Anyway, said decorating job put me (unsurprisingly) in a Space Invaders-y mood. So off to the internets I went in search of weird 'n' wonderful delights. I'm glad I did. Because I found this.

Like most classic arcade games, Space Invaders was not overly forthcoming with back-story or context. It gave you a ship. It showed you where to point it. And it implored you to shoot the living shit out of everything. Till you were dead.

What breakdown in galactic diplomacy had led to the invasion? We never knew. Nor did we care. We didn't even know much about our enemies' true faces – save for some crude (probably propagandic) cabinet art designed to make 'em look as monstrous as possible.

Into this breach of relative ignorance swooped (Australia's?) Player One – a band nobly determined to show young men & women just who it was they were fighting. I think…

Far from being lumbering, thuggish and fur-covered monsters, the invaders were (it would seem) intelligences of the cool, detached, and "standing around in a dark cavernous space wearing flowing cowls" variety. They may have looked freaky (blank mannequin faces and glowing LED eyes) but they seemed (otherwise) fairly harmless. Their favoured (only?) activity appeared to involve turning slowly toward camera. Hardly an intergalactic war crime.

The trouble with being a cool, detached, stand-y & stare-y type alien (of course) is that you leave yourself wide open to being strolled up to and shot at point-blank range (as happens above at 1:35). Brains are grand and all that. But being able to run away, or roll behind a barrel, is undeniably handy.

I'm assuming (though Player One's fragmented narrative never makes this entirely clear) that the assassins were part of some Earth-originating infiltration force. If so, then, y'know, this flies like totally in the face of established Space Invaders continuity. How did we get the lads aboard? Where did we get shuttle craft or transporter capabilities from? I mean, there was only one bloody giant tank defending the whole damn planet as far as I recall.

It's a conceptual nightmare. The campaign for a Director's Cut to address these (scoff!) glaring deficiencies starts here.

He was a gent throughout, expounding at length on such subjects as – sharing a stage with Laurel & Hardy, the failings of Fortycoats, colicky horses and much, much more.

By way of small (but long) tribute to the great man I dip into the archives and reprint the interview in its entirety.

May he rest in peace.

Part 1

To begin with, Eugene, can you tell us a little bit about how you first got involved in puppetry?

Well, I actually started doing puppets when I was a child, 8 years of age, when I got some books on it. My father was a county librarian in Sligo, I’m originally from Sligo by the way. Anyway, I made a ventriloquist’s doll when I was about 10 and after that I used to do school concerts and shows for the boy scouts and all that sort of thing. So that was the beginning.

You spent 7 successful years, I believe, with Jury’s cabaret performing as a ventriloquist with your dummy/companion Finnegan. Was ventriloquism a popular form of entertainment on the Irish variety circuit at the time?

Well no, not really. There were only about two ventriloquists around! So when I started doing it I had no idea that there was even such a thing as a ventriloquist. (laughs)

Was it literally then a case of just getting a book from the library and teaching yourself?

Well I actually started doing ventriloquism without a book at all. I’ve always mimicked and done voices and all that sort of thing, so it was a really just the next step from the other puppets I used to make…deciding to make a puppet that could move its mouth.

So if that was the very beginning of your interest in puppetry, how did you then get involved in it professionally?

Well, I was doing those concerts…and…you see my father died when I was 15 so I had to leave college, but I did go to the Tec for a few years, and I was always very good at making things with my hands. Then I actually became a fitter in Denny’s Bacon factory in Sligo, but I still used to do parochial concerts, and that, with the ventriloquism.

Then I came to Dublin…and we got married in 1950, Mai and I, we were only 22! So we came to Dublin and, as I always tell the story, we only had two cases. All our belongings were in one, and my puppet was in the other. That, and ten shillings…that’s what we came to Dublin with, you know. By the way, the dummy I had then was actually a predecessor of Finnegan, a character called Frankie.

Anyway, we came to Dublin and I got a job in refrigeration, in 'Re-cold', 27 Pearse St. It’s actually the Pearse Museum now, that building there…but it used to be a company called 'Re-Cold'. So, I was working in the fridges there when Mai entered me for a talent competition in James’ St. Hall. I won the competition and a chap saw me, he was a magician, and he brought me down to the Queen’s Theatre, which also used to be in Pearse St. So I got on in the Queen’s and that was really the first sort of professional break that I had. I did a lot of weeks in the Queen’s, before going on to play in the Capitol Theatre, which was beside the GPO, and the Olympia. In 1954 I actually played with Laurel and Hardy in the Olympia!

Around that time someone saw my act and I ended up going to England for 18 months, touring on the Musical Hall circuit. Nobody could do that now, of course, because it’s all gone. But it was a wonderful experience…and that, I suppose, is where I got my proper theatrical experience.

You said there weren’t many ventriloquist acts in Ireland at the time, but presumably there were quite a few on the Music Hall scene…

Well there was a famous ventriloquist called Terry Hall, and he was in the show in the Olympia when I was in the Capitol, and…I don’t know whether you ever remember Lenny the Lion?

Em…a bit before my time I'm afraid…

He was actually on the BBC…he had a BBC show…and Terry had left the show in the Olympia to do that, which is how I got the job! So, I went on tour then …I remember the first stage of the tour was in Cork in the Old Opera House, and when that finished I went to England and toured for 18 months as I’ve said. After that I came back to Dublin, and started doing dinners, children’s parties etc., but I also had a day job!

I also believe that you used to perform with Finnegan on a popular RTÉ radio program. Hearing this reminded me of a scene in Woody Allen’s Radio Days where one of the characters protests at the presence of a ventriloquist on the radio, asking (the fairly obvious question) "How do we know he's not moving his lips?". Was that ever an issue for you?

(laughs) Well no, not really. Charlie McCarthy was extremely successful in America on the radio, and then you had Peter Brough with Archie Andrews on the BBC [in a show called Educating Archie], and then, of course, I was here.

Take the Floor was a show on Radio Éireann with a man called Dinjo…and it was a huge success, and I toured around the country doing concerts with him, mainly Sunday nights…or the whole weekend in some places…and, of course, did the day job as well. We’d travel to Killarney and back in the one day and then have to go in to work in the morning!

I actually also had a children’s program called Finnegan Picks the Music on the radio…and that would have been way back in the 50s and the early 60s.

And what was the format of that?

Well it was based around Children’s records…which unfortunately you never hear now. I know people say that kids now are into pop music and all that, but they never hear the likes of Burl Ives and those songs…those wonderful children’s songs that he had. But there were a whole lot of these songs you know…Danny Kaye, for example, had hundreds of children’s songs. So I used to play those kind of records and then do a little bit of dialogue between songs with Finnegan and myself.

And then in 1963, I entered an idea to Telifís Éireann, and that’s where the other puppetry started…with a show called Murphy agus a Chairde. The idea I submitted was actually a marionette show, and from that I got what they call a 'test'. So it was all based around marionettes, which I had to make, and Mai (my wife), and my eldest daughter manipulated them with me. The other children (we had ten in the family) were very small at the time.

At the same time I was doing "Gaels of Laughter" in the Gaiety with Maureen Potter, as well as seven nights a week in Jury’s Cabaret in Dame St. So I had to give up the day job at that stage…as the money was pretty poor in comparison…

What was the money like in Telifís Éireann at the time, if you don’t mind me asking?

It was never good you know…but it was a lot better than the day job! (laughs)

So then, on the television front, Murphy agus a Chairde ran up until 1968 (5 years in all), and in the meantime I had met a wonderful director called Don Lennox and we started discussing further programs…and Wanderly Wagon came out of that and ran from 1968 up until 1982.

Part 2

Ok, Eugene, if we could just talk a little about the origins of Wanderly. Who takes the credit for the initial concept of a show based around a ‘magical wagon’?

That was a joint idea between myself and [director] Don Lennox. We had a lot of ideas at the time…but then of course they brought in writers…there were a lot of writers. We probably had, oh, 7 or 8 writers over the years.

Is it true that Pat Ingoldsby wrote some episodes?

Oh yes, Pat Ingoldsby wrote for us…Neil Jordan too! Then there was Carolyn Swift, Gordon Snell, Michael Judge…and a lot more.

I’ve heard you mention that Judge and Mr. Crow (the two most iconic puppet characters) were there from the very beginning of Wanderly, but had they ever been used prior to that (in Murphy agus a Chairde for example)?

Oh no, they were all different. They were all specially created for the show – Judge, and Mr. Crow, and Foxy, the squirrels, the mice, and Sneaky Snake – they were all our own original ideas for Wanderly Wagon.

According to the recent documentary made about the family, Pulling the Strings, you were originally only supposed to supply the puppets, but eventually found yourself playing the 'Jovial character' that Wanderly Wagon needed.

That’s right yes, originally. I had done some straight acting before that though. I was in the Abbey Theatre production of At Swim-Two-Birds [an Adaptation of Flann O'Brien's novel by Audrey Welsh] where I played the Pooka.

Oh Right!

…and did the ventriloquism for the Good Fairy who was an invisible character. Alan Simpson, Lord have Mercy on Him, was the director of that…an absolutely wonderful man. It was a wonderful production.

I also acted in a children’s play, a Robert Bolt play…in the Eblana theatre, which is gone now…and I did pantomime, of course, and a few other things too. I actually did several pantomimes with Maureen Potter in the Gaiety.

Of course when I did the ventriloquism it was really more adult shows and cabaret, but through television, then, I became known more as a children’s entertainer than an adult entertainer…

What about the casting of Nora O’ Mahony? Had you known her before, and what was she like to work with (and as a person)?

Nora O’Mahony of course was Godmother, and I knew of her…you know. She was a very famous actress actually, and had played in several films in Hollywood. One of the last ones she did was Darby O’Gill and the Little People, do you know that one?

I do indeed, with Jimmy O'Dea, Sean Connery etc.

Yes, they showed it quite recently…she was the barmaid [Molly Malloy] in that, so if you ever see it again you’ll know to watch out for her. She was a lovely person…but she gave it all up and went to work as a lay missionary in Rhodesia, and she was Bishop Lamont’s secretary for many years until she got a tropical disease, a kidney disease, and she was invalided home. After that she started reading letters on The Frank Hall Show on television, and that’s how we discovered her for Wanderly Wagon.

I believe that Rory (Bill Golding) left the show in 1974, though I don’t recall this personally I might add. I’ve read that the character "left the team early deciding to help the moon mice repair the moon with the help of some cheese". Is this true, and what are your memories of Bill?

He was a wonderful actor and he played several characters. He played Fortycoats¹ actually, with his flying sweetshop (The flying sweetshop was my idea, by the way).

And yes, what you read is true, himself and Foxy went off to repair the moon with the mice!

But Bill was always very busy because he did a lot of commercials and he did a lot of straight acting in the Gate Theatre and that…

Someone told me that he actually does the voice of "Ould Mr. Brennan".² Is that right?!

Yeah, that’s actually the voice he used to do for Fortycoats, the original Fortycoats! Now after Wanderly Wagon finished they did a program called Fortycoats & Co.…which was a rehash of our program…

So you (the Lamberts) didn't have anything to do with that show?

No, we’d nothing to do with that at all…but they actually rehashed some of our scripts, you know. Anyway, it was never as popular as Wanderly Wagon! (laughs)

Frank Kelly is another fondly remembered Wanderly regular. What are your memories of working with Frank?

Well Frank Kelly actually wrote quite a lot of Wanderly Wagon and then he played several characters over the years, the last one (of course) being Dr. Astro. But he had played several others…I remember he played a pirate – I forget his name now [Ed: Possibly 'Long John Gold'?] – and he was a brother..a monk! And, of course, he did the voice of Sneaky Snake. He was a very versatile man, though he’s now (of course) best know for Fr. Jack!

There’s a scene in the documentary where Jim O’Hare talks about the actual design of the wagon. Can you tell us a little bit about how it was first created?

Yes, Jim was the designer, and he worked in Telifís Éireann. The wagon was designed on a dray…CIE used to have these horse drays and it was on one of those. And we actually bought the original horse, Telifís Éireann owned him…Pádraig the Horse! We did a lot of filming of putting on the harness, and feeding him, and hooking him up to the wagon and all that…but there was actually a new lawn laid in Telifís Éireann, because it was quite a new building back then, and the poor horse ate the grass, got colic, and died.

Oh dear…

The thing was that nobody knew because we were still using all the footage we'd shot of the horse and the wagon! Then over the years they hired several other horses, but the kids never really seemed to mind that they were different. We had a piebald horse, and a brown horse…but it was just accepted! (laughs)

And, of course, we did a lot of the St. Patrick's Day parades with the wagon and the various horses.

So it was actually a properly functioning wagon then?

That’s right. Oh it was, yeah.

But the interior was obviously a set…

Yes, it was a separate set, and that was always a bit of a shock to the kids when they had a look inside!

I presume that the wagon was designed, from the beginning, with puppetry in mind?

Oh yes, it was. The downpipe was for Crow, and there was a barrel where Sneaky Snake was operated and so on. There was actually a fair bit of room inside, but it still used to be cramped enough when all the puppets and puppeteers were in there.

Jim also suggests that the original intention was for the show to be an outside broadcast, with the wagon (physically) travelling around Ireland every week? Was that the case?

Yes, but we very seldom travelled anywhere! We had it down in Clonmel at a big parade one time…and I’m sure there’s footage somewhere, because that was filmed…so it’s around somewhere.

Would be great to dig that up. So, basically, despite the initial concept, the show pretty quickly became almost exclusively studio based…

That’s right, but we did do a few outside things. I remember we had it in Powerscourt a few times, and Stephen's Green on several occasions. Whenever we actually went anywhere thousands of people used to turn up! We also had it in Birr, and a few festivals here and there but originally it was supposed to travel a lot more.

Part 3

So what's become of the actual wagon now Eugene? The documentary [Pulling the Strings] seemed to suggest that it has become the property of Fossett's Circus….

It used to be outside Telifís Éireann [in Donnybrook] for a long time, literally falling asunder, until Eddie Fossett took it. He then (thankfully) decided to repair it, so he has it in storage now.

Actually, for the second last Late Late Show with Gay Byrne, Gay said he would love to have the wagon on…but nobody knew where it was! Then, by accident, I found out where it was through doing the Punch and Judy Act in the Peter Ustinov film version of The Old Curiosity Shop. I didn't appear myself, but I did (as I say) do the Punch and Judy in it, and there were also some of Eddie Fossett's jugglers and acrobats involved. Anyway, Eddie and I got chatting and he said "You know, I have the wagon!" (laughs) So that’s how I got to find out.

Then, about 4 years ago, we had it up in the National Museum in Collins' Barracks, and we had about five thousand turn up to see it…mostly adults!

So is it back in Fossett's now?

Yes, it's back in Fossett's. It's there and it can be hired out.

You've suggested that you felt that you (and the family) lost control of Wanderly Wagon, somewhat, around the time it made the transition to colour, as it no longer felt like "a live show". How had things changed exactly?

In the early black and white days they couldn't edit the tape, so you did the show from beginning to end and if anything went wrong you had to start again. But then when it went into colour and they started to have editing facilities, they began to do shows simultaneously, so we'd do the interiors (say) for two different shows together. That made continuity very difficult …it became more of a technical show…and it was much more difficult to work like that for me.

I know that Wanderly was one of the first Irish TV shows (if not the first) to use 'Chroma Key' (or 'Colour Separation Overlay'), thus allowing the wagon to enter more fantastical realms (under the sea, outer space etc). What are your memories of working with that technology?

Well there were wonderful things you could do, of course. Suddenly the wagon could fly, and I remember we used helicopter footage that they had, and showed the wagon flying out to Cappagh Hospital, and all the other children's hospitals we used to visit at Christmas.

In general, how much freedom, did you have from RTÉ creatively?

Well we were always allowed to come up with ideas, and I was consulted about the different things we could actually do with puppets. So…over the years we came up with a lot of the puppetry ideas that made the show what it was.

How tight was the schedule in terms of getting the shows finished on time?

We used to rehearse for two days, and then we’d be in the studio for a full day, but it was never enough time, never enough time…

Then there were also sessions doing songs, recording songs and so on with Jim Doherty who used to do the music. There were a lot of different song-writers and composers too, over the years.

Were the mythical/folkloric elements of the show something you personally felt interested in, or did they (instead) spring simply from the imaginations of individual writers?

Well that really only featured in the later episodes like the ones they're after doing for the DVD, and 'Chroma Key' was used a lot in those ones. But we really didn't do that kind of 'Irish folklore' thing too often before that. We had some great episodes, though, in the early years, like 'Upside-Down land'…and…some of the early ones were marvellous really. All done without the special effects too.

I’ve heard that many (if not most) of RTÉ’s Wanderly Wagon tapes were erased/re-used due to cost-cutting techniques prevalent at the time. How much material actually remains in the archives, do you know?

Well they were big, wide tapes and they used to use them over and over. I was originally told that most of the tapes were gone, but there are still quite a few left…probably 150 tapes at least. Of course, we must have done an awful lot more that that over the years…so it's a great shame. But it was common practice at the time, and the BBC used to have the same problem.

For example, for all the years we did Murphy agus a Chairde (5 years) there's none of it left. Well, there's a little 2 minute clip…or it mightn't even be 2 minutes…in the documentary, and that survived because it was on film. It was a documentary about Telifís Éireann that happened to be filming at the time.

But in the coming years they're going to allow me to go through the archives and pick out ones that I'd like. I'll hopefully even be able to get something out of the tapes that are damaged, and I could always link up the fragments with inserts from Judge and myself.

So there'll definitely be more material coming out on DVD?

Yes, [the first volume] was a great success last year with over 30,000 copies sold. I didn't really have that much to do with it, they really only gave it to me to OK, but if I'd had the choice I wouldn't have picked the ones they picked. If I'd had the time I might have chosen something else but by the time they came to me it was already November so…

Anyway, it was EMI that did it and it took a long time to get Telifís Éireann to release the material, but because of the success they're definitely going to do more.

Finally, Eugene, could you tell us a little bit about the 'International Puppetry Festival' you're currently organising?

The puppetry festival is in its 13th year, and we're working hard on it at the moment. We're hoping to have a Russian company, a Mexican company, and a group from Iran would you believe! They're three girl puppeteers from Iran and it would be a great coup if we could get them.

As well as our own theatre we'll also be using the Pavilion this year, for the Russian one. It's not all finalised yet but we're hoping it'll be a very good festival.

1. The character of Fortycoats seems to have been named after a real-life Dublin 'character'…or possibly more than one, as Wikipedia explains:
   

   The name Johnny Fortycoats first appears in Dublin folklore in the 1930s. It may perhaps have been applied to more than one person, including one of a couple of tramps who walked the coast of Dublin at the time of the television series. A wild looking man, universally recognized (Dublin is a large village), harmless as anyone knew. He was far removed from the world of television. It was his habit to wear several coats, hence the nickname.

   [back]

2. For those who don't know, 'Ould Mr. Brennan' is a famous Irish, uber-Dub, radio character who advertises "Brennan's Bread"…in pretty maudlin style. [back]

Question: What the fuck had we just experienced?

Answer: A freakish hell-ride through the deranged mind of a psychotic fantasist named Eric Carmen.

Just watch. Just watch.

As he sits in his grimly stylish industrial apartment, watching snuff-core porn flicks like a lunatic 80s yuppie version of Mark Lewis (from Peeping Tom), Eric dreams of a lovely lady who he'll stare (madly) at with his "hungry eyes". Did I say hungry eyes? I clearly meant rapey eyes. He's got rapey eyes. Just look at him. And listen to him.

I've been meaning to tell you,
I've got this feelin' that won't subside.

Yes, Eric. This feeling is called "murderous blood lust". I wouldn't tell anyone. I'd keep it to yourself.

Now I've got you in my sights.

Note – "sights". As in "the sights of my Mauser 86 SR sniper rifle".

It gets worse…

With these – hungry eyes,
now I can take you by surprise.

I mean, come on! Take? By surprise (in a darkened alley)? Brett Easton Fecking Eliis would struggle to come up with a sustained rape fantasy this grotesque.

1:44 on is my "favourite" bit. Eric louchely leans against a nightclub (or whatever) door as fantasy lady outrageously whips her come-hither (and rape me) hair about in the sexy rain. In reality, she was probably just waiting for a bus, dressed normally. On her way home from work. Eric's bulging and "hungry" eyes see what they want to see…and force us to see it too. It's fucking terrifying.

Oh and then there's the bit where she becomes 100 feet tall and wails out a sax solo. And the bit where she makes out with Stan Lee before becoming Asian.

I need to lie down…

This is why ad agencies should be paying me the big massive bucks. But they're afraid. Too afraid…

The damn spineless & hidebound fools!

No more gif(t)s for you tomorrow. You've had enough.

Final gif(t) tomorrow.

Or so August Storck KG, makers of Werther's Original(s), would have us believe. Their sweets are the sugary glue that bind the myriad fabrics of reality together. They existed before the big bang. Before God (who based his whole shtick on the company's trademark chuckly and benign Grandfather).

They incongruously (and thrillingly) combine raw elemental power, with saccharine tweeness. They are steadfast. Changeless. Ageless. Beloved by viewers of Countdown. Yet eternal. Universal. Stare at a Werther's Original under an electron microscope and what do you see? Millions of smaller Werther's Originals. Each one of which contains a trillion even more tiny Wether's Originals. And so on and on and on forever. And ever. And ever.

What follows is a humble (Flipnote) attempt to capture this omnipresent and cosmically head-fucking essence.

More tomorrow.

Clouds are nasty and evil. See here:

More tomorrow.

Formative experience recollection time.

It's a summer evening in, oh, 1979 (or thenabouts), and I'm standing – gob-smacked and wonder-filled – in the lobby of the (no-longer-existent) prom-side cinema in Lahinch, Co. Clare. I've just seen Disney's Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs for the first time, and its 83 minutes of Technicolor gorgeousness have rocked my little world.

I'm not the only one thus affected. A (presumably awed & dazed) teenage boy emerges from the theatre, ambles across the lobby, and walks up to, into, and straight through the cinema's floor-to-ceiling glass window/door. Miraculously he is (in my memory at least) unhurt. Such is the power of animation. It not only fires and fuels your imagination – it throws a protective aura of invincibility around you as well.

For the majority of the rest of my childhood all I wanted to be was a "cartoonist" (the proper term, I assumed, for someone who produces animated cartoons). I sketched. I doodled (a lot). I drew cariacatures of teachers on classmates' copy-books. I was utterly dedicated to my craft.

Then – as happens with about 99.99999% of humankind – I hit my teens, thought "Ah, fuck it", and went off drinking cider and listening to The Doors. Such (as the platitudinous fella no doubt says) is life.

Skip forward 30 years and I'm buying a Nintendo DSi for my birthday. Skip forward another day or two and I'm downloading Flipnote Studio. Skip forward ten minutes more and I'm giving life to crude stick figures. Here's an early effort – combining the simple joys of (falling flat on one's arse) slapstick with the grim tragedy of (Sisyphean) eternal recurrence.

Bwaa ha ha! Look at him fall! Right in the hole. Over and Over! There he goes again. And again! Ah ha ha ha! The poor doomed bastard…*sniff*

More tomorrow.

[Today's unlovely slice of hot doggerel is served up (stinking & steaming) by guest-poster, Tuppenceworth stalwart, and occasional fustar.info football correspondent - Fergal Crehan. Take 'er away, FC.]

It is generally the case in writing that if you don't attempt anything too fancy, if you stick to the simple task of putting one word after another in some sort of coherent way, you can't go far wrong. Paramount on one's agenda must be getting the point across. Doing so with a minimum of fuss should be enough to make one's prose, if not exactly good, then certainly not bad either. Bad writing, almost invariably, is writing that thinks it's actually good. It reaches for the stars, and falls far, far short. How else to explain this, from The Sunday Independent's John Drennan:

“As O'Donoghue turned upon Labour matador Eamonn Gilmore — who had plunged the final piccolo between the shoulder blades of our hero…”

There are at least three things wrong with that sentence, but the main one is that a piccolo is a wind instrument. Our scribe probably thought he was doing something a bit classy, adding a touch of Hemmingway-esque Mediterraneana to the philistine pages of the Sindo. Thus does excess of ambition transcend the merely dull, and achieve the authentically bad.

Poetry is so much higher in the firmament than mere journalism, that it inevitably leads to poor writing. Most people just can't write the stuff. Even good poets miss the mark occasionally. But bad poetry is still readily identifiable as poetry. One senses that the poet at least had an idea of what she was trying to do. Occasionally though, one comes across something so bad that one must wonder if the poet had access to actual poetry, or was merely working from memory of a poem glimpsed many years before, and dimly. Had he, in fact, never seen a poem at all? Was he relying on second hand accounts from those better-travelled than he?

William Topaz McGonagall is considered by many to be the worst poet ever. These pages have already paid tribute to him, and to his masterpiece, "The Tay Bridge Disaster". Today, I prefer to look at one of his lesser known pieces, a tribute to his (long-lost) brother poet, Shakespeare.

Immortal! William Shakespeare, there's none can you excel,
You have drawn out your characters remarkably well,
Which is delightful for to see enacted upon the stage
For instance, the love-sick Romeo, or Othello, in a rage;
His writings are a treasure, which the world cannot repay,
He was the greatest poet of the past or of the present day
Also the greatest dramatist, and is worthy of the name,
I'm afraid the world shall never look upon his like again.
His tragedy of Hamlet is moral and sublime,
And for purity of language, nothing can be more fine
For instance, to hear the fair Ophelia making her moan,
At her father's grave, sad and alone….
In his beautiful play, "As You Like It," one passage is very fine,
Just for instance in the forest of Arden, the language is sublime,
Where Orlando speaks of his Rosilind, most lovely and divine,
And no other poet I am sure has written anything more fine;
His language is spoken in the Church and by the Advocate at the bar,
Here and there and everywhere throughout the world afar;
His writings abound with gospel truths, moral and sublime,
And I'm sure in my opinion they are surpassing fine;
In his beautiful tragedy of Othello, one passage is very fine,
Just for instance where Cassio looses his lieutenancy
… By drinking too much wine;
And in grief he exclaims, "Oh! that men should put an
Enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains."
In his great tragedy of Richard the III, one passage is very fine
Where the Duchess of York invokes the aid of the Divine
For to protect her innocent babes from the murderer's uplifted hand,
And smite him powerless, and save her babes, I'm sure 'tis really grand.
Immortal! Bard of Avon, your writings are divine,
And will live in the memories of your admirers until the end of time;
Your plays are read in family circles with wonder and delight,
While seated around the fireside on a cold winter's night.”

"An Address to Shakespeare" manages to suggest at the same time that the author is both familiar with Shakespeare and entirely ignorant of all literature. While he does show some passing acquaintance with certain moments in the Shakespearean oeuvre, he has little to say about any of them except to note that they are “particularly fine”. “Particularly” is an odd choice of word here, given that he is less interested in describing any such moments as in simply enumerating them. The poet having said nothing on what made them fine, we may guess that they have been chosen at random, and used as an occasion for the poem itself. Which would be fine had he used the occasion as a jumping-off point for something ambitious. But the poem is resolutely earth-bound, “I Love Shakespeare”, with McGonagall in the Stuart Maconie role, shunting snippet after snippet with a perfunctory remark.

It is this half-arsedness that is most striking, and ultimately most heroic about this poem. Nothing in there is outrageously bad on its own, apart perhaps from the deadening repetition of the word “fine”, but there's not a single line that couldn't quite easily be removed. To be fair, you couldn't say that about "The Tay Bridge Disaster". Often, even good writers will throw in a line for the sake of a rhyme. But in the "Address", every line seems that way. Indeed, the entire poem is a piece of filler, written without any apparent zest, as if someone had given McGonagall 30 minutes to knock out something about Shakespeare and wouldn't take no for an answer.

Why did he choose that particular scene from Shakespeare? Why write that particular line? Why, in fact, write the poem at all? Some writers are doomed to be in thrall to a muse that cruelly ignores their love. Though talentless, they display at least an affinity for talent. They know the good stuff when they see it. In McGonagall we have a man who, though he devoted his life to poetry, had no understanding of it whatsoever. He wrote hundreds of poems, not one of which ever gave the merest suggestion that he was barking up the right tree, few hinting that any pleasure was taken in their composition. It was as if, having decided he was a poet, he applied himself to it as a job, trudging through his “duties” without relish, like a time-serving civil servant. You could never call him talented, and most days you'd be hard put to say what his function in the office was at all, but his attendance record was perfect.

Take Jan Provoost's Christian Allegory (1510-15) for instance. Brimming with the thrown-together, jumble-of-images, pseudo-meaningful charm of a C-grade Leaving Cert "imaginative composition".

All the usual suspects are present and correct. Lamb & dove: Super-cute! Mighty sword of righteousness: Awesome! Giant fuzz-encrusted all-seeing eye: Spooky! Weird sleepy-looking monocular ovoid cheese thing (with a pair of jutting hands): Fuck!

Oh, and giant bowling ball? Confusing!

The interweb may often be an ugly, querulous and hate-filled place, but one of its undeniable beauties is this. No matter how outré or perverse your particular enthusiasms are, you're always only a click or two away from (virtually) rubbing up against some other soul who shares them. Suddenly no-one's a weirdo…because everyone is.

It was not ever thus. I mean, consider the middle years of the nineteenth century. Top hats. Monocles. Fusty old patriarchs spoiling everyone's fun. And, worst of all, they didn't even have dial-up. Most people were lucky to have wind-up.

And so it was that the likes of Scots-Canadian James McIntyre (sometime poet and furniture maker) exercised their enthusiasms alone. Ostracised from their fellows by what probably seemed to them (interweb-less as they were) uniquely peculiar passions. Few pieces of verse have captured the isolating nature of maverickness and eccentricity better than McIntyre's deliciously mature and creamy “Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds”.

We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go
To the great Provincial Show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.

May you not receive a scar as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great World's show at Paris.

Of the youth beware of these,
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek, then songs or glees
We could not sing, oh! queen of cheese.

We'rt thou suspended from balloon,
You'd cast a shade even at noon,
Folks would think it was the moon
About to fall and crush them soon.

Ok. So the guy liked cheese. A lot. More than is (or, presumably, was) conventional. But so what? Is cheese less worthy a subject for rime than, say, love? Or death? Or heavenly cherubim flitting hither and yon 'neath the arch of a beauteous rainbow?

This was, after all, no ordinary cheese. It was a four tonne behemoth deemed worthy of display (before an agog public) "at a Toronto exposition circa 1855″.¹ It was, in other words, the Godzilla of cheeses. A thing awe-inspiring. A thing beautiful but terrible to behold. A thing that dangled precariously over the cynical heads of cheese sceptics (threatening to "fall and crush them soon").

Anyway…the hour grows late-ish and I feel the muse swell within me. So before I slip into the sleeping bag of Morpheus I must away and pen some purple poesy on Yop, Monster Munch, Donkey Kong Jr, and all the other wonders that sometimes make life not totally suck.

1. Or so my copy of Kathryn & Ross Petras's Very Bad Poetry tells me [back]

Blogging is, as we all know, dead. Deeeaaaddddddd! Face-down dead in a pool of digital sick. Chunks of spewed code coating the virtual bathroom floor. A trail of "1s" and "0s" dribbling out its nose. Yuck.

Shocked & surprised? I thought you might be. So I'll repeat it.

Blogging isn't dead. Hang on…that came out a bit wrong. Well, it's one or the other. Or both. Or neither. Hmmm.

Anyway, if you fancy a spot of doomed and frenzied partying aboard a (possibly) sinking ship, then head to Connacht on the 27th of March. There you will find the last ever Irish Blog Awards (rust-covered, barnacle-encrusted, and leaking its final drops of oil) chugging sadly into Galway docks.

Go here to nominate your faves – from the mouldering ranks of the undead.

Like most (unintentionally) "bad art" (define those words how you will) – bad verse pulls its audience in at least two directions. With one tug it produces giddy thrills – leading readers down a colourful, rubbish-strewn path to hilarity. With another yank it breaks your bloody heart – as the poet's wobbly (and painfully sincere) edifice of fragile beauty collapses under the strain of bathos, sentimentality, naïveté and sheer (tragic) incompetence.

As the dust clears, there (in his/her creation's ruins) the poet lies. Naked and sobbing (and covered in piss…for some reason). An artless soul torn open & laid bare for a jeering world to see.

Yet, for all that, "bad verse" offers pleasures beyond the mere mocking guffaw. It can be vital and rousing. Refreshing and (over-used term this) life-affirming. Deliciously weird and delightfully demented. It can (like a gormless but flukeily effective lover) touch parts that "good" and worthy poetry often struggles to reach.

And so, when time permits – and the mood and muse take me (passionately) – "Hot Doggerel" will have a poke through the detritus of bad verse, schmaltzy pop-poesy, melodramatic and sensational balladry etc., etc. I don't know what we'll find exactly, but, y'know, it's…um…all about the journey. Or something.

First up – a classic from the Boys Own/Ripping & Romantic Yarn/East as exotic "Other" school. J Milton Hayes' (hugely popular and much parodied) The Green Eye Of The Little Yellow God (of which, we've spoken before).

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

He was known as "Mad Carew" by the subs at Khatmandu,
He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;
But for all his foolish pranks, he was worshipped in the ranks,
And the Colonel's daughter smiled on him as well.

He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,
The fact that she loved him was plain to all.
She was nearly twenty-one and arrangements had begun
To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

He wrote to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;
They met next day as he dismissed a squad;
And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do
But the green eye of the little Yellow God.

On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance,
And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars:
But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,
Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,
And a gash across his temple dripping red;
He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day,
And the Colonel's daughter watched beside his bed.

He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;
She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;
He bade her search the pocket saying "That's from Mad Carew,"
And she found the little green eye of the god.

She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do,
Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;
But she wouldn't take the stone and Mad Carew was left alone
With the jewel that he'd chanced his life to get.

When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,
She thought of him and hurried to his room;
As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air
Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro' the gloom.

His door was open wide, with silver moonlight shining through;
The place was wet and slipp'ry where she trod;
An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,
'Twas the "Vengeance of the Little Yellow God."

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

Right. So on the face of it, this appears little more than a vivid and effective bit of catchy, derring-do melodrama. Carew (the passionate and impulsive anti-hero) shows his wild and raging love for the Colonel's daughter by risking all to bring her a rare (mystical) treasure. The resulting doom (and its attendant casual racism: bloody revenge by murderous and uncilivised natives) only adds spice to the lusty romance. Fan me down, Aunt Margaret. My cheeks grow flushed. The end.

All perfectly jolly and disposable, as (the admirably unpretentious) J Milton Hayes himself seems to admit:

I wrote The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God in five hours, but I had it all planned out. It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be, but it does what it sets out to do. It appeals to the imagination from the start: those colours, green and yellow, create an atmosphere. Then India, everyone has his own idea of India. Don't tell the public too much. Strike chords. It is no use describing a house; the reader will fix the scene in some spot he knows himself. All you've got to say is 'India' and a man sees something. Then play on his susceptibilities.

But, in almost the same breath, JMH hints at more….

His name was Mad Carew. You've got the whole man there. The public will fill in the picture for you. And then the mystery. Leave enough unsaid to make paterfamilias pat himself on the back. 'I've spotted it, he can't fool me. I'm up to that dodge. I know where he went.' No need to explain. Then that final ending where you began. It carries people back. You've got a compact whole. 'A broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew' They'll weave a whole story round that woman's life. Every man's a novelist at heart. We all tell ourselves stories. That's what you've got to play on.

Key sentence? "They'll weave a whole story round that woman's life". Indeed they (or I) will. For really, when you sit in the corner for hours and hours and scratch your face and head and think about it all, the poem is (despite superficial appearances) really all about the Colonel's daughter (oh…and a colonial stereotype of India, I suppose). Carew is simply a pot-boiled agent of thick-headed adventure (motivated by a bad case of the horn). Off he goes, like an eejit tornado. Wrecking himself. Sorely pissing off others.

The Colonel's daughter is left to pick up the pieces, live with the guilt, and lovingly tend yer man's grave. While he's in a British Raj Valhalla doing, one supposes, similarly insane shit – for all eternity.

This quote says it all and says it well:

And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do
But the green eye of the little Yellow God.

Jestingly, she told him. Jestingly. She was joking you stupid idol-raping fool! Playing (with a nod & a wink: both ignored) the part of a spoiled and pouty debutante. Flirting with him. Taking the piss out of grand gestures. Mad Thick Carew – square-jawed literalist that he was – took the whole thing at face value. With predictably disastrous results.

Less, then, an unapologetically jingoistic and swoon-inducing romance. More a subtle and pointed satire/critique of traditional (block-headed) male "heroism".

J Milton Hayes? Lost feminist icon? Maybe. Just maybe.

January – as the fella said – is a gelid month. A hiemal, brumal, dismal and tenebrous month.

A month when the dankest and most abysmal recesses of the human mind kick into hideous half-life. Spewing forth noxious brain-fumes and strangling our seedlings of hope with worriment. A month of bad thoughts. A month of Dreadful Thoughts.

On that cheery & heartening note let's bid welcome to 2010 by bolting the doors, stoking the fires, and settling down to read (and chatter about) some choice spooky stories of yore.

For the fourteenth meeting of our Dreadful Thoughts Story Club we finally cast our baleful gazes in the direction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft – the mad 'n' bad warlock prince of 20th Century horror. He of the sinuously baroque and esoteric lingo. He of the awesome cosmic dread. He of the…er…not liking the non-white races so much.

Your (double-bill) reading assignments are as follows. See y'all next Monday.

Stories:

a) "The Outsider" (html)

b) "The Rats in the Walls" (html), (html), (pdf).

Discussion Opens: Monday, 11th January @ 9 p.m. (and runs for seven full days).

P.S: In case anyone's staring at this post, waiting for action – the discussion thread is actually located here. Refocus your gazes.