CALMzine Issue 13

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CAMPAIGN AGAINST LIVING MISERABLY

EVAN DANDO ON TARKA CORDELL // ANDREW COTTON // CAREY WILLETTS // DEAR JOSH // THE RANT

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CALM

CONTENTS

GREETINGS.

MANifesto ..................................................... 5.

The CV Gap Trap .......................................... 6.

CALM’s ‘How To’ Guide ................................ 8.

Inner Life ....................................................... 10.

Mister Mumbles ........................................... 12.

Can’t Catch a Break-ers .............................. 14.

Evan Dando on Tarka Cordell ...................... 16.

Let’s Get it On! .............................................. 20.

ART SHOW: Melissa White ........................... 22.

Ambassadors Reception ............................. 25.

POEM: I am the Product ............................... 26.

CALM Competition ........................................ 27.

Chris Sav’s Everyman .................................. 29.

INTERVIEW: Andrew Cotton ......................... 30.

The Rant ........................................................ 32.

Dear Josh ...................................................... 34.

So here we are. 2014. We’re officially living in the future, people! Lack of hover boards aside, this year is looking to be a BIG one for CALM and we thought we’d kick it off with an awesome magazine packed full of tip top literary fodder in this AWARD WINNING magazine. Yep, CALMzine was named Publication of the Year at the UK Public Sector Communications Awards at the end of last year, so a huge thanks to all of our writers, photographers, artists and you lovely readers for making CALMzine what it is. We couldn’t do it without you!

In this issue we were lucky enough to grab some time with the legendary Lemonheads front man, Evan Dando who talks about his friend Tarka Cordell and his contribution the brilliant tribute album Tarka & Friends: Life, which also features none other than Lily Allen. Check it out at tarkamusic.com. It’s a beautiful record. We also managed to catch big wave surfer Andrew Cotton between breaks to talk about his record smashing ride last year and what is takes to beat the ocean at it’s own game.

Plus we have article about sexual anxiety (we’ve all been there), the reality of OCD and cover art from the very talented Melissa White. All this alongside our usual crew - Mister Mumbles raids his grandfather’s gramophone collection, Chris Owen lets off some steam in The Rant and Dear Josh offers out his usual dose of irreverent agony uncle medicine.

So, enjoy and let’s make 2014 a CALMzine year, y’all!

CREDITS EDITOR: Rachel Clare ASSISTANT EDITOR: Molly Taylor DESIGNER: Silvina De Vita COVER ART: Melissa White VAN DRIVER’S ASSISTANT: Graham Goddard PLASTER CAST WEARER OF THE YEAR: Katie Barton MANAGERIAL DIRECTOR OF OMGZ: Niamh Brophy THE MAN WITH A PLAN: Nate Woodbridge CALM DIRECTOR: Jane Powell

Need Help? Call CALM. London: 0808 802 58 58 Nationwide: 0800 58 58 58.

Lines open 7 days a week 5pm - midnight

Contributors: Chris Owen, Mister Mumbles, Chris Sav, Joshua Idehen, Graham Goddard, Molly Taylor, Melissa White, Chris Price, Marcus Chapman, Oliver Dibben, Carey Willetts, Ant Meads.

Want to advertise with us?

Email editor@thecalmzone.net

Special thanks to Topman and JC Decaux for their support.

CALMzine is printed on paper from sustainably managed sources. Printed by Symbian Print Intelligence, paper from Gould International UK.

CALMzine is the first port of call for all your manspiration needs. We all have issues at the end of the day, so what do you want to talk about? Who do you want us to talk to? We want to hear from YOU. Email us your ideas and views at editor@thecalmzone.net If you want the hard stuff, go to the CALM website: www.thecalmzone.net or follow us on twitter @CALMzine thecalmzone.net - CALMzone Helpline London: 0808 8025858 Outside london: 0800 58 58 58

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CVs are problematic little buggers… so much rides on them, and it’s crucial to get them right, yet they often only tell the academic, impersonal side of ‘you’ – your work, your life and your achievements laid out in near-mathematical form. For someone with gaps on their CV, however, this can feel so much worse.

Gaps – in a lot of people’s eyes – hide something, something that you’re too afraid to announce in public, or something you’re ashamed of. We’re not talking a gap year back-packing around South America.

However, the reasons behind most gaps are not ‘suitable’ for a CV, so they remain off limits with the candidate forever worried about the scenario around which they’ll have to explain why 2003 is missing, and the resultant reaction from the interviewer.

It shouldn’t be like this though. We are who we are, and our life has shaped us all into the people we are today, which is ultimately, the person being interviewed. What’s more – and I’ll explain why shortly – those with gaps on their CV can actually be some of the most balanced, pragmatic, and sober (in all regards) people in a business. The sad fact is there’s still a stigma behind some of the circumstances that may lead to taking time out – yet those who’ve done so can often bring huge amounts to the conference table.

Looking at my own CV, I’ve got gaps. I can’t put down a University degree as I only completed two of the three years, and the second of those was barely completed (unless you count getting 12% as ‘a bloody good go’, which few employers do, understandably). I went to Uni to see what it was like and having taken a year out beforehand where I ran a record shop, going back to ‘school’ to read Jane Austen, in hindsight, was never going to be a massive success. However, early on in my career, I’d get quizzed about why I didn’t finish the course, regardless to how utterly un-related it was to the job I was applying for.

Later, after a few years running record shops and then handling the PR and marketing for a music festival in 2001, I took more time out – in this case a year. The reason? Well, in all honesty,

TheGAPCV TRAP

By Chris Owen

I had what many people would describe as a breakdown. The festival collapsed, owing hundreds of thousands of pounds. I was owed about ten grand (which I’d never see), had a loan to pay, and rent to make. So I hid away and didn’t open my post. My brother eventually rescued me and took me home to my folks where I stayed for a year to get myself back on my feet.

At that time I couldn’t look people in the eye, nor hold a pen – I was nervous, a ball of anxiety, and was only able to sleep by necking wine until I passed out. I had to start from scratch to get my confidence back, so starting working as a data entry clerk at HBOS. After several months, I was doing complex Trust and Deed work. My confidence was on the rise, and I felt I was ready to return to a career, so moved back into PR. What followed were a few years working at an agency before deciding it was time to move on, but the missing year on my CV cropped up in interviews. In some feedback from interviewers, I was told that they were worried about what had happened during the music festival period, which was apparently more relevant to whether I got offered the job or not than the three and a half years of successful PR experience I had gained after my year out.

A couple of stints doing the wrong job followed, before I arrived at a position I stayed at for nearly four years. When I started there my drinking was at an all-time high, and I was very unwell. Within a couple of months I was signed off with severe depression, anxiety and stress.

I was off work for three months, and was a bit of a mess when I did return but just about held things together. I eventually got on top of things in January 2012 by checking into rehab. It was during my stint in there that I realised that sobriety brought a lot more than just clear vision. The counselling and therapy had brought a new pragmatism, and recovery from illness had brought a new, and arguably better, sense of perspective.

When you’ve been through therapy and been taught how to think a bit clearer, and what signs to look for, you’re able to apply this to everything else in life – and especially to work situations. I’d no

longer get stressed worrying about the tiniest issue, but realise there are bigger opportunities to look at – I could finally see the wood for the trees, and it definitely improved my work; so much so that I won awards for the work I did in the year following rehab, (and continue to do so to this day).

In rehab, and through other therapy, I’d been taught the basics of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and also began to understand how the brain works – how untethered thoughts, concerns and anxieties can fester if left unchecked. I was taught how to manage them, file them and how to move on before they became irrational fears and blockages.

If you’ve been through hell and back, small things that get others flustered can seem, well, as they are – just tiny details that need ironing out. I gained a sense perspective off the back of a situation where perspective was completely absent. Tackling problems with a clear, logical and rational head will solve them faster and more effectively than panicking will ever do. I am a stronger, more effective employee now than I ever have been yet on paper – on my CV – the two gaps still remain.

The problem is that too many people look at a gap on a CV caused by mental health problems and see ‘liability’ rather than ‘pragmatic, balanced, and sober’. My gaps were, in the first instance, a time for me to get myself back on my feet, and in the second, a time for me to beat my demons and get back to being the real me. I achieved both. I managed to finally reach my full potential and saw more subsequent success than I ever thought possible. The gaps, in my opinion, show a resilience and strength in character to beat adversity and get my shit together in order to become a more rounded and functional human being, not an inability to fulfil an interviewer’s checklist. At the end of the day, if a potential employer hasn’t got the open-mindedness to see beyond the CV gap, then do you really want to work for them? If I were ever interviewed and felt on the back foot about my previous mental health problems, or my alcoholism, then I’d walk out – it would be their loss.

HOW TO... build Bearded word-twit Oh Standfast guides you through making your very own rocket and in turn helping you get that clerical job at NASA you’ve always dreamed of.

Materials: ttle Two litre plastic bo her an empty Lilt I would suggest eit tropical take off, bottle for a totally ck if you’re out to or Dandelion Burdo d. impress a lady frien otball Pump Cork, A4 card, Fo , Scissors , Tape Piece of gutter pipe

Step 1.

Carefully cut out 4 identical triangles from your piece of card and stick them to the bottle with tape.

These will act sort of like fins and please note that the top of the bottle is at the bottom, I mean it’s not rocket science.

Step 2.

Fill 1/4 of the bottle with water and then shove the cork into the end (said the astronaut to the control desk operator, ooh err).

Step 3.

Pierce the cork with the needle of the football pump, alternatively if using a bike pump you can forget the cork and wrap round the end of the nozzle with tape so it fits snugly into the end of the bottle.It is important that no air escapes as this may cause a damp fart noise, which though hilarious is the last thing you need as the launch team must remain fully focused.

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a bottle rocket Step 4.

Gently place the rocket (bottle) onto an old length of guttering ideally angled at 45 degrees for optimum launch capacity.

If you can’t get your creative filthy hands on a piece of gutter then maybe you can use a stick like Ray Mears would.

Step 5.

Now pump hard, harder still, harder, harder, steady, a bit harder...... (approximately 20 pumps) and then Uuuuuuummmmppphhh!

Step 6.

After taking a step back and wondering if it was all worth it, retrieve and dispose of responsibly.

The end.

Caveat alert! It goes without saying that if you DO happen to take Oh Standfast’s advice and make your own rocket, CALMzine are not responsible if you get a Lilt bottle embedded in your eye socket. Play safe, kidz!

You can follow Oh Standfast on Twitter @ohstandfast.

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My name’s Ant and I’ve got Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). If the first thought that comes to mind is ‘ooh, I’m a little bit OCD too’ please let me stop you there. Few phrases in the English language irritate me more. It’s the conversational equivalent of nails being dragged down a blackboard. If you like keeping your house clean that’s probably pretty normal behaviour. If you like having all the cans in your cupboard facing the same way you are probably just a bit fastidious. If not doing either of those things however, fills you with a feeling of sheer terror, makes you feel sick to your stomach and occupies a large portion of your day as you continually clean or reorganise over and over again, then yes, you may actually be ‘a little bit OCD.’ It all started when I was about seven or eight, my parents were arguing a lot and I began to exhibit some strange behaviour. I started flicking lights on and off until it felt ‘just right’. If I brushed into a chair or table with my right leg, I’d have to brush into it with my left. If I brushed into it slightly heavier with my left I’d have to even things out for my right again. That was a particularly tricky maneuver and I’d often end up spinning around like a dog chasing its tail.

At the time I had no idea why I did these things but what I did know is that if I didn’t, I felt sick.

Not the kind of sick you feel with a cold or after a bad curry but a sickness that was coupled with extreme distress. It filled me with anxiety 10

long before I could spell the word and left me paralysed with fear. I was at an age where I had no clue how to express these feelings, so when my parents asked what I was doing I couldn’t explain except to say ‘it just felt right’.

//

They took me to see a doctor and he explained lots of children have these tics and I’d likely grow out of it, and as far as my parents were concerned, I did. I didn’t like feeling weird and suspected my parents were disappointed in me, so I started to hide the routines. I’d go to my bedroom, shut the door // and repeatedly touch each of my fingers with my thumb. Over and over again until it felt ‘just right.’ After a while I didn’t feel weird anymore, it just felt normal.

I had my routines and so long as I repeated them every single day everything would be OK. IN THE MOST SIMPLISTIC TERMS, YOU FEEL BAD, YOU DO SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER, AND THEN A SHORT TIME LATER YOU FEEL BAD AGAIN.

So that was my life. For the longest time I locked myself away doing an array of odd things in the hope I could make the feelings of anxiety and sickness go away. I was 30 before I went back to see a GP and that came about because my life was spiraling out of control. I’d come home from work and cry. I’d arrange the things in my room in exactly the ‘right’ way.

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INNER LIFE

Understanding OCD

By Ant Meads

I’d eat the same food every night, at exactly the same time. I’d pull on my hair and wash my hands over and over again. Just hoping that one of these routines would eventually calm my nauseous stomach; that they would stop my hands from shaking and make the eternal sadness I felt go away, if only for a moment. Because that’s how OCD works; in the most simplistic terms, you feel bad, you do something that makes you feel better, and then a short time later you feel bad again. It’s an endless cycle and each time you perform the compulsive act, the time it takes for the fear and anxiety to loop back round becomes less and the feeling of terror becomes worse.

One of the biggest OCD traits of which I think people are unaware is the unwanted thoughts. At times I’d lay awake, so certain that my wife was going to die in her sleep that I’d spend hours checking her breathing.

If it wasn’t clear to me she was breathing I’d nudge her awake. The time between these regular checks was spent worrying about funeral costs. How do you even arrange one? Who do you invite? How would I afford it? And so another night would pass with limited sleep. These are the bits people don’t realise when you say you suffer from OCD. They don’t understand the constant fear in which you’re living your life. As a child I was regularly tested for diabetes. No would could understand why I was always complaining of

being tired. At the time I couldn’t articulate my fears so I just put up with it. They call depression the coping disease. It’s right, I have spent over 30 years coping with life rather than living it.

When I saw my doctor I was referred for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It basically rewires the thinking process. Now when my anxiety sets in I have to take a step back and rationalise my thinking. How likely is my fear to be realised? What will happen if it does?

Will I cope with that? Ultimately you are left in a better position to discard the unwanted intrusion to your brain. By doing that you are able to stop yourself from indulging in the compulsive behaviours that you had previously. I’ll confess, it doesn’t always work for me.

I have some deep-rooted childhood issues which mean that CBT isn’t the only solution. I also take medication for my condition.

I’m lucky. Lucky I survived a long as I did.

Lucky that I finally found help. Lucky that charities like CALM and OCD UK exist. They dispel the myths surrounding mental illness.

For years I thought my behaviour was normal.

I thought everyone was plagued with these thoughts and that everyone found their own ways to cope. In truth, being diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder was the best thing that ever happened to me.

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MISTER MUMBLES’ Musical Maladies Britain’s best-kempt cad lifts the lid on grandfather’s gramophone and spins a selection of vintage vinyl for your delectation.

With that he reversed his motorised wheelchair out of the room, still frantically steering bits of Tetris down as he went. I was alone, and the gramophone beckoned.

T’was a dreary Sunday after-lunch, and I was to be found lolling back in an armchair by the fireside, nursing a thimbleful of sherry. Opposite me lounged Grandfather Mumbles, playing on his Gameboy. Grandfather does love technology, as a glance around his drawing room attests. There’s a television set with a built-in video player. A foot spa. And above the mantlepiece, Big Mouth Billy Bass - a latex rubber fish who will, at the push of a button, belt out Old Man River until the lady next door sends her Kettle Chip-faced son round to have words.

The first platter I pulled out to play was The Belbury Tales.

This was very much the sort of thing I could imagine a group of medieval gammon farmers enjoying after a hard day’s toil deep in the mutton mines of Somerset, as they waited for their magic mushroom risotto to take ahold and reveal to them the many meaty secrets of the gammon gods.

Trumping all of those wonderments however, is Grandfather’s gramophone. Clad in polished teak with the most shiny, bulbous horn I’ve ever clocked, it’s the Rolls Royce of record players. Normally, I wouldn’t be permitted to operate such a priceless bit of kit, being as I am something of a butter-fingered oaf on the quiet. But this afternoon was to be anything but normal - or indeed, quiet.

“Arse cheeks – my batteries are running low!” spluttered Grandfather Mumbles suddenly, in between mashing at the buttons of his Gameboy. “I’m off down to Tesco Metro to get more – I’ll be back for Songs of Praise.”

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Moving on, I happened across an album by Patrick Moraz. Verily, this was the sound of mad cow disease, like soft poo in a baby’s nappy pressed up onto a piece of plastic. There were xylophones and other plinkyplunky things, plus a children’s choir. My footpads developed a mind of their own, and I realised I was having a little dance for the first time in a long time; not since that street party for the Queen’s Jubilee in fact the one where I ate far too much Satsuma jelly and had a rather unfortunate accident on a bouncy castle.

We shall do well not dwell upon that though! Onward I galloped into the afternoon, and it wasn’t long before I arrived at Grandfather Mumbles’ funk section. Now, I make no apology for the fact that funk finds favour in Mumbles’ Mansion. Myself and Missus Mumbles

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can often be found funking all night long, usually til dawn. But to funk in my Grandfather’s abode? Was that to take things a step too far? I was on my seventh sherry by now, so I threw caution to the wind. As Brass Construction parped and honked their way into the room, I duly surrendered myself to the funk.

I even unloosened my cravat a little bit. It just felt right.

Time passed like a chunky chip being poked through a sieve. It had gotten dark outside. With no sign of Grandfather and a third bottle of sherry now halfway towards finished, I decided to enter Room 237.

Gingerly, I slid the record from its sleeve. As I peeled it free, the colour of the vinyl struck me – lurid bright orange. The needle touched down on the citrusfinished surface, and my stomach lurched as I recalled that fateful Jubilee day when, on a bouncy castle in Ladbroke Grove, I brought up around two litres of raw Satsuma jelly diluted with rum and ginger.

By jove, it was high time to change the record! The only thing to hand was The TV Hits Album. So it was that halfway through the theme tune of Auf Wiedersehn Pet I heard the front door slam shut and the sound of a motorised wheelchair pootling down the hall. I scooted the needle off the record in a dash. Grandfather reversed into the drawing room. He looked exceedingly dishevelled.

“What the blazes happened to you?!” I exclaimed.

Forlornly, Grandfather replied. “I was invited to a soiree above a hairdresser’s shop dear boy. It was ruddy decadent. They had a mushroom risotto on the go, and bowlfuls of Mini Cheddars. They were playing funk music and some of the chaps had loosened their cravats, despite it being a Sunday.”

“A big-nosed youngster called Patrick asked if he could borrow my Gameboy, for a picture. Despite the fact that I was just beginning level 237 – a new Tetris record for me – I handed it over. After all, a constructive hobby like photography should be encouraged...”

He continued. “...though later, I came across my Gameboy abandoned in the lavatory. The screen was strewn with dusty white crumbs of lady’s face powder. Rejoining the party, I shouted above the ironic 80s theme tunes blasting from the jukebox, pleading to have Songs of Praise put on the television. No one heard me, so I went outside to take a pipe of tobacco – whereupon I was accosted by a girl with Satsuma-coloured skin. She took my Gameboy, along with one of my shoes. I put up a fight but she boxed my ears and I had an orgasm in my trousers.

“Accursed trollop!” wailed I. “I’m calling in the filth!”

“Not the pigs!” roared Grandfather Mumbles. “No, let’s have a bit of The Piranhas instead. Far less dangerous.

They’re from Brighton you know.” He smiled, wistfully.

“The track’s called Getting Beaten Up. Oh, and make it loud dear boy. My hearing aid’s utterly buggered.”

I cranked Grandfather’s gramophone to life one last time. He called for more sherry but I’d finished the lot, so we started in on the port. As sunlight began to creep through the heavy velvet curtains, we had Big Mouth Billy Bass sing for us awhile. When the boy with the Kettle Chip face came knocking, we tipped a bucket of horse spunk over him from an upstairs window. @Mister_Mumbles Why not listen to the soundtrack of this article by visiting www.mixcloud.com/Mister_Mumbles? It will verily thrill you to the marrow.

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Hollywood’s Favourite ‘Can’t Catch a Break-ers’

To celebrate the release of the new Coen brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davies, we took a minute to consider some more movie men for whom luck hasn’t shown its shiny little face in a while. So what can we learn from our favourite movie underachievers? Molly Taylor explores…

By Molly Taylor Larry Gopnik in A Serious Man We just couldn’t help ourselves: grabbing another grubby Coen character from the shelf of can’t-catch-a-breakers is inevitable, because those brothers surely know how to write stories about guys who have been dealt a shitty hand.

Larry Gopnik is a Midwestern university lecturer with a serious run of bad luck and an unavailable sexy stoner divorcee living next door. Larry has tried to be a serious man, he tells us. He’s tried to live as an upstanding member of the community, but his badly fitting short sleeved shirts and Costello glasses mark him out as a guy whose efforts will always be overcome. If he’s not getting his head smashed repeatedly against a chalky blackboard, he’s being manipulated by teenagers and ignored by Rabbis.

If we can learn anything from the genuinely distressing facial expressions of Gopnik, however, it’s that it’s important to stand up to those who try and smush you down. As the audience, there’s not one moment where we stop shouting ‘come ON, Larry!’ at the screen. This interrupts the dialogue somewhat but is important in terms of maintaining a strong sense of moral balance. If you can’t take even one more sympathetic hug from your exgirlfriend’s new partner, it’s time to pluck up your assertiveness and give ‘em hell.

Dewey Finn in School of Rock So I guess this guy doesn’t really need an introduction, because everyone who’s anyone spent hours of their youth watching Jack Black’s character try to transform a gang of tone-deaf uppity kids into rock royalty.

When Dewey gets kicked out of his band (which, you know, has happened to all of us at some point or another), he finds it hard to keep up with the rent and the whole instant-noodle-filled future looks a little grey and sad.

Dewey, as a relentless enthusiast with a great imagination and a big pair of balls, comes up with a pretty crazy idea to get him some cash, or more specifically – $10,000 prize money from a Battle of the Bands competition.

What he doesn’t count on is making some friends along the way (collective aww).

Though the group come second in the competition, Dewey learns a few things that mean more than cold, hard cash: never judge a book by its cover, never give up and, most importantly, music is the key to solving all your problems. Or, more generally, if you chase the things you love then some good will come. Even if it’s not $10,000.

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Rob Gordon in High Fidelity John Cusack plays Rob Gordon in High Fidelity, an awesome 90s love letter to music, girlfriends and regret. Rob loves vinyl more than birds, and he’s done pretty well to get himself a nice little record store where he and his awkward employees get to roll around in the yummy specialist nature of their music knowledge (cue: Jack Black being absurd at every opportunity). But when there’s a mid-life crisis on the horizon, nothing can stay sweet forever.

To ease the age-old question of ‘why am I single?’, Gordon undertakes a cross-country investigation into his five dastardly ex-girlfriends and the varying nonsensical reasons as to why they abandoned him and his achy-breaky heart. This inevitably leads to some important moments of self-discovery for both Rob and the audience. Rob hears his first love recount to him the way that he actually broke up with her because she wouldn’t put out, and thus the glorious prescription for self-criticism is handed over the counter.

Rob has to swallow that pill again and again throughout the film, as each girlfriend tells him her side of the story and he realises that maybe he wasn’t as fair as he could have been.

So he messed up a little in his youth… but that’s what makes Cusack’s character all the more loveable. We all do a little bad stuff from time to time. It’s just important to take stock and learn from those little slip-ups.

The Narrator in Fight Club Okay… we’re not sure whether this guy is actually loveable or not, but his absolute bad-assness puts him in the running. Norton’s nameless narrator (there’re spoilers here, kiddos) works in a job he hates, calculating insurance costs with an impossible formula that identifies his brain as sitting smack bang in the big leagues of cleverness. Despite his cognitive potential pulsing away like a jugular vein, Norton’s character can’t face the idea that he could be more than what he’s become. But oh! George Eliot, what advice do you have for us here? “It is never too late to be what you might have been”. Well, there you go. Our favourite slightly-off-kilter chap learns this whilst smacking the crap out of men in parking lots, basements, and even (in one of the most awesomely WTF scenes in film history) in his boss’ office. Note: this is not something to be advised.

Apparently exercise, endorphins and all that malarkey don’t help him too much, though, as he still turns out to be having trouble with memory lapses and is accidentally sleeping with Helena Bonham Carter who loves a cheeky cig but is still looking for her misplaced hairbrush. This guy has some seriously profound things to say about sleeping problems, such as “With insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy”. So there you go.

What we can learn from he who turns out to be TYLER DURDEN, however, is that it always helps to have a cry and a hug from someone who is sympathetic to what you’re going through. That, my friends, is not a lie.

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EVAN DANDO ON

A unique covers album featuring Evan Dando and Lily Allen pays tribute to late singer-songwriter Tarka Cordell. Chris Price talks to those close to Tarka about the man and his music.

On a wall at Room 609 Records, the London label releasing tribute album Tarka & Friends: Life, is a large black and white photograph entitled The First Supper.

Moving left to right, label boss Barney Cordell lists the names of twelve smiling longhairs sitting stage-side around an expansive, champagne-stocked table for one of Elvis’s ‘71 Vegas shows: Leon Russell, Gram Parsons, the film director Joe Massot and – notably, for the purposes of my visit today – Barney’s dad, the super-producer and Shelter Records label impresario Denny Cordell.

This is the world that Tarka Cordell and his elder brother were born into. Not for them the two-week family holiday to an English seaside resort; instead Tarka and Barney joined the 30-strong entourage on Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, aboard ‘a leased, painted-up twin-prop plane from a dodgy

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South American airline’. Barney points out another picture, of him and Tarka aged about five and six: ‘We were joined at the hip as kids, 11 months apart. Mum didn’t hang about’. Hunched over a game of snap, the two boys are kneeling onstage between a drum kit and the feet of a sound-checking Joe Cocker.

Later I hear stories of the boys’ idyllic LA childhood, first in residence at Chateau Marmont and later at their Malibu beach house, including a recollection of a day chasing jackrabbits with the family greyhounds and two of Denny’s friends named Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. (“We just knew that they were guys with dreads who played nice music.”)

Fast forward to 2008. Both brothers, // perhaps unsurprisingly, have ended WE WERE up in music – Barney on the business JUST side as an A&R at Island Records, RUNNING Tarka as a musician and some-time AROUND filmmaker. Tarka’s episodic career NEW YORK might best be described as a series CITY HAVING of near misses – an acclaimed RIDICULOUS film script that never made it into ABSURDIST production, an album of fragile FUN, AND songs that never quite saw the light TARKA WAS of day – but in all other respects A BIG PART he is the golden boy: devastatingly OF IT. good-looking, charismatic, adored // by women and men alike. One spring evening that year, after a seemingly blissful, sunny day in the garden with Barney and his family – the nieces and nephews he adored – Tarka returned to his Notting Hill flat and hanged himself.

Listening to an album of unreleased and unknown songs by a man who took his own life, it’s almost impossible not to parse every note through the ugly, distorting prism of suicide; to look for vital clues in a throwaway lyric, seek out meaning in a passing minor third. Hearing those same songs in tandem with new versions recorded by the people who feel his absence most keenly, Lemonheads front man, Evan Dando and Lily Allen among them, adds a layer of melancholy that’s almost too much to bear – and which maybe wasn’t even there to begin with. Experienced in reverse, a life can be redefined by suicide.

Dando’s contribution to Life is a heart-stoppingly beautiful cover of Lovely New York, a doped-out

paean to that giddy city written with him in mind and which perfectly captures his and Tarka’s early Manhattan bromance. Speaking from Keith Richards’ house in Jamaica, Evan recalls his first meeting with a bon viveur whose reputation preceded him: ‘I had just come off that movie Heavy with Liv Tyler. Tarka’s dad had just died and he was coming to New York.

Marlon [Richards] was like, “You must meet Tarka.”

We were just running around New York City having ridiculous, absurdist fun, and Tarka was a big part of it really quickly.’

What was the connection between you two? ‘Well, I could lie, but it had a lot to do with chasing models around and doing coke. And listening to records until eight in the morning. And Tarka had a magical childhood. He remembers Gram Parsons walking around Joshua Tree using his head as a cane – that’s one of my favourite Tarka stories. I guess I had a really great childhood too, and I was like, “Wow, I wanna figure some way of living my adult life on anywhere near this kind of level.” I think Tarka had a tougher time managing that.’

But New York wasn’t all lovely. In 2004 Tarka suffered a severe head injury in an altercation at a society bash. ‘Some horrible rich kid from New York,’ says Evan, not naming names (for the record it was the notoriously brattish gambling heir Luke Weil), ‘just came up behind him and smashed his skull with a bottle of really nice white wine. Maybe Tarka was talking to his girlfriend or something, I don’t know, but he was never really the same after that. They say that serious head trauma can make you more susceptible to suicide.’

Whether he invited the attack or not, the story behind another of the album’s highlights, Girls Keith, does point up both Tarka’s prodigious facility for attracting some of the world’s most beautiful women – Kate Moss, Liv Tyler, Sienna Miller, Sophie Dahl – and his probably-not-unconnected patchy work ethic.

‘After Dad died, Keith [Richards] and Tarka hung out a lot,’ says Barney. ‘Keith really tried to encourage him, to hone his craft. Then he found Tarka nobbing a supermodel in the hot tub at Redlands when he was meant to be there songwriting, and that was the end of their relationship. So Tarka wrote Girls Keith: ‘What’s wrong with girls, Keith? / They make me happy’!’

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17

Evan Dando in the recording studio

But Tarka was just as frustrated by his own lack of application as everybody else. Says Evan: ‘In ’98, when I was probably at my worst, drinking way too much, with a big beard doing the whole Jim Morrison thing, he was like, “At least you went out and did some shit.”

He really did wish he had some accomplishments under his belt. He just didn’t seem to have the natural desire to actually go out and do stuff.’

‘I think he battled depression and didn’t really realise it,’ says Barney. Of the never-quite-finished album Wide Awake In A Dream, to be released off the back of the forthcoming tribute record, Tarka’s elder brother puts the inertia down to a simple fear of commitment: ‘I don’t think he could make the make the final step. He was terrified of finishing, putting it out and it sinking without a trace. I don’t think he could have handled it.’

Which is an almost perfect analogue for his soap opera love life, too. Contrary to the lyrics of Girls Keith, the string of supermodel girlfriends never did bring any real joy, at least not the enduring happiness that, incurable romantic and eternal idealist that he was, Tarka really craved. ‘He was brilliant with those fast lane girls. He was very protective, gentlemanly and cool around them and they liked this and always felt completely safe and so at ease in his company’

18

says Barney. ‘But when it came to settling down he was absolutely hopeless – he never found peace with a girl. I think that was a massive part of his disappointment.’

// HE WAS BRILLIANT WITH THOSE FAST LANE GIRLS. HE WAS VERY PROTECTIVE, GENTLEMANLY AND COOL AROUND THEM Barney recounts the harrowing // I ask Evan how he found out about Tarka’s death. ‘I was in LA at an NME awards. We found out the next day – my friend Alex Friedman called me – and my wife just threw up. We couldn’t believe it. I felt extra dumb because I was like “I’m not fucking going to this thing,” and then I went and then that happened.

So yeah, it was stupid.’

logistics of the immediate aftermath: ‘Me and my best friend went to a bar down by the river and methodically started making the phone calls – my mother, my other brothers, my wife. And then you’re on the Cresta Run, you just deal with it. Other survivors have been through a lot worse than I have. It was Tarka’s best friend Jessie who found him – he worshipped Tarka. A couple of years later he had a nervous breakdown and killed himself.’

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Asked if he ever feels angry about Tarka’s death, the thought occurs to Barney almost as if for the first time: ‘The anger is far more about what he’s left behind than what he’s missed out on personally. He chose to do what he did, so what he missed out on is his problem. But the carnage that he left behind, that’s the worst part of it.’

‘My oldest kids were eleven and twelve. They worshipped him – he was so loved, by everybody. The power of whatever it is that made him do that – to override those thoughts – I will never understand. No problem is permanent, but in his state of mind he couldn’t see that. What he did is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.’

Back on the phone with Evan, I ask if Tarka’s death is the only time he has been affected by suicide. ‘God, no. Tons of my friends have committed suicide. Maybe a little less than twenty. And not all boys, either – girls do it too. If I think about it, you know, lots of cocaine does lead to suicide pretty quickly. A lot of my old cokehead friends, or people involved in serious drug use, have killed themselves. It’s a real fucking problem.’

I want, but can’t quite bring myself, to ask if he has ever considered it himself. He saves me the trouble: ‘How many times did you wanna do it as a kid, even in a dumb way, you know? It seems so attractive when you’re in a lot of pain, but how do you know you’re going somewhere better? I can’t even remember how many of my friends have killed themselves. I sometimes think they did it to stop me from doing it – that’s how selfish I am! [laughs] – you know, there’s a little of that. You see it happen and you go, “that’s just stupid”.’

Evan Dando and Barney Cordell

So it wasn’t a difficult decision then, getting involved with this record? ‘It was a no-brainer. I always loved that song [Lovely New York]. So I went out to California, and I knew I could do it OK, and we just did it in a night.

It was easy and it was fun. I still much prefer Tarka’s version, but ours has got some cool bass on it. And I love Lily Allen’s track, it’s so beautiful. It’s one of the prettiest Tarka songs, and I never heard her sing like that before, like really singing, you know?’

Evan’s right. There’s a line on Shelter You – I don’t want to drag you down / I’m just gonna shelter you – which, sung back at him in an uncharacteristically faltering voice by Allen, Tarka’s sister-in-law, adds an extra patina of heartbreak that Tarka himself might have rather liked.

But behind all the fragility and melancholy is a kind of grim-faced defiance, a determination in that album title – Tarka & Friends: Life – to prove him wrong. To put his life, his friends and his music centre stage again.

A few days later I speak to Evan once more. I want to know whether, five years on, the overriding feeling is of sadness or anger, guilt or peace. For the first time in all our conversations about Tarka, the line goes momentarily quiet: ‘Well, you don’t want to think about it too much because it can really pull you down. One thing I like to say is that he won’t do it again. Tarka won’t commit suicide again. And there’s some comfort in that.’

You can download Tarka & Friends: Life at tarkamusic.com

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Sexual anxiety is a tricky beast, which us guys tend to avoid talking about for fear of revealing that we’re not all über-virile Ron Jeremy-types all of the time. I call it a tricky beast for a couple of reasons. It’s tricky, first of all, in that it is a blanket phrase that describes a number of different annoyances, the two most common by far being premature ejaculation and not being able to get or maintain an erection while engaging in penetrative sex. However, it’s also pretty annoying as, despite what the spam in your email inbox suggests, there is no quick fix pill that will cure all the sexual grievances you’ve ever had, guaranteed to turn you into some sort of sexual Hercules who can perform well every single time. In my experience as a sexually active man, and from my conversations with blokes like me, Sexual Anxiety (SA) seems to be something that most men suffer from every now and then.

If you have a pre-existing anxiety disorder, however, then you’re obviously going to be more prone to it – or, at least, it can seem much more monumental when it does happen. After all, our brains tend to be very good at worrying about something, and then very bad at leaving it alone. We tend to obsess over a subject, bringing in all those ‘what if...’ questions, and constantly thinking about past failures.

To put this in context, I’ll illustrate the kind of cycle you can end up in with SA – using some past personal experience. You have a sexual encounter that you consider to be a complete wash out. Outside of the bedroom you worry about it, and make it

// into a huge deal in your SINCE IT’S mind. The next time you SOMETHING go to have sex, you fixate MANY MEN on it, and – inevitably – you repeat whatever it was that EXPERIENCE concerned you. The cycle AT ONE TIME continues, until you find OR ANOTHER, yourself dreading sex, and WHY DONT WE nobody wants that.

TALK ABOUT IT But how should we look at MORE? the issue of sexual anxiety? // Since it’s something many men experience at one time or another, why don’t we talk about it more? Well, we men are unfortunately burdened with something of a self-imposed (or at least a societally imposed) obligation to see sex as a big performance – something that we have to be awesome at in order to be a success as a bloke. We watch porn and see sex presented as a huge theatrical mess where two actors are hitting targets in a way that, on paper, begins to sound less and less appealing. More than anything else, though, the men are all presented as musclebound He-Men, who can always perform, seemingly on demand, every time. Often over and over again.

Exhausting. Well, real life isn’t like that, neither inside nor outside the bedroom. Sex, much like every moment in our lives, exists on a scale, which ranges from positive to negative with perfection at one end and total failure at the other. Each sexual experience will fall somewhere on that spectrum; naturally, not

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Let’s Get It On! (or not…)

By Oliver Dibben

every time is going to be right up at the perfect end.

So, what can we actually do to try and tackle this problem in a practical way, when we’re going through a bout of SA? From looking for answers myself in times of crisis, I’ve found a couple of common-sense answers, and new ways of looking at the issue.

First of all (and this is one of the biggest commonsense points), think about what sex is supposed to be: it’s about enjoyment and sharing a level of intimacy with another human being. It’s not a test or a points scoring exercise. When you’re in a cycle of sexual anxiety, sex loses all its fun, and you begin to think of it as a chore with a definitive goal. Try to be open and honest with your partner about all your worries, and just focus on the pleasure of stimulation.

Start it slow and try some foreplay with no pressure and see where it takes you. From personal experience I’ve found practising Mindfulness in these situations to be very helpful. Try going into your next sexual experience and think of it as a clean slate, where you are absolutely present and enjoying the act. Maybe it won’t be completely ‘fixed’ on the first go, but if you get yourself into the state of mind where you’re simply focusing on how freakin’ nice it feels, then it’s a step in the right direction in my opinion. One major piece of advice: don’t try any avoidance techniques.

Can you think of any time where thinking about Margaret Thatcher naked or trying to name every Premier League team has actually made you have better sex? Anyway, sex is supposed to be enjoyable, so why would you want to distract yourself from

that? Secondly, there’s no pressure. SA is sometimes described as Performance Anxiety, and this title touches on one of the key problems. Why can’t sex be something fun with no pressure attached? It’s not a ‘performance’ where you risk a booing from your audience, or David Hasselhoff pressing a buzzer and ordering you off the stage for being rubbish. It should be a jolly good romp between two (or more!) people, where pleasure is the prize, and fun is the ultimate goal.

One of the biggest worries is that the person we’re having sex with will think less of us if we don’t deliver the goods every time, that we’ve somehow failed and they’re going to throw our jeans in our face and tell us to get out. In the course of writing this article I have spoken to several female friends, all of whom have said that they wish guys would just be straight with them and have a laugh about it on the occasions when they can´t perform as well as they would like.

So none of that “this has never happened before” stuff: just be honest. One friend also made the very good point that, if the person you’re sleeping with does make a huge song and dance out of it, they’re probably not worth the hassle. Let’s start not making a big deal out of the times that we don’t have perfect sex. It doesn’t help anyone, and if we all start being more open and honest about our sex lives, with each other and with our partners, then sex can become something we can just enjoy and not be anxious about. We’re all on the same side here, after all.

Everybody just wants to get off.

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Melissa White is a London based Aussie who likes to draw. She studied at Sydney College of Arts, but is now resident in Hackney, East London where you can find her taking photos, scribbling in her sketchbook and pulling pints. You can check out more of her brilliant drawings and artwork on her website www.sheslaughin.com

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23

AMBASSADOR’S

RECEPTION:

ATHLETE’S CAREY WILLETTS At CALM we have a band of merry men and women who are proud to call themselves ambassadors for the Campaign Against Living Miserably. But who the hell are they? Reveal yourself…Athlete’s CAREY WILLETTS Tell Us About Yourself…

I’m from a small working class town in Cheshire.

Growing up, I loved sport and music. Sport was readily embraced by everyone and we all went for trials at Crewe Alexandra. However, music was a much more amusing prospect to me. No one aspired to do music or be in a band when I was growing up.

At 18 I moved to London where I became good friends with 3 young men who would change my life. The 4 of us decided to start a band. I knew how fundamentally stupid that was, but it seemed to make sense at the time. A few years later I remember waking up to a phone call asking me if I could get to central London in 20 minutes?

Bleary eyed. I rushed to get the train when I got into town (looking like a tramp), I was told that my band, Athlete, had been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and that lots of press wanted to talk to us. I think that was the first time I ever thought that being in a band was a brilliant

thing to do. I have loved being in a band with my friends we’ve managed to have a number 1 album, support U2, REM, Blur....but most of all, I got to make records which I utterly love doing.

So Why CALM? Good and bad reasons, I guess. Growing up, two of my friends died by suicide, which really affected me. I know how important it is to have some support or just a reminder that things can, and will, get better. A good friend of mine told me about CALM and I knew this was something important that I would love to be involved with.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Don’t touch that!

What is your one ‘lifesaver’ track that is guaranteed to make you feel better when things get tough?

Moderat - A New Error or LCD Soundsystem Dance Yrself Clean. Both brilliant!

What is your one rule for living life?

Treat others how you would like to be treated!

You can follows Boxes on Twitter @BOXESclever

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I AM THE PRODUCT

by Kendra Rose Fevrier I am the product Of my maker But only I can chose If I should function Follow the manual And join the line I am not the wheel But the force that drives it I am not the world But the axis it turns on I am a product Of my maker But I am a by-product Of my choices I am a force To be reckoned with A voice untamed A malfunction on the production line I am not The embodiment Of time gone by I am the product of a mould Long broken Don’t try to fix me In my eyes I am perfect I am a unique body A form of evolution Before your eyes The beginning of a new revolution

I am not a product Of my maker I am the creator Of the person I am I am the Shepard Not the quaking lamb A lone wolf Wandering from its pack In my life I am the driver Of a one-seat car Not a passenger On a coach On a ride to nowhere There is always a voice A way to communicate Through word or art By hand or mouth There is always a voice Only I can decide If I want to speak out Make a difference Or stand in line And follow the queue Because just like you I am me And I am unique I had a choice And now it’s been made I am speaker A product of the future

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WIN THE BEAUTIFUL TARKA & FRIENDS: LIFE ALBUM ON VINYL AND CD SIGNED

BY LILY ALLEN!!

PLUS A CALM GOODY BAG INCLUDING A COPY OF THE BRILLIANT THIRTY ONE SONGS ALBUM FT NOEL GALLAGHER, ELBOW, DELPHIC & LOADS MORE, A CALM SAVE THE MALE TEE, PLECTRUMS, PENS, BADGES AND TONS OF THE GOOD STUFF. To get your hands on this tasty prize, just answer this simple question (the answer if somewhere in this mag): Q: What is the name of the band fronted by Evan Dando?

To enter, email your answer to editor@thecalmzone.net using subject: CALM COMP ISSUE 13.

Closing date: April 17th 2014 Winners will be notified by email after the closing date. We can only accept entries from within the UK.

NEXT

ISSUE

OUT APRIL 2014

Everyman by chris sav

CALMZINE

NEEDS YOU

r Would you like to write for CALMzine? Do you have a photographic eye? We want great writers, interviewers, bloggers, tweeters, artists and photographers for CALMzine and the CALM website. r What’s your obsession, your passion? Music, sports, arts, gadgets, fashion, comedy, gaming – or something further out of the box? Can you write about it, picture it, tweet it? Can you conduct a gripping interview? r We’d love to hear from you, and in no time your work could be on our website and in these very pages.

Get in touch with Rachel at: editor@thecalmzone.net

Andrew Cotton, or Cotty as he’s known to his mates, is a big wave surfer based in Devon. Last year he hit the headlines after taking on a record-breaking…erm… break. CALM caught up with him to talk about the thrill of the ride.

Before Christmas you rode what could be one of the biggest ever waves surfed, tell us a little about the day and what that wave in Nazare, Portugal is like to surf, I’ve heard it’s so dangerous because of it’s brutal power?

The day was a pretty strange one, we only had a small window to surf as the conditions were due to change and the swell was dropping. It was a lot bigger than I imagined and obviously the session didn’t start well with Maya [Gabriel, pro surfer] nearly drowning, which shook everyone up. We ended up getting a few waves before the Sea Captain deemed it too dangerous and ordered us to come in. Nazare is a pretty scary place to surf; not just the power but also the shifty nature of the beach makes every wave a lottery. It’s definitely a challenging spot to surf in many ways.

How do you deal with the inevitable fear and doubt that must flash through your mind before paddling out on a huge day? Do you have any weird rituals or ways of dealing with it?

I use some good breathing techniques to calm me down and keep focused. Fear is healthy and its good to have but at the same time you can’t let it get in the way of what you want to do.

What are the best things about the sport of surfing for you?

I like the solitude, to focus my thoughts on how I’m going to surf the waves and positions I want to be in, rather than the day-to-day jobs and responsibilities I have. It’s a real escape for me.

There’s lots of evidence that physical exercise and the outdoors has a really positive effect on helping people deal with depression. Has sport always been important in your life?

Yes, it really is key for me to maintain a happy and balanced lifestyle. I’m not sure where or what I’d be doing without it as it seems my life has always revolved around it from such a young age.

How fit do you have to be to ride monster waves and what sort of training do you do? I heard you can hold your breath for over five minutes - is that true?

Obviously it helps to be fit but its more about wanting it. It’s all about the power of your mind, since your natural instincts wouldn’t put you where you have to be to catch these waves.

Yes, holding your breath for ages boosts confidence as well as personal fitness but you personally really need to want it too. I like to swim, do yoga, cross train and obviously surf as much as possible - but I want it more than anything else.

Surfing sometimes can have a reputation for being a bit macho with scary locals like in Point Break! Would you say it’s still a macho male dominated sport or is surfing becoming more open minded and welcoming?

Haha! You could say that but I don’t think it could be further from the truth. Of course there are egos, as in any sport, but I’d say if you go to any beach on any given day you’d see a wide range of men and woman of all ages enjoying the ocean without a Bodhi in sight!

What’s the scariest surfing situation you’ve ever been in?

I’ve had a few situations that have got my blood pumping for sure but nothing serious to be honest, I’ve been really lucky like that.

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INTERVIEW: Andrew Cotton If you could only surf one place for the rest of your life, where would it be?

Probably my local beach in Croyde. It’s where I leant to surf and probably where I’ll finish my surfing days.

Chasing your passions is obviously amazing but being the man of the house do you still feel the pressure of putting food on the table - how do you juggle that?

It’s really hard and I have been extremely lucky to have an understanding wife. Sometimes family commitment and money means you can’t be at every swell wherever it may be, but that makes it all the more important to make the right calls on the biggest swells and appreciate every minute I’m there. // When you’re surfing a dangerous spot do you think about your family a lot?

Of course I think of my family, it just makes me surf smart. You don’t have to take silly risks to be a big wave surfer. It’s all about the next wave you want to catch, not your last one.

What’s your best advice to someone who wants to learn surfing, where and when may be best to go?

MM: Check on the Internet for your nearest surf school and get a introduction lesson. Definitely the safest and easiest way to get involved.

By Marcus Chapman

track down and surf the biggest, most dangerous waves we can find. It follows the elite crews who commit and devote their lives to surfing the biggest waves they can find. It’s great to have this opportunity and to be involved in something like this and it’s gonna be a lot of fun making it.

Check it out on www.epictv.com - Behind The Lines.

What’s your five-year plan for your big wave surfing?

Firstly to enjoy it and make the most of every opportunity that comes my way. To be a role model for my children and others, to be the first ever Brit to win the prestigious XXL award, compete in the big wave world tour and obviously to keep surfing bigger waves.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE POWER OF YOUR MIND, SINCE YOUR NATURAL INSTINCTS WOULDN’T PUT YOU WHERE YOU HAVE TO BE TO CATCH THESE WAVES. //

You have a new web series that’s just launched called ‘Behind The Lines’, tell us a little about that - sounds exciting.

It’s a six part series on EpicTV documenting my missions to

Thanks to Sponsors: Tiki Wetsuits, Lifedge, Bayfitness, Dryrobe, Island Tribe Sunscreen and Mercedes Vito Sport.

And a big thank you to Mikey at Show & Tell Media and Marcus Chapman.

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THE RANT

By Chris Owen

To (terribly) paraphrase Hitchcock, just when you thought it was safe to go back to the cinema, out comes yet another dogshit awful remake of film classica.

In the last few years we’ve seen the likes of Oldboy – originally a 2003 cult hit, latterly a rare Spike Lee flop; that piss-poor, sacrilegious shite that attempted to make Planet of the Apes better than the epic original; and lest we forget, the imminent remake of Point Break. I mean, really? (Note, I’m not even going to BEGIN to discuss the hellbound 1998 attempt at remaking Psycho).

I’ll publicly announce here and now that I’m not going to be held responsible for my actions should anyone attempt any kind of remake bullshit with Ghostdog… or Rumblefish for that matter. Or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – God, if anyone so much as jokingly suggests they’ll make a new version of that, I’m off to the gunshop.

Why do they do this shit? Why doesn’t anyone, early on in the decision making process, just stick their fat hand in the air and say “errr, seriously, wasn’t this awesome the first time round? Why don’t we just try and write something original, rather than utterly gangbang this classic bit of movie history into a metric fucktonne of unwatchable shite?”

The reason this is particularly front of mind is that news reports suggest a remake of Back to the Future is on the cards. But this is no ordinary remake. No. Someone, somewhere, has decided to turn BTTF into a musical. A COCKING MUSICAL. Film remakes are bad enough, but musical remakes? Jesus wept. I hate musicals.

Everyone fucking SINGS. All the time. FOR NO REASON. Every second minute has someone breaking into song at the drop of a hat, about the drop of the hat…. it’s tedious, pointless and a bastard on the ears.

Maybe you can get away with it if you’re seventy and on some Christmas sunshine bus with the rest of your bridge club, or you’re trying (and probably failing) to tread a very fine line in post-modern irony, but as a rule, just NO. BTTF The Musical…due sometime in 2015… just before Four Horsemen arrive over the horizon heralding the impending apocalypse… War, Famine, Death, and Terrible Fucking Film Remakes.

Do you have something you want to rant about?

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ATENCIÓN! And an extra special thank you to Natalie, our lovely intern, WE MISS YOU!!!!

And to everyone that helped at the Being a Man Festival: Graham, Arun, Mike, Rai and Stew- BAM!

JC Decaux for their generosity, as ever!

Thanks to Graham and Jessica for manning the stall at the UCL Volunteer Fair

Huge thanks our office team: Arun, Angelene, Sam H and Sam W.

Dick Carruthers & Tom Woodcraft for their help on the Tarka Ads.

Danny Keehan.

You have been an amazing team of one, shouting the CALM message loud and proud in Manchester. Huge props. *high five*

Thanks to the Santa Dashers for donning their suits and doing CALM proud, and also the supporters who braved the chilly winds (without the benefit of a warm Santa Suit) to cheer our Santa runners; Becky, Jessica, Stacey and Hannah.

World’s biggest high five to Barney Cordell and team for choosing to support CALM with the amazing Tarka & Friends: A Life album.

An absolute pleasure to work with.

CALMzine Dream Team! As always we couldn’t get the mag out without you. Thanks to the usual suspects and welcome to the new faces; Nic, Poppy, Vanessa, Double G, Rachel, Joshna and Hannah

Our entirely unprofessional agony uncle offers his entirely unprofessional advice…

Q: I’ve recently been royally f*cked over by my best mate who has run off with my girlfriend. Both are clearly massive dick heads, so I wondered if you could give me a good idea to seek revenge through the power of words, rather than just by keying his car and posting a dog shit through his letter box Mark, Rotherhithe A: DUDE! You’ve already reached the dogshit through letterbox phase?! I humbly suggest we are way, waaaaay past the time for painful words at the moment. Agreed, they are massive, massive dicks, but the thing about revenge is: you have to hate someone, and to hate someone, you have to think about them. And to think about them is to give them free real estate in your head to dwell in your thoughts and I’m pretty sure your brain isn’t some run down council estate where bad memories can dwell for cheap. Forget them. Outlive them. And then, if you’re still pissed... shit on their grave.

Q: Now that Sherlock and Homeland have finished, I’ve found myself stuck with nothing to do on a Sunday evening. Do you have any Sunday night activities you could suggest to fill this gaping void in my life?

Jody, Balham A: Oi brethren, Netflix, Kindle, your friends, PS4, Twitter, Facebook, the freaking internet, a one man thumb war, make a Star Wars Porn Movie starring only Han Solo. I’m an agony uncle, not your recreations advisor.

Q: How old is too old to wear Nike SB Dunk High tops, and is it ever acceptable to wear them with a suit?

Daniel, Hammersmith A: Dude I buy my shoes from Primark. You feel good? Yes? Is anyone else hurt? No? Then Nike forth, yo.

Q: I’m pretty broke and am trying to come up some idea to make some quick cash. Besides becoming a high class escort or selling my furniture, I’ve not come up with anything. Plus I’m distinctly average at shagging and all my furniture is shite. Any tips?

Fred, Bromley A: I tried becoming an escort once. For the same reasons as yourself (at the time I was - how can I put this delicately – one of the rabbits without a duracell in its back) so I went into barbacking. Hard work, yes: but if you take care of your back and you work in the nightclub industry, after three months you can train to be a bartender!

Like Tom Cruise! And then become a poet! Also like Tom Cruise!

Q: I’ve recently left my job in the city, moved out of the big smoke to get back to nature and set up a local weaving business. Can I interest you in a hand woven onesie?

Larkin, Gloucestershire A: No

Do you have a question for JOSH Email us on editor@thecalmzone.net NOTE: Josh is not a qualified expert. He’s just a joker.

However if you do want to know some more about him, go to www.poejazzi.com

If you need professional advice, call the london CALMzone helpline on 0808 802 5858.

Outside london call: 0800 585858

thecalmzone.net - CALMzone Helpline London: 0808 8025858 Outside london: 0800 58 58 58

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The album out 9 th Feb 2014

Artist royalties are being donated to:

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