Les Biches

From the August issue of Opera News:

The opera world is reeling from the news that PETER G. DAVIS has been dismissed from his post as classical-music critic at New York magazine. The news was conveyed to Davis, who enjoyed a twenty-six-year run at the magazine, via telephone by managing editor ANN CLARK. (Beginning in September, JUSTIN DAVIDSON, Newsday's Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, will cover both classical music and architecture for New York.) For many music-lovers, Davis's by-line was reason enough to renew their subscription to New York each year. His opinions were often sharp, in the best of all possible ways, because they were based on an enviable store of musical knowledge and a long, committed history of attending performances. From the early 1980s, I eagerly tore into the back pages of each issue of New York, because I knew that I would be reading uncompromising music criticism, rendered in lively, engaging prose. All of us on the OPERA NEWS editorial staff are happy that Davis (now seventy-one) will continue to contribute to our pages, as he has done for many years. With all due respect to Davidson, a fine writer with a proven track record, the loss is New York's. I've heard the magazine's editor-in-chief, ADAM MOSS, described as a champion of culture, but I've never seen much evidence of it in his slick approach to arts coverage. Does Moss know - or care - that for many of us, Davis's departure will make New York matter even less than it does already?

Ham with Fetish on Wry, Please

The magazine Antiques & Collecting has a regular feature that profiles readers of the magazine and their unusual collections. The June issue profiled Mr. Steve Jenne, who collects the half-eaten sandwiches of celebrities.

Jenne started his collection while a member of a boy scout troop when Richard Nixon came to visit his small town in 1960.

"Our community is famous for raising bison, and bison barbeque is a staple in the area," Jenne explained. "When Nixon arrived, he was given a paper plate and a bison barbeque sandwich. He sat down at a picnic table with his wife and a lot of other community leaders . . . took a few bites from his sandwich, mumbled his approval, and then got up to make his speech. When he did, almost everyone at the table left with him."

Jenne and the other Scouts were left to keep the public away from the table, and were alone with Nixon's sandwich. Since no one was near, he picked up the sandwich and plate and took it home to his mother, who wrapped it in plastic and put it in the family's freezer. Jenne's odyssey of collecting half-eaten sandwiches had begun.

"Pretty soon, the local newspaper was calling me to write a story about the sandwich and what I had done to get it," he said. Each campaign year for the next several years, the local newspaper featured stories about Jenne and his sandwich, until 1988, when the newspaper in nearby Decatur, Illinois picked up the story.

"The story in the Decatur newspaper led to the story being placed on the newswire," Jenne said. "That's when things really got rolling. I started getting calls from all over the country with reporters wanting to write stories and disc jockeys wanting on-air interviews."

There was even a feature in a coffee table book titled, Weird Illinois, showing Jenne proudly displaying his sandwich in all of its full-page glossy splendor.

In 1988, USA Today also featured Steve Jenne and his sandwich in a story, which promptly landed in the lap of a producer from The Tonight Show in Burbank, California. On December 2, 1988, Jenne and his sandwich were honored guests along with Steve Martin, on Johnny Carson's show.

"They treated us—me and my sandwich—like royalty," Jenne said. "I told them that as long as I had a freezer handy for my sandwich, I'd do whatever they wanted. My sandwich and I were chauffeured in a limousine, and we stayed at the best hotel. Neither me or my sandwich has ever lived so well prior to or since."

Unbeknownst to Jenne, Johnny Carson would put his own stamp on the legacy of the Nixon sandwich. "I had a great time. It was a lot of fun, but what I didn't know at the time was that backstage, they had prepared another barbeque sandwich, which they brought out and put in front of Johnny Carson while we were on the air. Carson promptly took a few bites out of it, then presented me with the remainder."

In other words, he managed to parlay a half-eaten sandwich into appearances in newspapers, a book, and a TV show, and it wasn't until the late 1980s that it even started to become a collection. How impressive is that?

Cultural Too

Out today, worldwide.

Reviews here.

Interview here.

Purchase here.

The Spectre Who Loved Me

Publishers Weekly for July 16 carries a brief interview with Paula Guran, editor of the anthology Best New Paranormal Romance.

Now that's what I call niche publishing.

Steven Gerrard: One Week Later

So Rob Styles gets demoted but Mike Riley carries on. Maybe Villa are too nice.

We Don't Die. Only Little People Die.

Well you're dead now, so shut the fuck up.

Sweet!

Aston Villa alumnus Juan Pablo Angel ruins Beckham's weekend.

Polish Poster Pop Quiz

The latest issue of Film Comment magazine carries a brief article by Otto Buj on the postwar school of Polish film-poster design. The golden age of Polish movie-poster design, from the 1950s through the mid-1970s, produced a body of work that was astonishingly rich and varied. Buj says the school was revolutionary in its rejection of state-imposed social realism while at the same time developing an approach to selling cinema that was antithetical to the free-market model. Reconciling the fundamental objectives of advertising with the sophistication and influence of the fine arts, Polish designers produced work that was based in an allegorical tradition that could be traced back to Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, and Abstract Expressionism. They explored concepts that incorporated the dark and obsessive features of Polish romanticism, extracted from the country's unique experience during World War II, to portray their subjects in a cryptic, conceptual, and highly subjective way.

The article is accompanied by Bronislaw Zelek's poster for Hitchcock's The Birds and Waldemar Swierzy's poster for Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy. See if you can tell which is which.

Dubious Analogy of the Day

In the latest issue of the Wilson Quarterly, in an article entitled "A Woman's World," Sara Sklaroff argues that women are gradually taking over the important positions of authority in society and offers us a glimpse of "our feminine future." Some indication of what a matriarchal society of the future will look like, she believes, can be seen in such female-dominated societies as those of the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, Indonesia; the Mosuo, an agrarian group of about 50,000 who have lived for almost two millennia in a remote corner of China, high in the Himalayas; and bonobos.

I suppose I could live with masturbating outdoors all day, providing our female overlords can guarantee the weather.

Killer Clones

Next weekend sees the first Flat Lake Literary Festival, organized by Pat McCabe and Kevin Allen, on the Hilton Park Estate, Clones, Co. Monaghan.

Highlights of the festival include Rhys Ifans reading Dylan Thomas, Dylan Moran reading from his novel in progress, mind-body awareness workshops with Keith Allen (God alone knows), singing lessons from Shane MacGowan, Colm Toibin interviewing Eugene McCabe, and appearances by the likes of David Holmes, Stephen Rea, Neil Jordan, Claire Keegan, Tony Allen, and Niall Toner.

Tickets are €35 on the gate. See you there.

Who Needs Babelfish? Primavera Band Profile #5

David Thomas Broughton

Even though his name can lead to mistake, David Thomas Broughton does not have anything to deal with the plump leader of Pere Ubu. Melancholic, dark and gifted with plenty of scenic resources, the British has been able with just one album to step beyond and decrease the distance between Antony and Will Oldham. The austere and suffering "The Complete Guide To Insufficiency", recorded in a church in just one day, is the best letter of introduction of this songwriter who has managed to narrow bows with Nick Drake and other nostalgic of greyish folk.

Unpolished Monkey Business

Ian Brown deigns to let us know his views on war.

So what the fuck is this UK
Gunnin' with this US of A
In Iraq and Iran and in Afghanistan . . .

Does not a day go by
Without the Israeli Air Force
Fail to drop its bombs from the sky? . . .

How many mothers to cry?
How many sons have to die?
How many missions left to fly over Palestine?

Sounds like this guy has a rival.


Mind you, reviewer Dave Simpson says:

When I was a kid, I learned more about politics from records by bands like the Gang of Four and the Clash than I ever did in school or college, and Brown's opus brings that feeling back.

Hmm. Thanks, Dave. Thought so.

Not Long Now

11th annual Hideout Block Party

Friday 7th: From the Lake to the Loch: A Celebration of British Influenced Pop Music.
Saturday 8th: A Celebration of Psychedelic-Punk-Country-Marching Band-Disco-Glee Club-Square Dance-Orchestral-Pop-Rock!

Up to date enough for you, Will, you moaning get?

In Numbers There Is Strength

Tony Wilson Meets God

Anthony H. Wilson R.I.P. Fifty fucking seven.

A Beggar with a Dog Isn't as Hungry as He Says He Is

In the July 30th issue of Newsweek, Frederick R. Lynch explains why the 11 grand he spent to save the life of his pet cat, Fritz, was worth every penny.

I knew about soaring human medical costs from the college course I teach on health-care policy. But I was not fully aware of how the same wonderful but costly technologies for prolonging human life are also revolutionizing veterinary care. American pet guardians spend more than $20 billion annually on health care for their furry pals. Our pets now have access to many of the same restorative medical treatments as do humans. Dogs with ticker problems may qualify for a $3,000 pacemaker. A guardian of a cat with renal failure may opt for a feline kidney transplant, at about $8,000.

Who Needs Babelfish? Primavera Band Profiles #4

Shannon Wright

Shannon Wright, by walking through the fire without burning and licking her wounds in public, has made herself strong in a rough rock that shakes, disturbs and gets in the deepest of your guts, like PJ Harvey's. Writer of disarming works as "Flightsafety", "Dyed in the Wool" and "Over the Sun", the former Crowsdell will be on the front page again next May with the release of "Let in the Light", where Andy Baker makes a special appearance. Just a few days later, the singer from Jacksonville will debut in Estrella Damm Primavera Sound.

Cole Power

The summer issue of Art News reports that the Maxfield Parrish painting of Old King Cole that has surveyed the goings-on for the past 75 years in the King Cole Bar at New York's St. Regis Hotel has just been rehung after a five-month $100,000 cleaning.

Harriet Irgang, director of Rubin Levenson Art Conservation Associates, said that over the years the painting had become covered in dents, gouges, and distorting layers of nicotine and grime. With the process of restoration now complete, however, it is clear from the king's sheepish grin and the startled jesters by his side that the subject of the painting is flatulence. "I've come to understand that it is a very democratic vision," Irgang says.

Machinima!

The latest issue of Film Quarterly features a review by Irene Chien of the "machinima" movies Deviation and Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Machinima movies (the word comes from a combination of "machine" and "cinema") are computer-animated films shot within video games that reveal possibilities and pitfalls in the growing convergence of cinema and video games.

At the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, audiences encountered the big-screen debut of the machinima short film Deviation . . . The film follows a team of four soldiers tearing urgently through underground tunnels. One discontented soldier named Macintyre cynically believes that they have experienced this suicide mission innumerable times before, and vainly tries to convince the others to break out of the rote cycle of carnage. Acted out through standard avatars provided in the online multiplayer video game CounterStrike, the film imagines the existential horror of actually living one's life within the bloody, militaristic, single-goal-driven world of a first-person shooter game. As the soldiers charge through the claustrophobic maze of tunnels, under the omnipresent threat of attack, Macintyre becomes increasingly vocal about his misgivings. "Doesn't it strike you as strange, I mean we keep doing the same thing over and over again?" He is silenced by the team leader right before the soldiers climb up through a manhole to be slaughtered off screen in a rain of bullets and blood. Macintyre looks on in disgust.

Wasn't this already done with Mario?

Just Go Read

Andrei Markovits's essay on Jared Diamond's Gun, Germs & Steel at Norm.

"Wild? I Was Livid!"

In the July issue of Cincinnati magazine, Steve Kissing discusses the joys of a trip to the zoo.

The zoo is, of course, a rich source of learning for people of all ages, especially kids. Thing is, their parents often get in the way. While leaning against the viewing rails seeking to get the best glimpse of this animal or that, I have overheard some of the most shocking and ignorant things come out of the mouths of adults. "Polar bears get frozen solid into blocks of sea ice every winter, that's how they hibernate," I overheard one man say with an Alex Trebekian 'jeez, ain't I a smart one' tone. "Monkeys love to eat marijuana, they always have, it's why they didn't evolve into humans," another man said. Apparently, he'd had a brownie or two for lunch.

The most mind-numbing of the numbskulls I've overheard at the zoo was a fortysomething woman who, aptly enough, resembled a manatee in a jogging suit. This woman had three kids with her, each attached to her waist via a rainbow-colored leash. Anyway, the four of them were looking at a rhinoceros when the following exchange occurred.

"What's his horn made of, mommy?" the boy asked. He looked to be about 8.

"Wood," the mother responded, nodding her head and sucking on a straw poking out of a large cherry Icee.

"Wood?" he said, clearly as shocked as I was. I couldn't wait to hear more.

"Yeah, wood. See how they keep their heads down like that and scrape the ground?"

"Yeah," he said, staring intently at the animal.

"Well, they get seeds lodged in their heads, and little trees grow."

"Oh," the boy said. He didn't sound convinced.

I glanced at the woman expecting a wink, a secret smirk, some indication that she was joking. She wasn't. "It's like they have a giant chopstick to eat with," she added, clearly impressed with her observation.

A Doctor, a Bond, The Prisoner, and a Man from U.N.C.L.E.

And not forgetting Gordon Jackson, Sid James, Herbert Lom, Jill Ireland, and Alfie Bass. All members of the cast of Hell Drivers.

All of which demands we ask:

Are there any other films where James Bond has shared screen time with Doctor Who?

Delta 5 - Mind Your Own Business

David Brent lives.

I'm a "Ground Half-Full" Kind of Person

As the new season rapidly approaches and with four pre-season matches already witnessed (free entry with season ticket, how's that for vfm?) Altrincham's new playing roster has been finalised and squad numbers allocated. A couple of new young faces have been added along with some welcome experience in the shape of Darren Tinson, Jake Sedgemore, and Gareth Whalley.

According to the official website, Gareth "has been picked for the Republic of Ireland full squad on a number of occasions but has yet to win a cap."

I'll let you know if I see Stan down at Moss Lane this season, Gareth.

It was the Evening Wear Section That Swung It

The International Herb Association's Herb of the Year for 2007 is Lemon Balm!



(Better known to her friends as Melissa.)

Keep Your Irish Studies in Your Irish Houses

Puthwuth is sick up to here with 'em.

Quick! Everybody Hide!

The July 9 issue of Jet magazine reports excavations revealing that George Washington had a room to hide his slaves in when guests turned up.

. . . a recent archeological find-right next to the Liberty Bell-at the site of the house that once served as the presidential residence of George Washington and John Adams for 10 years in the late 1700s, has revealed that America's first president did indeed have slaves, even during a time when he spoke against servitude. One story below street level, on the corner of Sixth and Market, a recent dig revealed a brick and stone foundation of the President's House, which was built in 1757 and torn down in 1832. While experts expected to find the foundation, they didn't expect to unearth the outline of what is believed to have been slave quarters and an underground tunnel designed to hide some nine slaves from the chief executive's houseguests.

Is This the Right Room for an Argument?

Nick Cohen and the AWL have it out, albeit decently.

Not Worth It

I started reading the new Harry Potter book last week, but it's rubbish and I can't be arsed to finish it. Anyone know how it ends?

Pop Quiz

Who said the following in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in September 1968?:

It's a complete incredible fluke that England has got it together. England has got all the bad points of Nazi Germany, all the pompous pride of France, all the old-fashioned patriotism of the old Order of the Empire. All the European qualities which should enhance, which should come out in music, England should be able to benefit by, but it doesn't. And just all of a sudden, bang! wack! zap-swock out of nowhere. There it is: the Beatles. Incredible. How did they ever appear then on the poxy little shit-stained island?

The clue is in the question. But it isn't a Rolling Stone.

Wot, No Chav?

The August issue of National Geographic Kids has a special feature on the making of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and, for the benefit of its young American readership, presents a quiz on "English: Great Britain Style."

"People in Great Britain speak English, but you may not know some of the words. See if you can match these words to their American meanings":

1: Lorry A: Think

2: Git B: Throw Up

3: Spew C: Fool

4: Reckon D: Oh My

5: Blimey E: Truck

How did you do?

Terry Eagleton: Take Note

Tel, if you want to slag off writers for their shallowness of commitment or lack of cojones, this is the way to do it:

You deliberately keep your distance from other living writers.

No, not deliberately at all. It comes naturally. Where there's no interest, there can be no inclination.

Sometimes you hurl abuse at them too, like Canetti or Handke for example.

I don't hurl abuse at anyone at all. That's nonsense. Almost all writers are opportunists. Either they affiliate themselves with the right or with the left, joining ranks here or there, and so on, and that's how they make a living. And that's unpleasant, why shouldn't that be said. One works with his illness and his death and wins prizes, and the other runs round in the name of peace and is basically a nasty stupid fellow, so what's the big deal?

From a non-Austrian perspective, this comes as a surprise – in France, you are often named in the same breath as Handke.

Well, that breath will change. A new breath with come. But habits like that last for decades. They're impossible to eradicate. If you open a newspaper today, almost all you read about is Thomas Mann. He's been dead thirty years now, and again and again, endlessly, it's unbearable. Even though he was a petty-bourgeois writer, ghastly, uninspired, who only wrote for a petty-bourgeois readership. That could only interest the petty-bourgeois, the kind of milieu he describes, it's uninspired and stupid, some fiddle-playing professor who travels somewhere, or a family in Lübeck, how lovely, but it's nothing more than someone like Wilhelm Raabe. What rubbish Thomas Mann churned out about political matters, really. He was totally uptight and a typical German petty-bourgeois. With a greedy wife.

For me, that's the typical German writer combination. Always a woman in the background, be it Mann or Zuckmayer, always making sure these characters get to sit next to the head of state, at every idiotic opening of a sculpture exhibition or a bridge. Is that where writers belong? These are the people who always make deals with the state and those in power, who end up sitting at their elbows. The typical German-language writer. If long hair is in fashion, then he has long hair, if it's short hair, then his is short too. If the left is in government, he runs to the left, if it's the right, he runs that way, always the same.

They've never had any character. Only those who died young, mostly. If they died at 18 or 24, well, at that age it's not so hard to maintain some character, that only gets hard later. You get weak. Under 25, when no one needs more than an old pair of trousers, when you go barefoot and content yourself with a gulp of wine and some water, it's not so difficult to have character. But afterwards. Then they all had none. At 40 they were all absorbed into political parties, totally paralysed. The coffee they drink in the morning is paid for by the state. And the bed they sleep in, and the holidays they go on, all paid for by the state. Nothing of their own any more.

. . .

You sometimes give the impression of biting the hand that feeds, for example when you describe Heidegger as a "weak-minded pre-Alpine thinker" and...

He didn't feed me. Why should he have fed me? But he's an impossible character, he has neither rhythm nor anything else. He lived off a few writers, he cannibalised them, to the last, what would he have been without them?

I was thinking of the word "Lichtung" (clearing).

That word existed before Heidegger, 300 and 500 years before. He was nothing, a philistine, gross, nothing new. He's a perfect example of someone who unscrupulously eats all the fruit other people have jarred and who gorges himself, thank God, which makes him sick and he bursts. Gets stomach ache.

Hitler's Sheffield Utd Suffer Their Downfall

This Boy's Gotta Have It

Further to our post on Mr. Wesley Harding/Stace below, here are details of the album of the book.

Any man who regards Kelly Hogan as his favourite singer of all is alright by us.

We Have Lift-Off

In two letters to the July issue of Texas Monthly, readers respond to the article "Lust in Space," by S. C. Gwynne, which appeared in the May issue. Colonel Al Worden, Apollo 15's command module pilot, contends that the story was disappointing not only because it linked Lisa Nowak's lurid story to NASA, an otherwise august organization, but mostly because of its assumptive errors. Tricia Hudson of Magnolia, Texas, regrets the use of the phrase "Astronaut Sex" on the cover of the magazine featuring the story because it stopped her leaving it on the coffee table lest her boys think she reads space porn.

Magic!

The June 18 issue of Publishers Weekly features a profile of novelist Wesley Stace, better known as veteran singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding.

Stace spent six years writing in self-imposed isolation to produce Misfortune, a 19th-century family melodrama about an abandoned baby boy who is found by the richest man in England and raised as a girl. Although he initially held little hope for getting it published, it became the subject of a bidding war that netted him a two-book deal from Little, Brown. Stace's second novel, By George, due out in August, is a multigenerational family melodrama that follows both the 1970s boyhood of George Fisher and the story of his namesake, a ventriloquist's dummy who narrates his own adventures on the arm of George's grandfather.

What is the world coming to?

It'd make you very cynical about the Libyan criminal justice system, wouldn't it?

The Wisdom of the Cato Institute

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, James Surowiecki reviews Indur M. Goklany's book The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet, published by the Cato Institute.

Space is Ace

Just a reminder.

Under the Sign of the Moose

The latest issue of Orion magazine contains an excerpt from Robert Finch's book The Iambics of Newfoundland (almost universally and rather misleadingly listed in online stores as The Lambics of Newfoundland!), in which he recounts the problems faced by the Newfoundland Highway Department in its efforts to prevent moose-car accidents. He explains that the Trans-Canada Highway had become a favored spot for viewing moose on Newfoundland, but that as a result, accidents involving moose were common. In response, the highway department put up life-sized sheet-metal silhouettes of moose, designed to warn drivers that moose, and moose watchers, might be on the road ahead. Unfortunately, the signs themselves proved interesting to drivers, causing a slew of new accidents at the moose-sign locations. As a result, the highway department placed new signs before the moose silhouettes reading CAUTION: MOOSE SIGNS AHEAD.

According to Finch, the number of accidents has vastly decreased since the new signs went up, but so have the number of moose sightings.

Born to Run (Slowly)

The July issue of Runner's World magazine features a profile of 58-year-old Japanese marathon runner Hajime Nichi, who manages to run 60 marathons a year. During 2006, he ran 72 marathons in 11 countries, and for 2007 he is on track to do a further 60 marathons in 25 nations, his long-term objective being to finish 1,000 marathons in 250 countries by 2049, when he will be 100. Nishi is, in his own terms, an "ecomarathoner," who attempts to find "harmony" with his surroundings: He never pushes himself beyond his physical limits and is always one of the last to finish.

Once upon a time he was an overworked Japanese executive, but after his wife died of cancer in 1988 and his children grew up, he dissolved his company and enrolled in personal growth seminars at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. His spiritual quest led him to his slow-running philosophy, which was inspired by the Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, near Nishi's hometown of Kyoto, who run for 100 consecutive days in search of enlightenment.

That's Not Art, That's Just Messing About!

Chelsea Space is Ace

pics.

Little Audrey a Victim No More

The latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer reports the death, on April 14, of 23-year-old Audrey Santo, the brain-damaged girl in Worcester, Massachusetts, who supposedly exhibited supernatural abilities.

Known as "Little Audrey," she had been in a comalike state since August 9, 1987, when, at the age of three, she suffered a near-drowning. Controversy began a year after the accident, when her mother, Linda, spent $8,000 to take her to the shrine at Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, in hopes of a miracle. Instead, Audrey suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. Although she survived, the air ambulance that was needed to rush her home cost $25,000—a sum her grandmother had to mortgage her home to pay. Linda Santo's response to the near-fatal incident was to blame it on the proximity of a Yugoslavian abortion clinic (Harrison 1998; Sherr 1998).

Soon, Audrey was being promoted as a "victim soul." However, Catholic theologians, observing that that term was not an official one within the Church, questioned whether Audrey demonstrated the capacity—at the age of three or later—to make a free choice to suffer on behalf of others.

After Audrey was exhibited at a stadium with some 10,000 in attendance, and a window was added to her bedroom so that pilgrims could file by and pray for her to intercede with God on their behalf, the local bishop ordered that such practices be discontinued. Also curbed was the practice of offering oil-soaked cotton swabs as healing talismans. These restrictions may have diminished revenues, but the Santo family's situation was perhaps less financially desperate than many imagined, since Audrey received round-the-clock nursing care from the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (Weingarten 1998).

A Poet Worth Knowing

Though possibly not for his poetry (it's over 30 years since I was compelled to memorise his poems at school, such compulsion probably being one reason why I've steered clear). Louis Macneice's unfinished autobiography has accompanied me this past week on my train journeys, its vividness transporting me away from a blustery Skerries and rain-soaked Malahide Spit to a hot and sunny Barcelona in 1938, an adolescence of precious aestheticism in the company of Anthony Blunt and Stephen Spender, and to hours in stuffy Oxford rooms with W.H. Auden, aristocratic communists, and unworldly academics whose sole aim and function in life seemed to be to train the next generation to take their place.

Macneice writes in a delightful and accessible manner, constantly on the lookout for his own ridiculousness and, one feels, always surprised at his own good fortune. A thoroughgoing sceptic in all but his humanism, and from the look of his photo a handsome bloke you'd be happy going out for a pint or two with. My only diappointment was that this is, as the reader is warned on the cover, an unfinished autobiography, taking us up to London during the war but no further. A book double or three times this length would still have been an easy and enjoyable read. If nothing else, it has made me seek out his Autumn Journal. I feel diminished for not having read it before.

Fossilized Thinking

From today's New York Times:

An Islamic creationist is mailing a lavishly illustrated 800-page attack on evolutionary theory to scientists around the world.

"In our country we are used to nonsense like this," said Kevin Padian, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who, like colleagues there, found a copy in his mailbox.

He said people who had received copies were "just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is."

The rest is here.

More Agora Resources

"Recollections of My Time in Solidarity," by Louis Robertson.

A libertarian Marxist tendency map.

Guess Who's Been in The Guardian Today?

Frank has, in his big shorts.

Everybody Now: "I Like Driving in My Car"

Justice permanent secretary Jarun Pukditanakul yesterday suggested that in-car visual entertainment devices be banned whilst driving. His suggestion came after the cabinet on Tuesday approved a draft amendment which would prohibit the use of mobile phones while driving, a move aimed at reducing road accidents.

Mr Jarun said the proposed ban, which will be examined by the Council of State, should be extended to cover entertainment devices, especially in-car karaoke and television sets. He said using such entertainment devices while driving is probably more dangerous than using mobile phones.

Deputy city police chief Pol Maj-Gen Watjanont Thirawat said police and authorities concerned will work together to consider appropriate punishments for offenders. Under the proposed draft, violators of the ban would be subject to a 400 to 1,000 baht fine. (about £6.00 - 15.00)

Police spokesman Pol Lt-Gen Ronarong Yangyuen said the ban would not open a door for traffic police to take bribes or extort money from motorists. He said the ban was introduced for the safety of motorists and the public at large. He said the ban is not all-out and police would have to consider in what circumstances the use of mobile phones can be allowed. For example, motorists may use their handsets while their vehicles are not moving, he said.

Spotted in the Bangkok Post by our Far East correspondent.

Vitamin C(ocoa)

The health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health, reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told C&I that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin.

Hollenberg has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced to less then 10% in the Kuna. They can drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week. Natural cocoa has high levels of epicatechin.

'If these observations predict the future, then we can say without blushing that they are among the most important observations in the history of medicine,' Hollenberg says. 'We all agree that penicillin and anaesthesia are enormously important. But epicatechin could potentially get rid of 4 of the 5 most common diseases in the western world, how important does that make epicatechin?... I would say very important'

The rest is here.

With Apologies to Henry Root

Dempster, Nigel (1941-2007): Gossipmonger and fawning sycophant, worshiper of power. Never one to miss an opportunity to suck up to or kow-tow before his perceived betters. Who can forget the time he stood before Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and announced "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."? "I think you'll find that was the 3 am girls." "I bow to your superior knowledge. Pass the Cohibas."

Moulton: Not Even bin Laden Would Hide There

But he must have received an invitation.

Don't Panic! Kill all . . . no, that's the other blog.

Mick Hartley on Punk and P.Orridge.

Steal This Book!

This has been my train reading for the last week or so. Dense in parts but thoroughly captivating for anyone with an interest in the history of ideas. Social anthropologist Jack Goody delves behind the terminology used by respected philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and political theorists to show how many of those concepts (time, space, capitalism, civilization) were either derived from encounters with other societies or were influenced by them in ways that generally go unacknowledged and which consequently skew both the theorists' and our own understanding of history, society, and the world as a whole. Norbert Elias's use of the term "civilization" is a rather obvious target, and Goody's criticism is one that many on the left will be comfortable accepting; his critique of Marx and Braudel's understanding of "capitalism" may, however, raise a few eyebrows, although anyone familiar with Castoriadis's objections to Marx's retrofitting of history will feel on familiar territory (Goody enhances Castoriadis's criticism by drawing out the eurocentrism of Marx's definition of capitalism, a eurocentrism that endows capitalism with distinctively western features and a concomitant history).

Not only are ideas stolen from other societies, but as a consequence of this theft, oriental and other non-western societies are also denied a history in their own right because of the eurocentric reapplication of those concepts; China, for instance, is regarded as having been generally unchanged for thousands of years when in fact it just avoided the dramatic upheavals that typified European history. This denial of a past disguises patterns of development as valid and as rich as those that took place elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe, but are ruled as out of bounds because the terms borrowed from those societies have acquired western definitions that do not recognize the subtlety and distinctiveness of alternative patterns of development.

Trust me, it's more interesting than it sounds. Give it a read.

It's Friday. Everybody Dance!!!!

The Aristocrats!!

"I used to do things like stick severed chicken's heads over my penis, and then try to masturbate them, whilst pouring maggots all over it. In Los Angeles, in 1976, at the ICA I did a performance where I was naked, I drank a bottle of whiskey and stood on a lot of tacks. And then I gave myself enemas with blood, milk and urine, and then broke wind so a jet of blood, milk and urine combined shot [out and] then [I] licked it off the not-clean concrete floor.

"Then I got a 10-inch nail and tried to swallow it, which made me vomit. Then Cosey helped me lick the vomit off the floor. And she was naked and trying to sever her vagina to her navel with a razor blade and she injected blood into her vagina which then trickled out, and we sucked the blood from her vagina into a syringe and injected it into eggs painted black, which we then tried to eat. And we vomited again, which we then used for enemas. Then I urinated into a large glass bottle and drank it all while it was still warm. This was all improvised. And then we gradually crawled to each other, licking the floor clean . . . "

What's Known as a Slow News Day

Man Admits Throwing Traffic Cone in Edinburgh.

Even a Theist Can Get It Right Sometimes

One from the archives:

In the Xena: Warrior Princess episode "The Way," Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle meet Hindu deities Krishna and Hanuman. Both the World Vaishnava Organization and American Hindus Against Defamation expressed outrage about "The Way," but the issue received little attention even on Xena web sites until the show's distributor, StudiosUSA, removed the episode from syndication following an initial airing in the United States.

Here's the clincher:

The World Vaishnava Association and the American Hindus Against Defamation went further, however, announcing in a joint statement that the episode "treats Lord Krishna and Hanuman as fictional characters by putting words in their mouths that they never spoke . . . not only does this make the viewing audience think that Lord Krishna, other Hindu deities and the Vedic literature are fictional, it makes Hindus themselves look superstitious and foolish. After all, nobody but a superstitious fool would worship a 'fictional god.'"

We Have Killed Our God!

A naturally formed stalagmite in a Kashmiri mountain shrine worshiped by Hindus for over 200 years as an incarnation of Shiva, the god of destruction and regeneration, has melted away as a result of the body heat from the hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims who visit each year, say officials.

The rest is here.

Separated At Birth?

Andrew Griff, London

Andre Gide, Paris

No Adam, No Jesus

A letter in the May issue of Christianity Today responds to Stan Guthrie's March article "Living with the Darwin Fish," which discussed the willingness of some Christians to accept the validity of Darwinian evolution:

Stan Guthrie's "welcome aboard" to evolution reminds me of how a landlubber bails water out of a boat: by drilling a hole below the waterline. Along with evolution presumably comes a denial of a literal Adam and Eve as the fallen father and mother of the human race. But a historical Adam is as necessary to our salvation as a historical Jesus.

Paul writes, "For if, by the trespass of the one man [Adam], death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:17).

No first Adam, no second Adam. No death, no life. Sir, your vessel sinks.

DEAN BRUCKNER
Commander, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.)
Athens, Ohio

So Why Are All the Staff Blind?

An article in the May 7 issue of Maclean's discusses the University of Toronto's new "porn library," also known as the Sexual Representation Research Collection. Cue the smutty comments:

To be considered for entry, scholars must submit a formal request letter. "I don't think undergrads should be let loose in the collection," says Mariana Valverde, a criminology professor and member of the review committee. "This isn't the Archives of Ontario. A trained eye is required."

. . .

The holdings of the Sexual Representation Research Collection, a.k.a. the porn library, consist of more than 1,000 skin flicks (like Knights of Thunder and Dreaming about Dick), hundreds of well-read magazines -- from Wild West F------ to In Touch (the original version) -- along with a bookcase filled with dozens of examples of erotic fiction from the '40s and '50s, various sex-related texts, and hundreds of computer disks packed with images collected from the Internet. About 400 copies of Playboy are stacked in seven neat piles on the top shelf. Important research tools, apparently -- and not just for the articles.

. . .

administrators hope that as the Centre gains international exposure, people will begin donating material that's been tucked away in their attics and basements. Valverde thinks the library may benefit from people living in sexually repressed countries who want their collections used for research and kept "out of the hands of the local cops." This will also help diversify the collection, which is currently almost entirely white gay male porn.

Fuck.

More Quality Art!!

Since none of you poor fools challenged my bid last time out, I was able to secure the first Neko Case poster by Kathleen Judge up for auction on eBay to benefit the Chicago Women's Health Center. Judge sends another message of new items up for auction this week:

Two more poster items up for bid on ebay -- all proceeds to benefit The Chicago Women's Health Center:

Signed (by Neko) hand silkscreen Australia 2007 tour poster by Judge (me!):
http://cgi.ebay.com/Neko-Case-SIGNED-Limited-Edition-Poster_W0QQitemZ320129735477QQihZ011QQcategoryZ20148QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

RARE ITEMS (these sold out last fall!!) a set of TOUCH & GO 25th ANNIVERSARY POSTERS. One poster is by JAY RYAN of The Birdmachine and the second poster is by me. Both posters are signed, numbered & Jay & I did extra little drawings in the margin: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:11&item=280127382003

Please feel free to pass this info on. Auctions end within the next week.

Yours-
Judge

Don't miss out this time!

Who Needs Babelfish? Primavera Band Profiles #3

Herman Dune

Ten albums and almost a decade of winding path by bizarre rock ways have been needed by the brothers David-Ivar and Andre Herman Dune to reach the superlative "Giant", a dyed soul wonder folk in which resound echoes of Bob Dylan, Ray Charles and Ottis Redding, amongst many others. Nomads by defintion and musically brought up in New York, Berlin, Paris, and Switzerland, Herman Dune debuted in 1998 with "Glow in the Dar", predicting the birth of anti-folk and, just right now that rudder of pop music is handled by the more eccentrics freaks of the new folk, they have left the main way to claim the 70's pop in great detail.

As God Is My Witness . . .

No Rapture here:

A jury on Thursday awarded about $314,000 to a woman who sued her former church and pastor.

Jurors found Delta Township-based Mount Hope Church and its pastor, David Russell Williams, responsible for injuries Judith Dadd sustained when she was "slain in the Spirit" at a church rally in 2002.

. . .

Dadd went to the altar during a July 18, 2002 rally for church leaders and was "slain in the Spirit," according to testimony.

She fell backward and struck her head on the floor. Dadd, who was a member of the church for 12 years but left in 2003, claims she still suffers from the effects of the fall, including increased symptoms of depression, memory loss and difficulty concentrating.

Dadd said the church, which has about 2,000 members and 6,000 attendees, was negligent because no usher was there to catch her.

The obvious question: Where was god?

Mekons Exit City Varieties Stage in a Maxist Fashion

Yes, Maxist, as in Max Wall, one of many ghosts haunting the rafters of the home of The Good Old Days.

Why Should Atheists Have All the Fun?

A selection from "Fisting and God's Will" at the very wise Sex in Christ.

So far we have only discussed a husband fisting his wife, but some couples may wonder if it is appropriate for a wife to fist her husband if he enjoys anal stimulation. In most cases, a wife indulging her husband’s desire to receive light anal play is not problematic in the context of a healthy sexual relationship. A wife may even anally penetrate her partner with a strap-on dildo if he enjoys this, and if their respective roles as husband and wife are secure outside of the bedroom.

However, because of the intense nature of the act of fisting and the degree of surrender and submission involved in being fisted, a couple should first look deeply into their own hearts and pray for guidance as to whether it is wise for the wife to fist the husband. They should undertake this only if their relationship is such that the husband can assume a submissive and passive role during a sexual act, while afterward still maintaining his role as the spiritual head of the household and leader in the marriage. Our article on Christian BDSM also addresses this issue.

All Good Things Come to He Who Waits

Farewell, you fucking arsehole.

Another Reason to Like Art Brut

Thug-boy pop culture is right.




spotted via Norm.

Soylent Green Redux

300 oilmen at the GO-EXPO in Calgary, Canada witnessed an unusual presentation about turning human flesh into fuel by 'representatives of Exxon and the National Petroleum Council'.

The two 'representatives' turned out to be pranksters from the civil disobedience group The Yes Men.

. . .

The fake speech, delivered by 'Shepard Wolff' (aka Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men), unveiled a new Exxon oil product called Vivoleum.

'We need something like whales, but infinitely more abundant', said 'Mr Wolff' as he showed 3-D animations of human flesh being rendered into the fuel.

The rest is here.

Vote for Jim!

Because we can't have a Mekons fan losing to a snowboarder!

Moby-Dick's Older Brother

BOSTON (AP) -- A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt - more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.

. . .

"It probably hurt the whale, or annoyed him, but it hit him in a non-lethal place . . . He couldn't have been that bothered if he lived for another 100 years."

The rest is here.

Spoiled for Choice

Why not go to all three?

Bouncebackability!

Altrincham FC-Defying gravity since 2006!

In the Dentist's Chair

You might notice a little prick.

Stick with Me. Stick with Me. Stick with Me. Stick with Me.

If you haven't already discovered Steven Aylett, regard yourself as having been enlightened. Or warned.

His latest project, Jeff Lint, will provide you with hours of mirth, discomfort, surrealism. Here's an acccount of Lint's short story "Dawn of the Swans," some of which, we are told,

" . . . ended up in Chris Caccamise’s crappy but successful novel-length plagiarism, Empire of Flamingos (not to mention the appalling British feature-length cartoon Attack of the Piglets, voiced entirely by Bernard Cribbens)."

And while you're at it, check out the credits sequence for Catty & the Major.

If only . . .

Who Needs Babelfish? Primavera Band Profiles #2

The Durutti Column


Vini Reilly, survivor of the golden age of Factory Records and an anomaly appeared in the limits of mancunian post-punk, does not give up approaching the experimentation from every possible angle. The British guitar placer still amazes by adding new feel to his sound and improving those crystal clear Joy Division. The Manchester musician, with more than 20 published albums and a name inspired in the militia that tried to reconquer Zaragoza during the Spanish Civil War, gives a turn of screw to his career in "Keep Breathing" to come closer to traditional Jew music and African rhythms.

Perhaps "Chutzpah" Isn't the Best Word to Use

The summary of an article from the April issue of Art News:


In a decision upholding a longstanding German law, the federal court in Leipzig recently ruled that heirs of a Nazi doctor were not entitled to claim restitution of artworks impounded by the Soviets following World War II. The suit had been filed by six heirs of Gustav Schuster, a gynecologist and Nazi Party member from Chemnitz, in an effort to prove that they were eligible to reclaim the confiscated paintings, drawings, and etchings. Although German law prohibits the return of property to the descendants of Nazi criminals, the heirs argued that because Schuster, as an individual, constituted only a fraction of the overall number of Nazis in Germany at the time, he could only be blamed for 0.006 percent of the country's war crimes. In court, however, the city of Chemnitz was able to demonstrate that Schuster not only joined the Nazi Party and storm troopers early on—in 1930—but also that he headed the local Nazi medical association, ordered the sterilization of schizophrenics, and even carried out some procedures himself in the name of the Nazi "superrace" ideology.

Like "California Uber Alles" Never Happened

From the April 30 issue of Maclean's, I give you, Punk Rock Yoga:

Invented by Seattle-based Kimberlee Jensen Stedl, Punk Rock Yoga classes, which are held to the sound of punk music, are being held in places as far apart as Toronto, New York, Beijing, and Louisville, Kentucky. Beyond altering the music, converting a standard yoga class into a Punk Rock Yoga class involves such democratizing changes as holding the classes by candlelight, avoiding mirrors to negate body image issues, arranging the participants in a "sunburst" semicircle instead of rows that suggest hierarchy, and finishing the class with an "anarchist mantra."

Remind Me Again Why I Left Academia?

From the Journal of American Studies:


Elizabeth Klaver, Sites of Autopsy in Contemporary Culture (New York: State University of New York Press, 2005, $22.95). Pp. 180. ISBN 0 7914 6426 1.

The body—whether living, dying, autopsied, objectified or subjectified—has fascinated for centuries. Michel Foucault’s work on the body and medicine in The Birth of the Clinic (1963), Jonathan Sawday’s examination of the Renaissance body in The Body Emblazoned (1995), the essays in Donn Welton’s two-volume Body and Flesh (1998) and Steven Shaviro’s illuminating readings of bodies in film in The Cinematic Body (1993) are only a few examples of the array of work that has been undertaken on this subject.

Elizabeth Klaver contributes to this debate in many ways, first and foremost by offering new ways of reading contemporary culture’s relationship with the dead body. Talking of the Y-shaped incision that a pathologist performs on the cadaver to open the abdomen and chest (an act that she and a graduate student saw with their own eyes in an autopsy room in 2001), Klaver reflects on the meaning of tracing the shape of Y on a body, how it “etches the very point of the autopsy on the outer surface, enculturating the body as text” and how it “opens the book, authorizing the readability of an interior structure.”

This book indeed considers many sites of autopsy in novels, painting, theatre, film and television, inclusing Samuel Beckett’s Play, Patricia Cornwell’s novels and the O. J. Simpson trial. It explores autopsy as performance—as an action as well as an act for an audience. Apart from this theatrical aspect, the book also examines autopsy’s relation to the social. The use of the autopsy of John F. Kennedy’s body shortly after his assassination is appropriate, allowing Klaver to look into unorthodox sources such as the JFK autopsy diagram in the US National Archives and Records Administration, as well as fictional accounts of the autopsy such as Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK.

Klaver uses the idea of autopsy to explore our relationship with the body as a cultural sign, as a type of speech act, as myth and construct, as a philosophical problem, as a kind of subjectified material object and most importantly as one of the most contested sites of popular imagination. This book is an invaluable contribution to this still expanding field.

Bid High, Bid Often

Message from Kathleen Judge:

Posters I made for some recent Neko Case tours are being auctioned (on EBAY) by the Chicago Women's Health Center to raise money for the center.

Please go & bid. Tell any friends you think may be interested.

If you bid & win, know that your money will be going to a great organization that provides affordable health care for women and children in the Chicago area. 100% of poster sales go to CWHC.

First poster up for bidding is from the recent February tour.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320122094403

They have 5 different posters they'll be auctioning, consecutively.
Check back every week or so to see what new one is up for auction:
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZchicagowomenshealthcenterQQhtZ-1

read more about CWHC:
http://www.chicagowomenshealthcenter.org/about.html

Thanks- BID HIGH & BID OFTEN -- it's a great organization!

Kathleen

Who Needs Babelfish? Primavera Band Profiles #1

The Fall


Indisputable legend of the post-punk and hidden personage in the interior lining of the rock history, Mark E. Smith remains pawned in contradicting the laws of the genetics and, at almost three decades of his debut, gives reasons to believe in a present as resplendent as his past. To "Reformation Post-TLC", his last album, it is necessary to add his collaboration with Mouse On Mars and an endless rosary of concerts that continue presenting The Fall as the great brut diamond of the British post-punk. Repetitive melodies, unintelligible bellows and lessons of history. Almost nothing.

Competition Time

Following on from the post below. Answers please to this question:

What bands do you think these people wanted backstage passes for? (And you can't have The Arctic Monkeys).

Wittiest response gets one of my kidneys.*





*if I have one in the fridge.

Plus, the Winner Gets to Kill Her!

A Dutch reality television show in which a terminally ill woman is to select one of three contestants to receive her kidneys when she dies is to air this week despite criticism that it pushes the boundaries of the format too far.

Let's hope it isn't decided by a drink-off.

And Don't Get Me Started on That Liberal Queer-Loving Hitler

Fred Phelps and Co. picket Jerry Falwell's funeral.

The members of Westboro Baptist Church carried placards accusing Falwell of being in league with gays and of cozying up to Israel.

The church, which operates the GodHatesFags Web site, had warned Lynchburg police in advance they were coming.

On its site Westboro, run by Rev. Fred Phelps, called Falwell, a "corpulent false prophet" and said he "spent his entire life prophesying lies and false doctrines like 'God loves everyone.'"

In attacking Falwell the church says he "warmly praised Christ-rejecting Jews, pedophile-condoning Catholics, money-grubbing compromisers, practicing fags like Mel White (of Souflorce), and backsliders like Billy Graham and Robert Schuler, etc."

You couldn't make this shit up.

Double Trouble

Has anyone noticed the resemblance...

Here's my Primavera, tell me yours.

THURSDAY
Elvis Perkins
Veracruz
Slint
Smashing Pumpkins
The White Stripes

FRIDAY

Mus
Ginferno
Brightblack Morning Light
Billy Bragg
Black Mountain
Blonde Redhead (or Barry Adamson)
The Fall
Beirut (or Band of Horses)
Sr.Chinarro (or refreshments)
Modest Mouse
Girls Against Boys
Low
Bonde Do Role
Kid Koala
Hot Chip (if still awake)

SATURDAY

Kimya Dawson
Oakley Hall
Apples in Stereo (or Ted Leo & the Pharmacists)
Jonathan Richman
The Long Blondes
Durutti Column
Robyn Hitchcock (or Architecture in Helsnki)
Patti Smith
The Good the Bad and the Queen
Battles
Buzzcocks
Wilco

Some compromises will be made as food may need to taken at some point during the weekend and time could be lost queueing for the auditorium.

Full time table here

Football Name Game

Can you name Premiership footballers who share a name with fictional detectives?

God Says: Keep That Fascist Nutcase Away From Me!!

Does not having a heart count as a heart defect?

Lest we forget:

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

"The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior."

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"

and on 9/11:

"I put all the blame legally and morally on the actions of the terrorist, [but America's] secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord's [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture . . . the result is not good."

Overheard in My Head

This workplace conversation took place not minutes ago, following the reading of an article about this organization:

Ron: Bri, if you were schizophrenic and had the choice, whose voice would you like to hear in your head all day?

Bri: Les Dawson.

Me: David Coleman.

Ron: I'd have Tony Cascarino. He's a laugh a minute.

Me: And he'd be useful to have for the gambling advice.

Ron: Good point. Didn't he win some big poker competition recently?

Me: Yup. (Pause) Imagine playing Tony Cascarino at poker while hearing his voice in your head.

Bri: "I've got a pair of twos."

Me: I don't mean like that, Bri. When you hear someone else's voice in your head, they're not actually sat somewhere else talking to you.

Bri: And besides, he could be bluffing.

Zen Masturbation and Time Travel

Not a Python reference (and I'm not sure whether there should be commas) but the currrent interests, according to the Comments here, of the brilliant and wonderful Carlton B. Morgan.

Perhaps Gwent is more interesting than I imagined.

Poker Joker

Tony Cascarino interviewed in today's Guardian. Read it right to the end for a top joke. Skip the middle bit unless you want to read this:

When I was with Ireland I was in a room with Andy Townsend and this girl's started shouting up to our window: 'Andy, Andy, Tony, Tony - where's Jason Mcateer?' So Andy says 'he's in the next room' and they say 'run back and throw us his shirt'? I opened his door and there was no football shirt but there was a pair of shorts and a jockstrap, so I picked up the jockstrap, which had a huge skid mark on it, and threw it out the window. And this girl was thrilled. We were all in bits. Some fans will have anything.

A Fence Too Far

Even Sports Illustrated (SI) carried an obituary for Kurt Vonnegut, who died last month. The April 23 issue reported:

DIED At age 84, novelist Kurt Vonnegut. In 1954, Vonnegut—a talented young writer who confessed to knowing next to nothing about sports—was hired to write for SI, which had yet to begin publishing. One of his first assignments was to write a caption about a racehorse who had jumped the rail at Aqueduct and galloped across the infield. Vonnegut pondered the task, typed one sentence and then walked out of his office, never to return. His caption: The horse jumped over the f—ing fence. SI's loss was literature's gain. Cat's Cradle came out in 1963, and in '69 he published his most famous work, the semiautobiographical Slaughterhouse-Five.

Doubts About Chomsky

Timothy Mason identifes a few.

It was 24 years 9 months ago

Whenever the question "what was your first gig?" comes up I've always taken a guilty pleasure in saying "Elton John, Brondby,1984!"

However , during a clearout yesterday, I found these two tickets which show that my memory is shit but my taste is excellent.

Rafa Benitez Isn't the Least Bit Sticky

Former Real Madrid coach Jorge Valdano lays into the lack of flair exhibited in the Chelsea/Liverpool Champions League semis.

It was 25 years ago this week

The great Spizzenergi sums it up.

Not a Great Man

That Time magazine article about Bertie Ahern by Catherine Mayer, she of Gang of Four connections.

Now That's What I Call a Slow News Day

More top-notch reporting from Fox.

Natural Is In It

New Mekons album coming your way in August.

May Day Greetings

So different from the dungeon's gloom, the forest's shady bower
There's many a shade that love might share, where a man can kiss another
Her warm breath turning moist, where she is already
Green leaves and sunshine, sextatic in her head

(instrumental)

Like beautiful maggots inside rotten apples
Spitting out the juices of kings and big-arsed Barons
Fat on the Crusades, slaughtered by Assassins
Afraid to walk the glades of the land they own

Rise like lions, shake your chains, babe
Ye are many, they are few
Take from the rich and give to the poor
Take from the rich and give to the poor

Images of Spitfires strafing Greek resistance fighters
Winston Churchill gunning down the South Wales striking miners
In green we fought the Black 'n' Tans and beat them back to Ulster
An 18-year-old Argentine, lungs filled with cold water

(intro instrumental)

Buried Republican visions, symbolic and explicit
A history of resistance, denied by bishops, lawyers, spies
And Grantham hugely petty, riding on her crocodile
'cross teeming London Bridge, paved with blood and gold

Rise like lions, shake your chains, babe
Ye are many, they are few
Take from the rich and give to the poor
Take from the rich and give to the poor

Out in hunting country, we sabotage their leisure
Many a grotto meant for rest holds a pirate for a guest
Soft the scene so formed for joy
Oh curse the tyrants that destroy

Rise like lions, shake your chains, babe
Ye are many, they are few
Take from the rich and give to the poor
Take from the rich and give to the poor

"Robin Hood"
Mekons