The last of the Big Smoke

Regular readers of this blog (there must be one or two) will know that I like to take myself off to London a couple of times a year for weekends of culture - art, theatre, music, chilling on the Southbank, that kind of thing. It's lovely - you should try it. Anyway, at the weekend I took what might be, for reasons I don't intend to go into here, the last such trip for a while. We drove down on Friday afternoon and took up residence in an excellent little apartment in Hammersmith (I'm not going to tell you exactly where, because it is excellent, and if I spread the word too far and wide then next time I do get down to the Big Smoke I won't be able to stay there because it'll be fully booked, with you in it!). But I digress. After a brief bout of Christmas shopping in Muji at Covent Garden, we had an excellent dinner in 32 Great Queen Street, before heading to the New London Theatre on Drury Lane to see War Horse. And what a show that is - a true theatrical experience. Based on Michael Morpurgo's children's book of the same name, War Horse tells the tale of a boy and his horse and their experiences in the run-up to, and during, the First World War. In case you're wondering how they bring horses to life on stage, well, it's done with the most amazing puppets (right) I've ever seen - full-size horse puppets that are so well animated (right down to twitching ears) that you soon forget the puppeteers and become wholly engaged by the character of the horse. The show also provides a very vivid evocation of the horrors of WWI: the madness of cavalry charges into machine-gun fire, the lunacy of going "over the top", the terrible futility of trench warfare. Yes, it's a children's book, and yes, you have to suspend your disbelief a little bit to swallow the redemptive ending, but War Horse is a truly astonishing show, and genuinely moving to boot. I'd see it while you can if I were you.

The next day we headed over to the Southbank, where our first stop was the Christmas market. If I'm honest, this was a bit disappointing. Don't get me wrong, the stalls that were there were great, and suitably Christmassy, but they were nearly all food outlets. This is fine in that it gives the market a lovely smell, and gets the tastebuds in the Christmas spirit, but I would have liked to have seen more stalls selling unusual gifts. Yes, there were some... but there weren't enough. That wasn't the only disappointment though, because we headed up to the Tate Modern next, specifically to see the Pop Life exhibition... and, to be honest, that was a bit of a disappointment too. Yes, I accept that a key aim of the exhibition is to celebrate the growth of commercialism in art, but that grates a little with me - I prefer the idea of art for art's sake, rather than churning something out just because you know it will sell. I did like Keith Haring's "Pop Shop" (his style is illustrated on the left), and Tracey Emin's work, love it or loathe it, at least feels very real and personal, but some of the rest? Jeff Koon's work with Ilona Staller (aka La Cicciolina) is exhibited behind closed doors because of its adult nature, and that's no surprise given that it's basically just giant close-ups, in different media, of them having sex. There's nothing wrong with this... except that when you read that Koons contacted Staller after seeing her in porn mags, engaged her to work on this with him, married her, posed the pair of them in increasing explicit works, and that in later works the Koons figure was beefed up and better groomed... well, it just feels like wish-fulfilment for the artist, rather than art for art's sake. Koons might like to dress this up as portraying a modern-day Adam and Eve, but really it's just self-indulgent, self-gratifying sexploitation. (This is where I should append "IMHO" but I just can't bring myself to indulge in such a linguistic transgression, sorry.)

What else? Well, talking of sexploitation, Richard Prince's original "Spiritual America" has been removed from display - this features a naked, 10-year old Brooke Shields, heavily made up and slicked down. It's been replaced by "Spiritual America IV", which shows an adult Shields recreating the pose in a bikini, ironically less heavily made up and without having been quite so vigorously baby-lotioned. If you believe the Tate, this replacement of the original picture with the more recent update was at the artist's request. If you believe the BBC News website, the change was made after a visit from the police... And now I know I'm going to sound pious and old-fashioned but Andrea Fraser's exhibit left me cold. She basically asked a gallery to find her a collector that would be willing to be filmed having sex with her for an hour, given that the collector would then pay a not insignificant sum to own the first copy of the resultant film. Is this art or is this, oh let's say, not too far removed from very clever prostitution? Is this art or has Fraser, like Koons, dressed porn up as art and hidden behind the shock factor? In the words of many (too many) a reality show, you decide. At least the exhibition ended on a high note though, with McG's video of Kirsten Dunst performing a pleasingly-faithful cover of the old Vapors track "Turning Japanese" whilst prancing around the streets of Tokyo, dressed in a colourful costume that seemed (to this boy, at least) to owe a lot to Manga and animé (right). I watched this all the way through... twice... Oh, and I did like Damien Hirst's "Ingo, Torsen" but that may be because I found watching twins knitting in front of Hirst spot paintings strangely hypnotic...

A mixed-bag at the Tate then, but a generally enjoyable (and genuinely thought-provoking) trip to London. And as if that wasn't enough, it also gives the perfect excuse to wheel out The Vapors themselves... enjoy.

Mopping up

None of these stories quite deserve a post in their own right, but they are all worth sharing with you, so here goes - a bulletpoint apiece.

• Someone has complained that the new Marks and Spencer Christmas TV ad is sexist. Oh, for God's sake! Watch it (it's the one entitled "Christmas Ad", rather than the Wallace & Gromit one) and decide for yourself that it isn't. Frankly, who doesn't want to see a pretty girl prancing around in her underwear over the holiday period or, indeed, at any other time? Or am I now being sexist?
• Tesco paid nearly £1 million for six bicycles. Yes, push-bikes. Ordinary push-bikes. Stupid Evil Empire...
• For those of you who prefer over-hyped music stars to overpaid sports stars, you can now ditch Fantasy Football and create your own Fantasy Festival instead, and compete to win money-can't-buy type prizes in the process. Here's the line-up for the (admittedly unimaginatively entitled) Pipstock...
• When The Muppets perform Bohemian Rhapsody, it's satisfyingly funny.

So, who is number one?

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the campaign to get The Who a number one single. Well, this week is buying week and, as I write, you have about 33 hours left in which to buy a download of "Baba O'Riley", and so help the cause.

Sadly, the eXecrable Factor finalists are releasing their group single this week... which is a Michael Jackson cover... and a charity record... so the chances of actually getting The Who to number one are as good as nil. I mean, they were pretty slim anyway, but now...

Oh well. Baba O'Riley is a great record and you really ought to have it in your MP3 collection. Go and buy it. Quickly!

What do you call a man with three wooden heads?

Edward Woodward, obviously. Woodward died yesterday, at the age of 79. For many people, he will be famous for the inestimable Wicker Man (a genuinely unsettling film, in the unlikely event that you haven't seen it), whilst for others he will always be The Equalizer. These were both great roles, supremely executed by this fine actor. For me though, the high point of Woodward's resumé will always be Callan, even though I am too young to remember much about the original TV series. I base this preference purely on Edward's performance in the 1974 film, which is ace from start to finish.

I scoured YouTube this morning, because I really wanted to show you the sequence in which he uses a Range Rover to prevent his quarry leaving their house but guess what? Not for the first time, YouTube let me down. Yes, I know there are plenty of grainy clips from the old TV series, but the only clip I could find from the film is this. Enjoy, and RIP, Ewar Woowar.

Random trivia: Woodward was married to Michele Dotrice, of Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em renown, whilst the theme music for The Equalizer was written and performed by none other than Stewart Copeland, drummer with The Police.

Stung!

Hooray for Sting!

I loved The Police, and he's churned out some great solo work too (especially this), and let's not forget he was the Ace Face in Quadrophenia. And now, bless him, he's let rip on the X Factor (that's X for execrable, obviously). It won't make a blind bit of difference to the success of this appalling show, but Sting says everything I want to say on the subject, and more, and he says it here. Go read, and inwardly cheer.

Remember, remember...

YouTube is awash with old public information films, and of course all the fireworks ones are very popular right now, what with it being Guy Fawkes' Night tonight. This is the one that I remember from my childhood.

And remember kids, doing this is neither big nor clever...

RSI

When I first had a Palm Pilot (this one), back in 1999 or thereabouts, I got quite hooked on Sokoban. I spent hours dragging the stylus across my Palm's greyscale screen - countless boring meetings were spent that way. The great thing about Sokoban is that it proves the old adage that a game can be as simple as anything, yet still be compelling.

Now I've discovered Obechi... I've only played it three times, yet already don't want to stop. It is a sure-fire way to get RSI though...

Let the man hang himself

Countless millions will, no doubt, have watched Nick Griffin on Question Time last night. I was one of those millions. Was the BBC right to give Griffin, leader of the BNP, a platform? Well, how could they deny him it when his party, incredibly, polled more than a million votes nationwide in the last Euro and local elections. So they had to have him on there, eventually. Fortunately for us all then, he was pulled apart, by the crowd, the rest of the panel (carefully chosen, it would appear) and the always-excellent David Dimbleby.

Unbelievably, whilst Griffin confirmed that he is no longer a Holocaust denier, he could not say why he had changed his mind, or what he now believed. Equally unbelievably, he literally laughed off some of the criticism that came his way in the form of his own quotes from the past, coming back to haunt him. He declared that "skin colour is not an issue" when answering a question on his party's policy of repatriation - this from the leader of a party which, until the Equalities Commission forced it to change last week, had a "whites only" membership policy! And that's not all: he lambasted the Islamic faith (relying on a skewed interpretation of the Qu'ran to do so), admitted sharing a platform with the Klu Klux Klan, and more besides - he really did live up to the old aphorism that if you give a man enough rope...

Naturally my hope is that the Great British public will have watched Griffin last night and realised how appalling he and his party are, how the political posturings of the BNP are nothing but an attempt to pull a cloak of respectability over an organisation with vile, racist motives. My fear though is that the sort of people that watch Question Time know this already, whilst those that are tempted to vote for the BNP probably don't watch Question Time. So what can we do? Well, a very vocal group demonstrated outside the BBC yesterday, shouting, screaming and bemoaning Griffin and his ilk. But you don't beat hate with hate, and name-calling just brings you down to the lowest common denominator. If the BNP are going to try to use politics to acquire power, and implement their awful policies, then the way to defeat them is through politics too. It's important to remember that the number of votes the BNP polled at the last Euro and local elections didn't rise significantly, but their proportion of the vote rose because overall voter turn-out was very low. So we - you, me and everyone we know - needs to get involved. It doesn't matter whether your political views are red, blue, yellow, green, purple or Monster Raving Loony, you need to get engaged with the political process, and you need to vote.

That just leaves time, then, to offer kudos to Bonnie Greer for keeping her back turned on Griffin for virtually the entire show, and to close with a short message from your old Uncle Bill...

Live by the sword, die by the sword

Remember the Daily Mail stoking up the fire of complaints and controversy surrounding the whole Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross/Andrew Sachs affair? Well, the "Wail" doesn't like it quite so much when the shoe is on the other foot, does it?

I was going to add my vitriol to the torrent that is currently swamping the Mail, and its columnist, Jan Moir, but I won't. This is mainly because I don't feel I have much to add to the comments of the always excellent Charlie Brooker and Dave Gorman, both of which are worth a few moments of your time.

I do seem to recall making the point, during the Brand/Ross/Sachs epsiode, that people were complaining about something they hadn't actually experienced, and I wonder if that's happening again. So to make sure you know what has triggered all this, read the original article... albeit with a sanitised, less offensive headline. Then bemoan the crass, offensive, stupid and insensitive drivel that Moir has spouted...

Now my heart is full

Tell all of my friends... I don't have too many.