Hi, i am Lee Kern, i am a new blogger on The Fix. I am probably the least notable of the bloggers on the site and probably only worth checking on now and then in the hope of some hit and miss material. Some of you may have known me as one of the official bloggers for YouPorn - before i moved over to PornHub - where they had better focus upon anal, and which more closely represented my background and interests. I look forward to occasionally getting a comment from you - but do check on the other contributors and what they have to say first as i will be primarily focusing on porn, and i have less of an interest in comedy.

Thanks. Lee

Greetings from London, the popular English town that I am totally in right now and have been for the past week or so, mostly eating meat and drinking whatever is put in front of me.  It is going okay.  Most of the things I have encountered so far have been “brilliant.”  There were a couple things, however, that at first I thought kind of sucked but later found out were actually “crap” and/or “rubbish.”  In short, I am having a really nice time.

Speaking of crap, however, yesterday I was walking down the really nice street I am staying on in Kilburn Park, the popular London neighborhood, when I happened the remarkably sizable turd pictured about.  Usually when I happen upon a turd of any size on the street, I keep moving and going about my day, but this one stopped me in my tracks, paralyzing me even.  I should have put a coin or my face next to it in the photograph to give a sense of scale because on its own, it’s kind of hard to tell what exactly we are dealing with.  Let me assure you, however, that this turd in particular was historic in nature, measuring approximately eight inches in length and probably just as much around.  I am tempted to suggest that it was approximately the same size as my privates, but I need to focus here and stay on point, the shit point.

Anyway, once I finished taking several photographs of the turd in question, I continued on my way and did all sorts of things I can’t even get into right now.  I couldn’t help but wonder, however, exactly what or who had left this giant mass of feces behind for me to stumble upon (but- thankfully- not in).  My first guess was that it was a “large dog of some sort,” a Great Dane maybe.  Since showing the photo around a bit, however, others have suggested that this bomb was left behind by an actual Dane, maybe someone just visiting London for a few days even and unsure of what the public shitting policies might be.  I guess we’ll never know really.

As I type this, this atomic shit sits just outside my window, a house or two down the road, mocking me in a way that only a giant, mystery dump is capable.  I suppose the right thing to do would be to remove the shit from mine and everyone else’s lives by throwing it in the trash or something.  But as I sit here thinking about it, I realize it is more of a “could do” type situation, which in British means “Sure- this is physically possible, but there is very little chance that it is actually going to happen ever, so just shut the fuck up right now please.  Thank you.”  I am happy to just leave it at that and silently remain in awe of whatever creature’s ass this thing dropped from.  My hat is off to you.  Also, I am sending you a dry cleaning bill.

In other news, if you do find yourself in the shit-haunted London area, please come see my shows at the Hen and Chickens Theatre in Islington on Thursday, January 21 and Friday, January 22 at 9:30pm. On Thursday, I am doing my unstoppable new one-man show/monologue/rock assault “Big in Japan” and on Friday, I will be doing my incredible chat/variety/donkey show The Dave Hill Explosion featuring extra special guests Rich Fulcher (Might Boosh) and Alessi’s Ark.  I really hope you can make it.  That would be so great.  You can get tickets right here.

Dave Hill

Degeneracy Across The British Isles, as witnessed by Carl Donnelly

Espionage Night Club, Edinburgh

It’s said that Dante spent years training in the art of meditation to research and then document the journey between hell, purgatory, and paradise. He could have saved himself a lot of time had he spent an evening in the multi-floored Espionage on Cowgate - although he would have had to skip the part about paradise. Once inside, it is like Bruce Lee’s game of death, where you have to fight your way to the top before getting out alive. It’s worth the visit just for the challenge!

Copper Face Jacks Pub, Dublin

Mentioning the name of this pub to any right-minded Dubliner is similar I imagine to bringing up the My Lai Massacre to a Vietnam veteran. They may have been there, but will die never having spoken of the horrors they witnessed. Its reputation as a meat market does not do it justice, as it is easy when walking in to be taken aback by the overwhelming smell of Calvin Klein and semen. One visit made me see the positives of Sharia Law.

National Express Service 425, from London to Newcastle

Have you ever woken up and thought, “I’ve got seven hours to kill and what I’d most like to do with that time is sit with a bunch of borderline mentally ill people in a hot confined space?” If so, then this is the experience for you. The random shouts and smells of the people around you are only broken up by stops in such beautiful locations as Milton Keynes and Darlington. They should issue valium as you board this torture bus!

Its time for part three of the serialization of Rich Fulcher’s fantastic book Tiny Acts Of Rebellion, this week Rich informs Fixers how to improve their listening skills in a relationship.

We’ve all done the following: you’re telling your boyfriend a story about how you thought you lost your cat but then you found it hiding under your mattress playing with a piece of of string cheese, and you start to think your bf isn’t listening. So you throw in an obvious lie or incredible statement, like ‘Jeremy Clarkson dyes his pubes with lemon curd,’ to check if he is paying attention. Sure it’s petty, and an indicator that you’re a likely sociopath- but oh, how it works!

Why not use this tactic and get back at all those dull-eyed bureaucrats who simply nod their head without ever listening to a word you are saying?

So, you’re telling the woman at the Job Centre about your work skills and you mention ‘illegal gerbil fighting’ as one of them. Or you’re arguing about your parking fine and in the middle of telling the attendant you couldn’t have been parked longer than 15 minutes, you usually slip in ‘because I’m Zartron the Enabler, who has six elbows and can combust candy with eyes’.

This is a win-win situation because if the recipient of this statement ignores you, you have successfully revelled against the Kafka-esque nature of bureaucracy. However, if the clerk responds ‘Excuse me?’, then you have awakened him out of his stupor and may actually get some attention (even if it’s in the form of negative attention like a door slammed in your face or a slap on the gonads)

Note: I have inserted one of these somewhere in the book. If you can spot it and send it to my website, you will get a free turkey go-fuck-yourself sandwich.

As some of you might be aware the Fix found itself in a very precarious position towards the end of last year due to a very angry millionaire demanding money off us for an investment that didn’t work out due to irreconcilable differences. In order to settle the legal action that the angry millionaire bought against us and continue to publish the magazine we decided to put on a benefit to raise some cash. We assembled a bill of acts that when most people heard it exclaimed “thats the best bill of the decade” or “that will definitely sell out.” Newspapers got quite excited too with the Sun referring to us as “the worlds best comedy magazine” and the independent calling us “the stupendously good bible of comedy.”

So with a great bill featuring the likes of Mark Watson, Tim Key and Angelos Epithemiou, some fantastic press and half the ticket allocation sold the night before the gig it was looking like this harebrained scheme thought up just 6 weeks before the event was going to work. When I awoke on the day of the gig to see snow flakes the size of golf balls falling outside my window I found myself in very strange position of wanting to go sledging on Hampstead heath but also wanting to kill myself. It was going to effect the gig massively as no one in their right mind was going to leave their house that evening if the weather stayed like that. It did and although we had a fair sized audience and a fantastic show the majority didn’t leave their house.

So the benefit worked on some levels good show, raised awareness of the magazine etc… But it didn’t work on the most important level which was to raise the cash to pay off the legal fees. So due to the financial restraints imposed on us by the legal debt we cannot afford the luxury of producing a print edition of the magazine (there will be a print edition in Edinburgh, otherwise how would people know what to go and see) which, is very sad news. But fear not as just because there is no magazine it doesn’t mean there will be no Fix. As of now we will be ramping up our web output transferring all the usual content you would expect from the print edition online, which is great as it means you can read the Fix at work without getting told off by your boss. Over the next couple of months we will be securing more and more top contributors, syndicating regular podcasts, uploading loads more interviews from the past and present, hosting a load of hilarious video content and of course carrying on our highly successful live nights.

So with 2009 ending so negatively for once in the Fix’s history a new year is starting of quite positively. The future of the Fix is www.thefixonline.com