This Is This

OK, it’s not a great headline. It’s not like the time I imagined an Everton defender’s woodwind ballad pulled from the urban music awards show amid organisers’ concern for his mental health.

“No Go” For Loco Mofo Joe Yobo’s Slow-Mo MOBO Oboe Solo

Or airborne, drug enforcement officers closing down a failing hippy hair salon.

Drop-op Hop Cops Stop Mop Top Crop Shop Flop

Or when an Andrew Ridgely lookalike blasted a Belgian action hero’s mother during an airline-sponored Mexican hidden camera show.

Sham Wham Man Slams Van Damme’s Mam in Yucatan Pan Am Van Cam Scam

OK, these were all taken from my comments on Meg Pickard’s site, the wonderful Meish.org , but it all counts.

Actually, I thought of another one, today, which I am saving up for when Britney Spears’s ex husband seduces the flame-haired, Greatful Dead-loving boss of a Russian state-owned migraine drug company.

K-Fed Beds Red Fed Head Med’s Dead Head Red Head Head

It could happen. Oh boy, and when it does I will be there, me with not so much as a piece de resitance.

So my dog, anyway. I walk him every morning for about 45 minutes to an hour, up at 6:20. It seems a lot when he’s only four months old, but he is very energetic. Since talking to other pug owners, it seems like only mine has the energy of a blood-doped gymnast.

Still, I opted to take the rough with the smooth when I got into this. Little did I know that smooth is often served with a main course of rough as a side order in a deceptively shallow dish. Next time I order the smooth, I’ll have just enough rough to put hairs on my chest and no more. Or I’ll have it as a garnish and still qualify for desert.

My dog, though. He sleeps a lot and lets you stroke him, and he’s very attentive, but when I got a dog for companionship, I didn’t know it would mean you could never leave him alone - I thought it mean he’s there if I needed him. I didn’t know that my attention couldn’t be conditional. I thought it would be like having another blog. You know, drop in and out when you want, get the affection, clean up a bit of poo - that kind of thing.

But nooooooo. Apparently love’s a two way street, you see? You don’t know that when it’s quiet, though. You just drive down. Yes, the cars are all parked facing the same way, but you’re going somewhere, so it doesn’t really strike you.

I read somewhere once that dogs mourn the deaths of their owners. They go all lethargic and Leonard Cohen on you, sometimes for weeks. I think about the peace and quiet that would bring to my life, and wonder if my wife and I could draw straws.

I’ve been wanting to put a Francis Cabrel song up here for a while and I couldn’t decide which one to put, then once I could, I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait until October, which is what this is about.

It’s a bittersweet with some nice changes, much like October itself.

There’s a line in this that goes (trans): “We’ll climb to the top of the hill and see at all that October lights up. My hands on your hair, scarves for two, in front of the steep world.”

And if that doesn’t get you then the last verse will, and when the strings come in - something drops away.

Et sans doute on verra apparaître
quelques dessins sur la buée des fenêtres.
Vous, vous jouerez dehors
comme les enfants du nord.
Octobre restera peut-être.

Listen: Octobre 

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

The internet has undoubtedly changed the way we process information, but at the core of that is how we read, since the internet is still largely text-based.

I think the online revolution has encouraged more reading and writing than anything from the decade before it. Think about it - 1995 to 2005 saw the rise of email and changed the way millions of people gathered information. The ten years before that say the expansion of linear communication with more television channels and faster delivery of content, but your couldn’t really call it a flow of information in terms of an exchange.

Internet use has changed how we read, because there is more information available, in smaller chunks and from more sources. It has changed the volume of information in news items. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying it’s different. I’m a big fan of the two-minute news bulletin, as long as it changes every half hour and I can access it whenever I want. I also tune in to (”tune in to” – get me) half hour subjects on a particular story, but I wonder if that’s because I grew up before the internet age. But generally, we don’t sit down and read things the way we used to. The armchair grows dusty as we tear around the house trying to get a wifi signal while sucking down a latte from the Starbucks that has just opened in the living room.

Richard Sambrook is the latest editor to pop up on my blogdar with an article site wherein he looks at the changes in reading habits. His blog Sacred Facts is excellent, by the way, and I recommend it not just for his writing but also for his own tuned-finely sense of blogdar among journalists’ blogs from which he picks, sifts, boils down and serves up a lot of what’s worth knowing in the world of newsgathering so don’t have to do all that reading shit yourselves, right kids?

Like him, I notice that my kids read less than I did at their age, but then they have more diversions at their disposal. Whereas my parents used to give me models and books and games to keep me off the streets, I try to come up with ways of getting them out of the house. Of course the streets are filled with axe-murderers and kidnappers now, or at least that’s what it says in the two minute news bulletin I downloaded while I was writing this.

It has affected family life as well. Kids just aren’t as bothered. They don’t sit on their dads’ knees and ask them what they did in the war. Now fathers walk by their kids while they play Medal of Honour on their Nintendo Wiis, running around the living room shooting computer-generated Stukas out of the sky, and the dads say: “You know your grandfather was there.” And they hit pause and turn to you and go, like: “We’re out of Sunny Delight?”

I use the internet so much that I consciously make sure I read proper books just because if I get out of the habit I find it hard to go back and concentrate. I confess right here that when I start reading I go down the lines with a bookmark for a couple of pages while I get a rhythm going, because with the internet, there is not rhythm. I make sure I listen to long bits of classic music. Bach, Copland, Cosi Fan Tutte (trans. Swimsuit With Everything)

I don’t know whether or not the internet has made me dumber. To be honest, I wasn’t all that bright to start with. The tide will turn again of course (Really? It just goes back and forth, surely) when we all go video on your collective arses. BBC news has done a lot with embedded video, and I’ve done a few turns myself. See this, this and this.

Maybe in five years time, people will visit this site and yield a sigh (yield it, yield it) before leaving the comment: “I remember when all this was words.”

Grammatical errors in adverts annoy me. In fact, adverts annoy me, but when someone has spent millions of pounds on advertising to interrupt my programme they better know how to speak English.

Now I know that slogans don’t have to be in perfect English, and you can say “Just Do It” or “I’m Lovin’ It” and that’s fine. Personally, I think you could go a little further and say “I’m Doing It And I LOVE It”, and you can read into that what you want.

But when those millions spent are upped by a VO from Donald Sutherland with a voice rich, dense and heavy as oak beams, then please BMW do not say your new car has “less emissions”. It might cost less money, it might do less damage to the environment, but it does not have less emissions, it has fewer emissions. It says “Less emissions” in the dog at the end. That’s a media term, readers. The “dog” is the little graphic on the screen. Actually it’s a “stinger” because it’s a dog that’s at the end. I’m such a wanker. I promise the next post will be less wanky. And by that I mean it will have fewer wanks.

I don’t suppose most people will car about BMW’s poor grammar. I guess when it is reviewed in What Car (Which Car, technically), the petrolheads will not mind.

But I will. I know language is an organic thing, but then so is bullshit. BMW, not content with buying up most of the British motor industry, is now setting about destroying our language and I for one say stop the madness on this homespun durge technique.

I should probably stop listening to the World Service – my standards are too high. I have a digital radio and since I’ve been at the BBC I’ve become slightly evangelical about its output, because there’s a lot out there, but I think the World Service is a national treasure. I also think it should be available on FM, but there’s probably a whole wave of arguments against that which I wouldn’t be allowed to bring to light on this blog even if I understood them.

In the last two days, I’ve heard things about Arsenal striker Adibayor’s regilious views, the The Police reunion tour, the revival of food tourist in New Orleans and a radio play starring Jonny Vegas, Mark Steele and John Prescott. You don’t find that kind of diversity in one place that often, and seeing how my head works, I’m loving it and, henceforth, doing it.

I bet the World Service doesn’t say less when they mean fewer.

No comments on Saturday. Or all weekend.

You drove me to this. It’s time to bust out the pug.

And I can do this all day.

Of all the bands with numbers in their names, Blink-182 are probably my favourite.

They generally don’t add up to much anyway (arf): Sham 69, Fun Boy Three, the Guilford Four, Shed Seven, Sum 41, Haircut 100, Thousand Yard Stare, right up to 10,000 Maniacs and simply 5 (or 5ive) who took a minimalist approach to the trend started by Fives Maroon, Jackson and Ben Folds.

Plus, they are the only ones with a dash in their name. Blink-182. Like Spider-Man.

I like the catchy angst of this song, and the drumming is amazing. And there’s a middle bit with the same chords as The Police’s So Lonely or Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry.

Get ready for action!

Listen: Feeling This

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

I’ve been very busy this week, doing it all, burning bridges, fighting fires - that kind of thing. Running with scissors. Across broken glass. On a polished floor. And I’m wearing socks. And there are train tracks. A bell rings.

None of which should stop you going about your business in the course of your daily lives. It hasn’t with me.

I’ve been looking after myself OK. I’ve been eating a bit healthier. Today for lunch I had a falafel sandwich and couscous (so good they named it twice) and I’ve been getting to bed at a decent time to deal with the early starts up walking the dog. It’s been beautiful this week though. The mornings. Clear, sharp, beautiful mornings.

I’ve been drinking better, too. I bought an ice crusher after discovering I make a killer margarita. I drink mainly to counter the early starts, but I’m no slouch in the cocktail department.

Then again I’m no cock in the slouchtail department, but that’s for another post.

Take care of yourself too and come back tomorrow for the Weekend Song, if you like. If you don’t, though, I’ll leave it up on the blog for you to find when you’re back on Monday. That’s Monday, 23 June on This Is This, online at http://www.thisisthis.org.

OK, have a great weekend! Love you!! Bye!!!!!!

A growing number adults ride bikes now because of environmental concerns, lack of parking in the city and general economic downturn.

I think this is cool, because bikes are fun, clean and quick, plus they keep you healthy and that improves your mood which affects other people. I’m sure that in small, immeasurable ways, my life has been affected by good bicycle karma.

These commuter cyclists care not for fixing their own bikes, and why should they? There was a time when every motorcyclist had to be a weekend grease monkey, but I’d bet that most bikers now wouldn’t know an impact wrench from a pair of tyre spoons.

What they do instead is get people to service their bikes for them. This sounds a little fanciful, but I respect that their bikes cost hundreds of pounds and might need a tune-up every now and then. My own bicycle maintenance stretches little further than doing the thing where you get the front wheel between your legs and twist the handlebars so they line up a bit straight.

It is, however, a symptom of our skills being in decline. Maybe I’m being a little wistful for a time that never existed, where adults would know the exact knot to tie together two chords of different thicknesses to pull someone from a well, but do people really need to pay to have their bikes serviced?

It’s outsourcing all over again. I saw an interview where one guy was boasting about his outsourced guy in Bangalore who read the client’s kids a bedtime story because daddy had to work late.

He said this proudly, like he had been resourceful. Well done mate, you’ve got someone to do your living for you while you work to pay them.

Tell you what, you stay on, let me make a few calls and I’ll see if can get someone to schtup your wife. Save you the trouble.

Go home, read to your kids, fix your bike and tell your wife you love her. Please.

Do what you must. Work if you have to, then do what you can. Always. And when you’ve done that, take a step back and do what you should.

Chinese people right? We’ve got these chaps running the Olympics in a few weeks, and if no one’s going to have the balls to say something, I’m just going to come right out with it. The difference between the hurdles and the sprint is that the latter is a superior race.

These events are all about speed, and the 100 metres is as speedy as it gets. I don’t mind the other ones, the 3,000 metres, the 1,500 – those are all perfectly good disciplines. Some of my best friends do them. Lovely fellas. And there’s nothing wrong with a steeple chase. I persued a few myself for a couple of terms at university.

Don’t get me started on the relays, though. You have to draw the line somewhere, and that’s just sick. And the marathon? That’s not even a race and should be wiped off the fucking face of the fucking earth.

(more…)

Regular readers of this site (and by regular I means one that were here two days ago but I’ll take what I can get) will remember me picking out the line in These Days by Jackson Browne where he wrote: “Don’t confront me with my failures – I had not forgotten them.”

I thought this was pretty clever, and if I’d written it, I’d be pleased, but then I don’t have two last names like Jackson Browne. Or Woodrow Wilson. Newton Faulkner. Rudyard Kipling. Powers Boothe. There’s something in that, isn’t there? Gladstone Small. Harrison Ford.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. Man. Two last names and an initial. That’s even better than two initials, sported by many literary greats like H H Monro, E E Cummings and C C Peniston. Then there’s three initials – JRR Tolkien, AJP Taylor. You want to carry that off, you better write your weight in gold.

Jackson Browne, anyway. The line in question was picked up by reader who said, with considerable cause, that it was pretentious on the grounds of his age. Well, Chairwomen from The Internet in Cyberspace, I’d argue that it’s precocious, sure, but where do you stand on young talented kids?

Comedy answer: Back of the neck. Keep the fuckers down.

Seriously though, it’s a valid point. Arthur Rimbaud, Yo Yo Ma, that one off the Antiques Roadshow, these guys had talent. What do you do? It makes you want to do something.

It is a little pretentious, but it’s damn annoying when they go right ahead and fulfil that talent like they’re the next fucking generation or something.

Let me tell you something kids. One day I’ll be dead and you’ll still be going to work every day. Ha. How do you like that?

No, hang on.

I guess talent is subjective and it depends as much what you do with it as how people perceive it. There’s no “I” in genius.

No, hang on.

There’s no “us” in genius.

Fuck.

I’m thirty six, by the way. Thirty six and a half exactly this week.

Jackson Browne stayed relatively unknown in the UK, perhaps ending up as a footnote in the Great Folk Explosion of 1972. You had Neil Young, Crosby Stills and Nash, Carol King, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and everyone. A lot of good came from it, but often one side of a penny is invariably shitty and this came in the shape of Jethro Tull and The Eagles.

You could do worse that to buy the For Everyman album on which this song appears, ending with Sing My Songs To Me and the title tune For Everyman, but on my CD there is a track split between them even though there is no break, so it’s a pain to post them both up together without a break.

But this one’s a good tune, and my god there’s a line in this that is so heartwrenchingly honest, it’s more staggering to know he wrote it when he was sixteen:

Don’t confront me with my failures,
I had not forgotten them.

Listen: These Days

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

That’s what the kids call it, but I can’t leave the Friday go bye day without chipping in, if only to invade the privacy of my new colleagues with a tour of wit, quips, and (dare I say? Fuck it, yeah:) repartee.

Colleague 1: Has anyone heard of this band? Scooter?

Me: Nope.

Colleague 2: Me neither.

Colleague 3: What? Seriously? I know them. When I was at Uni they played there and everybody thought they were the dog’s bollocks.

Me: Now them I’ve heard of.

Also I have a childish pride in a comment I left on this post this week but other than that I have nothing to declare but declarations itself. I have no retorts, let alone torts, so I’ll just say it now and we’ll move on.

Have a great weekend.

What’s Mr T’s favourite snack?

“A petit filous.”

Do the voice, yeah? Brilliant.

That’s what I’m talking about. Three days without a sausage, then straight back in with a gem.

Ok, that’s an exaggeration, there may have been some sausage.

So I’ve been very busy. Like stupid busy. Job-wise, mainly, but tolls have been taken, pipers paid and you know - stuff. My new dog doesn’t allow me any time in the evening for much blogging because he requires a lot of attention. I am out the door at 6:30 walking him and up until he wants to go to bed. I had no idea it would be such a big job being owned by one.

Saying that, it’s rewarding, because there’s something to be said for going out for a walk at 6:30am when no one else is around. This week by the river I saw a stork sunning itself with its wings apart, warming itself up to go fishing I guess, but it stood there with its feathers splayed out like a hood ornament on a fancy automobile.

And another time I saw a bird of prey – a kite, I think – with its head perfectly still while the rest of its body was blown around by the wind, and its tail fanned out to catch every gust and volley.

I’ve also been reading a lot. A lot for me anyway, which is about thirty pages a day. I finished Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor and I’ve started Joan Of Arc by Mark Twain. Not a lot of people know Mark Twain wrote a biography of Joan of Arc, but he did. It was published under the name of a translator who put his talent towards the fictional recollections of a childhood friend and lifelong companion of Joan. All his own work, of course, and meticulously researched over many years but not written in his typical style.

Podcasts? I’ve been listening to Adam and Joe’s 6 Music podcasts. Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish are colleagues of mine at the BBC, though it flatters me somewhat to call them that because I have 28,000 colleagues. I don’t know them or anything, but you could you could do a lot worse with half of one of your hours than listen to this. I keep meaning to put them into the Recommended section of this site.

Which brings me nicely round to this. Traffic’s been healthy since the Post Of The Week thing which is always a challenge. Although I should technically be stripped of my title, because I’ve been nominated enough times to put me into the Hall Of Fame, a bridesmaid Hall Of Famer, but a Hall Of Famer none the less. I wonder how many times I can say Hall Of Fame in this paragraph? Four, apparently. No, I stand corrected: Hall Of Fame, you see.

Seriously, though. What is the past tense of bake? Shouldn’t we revise it? 

Baken? Book? Bade?

I was awarded Post Of The Week here for this, which was very flattering. I wasn’t going to get time to write today, but if early forecasts are correct (”a light flurry of new readers with a dusting of comments perhaps later”), I thought I’d say hello.

If you’re an old reader, then hello too yourself, you old fucking horse thief, you - I’m just kidding.

New or old, there is a book out this week which captures the internet’s spirit of intimacy, honesty and hope, with proceeds going to War Child.

War Child works with children affected by war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. They work with children who have been hit hardest by the joint forces of poverty, conflict and social exclusion and their groundbreaking work with former child soldiers, street children and children in prison has supported and helped thousands who would otherwise not have been able to reintegrate with their community, gain access to education or enjoy sustainable livelihood support.

Buy: You’re Not The Only One 

I listen to this song and I don’t know where to start. I marvel. I reel. I gaup. I go back to reeling before thinking maybe I should stuck with marvelling.

I normally pick the Weekend Song early on in the week, and sometimes have the words written about the same time. Until yesterday, this review read simply: “Fucking hell.” And I was happy to leave it there until Friday night.

There’s so much space in this song – it’s so loose and slow but relaxed and still has you hanging on to every word. How else can you explain a song that starts so slow and sweet and shuffles up with:

“Mmmmmmm LA.”
“Proved.”
“Too much for the man.”

Even after you’ve heard this a dozen times, it’s like a gentle reminder, like being woken up on your birthday. 

Thing is, this one’s all about the performance for me. The backing vocals are great because of the tight arrangement and the lead vocals are great because it’s left so open and Gladys Knight nails it. I mean fucking nails it.

I like a good backing vocal. Good backing vocalists are to music what a saucier can be to cooking. Get it right and you’ve no idea what makes it so good, get it wrong and you’ve no idea it could be so bad.

I have written about this before, but it really makes it.
Good Backing Vocals
Bad Backing Vocals
V. B. B. Vox

I use vox to host these songs because:

1) It is very easy to use and you can upload directly from itunes,

2) It doesn’t have a copyright policy so I can share songs (and also)

3) Listeners can not download the songs, so if people want the tune themselves they have to buy it so the artist doesn’t get ripped off.

But once I put a song on a different site so I could count the number of plays it got. You know how many people played the song? Nine. And I knew who four of them were, and I’m pretty sure I played it twice myself. Without blowing my own trumpet, that’s low compared to the number of people who read this site, so please if you normally skip this segment, you should give this a spin this one time.

Said he’s leaving on that midnight train to Georgia
Said he’s going back to find the simpler place and time.

Listen: Midnight Train To Georgia

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

Oh man. If I invented a time machine, you know what I’d do?

I wouldn’t go back to last week and buy lottery tickets or anything – no way.

What I’d do is go back to the 1400s or something and show as many people as possible how to build their own time machine using locally-available materials. “Out of flux capacitors? Wait there. Er. Staye thou hither. I returneth, um… anon.” WHOOOOSH!!!

And then when all the people knew how to build their time machines, I’d come back to present day and see how much the world had changed.

I bet there would be a lot of schools named after me.

Imagine what 500 years of time travel would have done to now.

Imagine how the Weekend Songs would sound then, hey?

Of course I could have changed the course of history and possibly I would cease to exist. Or could have killed everyone, like if the future would have arrived much earlier, and the Battle Of Waterloo would have gone nuclear. Or people like me would have been genetically ruled out by sympathetic parents, or people would have realised the internet would never make any money and that time travel now meant that news had no value, so I’d be out of a job for starters.

Or maybe current affairs would have become like history and repeated itself so much that if you didn’t like the story, anyone could just go to the tipping point and change the course of events at any time, so you could be watching the news and the newsreader would go:

“Good afternoon, Nik Kershaw has died. One second. No he hasn’t. In fact, I don’t know why I said that, because nothing had happened to him in the first place anyway. No wait. Yes, he’s definitely died now. But quite some time ago.”

Then the newsreader would disappear and the other one would go: “I’m sorry, our previous newsreader never existed. And no one just read that last report, because it’s just me on the show and I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Now over to Nik Kershaw with the weather. Nik.”

“Thank vous, Francine, et maintenant tous le monde parle en francais parce ce que Napoleon a utiliser les bombes atomiques.”

Have a great weekend.

I went out bowling this week. I like bowling. Although I have bad conversation skills, I can bowl a 140 game on a good night. This is odd, because I go bowling about three times a year but can have upwards of several conversations every day.

I guess you don’t get much call for hand eye co-ordination in talking. Hmmm – maybe that’s why I can write. It’s a physical process. God that all makes sense.

I think I just picked up a spare on that last paragraph alone. Line break - picture of me holding trophy – caption: “The writer triumphs. ‘Talk is cheap.’”

As it turned out, I had a bad night because I didn’t even get into three figures.

In case you’re wondering, there’s still time to join the This Is This Official Facebook page, so you can get updates every time you log in.

Bo Deadly
or
Diddly Squat
or
No Diddly
or
Vicar Of Diddly
or
Bo Selected
or
Bo No Mo
or
Bo Diddly Dead Like Dudley

Read the full story

I’m going to hell.

JK Rowling is going to write a prequel to the Harry Potter books, is says here.

How’s this going to work? I haven’t read them, but I thought Harry Potter starts out with an ordinary kid in a regular street who finds out he’s destined for bigger things thanks to his magical powers.

So is a prequel is going to be him as a very ordinary kid? It’s not like the prequels to Star Wars, where you had a whole history leading up. And those were shit.

Seriously JK, I liked your work in Jamiroquai, but I’m not sure about this.

I don’t know of any good prequels. There are only four sequels which were better than the first parts, and those are The New Testament, The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather 2 and Huckleberry Finn. It’s called a Number 2 for a reason.

Maybe someone should write a biblical prequel.

The REALLY Old Testament

In the beginning there was darkness, but before THAT, God’s trying to get planning permission to build a garden in Eden.

1:27 And lo, on Monday, the Lord invented the telephone and spake thus:

1:28 “- well maybe not a whole orchard, but I’m standing firm on the snake. Population two, that’s right. No we’ve got the man, I can make the woman myself. With a rib. Look, trust me. Now can I build this thing or not? I’ve got seven days to create the whole universe.”

1:29 And with that he smite down the phone and said thus:

1:30 “Christ. It’s already fucking half past, I better get weaving. OK, let’s see ‘oysters under the sea’. Check. Right. ‘Let there be cookoos, a lark and a dove.’ Maybe I’ll should have started with aardvark. I never listen. I think it’s because I lacked a father figure.”

1:31 At that moment he swore to be the best father ever.

1:32 “I’m going to do a lot more resting when I’m a dad. Someone else can be omnipotent for a change. I’m going to do things right. When I’m a dad I’m not going to let anything bad happen to my kid. And since I control the universe and can prevent wars and end all human suffering and I’m going to totally make that happen, too.”