A few words on the subject
A few words on the subject
A few words on
June 2010
A few words on staying on the carpet
1st June 2010
Gooten Targ to you, myn fraw-line.
An objectionable and let's face it, slightly Stan Boardman-esque opening gambit, I concur. You will accept my apologies, accept my forgiveness, accept any packages that arrive between 8-12pm if I'm out and of course accept yourself (for heaven's sake, anything is hard to find if you will not open your eyes... etc etc, copyright Morrissey/Marr 1983 Rough Trade All Rights Reserved)

Anyhap, hoping you're well. The reason behind my gratuitous Germanic drivelling is a hangover from my holiday. I have returned to Blighty after five spectacularly relaxing days with my lovely wife, swanning about the charming streets of that there Berlin. Twas my wife's birthday, y'see and being an excellent, caring, thoughtful and tall husband, I thought that a bit of a midweek city-breaky type thing would be just what she needed.

There was the usual anxiety, natch, when one does a birthday gift of the "event" type, rather than the tangible boxed-gift type. I'm sure you've all had it. You get someone a trip, or a dinner, or a holiday or a weekend-away thing for their birthday. Then, upon that birthday morn', with the foreign sun gleaming through guest-house nets, one has to say "happy birthday dearest," and then have nothing to, as it were, physically hand-over. I did the card thing, obviously, which seems to suffice on these occasions. But I did also, like a maddening twerp, resort to standing up, flinging my arms aside in the hotel room and declaring the gift again like a bad magician. "Tah-dahh! You're in Berlin! Uhm...still!" A fact which obviously hadn't escaped her. Much like the resultant eye roll and punch in the gums that deservedly didn't escape me three seconds later.

Anyhoo, have you been Berlinwards? Marvellous, isn't it.

I was there oooh, nigh-on, blimey, I should say so, tch, must've been, crikey, 20 years ago. It was a trip with my colleagues and co-students at the University of Westminster (formally Harrow College of Further Education, formally "Harrow Tech", formally a building site, formally coal, lava and Metazoic slime, although I'm going back quite far there. 1971 at least). Being a self-involved thicklet, I made absolutely no effort to learn the first fucking thing about the place before the 1990 trip and did no preparation more than buying a new DalerA3 art pad, polishing my Doc Martens and getting a nice grade-1 back and sides. As a consequence I knew nowt of the social and economic upheaval the city was going through. My knowledge extended to:
West Berlin: Nice shops and a McDonalds
East Berlin: Fucking grim.

Returning back there last week, armed with a fine Time Out guide and a fine Time Out guide senior publishing brand manager, I learned much about the political whatnot and social such-have-you and the communist owsyerfather and realised that I had somewhat slept through being among the most revolutionary moments in European history at the age of 19, concerned then as I was with only Daler A3 art pads and Boots Country Born hair gel.
I am an oaf. They say youth is wasted on the young. I would add to this, geopolitical upheavals are wasted on moping denim-clad art-students.

I won't bore you with the minutae of the holiday, suffice to say it was marvellous. The heavy rain that the BBC webular pages threatened didn't arrive until we were at the airport on the last day. The underground system is an absolute colour-coded, fast, efficient, joyful thing that we took to - maps in hand - like ducks to l'orange.  Although not famous for its culinary delights, we ate out for breakfast and dinner daily and dined finely. Our hotel was opposite a stall known in Berlin as being the finest purveyors of "Currywurst" (sausage, covered in ketchup, sprinkled with curry powder) so we had to try that and - boy oh boy - does it knock the hangover on the head. Yum. The hangovers themselves were mostly due to the glasses of Prusecco we started every meal with (shall we? C'mon, it's yer birthday/we're on holiday/it's our last day/it's our first day/it's Thursday) and the - ahem - Absinthe bar that was also conveniently opposite our hotel. (shall we? C'mon it's...well it's fucking Absinthe for Chrissakes).

I can also heartily recommend, if you're visiting, huinting down "Roadrunners Rock & Motor Club", which is a seedy rockers dive, full of Bettie Page-a-likes, greasy quiffs, live rockabilly bands (check out Knucklebone Oscar) and more vintage cars, motorbikes and denimy turn-ups than a Fonz convention. We spent two happy nights/early mornings there doing our thang on the dusty dancefloor and would return in a heartbeat.

As a gift from Berlin to you all, enjoy shoving this German slang into your discourse:
"Bleib auf dem Teppich" (keep your cool. Literally: stay on the carpet)
"Mir ist alles wurst" (I couldn't care less. Literally: It's all sausages to me)
and my favourite, a term of surprise,
"Mein lieber Herr Gesangsverein!" (My dear Mr. Singing Club)

What a town.

But I'm home again now which, as all travellers will tell you, is sometimes the best part of a holiday. It's Tuesday night, I've a coffee to my side and a Lindyhop danceclass to attend in a couple of hours. My dancin' partner and I are taking the big swingin' step of moving up into the "Intermediate" dance class tonight, after 20 weeks of the beginners lessons. Wish me luck. Actually, I'll be leading so wishing her shins luck might be more appropriate.

Preperation continues for my show at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival this Saturday. Tickets still available. Should be a fun filled 90 minutes of stand-up, advice, 3-act-structure and a fascinating exercise about fairy tales. Be grand to see any of you there.

Ad finally, did you enjoy Clarksville's Walking Like Michael Madsen last week? I trust you've been humming and whistling it's catchy riffs and wondering why I insist on putting door-slamming and thunderclap sound effects all over it. Blame Suggs for that bad habit.

As promised, this week I am very proud to present the chirp-filled singalong anthem that roused our live crowds way back when. For a burst of trumpet filled punnery, key changes and harmony-packed choruses, not to mention a tortured lego metaphore CLICK HERE. Gowarrrrn, your ears will thank you for it.

Until next time,

Love to all
Rx

A few words on passions, pico, perfomance and pop piffery
Tah-dah! Tah-dah and what-ho! And what-ho and ahoy-there!

Isn't it wonderful to have you all together. I mean, you're not altogether in a physical sense. I'm a self-crazed egomaniac, I know, but I don't imagine for a pico second you all gather about a screen once a week in groups like some kind of Microsoft CampFire 2.0 for Windows and share this simultaneously. That's clearly hognonsense of the first order.
I mean, today, some of you across the world who know each other, might be joined in reading this utter tripe at the same time. Maybe you and someone you used to work with? Or someone you met at a party? Or you and a friend of a friend. Or maybe someone that you used to fancy?
Oo'er, imagine that. That person. You know who I mean. You kind of liked them and they kind of liked you and nothing really happened but you sort of sensed it and once - just once - when you were both drunk, there was a shared moment. Maybe a touch, or a look and your heart did something a bit tumbly and you quickly spun forward in your life and imagined yourselves in bed, and then in the same house (I mean, cohabitating. I didn't mean you were in the same bed in different houses. Like you were renting it from each other on a round robin basis. I mean you thought about the sexy thing, then the living together thing, and the cooking together thing and then you pictured them naked and it all got a bit exciting). And then the moment, as moments will, sort of passed and you can never really be sure if your life would have been slightly more exciting if maybe, just maybe, you'd said something. And now you'll never know.
But you think about them. Don't you. Not all the time. But once in a while. A little bit. A what if.
And if you were going somewhere - a wedding, a party, a reunion, whatever - and there was a chance whoever that person is might be there, well, you'd spend an exttra moment, just a fleeting moment, in front of the mirror before you got you coat and went out.
Well, that person might be reading this too and thinking that very same thing.
There's a thought.

Pico is a funny word. As in "picosecond." I mean pico isn't a word on it's own, as fans of Terry Pratchett and  Red Dwarf will know (why do they always know?). You can't have pico-other things. there's no pico minutes.  It's a bit nerdy, isn't it, to say "picosecond". It implies a greater-than-GCSE-knowledge of physics. The interweb tells me it means a trillionth of a second, or one millionth of one millionth of a second, or 0.000 000 000 001 seconds. A meaningless figure, like so much of science. Too big and abstract to be properly comprehensible. We prefer analogue descriptions, us humans (fans of Asaac Asimov and The Now Show, aside). A picosecond is, to a second, what a day is to 31,000 years, give or take elevenses.

Here's another interesting "analogue" desription of something unfathomable. How long have human beings been on planet earth, compared to the age of the earth. We like to feel like we pretty much rule the roost, I know, and we know the dinosaurs were around before us but "olden times/yesteryear/days of yore (copyright that episode of Friends about Pottery Barn) seems a long time. Living in caves, hunting mammoth etc. Well, if you - like me, a fundamentalist and practising athiest, find this shit interesting, here's a way of demonstrating our insignificance:
Hold out your arms wide, like the mythical Jesus (or the Scoundrel Christ, I'm not jazzed either way) being crucified. That's it, nice and wide, stick your chest out.
Well, firstly, that's your height.
I know, but it is. I've tried it. And I've watched other people try it. It's your height. "But I've got really short arms" you might say? Well yes, short arse, but youve got pretty stumpy fucking legs as well, in case you hadn't noticed. See?
Anyhoo, that's your hieght. But also, if you imagine that the distance between your left hand tip of your index finger - that's the one riiiiiiight over there - and your right hand index finger (that's the other one. No, look, turn your head, there, look, see? Somebody show him. That's it). Anyway, if you imagine that disance represents the age of the earth. Where in that timeline on your body, did humans appear? Your right nipple? Your shoulder? Your right elbow?
Well I'll tell you in a minute.

Thank you to all you wonderful people who sent me good luck wishes for my appearance at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival. Thank you even more to those who heaved themselves off their couches on Saturday afternoon and made the solitary and tedious cross-town journey to "Stokey" (Christ I hate that) to biff up to the show itself. Especially as it was these folk who found out - a travelcard and 2 missing hours of their life later - that the event was cancelled due to "lack of interest." Boo.

Now I don't really know how I feel about this, frankly. Annoyed, natch. Mainly because of the evenings of prep designing handouts and polishing scripts and sorting crap out.

Oooh, sorry. It's the last part of Luther on BBC1 (making the unmissable unmissable, or something). Got to go. Be back in an hour...

Sixty tension filled minutes later...

Marvellous. Cracking stuff there, Neil Cross. Have just checked the video tape I lovingly and obediently set for my wife as she is out, and yes, I have managed to record 60 minutes of a blank black screen. I'm for it now. God bless the iPlayer I say.

Anyhap, where was I. Annoyed at Stokey, yes. Annoyed at myself, too of course, for being annoyed. I don't credit myself with being much of a "draw" to the great British Public. Jesus, even less to the Folk Newington (see what I did there?) But, speaking to publishing and literary folk in the following days, it did turn out to be not the best publicised event in the world. And p'rap not the finest peice of organisation. Hell, I know that sounds like the sourest of sour grapes. But hell, they cancelled the event at 5:30pm on Friday and tickets were still available to buy and the event still published on the web for the rest of the weekend. So, y'know, hmn.

But that's that.

I spent a charming 40 minutes in the company of Lambeth Social Health dept or Lambeth Health and Social Care or the People's Front Of Judea or whoever they are last Wednesday. A nice young psychologist called Abbie listened to me colourfully - and with no small amount of twitchy, blinking, stuttery verbal gymnastics - recount a speckled history of depression, mania and confusion and abandoned projects and delusion. I filled in the same 1-10 chart of mood swings and attitudes. Ever done one? "How do you feel in social sitiuations when you don;t know anybody?" 1=fine 10= fuckin' mental. Usual thing. Anyhow, she totted up my scores like a game show and I won an appointment for a pysche diagnosis at St Thomas's Hospital in a few weeks time. I'll let you know how that goes, fluoxetine followers.

But, I don't hear any of you ask, what of Darwin Stardust? We have tapped our toes to Clarksville's "Walking Like Michael Madsen", we've sungalong with gusto to "Lego Heart." But we're hungry for more, Richard.

(To be honest, I know this to be a lie and a sign of my delusionalness. There have been terrifyingly few clicks on the Clarksville Pop Page and, count them, one request for a copy of the FREE Clarksville debut CD.  One. C'mon people. Anyone would think you had had enough chirpy, pun filled witpoppery in your life. Anyhow, this next one is great. 5 mins 43 seconds of groovy larks about juvenile behavior. With a goddamn harpsichord part, for Chrissakes).

Click here for something to brighten your day.

Another one next week. Only coz I luves ya.

Until next time, the answer to the arm-stretch history of humans on planet earth? We've been here for the thickness of the fingernail on your right index finger.
Blimey.

love to all
Rx



Tues 8th June
A few words on the French, faux rock and flight
Sun 13th June
Good hello to all and sundries (shoes polish, suede protector, heel grips and other fine Dasco produce). I am writing to you today from Sunday evening at 6pm ish. I am just back from seeing “The Brothers Bloom”, a mediocre confidence trick movie with a couple of nice moments and about 5 twists that will be apparent to anyone who has spent 4 years of their life studying confidence tricks, scams, swindles and switcheroos to perhaps write a Conman based novel. So I was, let’s face it, both the ideal viewer for this motion picture and it’s biggest damned critic.
Well worth 2hrs of your time if you’ve never seen The Sting or any David Mamet movies.
(what the hell you’re doing on my pals list if this is the case, is frankly bewildering to me but heighdy-hum and such n such).

Talking of all things novelistic, I am terribly proud to now be the proud owner of two, count ‘em, two copies of CONMAN, my most recent novel, translated into French. It has been translated over the last few months, as those followers of affewwords… will know. It has a splendid illustrated jacket which is a glorious concoction and quite the thing. You can view it HERE - I trust you will. More alarmingly, it also has, along with the luverly jacket, a frankly terrifying price point of 25 Euros. For a paperback. I mean blimee eu Riley, as they probably don’t often say in Paris. What do they say over there? Sacre Bleu! (Literally, “Sacred Blue.” I mean I know the French like a boy band, but I wouldn’t go as far to call them sacred. Holy East 17, I could understand. Or at a pinch, Blessed Big Fun). Enough.

In the last 7 days two of you types have approached me with the same questions. “Do you like/have you heard “The Baseballs”? Now, I had no idea to whom or what these fine folk were referring, so I have done a li’l research. It appears that “The Baseballs” are a German rock n roll band who…
Wait, no, that’s wrong. They are no more a rock n roll band than The Reynolds Girls were a gritty urban rap act. They are a boy band. Three clean cut, offensively handsome Teutonic Twentysomethings Twits in the Bros vein. They have however gone for a Disney-fied Top Man Butlins Europop “rockabilly” look as their USP. Quiffs, turn ups and checked shirts. And their schtick involves  knocking out cheesy upright-bass, twangy guitar doo-wop versions of modern pop standards. They are, to rock n roll what the flash in the pan novelty act “The Puppini Sisters” were to 1940s girl groups.
So no, viewers, I don’t like them. Not while Brian Setzer is still performing anyway. They’re a cabaret act, who have replaced authenticity with rub-on tattoos and Brylcreem. Get them out of the charts now please.
Twerps.

Do you ever get over excited by appealing seasonal television montages? I expect, like me, it’s a quarterly occurrence in your life. You know the feeling. There you are, sat on your couch, plate of evening tea on your lap, perhaps a glass of Blossom Hill on the table. It’s getting on for nine pm. You’re trying to decide whether to commit yourself to part one of a three part ITV drama, possibly involving Kay Mellor or one of Robson and/or Jerome, maybe even a bit of Tamsin Outhwaite as a renegade cop. And in the commerical break, just as you wipe up your last bit of pesto with some nice crusty bread, a trailer pops up…
Look, it’s David Jason. He’s in a long coat and looks a bit stressed. The voice over man says “coming soon.” Oooh, I wonder what this is..?
Cut to: Shit, it David Suchet dressed as a Nazi. Blimey, what’s this? Davids Jason and Suchet in some kind of gritty wartime…
What?! John Thomson’s in it too? Crashing a Ford Capri? Jesus, this is gonna be amazing! Some kind of time travel action adventure drama with -
Fuck me! Judi Dench dressed as the Queen?! What is the -
Oh my sweet Jesus! Alan Rickman in a glass office yelling at a laptop? This is gonna be the best ever series in the -
Shit on a stick! Christopher Eccleston as well?! In space?! Who ISN’T in this amazing time travelling gritty royal detective action political conspiracy murder sci fi thriller?!
WHATTTT?! Melvyn Bragg?! Does he ACT now? This is gonna be fuckin…
Oh.
Oh, wait,
Oh, oh I see.
“…Coming this Autumn on ITV…”
It’s 10 different shows.
Bollocks.

Ever..?
No?
Oh, just me then.

I’m also currently confused by the R Kelly rnb classic “I believe I can fly.”
You’ll recall this, I’m sure. Chorus goes - in a big RnB ball busting sweeping epic pop ballad manner: I believe I can fly / I believe I can touch the sky / I think about it every night and day / Spread my wings and fly away / I believe I can soar / I see me running through that open door / I believe I can fly etc…
You remember it I’m sure. Anyway what bothers me is why this song has its own Wikipedia etry, was #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 on the R&B Singles chart, number #1 on the UK charts, won three Grammys, and is ranked #406 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time whereas this one, which is to all intents and purposes, identical:
“I wish I could fly / right up to the sky / but I can’t / y’can! / I can’t!” is considered childish nonsense?
What a fickle public we are.

Finally, not so fickle I hope, as not to be wriggling with glee at the idea of the next Clarksville pop classic?
I proudly present track 4 of the now infamously unrequested eponymous 8-track masterpiece Clarksville: “I’ve Been A Wild Rover.” A marvellous upbeat witpop number all about the difficulties of unrequited love. I offer it to you, my public, as a gift. Give it a whirl. It’s a good ’un. Click HERE

Until next time drivel fans,
Stop watching football. You’re only encouraging them.

Love to all
Rx
Well a marvellous good morning to all!
Thank you for joining us. If you wish to rather peversely picture the scene, then imagining a slightly hungover Mark Kermode sat in a small kitchenette with a big cup of tea (two tea bags) and Radio 6 music polluting the atmos at about 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. Mrs Kermode is on the couch in her "apartment pants" reading a Guardian supplement. (Apartment pants are essentially the comfy snugglesome pyjama-trousers/jog-pants one slips into after work or straight from bed at the weekend. Never, note NEVER, to be worn outdoors. I don't have any m'self. Like a punchably and contemptible adolescent, image is the thing. Part of me thinks some smart cotton PJs are a bit Don Draper and retro in a Mad Men sort of grown-up dad George McFly sort of a fashion. The other part of me thinks, oh for fuck's sake Asplin. Understandably). Alkas have been Seltzered, bacon has been chopped, fried, added to two fried eggs (one soft and whole, another broken and all hard and eggy), toast has been Dualitted and I'm now frittering away the afternoon afore I shower and head out with some buddies for male West End cocktails and mischief.

First an apology. I was unecessarily mean about those kind hearted, sweet natured and down-right good folk who, for reasons passing spiritual understanding, think about me enough to recommend pop tunes and new acts. I of course was rather rude about The Puppini Sisters and The Baseballs last week which was uncalled for. Thougtful people hear something I might like and bring it to my attention. And being a selfish clumsy oafwit, I get all "getouttahere" about them. Undeserved.

So what's been going on this week?

Well, some prescription sunglasses that I ordered from Optical Express (Express? Pah) finally, after one month, one lab screw up, 4 broken call-back promises and three, count 'em, three missed deadlines, finally arrived. Handsome tortoiseshell prescription Rayban Wayfarers. Mmmm, very Reservoir Blues Brothers and set off my shiny quiff a treat.

Ahem. Or at least the WOULD, if I hadn't arrived at Optical Express (Express?! Pah!) and tried them on to find. the tint is about a 60%, which isn't so much a sunglass, as a slightly 1970s driving tinted spec. Plus the expensive thin high-index lenses (embarrassed to tell you what they cost) compress my spectacular bad vision into this effect.
As Mrs Kermode said, they look like toy joke sunglasses for children. So back to the factory they have gone for what is known in the trade as a "welder's tint" - black as space. So 2 more weeks to wait. By which time I confidently expect winter to have arrived. Marvellous. Tch.

Been watchin' the footie? Of course you have, you twits, despite my advice. Lots of folk in the pub last night scurried about the 52" plasmas at 8:29pm to sit grumpily for 90 mins plus injury time. They then returned to the fold to discuss the grumpy mediocre 3rd division tussel of missed opportunities and flubbed chances in real fucking time, so that was another 90mins of fun. I lost myself in vodka tonics and the company of charmingly incomprehensible Eastern European work collegues who rightly couldn't give a flying badger about the result, which made things slightly more bearable. If they hadn't been discussing American Cage Fighting heroes it would have been even more bearable, but hell, you can't have everything. Not without a fuck lot of storage solutions anway.

Wanted to mention a conspiracy theory I have been working on recently. See if you think I've stumbled onto something here:
Okay, so we have ourselves a Tory Prime Minister. (Coalition, shmoalition I say. I'm with satirical comedy news website www.newsbiscuit.co.uk who report that Nick Clegg will be allowed to play with a small plastic toy steering wheel during PM Questions). Now a Tory PM has obviously got the upper middle classes and the blue blood toffs of Great Britain all of a flurry, hastening in a new era of Right Wing toffery. First on the agenda I'm sure, chaps in Jermyn Street shirts and Hackett Tweeds would have sat James Cameron down and told him he needs to overturn the "anti fox hunting" legislation. "It's our god given birthrght, fwaff fwaff, jowelly judder etc. Now those tree-hugging do-gooder lefty draft-card burning pinko hippies are out, let's get back in our scarlet jackets, climb atop our steeds and charge about the place like Eton Vikings."
"C'mon now," Cameron says. "Chaps, muckers, old fellow-me-lads. Give me  a chance here. This is our first government in sixteen years! I do something like that, chaps, and we'll be straight out again. We have to play this slowly. I'm as keen as you fellows are to get slaughtering and thundering through the home counties but the people won't allow it. I'm telling you, killing foxes? Good heaven's, a fox would have to become pubic enemy number one for middle England to except that."
"Public enemy, you say?"
"Absolutely. Good lord, you'd have to have suburban foxes killing babies in their sleep before the country would allow us back on the hunt."
"Hmm. Well, leave that to us, Cameron old sport. Leave that to us..."

What? A coincedence? Gimme a break here.

Saw a van heading up Camberwell New Road on my way to work this week. A plumbing company, specialising in some new bit of kitchen/bathroom brass whizzy jiggerywhanot. The product - all chrome and brass - is pictured on the side of the van. It's name? The hydrotap.
Hydrotap?
Aren't ALL taps hydrotaps, given that "hydro" means "make wet."
Put me in a midly irritated mood all the way to Vauxhall Station. At which point I picked up the day's free copy of Metro - 60 pages of opinionated, celeb obsessed, low brow fuckwittage to irritate me instead. So that was nice.

Two links before I go.
I may have flagged up my comedian buddy Dan Thomas before? I think so. Terribly talented chap, just turned pro. Now gigging all over the country. I am off to see him in Stratford on Monday and then again at Downstairs At The Kings Head on Thursday. Be grand to see anyone who wishes to pitch up. As well as being a terribly nice chap and dashed funny to boot, he also is the owner of frankly the finest Christopher Walken impression known to mankind. He has a clip of said Walkenism on You Tube and, if you have 1min 29 seconds, I cannot recommend it more highly. Click HERE.

And finally - as is now traditional - I have enormous, engorged, throbbing and purple amounts of joy in presenting for you, my listening several, the new Clarksville song for the week. The title is "Lover's Quiff" and is a up beat, twangy, rockabilly, Sun Sessions toe tapper about being in love with a woman who loooks like Elvis Presley. Surely, too good to resist? Click HERE for 4 mins of slap-backed Gretsch, Scotty Moore hillbilly whooping. And blimey, check out the gal on the cover? Boy oh boy.

That's that. I've been me, you've been joyous.

Love to all

Richard x









A few words on lenses, foxes, hydration and Walken to work
Sat 19th June
A few words on music news, weather, sci-fi and political appointments
Sat 26th June
Hello dear reader,
Here in my home hoping each and every one of you are splendid. Can I just say this, to get it over with?
Phew. Fuckin’ell it’s hot, in’it?

Blimey O’Reilly’s Snooker & Pool Hall, I don’t like it. The nice weatherman on telly last night - who experimented with a ghastly ‘let’s see what’s cooking’ metaphor that frankly seemed like a misjudged adlib - said it might get up to 29 degrees. Which is 84.2 in old money. Jesus fackin’ norah batty.
I foresee a weekend of windows open (despite no breeze), fan whirring on full, wandering about indoors, sticky barefeet, bare-chested, a greasy sheen of sweat all over, khakis riding up my bot-crack, drinking endless glasses of iced water, doing that unattractive blowing-cold-air-up-onto-one’s-face thing and feeling fat gobs of salty sweat flop from my red nose. Nice.

Still, could be worse. Could be at Glastonbury. Or “Glasto”, if you’re a twunt. An event which has taken over all middle-class media as it always fuckin does. Radio, TV, broadsheet supplements. All have their “Glasto” (urgh) footage and guides and what’s-ons and live bloody podularcasts.

It’s a particularly bad time for the ill-fated Radio station o’Damocles BBC 6 Music who have decided their entire listenership are aching to have the tuneless, flat, atonal, 6th form fey Victoriana whimsy of “Lawrence & The Machine” as the soundtrack to their Saturday.

BBC 6 Music have a tough time of it, insistent as they are on having as much music as they do everything else. Which means for every newsbreak (at the top and the bottom of every hour - oooh smell me wiv’ my DJ slang), they have to have the regular news, plus the “6 music news.”
Now oft’ there is genuine music “news”. I’m thinking of U2 cancelling tour dates or p’raps the death of Michael Jackson. But these, like Victoria Beckham after a strong breeze, are “thin on the ground.” The rest of the time they’re scrabbling about in the dirt for anything that’s gone on in the last day they can inflate into a story. So what you get is this sort of thing 48 times a day:
“BBC News. 4000 dead as a Tsunami sweeps the coast of Mumbai; Chancellor announces an emergency rise in VAT and two children found murdered in Merseyside. And in 6 Music News, the bass player of Supergrass tells us that his latest B-Side has a Motown feel and Beyonce gets a haircut.”

It’s been a delightful week. As preparation for returning to the London Stand-Up circuit, I have been attempting to see as much live comedy as I can to, as it were, stick my comedy elbow in the baby’s bathwater of quality. And it’s been grand. What young people, Disc Jockeys and general cunts call a “shout out” (Jezus H Corbett) to Dans Thomas & Mitchell and the Clint Edwards - fine performer from Wales who ventured to the mystic East for their London shows this week - and pretty much showed us Londoner how it’s done, Cardiff style.

Am looking forward to returning to the boards. I have the itch again. Or the “throb” as someone smart once said. I have about 90 minutes worth of scrappy ideas for material - mostly formed through the excellent discipline of this very site - and need to sit down and start working it into a perfect 5 mins. So that’s another project to add to the pile of destractions. Along with Clarksville, and my new novel and every other fuckin’ thing.

A ticket for a wonderful evening landed in my lap thanks to a kind friend yesterday which meant I found myself in the audience of “Infinite Monkey Cage”, a Radio 4 smart-alecky panel show recording. Hosted by Richard Asplin lookalike (copyright R. Gervias) Robin Ince, Physics heart-throb Brian “no not that one” Cox. The subject was “Science vs. Science Fiction” so guests were the infantile but incredibly educated Jonathan Ross, the hairy genius creator of V for Vendetta, Watchmen and The Killing Joke Alan Moore, plus an American string-theorist who’s name escapes me. 90 minutes of brainiacal round-table musings, posits and jokes about Hydron Colliders abounded. It’s being broadcast on Monday on Radio 4 at, I think, 4:30pm. Well worth a listen.

On the subject of SF, Sci-Fi, science fiction, fantasy and which not, here’s a bizarre thing. It is extraordinary to me the baffling holes that the public will choose to pick in fantasy/adventure/superhero/sci-fi movies. Example so you get the idea:
Came home last night to find my dear missus watching Blade: Trinity, which, for grown-ups, is a comic-book movie sequel starring the dashing Wesley Snipes and the gravel-faced Chris Christofferson. The sequence which we watched involved Wesley (a vampire turned vampire hunter) who had been captured by cops and a psychiatrist (all undercover vampire “familiars” providing urban vampires with human victims). The hospital room was then invaded - all slo-mo explosions, flames and smashed plaster, by a group of 4 vampires who proceeded to drug Blade in order to kill him. Cue Blade’s renegade rag-tag bunch of rescuers who all smashed in through plate glass, disposed of the Vamps with guns and bows & arrows and swords and ultraviolet light-tipped bullets.
My wife’s observation? “You’d have thought an alarm would have gone off.”
Which of course is true and I nodded my agreement. But it did strike me that it was this unlikely event which we chose to consider as unrealistic and silly in an otherwise perfectly sensible film. The lack of decent security alarm system in a major metropolitan psychiatric unit. Rather than, say, the light-tipped bullet wielding Vampire hunting renegade troupe.

The same is always said about Stars Trek and Wars. Nyerggh nyerggh nyerggh, they’re stupid. You can’t hear explosions in space. Right. The sound of explosions. That’s the ridiculous part of this story of space pirates, the Force, 900 year old green Jedis, moon-sized space stations and talking fucking robots. For heaven’s sake.

One other thing.
Assassinations.
I have scoured the interweb for the number of folk who are murdered in the plays of Shakespeare. You’d have thought searching “how many murders in Shakespeare?” would have wielded some sort of result. But the fact is, nothing. I’d very much like to know, if any scholars can tell me.
But the fact is, there are dozens.
In the time o’ Shakespeare it appeared that assassination was the first choice, route one, go-to solution if you wanted someone’s job. My brother’s king? I want to be king. I’ll kill m’brother. My Uncle is a general. I wannabe the general. I’ll murder my uncle. And so and so forth. Which has got me thinking: When did it become de rigeur for an assassin to automatically inherit the job of their victim? Was this just how it worked? “Well sonny, you murdered the king. So now we have something of a vacancy in the King department. And as you were the chappie with the bloody knife, we’re thinking by rights, the role’s yours for the taking.”
Who the goddamn hell thought this was an appropriate recruiting process? And when did this idea vanish? And how thankful are we that it did?

“Ringo? Paul? George? Uhm, you’ve got a new singer. Mark’s his name. He knows all the songs. Not much of a singing voice to be fair, and his song writing ideas are all a little intense and Salinger-obsessed. But hell, I mean, we owe him the front-man spot in the biggest band in the world. He put the work in. And by work, I mean small calibre bullet."

“After the death of President Kennedy, 24 hours late the United States accepted the inorgoration of President Harvey Oswald unanimously. A White House spokesman said, “sure, he’s a weird kid, a communist sympathiser and has an odd resemblance to Gary Oldman. But hell, constitution be damned, he earned it. Ladies and gentleman, please stand for the President of the United States, Lee Harv…oh shit. Sorry. Damn. Is he all right? Fuck it. The President Jack Ruby. Hail to the chief.”

And that’s that.

Click here for this week’s trip down pop-lane with Clarksville’s touching acoustic ballad “Snoopy Bookends” for your delight. For those who are having trouble loading the Clarksville pages, all songs are also available here for your amusement. myspace.com/clarksville pop

Until next week lovelies, keep cool.

Love to all
Rx