Woah, did I just come from the most insane night out ever. So there are these things called ‘summer clerkships’ that fourth year law students are desperate (in the most definitional way you’ve ever heard the word used) to secure such that they might make something of themselves for three months over summer and in the hope that premium clerkship equates to premium graduate job coming out of law school. Shit is ridiculous. I just went because the invitation suggested the night might be funny and there was the prospect of free drinks/food. On neither front was I disappointed. Stale Burger Rings and complimentary chilled water aside, the horrible, gruesome lengths to which people will go in the name of ambition turned out to be not so much terrifying as highly amusing. With one ‘free’ interview up for grabs at the launch party (ie knocking out torturous application process), a troubling game of one-upmanship concluded in a dude proposing to his girlfriend preemptively. He won. I almost collapsed.
In any event, Does It Offend You, Yeah? – the band whose name adorns a postcard directly above J’s toilet (the answer is yes) and which can’t be saved properly as an mp3 as Windows assumes the punctuation means you are searching for something – feature amidst all this horrifying sycophantic action precisely because they, with this song (as the title would suggest), so readily typify the sort of high-octane emotion on display tonight that had one, smashed, mature-aged student forcefully ejected, countless others slobbering over the hands of senior partners and one dude asking ‘really?’, stunned when the girl with the most unfortunate proposal story ever accepted. The whole ‘woe leave me’/'pull out my insides’ is such an irrational response to a crumbling relationship but it’s the violence of the sentiment that really hooks me tonight.
The story behind the band name doesn’t nearly do justice to the wonderful provocation it represents. Needing a name to go with their MySpace profile (ahhh) back in the day, the band turned on a nearby TV and picked the first thing that grabbed them, Ricky Gervais’ David Brent asking “My drinking – Does it offend you, yeah?” Before learning of this story, I assumed it was a witty stab at potential detractors, a nomenclature ‘fuck you’ for anyone who might not like their brand of electronic rock. Having learned of the story, I’m not sure I want to relinquish my mistake. A song like ‘Pull Out My Insides’ is so garishly emo, so obviously hyperbolic that it probably would, in the general scheme of things, offend me. That said, when you’ve witnessed potentially two of the most fucked up instances of social behaviour you might likely consume over the next year or so in the same night, I think you can stomach a bit of exaggeration.
Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Pull Out My Insides
The Office’s contribution to British music .
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