Bookwatch

It appears that 1989 was a good year for books.

Get Knotted

Too hot to blog. Too hot to do anything.

Still enjoying the football, but haven't got the energy to do the spielworks. I know this much. Strachan can be linked to every half decent player in the Euro- Championship between now and the end of the tournament, but I bet come August he won't be linked to Boruc. The bloke's was immense against Austria, and he'll get the offers flooding. I'll be very surprised if Celtic are able to hold onto him.

Summertime in New York City. No wonder people get raged up. When it's this hot, you just want to keep out of other people's way. My way of doing the body swerve is by never having my head less than three feet away from a air conditioner at one time. That's how you avoid those who are only too happy to blow a gasket at the slightest provocation.

Image via here.

Z!z!Z!z!Z!z!

"It doesn't seem right, manifestly unfair, but apparently David James . . . ."

FFS, reading last night's post is a bit of eye-opener. It reads as if I was typing (and thinking) in a drunken state.

I must try this new thing that everyone is going on about. I understand that it's very popular amongst the very young and Boston Terriers.

The Faking of Pelham One Two Three

On the first Wednesday in the month, this much I pretend to know

Livingston's only deadhead is roaming around Kerala. My sitemeter has informed me of this fact.

Denise Mina's latest novel, The Last Breath, was reviewed recently over at Huffington Post. I can call it 'The Last Breath' rather than 'Slip Of the Knife' (its American title) because Kara and myself are such Mina devotees that we got the book on import when it was originally released in Britain.
"Released?" Paddy Meehan noir is the new rock'n'roll. You will only read that bold statement here.

JC over at Vinyl Villain music blog has finally resumed his 45 45s at 45 series. He's been holding out for a few weeks but he's now down to his top ten.
In at number ten is Friends Again's 'Sunkissed'. Nice enough record but I of course don't have the same sort of back story as JC for reasons to truly love this song. I best know Friends Again for James Grant, and his follow up band, Love and Money.

There's a bastard load of monster trucks and trailers in the neighbourhood at the moment, as self-important people with loud voices and flourescent bibs are currently doing a bit of filming in the area over the next few days. For reasons I can't quite fathom - outside of the sound of the 'kerching' at a cash till - Hollywood has decided to do another remake of the classic 'The Taking of Pelham One Two Three'. And let's not bullshit here: the 1974 film was a bona fide classic.
The remake is being directed by Tony Scott, and will star Denzel Washington in the original Walter Matthau role and John Travolta will step into the late Robert Shaw's shoes as Ryder. I bet it will be shite. I'll go further than that. Sylvester Stallone miscast as Jack Carter will come to be seen as inspirational film making by comparison.

"Mel Gibson? He can't be in another film, I'm sure I saw him get his head chopped off in Braveheart." The Man who fell to sleep has still got it.

According to the iTunes recently played list on the computer, The Sparks track, 'Here in Heaven', is track 180. OK, fair enough. Kimono My House is a fine album.

So it looks like Barack Obama has finally secured the Presidential nomination for the Democratic Party. Speculation is now rife on whether or not Hillary Clinton will get to be his running mate.
One cynic has suggested that Barack will opt for Hillary for not only her very obvious political qualities, but because it will also be the best guarantee against any possible assassination attempt against himself.

If you skush some Ajax antibacterial orange scented washing liquid into hot water, it smells like Irn Bru. If you try and drink it, it tastes more like Orange Fanta.

It's taken me 24 years to reach a definitive position but I've finally decided that my favourite Police single was the one that was written by Stewart Copeland.

I was only saying to Kara the other week that I would like to read more British novels that are set in Thatcher's Britain or are contemporaneous of that period. I had this particular epiphany whilst watching the opening titles of Starter For Ten, and realising that, whilst the film itself is rather mediocre, I bet that the novel it is based on is so much better.
If nothing else, it has given me an excuse to hunt down the old Adrian Mole books from the 80s.

People can scoff all they bloody want, but Sue Townsend's books were amongst the handful of books that I actually got round to reading during that lost decade. It was through those books that I first heard of Tressell's 'Ragged Trousered Philanthropists', Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' and the Norwegian Leather Industry.

It seems to like another world to think that the author of the best selling new novel of the eighties was an unreconstructed Bevanite, and that one of the best loved fictional characters from that period was a curmudgeonly communist by the name of Bert Baxter.

A few weeks back I was going to spew out a ranty post about Ann McElvoy's recent Radio 4 programme, The Jam Generation, where assorted political hacks such as Cameron, Milliband, Osborne, Clegg, Cooper and Purnell congratulated themselves on being so different from past political generations. All this was going on whilst the music of The Jam was being played in the background, 'cos - sit tight - they were all of an age when The Jam were the biggest band in Britain. Geddit? Some of the preening numpties were even referring to themselves as 'The Jam Generation' whilst being interviewed. You couldn't make this shit up.
I'm glad I said nowt at the time 'cos I'm quickly cottoning onto the fact that it's not them who is out of step, it's me. First Weller gets interviewed in the Torygraph and now it's John Lydon who's getting the Torygraph treatment.

Will Rubbish was kind enough to pass on the link and, he's right, it's a good interview, but what the hell next: free GG Allin CDs given away with the Mail on Sunday? It don't seem right.

Mark Hughes has joined Man City? Sparky has gone down in my estimation by about 750%. I hope he fucking chokes on Thaksin's dirty money.

He may not get elected to the Michigan's state board of education, but I bet socialist/green party candidate candidate, Dwain C Reynolds III, has the fanciest smanciest website of all the candidates standing for office. There may be a few too many flashing lights and whistles on his website for my liking, but I was impressed that a candidate from a minor political party could come up with something so professional looking.

Over at his MySpace page, Attila the Stockbroker has blogged his ten favourite Half Man Half Biscuit songs. His number seven, 'Dead Men Don't Need Season Tickets', is a lost classic, but I would have also included '24 Hour Garage People' and 'National Shite Day' in my HMHB top ten.

As part of its forthcoming European Championship football coverage, ESPN has this past week been broadcasting highlights of previous European Championship finals. (To clarify: the actual finals themselves.)
I absentmindedly forgot to watch the 1984 final between the great French team and Spain, and kicked myself black and blue when I discovered my foolishness but I have been able to check out the finals from 1980, 1988, 1992 and 1996 so far.

Do you want to read something heretical, and I don't care if it does cause a coronary in old Utrecht.

Everybody (understandably) bangs on about that Van Basten goal when they refer to the '88 final. The perfectly controlled volley from an impossible angle . . . a stunned Dasayev stumbling back in astonishment as he's the last person in the stadium to realise that the ball is in the back of the net . . . and that look of unalloyed joy on the face of Rinus Michels when he knows that the trophy has gone Dutch, but it has to be stated for the record that the game itself was one of the most piss-poor games of football I've ever had the misfortune to sit through.

It was nothing more than ninety minutes of pedestrian play by blokes sporting perms, with the ball ricocheting around the pitch as each outfield player took it in turn to either miscontrol the ball or overhit a pass. For the life of me, I can't understand how people can make a just comparison between the '88 team with those brilliant Dutch national sides from the 70s.

As an antidote to that disappointment, tonight I thoroughly enjoyed watching the highlights of the '96 final between the Czech Republic and Germany. The Czech Republic were a fine side, and on another day they would have deservedly won the title. I really had forgot how good Karel Poborský was back in the day. I guess if you were going to sport that hairstyle in '96, you had to be the dogs bollocks to back it up.

Finally got round to seeing Juno the other week. I had similar feelings towards it to what I had towards the last 'indie' film to generate the Oscar baubles, Little Miss Sunshine: it's good, but not as good as I was expecting. Saying that, I liked both the skewed happy ending and the Sonic Youth line.

Stumbled across the Irish songwriter Mike Cleare recently, who hides behind the monicker of My Brother Woody.
Excellent stuff. Think Luke Haines with a girlfriend, a Beach Boys fixation and a prozac prescription.

I really must get the links thing sorted. It's got beyond a joke. Apart from anything else, I bet Volty over at Shiraz Socialist thinks I'm cyber-stalking him because he's getting so many hits from Brooklyn. 'fraid the truth is more prosaic than that: I just happening to be using blogroll whilst my one has gone awol.
Because of my procrastination, even Morph is quickly losing patience with my present predicament. He wants to give me the finger in this latest pic but Aardman animators won't supply him with the necessary fingers for the full effect. Thank you Nick Park. You're a gent, and I'll get that blogroll sorted.

11 13 15 17 comments! Blog life imitating art.

Back to Gregory's Girl:

"You read it, don't you? I've never seen you turn your nose up at anything I've made. Hours and hours I've spent writing you lovely, lovely things. And all it means to you in the end is 11 13 15 17 comments over a random film poster?"

Charlotte Street, I won't read your poetry

Did anybody ever work who Timid Maximalist was? I had my suspicions . . . . but I believe they were found to be false.

Just asking like because I do still gets referrals to the blog via the ever so quiet TM. The link to the now defunct Charlotte Street should have been the giveaway. Who do I know who likes Lloyd Cole and the Commotions?

What about Memes, Mac or Mc?

A book meme - I guess - that I shamelessly nicked from Normski over at Normblog. It "involves going through the alphabet and picking, for each letter, a novelist and one of his or her novels that you've read."

It's a personal bugbear of mine that I'm not reading as much as I once did. No excuses at my end. Just the realisation that I can feel the brain cells bailing out of my left ear each and every day I get further and further away from picking a book off a bookshelf . . . any book . . . any bookshelf.

Allen, Walter All in a lifetime

Barker, Pat - The Eye in the Door

Carr, JL - A Month in the Country

Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Notes from Underground

Ellroy, James - Brown's Requiem

Friel, George - Mr Alfred M.A.

Greene, Graham - Brighton Rock

Hamilton, Patrick - The Slaves of Solitude

Irving, John - The World According to Garp

Jones, Lewis - Cwmardy

Kundera, Milan - The Joke

Legge, Gordon - I Love Me (Who Do You Love?)

Mina, Denise - Garnethill

Nasrin, Taslima - Shame

Orwell, George - A Clergyman's Daughter

Piercy, Marge - Vida

Q - pass

Rankin, Ian - Black and Blue

Serge, Victor - The Case of Comrade Tulayev

Tressell, Robert - The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Upward, Edward - The Rotten Elements

Vonnegut, Kurt - Slaughterhouse-Five

Williams, Nigel - Star Turn

X - pass

Yourcenar, Marguerite - A Coin in Nine Hands

Zamyatin, Yevgeny - We

A bit of an obvious list, though some of the usual suspects are temporarily missing. I can honestly say that I enjoyed reading all the books listed, though Edward Upward's novel was probably a bit of a struggle at the time.

Not so much for the novel itself, but for its painful honesty. To be in the same Party branch as Alan Sebrill (Edward Upward's fictionalised self) would have been my idea of hell.

With regards to the gaps in my alphabet, I get not reading an author with the surname beginning with X, but Q? I'll have to look out in future for an author to fill that particular gap. A David Quantick novella will suffice.

Do people still tag people when doing these memes, or was it finally rumbled years ago that memes are just a ruse to compel people who otherwise wouldn't be caught dead looking at your blog to have to give you the blogging time of day? I think I'll have to test that hypothesis out.

Kara; Cactus Mouth Informer's Highlander; FDTW's Stuart W; The Scottish Patient's Kevin W; Richard Curmudgeon; & Snappy Kat have been duly tagged.

Take your time comrades . . . I'm just finishing the start of this book in my hand.

An Inconvenient Truth for Al Gore

Further to this recent post, it turns out I was wrong for wallowing in self-deprecation. I did burst through the red tape a few months back.

The self-deprecation can't take a back seat for a change. Self-aggrandisement can climb in for a bumpy ride. Al Gore's got nothing on me.

As you were.

Message From The Troubled Centre

Note to self: Need more posts relating to politics. Links, notices of meetings, YouTube clips, cut and paste, politicians kissing babies, etc etc. Doesn't matter. Get it sorted. Where's Rob and Piers MySpace bulletins when you need them? Have I got a random pic - and meaningless post title - in place for when Bulletin 43 drops in my inbox?

Further note to self: ask Kara if I should be using colons or semi-colons.

A Reminder To MySelf

Don't take blogging too seriously. It's a dumping ground.

No post can be too short.

No post can be too long.

Beg, borrow or recycle but always provide a hat tip where necessary.

Only one YouTube on the main page at any one time.

Not enough posts about New York.

Not enough posts about US politics.

Not enough posts about Gordon Legge.

The more obscure and self-indulgent the joke, the funnier it is.

I seem to be slacking on the 'here, have my music taste shoved down your throat' type posts. Must up the ante.

Half-Time Orange Slice

Just struck me.

At Hampden tonight, Scotland drew with a Croatian team who had previously beaten England both home and away. Over in Paris tonight England lost to a French team that had previously lost home and away to Scotland.

That (kind of) conclusively proves that Scotland are better than England. At a push, they could even be termed unofficial World Champions. And it also explain why England continue to refuse to revive the British Home Championships. Too much face to lose. It's all falling into place.

Political Undertones

How does someone go from checking out this photo on the blog to wondering about John Peel, his festive fifty and one of the best singles of all time? And all from a keyboard in New Delhi to boot.

Mmm, "to boot" . . . makes sense: search for photo of fascist nutjob who just happened to be a fine footie player - that goal against Wimbledon, sigh - on the net brings thoughts of footie hoolies which sparks off memories of bootboys, which makes one think of teenage kicks. It rubs off one me 'cos I head straight to iTunes to check out some classic Auteurs.

The tea should have masked by now.