I get paid in three days. With that in mind, I hied me to Rockaboom to get a couple of the latest top pop waxings, as John Peel used to say. I have been without satellite TV for nearly two months now, but can still remember enough of MTV2 to find a couple of things worth a listen. For example, the Good Shoes album. Some arty sort of punky types from Morden in Surrey, they are deeply suburban and can play some very cool guitar. They sound a bit like something between The Cure and the Futureheads. Good, I think.
I like to keep up with the Kids, see. My back aches too much for four days in a tent at Glastonbury, but I still enjoy a tune or two. And it's nice to see the young people enjoy themselves. The Who last night, for example. I cannot be alone in finding it funny to watch Pete Townshend (aged 62) and Roger Daltrey (age 63) singing that they hope they die before they get old. Still, Pete is a great guitar player, and if I can be that spry at the same time as having my bus pass, I will be happy.
My own personal festival is happening in August, at Summer Sundae. I like it a lot. It's about 500 yards from my house, and I can go home at night, shower, sleep in a bed and generally avoid the whole tent full o'mud thing. Once upon a time I'd have said something like "A festival witout mud is like a pencil without a sharpener... pointless". but then a lot of the things I said when I was a teenager should be stricken from the record. I have made peace with the ridiculous little squirt I was when I was young, and don't need reminding of it by the likes of me, thank me very much.
What else? Well, I broke a heart at work, but that's more ludicrous that newsworthy, especially considering I didn't know I did it. Alaina has spent the last God knows how long telling me that I am something of a catch, and I have spent the corresponding time saying something along the lines of "Yeah, right" and then weeping copiously alone in my cold, peeling rooms. But maybe? Yeah, right. God, I sound like a stuck record sometimes.
Sigh.
Oh, yes, records. I also bought the new White Stripes album. Jack White is an odd fish. On the cover he and Meg (more about her later) are dressed as pearly kings, not the kind of garb you'd expect from a pair of garage musicians from Detroit, MI. Aparently he's obsessed with the number three, and thinks that black is the most powerful colour in the universe. It's slimming, sure, but after ten washes, anything black will not be so much black as charcoal.
But then again, he's worth $20,000,000 and is married to a supermodel, so he can afford to have his little whims. Like the huge picture of Queen Victoria on page 3 of the inlay. Not normal. And he gets to mob about with Meg. Lucky bastard. She's not obvious about it, and her taxidermy fixation is a bit off-putting, but you can't argue with an arse like that. Felicity Kendal in 1978, Audrey Tatou and Meg White. That's some menage a quatre.
Anyway. I think I've got as much out of buying two records as any blogger can. I certainly am not going to go on about how much I might fancy Meg White. Once you start doing that, it's only a short step to a website dedicated to her, copyright infringement to fill said site with pictures, writing a pangeryic for her entry on Wikipedia and then some kind of court action. The internet is full of creepy people, and I aim to not be one of them. But have a look at the inlay of Icky Thump. Like I said. You can't argue with an arse like that. Or the boobs, neither. Hur, hur.
Anyway, busy, busy, busy. I need to finish my script for my comedy pilot, work out some guitar for The Invisible Head and see if I can get any further on Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I was doing quite well, but kept falling off a motorbike over a cliff on one chase level. I need to work out how to stay on the bike, and then how to kill the man I am chasing. I am pretty confident I'll have to. GTA is like that. And that's aside from the heartbreaking and drawing pictures of Meg White all over the walls.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Monday, June 25, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
I Don't Believe In Reincarnation
Calvin Harris, Kirkcaldy's answer to White Town, who was in turn Derby's answer to Gary Numan, Essex's answer to a question only a New Romantic would ask, recently delighted some and annoyed most with his oh-so-hip rehash of the music we know and love. The music of the 1980's. Not like the actual music of the 1980's, of course, as that was actually mostly awful. Anyone who harbours a nostalgic love of The Reynolds Sisters wants seeing to by a competent doctor. No, Calvin is cleverer than that. His little tune 'It Was Acceptable In The 80's' sounded nothing like anything I remember of the musics of the 1980's. I was only ten when the decade ended, but I am pretty sure it was a lot less super-disco and a lot more Rick Astley.
Similarly the video. It had lots of neon synthetics, big hair and ker-ay-zee decor in flourescent yellow and chrome. All he lacked was a silk dressing gown with a dragon embroidered on the back. Not like the actual look of the time, which was dominated, at least in my house, by beige and the Great Smell of Brut. In this respect the 80's were exactly like the 70's before it, although to be fair the 70's were more brown than beige. Whatever, it was not hot pink.
And now it is. The 80's are cool, and who'd have thought that would ever happen in the depths of the 90's, where the Union Jack was the ultimate emblem of style and London was briefly swinging again? Back then, the 80's was all ridiculous hairspray and suits with narrow lapels made of that strangely sheeny sort ofgrey fabric. Laughable. Although, we can see that short term cultural nostalgia is being used up at an alarming rate, and if it continues we may be forced to have some new ideas. No-one wants that.
As an acolyte of the 90's, I am sat in slightly baggy jeans, mildly retro t-shirt and a pair of Adidas Superstars. Apart from the PC, I like to think I could look like anyone from the late 60's/ early 70's. I also know that I don't, and never will because my teeth are too healthy and I am not anywhere near skinny enough. Because that was the reality of the time. Bad teeth on the NHS and no food because everyone was skint. Oh for the good old days.
So we come to my actual point, which is that the likes of me and Calvin Harris are the first generation who can have this rosy nostalgia for a lost age, knowing that we don't have to be really selective with what we remember. Hankering for the true 1960's experience? Then really you need diptheria, capital punishment and Rhodesia, too. A bit less attractive now, isn't it? Maybe the 70's, with its huge rock bands, flares and John Thaw driving a Granada in The Sweeny? Not forgetting, of course, the three day week, Northern Ireland and a mysterious virus that appeared in New York's gay community which no-one could understand and killed you dead in weeks. On the other hand, the worst the 90's could throw at us was John Major and Oasis' 3rd album.
So I have been wallowing in 90'stalgia (a neat neologism, that). Or, in another sense, I have been watching my old Eddie Izzard videos. A funny man, he was. I also watched The South Park Movie which again, was very good. It's a proper musical, with many, many songs ripped off from Les Miserables and West Side Story. And what has the 21st century to offer us? This exciting new millenium, with its promise of jet boots and flying to Mars by teleporter and sex with hot green alien women?
24.
I mean, really. It's no wonder society is falling apart at the seams. We don't talk anymore. No-one returns phone calls or emails now. We just sit, wall-eyed and defeated as the phone rings and Microsoft Outlook beeps again and again, looking out of the window and wondering if it should be raining more or less this time of year and if it has anything to do with global warming. We are all somatised, and yes, Americans, I spell it with a damn S. One of the minor characters on Doctor Who this week said 'schedule' with a hard C, and it really grated. It's pronounced 'shedyool'. Morons.
That said, I have discovered the cure for my crisis of faith in the excting new and not at all unutterably depressing world of internet dating. I was walking home today when I noticed a sticker on a traffic light saying, and I sort of quote;
SENSITIVE BUT ASSERTIVE MAN
LOOKING FOR SOMEONE LIKE YOU
HAS NINE INCH PENIS
And a googlemail address. Now, there's a man with the right idea. Never mind Match.com, that's gotta be much more effective!
Good Night, and Good Luck
Doug
Similarly the video. It had lots of neon synthetics, big hair and ker-ay-zee decor in flourescent yellow and chrome. All he lacked was a silk dressing gown with a dragon embroidered on the back. Not like the actual look of the time, which was dominated, at least in my house, by beige and the Great Smell of Brut. In this respect the 80's were exactly like the 70's before it, although to be fair the 70's were more brown than beige. Whatever, it was not hot pink.
And now it is. The 80's are cool, and who'd have thought that would ever happen in the depths of the 90's, where the Union Jack was the ultimate emblem of style and London was briefly swinging again? Back then, the 80's was all ridiculous hairspray and suits with narrow lapels made of that strangely sheeny sort ofgrey fabric. Laughable. Although, we can see that short term cultural nostalgia is being used up at an alarming rate, and if it continues we may be forced to have some new ideas. No-one wants that.
As an acolyte of the 90's, I am sat in slightly baggy jeans, mildly retro t-shirt and a pair of Adidas Superstars. Apart from the PC, I like to think I could look like anyone from the late 60's/ early 70's. I also know that I don't, and never will because my teeth are too healthy and I am not anywhere near skinny enough. Because that was the reality of the time. Bad teeth on the NHS and no food because everyone was skint. Oh for the good old days.
So we come to my actual point, which is that the likes of me and Calvin Harris are the first generation who can have this rosy nostalgia for a lost age, knowing that we don't have to be really selective with what we remember. Hankering for the true 1960's experience? Then really you need diptheria, capital punishment and Rhodesia, too. A bit less attractive now, isn't it? Maybe the 70's, with its huge rock bands, flares and John Thaw driving a Granada in The Sweeny? Not forgetting, of course, the three day week, Northern Ireland and a mysterious virus that appeared in New York's gay community which no-one could understand and killed you dead in weeks. On the other hand, the worst the 90's could throw at us was John Major and Oasis' 3rd album.
So I have been wallowing in 90'stalgia (a neat neologism, that). Or, in another sense, I have been watching my old Eddie Izzard videos. A funny man, he was. I also watched The South Park Movie which again, was very good. It's a proper musical, with many, many songs ripped off from Les Miserables and West Side Story. And what has the 21st century to offer us? This exciting new millenium, with its promise of jet boots and flying to Mars by teleporter and sex with hot green alien women?
24.
I mean, really. It's no wonder society is falling apart at the seams. We don't talk anymore. No-one returns phone calls or emails now. We just sit, wall-eyed and defeated as the phone rings and Microsoft Outlook beeps again and again, looking out of the window and wondering if it should be raining more or less this time of year and if it has anything to do with global warming. We are all somatised, and yes, Americans, I spell it with a damn S. One of the minor characters on Doctor Who this week said 'schedule' with a hard C, and it really grated. It's pronounced 'shedyool'. Morons.
That said, I have discovered the cure for my crisis of faith in the excting new and not at all unutterably depressing world of internet dating. I was walking home today when I noticed a sticker on a traffic light saying, and I sort of quote;
SENSITIVE BUT ASSERTIVE MAN
LOOKING FOR SOMEONE LIKE YOU
HAS NINE INCH PENIS
And a googlemail address. Now, there's a man with the right idea. Never mind Match.com, that's gotta be much more effective!
Good Night, and Good Luck
Doug
Monday, June 11, 2007
Guilty Pleasures
Dinner tonight was provided by the good offices of Queen's Takeaway, what with my slide into the batchelor junky lifestyle. Hopefully by September I will be malnourished enough to qualify for a student grant. Anyway, I couldn't be bothered to cook. The sight of my housemate chopping his healthy veggies filled me with a kind of mortified self-loathing, so I decided to fill the hole with some Singapore rice.
So I found myself sat at the chinese takeaway, waiting for my dinner. I knew it would be a little while, as Queen's is not like the Golden River on Tudor Road at all. There, any meal, no matter how large, would appear within a minute and a half, come hell or high water, and on one memorable eveing, both. I am not sure how many times it has been shut down by environmental health, but I am willing to bet it's more than one. Crunchy rice and suspiciously tepid roast pork are good for you anyway, lending a ruddy hue to your cheeks and hardening your immune system against more harmful things like bird flu, or global warming.
So I was there for a while. I had a book with me, though. Quite a classy one, actually, a Reclam text. These are a particular type of book you get in Germany, tiny little books printed on A6 paper in even smaller print. They do a staggering range of classics and so on, obviously mostly in German. I speak German to the level of a dead giraffe, so I was sat trying to look classily interesting and interestingly classy reading the English language Reclam edition of the scripts of Fawlty Towers. Still, the blurb on the back was in German, so perhaps someone blind might be fooled.
This ruse wasn't to last. Because where normally sits a modest pile of copies of Mobile Home User magazine, or a glossy edition of Rutland Living (Barbour and Land Rovers, basically) was a huge, teetering heap of copies of Cosmopolitan. And like all men, everywhere, I very quickly found myself reading them.
It's such a shameful thing to admit to. It goes against all male expectations. Because magazines are very, very good at defining what we should be. According to the magazines aimed at men, we all like titsandlagerandfootballandmotors. One thing we titsandlagerandfootballandmotorloving men can't ever do is wonder about our weight, relationships or just who's shagging who. The fact we only do wonder about these things when we are in the presence of a copy of Cosmo is something of an oddity. Really, the imaginary gender differences these magazines propagate aside, I shouldn't give a tiny toss about fifty new ways to please my man. As a man, in the real world, I think 'turn up' is numbers one through seventeen on the list.
They deal in fiction. Everyone knows this. It's not like they really even try to look like they aren't just spoting rubbish. The edition I was looking at had a section on how the single woman could enjoy Valentine's Day (I never said it was a new edition), the next page a feature on how to win an argument with your boss (dealt with in probably less than 500 words) and the next page a slightly larger article on how to tell if your man is a good long term bet (will occasionally stop watching football to make frenzied animal love to you till your fillings fall out, and then cry about how beautiful you are). This was filled with approximately two pages of adverts for every page of content.
They also deal in hatred. We all hate Lindsay Lohan, it seems. Really hate her. Grr, what a bitch, with her... erm... her... uh... hold on... Because we all hate her alright, but we are not too clear why. Heather Mills is even more loathed, despite being actually quite an inspirational type, what with her missing leg, ad work with fluffy animals. But stick her in a magazine and we're pasting her photo on a wall and flinging darts at it. Of course, because the entire reason for our hatred of these people ('Who do they think they are, being famous? I certainly can't think that putting their every move in our magazine has anything to do with it') is so ephemeral, we need to purchase the next week's Heat to read that week's reason for hating this person who we have never, and will never, meet.
Why bother with a product which is so manifestly poor, and so manifestly unwanted? Because I have met very few women who actually do pay attention to the shrill and brainless imprecations of Cosmopolitan magazine. Any that did would be unemployed, totally bankrupt and dead by now. And of all women I know, they all know it. I suppose it's a combination of habit, and that we all like to complain. It's how ITV still gets an audience. It's how come I have something to write about.
In actual events, my friend Gillian got married, we had my Nan's funeral and I went to IKEA in a van. But that's another story.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
So I found myself sat at the chinese takeaway, waiting for my dinner. I knew it would be a little while, as Queen's is not like the Golden River on Tudor Road at all. There, any meal, no matter how large, would appear within a minute and a half, come hell or high water, and on one memorable eveing, both. I am not sure how many times it has been shut down by environmental health, but I am willing to bet it's more than one. Crunchy rice and suspiciously tepid roast pork are good for you anyway, lending a ruddy hue to your cheeks and hardening your immune system against more harmful things like bird flu, or global warming.
So I was there for a while. I had a book with me, though. Quite a classy one, actually, a Reclam text. These are a particular type of book you get in Germany, tiny little books printed on A6 paper in even smaller print. They do a staggering range of classics and so on, obviously mostly in German. I speak German to the level of a dead giraffe, so I was sat trying to look classily interesting and interestingly classy reading the English language Reclam edition of the scripts of Fawlty Towers. Still, the blurb on the back was in German, so perhaps someone blind might be fooled.
This ruse wasn't to last. Because where normally sits a modest pile of copies of Mobile Home User magazine, or a glossy edition of Rutland Living (Barbour and Land Rovers, basically) was a huge, teetering heap of copies of Cosmopolitan. And like all men, everywhere, I very quickly found myself reading them.
It's such a shameful thing to admit to. It goes against all male expectations. Because magazines are very, very good at defining what we should be. According to the magazines aimed at men, we all like titsandlagerandfootballandmotors. One thing we titsandlagerandfootballandmotorloving men can't ever do is wonder about our weight, relationships or just who's shagging who. The fact we only do wonder about these things when we are in the presence of a copy of Cosmo is something of an oddity. Really, the imaginary gender differences these magazines propagate aside, I shouldn't give a tiny toss about fifty new ways to please my man. As a man, in the real world, I think 'turn up' is numbers one through seventeen on the list.
They deal in fiction. Everyone knows this. It's not like they really even try to look like they aren't just spoting rubbish. The edition I was looking at had a section on how the single woman could enjoy Valentine's Day (I never said it was a new edition), the next page a feature on how to win an argument with your boss (dealt with in probably less than 500 words) and the next page a slightly larger article on how to tell if your man is a good long term bet (will occasionally stop watching football to make frenzied animal love to you till your fillings fall out, and then cry about how beautiful you are). This was filled with approximately two pages of adverts for every page of content.
They also deal in hatred. We all hate Lindsay Lohan, it seems. Really hate her. Grr, what a bitch, with her... erm... her... uh... hold on... Because we all hate her alright, but we are not too clear why. Heather Mills is even more loathed, despite being actually quite an inspirational type, what with her missing leg, ad work with fluffy animals. But stick her in a magazine and we're pasting her photo on a wall and flinging darts at it. Of course, because the entire reason for our hatred of these people ('Who do they think they are, being famous? I certainly can't think that putting their every move in our magazine has anything to do with it') is so ephemeral, we need to purchase the next week's Heat to read that week's reason for hating this person who we have never, and will never, meet.
Why bother with a product which is so manifestly poor, and so manifestly unwanted? Because I have met very few women who actually do pay attention to the shrill and brainless imprecations of Cosmopolitan magazine. Any that did would be unemployed, totally bankrupt and dead by now. And of all women I know, they all know it. I suppose it's a combination of habit, and that we all like to complain. It's how ITV still gets an audience. It's how come I have something to write about.
In actual events, my friend Gillian got married, we had my Nan's funeral and I went to IKEA in a van. But that's another story.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Wadde Hadde Dudde Da?
I am sick of the internet.
Actually, that's quite a heavy statement, so let's clarify. I have been pottering about on MySpace for quite a while now, probably something like 18 months, and perhaps the novelty has started to pall a little. It is quite easy to get started on building a network, really very easy. all you need to do is search a few pages, drop a few comments, and away you go. It's a bit like internet dating - if anyone replies, you can start a conversation, and who knows what will arise from it. Unlike internet dating, you probably will get a reply eventually. That is a subject for seperate bitterness, and I may go into it later.
The thing is, if you are successful in building your network, you have to maintain it. And I find that after an initial series of comments like "lk yr vid of burning nun, ROFLMAO", the initial rush of happiness at finding a new friend subsides. So it's fairly inevitable that of 80-odd friends, you will end up talking regularly to no more than five of them. That has happened. But, finding new friends was not quite why I was on MySpace, at least, not once I had.
I like blogging, you see. I in fact think I might be quite good at it. I was always crap at most of the fun things at school. I preferred English lessons to football, and thought that backies on a BMX were probably more dangerous than useful. I never aspired to popularity, preferring to have a small number of good friends I could rely on rather than a huge circle of loose associates who, if I was lucky, would remember my name.
Happily, this didn't lead to being one of the differently interesting kids at the edge of the school field who talked to themselves and directed their energies to plans of bloody revenge. I would instead sit in the middle of the field talking bollocks with a number of likeminded souls and avoiding the footballs that would fly towards us every six minutes. Not as many girls as I would have liked, but there you go. Being able to quote the dialogue to Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail turned out to be less alluring that I thought it was. In such a fashion I passed thirteen years of education, substituting the 6th Form Centre for the grassy field during the last two years.
So what does that have to do with blogging? Well, I was beginning to wonder myself, until I was called away from the computer for a couple of minutes, which jarred me back to what it was I was actually talking about. The point is, MySpace is bad for good writing. Partly it's the site itself, which is horrendously badly coded to begin with, and then riddled afterwards with poorly written HTML page pimps and stuffed with bandwidth-gobbling YouTube films. Click on any page, and the chances are it'll take a good three days to load properly and be unreadbly sparkly once it does. I have an OAP of a computer and it really isn't hip to that jive. See? That's how old my computer is. It deletes my cool contemporary urban and replaces it with stuff from the Fifties.
But secondly, it is relentless. If you get a decent readership, you have to write constantly to keep them happy. And most of them won't stick around if you decide to take a day off. Some will, and I love them all, but a lot won't. I have had various people come and go, just like life, I suppose, but like all things on the internet, it happens a lot faster.
I am becoming old. I am becoming sedate. I don't want to log on every single day and fill E-Space with my whimsical thoughts. Most days I don't have any to begin with, let alone any worth writing down. If I do, they're going to be about something like work, or telly. Everyone rants about telly and things you write about work can be very easily traced back and get you into serious trouble. You hear about that quite a lot. So I'd quite like to be able to write something a bit more considered at my leisure and then not have to worry about people writing back.
I'd still like to be funny, of course. If anyone reads this, you will tell me, won't you?
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
Actually, that's quite a heavy statement, so let's clarify. I have been pottering about on MySpace for quite a while now, probably something like 18 months, and perhaps the novelty has started to pall a little. It is quite easy to get started on building a network, really very easy. all you need to do is search a few pages, drop a few comments, and away you go. It's a bit like internet dating - if anyone replies, you can start a conversation, and who knows what will arise from it. Unlike internet dating, you probably will get a reply eventually. That is a subject for seperate bitterness, and I may go into it later.
The thing is, if you are successful in building your network, you have to maintain it. And I find that after an initial series of comments like "lk yr vid of burning nun, ROFLMAO", the initial rush of happiness at finding a new friend subsides. So it's fairly inevitable that of 80-odd friends, you will end up talking regularly to no more than five of them. That has happened. But, finding new friends was not quite why I was on MySpace, at least, not once I had.
I like blogging, you see. I in fact think I might be quite good at it. I was always crap at most of the fun things at school. I preferred English lessons to football, and thought that backies on a BMX were probably more dangerous than useful. I never aspired to popularity, preferring to have a small number of good friends I could rely on rather than a huge circle of loose associates who, if I was lucky, would remember my name.
Happily, this didn't lead to being one of the differently interesting kids at the edge of the school field who talked to themselves and directed their energies to plans of bloody revenge. I would instead sit in the middle of the field talking bollocks with a number of likeminded souls and avoiding the footballs that would fly towards us every six minutes. Not as many girls as I would have liked, but there you go. Being able to quote the dialogue to Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail turned out to be less alluring that I thought it was. In such a fashion I passed thirteen years of education, substituting the 6th Form Centre for the grassy field during the last two years.
So what does that have to do with blogging? Well, I was beginning to wonder myself, until I was called away from the computer for a couple of minutes, which jarred me back to what it was I was actually talking about. The point is, MySpace is bad for good writing. Partly it's the site itself, which is horrendously badly coded to begin with, and then riddled afterwards with poorly written HTML page pimps and stuffed with bandwidth-gobbling YouTube films. Click on any page, and the chances are it'll take a good three days to load properly and be unreadbly sparkly once it does. I have an OAP of a computer and it really isn't hip to that jive. See? That's how old my computer is. It deletes my cool contemporary urban and replaces it with stuff from the Fifties.
But secondly, it is relentless. If you get a decent readership, you have to write constantly to keep them happy. And most of them won't stick around if you decide to take a day off. Some will, and I love them all, but a lot won't. I have had various people come and go, just like life, I suppose, but like all things on the internet, it happens a lot faster.
I am becoming old. I am becoming sedate. I don't want to log on every single day and fill E-Space with my whimsical thoughts. Most days I don't have any to begin with, let alone any worth writing down. If I do, they're going to be about something like work, or telly. Everyone rants about telly and things you write about work can be very easily traced back and get you into serious trouble. You hear about that quite a lot. So I'd quite like to be able to write something a bit more considered at my leisure and then not have to worry about people writing back.
I'd still like to be funny, of course. If anyone reads this, you will tell me, won't you?
Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal
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