Sticky Post

Filed under: Entertainment

All fireworks customers must turn right

I am stunned, shocked, at the video at the bottom of this blog entry about firework packaging. You need to scroll to the bottom of the page to see it. It’s a movie of the road leading up to two competing fireworks sellers, which the writer calls The Gauntlet.

via Daring Fireball

Filed under: Entertainment

Bernie, the bolt

Renowned liberal leftie Bernie Ecclestone has said some unbelievably crass things in his time, but his latest interview in The Times will take some beating.

Some highlights:

“Politicians are too worried about elections. We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein, he was the only one who could control that country.”

“In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people able to get things done.”

“If it were possible, I would love to have a good lady race driver and preferably black and Jewish but they might take maternity leave.”

Filed under: Entertainment

Records what I have bought recently of late

Alan Jackson – Good Time. Haven’t really been through this in detail, but it’s a fairly standard set from Jackson. He does what he does, though he wrote most of this one, too.

The Gaslight Anthem – The ‘59 Sound. As recently discussed, inspired by brief exposure during their Glasto set. It went on my iPod, which is still operating a strictly alphabetical order policy, so I’ve only heard one or two tracks so far. Nothing too offensive.

Sonny Landreth – From the Reach. This purchase was inspired by Spotify (I went looking for Vince Gill stuff). Landreth is an incredible slide guitar player – who manages to slide and fret at the same time. A very distinctive creamy tone. He wrote the songs on this album in the styles of his various contributors, including Knopfler, Clapton, and Vince Gill. A mixed bag, then, depending on your tastes, but held together with some super-hot guitaring.

Wynonna Judd – Sing Chapter 1. An album of covers of songs from various styles and traditions. Not the sort of thing I usually enjoy, but it’s been a while since we heard from Wynonna, and I was swayed by the passionate iTunes write-up, which specifically complained about the outrageously sexist playlist policies of Country radio in the US. Quite right too. I get sick of shit like Kenny Chesney being recommended to me by various algorithms. Wynonna rocks. I already love “That’s How Rhythm Was Born”, “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “I Hear You Knocking”, which I used to have on single by the Dave Edmunds Rockpile.
Wynonna is such an incredible singer that if more wannabes knew about her, they’d all be attempting to “do” her on the X Factor instead of trying to “do” Mariah. Fortunately, Wynonna is way under their radar.

Filed under: Entertainment

Senseo Latte Select

I’ve long been of the opinion that the Senseo coffee pod system was the most economical and environmentally friendly – especially since I started using a permanent plastic filter in place of buying any pods at all. But other systems offer a greater range of fancy drinks – if you can call a drink made with powdered milk fancy.

The Philips boffins have clearly been hard at work thinking through this problem, and the latest Senseo machine allows you to make crapuccino and lattes using fresh milk as well as the standard black coffee.

We’re still poorly served in this country for the variety of pods avaiable, but my melitta plastic pod substitute allows me to use my favourite coffee anyway.

My problem is to persuade my wife we “need” one, given that we bought a new one not long ago.

Filed under: Entertainment , cafe, coffee, dosettes, pods, senseo

Apollo Talk

I enjoyed reading this long article by Tim Radford in the Guardian about the first moon landing.

What I *love* about our media industry is the way they can’t actually wait for the actual anniversary (20 July), probably because they’ll be going on holiday that weekend.

I was allowed to stay up to watch it on TV. I was six and a half years old. Snip:

Could Eagle find a level surface? Or might it land on a slope, on unstable ground, on a protruding rock, and topple over, so much expensive wreckage on a hostile shore? And even if it could land safely upright, might it not sink into the dust, to be trapped in lunar quicksand, never to escape? There was no precedent, no information and almost no room for error at any point in the landing, that night of 20 July, and everybody in the world knew it.

Filed under: 1960s, sixties , 1969, apollo, moon landing

Press conference

I realise where I have been going wrong.

To effectively practice shameless self-publicity, I should have held more press conferences.

I would like to announce:

My retirement from all forms of cricket, effective August 20th 1991.

My retirement from all forms of football, round and oval, effective August 20th 1983.

My retirement from live performance (The That Was It Tour), effective July 30th 1992.

My retirement from writing poetry, effective June 10th 1990.

My retirement as a Labour voter, effective May 5th 2005.

Questions?

Filed under: Entertainment

All Bruced Up

I stayed up to watch Springsteen at Glastonbury on TV, fully expecting the BBC to fumble the coverage, as they had the night before with Neil Young. On Saturday, they issued a statement explaining that Young had only allowed them to show five songs from his set. The old curmudgeon wants to keep the “mystery” of his live performance intact. So I expected some kind of disappointment: perhaps half an hour of inane chat from the ridiculously poor presenters, repeating the word amazing fifty million times and another half-hour of Bruce.

Young is about three years older than Springsteen, who looks fully 20 years younger than he actually is. Since his spate of after-show collapses in the late 70s and early 80s, Springsteen has looked after himself. The pumped-up image he wore for the BitUSA tour was a result of the workouts his doctor suggested would help him through his three-, sometimes four-hour shows.

Bruce doesn’t play many festivals, but does know how to put on an outdoor show. My favourite bootleg of the old days was one at Alpine Valley, East Troy, Wisconsin, on the early part of the BitUSA tour, before it got huge. It was still an old-style Springsteen show, then, with the long intros and anecdotes. These days, there’s more polish, a tighter set, though some commentators still complain that the codas are longer than the actual songs.

He gives to the audience, does Springsteen, always wants to put on the best show he can, never to give the impression that singing “Born to Run” is a chore. Which, if the atmosphere is working right, it can’t be. Watching the TV coverage last night, it seemed to me that he delivered “Born to Run” with as much passion and commitment as ever, and the song still resonated with the audience, which were presumably a mixture of proper fans and people who’d turned up to wave a flag in people’s faces. In fact, the guitar solo in “Born to Run” was one of the best I’ve heard him do, though (typically) the BBC director decided to stay with the camera on Clarence Clemons for that particular moment (fifty years of music TV and they still can’t spotlight the lead guitar player when he’s doing his stuff).

It’s typical of the level of collective knowledge in BBC staff that Colin Patterson, Five Live’s entertainment correspondent, mistook Steven Van Zandt for Nils Lofgren. A previous entertainment correspondent (Phil Williams, now Weekend Breakfast host) gushed about Audrey Hepburn when Katherine Hepburn died.

Whenever I see Glastonbury on TV it seems like a vision of hell. I honestly can’t imagine anything worse than being there, surrounded by vast hordes of people, overpriced everything, noise, mud, and any fucker who ever had a cause. And flags. The thought of having to endure hour after hour of unfamiliar amplified music waiting for the odd person you might want to see/hear makes me queasy. I’ve done one-day events at Wembley and MK Bowl in the past. Waiting for the Rolling Stones and having to endure the J Geils Band. Waiting for Bob Dylan… the memory of what I had to endure blanked out. Having to endure the Stranglers, AC/DC and Nils Lofgren waiting for The Who (actually, that was a pretty good day!).

I caught a bit of The Gaslight Anthem earlier in the day, and Springsteen jumped on stage to sing one of their songs. For a band that seems to endure comparisons with Bruce all the time, was this really much of a favour? Seemed to go down well, anyway. I downloaded the album from iTunes; it was only four quid.

The TV coverage of Springsteen started with “Badlands,” though he started his set with a Joe Strummer song. I think the BBC then kind of fast-forwarded through some highlights of the gig before catching up with the live show, which finished somewhat after the Glastonbury midnight curfew (a hefty fine will ensue no doubt – up to £120,000, at £4k per minute he overran). I think it helps that the world economy is in the toilet and that it’s all the fault of big business and the banks, but Springsteen’s songs from Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River, mostly written 30 years ago and more, seem to resonate as strongly as ever.

The moment in the set that really worked I think was the harmonica-driven “Promised Land” followed by “The River”, which could have been written last week. The camera caught Springsteen haloed by a spotlight and apparently on fire – steam was rising from his back and head. The only more appropriate song for that particular camera shot, of course, would have been “I’m on Fire” or the fan favourite from the halcyon days, “Fire.”

Perhaps “Fire” would be the difference between a classic Springsteen gig and the festival set he put out. For the long-term fan, the indeterminate length of the pause after the middle 8 of “Fire” before the last verse (”Romeo and Juliet / Samson and Delilah…”) was pure magic, but would have been lost on an audience unfamiliar with the ritual.

Apparently, some were complaining that he didn’t do “Born in the USA”, but I imagine that was deliberately omitted, because he doesn’t really want that fist-pumping stuff. He did “Thunder Road” and “Dancing in the Streets”… I don’t think I’d have complained, had I been crazy enough to be there.

As I said to my wife, the nice thing about that was, I didn’t have to find my way back to a wet tent in the dark afterwards.

Filed under: Entertainment

Summer Reading

Apart from The 26th Annual collection of the best in SF edited by Gardner Dozois, I have the following piled up for my 6 week summer vac.

1. Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones (in a near future, post political collapse, a popular musician is conscripted to win hearts and minds)

2. Best SF of the Year 2008 edited by Rich Horton
3. Best SF of the Year 2007 edited by Rich Horton (I’ve not tried any of Horton’s antholgies before. I worry that there’ll be duplications with the other ones I read, but I’m giving these two a go)

4. The New Space Opera 2 edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan (not a reprint anthology, these are all previously unpublished stories. As such, the quality will tend to be more mixed, though both editors are pretty trustworthy).

5. The Terror by Dan Simmons. (Fictionalised account of the ill-fated Franklin expedition of 1845 to complete the Northwest Passage. They all died, of course, and various explanations have been offered: lead poisoning, botulism, cannibalism… or was there something out there in the dark on the ice?).

I have to confess I’ve already started The Terror, which is a 900-page monster of a novel. Three chapters in, and I’m hooked. Most excellent.

Finally, I’m toying with the idea of buying Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson, which is bound to be worth a read, but I might wait for the paperback.

Filed under: SF, summer , reading list

Hunch Crunch

So I signed up for Hunch when it was still invite-only, and I took a look around and went through the teach-Hunch-about-you stuff (enough to earn 1691 banjos) and some of the other “What xx should I xx” Q & A things, and here’s my considered opinion.

It’s shite.

What could have been something different and original was immediately hijacked by sales/marketing people (and not very bright ones at that), and so became another source for unwanted advertising and not-very-good advice. It’s a bit like those badly spelled and ungrammatical quizzes you see on FaceBook, where you wonder if the person creating the quiz has ever actually been out of the house.

The whole point of Hunch is that it could only ever be as good as its contributors, but like most other internet social things all it can hope to do is reveal how very very stupid, narrow, and limited most of the people who use the internet actually are (including the shitbird bastard fuckwit who thought he’d leave a comment the other day and called me a “tool” – expecting his comment to ever appear? Amazing). The almost complete lack of experience, knowledge about the world, sense of irony/humour in Hunch users means that the only “correct” response to most of the topics that get suggested is a slap in the face or a clip round the ear. Which MacBook should I buy? Fuck off!

Example: Which Franz Ferdinand album should I listen to? Answer: slap in face (also: Franz Ferdinand have more than one album? Who knew?).

Another example: Which hero do I miss the most? Answer: clip round ear (also: who fucking cares?). (With this one, you answer two questions and get the answer Mother Theresa, which immediately makes you feel sick, violated, and soiled.)

All social sites attract a fair number of fuckwits and creeps, of course, but I get the feeling that Hunch should really have been much more App Store nazi-like about accepting contributions in order to train out the losers. Of course, I’m terrible for saying this because I haven’t contributed any decision tree topics myself, but then that’s the point: given even a modicum of thought, no topic is worth creating a decision tree about. People who can’t decide things for themselves using their own brains and their own research don’t deserve any assistance.

Filed under: Entertainment , hunch, social networking

Settling

So the question we come to now, is well, how do you go about knowing the field of forces in which you live? How do you know which way the wind is blowing so you can sail properly, when it isn’t as simple a matter of wetting your finger and holding it up to see which side gets cold first, and that’s where the wind’s coming from. Or is it as simple as that? We know, or think we know, that nature is extraordinarily complicated, and so very difficult to understand. And if you can’t understand an immensely complicated situation it’s very difficult to make decisions about it. Alan W. Watts

If I was an insurance company about now, I’d be offering people once-and-for-all settlements on the homes that are likely to drop into the sea, disappear under the flood plains or otherwise suffer the vagaries of climate change. It’s not that I’m convinced that predictions about the next 50-60 years are necessarily any more accurate than the average 5-day weather forecast, but if I was an insurance company I’d be calculating the odds, and reckoning that it’d be cheaper to pay out now and then refuse to insure anybody in a risk area for the next 50 years.

Yeah, sorry, your house is a write-off. Here’s a couple of hundred grand to buy a new one on higher ground. You don’t have to move, but we will no longer insure this property, so if it floods next year, and the year after that, and so on, we won’t pay for repairs.

Filed under: Climate, climate change, omens and portents