So welcome to my fiftieth post of the month!
Pointless but pretty.
Next month I'll probably post bugger all.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Pointless
So welcome to my fiftieth post of the month!
Pointless but pretty.
Next month I'll probably post bugger all.
Pretending to Work While Watching the Paralympics
The thing that impresses me the most, however, is the fact that all of the events are completely sold out and the stadium is packed to bursting. The atmosphere in the velodrome and the aquatics centre is, if anything, even louder and more enthusiastic than it was for the Olympics. The country has embraced the Paralympics in a manner that makes me proud.
You know how I feel about the lack of TV coverage in the USA. It shames that allegedly mighty nation. Robyn said on Facebook yesterday: "The US has 233 athletes competing in the Paralympics, and we're set to win all sorts of medals. Why isn't this all over the news here, especially when you consider so many of our athletes are injured vets who lost limbs fighting on our behalf?"
General Martin Dempsey, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in the US is over here at the Paralympic shooting range and was interviewed last night on the news (in an unconscionably spiffy full dress uniform), saying how rightfully proud he is of the achievements of his Veterans as a part of the huge American Paralympic team. He said that he would go back across the pond and look into the shameful lack of TV coverage there and I hope he kicks some righteous ass.
Are the US TV networks too embarrassed to show their Paralympians? I cannot believe that the US public just aren't interested. Do let me know if the TV and press coverage improves over there.
Things To Do In Central London - Nothing
If this is your view …
… why bother baiting your rods?
Just sit out on the pier and enjoy the day.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Party Like It's A Verb
The Paralympic Opening Ceremony is still going on as I write this in bed at midnight.
It's been a stunning spectacular, with Stephen Hawking and Ian McKellen (in a star-spangled robe as Prospero) acting as Masters of Ceremonies with their own wheelchair-bound Miranda experiencing brave new worlds as the ceremony progressed through a series of tableaux that made the opening of the Olympics a few weeks back look like merely a warm-up act.
This is fucking brilliant!
Lots more classical music (which of course is more to my taste), our blind opera diva, umbrellas with everything (a brilliantly realised theme linking the scenes and fortunately keeping away the rain that had threatened all day but never came) flying ballet by paralympic athletes, a dance interpretation of Newton's Principia Mathematica, the Higgs boson (with umbrellas), Quinn's giant limbless sculpture from Trafalgar Square, the whole solar system inside the stadium, choral singing on a monumental scale, limbless dancing, Newton's/Yoko's apples a recurring theme, "gravitational choreography," Shakespeare, Ian McKellen with the biggest phallic telescope in the universe, the Large Hadron Collider smashing ideas into new understandings, "the shining, limitless possibilities of humanity" and Prospero's final message to his Miranda to "be yourself."
Linking the spectacles, reminders of the origins of the Paralympics here in England at the last London Olympics of 1948 and the rôle of the shattered soldiers and the groundbreaking surgeons and therapists who rebuilt them after the war and gave them new hope and dignity through sporting endeavour; reminders of the self-evident but rarely evinced equality of rights due to every human being.
Above all this opening ceremony has been about perception and enlightenment. Perception challenged and transformed. The definition of ability reforged by thousands of superhuman athletes inspiring and enlightening this and many future generations.
And didn't the athletes have fun? What a party!
Here comes the flame as I write. Amazing. Flown in to the stadium by a Royal Marine paralympian.
The cauldron is lit and the celebrations reach the fireworks stage. Woah, Nellie!
The Paralympics has come home to its birthplace and it's ready to seriously fucking rock! I can't wait!
It's been a stunning spectacular, with Stephen Hawking and Ian McKellen (in a star-spangled robe as Prospero) acting as Masters of Ceremonies with their own wheelchair-bound Miranda experiencing brave new worlds as the ceremony progressed through a series of tableaux that made the opening of the Olympics a few weeks back look like merely a warm-up act.
This is fucking brilliant!
Lots more classical music (which of course is more to my taste), our blind opera diva, umbrellas with everything (a brilliantly realised theme linking the scenes and fortunately keeping away the rain that had threatened all day but never came) flying ballet by paralympic athletes, a dance interpretation of Newton's Principia Mathematica, the Higgs boson (with umbrellas), Quinn's giant limbless sculpture from Trafalgar Square, the whole solar system inside the stadium, choral singing on a monumental scale, limbless dancing, Newton's/Yoko's apples a recurring theme, "gravitational choreography," Shakespeare, Ian McKellen with the biggest phallic telescope in the universe, the Large Hadron Collider smashing ideas into new understandings, "the shining, limitless possibilities of humanity" and Prospero's final message to his Miranda to "be yourself."
Linking the spectacles, reminders of the origins of the Paralympics here in England at the last London Olympics of 1948 and the rôle of the shattered soldiers and the groundbreaking surgeons and therapists who rebuilt them after the war and gave them new hope and dignity through sporting endeavour; reminders of the self-evident but rarely evinced equality of rights due to every human being.
Above all this opening ceremony has been about perception and enlightenment. Perception challenged and transformed. The definition of ability reforged by thousands of superhuman athletes inspiring and enlightening this and many future generations.
And didn't the athletes have fun? What a party!
Here comes the flame as I write. Amazing. Flown in to the stadium by a Royal Marine paralympian.
The cauldron is lit and the celebrations reach the fireworks stage. Woah, Nellie!
The Paralympics has come home to its birthplace and it's ready to seriously fucking rock! I can't wait!
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Now For The Real Thing
The Paralympics enjoy their own opening ceremony this evening and I can't wait. The city yesterday was eerily quiet, taking a last breather before another two weeks of sporting mayhem. There will be tears of joy and of anguish, records will tumble and we will cheer.
That's the Paralympic symbol adorning Tower Bridge, in case anyone was wondering.
The Paralympics have grown since coming of age so wonderfully in Sydney and this year promises to be the biggest and best ever (and certainly the best televised - we're getting the same coverage as the Olympics) After the NBC Olympic debacle I very much doubt folk in the US will get to see much of it, though it is gaining in popularity across the pond now that they've realised it's a great outlet for wounded Veteran service personnel to overcome their ordeal and shine.
Wherever you are I hope you watch as much of it as you possibly can.
I'm rooting for my own little bunch of heroes this year. Here's one of them: Martine Wright. Read her story - I insist!
If anyone doubts there are true heroes in this shitty world, read it and weep.
Bring on the Real Games!
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Walk This Way
In answer to your inevitable question: yes, I did. The street was pretty much deserted and I imagine the folk in the offices there are too bored to notice any more.
I was in London all day today (until I misjudged the bottom step coming down into Trafalgar Square and twisted my ankle, necessitating a taxi straight back to the station and some degree of profanity).
Now home and drinking heavily and medicinally.
No doubt there will be a rash of London photos over the following days.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Red, White and Blue
No real reason for posting this, other than I like the shapes and the colours.
Oh, that and the fact that I can't think of anything to write but if I can post another half-dozen meaningless things before Saturday I'll beat my best ever monthly post total
(back in December, 2006).
Wish me luck in my pointless pursuit.
Oh, that and the fact that I can't think of anything to write but if I can post another half-dozen meaningless things before Saturday I'll beat my best ever monthly post total
(back in December, 2006).
Wish me luck in my pointless pursuit.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
εδακρυσεν ο ιησους
Ah, religious differences … where would we be without the 70,000 or so officially recognised churches within the Christian faith alone? They do love to bicker.
And that's just the officially recognised churches. There are a myriad of cults to add in to Christianity's glorious tapestry, and each and every one fervently believes that they - and only they - hold the TRUTH (always in upper case) and that everyone else is headed for hell in a handcart.
Lovely people …
Here are a small group whose way of life would make Jesus weep. They live out Robyn's way and the thing that tickled me most was the names …
Go on - read it. You know you want to.
And that's just the officially recognised churches. There are a myriad of cults to add in to Christianity's glorious tapestry, and each and every one fervently believes that they - and only they - hold the TRUTH (always in upper case) and that everyone else is headed for hell in a handcart.
Lovely people …
Here are a small group whose way of life would make Jesus weep. They live out Robyn's way and the thing that tickled me most was the names …
Go on - read it. You know you want to.
One For Neil
We've all got our memories of that momentous moment and the TV is full of the original footage today, so here's the closest I came to the great man.
This is one of the small number of back-up lunar modules that never got used.
It sits in the Science Museum in London.
And here's the actual command module from the dress rehearsal that was the Apollo 10 mission.
Neil, Buzz and the other guys who made it happen are all heroes.
And they always will be.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
Between Shifts
I'll be in the London office on Tuesday, so if anyone needs anything from the Japan Store, let me know (yes, mum; I've already got your favourite Shizuoka green tea and miso on the list) …
Happy Friday, peeps!
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Dumb Shopfront
And as for those chandeliers? So far beyond tacky it's painful.
What's the weirdest shopfront in your local mall, folks?
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Hey Ho … Another One Down
Seems like I'm forever mourning people these days; they're dropping like flies. Here's another one: Dom Mintoff; a good Socialist rabble-rouser from the beautiful little island that brought the world Old Dive.
Sigh …
Sigh …
Monday, August 20, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Will Knit For Breakfast
We enjoyed way too many coffees, a great catch-up session and some shopping and then a very therapeutic ranty moan in the Apple Store (one of my favourite Saturday pastimes) about Apple's dumbing down and lack of support for professional users with each new and increasingly mobile-oriented OS and the fact that Pea has to sell her apps exclusively through Apple's Apps Store and they charge her THIRTY FUCKING PERCENT on every sale!
Apple are turning into Microsoft and I do enjoy venting my righteous spleen at their long-suffering staff members whenever I am in there. They are so nice and they always nod and agree with me. The fact that I spend all my money in there no doubt makes them more tolerant.
Anyhoo … thanks for a fab fun morning, Pea. Give my love to the family, and mum says she loves your hair like that.
xx
Friday, August 17, 2012
Driving to the New World
My curiosity piqued by the Guardian’s article on fan fiction (see Wednesday's post) I turned to the interweb to investigate further.
The reason why yesterday’s post was a filler photograph of Horseguards’ Parade featuring a man sweeping up discarded thongs after the Olympic beach volleyball and not an incisive follow up from the previous day’s fanfic funfest was that I got sucked in to the mælström and didn’t manage to escape its clutches until way past bedtime. As to what I witnessed within: I am not, as you well know a frequent user of the phrase, but I feel justified at this point in exclaiming “What the fuck?”
Over the past few years I have observed – and frequently bewailed – the mass emigration of many fine folk from Blogville to such brash and trash locations as Facebook and Twitter. Old neighbours who would happily read and write reams of pertinent and often hilarious copy gradually drifted away, leaving just the empty husks of once beautiful blogs. Now all that remains is a ghost town through which we few hardy yet bewildered survivors shuffle amid the tumbleweed and discarded cat photographs.
Driving over from Blogville to visit my old friends in the community of Facebook is – like a trip from Springfield to Shelbyville - a disheartening experience. People there seem to have had their previously lengthy attention spans shorn mercilessly short and to be incapable of reading more than a paragraph – sometimes no more than a sentence - without glazing over and starting to dribble. They have lost the ability to write anything more than “look at this … LOL” and post links to bad photos or large print witless aphorisms. It is an appalling loss to the world.
I’ve never driven as far as Twitter but I’ve heard rumour that things are even worse over there.
Last night, however, armed with a new and strange map I discovered that the condition of the written word might not be as tragically hopeless as I had feared. Driving out of Blogville along a narrow road I had never used before I discovered not a new town but a whole new world! What the fuck? Where did THIS come from? People writing! Reams and reams of the stuff; whole cities full of fiction fans writing entire libraries full of fan fiction.
Some of it is even good!
I soon got lost. Having followed the Guardian’s directions I was sucked down side roads and decoyed along back alleys, racing through the sleazier districts (and there are a lot of those) but cruising slowly through much nicer neighbourhoods with kids’ playgrounds and community centres.
There are real writers here.
Of course, for every gemstone there's a ton of worthless gravel to sift through, but walk into any library or bookshop and you’ll find much the same situation. My own local bookstore has miles of aisles of Zelebrity diarrhœa, TV tie-ins, faddish cookbooks that nobody will ever use, a humourless “humour” section, ghostwritten biographies of yet more Z-listers and of course endless wasted shelves of bad writing masquerading as novels.
A small bookcase at the back contains poetry and “classics” and even those are mostly tied in to TV adaptations.
Yet there are great books to be found in there amongst the dross.
The same goes for the crazy planet of fan fiction. Drive through entire cities of people whose apparent appetite for accounts of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy snogging and fiddling with one another knows no bounds and you might just find a single shop catering for those who wondered what happened with Kitty and Levin after Anna Karenina painted the train red.
Last night I was only window-shopping yet I bookmarked far more short stories, novels and serial fiction than I can possibly read and this evening I shall probably go back for more. I’ve only driven through a few districts in the outskirts and there are whole metropolis … isses … (metropoli?) still waiting over the horizon.
I’m actually quite excited by the discovery that the written word is not dead, and that – while an infinite number of chimps are frantically hammering at their keyboards - just occasionally one of them will indeed write something more readable than Fifty Shades.
The reason why yesterday’s post was a filler photograph of Horseguards’ Parade featuring a man sweeping up discarded thongs after the Olympic beach volleyball and not an incisive follow up from the previous day’s fanfic funfest was that I got sucked in to the mælström and didn’t manage to escape its clutches until way past bedtime. As to what I witnessed within: I am not, as you well know a frequent user of the phrase, but I feel justified at this point in exclaiming “What the fuck?”
Over the past few years I have observed – and frequently bewailed – the mass emigration of many fine folk from Blogville to such brash and trash locations as Facebook and Twitter. Old neighbours who would happily read and write reams of pertinent and often hilarious copy gradually drifted away, leaving just the empty husks of once beautiful blogs. Now all that remains is a ghost town through which we few hardy yet bewildered survivors shuffle amid the tumbleweed and discarded cat photographs.
Driving over from Blogville to visit my old friends in the community of Facebook is – like a trip from Springfield to Shelbyville - a disheartening experience. People there seem to have had their previously lengthy attention spans shorn mercilessly short and to be incapable of reading more than a paragraph – sometimes no more than a sentence - without glazing over and starting to dribble. They have lost the ability to write anything more than “look at this … LOL” and post links to bad photos or large print witless aphorisms. It is an appalling loss to the world.
I’ve never driven as far as Twitter but I’ve heard rumour that things are even worse over there.
Last night, however, armed with a new and strange map I discovered that the condition of the written word might not be as tragically hopeless as I had feared. Driving out of Blogville along a narrow road I had never used before I discovered not a new town but a whole new world! What the fuck? Where did THIS come from? People writing! Reams and reams of the stuff; whole cities full of fiction fans writing entire libraries full of fan fiction.
Some of it is even good!
I soon got lost. Having followed the Guardian’s directions I was sucked down side roads and decoyed along back alleys, racing through the sleazier districts (and there are a lot of those) but cruising slowly through much nicer neighbourhoods with kids’ playgrounds and community centres.
There are real writers here.
Of course, for every gemstone there's a ton of worthless gravel to sift through, but walk into any library or bookshop and you’ll find much the same situation. My own local bookstore has miles of aisles of Zelebrity diarrhœa, TV tie-ins, faddish cookbooks that nobody will ever use, a humourless “humour” section, ghostwritten biographies of yet more Z-listers and of course endless wasted shelves of bad writing masquerading as novels.
A small bookcase at the back contains poetry and “classics” and even those are mostly tied in to TV adaptations.
Yet there are great books to be found in there amongst the dross.
The same goes for the crazy planet of fan fiction. Drive through entire cities of people whose apparent appetite for accounts of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy snogging and fiddling with one another knows no bounds and you might just find a single shop catering for those who wondered what happened with Kitty and Levin after Anna Karenina painted the train red.
Last night I was only window-shopping yet I bookmarked far more short stories, novels and serial fiction than I can possibly read and this evening I shall probably go back for more. I’ve only driven through a few districts in the outskirts and there are whole metropolis … isses … (metropoli?) still waiting over the horizon.
I’m actually quite excited by the discovery that the written word is not dead, and that – while an infinite number of chimps are frantically hammering at their keyboards - just occasionally one of them will indeed write something more readable than Fifty Shades.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Spongebob and Carol and Ted and Alice
Yesterday's Guardian ran a really thought-provoking article on fan fiction and Fifty Shades of Crap (here it is).
Yikes!
From the Gospels through to Jane Austen's and Arthur Conan-Doyle's very own fanfics it looks like this thing has a long history.
Dickens was constantly plagued by fanfic cash-ins and suffered more plagiarism than any writer before or since, with thousands of cheap, serialised novels based on his plots and characters. Plagiarists adapted Dickens' writings to suit the tastes of a rapidly expanding lower class readership and these imitations enjoyed sales which rivalled and probably outnumbered those of Dickens' originals.*
And now we have the gruesome yet compelling prospect of fifty thousand shades of grey, bland, fanfic pornography of no literary merit whatsoever swamping the bestseller lists.
Fair enough. It's fun. I've violated Jane Austen and Mary Shelley myself in our 500 Words short story circle and thoroughly enjoyed doing it. Writing fanfic has the great advantage of giving you a set of ready made characters that your readers are already familiar with and so saves you having to bother with character development.
The one thing I did find truly fascinating in the Guardian article was the meteoric rise of the "fanfic mash-up." As the article points out, these have been around for a couple of hundred years but are now going viral in a big and entertainingly amateurish way.
The mash-up has been giggling its merry way through real literature for some time, too; witness Mark Twain gleefully mashing present and mythical past in 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' and our own Petrea's upcoming novel 'Camelot and Vine' (in which the heroine deliciously shares Twain's real surname in a kind of mash-up within a mash-up).
In Mario Vargas Llosa's 'Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter' characters from radio soap operas start bleeding into one another's shows and then crossing over into reality (or what passes for reality in a Llosa novel). I love that stuff.
Most fanfic mash-ups, however, appear to be based around bad porn or who-would-beat-who-in-a-fight. Witness the example in the Guardian article of Darth Vader and Spongebob v. Edward and Harry Potter (I assume the Edward is the miserable looking bugger from the kiddies' vampire films).
I made the mistake of discussing the article at lunchtime yesterday and soon became depressingly aware of the literary ambitions (can you have an illiterary ambition?) of the people with whom I share most of my waking hours. Did we get Shakespeare? Tolstoy? Austen? Did we buggery.
"Harry would easily take Vader … One 'Expelliarmus' and his lightsabre would go flying …"
"Ah, but Vader would put the Force-choke on him so Potter couldn't speak any spells. Then he'd pick up his lightsabre and …"
A whumming sound and some demonstrative arm movements followed by a splat.
And so yesterday afternoon was filled with theoretical fights and desperately bad porn. Vignettes sprung up all over the office: Professor McGonagle with the dwarf music teacher from Hogwarts and a chair got popular and pervy support from the girls (and some hilarious facial expressions), while the boys had Mister Magoo fighting the Terminator and Hagrid battling the Oompa-Loompas. It's just as well I no longer work with Mikey as his Chewbacca and Scooby-Doo impersonations are second to none and would have rendered me helpless for the rest of the day.
And so it went on … my personal favourite example occurring slightly later while I was on the phone, discussing services routes with the main contractor's site manager, Tom. A few feet away from me an epic and very noisy battle was raging between Kellie and Erin, featuring some admirably good voice characterisations and imaginatively biological threats and imprecations.
Tom stopped me.
"I have to ask: what the HELL is going on in your office?"
To which I could only truthfully reply, "Miss Piggy and Jar-Jar Binks are fighting."
Tom paused for a moment. "My money's on the pig." he said.
And so the day went on …
I'm tempted to kick start 500 Words again with a fanfic mash-up challenge. Who's up for it? Any ideas which characters we should feature? Do let me know, but please make it more of a literary challenge than I got from the office.
* The Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
And Today's Object Is …
Not an original Norman fitting but an essential part of the Cathedral nonetheless.
Monday, August 13, 2012
La Cuidad Imaginaria
Petrea made me stop and think this morning (not a rare occurrence as her writing is so consistently thought provoking).
What she made me stop and think about was this:
Why the hell am I so obsessively interested in the history of Los Angeles?
It's not as if I want to live there; good God, no! I want to live here and in Paris (and it looks like I'm going to have to settle for here).
She's right, though. I may be fascinated by Paris and London and even New York, but with LA it's more of an obsession.
I think I might be beginning to understand why, and it's not just the sunshine and the beautiful Art Deco buildings …
I think it's because LA is the ultimate exhibitionist.
Little over a hundred years ago there was just the occasional ranch and orange grove, crumbling Spanish mission houses and the ragged remnants of the Tongva and Chumash nations. You can see it all in black and white, sitting peacefully in the sun in early photographs.
Then came oil … but far more importantly, along came a nascent moving picture industry desperate for long, sunny days to save costs on lights. Los Angeles was born, grew up, threw tantrums and went batshit crazy in all our cinemas and on all our TV screens.
You might just be able to form a mental picture of what pre-Roman London might have looked like, and you can get an all too real impression of the suppurating growth of the Great Wen from Pepys and Dickens; but nobody will ever know for sure how it all looked or sounded (or smelled) and how it grew and spread. That goes for just about every other city on earth.
But not Los Angeles …
LA loves the lens. Its entire history is available on celluloid and it's a real strumpet in front of the cameras.
I was brought up on Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Keystone Kops. From there I wandered, via DW Griffith through to Sunset Boulevard and at last stumbled upon the LA I fell madly and irrationally in love with: the LA of Kiss Me Deadly. The LA of my obsession.
Boy, what an impact that movie had on me (and still does).
Ever since then I've sat here in the rain, living vicariously in the sunny postwar LA of wisecracking, punchy private dick Mike Hammer; from the moody black and white of Kiss Me Deadly to the bright, harsh, saturated colours of Chinatown and L.A.Confidential it grabbed me and never let go.
From wolfing down the noir heaven of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler I discovered the books of James Ellroy; hardboiled, racist, misogynist corrupt and violent cops and politicians whose stories played out against the real history of LA.
And what a history that was! It's all there, splayed across the screen in celluloid and scrawled across the pages of a thousand great pulp trash crime novels. A city usually takes two thousand years to grow and mature; Los Angeles crammed it all into a few short decades of boom and bust, corruption, greed, insane politics, water wars, race riots …
And still it goes on; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Watching LA's awkward puberty from a distance via movies and TV is morbidly fascinating; like watching a slow motion car crash, or an orgy in a circus freak show tent, or … well … a city with no shame, proudly displaying itself naked to the world and seemingly glorying in its sleaze and violence … the zoot suit riots, the battle of Chavez Ravine, the Watts riots, the global coverage of Rodney King's vicious beating … It's not like that really (or at least mostly) but the nice side of LA rarely gets put on display to the world.
LA has recently spread from celluloid through comic books (the immaculate Love and Rockets, yay!) to the games console and I regularly take vacations there in 1990s gangland style South Central LA (Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and the upcoming GTA5) and in the postwar boom of the superb cop game "LA Noire" which is just like living inside an Ellroy novel. If you've seen L.A.Confidential, imagine climbing into a squad car with the guys and fighting crime and corruption (complete with classic femmes fatales). It's truly awesome.
Yet apparently the real Los Angeles is not like that at all …
There are farmers' markets, bistros, normal folk walking their dogs and sharing coffee, there are gourmet bakeries and microbreweries, for Pete's sake! Petrea drives to work in Hollywood and has been posting photos from her commute, and it's lovely. LOVELY!
I'll probably never get there so I'll never know what it's really like, yet LA fascinates me like no other place.
Paris is Paris. It's grown slowly. It is what it is. London and New York are what they are; yet the City of Angels craves being all things to all people; it's the wannabe starlet sprawled across the casting couch … "I can be whatever you want me to be, sugar. I don't mind, just GET ME IN THE MOVIES!"
Los Angeles exists, physically; it's there on the map: a huge, monstrous, sprawling metropolis smeared across Southern California; the sheer, mind-buggering size of it is beyond belief … and yet my Los Angeles is ephemeral; the LA of Kiss Me Deadly is long gone; it is a city that exists almost entirely in my imagination.
And I love it.
What she made me stop and think about was this:
Why the hell am I so obsessively interested in the history of Los Angeles?
It's not as if I want to live there; good God, no! I want to live here and in Paris (and it looks like I'm going to have to settle for here).
She's right, though. I may be fascinated by Paris and London and even New York, but with LA it's more of an obsession.
I think I might be beginning to understand why, and it's not just the sunshine and the beautiful Art Deco buildings …
I think it's because LA is the ultimate exhibitionist.
Little over a hundred years ago there was just the occasional ranch and orange grove, crumbling Spanish mission houses and the ragged remnants of the Tongva and Chumash nations. You can see it all in black and white, sitting peacefully in the sun in early photographs.
Then came oil … but far more importantly, along came a nascent moving picture industry desperate for long, sunny days to save costs on lights. Los Angeles was born, grew up, threw tantrums and went batshit crazy in all our cinemas and on all our TV screens.
You might just be able to form a mental picture of what pre-Roman London might have looked like, and you can get an all too real impression of the suppurating growth of the Great Wen from Pepys and Dickens; but nobody will ever know for sure how it all looked or sounded (or smelled) and how it grew and spread. That goes for just about every other city on earth.
But not Los Angeles …
LA loves the lens. Its entire history is available on celluloid and it's a real strumpet in front of the cameras.
I was brought up on Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Keystone Kops. From there I wandered, via DW Griffith through to Sunset Boulevard and at last stumbled upon the LA I fell madly and irrationally in love with: the LA of Kiss Me Deadly. The LA of my obsession.
Boy, what an impact that movie had on me (and still does).
Ever since then I've sat here in the rain, living vicariously in the sunny postwar LA of wisecracking, punchy private dick Mike Hammer; from the moody black and white of Kiss Me Deadly to the bright, harsh, saturated colours of Chinatown and L.A.Confidential it grabbed me and never let go.
From wolfing down the noir heaven of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler I discovered the books of James Ellroy; hardboiled, racist, misogynist corrupt and violent cops and politicians whose stories played out against the real history of LA.
And what a history that was! It's all there, splayed across the screen in celluloid and scrawled across the pages of a thousand great pulp trash crime novels. A city usually takes two thousand years to grow and mature; Los Angeles crammed it all into a few short decades of boom and bust, corruption, greed, insane politics, water wars, race riots …
And still it goes on; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Watching LA's awkward puberty from a distance via movies and TV is morbidly fascinating; like watching a slow motion car crash, or an orgy in a circus freak show tent, or … well … a city with no shame, proudly displaying itself naked to the world and seemingly glorying in its sleaze and violence … the zoot suit riots, the battle of Chavez Ravine, the Watts riots, the global coverage of Rodney King's vicious beating … It's not like that really (or at least mostly) but the nice side of LA rarely gets put on display to the world.
LA has recently spread from celluloid through comic books (the immaculate Love and Rockets, yay!) to the games console and I regularly take vacations there in 1990s gangland style South Central LA (Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and the upcoming GTA5) and in the postwar boom of the superb cop game "LA Noire" which is just like living inside an Ellroy novel. If you've seen L.A.Confidential, imagine climbing into a squad car with the guys and fighting crime and corruption (complete with classic femmes fatales). It's truly awesome.
Yet apparently the real Los Angeles is not like that at all …
There are farmers' markets, bistros, normal folk walking their dogs and sharing coffee, there are gourmet bakeries and microbreweries, for Pete's sake! Petrea drives to work in Hollywood and has been posting photos from her commute, and it's lovely. LOVELY!
I'll probably never get there so I'll never know what it's really like, yet LA fascinates me like no other place.
Paris is Paris. It's grown slowly. It is what it is. London and New York are what they are; yet the City of Angels craves being all things to all people; it's the wannabe starlet sprawled across the casting couch … "I can be whatever you want me to be, sugar. I don't mind, just GET ME IN THE MOVIES!"
Los Angeles exists, physically; it's there on the map: a huge, monstrous, sprawling metropolis smeared across Southern California; the sheer, mind-buggering size of it is beyond belief … and yet my Los Angeles is ephemeral; the LA of Kiss Me Deadly is long gone; it is a city that exists almost entirely in my imagination.
And I love it.
Morning After
So farewell to the Olympics.
I enjoyed it tremendously, but this morning I feel like crap (staying up way too late watching an extended karaoke party by a bunch of people I'd mostly never heard of singing songs I either don't know or don't really care to remember didn't help). It was good to see Pele, though.
At least we've got the Paralympics to look forward to. I love that.
My moment of the games remains the same one it was last week: Galen Rupp's reaction as he crossed the finishing line in the 10,000 metres.
The oddest thing about the games for me was the sight of thousands of idiots in the stadium holding iPads up in front of their faces. Sure, it's got a decent camera on it, but you look really dumb watching the race on a miniature TV screen while the real thing is happening in front of you.
I'm baffled.
Anyhoo … How was it for you?
Addendum: General opinion in the office this morning is that the closing ceremony gave us what we had expected from the opening ceremony (but had been denied by the opening ceremony being totally brilliant): a shambolic parade of Z-list celebridees who cannot sing and old crocks who can no longer sing. It was also a timely reminder that England will always hold the gold medal for tragic irony, with poor old Roger Daltrey (who at least was still in reasonably fine voice) and his disgraced pædophile guitar player belting out “Hope I die before I get old;” a great lyric in 1964; a masterclass in tragic irony in 2012. Keith Moon at least had the decency to live fast and disgracefully and die young.
Favourite moments from around the room: John Lennon’s face, the giant octopus, laughing at the Spice Girls, a huge vote from the older guys here for the girl singer in the flesh-coloured leotard, and everyone agrees that George Michael should have stayed in bed and that Brian May’s hair is beyond parody.
The song on everyone’s lips today is “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” As good a result as we could have hoped for.
I enjoyed it tremendously, but this morning I feel like crap (staying up way too late watching an extended karaoke party by a bunch of people I'd mostly never heard of singing songs I either don't know or don't really care to remember didn't help). It was good to see Pele, though.
At least we've got the Paralympics to look forward to. I love that.
My moment of the games remains the same one it was last week: Galen Rupp's reaction as he crossed the finishing line in the 10,000 metres.
The oddest thing about the games for me was the sight of thousands of idiots in the stadium holding iPads up in front of their faces. Sure, it's got a decent camera on it, but you look really dumb watching the race on a miniature TV screen while the real thing is happening in front of you.
I'm baffled.
Anyhoo … How was it for you?
Addendum: General opinion in the office this morning is that the closing ceremony gave us what we had expected from the opening ceremony (but had been denied by the opening ceremony being totally brilliant): a shambolic parade of Z-list celebridees who cannot sing and old crocks who can no longer sing. It was also a timely reminder that England will always hold the gold medal for tragic irony, with poor old Roger Daltrey (who at least was still in reasonably fine voice) and his disgraced pædophile guitar player belting out “Hope I die before I get old;” a great lyric in 1964; a masterclass in tragic irony in 2012. Keith Moon at least had the decency to live fast and disgracefully and die young.
Favourite moments from around the room: John Lennon’s face, the giant octopus, laughing at the Spice Girls, a huge vote from the older guys here for the girl singer in the flesh-coloured leotard, and everyone agrees that George Michael should have stayed in bed and that Brian May’s hair is beyond parody.
The song on everyone’s lips today is “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” As good a result as we could have hoped for.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Writing Drunk Last Night in Front of the Olympics with a Ry Cooder Album Playing …
A touch more Ry. This is the haunting El UFO Cayó, from the superb Chavez Ravine album (buy the CD, not the download, as the accompanying booklet is essential reading).
There are some heartbreaking photos in this clip of the forced demolition and eviction of the Hispanic community living in Chavez Ravine; a laudable social housing project that got hi-jacked by the usual greed and corruption and - after a ten year battle - the last thousand or so residents lost out to the money men behind the move from New York of the Dodgers baseball team.
To deflect blame, the social housing project's organisers were branded Communist and ruthlessly purged by the idiot show trials of HUAC; and in an echo of the zoot suit riots, thugs were bussed in to beat the crap out of the Hispanic families living in Chavez Ravine. Eventually the bulldozers did their filthy work and the cops drove the refugees out of town.
"We don't want slums in LA!" said the mayor at the time.
I wonder how that turned out?
I tend to listen to this album a lot when I'm reading James Ellroy, whose revisionist history of LA (if anybody hasn't read his LA Quartet novels: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A.Confidential and White Jazz, drop what you're doing and read them now) throws the real events into sharp relief.
Also check out Mike Davis' 'City of Quartz' for a decent alternative history of the City of Angels.
Of course the music also ties in with my deep love of Los Bros Hernandez and their own, more contemporary LA social history, played out in the incomparable Love and Rockets comics from the eighties to the present.
And unless you have an intimate knowledge of Love and Rockets, how on earth can you hope to understand a single word I write on this blog?
There are some heartbreaking photos in this clip of the forced demolition and eviction of the Hispanic community living in Chavez Ravine; a laudable social housing project that got hi-jacked by the usual greed and corruption and - after a ten year battle - the last thousand or so residents lost out to the money men behind the move from New York of the Dodgers baseball team.
To deflect blame, the social housing project's organisers were branded Communist and ruthlessly purged by the idiot show trials of HUAC; and in an echo of the zoot suit riots, thugs were bussed in to beat the crap out of the Hispanic families living in Chavez Ravine. Eventually the bulldozers did their filthy work and the cops drove the refugees out of town.
"We don't want slums in LA!" said the mayor at the time.
I wonder how that turned out?
I tend to listen to this album a lot when I'm reading James Ellroy, whose revisionist history of LA (if anybody hasn't read his LA Quartet novels: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A.Confidential and White Jazz, drop what you're doing and read them now) throws the real events into sharp relief.
Also check out Mike Davis' 'City of Quartz' for a decent alternative history of the City of Angels.
Of course the music also ties in with my deep love of Los Bros Hernandez and their own, more contemporary LA social history, played out in the incomparable Love and Rockets comics from the eighties to the present.
And unless you have an intimate knowledge of Love and Rockets, how on earth can you hope to understand a single word I write on this blog?
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Apropos of Nothing …
Phil pointed out a poster in a shop this morning that read:
"PUNCTUATION:
KNOW YOUR SHIT
OR
KNOW YOU'RE SHIT."
Tickled the hell out of me.
Something For The Weekend
To start your weekend in fine laid-back style, here's the Intelligent American from yesterday's post doing what he does. Ry Cooder with Flaco Jimenez and friends, having a ball.
And if you liked that, here's the whole concert. Enjoy your weekend!
And if you liked that, here's the whole concert. Enjoy your weekend!
Friday, August 10, 2012
An Intelligent American
News this morning that one of my favourite Americans is bringing out a new album to help voters over there understand what's going on.
The man who gave America back its real music; who gave us Into The Purple Valley, Chicken Skin Music, the incomparable Bop Til You Drop, the slide soundtrack to Paris, Texas, THAT solo on John Hiatt's Lipstick Sunset, just keeps on getting better and better.
Ry's last three albums - his "California Trilogy" were breathtaking. From the outrage and sadness (and not forgetting hilarity, Hispanic dance heaven and a UFO) of Chavez Ravine, through the Dustbowl Odyssey (with Æsopian fabulous animals) of My Name Is Buddy, to the gloriously supercharged carmageddon of I, Flathead (released with its own novella attached), he has been the soundtrack to the real American Dream.
Now he launches Election Special.
No idea what it's going to be like musically (Ry makes chamæleons look bland and predictable), but I can be pretty damned sure that its politics will be bang on target.
Go buy it. I just pre-ordered my copy. Then listen to it before you vote.
The man who gave America back its real music; who gave us Into The Purple Valley, Chicken Skin Music, the incomparable Bop Til You Drop, the slide soundtrack to Paris, Texas, THAT solo on John Hiatt's Lipstick Sunset, just keeps on getting better and better.
Ry's last three albums - his "California Trilogy" were breathtaking. From the outrage and sadness (and not forgetting hilarity, Hispanic dance heaven and a UFO) of Chavez Ravine, through the Dustbowl Odyssey (with Æsopian fabulous animals) of My Name Is Buddy, to the gloriously supercharged carmageddon of I, Flathead (released with its own novella attached), he has been the soundtrack to the real American Dream.
Now he launches Election Special.
No idea what it's going to be like musically (Ry makes chamæleons look bland and predictable), but I can be pretty damned sure that its politics will be bang on target.
Go buy it. I just pre-ordered my copy. Then listen to it before you vote.
Thursday, August 09, 2012
A Class Warrior Writes …
Just because we won a gold in the dressage doesn't mean I want to watch it. Preening upper class twits forcing noble animals to do what doesn't come naturally … an event that should have gone the way of animal circuses and been banned years ago.
We also won a gold today in the women's boxing. Boxing is never something I've enjoyed watching either but Nicola Adams has fought a bigoted and misogynist male-dominated Olympic Committee for many long years to finally succeed and see her sport recognised as something other than "foxy boxing."
Three hearty cheers for her!
We also won a gold today in the women's boxing. Boxing is never something I've enjoyed watching either but Nicola Adams has fought a bigoted and misogynist male-dominated Olympic Committee for many long years to finally succeed and see her sport recognised as something other than "foxy boxing."
Three hearty cheers for her!
Quote of the Day
More bullmitt from the mouth of the moron:
Not content with offending entire nations on his gaffe-fest tour of "safe" foreign allies a couple of weeks back, Romney now offends Sikh Americans with:
"We had a moment of silence in honour of the people who lost their lives at that sheik temple."
The man gets dumber by the hour.
Addendum:
DUH … Looks like Mitt the Twit is actually a fake.
Not content with offending entire nations on his gaffe-fest tour of "safe" foreign allies a couple of weeks back, Romney now offends Sikh Americans with:
"We had a moment of silence in honour of the people who lost their lives at that sheik temple."
The man gets dumber by the hour.
Addendum:
DUH … Looks like Mitt the Twit is actually a fake.
Chariots of Coloured Plastic
They're back …
And this is how they put all that stuff together. It takes a team of nerds three days to build a Lego Olympic stadium.
So now you know.
And this is how they put all that stuff together. It takes a team of nerds three days to build a Lego Olympic stadium.
So now you know.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Weird Norwich
This splendid plaque adorns the John Lewis department store.
I've been a Beatlemaniac my whole life.
If anyone else out there feels the same way, click on the image below to inflate it and sing along..
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Where Are All My Presents?
Hey, I just noticed that today is my sixth blog birthday!
I think that's a good enough excuse to open up the Scotch and get slightly shitfaced while shouting at the Olympics. I may even use the word 'party' as a verb (slap me).
And a very happy sixth blog birthday to my longtime best buddy and Wyrd Sister, Robyn, who started blogging at the same time.
Woo … and very definitely, hoo!
I think that's a good enough excuse to open up the Scotch and get slightly shitfaced while shouting at the Olympics. I may even use the word 'party' as a verb (slap me).
And a very happy sixth blog birthday to my longtime best buddy and Wyrd Sister, Robyn, who started blogging at the same time.
Woo … and very definitely, hoo!
Fame At Last!
I've been spotted in - or at least fairly adjacent to - Hollywood!
Looks like I sold out to get there, though.
Huge thanks to the handsome and talented John Sandel (hubby of our very own Petrea), for spotting this and sending me the photo.
Monday, August 06, 2012
Predictably …
Dammit! The Guardian has sold out to The Man! They've started putting dumb fucking adverts at the start of their "Olympics: Brick by Brick" videos.
Still, it's fun to watch Usain Bolt do what he does best … in Lego.
Still, it's fun to watch Usain Bolt do what he does best … in Lego.
Look! It's Me! I'm On the Beach!
A bunch of people wearing blue shirts doing very bad calisthenics and shouting.
Curiosity has landed on Mars.
NASA's madcap rocket-powered crane has done its job and buggered off to crash somewhere.
And the rover is okay.
What did it do first?
Well it's part of the Facebook generation, so it did what any drunk holidaymaker would do and took photos of itself and sent them to its friends.
Then it Tweeted.
Geeks have reached the Red Planet. Martians beware.
Sunday, August 05, 2012
The One Where I Praise An American Athlete
Yup, it's Rupp.
Here's how the US press saw it.
Sure: Jess Ennis is Britain's Golden Girl and let's not take anything away from her astonishing achievement, but for me it was Mo in the 10,000metres that I was waiting for.
I've been a fan of Mo Farah for years, frustratingly watching him get bullied and shoved and blocked and repeatedly edged out in the last lap by the tactics of the Ethiopian team. He's the best 10,000metres runner in the world but as his home Olympic race got under way last night the Ethiopians once again outnumbered and surrounded him and it looked like being another case of tactics beating talent.
But this time it was different. A figure in red was there like a protecting angel, countering every Ethiopian surge and bunch and riding shotgun for Mo.
A little while back, Mo disappeared from these shores and headed into the beautiful woods of Oregon. There he met local boy Galen Rupp and they hit it off as friends and training partners.
Last night I watched (and shouted and pinballed off the walls) as the Anglo-American pair took on the three Ethiopians and beat every spoiling effort with sheer guts and talent.
The last lap meant I can hardly speak this morning.
So - and this is a shock to me as well as to my lovely Colonial friends - my moment of the games was watching the face of an all-American boy just after Mo crossed the finishing line. Close behind him, in second place, Oregon's own Galen Rupp crossed the line and shouted "MO!" He didn't shout "Yoo Ess Ay", he looked across at this friend and celebrated their achievement. The pair collapsed together, Mo flat on his back and Galen leaning over him, signing "one - two" with his fingers; his knees and shins spattered with blood from the spikes he'd taken for his efforts.
Yes, I know you're supposed to run, swim, throw, pedal, sail, paddle or whatever for your country, but Nationalism be damned. This was friendship, comradeship, international cooperation and it beats Nationalism hands down.
Three cheers for Mo Farah and Galen Rupp for showing us what the Olympic Spirit really should be.
Oh, and hoorah, too, for Joanna Rowsell, for leaving her wig at home and proudly taking gold as the poster girl for alopœcia sufferers worldwide. Brave and beautiful.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Saturday Statuary - Horse's Arse
Happy weekend from someone camped out in front of the sport with a bottle of wine.
Friday, August 03, 2012
The Importance of a Hefty Plastic Breakfast
For my dear Colonial friends, here's Michael Phelps looking better than ever (check out that bod, girls), in the latest official footage from the Olympics (you won't get this on NBC).
Sane
More good news from the Guardian over breakfast this morning.
Not that I needed to find an excuse for heading back across the ditch to Paris, but it looks like those godawful rat runs of insane traffic racing along the quais and ruining everyone's enjoyment of the Seine …
… will soon be as quiet and idyllic as the beautiful walks around the Ile de la Cité. Woohoo!
Thursday, August 02, 2012
A-Holes
Many thanks to those lovely folk at ecards for today's post.
As if anyone needed an excuse to avoid junk food, this obscene US chain recently went public with its inexplicable and disgusting homophobia.
Shitty junk food recovered "meat" product served with lashings of fat, salt and hate.
I'm proud I shop at Rainbow wholefoods in Norwich.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
August?
Holy crap! It's August already. How on earth did that happen when we've only had three days without rain since February?
Whatever …
The news this morning tells me it's time to wave a fond farewell to Gore Vidal. Great author, great man. Smart, witty, controversial: always a good combination. America needs more like him.
And over here at the Olympics, it seems my efforts to train the Chinese badminton team have not been an unqualified success. Watching them and the Koreans both playing to lose has to be the most pathetic sight we've seen since Mitt Romney's ignominious departure.
And it's raining again.
Get a grip, August; you'll have to do better than that.
In the meantime, Cat and Girl have nailed the Olympics:
Whatever …
The news this morning tells me it's time to wave a fond farewell to Gore Vidal. Great author, great man. Smart, witty, controversial: always a good combination. America needs more like him.
And over here at the Olympics, it seems my efforts to train the Chinese badminton team have not been an unqualified success. Watching them and the Koreans both playing to lose has to be the most pathetic sight we've seen since Mitt Romney's ignominious departure.
And it's raining again.
Get a grip, August; you'll have to do better than that.
In the meantime, Cat and Girl have nailed the Olympics:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)