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popular culture no longer applies to me
There seems to be a lot of giggery going on which I am unable to attend. Last Sunday, as was announced by email to me only a couple of weeks beforehand, was to see the last ever gig of bravecaptain, the solo project of former radley martin carr. In kilburn too! I was especially gutted as, though big fan I am, I never got to see bravecaptain live. The boo radleys neither, come to that. Well all is hardly lost; he's just announced he's going solo again (artistic differences with the mirror) and going on tour as plain old martin carr. More pelasing is that this tour is not going to be in wales or camden or new brighton, but in the good ol' us of a. Bad news is that it's way out east, and i'm way in west. I'm interested to know if it'll be martin laptop carr or martin acoustic carr. Well they like cars out here. and then there's artists of brut, who seem to have given up on england and are dylanishly touring forever the united states (ok, they do pop back to europe occasionally). Flying by SF again last week, of course i had to miss it (it was a monday). Next time please come to sac, or davis. Then again...i have been to plenty of their gigs when less globally known, crammed into tiny record shops in archway, oh there'll be another time. At least i got to the april gig, and helped convert some convertibles on the way. But hardest of all for me to miss is the upsoming giggery of david devant &hsw, and the vessel's alter-ego mr solo. The next few weeks see more shows, starting in tunbridge wells of all places (the legendary venue i never ever made it to, due to an invisible barrier that stopped me ever leaving london for a gig), for the silver-booted one. And then, deary me, they're only going and gonna be playing on a boat on the thames, no not for jubilee 77, but for hallowe'en. This isn't fair. It's times like this i want to be back in londres, not in davis. I'm missing important artistic developments of my favourite all-round artists here you know. and the Tate Modern has slides now! Not a slide-show but actual slides! david devant and his spirit wifi oh well. i have the cds. |
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13.10.06 01:39 |
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chez nous in a two-page spread
uniball vision pen, moleskine sketchbook; sketching feeling a lot less sketchy, getting used to the paper a bit, still frustrating me, but getting in with it, yes i am. Using the 2-page thing, note how i'm. I like that the thickness allows me to do so without worry, though I wouldn't do that in pencil, as they'd rub together, yes they would. arnold was getting some free airtime on leno, soaping box about Kaliforni-ah and how linking him to george dubba-yah boosh is like linking him to an oscar, to much general merriment. Arnie, you went and campaigned for george dubba-yah boosh in ohio (oh why oh) before he got re-elected, you didn't campaign for oscar to get into the white haus. Speaking of which, can we not to do bush like they do at the oscars, "come on george, time's up", start the music, tell him to get outta here? and what happens in Congress when congressmen go absent a la foley, do they have seat-fillers so the place doesn't look empty? Lotta politicians need seat-fillers lately. Whoops i went all political when i'm meant to talk about art. Oh well, augustus john, la la la la la la. How's that? Please yerself. |
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13.10.06 06:34 |
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biker grove, minus pj and duncan (thank god)
02 micron fineliner pen, pencil, staedtler watercolour pencil, moleskine sketchbook. Getting a bit more familiar with it. The size of this scan doesn't show it quite right though; i've put it on the flickr thing as well though, slightly bigger. Drawn outside on my lunchbreak, this is the uc davis bike barn seen in an earlier sketch from a different point of view, obi-wan. And it's friday the thirteenth, and i've been feeling very paraskevidekatriaphobic today. i have a bad feeling about this, anakin. |
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13.10.06 23:59 |
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"oi, scully!"
While on this chinchilla's website (he's leaving london for australia, y'know) i noticed the name of a band out the corner of my little eye which caught my attention: scully. Naturally i investigated. A band with that name must be good, or at least worth me having a butcher's. So look i did. Well, they are interesting I must say; the singer, Dan Scully (it just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it) chants in his best urban class guerilla saaf landon accent about such issues as, well, um , urban guerilla class warfare type of stuff. His voice sounds like it thinks you want a slapping, it certainly isn't friendly. But he does want to be mike skinner a little bit, or maybe the young paul weller halfway through his bowl of eton rifles. Listening to a few tracks I can see what he wants to do but I'm not convinced the barbed wire is protecting anything worth stealing. Lyrics sneering at students and hippies verge dangerously close to the realm of hackneyed old cliche. However something about some of the lyrics remind me very much of stuff I myself used to write about, and some things the singer says makes me think, hang on maybe we are related..? I do have a cousin called Daniel... but he's not actually a Scully, and is from Norwich, not Deptford. And I must say, despite some flaws, I do like the song "Who's A Terrorist Now", which opens with his experience of being told the crime he was a victim of was not priority and they wouldn't catch who did it. In an interview (on youtube) he says how he was stabbed by crackheads on the tube. Kind of wierd, considering I was attacked (possibly stabbed in the head, i'll never actually know, but i have a big harry potteresque scar) by a crackhead who was also never caught. at one point he sings about knowing "a geezer called rob", staright after talking about the "Spice of Life". I know a Rob, who is a Geezer, and we used to drink at the Spice of Life in Soho! Is this guy the bizarro pete? I would like to see them live to find out if I really like them; I think I do, but I gotta be sure it ain't just about the name. They are pretty self-confident, which I think is a good thing for a band. But I tell you what thogh, I'm not sure I like the linking of the word 'terrorist' with the name 'scully'. That's gotta be bad news. |
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15.10.06 09:28 |
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there's something in my eye, a little midge so beguiling
My mind was elsewhere, and this is what my hands did, in a thin-papered writing pad. I tell you what, you can tell I'm missing england; i ate a tin and a half of heinz baked beans today. |
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15.10.06 09:44 |
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i never should have let you look
watercolour (from a series of tubes, not a big truck); the one and only foz? of the spirit wife and her david devant fame, from a photo taken on a certain Evening in november 04, and painted now cos i'm not going to see the upcoming giggery due to my absence from london. Shortly afterwards the brut army arrived and i was covered in pink paint, causing me to ditch the beloved grey garment i was wearing that i had bought in scarborough many years ago. "And besides when i've had a few i like to share things." And don't forget the solo. |
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17.10.06 06:32 |
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don't kill bush, please
I was shocked by the news story last week about the 14 year-old Sacramento schoolgirl who posted a picture of George W Bush with the words "Kill Bush" blazoned across it. She was apparently so pissed off with King George and his War in Iraq that she vented graphically on her myspace. Alarm bells rang out at the FBI and federal agents marched into her school and took her away, in front of her classmates (but conveniently out of the way of any meddling parents). They interrogated her, threatened her with juvenile hall for making death threats against the pres'dent, and reduced her to tears (again, without the presence of her legal guardians). What upset me as well is the way the news channels have treated this. A couple of nights ago (I think it was CBS-13, but they're all pretty much the same, and as annoying as each other), when reporting the girl's father's reaction, they chose to report the 'anger' of selected interviewed 'members of the public' at him before showing his views on the matter. They described the girl as someone "who endorsed the murder of President Bush". This sort of language and reporting, which doesn't even criticise the snakey methods of the secret service, just shows us how far the mainstream news media are in the Administration's pocket. Can they not use their valuable airtime to highlight the ridiculousness of this case? Storming into a school and plucking out 14 year old schoolgirls who dare to have political views? A kid who has grown up under an Administration that thinks nothing of killing thousands of innocents in illegal wars (freedom's on the march!), that endorses the death penalty for criminals (while criminals stalk the corridors of the White House every day), who has grown up thinking that there is free speech in this country (a right exercised without secret service intervention by right-wing verbocrats like Ann Coulter, who endorsed the murder of supreme court judges and NY Times journalists). Jeez, kids say worse (with real consequences) on myspace every day without anybody batting an eyelid. She even took the image down after learning that it was a Federal offence - and this was before the FBI spent their manpower tracking her down (SF gate). Whatever next in this upwardly totalitarian state? I had to google certain words in order to find online articles about this case; now as we know the government can check up on your google searches, will FBI agents in heavy boots and dark glasses come after me for looking it up? Or you? About a month or so ago a British film won an award at a Canadian film festival, I forget the actual name but it concerned the assassination of President Bush on some future date. It was met over here with the expected derision of those who haven't seen the movie, with comments on news sites such as "why do the Brits hate us?" I haven't seen the movie (quelle surprise, eh) but I would imagine that it would try to look at what would happen were the Decider to actually get taken out. Personally I think that killing the Smirking Chimp would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to the US. First of all, Dick "Tater" Cheney would be elevated to the office of President, the nightmare of the civilized world. Secondly, it would be a media frenzy, and the neo-right would use it to their absolute advantage. The War on Our Civil Liberties would be Justified, and people in a state of national shock (because they're told by the Constant Media to be in such a state) would go along with it in order to make us 'Safe'. The War on Terror would be permanent. It's a Neo-Conservative dream scenario. If I were George I'd be more worried about my own men than schoolgirls. So please, pretty please, don't kill Bush. The alternative would be unthinkable.
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17.10.06 21:12 |
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Yr2, Wk55-56: North to Oregon
It was time to get out of California, so we drove north, and crossed into the state of Oregon. We were off to visit some of my wife's family, who live just over the border in the town of Medford. It was a long old drive, too; we may be nominally living in 'northern' California, but I tell you, there's a lot more north to this state than Arnold's letting on. Passing beneath the shadow of Mt Shasta (it was a big shadow too, because it was night-time, and I couldn't see the thing), whizzing past towns with names like Weed and Talent, overtaking huge trucks careering through the mountains carrying enormous tree-trunks, I eventually got my first taste of one of the other West Coast states. I didn't imagine it could be all that different really. Well, the first thing I noticed when the sun came up was the trees. I've gotten used to the flat, ochre expanse of the Central Valley, so to suddenly be surrounded by dramatic mountains and hills covered in glades of red, green, orange, yellow; well, it was like Christmas had come early. Or Thanksgiving, at least. Trees everywhere bore the mark of autumn - I mean, Fall - and in the morning sunshine they were every bit as glamourous as those New England headline-grabbers. Trees are a big part of Oregonian life - most of the towns in these parts owe their existence to the logging industry What's more, I felt we were really in the country, or as real a country as I'm used to, where you get up and hear roosters and horses, and driving a big truck is like waving a flag. Places felt different, older, stuck in time somewhere; I played Donkey Kong Jr for the first time since the 80s in a traditional diner, while sipping on a 32oz strawberry and orange milkshake, half expecting Biff Tannen and his gang to march in (I got top score on Donk Jr, by the way - I still have the magic). We went to Harry and David, a gourmet food and gift-basket store which began in Medford selling pears and has gone on to become well known nationwide. They had a guy outside carving three enormous pumpkins into a totem pole for Hallowe'en, quickly becoming the town's main attraction. Shopping also highlighted one of the other differences between California and Oregon - they don't add on any sales tax at the register. This was such a novelty I couldn't help but grin - but then I realized I gre up living in europe, where we don't do that sort of thing anyway. One of the other peculiarities of Oregon is that motorists are not allowed to pump their own gas at the petrol station. It is state law that you must wait for the attendant to do it for you. I'm told that this comes from a time when the state wanted to make sure everyone was employed, but I reckon it's because years ago they didn't want people to put too much gas in their car, in case the little out-of-the-way rural gas stations ran out. Ah, what do I know. I can tell you that gas was cheaper up there. We didn't drive to too many other places, but we did catch a few local sights - a trip to historic Jacksonville, a jaunt down the Rogue River valley in search of a brewery - and we didn't visit Ashland, home of the famous Shakespeare festival, but I think I saw enough to feel like we'd visited a different state, gotten out and breathed some fresher air. I'm feeling restless at the moment; I want to see more of these colourful states, preferably those with lots of trees, and not so much Bush. |
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24.10.06 22:43 |
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King George's Royal Flush
The White House seems to be getting itself into deep water lately. But that's OK!!! Because 'waterboarding', a form of torture (sorry, 'interrogation') that 'simulates drowning', is now ALRIGHT!!! According to Dick Tater, anyway. He said that using this technique to extract information from terror suspects is a 'no-brainer'. Well that's lucky, because we have a President who is also a no-brainer. When I was at school, it was common practice among the more discerning bullies to plonk the smaller kids' heads down the bogs. This was usually to extract little more than lunch money, rather than information on the rebellious plots of other small kids, but it worked in pretty much the same way. Of course, if the kids had no lunch money, they would still get their heads flushed down the toilet. It was ultimately an act of power, and was most certainly not recognized in the Geneva Convention on Playground Bullying. Hundreds of years ago, thousands - millions - of people were forcibly converted to Christianity from whatever other heathen infidel cult they belonged to, their heads similarly dunked in the baptismal water. An act of power. Just a couple of thoughts for the day. |
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28.10.06 01:01 |
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the suturist manifesto
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28.10.06 05:30 |
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