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).