Ninety9 Launch in Newcastle

I’m launching Ninety9 in Newcastle this weekend from a recreation of my 1990s bedroom. See you under the Robert Smith poster.

 

Ninety9 Notes #1

While I was writing Ninety9 I kept a lot of notes – writing from memory I found that details would pop back into my head at unexpected times, and I recorded these on scraps of paper. Once a piece of paper was filled up or had too many teacup stains I’d shove the note into a folder. Occasionally I’d shuffle through the folder to look for useful things, ragpicking over my ideas and fleeting thoughts.  I usually don’t keep my notes, but as I was on the way to the recycling bin I had another look at them, the different shapes of paper and ink stains…maybe these notes are interesting after all.

TV’s Top Stars II – Twin Peaks

I was obsessed with Twin Peaks as a teenager – it came along at exactly the right time in the evolution of my outsider/weirdo identity, and I would await the screening of each week’s episode with great anticipation. In Ninety9 I write about the terror which some of the creepier episodes would inspire in me, and how hard it was to walk down the hallway back to my bedroom in the dark house.

For all its strangeness, Twin Peaks inspired as much, or even more, merchandising and promotional ephemera as the more mainstream tv shows on at the time. This copy of TV’s Top Stars II includes posters, profiles, a quiz, “The Wit and Weirdness of Agent Cooper”… and came with a badge that said “I Killed Laura Palmer”, which was affixed to the front cover.

I’ll post some further Twin Peaks ephemera soon, but for now I’ll leave you with the words of Dale Cooper: “Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it, just let it happen.”

1990s Bedroom

This is my bedroom in the 1990s, where much of the action of Ninety9 takes place. This photo was taken around 1996 judging by the goth posters on the wall. I still own the candelabra, the papier mache pig, and the Church album and some of the cassettes, and still live in a chaos of paper and clothes, though I no longer wear nighties as outerwear.