Rush Limbaugh reminded me of something
Thing I did for the UK Huffington. A bit of ranting for a Tuesday.
If there’s two things I despise about PR people, its 1) they’re always unbearably attractive and 2) they’re horrendously nice, all the fucking time. It’s of course, one big giant ruse, the same way the staff in American Apparel look at you with a I am ready to get it on, and you there goblin, are in luck glance in order to trick you into buying more in some desperate attempt to secure the approval of these desirable elves, before they snap out of the temporary insanity that is rendering them immune to your pungent goblin smell. My problem is, despite knowing this, I cannot seem to steel myself against it. Secretly, perhaps somewhere deep down I think that all these PR people really do love me, and that one day I too will be accepted, like Simba. Or The Elephant Man.
The situation is always the same. PR sends Coco press release. Coco reads press release then sends a question. PR sends response and tails if off with ‘Super! So I should put your name down for this then? I am so looking forward to it, and to seeing you!’
She likes me. She really likes me.
Okay I type, clicking send. And so repeats the annoying rigmarole of doing stuff for no good reason that serve only to destroy your soul. This time however, I think I have achieved my own ‘piece de resistance’ of fail. I, Coco Khan, am going to have a little man follow me around for 12 hours. Thats it. That is the piece. Just some guy following me around, trying to ‘assist’ me. In context of wealth, I imagine thats just called ‘having a PA’ but in my context I sense a little bit of ‘probation officer’.
I’ll let you know how that goes.
So I just had the crushing experience of firing someone. I’ve developed a really good technique with this. What I like to do is hysterically beg for forgiveness until they hang up. I think that works for both parties because I go in some way to alleviating my immeasurable and impenetrable sense of guilt, and the other person feels a relief that they no longer have to work with someone who could potentially be the subject of a Panorama episode.
This morning I opened a parcel that had a press sample in it. Press samples, in case you aren’t aware, are free products given to journalists in the hope they will review/include it. It works well because most journalists are so unbelievably poor that we live off this stuff and so largely, like a greased up stripper dancing for pennies, we grudgingly provide the promo. I went through a stage of being so poor I couldn’t afford to eat, so I offered to restaurant review. I was eating in Michelin starred restaurants every night for a week, but that was all I was eating. Nothing says ‘professional food critic’ to a chef than watching a journalist ask for more bread after being at the table for 37 seconds then crying when the main course comes.
Unfortunately the ‘free shit’ outlook isn’t entirely self-perpetuating. Tower Hamlets Council are not interested in my thoughts and opinions in lieu of Council Tax. For that stuff you need real money, real money.
I ran out of real money last week (don’t ask) so I sent my standard ‘Whore, available’ to the relevant PRs and so unsurprisingly found a pile of parcels on my doormat this morning. One of the parcels had a skincream inside. A skincream made from caviar. Am I supposed to eat it? I thought, hungrily.
For some reason, this Caviar Skincream has returned to my mind throughout the morning. It continues to disgust me the more and more I think about it. In terms of beauty politics, the environment, the sheer ‘fall of Rome’-esque state of decadent affairs we find ourselves in, or rather a select few find themselves in while the rest of us are trading in Caviar Skincreams at the cornershop to fund a nicotine addiction. I must say, these cigarettes are feeling particularly good this morning.
Took my blog down so the professional world didn’t know about my antics. But actually, my own instinct for self-destruction knows no bounds.
R.I.P Brown Around Town
If you’re clicking this, you’ll see my old blog ‘Brown Around Town’ is no more. If you’re one of my followers that somehow has stumbled onto this new blog despite me severing our virtual ties without so much as a note- I’m sorry. It wasn’t personal, rather things in my career took a turn for the better and I realised that I should probably remove all the incriminating evidence of my personal antics from the public domain.
This is my new blog, follow it if you like, it won’t be half as sexy/neurotic/potentially punishable by prison time, but it might have a few things more exciting then listening to the dialling tone of a fax machine. I might even put some of my articles up. Maybe.
Until.
