American Fez

The Phantom Tollbooth

Every year I remove my vinyl copy of Scott Walker’s “The Moviegoer “ album from its protective sleeve and give it a RPM whirl on my turntable. These are big screen songs for cinemascope pictures; aural archives from a time when venturing out to see a film was a sophisticated and alluring night’s entertainment. Today audiences only go to the movies if they have nothing better to do. They have become expensive options for wasting time.
I was reminded of that former, golden age recently when purchasing an iced americano from Starbucks. The shop was playing some old seventies song that included the phrase “movie show.” Nobody calls films “movie shows” anymore. We merely refer them as “what’s on” or “it.”
I suppose I am just old enough to remember the good old days, and my most vivid memory is sitting in the dark with my dad watching “The Phantom Tollbooth,” an animated adaptation of Norman Juster’s brilliant story. However, for a long period of time, being no fan of films, my father denied that this experience ever took place, and that I must have dreamt it Indeed, this film of “The Phantom Tollbooth,” he added, must surely be a phantom of my own imagination since he himself would never have stepped foot inside a cinema, even to please me. I knew he must be wrong because my recollection of the animation was so clear and strong, but it was not until at least two decades later that I actually found a copy of the film in the children’s section of my local video store. Mind you, it wasn’t the same watching it on tape as it had been in the theater, they never are. But, alas, this is what the future holds. Pretty soon all theaters will have switched over to High Definition screenings, tape being so much cheaper to mass-produce even HD tape, than it is to process thousands of film prints.

Blue Tooth Red Face

My phone may have just received its first spam text message. The communication certainly makes no sense to me, nor can I discern from what source it originates. Fortunately my service plan provides me with free text messaging. After all, who wants to be charged time and money for worthless and unwanted data? But such a travesty of networking will befall someone soon.
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Obviously, as cellular telephone technology develops itself into yet another branch of the web, the more prone our wireless,mobile devices become to those afflictions that are the scourges of the internet: spam mail, viruses, idle browsing, wasted time, ecetera.
In fact, almost anything with a microprocessor is at risk. Perhaps the artificially intelligent vacuum cleaners of 2009 will be attacked by computer viruses instructed these virtuous machines to suddenly act like the wayward brooms and mops of the Sorceror's Apprentice? Or maybe we will already have despairingly given up on the internet by then.

Packing And Moving Tips

Sentimentality is just another form of laziness; a form of mental acedia in which an object's quixotic associations with an over-sweetened vision of the past are valued over its actual worth and usefulness.
But maybe that's not such a bad thing? I don't know. This isn't really much of a packing tip, I'm afraid.
Sorry.

A Message From Me To You

Perhaps I spoke to soon. Today's republican schedule has forced an unforeseen interregnum in the divinely righteous governance of my personal life. Never mind, the unruly Jacobins of Time will be flung into my dungeons by tomorrow. Normal sovereignty will be resumed as soon as possible.

Point To Point

From now until the middle of next week I shall be engaged in the arduous and unpleasant task of moving my life and its effects from one location to another. My brain, at least what remains of it, has been bubble wrapped and currently resides in a cardboard box alongside the second best crockery and a rather frightening tribal mask that Abby brought back from Bali several years ago. However, the slings and arrows of outrageous chores have never prevented me from updating this blog before, and I see no reason why such slight blips in my domestic administration should prevent me. After all, I have hired a team of friendly ogres and their enormous van to do the dirty work for me.

The Corporate World

As you may recall, some time ago now I decided to create a corporate logo for myself. As you can observe by even the merest cursory perusal of the example reproduced below, I was entirely unsuccessful in this endeavor. A generic bird adorned with a fez and an eye-patch clasping in its beak a generic fish wearing a fez and an eye-patch?

I have always considered birds to be the pirates of the garden, hence the eye-patch, and the cold, dark eyes of our feathered friends also appear vaguely Orientalist, at least to my mind, which explains the addition of the fez. That letter S, of course, stands for Stephenesque, and not Superbird. Oh, and the fish that droops like a Ottoman vizier's moustache from the bird's mouth? Well, a worm wearing an eye-patch and a fez would look very silly indeed, wouldn't it.

Matthew d'Anbrowna

Considering that Britain's venerable weekly Spectator can safely be regarded as a publication largely unsympathetic to the "da Vinci Code" story and related phenomena, I was somewhat amused to learn that Matthew d'Ancona the magazine's editor', has just published a brand new novel called "Tabatha's Code."
Described as "a fast-paced thriller which takes the reader through a rollercoaster ride of global politics and personal betrayals" the book's plot hinges on the succesful deciphering of certain "coded messages."
Matthew d'Anbrowna will be cashing-in, sorry, I mean signing copies of his work at a hidden vault near you soon.
Meanwhile, what's the deal with the Spectator's new preposterous and boring "You've Earned It" section?
I don't know. There really ought to be more of Rachel Johnson's wonderful writing in it. Only she can save the magazine now.

Body, Mind and Spirit

Merlin Herbert's Thought For The Day

The human nose is divided into two diverse energy areas, the ying nostril and the yang nostril, that form a pyramidal proboscis divinely manifest on the human face. These sacred nasel spaces produce cosmic snot crystals that can be harvested and presented as ritual offerings to the moon.

One Yorkshireman

When I were a lad we were really afraid of war, much more afraid of war than folk are today. Back then "war" meant t' bomb and t' bomb meant hideous human mutations and young 'un's skin melting off their bones right in front of your eyes. That's what war meant when I were a lad: t'Earth become a barren, inhospitable wasteland ruled by subterranean overlords who turned everyone into slaves to do their bidding in the dark underground caverns which were t' only place anyone could subsist anymore without being vaporized by the atomic winter. A bit like Lancashire on early closing day, only more depressing.
War bloody war, eh?
Mr Arkwright at number 38 built himself a bomb shelter behind outside toilet in his back garden. Made it himself out of an old Bessamer Converter, a rusty pram, a length of bicycle innertube, and some bits o' breeze blocks. It were full of baked beans and tinned rhubarb. I reckon there were some powdered custard in there, too, but I don't rightly know. My mam said she'd rather face a thousand mushroom clouds o' nuclear armageddon than suffer five minutes in confined atmosphere with Mr. Arkwright after he'd eaten all them beans and all that rhubarb. Even our dog, Jobriath, wouldn't do his business near it.
I tell you, this to-do they're having now with the Iranians brings it all flooding back; all t' tense paranoia o' yesteryear. Cold War nostalgia, that's what I call it. At least, you knew where you were with old Ivan.

Great Ghosts

Great Ghosts of Comedy (ain't no spectral garbage here):

1. Conductor Seventy-One (from "A Matter of Life and Death)

2. Hopkirk, Deceased: original version

3. Elvira (from "Blithe Spirit")

4. Topper

5. The Ghost Goes West

6. The Canterville Ghost

....

....

94. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Snetterton

Browsing shelves of unsold books this weekend, my eye chanced upon a gleaming, pristine-spined copy of something called "Nostradamus For Dummies." Obviously the publishers had performed their market reseach with expert precision, for it is hard to imagine that any other genre of person but Dummies would be interested in reading such a work!

As you know, Nostradamus' real name was Pierre Smeeth, and before prophecy took his fancy, he paid the bills by pursuing a career upon the stage; performing in a number of celebrated farces including: "Pardon Me Madame de Sevigne, But I Believe That The Baguette In Question Belongs To Me!" and "Yes, Cardinal Mazarin, We Have No Shaved Garlic."

Ignoring the book, I passed over to the store's DVD section, purchasing "At Last The 1948 Show." featuring John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Marty Feldman, Tim Brooke Taylor, and the Lovely Aimi MacDonald, who was very lovely indeed. Apparently, Feldman found her in one of London's louche West End Cabarets. What a find! And she was funnier than the other three combined. A good disc well-worth watching.

Ah Yes

No doubt most of you are familiar with Nietzsche's hilarious account of how he taught Wagner to throw and catch a boomerang. The story appears about three-quarters of the way through "Thus Spake Zarathrusta," and has always brought an enormous smile to face whenever I think of those two eminent German gentlemen cantering around Goooveballenplaz pretending to be aborigines. By comparison, Nietzsche's amusing anecdote makes the episode of the cheese in "Three Men In A Boat" appear about as funny as an extremely serious, in-depth post-doctoral treatise on the economic effects of automatic churning machines on nineteenth-century Norwegian dairy farming methods.

Exeunt All Pursued By Furies

I am a proud, card-carrying Contrarian. In fact, I am so contrary that I actually wash my hands before going to the bathroom. Mary Mary has nothing on me. By comparison Mary Mary is a model of agreeable malleability.
But these days I'm finding it increasingly difficult to decide from exactly which viewpoints and perspectives I should divaricate. All appear equally banal and lame to me. So I just figure I'll pick on whomever seems most certain about their shibboleths. What else can a good Contrarian do?

Odd Mood

Salty Stan, last of the crackers, slowly spoons himself across a swelling sea of soup.
Beware the carrot sharks, dear Stan, oh treacherous Scotch broth! Here be mullagatawny monsters and submerged spuds deep in Betty Crocker's locker.
A lonely lentil floats by; then a school of vichyssoise, and also split peas, bobbing along, fresh from their spawning sites in the gumbo archipelago. Mock turtle? Perhaps. Who knows? It is Wednesday, after all, that hump-backed whale of a day.

In Ages Past

The masthead of my first online journal was adorned by the charming image reproduced below, inadequately scanned from the back cover of one of my favorite books, Osbert Lancaster's "All Done From Memory," which entertainingly recalls the author's halycon youth and neophyte years of adulthood between the wars.

As you can see, well, just barely see, Lancaster's illustration includes all the familiar and fashionable elements of those times: a portrait photograph of a bright young flapper; a framed picture of Nijinsky on the wall; an African mask, absolutely de rigeur back then; there's also one of those new-fangled cocktails drinks from America placed nonchalantly beside a gramophone undoubtedly blasting Debussy into the evening air; and an unread issue of Wyndham Lewis' infamous magazine "The Enemy" illuminated by a moderne lamp.
Personally, I tried very hard to admire all those 1920's artifacts because I thought I ought to. But when push comes to shove, I just don't; with the exception of Nijinksy's autobography - "I challenge Diagalev to a bullfight!" - and some Vorticist artworks. I'm sure that flapper was probably a bitch too.
Meanwhile, whatever enjoyment I might have experienced from listening to the music of Debussy's has been eternally devastated by an indelibably awful mental image of pseudo-hetreosexual aesthetes either cantering around some Oxford quadrangle, or repeatedly revisiting Brideshead to gorge their fat, effeminate faces on pompously enormous strawberries.
I'd much rather spend my precious time with Anthony Powell's "Afternoon Men," any day of the week.

Apollo

A colony of sun-worshippers invade a rickety wooden dock on the River Charles at high noon last Saturday. They roll over onto their browning backs, adjusting freckled and shiny shoulders, closing their eyes, toes fanned, books ignored, baskets full of bottles containing lotions and potions. The people of Apollo. Personally, I always burn to a red crisp, hating hot beaches and all the urban equivalents of them.

The Charles is one of the world's most actively recreational rivers: fishing and rollerblading; concerts and sailing; fireworks and bird-spotting; picnic tables and dog walking. There's even a gondola service for touring the man-made lagoons. But, heavily dammed many times over, this river no longer flows into the sea. I couldn't live where I do if it did - unless I pitched a tent on a salt marssh.

I Was Julius Caesar's Barber

So just how do you inform a conquering hero that, although he might have gained a world, he's also lost most of the hair from the top of his head? Personally, I just always hemmed and hawed and casually inquired if he'd gone to one of those cheap, tribal salons in the wilds of unfashionably primitive Gaul when he off expanding the empire. What else can you say? An honest barber must pussy-foot around such sensitive issues with a proud client like Julius Caesar. I mean, I didn't want to end up in a gladiator camp getting my curls parted by a Net 'n' Trident man, if you know what I mean.
Let me tell you, and this comes straight from the barber's chair, Caesar's historic feat of crossing the Rubicon was nothing compared to the complex comb-over he needed to plan each morning. It wasn't the Ides of March this guy needed to be worried about, it was the onset of Androgenetic Alopecia! - that's the condition you barbarians call "male pattern baldness".
Of course, they deified him later. I have no problem with that; after all, he'd already been depilified. Me? I do that Livia Drusilla's hair these days. She mixes her own styling gels and gossips like there's no tomorrow.

Mood Agriculturo

The field is fragrant fallow. Sun rises behind church steeple. A cock crows while crows caw. The ploughman wakes. Gretel kindles fire in the grate: busty, trusty milkmaid she. Meanwhile, beneath dense woodland brush, enter stoat. Long shadows stalk this arable land.
Think I'll have cornflakes for breakfast. Again.
Toujours, toujours, toujours le Bucolia!

Him Indoors

Today there are torrential rains that might make even Noah cry. And so we shall not venture abroad into the water meadows and river bank today. After all, at this moment a stronger current courses down my window pane than flows through the swelling Charles.
A fine morning, therefore, when enlightened souls (ye who be not afraid of foul language and offensive subject matter) can spend languorous hours listening to the collected works of Derek and Clive, those grubby alter-egos of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
By their works shall ye know them, and X-rated streaming audio from their three albums can be found at this online gentleman's public convenience
And as those of us who purchased the CDs to replace our worn-out vinyl records will be well aware, Ad Nauseum features fabled "bonus tracks." Which is why some of us even bought the dynamic duo's DVD: "Derek and Clive Get The Horn."
But for the humorless, outraged Puritans amongst you who deride and deplore the art of Dagenham's finest, I refer you to the wise words of Sir Toby Belch (always a suitable authority to quote on such occasions): "Out o' tune, sir: ye lie ... Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
Cook and Moore: still bedazzling after all these years.

Ol' Cinematic River Keep Rollin'

Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits ...
Meanwhile, this foliaceous foot bridge spans one of the dreamy lagoons forming a watery wedge between the sail boats of the Charles River and the streaming traffic of Storrow Drive. To my mind it exudes an extremely Pre-Raphaelite Ophelian quality, since even a mere semi-active imagination could easily visualise some drown-ed virgin floating beneath its stone arches in her floral tomb.

Or if you want to get all Arthurian about it, then squint like Sir Kay and you can spot the Lady of Shallot, drifting downstream in her antique barque, seeking her knight with "coal-black curls."
I took this lovely picture last August while such romantic figments flow through my frontal lobes, but truth be told, besides bemused ducks and twin tourist gondolas, the only idle fancies that actually ride rhe ripples here are armadas of spent soda cans and the occasional used contraceptive.
What a waste.