robwoolford.com

A convo I am currently having…

Pot says:
am talking to my freind on here
Pot says:
and hes in iraq
Pot says:
i didnt no they had computers there !
Rob says:
…..
Rob says:
are you serious
Pot says:
about him being there
Pot says:
or no pc
Rob says:
no pc’s
Pot says:
yeah
Pot says:
i thought iraq
Pot says:
was like where jesus was born
Rob says:
they have electricity
Rob says:
why wouldn’t they have computers?
Pot says:
NOR !
Pot says:
they got like mud huts
Pot says:
havent they ?

:/

It’s moments like this where I wonder about mankind. I really do.

In yesterday’s Observer Review, Robert McCrum was trying to evaluate the effect that the last decade has had on the world of books. Whether broadcast media and new forms of technology have hindered the progression of literature, or whether they have improved the written word.

Of course, the internet has to be at the heart of this discussion. And an apparently true statistic that I have seen banded around numerous times is that 175,000 new ‘blogs’ are launched everyday – which equates to around two new blogs per second.

In the time I write this post there will be hundreds of new blogs scattered across the internet. Whether they will be any good or beneficial to our children and our children’s children, well that’s another matter.

While many will point to the deteriorating grammar that now litters the internet (the endless LOLz!!! and text speak) as a detrimental effect on the written word, this new age of self-expression is something that I find very exciting.

This ‘blog’ is something I do in my spare time for around 10 minutes a day because throughout any given day there are thoughts that you want to share with the world. And ideas that you don’t want to lose. In ten years time I don’t suppose anybody is going to care about my commentary on culture, books, film, music or sports or any of that jazz, nor should they, but self-expression is important for every one of us – and for me blogs help me from talking shit in every day life.

It’s been a pretty strange experience at times having this website. I say this because whenever I write I don’t think about anybody reading this. I don’t expect any feedback and, to be honest, I don’t write for other people (that might sound weird seeing as I publish it all on the internet). I’m always writing for myself.

Recently I’ve had people talk to me in public about the things I’ve wrote on here, and I’m always taken back at first like “you actually read that?” or “how do you find it?” when in actual fact I know that anybody googling my name is likely to land here. More recently than that my girlfriend told me that her mum was on here have a mosey around.

This month alone I have had 1,206 visitors here on the website. That’s 1,206 unique people who have found their way here. And it’s been consistently over 1,000 per month since the turn of the year. It’s bizarre to think that that many people ending up here reading about my every day commentary on pop culture, or my uni experience, or family, or whatever it is I’m writing about. Why they should care I don’t know, but I guess whatever form of self-expression you want to pursue there are always going to be people around who will be interested in it.

I’ve kind of lost focus on what I wanted to say with this, but I guess it goes along the lines of ‘blogs are brilliant’. While the internet came around as a communications medium, what has developed has been a gold mine of educational and personal development. Whether people sift through wikipedia and google aimlessly, or whether they try to find themselves once a week by publishing their own thoughts, its something that is hugely beneficial to the human race.

But I guess the next generation of young adults will be best suited to comment in a decade or so’s time.

I should really be doing work as my dissertation is not entirely finished and due in in about a weeks time, but whatever, it can wait.

I’ve spent all of this week back in my home town of York as my sister celebrates her 23rd birthday. This, of course, was an excuse to come home and get shit-faced with my closest friends too.

I love York and every time I come back I realise how much I miss it. The home comforts too - like hot water, baths and a fridge full of non-value food are one thing. But the city of York is such a nice place and its not until you spend three years in Sunderland/Newcastle that you realise that. The city is clean, safe, the people are nice, the nightlife isn’t great but it is certainly unique (its not rowdy and packed full of grotty bars)… it’s just generally a pleasant place.

Every city in the country seems to be plagued with crime and ‘chavs’ but its rare to get either of these in York. Maybe I’m looking through my York-tinted glasses but I can’t remember ever seeing anything bad happen in this city, and I rarely see chavs. Obviously there’s some rough areas in and around York, but even then they’re not too bad. Not compared to what I’ve seen elsewhere anyway.

I went out with a couple of close friends last night and despite doing my best to get wasted, £50s worth of beer and I was still completely sober. That’s one bad thing about York’s nightlife. It’s expensive. I don’t usually complain about prices because after all, you don’t have to drink to have a good time, but I feel I’m being slightly outpriced when cheap-ish alcopops weigh in at £3.70. It’s a good thing that I was only out to see my friends otherwise this would have rattled my cage.

As I mentioned earlier, the nightlife is not great in York if you’ve been to some of the country’s major cities and there’s so many ‘routes’, ‘clubs’ and ‘hot spots’. London, Newcastle, Leeds or Manchester for example - you can go out ten times and never visit the same place once. You don’t really get that in York. The main club is, simply put, a sausage-fest. All the GHD straighted hair and G-Star clothes you could wish to see. And at a ratio of five lads to every girl, you can imagine that after visiting this place since I was 17 I can tell you first hand that York needs something else.

Some will tell you that there is ’something else’, but in actual fact the relatively small nightlife is divided into a ‘cheesey’ route (like the chain Flares) for the over 30s crowd, and the other side of town (The Gallery, Vodka Revolution, etc.) for the more youthful lot.

A great night if you’ve never done it before, but after that it’s only as good as your company (fortunately for me mine were great!)

Before we went out we watched the Blackburn v Manchester United game, which are never easy affairs for United. When I drew up my predictions for the end of the season I had us drawing there, and I guessed correctly, hurrah. We had more than enough chances to leave Ewood Park with an away win, but there is something about Blackburn that we always seem to struggle with. Mark Hughes has a very rigid and organised team. Bullish and physical, but also really good on the ball. It’s difficult to play through them (which we didn’t really do yesterday as Carrick and Scholes sat incredibly deep) and it’s difficult to play through the wings with Samba and Nelsen both strong and good in the air (it didn’t help that we couldn’t cross for shit). Regardless we made a string of really good chances (Rooney, Tevez, etc.) but it just wasn’t enough. Overall I thought the performance was pretty dire - Blackburn didn’t create many chances but we looked vulnerable defensively, we didn’t reproduce the movement and energy that has earnt us top spot in the league and, in all honesty, we didn’t play like champions-to-be. At the end the point felt like a win though, and each United fan I’ve spoke to since said they celebrated it like a win. 3 points between us and Chelsea is a lot more convenient than 2 points with us having to travel to the Bridge next week!

I watched the highlights of yesterdays NBA playoff games earlier and I have to say that the difference between the regular season and the playoff magic is quite extraordinary. The Sun/Spurs game last night was fantastic. Tied all the way up to the end of double overtime! Incredible stuff. Tim Duncan posted 40 points and generally dominated, while Shaq (a player brought in to help neutralise Duncan in the playoffs) struggled with the foul limit all night. I can’t wait to see the rest of the series between these two. I think everybody knew that this would be the stand-out series for the first round of the playoffs, but given the recent history between the Suns and the Spurs that’s not exactly a difficult conclusion. The Cavaliers vs the Wizards, or should I say LeBron vs Gilbert Arenas, also looked incredible. Arenas looked so good in that game yesterday and some of the three pointers he hit (he hit three-in-a-row in the space of a few minutes at one point) were quite incredible. One in particular where he dummied to fool Varejao, and then jumped unchallenged was quite something. LeBron though, as always, was superb too. I always think the Cavs have the potential to get swept away in some games, but when LeBron is firing they can beat anyone in the league (as he proved against Detroit last year). Two phenominal games, and it bodes well for the rest of the playoffs.

I’m hoping to catch the Nuggets/Lakers game at 8pm tonight, and then the Hawks/Celtics game at 1.30am if I’m still awake and can last til the early hours of Monday morning. Not seen too much of the Celtics this year but the results table doesn’t lie and statistically they’re the best team in the league, so I’d like to watch Garnett and his boys toy with the Hawks.

And that’s about all I have to say really. I’ve nattered on my laptop here while I watch the Newcastle/Sunderland Tyne-Wear derby. Newcastle have, for the most part, completely toyed with Sunderland. Both goals that the Mackems have conceded were easily preventable, but that’s why they’re where they are! Quite an open, lively game but Sunderland haven’t really done much.

Right, now I’m off to apply for a radio ‘couples’ job (a two-some basically) in Tenerife with my good friend Danny. We’re back on Utopia FM in May. Links and adverts galore to come soon, you can be sure of that.

Bye bye for now.

• I’ve just finished work. That would be a good thing, but I’ve got to go back in three hours time. Yeah. Sucks huh? Another night of serving the middle-aged, intellectually challenged retards of Sunderland. It’s a tricky job, but someone’s got to do it.

• My Mrs reads this blog now – hey Amy! Yeah apparently if you google my name I’m the second entry for this website. Google’s #1 rob woolford works for a website/company under the address of woolford.co.uk. Which leaves me in the unfortunate position of being the #2 rob woolford. All this will change though, I am sure. I also have the #3 entry and the #5 I think too (for my work on the uni radio station). I’m gunning for #1 though. Watch this space…

• I was rather enjoying Soccer Saturday in my brief few hours off. Arsenal 2-0 down, and with Diaby sent off… turns out they went on to win 3-2. Grrrrrrrr. Fucking Bolton. Hope they get relegated now. Good for nothing set of bastards. That would have been Wenger’s title charge dead and buried for sure. The bottom of the table looks a lot clearer though – Derby relegated on 11 points, Fulham (24) and Bolton (26) pretty far adrift of Birmingham (30) with only 6 games left. Sunderland look safe, which is good, and I can’t see past Fulham/Bolton going down now.

• On the bright side (Arsenal winning being the gloomy side), United v Aston Villa is on the box in a minute. I don’t have a good feeling about this one, but apparently the last time they beat us was in 93/94… some 15 years ago. That’s a long ass time ago. I don’t want to do the predictions thing, I just hope our team comes out unscathed with our trip to Rome in mind on Tuesday.

• On the subject of Italian football I just read that Jose Mourinho has flown into Milan for discussions about the Internazionale job. That’s Inter Milan to you. Not bad at all. I’ve always liked Inter, and I’ve always liked Mourinho. I don’t really think Roberto Mancini has done much wrong, but whatever. Decent squad for Mourinho to inherit. Will be interesting to see what he does now that he isn’t being fed money like its air. That is, if he gets the job of course.

• I’ve been quite detached from the Basketball world this year. Focusing on my dissertation and all that. But I’ve been keeping a close eye on the standings, and New York are still doing shit. 20 wins to 52 defeats. They would be rock bottom of the Eastern conference if it weren’t for the Shaq and Dwayne Wade-less Miami, and taking the West into account New York are the 5th worst team in the whole competition. That’s 5th worst out of 30+ teams. You would have thought that the city of New York would be able to compile a much better team than that… I wanted New York to finish rock bottom in the midst of all this, just so they could secure a good draft pick… but as I’ve wrote before Isiah Thomas has already traded away the good draft picks so even if New York finished bottom they wouldn’t be getting their hands on the next LeBron or Dwayne Wade. Oh no. They’d be giving it away. So, instead, I want the Knicks to finish bottom (or thereabouts) just so that Dolan can fire Thomas’ sorry ass.

• I’ve just seen this, the Grand Theft Auto Xbox. Nice.

• In fact, GTA IV is less than a month away. Well, if we’re being exact, its out a month today! Check the official website here, the wikipedia page here and a geek’s fan site here to find out what all the fuss is about.

• This time next month I should be saying goodbye to my dissertation, and hello to the end of uni. That’s quite sad in a way, but I’ve been looking forward to leaving for a while now. I’m sick of doing everything in my spare time, sick of bringing work home with me. At least if I had a 9-5 I would be able to chill out from 5pm until the next time I’m at work. At the moment, it’s uni whichever hours of the day I need to be in, and then the added weight of having to get stuff done outside of work. And it’s been that way for three years now. I’m sick of it. I want to come home, put my feet up, watch TV, play Xbox, go for a pint and chill the fuck out. I feel extremely guilty when I do that whilst at uni (after all, it is my third year).

• Easter holidays are here. What are you doing with yours? I’m spending mine here, in the rather depressing city of Sunderland. Five of my six flat mates have gone home. And Mark, the only other one left, works 9-5 and will be going home in a week or so. The girlfriend is on holiday. I sense two or three very lonely weeks coming my way.

• I just watched Good Morning Vietnam. It made me laugh.

• Me and my good friend Lee have just started a weekly album exchange. Sort of like a book club, but he wants to hear more good rap music – and I’m the man for that job. And I want to get a rock education. Trying to learn all about a new genre is hard, especially when there’s so many albums out (I can think of 25-30 albums straight away that I would recommend to anybody wanting to get into hip hop – where do you find the time for them though?) and I can imagine that Lee has a shit load intended for my listening. The first one he’s given me is Aerosmith’s debut album. I’ve really enjoyed it, although I need to give it a few more listens to know it. The first album I gave him is Aim’s “Cold Water Music” simply because it’s what I’ve been playing a lot lately. I plan to send Nas’ “Illmatic”, Dre’s “2001”, Jay-Z’s “Reasonable Doubt” and some others his way in the next couple of weeks. It’s a great idea though. And I hope to step up my rock knowledge as the weeks go by. In a years time I should ‘know’ 50 or so seminal rock albums. Which is what I want.

• I’m also going to ask Lee to teach me the guitar. He doesn’t know that yet.

• And, in the next year or so, with less ‘home work’ in my spare time, I’m going to start learning Chinese. Although that will only last a week or so.

• After I’m done with uni (late May, early June) I’ll be completely redoing this website. I originally bought robwoolford.com to make it into an online portfolio for prospective employers. Then I just ended up using it as a blog. I need to get an online C.V. and shit up on here, because that will always look better than an e-mail or a letter. As well as that I’m going get all my photos and other shit up on here - make it more than just a blog. The blog is going to be redesigned too. I’m bored of how it looks at the moment.

And now I’ve run out of things to say.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

I probably won’t.

Just seen this on High Fidelity (film with John Cusack).

If you haven’t seen that film, basically John Cusack makes “Top 5…”s pretty much all the way through the film. Most centrally, his “Top 5 break ups”, but other things like “Top 5 funeral songs” creep in to the film too.

One that got me thinking was his “Top 5 dream jobs” which he all managed to fit in as a sort of career.

So, in a High Fidelity style-y… “Top 5 Dream Jobs”.

Sports Journalist (2008-2018)

After deciding to settle in Sunderland at the age of 21, I start writing freelance, but am recruited by either The Guardian, The Times or a well paid website to cover international leagues outside of England. This would see me doing a lot of travelling and attending faraway matches on special occasions – random derbies in Argentina, relegation battles in Eastern Europe and lots of stops in Brazil. Tim Vickery does something similar on the BBC’s website, and I absolutely love it.

After five or more years of doing this, I move to The New York Times (or some New York based website/publication) to help with their ‘Soccer’ coverage, including reporting of America, The Premiership and yet more random domestic leagues. This isn’t particularly well paid, but it bases me in the Big Apple and sees me free to cover as much global football as possible.

Oh, and ummm, this also doubles up as commentary too. On a minor scale though.

Radio Station DJ, New York (2018-2025)

Now that I’m based in New York, I decide to pursue my love of hip hop and apply to various hip hop radio stations. I don’t become the next Funkmaster Flex or Tim Westwood. Instead, I score a stupidly late show on Hot 97 (or similar) where commercial hip hop isn’t a must, and I’m free to play the best hip hop available – both past and present. The show is only on a couple of times a week, and I don’t gain huge notoriety, but I earn a small fortune DJing all over NYC and the surrounding area, whilst still reporting on the football in a part-time position.

It’s not that inconceivable. Colin Murray did something similar with BBC Radio 1, then to sports reporting and sports talk shows.

Travel Writer, Worldwide (2025-2030)

After a successful period on the radio, and having enjoyed travel so much in my earlier days as a journalist, I decide to travel again. By this point I will have been stationary in New York for nearly 10 years, and I’ll be late 30s.

At this point I write a well received travel website. You know, because I’m such a good writer by this point (haha). But I also branch off to a more travel-related job in the media. It’s 20 years in the future, so it’s hard to know what exactly that would be, but I envisage something along the lines of a video-blog or a video-podcast about different cities around the world. A dedicated team would visit all the corners of to bring all these cities and wonders of the world to the public. But, they would also be guides, so we would compile places to stay, how to travel, interviews with locals and all that garbage… I don’t know the details… but it would be a hit on the net and make us all a small fortune.

The best part though is that the team would all hit the road together and we’d stop in each location for a week. We’d work, of course, but in our spare time we’d get to follow our personal interests in these places. 5 years, (52 weeks x 5) spending a week in a new place. Shit, that’s 200+ cities or countries I’d get to visit… a definite dream come true!

Bar owner/manager, Various places (2030-2035)

Having travelled for so long, I fall in love with a number of cities and places.

I would be 50 years old by this point, and at that age there’s only so much you can do whilst you travel, so I decide to open a bar in some quiet corner of the world. South Africa? Australia? Brazil? Argentina? … who knows. Somewhere nice, with a lot of sun to keep the Mrs happy, and somewhere nice for the hypothetical children to spend their teens.

The bar is a success, and I’m able to open a couple more in some other lovely destinations.

And therein lies a family business. Hoorah! A chain of low key bars/pubs in exotic locations. Holiday homes for all of the family, but a nice stress-free way to retire I think!

York City Chairman, York (2035 onwards)

After galavanting across the world, writing almost non-stop for the previous 30 years… I decide it is time to get back involved with my first love – football. I’ve never been any good at playing, and by this time I’m too old, so I look to get involved on the executive side.

York City are a club who’ve never really been successful. They’re currently outside the top 92 clubs in the country, but the city deserves a club that matches its beauty.

The club are still nowhere special when I miraculously manage to buy them, but as this is my dream, I somehow manage to set up a structure at the club that sees them progress and work their way up the leagues towards the top few tiers. Premiership is nice in the dream, but I’d be happy with any of the top few tiers.

With ‘chairman’ being such a loose role, I can still run the aforementioned worldwide bars, amongst other things… but relocating back to York is something I’ve always expected to do in later life.

Anyway, the club’s stadium expands under my reign, as does the fan base, and the club are a consistent, respected part of the football league for as long as I’m alive.

So… New York Times, Hot 97, worldwide travel, bars and York City Chairman. Hey, it’s my dream, why the hell not?!?

What are yours?

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaappy New Year everybody!!

(more…)

Apparently if I were a Simpsons character, this is what I’d look like.

I don’t know why that’s important. And I don’t know why I’m sharing it with you.

This is down to a pointless, yet time-killing, promotion tool for the Simpsons movie - http://www.simpsonizeme.com. Give it a try, it takes a random picture of you and makes you look nothing like yourself.

Hurray.

Bonjour,

About half an hour ago I answered my door to a guy holding a big can of bug spray. Apparently my landlord has sent him round to spray various rooms of the house – of course, these rooms have to be evacuated for 2 hours for the fumes to leave (or for him to rob as much of our stuff as he likes) – so I’ve pretty much been kicked out of the house. (I’m now in the library, before an intense gym session).

I only got back into Sunderland today. I’ve yoyo’d between home (York) and Sunderland for the better part of a week now. I was back in York on Sunday to spend a night with friends who I hadn’t seen in months and months, then went with my family and girlfriend to watch The Simpsons on Monday night before jetting back (not literally, I drove) to S’land the following morning. Amy then dragged me round Newcastle for the whole of Tuesday to find a dress to wear to my dad’s wedding next month, and on Wednesday she dragged me round all of Sunderland to find shoes to match.

After working Wednesday we drove down to York/Leeds so that we could have a meal with my dad and his bride-to-be on Thursday, and first thing this morning (Friday) I was back in Sunderland to have Sky+ fitted in the house. Busy week. Although, Sky+ hasn’t been fitted, they took one look at the house and said they needed to come back Tuesday because the dish had to go next to our chimney. She was a woman, I’m not surprised she didn’t fancy climbing the roof ;).

My night out on Sunday was top notch. Got to see all of my best mates from school, a lot of which I haven’t spoken to properly for the better part of a year (because I’m lazy and they’ve probably got better things to do). I’m the one with the awful smirk on the right of the screen.

For those of you in the photo that are reading this – Liam’s hand is very conveniently place on Louise’s hips. Good work Liam.

It wasn’t a particularly eventful night out, but it was wonderful and one of the best nights out I’ve had in a long while.

Last night as me and Amy were out eating a meal, she decided to leave my iPod on in her bag (resulting in a dead battery), so today I had to travel all the way back to S’land without any music. Not a total disaster – I picked up a copy of the Guardian and read it from cover to cover – and it kept me pretty entertained. A couple of things worth sharing:

- The Spice girls have opened up their ‘world tour’ to the fans, and will play an extra date anywhere in the world – whichever city receives the most votes on their website. Fair enough, you might think, but after a P.R. stint in Iraq, a lot of sarcastic votes have launched Baghdad to the top of that last. A city that is war-torn, regularly loses power, and probably doesn’t even have a secure stadium looks like it could be the winner of this competition. If, like me, you’d love to see that happen. Google ‘The Spice Girls’ and vote for Baghdad on the tour section of their web site.

- Russia have claimed billions of pounds worth of oil/gas reserves in the Arctic Ocean by placing a flag on the sea bed. Two submarines dove more than two and a half miles (a record, by the way) beneath the North Pole and planted a one metre-high titanium Russian flag to symbolically claim what experts predict could be 10bn tonnes of hydrocarbons. I couldn’t help but laugh at the childish nature of this – and I’d love to be at the meeting when the United Nations discuss the legitimacy of this flag. Does a flag qualify you for billions of pounds worth of oil and gas reserves? Does America now own the moon? Who knows? But Canada aren’t happy about it, likening Russia methods to 15th century colonial land grabs. Personally I think that’s the way forward and I might invest in some flag poles myself… Read more about Russia’s genious here.

- Another story I read yesterday is that of Rhain Davis, a 9 year old boy who has been signed to play for Man Utd off the strength of a DVD. Rhain lives in Australia and has been invited over to Manchester based on the tape that his Grandfather sent to Old Trafford. Young Rhain is already being compared to Wayne Rooney, and his video has made it onto Youtube where it has attracted 1.6 million views. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, here’s the video: (He’s pretty good)…

That’s about it really. Kate Nash and Kano’s albums have made their way onto the net. To download Kate Nash – Made of Bricks, click here. For Kano – London Town, click here.

Ta-ta for now.

Guess that complaint worked, phone line is FINALLY working \o/

24 hours after I wrote that e-mail… not bad. And BT even rang me this morning to see if there was anything else they could do.

I realise this may have been a boring saga for you – but my god it was stressful!

One thing that’s wonderful about living in a house that you own is mail.

Every day there’s mail.

And every day it concerns me! That’s wonderful. What’s not so good is that most days it’s bills, or bank statements, or notifications of eviction (no, just kidding, not yet!)…

How long before the novelty wears off? Probably the first bill that comes around that I can’t afford to pay.

Shouldn’t be long then.