22: The Death Of All The Romance

Well, this is awkward. For two reasons, in fact.

First reason: having committed myself to a song that I haven't heard in over a decade, it turns out I don't like it very much. Or, more accurately, the bit I like is from 3' 45" to the end, once they've all stopped singing. I'm lumbered with this dull video of the album cover because the official video is of the radio edit which stops before the coda, and all the full-length live renditions on YouTube have been filmed on analog telephones, judging from their sound quality. (The other alternative would have been to go with 22 Grand Job by the Rakes, but the video for that's problematic ay eff.)

Second reason: I needed a song with 22 in the title to help me announce that The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey first appeared on the internet on July 14th 1998, which is 22 years ago today. It launched with a review of one of my favourite comics at the time, Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. And by pure coincidence, yesterday (July 13th 2020) saw the launch of a new website called So Many Of Us, an extraordinary piece of work in which dozens of women share their stories of how Ellis has abused and manipulated them over two decades or more. I guess I'm not so disappointed these days that he blocked me on Twitter.

All of this is rather grim, which makes the transition into this next bit a grinder of a gear change, but here goes: today is this site's 22nd birthday! Hooray! As The Belated Birthday Girl keeps telling me, she can think of very few commercial websites that have been around as long as this one, so I suppose this counts as some sort of achievement. Thanks to all of you who've hung around this long, and still seem to be somehow enjoying it.

Right, that's that out of the way. Now I guess I've got 365 days to find a better song with the number 23 in the title.

Previously:

• Zero
• Five
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-one

(And additional birthday greetings to sister site The Bermondsey Beer Mile, which enters its terrible twos today.)

Comments

[suzeaskmylawyer]

Surprised you didn't pick this one !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL3Wwo6RGyw