Steven Garrard's Garrulous Blog

What is it about hip-hop?

2011-12-22T05:02:00.000-08:00

I was watching Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai last night. The scene where the mafia underboss is dancing around to Public Enemy got me to thinkin': what is it about hip-hop that attracts skinny, middle class white boys?

I’ve been listening a lot to the old Ricky Gervais podcasts over the past couple of months. Usually when I come back from work I “enjoy” mindlessly vegetating in front of my laptop while listening to an episode I’ve already heard four or five times because I’m too tired to think about anything else. In fact, when I’m not listening to Ricky Gervais, I’m usually listening to an album I’ve heard 15 times before, so I guess listening to the podcasts is actually slightly fresher than that. Thanks to a lack of money and my job and daily two-hour commute, my finger is so far from the pulse of recent music that I feel like weeping.

I digress.

I’ve been listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast and it occurred to me that Stephen Merchant’s “Hip Hop Hooray” feature (where he is allowed to play a single hip-hop song, called “the worst feature on British radio” by a visiting Jonathan Ross) entirely exemplifies the people I know who like hip-hop, including myself; they are usually tall, underweight, incredibly white and more often than not suffering from bitterness at the world having been niggled by minor bullying throughout their life, manifesting itself in a heightened and rather dry sense of humour, laced with an underlying misanthropy.

Steve Merchant - straight up gangsta

I can think of several examples of this among my own very limited circle of friends (although admittedly it may simply be the case that I stick with people like myself); while there are clearly going to be a number of exceptions (people I know who are skinny and white but don’t like hip-hop, or people who aren’t and do) there does appear to be a clear pattern there. Furthermore, there are certain absolutes; the hip-hop fans I know are exclusively male and they do seem to be angry about something (although who isn’t?).

So where is the appeal? Why do angry anaemic whiteys listen to so much angry black music? In a way it seems as if, generally speaking (as always), our generation of “alternative” and explicitly angry young people are either deeply entrenched in metal or emo music, both visually and musically, or they dig hip-hop (sometimes, rarely, they are into both). Is it simply the case that the angriest music that can be found that isn’t guitar and wearing-lots-of-black based is hip-hop, regardless of how irrelevant or culturally misplaced this might seem to an outsider? Just what do experiences of drug dealing, white oppression, black ghettoisation and exploitation etc. have to do with a relatively well-off, over-educated, ginger Scottish kid?

Punk was the last great explosion of white anger in the UK. Since then, what have we really had? America has experienced hardcore punk, grunge, riot grrrl, emo, and a much larger share of decent metal bands (I’m think Slayer, mostly), and of course the huge majority of hip-hop, angry or otherwise. Scandinavia and Europe have had the rest of the decent metal. What have we had, objectively speaking? Post punk was fairly angry but too introspective and experimental to be really considered so. Since that we’ve experienced nothing that could really be considered a definitive movement of angry young people, other than throw backs to punk, fairly boring metal bands (Napalm Death being one example to the contrary) or a bastardisation of foreign music scenes, and the yoof have had to look abroad for inspiration. It starts to become less surprising then that people turn to a genre that seems culturally poles apart from our own experience (apart from perhaps in the largely black youth of the largest British cities, London and Birmingham); an irony which is lost on many listeners, and occasionally lost on even the more aware of us.

Does this really matter? Well, I often think about meeting GZA or Chuck D in the street (it’s bound to happen sooner or later) and trying to explain to them why I like their music and why it speaks to me. Would they even want me as a fan? If I tried to explain to them that the irony wasn’t lost on me, wouldn’t this just seem like an insult, a kind of hipster cop out pose, that makes it sound like I enjoy their music as part of an elaborate cultural juxtaposition based joke? Other than that, what do I have? I enjoy it because it’s anti-authoritarian, because it speaks about struggling under oppression; but their idea of oppression and my own are so far apart that the contrast is laughable. Perhaps a combination of the two is the real explanation. Despite the seeming triviality of my own gripes against society, their lyrics are so powerful that they make me feel part of a larger movement against “the man” generally. But this sense of cultural displacement and guilt that I get from listening to hip-hop is certainly interesting.

Chuck D

As I hinted at before, the only people who don't seem to have this problem are London and Birmingham based black kids. Obviously I'm talking about a very specific type of hip-hop here, but it seems strange that, as a genre generally, only a certain type of person has a "legitimate" right to listen to it. This may be the mainstream confusing genre with medium; there's a big difference between Flying Lotus and Eazy E. Even so, I think this is a wider issue of cultural "robbery." I'm sure some people get the same creepy feeling when they spot a white guy sporting a Run DMC or Wu Tang t-shirt in the as I do when I see a white dude with dreads.

*Shudder*

Heeeeey now

2011-07-18T04:23:00.000-07:00

Five years on from Stadium Arcadium, an album I'm told was fairly decent but which was released long after I had grown tired of RHCP's stadium rock antics and pseudo-alternative hippy/heroin chic bullshit, we are presented with "The Adventures of Raindance Maggie", a song so generic that, having just listened to it, I've forgotten what it was like already. Which can't be good. But I do remember the chorus is along the lines of "Heeeeey now."

This one was produced by Rick Rubin (natch), who has a production discography that looks suspiciously like an alternative rock conveyor belt. The cover artwork is by Damien Hirst (Kiedis said of it, in one of his more discerning moments: “It's an image. It's art. Iconic. We didn’t give it its meaning but it's clearly open to interpretation.” The wikipedia page for the album is full of great quotes like this, the sort of things that actors are forced to come out with when they're promoting some shitty cash cow of a movie, like "it was a real pleasure working with Michael Bay, he's a real artist" or whatever):

The promo artwork is by Mr. Brainwash, "protégé" of Banksy, who, if he is real, seems to be a lot like Nathan Barley. It isn't even that good:

So why do I care? Well it strikes me that this album will probably be extremely commercially successful, as most of their albums are, and yet I just heard it being played on 6 Music, a well known home of alternative rock and indie. My point is, really, why does anyone care anymore? Who is this album aimed at? It isn't in any way interesting to anyone other than RHCP obsessives, who will undoubtedly lap it up, and yet I'm sure thousands of other music fans will probably buy it anyway, out of some vague feeling that they might be missing out if they don't, or that it's an important cultural document. It sets a bad example for young people getting in to an underground music scene to put RHCP on the playlist of 6 Music, because it holds RHCP up as, at best, a great band, or, at least, a band who used to be great who are still rocking it and showing how you can be successful and artistically credible in the music industry. They aren't either.

The people involved seem to be some of the biggest names in music and art; surely that should be reason for excitement. But it just isn't. It isn't "underground" or "street art" to have Banksy's "protégé" go around slapping stickers on bins to promote the album (or more accurately, to tell somehow else how to design the stickers; a conversation which must have consisted of "do a robot and the RHCP symbol", and then have a street team, who work for free, go around slapping them on), and it isn't "avante-garde" or "alternative" to have Damien Hirst to do the cover; these people are now at the very core of the art mainstream.

Of course it's well documented that the "alternative" music scene of MTV and MTV2 and the like is just another angle for record companies; they are selling this "scene" just like any other. It just strikes me that people should surely be over that by now, that it's time for something new, particularly when RHCP seem to have so blatantly phoned in on this latest "effort".

Death Becomes Us

2011-06-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

What happens to you when you die? I don’t mean where will your soul or spirit fly to, I mean will your body be buried, cremated, dumped on a rubbish tip, set alight in a Norse longboat… what? In Mark Everett’s autobiography, Things the Grandchildren Should Know, he recalls his father’s request that his body be dumped in the rubbish; a stipulation E’s mother did not have the heart to carry out until long after his father’s death (thankfully she threw out his ashes, not his body). In our largely secular Western society, there is no obvious way of dealing with a dead body; while rituals have always surrounded the dead throughout history, in most religions and cultures, how do we now deal with the dead and dying?

In the past there has always been a script to follow, whether it be a Catholic wake, a Protestant funeral, the preparation of a stone-age barrow filled with the dead persons possessions or a good, old-fashioned Egyptian embalming; the variations are endless. In a society where people have largely lost the belief that death leads to an afterlife or reincarnation, where our bodies are largely destined to become worm food or fertiliser, nobody wants to be reminded that death is an everyday event, largely unimportant to anyone outside the person’s immediate friends and family. Rituals of death are seen as outmoded, outdated or superstitious. Is it hypocritical to have a church service funeral, or a wake, or any kind of death ritual when you believe that your body is simply an empty and used shell once your consciousness has left it? I’ve always liked the idea of being cremated and having my ashes scattered at sea; is this a hopelessly romantic gesture, designed to inflate my dead ego? Or does it help my relatives and loved ones to see me off in style?

The issue isn’t just a lack of religion; it’s a lack of community. The Western world is such a highly populated place to be, and there’s no time to worry about each individual death. The obituary page is seen as the interest of the morbid; nobody else has the time to read about the death of one of the many local butchers, one of the numerous local policemen, etc. Collectively, we only care when one of our favourite celebrities dies; a phenomenon which has nothing to do with the death at all, but which is simply about eulogising over their contribution to our entertainment, and ignoring that they were a recluse for the last five years of their life, living with ill health and largely forgotten. Death is hidden, often in antiseptic hospital wards or behind closed doors. Is this a problem? Do we need death in our lives? My attention was grabbed recently by a Mexico “Death Cult” which is apparently growing in popularity amongst “drug traffickers and criminals.” Of course I don’t think it’s exactly healthy to revere death in such an over the top way; but I certainly think that’s it’s also unhealthy to have death hidden. When someone does have to deal with death the psychological effect might well be extremely damaging, if death has become something that appears in movies and television but never in real life.

It would appear that, perhaps subconsciously, we do have a desire to deal with death and have some manifestation of death in our lives. This appears not only in various visual mediums, such as film and television drama, but also in fashion. While previously only a semi-underground subculture, such as punk or metal, used death imagery in clothing and fashion, it is now a relatively frequent occurrence to come across children, teenagers, young adults and even middle aged people sporting skull and death imagery on t-shirts, bags and jackets. Only today the foster child under my parents care was dressed in a shirt to go to a birthday party; it was only when he took his jumper off that I noticed the skull and crossbones symbol imprinted on the breast. Death has become a cartoon presence in our daily lives, something we are desensitised to; in children’s clothing, it is a shorthand for the “naughtiness” of the child in question; in the clothes of mainstream, “hardworking”, middle class people it shows a mildly banal “alternative” streak to their fashion sensibilities. It’s a fairly common theory that we are desensitised to death in modern society; but does this increasing and almost unconscious wearing of death imagery also show a desire to see and deal with death?

Can you take the terrifying adventure into unspeakable horror?

2011-06-29T12:34:00.000-07:00

I watched this recently;

It was pretty great; it was the first movie adaptation to be based on Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, followed later by Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007), the latter starring Will Smith and allegedly being a bit of a stinker. I haven't seen it, but I think I ought to check it out.

It's a very interesting concept for a movie, and I'd like to read the novel; essentially, without giving too much away, the central character (played by the always most excellent Vincent Price), is the titular last man to survive a now clichéd zombie/vampire apocalypse. He stalks the (un)dead by day, in an interesting mirroring (geddit, mirror?) of what the vampires stereotypically do by night; however, while the vampires are actually shambling oafish halfwits, Vincent Price's character, Dr. Robert Morgan, is an organised and extremely effective killer; making him a "legend" amongst the vampires, as a fearsome and frightening spectre of death in a world where vampirism is the norm.

The film asks interesting questions about normality and the argument that "might makes right"; is it morally "right" for Robert Morgan to seek out and kill the members of another "race", when that race has annihilated and replaced his own? Is he simply a murderer of other sentient beings, or do humans take precedence if threatened at large, even if it is by creatures stronger and more adapted to survive than them?

The film was genuinely creepy at points, and Vincent Price was as brilliant as ever; a tad melodramatic, and a scary presence even without the inclusion of vampires.

In personal news, I didn't get the Columnist position I was gunning for at IdeasTap, and I didn't even get an interview for a job in Waitrose; which is essentially confirmation that my writing sucks and my practical skills are non-existent. I'd like to think that I didn't get the Waitrose job because I'm over-qualified and they didn't think I'd stay very long, but quite honestly I seriously doubt it. It's no good bemoaning the current economic climate either; I reckon I was simply sold a lie when I took on English as a degree subject, and I've pretty much wasted the last five years of my life as far as my career is concerned.

So that's an encouraging thought.

But hey, at least I know a fair bit about how to read books.

V-2 Schneider

2011-06-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

I braved a rainstorm yesterday to go and check out the Jeff Koons exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. I caught up with my friend Chris, who I haven't seen in a couple of years, and we had a pleasant day of art viewing. I wasn't massively impressed by the Koons work they had on displayed; I wasn't really disappointed, because I didn't expect an awful lot, and there were a couple of pieces that I enjoyed looking at, including an aluminium caterpillar that was painted to look like a blow up child's pool toy, and his giant multi-coloured cartoon animal mirrors.

We also had a look around at the permanent exhibitions there, and the August Sander: People of the 20th Century collection in the Dean Gallery really caught my eye. I'm sure I've seen it before, but I can't remember if it was elsewhere; it may have been in the Tate Modern:

August Sander - Self-portrait, 1936

Bricklayer, 1928

Pastry Chef, 1928

Young Girl in Circus Wagon, 1926

Secretary at West German Radio Station, Cologne, 1931

I really love that last photograph. The subject looks so androgynous, and is so evocative of Weimar Germany; her cool, nonchalant pose is fantastic. Strangely, it reminded me of this painting:

Otto Dix - Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia Von Harden, 1926

According to the Weimar Art blog, the models are one and the same, so I'm pretty pleased with myself for having spotted it.

Adventure Time!

2011-06-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

Holy smokes, this is one of the greatest things I've seen in a long time. I'm not sure that this is the best episode that I've watched so far, because they've all been amazing, but it's the most relevant to the house searching that Heather and I have been doing recently:

Enjoy!

Most illogical

2011-06-26T04:17:00.000-07:00

I'm a writer with nothing to write about. It's not writer's block, I've just literally spent the last 9 months in a relatively stifling city (Durham), and I'm constantly aware that no one is reading this blog, and that makes it very difficult to force myself to write for the sake of keeping in practice, or for the sake of having an informal "portfolio" of articles. It's unfortunate that I have so little money, otherwise I'd certainly spend it on going out of my way to visit art galleries, or on seeing films, or on visiting the theatre, or on buying new music. It seems like a lame excuse, but without the time or the means to get anywhere I feel as if my critical and creative sensibilities are drying up.

I haven't begun writing my dissertation yet, which is another worry. I watched the entirety of this speech by Grant Morrison the other day; it's both enlightening and awkward:

The full lecture can be found on Youtube in parts, but the whole thing can be found here.

It's interesting to watch Grant Morrison speak, rather than read his comics or read interviews with him. He constantly talks as if he's in a work of fiction; he so clearly wants to come across, and imagines himself, as a crazy, drugged up prophet of the counter-culture, and the luke warm audience reaction to this clearly stifles him slightly, particularly following that scream he does at the start. It's still a very lucid and engrossing speech though.

There are certain pros and cons to being at home.

Pros:

- Free food and drink.

- Food and drink (and especially drink) is almost forced upon you at all times.

- A nice quiet room to work in, or read, or watch movies.

- Free phone and internet.

Cons:

- Missing one's significant other.

- A lack of freedom.

- A lack of anything to do (this might be specific to the town that I'm in).

- An eventual drying up of the free food and drink rule (which admittedly hasn't come about just yet, but it always does), when your parents realise that you're taking too much of an advantage of it and it's costing them money and valuable alcohol.

I think the cons outweigh the pros, overall, but it is nice to visit, and it's nice to hear seagulls again.

Wrath of the Math

2011-06-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to read Relativity, Einstein's explanation of his theory. In the Preface he claims that "the present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who... are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics." That's a description of me if ever I read one, so I thought I'd be held by the hand all the way through the process and I'd be able to impress people by explaining to them exactly what E=mc2 actually means. However, I think "as far as possible" might be the operative phrase; thus far I haven't lasted very long, but I will keep trying.

Speaking of Einstein, here's a picture of him hanging with Charlie Chaplin, from Awesome People Hanging Out Together:

I'm visiting home this weekend, waiting for our new flat in Salisbury to be ready to move into. I think I might pop in and check out the Jeff Koons exhibition in Edinburgh. I'm not sure what to think of his work; it seems to combine Duchamp's questions about "what is art?" with Warhol's answer that everything popular, banal and crass is art. Except I guess that neither of the would like me to call it "crass", because they're trying to avoid making such distinctions between "high" and "low" art. Anyway, I'm sure his work will be visually impressive. I hope they have one of his Balloon Dogs:

Jeff Koons - Balloon Dog

Or one of his Cracked Eggs:

Jeff Koons - Cracked Egg

Although I think they would have mentioned that on the website, as they're pretty famous works.

I'm still looking for a job of course, so get in touch if you want to pay me to write some cack-handed articles about wrestling or art or whatever.

Flossy

2011-06-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

Have a look at Heather's blog to see the poster she designed for the upcoming art event which we've been organising for The Bubble. Speaking of Heather, I bought a book about Lucian Freud from Oxfam the other day, and this looks quite a bit like her:

Lucian Freud - Girl With Kitten, 1947.

Bored

2011-05-31T03:35:00.000-07:00

Macho Man Randy Savage, R.I.P.

2011-05-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

Macho Man Randy Savage, 15/11/52 – 20/05/11.

I was at work when one of my fellow wage slaves informed me of Macho Man Randy Savage’s death. He broke the news rather off-handedly; a younger child-man than myself, it’s likely that he has only a vague recollection of Macho Man’s reign in professional wrestling. Growing up, my older cousins gave me access to a gold mine of early Wrestlemanias on VHS. Randy Savage was one of those figures from my childhood who undoubtedly had an effect on the construction of my psyche, along with a plethora of other campy, brightly costumed, muscle bound characters. His passing made me consider this formative influence, and wonder whether wrestling stars are good role models; does this arena of violence and hyper-masculinity, watched by a live audience of jeering hillbillies, really make good children’s television? I was lucky, in that I had other, much more wholesome cultural sustenance to counteract the fast food of WWF; videogames, for example, and Star Wars. But what about other, less fortunate children, with less scrupulous and culturally sophisticated parents than my own?

I’ve come to the controversial conclusion that wrestling was indeed a good influence. Apart from the empirical evidence at hand (i.e. I turned out to be an extremely successful, well adjusted and modest young man), it has always been clear to me that wrestling’s muscular, hyper masculine, orange tanned übermensch are not meant to be taken seriously; in fact, their antics are so over the top that a person of at least average intelligence will see them as positive figures of self expression, rather than a corrosive symbol of male patriarchy. I remember watching wrestling once at a friend’s house; he was lucky enough to have Sky television. His father came and asked us what we were doing. When we said “Watching wrestling”, his reaction was essentially “Isn’t it a bit strange to be watching sweaty men in small pants, grappling?” If this rich man, a representative of “straight” (I mean that primarily in the sixties counter-culture sense) society, feels the need to point out the homo-erotic subtext in wrestling to his eight year old son and his friends, then surely wrestling is positive, if perhaps subversive, viewing? It says “It’s O.K. to dress up in funny costumes. It’s O.K. to wrestle other men while wearing very little clothes. You should be excited and amused by the muscles and exaggerated bravado of Hulk Hogan or Macho Man.” For a young boy growing up in emotionally repressive Scotland, this amounted to an affirmation of your right to a different sexuality if you happened to be gay, and if you were straight, you could be comfortable with your sexuality and still show off your leopard skin pants collection. Unlike the fascistic antics of superheroes like Batman or Superman, these wrestlers were just happy to be themselves, and weren’t trying to reign down their own form of justice on society. In losing Macho Man, the world has not just lost a great wrestler and part time rapper, but a true exponent of freedom of expression.

Week End

2011-04-06T03:16:00.000-07:00

I Ain't No Joke

2011-04-06T02:56:00.000-07:00

Ubu

2011-04-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

Max Ernst: Ubu Imperator, 1923.

I wonder if this painting has anything to do with Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi? If anyone knows please post a comment (as if anyone ever reads this blog), while I try and find a book about Ernst somewhere.

First edition cover of Ubu Roi, 1896:

Ain't no-bod-y dope as me

2011-03-31T11:01:00.000-07:00

Last day of my "holiday." Tomorrow it's high time I got on with some serious work, and the various enjoyments of reading what I like, watching films and playing Minecraft will have to be limited once again. In my short time off I managed to get through the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Steppenwolf and the first two parts of Barefoot Gen, and I've started Crime and Punishment: probably not a good thing to start when time is running short, but it's been fantastic so far. I've also watched Three Colours Red:

Throne of Blood:

and My Neighbour Totoro:

in the last couple of days, all of which were pretty excellent. The Totoro trailer makes it look a bit stupid, but it was actually rather good; a bit more on the side of an out and out kids film than Spirited Away was, but heartwarming fun nonetheless. Throne of Blood is extremely atmospheric and spooky; whereas some of Kurosawa's other historical dramas are pretty straightforward realism/with elements of myth, this one is pretty supernatural. Interestingly, Washizu, the stand-in for Macbeth, is brought down more by paranoia than ambition, due mostly to Asaji (Lady Macbeth), his wife, and her manipulation of his fear of betrayal; he seems to betray to avoid being betrayed, rather than because he really wants to become the ruler of "Cobweb Castle." Best character in it is the witch, the scenes with her are pretty dang freaky. Three Colours Red was great too, although I think my favourite in the series has been Three Colours White.

My other recent time consumer, other than applying for jobs, has been Minecraft. I'm not really sure what to say about it; Heather assures me that it's very boring to watch me play it, and a lot of it just seems to be endless digging through walls, but I love it. My heart leaps whenever I come across an underground cavern, diamonds, or (I discovered my first one today!) a dungeon with a chest. I can't wait until the complete game comes out. The only problem is that it's very difficult to think of things that no one else has built; some of the videos on Youtube of people's creations are insane, and whenever I think of something that might be cool I look it up, and inevitably it's already been thought of. Still, I have built a very nice windmill with a red roof. Video unrelated:

Can't Stop Us Now

2011-03-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

I love looking out the the source of samples; it's nice to retrace the steps of producers, and it puts you onto great music via the people who have reused it. This is a particularly good source:

Here's some examples of this song's use as a sample, in order of how well I think it was used; it's interesting that, in different ways, each of these subsequent producers have kind of gone with the same theme and attitude of defiance as the original song, as well as borrowing that distinctive riff:

Nas's usage is probably the most well known, although in my opinion it's probably the least effective; although that may because I love the Geedorah track and I have a soft spot for anything the RZA does.

Quite unfit for women!

2011-03-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

I recently ran across BFI's youtube channel. There's some pretty amazing stuff on there; old newsreels, early films, trailers from rare old movies... Here's a few of my favourite clips:

Topical Budget newsreel:

Footage of Scott's trip to the South Pole:

Jack Cardiff - Temples of India:

It's been a while since I've updated this blog, and last time I updated it was the first time in a long time; but I have a month free of part time job responsibilities, and I've given myself at least a week off from uni work (although I have to get on with applying to jobs), so I'm going to at least try and get a few entries in before my time is completely eaten up again.

Since last time I posted I've taken up the position editor of the newly created creative section over at Durham student magazine The Bubble. It's fairly exciting, if time consuming, and there's been some really good submissions so far; I'd post some here, but I don't want to show any favouritism (not that anyone is even aware that I have this blog), so go and peruse at will.

OFWGKTA:

Bullfight

2011-01-25T02:38:00.000-08:00

Women/Cold Pumas/Fair Ohs/Friendo four way split. Might be the last thing Women release, great songs, 7" with free digital download. Check it out!:

Closed door, open door

2011-01-22T11:54:00.000-08:00

The State That I Am In

2010-12-05T06:35:00.000-08:00

It's been a funny couple of days. The weather has been utterly insane (/hyperbole), and a glance at the BBC news website will indicate that it is causing "chaos" etc. and as a result I've been released from the clutches of work early for the last two nights, allowing me to engage in what is apparently known as "socialisation". This included visiting Klute, in Durham, a place which was allegedly voted the second worst club in Europe at some point. It's certainly harsh to say it lived up to this; it was dingy, the draught coke machine was broken, they only had cold water in the toilets, the drink was kinda expensive (and erratic - 2 quid for a gin and cranberry [no draught lemonade either], £2.90 for a bottle of Tuborg!) and the music was awful beyond belief (I mean, the music in most clubs is bad, but at least it's chosen to allow dancing; this is not the case in Klute), but the staff were nice, and didn't seem to be brain dead, unlike the staff in Fat Sam's for example (the cloak room guy was reading The Selfish Gene!). I even came across a nice bouncer - which I'm pretty sure means I have to call whatever agency he was working for and make a complaint.

Anyway, I've been in worse places.

I also went and saw Travesties at the DST, which was pretty good. I mean, the writing was excellent, being Tom Stoppard and all, and the acting was decent (although it did seem to take the actors 10 minutes or so of being on stage before acting properly), but I wasn't massively keen on some of the stage direction. However, what really annoyed me, as usual, was "other people". The problem with going to see student theatre is that the audience have a vested interest in appearing to enjoy themselves - that is to say, they want to support their friends, and they obviously take some genuine extra enjoyment out of seeing someone they know act like someone else. However, this leads to all sorts of overacting in the audience - for example, the dude sitting in front of me laughed in the most affected way imaginable, at the most inappropriate times, which was pretty irritating.

Tonight Heather and I are going to see Belle and Sebastian, with full orchestra. I'm really excited - I think I've only ever been to one sit down gig before, which was one of the first gigs I ever attended (RHCP), and it was completely lame (which may have had something to do with it being RHCP). However, I think sitting down will really suit the music and the experience, plus years of going to gigs has somewhat jaded me to the appeal of standing for hours and jumping up and down.

Portrait of Tristan Tzara (one of the characters in Travesties and a founder of Dada) by Lajos Tihanyi, 1927:

Fresh, for '88, you suckas!

2010-11-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

Get your ass away from there!

2010-11-07T05:23:00.000-08:00

Watched Halloween last night and this was by far the best part, although there was a lot of amusing, unnecessary nakedness; the first broad who gets killed spills a tiny amount of some substance on her clothes (looks like water, she claims butter), so she undresses (in the house of the person she's babysitting for), until she's dressed only in her pants and socks, and then puts on a random shirt she finds. She then runs around outside for about half an hour until she finally gets killed (hope it's not too much of a spoiler to point that out).

It was worth watching though, if only to find out where Fallout got their "Pint Sized Slasher" idea from:

Anyway, in Durham, so more posts to come about what's been going on. I've been meaning to pick up this blog for a while now; I lost steam in the middle of documenting our European holiday and felt bad abandoning it; however, it's better to jettison this than dispose of the blog entirely. It's funny to come back to it and read the stats of how many visitors there has been to my dead blog.

Adventures, part 7

2010-05-21T03:12:00.000-07:00

Adventures, part 6

2010-05-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

Vienna, day 2

On our second day in Vienna we picked up where we had left off the previous day, in the Museums Quartier. We visited the Museum Moderner Kunst, or "MUMOK", which had a large exhibition of televisual art, including a lot of works by Andy Warhol (he was a popular guy in Europe), and various other contemporary artworks; in fact, it was probably the most contemporary place we visited, with a lot of very recent work from artists I'd never even heard of.

Heather got a few great pictures of some of the highlights, including this piece featuring several vertically standing neon lights which I have been unable to attribute to any artist (I'll continue to research and hopefully edit with the creator at some point):

She took that from a balcony, which is why they look so small. This picture is a close up of Pietro Sanguineti's "Void":

Here's the whole thing:

Void was one of my favourite pieces, but the place was full of really great, forward looking and slightly confusing art.

The television art section wasn't so up to date, as it was more of a retrospective on tv art generally. One of the highlights was a whole room dedicated to "Andy Warhol's TV", a television show which was shown in the 80s on MTV, as a kind of realisation of Andy's 15 minutes claim. It was pretty amusing; I watched a sketch where a fat woman gets the wrong shoes from her parents for Christmas, so she wrecks the room she's standing in, tipping the Christmas tree onto her mother and screaming swear words before storming out. I also watched a sequence about rodeo clowns, and Heather watched an episode dedicated to boots.

To be honest, I don't remember seeing this particular video, and I can't actually watch it right now because I'm in the library without headphones, but here is a clip to give you some idea:

One thing I forgot to mention about this place was that it was completely free to students! Considering how expensive we thought Vienna was going to be generally, it was great to get in here free; all we had to do was fill in a little form about what University we went to.

After MUMOK we went to Schönbrunn Palace, which was pretty magnificent, maybe a little too magnificent for a couple of student bums. It was a massive place, the "gardens" were more like a huge park, it had it's own zoo... The maze was fun though. We went through the main maze, the kids maze and some other kind of puzzle maze, which wasn't really a maze, just a hedged in windy path. Heather has pictures of these things, but I don't think she's posted them yet.

One other note about Vienna; I think Austrians are pretty much obsessed with sex. Sex club inside an art gallery aside, we saw posters for sex shows and sex shops everywhere, even just outside the palace gardens.

Other than that, that's pretty much all there is to say about Vienna; I think it was my second favourite place on the trip. We had to eat cheaply but there was a lot to do.

Next was Budapest, city of bums!

Adventures, part 5

2010-05-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

Vienna, day 1.

The train out of Prague was nice, in a kind of Poirot/Holmes stylee, as we had to sit in a booth. There was a lock on the door, and when the ticket man/coffee man came, they knocked before entering and closed the door behind them, even though it was made of glass so it wasn't exactly private anyway. Regardless, it was a nice trip, and we had our booth to ourselves almost the whole way.

When we got to Vienna we weren't sure which station to get off at, and then when we got off and U-Bahn'd over to the correct stop, we couldn't decide on which direction to walk. We got to Hostel Ruthensteiner in the end however. It was a strange place; very nice, and pretty clean, but the staff were pretty anal about being environmentally friendly/smoking/keys etc., which was a bit off putting. Also, the kitchen was tiny and always packed full of people, making it pretty awkward to cook food, which was a problem because Vienna was probably the most expensive place we visited.

Anyway, it wasn't such a big deal, since we'd only be sleeping there, and it was still a pretty nice place. The first thing we did was head to the Secession Building:

It was pretty impressive from outside, and pretty bizarre inside. We paid about 10 euros to see two exhibitions; the first of which a crap piece of rock in the middle of a huge white room, which apparently the "artist" had slept inside or something (I'm not entirely sure, I wasn't paying much attention to it).

The second, which was what we really went to see, was this:

Gustav Klimt - Section from the Beethoven Frieze (1902):

Actually finding the frieze was quite difficult. We went in, looked halfheartedly at the rock sculpture, awkwardly asked the attendant about a cloakroom (as we anticipated a larger gallery), came back, went downstairs, saw a pole dancing stage and a seedy looking bar, got confused and went back up, asked the reception guy where the frieze was, he said "go through the bar", so we did, and we found it right at the back. However, the bar we went through, and the club built around the bar, was a swinger's club called Element 6. This swinger's club was complete with S&M equipment, like a cross with manacles, and huge screens showing porn. There was also private sex rooms, and beds lying around under palm trees for exhibitionists (including inside the room with the frieze - a room which was darker than it probably should have been for proper viewing, to accommodate the shaggers).

When we left the sex club/gallery, we saw a woman going in with her kids; I'm pretty sure the reception guy didn't bother to warn her. I took comfort in the fact that she was British, so she'd probably be very shocked and indignant about it.

After our sex club adventure, we visited the Leopold Museum. I think tiredness was generally one of the most debilitating features of our trip; we struggled to have the energy for looking around exhibitions (or at least I did, especially with a sore toe), and as a result probably didn't take the time we should have in studying the various artworks. The Leopold was great, it had some brilliant Secession paintings and posters and some amazing works by Egon Schiele, an artist I'd only vaguely heard of before going abroad:

Egon Schiele - Nude Self Portrait (1910):

Gustav Klimt - Poster for the First Secession Exhibition (1898):

Koloman Moser - Poster for the Thirteenth Secession Exhibition (1902):

I love the red eyes on the Schiele painting. His works were some of the most impressive that I saw while I was away, they were so expressionistic yet stylistic and bold.

It was raining when we came out of the Leopold, and we planned to go to the Museum Moderner Kunst after a trip to a cafe, but we ended up just heading back to the hostel, we were so tired and short on time.

Day 2 in the next post.

Adventures, part 5

2010-05-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

Adventures, part 5

2010-05-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

Adventures, part 5

2010-05-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

Vienna, day 1.

The train out of Prague was pretty Poirot/Sherlock Holmes stylee, as all of the seats were inside little booths, each with six seats. It was pretty cool, there was a lock on the door so I guess we could have locked ourselves in if we had wanted, and when the coffee/ticket guys came they knocked and then closed the door behind them afterwards. We mostly had it to ourselves, apart from a very short way when we were joined by two women who sat in complete silence.

When we got to Vienna we couldn't decide which train station to get off at, and then when we got to the correct U-Bahn stop, we couldn't decide which direction to walk in, but we found our hostel eventually. I've actually forgotten the name of it; it was nice enough, but the staff were a little bit anal about smoking/keys/environmental friendliness etc., which was a bit off putting. It was kinda expensive for beer as well, and the communal kitchen was tiny and always packed full of people.

However, we weren't too concerned about where we were sleeping, and we headed off for our daily intake of art. The first place we visited was the Secession building,

Adventures, part 4

2010-05-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

Prague, day 2.

Gosh, I should have done this much faster than I have done it, because already I'm beginning to struggle to remember what went on in each day.

On our second day in Prague, we visited Prague Castle:

We didn't go inside, in general we tended to avoid huge tourist attractions, but I figured it was worth mentioning because it's a pretty impressive building. We also made a stop at the Wallenstein Gardens, which were impressive and peaceful (apart from some idiots chasing the peacock around trying to get a picture standing next to it):

Our next stop in Prague was the Franz Kafka museum, which was pretty insane. There was a couple of sculptures outside; the one of a man pissing into the shape of the Czech Republic is by David Cerny, who is a bit of a nutter (both pictures by Heather):

[slideshow]

The Kafka museum itself was a pretty scary and weird place, but they certainly made the most of the fairly boring material they had (letters, first edition books etc.) by turning the whole place into a representation of some kind of existential nightmare, with strange noises like children crying playing behind a monotonous droning soundtrack, and various art installations. It was interesting, and well worth a visit.

After the Kafka museum we visited a pretty small art museum that I don't remember too much about at the moment, but I'll come back and edit this post later if I remember who the artists were (most of the works were by two artists).

That evening we experienced a lot more of the Czech hostility towards dummies like us who can't speak any Czech. Both days we went to the same supermarket and got shouted at in broken English by the same crazy woman. However, we had a really great meal anyway, in a place that has a name that translates into "The Whale" or something, but I don't remember the Czech.

That was pretty much it for Prague. A pretty place, but we struggled a little to find too many things to do.

Next stop, Vienna!

I Need a Dollar

2010-04-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

Adventures, part 3

2010-04-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

Prague.

The train to Prague went via Dresden and ran along the river Elbe. The Czech Republic seems like a pretty run down place, even in Prague, which isn't really a surprise; however, the Elbe was pretty and there was a lot of impressive cliffs along the bank of the river.

When we arrived we checked in at our hotel, the Dahlia Inn, which was a lot nicer but a lot quieter than the East Seven in Berlin. The guy running the place, Mark, was really nice; he gave us loads of information and we had a nice chat about music and whatnot. For the first evening we decided to just have a bit of a wander around, so we checked out the old town and wandered past a really old synagogue and a bunch of poncy shops. We also walked past the Astronomical Clock, which, amusingly, has four animated figures which were added in the 17th century, representing things hated by the Czech people at the time; vanity, Jews, death and Turks. We didn't actually bother to wait for the clock to move on the hour, because it was raining, but also because the guidebook said it wasn't really worth it.

In the evening, we ate at Pivovarsky dum, where the beer was really cheap and awesome, and the meals were slightly more expensive but still pretty good. I guess they do things in reverse to the old scam here of cheap meals and expensive drinks. I had venison, which was pretty tasty.

So yeah, not much happened on the first day; not much happened in Prague generally, although the second day was a bit more interesting.

Adventures, part 2

2010-04-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

Berlin, day 2.

We got up pretty late on our second day in Berlin, having flown the day before. We considered a walking tour, but by the time we got outside it seemed to have disappeared anyway, so we headed for Museum Island to see if anything was open, as prior research had indicated that nothing was usually open on a Monday. Most of the museums were indeed open, so we bought a pass for all of them and headed to the first, the Neues Museum, which for some reason only allows people in at certain time slots, but luckily we turned up right when one of the slots was beginning so we got in quickly.

Having read up on these museums beforehand, I was particularly looking forward to the Pergamon Museum, which was described in the guidebook as being Berlin's equivalent to the British Museum. However, all of the buildings were extremely impressive from the outside, and this area was one of the ones I mentioned in my last post as being a place where you walk down a regular street, turn a corner, and are confronted with an area of several huge, regal buildings. The Neues Musuem was impressive inside also, and had a very large collection of ancient Egyptian art, sculpture and several mummies and sarcophagi. It also had the iconic, 3300 year old bust of Nerfetiti, attributed to the court sculptor Thutmose:

This sculpture, which we actually found kind of scary, had a room all to itself. It was strange to see it, because I didn't know it was in the museum, and I know I've seen it somewhere before but can't think where; as if it was some residual memory from a programme I'd watched, or something I'd read at some point.

Anyway, as cool as the Neues Musuem was, the Pergamon Museum was frankly insane. If you've ever been to the British Museum, you'll be amazed by the sheer size and scale of some of the statues they have in there, like that of Ramesses II taken from the Ramesseum. However, the Germans seem to have gone a couple of steps further, taking entire buildings and putting them inside the friggin' museum. I mean, photos can hardly do it justice, but they might give you some idea:

The Pergamon Altar:

Detail from the friezes which run all the way around the room, just visible at the left of the altar in the above picture:

The Ishtar Gate:

HUGE columns:

There were also a number of huge sculptures, but it's a bit futile to post pictures of all of these things, because they can only really be experienced in person. As well as Greco-Roman and Babylonian artifacts, they have a large Medieval collection and, at the time we were there, an Islamic art exhibition.

So that's what we did on our second day in Berlin. After these two we decided we didn't really have enough time to visit the others, so we went back for the free meal that East Seven were cooking us, Mexican pasta, which was great. We also ran into some of Ed's friends, Fraser, Tom and Richard which was an extremely strange but enjoyable coincidence. We hung out with them for the evening rather than going to the Reichstag as we'd planned, and then hit the hay pretty early.

Day one of Prague in the next post!

Adventures outside the Isle of Disappointment

2010-04-22T06:33:00.000-07:00

Heather and I escaped the Isle of Disappointment, Boredom and Mental Anguish for a sojourn around Europe over the last week and 'alf. In total our itinerary consisted of Dundee-Edinburgh-Berlin-Prague-Vienna-Budapest-Munich-Augsburg-Munich-Stuttgart-Paris-Calais-Dover-London-Edinburgh-Dundee.

The last part of this itinerary, from the second Munich visit onwards, was unplanned, but due to certain giant volcanic ash clouds, we had to take the long way home, travelling by train, bus and boat for around 30 hours straight to get back and relieve Matthew of the responsibilities of Jam. As well as this, we had work to get back to, and I have a poisonous toe, which required medical attention, plus we couldn't afford to sit around in Augsburg (as lovely as it was) waiting for Ryanair to put our flight back on.

Anyway, I will attempt to tackle each of these cities and towns in an individual blog post, in a very dull, holiday slide show sort of fashion, in order to document our trip to the annals of history as being the greatest holiday that ever was.

So, in the spirit of getting on with pointless and lengthy tasks:

Edinburgh.

We went to Edinburgh on the afternoon of the tenth of April, later than we should of, being forced to buy new tickets because we had to find a post office that would sell us Euros before leaving. The beginning of a trend of having to spend more money than necessary while in Britain, compared to relatively low costs in Europe.

I know Edinburgh isn't particularly interesting, but it's worth a mention because we had a lovely afternoon in the sun outside our friend Ed's flat, followed by a tasty Korma cooked by the aforementioned Ed, with an early night in preparation for an early light the next day.

This flight had a disturbing contrast between chirpy, cheerful announcements and grumpy twat staff, who repeatedly shouted at one passenger for sitting in a seat that was inexplicably off limits, rushed through the emergency procedure with complete apathy and boredom, and badgered us to hurry up and sit down so that we could get flying on time.

Berlin.

I was most excited about Berlin out of all of our destinations, and it didn't disappoint, although it was definitely different to what I expected. We wandered around lost for a while, trying to find a market that sold old Soviet memorabilia to buy a present for our cat-sitter and accidentally walked straight up to the Reichstag, without even realising where we were. The spaces in Berlin seem incredibly open, and while there was a huge line outside the Reichstag building, it was pretty much deserted otherwise; whether this was because it was a Sunday, I'm not sure. Often we'd walk down a perfectly normal street, turn the corner, and find a massively impressive building, or several all in one place, as with the museum district. I guess no one walks around anyway, they cycle or take the awesome U-Bahn, so maybe that's why there wasn't many pedestrians.

We eventually gave up on trying to find the market and went to the Hamburger Bahnhof gallery, which was the first in a day of really incredible art spaces. This place was flippin' massive, and had a lot of modern artworks by artists who, admittedly, I hadn't really heard of, but which were extremely impressive nonetheless. They did have several Warhol's, which were interesting; I never really get overally excited by Warhol, but I always find myself intrigued and/or amazed by him when I actually see his work. Included was a huge Mao print, the scale of which can only really be exemplified by showing it in situ:

There was also a couple of his Elvis prints, a James Cagney one and a large Flowers one.

Next we jaunted over to the Neue Nationalgalerie, which was, for me, probably the most impressive place we visited on the whole trip. It was full of the works of some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, including Pablo Picasso, Rene Magritte, Otto Dix, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Edvard Munch, Piet Mondrian and many others. Here's a few of my favourite paintings from the collection; it's hard to remember them all, because I was very tired from the flight etc., so I hope to go back some time and take a lot longer to browse through:

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Potsdamer Platz (1914):

Otto Dix - Card Playing War Cripples (1920):

Barnett Newman - Broken Obelisk (1963):

Paul Klee - The Goldfish (1925):

George Grosz - The Pillars of Society (1926):

A lot of the work in the Neue Nationalgalerie focused, understandably, on the First and Second World Wars, and it was extremely interesting to see artworks from German and other European artists in person; they were certainly as full of horror and disgust at these wars as the works of ally artists like Paul Nash. Many of the works were also featured in the infamous "Degenerate Art" exhibition, held by the Nazis in Munich in 1937. It's amazing to think that the Nazis would even attempt such a thing; one would think that anyone exposed to these works would see their worth, and yet the Nazis were able to turn people against modernism and what they deemed "Jewish-Communist" artworks such as these.

The last place we visited that day was the somewhat underwhelming Kunst Bibliothek (art library), which had an exhibition on 60s fashion photography, and one featuring works by Botticelli, which we couldn't seem to find. By this point we were tired, and overwhelmed by the Neue Nationalgalerie, so perhaps it's no surprise that weren't hugely impressed.

We went and checked in to our hostel, the East Seven, which seemed comfortable and friendly. However, on the first night, we pretty much just got Chinese food and a coupla beers and went to sleep, we were so tired.

Day two of Berlin tomorrow (or later today, if I can be bothered)!

He's a demon on wheels

2010-04-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to a lot of MM...Food recently, and it's put me in the mood for watching old, stupid cartoons. A lot of the samples DOOM uses are from Fantastic Four (naturally), and I found this rather amusing clip, featuring a crazy underwater car that walks on legs (and which The Thing refers to as a "jalopy"), and the old classic of reusing the same scene over and over to save money and time drawing new scenes:

I also found this:

It's pretty funny, because you expect the theme tune to be pretty dramatic, and it starts off like some sort of 70s cop show, but quickly turns into something resembling that of a cheesy game show. Also, it's super cheery, even though someone dies in the race that we see Speed Racer in. Even the grim look on Speed Racer's face seems to contradict the cheesy music; as if the guy who wrote the theme tune didn't even look at what the show was going to be like. Plus, Speed Racer's strange mincing walk to his car at the beginning is hilarious, and his pose at the end is incredibly awkward.

Here's the opening track to MM...Food:

Pointless

2010-04-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

Good lord. Just watching a programme called "Pointless", hosted by Alexander Armstrong, and it's pretty strange. It's kinda like reverse Family Fortunes; you have to guess an answer which very few or no people have said in a poll, but you're not allowed to get it wrong. It's pretty terrible, for a number of reasons; the concept is pretty shit, the co-presenter is a bit of a smarmy twat who tells everyone whether they're right or wrong and adds miscellaneous facts, and the contestants are plain weird and idiotic.

For example, the question I'm watching right now is "Robin Williams Films"; i.e, you have to name films which Robin Williams has featured in, but obscure ones which people might not think of right away.

One of the guys on a team of two old men said "Alien"(!)

As well as this Alexander Armstrong asked a team, who are a married couple, how they are, and they said "well, we're happily married, but we've actually had a very stressful time of it lately and our marriage isn't doing so well, but we've had a pep talk from our 3 year old daughter this morning, so I think things are OK." This didn't seem to be a reference to an inside joke or anything (even though they've been on the show, apparently), it was just an embarrasingly open response to a fairly banal question.

I've never heard of this show, but apparently it's been on for a couple of series.

I can't believe how far Alexander Armstrong has fallen; from almost permanently presenting Have I Got News For You, to doing awful Pimms adverts, to this crap.

VICTORY!

2010-04-05T18:53:00.000-07:00

Kinda fruity

2010-04-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

Screw your wig on tight!

2010-03-31T19:38:00.000-07:00

Went to the library this evening to begin work on my final essay; however, I was very tired and pretty much ended up just watching this video over and over again, as I think it might be one of the most mesmerising performances I've ever seen.

Kaleidoscopic

2010-03-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

If hip hop seems to be the genre with the worst album covers (except maybe obscure folk), then I think jazz might have some of the coolest, as evidenced by Don Cherry's Symphony for Improvisers.

Here's a number of some of my other favourite covers (in every case, the quality of the cover seems to reflect the quality of the music, so give them a listen):

As you can probably tell, I'm on a bit of a jazz kick at the moment. It's a huge and confusing world of great music, and it's really enjoyable to search through it, try and recognise the different genres and sub-genres (I'll admit, at first, a lot of jazz sounded the same to me, but I'm getting there), and discover loads of amazing artists who are described on wikipedia as "one of the greatest musicians of the 2oth century", or "instrumental in the formation of bebop" or whatever, but who I have never even heard of before.

Last night I got a fair bit of work done on my dissertation, and it's almost finished. For my library session I bought 40 Mingus tracks off iTunes for £2.49! Insane. I was there about 3 hours listening to that one compilation and I don't think I heard the same song twice.

Today was my last ever undergraduate class at Dundee, for my Bob Dylan module, and it was as infuriating as ever; there was six people there, of which only I and one other loudmouth talked (the other loudmouth, however, didn't seem to have a clue what he was talking about, whereas I hope I displayed at least a scrap of intelligence in the points I made).

It'll be good to leave Dundee, and I'm sort of hoping I'll be able to go to Durham, although it depends how much money the AHRC offer me, if they offer anything at all. The recent student elections were pretty much the last straw; I got emotionally involved, because one of my friends was running (and he actually had great policies, bar one about a bus to Kirkcaldy which I wasn't so sure about), and he didn't get elected, whereas a hideous girl, whom I hate with a massive and unhealthy passion, got voted in to another position, despite having no real ideas and having a terrible series of massive personality flaws. So pretty much lose/lose for me. I actually had the optimism to believe my friend would win, but I suppose I put too much belief in it being a fair contest, rather than the popularity competition I knew it to be (call me bitter).

While the whole ridiculous affair was fairly upsetting (dodging canvassers was also very irritating), it was quite amusing to have prior and current candidates googling for their names along with my blog to see if I was bad mouthing them again.

Anyway, it'll be nice to move on to somewhere else, unless I get offered so much money that it would be stupid to go somewhere else. I guess we'll see.

Jazz jumper

2010-03-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

I posted some bad album covers a while back, here's one that I found which is great, and it's from an awesome album:

If I could play like Don Cherry (or at all), I'd be a very satisfied man. If I had a jumper like this one, I'd be an ecstatically happy man. Not sure why he looks so confused/lost, if I had that jumper I wouldn't care where I was.

Barbara Peppers

2010-03-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed a day of cheap retail therapy today. Last night we were faced with the unfortunate discovery that we had booked our flight out to Berlin in April on the wrong day, so we had to pay 50 bucks to change it; this meant that the pipe dream of buying some new junk before leaving was fading fast. However, I was able to find a pair of really decent 20 quid black jeans in H&M, a place usually devoid of any decent clothing. I also picked up a new razor, and, as Head was closing down, a large stack of CDs on the cheap. For about £18, I purchased:

Bobby Digital - Digi Snaks,

Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life,

Yacht - I Believe in You. Your Magic is Real,

El Guincho - Alegranza,

Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends,

Popular Workshop - We're Alive and We're Not Alone,

Aids Wolf - Cities of Glass,

Outkast - Aquemini,

Outkast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,

White Denim - Workout Holiday,

Grampall Jookabox - Ropechain,

Abe Vigoda - Skeleton.

Pretty amazing, right? This means I'll be able to completely overhaul my rather stale iPod before our trip. I have to be sure to take my time over these though; I missed out on 36 Chambers for the longest time when I got it cheap from the Woolworths close-down sale, because I simply overlooked it and put it to one side, having only paid about 20p for it.

It's amazing, the place was just full of great CDs that they'd only just put out for sale; the staff obviously weren't interested in any of this great music, and they probably figured that the general public wouldn't be, and I guess they were pretty much right. It's nice to take when CDs are cheap enough to take a few chances, and buy things that you love but have listened to so much that you probably wouldn't bother buying on CD.

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago

2010-03-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

I wish that I'd sail the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
In a sailor's suit and cap
Away from the big city
Where a man can not be free
Of all of the evils of this town
And of himself, and those around
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know.

William Hodges - A View of Cape Stephens in Cook’s Straits (New Zealand) with Waterspout, 1776.

Stop the violence

2010-03-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

I feel kinda funny doing this, because I think Michael might have posted the second of these videos not that long ago and it might seem like I'm just bitin' his style. However, as you can see from these two videos, sometimes it's for the greater good to all to emulate others:

Snake charming

2010-03-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

Dissertation seems to going pretty well. Obviously I don't know right now if I'm actually writing a load of shite, but the word count is on a steady rise, and that's good enough for me at the moment.

Anyways, I'm amazed that this even happened, never mind that I found it:

I know, it's too short.

I guess it shows how little I actually know about jazz, when two of my favourite musicians played together quite extensively and I didn't even know about it. Dolphy's last tour was with Mingus; there are a couple of stories about his death, one of which is that he collapsed on stage and was taken to hospital in a diabetic coma. The hospital attendants, thinking that he was probably just drugged out of his mind like most jazz musicians, left him alone to allow whatever was in his system to work it's way out again, and he died.

That's the difference between us

2010-03-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?

2010-03-12T16:39:00.000-08:00

A couple of little puzzles have been solved for me recently. The first was the song "I Like to Eat Eat Eat Apples and Bananas", a song which I felt sure a boy (now man, if someone my age can be considered a man) from my school named Graham Brameld invented, but which I now know, thanks to the school I work at, is actually an old children's song. Here's a Barney version:

Irritating, I know, and that was the least irritating one I could find.

The other thing was the phrase "why's everybody always picking on me?", said in a deep south accent, which I started saying to Heather when she would complain that I was bullying her, but without knowing where it came from. I haven't ever heard this song, to my knowledge, but I guess at some point someone must have sung it to me. I actually found it because I was looking for a specific Charlie Brown strip, and there was a link to it on another blog:

So there we go, two small problems solved.

In Heaven

2010-03-09T07:15:00.000-08:00

Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat, college.

2010-03-08T10:58:00.000-08:00

OK, it's been a while since I've posted anything other than just a video or a comic strip, but there a few things which have come to my attention (unfortunately for them, me and you), so I thought I'd make this a lengthy post to make up for the lack of chatter coming from my side in the past few weeks (or months).

Let's start with this: I've watched three interesting films in the last three days, all interesting for different reasons. One musical and two comedies. The first of these was Gigi:

I admit, I didn't watch all of this trailer, because I couldn't subject myself to any more of this nonsense, but I watched enough to tell you that the trailer misrepresents the movie (surprise surprise). It gives the impression that Gigi is interested in finding a man, when in fact, the clip which shows her asking her great aunt rather sardonically about whether her family marries, is immediately followed in the film by a song about how she doesn't understand why Parisians are so obsessed by love.

In fact, this one of the longest sequences in which we actually see Gigi. Practically all of the rest of the time she is just an incredibly young piece of meat that gets handed around between her grandmother, great aunt and (by the end of the film) fiance, a rich spoiled twat who sings that everything "is a bore!" all the way through the film. I know it's the fifties, but Jesus, this film is incredibly sexist and borderline perverted, what with the opening song (sung by a very old, leery dude who is the only person to bother with a French accent in the film) being "Thank Heaven For Little Girls", the tone of which seems to be "Oh, I know we shouldn't really think about young girls sexually... but just look at them! And besides, one day they'll be old enough, so it's good to get in early and take advantage when their young and stupid, then you can shag them and dump them when they get too wrinkly/naggy/clingy/dependent." The dude who sings this is seriously scary, and everyone refers to him as being young at heart, when in fact he appears to simply be an old perv who uses money and his ridiculously shiny teeth to take advantage of young women. At one point you think he's going to settle down with Gigi's grandmother, as they have a romantic sing song, but no, after that scene, in which they appear to be quite close, you never hear of their relationship again.

As for Gigi herself, she drifts around in the background, with her incredibly obnoxious great aunt taking up loads of screen time, until suddenly the "it's a bore!" guy decides he's in love with her, and pretty much offers to buy her from her grandmother. Gigi, far from seeing anything wrong with this, objects because she'll be too much in the public eye, because "it's a bore!" is super fucking rich. However, five minutes later she comes round and decides to go out with him, they go out to dinner, he gets embarrassed for some reason, drags her home, leaves her house, comes back, proposes, she accepts even though she just got humiliated and carried home like a child, the end.

9 fucking Oscars. Kind of casts in to light what a bunch of crap we'll probably be thinking the current Oscar winners in 50 years.

The other two were The Lady Killers and Annie Hall; I won't get in to too much detail, I've wasted enough time slagging of Gigi, as it's a lot more fun to trash something than praise it, but both were pretty excellent, Annie Hall being the better of the two, or at least my personal favourite. Woody Allen is a strange guy; I found myself both repulsed and attracted to his whiny complaining and constant wisecracking throughout the film. I guess he reminded me of me a little bit, as I'm pretty cynical, but not as intelligent or funny. Here's the opening, it pretty much sums up the film, in tone, but also because it's full of these interesting moments where the fourth wall is broken and Woody directly addresses the audience:

The other things that have been bothering me around to do with the university. Now I know I said I'd stay away from politics, especially student politics, but the nominations for the 2010 student executive elections are on the DUSA website, and I can't help but notice that our old friend Craig Kelly (who, in the past, kindly and anonymously said my blog was arrogant, along with some other such things, before posting a lovely and welcoming invitation to his office under his real name, I guess so as to have a dig at me while appearing above all such nasty, naughty name calling at the same time), is unopposed as President. That means he'll walk into a paid position of "authority and power" without even having to run. I don't envy him the position, but I do envy him the pay package, which will come practically work free if the actions of the last two presidents is anything to go by, as they don't seem to have done very much (allegedly).

I guess this might have put people off from running as president:

"Nomination forms can be picked up from Anne Marie Bottoms, Executive Support, 4^th Floor, DUSA during office hours of: 10:30 am – 1:30 pm. Should Anne Marie be unavailable at the time of pick up, leave her a message at extension: 81085 or e-mail her at: abottoms@dusa.co.uk"

Miss Bottom's email address would appear to be a joke one. No offence, Miss A. Bottoms.

Anyway, the other thing, which has been repeatedly rammed in my face this last week, is that the the humanities department is getting rid of one of their modules, Renaissance literature. Shock horror. There's a facebook campaign to save it, which makes it deadly serious of course, because it's so rare for someone to implement facebook as a way of expressing any minor annoyance they might have that once it happens, you know shit's about to hit the fan (/sarcasm). Both my tutors have made pleas (one in an email to everyone, one in my class today) asking people to calm down and stop being silly, as Renaissance literature will continue to be taught, and in fact will be extended, in first year modules (in fact, even if I wanted to or cared, it would be a be a bit hypocritical of me to join the campaign, since I avoided doing Renaissance in third year and only got the basic stuff in first and second year - but hey, it's done me alright). The problem for them, Aidan Day and Chris Murray, is that they are both running contentious, if, in my opinion, completely valid and excellent modules; British comic writers and Bob Dylan's song poetry. Now, some close minded nincompoops have attacked these modules, saying "duh... um... Shakespeares are important, comics ain't important, they're for kids, Bob Dylan sings songs and isn't proper england, up the Shakespeare" or whatever, which completely goes against the idea of opening new areas of research, but also displays a real ignorance about the topics in question.

So it's a bit annoying for me, because I thought I couldn't care less, but now I do, because there's a possibility that this half baked campaign about something uninteresting happening to a module I didn't even take and won't miss will actually effect modules I did take, loved and will miss. I find it easy to imagine the amount of shit Aidan and Chris get as it is for wanting to do something interesting and different, without people getting their axes ready to chop comics and Dylan to save Shakespeare, who is still going to be taught anyway (in fact, while level three Renaissance is optional, there's no dodging it in first year, so if they make it more extensive as a result of chopping the third year module, it'll probably be better for everyone).

Anyway, Heather's coming home soon and I need to go and make the tea. If Craig Kelly even bothers to run (why the hell would he?), I'll see if his campaign material is worth a cheap laugh or two and post it when it appears.

Toodle pip!

Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat, college.

2010-03-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

Good morning blues

2010-03-01T09:59:00.000-08:00

Jack the Ripper

2010-02-19T15:26:00.000-08:00

This picture was taken by Barney Peterson, and was featured in Life magazine, alonsgide an article about the Hollister riot, which I have transcribed below as it would have appeared in the magazine.

"CYCLIST'S HOLIDAY:

He and friends terrorize town.

On the fourth of July weekend 4,000 members of a motorcycle club roared into Hollister, Calif. for a three-day convention. They quickly tired of ordinary motorcycle thrills and turned to more exciting stunts. Racing their vehicles down main streets and through traffic lights, they rammed into restaurants and bars, breaking furniture and mirrors. Some rested awhile by the curb (above). Others hardly paused. Police arrested many for drunkenness and indecent exposure but could not restore order. Finally, after two days, the cyclists left with a brazen explanation. 'We like to show off. It's just a lot of fun.' But Hollister's police chief took a different view. Wailed he, 'It's just a hell of a mess.' "

The incident inspired the Marlon Brando movie The Wild One.

Link Wray - Jack the Ripper.

That poor l'il door mice!

2010-02-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

Harlan Pepper

2010-01-03T04:39:00.000-08:00

Wowza.

I can't live without my radio

2009-12-29T06:33:00.000-08:00

Regrettably, I seem to have missed the first of the two Today programmes that I wanted to listen to, the one edited by David Hockney, which was broadcast this morning. Which is a bit of a shame, as it looks quite good, and I'm not sure why the BBC can't put it on the iplayer, but never mind. There are some highlights to be listened to here:

David Hockney edited Today Show.

I think they might put it up in full tomorrow or something, as seemingly they can't put it up immediately afterwards because of interviews and possible changes to the schedule(?)

Anyway, the next one that I'd like to listen to, but which undoubtedly I will miss also, is edited by Robert Wyatt, and is being broadcast on New Year's Day. Not much hope of catching that one then, although I don't actually know what we're planning to do on New Year, although I'm quite sure alcohol will have some part to play in the proceedings.

In the mean time, here's Hibou, Anemone and Bear from Soft Machine's Volume Two:

And Robert Wyatt's cover of Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding, on The Old Grey Whistle Test:

Enjoy.

Yo!! Sweetness.

2009-12-27T15:41:00.000-08:00

I was checking this out recently, and I got to thinking about some of the worse album covers from other years. By that I don't necessarily mean album covers that are just completely bizarre and obscure (but admittedly hilarious), rather albums that are actually relatively well known, by popular or respected artists. Some of the main offenders here seem to be rappers; older albums often have strange and ridiculous fashions on display, while some of the more recent efforts from the Wu Tang are pretty 'orribly designed, even if the contents are often excellent (unlike with the pitchfork article above, which seems to be suggesting that the artists who make or commission bad album art are necessarily bad musicians). So I guess you can't judge a CD by its cover (even if you can usually judge a book by its cover). Anyways, here's a few for your consideration, in no particular order:

Inspectah Deck - Uncontrolled Substance (1999):

A good album ("my style's so underground I write rhymes on fossils"), awful art. Inspectah looks like he's dressed as a bin man, and he's pulling a very awkward pose. The movement lines around the car suggest it's driving past him, and yet there's a dog leaning on it barking. Also, check the awful pic art magnifying glass, the bad font, and the awkward and unnecessary use of the Wu's "W" symbol, which is a recurring theme in Wu Tang solo albums.

Method Man - Tical 0: The Prequel (2004):

Extremely confusing and cluttered. Is the baby flying? Has it been dropped? It looks in pain anyway. More awkward "W" usage, this time it's been turned upside down. (Edit - just realised that it's a giant baby, wrecking a city)

GZA - Beneath the Surface (1999):

Another Wu Tang. Not sure what it is about this one that gets on my nerves; I think it just looks like a poorly made PC game from the late nineties, some sort of space related strategy game, but I can't really put my finger on it. The idea of imprinting a massive "G" on the world is a nice metaphor, but it looks rubbish in execution. Also, the "Parental Guidance" symbol is far too big, and it's guilty again of "W" manipulation. It's strange, because Liquid Swords has one of the coolest Wu covers, and yet this one is rubbish - perhaps he went to a different guy for Liquid Swords, and reverted back to the same crappy graphic artist that all of Wu seem to be friends with for this one.

GZA - Legend of the Liquid Sword (2002):

Pretty much the same deal as above, looks like a bad 90s PC game, except this one reminds me of this also:

GZA and the person he's with have been badly pasted behind that console they're looking at, so it seems as if they are just disembodied torsos without legs, just floating there above it.

Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams (2007):

Mortal Kombat.

Bob Dylan - Self Portrait (1970):

This one is pretty famously bad. Created by Bob himself, I guess by this point he was surrounded by sycophants and yes men who didn't bother to tell him he couldn't paint.

David Bowie - Earthling (1997):

I'm afraid to listen to this, because it contains the infamous drum and bass track he did. I'm sure I'm not missing very much, late Bowie tends to be pretty dull, but he's certainly not doing himself any favours by dressing up as Geri Haliwell's dad on the front cover.

Bobby Womack - The Poet II (1984):

Apparently tired of being of his image as a sexy sounding soul singer with big glasses, Bobby Womack decided to up his game in the mid 80s by dressing in pink leather. This seems to be part of a trend with soul and funk singers, who in trying to appear sensual and sensitive, sometimes cross the line into flaming homosexuality. I actually found this album in Groucho's once, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn't buy it.

Isaac Hayes - Joy (1973):

Same as the description for The Poet II, although it's worth noting the tiny Isaac jumping for "joy" above his name in a nice ballet pose, as well as the back cover for this album:

How can someone wearing that have such a manly pose? Because he's Isaac Hayes.

MC Hammer - Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em (1990):

Bad cover, terrible (although unintentionally hilarious) title. This one runs against my "don't judge a CD..." comment somewhat.

Kool Moe Dee - How Ya Like Me Now (1987):

This is one of the few bad album covers that is both completely horrible and completely awesome at the same time. My brain is swinging between the opinions so quickly that it's making me feel sick. Kool Moe Dee famously feuded with this guy:

LL Cool J - Walking Like a Panther (1989):

This one is more baffling than anything else. How were they allowed to do this? Does the purchaser/listener really need to be shown a panther in a gold chain in order to understand where LL is coming from here? Also, is it just me, or does that panther actually seem to be somewhat weighed down by the chain? It looks like his head is drooping. And what does that briefcase with the handcuffs have to do with anything?

Anyway, that's enough for now, but I might come back to this. I found some of these just as I was writing this blog, like the Panther one, so I guess there are probably an awful lot more out there than I'm aware.

On a side note, hope everyone is having a good Christmas.

I hope you choke on it.

2009-12-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

It's been very quiet on this blog of late, I guess because I've been finishing coursework and whatnot, and because I've just had a bit of a block in terms of having anything to say. However, the opportunity arose last night, when I wrote a couple of reviews for Clash that were too late to be included in the magazine (the deadline was last Friday), so I thought I'd post them; not because the bands I reviewed are any good, but because they are spectacularly bad, so you might get some small amusement from reading someone slating them:

Sgt. Wolfbanger – Think Inside the Box.

S.A.C Records.

The quality of Sgt. Wolfbanger's debut album is, sadly, easy to predict without a single listen; they've supported McFly. They have a song called “Ctrl Alt Retreat”. If you were to buy their album, you'd find the lyrics for this song printed inside, which include the rhyming dictionary fest, “now pull me from the mire, my eyes are pits of fire, never will I aspire, you've nothing to admire, not the type to inspire...” (it goes on like that, but I won't bore you further). Whether or not these points put you off, there's probably little purpose in reading the rest of this review; it's a foregone conclusion. If this description sounds appealing to you so far, chances are you aren't going to listen to reason. However, suffice to say, the music is the type of dull, uninspired and idiotic pop punk that you'd expect.

0.5/10 (for bravery).

Three tracks: If you want a laugh, listen to Take Me Away, which includes the line “when he buys you a drink, I hope you choke on it”.

Dig this? Dig Deeper: McFly, Busted, Noise Next Door.

Hadouken! - For the Masses.

Surface Noise Recordings.

In the press release for this album, Hadouken's lead singer James Smith name checked the Prodigy, admitting that he feels Hadouken! are due some chart success as they are “cut from the same cloth.” Immediately, listening to this album, alarm bells began to ring in my head; it seemed like Hadouken! aren't similar to the Prodigy; rather, they are actually trying to be the Prodigy, in the most cynical, shallow and brainless way possible; remember the part in Peep Show, where we hear the song Jeremy has been working on (“This is outrageous! This is contagious!”)? Well that's kind of what this album sounds like, except that along with the dumb chanting about drumming drums and cracking craniums, shouted over the generic dance music, James Smith also seems to be aping Dizzee Rascal's vocal style, to give the album the best chance of popular acceptance.

1/10.

Three tracks: It doesn't matter, they all sound the same.

Dig this? Dig Deeper: The Prodigy?

As well as ripping into horribly unconsidered music, last night I watched Hunger, which was excellent, if not particularly Christmassy. It was very quiet and reflective, and the parts that were noisy seemed absolutely deafening, in sharp contrast to the silence of the rest of the film.

The quote from Thatcher at the beginning of the trailer is particularly interesting; I find it hard to believe people swallowed her bullshit so easily. Obviously I'm not advocating the bombings in London and elsewhere by the IRA, but how can she justify the Falklands War if she thinks there is no such violence as political violence, only criminal?

Anyways, check that fillum if you get the chance.

I'm a real light sleeper...

2009-10-31T14:28:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

The Ghost of a Flea.

2009-10-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

William Blake - The Ghost of a Flea.

"Blake's explanation of the spirit he saw accords with the painting's extreme drama of scale, the contrast of the huge invisible monster with its tiny incarnation as insect. The blood-drinking household flea, said Blake, is in fact the physical shape taken by the souls of men who are so bloodthirsty that they are providentially confined to the size and form of insects.

The ghost is gorging on a bowl of blood. This is Blake's ultimate critique of the English portrait. How can empiricism, good manners and the sociability of a Gainsborough possibly acknowledge, as Blake does here, that one aspect of human nature is that of a blood-drinking ghoul?" - Johnathan Jones, the Guardian.

It's like looking in a mirror. Only... not.

2009-10-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

Best thing he's ever been in.

I have no love for the rich

2009-10-20T01:03:00.000-07:00

One of the best detective/noir films I've ever seen... In fact, one of the best films I've ever seen generally, and probably my favourite Kurosawa so far:

This is the best trailer I found on Youtube, because it doesn't give too much away (unless you read Japanese, in which case it might well give the whole plot away), unlike most of the other ones. But you should go and watch the whole film; it's pretty long, but brilliantly suspenseful and doesn't seem long at all.

"No more squishin' and squashin'!"

2009-10-15T12:20:00.000-07:00

"Or flippin' and floppin'!"

Sorry to keep going on about dumb informercials, but these things are just so fascinating and hilarious. The volume of this guy's voice is through the fucking roof. It's like they're just trying to scare and intimidate people into buying this shit. This must be where they got the inspiration for Barry Scott, guys like Billy Mays.

"The money you can claw back from things like home insurance is... invaluable."

2009-10-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Surely it is very easy to value money... It has a directly corresponding monetary value. It's pretty much the most easily valuable thing you get.

Stupid adverts.

Also, "School of Comedy" looks fucking awful. I hate TV, it makes me so angry.

Speaking of how much I like TV, here's a selection of interesting/amusing interviews from across the ages:

"Poppin' right around the studio"

Dave Letterman is a real asshole... As it says at the start of this video, you should check the context of what it is they're arguing about, but basically it comes down to Harvey protesting against General Electric, for various offenses like dumping toxic waste and testing nukes. General Electric own the television station NBC, which broadcasts the Dave Letterman show, so when Harvey came on with a t-shirt prompting people to boycott NBC, and starting mouthing off about General Electric, Dave Letterman wasn't having it and tried to shut him up, following which the in-house band played over him speaking and they cut to a commercial, despite having just come back from one. The video above seems to be NBC basically getting Harvey back in simply to make him look as stupid as possible, in order to belittle him and make sure that anyone who might have got a shock from the first time round fell back into being close minded zombies who don't care about what General Electric does as long as David Letterman keeps on with the funnies, which is incredibly hypocritical given how much Letterman tries to shout Harvey down by telling him he's being very rude in the first video. It also doesn't work, because he comes across as a complete prick. I think in both videos it shows how much of a bunch of assholes the live audience are also. Here's the first video:

While we're on the subject of television, I came across this guy today, who puts Barry Scott to shame in terms of sounding ridiculously hammy and over the top:

"Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life" - basically the funniest line ever. "You're gonna have an exciting life now." If only this guy actually knew what irony meant... Perhaps he's taking the piss, but I'm afraid he might be serious. "You're gonna love my nuts". People say sex sells, I guess they're trying to sell this product to extremely desperate housewives or something.

Outside of the adverts, he was also arrested for beating up a prostitute after she bit his tongue. This guy is like the most stereotypical numbskull from L.A. that you could ever think of; clearly a failed actor, leading some empty vapid life where he goes around beating prostitutes and doing incredibly bad infomercials.

Anyway, sensory overload, that's enough for today.

You feel so glad to be unable to go beyond

2009-10-06T03:05:00.000-07:00

Not sure if the person who posted this on Youtube made it, or Wavves made it, or what, but here you go:

Punch and Judy

2009-10-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Random

2009-10-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

1. Proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern: the random selection of numbers.

2. Statistics. of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen.

3. Building Trades.

a. (of building materials) lacking uniformity of dimensions: random shingles.

b. (of ashlar) laid without continuous courses.

c. constructed or applied without regularity: random bond.

It doesn't mean quirky, strange, or vaguely unlikeable. Just to clear that up.

I know a lot of people have a problem with the word "nice", I don't mind it, when it's not overused, and it's a lot less annoying and offensive than "random". I'd pretty much ban the word "random" if I could, for a while at least, so it could have a little cooling off period. People just insert it anywhere, as an exclamation or as a totally irrelevant adjective. It's pretty irritating, especially when people do it in my classes:

Lecturer: "Has anyone seen all of these poems?"

Person who never says anything vaguely interesting or useful: "Yeah... I have."

L: "OK, so what did you think of them?"

P.W.N.S.A.V.I.O.U: "I dunno... they were a bit random..."

Sigh...

This is good:

babel and escha - Urbanalities

I especially like the clock part, and the strange flowing shape inside the red clock face that follows it.

Only inarticulate people use language

2009-09-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

I wholeheartedly recommend this book:

It's great. So far it's been a pretty heavy introduction to comic criticism (in the part I was just reading, he was talking about Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment), and yet it's so enjoyable and conversational that it hardly feels like anything arduous or even very academic. It's like a cunning trick.

So yeah, if you're interested in that sort of thing, buy it, or borrow it off me when I'm done.

I've been reading a lot of comics recently, as a matter of fact, mostly by Grant Morrison; I've read the first volume of Animal Man and the first couple of volumes of The Invisibles in the last couple of days. It's amazing to be able to do something so constructive and enjoyable, but admittedly it is kind of distracting me from my Digital Poetry module, and from doing my journal.

The Invisibles is great as well, now I come to mention it (Animal Man is good too, but The Invisibles is better):

Also bought some new music today, Pavement's Bright the Corners, Yo La Tengo's I'm Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass and a Curtis Mayfield compilation, which was only £2.74 and has Move on Up, We the People Who Are Darker That Blue and Superfly on it.

So yeah.

Space is the place

2009-09-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

Sun Ra made a movie, apparently:

Sun Ra - Rocket Number Nine

Meanwhile, on Earth...

Broadcasting on 28/9/09 (next Monday):

1. The Smiths - Sheila Take a Bow

2. Lambchop - Ohio

3. Television Personalities - Part Time Punks

4. Field Music - 17

5. Tom Waits - 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six

6. Times New Viking - Those Days

7. Frank Black - Los Angeles

8. The xx - Crystalised

9. Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic

10. Jack Lewis and Friends - Polar Bear

11. Jurassic 5 - Lesson 6: The Lecture

12. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth

13. Vashti Bunyan - 17 Pink Sugar Elephants

14. The Specials - Too Much Too Young

15. Japanther - Um Like Your Smile is Totally Ruling Me

16. The Clash - Rudie Can't Fail

17. Deerhunter - Rainwater Cassette Exchange

18. Atlas Sound - Quarantined

19. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

20. Cocteau Twins - Sugar Hiccup

21. Indian Jewelry - Bird is Broke (Won't Sing)

I can't leave her behind

2009-09-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

I've been desperate to repost this ever since I saw it on Aquarium Drunkard. I think it's been long enough since they originally brought it to my attention, so now I'm passing it on to you, a very small but hopefully appreciative extra audience. This is one of the most wonderful snippets of music I've ever come across. It brings tears to my eyes, and very few songs do that:

Anyone who knows me well will tell you how much I love Bob Dylan, how much I love his style, his lyrics and his music, but this is perhaps the most beautiful love song he has ever sung, in one of the loveliest singing voices I've ever heard. I know, right? Why doesn't he just sing like that all the time, instead of nasal-o-jefferies? (as much as I love nasal-o-jefferies). I dunno, you'd have to ask him I guess, the man's an enigma wrapped in a puzzle.

P.S. I found the original Aquarium Drunkard post, while trying to find out whether this song had ever been recorded, and they posted the lyrics as follows (with a couple of amendments):

“Where she leads me I do not know, well she leads me where she goes. I can’t find her nowhere. Well, she needs me how, all aware, I just can’t hear her walk, I just can’t hear her talk, though sometimes you know you will. And when she comes my way, I’ll just be left any night or day, I will hear her say, that I don’t wanna try, I tried, also cried, but I can’t leave her behind.”

Rad! Oh?

2009-09-21T16:14:00.000-07:00

See what I did? Maybe not.

Broadcast 21/9/09 (ie tonight, I hope):

1. They Might Be Giants - James Ensor

2. Stanley Brinks - Stanley Brinks

3. A Hawk and a Hacksaw - Hummingbirds

4. Devo - Whip it

5. The Smiths - That Joke isn't Funny Any More

6. Wolf Parade - Shine a Light

7. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Helter Skelter

8. Tom Waits - Grapefruit Moon

9. Herman Dune - 1,2,3 Apple Tree

10. Zombie Zombie - What's Happening in the City

11. The Kinks - This Time Tomorrow

12. Tapes n' Tapes - Crazy Eights

13. Public Enemy - Don't Believe the Hype

14. Ananda Shankar - Jumping Jack Flash

15. Pink Mountaintops - Gayest of Sunbeams

16. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?

17. Beach House - Heart of Chambers

18. No Age - Teen Creeps

19. Bob Dylan - Gates of Eden

20. Times New Viking - End of All Things.

Grib grib gribbet

2009-09-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

It's fun to listen to Adam and Joe podcasts on my iPod, not only for the obvious reason that it's hilarious, but also because I find it quite fun to play a little game with myself, where I try to laugh as little as possible, and also because when I do laugh it's invariably when someone is walking past and it looks like I'm laughing at them. This can be fun when there are so many awful freshers around, and I like to think that their self confidence crumbles under my snickering, although of course it probably doesn't.

Anyways, here's a sort of bizarre clip from the TV show what they did, with Mark E Smith appearing on Vinyl Justice:

He gets pretty violent, as you can probably see. I feel pretty bad for A+J, because even though they seem to cope with it quite well, I think they are the kind of guys who don't respond very well to confrontation, and are probably therefore quite scared and intimidated.

In a side note, when we were doing the pub quiz last week, someone had the team name "Steven!", and so I dutifully shouted out "just coming!" when they got called up to receive some sort of prize.

Yeah, it was great.

A tinned Carribean drink

2009-09-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Dizzee looks so disappointed.

Half time hero

2009-09-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

I remembered that Heather actually posted the show that we did before she left, so I'll post the tracks I've been playing over the past couple of weeks. Did two shows in a row today, which was pretty dull and tiring. Anyway, here you go:

Show 1 (broadcast 14/9/09):

1. Belle and Sebastian - The Boy With the Arab Strap

2. Roy Orbison - In Dreams

3. Yo La Tengo - Sometimes I Don't Get You

4. Bob Dylan - From a Buick 6

5. Health - Death+

6. The Stooges - Search and Destroy

7. A Place to Bury Strangers - In Your Heart

8. The Specials - A Message to You Rudy

9. Tune-Yards - Sunlight

10. Nick Drake - Parasite

11. Black Sabbath - Paranoid

12. Women - Black Rice

13. Sonic Youth - Mary-Christ

14. The Mountain Goats - Psalms 40:2

15. Patrick Kelleher - Coat to Wear

16. Pavement - Heaven is a Truck

17. Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode

18. Tall Firs - Loveless

19. De La Soul - Tread Water

20. - Connan Mockasin - Sneaky Sneaky Dogfriend

Things that were planned but didn't make it:

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Satan Said Dance

Boris - LaserBeam

There's the first one anyway, I'll post the others another time.

Got Condemned today, it's pretty scary stuff. Been playing it a little, but I was also watching LOTR on channel 4 for a while, which was strangely both quite engrossing and laughable at the same time. Merry and Pippin are two of the most annoying fucking characters in film history, not only to the audience, but to the other characters as well; you almost start to think that they are agents of Sauron, they do such a good job of fucking things up. Sam isn't much better in terms of dumbness, but is equally irritating, due to his near willingness to actually commit suicide rather than allow Frodo to go off on his own, and his melodramatic, "I'm just a simple lad really" bullshit, like the part where he holds Frodo up in a field to tell him that if he takes one more step, he'll be the furthest away he's ever been. So fucking what? That's not in any way significant.

However, check this shizz:

For all that people (myself included) grumble about CGI, and how silly some of the acting is, and how ridiculously some of the characters are portrayed, I can't help preferring Peter Jackson's version over the animated one, in this scene at least (I haven't seen all of it, although I should, for kicks). Despite being animated, the Balrog still looks like a guy in a suit. How is that even possible? Plus it looks like he's seductively dancing towards Gandalf, rather than actually attacking him. As for Gandalf, he sounds almost nonchalant about the whole affair, even when he says "fly, you fools". Ian McKellen is pretty awesome though I guess, it'd be hard for him to be topped by a cartoon version.

Fly, you fools!

Cate Blanket

2009-09-18T04:55:00.000-07:00

I couldn't really give a flying fuck about fashion, but it's pretty infuriating how badly people have reacted to this:

That is one of the coolest, most original dresses I have ever seen anyone wear on pretty much any award show/event/whatever. And yet people are slagging it off and calling her "Cate Blanket" because it looks like something someone's granny would knit, or some shit like that.

Who cares? I don't think it looks like something an old person would knit, unless they were born in the 60s or something, but even if it did, grannies are cool. I'd wear something my granny knitted me. Better than wearing some over expensive, generic lookin' black or red dress like everyone else. Plus, it's bright and kinda psychedelic, which are obviously good points.

Fashion writers are full of shit.

The Bandit

2009-09-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

One of the best films I've seen in a while:

Your funeral, my trial

2009-09-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Check this wack shit:

My parent's application for a house extension, which they need so that they can properly accommodate the foster children in their care.

What's so wack about it is the fact that so many of my selfish ex-neighbours are bitching and moaning about the fact that it will effect their sunlight levels and privacy, even saying that less sun during winter afternoons will have a negative effect on their heating bill (from a guy who only visits at weekends. Also, what planet's he living on? What sun during winter? Even if it's present, it sure as hell isn't warm). Even the people next door are complaining, and they've already had their own extension built, to provide themselves with a lovely conservatory, sticking a big wall in the way of the back garden view in the process. Goddamn hypocrites. The keeping up with the Jones's bullshit and rivalry that goes on in that street makes me ill; it was the same sort of situation when one person in the street got a balcony, and suddenly everyone was building one. Except my parents have a genuine need for more room, whereas practically everyone else who lives there is either extremely old and childless, or only visit on weekends, or both.

Anyway, check that link and lend your support if you have a few seconds; I'm pretty proud of the little rant I put there, but all it would take is a little "I support the plans, Ian and Carol are doing a great job and one important to society and need the room" or whatever, and hopefully we can drown out all of the miserable bastards who have a problem with it.

I got hassled by someone outside the union today, advertising something called "Shag Tag". I pointed out to Matthew that it looked stupid, and she advanced on me and forced a leaflet under my friggin' armpit, shouting "TAKE ONE!" like a mad harpie bitch.

Grumble grumble grumble... I hate the union, and I hate my old neighbours, and I miss Heather.

I like this though:

John Caley - Overboard.

There were these two guys in a lunatic asylum...

2009-09-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

...and one night, one night they decide they don't like living in an asylum anymore. They decide they're going to escape!

So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moonlight... stretching away to freedom.

Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daredn't make the leap. Y'see he's afraid of falling.

So then, the first guy has an idea. He says "Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!"

But the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says "Wh-what do you think I am? CRAZY?

You'd turn it off when I was half way across!"

Yeah... Just read The Killing Joke. Pretty disturbing stuff... You sympathise with a psychopath, and it's finally brought home just how bat shit crazy Batman really is.

Had my first class this week, and got another two tomorrow. Studying comics this semester, and I've never been so excited about reading the course material before. I've actually already read a lot of it, including the secondary sources and critical writing stuff, which leaves me in a pretty good position for focusing on reading for Digital Poetry, which looks to be pretty complex and intellectual. A lot of it is free online though, which is cool:

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries - Dakota.

In all, fourth year is looking to be pretty exciting; the lyrics of Bob Dylan and American Modernist Poetry next semester, another personal fandom/difficult and intellectual combo, and both very interesting (to me, anyway).

Been on a big hip hop binge lately; I dunno why, there seems to be this link in my head between comics and hip hop. Especially been listening to a lot of Wu Tang (yes, I am 13 years old), as well as the many solo albums that have been made by the various members, especially Liquid Swords by GZA/Genius. I was gonna post C.R.E.A.M, but this is more amusing, as it kinda gives the impression of a poorly made infomercial aimed at selling the Clan to record labels (which is actually pretty much what it is):

I like the way Ghostface's name is written "Ghost Face Killer" instead of the usual "Killah", as if they sent off the footage to some cheap professional movie editing company, and the guy making it refused to typset it "Killah" because it was a crime against English. Although, ODB has his name with the usual "Ol'" as opposed to "Old".

It's also funny how much they have to censor the swear words, especially during ODB's part. I think he says "bite my style, I'll bite your motherfucking ass" at about 2:31, all of which is bleeped, to comic effect.

I really am going to post more often from now on. Really.

Kool thing walking like a panther

2009-09-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

I've had a shitty day. I'm totally sick of everyone at work; the kids, my co-workers, the parents (the ones who are on the committee, who effectively work there, but behind the scenes), they all seem to be busting my chops for no good goddamn reason. I need to find a new job.

Matthew and I watched Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai last night. It was pretty great. My mum gave me it because I accidentally gave it to her for Christmas, and she didn't want it. Here's a clip that pretty much sums up the idea of the movie, without giving too much away:

The music in the film is pretty cool too, kinda lo-fi hip-hop stuff. It's all done by RZA, from the Wu Tang Clan, who makes a slightly unnecessary cameo appearance in the movie. He also appears in one of Jim Jarmusch's other films, Coffee and Cigarettes:

So yeah... gonna have to start posting again.

What flavour!?

2009-08-10T04:55:00.000-07:00

Watched You Can't Take It With You last night, another Capra with Jimmy starring. It was a little bit sappy at some points, but generally speaking hearts were warmed all round. Here's a scene where this fat horrible business man gets owned by a nice old man:

I like the way he says "human being".

Also watched Brewster's Millions yesterday afternoon, with most of the swearing and stuff cut out since it was for television (even though I picked up on Ricky Gervais saying "wank" on an advert for T4 just before it came on). It was pretty funny, and 80s-tastic, and also heartwarming, in it's own way:

Back to work today. It feels like going back to school after summer holidays; there's a kind of deep dread down in the pit of my chest. It's been nice lazing around, although I can't help feeling I kind of wasted the last weekend by getting drunk on Saturday night at Alex's party and spending the whole of Sunday recovering. The whole situation was like being a teenager again; having arduous and tedious work on the horizon, getting drunk and arguing pointlessly with random psychology students about God knows what for hours...

Anyway, gotta go to the junk shop.

Quiet on yo' ass

2009-08-04T05:35:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been pretty silent on this blog o' mine, mostly because I've been lazy, but also because I've had little to say in relation to the things I've been posting; I'm neither qualified or capable of saying anything useful about these paintings, so I thought it better to let them speak for themselves.

I've been really interested in painting recently, which has been filtering into my dreams a lot; dreams about helter skelters set against fluorescent pink backdrops, extensive walks around art galleries, both as myself and as Sherlock Holmes, accompanied by Heather and Watson, respectively.

Here's some work by William Eggleston, about whom Heather and I watched a programme recently, presented by Alan Yentob, called Imagine:

Morton, Mississippi (1969-70):

Huntsville, Alabama (1971):

Untitled (1984):

Apart from anything else, it strikes me that the first two images, and much of Eggleston's work, seems to have been infuential on on the films of David Lynch; this was pointed out in the programme of course, so I probably had some help in making this amazing leap of reference. Regardless, they both have the same kind of facade of normality with an undercurrent of evil and loneliness that you would find in a film like Blue Velvet, with a similar subject matter of the American lower middle class. The first image is obviously more threatening than the second, which just seems very empty and sad.

The last picture is just odd; everything about it suggests a church or shrine to Elvis, and I think Kennedy, whose face I believe is in the American flag on the dresser. Obviously the owner of the house misses the 60s a great deal. In fact, I think it might have been taken inside Graceland, which would probably explain it.

Roy Orbison - In Dreams.

Mellow fruitfulness

2009-07-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

David Hockney - Woldgate Woods, 6 & 9 November 2006:

Polyphemus

2009-07-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

Odilin Redon - The Cyclops (1898-1900):

Dig him up and shake his hand

2009-07-20T03:08:00.000-07:00

James Ensor - Portrait of the Artist Surrounded By Masks (1809):

Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring (1891):

Uh...

2009-06-30T06:02:00.000-07:00

Her death is quite romantic.

2009-06-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

William Shakespeare - Hamlet (Act IV, Scene VII):

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death."

John Millais - Ophelia (1852):

Bob Dylan - Desolation Row:

"Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window,
For her I feel so afraid,
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid.

To her, death is quite romantic,
She wears an iron vest,
Her profession's her religion,
Her sin is her lifelessness,
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow,
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row."

Straighten up your act and boogie down.

2009-06-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

I know I said I wouldn't do this, but...

Of course, the Michael Jackson in this video has been gone for a long time, but it's still pretty sad. I didn't realise I'd be effected really, but he was so hugely famous that it feels like an important part of human civilisation has disappeared, as if the Statue of Liberty had fallen down or something. Even though it's remote, and I've never been a huge fan (although I've always liked his earlier music, I guess his image and "Earth Song" both kinda put me off him), I can't help but feel pretty weird about it.

Anyway, today I found an absolutely awesome album. Here's a picture, although the cover of the one I bought is different to this, you get the idea:

I don't know if you can quite read the little yellow strip in the top left corner, but it includes an amazing 80s-tastic poster on how to breakdance (which will be going up on the wall shortly), and an instructional "rap" on how to breakdance, which I haven't yet listened to. It also has a little glossary on the back of breakdance slang, which I will transcribe in full, because Heather is away at the moment and I'm sad and bored and have little else to do:

BITE - verb; to copy, duplicate or reproduce without consent; to steal from others.

Ex: "We were doing those steps way before them. They must have bit our moves.

CHILL - verb; to chill, chillout, chilin', the act of calming down, keeping under control, staying cool.

Ex: "Yo, chill out!" "I'm just chillin'!"

CRITICAL - adjective; describes an action poorly done, a state of poor condition.

Ex: "His graffiti piece was all critical, looked like a chimpanzee did it. He breaks all critical."

DIS - verb; to disrespect another person, to show no respect or regard for another person's feelings or property.

Ex: "When you talked about my girl, you really dissed me man."

DOG - verb; to overuse, abuse, spoil through excess.

Ex: "He dogged his sneakers. They were all critical looking."

FRESH - adjective; the hippest, the newest, the most together and unique. On time, well conceived and executed. Beautiful, aesthetically pleasing.

Ex: "The new Mercedes compact is fresh!" "I want that record with the fresh beats!"

FRONT, FRONTING - verb; to be irresponsible, to not show up, to break a promise.

Ex: "I was supposed to meet her here at 8.00, but it looks like she's fronting on me."

HOMEBOY, HOMEGIRL - pronoun, noun; comrade, companion, guys and girls from the neighbourhood.

Ex: "Yo man, let him in. He's one of my homeboys."

JERK - verb; to cheat, or to fool someone.

Ex: "He told me 50% but I only got 10; I got jerked."

MAX OUT - verb; a friendly term for parting with ease or saying goodbye.

Ex: "OK, I'll see you tomorrow. Yo, max out."

RUN - verb; to repeat in excess, to be redundant, to use over and over.

Ex: "That song was alright until they started running it."

SQUIGGLEY - adjective; nerdy, unhip or unattractive.

Ex: "I don't want to go out with that girl, she's too squiggley."

TRACK - noun; freeze move in which break ends in a bridge with stomach up, supported by hands and feet.

UPROCK - noun; duelling distance between 2 breakdancers, where the dancers mimic fighting an score points by getting non-contact blows or hits in first.

WACK - adjective; describes something poorly done or in bad tate, awkward, clumsy, off beat.

Ex: "That break move was wack!" "He's the wackest D.J. I know"

WORD - noun; an affirmation, a term to acknowledge or support a statement.

Ex: "That girl is fine. Word." "Do you want to be the best? Word, you know it!"

So there you go. I think my favourite might be Homeboy, the example for which sounds like alternative lyrics to "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", and I like the cruelty of the Squiggley example.

It's weird, it also mentions MJ on the back of the album, in a little section on the history of breakdancing:

"At the moment Michael Jackson stepped on stage - dancing his "MOONWALK" on the 25th Anniversary Mowtown Special last year - Breakdancing took a giant step forward in the space of about a year, rock and pop videos, have brought breakdancing to international fame."

Obviously grammar isn't their strong point, but never mind.

Peace out homeboys.

I'm not dead.

2009-06-14T06:28:00.000-07:00

Public Enemy No. 1

2009-05-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

I was going to post the original Crass version of Do The Owe Us A Living, but, controversial as it may be, I actually prefer the Jeffrey Lewis version. Here's a montage of Jeff and co. playing a selection of tracks from 12 Crass Songs:

And here also is something that I'm pretty surprised I haven't posted before, because it's excellent:

Jeff provides pretty convincing evidence that America is the original home of punk, although I suppose I still see merit in the argument that English bands really took it to the masses and developed it as an idea. Although I actually prefer "proto-punk" and "new wave" or "post-punk" to the actual punk era.

In reference to an earlier post, which recently provoked a pretty big reaction, in a way, it's sort of comforting to know that my opinions about student politics caused so much anger; DUSA seemed to go completely unchallenged for the most part, so it's pretty amusing to see them crawling over themselves to shout me down when I speak up (if you can even call posting my own opinion on my own, largely anonymous personal blog "speaking up"). It's especially funny to see people making particularly vitriolic posts under an anonymous name, before switching to their real name to act like "Uncle Democracy", inviting me over to their office or whatever... Or to see people acting real friendly in the face of what I've said about them, whilst belittling my opinions on their Facebook page.

Stay outta politics, kid. It's a goddamn mug's game. From now on I think I'll stick to talking about obscure bands and silly Youtube videos.

Cheery fucking bye!

Gun Crazy!

2009-05-16T15:10:00.000-07:00

Just got back from watching Gun Crazy at the DCA. It was pretty much one of the most exciting films I've ever seen. The chase scenes were fantastic. Here's a clip:

There's a little quote from the director that the person who posted the video stuck alongside it, which I thought was pretty cool:

"We started a mile out of town. John and Peggy knew the intent and content of the scene, improvised their own dialogue and generally played it by ear. It so happens a car pulled out as they drove up. Otherwise she was going to double park. We made two takes and used the second take. Off screen there were people that yelled 'They held up the bank'. It was so real and none of the bystanders knew what we were doing. We had no extras except the people the policeman dircted. Everything - cars, people - was there on the street."

It's amazing the things that you see in more recent films that you think are unique and original and great, only to find that they've been ripped off from some obscure film from 40 or 50 years ago. Nothing seems to be original. Some of the things Tarrantino gets away with are scandalous (for an example, check one of Heather's earlier posts for a clip from Bande Apart; it's a cafe dancing scene which is pretty much lifted wholesale and made into the Jackrabbit Slim's scene in Pulp Fiction.)

So yeah, that was pretty decent, check the whole film if you can, although I'd imagine it would be expensive to purchase. If you're in Dundee, it's on again at the DCA tomorrow night. There was only about 6 other people there, it was crazy. Gun crazy.

Work is going good, although my rather tiring daily activities pretty much consist of a constant reenactment of this video:

Bye!

And it burns, burns, burns!

2009-05-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

Couldn't work out how to post this as an embedded file, because it's a bit of a funny link (ie, it's not on Youtube), but here's a link anyway:

Great big fire outside my house.

Full article, with my mother, AKA "Carol Harrison (50)", posing with a basin like a media whore.

So that's quite amusing, anyway.

Also, Stuart has a blog! There's a link to it on the right, but here's another for good measure:

Stuart's blog.

Also, here's Jeff's latest video, for To Be Objectified:

Jeff was fucking great when we saw him the other day, and I'm coming round to the new album more and more - I've found it to be clever rather than deep, if that makes sense. There's plenty of wit and intelligence, but (at first at least) there seemed to be less about life, how it should be lived, and whether anyone really has any idea what's it's all about anyway than in previous albums. But I think the deep thoughts are still there underneath the witticisms, and I like this video, although the start and finish are a bit cheesy (although if you pause the start you can see the cover of "Fuff #7", which is a great comic written by Jeff, which I have read all but one issue of, as I forgot to buy it in Aberdeen).

I forgot to mention the most important thing, at least in diary terms, which is that I got a job at one of the schools where Heather works, as a play worker! Which is awesome. I'm really looking forward to it, I met the kids when I went in for the interview and they seem really cool. I think I'm going to try out a comics class with them.

Anyway, that's enough for one evening.

Auf Wiedersehen!

If you're not greedy you will go far.

2009-05-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

Heather downloaded Spotify recently, so we've been testing out it's boundaries by searching for various obscure bands and artists, and checking out some stuff we've not heard in a while, or at all. I was listening to the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory soundtrack, until it got too annoying; somehow it's just not the same without the psychedelic visuals (sorry about the stupid title someone has given this video):

This was one of my favourite films as a kid, along with perhaps the Aristocats and The Yellow Submarine, which for a while I watched practically every time I went to Christopher's house (as well as watching that, we often recorded our own radio shows onto cassette - pretty portentous, I suppose):

So as well as reminiscing about my wayward childhood, which at the moment seems to have been as close to a series of psychedelic episodes as you can get without actually taking LCD, we've also been listening to some bands that have released CDs that are outside our budget, like Herman Dune, who are really great:

I would love to get hold of a pink bear hat like that one.

So yeah, download Spotify, it's great. There is a premium service, but the only real benefit is that you don't have to listen to adverts, which are very infrequent anyway, and mostly seem to be advertising the premium service. Which is strangely self serving and actually quite amusing, rather than annoying.

Toodle-oo!

Satan's bingo

2009-04-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

I justed wanted to draw your attention to this advert, and make some comments on it, if I may:

A) That fox man is the freakiest fucking mascot I think I have ever seen. It doesn't look natural. If you plan to use an animal as a mascot, they should either be ridiculously oversized (ie, football mascots), cartoons, or real animals that happen to have the power of human speech. This... mutant hybrid is just frightening. It looks enough like a fox to give it an air of cluelessness about its own actions, and enough like a man for it to seem like a dirty pervert/pimp.

B) This advert is probably also one of the most sexist I have ever seen, and it happens to be prejudice towards its own target audience. All of the women seem to be slags, lusting after this horrible fox creature because he keeps spouting cheesy, building site inspired one liners. Is it really that easy to get female admirers? Try dressing up in an animal costume and walking up the middle of the road, whilst playing Sister Sledge at an annoyingly loud volume, see where it gets you. Probably even further than this guy, because at least animal costumes from fancy dress shops are pretty cute, while this fox thing is freakish.

C) As well as alienating its target audience by portraying them as a bunch of desperate housewives, it seems to be further limiting the advert's appeal by only featuring women. Where are all the old men that go to bingo? Oh wait, there is one prominently featured man in this ad...

D) The dead guy, who comes back to life when he "sees" the fox walk past. Is this for real? Is the guy gay, or into bestiality, or does he just love bingo so fucking much that it brought him back to life?

E) While this advert seems to be full of blatant prejudice, it misses one obvious stereotype; the majority of people who go to bingo are very old. I'm not saying all of them are, some might even be glamourous bimbos like the one at the zebra crossing, but I'd say about 80% of the people following the fox creature should have zimmers.

F) They all gatecrash some poor bastards house at the end, just to use his internet.

There's probably more I could say about this monstrosity, but not without feeling violently ill, so I'll call it a night.

Dada like these

2009-04-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

Sunset Rubdown are releasing another album on Jagjaguwar, called Dragonheart. I've asked Clash if I can review it, but I haven't had an answer from them yet. However, I did get sent this by Jagjaguwar's PR guy, Manish:

Sunset Rubdown - Idiot Heart

It's a pretty good track. For anyone unfamiliar with Sunset Rubdown, they are a side project of Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug, who also plays in the "indie supergroup" Swan Lake. Heather pointed out that Idiot Heart sounds like an Interpol track, and I agree, although I wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad thing... Maybe a little bit bad. Not that I have anything against Interpol, but I'd rather other bands didn't sound like them, because Interpol themselves already sound like a few other bands (Spoon, Modest Mouse... Wolf Parade, etc).

Anyway, hopefully I'll get the album for free and I'll be able to judge it as a whole.

The sink got blocked last night and I fixed it. We also might be starting a podcast station. That makes me one of these:

We were also listening to a lot of soul/funk/disco last night, after watching a rubbish programme about 70s music. Here's a classic soul hit, followed by a kind of reworking by Alan Hawkshaw's band of session musicians, The Mohawks:

Otis Redding - Tramp

The Mohawks - The Champ

Funkaliscious!

I wonder where that fish has gone?

2009-04-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

This is how I feel right now:

We bought some fish today. A black one, an orange one and a white one. We were going to by a lovely orange/black one, but some couple bought it before us, even though they fecking heard us talking about buying it.

We watched Blowup last night, which was pretty good. By now we're starting to get pretty used to watching obvious but heart warming classic Hollywood movies, mostly starring Jimmy Stewart, so it made a nice change. Here's a trailer:

It has a really great and strange final scene, and on the whole it's well worth a watch, even if the lead character wears an obnoxious pair of white jeans throughout.

It's cold, so I'm going to go and find a jumper and check Jam hasn't broken the fish tank yet (for pictures of our lovely tank/fish, check Heather's blog).

Goodle Tip!

A Perfect Day For Bananafish

2009-04-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

I've been reading For Esme - With Love and Squalor, and to be honest I must have been insane to not do so before now. Catcher in the Rye is probably my favourite book of all time, and this collection of short stories hasn't disappointed so far. I don't always like reading short story collections, because I sort of enjoy the small sense of achievement and fufillment that comes with finishing a novel. When you finish a short story you immediately have to throw yourself into another, which can be tiring and irksome; not always of course, and certainly not in this case.

I just found A Perfect Day For Bananafish, which I urge you to read. It's probably best to just get hold of a copy of the story collection, but if Bananafish is online then there are probably quite a few others kicking around somewhere.

More colour field today. Here you can find the poet Frank O'Hara interviewing the colour field painter Barnett Newman; I didn't watch all of it, it's a little out of my depth in terms of intellectualism, but here's a couple of Newman's paintings:

Barnett Newman - Adam (1951-2):

Eve (1950):

Rather than try and explain these paintings, which of course I can't do accurately or even coherently, it's probably best to watch the afformentioned interview; however, I did find a quote from Newman which is very interesting in relation to these paintings:

"What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against man's fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men."

So there you go.

Everything I have is down in pawn

2009-04-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

Alright, it's been a fucking while, so what?

I've been to Morocco since the last time I posted, which was extremely interesting, not as relaxing as I thought it might be, and a little scary. So on the whole it was a positive and worthwhile experience. However, for the extensive low down on that sojourn the best place to head is Heather's blog, which is crammed with great pictures of our time.

I borrowed some books from the library to try and get through in between looking for jobs and trying to set up radio stations (best not to ask right now). These were:

J.D. Sallinger - For Esme - With Love and Squalor

Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan

Phillip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?

Graham Greene - Our Man In Havana

So mostly American novels.

I also filled in another couple of gaps from my Sandman gallery, by purchasing Doll's House, Fables and Reflections and the stand alone Endless Nights. I've read Doll's House already, which is great, as always, and has more of the beloved Corinthian, who is one creepy and charismatic bastard. He has teeth where his eyes should be and he eats the eyes of others, especially those of rent boys. Well, since you insist, here he is as he appears in The Kindly Ones:

.

Speaking of The Kindly Ones, it's still my favourite Sandman so far, which is really saying something, because they're all excellent. The art really stands out compared to the others; despite the gravitas of it's events, it being the virtual climax of the Sandman storyline (with The Wake acting as a kind of summing up book), the artist chosen for most of the book was Marc Hempel, who has a wonderfully bright, jagged, cartoony style:

Marc Hempel - Death:

To be honest, the artwork he has on his myspace doesn't really do him much justice, but here's a link anyway:

Marc Hempel.

It would be a much better idea to just buy The Kindly Ones - of course, it would make sense to buy and read the preceding books first. If you're lucky enough to know me personally I might let you take a look, inside my house and under my supervision.

I also found out that Chris Murray is running a module on British comic writers next year, which is the best news since Mr. Hovis wrote home to his son to inform him that he had just invented sliced bread. The Sandman is actually on the course, which is even better.

Anyway, I think Heather's a bit sleepy, so I'll call it a night.

Toodley George!

Get out of here with that watch, lay off the poor beavers will ya?!

2009-03-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

1959

2009-03-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

I'm just taking a pause from watching a programme about jazz in 1959, as Heather is drying her hair and we're going to the library soon, but here's a link:

1959: The Year That Changed Jazz.

It's really pretty great so far. I love BBC Four, pretty much everything on there is worth watching. I wish I had the time to just sit and watch educational programmes all day long, but alas, I must go and write my journals today. I also still have quite a lot of my portfolio to finish for creative writing, as well as an essay which explains my work. I had a go at the cut up technique the other day, and I think it went quite well (watch previous William Burrough video for explanation of cut up).

This is kind of a classic performance of So What, a Mile Davis track which features John Coltrane in the band on sax:

Enjoy.

You also invented homos!

2009-03-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

We attended The Only Fun In Town last night, which was being hosted on the same night as "Ned and Emo night" at the union, an event which was sure to make my blood boil. Whenever I go to the union I try to keep an open mind about the other people who go there, but they sure make it difficult.

Practically everyone attending went as a "ned", presumably because they relished the chance to dress in the regalia of their spiritual ancestors, and those few people who did go as "emos" were dressed like gay ravers. Seriously, we're talking black tank tops, red ties on collarless black t-shirts, black armbands around biceps, mascara etc.

Also, when I went to the toilet, two cockmunchers obviously picked me out as an outsider to their carnival of idiocy, and turned the lights off. So I was groping around in the pitch blackness (there are no windows), when someone else came in and turned the light back on. I was like "Someone turned the light off when they went out", to which he responded, in a really smarmy voice "Oh yeah, sure, like you didn't do it yourself". In a fit of extreme manliness, I quipped back "Oh yeah, I did it myself, because I enjoy stumbling around in the dark you stupid prick", and walked out.

Zing!

There was also an awful lot of people touting various candidate t-shirts, hanging around in groups of differing political allegiance. I've noticed a somewhat more lackadaisical approach to canvassing this year, which hasn't involved screaming at people outside of the union like apes at a zoo (at least to our notice). Also, a lot of the policies seem pretty half-hearted and pointless (although that has been a feature of previous campaigns); for example, two separate candidates are promising to start a Facebook page. Surely that isn't something which takes a lot of time or effort?

EDIT:

Just wanted to show you this guy's campaign poster (there are quite a few bad ones, but this might be the worst this year):

I may be wrong about this, because I'm sure there have been some pretty awful ones in the past, but I think "Don't be a Focker, Vote for Cocker" might be the worst slogan of all time.

As for the policies, this is one of the Facebook people; the other two policies are pointless, because I seriously doubt that a change in the legal drinking age is even going to happen, and even if it does it wouldn't be in the year that this guy is "Honorary Secretary" (a meaningless job title if ever I heard one), and even if it did happen this year, just what is this guy going to do about it? I suppose the Government/Council are going to cancel all plans for the law change and start running the other way once they hear that Cocker's on the case.

And it's wrapped up nicely with "Get Your Cocker Out!" Christ, are we living in a 1960s Carry On film?

(EDIT 2 - I took out some of the nastier stuff in this rant - I often get carried away with this sort of thing, and as readers can probably tell from Gary Cocker's post (if it is indeed Gary Cocker), he isn't a nasty guy. His campaign poster is still clearly misled, but it obviously got him elected, so what do I know? /EDIT 2)

/EDIT.

But anyway, we didn't stay too long for fear of getting terminally drunk, and so we went home and watched Ghost World instead, which was pretty great. Here's a clip:

While that clip kind of makes it look like a dumbass teen movie of sorts, it wasn't, but there are some pretty funny bits in it. Also, there's a great opening clip of a Bollywood dance routine, which I found in full, as the song is pretty damn catchy:

The film is pretty different from the comic; Seymour (played by the awesome Steve Buscemi) is kind of just a minor character in the book, while he plays a major part in the film. Also, in many ways the movie is a lot more depressing in an obvious way, rather than mildly melancholic, which is how I'd describe the comic. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.

This has been quite lengthy/ranty.

Oh yeah...

2009-03-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

These words are not premature.

2009-03-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

I'm attempting to read Naked Lunch again, which I can only really do at night, when I'm tired, otherwise I find my brain tries too hard to understand what is going on. At night the words and images just wash over me, and I'm left with an impression of what has happened, who the characters are, what is being referred to etc.

Here's a video about the cut up technique, which has an interview with Burroughs and Ginsberg, who shows up at the end:

And some other great artists:

And that is all for today.