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| No. 5: The Guardian Guide |
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I’m middle-class media scum, so it’s par for the course that I should also be a Guardian reading twat. All true so far, but come Saturday when I pick up my inky rag, 90% of it instantly bites the bin. Because you just don’t need the News section, the Travel section, the Review or the lifestyle section – you just need The Guide.
So it’s essentially just a TV guide with whistles and bells, but then is the Bible just a jolly self-help guide? The more you’re used to The Guide, the less you can function without it. Think of it like a ‘good’ drug – like pizza or tea. If you should find yourself lacking come the end of Saturday, see how you feel coping with the crushing burden of modern culture with just Hot Tickets, or one of those large Sunday supplements. They’re just too big, there are too many adverts, they are just BORING. Heck The Guide would never bore you, it's like having a pet – which can tell you if the new Clive Owen psychodrama is shit or not.
It’s had it’s ups and downs. It stopped being subjective about film releases for about a year in 1997 – still a mystery why. It’s had a nasty Paul Weller CD attached to it once. It pulled off a pointless re-design which relegated the films on TV to a separate section and put lots of blue lines and dots everywhere. It’s guilty of hiring some of the planet Earth’s worst illustrators to desecrate it’s holy pages – a series of appalling ‘Star Portrait’ covers (particularly Courtney Love) many years back numbed my eyes, as well as that evil evolved sperm that does the Jacques Perretti pics.
But I have to forgive these points, because it’s given me so much happiness in the past seven or so years it’s been around. I think the first one had ‘Ren and Stimpy’ on it and I saw it round at a friends house. A quick flick and I felt that here was something that would live in my pocket from that day on. No more missed stuff, no need for your mini-etch-a-sketch Palm Pilot (you can write important phone numbers in the generous margin space), no more restaurant guides – it’s all in there. It’s got a great American report bit at the back bi-weeky, it’s got Tapehead – he’s a reviewer’s Godhead, it has fantastically caustic record reviews, which dispense music criticism in favour of character assassination. Heck, the only thing it hasn’t got it a free chocolate bar stapled to the front.
When I’m forced from my futuristic hospital bed to remeniss about the old days, I’ll just gesture to the box of Guides under the bed and say ‘It’s all in there Kids’.
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