The night after I published The John Amaechi Interview, a though kept smashing around in my slumbering head until jarring me awake: 'What if I focused on getting facetime with famous (or notorious) people who I admire, and reported my findings back to the reader?' That was it, crystalized in a sentence - that is where I want to live.
I scratched out a list of potential interviewees. Fun-loving, dangerous, clever, ridiculous, brave, deranged and publicly known - the more of those traits the better chance you have of getting on the list. I scrolled the names and noticed a common denominator, they have all dipped cupped hands into the elixir of I Do It My Way and supped deeply. They found that, contrary to what the status quo threatens, nothing calamitous happens when you cross the line. Ironically, instead of suffering personal repercussions, they were bequeathed with a real-life superpower called Liberation of Spirit, which grants them unlimited free access into the universe's energy-flow passing lane.
Frankie Boyle, Noel Fielding and The Midnight Beast were the three I circled. The others are either guarded by a phalanx of handlers or live too far away from SW England. I will get to everyone in due course, these three, though, need immediate attention.
Frankie effing Boyle - In the battlefield war between Free Speech and Censorship, Frankie is the guy that stands up in our trench and hollers across the front line, "All your mothers are flea infested whores!" Running with the metaphor, The Establishment has issued a long-standing order for a one shot kill, but as yet has only winged Frankie with high calibre rounds of hot metal ripping through flesh and muscular extremities. Nothing fatal.
What is the polemic firestorm about? Frankie's words. They explode onto the social constraints of pop culture like dirty bombs. Even limited exposure to his radioactive material melts victims into heaps of vomit, diarrhoea and human viscera barely attached to protruding bones. For an instant, when Frankie really opens up the throttle, everybody in the room has a petit mal seizure - followed immediately by the rarest form of unencumbered, astonished and exhilarating archetypal laughter drawn from our long-ago ancestors, maybe all the way back to caveman. Always attached to this beautiful moment is the double raised eyebrow declaration, "What the *^ck did Frankie just say?"
I want to witness Frankie in action, watch him piss off the gods - over and over. And hold my breath to see if they have figured out how to smite him down for good; or if he continues to walk away with mere flesh wounds - because even God himself, levelling sniper rifle crosshairs, flinches one off target when Frankie is in the zone.
Noel Fielding - Is it possible for someone to be born on earth and not be from our planet? Noel Fielding is an angelic alien with brain functions that have behavioural scientists scratching their heads. If we created an Xbox RPG called, A Typical Day in Noel Fielding's Life, the gameplay just to get out of Noel's apartment would be like fastening a separate heavily distorted 3D kaleidoscope monocular to each of your eyeballs.
I want to spend Q time with Noel. My theory is that his Through the Looking Glass lunacy/perfect sanity will spinal shock my middle age sell-out back to when I was twelve years old doing stupid but very entertaining "grabass bullshit" - that endlessly pissed off my dad. We all need Noel to resurrect us from the fade.
One foreseeable problem - how the hell are Noel and I going to interact? Noel is off the grid, I am the tripod that holds the grid upright. Unless I drop 600mgs of old school mescaline on the morning of our meeting, we might not be simpatico. This calls for rash and extreme measures to close the gap. Remanufacturing my look and wardrobe would entail what? Hair dye, hair putty, hair extensions, artificial hair fill, backcombing brushes and picks, across the board eye enhancement products, nail (and toe) polish, Cuban heals, silky stuff, really tight stuff, really loose stuff and capes. For Noel and the rest of us, I will do it.
The Midnight Beast - Stefan, Dru and Ash are hanging on to a rocket ship headed for the ozone layer. On the way out they are smashing the video sharing Internet to smithereens and scooping up UK teenagers by the millions - PaKow!
The YouTube musical parodies are like watching fun-loving clowns on a parade float tossing razor blades instead of sweeties. If you weren't careful you might categorise The Beast as a one note wonder whose Weird-Al-as-a-Band routine will get 3¾ years of notice before the big flame out. You would be stone cold wrong. The first couple episodes of the E4 TV show are proof. Eccentric writing, offbeat comic delivery, physical shenanigans and layers of satire interspersed with music vid breakaways - equal parts smartass and cleverass. What we are watching is not the sizzling butter burning off in the pan, it's a nice cut of rib eye warming up in its own juices, The Beast has chops.
Me and the The Beast need to hang. The boys are in their early 20s from London, I'm 46 from Vegas. This is going to be tricky, but I've got a secret weapon called B to the Keezie. My son, BK, is the coolest 14-year-old alive - a jock, geek, metrosexual, English/American, skating, gaming, bballing, dubstepping, Soundcloud producing little badass. He represents the prototypical TMB fan. I will bring BK with me. He's the plant. BK and the boys from The Beast will rip it up. I will observe and scribe.
Update
Emails have been exchanged with the management teams representing Frankie, Noel and The Midnight Beast. Each has shown initial interest. Let's do this. Brrraaapp!