28 July 2005

How to be English part 48

1. Following on from part 47 below, decide to try to go to the cricket again, getting in free with your useless ticket from the rained off match.
2. Leave your flat thinking that while the skies are grey they're a kind of bright grey.
3. Wait for the bus, noticing as you do that you can no longer see the horizon out to sea.
4. Realise on the bus that a serious sea mist is descending.
5. Arrive at the ground to find it's so misty that you can't see the middle.
6. Go for a pint, and enjoy that instead.

So that's twice this month an attempt to watch sport has led to drinking instead. I should cut out the middle event and stick to the pub.

In other news, Police give a 74 year old Muslim woman a heart attack by pointing guns at her 12 year old grandson. It's gonna get worse before it gets better...

Mod out.

27 July 2005

Hiphop lyric of the day

This has been making me chuckle for weeks. From "Gangster Boogie" by Toddy Tee and Mix Master Spade (no, really), which also blatantly and gloriously samples Dame David Bowie's "Fame", comes this lyrical gem...

"The high rollers of rap are back in your town
So let's rock this boogie with the woogie-oogie breakdown"

The woogie-oogie breakdown. That well known LA dance step. Maybe. But then what does rhyme with boogie? It's a tough life being an MC. I'd imagine. Storming tune all in, though.

(Drunk) mod out.

12 July 2005

Well, it made me laugh

Courtesy of McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the best designed site on the web (ie it's black and white and uses words all proper like), David Litt gives us...

The Lyrics to the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire" if they were written by a Muskrat instead of by Billy Joel

Genius. I looked into the possibility of picking up copies of the McSweeney's magazine over here, but it seems unlikely. I guess I'll try to pick up a few secondhand until the postage costs bankrupt me.
As a result of this and other sources, I've been on a bit of a Dave Eggers kick lately. Until recently he did a column in the Saturday Guardian called "Short Short Stories", which was unfailingly brilliant and also perfectly pitched for my average attention span on a Saturday morning. My favourite one is here, it's all about how bears don't like E.M. Forster and I refuse to believe you haven't got the 60 seconds it'll take to read it. Click. Go on. I'm not going to say anything interesting for the rest of the post, you might as well take off now. Go on.

It occurs to me I once knew all the lyrics to "We Didn't Start the Fire" off by heart. The shame.

Mod out.

05 July 2005

The Single of the Year (and possibly the Decade)

A couple of months ago I was stumbling around in my usual rubbish waking manner, listening to the Phill Jupitus show, when a bouncy punk tune came on. To my amazement I started bopping around like some kind of teenager on bad speed. I spent the rest of the day humming the chorus...

"Cos he said they'd live in New York
And the stars would be their own,
She was Debbie Harry
He was Joey Ramone"

In self-defence I googled it and found that it wasn't out for 2 weeks. Aarrgh. In the intervening time I did wonder whether it was just one of those things and whether I'd actually like it when it finally arrived, but of course I did. And I still do. I had to exercise extreme self-control at the station last week to prevent myself from pogoing in front of other commuters when it came on my headphones.

So, without further ado, the Single of the Year (and possibly the Decade) is...



Debbie Loves Joey by Helen Love, off their Bubblegum Killers EP.

Imagine if the Pretenders met the Stranglers, had a snog in Cardiff and drank some scrumpy. Go on. You see? The other tracks are great too - one includes the killer line "She says 'You're as dull as the Stereophonics'". Woohoo! Give these women some medals and chart exposure. Beats Chris Martin wetting himself any day.

Mod out.

04 July 2005

How to be English part 47

1. Get tickets to a cricket match, in this case a 20/20 evening match featuring Sussex vs. Middlesex.
2. Make sure you have any or all of the following - waterproofs, umbrellas, newspaper (for reading and/or drying your seat), pork pies, fruit, bottles of water, a fatalistic attitude to the weather.
3. Turn up to said game in the rain among cheerful crowds of punters hoping for the best.
4. Sit for half an hour while they take the covers off about a third of the ground. Spend the time thinking about how driving those little tractors all over the field looks kind of fun.
5. Enjoy 5 overs of cricket, even though pajamas aren't the coolest things to wear under any circumstance. Endure blasts of shit euro-techno every time a boundary is struck or over ends.
6. Sip a one pound cup of tea while it rains on you for 20 minutes. Eat your pork pies while the covers go on, and eventually come off. Try to decipher a sound system they've clearly borrowed from a local parish fete.
7. Enjoy a further 3 balls of cricket before the rain starts again.
8. Decide to head for home as the rain falls even harder, learning on the way out that 6 overs of cricket constitutes a game, and therefore you won't be getting a refund on the 34 overs of cricket you didn't see.
9. Shrug at the penny-pinching bastards who run Sussex CCC, and go for a pint.

Where else would this happen? Anywhere else there would be a goddam riot until we got a refund, dancing girls, and cake. Oh well.

Mod out.

03 July 2005

Live 8

Sigh. I didn't want to feel this way. I wanted to spend yesterday glued to my tv for pop-tastic moments and the feeling that for once culture could change the world. Sadly, it wasn't the case. From the moment Bono started singing the words to "Blackbird" (badly) over the chords to "One", it got right on my nerves. Obviously Coldplay up next didn't help matters. But I wasn't expecting to like too many of the acts, it did have to appeal to as many people as possible and apparently Primal Scream are offensive to middle England. Can't think why.

No, what really got me was the endless hyping of the event by everyone involved. Every act was "fantastic", "unbelievable", "superb", the day was "memorable", "life-affirming", "astounding" and tons of other tired superlatives. I guess they had airtime to fill but it doesn't excuse them. It's the old adage that if you keep being told what a great time you're having then you can't have one at all. Or is that just me?

And the guff being spouted by the people onstage. I got in last night just in time to hear Natalie Portman giving the Dave Matthews Band the kind of welcome speech usually reserved for Nelson Mandela or human rights campaigners in Burma. Jesus. David Beckham introducing Robbie Williams has to be the lowest point of this young century and made me shout "fuck off" about 10 times in a row. I was drunk, but it needed saying.

I'm sure it's all done a lot to raise awareness of the issues. I have no problem with that. It's just the small matter of popular culture being so fucking lame and so reliant on everyone telling everyone else how wonderful it is. Emperor's new clothes syndrome, in a nutshell. When the Who came on and stormed through "Won't Get Fooled Again" it was like the gods had descended to show the pygmies how to do it properly.

So all in all, I could have done without it. If it has the desired effect then who cares what I think, of course. I still reckon some kind of constructive torture involving honey and fire ants would be more effective on the G8 leaders though.

Mod out.