Blue Friday - Tank Park Salute (live)

More from the peerless Uncle Bill, a song for parents everywhere. Prepare to get something in your eye...

The obvious post

I've checked back through the February posts for the last fourteen years (yes, that really is how long this tired little blog has been stumbling on) and it seems that, somehow, I've never posted this obvious song for today.

So now, at 11.59... Valentine's Day Is Over. A great early-Bragg-era song, with wonderful between-the-lines storytelling, laid even more bare than usual in this Peel Session version.

The Dirty Mac

I love that this happened. I love that it was recorded and that a recording was kept. And most of all, I love the minute of banter between John and Mick at the intro, particularly the moment 50 seconds in when Mick turns directly to the camera and says, "Dirty".

Here's Winston Legthigh on vocals and rhythm guitar, Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums ("Are you really, experienced?" "Oh very, very. You've read my file."), Eric Clapton "from the late, great Cream" on lead guitar and "your own soul brother" Keith Richards on bass. In other words, The Dirty Mac performing Beatles vocal-shredder Yer Blues, from The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV special.

On looking like

Apparently it is possible for the same person to look like all of these people...

About twelve years ago, when I had a bit more hair, kept my stubble trimmed and was running three times a week (i.e. was a lot slimmer), I quite often got told I looked like Simon Pegg. At one friend's 40th birthday party, I was told this by three different people, separately. One of them even said, "I'm sure you hear this all the time but you look just like..." Now for the record, I didn't really look like Simon Pegg, though I can see where they were coming from, I guess.

Prior to the age of Pegg comparison, I was told on more than one occasion that I looked like a young Tony Blair in certain photographs. Since the Pegg years, I've most often been told I look like Dave Gorman. More accurately, Dave looks like me (I am older). But again, neither of those is really accurate, both simplistic comparisons based on a single feature (hair for Blair, beard for Dave G).

Today I had the most unexpected "you look like" yet. I have new glasses. Not only that, I'm having to wear my glasses more of the time, so I guess they are more noticeable, especially to people I don't see that often. And today, from a colleague at work, this: "I've been talking with XXXX and we've decided your new glasses make you look like Jeff Goldblum."

Now, by no stretch of even the most fertile imagination do I look anything remotely like Jeff Goldblum.

What XXXX and YYYY mean is that my new glasses look a little bit like Jeff Goldblum's glasses.

Whatever, I'll take that as a win, because Jeff rules.

More tees, vicar?

I should probably grow up. No-one buys these (yet, at least), but I had fun designing them.

All this and more, available to buy, here.

Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not

Sad to hear of Albert Finney's passing - Mark at the reliably excellent So It Goes has a nice obit here.

Top pub quiz trivia for you: the title of the debut Arctic Monkeys album comes from this internal monologue, delivered by Finney in his breakthrough film role, the adaptation of Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Here, see for yourselves.

R.I.P. Albert.

Blue Friday - Lua

Courtesy of Bright Eyes, aka singer-songwriter Conor Oberst.

The Underappreciated: Adventureland

A very occasional series, the purpose of which is to highlight films that are really underappreciated, and that you might get a kick out of viewing. Today, a 2009 vehicle for then rising star Jesse Eisenberg: Adventureland.

"One of the year's coolest comedies!" opines the review quote, because that's what the kids want, isn't it? A cool comedy? But you might guess, by dint of the fact that I'm featuring it here, that there's a bit more to it than that... although you wouldn't know it from IDMB's plot summary for Adventureland, which reads:

In the summer of 1987, a college graduate takes a 'nowhere' job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.

Let's flesh that out a little, shall we? More specifically, college graduate James (Eisenberg) is expecting to set off on a European road-trip, bankrolled by his father, but when his dad suffers a massive pay cut our poor hero is faced with a dose of reality. Over-educated, smart-talking James then takes a job at the eponymous, somewhat down-on-its-luck amusement park, in the hope of raising some capital. And wouldn't you just know it, in the process, he learns more about life than he ever did in college. Here's the predictable trailer:

So what, right?

But there are lots of things that elevate this above the standard teen comedy / coming-of-age fare. First of all, there's the dialogue, which is whip-smart throughout, and a credit to writer and director Greg Mottola (who cut his teeth on Arrested Development and would later direct Pegg/Frost vehicle Paul). Here's a great scene illustrating precisely that. In it, Eisenberg plays the same sort of character that Hugh Grant portrays in virtually every Richard Curtis romcom, if that character were half the age and American, but don't hold that against him. Also, note his precise delivery of at-times complex, at-times rapid dialogue, a feat he would showcase to even greater effect in The Social Network. Enough - here's the clip:

Yes, that's Kristen Stewart as the girl James gets on with. There's also a girl he fancies, so sure, there's a love triangle to predict the outcome of too. Or two triangles, if you factor in James's colleague and sort-of friend, the older, wiser Mike (Ryan Reynolds). But I don't want to give any spoilers, so... so, what else elevates the film? Well, it's timeless. No, really. Made in 2009 but set in 1987, it just doesn't age, in the same way that Back To The Future doesn't. It is as much about 1987 as it is about coming-of-age or romance or comedy. So you get to wallow in nostalgia for a simpler, happier time: a time before mainstream access to the Internet, a time before widespread use of mobile phones, a time before celebrity culture ran amok... in short, you get to remember how life used to be. How the things that were important in your life were different, and simpler. How work was once just about a pay check and trying to get through it the best you could, with the people that circumstance had thrown you together with (plus ça change... right?). And you get all this with a great soundtrack to boot, and a lot of laughs.

I have yet to meet anyone who has actually watched this and not loved it. So what are you waiting for? Go and watch it!

Nineteen in '19: Cathedral

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading nineteen books in 2019. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

4/19: Cathedral by Raymond Carver

The blurb: Raymond Carver said it was possible 'to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language and endow these things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power'. Nowhere is this alchemy more striking than in the title story of Cathedral in which a blind man guides the hand of a sighted man as together they draw the cathedral the blind man can never see. Many view this story, and indeed this collection, as a watershed in the maturing of Carver's work to a more confidently poetic style.

The review: well, this collection is certainly a watershed. Carver's earlier work, the stories that had made him famous like What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, had been sparse and unsentimental. The tales in Cathedral are less concise and more overtly emotional. At the time, reviewers credited this change to a more confident, mature writer but in hindsight it's easier to see this as a result of editor Gordon Lish no longer having such a tight rein. The impact of Lish's editorial style is well documented in the Carver Chronicles and, more concisely, in this article from the Standard. So do Carver's much-lauded short stories stand up without Lish cutting and rewriting swathes? Well, for the most part, yes. Cathedral comprises bleak tales of alcoholics, the unemployed, cheaters and adulterers, and who doesn't like to read about characters like that? And even if these tales are not subject to Lish's editorial magic, they still work, with tales like Vitamins, Where I'm Calling From and Fever particularly standing out, for me. And then, most interestingly, there's A Small, Good Thing, the tale of a boy who is knocked down in a hit and run on his eighth birthday and subsequently falls into a coma. In the Lish-edited version, the reader doesn't know whether the boy ultimately lives or dies, but in the unexpurgated Carver version, included here, it is spelled out. Is it a better story for that? Maybe, maybe not. It's certainly longer, and more obvious in its story telling. You'll have a preference, no doubt. Critics at the time praised Carver's more expansive style, but was Carver ever as good as Carver/Lish? I'm not so sure.

The bottom line: bleak but real, these short stories are well crafted, however edited, and especially recommended as an object lesson for aspiring writers.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★☆

Blue Friday - Love Song No.7

Yes, that really is Chas Smash of Madness fame. More about this excellent track, and the album whence it came, in this old post.