...is apparently not worth living. Can't say I'd noticed to be honest, but then I wasn't looking, was I?
I only really became aware just how true this was when on Friday I lost my pedometer two half-hour walks and three train journeys from home, and realised all my accumulated steps counted for nothing if they went unrecorded.
Happily, I found it at home on my pillow that evening like a high-tech hotel chocolate. I have a suspicion this was the work of those particular elves/elemental forces who move stuff about the house you're looking for, before later replacing it somewhere unlikely you know you've already looked. If God's in the gaps and the Devil's in the details, minor household deities have probably been sniggering unseen in our drawers since the Romans named them Lares. The deities, not the drawers.
Modern physics tells us observation shapes the Cosmos, so who knows, maybe the Universe does muck about a bit like this when we're not looking. Maybe, that's why an unexamined life isn't worth living? If you're not looking, all the gubbins you're after gets hidden, and you have to go around making your special 'summoning mimes' to find things.
This is called boot-strapping- do a good enough tin opener or scissor mime as you pace around the kitchen, opening and lifting things at random and you'll invoke one.
Anyhow, what I started off intending to say was that an empty weblog is a sign of an unexamined life, and so I better start putting that right if I want to make something worthwhile of it. The weblog, not the- oh hang on, I've done that joke. Lots.
Well, since my last entry I've spent a few more days back in Bradford researching the telly book, which I've now had the advance for (hurrah!), and it's all quite nice. As usual, when you do this kind of archive trawling you keep finding out fascinating things that are of no use for your current project.
Did you know for example that Leonard Rossiter, Richard Beckinsale and Don Warrington recorded an 8 minute promo for Betamax in 1978 in which Philip and Alan explain the VCR to Rigsby. Be honest, how much do you want to see that, right now? Apparently, it was only distributed to salesrooms not to the public.
What do you mean "you already have it, and can provide Youtube links?" You're scaring me.
Another notable development since I last wrote here is that Death has come back from a holiday and been on double-time, taking loads of cool people and Antonioni whose famous film I've still not seen. I'll miss him mainly for his fabulous stammer inducing surname. So, to make these people's lives worthwhile I'll give them a quick examination for you.
Ian's list of the work of recently dead people to seek out:
Mike Reid - severe-faced soldier in The War Machines obviously.
Ingmar Bergman - Smiles of a Summer Night.
If you read this weblog you're either, arty, campy or desperately nostalgic so this should work quite nicely, ticking all your variously demanding boxes. It is funny, romantic and bitter-sweet, and should help dismiss any ideas you might have that he's one-note Nordic misery. It's also the missing link between A Midsummer Night's Dream and A Little Night Music if, you know, you're a friend of Billy Elliot.
I hate that film, by the way (caught an annoying chunk again last night), but then I have a massive Lee Hall blind spot I think. I just feel emotionally exploited by Spoonface Steinberg and I Luv You, Billy Spud etc., which seem just a little too obvious in the ladling of sentiment into the mouths of babes for me. I also resent having to sit all the way through a movie full of Marc Bolan just knowing "Ride A White Swan" is going to be crassly combined with Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake as a coup d'obvious at the end. All a touch "on the nose", I find.
If Smiles of A Summer Night works for you, you might find that the much longer and more varied in mood Fanny and Alexander makes you smile too. After that it does get a bit bleaker, but some of it's still amazingly cheerful- even the 'Dance of Death' sequence in The Seventh Seal is quite uplifting (do bear in mind I think Leonard Cohen's funny and find a lot of Edvard Munch uplifting too, your version of cheerful may vary).
Lee Hazlewood - Some Velvet Morning.
I've been haunted by this song since hearing a fragile weird cover on Mark Radcliffe's Out On Blue Six (an anagrammatic tribute to a certain Louise Buxton apparently), that I've never been able to track down. The envelope I scribbled details on suggests it was by Big Star but that was probably just the next act on. Anyhow, this was the only version I've heard that makes the sickly swoony tempo change into the 'Phaedra' bit work properly (and I've heard a lot of covers since, believe me). It was probably Lydia Lunch's version but it doesn't sound how I remember that take on it. Thin White Rope's version is okay too, Bobbie and Kate's is best avoided for me. This is a track in severe need of Saint Etienneing one day.
Tony Wilson - Earthbound by To Hell With Burgundy.
It's danceable folk music really, and I've picked it because it's peculiar, pretty and a bit different to what you'd expect. Not everything Factory produced was quite so sweaty and indiscriminately in love with you as people recall (I lived in Manchester for seven years and went to Hacienda about four times, and two of those were to see Spacemen 3 and The pre-ecstatic Shamen supporting All About Eve, so I can speak for the people at the edge, man). Obviously, Wilson's biggest achievement is So It Goes the show that made the legend, but let's also mention Be What You Wanna Be by ACR, because all the tribute air play's going Mondays, New Order, Joy Division at the mo and it's a decent track. Mainly though, Wilson strikes me as like that largely shambolic quiz show he did with Frank Sidebottom on- good in parts but making it up on the spot. Self-belief and taking chances can take you an amazing way, people will invent your masterplan in retrospect from the best bits. Good on him for what he achieved and for having the chutzpah to make it happen..
Phil Drabble - The One Man and his Dog signature tune. Evocative, rural, idyllic and in a jaunty late seventies synth styley? Nostalgoverload!
There- that was worth doing, wasn't it?
Monday, 13 August 2007
Thursday, 2 August 2007
The Theme from S-Express
Here we are then in sunny August, your date and weather may vary, and I'm back at my old place of work in Bradford doing some research for a book on telly companies, using the fantastic library they have there that I never had enough opportunity to use while I worked there.
Don’t it always seem to go that you don't use what you’ve got
‘til you've gone? (They paid Joni Mitchell to promote a cruddy coffee shop).
It's like time's gone funny again. I'm spending more time there now I'm not there than I was there when I was there (Now you miss my helpful commas, eh? Never diss my punctuation again).
I've also handed out a few copies of No Tomatoes to people and am getting nice comments back (reassuringly, people are having different favourite bits, which means it must appeal slightly, in slightly different ways, to different people who know me a bit and feel obliged to be polite), which is probably good.
By the way, I'm now assured the BBC7 TX dates are 24/9/07, 1/10/07, 8/10/07 15/10/07 22/10/07 and 29/10/07 at the ever popular times of 11 o'clock at night 4 the following morning and on the internet for a week after, if you can remember. These are plum spots for comedy I'm informed (though you can't swear because 4 o'clock in the morning is pre-watershed, true, it's like 10 million years BC in that respect). I told you time had gone funny again.
Incidentally, I was in a Starbucks the other day (it was a social thing, I'll planting a rain forest of smug somewhere to offset the gaffe and atone) and ordered a double espresso, (I've given up using the word 'doppio', it doesn't help) and was asked, as usual, if I knew an "eXpresso" was "just, a small strong black coffee".
"Yes! I do, that's why I ordered it and used the correct bloody name for the thing, stop asking! Is it part of your moronic training that you're obliged to say this? Is it part of your script, designed to prevent any genuine interaction with your customers and thus enable the Starbucks experience to be uniformly bland and aggravating whereever you are in the world?" I might have screamed, if I could have been arsed.
My blood metaphorically boiled and, poetically speaking, made a satisfying hissing gurgle, as steam, quite literally (here meaning "didn't actually") came out of me.
"Not everyone thinks coffee is milky stuff with syrup and froth and chocolate nonsense chucked in!" I didn't yell, politely.
Gawd, imagine if an over reliance on coffee made me tetchy and short-tempered? I'd probably have over-reacted.
Don’t it always seem to go that you don't use what you’ve got
‘til you've gone? (They paid Joni Mitchell to promote a cruddy coffee shop).
It's like time's gone funny again. I'm spending more time there now I'm not there than I was there when I was there (Now you miss my helpful commas, eh? Never diss my punctuation again).
I've also handed out a few copies of No Tomatoes to people and am getting nice comments back (reassuringly, people are having different favourite bits, which means it must appeal slightly, in slightly different ways, to different people who know me a bit and feel obliged to be polite), which is probably good.
By the way, I'm now assured the BBC7 TX dates are 24/9/07, 1/10/07, 8/10/07 15/10/07 22/10/07 and 29/10/07 at the ever popular times of 11 o'clock at night 4 the following morning and on the internet for a week after, if you can remember. These are plum spots for comedy I'm informed (though you can't swear because 4 o'clock in the morning is pre-watershed, true, it's like 10 million years BC in that respect). I told you time had gone funny again.
Incidentally, I was in a Starbucks the other day (it was a social thing, I'll planting a rain forest of smug somewhere to offset the gaffe and atone) and ordered a double espresso, (I've given up using the word 'doppio', it doesn't help) and was asked, as usual, if I knew an "eXpresso" was "just, a small strong black coffee".
"Yes! I do, that's why I ordered it and used the correct bloody name for the thing, stop asking! Is it part of your moronic training that you're obliged to say this? Is it part of your script, designed to prevent any genuine interaction with your customers and thus enable the Starbucks experience to be uniformly bland and aggravating whereever you are in the world?" I might have screamed, if I could have been arsed.
My blood metaphorically boiled and, poetically speaking, made a satisfying hissing gurgle, as steam, quite literally (here meaning "didn't actually") came out of me.
"Not everyone thinks coffee is milky stuff with syrup and froth and chocolate nonsense chucked in!" I didn't yell, politely.
Gawd, imagine if an over reliance on coffee made me tetchy and short-tempered? I'd probably have over-reacted.
Monday, 30 July 2007
Random Opinion Generator
I quite like doing radio, no one has to look at me, it's done quick and often live and it's usually less rubbish than the tiny bits of telly I've been involved with. It's quite reassuring to find I can talk coherently off the cuff and be understood by people who can't see my lips moving too, but what is strange is how eager you become to have views on everything as soon as the transmission light goes on. You become a hyper-opinionated caricature of yourself because there's nothing worse than being dull, disengaged or just failing to fill the silence.
You begin to suspect that some of the more unpleasant "shock jocks" might even be quite nice in real life when not raising their personalities and voices and my blood pressure on air. Time must be filled and listeners connected with, and I suspect it's far easier to do that by going a bit extreme, than by being sensible, understated and reasonable.
I wonder if this is how Lord Haw-Haw started?
That's what went wrong then- nothing interesting enough happened to be worth an entry, how dull. Maybe I should be attempting to lift my on-line personality into caricature too? It's either that or witter on about nothing much to fill the time in.
Oh hang on, false dichotomy- wittering on about nothing is my personality.
You begin to suspect that some of the more unpleasant "shock jocks" might even be quite nice in real life when not raising their personalities and voices and my blood pressure on air. Time must be filled and listeners connected with, and I suspect it's far easier to do that by going a bit extreme, than by being sensible, understated and reasonable.
I wonder if this is how Lord Haw-Haw started?
That's what went wrong then- nothing interesting enough happened to be worth an entry, how dull. Maybe I should be attempting to lift my on-line personality into caricature too? It's either that or witter on about nothing much to fill the time in.
Oh hang on, false dichotomy- wittering on about nothing is my personality.
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
Latest BBC dishonesty shocker
The idiot who says "Good luck, everyone." on the National Lottery doesn't mean it, and hasn't even thought it through properly.
How can everyone be lucky any how? Just supposing they were, the consequences would be disastrous anyway- they'd either all end up winning a proportion of the jackpot smaller than their initial stake money, or bankrupting Camelot by winning larger numbers of the smaller fixed amount prizes than had been budgeted for.
Doesn't add up.
Furthermore, I have reason to suspect that Lottery HQ is in fact not a real building but a crude computer generated facsimile and doesn't even have real helicopters with searchlights flying over it (unlike our neck of the woods on a Saturday night).
I do hope the BBC reconsiders and puts an end to this wicked deception of the credulous...
How can everyone be lucky any how? Just supposing they were, the consequences would be disastrous anyway- they'd either all end up winning a proportion of the jackpot smaller than their initial stake money, or bankrupting Camelot by winning larger numbers of the smaller fixed amount prizes than had been budgeted for.
Doesn't add up.
Furthermore, I have reason to suspect that Lottery HQ is in fact not a real building but a crude computer generated facsimile and doesn't even have real helicopters with searchlights flying over it (unlike our neck of the woods on a Saturday night).
I do hope the BBC reconsiders and puts an end to this wicked deception of the credulous...
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
God Only Knows
“If you want to make God laugh,” they say, “tell Him your plans.”
Of course, if you do want to make God laugh, you’re probably religious and more a little over-confident, and need to consider just what kind of God you’re dealing with before developing your set.
Number 1) Is He Existent? Don’t both trying to make any non-existent Gods laugh. It’s your own time you’ll be wasting, not His.
Number 2) Is He Omniscient? If so, I’ll wager He’s heard it, whatever the joke, however, if also Omnipotent and So Inclined, He may be able to laugh at jokes He already knows. This may also require Him to be a Personal and Active God, not to mention Personable (which I haven’t, OK?), and much may hinge on the way you tell ‘em.
Number 3) Is He a God who allows humanity Free Will? If the Universe in Deterministic and Pre-ordained it’s possible God will already know the outcome of your life (not to mention your comedy routine about it, which I have mentioned, to be honest, but only in parentheses) and may thus find your plans amusing.
If He’s one of those laissez-faire, leave it all down to you Gods, then He may have no idea how things will turn out for you and may thus fail to appreciate any possibly irony, unless He’s, as mentioned before, Omnipotent and/or Omniscient.
It goes with out saying that if Omnipotent He can also be Omniscient as required (obviously it hasn’t gone without saying just now, but it could have done).
When I was making my list of "things that could possibly go wrong" before, I neglected to count the barbecue being cancelled due to ill health as one of them, which is obviously far far worse than any of the scenarios I’d come up with in my head, and I hope all works out well.
That’ll teach me.
Of course, if you do want to make God laugh, you’re probably religious and more a little over-confident, and need to consider just what kind of God you’re dealing with before developing your set.
Number 1) Is He Existent? Don’t both trying to make any non-existent Gods laugh. It’s your own time you’ll be wasting, not His.
Number 2) Is He Omniscient? If so, I’ll wager He’s heard it, whatever the joke, however, if also Omnipotent and So Inclined, He may be able to laugh at jokes He already knows. This may also require Him to be a Personal and Active God, not to mention Personable (which I haven’t, OK?), and much may hinge on the way you tell ‘em.
Number 3) Is He a God who allows humanity Free Will? If the Universe in Deterministic and Pre-ordained it’s possible God will already know the outcome of your life (not to mention your comedy routine about it, which I have mentioned, to be honest, but only in parentheses) and may thus find your plans amusing.
If He’s one of those laissez-faire, leave it all down to you Gods, then He may have no idea how things will turn out for you and may thus fail to appreciate any possibly irony, unless He’s, as mentioned before, Omnipotent and/or Omniscient.
It goes with out saying that if Omnipotent He can also be Omniscient as required (obviously it hasn’t gone without saying just now, but it could have done).
When I was making my list of "things that could possibly go wrong" before, I neglected to count the barbecue being cancelled due to ill health as one of them, which is obviously far far worse than any of the scenarios I’d come up with in my head, and I hope all works out well.
That’ll teach me.
Sunday Morning
Okay, so I've agreed to do a local radio show for taxi fare only (normally I want at least some kind of token payment to remind them I do this sort of stuff for a living, however meagre, but I like the host).
It's on Sunday morning after a traditionally boozy and rather classy Saturday evening barbecue we attend every year. There's a jazz band there and all sorts and I always end up tipsily rasping along in my best Fats Waller voice to I Can't Give You Anything But Love. Hint- my best Fats Waller voice is not by any means even as good as your worst one, and I've heard yours is rubbish.
What can possibly go wrong?
I've come up with a list of about five things so far. Six now, I've just thought about the things that can go wrong with a Halloumi, pepper, mushroom and courgette veggy kebab. Make that seven actually, ooh no, nine. Twelve for safety.
I was warned about this- after a certain amount of time 'blogging, you deliberately go out of your way to do stupid things just so you'll have something to write about afterwards. Oh dear, this is what comes of not posting enough this month.
It's on Sunday morning after a traditionally boozy and rather classy Saturday evening barbecue we attend every year. There's a jazz band there and all sorts and I always end up tipsily rasping along in my best Fats Waller voice to I Can't Give You Anything But Love. Hint- my best Fats Waller voice is not by any means even as good as your worst one, and I've heard yours is rubbish.
What can possibly go wrong?
I've come up with a list of about five things so far. Six now, I've just thought about the things that can go wrong with a Halloumi, pepper, mushroom and courgette veggy kebab. Make that seven actually, ooh no, nine. Twelve for safety.
I was warned about this- after a certain amount of time 'blogging, you deliberately go out of your way to do stupid things just so you'll have something to write about afterwards. Oh dear, this is what comes of not posting enough this month.
Monday, 23 July 2007
One person didn't pass on the chain and ghastly things happened to them, though it's unclear how this information entered the text of the chain letter
"Where've you been, Ian?" I hear you cry out in unison in voices so soft you can't actually discern them yourselves.
"Oh, about," I say, mysteriously failing to sound mysterious.
"And what, pray, have you done?" you respond eagerly, while carefully maintaining the punctuation that helps readers parse your collective utterance. "You've not posted in so long, your mother was considering 'phoning you," you add, unnecessarily archly, I think, but I'm pleased nevertheless that you're like me and you put an apostrophe at the start of 'phone.
Well, I tidied a bit, then messed a bit just so the tidying didn't feel too smug about itself, sent off one contract for a book when I should have sent off two, grizzled pointlessly over the bits of m'radio show I don't like any more and which are all my fault, considered an invitation to go on local radio again (still am doing), and didn't reply to a perfectly polite virtual "tagging" because they're just a reincarnation of those faintly sinister chain letters you sometimes got from friends in the 1980s really and all they ever do, if you fill them in, is tell you that you have fewer friends than your contemporaries and that you're eager to waste some time.
After that, I wrote the first draft of a 6000 word short story, when really I should have been writing a synopsis of it.
There's a good reason for this- the story is a ghost story based on historical fact, and a synopsis of it wouldn't contain the atmosphere, liberal smattering of verifiable period detail and little misdirections and suggestions that hold the thing together. Well it could do, but it would be about two thirds of the length of the actual story if it did and be about an eighth as interesting. So, caution to the wind, I did a first pass at the whole thing, which takes longer for me to produce and the possible purchaser of the story to digest obviously, but hopeful affords us both a bit more pleasure.
I'm quite pleased with it, it feels like it obeys the rules of the form quite nicely in a sort of MR James gets a bit more with it kinda way, and sends a little pleasurable chill up my spine. It has a proper plot too, which is a relief because my last short story was such a mood piece- just a very long conversation hinting at a plot really.
Fingers crossed, if it's knocked back I'll find somewhere to pop it on-line.
"Oh, about," I say, mysteriously failing to sound mysterious.
"And what, pray, have you done?" you respond eagerly, while carefully maintaining the punctuation that helps readers parse your collective utterance. "You've not posted in so long, your mother was considering 'phoning you," you add, unnecessarily archly, I think, but I'm pleased nevertheless that you're like me and you put an apostrophe at the start of 'phone.
Well, I tidied a bit, then messed a bit just so the tidying didn't feel too smug about itself, sent off one contract for a book when I should have sent off two, grizzled pointlessly over the bits of m'radio show I don't like any more and which are all my fault, considered an invitation to go on local radio again (still am doing), and didn't reply to a perfectly polite virtual "tagging" because they're just a reincarnation of those faintly sinister chain letters you sometimes got from friends in the 1980s really and all they ever do, if you fill them in, is tell you that you have fewer friends than your contemporaries and that you're eager to waste some time.
After that, I wrote the first draft of a 6000 word short story, when really I should have been writing a synopsis of it.
There's a good reason for this- the story is a ghost story based on historical fact, and a synopsis of it wouldn't contain the atmosphere, liberal smattering of verifiable period detail and little misdirections and suggestions that hold the thing together. Well it could do, but it would be about two thirds of the length of the actual story if it did and be about an eighth as interesting. So, caution to the wind, I did a first pass at the whole thing, which takes longer for me to produce and the possible purchaser of the story to digest obviously, but hopeful affords us both a bit more pleasure.
I'm quite pleased with it, it feels like it obeys the rules of the form quite nicely in a sort of MR James gets a bit more with it kinda way, and sends a little pleasurable chill up my spine. It has a proper plot too, which is a relief because my last short story was such a mood piece- just a very long conversation hinting at a plot really.
Fingers crossed, if it's knocked back I'll find somewhere to pop it on-line.
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