26 May 2005

A pig shat in my head...

But it was all in a good cause. Champions! Champions!



Mod out.

24 May 2005

Festival time is almost over...

May is Brighton Festival month, when everything comes with free Art, be it face painted and slightly annoying, or overpriced and booked up by the time you see the program anyway. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it traditionally passes me by in a whirl of interesting but ultimately unnecessary posters, posh coffee and gallery trails. So it's been this year, excepting the one thing to which I was (deprecating cough) actually invited. A belated plug follows...



My friend Mr. isthisyou has put together a superb exhibition of graffiti art, including a lot of things that I've noticed, loved and photographed (if I've managed to remember where I saw them and they haven't been painted over in the intervening time) over the last few years. Some good pictures of the exhibition can be seen here, including the pics I've posted.



The two above are by Void, and are usually spotted as just fairly perfunctory black magic-markered outlines of yer monster, but once you notice one, you notice thousands all over town, watching you and keeping his own tabs on your activites...
Well, that's the way I feel.

The stuff below is by Hutch, who's my personal favourite. I must have walked past his Johnny Rotten off London Road a thousand times.



So in case anyone is near enough, there's one more weekend to go, at the Open Gallery in the middle of town, just behind Boots, 11am-5pm. Map.

Mod out.

20 May 2005

Saddam in his pants

Gosh, what a storm in a hypocritical teacup. The Sun claiming it's doing it's bit to shame a tyrant (nothing to do with sales then) and the Americans suddenly getting interested in the Geneva Convention to conceal the fact that their big shiny war machine can't stop some cleaner with a polaroid snapping away.

I'm not sure where I stand, and not sure if I care in any case. I believe in justice for all, even Saddam, but also don't really care if he's photographed in his pants. I don't buy the Sun anyway, not since Hillborough and the lies they printed.

No, what's really got me is the Bush administration bringing up the Geneva Convention for the first time. Um. Hi there, George. What about Guantanamo Bay? Or about the countries to which you export suspects so they can be interrogated using less than constitutional methods? It's kind of funny to hear you getting all self-righteous about some petty pictures of an old man in his pants. But not funny haha really. More funny you-sick-fascist-fucks.

So, Dubya vs. the Sun. A match truly made in hell. May they both lose... not sure how that's going to work really, but it's the only outcome I'll be happy with.

Mod out.

19 May 2005

The Star Trek/Hiphop crossover

Today comes courtesy of Viktor Vaughn, aka MF Doom. His album is full of them...

"Next experiment
Twelve strands from double helix
No, I haven't seen Kes, Neelix
'Oh yeah? You stay away from her with those lyrics'
Please, ain't nobody fucking after her
I'm out of here as soon as I fix the flux capacitor"
- "Dead Mouse".

There should be more of this, instead of endless lurid tales of braggadocio and sexism. Oh well.

Mod out.

17 May 2005

Ivor Cutler



A recent discovery (via a superb BBC4 documentary) who's very quickly become one of my favourite people. Anyone who's done over 20 Peel Sessions , appeared in Magical Mystery Tour and played the Royal Festival Hall at 81 is clearly doing something right. But what exactly? At first listen, it's a rickety Scottish gentleman either reading some lightly surreal poetry or playing the harmonium - badly - and singing some fairly monotonous tunes over the top.

After a few pieces, though, you realise you've never heard anything like this. Completely deadpan delivery and some really odd content - bats play Brahms, fathers take children to Hypocrisy Day and good old fashioned words like poltroon or alum get an airing. He tells oddly compelling shaggy dog stories about a darkly humorous childhood. It's not to everyone's tastes, certainly, but it's a million miles away from the shiny happy people we have to stomach these days, which is good enough for me.

My favourite song is The River Bends...

"Where the river bends, the blind men fall in,
Where the river bends, the blind men fall in,
Where do they come from, the blind men,
Why do they all fall in?
I don't know, and neither do they.

I walked round to where the river bends, and I fell in,
I walked round to where the river bends, and I fell in,
Where do I come from?
Why did I fall in?
I don't know.

We all went back to the bank,
And fell in again and again, and again and again and again and again,
And again and again."



...some kind of Glasgow zen maybe? Fair play to him, in any event.

Mod out.


Ivor Cutler yahoo group

In a decade of bad haircuts,

Paul Simon had one of the worst...



Deary deary me. It's almost as if he was embarrassed for Art Garfunkel and was trying to draw attention away from Art's "finger in light socket" look. Still when you're a genius you can get away with these things. Mozart had a mullet, of course.

Mod out.

16 May 2005

Is there anything finer in life...

...than strolling down to the cinema of a Friday evening to meet one's girl and watch a Woody Allen film?

Ok, there is that. And that. Ok, ok, point taken. But that was the thought that got me onto this site. A late-night screening of Manhattan at one of the finest little cinemas in the world, and it's minutes from where I live. Good carrot cake, too.

Mod out.