Archive

Journal

 

Web 2 Point Shit

 

A Genital Reminder

 

 

Kids in America

 

Witness the Fitness

 

Ride, Rise, Roar

David Byrne is my favourite polymath.

If he wasn’t so magnanimous with his own prodigious talents, you could argue that they were undemocratically placed, as they are, wrapped around and in between one human being called David. This is a documentary about his last tour, which I was lucky enough to attend on three occasions; like the other fella with white hair, he doesn’t come around everyday, best make hay, hey?

The tour featured dancers, more Swan Lake than Go-Go, at points they darted across the stage on office chairs. Shhhhhsometimes I do this when everyone has gone home. I recommed it as a tonic.

You can view the tralier here http://www.rideriseroar.com/

 

Ol' Dirty Winehouse

There are many things I find endearing and alluring about our cousins from across the English Channel. A sense of style, the accent, Mai 68, the wine, the food (i could go on): yet all of these talents are superseded by their nations inbuilt & glorious nonchalance (itself a word of French origin).  It is in this spirit that I’d like to talk about Wine.  This is a case of plonk shipped to a load of plonkers. 

That’s one and a half million cases and a pair of American plonkers.  

Ernest & Julio Gallo is the largest family owned winery in America, started by a pair of enterprising young brothers (white grape) soon after the repeal of Prohibition (just wrong) in 1933. They are not squeaky clean but they sure know a profit when they see one. It would, however, seem that they couldn’t smell a con if it was right under their noses.  The favourite movie of middle class alcoholics  ‘Sideways’ had ensure that the Pino Noir grape would be a good bet for a ‘tipping point’ triumph.  As the films metaphoric usage suggests: it’s very rare, it’s not easy and there’s never a surplus, only the deserving will end up sniffing the Championship bouquet. Only the duped will fall for a fake.

 

Entre Monsieur Claude Courset, filthy rich, head of Ducasse Wine and recent recipient of a six month suspended jail sentence and a 45,000 Euro fine. It was his idea to repackage eighteen million bottles of wine label them as Pino Noir and export it to E&J Gallo for resale at a huge profit. It wasn’t the American consumer that noticed first, nor E&J Gallo: it was the French inspectors amazed at just how much of the troublesome grape had grown and made it to market. It hadn’t.

One of the accused told the local news ‘At those prices, we would of put Yoplait on the label if they had asked us’.

C’est Bon.

 

It's Got Legs

 

J Dilla Doc. Pts. 1&2

 

You is Leakin' & Sheeeet

 

Die Antwoord, hmmm

 

Not for Prophet

Jacques Audiard new movie ‘A Prophet’ is dope.

There’s nothing like adversity to put hairs on your chest and, for lead character Malik, getting locked up is the just beginning in a long line of challenges and opportunities. Part of the Arabic underclass he is forced into a dead end situation by a Mafia Don: his options for survival are wretched and cutthroat.

There’s killers, there’s players, there’s dealer and him.

Yet this is situation he thrives in, gradually turning it to his advantage as the film unravels, displaying a streetwise guile that makes Machiavelli’s politics look like child’s play. Scarface should watch out: there’s a new knife in town and he's smiling.

 

 

FIT

 

Guantanamo Decorators

 

Tails of Two Cities

 

 

It’s an unfortunate time of year for our four-legged friends. Old adages ring true as dogs homes experience a sudden influx as January plummets from Decembers asshole. One story caught my eye a couple of weeks back. It highlighted social differences between metropolitan cities on both sides of the Atlantic, differences that are linked by our dear friend Rover. In a very perverse and nonsensicle way, it makes me glad I'm British.

 

Over in sunny California, the Chihuahua is having a rough time of it. The skinny little dog made popular by another skinny little dog, Paris Hilton, is the areas most unwanted pooch. In the bay area alone, around 300 are handed in unwanted each month, this is, like totally topped by LA, with a staggering 400 Chihuahuas forming an orderly cue in a distinctly doggy style death row. As with most fashions, these dogs soon fell foul of new trends: smaller handbags offered no space for pint-sized pooches.

 

Closer to home, it’s The Staff that saturates the kennels of England. These dogs stand for an all-together different type of glamour yet feed on a similar need for status. A walk around the Battersea Dogs Home website will tell you all you need to know about the epidemic rise of Staffs and Pit-bull crossbreeds in the UK. Scrolling through the web pages of unwanted dogs is heartbreaking stuff, puppy love turned into doggy divorce very quickly and these mutts didn’t have a lot to say in the matter, never mind a lawyer.

Both breeds represent female and male trends in ownership linked by a common need for status in their respective societies. In these instances the dog is an accessory for fashion or fear and not four-legged kinship.

 

Oof.

 

 

 

Good Ol' Jan

 

This One's 4U Mr. D. Cameron

 

Quote of the Day

‘I do admit to having a chronic inferiority complex but I’m willing to wager mine is better than anyone else’s’

Arthur Koestler

 

Outsider Art

I went to the Museum of Everything at the weekend and had a very good time indeed.

The aptly titled exhibition No. 1 is full on feast of folk art from around this place we call Earth. The works on show come from a variety of artists, take a variety of forms with the commonality being all practitioners exist outside of the commercial art market and mainstream society. This is Art intrinsically free from a need to conform and this is where its beauty glows with an unpatrolled vibrancy. It ranges from the fairytale to the religious and the macabre to the life affirming.

The gallery itself is a disused dairy in Primrose Hill and I'm hard pushed to think of a more charming place to visit to inspire creativity. You can find more details by clicking here: http://www.museumofeverything.com

 

Orson Welles Pissed

 

 

Insider Art

“OK. Hands up. Look, I know I embezzled a shit load of cash, assaulted more than a few people, did murdered, did the bunk, went on the lamb leaving a trail of destruction (that we don’t need to go into) before getting a 5 stretch but in this godforsaken gaol, BUT I really, and I mean REALLY, need that Winsor & Newton Artisan Oil in Cerulean Blue Hue before I stab this slag with a handmade paperclip shank; my solo show at Haunch of Venison opens next week. You cunt”

I recently brought some prison art and viewing it throws up some difficult questions and I reckon that’s one of its strongest points. Looking at a challenging painting completed behind bars, by an inmate serving time for a crime (for which you remain unaware of its severity) offers many of the same emotions as looking at a piece by the Chapman Brothers; you often question the state of the artist first before examining what they’re trying to say. By its very existence, prison art fits the shock doctrine so famously manipulated by some of the most successful YBA’s.

 

Our increasing fascination with the inappropriate & macabre stems from a number of places, at one end of the spectrum, the wholesale abolition of the concept of Hell in the 1960s (the invention of the Pill and its resulting choices for Roman Catholic women saw to this) afforded a new light on an old subject and at the other, throwaway nihilistic popular culture. Or just maybe ‘skulls just look rad!’ who knows?

 

The emotional interior landscape of prisoners is not addressed by back to work schemes and first and foremost, these programmes offer individual, and moreover, peaceful expression and an all important sense of identity in an often hostile name and number environment. Participating prisoners talk in overwhelming positives, from something good to discuss with their families to good ole fashioned hope.

The Koestler Trust was set up in 1962 to help prisoners find a voice and its first public show was held in Foyles Bookshop on the Charring Cross Road, the winner received a cash prize paid for by its founder, writer and thinker, Arthur Koestler.

 Arthur Koestler was no stranger to controversy himself. He had been imprisoned a number of times, firstly at the behest of El Bastardo Franco and secondly by the French for subversive activities at the start of WWII (from which the UK secured his release only to lock him up as an illegal immigrant when he arrived in the UK, doh).

He tirelessly campaigned for an end to capital punishment. Riddled with both Parkinson’s and Leukaemia took his own life in a suicide pact with his healthy wife in 1983. His is an interesting story, no-diggidy, no-doubt.

 

An exhibition on Prison Art is on at the Royal Festival Hall until December 3^rd.

 More reading:

http://www.koestlertrust.org.uk/homeAK.html

 

Fish Tank the Musical

 

 

The T-Cell Chronicles

During the process of this thing called grief, I have been forwarded similar points of interest by some caring people. Few have invoked the reaction in me that Hanah Mackeys blog has. Her man and father to her children, Paul Stevenson, was diagnosed T-cell Lymphoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer. Hannah decided to keep a record of it, on line and in full view and in total honesty. It’s the very opposite of a lugubrious state of mind and so unswervingly brave it'll put hairs on your chest.

Paul took pinky to keys for the last post and this serves as not only a reminder of him but also an offering of hope to people in similar situations. In cases such as this, technology can be such an enabler of human spirit and as an intrinsic luddite, for once I salute its bandwith desires.

You can view it here http://t-cellchronicles.blogspot.com/

Hannah is the Don, Capice?

 

Things That Keep Me Amused

#2 Biggie Space

 

If the first verse of a record opens with the line 'If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe' you know you're in for a fun time.

If you then find out Stephen Hawkins does a guest rap, you may well get a boner or a wide-on, indeed. If both of these facts turn out to be true and you subsequently find out that Jack White is releasing it on a limited edition 7inch single; you'll be as happily confused as I am.

God bless America and Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawkins.

 

Labour Intensive

 

BIG FISH / BILLY OCEAN

 

The waters off Kenya’s gold coast are undergoing a flourishing transformation.

The seas are stuffed to the gills and the indigenous fishing industry is making hay. Regular £200 catches in an area where the average earning is a meagre £5 makes local people very happy. Shooting fish in a barrel is not what the fishermen said but what I thought of writing here.

The Chinese and Japanese super-trawlers are scared of the Somalian Pirates that command the high seas around that neck of the woods. They have altered their routings accordingly.

This offers indisputable proof that it’s environmentally friendly to become a Pirate.

Pieces of Eight Mo’ Feckers, Pieces of Eight.

 

Ed Ruscha

I have been a fan of Mr. Ruscha since my friend Richard Hogg mentioned I should check him out a few years back. The current retrospective on London’s South Bank is the first time I’ve seen a solo show of his work and it's pretty darn special.

Part draftsman, part social commentator, all American boy; it’s this mix of attributes that make him one of the great post war Artists. His growth as an artist often mirrored the growth of the fledgling ‘mad-men’ USA advertising industry. For me, his reclassification of these graphic images holds a different resonance in our current financial predicament. Exposure to the wholesale-retail of The American Dream ™ and its corresponding use of language and billboards must have been a very new phenomenon, its effect on social behaviour unknown or ill considered. His training as draftsman for Walt Disney could hardly have been more perfect for the subversion to come.

 

His work is playful and inspiring and when viewed together, gobsmacking.

 

On at the Hayward now until Jan 10.

 

Shock and Awe Patchwork Inc

 

'I COULD TELL YOU BUT YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE DESTROYED BY ME' is not a self-help book.

 

It is a book on the Uber-Handycrafts of the USA Army and its iconography. These decorative military uniform badges offer a valuable insight into the CIA's finest needle work and 'black opps'. As you would imagine, these missions are cloaked in a secrecy and not friends with Area 51 on facebook, but we do know they command a $27 billion dollar budget, each and every callender year. 27 Billion and good ole Dick Nixon's not even in office.

Big budget weapons, Massive Cigars, Clandestine Operations and Brilliant Strap-lines. It's just like the X-Factor!

 

Hell, Yes!

Is it a Gallery?

Is it a stack of speakers?

Nope; it's a dope factory.

I caught the excellent Emory Douglas retrospective; he was the creative force behind The Black Panthers. Strong imagery conveying powerful messages, square in the face of a repressive regime. Good job, well done.

 

The New Museum, Manhattans lower east side on Bowery. Cracking gift shop too.

 

Things that keep me amused:

Number 1: P.I.N. Face

 

P.I.N Face is a new affliction and one that only strikes shop assistants and cashiers and, rather alarmingly, it seems to have varying degrees of potency solely dependent on the value of the current transaction. P.I.N face is the moment that the shop assistant demonstratively ‘looks away’ whilst you enter you P.I.N code.

 

From experience, a small transaction in a local shop does not require the same amount ‘I will never steel from your account brother’ neck gesturing as a organic deli does. JD sports induces a ‘what’evs mate’ motion. My worse / best P.I.N face is that of the boutique clothes shop 'I’m actually an actor (or model slash actress) and I’ve served people considerably richer than you, regularly’ assistant. I have developed a strategy for maximum pleasure in these consumerist times, as they pass you the handheld terminal, mentally insult her (quite personally) and watch in delight as the aforementioned snobbish look is buggered beyond belief.

 

Idi Amin: C*nt, funny C*nt

 

I do not want to encourage tyrannical behaviour of any sort. If you’re sitting reading this thinking of becoming, you know, a dictator, don’t bother: nothing good will come of it.  Ladies and Gentlemen, Idi Amin who was described by one of the white British ruling classes as ‘a splendid type and a good rugger player but virtually bone from the neck up and needs things explained in words of one letter’.

 

One word runs concurrent throughout our nations descriptions of past dictators and that word is Bastard. Often prefixed with Evil, Cruel or Heinous but rarely has Cheeky fit the bill. Short on empathy but long on brutality, Idi had an individual and equally incendiary way of dealing with the pomposities of the British Empire and it’s this ‘fuck you’ attitude to colonialism that’s worth retelling. Upon hearing of Lord Snowdon’s divorce from Princess Anne in 1975, Cheeky Idi* sent a telegram announcing that his ‘experience will be a lesson to all of us men to be careful not to marry ladies in higher positions’. During the quagmire that was British life of the 1970’s Cheeky Idi organised an appeal to help the 3 day week sovereignty through the crisis, he personally donated 10,000 Uganda shillings and organised one whole lorry load of vegetables and wheat which he ordered Prime Minister Ted Heath to collect by aircraft before it went bad. He called the Queen ‘dear Liz’ and held the British upper class in high contempt. NB: Scotsmen personally trained him.

 

 *Cheeky Idi murdered 300,000 innocent people

Notation from Francis Wheen’s fantastic new book ‘Strange Days Indeed’

 

SUM

 

Neuroscientist in mind altering book non-shocker.

Science has taught us many things about life, many things about our beginning and many things about our demise. It hasn’t, however, shed any light on what happens when we pop-off this mortal coil. This perfectly formed book by writer and David Eagleman offers 40 insights as to what may or may not happen.

Written with such a humanistic approach to science fiction Kurt Vonnegut is very probably dancing the fandango in his grave as I type. The clarity of vision and wit contained within its 110 pages stopped me, stone cold, in my tracks on several occasions. By way of example, in one chapter ‘Metamorphosis’ he supposes that there are 3 deaths, one where the body ceases to function, the second when your body is consigned to the grave, the third and time when we truly die, is that moment your name is spoken for the last time. The irony of this place is that many people never meet their loved ones again as they we’re the only ones remembering their name.

Think about that.

Freaky Deaky

 

Fish Tank

 

 

Don't watch that: watch this.

Fish Tank is the story of Essex girl Mia and her tres potent teenage rage. Mia head-butts a butters member of an s-tate Girls Aloud in the opening scene and it get’s rougher and tougher from there on in. The dialogue is brutal and the soundtrack is on the money: there’s even a close up of the excellent Soul Jazz compilation ‘An England Story’ so the hard of hearing know it’s a banger.

It's one of the best films I've seen for an age. It's Kes for southerners.

Yes, it's that good. 

 

I'm Not Making This Up

Let’s hear it for Das Racists!

 If, like me, you’ve been bored shitless with racism, sorry, hip-hops recent offerings, you’ll be encouraged by the arrival of Das Racist. It’s sounds inventive and the lyrics are both intelligent and stoopid, daft and punky and the production doesn’t give a flying feck for tradition. The ensemble is partly staffed by Victor from Crooklyn’s premier ironic party vendors ‘Boy Crisis’ and I was fortunate to make his acquaintance on one of their visits London in spring of last year. I took them on a walk though one of the Queens very own parks and was absolutely amused as Victor and band mate Tall (no shit, the smallest member of the group) tried in vain to fuck catch a Swan on the Serpentine.

Beastiality means nothing to Das Racists; it’s just a walk in the park.

www.myspace.com/dasracist

 

---

 

 

A Fever Called Swine.

 

Sex and drugs and sausage rolls is all my brain and body needs.

Often overlooked for an overrated pork pie, the Disputed Champion of the Savouries isn’t to be fucked with lightly and I’m currently pushing for some sort of Sausage Roll kite mark to avoid your disappointment. It’s sad to say but in undertaking the commitment to produce the prefect Sausage Roll all but the brave fall in its shadow.

How hard can it be? I hear you ask.

Let me talk to you about the troubles.  

It’s warfare out there. A lot of people don’t agree with the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘tasty’ and there’s more than a few conscientious objectors. Fucking Vegetarians. They are not freedom fighters. They’re just uninformed. Although clearly clever: the merger with the Health Brigade was a master-stroke and has all but destroyed the Pork Rebel Alliance (PRA or The Real PRA). For many dark years this level of outright devotion and commitment to cause has been some underground business. I’m talking to you now from a secret room in the attic of the attic in the Anne Frank museum. Oh the meaty irony.

This battle and its resulting blockades have forced a stranglehold and pushed the majority of guerrillas’ underground. Dissenters wander arid cityscapes in search of a vendor to call the Supreme Being: a human so divine that serving religions sullied mammal on a daily basis actually perks-up their supremacy, one banger at a time.  In my lifetime, the black market has never had such piety.

Many ‘manufactures’ (for craftsmen they are not) in today’s market take the refrigerated and regurgitated route. Others pay no attention to form, both skimp on the sausage. Or worse still: get absurd with the pastry. Clue is in the title dickwads: Sausage Roll.  Greggs isn’t the only villain on the high st. and Tamiflu is rendered impotent by the severity of this swine crime.

GREGGS FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY: GIVE IT UP!

Sure, we had a few dwrunken Saturday afternoons together but I knew you were a bit of a chief back then. I was just using you. Now you’re just making a fool out of both of us. Times have changed mate. Fix up or forget about it.

Rest assured that this is no class-war; I’m pleased to tell you that the bouji-butcher also makes mistakes. More often that not, showing out with sausage so rich suckers salivate.  This upper middle class affectation does not float my yacht, yah.

I believe that sausage rolls represent a stolen moment and therefore should not be viewed as breakfast, lunch or dinner. It would serve many well to remember that the king of snacks will not be confined by convention. To this end the champions’ sausage roll should be snack sized, by my measurements this is 90 x 70mm, with pastry crusty and approximately 2mm thick. This form doesn’t fill you up, leaves you satisfied able to eat lunch ('what sausage roll Miss?') and most importantly, leaves room for another if you really feed the need.  I'm writing this in Barca and my stomach is suddenly well-homesick for West London.

My sausage roll Nirvana is, rather handily, on my route to work and postal coordinates W11 2JA. Denying myself the pleasure of a daily dose has become one of the unexpected joys of my adult life. It also makes Friday mornings a monumental celebratory experience. Mr. Christians on Blenheim Crescent just off London’s Portobello Road is a place built by food lovers for food lovers. And tourists. Less deli and more de-lightful these fuckers know how to get down with the swine, the slightest seasoning and the pastry.

At this juncture I had planned to produce a top ten and map of where to find them but that’s just a ludicrous waste of both of our time. As my girlfriend recently noted ‘It’s just a sausage roll Austin’. Suffice to say places that deserve your tummy love include many of the nations on-site farm stores (Grasmere Farm in Market Deeping, I salute you), if you’re very hungry the Ginger Pig in Borough market, Waitrose’s bouji version excursion and of course Mr. Christians.

But be warned if there’s only one left, I will fight you for it.

TONY SAPRANNO

If any of you have a vendor contender, let me know where and I’ll post the info once I’ve verified its authenticity.

 

Dan the Don

It’s not every day that an album this grand comes along but that day was 10^th February 2009.  It has not left my car, home stereo or cortical hemispheres ever since.  

This is an album in its truest sense: a collection of songs that hang together like heartfelt and connected emotions on life’s sinuous road, eternally embodying more than the sum of their singular elements. As a songwriter he asks questions and demands answers, never over complicating with metaphor he sets new standards in straight talking and manages to sound effortlessly comfortable, tender, aggressive, lost and assertive over the course of two verses and one chorus. Over the course of 14 songs: you’ve walked a lifetime in heartaches cowboy boots.

Murder ballads for the broken man, a Heist record for the G’s, delicate midnight lullabies for those lovely ladies out there and stone cold classics for all and sundry. In this town called Auerbach subterranean blues guitars skank their way over drum patterns rock-steady and sure-fire. Dan’s a white man for the sole reason of the skin he’s in as this music is raw and tender like Andre Williams fighting Screamin’ Jay Hawkins in a downtown sushi restaurant. Rest assured: he is one of the songwriters of our generation.

The album already had me firmly by the balls and then I saw the live show. Fuck me. Dan Auerbach and the Fast Five play like a bunch of desperado gangsters and look like, erm, a bunch of desperado gangsters. If the Reservoir Dogs movie had house band, they’d no doubt be it. The Furious Five are in fact ‘Hacienda’: a family band from San Antonio, Texas whom I was lucky enough to see them perform at SXSW in Texas in 2004. Rene Villanuva looks like John Leguizamo (Tybalt Capulet) and plays bass like a vexed wasp, all action and meaning, his weapon strapped short just in case he’s got to plant a quick right hook. The rhythm section bangs, hard.

It’s only fair to end on Dan, he clearly means it when he’s up there and it clearly means everything to him, there wasn’t a guy that wasn’t impressed and engaged or a lady in that audience that wouldn’t of capitulated in his gaze that night.

 

Like I said: Dan the Monster Don.

 

http://www.myspace.com/danauerbachmusic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXrj6Ch5n5E&feature=related