Down with the music of today

As one who, despite being over 30, prides himself on being very much down with the kids and all the music that they love so much, I try to make sure I keep up with what's new and happening. Yes I do, stop giggling. I'm not a total square, you know - why, I even know that Top of the Pops isn't on a Friday night any more. See? Not so out of date after all.

Anyway, this means that I often sit in my favourite armchair, puffing on my pipe and wearing my comfiest slippers as I watch MTV Base (I jest, of course - smoking's a filthy habit). And whilst watching large numbers of music 'vidz' (as I believe the kidz tend to call them), I've noted certain recurring themes in many of the songs.

And so, for those of you out there who don't have the time to watch youth television because you're too tired, too square, or just too busy watching nature documentaries and home makeover shows, I've compiled the following list, which summarises the categories into which the vast majority of popular songs now tend to fall.

(Please note that I'm talking here about hip-hop and R'n'B. I find much urban music to be delightfully urbane, and unlike many of my contemporaries, a little bump 'n' grind doesn't make me grind my teeth.)

The categories are as follows:

1. "I'm Best". Usually a male performer, who is at great pains to tell me about his finances, his car, his preferred brand of champagne, and his success with women. Frequently threatening various kinds of violence (such as "poppin' a cap in my ass") should I disagree, he seems very certain about his status - and good for him, I say. So few people are sure of their place in the world nowadays. Despite often performing in a street setting, he does not feel the need to close his shirt, instead preferring to show off his stomach muscles, and possibly a large pendant-style jewellery item of some sort.
2. "We're going to do it". Again, invariably a male artist, and one who informs the listener about the physical activities he intends to enjoy with, presumably, a woman. He's in no doubt about his attractiveness - perhaps it's this confidence which the woman in question finds so appealing - and (occasionally using very strong language) he promises to maintain this 'freaking' all night long. What an energetic fellow he is. And they say youth is wasted on the young.
3. "You are not worthy". Often female soloists or close-harmony groups, telling the listener that he is unlikely to enjoy the benefits of her love. He occupies, it seems, a lower run on the social ladder, or is from an entirely unsuitable neighbourhood, though on many occasions it seems that the 'sweet love' is being withheld due to an apparent paucity of finances, 'bling', or an outdated or inappropriately thrifty vehicle or mobile phone. These songs are often sung with what I think is termed 'sass', though they do strike me as rather alarming in their implied suggestion that a lady's favours will inevitably go to the chap with most money or material objects. The thin end of a socio-politically dangerous wedge there, I fear.
4. "I regret my mistake". Oftentimes, this could be mistaken for a female vocal, but it is in fact a male - or chorus of males - singing falsetto. They have, it appears, lost the affections of their ladylove due to an error of judgment. All too frequently this appears to take the form of "makin' it wit' yo' best friend" or similar, or some other misdemeanour which causes one to rather empathise with the lady's decision to cease relations. However, the chap or chaps in question give the impression of regretting their foolish error, and often prove this by lamenting in the form of a slow, high-pitched song, often performed in the street, or by the sea. In the case of groups, they invariably take turns in expressing their woe, with the vocalist explaining the sense of loss, whilst the others harmonise, or appear forlorn and gaze into the middle distance.

So there you have it. A brief primer for the uninformed as to the leitmotifs in modern youth music, and I hope it helps you to appreciate the kidz' music as much as I do.

But if you'll forgive me, I must take my leave, as I need to go and patrol my hood, as I do 24/7. Big shout out to the blogreading massive.

Will someone please tell those kids to behave themselves?

Apparently not.

It takes a court agreement, it seems.

I'm guessing the kid must have got all the maturity. Seriously, I mean all of it.

If You've Just Joined Us, Welcome

I'm painfully aware that a number of new readers have been drawn to the blog due to its being linked in relation to www.shaggyblogstories.co.uk, and as that book was very much about the funny, I shall try to hang on to that newfound audience by upping the humour content.

Hopefully that won't mean lots of self-consciously 'LOL!!!!111!!!' style posts. If we're lucky, it'll probably mean gratuitous sarcasm and sniping, plus puns. And maybe some points that actually have some kind of intellectual resonance.

No, you're right, let's not hope for too much...

Buy, Buy, Buy: Comic Relief Book Featuring Your Humble Blogger

Techie problems prevented me from posting about this sooner, which is a bit annoying as I am very excited about this (still, might be for the best, as the post I would have made at the time I found out would have been incoherently full of yays and yees)!

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Bloggers publish book for Comic Relief.

100 bloggers have published a book to raise funds for the BBC's Comic Relief appeal on Friday 16th March.

'Shaggy Blog Stories' features hilarious contributions from Richard Herring of 'Fist of Fun' fame, BBC 6Music presenter Andrew Collins, comedian Emma Kennedy, and James Henry, scriptwriter from Channel Four's 'The Green Wing'.

Authors Abby Lee, David Belbin, Catherine Sanderson and The Guardian's Anna Pickard have also contributed pieces to the book.

The vast majority of contributions, however, are the work of many of the lesser known and unfamiliar heroes of British blogging; going under pen names such as Diamond Geezer, Scaryduck, Pandemian and Unreliable Witness.

Also contributing to 'Shaggy Blog Stories', and hoping to raise funds for the Comic Relief Appeal is London-based writer John Soanes.

The book is the idea of blogger Mike Atkinson who writes the 'Troubled Diva' weblog. 'Shaggy Blog Stories' features comic writing from not only the cream of British blogging, but also the best up-and-coming and undiscovered writers publishing their work on their own websites.

Giving himself a "ridiculously short" seven days from idea to finished product, Atkinson admitted that he was overwhelmed with the response, which gleaned over 300 submissions for publication.With a pool of talented writers, and the latest publishing-on-demand technology, Shaggy Blog Stories bypasses the usual snail-paced publishing industry, and offers a mail order service to customers who will receive their finished copy within days of placing their order, and only a couple of weeks after the original idea.

"Blogging creates complex, worldwide networks of friendship and contacts on the internet", says journalist Alistair Coleman, one of Shaggy Blog Stories' contributors. "By creating a buzz about this book, we can reach out to hundreds, thousands of readers who'd be willing to part with a few quid for this very good cause. Mike's got some excellent writers on board here whose work deserves a wider audience. Everybody wins."

For details of how to order the book, visit http://www.shaggyblogstories.co.uk.

For the background story on the creation of Shaggy Blog Stories, take a look at http://www.troubled-diva.com.
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...So, you’re possibly wondering, which did I contribute to this staggeringly worthwhile endeavour? I’m not gonna tell ya, nuh-uh. You’ll have to buy the book and find out.

It’s raised over £1700 as I type this, so why not buy a copy and help push that total over £2000? Given the list of other contributors, it should be a good read, and it’s for a darned good cause.

Laughter, and for a good reason? Not to be sniffed at, I'd say...

Spotted in Covent Garden on St Patrick’s Day (Sat 17th March)

Even leprechauns have to move with the times, it seems.

I like to think he was calling someone on his mobile to make sure that his pot of gold was undisturbed while he was out drinking.

Happy (belated) St Pat’s Day to all my Irish readers.

And also all the leprechauns reading this, of course.

Look at my widget. You know you want to.

Well, the niftyish box in the column to the right is the Justgiving Widget, and provides an ongoing update as to how close I am to raising the target amount in sponsorship for the London Marathon.

Clever techie stuff, yes?

Anyway, with just over 5 weeks to go, I'm not too close to the target of £1500, so if you're reading this and haven't sponsored me yet, please consider doing so...

Thanks!

Sacked X-Factor Judge Writes Novel...

... but cover designer decides to make it resemble another book on the shelves.

I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me...

... than a full frontal lobotomy, as the saying goes.

Anyway, this is something I saw and took a (slightly blurry) picture of this evening, at the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, here in the ever-fascinating city that I call home.

Two people dressed as bottles of Corona lager, complete with slices of lime.

On a Thursday evening in London, with shoppers and traffic passing by, as if nothing unusual was occurring. Naturally.

LINK: Kopyright Liberation

Conservative MPs David Cameron and Boris Johnson were, it turns out, members of The Bullingdon Club. This group for toffs has something of a reputation for drunken property destruction, and a number of newspapers recently printed a picture showing the group as it was when they were members.

For reasons which I’m not entirely clear on – they might be political or financial, both or neither – the owners of the photo have now stated it shouldn’t be used by the media.

Which, in the days of the interweb, is more easily said than done - here is a copy of the picture, as stored on the Flickr website by writer James Henry (whose blog is always worth a look, in my opinion).

Crikey, this www lark’s certainly one in the eye for the man, isn’t it?

REVIEW: Wicked

This musical has been playing in London for a while now, after being very well received in the USA. This is a slightly belated review, as I saw it on Valentine's Day - as any cheapskate in a relationship will tell you, nothing says romance like Black Magic. Ahem.

Given that a large number of musicals currently playing in London are based on the work of well-known groups (Abba, Queen, Boney M), or on known plotlines (Mary Poppins, the Lion King, Spamalot), Wicked arguably swims against the current tide, as it's a new story... albeit one linked to an established franchise; it tells the history of the Witches in L Frank Baum's Oz series.

The green-skinned Elphaba (hope I've spelled that right - it's meant to be derived from the first syllables of Baum's name), who eventually becomes the wicked Witch, and her opposite Glinda the Good, are shown as having known each other since an early age. However, instead of Elphaba being evil from the start and Glinda as nice as pie all along, things are shown to be a fair bit more complicated - and it's hard not to sympathise with the way Elphaba turns... well, yes, to the Dark Side.

And that phrase, and its inevitable associations, fits - there are several very good moments when events slot into place, creating circumstances and characters that are recognisable from the Wizard of Oz film, and the neat way that things come about creates an appropriate sense of sickening inevitability - notable by its absence from the recent Star Wars 'prequels', I feel, though both sought to tell the tale of a good person turning bad.

In fact, the 'prequel' description is rather inaccurate, as Wicked provides not only the history of various characters in the known Oz story, but it runs alongside it and indeed continues after Dorothy's departure, showing new takes on known events, so in its way the story is more of an extrapolation or revelation of unseen events (in the same Tom Stoppard's 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' shows us more about the two characters from Hamlet, and the events run alongside the play by that Shaxbard chap).

But, you're probably asking by now, is it any good? The answer, to my mind, is a definite yes. The music's strong - particularly when it comes to Elphaba's songs of upset and annoyance ('Defying Gravity' and 'No Good Deed Goes Unpunished' are ones which stick in my mind even a fortnight later), and the staging is very good indeed - as you can see from the photo above, there's a mechanical dragon which looms over the stage (and occasionally does more than merely loom), Oz the Great and Terrible looks both of those things, and the final part of the first half was so effectively done it sent a tingle down my spine . The cast - of whom I'll freely admit I only recognised Miriam 'Caramel Bunny' Margolyes - all put in sturdy performances, and all showed that they could belt out a tune and hold a note where it was required (what is technically known as 'singing'. I think), and deliver a sad line or joke as well.

Given that it has plot elements of a phoney war, manufactured scapegoats, and victimised minorities, it'd be all too easy to suggest that Wicked is influenced by the events of 11 September 2001, but as the novel (by Gregory Maguire) upon which the musical was based was written in 1995, I don't know how much stock I'd put in that sort of claim. Then again, page and stage are very different places, so maybe there's something to it. Regardless, the way that things in Oz are shown to have a darker side is cleverly done.

You have to bear in mind that I don't like musicals (simple reason for that: I'm all about the story, and most musicals either ignore story as much as possible [Show Boat*], or seem all too willing to let the tale grind to a halt to shoehorn in another song'n'dance number [Chicago*]), but I found this a lot of fun - it's good to look at, and the music is solid, and the story's interesting. Definitely recommended, and in what may be a first for me, a musical that I would happily see again.

*Yes, I've seen both of these. A previous employer took me (and various clients) to see them as part of a corporate evening out. So I speak from experience - those are two evenings of my life I won't be getting back.

LINKS: The Uses Of Literacy, and Its Dangers*

1. As many of you may know, when I was a teenager I had a Saturday job in Waterstones (well, Sherratt & Hughes, but nowadays they’re known as Waterstones). Obviously, as I like books and reading, it was an ideal job for me, and it gave me the opportunity to read the back covers of many classics and then pretend I’d read the books themselves, all the better to cultivate an air of sophistication and get the right sort of friends. Now, it seems, an enterprising chap has written a book that helps you feign a knowledge of great literature. Likely to be pretty popular in that it’ll save lots of people from wasting time reading things which they’d otherwise turn up their noses at, I’d imagine.
2. As many of you may know, when I was a teenager I read a lot of graphic novels (well, comics, but nowadays they’re more commonly known as graphic novels). Obviously, I read books as well, but it gave me the opportunity to stay indoors and away from sunlight, all the better to cultivate an air of putrefaction and gather a limited number of friends. Now, it seems, an enterprising firm has created a range of scents that help comic readers feign a knowledge of soap and water. Likely to be pretty popular in that it’ll save lots of people from wasting time washing in order to prevent themselves becoming someone who everyone would otherwise turn up their noses at, I’d imagine.

*Apologies to Richard Hoggart

Hand in Glove

Now, it might just be my childish way of thinking, but is it really appropriate that this alley is right next door to a large building owned by HM Customs and Excise?

LINK: You go, boy!

I strongly recommend you read this article. Wonder if she’ll sue?

Marathon Man

What's that, to the left? Why, if it isn't a picture of me running a half-marathon last year. What's that you say? Half-marathons are easy? Well, funny you should say that...

I'm running the London Marathon on April 22 this year, in aid of Phoenix Futures, the people for whom I've previously walked on hot coals and glass (yes, yes, I know). They've very kindly given me one of their few 'golden ticket' places, so I want to repay their kindness by getting them lots of lovely money to help them with their good work.

So if you can help, I'd be very grateful indeed. You can sponsor or donate online here, which is totally secure and safe, and you can give even more with the magical Gift Aid tax-thing.

If you have any questions at all, please drop me a line at therunningman@johnsoanes.co.uk - and yes, if you want to come along and cheer or jeer, you can do that..

I'll be referring to this a LOT in the next couple of months, as I really want to reach (if not exceed) the target I've set, so don't be at all surprised if this isn't the last blog entry on this. I'll add a link in the column to the right as well, and indeed I may be adding some kind of totaliser-gadget to this page as well, so we can see how much money has been pledged, like the Blue Peter appeals which they used to do when I was young (and still do, I think).

Anyway, please sponsor or donate if you can. I promise all of the money goes to a worthwhile cause - I've been lucky enough to meet one of the people who Phoenix have helped, and even to a hardened cynic like me, it was incredible to see how pleased he was that his life had changed, and that instead of the drugs ruling his life, that he was now back in control of his life, and proud of the direction he was heading.

So please help if you can. Thanks!

Stray Thoughts I Taw A Puddy Tat

1. Rather alarmingly, I heard someone on TV the other day saying she was a 'would-be WAG' (that's Wife and Girlfriend, for those of you who - rightly enough - don't want to start using journalistese in conversation). So her aim in life was to be the wife or girlfriend (I can see why that acronym's never caught on), presumably of a footballer or someone in a similar financial position to give her money to spend on clothes and shoes and so on. I say that this is alarming because ... well, surely it isn't a good thing that people are actively planning to be a hanger-on to someone else this way? Is this any kind of goal to have? It sounds much more like a Plan B (well, one would hope Z, really), to resort to only once you've actually made an effort to achieve something with your life in your own right, as opposed to just going "ah well, I'll let someone else give me money in exchange for..." well, exactly. It's the thin end of a wedge which makes me distinctly uncomfortable.
2. Recent experiences have suggested to me that Myspace and the like can become horribly incestuous 'environments', and in some cases can become a bit too much like a substitute for a phone call or a meet-up with a cup of tea. Oh, I'm not kidding, some people can get seriously daft about it all. And this chap appears to have reached a similar conclusion, really...
3. Really enjoyed the mixing on DJ Food's "Raiding The 20th Century", which is an hour-long music mix containing some frankly unlikely merging of well-known tracks, linked by commentary from Paul Morley (who coined the title in the early 80s as a project for he and Trevor Horn to work on - sadly, it never came to anything). But it's a fascinating item, especially the Nirvana-Destiny's Child mash-up (as I believe the young people call such a thing). You can find it at a variety of places on the interweb to download as an mp3 - here's where I downloaded it, though a quick Google will show you other places. I strongly recommend that you give it a listen - it's fun, but also feels a bit like a historical document...
4. Oh look, the first letter of the preceding paragraphs gives us the three Rs - who said that my blog wasn't educational?

LINKS: Bill Hicks was right about Marketing and Advertising, it seems

It’s about time for this, quite frankly. Only a slightly more dubious qualification than those ‘MAs’ which people at Oxford and Cambridge get given as a matter of course and with no further study, to my mind, but of course I’m an academic snob. Though I prefer to call it ‘maintaining standards’.

And though this is rather old, it’s a startling and appalling insight into the methods and sometimes the depths that firms will go to in order to ‘build brands’ (read: flog stuff).

My Silly Feelings For Snow*

As London recovers from a fall of frozen water from the sky, bizarre and never seen before in the month of February, and the transport systems react with dismay and amazement, I can't help but be reminded of the famous(ish) letter which W.S.Gilbert (of '... and Sullivan' fame) wrote to the Times of 28 September 1897.

To see what I mean, merely imagine every reference to 'Saturday' to be a reference to snow in the following:

"In the face of Saturday the officials of the company stand helpless and appalled. This day, which recurs at stated and well-ascertained intervals, is treated as a phenomenon entirely outside the ordinary operations of nature, and, as a consequence, no attempt whatever is made to grapple with its inherent difficulties.
To the question, "What has caused the train to be so late?" the officials reply, "It is Saturday"--as who should say, "It is an earthquake."

... over a century has passed, and it appears the situation has, like the trains themselves, hardly moved forward a great deal.

*Apologies to Peter Hoeg

Moulded From The Same Press

... well, maybe kinda sorta.

Lies, Damn Lies, and...

This claim was on the packet of some printable labels I was using at work the other day.

How do they know? I mean, unless they're giving away half a free arm with the labels, how on earth could this statistic be even remotely verifiable?

Stray Thoughts, eh ? What are ya, some kinda wise guy?

1. If I told you - and I honestly could - that I'd recently found myself typing the word 'thoguth' a lot, you could reasonably think that I was working on a short story set in H.P.Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. The truth is more mundane; my hands appear to have forgotten how to type the word 'thought'.

2. I'm not proud of it in any way, but I have become almost addicted to watching trash like X-Factor and American Idol. Like many people, I'm not interested in the final outcome, as I don't need any more cabaret-level cover-singing six-months-and-then-gone singers in my life (Sneddon, Parks, Ward, and so on). What I do need more of, though, is the insane and untalented ones, where the people seem to be powered solely by delusion and uncritical family support. Oh, and the dignity-free folks who beg for a chance when they have all the singing ability of a slightly wet flannel. That, my friends, is what I like to see... which sits, I know, very badly with my wish for people to be vetted for talent BEFORE they make it onto the screen. However, I think the comedy value of it may be the exceptional factor (see what I did there?) here.

3. This suggests a remake where the point's once again being well and truly missed, rather like the recent abortive Coupling USA-stylee, and even moreso the two tries in the USA to remake Fawlty Towers, one of which removed the character of Basil. No, seriously.

4. It's just over a week to Valentine's Day, so if there's someone you'd like to send something to, this is a good time to start thinking about it. You could, of course, wait until the morning of the day itself, and then run round like an anniversary-forgetting-husband in a 1970s sitcom, but unless you're actually going to have music and a laugh track accompanying your actions, it's probably not such a good idea.

5. The link will follow soon so you can sponsor me, but just to confirm for those of you who've asked, yes, I am in training for the Marathon. I've eschewed Diet Coke since the start of the year, and I'll be giving up chocolate, in all its forms, for Lent. Not for religious reasons, but simply calorific ones. Granted, giving it up may well lead me to be found shaking and cold-sweating in an alley, but I think my waistline and my running feet will thank me for it, even if my serotonin levels do drop in a scary way.

6. Sherlock Soanes Dept: whilst I didn't blog about it at the time as I only intermittently put comic stuff here, I can honestly say that, in relation to DC Comics' 52, I guessed who Supernova was a couple of weeks after he was first introduced. No, really, hand on heart I did - in the same way that I guessed Judge Dredd was The Dead Man back in 1989 or so. Mind you, I didn't guess who was behind it all in Watchmen, so maybe my comic detection powers only apply to weekly publications.

Definitely Provocative Proposition

And there was me fearing all government appointments were mere mouthpieces and hand puppets… not so, it seems.

The Curse of the Jade Ignorance

In relation to the Celebrity Big Brother racism debate : can anyone really be surprised that ignorance sits so readily with racism?

Fishin' a-barrel

All right, so if you live in London, this makes a bit of sense, but if you don't... well, how surreal an image does this conjure up?

Ban This Sick Filth Now*

Over at The Writing Factory, my friend and fellow blogster has recently taken a turn for the downright filthy and foul-mouthed.

As I know him, though, I can confirm it's very much in character.

Oh my goodness yes.

*I’m entitling this post thusly because I know it’s always been an aim of his to be referred to with this phrase. Granted, I’m not the Daily Mail, so it's not quite the fulfilment of a dream, but I don’t think we need another Daily Mail, do we? Let's face it, we didn't need the first one.

Welcome to Stray Thoughts (Population 51,201)

1. Yes, it's been a while. And many of you will already know the sort of things I've been up to in that while - and thanks for the kind words. It's good, and me like.

2. Not a fan of the death penalty, so haven't been joining in with the frankly unseemly hand-rubbing and grins of glee about Saddam Hussein being executed. And I think that the recent 'outcry' about how he was mocked as he was led to the gallows is just weaselling by politicians who were involved in the whole thing and may be experiencing a twinge of conscience. Maybe it's just me, but if I knew I was about to be killed, someone calling me nasty names would be a side issue.

3. And let's remember, the avowed reason for Gulf War 2 was because Saddam allegedly had 'weapons of mass destruction', not because he was a brutal leader and killed people and so on. It was because he had bombs... which he didn't. I know history will probably be rewritten to suggest it was all about liberating Iraq, but that wasn't the premise given, and let's try to bear that in mind, eh ?

4. Do any of you know much about rugby? If so, and you're willing for look at some digital photos, please drop me a line at oddlyshapedballs@johnsoanes.co.uk , as I have a signed England rugby shirt which a friend won in a raffle, but we can't identify the signatures. Ta.

5. The usual paucity of Christmas television, as far as I'm concerned; The specials of The Thick Of It and Doctor Who didn't really capture my attention, though I did enjoy the Vicar of Dibley finale(s). Not cutting edge by any stretch of the imagination, and overly reliant on Dawn French's likeability, but pleasant and amusing enough.

6. This may well be one of the greatest items I've ever seen. What a fab idea.

Let's All Meet Up In The Year 2007

Ah, that's very decent of you - decided to keep the appointment we made this time last year, eh ? Smashing.

Have to admit, though, I haven't done my homework, as I haven't yet had a chance to sit down and figure out how many (if any) of my 2006 goals I've fulfilled. I'll try to get to it, but you know how it is - busy at this time of year...

And as it's 'this time of year', I'll just take the opportunity to wish you a Very Happy 2007, and to promise to post more when I get the chance. May the year bring you all the things you could want, and a few which take you by surprise.

Do you think Mary and Joseph had a stable relationship?

Yes, yes, I know. There's a reason I never used that line in my stand-up.

Anyway, just a quick post to say that I'll probably be away from the keyboard for the next few days, and to wish you, my constant reader(s), a very happy Christmas /Yule / Saturnalia / Insert own pet name for week-long present- and food-fest.

The picture above was taken yesterday in Central London, as I finished off my shopping - the star in the centre is illuminated, and shoots out spangles of light along the radiating lines every couple of seconds; and all this is on the front of a functioning office building, it seems. Once again, I smile wryly and shake my head in amusement at the casual wonders of the city where I live.

Have a good Christmas, and may you get everything you deserve, and at least one thing you don't.

She’s Leaving Home (But She Has Her Phone With Her, So That’s All Right)

To the left there, one of a series of phone ads which are currently plastering the Tubes here in London.

And one of the oddest ads I’ve seen in some time, I feel; the suggestion being that the young woman in the picture hasn’t called home for a while, and the caption suggests that it’s something she ought to do, and so I’m rather inescapably driven to conclude that she may have run away from home.

Given the fate which so many female runaways are in danger of, and the shape of her mouth in the photo they’ve chosen to use… well, it looks to me as if Nokia are trying to get a slice of the teenage runaway prostitute fellatrix market.

I don’t know much about advertising, but I can’t really imagine that it’s one of the larger demographic slices. Ah well.

The Running Man

The rumours are true, yes; I have managed to get a place in the London Marathon 2007.

I’ll be running for a charity, so will be setting up a page online where you can sponsor me, probably in the next week or two.

More news as I’m able to share it.

REVIEW: Casino Royale

It’s been a few weeks since I caught this at the cinema, but it’s worth me giving a quick review, I think – if nothing else, it gives me a chance to post the picture to the left there; Daniel Craig’s first press conference after it was announced he was playing James Bond led a lot of the papers to be rather scathing, but the majority of them did a volte-face when they saw the actual film. Apparently they’re not able to distinguish between the actor and the role, though perhaps such a tenuous grasp of the difference between reality and fiction is a job requirement for journalists.

Anyway, Casino Royale is a very decent Bond film, and a good solid thriller in its own right. It features the standard elements of the Bond films (pre-title sequence, him saying his name in – y’know – that way, specific drink orders, etc), but unlike, say, its immediate predecessor (the woefully patchy Die Another Day), it also features a strong plot with a discernible through-line (as they say), and good performances by all the cast.

One or two of the lines are a bit wonky, but the general pacing’s very good, and they do well in coming up with some stunt sequences that are actively inventive (the free running bit, for example), and the pre-title bit sets out the stall well; it’s a flashback, and then they go into a flashback within that. Fairly unusual for a Bond film, let’s face it, and streets ahead of the thinking that leads to such nonsense as invisible cars.

Anyway, heartily recommended if you want a good entertaining film with some actual character development for Bond, and some respectable twists. And worth seeing on the big screen for the ‘wow’ factor – one or two scenes had the (admittedly fairly lively Saturday night) audience I was a member of actually gasping, which must mean the film-makers were doing something right.

Invading myspace

In answer to the several queries I’ve had, no I don’t have a myspace page, nor do I intend on setting one up in the foreseeable future.

The simple reason for this is that with very few exceptions, the pages seem to be exceedingly ugly and slow to load, and invariably chock-full of postings from bands in Wisconsin saying ‘cool site!!11! Be sure to check out our page too!!!! Lol!1!’ and the like.

And for some reason, I can’t bring myself to get involved with all that. And let’s face it, I don’t post enough updates to this blog as it is, let alone update my web space on any kind of regular basis.

That Sound You Hear Is That Of TV Execs’ Fingernails On The Bottom Of The Barrel

I've often maintained that ITV2 shows the stuff that even 'ITV1' knows is unfit for broadcast, and as if to prove me very right indeed, tonight at 9pm they are showing the following:

Ghost Hunting with Girls Aloud

Let me say that again.

GHOST HUNTING WITH GIRLS ALOUD.

… you know, I’m almost tempted to type those words over and over again, like Jack Torrance in The Shining, but let me just say that the idea that this is an actual programme, occupying two whole hours on the schedule, is far more terrifying than any supernatural element that the programme could possibly contain.

Granted, not half as scary as being a nightclub toilet attendant when the girls are out on the lash at night, but still deeply troubling.

Corduroy pillowcases could create better headlines, frankly*

Today's Evening Standard board, with a typically nonsense use of language.

Unless he shouted 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' as he fell, I think the word 'mystery' would have been more appropriate.

*Apologies to Bill Watterson

Vive la difference!

I’m doing some market research this week, and as part of it I’ve been asked to complete some online diary-like exercises. Apparently, the same research is being done in France at the moment (albeit one hour ahead). As I’m rather inclined to be impressed by the culture-loving ways of the French, I can’t help but wonder about the possibility of a vast difference between the two sets of diaries.

TUESDAY
It was raining. Went to work. Had a couple of drinks with the lads after work, and got a kebab on the way home. Think I sent my ex a text message or maybe even called her from the pub just before we got thrown out, but I’m not sure. Some tosser was mouthing off on the bus, so I lamped him. Was sick in a skip outside next door’s house. Fell asleep watching ITV Play.

MARDI
Spent the day in a café with Luc, smoking Gauloises and drinking coffee, and arguing about literature. He insists on the importance of Perec’s influence, but I disagree, and refuse to accept that anyone other than Baudrillard has any true and lasting merit. We agree, though, that Proust was an effete dilettante, and that Sartre, whilst important at the time, is now merely a poster-boy for students and would-be intellectuals, which is only right, as existentialism remains fundamentally adolescent in both its concerns and outlook. We drank wine, talking late into the night, ignoring the rain outside, and when we were finally thrown out of the café, I walked the streets for several hours, my steps inevitably leading me to the street corner beneath Marie’s apartment. Taking a pencil stub from my pocket, I wrote a brief but heart-felt villanelle about love, loss and destiny on the wall, there beneath her window. I know she will see it, and I fancy it might bring a tear to her eye and perhaps even regret to her mind. I made my way home then, smoking the last of my cigarettes and enjoying the sound of my footsteps on the rain-slick pavement as the new day threatened to dawn.

REVIEW: ‘Helltown’ by Dennis O’Neil

O’Neil is a long-time comic writer and editor, and this novel is set in the DC Comic Universe, re-telling the origin of The Question, a character O’Neil wrote to considerable acclaim in the 1980s.

Vic Sage, alias the Question, isn’t a standard superhero character – he’s essentially a man in a trenchcoat and fedora whose face is rendered blank by a mask. Quite a creepy image, and in making the character an orphan, the character truly is a blank slate, and his driving motivation in the comics (under O’Neil, at least) is that of curiosity, as well as a wish to see justice done, though that’s often almost incidental.

I was a huge fan of the Question comics (even writing letters of comment , some of which, to my adolescent fanboy glee, were published in issues’ letter columns), so I was keen to see what O’Neil did in the prose medium.The results are ... let's say mixed.

In the novel, starting from scratch and set in in the present day, a lot of the ideas underpinning the comic series are lost, and the need to reintroduce the characters – and even other DC Comics characters like Batman – takes a fair amount of time, leaving certain elements overplayed and others rather truncated. It starts rather uncertainly, too, and it’s not entirely clear who or what of the various elements described is going to prove relevant, and what’s just scenery.

The original Question, created by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, was a single-minded and pretty harsh character, and in order to start afresh, the 1980s comic series as good as killed him off, but this novel doesn’t quite have the same approach, and to my mind that was a bit of a pity. The reduced role of Myra, the love interest, is a shame as well, and indeed she’s reduced to little more than a love interest, and a rather token one at that – there’s no real reason why Vic should be so keen on her after so few interactions.

That said, the book hangs together pretty well, and some of the action sequences are quite tautly written, even if characters do have some frankly unlikely names (Emiline Grandyfan, Thaddeus Crate, and Eustis McFeely, for example), which rather disrupts the flow when reading. A pity, especially as some of the dialogue is quite snappy.

A cautious recommendation to fans of the original comic series, I guess, but in all honesty you’d be better off hunting down back issues (especially the first 12-15 issues), or even checking out the character's appearances in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon series over the past few years.

Nano Writing Month

Well, it’s the end of National Novel Writing Month, and I’m sure you’re wondering how I did. A quick click on the link to the right will tell you, but let me save you the trouble: out of a goal of 50,000 words, I wrote… around 3000. Less than 5%, by my quick calculation.

By any estimation, this is pathetic, and I’m frankly ashamed of, and embarrassed about, it. Granted, November has been one hell of a month for a variety of reasons, but it’s things like this which make me wonder if I might gradually be turning into one of those people who wants to have written, rather than to write. Many people think that they’d like to write, but it’s the act of keeping the backside on the seat and the pen moving over the page (or, if you’re all modern-like, the cursor scooting over the screen) which is all too often the key part of writing.

There’s a joke I both love and hate, and at the moment it rings all too true:
Two men meet at a party.
“I’m writing a novel,” says one.
“Really?” says the other. “Neither am I.”

REVIEW: ‘The Traveller’ by John Twelve Hawks

Touted as 'the new Da Vinci Code’, this novel is, thankfully, much better than that, though I guess it shares some themes – secret societies, and the notion of a true history of the world which remains hidden from the general population.

The Travellers of the title are people born with the ability to travel out of the material realm as we know it into other dimensions. They’re seen as a threat and tend to be eliminated by the ‘Brethren’, who are keen to make the world as regulated and ordered as possible. Travellers are protected by a warrior group known as the Harlequins, and this book – the first of a trilogy, it seems – tells the story of a Harlequin called Maya trying to protect two could-be Travellers from the Brethren.

From that description, it might all sound a bit science-fictiony, but the book’s set pretty much in the present day (perhaps a few years in the future), with most of the trappings of today, and quite a bit of the paranoid-sounding stuff about surveillance and tracing people has its roots in current events.

It’s pretty well-written, even if plot requirements sometimes force characters to speak in exposition-ese, and there are some interesting twists. I mentioned above that it’s the first of a series, and rather irritatingly this isn’t really very clear from the cover, and I half-wonder if the themes (which will be familiar to anyone who’s seen The Matrix or read The Invisibles comic series) won’t feel a bit stretched over more than a couple of books. But I was sufficiently interested to make a mental note to keep a look out for the next book (in paperback, mind).

There’s a certain amount of internet hoo-hah about the author, as he apparently ‘lives off the grid’ like characters in the book, but I’ll take that with a bag of salt, frankly. Anyway, the book’s not bad, and if you want a dose of easily-absorbed conspiracy-laden reading, I’d recommend it.

File Under ‘Dignityphobic’

To the left there, the cover of the latest Heat magazine.

Just when I thought that the magazine, and Peter Andre and Katie Price, couldn’t stoop any lower, or appear any more desperate to fill pages at any cost, comes this latest issue, with the photo touting an article showing the happy couple ‘at home’.

Yes, she's sitting on the toilet, her knickers are spooled around her knees, and he’s handing her some toilet roll, presumably to wipe after she’s urinated, defecated or both. All, quite charmingly, captured on film.

I’m not actually supposed to admire these people, am I ? Please, someone, reassure me.

The Bigger They Are…

Obviously, this is true.
But of course, I can cheerfully agree with it from my lofty perch (that's over 6’, ladies)…

All right, so it’s yet another bit of pseudo-scientific non-news. But it beats this rather grim prospect for tall men.

And I have to say that I know very little about women, but one thing I’ve come to realise is that they can forgive fat, they’ll even be tolerant of bald or balding, but that (paradoxically) they won’t overlook short…

LIST: Things I Strongly Believe One Should Never Skimp On The Purchase Of

Notebooks
Pens
Tea Bags
Chocolate
Underwear
Aftershave
Contraceptives*

… any others you can think of? Let me know.

*Surely the ultimate in false economy.

Don’t say I never give you nuffink, awright?*

Here’s another one of those free iTune codes (see this post for how to redeem it): SPMZTSPZCRFF. First come, first served once again, but let’s pause for a moment and consider what a good score that code might warrant in Scrabble.

And, assuming that this isn’t one of those tiresome e-mail hoax whatsits, this could be useful for those of you who, like me, have something of a weakness for the smell of a new book…

*This line copyright © EastEnders Christmas Afternoon Specials every single year since it started. Used with derision.

Give Stray Thoughts What They Want, And No-One Gets Hurt

1. Backnowyes, long time nopost, but verybusyvery oh yes. Don’t hurtbe, sometime things be thatway.

2. My current pet peeve; people who approach me in the street and ask for money – specifically, a particular amount (recently 20p, 40p and 50p, though not in that ascending order). The main thing that annoys me about this is that the approachers have mastered the art of looking sincere and bewildered as if they’re about to ask for directions, so I take my earphone out and ask if I can help, only to be asked for money. I’m always hmm on being asked for money this way anyway, but when I wear earphones to block out extraneous and nonsensical noise and then have it interrupted by specifically the kind of thing I’ve put the earphones in to counter… well, grr.

3. Okay, this seems to have some kind of pseudo-commercial element to it, but I rather like it – can’t explain why, but there’s something rather joyously silly about it. Just ignore the final captions, and the unpleasant interruption of commercial considerations.

4. Meanwhile, do give your money to these good folks, who are releasing DVDs of live comedy. Their first one is from Stewart Lee, and is a bit of a barg (I know, cos I’ve got mine already). Support the independents, and stick it to the man. Yeah!

5. While in Paris the other week, I went to the Buddha Bar. That’s right, look impressed. Yes, I went to this much-vaunted drinking place, where a huge statue of Buddha towers over the dining area, and where the bar is full of candlelit secluded corners which have played host to Johnny Depp, Cameron Diaz, and many other people you’ve heard of (as well as many you haven’t). It’s cloaked in shadow, with only the odd neon light from the bar and flickering flame from a candle or tealight casting any illumination. All of which is my characteristically long-winded way of saying yes, I bumped into a bar stool in the dark, and sent it flying. Smooth.

6. In answer to your several e-mails, no, I have not seen Casino Royale yet. But I intend to, and depending on what I think of the film, I’ll probably post a review of it here.

7. Started Xmas shopping yet? No, nor have I. But I was on Bond Street on Thursday Evening, where it transpires Thandie Newton was switching on the lights, and I had no idea. Curses!

Yes, I did order the Creme Brulee*

I’ve been away from the keyboard a bit recently, I know.

And one of the places I’ve been is the Café des Deux Moulins in Paris, perhaps best known from the frankly terrific film Amelie.

The photo here is taken from the telephone booth where two people … er, let’s say ‘get frisky’ in the film. And whilst the place is nice, I have to say that it wasn’t quite as sunny and colour-washed as it was in the film. Damn those film-makers with their filters and lenses and washes and doodads.

Y’know, it’s almost enough to make a chap think that there’s some kind of difference between films and reality.

I said almost.

*Though unfortunately they didn't have it.

REVIEW: ‘Good News, Bad News’ by David Wolstencroft

This is the first novel by Wolstencroft, who’s one of the creators of the BBC drama ‘Spooks’ (known as ‘MI-5’ in the USA, I believe). I’d read positive reviews of the book, and as I’d enjoyed the first couple of series of Spooks (until they’d seemingly been forced to let plots be driven by the need to write various cast members out), I was pleased to get this for 75p in a charity shop.

As you’d expect, it’s a thriller, about two men, Charlie and George, who, at the start of the book, work in a photo developing booth in London. This happy little situation is shaken up quite quickly within fifty pages or so, with some really rather clever twists and gradual revelations about the two men which undermine the expectations which have been built up.

However, once the whole spy and espionage aspect of the book gets going, the constant twists and turns of the plot start to border on laughable, reminding me of Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ in that characters seem incapable of staying dead when seemingly demised. There are also some sequences which I simply couldn’t follow – there’s one in the ladies’ toilet of Oxford Circus tube (does such a place exist? I have my doubts), and another chase in a tube tunnel, where I honestly had no idea what was meant to be going on.

The number of pages devoted to events seem disproportionate too – dozens of pages detailing a trip on the Eurostar (albeit a covert one), but at another point in the book, bam, a new chapter begins and they’re in a totally different country with scant explanation of how they got there. And the plot hinge upon which the whole book moves seems pretty feeble too, and certainly not worth the Security Services creating the mayhem involved in the book.

Finally, there’s one ‘big revelation’ which I found utterly risible, and which, if you don’t want to spoil the book, you can avoid by jumping to the next paragraph. Right, still here ? Okay, brace yourself then, this is it: the two baddies chasing Charlie and George are actually the same person – Rose Willets is Latham. Yes, she apparently is also Latham, a male character, referred to as ‘he’ in the narrative, in spite of the fact that the male pronoun should not apply to a genuinely dispassionate omniscient narrative such as the book purports to take. Quite how she is also meant to be he is never fully (or at least plausibly) explained.

To be fair, Wolstencroft’s writing style is generally quite readable, but the incessant twists of the story undermine the whole thing to the extent that, like Dan Brown’s inexplicably popular bad book, I just kept reading to the end in vaguely awed and appalled fascination - to see what he would come up with next; and not in the sense of being hooked by the tale and concerned about the characters, as they’re pretty much a uniformly unsympathetic bunch.

So, far from recommended, and disappointing after a good start. I got it from a charity shop, as I mentioned, and it’ll be going back to the same place. Here’s hoping they benefit more from selling it again than I did from reading it.

Remembrance of Things Past

It’s Remembrance Sunday, and I’d be remiss to let it pass without some kind of remark, I think.

I stand by what I posted this time last year, though it has to be said that I probably didn’t actually say as much as was appropriate about my respect for the troops involved, instead grinding my teeth about the politicians who send them to their fates (a reaction which was not diluted in any way by seeing Tony Blair lay a wreath this morning. The man clearly has no sense of causation, or even conscience).

So: I think war is a bad thing. A very bad thing, in fact, the very breakdown of civilised behaviour, and a sign that at least one party to the situation is allowing the primal basal ganglia of the brain to rule over the more evolved parts. Not a good thing at all.

And sometimes it does seem that there are some people who are unwilling to listen to reason, and who seem incapable of being dissuaded from certain actions unless it’s with the application of force, or the threat thereof. Granted, there are obvious examples of this where one can easily point to a moral high ground, and other examples where the morality is more murky, or downright absent. That said, there does therefore seem to be an argument – however regrettable the need – in favour of the existence of some kind of military.

The point I’m trying to make here is that whilst I think I admit with some chagrin the need for the military, there does seem to be such a need at this stage in human evolution, and as such I’m both grateful to, and in awe of, the men and women who fulfil these roles, and who are willing to die in doing so. I don’t think I could do it, frankly.

Gallingly, though, there seem to be all too many people who think that war is some kind of game, or political stratagem, or personal crusade, and these people utterly lose sight of the fact that what is lost is not a handful of votes or some financial amount, but the lives of real people, who will be missed and mourned.

Even more annoyingly, all too many of these armchair commanders are people who seem to know little about the subject of war, or (and you know who I’m talking about) have actively sought to avoid it whilst being all too happy to send others into conflict, or to send them into battle for the most spurious of pretexts. These people, unfortunately enough, seem all too frequently to find their way into government.

And their actions do nothing to honour the memories of those who die in the service of their country. It is the bravery, unfortunately, of those who are safely out of range.

LINK: Good sportsmanship, I’d say

Granted, many people feel (moderately justifiably) that the song was rather overexposed, but I like this – it’s for one of my favourite causes, and I think it certainly shows her in a good light, particularly in the last couple of minutes.

Free iTune

I drink too much Diet Coke, and thus have reached my limit in using their free iTunes codes (only 5 per person).

Thus, the following code can be utilised by anyone who wants it - first come, first get. Head over to iTunes' site, find the 'Coke Free Song' section or whatever it's called, and enter the following code to get a free song: TFFRNWCXSBMB.

If you try to use it and it doesn't work, that probably means some-one beat you to it. Them's the breaks, kid.

Evening Standard Free West Wing DVD Codes

This post will make no sense at all to anyone who doesn't live in London and didn't get the free item in question, but here's hoping that anyone who strays here by the almighty power of Google finds this useful:

Episode 2 - 199416

Episode 3 - 269679

Unlock, and enjoy two more episodes of one of the better examples of TV in recent years. Of course, you could have got these numbers by buying the ES yesterday and today, but frankly, the fewer people who buy that tatty Daily-Mail-affiliated rag, the better.

LINK: Hear here

If you're missing my updates, then you can get a (small) dose of me by clicking here and scrolling down to the bottom of the page, where Cameron, the leader of the Mount Ararat Trek I did in July, has posted a free podcast all about it.

It's well worth listening to, especially if you're not expecting more than half a dozen words from me.

Suddenly, one year later

Lawks alawdy, if it hasn't been a year since I first posted on this blog. Cripes.

No major observations to make on the changed world since 365 days ago, but to note - as I'm often driven to -that if, this time in 2005, I'd tried to guess what my life was going to be like, I doubt I would have been even remotely close.
How about you? Is your life taking you unexpected places? I hope so, and I also hope they're places you're happy to be.

Happy Guy Fawkes' Night.

Separated at birth (or, rather, death)?

The BBC show's logo came after the HBO one, I think, which is rather unfortunate.

...Surely I can't be the first person to have noticed this?

A Bit Of Window Licking

Was amused to see this in the window of a London bookshop yesterday.

Ignoring for a moment the fact that the title of the book is asking for trouble (that is, the way to survive them would seem to be ‘don’t watch their programmes’, which suggests the book is rather padded out), I love that they’re giving away free mini bars of chocolate with the book.

Perhaps I‘m being simplistic, but I fear that many of the people who might buy the book might also be the kind of people who’d view chocolate as something to be avoided or feared…

Story Time

Well, as I mentioned the other day, I'm taking part in National Novel Writing Month - hence the little logo in the Profile box to the right. However, rather than bore you with posts which simply say things like '11 words today, think my pen might be faulty', I've created a new link in the column to the right which will take you directly here, where there'll be a running total (assuming the technology doesn't go all HAL on me).

Will I make it 50,000 words, and finish 'Coming Back To Haunt You'? Dunno, but I'm thinking that by stating my intention in public, I might feel your eyes on me, and motivated to avoid public shame. We shall see...

LIST: Films which would be shown as part of a season for dyslexic nature lovers*

- Dead Clam
- Dragon: The Bruce Eel Story
- The Dogs Must Be Crazy
- Mission To Rams
- O Rat! O Rat! O Rat!
- Cats Away
- Vole Actually

*I know, I know, it is a feeble excuse to make lots of anagram puns, but puns aren’t the lowest form of humour, that would be Balls of Steel or The Friday Night Project. And though John Cleese may be on record as knocking puns and plays on words, do bear in mind that he co-wrote and performed the line “The plaice is grilled, in fact the whole room's a bit warm, isn't it?” (Fawlty Towers: The Germans.)

REVIEW: ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell’s first book, ‘The Tipping Point’ was a perhaps surprisingly well-received book analysing social trends, and what makes them emerge, fade or become part of ongoing culture. In Blink, he looks into the power of snap judgments, and the benefits of being able to make speedy (but accurate) decisions.

There are some very good examples – a fake sculpture which fooled most experts, but nonetheless made some say hmm at first glance, and a marriage guidance counsellor who can analyse discrete moments of behaviour and make startlingly accurate predictions about the likelihood of the couple staying together. There are more examples like this, and Gladwell writes well, and yet I must admit I was vaguely disappointed with the book.

Whereas Gladwell’s previous book analysed the people and factors involved in social trends, Blink doesn’t repeat the analysis in Blink; after two hundred pages or so of discussing why it’s a good idea to try to ‘think without thinking’, he spends about a dozen pages talking about how one might go about doing this. Maybe my expectations were inappropriate, but it seemed to me that it would be a good idea to actually suggest ways that the reader might develop the skill of making snap judgments.

So it’s an interesting read, but it rather fails to reach a conclusion – or, at least, the one I was hoping for; as opposed to ‘hey, that could be something to try’, it remains slightly removed, restricted to the lives of others, and thus in the realms of ‘oh, that’s interesting’.

Which the book is: interesting. But not, I felt, fascinating or gripping. Cautiously recommended as long as you don’t expect suggestions as to how to apply the lessons of the book to your life, but if you’re looking for a pseudo-self-help title, you’ll probably feel slightly let down. I certainly did.

Put it in your dictionary

Morkish [Maw'kish] a. artificially and manipulatively sentimental; ostensibly emotional but lacking sincerity. Characteristic of the mid-career film work of Robin Williams.

LIST: A Life Of Surprises

Here, then, are some facts about me which might surprise you, but they're all utterly true. Thought I'd share:

1. I was knocked down by a car at the age of 7.
2. I was the only male in the 'Top 6' recorder group at my junior school. I was miming quite a lot of the time.
3. I've never been met at the airport by a loved one on returning to the UK.
4. My geography is appalling. I genuinely have no idea where, for example, Sweden is (sorry, Sweden).
5. I've never put the phone down on anyone in anger (yet).
6. The first album I ever owned was a tape of a Muppet Show album. A home-recorded tape, at that.
7. I have watched Dirty Dancing and Dirty Dancing 2, and think they're all right.
8. I've never walked out of a film at the cinema (yet).
9. I seem to have been genetically gifted with large lungs, but cursed with migraine headaches.
10. In relation to women, I've rebuffed far more offers than I have accepted.

Those were (some of) my truths, now tell me yours. Seriously, send in your surprising boasts/confessions to surprisesurprise@johnsoanes.co.uk, and I'll post the most knee-bucklingly staggering ones (let me know if you'd rather I withheld your name) ... that should help make this post seem less self-absorbed.

Well, perhaps.

Recycled Meat (Leaves A Bad Taste In The Mouth)

As you may know, Meat Loaf’s released a new album this month, called ‘Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose’. A quick Google search will show you that it’s not written and/or produced by Jim Steinman, the chap behind the first two ‘Bat’ albums in 1977 and 1993. In fact, there’s been a bit of backstage hoo-hahing about the album, as Messrs Loaf and Steinman have been engaged in a bit of legal fencing, it seems. Anyway, they’re all friends now (ahem), and so this new album – apparently the final one in the ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ series, has come out.

Well, I say “new”…

Okay, let me say this now, before I get into the petty criticism; I think that Jim Steinman is a remarkably gifted songwriter, and it’s an indication of his ability that his songs have a very distinctive sound; often a ridiculously overblown one, with several instrumental breaks, layers of sound piled on top of each other, and lyrics built on paradoxes and plays on words which lend themselves all too easily to parenthetical titles, but a distinct and unique sound nonetheless, and one which I like a heck of a lot. He’s a great songwriter, and in Meat Loaf he finds an ideal mouthpiece – the Hugh Grant to his Richard Curtis, if you will. But…

But the thing is, Jim’s not averse to a bit of recycling. A whole lot of it, if we’re honest, and in its way, that makes the claim that ‘Bat III’ features new songs a smidgin close to untrue. To be fair on Steinman, that claim’s more being made by the album’s label and publicists, who’ve also rather cheekily claimed that the album has been thirty years in the making (predating the original Bat Out Of Hell, inexplicably enough), but all this publicity (and even the sticker on the CD) rather suggests that Steinman’s involvement is greater than the 7 out of 15 tracks it actually is. Tsk.

And because it’s the way I think about things, I think an analysis of the man’s contributions is in order:

Track 3: It’s all Coming Back To Me Now
Does this song, Meat Loaf’s current single, sound familiar to you ? It should do, as this is the third time it’s been released. It was first released in 1989 by the Steinman-steered group Pandora’s Box, and then again in 1997 By Celine Dion. This is, however, the first time it’s been made into a duet. In all honesty, I don’t really think it works in this way, but I have a cynical suspicion that the phenomenal success of ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’ makes the Loafster feel that duets are a good idea.

Track 4: Bad For Good
Is the title track of Steinman’s 1981 solo album. The album itself was intended as the follow-up to the original Bat Out Of Hell, but disputes between Steinman and Loaf (there does seem to be a theme here, doesn’t there?) led Steinman to sing his own vocals over the recorded backing tracks. For my money, the new version’s somehow got less fire to it, and the presence of Brian May’s distinctive guitar style is actually a little bit of a distracting element, accomplished though it is.

Track 6 : In The Land Of The Pigs (The Butcher Is King)
An oddly-titled track, and even more so when one considers that according to Steinman’s blog the correct title is in the singular – ‘The Land Of The Pig’, which does more readily echo the famous quote from Machiavelli. This song hasn’t been heard before, and (bizarrely though perhaps appropriately) it was from a never-produced Batman musical that Steinman was working on. It sounds like it, too, with a more obviously operatic feel, and whilst I can imagine it might work as part of a musical, it sounds rather out of place on Bat III.

Track 10: If It Ain’t Broke, Break It
Whilst one review I read suggested that this song might be about US Foreign Policy, I have my doubts, mainly as this song has been heard before, as part of the film soundtrack Steinman prepared for a 2003 made-for-MTV modernisation of Wuthering Heights. It’s a pretty decent track, though.

Track 12: Seize the Night
Is a funny old track; Steinman wrote this song for the German-language musical ‘Tanz der Vampire’, itself a stage adaptation of the Polanski film ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’. After a pretty successful run in Europe, the musical was taken to Broadway to star Michael Crawford, where it didn’t run for very long at all. So the song’s far from new – and even less so when one considers that its opening is taken from ‘The Storm’ on Steinman’s aforementioned solo album, and that the central guitar riff is a lift from ‘Back into Hell’, an instrumental track which appeared on Bat II. Perhaps because of this, the song feels a bit like a patchwork, and doesn’t really hang together. It’s all right, but its familiarity rather undermines any ‘sit up and pay attention’ possibilities.

Track 13: The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be
Another song which has been heard before in two different versions, and another one which has been turned into a duet. This was the finale on the aforementioned Pandora’s Box album, and was also used in the MTV Wuthering Heights film. It’s a good number, no question about it, though I think I prefer the original for no reason I can easily articulate.

Track 14: Cry To Heaven
Is another track that was rescued from the aborted Batman musical. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t really go anywhere new, and I have to say that the other songs from the musical (under ‘Blog Mentioned Songs’ here) are a little more interesting, but granted they don’t really lend themselves so readily to a solo male vocal (or duet with a female vocalist).

… now, the reason I’ve even bothered to mention this stuff in such great detail is, I guess, that both the previous Bat albums were written and produced by Steinman (though 6 of Bat II’s 11 tracks were recycled, but let’s not get into that now). And so, in its way, Bat III is no more a ‘proper’ Bat Out Of Hell album than any of Loaf’s albums which have only featured a small number of Steinman contributions. Two other albums (Bad Attitude and Welcome to the Neighbourhood) have featured what are effectively cover versions of old Steinman songs, and neither of them has had anything like the success of the Bat albums, and I think the absence of Steinman is probably the link here.

So I rather feel that the marketing of Bat Out Of Hell III as an album in the series is, at best, misleading, and at worst, something of a money-getting scam. A shame, as it leaves me with rather a bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing, and I’d previously enjoyed the collaborations between the two chaps, and this feels a bit unnecessary, and has that odd effect of retroactively souring my feelings about the original works, if you know what I mean. A shame, I think, and I wanted to explain why, rather than just making an offhand sneery comment about ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)*’, which would be the easy option – and if you don’t believe me, watch just how many comedians and writers take the release of Bat III as an opportunity to dust off their old material about the meaning of that song title…

*This title is, in itself, a recycle by Steinman from an earlier work: it appears as a spoken line in the song ‘Getting So Excited’ on the Bonnie Tyler album ‘Faster Than The Speed Of Night’, which Steinman didn’t write, but did produce.

LINKS : Writers of very few words, and a man who lets his actions speak for him

The cliché is that brevity is the soul of wit, which is probably why so many of the stories here strike me as so amusing. Clever stuff.

And you’ve probably seen this this news story before, but I wanted to share this version of it - love the way that a rampantly silly story is rendered all the more ridiculous by the headline.

Lookee, I've mastered putting the links in more elegantly! Yee!

With, of course, hilarious consequences

Those of you who know me will be all too aware that things often happen to me which are usually confined to sitcoms or farces.

And so, without going into enormous amounts of detail about it (I’ve done that several times already in the past twenty-four hours), I’ll just say that there was no surprise – and indeed there was a general air of sickening inevitability about it – to my Saturday night, when I was babysitting the young daughter of a friend.

It was, of course, only right that when I put a pizza in the oven, and nipped off to the bathroom for a quick slash, that the bathroom door lock completely and utterly seized, leaving me trapped on one side of the door, and my infant charge on the other side.

No, I’m not kidding.

LINK: I'm gonna need you to go ahead and print this out...

... okay, so that title's pretty meaningless if you haven't seen the film Office Space, but this is a good opportunity for me to recommend you do so.

Anyway, I'm fortunate in that I currently work with decent folks in a decent environment, but I know what it's like to suffer from lousy management.

And that's why I've created the item at www.johnsoanes.co.uk/cbaward.pdf for you to print out, customise as necessary, and hand on to a rubbish boss.

Please note: You may want to use an internal mail system, or sneakily slip into onto their desk when they're not looking, if you dislike the boss but enjoy receiving a salary.

November: no more is NaNoWriMo a no-no, it's a go-go

... which is to say that this year, I've decided to have a go at National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo).

Granted, I'm about halfway through a novel already, but that's been the case for too damn long, and it's time to get that story all finished so I can get on with the next one, which is niggling away at my mind like the thought of a friend I really ought to spend some time with.

So I've signed up at www.nanowrimo.org, and so like a sizable number of people (it's more international than national, really), I'll be endeavouring to get 50,000 words done during November. Many of them are starting from scratch, but I'm using the communal aspect of it to motivate me to get 'Coming Back To Haunt You' finished (or at least its first draft). I shall no doubt update you as next month progresses, but if you know for a fact I'm skiving off when I should be doing some writing, I respectfully request you send me a harrassing e-mail at getworkingskiver@johnsoanes.co.uk. I'll probably make excuses at the time, but I'll thank you for it really.

And if you feel like you might want to join in, why not visit the NaNoWriMo site and sign up?They say that everyone has a book in them, after all...

LINKS: One strange, one painfully obvious

There are so many strange elements to this story, I'll let it speak for itself...
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061018/NEWS03/610180415/0/NEWS14

Whereas this link - http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2006/10/23/4590/all_you_need_is_spoof - must win the day's award for stating the bleeding obvious, and therefore needs comment; of course George was a fan - he appeared in the film, for goodness' sake. Sigh...

LINK: Our man knows…

Armando Iannucci has produced some very decent comedy over the past couple of decades, and so I think he knows a lot about the subject of comedy and satire.

And at http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1924846,00.html, he shows his insight also covers the media and politics (especially in the paragraph that begins “I found myself hungry for narrative in the build-up to the war in Iraq…”).

Worth your time, I feel.

I can resist everything except the temptation to tempt fate

So, I'll push my luck: my Broadband connection appears to be working (yay), and all because I've been given a new modem, which I suggested was the problem sometime back in August (tch).

Anyway, assuming it doesn't die on the stroke of midnight or something, posts should be much more frequent now.

Dammit, there goes my excuse, eh ?

Oh, everyone always exaggerates everything

Granted, this is quite old now, but I thought this frankly insane turn of phrase on the part of the ever-rubbish Evening Standard was still worth mocking.

Maybe it’s just me being over-sensitive, but do you think that the word ‘hijack’ could be seen as slightly inflammatory, as well as being untrue (he interrupted his speech)?

I can't imagine a world without Stray Thoughts

1. Now, from my deep and thorough political research (that is, watching 'Team America: World Police'). I'm aware that Kim Jong-Il is a decidedly odd fish, and not really the sort of chap that one wants to have access to nuclear capability. However, given that Iraq is so obviously the new Vietnam, does it really show any sense of learning from history for the USA to be making noises about military action in Korea ?

2. I've been quite enjoying 'That Mitchell and Webb Look' on BBC2. One of the refreshing things is that it's a show which has different sketches each week, and fewer recurring characters than is currently popular. Shows like Little Britain, Catherine Tate, and Swinging tend to remind me of the oriental proverb that one should 'be wary of the artisan who claims to have twenty years experience - he may simply have one year of experience, twenty times over'. In the same way, these catchphrase-based shows feel like one 30-minute programme rehashed six times.

3. It's not too late to donate/sponsor for my recent weekend of torturing my feet - you can see the glass walk picture on my previous blog entry at http://johnsoanes.blogspot.com/2006/10/bottle-and-glass-as-we-say-in-london.html, and the timings for the 10 mile run are at http://www.herculeswimbledonac.org.uk/wimbledon%2010%202006.htm (I'm very low down at 119th, but in my defence I got held up on the tube and ended up starting 15 mins or so after everyone else). Impressed by it all ? Great, grab a credit or debit card and get thee to http://www.justgiving.com/agonyofde-feet - and thanks.

4. There's a Prince song ('New Power Generation', if memory serves), which features a line to the effect of 'I hope they bury your old ideas/The same time they bury you'). Over the weekend, a good friend of mine told me that my secondary school (http://silverdaleschool.org.uk/) is to be knocked down and rebuilt, and in relation to that I would heartily echo the purple man's words. Some people might want to go back and say farewell to the place, but for my part I'd cheerfully volunteer to drive one of the bulldozers. But I'm not entirely unsentimental about it; I'd make sure they got the kids out first.

5. Am I the only one who thinks that people are currently a tad too ready to resort to threats of violence when someone says something they don't like or disagree with? People of various religious shades seem all too ready to threaten (or worse, carry out) violent acts, often when someone's done something like ...er, suggest that their religious advocates violence or intolerance. The irony is almost overwhelming, but that seems to be missed. I can only hope that atheists don't decide to take offence in a similarly touchy fashion, and start burning down all places of worship, or picketing religious events. Though atheists don't tend to do that sort of thing, do they? Probably for the best.

6. On occasion, I wonder if the Krankies' stage act is just a bedroom game which got horribly out of hand.

7. In London, there are currently two free evening newspapers, and the distributors positively clog the pavements. One of them, the recently renamed London Lite, is owned by the folks who own the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail, and the newcomer, the no-capitals-no-spacedly-named thelondonpaper is, I think, owned by News International. It's quite a heated thing, I gather, though given that the papers are free (and, like the Metro in the morning, essentially padding and piffle), I think they'd be daft to think that commuters are in any way going to develop any sort of loyalty to either title. However, since the 'circulation war' will have a loser, and it'll either be Associated Newspapers or News International, I like to think that whoever loses, the world at large wins in a way.

Fry on Friday

As I may well have mentioned at the time, I recently went to see a recording of the TV programme QI, hosted by Stephen Fry. The episode in question will be shown this Friday (20 October) at 10pm on BBC2.

Wisely, in editing down the 90+ minutes of material, they've decided to omit Rory Bremner's earlier attempts to shoehorn political impressions into the format (which he sensibly dropped as time went on, and instead demonstrated some rather impressive general knowledge), and left many of Ronni Ancona's funny replies in (I draw your attention to her lengthy answer about 'obscurity').

Anyway, as ever with QI, it's funny and makes one think, which is an appallingly rare feature of TV nowadays as far as I'm concerned.

QI, incidentally, has its own website (and a shop and a club, intriguingly enough), and lo, the following link shows I'm not alone in appreciating the show:
http://www.qi.com/tv/audience.php

Very impressive, I think you'd agree. Whether it makes people at the BBC think twice about the programming on either side of the timeslot in question is, of course, another matter entirely...

REVIEW : Spamalot

Yes, this is a review whilst it's previewing, but rather than being a bit previous, I like to think I'm ahead of the game, okay ?

As you may know, this is a stage musical based on the film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', which has the blessing of the remaining Pythons, though it's mainly (and when you see it, pretty clearly) an Eric Idle-steered item. It's done well on Broadway, and now it's transferring to the West End of London, as is Tim Curry, who plays King Arthur.

So, what's it like? Well, it's a mix of bits from the film and new bits - a few new songs, expanded versions of favourites like the title song, and new plot-type bits. Overall, it's pretty good, but it doesn't truly hang together as a story as well as the original film does.

Notably good are some of the new songs, especially 'This is the song that goes like this', a great parody of the big romance numbers that all big musicals seem to feature, and the song about needing more Jews involved to get ahead in musicals (though this feels considerably less relevant in the UK than I'll wager it did in the USA). And the sets are very good, and there's quite clever use of Gilliamesque animated bits (the picture above is the animated 'Trojan Rabbit' which appears on the interval curtain, for example).

Less good is ... well, the thing is, because there are whole scenes which are lifted directly from the film, Python fans will be used to hearing them performed in a particular way, and whilst it's perfectly understandable that the cast want to make the parts feel their own, or to vary them when they're doing so many performances, bits like the Knights of Ni, Constitutional Peasant, the Black Knight and French Taunter are so well- known and well-loved (and rightly - for my money, Holy Grail's one of the funniest films there is), that hearing them performed by other people, with different emphases and inflections just feels wrong - like overhearing someone reciting Python in the pub or on the train, if you know what I mean. It has the unfortunate side-effect of making it feel almost like a student review version of the material, and that's not really what you want from a West End show.

That said, there are some nice jokes, the staging's really very good, Curry holds it all together well, there are enough in-jokes to keep Python fans happy, and there are new audio bits from Idle (introducing) and Cleese (as the voice of God). I have to accept that (my ongoing quest to spot the Pythons notwithstanding), this is probably about as close as I'll ever get to seeing Monty Python live, and as it's a fun night out, I'd cautiously recommend it; cautiously, as you have to accept it's NOT the Pythons, but once you do that, it's really pretty good.

Of course, as it's currently in Preview, it may well be that the critics will slate it when it opens 'officially' (after all, the member of Python are revered throughout the western world, but particularly in the UK, so there might be cries of 'what have they done to our Python?' or the like), so it might close quickly and you might not get a chance to see it, should you so choose. Or, it might be hyper-well-received (as I gather it was in the USA), and so tickets will sell out well in advance, so you might not be able to get tickets before 2008... now do you see why I decided to go to the Preview?

Who said that meetings are a waste of time?

I mean, I recently managed to doodle THIS!

And to think, my Sixth Form Head said I was shallow...

Bottle and Glass, as we say in London

This is a picture taken at the glass walk I did last Saturday. Yes, that's a walk on bits of broken glass, laid down on tarpaulin. And then the next day I ran ten miles.

I know, I know, doing such things in close succession is plain stupid, but of course that's part of the appeal. Then again, I do it because it's in aid of Phoenix House, a charity which helps to rehabilitate people with drink- and drug-related problems, and you can sponsor me or donate at the following page : http://www.justgiving.com/agonyofde-feet - this page gives more details about the charity, and also how your donation can be worth even more to them, without you having to pay an extra penny.

Please? Pretty please with sugar on it? Oh, thanks...

LINK : Director hits back

This made me laugh: http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/25/moviedirector.boxing.ap/index.html

I mean, I have a really sceptical view of the importance or relevance of critics, professional or otherwise, but I don't think one should necessarily take it this far.

Although...

A far from gruntled customer

Since there's absolutely nothing more gripping than hearing about people's utility hassles, just to say that I've lodged my complaint about lousy service with the higher echelons of Talktalk, and they're looking into it, allegedly. Be interested to hear why the company hasn't called me back (as they promised to do in late July) or sent me a replacement CD (over a month of waiting now) in order to get me the broadband I've been paying for.

So, if you're thinking about signing up for TalkTalk's package with the 'free' broadband, I strongly suggest that you don't, as - in my experience - their customer service is atrocious, and the broadband doesn't work. You know, I rather miss my dial-up with its usual connection speed of way below 56K, as that was infinitely faster than none at all.

If you have a Broadband deal which doesn't costs a lot, and includes calls (ideally evening and weekend, but I'll make do with the latter), please let me know, as unless Talktalk pull something rather remarkable out of the hat (and as I cc-ed my latest e-mail to their MD, maybe they will), I'm looking to change interweb provider... please e-mail your suggestions to me at mybandisbroaderthanyours@johnsoanes.co.uk.

And of course, until this is sorted out, updates will continue to be sporadic... yes, I'm as tired of that refrain as you are.