American Fez

State of the Art

You will often find the absurd blurb “well written” printed on the back of contemporary novels: an extraordinary expression of acclaim considering it is made in connection to a published work on sale to the public! Alas, that is how far the level of writing has sunk, and consequently how low standards have fallen today, when so much fiction - especially that described by modern critics as “quality” - makes for dreary and uninspiring reading: all those short and simple sentences, one after the other, on and on, hammered into the paragraphs like thin brown slats in a makeshift garden fence. And you might think these writers would wish to decorate their fences occasionally with a colorful metaphor or a splash of simile. But no, they just roll on another coat of creosote.
This is why recent “quality” novels do not sell. They are bloody boring.It’s got nothing to do with the publishing industry. Understand this, contemporary novelist: nobody wants to read a fictionalised account of your last ten years of psychotherapy rendered in emaciated language and stutter speak.
Now, can someone please point me in the general direction of the Cultural Zeitgeist, I need to use the bathroom.

Double Flying Dutchman

Public speaking has always been a tough nut for me to crack; and, rather like an especially frugal squirrel, it is also a nut that I prefer to hide away until some future date. The problem is that I tend to say things like that previous sentence, which can often bewilder and vex an audience whose collective mind is already number and bruised from the effort of trying to concentrate on the tedious speeches of those rubber-lipped orators who preceeded me at the lectern. Give me an opportunity - a metaphor or similie with which I can run barefoot and gibbering through the fallow fields of incomprehension - and I will gladly wander from the script of any subject you care to pick and into the enchanted forest of inchoate irrelevance.
Oddly, I am often in great demand for such events. I can only suppose nobody notices. Or perhaps they don't really care?

You Have Been Watching...

Although I rarely watch television, I am familiar with the identities of most of the stars and the names of the characters they play, even if the titles of the shows in which they perform are somewhat jumbled, interchangeable, and indistinct. This type of unconsciously absorbed, phantom knowledge must swipe its way through your cerebral cortex like an especially lardy supermarket cashier swiping a box of ‘buy-one-get-one-free’ laxatives through a barcode reader: charged to your account before you even realize you wanted it. All that will change, however, with the rabbit breeding-esque proliferation of large screen televisions in public spaces and the portable videophone. Very soon you won’t be able to avoid watching those shows if you take a train or plane or stroll through a shopping mall, and then these T.V stars will be as familiar to you as your own friends and family (and I’m referring to actual people, not your long-distance calling plan).

Musical Notes

Mooching around the bargain bin at my local record store last night, my eye alighted upon a CD whose cover featured an aerial photograph of some multi-spired Bavarian stronghold, the package tour snapshot grandeur of which was balanced by a terrible cartoon of a bulky woman wearing a winged helmet. The CD was called “Weekend Wagner.”
Now - I don’t know about you - but I have no desire to be awakened by the Entry of the Gods into Valhalla on Sunday morning. In fact, the whole notion of Wagnerian weekend activity leaves me cold: you can just imagine the Flying Dutchman ceaselessly zooming up and down his garden on one of those loud motorized lawnmower things; Tristan und Isolde deafening the neighborhood with horrible rap music at their Saturday night barbeque; the Mastersingers of Nuremberg parade blocking the streets with their ridiculously decorated floats; Seigfried allowing his poodle Gotterdammerung to crap all over the sidewalk and not bothering to clean it up … still, I suppose it’s better than Tuesday afternoon Polyphonic Chant.
Anyway, the CD was only $3.99 but I didn’t buy it, even at that low price. These days I invest my music money in Opera DVDs, since I can surreptitiously slip them on when the doorbell rings announcing that friends have come around to call: “Oh no. Don’t worry.” I tell them, “You’re not disturbing me at all. I was just sitting around watching Faust. Can I get you a drink?”
“Maybe just a small one. We’re not staying long.”
“Oh okay then.”
Then the minute they depart I put the Contempt special features disc back on: Bonjour Brigitte (this is one Criterion Collection DVD that is definitely worth the money!)

Future Schlock

I suppose it was with the emergence of Lenin as Soviet leader, followed by similar star turns from Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and friends that politics usurped religion as the "opium of the people". And then, roughly only forty or so years later, politics itself was superceded - basically mounted and ridden - by the all consuming Media Circus and its attendant jugglers and clowns. So what next for the opium comparison? I don't know. But I imagine in about twenty years time, if that, we will be voting for President of the Global Village any media personality called Sting or Bono or whatever whose sing-a-long campaign extravanganza will promise to satiate our base appetites and appeal to our most banal and polarised opinions at the expense of common sense.
"The Golden Age of Communication": everyone shouting at the same time and the loudest, most monosyllabic voice wins the biggest prize.

Egregious Moments

Much as aficionados of futuristic novels abbreviate the genre appellation applied to their favorite reading material from Science Fiction to Sci-Fi, it was my practice many years ago to shorten the name of my favorite food from Pork Fried Rice to Po’ Fri-Ri; an affected vocal convention that not only satisfactorily limited the unwelcome pronunciation of harsh consonants, but also mimicked – amusingly I believed, back then, in my apparently Oswald Mosely admiring days - the manner in which the wait staff employed by the red and gilt citadels of Eastern cuisine I frequented in those days spoke the name of the side dish under negotiation by myself and they.
Obviously, later, when I had matured as a person and the true moronic weight of what I was saying had dawned upon me, it was too late to change my ways since, horribly, the pronunciation I have described had developed into an unconscious and unalterable habit. And so today I just ask for a “number 317 with duck sauce” instead, since I cannot trust myself to order properly.

What do we learn from this sorry tale:

1. I’m pretty sure it was just the black fencing tunic that I liked.
2. And even if I owned one it would be completely covered in duck sauce stains by now and therefore completely unwearable.
3. Clinton is not the first politician to have written an autobiography called “My Life”. Nor, sadly, probably the last either.
4. I am adopting more of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist stance in restaurants, as I get older.

Pawn Takes Bishop: Checkmate

Since observance of the Holy Eucharist recalls the bread and wine consumed during the Last Supper, why do most churches stage this event in the morning?
It is just an observation of mine own, similar in spirit, holy or otherwise, to the immortal question: "Where, in the middle of the Sinai desert, did Noah find - not one - but two polar bears for his Ark?"

The Drums! Those Beating Drums! On And On And On Throughout The Night! Damn Them! Why Won't They Stop!

Suffering - like an anguished, pith helmeted explorer in an ancient Zombie movie - from heat delirium most of Friday and Saturday morning: that will teach me to labor under the hot sun without a hat. Still, I managed to get a little work done on "Jeeves And The Final Outrage", my P.G Wodehouse pastiche, which can probably be more accurately described as a travesty featuring mis-appropriated characters. It should, God and temperature willing, be completed soon. At any rate, on Thursday I shall post what I have written so far.
Meanwhile, on Saturday night, courtesy of the Robert Benchley Society, I enjoyed watching - through bleary, sun dilated eyes - two old short films starring the man himself. Benchley was a fine speaker of comic lines and performer of dead-pan mime during an era that delighted in a plethora of such characters, otherwise the world might have seen more of him on the screen.
Afterwards, there were requests to listen to Goon Show recording: a demented shriek in a locked cupboard compared to Benchley's droll delivery. Fortunately they could not be found, since, for some reason, the sound of Peter Sellars' voice has always left me feeling extremely depressed.

Parnassus

A lot of talk recently about the forgotten and discarded objects people find abandoned in the yellowing pages of old books bought from second hand book dealers.
Personally, my concern has never really been the objects I find inserted between the pages of these ancient tomes, but the object I don't find inserted between the pages: and, alas, that missing object is usually page 136.

NB - As fugio points out, it should really be page 135 that is missing ... unless of course, it is a glossy illustration printed on one-sideof the page only.

A Rolling Ball Gathers No Moss

Count ‘em: a twelve-volume roman a clef; four volumes of memoirs; three volumes of diaries and a published notebook; two volumes of collected criticism and a recipe for curry; also numerous guest appearances in tedious books about the so-called Brideshead Generation; add two volumes of autobiography by his wife, Lady Violet, and you have to begin to wonder if there was any need for a biography of Anthony Powell.
But of course there is. Even after reading all those aforementioned volumes you still must ask yourself: what was Powell really like?
And was he the “English Proust?” Or merely, in Auberon Waugh’s delicious slighting phrase, “the North Somerset novelist.”
Frankly, I am a huge admirer of Powell – the playwright Alan Bennett sniffed that Powell was an author who gathered “fans”, and there is much truth in that – so I shall not be reading the new and much needed biography: as a fan, I am afraid of undesirable facts that it might reveal.
Still, at least he wasn't a youthful sexual invert like the elder Waugh. (Come out of hiding Soames!)

Work in Progress

My grandfather always alluded to the affliction of diarrhea as a "case of the licorice." It was a rather Wodehousian euphemism, I think; although, of course, for the most part, references to functions of the human body rarely occur in Wodehouse’s published books. Which is probably all for the best, really. However, in memory of my grandfather, I have decided to begin work on a gruesome, gut-wrenching (literally) Wodehouse pastiche – no easy thing to write - called either "PG 17" or "Jeeves and the Final Outrage." Or possibly, "Jeeves and the Ultimate Sacrifice." Maybe even "Death Stalks the Drones Club."
I haven't decided on the actual title yet, but I have started on the first paragraph. Hopefully the whole thing, with title, will be finished by the beginning of next week.

Above the Clouds

Wings of Chance are funny old things, aren't they. One cannot avoid the sinking feeling that they are manufactured by Icarus Corp; and anyone airborne on Wings of Chance will definitely be flying too close to the sun - crash landing on it, even. That's why, personally, I prefer the Jumbo Jets of Certainty, especially the non-stop flight to Cash City.

A Sentence Of One's Own.

Besides a conventional dictionary and thesaurus set, an observer of personal habits would note copies of the following books propped and lined up on my writing desk: the invaluable Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable; the slightly dubious New York Public Library Desk Reference; and those two useful volumes rub bindings with, for more inspirational purposes: Julian Maclaren Ross's The Funny Bone (first, and probably only, edition, published simultaneously in England and Canada); Anthony Powell's Afternoon Men (first American edition); Robert Byron's Road To Oxiana (some weird British re-print, possibly from the 50's).
On any given day it is more likely that I will reach for Maclaren Ross' collection of satires and parodies than for my thesaurus or dictionary. Flicking at random through his book - or Powell's or Byron's - makes excellent writing seem such an easy thing to achieve that one can't help but feel an enormous and immediate desire to seize a pen and begin composing a sentence of one's own.

Argonaut

The familiar rattle, clink and creak of a plundered supermarket shopping trolley filled with empty bottles and cans, steered across city streets by a stunted, hopeless figure, anonymous, still bundled in his extraneous rags, scarves, and filthy newspapers even beneath the penetrating summer sun.
Perhaps it was the circling seagulls crying above us in a Greek-blue sky, and the roar of onrushing traffic, but for a moment it seemed to me as if the tall apartment buildings that lined the street had become steep cliffs flanking an ocean passage suggested by the flowing waves of cars and trucks, rough waves through this channel the hopeless figure navigated his cargo of redeemables with great difficulty: an Argonaut separated from his fellows, bewitched by the Medea inside himself, in search of a golden fleece that shimmers unattainably in the bottomless depths of an ocean of intoxicants.

The Voices of Silence

Andre Malraux used to say me in the offices of Combat, he used to say, "Stephen, mon ami." he'd say, "During the Renaissance - or what some L'reactionairries like your good self persist on calling the Renascance - a certain painting would be judged a Work of Art or not by asking of the painting a single question: Monsieur le Painting, are you owned by the Medici? If the Painting answered 'yes', then it was a work of art. But if the answer was 'no', then it was deemed to be merely an altarpiece ... whatever that was."
And then Malraux would jump into a waiting helicoptor and fly to China for the weekend to gather material for his new book.
Ah yes. They were very simple days in post-war European intellectual society. How I miss them. But who would guess that even in our Post-Modernist Age we can judge art by following those same principles outline by my friend Andre. However, today, instead of asking a painting if it is owned by the Medici, we say : "Hey preserved dead cow in a glass box, have you caught on fire by mistake?"
If the answer is yes, then we know it is owned by Charles Saatchi and is therefore a work of modern art.

Mirrors

Perhaps the most fantastic element of Lewis Carroll's Alice stories - not to mention the most obviously Cabbalistically inspired - is the notion that any female would actually decide to pass through a looking-glass when they could be changing and re-changing clothes, primping hair, or applying cosmetics in front of it instead.
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To speak of many things: of shoes and..."
"...Hang on." Alice shouted. "I've just got to run to the bathroom and re-apply. I won't be a minute ... honestly."

Another example of the surreal and bizarre is the ridiculous amount of money the pretentious Criterion Collection think they can charge for a DVD movie: $39.99 - what planet do they think they are on? That belonging to the Apes!
Criterion Collection film to video transfers are generally no better restored or color corrected than those supplied by many other companies whose films cost half the price: Brand new High Definition transfer! Who cares? Even if you have a HD television the DVD in your hand is still only Standard Definition.
And what about those boring commentary tracks they provide. So-called film historians merely relating the bloody obvious in dreary monotone voices: "The protagonist crosses the room. Hitchcock's camera frames a two shot and focuses on the killer's gun." Yawn.
And what of some of the titles they choose to make available. Now I happen to think that Withnail And I is a very funny film. But important and groundbreaking? Oh come on.
They have just released a new copy of Visconti's brilliant The Leopard, but I damned if I'm buying it. Why can't they leave good films alone and just do their forty dollars worth of fannying around with Ingmar Bergman, Fassbinder, Godard and all the other Euro tedium that no-one in their right mind wants to watch.

Dialectic

I may very well passionately believe in Propostion X. But if I discover that you also believe in Proposition X, then I will cease to have any dealings with Proposition X at all, since you being who you are, if you think Proposition X is correct, then it must surely be very wrong with it indeed.
So I will start believing passionately in Proposition Y instead. Even if Proposition Y is the exact opposite of Propostion X.
However, I will tell you that what I actually believe in in Proposition Z(X) - P2.
For what I really do believe implicity and above all else is that you must be bamboozled and confounded at every opportunity. And will continue bamboozling and confounding you until the only thing you end up believing in are the mysterious hieroglyphics tattooed on Harlequin's bum.
Then, when the mysterious hieroglyphics tattooed on Harlequins are your only credo, then I will say unto ye: "Come, friend, now we can finally get down to business. Now we can finally get things done."

"If There Were Dreams For Sale What Would You Buy?"

Customer: Excuse me. I bought this dream here last week but I’m afraid to report that it’s defective.

Salesman: That’s highly unusual sir. What exactly was the problem?

Customer: Well, it was supposed to be a Night in Paradise with my ideal woman dream...

Salesman: The “remember it all in the morning" deluxe dream, or just the “hazy recollection" budget model?

Customer: Actually it was the mid-range “flash of total recall the following lunchtime” dream.

Salesman: Oh yes. Number 352. That comes free with a fleeting daydream of a pair of enormous breasts, doesn’t it … Hmm … So what went wrong with your experience, sir?

Customer: Well, I was only five minutes into the dream and my ideal woman suddenly turned into a giant slimy lizard. And if that isn’t bad enough, I got the flash of total recall at lunch today and nearly choked to death on my sandwich.

Salesman: I see. So it wasn’t the dream system that malfunctioned, then, it was just the content of the dream that didn’t meet your requirements.

Customer: Yeah. I suppose you could put it like that.

Salesman: Well, I will let you return the dream this time, sir, and give you a new one. But please be advised that we won’t be so accommodating next time. You see, sir, the trouble you experienced is not really the dream’s fault at all. It would actually seem that is your own perverted and gross subconscious desires that caused the dream to malfunction in the manner you describe. To put it very simply, sir, if you were not so psychologically messed-up, and your soul not so devoid of true human feeling, the dream would have worked as advertised on the package. So in future, please do not blame the Dream Store for your own shortcomings and personal problems.

Meshes of Thursday Afternoon.

Good afternoon. This is Merlin speaking. I would like to take this mysterious fracture in the fabric of reality to welcome you aboard the 16:16 Erewhon Airways unusual Flight of Fancy to Never-Neverland’s Peter Pan Memorial Airport.
Our flight of fancy-time this afternoon is scheduled by unseen powers to take about the blink of an eye. We are just waiting for another magic carpet to clear the runway to another dimension prior to lift off, but we are next in the surreal arrangement of objects refracted through the Cyclopean eye of the air traffic magician for disappearing into thin air.
Once we are borne aloft by the golden wings of the Gryphon, a fine selection of complementary colored bottles marked Drink Me will be served by the phantoms of the cabin. I would also like to remind passengers not to dance around the aisle in slow motion until the fasten seat-belt sign has been erased from your consciousness. And now, at this everlasting instant in the epiphany of the soul, I would ask the Crew of the Argos to please take their positions of relative transcendentalism as we prepare for going to sleep.

Biological Reveries

If the human body is really eighty percent water, then I would like all the "me" that is water to be drained and replaced by that artificially flavored fruit kind that is vitamin and mineral enriched and comes in a squeezy bottle. After such a modification, every time I swallowed it would taste of Tropical Paradise.
Meanwhile ...
Since she leaves a silver dollar for every tooth she collects from under a child's pillow, it's a great pity there is no adult equivalent of the Tooth Fairy - like, for instance, the Hair Fairy.
If there were, I personally would be a millionaire by now.
The way I see it, the Hair Fairy would live in the shower drain, and for every strand of hair he harvested he would leave a quarter in the soap dish. For the average male - sorry girls - that probably works out to something like ten bucks a day! And what about the Ear Wax Elf? Actually, we would probably have to pay him - I'm figuring a going rate of about a dime per ounce of earwax he removes. So with the ten bucks per day from the Hair Fairy, minus the earwax deduction and ubiquitous toenail tax, that's still roughly thirty dollars a month clear profit, just for getting old! It's not a great deal of money, I know, but it's probably a damn sight more than we'll get from Social Security.

Local Color

It is hard to believe that a trio of elephants clad in decorative golden armor once swung their trunks up and down the quaint, cobbled streets of Beacon Hill, but they did. The year was 1847, and these fabulous animals were a gift from the Ranee of Chundrakerrie, presented to the people of Boston in recognition of the one-mile fundraising Walk For Leprosy in which many Bostonians had participated the previous June.
Ignorant of basic facts concerning the care and feeding of elephants, a Beacon Hill vet fed the Chundrakerrie elephants on a continuous and unvarying traditional diet of Boston baked beans, a disastrous decision resulting in the most profound seismic eruptions to affect the city since the Ice Age, and a deluge of brown sludge that flooded the city streets for many days, many of these thoroughfares and alleyways becoming not only impassable, but also unlivable.
Of course, as everybody knows, Beacon Hill - the seat of Massachusetts State government - has been associated with lumbering beasts called Dumbo and stupid decision-making ever since. But how many people know that the actual name, "Beacon Hill", is derived from the old Puritan practice of building fires in high places for weird reasons?
In fact, it is said that on moonlit nights the Puritans would force young girls to jump over the flames of these hill fires to verify the girl's virginity. Supposedly the unchaste girls would explode in mid-air. For those interested in obscure New England history, I have written an illustrated booklet on this fascinating subject called, "The Explosion of Polly Goodhead: Early Case of Spontaneous Combustion Or Just A Naughty Girl?"
It is available by sending your Telephone Bill to your Gas Company, enclosing a letter with the words "Fiery Colonial Virgin Book Offer" written on it.

The Way They Lived Then

Anyone interested in old news, and in my experience old news is the best kind of news, may be interested in spending a few hours gawping at examples of Movietone Portraits.
Personally, I was very interested in the travelogue-ish films of Instanbul (1931), St Marks Square (1900), London Traffic (1933), Iraq (1940), and Egypt (1931); the undated reels featuring such notable personalties as Dame Margot Fonteyn, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-Shek; and there is also fascinating footage of Geisha Girls (1930), Corsets in Paris (1959), Alley Soccer (1930), and an English Harvest (1933).

The Storrow Drive Venus

Strolling along the River Charles yesterday - sidestepping the grim-faced, mosquito-like rollerbladers, and those racing cyclists apparently in training for the Tour de France - as the discarded soda and beer cans bobbed along in the water's edge like rusting buoys in a brown foam so disgusting that it seemed even the seagulls disdained to get their feet wet, I thought to myself: what kind of Venus would be born from the waves of an ocean into which such a river flowed?
And then suddenly - as if belched out from the guts of some mutant, bottom-feeding mollusc - there she was, standing before me in all her grotesque, obese, acne-scarred, frizzy-haired, gum-snapping, incoherent shouting glory. Her flabby stomach exposed, bulging out from beneath some sickly pink top that barely covered a pair of red-raw, scrawny breasts, she staggered across my path in filthy flip flops, weighed down, no doubt, by the weight of her cheap jewelry and industrial strength cosmetics applied in a haphazard manner to every inch of her misshapen face.
She was also - or at least had been - attended by two "cherubs"; but these our Venus of the Slag Heap had momentarily lost while grappling on a bench with the pile of beer-stained and cigarette ash-covered basketball clothing that she seemed to accept as her lover. Fortunately, she found them quickly enough. They were standing beside the highway, watching the trucks and SUVs speed by.

Thoughts from the Guest Room

A friend of mine who shall remain nameless (although most people like to call him Rob Forbes) keeps a large collection of magazines in the bathroom he reserves for the comfort of guests. An unkind visitor might make the observation that there are even more magazines than there are small, unused, sample size bars of scented soap in this particular guest bathroom. But I am not that kind of person.
I would, however, draw your attention to the fact that most of these magazines that Rob and his wife Sarah have collected are of such ancient vintage that one can easily believe that, at some point in their lives, these publications were idly perused by yawning Athenians in the great libraries of Antiquity. Indeed, I have heard it said that many modern day scholars lock themselves in Rob and Sarah's guest bathroom while researching articles on various arcane and historic subjects of interest to only the highest brows of academia.
What really puzzles me, though, is that Rob and Sarah - people with little interest in ethnography or archeology - have somehow managed to accumulate such a large number of National Geographic back numbers. I can only assume that after experiencing one of Sarah's powerful feats of Mexicano-inspired gastronomic artistry, this accommodating couple enjoy offering their guests a chance to retire and, while seated on that famous toilet, read about the real Montezuma while suffering his so-called "revenge".

A Dance to the Music of Moreland

I have never understood ballet, except for the thin girls in Swan Lake outfits standing on their toes and smiling at me part of it.
However, those of you who can make the leap, as it were, might be interested in the choreography of Sir Frederick Ashton,soon to be celebrated at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Of interest to bookish types, the program includes music by Lord Berners (aka Merlin in "Love in A Cold Climate") and Meyerbeer via Constant Lambert (part model for Hugh Moreland in "A Dance to the Music of Time").

Scylla and Charybdis

My house being located where it is, on this particular Saturday I find myself caught between the Scylla of fey and loud razamatazz from Boston's Gay Pride Parade on Boylston Street, and the Charybdis of a nostalgic dirge emanating from the "Oldies" 103. FM summer concert along the riverbank. Obviously, with the alternatives being either to be shipwrecked or devoured, I chose to spend the day in Brookline.
Interestingly, as I was taking my morning stroll along the Charles, I noticed a complete lack of rollerblading buffoons along the path which is normally so overcrowded with them; and I wondered whether the absence of persons practising this ludicrous method of transportation on this particular morning could be in any way connected with the Gay Pride Parade taking place elsewhere. Just a thought.
Meanwhile, if she were still alive, my Grandmother would be one hundred years old today. So Happy Birthday Granny! No doubt you are celebrating up there in the World of Light: I wonder what you make of your grandson's website!

Champions of Europe

Greece have already amusingly defeated hosts Portugal in the Euro 2004 soccer Tournament. Hurrah!
Of course, one used to admire plucky Portugal but now they are such a team of arrogant cry-babies and molly-coddled superstars that it is always fun to watch the Portugese lose: Man O' War? More like Poodle of Capitulation!
Naturally, all the newspapers in England are full of dark forebodings and predictions of the carnage, mayhem and bloodshed that will be unleashed by the arrival upon foreign shores of Albion's infamous wine-soaked Hooligans. These descendants of the Redcoats are often branded as "lazy and stupid and drunk" by the media; which is ironic, since those three words also describe the composition of many of the articles written about them. I feel like I have read this piece of frothy bilge in the Spectator at least three-hundred times before in other magazines and papers:
Lazy writing? Pretty much.
Stupid thesis? It's certainly mis-informed.
Drunk on its own denunciations? You betcha.
Whenever I have visited football stadia in England the fans have always seemed sober, good-humored and passionate about the game, creating a jovial, entertaining and lively atmosphere. So perhaps it is only when they travel abroad that the English transform themselves into the demons we always hear about: lobotomized Evelyn Waughs on steroids and lager is what it amounts to, apparently.
Anyway, England play France tomorrow (Sunday), so we will see what the day brings both on the field and off.

Economic Sense of Yesteryear

Without the shadow of a doubt the greatest story ever told, the most fabulous science-fiction fantasy, the most epic tale, the most daring saga of an enduring quest is the Hero's journey to pay his phone bill. Not only must he locate the legendary stamp, he must also confront the evil "phone company".
Of course, the Hero can never actually slay the phone bill since it comes back to life again every month. This is why it is such an exciting story and such an enduring myth. And it's much better than that Lord Of The Rings load of crap.
Of course, both Freud and Jung believed that the paying of a phone bill was merely a modern version of an ancient fertility rite.
Essentially they believed that primitive man owned an old and dusty tome which they called "The Phone Book". Primitive man would look in the phone book under the heading "Child Bearing Hips", and this way he was able to contact a woman and ask her to be his brood mare. If he did not pay his phone bill, well, his phone would be cut-off, and his line, as it were, would become extinct.
Meanwhile
Since the cost of Healthcare in the States is so high, I decided to see a Voodoo Priestess about my back problems. On the face of it this seemed like the cheapest method of obtaining decent treatment for what is an extremely annoying complaint.
So I set sail for the West Indies aboard a tramp steamer called the Smelly Foot. The journey took several weeks and I had to bring my own lunch. When we landed in the West Indies I had to hire a guide and pack mule to ferry myself and suitcases to the jungle clearing where the ceremony to cure my persistant back ache would take place. But first I had to buy the three live cockerals who were going to have their throats slit. All in all, considering my travel costs, live stock expenses, Voodoo Priestess fee, and then tipping the hypnotic tom-tom drummers, the entire trip and remedy was extremely costly. The moral here, is that my annual HMO subscription is actually pretty good value.

Semper Fi

On page thirty-seven or so of their weekend editions, most of the newspapers seemed to be asking the following question: "Placed in similar circumstance upon a similar beach, would the present generation of dubious flabboes act as unassumingly courageously as the D-Day heroes did?"
The point, it would appear to me, is about as moot as a point can get without becoming a blunt silence.
No, the really interesting question worth answering is this: "Placed in the same Aerodrome on the south coast of England, would the present generation be as satisfied with Varga girls and Vera Lynn as the Memphis Belle boys were?"
Perhaps with the Varga girls - if they were real - but otherwiseI sincerely doubt it.
One can only imagine the popular songs the dear old dame would be forced to sing: "Gonna be your bitch in the mutherfuckin apple blossom time, yo dig what I'm sayin'."
Or something along the lines of this: "We be doin' the nasty on them White Cliffs o' Dover. Gonna get them White Cliffs real dirty. Huh huh huh huh. Dirty cliffs." Huh huh huh."
Perhaps Ms Lynn would also bare her nipple over Forces Radio during the Bombing of Dresden halftime.

It Takes All Sorts To Make A World

Boston's Gay Pride Festival is looming on - or rather draping itself in a louche manner all over - the horizon. Personally, I don't mind Gay Pride Parades as long as Allen Ginsberg isn't taking part. Fortunately, he is long since dead, so there is no danger of the author of Howl making an appearance. Meanwhile, if non-poetry spouting grown men desire to march up and down the street clad only in a pair of motorcycle boots and an extravagantly twirled moustache making a public spectacle of themselves, well, that is up to them.
I imagine there will be a few Anglican Bishops this year too, both real and in drag: "The Gene Genie" as it were. That should be amusing.
On the other hand, nobody who insists on prancing and wriggling around like a self-concious and effeminate dervish to the ultra-facile sounds of relentless disco music that sounds like somebody building a garden shed should have any reason to feel proud of themselves, whether straight, homosexual or Reality TV personality.
Still, it take all sorts to make a world and we should always remember that. It is the world's most sage advice for a stoic understanding of life and the people you are forced to share it with.

A Question of Light and Dark

Edward Hopper is the painter of both summer days and nights for me; even more so than Fairfield Porter, with whom I also associate this particular season, albeit with its less brooding aspects. Hopper’s Cape Cod plays its part in this for me, naturally, but for the most part it is the peculiar melancholic quality of his strangely undecided landscapes that tips the summer scales, so accurately evoking, as these pictures often do, the special disenchantments and regrets of those June, July, and August days past, present, and no doubt yet to come. It would have been interesting to visit that lighthouse, the paintings seem to say, but dark hints of de Chirican mysteriousness were lurking in the shadows, and so we silently agreed it would be better to return to our motel and just stare at the wall instead; or it might have been nice to sit and talk on the porch tonight, but it was too much like hanging around on a movie set waiting for the director to call “action’, so she just went to bed and I read the paper; or it’s so hot I think I’ll strip all my clothes off and stand facing the window.
Been there, done that. Every summer.
And then there is the absence of people in many of Hopper’s paintings: everybody leaves the city during the hot weather, except me of course, left alone in the abandoned world with only secretive and suspicious architecture for company. Anthony Powell caught the mood well in A Buyer’s Market: “Everyone appeared to be away. A sense of isolation, at least when out of the office, had become oppressive, and I began to feel myself a kind of hermit, threading his way eternally through deserted and sultry streets, never again to know a friend.”
Ah. What a terrible curse to be found contemplating the disappointment of summer when summer has not even properly yet begun.

Re-Vamp

Charlotte was only ever available in three flavors: regular plain, apple cinnamon, and this sort of sharp minty kind that I didn’t like. Still, she used to change her packaging all the time, you know, sometimes she came in a paper bag, sometimes she came in a box, and there were different colors every week, often featuring a brand new logo. But she always kept the same twist-off top, and I guess that’s how I’ll remember her the best.
She was a good girl, really: free extra-added power brain; thirty percent more natural goodness; thirty percent less saturated fat. Fun size, family size, and variety pack.
I used to save the coupons for the special souvenir Charlotte merchandise you could win: “Collect them all!” they said. So I did.
Nothing I looked forward to more when I got home from work than settling down with a nice Charlotte.
Then one day they discontinued her model. Out of the blue. Just like that. I went in the store and there was nothing on the shelves. Nothing but this chunky thing called Charlene that looked too chewy for my taste, and it came in all these crazy flavors like “Tropical Fruit” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
I complained to the manager but he just said that most people were sick of the boring old Charlotte flavors and wanted something juicier, something with a bit more fizz; no mess and easily disposable. Artificial sweetener, that’s all Charlene was. Bloody artificial sweetener.
“This is not my cup of tea.” I told the manager.
“Too bad.” he replied.
“Whatever happened to the customer is always right.” I asked.
“We don’t care.” he said. “You get what you’re given and you’d better be happy with it.”
Eventually I simply took my business elsewhere.

Heat

The hours are dripping by at a bafflingly prolonged and protracted rate this morning; like subway trains, the next one always seems to be delayed without explanation. What is going on with the time? So slow. It is normally already next Thursday by now.
And so, from beneath drooping eyelids, I observe a cone-shaped collection of dust roll across my living room floor like a lethargic, ineffective tornado; a curling cluster of things past that has been self-constructed from particles of ancient skin and hair; it travels in slow-motion time through parallelograms of too, too bright sunlight cast by an irregular arrangement of window shading. Drip. Drip. The Dali clocks have returned. Will we never be set free?

Cloak and Dagger

My occasional correspondent, the inimitable Mr. Outer Life finds himself in a quandry: should he don his fake Thomas Hardy moustache and write reams of mordant poetry about death and mortality, or should he don his GQ fake hairy chest wig and write about inserting metal wedges into shoe heels to extend the life of the Lobb that is in need of repair.
My advice to him - recalling the considerable post bag and large number of "hits" my site received after writing about annoyingly curly shirt collars - is to go with the shoe heels everytime. As regular readers may remember, Mister Beck Senior advised me to hie my way on down to Brooks Brothers and purchase their brass collar stays, thereby ensuring that my shirt collars remained as flat as the mediaeval Earth, and as a shapely as mediaeval tavern wench's bosom - although, being of more refined mind than me, Mister Beck Senior did not crouch his advice in such coarse terms as that.
Anyway, returning to Outer Life's problem, why not write about both death and the insertion of metal wedges in to shoe heels ... in the same post? Indeed, why not write about death caused by the incorrect insertion of metal wedges into shoe heels: perhaps the metal wedges could be poisoned? Then we could call the post "The Cobbler's Conspiracy", or something like that.
But why just stop at the insertion of metal wedges? Why not create a serial killer who murders his victims with a wide range of gentleman's accessories: my brass collar stays, for instance, could be thrust into a jugular vein; or sharpened cufflinks could be used to slash someone's wrists; "The Sartorial Sadist Strikes Again" ... I think we have the makings of a best-selling thriller here.
So thanks for the idea Mr Outer Life! I'm off to sell it to PBS.

A Moral Fable

Emmanuel Kant But Genghis Khan: A Moral Fable

Two weeks before her seventeenth birthday, Princess Bustia de la Faique, acclaimed throughout the land as being the most well-endowed girl in the whole of Delirium et Tremours, arranged a birthday party for herself. Feeling extremely bored and unfulfilled in her virginal bower deep in the heart of the impenetrable Castille Cleavage, Princess Bustia resolved to send enchanting, perfume scented invitations to her birthday party - or probably, edicts to attend with showers of gifts, giggled the Ladies of the Royal Bra-Room - to Emmanuel Kant, widely acclaimed as the brainiest man in the kingdom of Philosophia, and also to Genghis Khan, widely acclaimed as the toughest guy on the windswept, barren plains of Outer Mongolia.
At her party, she decided, Princess Bustia would pit the two famous men against each other in trials of strength and intelligence devised by herself, and at the close of competition she would present her hand in marriage to whichever of the men had accumulated the most points.
As soon as the two envelopes containing the party invitations were sealed, an Imperial messenger was dispatched to deliver them into the hands of the two great rivals, and instructed to receive and return with their replies as soon as possible. And from that moment on Princess Bustia paced the confines of her pink and frilly bedchamber, awaiting the responses of her chosen suitors.
Finally, on the night before the big event, Princess Bustia's messenger arrived back in Delirium, hot foot from Philosophia and Mongolia.
"Well," Princess Busia demanded. "What word from Kant and Khan?"
"My lady." the messenger replied, still out of breath. "I must inform you that Kant can't come but Khan can."
"What?"
"Kant can't come but Khan can." the messenger repeated.
"What do you mean by Kant can't." Princess Bustia shrieked, stamping her little foot. "Why can't Kant come?"
The messenger cleared his throat: "Kant told me that, alas, according to his diary he is already booked to spend that night at home thinking in bed so he can't make it."
The Princess beat her fists against the man's head, wailed, and then stormed off up the winding staircase to her virginal bower where she sat sulking and cursing Emmanuel Kant.
An hour later, after the messenger had been killed and things had settled down a little, one of the Ladies of the Royal Bra-Room persuaded the Princess to write another letter to Emmanuel Kant, asking him, if he would be so kind, to furnish her with his real reasons for not attending the birthday party he had been invited to.
Kant's eloquent and thoughtful response, a monumental undertaking that took thirty years to compose, was called Being A True Account of the Reasons Why I Could Not Attend The Birthday Party of Princess Bustia de Faique of Delirium et Tremours, later published in this country as The Critique of Pure Reason, a very fine work that has proven to be a handy guide for thinkers wishing to shirk social responsibility ever since.
But what of Genghis Khan, you ask, the suitor who consented to attend the Princess Bustia's party. Well, naturally that great Chieftain and his Mongol hordes pillaged and plundered their way across Delirium and Tremours until they reached the Castille Cleavage, where, pausing only to sing "Happy Birthday To You", they slaughtered everyone at the party including Princess Bustia herself. And then they popped all of the balloons and ate all of the cake.
So the moral of this fable is: don't go to parties thrown by large breasted aristocratic women unless you are capable of defending yourself against sudden and savage onslaught by rampaging, bloodthirsty horsemen .... it's not much of a useful moral, I know, but at least it's better than none at all. That's what I always say.

Democratic Notional Convection

In the 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death, Raymond Massey’s character, Abraham Farlan, described as the first American killed by the British in the War of Independence, strides to the summit of his Heavenly rock to provide an other-worldly audience of slain servicemen and women, po-faced Quakers, and other assorted figures both ancient and modern with the information that, "A man can see further, sir, from the top of Boston State House, and see more worth seeing than from all the pyramids, turrets and steeples of all the places of the world."
Alas, it must be conceded that such a bountiful panorama may no longer be observed from the same location in our present age. Indeed, a short list of what Abraham Farlan would see today from the top of Boston State House includes the following: a shabby row of fast food chain restaurants featuring Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, and Finagle A Bagel; chintzy discount jewelry vendors and tawdry fashion boutiques purveying clothes for the slovenly and sluttish; second hand Compact Disc stores broadcasting obnoxious music into the street at such disagreeable volume that the adjacent buildings are in danger of collapse due to the Howitzer-like bass vibrations; a number of consignment shoe shops whose shoddy wares are guaranteed to disintegrate in the space of a few months; several scattered and rickety pushcarts selling sugary lemonade, stale pretzels and slimy hot dogs; and within this polluted constellation of third rate shopping experiences, languishing beside the bird crap-splattered Brewer fountain and urine-stained subway entrances, Abraham Farlan could wander amongst the drunks, addicts, drop-outs and varities of hoodlum who sprawl across the park benches and collapse beneath the trees. Consequently, although Abraham could certainly see these horrible sights with his tearful eyes from that perch above Boston State House, let us hope he could not smell them, for we would not wish the poor man to die an agonizing death for a second time.
… However, because the Democratic National Convention looms on the city’s horizon this summer like a leprous and dying wildebeest - and since we have a Democratic Mayor with an eye on his political future and therefore a desire to impress his party comrades - it seems that Boston is actually making a desperate attempt to smarten itself up for a change: the iron railings alongside Storrow Drive have been painted a pleasing shade of green; sidewalks are being repaved and potholes filled; new trees and shrubberies are being planted; and so on; you know, small things here and threre.
But unfortunately I suppose no truly effective steps towards the complete beautification of our surroundings will be taken, such as …oh, I don’t know … let me see … the rapid expulsion of Ted Kennedy from the city limits, preferably by cannonade.
Of course that will never happen. And come July we must be accustomed to the sight of even more obese, disfigured, scruffy and disheveled Democratic delegates huffing and puffing up and down the streets, clad in their crunchy sandals with “Single Parent Dolphins Support Kerry 2004” badges festooned all over their Montana Gay Pride 1992 souvenir tee-shirts.
Of course, one imagines that the city’s electrical supply will run out this July, drained by the strenuous effort of keeping all that extra flabby flesh air-conditioned, but mostly from the Herculean task of ensuring that Senator Kennedy’s mini-bar remains operational.
I do hope Boston is prepared for the army of unwashed politicos that is about to invade. But I doubt it. Where is Abraham Farlan when his city needs him most?

Great Conversations of History

"Hey, did you hear, that guy Marat is dead."
"No. Really?"
"Yeah. He was stabbed in his bath by this mad woman."
"Charlotte Cordray?"
"Of course. Who else!"
".... Well I suppose it was bound to happen, wasn't it."
"Absolutely. Only a matter of time, really."
"Serve him right for not locking the door."
"Yeah, yeah ... But listen to this, there was something funny about the whole thing."
"Oh yeah. What was that?"
"Well ... and you didn't hear this from me .."
"Go on..."
"Well ... they say he was wearing this weird turban type thing on his head."
"No way ..."
" ... Way!"
"Bit of a turn up for the books, eh."
"You're telling me!"
"You know, I bet the murder scene would make a nice picture to hang on somebody's wall if you did a nice painting of it, especially with the turban and everything."
"Yeah. If it was tastefully done."
"Surely you mean tastefully ... executed!"
"Ha ha"
"Ha ha."
"Oh dear me. That was funny... Anyway. Who knows, your Death of Marat painting could even be museum quality if you really spent some time on it."
"Maybe even used the cover of some books."
"Yep. You never know with a good death scene. Sky's the limit."

A Spectre Walks As I Repeat Myself ...

I think it was T. S. Eliot who said, "I'm sorry to inform you that I cannot attend your Poetry Slam on the day specified since I find I am meeting the Archbishop to discuss decoration of the Abbey for this years Harvest Festival. Please be advised, however, that you can read my Four Quartets online. I hope this may prove to be of some consolation for my absence from your event."

Meanwhile ...

With the exception of traditional Czech folk music transcribed for piano, there is no more beautiful sound on Earth than the BBC Shipping Forecast.
A litany of strange, evocative names pronounced in precise, clipped tones; Fair Isle, Fitzroy Sole, Fastnet, Biscay, Dover Wight, Viking, Humber Thames, Cromarty. Mysterious areas of ocean known only to long distance trawlermen casting a nervous eye towards the lighthouse, and marine engineers drilling on distant, lonely North Sea Oil Platforms.
"Low 300 miles west of Sole 998 moving slowly northeast, losing its identity. New low expected North Spain 1016 by 0100 tomorrow."
Listen to it at BBC Shipping Forecast
It's so much better than NPR or college radio.

Stop (Thief) Press

I take back all the nice things I wrote about The Spectator. They have stolen one of my titles - "Boeing Boeing Gone" - for an article about 747s in today's edition of the magazine.
Mind you, I have stolen enough stuff from them in the past that I guess I'll call it quits!

A Reference For Mellors

Being an Eastern Orthodox theologian seems an odd choice of vocation to me. But then I imagine followers of that particular strand of religious thinking would claim that it was not they who did the choosing anyway.
Fortunately for them, however, Eastern Orthodoxy certainly appears to have some rather fine perks: free room and board on Mount Athos for your holidays; large selection of John Tavener albums to choose from; highly decorative artworks on the walls and fancy-style liturgical robes on your shoulders; opportunity of having your essays published in the magazine called First Things. A far superior calling, you will agree, than just being a regular Catholic whose only days out are spent ferrying old ladies to Lourdes once a year in a rusty old van.
Anyway ... readers of the June edition of First Things will be aware that Eastern Orthodox Theologian David Bentley Hart has taken advantage of his aforementioned publishing perk (although I still believe that evidence points to this name possibly being just another pseudonym of Anthony Daniels) and he has written an essay called "Freedom and Decency". Several paragraphs of this excellent essay are devoted to a discussion of the relative merits of censorship - notably the extremely laudable notion of protection from other people's bad taste - and Hart concludes that a little restriction here and there is not such a bad idea. However, being the fair-minded theologian that he is, Hart also draws attention to some of the laughable forms censorship can take - the banning of works by James Joyce, for example, and also, Hart adds with well-founded reservations, the prosecution for obscenity of D.H Lawrence's risible study of inter-class pseudo-pornography Lady Chatterly's Lover.
But what our theological friend forgets to mention, alas, is that the records of the subsequent legal proceedings surrounding the Lawrence book in 1960 provide in themselves an excellent argument for rigorous censorship of permissive literature. Where else in the annals of law - or, indeed, any other kind of annals - can be heard the supreme and ultimate question of all questions, that truly tremendous question asked by the prosecuting counsel: "Is this a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?"
And neither should we forget the memorable rejoinder: "I don't mind my wife or servants reading it as long as my gamekeeper doesn't."
Now that's what I call entertainment; and it would not exist were it not for censorship. Pass the scissors!

Nave of Hearts - A Churchgoing Love Story.

Out of breath from chasing Delia’s rabbit around the cabbage patch, I managed to make it to the Chapel just in time for Evensong or whatever mediaeval ceremony the faithful few were celebrating.
Margery, as always, was kneeling in a pew nearest the memorial window featuring Saint Cuthbert the Dozy Scattering Pomegranates Among the Forty Children of Ethel the Brood Mare.
“Get up you stupid slag.” I hissed. “Your hairline is visible from the pulpit and the vicar can see the join.”
I had spotted his beady eye and arched brow staring down at the top of Margery’s head from his lofty perch the minute I flung the door open.
“We shall now sing Hymn 362.” he announced as if someone had just farted in the font.
Old Mrs Peachum began kneading the organ, and on cue Margery, creaking and groaning, finally rose to her feet: “Sweet Jesu Maileth In My Rebate Oh Great Redeemer,” we sang, always a difficult one for bass-baritones like Margery. Poor cow.
Poor me, for that matter; it was no fun being married to the bum note in the choir, if you get my drift.
And so, while Margery was still enthralled in song, I was able to fold my secret epistle into a paper airplane and send it flying across the apse to be caught Miss Prym’s warm, caressing hands. It said: “I’ve laid on tea for two in the Parsonage garden. Meet me after the service and I’ll butter your scones.”
My spectacles began to steam up as I watched Miss Prym adjust her girdle as she read my letter. I was already sweating with anticipation beneath my wooly cardigan, the green and beige one that Miss Prym had remarked very favorably upon that June afternoon twelve years earlier. Racked with nerves, I glanced over at Miss Pym’s divine form once more. Had it been wise to strike while the iron was still so hot?

…. To be continued in seventeen years time.

Ghosts of Stephenheads Past

1. Corporate Death

The funeral procession trudged it's way up to the twenty-third floor. We strapped Simpson's corpse into his favorite swivel chair, opened the window and tossed him out. Someone rolled up an old fax and blew the Last Post through it. A nice touch. Respectful.
On these occasions it is generally a good idea to attach a large company logo and other promotional signage to the body as it plummets to the ground: why not achieve maximum exposure for your business during this time of grief? Remember, just because a human has died doesn't mean they can't still be a Human Resource.
It is also worth recording that it was elaborate preparations for death, neat embalming tricks and building pyramids that kept the ancient Egyptian economy solvent. Who cares if they extracted the deceased's brain through the nose with a pair of primitive forceps. These people knew the value of good product branding.

2. Travel and Tourism

In olden days, our ancestors grazed cattle on Boston Common. And they still do, considering the bovine expressions on the faces of many people wandering around the area today. Until 1817 public hangings were held on the Common, also. And again, you would think they still are, judging by the lifeless bodies sprawled on the benches thereabouts. The gallows stood on the exact spot where tourists with camera straps biting into their necks now ask directions to Quincy Market.
Stroll along the shaded, junky-lined avenues of Boston Common, and up above the treetops you can see the gleaming, golden tit of the State House. And I am sure the red-nosed people in the State House must be able to see you. Which means that those Irish Whisky drinking politicos in the State House can also see the poor, neglected Brewer Fountain (1868) that sits forlorn and neglected on Boston Common covered in pigeon shit.
No water flows through the Brewer Fountain this summer. A great shame since the fountain has three beautifully decorated tiers. Around the base are excellently sculpted bronze figures of four Classical figures: Neptune and his wife Amphitrite, and the lovers Acis and Galatea. At the moment they look positively suicidal. And no wonder, they are forced to stare into a bone dry and empty basin that is full of litter and still stinks of last years vagrant's urine. This fountain has not been cleaned in how long?
Far too long, obviously.
I sincerely hope Mr. Brewer is not rolling in his grave, but I'm almost certain he must be. Why donate beautiful things to the city if the authorities will not take care of them? Whoever is responsible for the upkeep of public monuments in Boston should be drummed out of whatever miserable organization he or she belongs to.

3. A Fistful of American Express Traveler's Checks

It is summer, and the tourists here in Boston have gone into heavy sunburnt, bleary-eyed rotation. Personally, I love tourists. It is nice to know that people want to visit the place you live, and I like to think I benefit in some small way from the money they bring into the city. However, since I live just down the street from the laughably named "TV's Cheers pub", I spend a lot of time advising people not to go there when they ask for directions. Although the exterior of the bar is the one seen on television, the interior is completely and utterly different in all respects.
One thing I have observed about tourism is that language phrasebooks are absolutely worthless. You spend hours locating the phrase you want to use and learning the correct pronunciation, then you speak it to the man in the hotel, and he answers you in the same language with sentences you have no hope of understanding - consequently the poor hotelier must act out his reply with gestures rather than words, or grab your phrasebook and locate the appropriate response which he then has to point out to you.
Can you imagine travel tourism in the future?
"I like to pack light: rocket boots with special Dr. Scholl's Ejector insoles; two silver togas, one with a red flash insignia for evenings; a utility belt and ray gun; and a Mars-Earth phrasebook chip implanted in my cerebral cortex. Many travel agents advise that it is a good idea to arrive at the launch pad eight weeks before blast off. That way you have plenty of time to undergo Anti-Gravity training before your departure."
Tourism in ancient times was just as bad. Romans were a neurotic group of travelers, they would never depart for a journey on a Tuesday since it was deemed bad luck to do so, nor would they leave at the end of the month for the same reason - unless, of course, the entrails of a sacrificed chicken augured differently.