Listening To: What’s The Story (Morning Glory) : Oasis

OK gang, today we’re going to talk about wallets. Actually no … that’s a lie. True; I left my wallet at home – and that’s the segue into todays rant proper. However wallets shall not in fact be the main topic of discussion, save for this brief introductory mention. Now that we’ve got that sorted …

Right, so I forgot my wallet today because I spent last night printing out some wallet-sized shots of my girlfriend on my fancy-schmancey Canon i685 photo printer. After viewing the results, I then proceeded to select several of the fingernail sized prints and put them behind the dodgey plastic photo-window in the aforementioned shrapnel carrier. Is this because I’m a sad bastard who needs photos of a woman in his wallet to prove that yes, I am in fact capable despite my obvious shortcomings, of attracting a member of the opposite sex who is not only possessed of the requisite number of limbs and appropriate configuration of squidgey bits, but is in actual fact more than a bit of a ‘looker’ ? Maybe … but more than likely it’s actually because I genuinly wanted some photos of the lovely IG to look at whenever I need to brighten up my day.

If you haven’t been to my girlfriends blog yet, let me tell you it contains a fair few photos. There’s a good reason for that – as it’s fair to say the esteemed IG is a very photogenic young lass. In the fairly short time we’ve been ‘an item’, I’ve already managed to amass a pretty decent number of pictures of my girlfriend looking mighty fine in a variety of looks ranging from rock-diva to corporate and everything in between. All good – I love photos, especially when they are of sexy young women I happen to be dating. However, now we start getting to the point of today’s rant.

Y’see, until recently I didn’t have any photos of IG and I together. Yes I had a few good shots of her with various dudes and dudettes in pubs and cafes from her recent overseas trip. Ditto a great shot of her from her work Xmas party with Bin (no relation to Laden), the warehouse dude. Ditto various shots of her alone. But none of the two of us, save for a really crappy photo taken with my camera phone one night at Bungalow 8, which didn’t turn out at all thanks to the lack of ambient light and the drunkeness of the mate photographing us. There’s a damn good reason for that too, ladies and gents – a reason echoed by Baz on his blog over at Random Rant last Monday. The reason for this is … basically (and I’m bracing myself for this admission) … much to my own disgust, I am not exactly the world’s most fŨcking photogenic Czechboy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m the sort of fugly bastard whose photo there on the sidebar of this blog you’d print out in order to create a face-mask for frigthening the Jehova’s Witnesses away from your door. Or whose mug you’d stick on the back of a coin to stop kids from swallowing it, for that matter. I know I have my moments, and over the years (usually after one of my frequent several-months-long health kicks) I’ve even managed to fluke some decent photographs. But usually whenever I’m stupid enough to let myself get photographed, to paraphrase Baz I invariably end up “look[ing] like an utter fŨcking mong”. This, dear friends and fans, is the main reason there aren’t too many pictures of yours truly floating around. Interpol, as they say, would be well and truly rooted.

The picture of my girlfriend and I (left) now sitting nestled in the plastic sleeve of my missing wallet is certainly no exception to this hard-and-fast rule of my utter lack of photogeniacy. Examinining this photo taken over dinner at a local restaurant recently while celebrating my 28th birthday, the casual observer will no doubt agree IG looks radiant, and emminently photo-worthy. In contrast, the same casual observer would agree I most closely resemble a photoshop artists rendering of Cromagnon Man in a Marks & Spencers business shirt. To quote Baz again,

I don’t know why … I always try to do the ‘relaxed smile’ thing when I’m getting my photo taken, but I inevitably come out blinking, or playing a tuba or looking like I’m developing Cerebral Palsy before the photographer’s very eyes or something.

I’m not even smiling with my teeth in the above photo (as I often don’t), because I was paranoid about having food stuck to them. Unfortunately, this just makes me look like I’ve got the ‘protruding lower jaw’ thing happening, adding to the neolithic biped impression established earlier, or possibly making me resemble a chimpanzee. This wouldn’t be such an ‘issue’, or worthy of a rant (although hey, I’ve written ‘zine articles about cooking with catfood before, so I’m certainly not averse to scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas when running into writers block) if I could just cut my losses and make a pact with myself to stop letting people take photos of me. If I could just do a Chris Martin from Coldplay on anyone even remotely looking like they were going to brandish a camera near me, as it were.

Unfortunately, as I’ve already said – I really like photos. My parents have literally thousands of snaps taken over the last 50 years or so, and we’ve spent many happy times going through these, sharing remembrences and marvelling at how the world has changed in that time. I’m looking forward to doing the same thing with my kids and my life-partner one day. I really like the idea of having photos of myself and those dear to me, engaged in our day to day, travelling, on special occassions and other adventures. So why, oh why does every second photo of me past the age of 11 have to be the kind which makes me think “oh for fŨck’s sake !” ? Why does the cruel eye of the camera perenially have to shatter my strongly cherished delusion that I could have been bigger than Deiter Brummer, if only I’d bothered to cut my shoulder-length hair the day before my Home & Away audition for the role of ‘Shane’, instead of the day after ?

Why do I niavely look at ‘happy snaps’ featuring myself, expecting to see … well not Brad Pitt (even I’m not that self-deluded), but at least someone from the fŨcking OC looking back at me, and instead find the bastard love-child of Eddie Munster and the fat kid from the ‘Numa Numa Dance’ video returning my insipid stare ?

Answer me that God, answer me that ! ;P