Tom Lennon's Blog

I've moved...

2009-06-27T10:14:00.001+01:00

Thanks for popping by. My blog has now moved to www.tomlennon.com.

See you there!

(Nothing But) Flowers

2009-06-12T23:43:00.003+01:00

Last December I was driving past the former Matthew Boulton College building on Sherlock Street in Birmingham as it was being demolished. Clare was in the passenger seat, but seeing as though neither of us were former students at the place and it wasn't an old cinema it failed to elicit any kind of emotional response worth mentioning.

A few weeks later we drove past it again. All that was left of the college was a big pile of rubble, but that didn't particularly bother me, either. Civil engineering was never my strong suit, but the one thing I do know is that rubble is an inevitable byproduct of knocking down a building.

A few weeks ago Clare & I once again passed the former Matthew Boulton College on Sherlock Street in Birmingham. On the site of the erstwhile big pile of rubble was a reasonably large field. This didn't look like freshly rolled-out turf: it looked like it had been there forever. Despite the fact we were driving past it at a reasonable speed we could even see weeds.

"I remember when all this was buildings," said Clare, wistfully.

The Citroën Dali

2009-06-03T23:46:00.000+01:00

"Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole"
- The Modern Lovers

Last Thursday evening we were driving home from Wales. Clare was sitting beside me and the kids had fallen asleep on the back seat. The two grown-ups were about to have a proper grown-up conversation when a jet black Citroën Xsara Picasso overtook us somewhat aggressively. The grown-up conversation was put on hold. "The Citroën Picasso," I snarled with mild indignation. "What do you think old Pablo would have made of that?"

"I wouldn't know," said Clare. "Why don't you tell me. I can see you're itching to."

So I did:

"I think he would have hated it. I mean, there he is: this major big-ass icon of the 20th Century, a bona fide cultural heavyweight who revolutionised art and transformed the way in which we see the world. People like that don't want to end up becoming synonymous with a safe and sensible family car. It's bad for the image. If you ask me, I think he'd be pretty damned furious that his descendants were so willing to whore his name off so indiscriminately."

"Really?" said Clare, somewhat dryly. "I bet they didn't get a penny."

"Really?" said I, somewhat dimly. "That makes it worse. At least, I think that makes it worse."

There was a moment's silence as I gathered my thoughts and watched the red tail lights of the popular MPV fade into the distance.

"It's all about design principles," I continued. "If you're going to name a car after someone like Picasso then at least try to remain faithful to your source of inspiration. A proper Citroën Picasso wouldn't look anything like that. For one thing, there'd be none of those functionally streamlined elegant curves. The real deal would be cube-like, wilfully asymmetrical and feature oblique references to the Spanish Civil War. Plus, all the wheels would be different sizes."

"It'd be a bugger to drive," said Clare. "You struggle with parallel parking at the best of times."

I was now in full-on monologue mode, so I managed to deftly side-step my partner's sarcasm: "Why stop with Picasso?" I said. "I want to see a range of family-friendly, design classic MPVs inspired by the greatest artists of the 20th Century. Just imagine a Citroën Dalí! A vulgar egg-shaped monstrosity with a massive pair of waxed windscreen wipers, a melting speedo and a Sat Nav that refers to itself in the third person."

"Or a Citroën Pollock," said Clare.

"What's that like?" I asked.

"It's like a Citroën Picasso that's been in an accident."

Nathan Fillion is the Green Lantern

2009-05-31T00:32:00.004+01:00

Well, no, he isn't really - and he probably won't be, either - but we all know in our hearts that he should be. Here's a rather clever fan-made trailer from someone who agrees...

Why so serious?

2009-05-29T23:21:00.004+01:00

We spent yesterday in Wales visiting my old friends Jude & Jonathan at their secluded lakeside retreat located somewhere between Llanidloes and God Knows Where (Dduw Chnotiau Ble). I introduced my old friends to my new family and, for the second time in my life, tried to water ski. It was not a dignified sight.

The journey involved us driving up some ridiculously steep inclines, negotiating some svelte-like country lanes and indulging in the kind of hairy off-road antics that my modest Citroen Saxo is not best equipped for. The Saxo might be fine as an urban runabout, but last time I checked 'driving through a field filled with sheep' wasn't one of its unique selling points.

(It's sitting outside the house now, looking slightly forlorn and covered in a generous coating of babyshit-brown mud. My neighbours must think I've taken up rally driving.)

In any case, as we approached our destination we saw a rather disturbing sight. Next to a particularly treacherous bend on a particularly skinny stretch of a particularly vertigo-inducing country lane sat the corpse of a white Vauxhall Corsa. It was smashed to smithereens and looked as though it had been sitting there for quite some time. The most disturbing thing about it, though, was that it was covered in graffiti. Scrawled all over the car in black spray paint was the following sinister message:

HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA HA ha HA HA Ha HA

Maybe it was because I watched too many horror films at an impressionable age, but I couldn't help but feel ill at ease. Was this an omen of some kind? Should we turn back? Had we stumbled into some weird, Deliverance-style pocket of wrong?

As it happened, the day passed without incident. I can only assume that the white Corsa festooned in HAs was some kind of weird tribute to the late Heath Ledger.

Hagbard Celine and the MPs' Expenses Scandal

2009-05-26T23:15:00.005+01:00

As an antidote to the relentless cavalcade of hubris, hypocrisy and moral indignation stoked up by the cataclysmic faeces-to-fan proximity problem that's known locally as the MPs' Expenses Scandal, here's a little something from the satirist, guerrilla ontologist and former editor of Playboy, Robert Anton Wilson. Its the Third Law of Wilson's fictional gentleman anarchist Hagbard Celine, and it goes something like this:

An honest politician is a national calamity
At first glance, this seems preposterous. People of all shades of opinion agree that at least on the axiom that we need more honest politicians, not more crooked ones. Please remember, however, that people of all shades of opinion once agreed that the Earth is flat.

Your typical dishonest politician (bocca grande normalis) is interested only in enriching himself at the public expense, a goal he shares with most of his fellow citizens, especially doctors and lawyers. This is normal behavior for our primate species, and society has always been able to endure and survive it.

An honest politician (bocca grande giganticus) is far more dangerous. He or she is sincerely committed to bettering society by political action. In practice, that means by writing and enacting more laws. Indeed, many groups of idealistic citizens publish rating sheets on politicians every year, and those who have created more laws are estimated as having higher value than those who are frequently absent when bills are voted upon. The assumption is that adding more laws to statute books is a positive achievement, like adding more money to our paychecks or more art works to a museum.

A little thought, however, shows that this assumption is not tenable. Every law creates a whole new criminal class; for instance, when marijuana was illegalized in 1937, several hundred thousand formerly law-abiding citizens became criminals overnight, by Act of Congress. As more and more laws are passed, more and more citizens become criminals. The chief cause of the rising crime rate is the rising number of laws being enacted. An honest politician, who keeps his nose to the grindstone and enacts several hundred laws in the course of his career, thereby produces as many as several million new criminals.

It is furthermore mathematically demonstrable that the more laws there are, the more restrictions there are on the freedom of the individual. If there were, say, only three laws in a given society---e.g., Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not lie or defraud---there would be only three restrictions on freedom, which all rational persons would accept as obviously necessary to the maintenance of order. When there are several hundred thousand restrictions on freedom, most of them are felt as extremely irksome by large segments of the populace.

In fact, it would take a brigade of lawyers several weeks, minutely examining your affairs, to determine if you are a criminal. Certainly, no ordinary citizen has the time or research facilities to discover if he or she is in violation of one out of skillions of laws currently on our statute books. In many cases, two lawyers consulted independently will give opposite opinions about whether or not a given course of action is in violation of the statutes.

And new laws are being enacted all the time. Obviously, unless there is a sudden paper shortage, the number of laws on the books will eventually reach the point satirized by T.H.White, in which "everything not prohibited is compulsory." It would then probably only take a few years or decades more for a cadre of honest politicians diligently writing even more laws to reach the complementary point where "everything not compulsory is prohibited."

At that stage the nightmare world of Orwell's 1984 will be achieved. Crooked politicians, merely interested in the normal human activity of making themselves rich and comfortable, could never create that ultimate horror; but honest and idealistic politicians bring us closer to it every day, with every new law they enact.
From Robert Anton Wilson - The Illuminati Papers

Please remember: Hagbard Celine is a fictional character. The views and opinions expressed by him are fictitious and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Tom Lennon's Blog or any of its affiliates. This disclaimer, of course, does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Hagbard Celine.

Step away from the fnord.

Bocca Grande Normalis

2009-05-23T01:17:00.004+01:00

I know that this will involve me stepping out of my made-to-measure comfort zone of pop culture, obscure literary references and knob gags, but I have to confess that this whole MPs' Expenses Scandal malarkey has left me feeling somewhat bemused. Yes, that's right, bemused. Not angry, not apoplectic with rage, not even baying for the blood of every front bencher, back bencher or side bencher in the land. It's just left me feeling somewhat bemused.

Sorry about that.

Maybe its my age. I used to get angry about stuff like this, but I'm fast approaching the tip of the tail-end of my third decade and - while I'm no expert on neurology - I strongly suspect that violent and disproportionately hysterical emotional reactions are bad for one's blood pressure. Adopting a detached and slightly bemused demeanour seems to do wonders for my endorphin levels. For one thing, I seem to get fewer veins on my forehead.

That's not to say that the steady eruption of sordid revelations gushing out of Westminster (via the Daily Telegraph) haven't managed to elicit any negative responses in me whatsoever. I try my best, but I'm only human. I've felt the occasional twinge of schadenfreude as I've watched a group of individuals who - as far as I can tell - seem habitually inclined to scapegoat other groups of individuals for all of society's ills become, well, the scapegoat for all of society's ills. I'm no expert on Eastern Mysticism, but I believe that's called Karma.

The fact that the British government have increasingly resorted to psychological scare tactics and Orwellian mind-fuckery to discourage the rest of us non-political critters from benefit cheating, TV Licence evading and miscellaneous acts of no-good shit dishonesty doesn't help. Part of me would like to see an aggressive high profile advertising campaign aimed at the nation's politicians. It should, of course, be meticulously designed so as to create an overwhelming sense of paranoia and mistrust in the target audience. Stark black and white imagery, distressed jump cuts and a final lingering shot on an expenses claim form should do the trick. Maybe throw in a catchy slogan like: "There's no second home allowance in Jail" or "What's that really worth, you patronising bastard?"

For the most part, though, I try to be bemused.

Happy Birthday, Morrissey

2009-05-22T22:53:00.003+01:00

Ulysses on the Buses: Stockland Green

2009-05-11T23:04:00.007+01:00

CONFESSIONS OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (1974)

Cert X, Dir. Alan Smithee

Stockland Green Plaza from 16th June, 1974. Showtimes vary.

Based on the acclaimed novel by cult science-fiction satirist Jimmy Joyce, this new British sex comedy stars the ever-popular Robin Askwith as Steve Dedalus, a chirpy young aspiring novelist who yearns to break free from the suffocating straitjacket of conformity by embarking on an illustrious literary career. Steve soon finds, however, that it takes more than an abundance of talent, ruthless tenacity and sheer luck to make it big in the book business: it also requires a willingness to subject oneself to a series of back-breaking romps with various ladies of letters. This hardback harem of softback sirens include a licentious librarian (Sally Geeson), a lascivious literary agent (Rula Lenska) and a saucy censor (Irene Handl), and Steve’s so-called ‘epiphanies’ take place in a variety of ludicrously lewd literary-themed locations including a marquee at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the back of a mobile library and the top deck of the number 11 bus.

This, it must be said, is something of a departure from the source material.

JJ Abrams' Star Trek

2009-05-08T10:55:00.007+01:00

The New Yorker's legendarily outspoken film critic Pauline Kael once said of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan "Now that's more like it." At least, I think that's what she said. Whatever the case, it's a phrase that went through my mind last night as the credits went up at the end of JJ Abrams' wonderful reboot, reimagining and reinvigoration of Star Trek.

Let me make my position clear: I'm what you might call a lapsed Trekkie. As a kid, as a teenager and even into my twenties I was addicted to all things Star Trek. I watched every episode of the original series countless times, went to see each movie on the opening weekend and even learned to embrace The Next Generation. In my defence, however, I never went so far as to attend conventions, dress up in costumes or sport a pair of fake pointy ears. As Mason said to Dixon: "You've got to draw the line somewhere".

At some point, though, something went wrong. I began to despise Star Trek. This didn't happen overnight; there was no Phantom Menace-style moment of clarity. Over time, however, I became increasingly disenchanted with the franchise. The TV shows became increasingly anodyne and even the old Trek movie 'even-numbered good; odd-numbered bad' maxim was replaced with a new, entropic holding pattern of 'even numbered dull; odd-numbered duller'.

Thank God, then, for JJ Abrams. He's not only created a Star Trek film that's exciting, kinetic and full of great characterisation, but he's done something that hasn't been done before. He's made a cracking piece of mainstream entertainment that just happens to be a Star Trek movie.

Now that's more like it.

Boldly Going Out

2009-05-07T14:13:00.002+01:00

My brother and I will be off to see JJ Abrams' Star Trek at the Birmingham Imax this evening and - I must admit - I'm rather looking forward to it. As a lapsed Trekker, I've almost forgotton how that feels. To actually look forward to a Star Trek fim... why, that's a sensation I haven't experienced since about 1994. That was Star Trek: Generations - the one where Captain Shat met Captain Baldy - and it turned out to be not very good. I'd have to go further back to find one I look forward to and actually enjoyed.

When tonight's tickets came through the post an accompanying leaflet promised an evening of 'Star Trek themed fun':

Come in costume and receive a FREE sci-fi goodie bag
Have your photo taken with your favourite Star trek characters
Competitions to win amazing Star Trek prizes

Oh dear.

While it's nice of the Imax to make an effort and all, this does not bode well. I've been to places where grown-up people dress up in genre drag and its never a pretty sight. I don't relish the opportunity of spending this eveing surrounded by chartered accountants dressed as Klingons.

I guess I'll be coming home empty handed.

Bob Dylan is Number 1

2009-05-03T23:06:00.002+01:00

From BBC News:

Bob Dylan has topped the UK album chart for the seventh time in his career, nearly 40 years since his last number one.

Wow - I mean, as a Dylan fan of many years standing I'm delighted to hear that Mr Zimmerman still has it in him to knock out a chart-topper.

I just find it hard to believe that the last time it happened I wasn't much older than my nine day old daughter...

Ulysses on the Buses: Villa Park

2009-05-02T13:55:00.004+01:00

Next week’s auction of rare manuscripts by the great Irish author James Joyce looks set to ignite a bitter dispute between private collectors, leading academics and fans of a West Midlands football team. The documents – made up of original, handwritten drafts of what many believe to be his earliest published work - consist of over 1500 pages of articles, match reports and in-depth player profiles that Joyce wrote between 1919 and 1924 for Aston Villa’s weekly match day souvenir programme.

‘This has got us all worried,’ says Harry H. Earwicker, Aston Villa supporter and spokesperson for the Anglo-Irish ‘soccerlit’ pressure group, Villa Yootha Joyce. ‘There’s a very real danger that some well-heeled foreign buyer could take the manuscripts out of North Birmingham. These documents form part of this great club’s history. They are the only surviving link between the modern-day Claret and Blue Army and the lost world of Modernist literature. They should remain at Villa Park or, at the very least, somewhere in Witton.’

As well as being one of the most important writers of the last century, James Joyce will also be remembered as one of Aston Villa’s original ‘famous fans’. In this respect, he was very much the Nigel Kennedy of his day. Joyce would often boast about this in public, despite the fact that - in the 1920s at least - no serious artist wanted to be compared to Nigel Kennedy. What first attracted the Dublin-born writer to this legendary North Birmingham club remains a mystery, however. Some Joycean scholars have tentatively suggested that he supported Aston Villa as an defiant act of artistic rebellion against the dated literary conventions of Victorian novelists like Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope and the Brontë sisters who were, for the most part, Birmingham City supporters.

Whatever the case, his obsession for the club found its way into the early drafts of many of his most famous books. His autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was originally entitled A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fan, while his masterpiece Ulysses – in which the entire narrative famously took place on a single day, 16^th June, 1904 – was originally scheduled to take place on 2^nd April, 1897, the date of Villa’s first FA Cup victory.

Joyce began writing for the club’s souvenir programme in 1919. He was living in impoverished exile in Zurich with his lover, Nora Barnacle, and was desperately struggling to make ends meet. By the time his ends eventually did meet it was too late, as the pair had already moved to Paris. To help alleviate Joyce’s poverty his well-connected patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, put in a good word with Aston Villa’s owners. In those days, the football souvenir programme industry was a melting pot of Modernist talent and many of the great artists of the day got their first break working for these publications. The likes of T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein and Marcel Proust cut their creative teeth writing articles, match reports and in-depth player profiles until people started taking them seriously. Writers weren’t the only people to benefit from this industry, of course. Pablo Picasso famously produced a series of lurid strip cartoons for Birmingham City’s souvenir programme during what later became known as his ‘Blues period’.

Over the next five years Joyce was a prolific contributor to the publication. He produced 276 articles, 573 match reports, 834 play-by-play tactical analysis charts and over 15,000 in-depth player profiles. This prodigious output was all the more remarkable as he spent most of this period living abroad and, as a result, was rarely able to attend home games. Instead, he had to rely heavily on detailed telegrams, eyewitness accounts and conjecture.

According to Earwicker, Joyce’s early articles for the souvenir programme featured ‘a winning combination of hard-hitting match analysis, erudite Irish wit and obscure literary allusions that proved to be a big hit with Villa fans.’ His classic work during this period included the groundbreaking match report Villa v QPR (1919) and its disappointing sequel, Villa v QPR (1920), and during Villa’s 1919-20 FA Cup campaign Joyce received widespread acclaim for his detailed account of the long road to Wembley, which was entitled ‘The M1.’

Unfortunately, Joyce’s love affair with Aston Villa was not to last. Egged on by fellow Villa fan Ezra Pound, he began to introduce increasingly experimental literary techniques into his Villa programme contributions. His play-by-play tactical analysis reports featured an increased use of multiple-viewpoint narration and Lobachevskian geometry. This confused scores of Villa fans who were more familiar traditional third-person narrative approaches and Euclidian geometry. He also abandon many of the traditional rules of punctuation: a 1921 interview with Frank Barson upset the legendary ‘hard man’ striker after Joyce removed all the quotation marks and replaced them with inverted commas.

The situation finally came to a head in 1924 with his controversial profile of one of Villa’a most notorious fans. A precursor to the modern-day streaker, Macintosh Brown would interrupt Villa matches by charging across the field wearing nothing but a brown macintosh. Joyce’s profile of this shady exhibitionist – complete with pop-up illustrations - resulted in a highly-publicised obscenity trial and Joyce was forced to accept a three-match ban.

The club’s owners were furious with Joyce. When Villa were defeated by Newcastle United in that year’s FA Cup final, Joyce submitted a 10,000 word match report which featured passing references to Irish patriot Charles Stewart Parnell, Catholic theologian St Thomas Aquinas and Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. The club owners urged Joyce to remove these references which, they felt, were ‘somewhat irrelevant’ and ‘confusing to younger fans’. Angered by this perceived attack on his artistic integrity, Joyce submitted a 10,000 word profile of Parnell, Aquinas and Vico which made only passing reference to the FA Cup Final. In retaliation, the club owners published a clumsily edited version the original article and attributed it to one of Joyce’s uncles, who he didn’t like.

For Joyce this was the final straw. He sent the club a blunt, two-word resignation letter in Latin which read: ‘Non-serviam.’ The club responded with a blunt, two-word response in Anglo Saxon, which – unfortunately – was lost in the post. After turning his back on his religion and then his country, Joyce finally turned his back on his favorite team. In a fit of rage he attempted to set fire to his vast collection of Aston Villa scarves, track suits and other paraphernalia. Unfortunately, due to his failing eyesight, he instead set fire to a pair of curtains and an early draft of a planned sequel to Ulysses that was provisionally entitled Twolysses.

Nearly a century later, Joyce’s influence still remains strong at Villa Park. According to Earwicker, his ghost has often been witnessed sitting on the top deck of a bus that passes close to the ground and shouting abuse from the terraces. Most touchingly, perhaps, many of his early, lyrical poems have formed the basis of some of the club’s most enduring supporter chants. These include the touching ‘We Love You Villa, We Do’, the rousing ‘We are the Boys from the Holte Army’ and, of course, the ever-popular ‘Shit on the City.’

Edie Rose

2009-04-29T09:44:00.003+01:00

Clare and I would just like to say thanks for all your messages. It's been a bit hectic around here, but I will get back to you - promise!

We decided on a name for our baby girl on Sunday. It's Edie Rose, which we think fits her perfectly. Clare's parents came up to visit us at the weekend and made damn sure that we'd agree on a name before they left. There's nothing like a deadline to focus the mind.

Here she is, ten minutes or so after she was born:

I'm a Dad

2009-04-24T10:54:00.002+01:00

Our lovely baby girl arrived at 2.03am this morning, weighing in at 8lb and 13oz. Mother and baby are happy and healthy and I'm rather knackered. I'm not ashamed to admit that my eyes welled up with manly mist.

Today would have been my Dad's 79th birthday. It's funny how these things work.

The Secret World

2009-04-22T22:32:00.005+01:00

Radio 4's The Secret World is billed as a 'comedy series that offers an insight into the private lives of the famous', but don't let that rather off-putting description put you off. Pitching its tent somewhere between Radio 4 classic Dead Ringers and Chris Morris' sublime mongfest, Blue Jam, it's anthracite dark funny stuff that I highly recommend.

On first impression the show might seem like an unofficial Dead Ringers spin-off, insofar as it features Jon Culshaw in a variety of roles and is produced by Bill Dare. Like Dead Ringers, it's also full of Radio 4 in-jokes (in one sketch, we're introduced to the seedy world of sectarian intimidation that goes on behind the scenes at Thought for the Day). Unlike Dead Ringers, however, the comforting cackle of the studio audience has been replaced with ambient music and the material is much darker in tone.

The highlight of last night's episode, the second in a six-part series, was a sketch in which the venerated Britflick director Mike Leigh was depicted as cynical conman who hires out gullible actors to companies like Wal-Mart as cheap labour. Leigh pockets the wages while the likes of James Gandolfini and Keira Knightly, believing they are researching a role for Leigh, are happy to work for free.

The Secret World is on Radio 4 on Tuesday nights at 11pm. Last night's episode is available on the BBC iPlayer between now and 28th April from here.

More PKD on the Radio...

2009-04-20T22:29:00.006+01:00

To elaborate on that previous post (which, truth be told, I knocked out in a bit of a rush):

The Today programme's Jim Naughtie was talking to David Davis (ex-shadow home secretary) and Derek Barnett (vice president of the Police Superintendents' Association of England & Wales) about calls for a debate about how police should handle public protests in the future. The conversation moved on to the recent arrest (and subsequent release on bail) of 114 people in Nottingham who were apparently planning to stage a big-ass protest at a power station.

The bit that made my ears do a double-take was when Davis said:

"We are getting into... a sort of pre-crime mentality. The idea that we've got to somehow interview people before the crime takes place."

Which is all a bit disturbing, at least to a simple fool with leftish, anti-authoritarian tendencies like me. What made it worse was the fact that this was the first time I'd heard the term 'pre-crime' outside of a Phillip K. Dick science fiction novel. What next? Robert Peston reviewing the latest figures from Ubik Industires? John Humphreys grilling Palmer Eldritch over his three stigmata?

But I digress. As far as I know, the term 'pre-crime' first appeared in PKD's 1958 short story 'The Minority Report' (which Steven Spielberg turned into a Cruiser-starring blockbuster in 2002). In the story, the police arrest people for crimes that they would have committed before they're actually committed. Like so many of PKD's stories, the central conceit is fiendishly smart and deliciously bonkers. I like it a lot.

I'm just not quite ready to see it happen for real.

You can find the original Today programme interview here (it's about 7 minutes in)

Philip K. David Davis

2009-04-20T08:22:00.004+01:00

Former shadow home secretary David Davis was just on Radio 4's Today programme. He was discussing the role of police crowd control following the G20 demonstrations. He said that policing in this country is in danger of becoming increasingly 'pre-crime' based.

David Davis a PKD fan? Who'd a thought it...

Yesterday was Record Store Day

2009-04-19T17:53:00.005+01:00

I popped into Birmingham music emporium Swordfish Records yesterday in order to fulfil my obligatory Record Store Day obligation. As this blog is committed to transparency and a full disclosure of contributions to the music industry, I'll fess up now and admit that I purchased Television's People by the rather marvellous Brum-based endorphin-pumpers Misty's Big Adventure. I also bought an additional CD and two vinyl LPs from their £1 clearance section, but - as this blogger is committed to protecting what's left of his credibility - I'll refrain from telling you what they were.

As I drove to the store I was listening to Frank Zappa's 1983 album, The Man From Utopia. It's not one of his best but it seemed appropriate, to me at least. Zappa has always reminded me of Swordfish Records, and Swordfish Records has always reminded me of Zappa. I'd like to offer some deep and thoughtful insight into the roots of this weird interrelationship, but instead I'll just tell you the truth: Zappa reminds me of Swordfish Records because the staff used to play his music all the time.

Of course, with the twin onslaught of download culture and deep discounting supermarkets, even the major High Street record stores have been having a tough time of it lately. It can't be easy for independent retailers, either. One of the advantages that independent record stores will always have over the competition, though, is that your average major supermarket or High Street record store is unlikely to play weird, subversive shit like Willie the Pimp, The Illinois Enema Bandit or Why Does it Hurt When I Pee? over the tannoy anytime soon. Too bad.

Independent record stores also tend to be staffed by people who are passionate and knowledgeable about music. If you were to ask a member of staff at, say, Sainsbury's to point you in the direction of the Zappa album that featured the original studio cuts of Suzy Creamcheese and Bobby Brown Goes Down you're unlikely to get a detailed, well-informed response. I'm making a sweeping generalisation, of course. This might only be the case at my local branch.

As I rifled through the racks at Swordfish yesterday, a Zappa album was playing in the background. I smiled, wistfully.

This is Record Store Day

2009-04-18T11:56:00.003+01:00

Which, in case you don't know, "is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music."

I'll endeavour to pop into my favourite local indie music store, Swordfish Records, at some point later today and I might even try to observe a minute's silence for its fallen comrades in arms, like Frank's Wild Records and the Plastic Factory.

You can find the Record Store Day site here.

11-11-11: Ulysses on the Buses

2009-04-09T15:28:00.005+01:00

Stateless, scrawny James Joyce and his mistressmusewife, Nora Barnacle, were waiting for a number eleven omnibus in the Perry Barr district of Birmingham. It was twenty-six days, five months and one hundred and four years after 16th June 1904, although they didn't necessarily spend all that time waiting for a bus.

At what precise location in Perry Barr was their bus stop located?

By a clay bark’s bank, where a stone lane meets a field of birch.

Do you mean by the Barclays Bank on the Corner of Aston Lane and Birchfield Road?

Um, yes.

What obsolete vernacular term for acute dental dysfunction can be used to describe the approximate time of the bus’s arrival?

Tooth hurty.

What action did the author make upon the arrival of his omnibus?

He inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his senior citizen’s bus pass.

Was it there?

No. It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the day but one preceding.

Why was this quadruply irritating?

Because he had forgotten; because he had previously reminded Nora to remind him not to forget; because Nora was now reminding him that she had previously remembered to remind him not to forget; because the previous trousers were now at the dry cleaners.

Was the controversial author of such groundbreaking classics as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake entitled to free travel on bus, train and Metro services throughout the West Midlands and environs?

Yes, insofar as the author was 126 years of age and could therefore be classified as a pensioner.

Due to the aforementioned bus pass oversight, was Joyce required to tender the full adult off-peak fare?

No. The stately, plump bus driver was in a charitable mood and let him off on a technicality.

What was the technicality?

The fact that Joyce had been dead since 1941.

Briefly outline Joyce’s initial observations with regards to the distribution of passengers in the lower deck of the number 11 bus.

The lower deck contained twelve adult females (two with infants), nine adult males, and eight juveniles (five female and three male) of varying ages, races and creeds; five adults (three female and two male) were reading (or appearing to read) daily newspapers, monthly magazines or this week's Take a Break; two adults (male and female) and one juvenile (male) were listening to music (or appearing to listen to music) on portable MP3 players; one adult (male) and one juvenile (female) were conducting (or appearing to conduct) mobile telephone conversations with unidentified parties on matters pertaining to, in the first instance, a somewhat contentious business transaction involving an otter,and, in the second, a highly detailed account of a series of regrettable and somewhat lurid romantic entanglements involving a third party known only as Our Sonia.

There were no available seats on the lower deck, then?

Indeed.

What parallel course did Joyce and Nora subsequently follow?

Starting united both at normal walking pace from the driver’s cabin, they turned right and approached the steps leading to the upper deck. Joyce, a well-mannered man, insisted that Nora go first; Nora, a feminist icon, insisted that Joyce go first. He eventually acquiesced, for fear of getting a punch on the nose.

What change in circumstance almost thwarted their ascent?

The vehicle’s sudden and unexpected transition in relative state from at rest (statum) to moving (agitato) caused Joyce to lose his footing on the narrow stairwell, ricochet off the handrail and launch into a form of graceless backflip commonly referred to as arse over tit (ineptio).

What prevented Joyce from sustaining a serious head injury?

The fact he collided, face first, into the ample cleavage of his mistress, Nora Barnacle.

What was Nora’s initial reaction to this?

NORA: Get off me Jim, ye wee skitter! I’m not falling for that one again!

What was crestfallen (and chestfallen) Joyce’s initial reaction to that?

Shock: embarrassment: shame: mild titillation: guilt: a profound sense of irony.

Why irony?

Because he had now done by accident something that he had previously done on purpose; because when he previously did it on purpose he pretended it was an accident.

What was the origin of this hitherto intentional stair-stumbling, cleavage-colliding phenomenon?

A high risk seduction stratagem Joyce called The Epiphany Accelerator.

Where and when did this previously happen?

With Nora, along a set of stone steps in Ringsend, Dublin, on 16th June 1904.

Shall we move on?

I think we should.

Were there available seats on the upper deck?

There were.

Where did Joyce and Nora decide to sit?

On the left hand side of the deck, at an equidistant point between a cackle of truants sitting on the back seat and a skinnylooking galoot and his girlfriend sitting at the front.

Why did Joyce take an irrational dislike to the skinnylooking galoot?

He was making witless remarks, scribbling furiously in a note pad and looked like a blogger.

What course did the number 11 omnibus subsequently follow?

Travelling in a south-easterly direction at an average speed of 26 mph, it left the field of birch and its broken librubble and followed Aston Lane’s Path, past Roddy Tufnol’s factoray and the new 24 our tescosuperstore.

What was the skinnylooking galoot’s reaction to the broken librubble?

- Where the fuck did that go?

What was the skinnylooking galoot’s reaction to the new tescosuperstore?

- Where the fuck did that come from?

What was Joyce’s reaction to the skinnylooking galoot’s reactions?

He let out a pair of audible tuts.

Was Joyce the first great 20th century novelist to have used the number 11 bus despite being dead?

No.

Can you elaborate on your answer?

Can you be more specific with your question?

Alright, then. Was Joyce the first dead 20th Century Modernist author to use Birmingham’s number 11 bus?

No. Ernest Hemmingway spent some time on the Outer Circle route during an otherwise regrettable trip to Birmingham.

Why was the trip regrettable?

He didn’t realize the Bull Ring was a shopping centre.

April Fools

2009-04-01T22:16:00.004+01:00

When I was a student at Hull University, lo those many years ago, I was involved in a cruel and unusual April Fools prank that I still feel rather guilty about now.

It wasn't my idea, you understand. I could never have dreamt up anything that reeked of so much wrong. I didn't have much to do with the prank's execution, either. I just grabbed a seat at ringside, kept my mouth shut, my face straight and watched it all unfold.

The target was my very dear friend, Jude, who was (and still is) one of the loveliest and most genuine people I've ever had the good fortune to meet. Unfortunately for Jude, however, she used to be (but isn't any more) a tad gullible. This loophole in her personality profile was something her trusted circle of friends were not averse to exploiting.

It was 1993, I guess, and a bunch of us were sitting in the living room of the house that Jude shared with our mutual friends Jo and Rick. We were all watching daytime TV when the telephone rang and - as planned - the rest of us feigned laziness so Jude would have to pick it up.

On the other end of the line a man claiming to be an engineer from the phone company told Jude that emergency work was currently being carried out on the local exchange. Her telephone line would be out of order for the next hour and, as a result, she would not be able to make or receive any phone calls. If her phone were to ring during the next hour then this will be caused by the engineering works and she should not - under any circumstances whatsoever - answer it. He was quite emphatic about that.

Over the next hour, the phone rang on several occasions and, on each occasion, Jude refused to answer it. Then, almost an hour after the engineer spoke to her, it rang again.

"Is it an hour yet?" asked Jude.

"Yes," we said. "It's more than an hour since you spoke to him. Answer the phone."

It was still ringing. "I'd better not answer it yet," said Jude. "It might be dangerous."

"Yes you should. It could be urgent. Answer the phone."

It was still ringing. Slowly, reluctantly, she reached for the blower and - at the very instant it left its cradle - a terrible, blood-curdling scream erupted from the receiver.

We could all hear it.

Panicking, she pressed the blower to her ear and heard a second voice yell: ""Blakey! Oh my God! You killled Blakey!" Jude slammed the blower into its cradle and looked at us in terror.

"I think I've killed someone," she sobbed.

And, for about half an hour, that's just what we let her believe. Until, that is, our friends who made the phone call arrived at the house and admitted to everything...

Read Yourself RAW

2009-03-26T22:41:00.004Z

I'm currently re-reading - for the umpteenth time, I might add - the great (and, sadly, late) Robert Anton Wilson's first Cosmic Trigger book. While the title might seem a tad hokey and dated (it was written in 1977), the book itself remains fiendishly clever, gleefully provocative and side-splittingly funny. Like most of RAWs oeuvre, it contains such a generous mindbending-idea-to-page ratio that he makes most other writers, philosophers and social commentators seem cognitively tight-fisted by comparison.

Anyway, a particular passage jumped out at me today. Let me share it with you:

Everybody nowadays thinks they must have an "opinion" on everything, whether they know anything about it or not. Unfortunately, few people know the difference between an opinion and a proof. Worse yet, most have no knowledge at all about the difference between a merely legal proof, a logical or verbal proof, a proof in the soft sciences like psychology, and a proof in the hard physical-mathematical sciences. They are full of opinions, but they have little ability to distinguish the relative degree of proof upholding all these various opinions.

We say "seeing is believing", but actually, as Santayana pointed out, we are all much better at believing than at seeing. In fact, we are seeing what we believe nearly all the time and only occasionally seeing what we can't believe.

RAW was very good at codifying, clarifying and articulating the thoughts (and, sometimes, the intellectual prejudices) that many of us have from time to time. What he says here may seem fairly self-evident, at least conceptually.

He also, however, had a mischievous gift for planting in his readers' heads nasty little neuro-linguistic cluster bombs with time-delay fuses. In the example cited above, we all encounter people/groups/institutions who seemingly can't distinguish between an "opinion" and a "proof" (let alone make a distinction between the different types of proof...) every time we pick up a newspaper, listen to a politician or subject ourselves to the BBC News website's Have Your Say page. What's not so easy, of course, is detecting this sort of thing in your own group, tribe or self.

That includes myself, of course.

What the Nyuk?

2009-03-25T23:24:00.008Z

From Variety:

MGM and the Farrelly brothers are closing in on their cast for "The Three Stooges."
Studio has set Sean Penn to play Larry, and negotiations are underway with Jim Carrey to play Curly, with the actor already making plans to gain 40 pounds to approximate the physical dimensions of Jerome "Curly" Howard.
The studio is zeroing in on Benicio Del Toro to play Moe.

What? What? WHAT???

For some reason, the notion of the recently Oscar-enriched Penn playing Larry puts me in mind of a Woody Allen short story, where a serious-but-struggling writer is commissioned to write a novelisation of a Three Stooges flick:

Calmly and for no apparent reason, the dark-haired man took the nose of the bald man in his right hand and slowly twisted it in a long, counterclockwise circle. A horrible grinding sound broke the silence of the Great Plains. 'We suffer,' the dark-haired man said. 'O woe to the random violence of human existence.'

Meanwhile Larry, the third man, had wandered into the house and had somehow managed to get his head caught inside an earthenware jar. Everything was suddenly terrifying and black as Larry groped blindly around the room.
He wondered if there was a god or any purpose at all to life or any design behind the universe when suddenly the dark-haired man entered and, finding a large polo mallet, began to break the jar off his companion's head. With pent-up fury that masked years of angst over the empty absurdity of man's fate, the one named Moe smashed the crockery.

That's it. I'm off to watch You Nazty Spy! before I go to bed...

My Movie Alphabet

2009-03-25T22:49:00.003Z

Here's something fairly inconsequential for you.

This is a meme I saw on Rol's blog late last year. Rol heard about it here, but I believe it originated from here. In any case, the idea is to select a favourite film to represent each letter of the alphabet. As I have lots of favourite films and a fairly temperamental set of taste buds, I've included runners-up in my list. This was to overcome the judgement-call paralysis that hampered my previous attempt.

If I didn't do it this way I wouldn't have made it past the first consonant.

Annie Hall (Runners up: An American Werewolf in London, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension)

The Big Lebowski (Runners up: Batman Begins, Blazing Saddles and Brazil)

Citizen Kane (Runners up: Crimes and Misdemeanors, Chinatown and Casino)

Dirty Harry (Runners up: Dawn of the Dead, Duck Soup and Down by Law)

Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (Runners up: El Topo, Escape From New York and The Empire Strikes Back)

F For Fake (Runners up: Fight Club, Fitzcarraldo and Fistful of Dollars)

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Runner up: Ghostbusters, Get Carter and The Great Dictator)

Holy Mountain (Runner up: High Fidelity)

It's a Wonderful Life

Jaws (Runner up: Jackie Brown)

Kiss Me Deadly (Runners up: King Kong [1933] and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)

Love and Death (Runner up: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and L'Âge d'Or)

Manhattan (Runners up: Momento, The Magnificent Ambersons and Monty Python's Life of Brian)

North By North West (Runners up: Night of the Hunter and Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!)

The Outlaw Josey Wales (Runner up: Once Upon a Time in the West)

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Runners up: Point Blank, The Producers and Paris, Texas)

Quadrophenia (Runner up: Q - The Winged Serpent)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Runners up: Repoman, Rear Window and Reservoir Dogs)

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (Runners up: Spider-Man 2, Santa Sangre and The Searchers)

This is Spinal Tap (Runner up: Touch of Evil, The Thing and The Third Man)

The Usual Suspects (Runners up: Un Chien Andalou and Unforgiven)

Vertigo (Runner up: Videodrome)

Withnail & I (Runners up: W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism, When Harry Met Sally and Wings of Desire)

X-Men 2

Young Frankenstein

Zelig (Runners up: Zero Effect, Zoolander and Zodiac)