Andy Mckendry

It feels like the good life

The lens on my sunglasses has a sepia tint. It makes everything I see look like a memory from the seventies.

I’m in Amsterdam in the middle of a red hot summer. Today I woke up to a vibrant green glow from the sun glinting through the leaves of the oak tree outside my window.

I put on some shorts and picked up my cat Lua and we went for breakfast. I ate pita stuffed with baba ganoush on my balcony and drank black drip-filter coffee with my sunglasses on.

I smoked the leftover weed from the night before and went outside. I got on my bike and started cycling. My headphone in, I listened to Jimi Hendrix. The music and the sepia tint from my sunglasses made me feel like I was in another era. Girls bums wobbled in time to the music, their colorful skirts, dresses, and jumpsuits muted but no less vibrant.

As I cruised along, I felt my mood lift. The sun was out, I was high, and the girls looked good. But as always happens in these moments the other voice inside started to speak. And loudly too. Ugly. Fat. Bald. They wouldn’t want you anyway.

Then I stopped at Boerenjongens in De Baarsjes. The name literally translates to farmer boys.

This was my favorite coffee shop. The budtenders wore white lab coats, and the smoke was lovely. I bought some Girl Scout Cookies and Blue Magic.

I headed toward Rembrandt Park. I wanted a to find a bench and then roll a joint.

I found one by the lake and I smoked some Girl Scout Cookies. Then got back on my bike, plugged my headphones in and hit random.

“...Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you…”

The soundtrack was as perfect as the weather.

I cruised down the long hill towards the heart of the park, but slowly. I was in a movie and this scene called for slowness.

As I reached the bridge towards the middle of the park Maggie May faded out and The Weight kicked in.

This was my favourite song, and Easy Rider was always my favourite movie. It was a moment so constructed, and yet completely by accident. It was on the nose, yet organic. And through my literally tinted glasses, I thought I saw what those hippies had been looking for. That high watermark. I was in it.

Killing It, Cruelty Free: The Story of Glasgow's #Vegan Brand

Ever heard the phrase guilt by association? Well how about cool by association? Because that’s what branding is all about. It’s about the individual choices, the stylistic touches that when packaged up, forge an identity and shape meaning.  

For me, I love a great brand, and I love the story behind that brandtoo. One brand I’ve been thinking long and hard about is the vegan one. Not so long ago,…

REVIEW: Straight from the Horse's Mouth: The Affecting Tale of #BojackHorseman

From the golden age of Mad Men and Breaking Bad, to the lesser, but no less entertaining peak TV era, there have been plenty of outstanding TV shows in recent years. But for me, even with great seasons of shows like Halt and Catch Fire, Preacher, and Broad City, there is one TV show that has consistently surprised and delighted me this year: Bojack Horseman.

An animated show about a talking…

Cool Vibes from the Glasgow Brand

I’m based in Glasgow, a city with a difficult reputation. From neds, eccies, and Buckfast, to crumbling high rises and violent ‘schemes’, people are often turned off by my fair city. I’ll change your mind. I’ll rebrand Glasgow for you. Glasgow is a place that has reimagined itself, showing the importance of good storytelling. An identity is formed by perception, by the pieces we choose to…

The Lego Movie: The Greatest Brand Story Ever Told

We all love Lego, right? As kids we loved the potential. We could put one piece on top of the other and build tanks, airplanes, boats, castles… stories. We crafted narratives. From fighting dinosaurs, to creating our own fairy tales, Lego allowed us to travel through space, taking us far into the recesses of our imagination. And now as adults, we treasure those memories, remembering Lego not as a…

Good people drink good beer. #branding

Once upon a time, before the internet, writers wrote novels, short stories, films, plays, TV shows… They might have worked day jobs; William S. Burrows was an exterminator, Arthur Conan Doyle was a surgeon, and Jack Kerouac was a dishwasher. But they didn’t write blog posts. They might have churned out pulpy hits, like Philip K. Dick. At his peak he wrote sixty pages of fiction per day. But they…

They're selling hipster cool in Urban Outfitters, man.

In the corner of a coffee shop, with a cool name like Drip, in amongst the beards and mismatched mugs full of black artisanal coffee, a young man types on a battered Macbook Pro. With his skinny jeans, his ironic moustache, and his vintage shirt, he’s become something of a stereotype.

Once a hipster was difficult to define. Marketers hadn’t sussed out the integral components yet. But now, places…

Nocturnal Animals (2016) Film Review: Haunted Headlights on the Highway

  Nocturnal Animals (2016) is a bleary eyed journey into delusion and revenge. Sitting somewhere between thriller and horror, Tom Ford’s latest is an excellent neo noir that focuses on the blurred line between fantasy and reality. The film opens in an art gallery, where a number of obese women dance naked, in slow motion, with nothing hidden and everything on display. They’re glittered,…

[REVIEW] Kurt Vile meets Mac Demarco in @lowsounduk's EP Slacker

    Lawrence Willoughby (LOWsound), dives into the murky space between adolescence and adulthood in his self produced EP, Slacker. Lawrence sent me over a copy ahead of its November 1st release date. Here’s what I thought.

As a slacker once said, ‘Salad days are gone.’ And so they are, for some of us anyway. But we still yearn for those long, heady summer days that stretched lazily ahead.…

I held you up

Finger tips to the sky

Hoping you’d catch

That eagle’s eye

I was so young

Once upon a time

I looked around

And said ‘It’s all mine’

As I get older

Sunlight over my shoulder

The day is longer

And I’m not stronger

All I can hope for

Is finding grace

To carry me through

A tense fight between a leggy surfer chic and a big bad shark. #TheShallows #FilmReview

The Shallows (directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Non Stop) is an effective, well crafted film. It slots neatly into the horror genre, and it sits comfortably with contemporaries like Open Water, Castaway, 127 Hours, Buried, and even Locke. Similar to those films,  The Shallows focuses in on one character, in this instance, Nancy Adams (Blake Lively).

The story follows Nancy after she drops out of…