Last night Le Flâneur had a traumatic experience.
We had been given some free tickets for a ‘classical music extravaganza’ at the Albert Hall. Like total fools, we thought this would merely mean three or four performances of classical favourites, popular and crowd-pleasing no doubt, but a good opportunity see world-class musicians in a world-class venue none the less. I couldn’t find the program anywhere on the internet prior to the performance (though as it turned out that was more or less irrelevant anyway)
We should have seen the warning signs, but we were swept forward on wave of good feeling that we were getting out doing something cultural for once.
It was as though we’d walked into a dystopian future, or an idiocracy style world way out there beyond the realm of kitsch. Unbelievably, the music was amplified (presumably for the hard of hearing), and badly done. In combination with the light show it amounted to a full on assault of the senses. You’d find more subtlety at a metallica gig. Only the genuinely mentally handicapped, or people old enough to have their critical faculties completely desert them, would have found any enjoyment from last night’s performance. The people that didn’t fit into these two brackets were merely shells of human beings, hysterical flag waving philistines, for whom the music only provided wall-paper to their frantic collective nationalist jerk-off. Never have I seen so many Union flags. Never before have I experienced such a strong sense of the terrible and dangerous power of music.
During the interval we made a be-line for the door; our one thought to escape this weird shared nightmare. Suddenly all the people around us seemed like unthinking automatons. It was a harrowing insight into the dim right wing. The venue will be forever tarnished for us all. The horror.
Joe says:
I was separated from the others and found myself trapped in a small room with four Australians one of whom passed me a union jack. I reluctantly accepted the cheap plastic artefact and discreetly dropped it as soon as the lights dimmed. This was when the real trauma began. The chorus from Carmina Burana began and a bright green laser was shone directly into my eyes. After the orchestra had been playing for about two minutes, the ‘conductor’, in the style of smug radio four stalwart Nicholas Parsons, spoke for about five minutes about the Royal wedding anniversary. At this point the woman who’d kindly given me the flag turned around to make sure I was waving it. I wasn’t. The only ray of light came from a text from Matt (pictured). We left at the interval, shocked, traumatized, slightly hysterical, and sadly aware that the world was an even more terrifying place than any of us had previously imagined.
Matt says:
We tried to warn others. No one listened.
If you think you like wine watch this brilliant video blog. It’s hosted by the hugely charismatic Gary Vaynerchuk. Vaynerchuk runs a wine store with his father in New Jersey called Wine library and clearly the man knows what he’s talking about. Winelibrary.tv is on a mission to take the stuffiness out of wine appreciation and cultivate a broad repertoire of wine knowledge in its viewers (sorry ‘Vayniacs’, as they are known). It’s fun, dynamic and informative. Who would have thought that watching a guy, on a static camera, trying and then describing wine for twenty minutes would be good entertainment? But it’s surprisingly compelling. There’s a brilliant episode where Gary takes you through how he developed his palette. This basically involves training yourself by gathering together all the flavors that commonly make up the flavour profiles of wines – including rocks, fruit, dirt, vegetable matter, you name it. I’d really like to try this some time. If you taste all the components individually and in succession, your brain builds up a clearer picture of what they are. How often is it you drink a nice wine and you just can’t quite put your finger on what the flavours are? Well this is how you do it apparently.
I really like Vaynerchuck’s boundless enthusiasm and his larger than life persona. Can you imagine a Brit doing the same thing, and referring to the show as ‘The thunder show’? At first glance he could come across a bit of a frat-boy, but you quickly realise he’s a very sophisticated guy. Be warned, this will make you want to consume a lot of wine. Basically, and this is more than a little sad, I wish I could do what he does everyday but I’ve neither the budget nor the expertise. Frustratingly also, when he does pick out a wine that is cheap but highly rated, I don’t seem to able to find a retailer in the UK that will stock it. This is particularly annoying when it’s a French Wine (Gary is a big fan of ‘old world’ wines by the way, is this an east coast thing?) Maybe the French have given up on the British market now, saturated as it is with New World stuff.
We’re not talking about the football here by the way. I can only hope that they appoint a dispassionate foreigner and one or two candidates spring to mind. Have we got enough time to completely rejuvenate English football in time for the next world cup? I doubt it somehow.
I can’t believe I’ve not been following this little fight from the start. Ronan Bennett’s recent article in G2 denouncing Martin Amis as a racist, has resulted in Hitchens coming to the defense of his friend in an article published in the Guardian today. I think Bennett is absolutely right in his questioning of Amis’s motives and his dubious choice of language at times. What is a ‘thought experiment’ anyway? Is it where you pretend to be a bit racist to test the responses of other people – and only the truly intellectual and enlightened liberal mind can partake of it? Sounds a bit dubious to put it mildly.
But Hitchens equally makes some good points and rather settles this I feel. I think Amis is lucky in this instance to have such an eloquent advocate as Hitchens. Hitchens and Amis would never tolerate the label ‘islamaphobe’. But I think when they express a strong distaste for ‘islamism’, that’s what they are. But this is different from being racist towards all Muslims isn’t it? Or is the distinction irrelevant?
This whole spat started as a dispute between Amis and fellow Manchester University Professor of English Terry Eagleton. Hitchens seems to have taken it as a compliment that Eagleton has expressed disappointment in Hitchens turning out not to be the new George Orwell, but rather the new Evelyn Waugh. Hasn’t he heard, right is the new left?
This blog will now have contributions from Joe Miller and Matt Venables. This way it’ll probably be updated more regularly and you’ll have three voices to, ahem, enjoy instead of just the one. It’ll be fun. You’ll be able to read about all our exploits living in a rodent invested hell hole in Hackney. This has come about after a sustained effort on my to get them to joint the party. Thematically it’ll probably remain the same. The truth is that there is no theme to this blog, it’s just easier that way. To see who is the author of a post, you’ll have to click on the comments section and scroll down to the bottom.
This picture is from the FIB festival this summer. Matt had hurt his arm and is sporting a rather fetching and coordinated bandage. Joe is just resting his eyes having consumed only a moderate amount of alcohol.
I recently edited together my footage from that week. It had taken many months before I could bring myself to properly review it all. I think this picture is quite emblematic of the holiday. Notice how just out of frame Tom is somehow still holding it together. After this we had to walk the three or four miles along the beech back to our apartment to watch some more wrestling on the TV.
Is anyone else a little cheesed off by the return to the screen of Lead Balloon? It’s not that this
Jack Dee vehicle is that bad (there are some laughs), it’s just that I know there’ll be loads of people watching it who haven’t seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, and I think it’s therefore a bit rich that in the round of publicity spots Dee has done for the show, I’ve never once heard him acknowledge its debt to the HBO show. It’s as though the BBC has a policy of ‘no comment’ in this respect.
For those who haven’t seen it, Jack Dee plays an affluent, grumpy, misanthropic comedian (Rick Spleen). The show focuses on his domestic life and the embarrassing social situations he engineers for himself through a curmudgeonly and conceited attitude towards others. His best friend is his manager (an American). His long suffering wife is attractive and has a more human touch with the subjects of Rick’s scorn. It’s filmed in a semi-documentary style with no laughter track. Sound familiar?
Maybe I’m taking this a bit personally, but why didn’t the BBC (for the brief time that they had it) give Curb a proper billing instead of burying it on BBC4? And why do we now have to endure this inferior remake of a classic?
I am a massive fan of The Wire. It’s completely out there on its own. I can’t think of anything else that really compares to it. Hollywood is dead but who cares when we’re living in televisual golden age? People often talk about ‘realism’ when discussing the Wire. Is it realistic? I have no idea. It certainly seems plausible enough. I do know that’s it’s excellent entertainment that treats the audience as though they were grown-ups with the ability to think for themselves. At this juncture, that alone is enough. So just briefly, here are some of the reasons why it’s great:
Character. Characters in The Wire are rounded. They surprise you and are allowed to develop as a season progresses. Even the supposedly ‘good police’ have their flaws. Gay and lesbian characters are realistically portrayed. The writing at times does not shy away from making the characters act in a vile or ethically dubious fashion. There are also loads of them too. I can’t help thinking that you could make whole spin-off shows just on the exploits of relatively minor characters here.
Pace. The Wire is not afraid to take its time. It’ll lead you down dead ends where the audience know that the police are pursuing the wrong line of inquiry (incidentally many of the police are stupid, lazy and despicable). Scenes are allowed to play out for as long as it takes and there is much more than just a sense of necessary information being conveyed. It can drift off into the whimsical or even the banal at times. There is no music except for what is heard on car stereos, in bars etc. and as a result we’re spared the little aural signifiers of drama used to manipulate our emotions and guide us through the complexity.
Acting. Performances are uniformly excellent. For a show with such an intricate and complex plot, the characters very rarely look like they’re just trying to remember their lines. In particular I’d single out Chris Bauer as Frank Sobotka in season two. As a Polish-American longshoreman’s union boss torn between loyalties to family, the union and the temptation to skim a little off the top, Bauer gives a brilliant performance with just about as much intensity as I’ve seen on screen anywhere in any format. When the rest of the TV land catches up with this show, performances like this will no longer go unacknowledged.
Moral ambiguity. The Baltimore of this show, right from the lowest gangster errand boy in the projects, to the movers and shakers at the highest echelons of power, consists not simply of bad guys and good guys. Rather it’s all shades of gray in web of human intrigue. This simple fact, may well be the shows greatest strength of all.
Writing. Okay maybe everything above comes under this heading to some extent, but when watching this show I frequently find myself marveling at the brilliance of the writing. A cop drama show with half of the ideas here, and half of the characters, would still be worth watching. Quite simply it spoils us with its depth and breadth.
Joe bought the new Jeffrey Lewis record the other week. It’s Jeffrey Lewis doing cover versions of twelve Crass songs. Crass were an English anarchist punk rock band that formed in 1977. Liking the album we decided to track down the original Crass versions of the songs. Crass were a riduculuos band. Their songs consist of leftist rants in a six-form poetry style. While other punk acts merely postured, Crass were the real deal: angry young men (and women) sticking it to the man, taking on the establishment. They were angry about absolutely everything in an endearingly juvenile way.
Jeffrey Lewis makes the tracks into something altogether more palatable and updates some of the lyrics for a contemporary audience. My favourite changes being on the lyrics to ‘I aint thick, it’s just a trick’:
Standards and values on the living room screen, Sarah Jessie Parker acting mean. She’s got it all that’s what they want you to think but if you read between the lines you’ll see the missing link. She’s just a puppet in their indoctrination plan – be link me girls and become a real man. Live to the full, always act flash. Don’t use your brains when you’re body makes a splash.
I think this album maybe a modern classic, or at the very least a highly recommended curiosity.