Ronnie Drew is survived by his beard

[alexsarll]

Went to the New Royal Family's comeback show last night at the ever-baffling Lark In The Park - absolutely top hole. Lots of people out to see 'em, rewarded with icecoldinalex going back to blond. a new drummer in a very fetching sailor suit, and heteroerotic Bowie/Ronson guitar antics from charleston and thedavidx. Oh, and chocolate digestives, of course. New single 'I.W.I.S.H.I.W.A.S.GAY' made its live debut, except that live it's not a minute of electropop madness, it's 'Another One Bites The Dust' meets the Sugarhill Gang, especially once moleintheground got in there with the gay guest rap. That's gay meaning homosexual, obv.

Stardust is of all Neil Gaiman's works the one to show the most evidence of Lord Dunsany' influence - and that's saying something. Nonetheless, even the success of the lovely film version did not prepare me for news of a Dunsany film. I confess that Dean Spanley is not a work I know, but if Peter O'Toole, Sam Neill and Jeremy Northam are all in the film, then I have reason to be optimistic. Though I note they have all also worked together on the dismal Tudors, so maybe I should be expecting an announcement of Joss Stone joining the project as the King of Elfland's daughter.

I've noticed the whole Georgia farrago has been mostly absent from my friendslist, and I don't blame people, because there's not much to say; Russia's throwing its weight around again, there's sod all we can realistically do about it, and certain sections of the Left are creaming themselves with glee and blaming the US, just like the old days. But this one I cannot let past without comment: "It is rare that all the blame is on one side. In fact, both sides are probably to blame. That is very important to understand," Germany's Chancellor, there, talking about a war. Perhaps she should acquaint herself with the biographies of some of her own predecessors, she might find a rather startling counter-example. That sort of moral equivalence and equivocation gets my back up whoever's spitting it, but coming from someone in that particular job, is simply chilling.
(And while I'm back off the current affairs wagon:
Paul Duffy, 35, from Castlemilk, was part of a four-strong gang who smashed their way into a car dealer's home...The High Court in Edinburgh heard that Duffy was freed on bail nine days before the raid in February. He had 52 previous convictions for crimes including robbery and carrying a knife. And this man has been sentenced to...50 months. It being deeply unlikely that he will even serve the whole of that. Seriously, what are the odds that this man's continued existence will ever do other than taint the lives of other, better people? What possible purpose is served by allowing the continued existence of a human being so fundamentally rotten?)

I realise there are few lower forms of blogging than 'point and laugh at the interweb mentalist' but what the Hell - go here, skim the article (which is filler, frankly), and then check the comments from a prize pillock I may have mentioned before, 'anytimefrances'. ATF's feeble brain is entirely consumed by a knot of obsessions - chiefly, the notion that rock and rap music (they're interchangeable) are synonymous with drugs and noise pollution, and that they're leading to the demise of Real Literature and Proper Music. In and of itself this would be of strictly historical interest - in an age where even the Mail covers Glastonbury without much hysteria, seeing such retrograde opinions in the wild is a bit like finding a living coelacanth, except uglier. What raises the experience to the level of comedy is that while ATF grandly proclaims its own cultural and intellectual superiority to the foolish rock fans, its incoherent arguments are unfailingly delivered with worse spelling and grammar (never mind sanity) than anyone else on there: "wake up to reality. don't pretend, we can turn it up 'real loud' because everyone loves it. it's sick humiliation detritus." Though I admit that's an atypical quote - for starters, the apostrophes are in the right place.

Comments

dum...dum...dum

[missfrost.livejournal.com]

ATF has hurt my head! Bearing in mind that I often have to read the Mail, Star and Sun letters pages, I have never been quite so astounded by the opinion of the so-called general public as I was by that.

Re: dum...dum...dum

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Astonishing, isn't it? I mean, between letters pages and Web 2.0 there are a lot of fools sharing their opinion with the world, but seldom does one find quite such a perfect storm of stupidity.

Re: dum...dum...dum

[missfrost.livejournal.com]

I found the fact that she was in Derby quite intriguing though...

Re: dum...dum...dum

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

To me that was simply...inevitable. Like when I heard the BNP were having a music festival this weekend, I barely even needed to ask where. Seriously, of all the people I knew in Derby who could speak, and think, and crazy stuff like that, not one of them was more than third generation Derby. The proper locals Aren't Right.

Re: dum...dum...dum

[missfrost.livejournal.com]

I'm dying to hear what ATF has to say about a BNP music festival.

Re: dum...dum...dum

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I don't think it's being held in the university library, the market square or ATF's neighbour's house. But we can always hope that I was misinformed...

Re: dum...dum...dum

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

See I would say Central Park Dagenham! ;)

Re: dum...dum...dum

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

But for all its sins, Essex is at least near civilisation. Out in the wilds of Derby, they can breed new generations of gunts who won't be lured away by the bright lights...

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

Lark In The Park used to have loads and loads of flyers for fetish events and stuff which is what used to baffle me about it.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

For me it's more about all the dictatorial posters which seem to be predicated on the same sort of ethos as the Luminaire, while the venue doesn't generally pull in quite the same calibre of acts. It is quite near Central Station so the fetish flyers make at least that much sense.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

I think your Coelacanth analogy is flawed. Finding a living Coelacanth was a cause for celebration. People still run around going "how freaking cool are these things!".

Someone like ATF is closer to a fishing boat dredging up those basking shark carcass that look a bit like sea monsters. People run around going "sweet god what is that thing?"

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Fair, but really - coealcanths are only cool 'cos they're old, aren't they? I mean, if you were given a list of their coevals and asked to rank them in order of awesomeness of finding a live population, they wouldn't make the top 20, would they

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

It would be nice to find non-avian dinosaurs (but which sort? its like saying "non-primate mammals", a massively diverse group you can't boil down to representative groups), or a placoderm, etc, but they haven't survived, so we just have to make do with what we've got. "Freaking awesome" animals tend not to survive major extinctions terribly well.

Nor do you tend to find "missing links" persisting for terribly long. Archaeopteryx wasn't a particularly talented flyer, and was outcompeted by its descendants.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

If they failed to survive extinctions, we can only assume that the triceratops et al were, contrary to the impression they gave, insufficiently freaking awesome. As such, we can but hope that certain isolated populations were more freaking awesome than the general population. If the awesomeness took the form of ninja training, for instance, it would also explain why we've yet to find them.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

Most humans will judge awesomeness on the basis of size and such, which puts you first on the list of "going extinct" when a 10km wide rock falls out the sky on your head. Most of what survives is small, inoffensive and fairly boring (the old "all that survives the nuclear holocaust will be rats and cockroaches" adage).

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Although isn't that a myth as regards cockroaches, at least in temperate climates which would be too cold for them without the warmth of human habitation?

[ex-al-ewing.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the time to point to the mad mentalist opinions of an interweb nutter is after you've gone on a BRING BACK THE NOOSE rant, Barry.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm a little disappointed that you think the juxtaposition was accidental.

[ex-al-ewing.livejournal.com]

I'll read the Cliff's Notes when they come out.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's wheels within wheels round here. Though I did play myself somewhat by posting this while the one friend who's even more frothing on the matter than myself is on his holidays.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

"Sick Humiliation Detritus" - a great name for my new band.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I did briefly wonder whether that post meant we'd finally found Richey Manic.

[euphoricstimuli.livejournal.com]

Whos Lord Dunsany? Looks like someone important I've missed.
To be honest when I first read Stardust, the imediate comparison that leapt out at me was Wiliam Morris.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I have a couple of his novels in the parents' attic, but have yet to read them. The one short I know is very similar in tone to Dunsany, though Dunsany has perhaps a little more self-awareness. Dunsany's Wikipedia entry's not bad, though a little too restrained for my tastes; mercifully, his books are much easier to find now than they were even a few years back - even Penguin have now ushered him into the canon.