Steven Wells, 1960-2009
Thanks to Robert at cowsarejustfood (an excellent music/ranting blog) for letting us know about the sadly departed, no-nonsense journalist and cultural critic, Steven Wells who died last week. Wells’ pieces were known for being lively, humorous and against the grain. A Philly.com obituary has described him as an “irascible commentator” with an “in your face style”. During his career Wells wrote for the likes of NME, The Guardian and 90Minutes, and also co-founded a video production company, GobTV, and founded his publishing company, Attack! Books. Lately Wells wrote about his experiences suffering from Hodgkin’s lymphoma for Philadelphia Weekly. Here is an excerpt from one of those features.
Hospitals hate sleep. After a night in which you’ve been rudely ripped out of your every Temazepam-addled drug dream by some fucker’s IV alarm going off, or some utter bastard wanting to prick your thumb or take your blood pressure or stab you violently in the thigh with a syringe the size of a space rocket—every morning at 7 on the dot, in trot the junior surgeons who turn on the retina-raping top light and start shouting.
I’m going a little stir crazy. My wife and a nurse discuss my case across my still-breathing body.
“For fuck’s sake, I am actually still fucking here!” I roar.
A friend brings in a homemade needlepoint.
“Wait, does that say what I think it says?” gasps a nurse.
It says “FUCK CANCER,” a slogan popularized on T-shirts and baseball hats by Hodgkins lymphoma survivor Steve Saltman, a dude who knows that subtlety is found in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.
The “FUCK CANCER” phemon has its critics, but you know what? Fuck them, too, especially when so much of the rest of the cancer-culture crap is mumbo-jumbaloid spiritual sewage, like the book Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor’s Soul. It seems every touchy-feely Christian fruitcake and magic crystal-clutching New Age ning-nang-nonger who’s ever survived cancer has written a book about it. It almost makes you sorry for the poor little cancers, having to share body space with such total flaming idiots.
“Cell Out — Looking for dignity in the fight against cancer”, by Steven Wells
UPDATE– Since I posted this the price of Steven Wells’ reportedly-sidesplitting book, ‘Tits-Out Teenage Terror Totty
Posted in Culture & Media & Music by Martin Skivington on June 29, 2009.
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cowsarejustfood says:
06.30.09
music/ranting blog. couldn’t have reduced it better m’self.
poor old swells though. i’ll forever hold him dear to my little black heart for his staunch defence of daphne & celeste and for this description of wayne rooney:
look at his eyes! have you ever seen deader eyes? even on a dead person? even on, like, a dead person with no eyes? they say that the eyes are the windows of the soul - but looking into wayne rooney’s reptilian pits is like staring into nietzsche’s abyss. there is no humanity there, or compassion. there’s only the message, beamed loud and clear: “i outlived the dinosaurs and i will outlive your kind too, human. and my offspring will lay their eggs in your children’s flesh-stripped bones.”
he was the scorcese of vitriol. whatever that means…
Martin Skivington says:
06.30.09
Haha love it. Btw I deliberated on that description of cowsarejustfood.
There is a scan of the legenadary Daphne and Celeste article here as well which makes for essential reading. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wrong/10292151/sizes/o/