Tag Archives: that friday feeling

Tashcrawl 2014

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Good morning Tash Appreciators,

First this week, an announcement. Quite independently of TF HQ, a sub-crawl (it has apparently been christened by one particularly poetic Appreciator as a “Tash-Crawl”) will take place tomorrow in Glasgow. I understand it will start with a large lunch at the Counting House and the first stop will be at around 2pm at Times Square, next to St Enoch Square station. All are welcome and although Tash related apparel is recommended, it’s not essential. The arrangements will be on Facebook and twitter. There is a fair possibility that, during the course of the afternoon, this:

 Tash Friday 20:9:13 3
 
May turn into this:

 
Tash Friday 20:9:13 2
 
 
For those who may not be familiar with Glasgow’s subway system, the Tash-Crawl is but the latest incarnation of a very old Glaswegian activity – the subcrawl. Only in Glasgow would people willingly spend the best part of a day travelling in a smelly old orange train purely in the interests of finding a novel way to have fifteen drinks. What makes this even stranger is that Glaswegian comedy duo Francie and Josie used an entirely complimentary song about the subway in their set:
 

 
It’s strange where people get their enjoyment from, I suppose, and another example of that is the release this week of Grand Theft Auto V: the fifth incarnation of what must be one of Scotland’s most successful exports.
 
Tash Friday 20:9:13 4
 
GTA, as it’s usually called, has made Dundee/Edinburgh’s Rockstar North over £500 million in it’s first week and is apparently even more popular than a good Subcrawl. Some people will find it difficult to understand where the fun is in a game where the player is encouraged to commit a variety of pretty awful crimes. Some may even think the game is dangerous.
 
TF isn’t a platform from which to preach morality and I’ve got nothing to add to the debate about whether games like GTA should be allowed. However, what I will say is that we should be pleased that a Scottish product has managed to be so successful for so long. What is clear is that regardless of whether it’s a subcrawl (which could hardly be said to be healthy) or a violent video-game, people tend to be interested, now and again, in things that aren’t good for them.
 
This week’s Tash is a man whose activities would easily fit into the plot of GTA. Although he’s a dangerous and unpleasant chap, we still find him interesting. There have been numerous news reports about him over the years and Eric Bana even starred in a film about his life. I’m talking about Mark “Chopper” Read:
 
Tash Friday 20:9:13 5
 
If you’re wondering where his ears are, he asked one of his pals to cut them off with a razor blade while in prison. See what I mean, you’re interested, aren’t you!
 
Have a great weekend folks!
 
#keepgoing
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TGI Friday

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Hello Friday Appreciators,

The last few Tash Fridays have seen some examples of classic Tashes. While that’s all well and good, I wonder sometimes whether TF focuses too much on the Tash and not enough on the Friday.

Like the Tash, Friday is one of those things that is universally appreciated (hence the change to this week’s usual greeting). I bet that if you all looked on your Facebook news feeds today, at least one person will have posted something like this:

Tash Friday 6:9:13

For most of us, Friday at 5pm is the point where we are furthest from our next day of work and for that reason we can’t get enough of it. To prove that universal appeal, you only need to look at the global chain of restaurants which uses an acronym of “thank goodness it’s Friday” as it’s name.

It may mean something different to all of us, but the feeling of turning the computer off and flying out of the office on a Friday evening is common to us all. I think that feeling it’s a combination of this :

And this:

Of course, there is a Tash connection to both of those clips. The song in the first video is “You Make My Dreams” by Hall and Oates and the second is an example of Carlton Banks’ dance from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air (essential Friday viewing when I was younger). John Oates had one of the greatest Tashes in rock and roll:

Tash Friday 6:9:13 2
And both Will Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro are well versed in the ways of the Tash:

Tash Friday 6:9:13 5
The point is, both Tashes and Friday are part of that long list of small things that make life worth living (along with cider on a hot day, showers with good water pressure etc) and it’s no wonder that the combination of them seems to have an appeal.

Have a fantastic Friday and a great weekend.

#keepgoing

Ask not what you should be thankful for…

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Good morning Tash Appreciators,

Some are under the impression that TF is based in the US (N.B. not everything that is  syntactically incorrect and littered with spelling mistakes emanates from the United States) and others lambast TF’s American leanings. This week, we embrace the US-bias, and one of the great American traditions – Thanksgiving. 

If Thanksgiving is one of the most famous American traditions, John F Kennedy is one of the most famous American Presidents. In his inauguration speech (pictured below), he asked that his fellow Americans “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” 


Maybe we should not ask ourselves what we should be thankful for (there would surely be too many things to think about), but what we have done to make others thankful. I daresay that’s a shorter list. 
Earlier this week, I heard an exceptionally cantankerous chap – who will not be happy with his views being compared to those of JFK – arguing that people these days spend too much time trying to insulate themselves from society.  He said that we should invest more of our time and effort in trying to improve the world around us rather than blocking out all interaction with it. The ways he suggested doing this were fairly radical but the core of what he was saying was pretty indisputable: that only by working together will things improve. That seems to fit pretty well into what JFK said.  It also fits the idea that we should ask ourselves what we have done to make others thankful.
Of course, there is one thing for which we will all be thankful – The Tash. For that, we must thank the ‘Tashfather’ (apologies, that’s awful):
Have a cracking weekend y’all!

Oppan Gangnam Style

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안녕 Tash Appreciators,

It’s Friday again!

Here at TF, we like to cover current affairs. Sometimes this can lead to fairly heavy content,so we also like to mix it up a bit. This week, we’re starting with this chap:


No, not the guy on the left, that’s only the Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki Moon!  It’s the man on the right we’re interested in. His name is Psy, a Korean popstar, and he’s teaching his dance to one of the most important men in the world.
The dance is taking the world by storm. The video for Psy’s song, “Gangnam Style”, has over 530 million views on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0) and you’ll see people cutting that particular shape in discotheques everywhere from Paisley to Psy’s home-town, Seoul. You’ll even see some people doing it down the aisles of their local supermarket, but that’s another story. 
The point is that you will all need to know how to do the dance as it is/is going to be the next Macarena. TF always tries to be informative and so below is a handy guide to the dance. If you follow these simple steps, you’ll be able to tear the dance floor up with the best of ‘em:
If you have any problems, ask the nearest hipster/person under 25. They’ll be able to help you out. 
Psy is the latest in a long line of cracking Korean exports but he’s the first to really hit the jackpot. You’ll hear more about Korean exports in the years to come, particularly if you go to the cinema a lot. In 2003 for example, a Korean film by the name of “Oldboy” was released and the plot was…unusual. That’s all we’ll say about it as it’s now being re-made for a Western audience (i.e. without subtitles) and the remake’s star is this week’s Tash:
That’s Josh Brolin in No Country For Old Men (another belter of a film). We can only hope he rocks a similarly superlative Tash in Oldboy.
Have a fantastic weekend folks, try to do it Gangnam Style.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

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Salut Tash Appreciators,

There have been a couple of requests for TF’s views on Lance Armstrong and his fall from grace. In short, it’s been as if the curtain has fallen and he has been exposed as being what he really is – ordinary. It’s a bit like the Wizard of Oz:

There are some similarities between the impact that Armstrong’s story has had on cycling fans (and maybe everyone else, too) and the stages of grief. Even those involved in the sport were in denial about what was going on.  They deluded themselves into believing that he was superhuman. Then came anger at the realisation of what he had done; bargaining (“they were all at it!”); depression (“the sport will never recover”); and finally, acceptance. 

For those who follow cycling, the evidence against Armstrong has been known for a while. We are therefore mostly well on the way to acceptance (although we won’t wear our Livestrong T-shirts or jerseys ever again). The sport itself is dealing with doping and we’ll need to wait and see if the new clean policies of team directors have a positive impact. Like in all walks of life, there will always be those who seek to gain an unfair advantage, but the important thing is that the people at the top are doing the right thing.

Armstrong’s story is also a good metaphor for the last decade or so. He won an unprecedented 7 Tours between 1999 and 2005, just a year or two after he defeated cancer. His story, and the incredible things he did every July for seven years, caused most of us to believe he was special and that the conventional rules of physiology didn’t apply to him. 

That matched our attitude to most things at the time. We were at the peak of our powers: house prices were seemingly on a never-ending rise; wages were increasing; there was no end to economic prosperity in sight. 

Both in sport and economics, we were obviously wrong. However, on the upside, the recession, and now the Armstrong scandal, has left us with a healthy cynicism. 
There was a fantastic article in a cycling magazine during the summer which questioned why everything about Armstrong was coming out now. It’s explanation was that we used to believe in fairy stories and drink in the impossible. To use a Scottish analogy, it was like we were bevvying hard on a Saturday night, having the time of our lives but thinking that by some miracle a couple of pints of water before going to mitigate would mitigate the hangover the next day… Or that  all the partying wasn’t having an impact on our bank balances. But now we ask more questions.
There’s been a realisation that if something is too good to be true, then it probably is. That can only be a good thing. The more we question and evaluate what’s going on, the more we can influence things. This started with billion dollar enterprises being exposed as nothing more than fancy algorithms/classic frauds disguised in glossy branding and false-promises. Now all the curtains are beginning to fall and the “Wizards” are being exposed as what they always were – men in suits using smoke and mirrors. 
To put that to the test, have a look at this week’s Tash. It’s Ben Stiller in Anchorman and his Tash is just outstanding. But is it real? TF knows the answer, but what do your instincts tell you?
Have a cracking weekend folks!