editor from hell’ Quiff is demanding more work on his desk. I have decided this week that I am going to talk to you about happiness.
If Les Dennis were to ask 100 people what it was that they most desired from
their life, the illiterate, still-tied-to-the-proverbial-apron-strings contestant
would get a very high score from answering happiness. Happiness is clearly
a very important thing to every human being and therefore, bearing this in
mind, it seems very odd to me why almost the whole entertainment industry
is obsessed with depression. Musicians, authors and TV and film scriptwriters
have all followed the new age trend of introducing sadness and misery into
their work in order to make more money.
Let us begin with music. I believe that John Cusack sums it up best in the
movie ‘High Fidelity’ when he says ‘did I listen to pop music because I was
miserable or was I miserable because I listened to pop music. Kids these days
listen to literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain,
misery and loss.’ His words basically describe the path that popular music
is taking at the moment. Hundreds of bands including household names such
as Radiohead, Blur, Marilyn Manson and, to a lesser extent, Coldplay are all
feeling the desperate urge to be unhappy with the world and to express it
through song. Surely people who earn as much money as they do would have something
more cheerful to sing about. Even the classic song by The Police, ‘Every breath
you take’, once thought by many people to be one of the most romantic songs
ever written, was spoiled when it turned out that the song was about a stalker.
I hate to use a cliché but what is the world coming to. Why can’t we take
the advice that has been delivered to us by artists such as The Polyphonic
Spree and David Bowie and realise that music can be recklessly joyful and
aurally pleasing.
I am of the, possibly misguided as I hardly read any books, opinion that literature
has slightly more of an excuse to be grim and dark. Purely looking at the
roots of modern literature, which is basically ancient Greek literature through
Shakespeare and Dickens to the modern day works of Stephen King, forms this
opinion. Basically, the rule of thumb in Greek tragedies, Shakespearean plays
and King novels is that by the end a significant number, if not all, of the
characters have died. In Dickens books, a majority of the cast were extremely
poor and therefore didn’t have such a great time of life living in workhouses,
eating rats and meeting up with perverted old men that made Robert Baden-Powell
look like an upstanding pillar of the community. It is no surprise then that
modern novelists such as Zadie Smith, Thomas Harris and JK Rowling have all
followed in the footsteps of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and have filled their
books with torment, emotional and physical pain, crime and grief in order
to try and fulfil their ultimate goal of either winning the Pulitzer prize
or the Nobel prize for literature and then retiring to live in a villa off
the coast of Portugal accompanied by their gold-digging partner and their
spoilt 2.4 children. I feel that it is a crying shame that someone couldn’t
just come along and write a book about something pleasant, kind of in the
vein of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ or ‘The Beach’.
As I slowly grind onto my 2nd page on Mocrosoft Word*, I hear the furrowing
of Quiff’s brow (he doesn’t like me writing more than a page.) I must quickly
get in a small grumble about TV and film. I have just watched the film ‘Orange
County’ starring Colin Hanks and the comedy legend Jack Black. ‘Orange County’
is a very happy film about a boy who in the end realises the importance of
family and friends and how happiness isn’t always where you think it will
be. Charming little film. I then compare it to the episode of Eastenders that
was on tonight in which a girl realised that her phantom pregnancy was actually
real and a cheeky young upstart with scruffy hair threatened a perfectly innocent
young lady into giving him jackets. I don’t know about you but I know which
one I’d rather watch. Why do film studio bosses feel that we need to see the
disturbing spectacle that is Brad Pitt kicking the proverbial crap out of
Edward Norton when they could be spending the money on more films like ‘My
Big Fat Greek Wedding’ which make people leave the grotty cinema (AR#2)
feeling content and not wanting to vomit having just seen Jared Leto spit
his guts out onto the floor. I am disappointed in Mr. Warner Brothers and
Ms. Paramount in their handling of these kind of issues.
As I end my rant on why sadness is used too much in the entertainment industry
to pitch material, I hear you ask ‘What does all of this talk of happiness
have to do with little old me?’ Well here comes James’ final thought. It’s
more like James’ final piece of advice, which will contain far too many clichés.
Happiness is where you find it and everyone will find it in a different place.
Some may find it in the embrace of a partner while others may find it in the
thrill of seeing a train that hasn’t yet been spotted. Wherever you find your
happiness, once you’ve found it, don’t let it go. Life is short and when you
come to those pearly gates, you can say one of two things to Peter. You could
say ‘I earned £70,000 a year and was an executive at my company, I was promoted
before everyone else and I drove the most expensive car. I had a studio flat
in Kensington and when friends came over, we drunk Crystal champagne.’ Alternatively,
you could say ‘The amount I earned is irrelevant. The only thing that mattered
in my life is that I lived every day as if it were my last and every second
as if it were the one in which I would draw my dying breath. I was happy and
I made the people around me happy.’ Again, I don’t know about you but I know
which I would rather say. For those of you who link happiness with love, the
words of a wise woman should suffice for you. She said ‘Waiting is the worst
thing in life, the best thing is having someone worth waiting for.’ Once you
have found that someone, don’t let him/her go for once you have found that
someone, you will know that you are truly happy.
Anyway, I’m going to back out now before it gets too philosophical on me. If you have any comments on this, anything at all, now matter how big or small. SOMEONE PLEASE HAVE SOME COMMENTS!!!! I may get paid if Quiff begins to get feedback on these articles. E-mail us on:
James [email protected]
Quiff [email protected]
*This is just incase a
certain Megalomaniacal Geek tries to sue my ass for copyright. Always buy
Mocrosoft.
Like pulling off a plaster, the pain is relieved quickly. If you're a sucker for this literal punishment, Click Here for the last Assinder Report.