"And it's a Pink Moon..."

Prague

No-one tells me anything. I was in the pub earlier when I noticed some people in the street pointing at the sky. Either it was the start of a bohemian production of War of the Worlds, or someone was naked up a lamp post. So I went outside and lo, it was a lunar eclipse in progress. Why don't people tell me these things?

All over the North Lanes people were standing outside pubs talking and looking at the sky, some trying, and mostly failing, to explain it to each other. I shared a Bonnie Tyler joke with someone while drinking a Lagavulin. Had to be done.

I was going to name this post after the Pink Floyd album. But then I went and sat on a bench across the street and watched it turning pink, or perhaps orangey-red if you're going to be pedantic, and thought of Nick Drake. Pink Moon's going to get us all, people...

Mod out to check on the celestial alignments for Doomsday.

PS Ok, so I can't resist it. "There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact it's all dark".

Billboard

Lovely. C/o the Gibson board.

Francis Wheen's Top 10 Delusions

Read this. He rants so much more elegantly than I ever could.

Pun of the day

I went to a stamp meeting tonight. Don't ask. Really. But it was sort of a family obligation and it ended up being mildly interesting, if only because I got talking to this guy who'd been a botanist and lived for many years in Borneo.

Apparently there's a family of trees out there with the latin name Fordia - Fordia Splendidissima, Fordia Coriacea, and so on (google tells me). Apparently this chap's friend who was constantly discovering new species discovered a new member of this family, and named it Fordia Cortina.

Genius. And a joke that will only apply for a few more decades before no-one will get it. See Ford Prefect.

From Shaolin to the Big Easy

I haven't checked out dj BC's site in a while, and there's lots of new mashed-up goodness to download there. Most thrillingly, Wu Orleans, a 10 track compilation of Staten Island's finest with various funky Louisiana grooves.

It's all a bit silly, but none the worst for it, and the final track "When the Meth Comes Marching In" does exactly what it says on the tin. Download it here.

I got the whole thing from a torrent, although it was sporadic and took a while to complete. In case anyone cares.

Mod out for gumbo, g.

PS In other news, I was right about 2000AD according to the BBC. And who else are you going to trust?

Pictures of New York

Fantastic old shots here. Make sure you have plenty of time, there are loads...

I'm So Excited...

...and I just can't hide it, yadda yadda. Marmite Guinness. Guinness in my Marmite. Marness. Guinnite. mmm.

Although I haven't tried it yet and it might be minging. Doubt it, though.

Next up, Earl Grey spliffs and pork crackling crisps (proper ones not pork scratchings, that is). Laphroaig chocolates already exist, hallelujah.

The Wisdom of Lasco

Whoever he may be.

True

Arf!

Health and Safety would have a fit

Ever since seeing Inside Man I've loved the Chaiya Chaiya song, but I've only just found the video. Bollywood dancing on moving trains. It's just the newest thing.

Link

Mod out to see if Southern Rail will allow bad body-popping on the 9.14 to Lewes.

"Ralph Richardson got stuck in the lift"

Occasionally life throws up unexpectedly storming evenings that are above and beyond your normal "see your mates and drink a bit" type night out. It was a friend's birthday last night, and all I knew was that it was a joint thing in someone else's house on the seafront. We pulled up to find that not only was the party was being held at a beautiful mathematically tiled terrace house in one of the posher crescents, but it was the one where Laurence Olivier used to live. Tumbling out of a transit van clutching off-licence carrier bags was clearly the only way to arrive.

God, what a house. The stairs just went up and up, every floor full of antique furniture and so much space. Even the plumbing was posh, apparently. There was a dumb waiter going right from the basement to the (?)third floor, and one detail we picked up was that Sir Ralph Richardson got stuck between floors in it once. I'm sure he played many important roles in his long career, but I know him best as god in Time Bandits.

We mooched around and stood in the kitchen for a while before it got a bit crowded and so we liberated a few bottles and headed upstairs. A sitting room had a gorgeous oak dining room table in the back that amazingly no-one had colonised. Morrissey was singing "Irish Blood, English Heart", which made me happy. We set up camp, using pieces of paper as makeshift coasters (it was a really nice table) and got into it. Over the next few hours random people wandered in and out or sat on the sofas over by the windows. Some introduced themselves, sat down and had a few drags on our jazz cigarettes. Tales were swapped (one of the hosts had a good line in stories about free parties and festivals) and the world set to right. There was dancing downstairs which a few people indulged in, but mainly we stayed put, occasionally foraging for more wine. It seemed like the best table in Brighton, and probably was.

For the first time in my ungrateful life I might even write a thank you note after a party. Scenes like that don't come along too often for us mortals.

Talking to a Scotsman about Serifs

In the course of my working day today I had a conversation with an old man about the typeface Joanna, designed by Eric Gill. We both agreed that the use of flat serifs on an otherwise classically-based font helped draw the eye along the page.

So there you go. Of course the thing about Eric Gill is that he used to regularly have sex with his children, which long after his death came as a bit of a surprise to the world considering a large portion of his work is religious in tone and he lived for much of his live in monastically styled artist's communities.

So does it affect his art and designs? Well, yes, because he had sex with his children. And no, cos they're some of the finest creative pieces of the twentieth century and art is art is art.

The biographer who uncovered all this in the 1980s writes a good article in the Guardian about it here, and as she comments, interest in him has actually increased since her book came out. The public love a bit of scandal.

But his influence was so widespread, and his sculptures and book illustrations so prolific, that it would be hard to get rid of them. Apart from the fact that his daughters grew up apparently well-adjusted, history is full of nasty shit that you can't escape. So I think it's all ok. And as you can see from one of his fantastically out-there wood engravings for the Song of Solomon below, sanctity and shagging were for him much the same thing. Genius is genius, even if it's not very nice.

A Peek at Mod Towers

Some friends were over for dinner last night, and their little boy was clicking away with their new camera. He took this random shot that came out rather well, and I thought I'd post it with a brief commentary into why these people are on my wall, especially as recent developments combined with an increasing need for wallspace mean they won't be there much longer...

The middle one is the simplest. The Stone Roses. 'Nuff said.

Top right is her from Echobelly, not Audrey Hepburn as many people have assumed. I had a serious Britpop crush on her back in the day, and old habits die hard, not least cos it's been up in every room and flat I've had since 1994.

And on the left is a shot from the film If..., from right at the end where our heroes get up on the roof and machine gun all the people coming out of chapel. If that seems a bit harsh, I'd advise sitting through the whole thing, a savage indictment of Public school culture and conformity. Having had to listen to the Kipling poem from which the title is taken at the start of every term at my own boarding school, I can't help but sympathise with Malcolm McDowell every time I watch it. That's not to say that taking to the rooftops to machine gun people on Speech Days is necessarily the best course of action, but it does remind me who to hate. (The Church, the Military and all the other people who tell you how to think, in a nutshell). And not, as ever, to believe the hype.

Mod out of bluetack.

Late Album of the Year entry

Ages ago Ford burned me "Rabbit Fur Coat" by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins. Being an ungrateful sort I didn't listen to it until last week, when getting a new hifi in our stockroom at work meant I could listen to cd's for the first time. So I put it on, and then put it on again, and it's pretty much been on ever since. It's just under 40 minutes long, so that's a lot of plays even since last week.

The first thing I noticed were the lyrics, pithy little verses with a certain cynicism and humour. Backing singers that chime in to emphasise lyrics, not just to make everything louder. And the tunes have catchy hooks and lines you remember ("my dad starts growing Bob Dylan's beard"), which is all I ask (is it so hard? Radiohead? hmm?). The songs wouldn't be out of place sung by either Emmylou Harris or some modern bunch of scruffy indie kids. Dolly Parton should definitely cover "Big Guns".
Late in the day, under the radar, Album of the Year round the Mod's place.

Hype Machine will probably get you some tunes, "Rise Up with Fists" or "The Charging Sky" are my faves but they're all good.
Also, the "Rise Up with Fists" video, briefly featuring Sarah Silverman. Which is always a good thing.

Mod off to google the b-sides.

Some Quotes from "Yes Minister"

"'The matter is under consideration' means we have lost the file. 'The matter is under active consideration' means we are trying to find the file."

"Foreign Office Honours: CMG - 'Call Me God'. KCMG - 'Kindly Call Me God'. GCMG - 'God Calls Me God'."

"It is only totalitarian governments that suppress facts. In this country we simply take a democratic decision not to publish them."

"The first rule of politics: never believe anything until it's been officially denied."

"Things don't happen just because Prime Ministers are keen on them. Neville Chamberlain was keen on peace."

"Politician's logic: We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do it."

"It was a good idea to partition countries like India and Cyprus and Palestine and Ireland as a part of their independence. It keeps them busy fighting each other so we don't have to have a policy about them."

"The Foreign Office is a hotbed of cold feet."

"Government is not a team. It is a loose confederation of warring tribes."

Two facts from the New Yorker

The American Embassy in Baghdad has just 6 fluent Arabic speakers (out of 1,000 employees).

The average American household owns 4 Bibles.

I'm. Not. Saying. A. Word.

Mod out (of patience for trying to feel sorry for America. Just a bit. Sorry).

Top Cat

I've been a fan of the wood engravings of Anatoly Kalashnikov (no relation, as far as I know) for several years, and have what seems to be the only collection of his bookplates in print, containing several hundred powerful modernist designs. I keep an eye out on eBay for them, and there aren't more than a few a year. I just got one there for what still seems a steal, especially as it's more than usually bonkers, and both cats and vodka are a few of my favourite things.

Here kitty kitty kitty...

Mod out and off to the picture framers.

Tramline 3 Smells of Pee

And other complaints from the Helsinki Complaints Choir...

Dude!!

That's, like, a totally rockin' tshirt you've got on...

And just in time for the Tenacious D film, too.

Powerstanced Mod out.

The Time is Right for Dancing in the Street

"The Republican beast is fuckin' dead! Twelve years of that rampaging Republican fuckin' elephant-beast finally brought to its knees. Yes! You're dead, you fucker! You fuck! You fuck, you're dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! We hate you! Hate you! Now do you know it? Now do you feel it? Feel the fuckin' hate. Feel it. Call off your dogs. Call your little Vietnamese pot-bellied Rush Limbaugh back to your fold, you demon fuck! Bring Pat Buchanan back! Call him back, you lost! Finally...the Republican beast-elephant brought to its fuckin' knees. 'Cause I feel like me and my friends and all the artists in the fuckin' country were like little pygmy tribes shootin' darts at that elephant for twelve years, and finally [elephant trumpeting, then crashing noise]. Do our little pygmy dance: [singing] Na na na na na na na! Na na na na na na na! Na na na! Yes!"
- Bill Hicks, 1993.

What he said.

Back to my Future

I've just discovered that 2000AD have all their covers scanned in. The one above is my all time favourite, from the beginning of the second "Bad Company" story. It was on the wall by my bed until I was about 22. (This one is my second favourite).

A few years ago I sold the four Bad Company graphic novels on ebay, and of course re-read them before doing so. It's an astonishing piece of work, drawing on many Vietnam movies as well as Conrad (and so of course Apocalypse Now), and a lot more complex that people would imagine. I found it too violent and slightly sick at 31, when I was 14 it was simply cool. Go figure.

Looking back at 2000AD, it was way more than a bunch of aliens or futuristic cops speaking in bubbles. The first time I read "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot I realised that a picture I'd cut out and had had on my wall for about 2 years featured a quote from it (from a strip called "Shadows" where a privileged woman loses her identity chip and thus her access to everything from hospitals and banks to her apartment building, all because the machines don't know who she is. Not so far-fetched these days...).
The last Strontium Dog story was basically the Holocaust set in a neo-fascist Britain, and warned of the dangers of having a set idea of "Britishness" that people (in this case mutants) could be excluded from. It referenced the KKK and Mosley and invented an entirely plausible set of icons for the state to champion, like Stonehenge and King Arthur. It probably helped me become the sceptical internationalist I am today.
Of course there was pap like Chopper, the sky-surfing champion, but even there his death was for me a moment of real shock. I still remember the series of wordless panels closing in from above onto his stationary board, inches from the finish line.

I'm glad it's still going, even though I haven't read it in about 15 years. We need sci-fi to tell us what to build next, and to illustrate that the future is just the past with fancy gadgets, so we'd better get thinking harder and knowing more.

Judge Mod.

When t'Internet breaks

I couldn't connect to the net last night. So I tidied up, cooked about 2 hours earlier than normal, drank beer and watched the Liverpool game, laughed at lot at The Secret Policeman's Ball (Sarah Silverman is a genius) and compiled a cd for Ford.

It was terrible. Thank god I'm back online staring blankly at this thing. mmm. Pixels...

Sedentary Mod.

PS El Reg reports that BT had a server problem last night. All over Britain people were tidying up, doing jigsaws or playing board games (maybe). Perhaps they could do it deliberately once a month to help us with our addiction...

An overlooked gem

Slightly hungover today, in a good way. Lunch is cooking, and the sun is shining. Some kind of Autumnal mood made me put on an album I haven't listened to in at least 5 years, First Fruits by Eggman. There are cellos, flutes and harmonies, the guitars cut in appropriately noisily and it's a beautiful little English rock album.

The fact that no-one's heard of it is hardly surprising, given the messy and entirely boring denouement of Britpop. In 1995 the Boo Radleys had their big number one album, and Creation were flush with all of Oasis' money. Maybe Alan McGee was high, maybe just in a good mood, but he let Sice (the Boo's lead singer) cut a solo album, which almost immediately slid into obscurity. Being a stupidly obsessive Boo's fan I bought it, and it's still a lovely collection of songs that have verses and choruses and the right number of eights in the middle and an edge of melancholy. Or at least that's how it seems today. I wish Autumn would get on with it, I'm bored of this Indian summer in October.

Mod inside and staying there.

I hate McDonalds, but...

...I'm not sure I feel this strongly. How much harm can one strawberry shake do?!

Seen here.

Mod out.

If I had 5 grand...

Still, Will Smith notwithstanding, the best scifi book of the century. (Ok, you could make a case for Fahrenheit 451, or A Canticle for Leibowitz, or Neuromancer, and I might even agree with you. But none of them have that dust jacket*).

Mod out.

*Although Fahrenheit 451 was issued in a limited edition with an asbestos cover. Which is pretty cool.

The Strangest Thing on the Internet

Now, I know, that's quite a claim. But it isn't really a product of the internet, so you could say it's the strangest thing in the world. But before you say, well, the world's quite a strange place, let me direct your attention to this video from 1978. Devo with "Jocko Homo". What the fuck?



I've become mildly obsessed with this video. Are we not men? We are Devo...

Mod out.

My favourite picture

I've been taking photographs of graffiti around Brighton for a couple of years now, defiantly using an old pentax in the face of the digital onslaught. It's something to do with not knowing what you've got right away, makes the experience less trivial. Or something.

But now someone's given me a scanner I can at least get them onto my laptop, and indeed onto my shiny new fotolog. The shot above is of one of Mr. Hutch's fine creations, off London road earlier in the summer. The best I've done so far, I think.

Marty Feldman would be 73.

Mod out.

Apache Boogie

From the dancers dressed as Native Americans to the moustache, it really covers all the bases of bad taste. Still better than the Shadows, though.

Mod out.

(Via Soul Sights).

Funny old world

Tony Bliar has the mark of the beast. Or of Dubya, anyway.

Vegan condoms.

Banksy in LA

Pictures

Some top stuff, but I do like the one of the Auction with the painting that reads "I can't believe any of you morons actually buy this shit". And with prices reputedly soaring into six figures, I can't either. It's cheaper to walk around London or check Wooster Collective. Still, good luck to him, and Brad Pitt has too much money anyway.

Mod out.

Just like Mousetrap*

But better. Originally created for a Japanese children's program (so not just bored physics students avoiding work).

Mod out.

(*That's Mousetrap the game, although no-one ever played it, just set it up and then found that a crucial bit was missing).

Gil Scott-Heron

I've been listening to some old records tonight that I haven't dug out since I needed daily political hits to get me through the shitfest that was the preamble to America's invasion of Iraq. Most mornings would start with a blast of Gil's "Work for Peace", or "B-Movie", where he compares the Reagan administration to a 50s black and white classic.

Even without his status as a progenitor of rap music, and one of America's most high profile black musicians, there's no doubt he's a fine poet, able to make you think and laugh in the same breath. So here's a quick sample of some of my favourite lines. Sadly as relevant now as in the past decades when they appeared.

"The Military and the Monetary,
get together whenever they think it's necessary,
they turn our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
they are turning the planet into a cemetery.

They took the honour from the honorary,
they took the dignity from the dignitaries,
they took the secrets from the secretary,
but they left the bitch in obituary.

The Military and the Monetary,
from thousands of miles away in a Saudi Arabian sanctuary,
had us all scrambling for our dictionaries,
cause we couldn't understand the fuckin' vocabulary.

Yeah, there was some smart bombs,
but there was some dumb ones as well.

The only thing wrong with Peace,
is that you can't make no money from it.

We hounded the Ayatollah religiously,
bombed Libya and killed Gaddafi's son hideously.
we turned our back on our allies the Panamanians,
and saw Ollie North selling guns to the Iranians.
watched Gorbachev slaughtering Lithuanians,
we better warn the Amish,
they may bomb the Pennsylvanians."

- "Work for Peace" (1994).

"A rat done bit my sister Nell
with Whitey on the moon
Her face and arm began to swell
but Whitey's on the moon
Was all that money I made last year
for Whitey on the moon?
How come there ain't no money here?
Hmm! Whitey's on the moon."

- "Whitey on the Moon" (1970).

"What has happened is that in the last 20 years,
America has changed from a producer to a consumer.
And all consumers know that when the producer names the tune,
the consumer has got to dance.
That's the way it is.

The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia.
They want to go back as far as they can
even if it's only as far as last week.
Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards.
And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment.
The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse
or the man who always came to save America at the last moment
- someone always came to save America at the last moment -
especially in B-movies.

And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future,
they looked for people like John Wayne.
But since John Wayne was no longer available,
they settled for Ronald Ray-Gun,
and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at
like a B-movie.

Come with us back to those inglorious days
when heroes weren't zeros.
Before fair was square.
When the cavalry came straight away
and all-American men were like Hemingway.
To the days of the wondrous B-movie.

As Wall Street goes, so goes the nation.
And here's a look at the closing numbers -
racism's up, human rights are down, peace is shaky,
war items are hot - the House claims all ties.
Jobs are down, money is scarce,
and common sense is at an all-time low on heavy trading.
Movies were looking better than ever and now no one is looking,
because we're starring in a B-movie.

And we would've rather had John Wayne."

- "B-Movie" (1981).

Mod out.

Top 5

Ford Prefect's top 5 Chanteuses list got me thinking, and so in a spirit of friendly disagreement and general "my 5 are better than his 5"-ness (although not nearly as contemporary), I give you my Favourite Five Female Singers...

5 - Audrey Hepburn. Not known for her singing, clearly, her inclusion here is due entirely to her rendition of Moon River in Breakfast at Tiffany's, which warms not just the cockles of my heart, but many other hard to reach parts as well.

4 - Roberta Flack. A relatively recent discovery for me, I found the above album in a thrift store in Brooklyn ($3!!) and bought it as much for the cover as for the fact that she's the "Killing Me Softly" lady. Full of gospel-tinged tunes and subtle arrangements, it totally blew me away.

3 - Joni Mitchell. Where would I be without Joni? Possibly the finest songwriter and certainly the best lyricist of her generation (and who's been better since?), she has the kind of voice to either scare you or excite you. Sometimes low and smokey, other times up in the stratosphere, she's always on target and never boring. Her style is often conversational and she does make you think she's telling you all this down the pub a lot of the time. I can't really believe she's only at 3, but...

2 - Ella Fitzgerald. This lady could sing the phone book and it would sound good. As musically perfect as anyone can be, her scats and improvised lines have to be heard repeatedly to be believed. She recorded pretty much everything in her long life, but you can't go wrong with her interpretations of either Duke Ellington or George Gershwin. The one above probably ain't bad, either.

1 - Aretha Franklin. The Queen of Soul, the best there is. I saw a clip a few years ago of one of those terrible VH-1 Diva events, with Mariah Carey and Alicia Keys and other wailing eejits giving it large, and on walked Aretha, in her 50s and the size of a small house, and in about 10 seconds had floored them all. Not with power, not with pitch, but with phrasing, craft, and the fact that she doesn't need to have big hair (and the rest) or appear nude on the front of Rolling Stone to sell records. I love her gospel albums even though I hate religion, and her version of Bridge Over Troubled Water is the best yet, but I'd recommend Aretha Sings the Blues - the first track, Drinking Again, will have you reaching for the spirits before she's finished the first verse. Which is a good thing.

And as Ford says, an honourable mention to Liz Fraser. Although she could have tried just a bit harder to make sense, if you ask me. Really. (tuts).

Mod out.

Butterscotch clouds

More youtube goodness, this time Prince on the Muppet Show being Very Silly Indeed. Ah, bless.




Purple Mod out.

It was a little bit frightening

Monks brawl during Peace rally

"A scuffle broke out... between saffron-robed monks and anti-war demonstrators at a peace rally in the Sri Lankan capital. About six or seven monks from a right-wing Buddhist faction had stormed the stage during a peace rally attended by about 1,000 people in the capital, Colombo, shouting pro-war slogans, an AP reporter at the scene said.
A member of Sri Lanka's parliament was addressing the crowd when the monks climbed on stage.
The monks unfurled banners reading "Take your protest to Kilinochchi," referring to the de facto rebel capital in northern Sri Lanka where hundreds have been killed in the last week..."

All together now - "Everybody was kung-fu fighting..."

Get on the Trane

The year is 1963. Over in Liverpool the Beatles are just getting started on learning their fourth and fifth chords. Much of the western world still thinks Elvis is about as far out as you can get, and the rest would probably mumble something about Shostakovich. But the more you look at the 20th century, the more that New York jazz in the 1960s seems about as good as it got. Before the excesses (and electricity) of the 70s when the politics and the fashion entirely obscured the tunes, it was a time when the gods were walking the earth, inventing new forms and movements sometimes weekly. No other music was this intense and creative, all the time, for years and decades. Let's not forget it was almost entirely improvised, and the charts and arrangements that started the ball rolling would've have scared the pants off any symphony orchestra.

Some people like Miles, others swear by Monk. I like them both. Sonny Rollins shook it up and you really can't ignore Charles Mingus (or he'll come and get you). However the John Coltrane Quartet made me a true believer about a decade ago and I've never looked back. His horn sounds like answers to questions I didn't know I'd asked, and I really can't put it clearer than that.

"Afro-Blue" is my favourite tune, the first track on Live at Birdland. I'm still pissed off I wasn't around to be there, frankly. McCoy Tyner playing the darkest chords yet heard, Elvin swinging it along with faint rumours of violence, Jimmy Garrison holding it together, and Trane riding the whirlwind and making it beautiful. This is from the Ralph Gleason show (he's the chap sitting by the piano looking fantastically out of place) and is one of the reasons for living...

Mod out.

Ees seelly, Senor

I went to see the new Jack Black film Nacho Libre yesterday. Ridiculous. Based on the admittedly far-fetched but true story of a Mexican priest who dons the cape and mask of a Mexican luchador to fight for money to feed the kids in his orphanage, there's probably a heart-warming tale with many examples of bravery and the best of the human spirit to be made of it all. But of course Black doesn't give a monkeys for all that and ditches all but the basic plot to make a film full of mugging, piss-poor accents and outrageous set-pieces that would have been rejected by the Chuckle Brothers as too flimsy.

If you liked School of Rock (and if you didn't, then don't come round Mod Towers expecting a warm welcome) or the mighty Tenacious D you'll love this. We all laughed like drains, and the sillier the pratfall or cheesy grin the more we laughed. Other highlights included a Penelope Cruz-a-like as a rather foxy nun and one of the best improvised soft rock ballads I've ever heard. Maybe you had to be there. Go see...

El Paranoico Mod out.

My Heroes

Protestors boarded a US Military plane at Prestwick Airport to perform a "citizen's inspection" for bombs. Story. Wonderful. The shame of how we let the US refuel their death filled cargo planes has been eating me up since the whole thing kicked off. Apparently it's not happening any more, but Bliar should be put in the stocks for a week for allowing it in the first place.

(Brought to my attention at The Scottish Patient).

Mod out.

Random

The best first lines of any novel ever...

"Coventry are fuck all. They've got a shit team and shit support. Hitler had the right idea when he flattened the place. The only good thing to come out of Coventry was the Specials and that was years ago. Now there's sweet FA and we've never had a decent row with Coventry. The best time was two years ago in Hammersmith with a bunch of Midland prototypes looking for a drink down the high street. About fifteen of them. Short cunts with noddy haircuts and tashes. Stumpy little legs and beer guts. Looked like they should be on Emmerdale Farm shafting goats for a living. They clocked us coming the other way and took off. You could smell shit over the petrol fumes, which is saying something in Hammersmith..."

And so it goes. From John King's The Football Factory, about a firm of Chelski hooligans. Don't bother with the film, but the book's got more energy than Irvine Welsh on a week-long speed bender.

Coventry City Football Club is 123.

Mod out.

Salvation and shrimp

I found the above sign at the Mountain Cycle Diaries. Apart from the fact that the quote is about as banal as you can get (or was Fear playing a game of Knock Down Ginger?) the food on offer is enough to make you want to get your salvation elsewhere. I've heard those hindus do a mean chicken dhansak with their karmic teachings. Never mind the Italians and their chianti-fueled masses. Still, when in Montana...

Mr. Mountain Cycle Diary is quite a chap, he's cycled all the way from Chile and is closing in on Alaska all the time. Someone should give him a medal, or at least buy him a pint.

Mod out (on his training wheels).

Sinfest

Since the halcyon days of Calvin and Hobbes, I've only really cared about Doonesbury, and only then because it's in the newspaper I read right next to the crossword. It's good, but. Randomly I've just discovered a new cartoon strip that's got me hooked. Sinfest isn't some dodgy porn site or new consumer campaign, but it does have something to say about both.

The cast features God (often doing puppet shows in the sky), the Devil, various bit part players such as the true believer above but mostly a couple of slacker friends, Slick and Monique, who don't have a lot of faith in anything except porn (Slick) and retail therapy (Monique). They argue, laugh, sit under trees and occasionally perform at open-mic nights, and generally carry on like, well, real people do. Or maybe that should be real people do in their heads.

Anyway. It's been making me laugh as I've worked my way from the very first strip back in 2000 (currently up to the middle of 2001) and the strip's creator Tatsuya Ishida has a nice line in everything I hold dear, from cynicism and manga to amusing stoners and gothic script. And every now and then a Chinese dragon turns up and has a scrap with God. What's not to like?

Mod out.

George Harrison sings "The Pirate Song"

Amazingly how quickly we've forgotten the cultural force that was Rutland Weekend Television. Ahaaarghhh me hearties!

One-eyed mad Captain Mod out.

"Yo, Blair..."

Overheard at the G8 conference. Confirming all our fears that Dubya's grip on facts and details is somewhat lacking, and all Blair cares about is continuing to be able to sit at the big boys' table. Excruciating.

Mod out.

Mastercard blues

Or rather reds and yellows. The Register has an amusing report on how Mastercard's new logo was achieved with reams of top class management bullshit.

"The launch of the new corporate brand identity follows an extensive analysis of the MasterCard brand and the value proposition it represents to constituents" is just one of the astonishingly content-free sentences... Well, it made me laugh.

mod out.


...I mean, brand and identity surely mean the same thing in this context. They use brand twice. "Value proposition"? Constituents? What are they, running for Parliament? Suckers of Satan's cock, every one of them.

ahem.

World Cup Sponsors...

Adidas, Budweiser, Ayaya (?), Coca-Cola, Continental tyres, Deutschetelekom, Emirates Airline, Fujifilm, Gillette, Hyundai, Mastercard, McDonalds, Philips, Toshiba.

Not one of these is a company I pretty much ever use, except by accident, ie my boss rather sarcastically bought me a razor for my birthday, or buying a secondhand tv. Kind of annoying that I can't actively boycott any of them, but I'm getting over it.

I guess it affects some people, but I don't know who. Do you? Does anyone out there actually buy a chocolate bar because of the pretty girl in the advert. I guess they must. Weird.

Anyway, death to the corporate whores who've nicked all the fans' tickets, and mine's a Guinness. I know they sponsor the Rugby, but I've been conveniently ignoring that for years, and anyway, Guinness Is Good For You.

Mixed message mod out.

I think my mother wrote this...

Pictures of Walls dot com

If I hear the word "metatarsal" one more time...

Top five reasons why I don't care about Wayne Rooney's injury:-

1. He looks like a potato
2. He used to play for Everton
3. The less Manchester United players in the England squad the better
4. I want Brazil to win the World Cup anyway
5. He'll need the time off to learn to spell for his £5million book deal

Kopite Mod out.

Unless You're Very Lucky

In a change to the published program I've decided to chance a foray into mp3 blogging. This week I bought on cd one of my favourite albums, Astronauts by the Lilac Time, which I also have on vinyl but for that reason never play. It's a gently melodic collection of wistful songs by Stephen Duffy, who's amazingly still better known for having the dodgy soubriquet of "Tintin" in an earlier incarnation, and also recently supping with the Devil and writing songs for Robbie Williams.

In between his band, named after a line in the Nick Drake song "River Man", made 4 albums of acoustic gems that couldn't have been less inkeeping with the late 80s and early 90s fashions for all things grunge and madchester if he'd started an Arthur Askey tribute band. But then Blur did that, eh.

So here is my favourite tune, and indeed one of my favourite songs by anyone ever. "Grey Skies and Work Things", as in:-

"I know what tomorrow will bring
- Unless you're very lucky -
Grey skies and work things"

Folky mod out.

The Kleptones are back

A mysterious entity from planet Brighton, Eric Kleptone has done it again, posting more bootleg and mashup tracks than you can shake a stick at. Unless you can shake a stick 33 times that is.

Preliminary highlights include Cold Turkey over Unfinished Sympathy, some silliness involving Careless Whisper, and INXS backing up Aerosmith. All melted around some delicious samples from movies and the six o'clock news and served on a bed of Rrrrrock.

Get 'em while they're hot!

Mod out.

Paddy's day humbug

I had a bit of an auld Pogues listen this morning, partly cos it's Paddy's day, and partly cos I listen to the Pogues all the time anyway. The lines below really stuck with me and put me right off going out tonight. Of course I will, but if anyone comes near me in one of those stupid green leprechaun hats they'd better beware.
Take it away Shane...

"Where 'ere we go we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees
From fear of Priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies"
- Thousands are Sailing.

Mod out (of patience with Ireland being marketed as a brand of jolly drunk people).

Witness the Fitness

By Hutch. Keep up with his stuff here.

"Mixin' up the Guinness with the raw egg yolk..."

Mod out.

Book of the month

I've just started Francis Wheen's "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World", and it's been getting me needlessly annoyed on the train morning and night all week. So far he's set out with laser precision exactly how little common sense our rulers have, and how much they rely on stupidity of every creed.

Obviously, Dubya and his god thing. Reagan and his horoscopes. But it isn't just the nazis, the Democrats are as bad. Hillary Clinton regularly met new-age gurus who spoon-fed her bullshit, Al Gore shrank from condemning "intelligent design" while running for President, and our own Tony Bliar is not only a christian but has swallowed hook, line and sinker all the management consultancy gibberish which now passes for New Labour policy.

And these are supposed to be the clever people. When he deals with the weirder end of things, from Sunday Tabloid astrologers to surreal-titled corporate personal growth books ("God wants you to be Rich"; "The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun"; "If Aristotle Ran General Motors") all you can do is laugh. It's a very funny book if it wasn't so depressing.

You'll find a much better precis here, so I'll leave you with a quote Wheen gives at the beginning from the German Philosopher Immanuel Kant:-

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! Dare to Know! "Have courage to use your own understanding!" - that is the motto of enlightenment."

Or, as Public Enemy put it, don't believe the hype...

Mod out.

Tis the Season to be Merry...

So why not pick up some drinking songs down at Locust St.?

As Fats Domino puts it...
"You know the sun never shines in whiskey heaven,
It rains Jack Daniels all the time"

Cheers!

Mod out.

Downloaded Tune of the Year

A bit early, but unless something really seismic passes my way quite soon the best thing I've nicked off the net all year has to be dj BC's mashup of Philip Glass and Dizzee Rascal, Stand Up Dance.

Philip Glass - minimalist New York composer famous for his "difficult" operas and repetitive motifs. Check his symphonies of the David Bowie albums Low and Heroes and pretty much anything else he's done, although Music with Changing Parts might induce headaches in the underprepared. I quite like it, myself.

Dizzee Rascal - south London grime MC who's finally banished all Americanisms from British hiphop (not that Roots Manuva hadn't done his best already, of course).

Put them together and you get the tightest, meanest and most interesting tune this side of some of the RZA's weirder productions.

The whole album, Glassbreaks, is more of the wonderful same, and available (for now) via Mashculture. Get it while it's hot!

Mod out.

Sgt. Rafa's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Trawling through one of my favourite Liverpool FC forums (and I have several) I found a link to the above picture, which has been proudly gracing my desktop all weekend. Bringing together pop art, classic 60s rock (although I don't like the album nearly as much as Abbey Road or Revolver) and some of my all time heroes, it's made me a very happy mod.

Highlights for me are John Barnes in a gimp mask, Cisse in the dressing gown, and Stevie G as John Lennon (of course). The Shankly bust is a nice touch too. Clearly some people have too much time on their hands, but if they didn't there's a whole range of stuff we wouldn't have. This is merely the acceptable end. I would claim.

YNWA.

Mod out.

Late birthday presents...

Someone just gave me a hammock. Or rather the combined might of the American and British Postal services just gave me a hammock, only 5 weeks late. But woo, anyway.

Anyone got a spare garden?

Mod out.

New Highway Code Instructions

Mod out (of his car and claiming "you can't touch this").

How to get arrested

Have a rucksack. Wear a coat. Go on the tube. Avoid looking at the police in the entrance. Look at people. Look at your phone.

For fuck's sake. If this is the level of our police intelligence then we're all headed for sunny Cuba. Remember to publicly praise Bliar in earshot of every copper or you too could be tortured in Egypt, no expense spared.

Cynical mod out.

Out in the sticks with only whisky to live on

Well, maybe not, but having just got back from a jaunt to Scotland I was struck by how little goes on up there compared to southeast England. Less people, more space. It's a salutary lesson, probably in economics and the lack of manufacturing industries, but anyway. It felt nice to me.

Oban is a small port town which seemed to be doing alright on tourism, but by far the largest taxpayer must be the local distillery. We went on the distillery tour, which was fascinating for many reasons, mostly how they make the stuff, but also to my mind how such a small (in physical size) business can make so much money, mostly for the government.

The Oban distillery covers about the same area as a medium sized supermarket, employs 7 (seven) people to shovel the malt and move the pipes around, and manages to produce around a million bottles (offsite) of whisky every year. Impressive. What's even more mind boggling is that at around £30 a bottle, and the tax on every bottle being around 70%, this one small factory in a small community miles from anywhere gives somewhere in the region of £21m annually to the Exchequer. Which is madness. But it's madness that's been in motion for centuries and you can't fight that sort of inertia. The Treasury is never going to give up on that sort of money; Oban is one of the smaller distilleries and the largest producers must pay many times that amount for their skill in boiling up some barley and water and adding yeast.

In these times where idiotic petrolheads complain about how much it costs to give children asthma and fuck up the planet, surely a word should be put in for this harmless eco-friendly industry (they use the leftover malt and hops for agricultural purposes, and recycle the casks, which were secondhand to begin with), which for me is one of the great pleasures in life made ridiculously expensive by our avaricious rulers. But barricading the gates of distilleries would be as stupid as barricading oil refineries. And twice as ineffective. So what are you going to do?!

Anyway. Cheers.

Mod out.

Five things blah blah blah

Well, apparently I've been tagged. And while I was asleep, too. Mr Prefect sir, you're a pervert.

But anyway, tea's up, it's raining outside, so here goes...

10 years ago...
Enjoying a summer of cool as my musical tastes meld seamlessly with the best Glastonbury has to offer, Massive Attack, Jeff Buckley, Spearhead, Red Snapper and so forth. I then spent the rest of the summer working in a brewery. Not quite as cool as it sounds, honest.

5 years ago...
Hmm. 2000. Not a very good year. Someone's dad died, someone else's mum died, a friend crashed his motorcycle and died, and my mum had a stroke. I got very good at drinking in this year.

1 year ago...
I was probably living by the sea, smoking a bit more dope than I currently do, and wondering if Liverpool will ever win the European Cup in my lifetime. What a difference a year makes...

Yesterday...
Work, pub, curry, 2 episodes of "Spaced", bed. Tough life

Tomorrow...
Work, Super Cup final vs. CSKA Moscow, beer, silly conversation until too late, bed.

Five snacks I enjoy...
Marmite on toast, chocolate hobnobs, apples (I know, I know, but I do!), curried scotch eggs and tea. Which counts as a snack. No, really.

Five bands whose lyrics I know most of...
Queen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys and the Boo Radleys.

Five things I'd do with $1m...
Buy a house, buy some art, travel, have a big pirate-themed party, invest the remaining 100 quid.

Five places I'd run away to...
New York, Edinburgh, Dublin, Liverpool, Buck's Mills (Devon).

Five bad habits I have...
Eating chocolate hobnobs, smoking when drunk, drinking too much, an inability to be arsed with serious financial matters, pathological hatred of christians.

Five things I like doing...
Reading, listening to cricket on the radio, drinking, arranging things in alphabetical order, playing guitar.

Five things I wouldn't wear...
Brown shoes, patterned ties, anything with a noticeable label or manufacturer's name on, trainers unless I'm playing sport, a Nirvana tshirt.

Five TV shows I love...
The Sopranos, The West Wing, Absolute Power, the Mark Steel Lectures, BBC4 documentaries.

Five movies I love...
Once Upon a Time in America, Three Colours Blue, Top Gun, Withnail & I, Head.

Five famous people I'd like to meet...
Joni Mitchell, John Cale, Brave Captain, Iain Banks, Christy Moore.

Five favourite toys...
My laptop, my guitar, my ipod shuffle (although it's giving me tinnitus), my long wave radio (for the cricket) and crosswords. I know the last one isn't really a toy, but unless I'm allowed books or my aviator sunglasses, I can't think of anything else.

Five people to tag...
The Count, who's currently extremely incommunicado and won't get anything I send him.
The Desk of the Sellout Generation, who'll shout at me for tagging him.
Joeri
...and er, that's it.

I don't know too many bloggers. Yet.

Mod out

Holy analingus, Batman!

Now that I've got your attention...

I just read this BBC news story. In short, an artist called Mark Chamberlain had a show at a posh New York Gallery featuring the above painting and similar others, including a lovely shot of Robin and his bum, as part of a whole collection of gay Batman pictures. Although they've been there since February, DC Comics have only just got their act together and sent the lawyers in.

Now, I'm no lawyer, and I'm sure it's important that copyright on something like Batman is protected, otherwise clearly the world will end and no-one will get any cake, but doesn't the fact that it's "art" count for something? How come Warhol didn't get sued for his Campbell soup tins? Also, isn't there a world of difference between the mafia selling millions of fake dvds and one bloke painting some pictures? Apparently not, but that's lawyers for you. No sense of beauty or appreciation of how hard it is to afford good quality brushes.

So is there more to it? Is the fact that he portrays them as gay the problem? Given they've spent decades prancing around in tights, I reckon the cat's out of the bag on that one, and DC should learn to live with the fact that people's perceptions may not match the company line.

I'm less interested in the art than I am in the whole kerfuffle about it, but since we're talking about fruity pictures of the caped crusader, see some of the rest of the paintings here and hope that DC's pursuit of anyone who chooses to offer an individual take on their product bankrupts the fuckers.

Mod out.

Death masks

I was in the British Museum a couple of years ago when I came across the death mask of Oliver Cromwell in one of their display cases. Oh, I thought, so that's what he looked like. That's the bloke who killed a king and helped drag Britain kicking and screaming into the 17th century. Oh, and killed a bunch of people, many of them Irish.
(And even a couple of kilos of plaster of paris can still be controversial).

You don't really get a sense of a person from a painting, at least I don't, but with a death mask you can look at the shape and size of someone's head, and imagine them lying there, asleep, about to wake up and invent gravity (as in the case of Newton).

They were created as soon after death as possible, to get the best likeness. The one above is of Beethoven, and obviously was once dropped by someone. oops. Other famous death masks include Jonathan Swift, Dante, and Hitchcock, oddly enough. For anyone who's as morbid as me, there's an excellent list here with pictures of Princeton's collection.

In the immortal works of Nick Ross, don't have nightmares.

Mod out.

Vertebrae and dodos

Someone once asked me who my avatar was. I was going to post about him, but then I figured anyone who really needs to know about dead geologists can look him up themselves. His name was Gideon Mantell, he lived up the road from where I work, and I like his sideburns should about cover it.

But having a quick google, I found this superbly bizarre fact...
"In 1852, Mantell took an overdose of opium, the drug he used to alleviate his pain, and later lapsed into a coma. He died that afternoon. His postmortem showed that he had been suffering from scoliosis. Richard Owen, his one-time nemesis, had a section of Mantell's spine removed, pickled and stored on a shelf at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. There it sat until World War II when it was lost, presumably destroyed, during a German bombing raid"

A little harsh, I feel, just cos the guy was right about dinosaurs and Owen wasn't. Although if anyone wants to remove any of Alex Ferguson's vertebrae I'm willing to pay top whack.

Richard Owen wrote a very cool book about dodos, which reminds me that the dodo was initally given the latin name "didus ineptus". Whether Owen had a hand in this I don't know, but again, a little harsh considering they couldn't fly and the humans had guns. But, phew, google informs me that they've posthumously been renamed "Raphus Cuculatus".

So that's alright then.

Mod out.

Banksy does it again...

There was a bittersweet piece of genius in this morning's papers - the infamous and excellent London graffiti artist Banksy has just got back from the middle east, where he tagged the wall that the Israelis have erected to, well, fuck over the Palestinians and steal their land (is there another interpretation?!).

Of course he did more than tag it - he produced some of the coolest images I've seen and without a word made a more eloquent statement on Israeli policies than a whole raft of Panoramas, Dispatches and newspaper articles. We all know what's going on, we all think it's wrong (don't we?), what's to talk about? If they won't listen, tag 'em!

The google news link above has some pictures here and there, but you can see all of them over on the Wooster Collective site, which is the online motherlode for all things spraypainted as far as I can tell.

My favourite one is above - I'm a sucker for a good stencil - but some of the others are technically more superior. Some paper this morning was suggesting he should be entered for the Turner Prize, and apart from the fact it'd go against his entire ethic, he'd surely win. Better than video loops or installations of rubbish. And funnier too.

His site is extremely cool, this or this for example. I'm not a big fan of simple tagging, but then if it wasn't for the penalties imposed for graffiti people would have more time to hang around and be creative. There's enough state-sponsored visual pollution already after all.

Mod out.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More alcohol

In between my Friday nights I do have a hardworking sober life, but who wants to hear about that?

So last night was the beer festival in Lewes, with 50/60odd ales on tap and a Town Hall full of happy people. You never see angry real ale people, I've noticed.

Drink was taken, shite was talked, fat people with socks and sandals and big bushy beards were spotted and quietly mocked, and a storming time was had by all. And having spent the last couple of hours quietly moaning and watching Wimbledon the votes are in for the top 3 festival beers, as voted for by, well, me...

1. O'Hanlon's Port Stout, 4.5%. A ruby-black gem, according to the leaflet they gave us. No argument from me. Makes Guinness seem like a mass-produced over-advertised con. Which it probably is but in a world full of lager what are you going to do? I might have to move to Devon.

2. Downton's Chimera Raspberry Wheat, 4.5%. Wins the best name, too, but this was a light, refreshing draught with fruity overtones and other pretentious qualities. It might well have had a long hoppy nose but I can't remember.

3. Harvey's Tom Paine. A dark powerful beer that isn't for the faint hearted. You can keep your Kronenburgs and your vodka/red bulls, thanks. Named for the very cool 18th century radical whose pamphlets inspired both the American and French revolutions and thought both the Monarchy and the Church were shit. Cheers!

Mod out.

The perfect Summer drink

Tonight I will be mostly drinking Tuscan Mules...



Take some Tuaca. Add the mule (ie ginger ale and lime), get involved with crushed ice if your kitchen is up to it, and paradise awaits...

There's a company in Brighton who have the importation rights so we see a lot of it around these parts. That's reason number 32 for living here, by the way.

Mod out (for the evening).

The King of Pap

It was with a heavy heart I watched the news this morning about wacko getting off (don't misconstrue that now...).
It's not that I wanted an innocent man to go to prison, I just really hoped they'd convict him and he'd be put away for ever, with the knock-on effect that no-one would ever play any of his fucking awful music ever again. Since Rockin' Robin it's been one long squeak-filled shower of shite, and ever more expensive videos covering up for the lack of musical ideas. And all that crotch grabbing. It's just not right.

Maybe he isn't guilty. Maybe every parent in southern California is in it for the money. Who cares. I just wanted all his fans to feel betrayed and sick. It would have made me laugh...

Mod out.

The Difference is Why

I've just returned from London, where there was work to do and curry to eat and friends to see. And hear. And while I had fun I also spent way too much energy fending off the bad psychic vibes all around me. From the incessant branding and advertising to the smell and the dirt. None of this is new, everyone knows London is all these things, but I didn't notice it getting to me until I had a psychotic need to tell everyone to fuck off about midnight last night. Not the best policy for Coldharbour Lane at any time, of course.

But the noodles were good (and cheap), and going to the British Library was as cool as ever this morning (they'll give me any book I ask for! The power is mine! woohahahaha...) but my god it's nice to be back by the seaside again. If I lived in London I'd murder someone in weeks. Or at least get in a fight. And lose.

In other news, welcome to the rantiest of bloggers, Mr Falling Carefully off the edge of any given metaphor. He makes us all seem sane and rational, so kudos for that.

Mod out.

Johann Cruyff

Continuing (allegedly) on the football theme, I caught a favourite Super Furry Animals lyric on the train tonight. From their obscure but winningly out-there tune "Smokin'" comes this gem:-

"Gonna manage my time just like Johann Cruyff
If we do it together we've got meaning of life"

So. How does one manage one's time just like Johann Cruyff? It's bothered me for a while now, and I have a few options which seem suitable...

1. [The SFA's approach]. Write good tunes, always appear stoned and terminally Welsh while effortlessly churning out another genius album/dvd/remix project and slowly take over the UK pop landscape by stealth. Huzzah!

2. [Only if you're Dutch]. Captain your country to the World Cup Final while playing some of the best football the world has ever seen. Wear orange. Beat defenders so skilfully that they name a turn after you. Later in life, chainsmoke while guiding Barcelona to many trophies.

3. [The mere mortals approach]. Enter a local newsagent. Pick up a pint of milk, drop it, and then flick it with your instep between your legs onto the counter. This may take time and much training, but assuming the proprietor doesn't start shouting at you and accusing you of having carnal knowledge of mental patients, it will pay off. Instant karmic kudos. You may now chainsmoke.

4. [The zen approach]. Don't do anything as crude as actually kicking a football (or a pint of milk). Instead ask yourself at every tricky juncture "What would Johann Cruyff do?" I myself favour this option, and it's amazing how many times bringing on an extra holding midfielder has helped me catch the train in the morning, or complete the crossword. I also find reverting to a 4-4-2 formation works wonders for the washing up.

Johann Cruyff is 68.

Mod out.

The hangover's nearly gone...

OK, so I exaggerate, but I definitely needed the 2 days off I'd booked, last Thursday was a washout, I just watched the video of the match again to make sure it happened (it did), and Friday I just bought 3 newspapers and went home to read all about it. Sad but true.
A week on, I can just about relax into it. The nagging feeling of other clubs winning every-fucking-thing has gone, replaced by an almost beatific sense of the restoration of the natural order. I even got to seriously take the piss out of some Man U fans this afternoon, which hasn't happened for a while.

As a result, nothing's bothering me really, hence the lack of blog. But here's a few things that amused me about the whole farrago, first Xabi Alonso's comment - "I'm enjoying this triumph like a child. The secret is that Liverpool is as strong as a pine cone". Uh-huh. Righto. This must be some Spanish metaphor to do with forest fires or something...
Secondly, here's Jamie Carragher - "I'm on a bender for a week". Bless him.
And apparently Milan Baros dented the trophy by dropping it on a grand piano. While singing songs from West Side Story.

...that last bit might not be true. In other news, I got a nice little booklet today in the post from Mr. isthisyou with some random but carefully thought out images of his logo around town. One caption reads "You have a duty to improve your surroundings", which is presumably why some prankster created these posters, very much to the point...



And this one for that matter...



We are surrounded by geniuses, and they aren't the ones busy being famous. Mod out.