Frolix-8

Tribute / Dodgy Copy

Inspired by one of the podcasts from the Adam & Joe X-FM radio show, I have come up with a few tribute band names without first checking to see if they actually exist;

U2 Too
The Thompson Twins Twins
The Made-Up Chilli Peppers
Made That
The Rolling Clones
Maybeohead
Yet Another Zeppelin
The Back-handed Compliment Peas
The Cloned Roses
Clones n' Roses
Green May

As a little twist of my own, I also thought of a few tribute band names where the original band's music is played in a different genre (a la Hayseed Dixie);

Rodeohead
Punk Floyd
Thrash That
Goths n' Roses
Dance Sabbath
Frankie Goes To Nashville / Chicago / New Orleans / Seattle
Thrashedwerk
The ZuHonkyTonks
UBoogieWoogie
Countryplay

Someone's no doubt done this already, so that's enough. Unless anyone's got any more...?

A Scanner, Briefly

A quick mention for this article by Josh Glenn on the Scanner Darkly film - made notable for me by his use of the term soixante-huitards. Didn't they used to be 'baby boomers' ?

Make Poverty History History

I remember burbling on about this round about the time of the G8 Gleneagles summit and everybody wearing white wristbands. Can't find the exact link or anything but I doubt that I wrote anything particularly life-affirming or positive. Hard to believe, I know. Anyway, the meeja have seen fit to exhume the story today - and, surprise, surprise, poverty appears to be very much part of the present. The Geldof is perturbed at the lack of action by the G8, promised at the summit (again, no surprise) and all we have to counter this is The Blair's assertion that "...the achievements of the Gleneagles summit were 'greater than all but those with the most rose-tinted spectacles thought was possible...These issues were not high up the political agenda, in the UK, let alone internationally. Now they are.' "

Jolly good. That 'rose-tinted spectacles' line is fantastically opaque hyperbole, isn't it? I mean, even for a politician.

OK, smartarse, what are you doing about poverty then? You may very well be asking, if you can be bothered. Not a lot, is the answer. I could come up with some obtuse argument that in some way I am doing something about poverty but I think 'not a lot' is more honest. 'Sweet Fanny Adams' would be even more so. Perhaps I should emulate that billionaire who said he was going to give away 85% of his wealth the other day. That would, of course, put me in the position of needing to beg for some of that money as I would be 'in poverty', but still, at least I'd be 'doing something'.

I reckon my attitude towards charity is linked to my attitude towards work, you know. I think that if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing 100% and if it's not worth doing, you shouldn't do it. Obviously real life isn't like that and I am forever doing work to 50% quality or less, for various reasons that are ably described in the Dilbert cartoons. Hence giving (or rather, not giving) to charity. Any contribution I make would be like removing a drop from the ocean of poverty, even if I donated 100% of my 'wealth'. So any contribution is just assuaging my conscience, and the politicians who promise so much and do so little are let off the hook once again.

Poverty doesn't go away - our whole world is based on it. With finite resources, if someone has a lot of something, it follows that others must have little or none. I think it shows how much money and power is concentrated in the hands of so few people that even with a world-wide campaign like Make Poverty History, involving millions of people and thier collective 'wealths', poverty is still very much alive and killing.

Let There Be Light (Blonde)

Something else for the Christmas / Birthday / Amazon Wish list, I fancy: Alan Moore's Lost Girls. Reclaiming pornography artistically, apparently. Excellent. I like a bit of reclaimed porn in the morning. Does you the world of good. Walt Disney (&trade' © inc. ltd. corp.) was never finished reclaiming porn - look at Dumbo. Loaded with sexual metaphors; big ears, big trunks, flying. A mouse in a uniform. My God it's obvious !!

But such foibles pale into insignificance when compared to the majesty of Nature; Michael Bath photographs storms in a manner pleasing to the eye, and if you've ever wondered exactly how we measure up to the rest of the universe, look here and spot the Earth at the bottom of the page. If you can.

Personally, I'd rather watch the video of the lampshade made from human hair again. "Within this object a contextual connection between emotional excitement and physical voltage is established..." OK. Does that mean it's just a nice weird thing to look at ? Good.

A Scanner, NIMBY

Apparently, the site MTV Overdrive has some footage from A Scanner Darkly up. I can't verify this, as browsing to it in Firefox gets me an erroneous mesasge about having wrong plugins and IE gets me this, which I have never seen before (click for full, er, 'joy') :

'Currently unavailable in your territory' ???? What am I, a lion? If only this applied to their wretched television channels as well.

Maturity, Schmaturity

Adults are becoming less adult, according to some numpty in Geordieland. Whatever. Talk to the hand, girlfriend. Chah, like, really. Am I bovvered?

No I'm not, because I'm off to the eighth annual Bats Day, an unofficial gathering of goths in Disneyland. DisneyMegaCorp™,inc. ltd. have some stipulations for the merry throng, however;

From our previous trips we found out that Disney will not allow capes or fishnet stocking, on guys, to be worn into the park. You can try to wear them in, but keep in mind that you may be asked to take them off and place them back in you car. One of the main reasons that there is a dress code is due to the fact that Disney does not want anyone from the regular visitors mistaken any of us as one of their characters or cast members.

I love that 'one of the main reasons...' bit. Any readers of EL Doctorow's The Book of Daniel will know what I mean.

But we're not all childish morons and once again it falls to our elders and betters to show us how to behave. Step up Warren Buffett, who has decided to stop rolling around in jacuzzis of million-dollar bills and painting his stables in liquid platinum to make the largest charitable donation ever - 85% of his wealth, to be exact. 85% of over forty billion dollars. Most of which will go to a charity shop run by a certain Mr. and Mrs. Gates - itself worth $30 billion. That's a lot of money. Where does it all go? Do you want a bag with that, dear?

So Where Is It?

Apparently it is now a year since the head of the famed PKD android went missing. Personally, I think Richard Linklater has got it as part of some bizarrely extended publicity stunt for his film of A Scanner Darkly. Or, perhaps more likely, it is in some warehouse somewhere labelled 'Mr. Computer - Out Of His Tree'.

Gig Blogged #34 - Dylan Moran @ Loughborough Town Hall

Dylan Moran @ Loughborough Town Hall, Friday 23rd June 2006
	There are only four or five nights left on this tour, which began in Buxton on May 3rd and has seen Moran follow a route around the country as rambling as his stage act can be. So the thought was that he was either going to be razor-sharp and well-rehearsed, or shagged out. In actuality he was a combination of these. We had a very comedy-as-rock-n-roll setup at the hall, with Kings of Leon unobtrusively on the PA and ‘Like, totally… Dylan Moran’ projected on the walls and stage floor. There were the usual back projections of Moran’s dark cartoons, and the man’s props were onstage ready; fags and red wine.
From the off he laid into Loughborough with his finest Bernard Black (a character not very far from what he is like in real life, at least on stage anyway), which roused a few barely-audible heckles from the student portions of the audience. “Come on!” Moran responded “I’ve been round the world five times and been doing this for fifteen years. Try your luck!” On discovering the town’s university specialising in sport, his derision went into something like overdrive, although that’s not a word one would normally associate with Moran. This brought a slightly louder response from one of the studes, “But it’s a centre of excellence!” which just about brought the house down itself. A subsequent exchange, where Moran asked “What do they teach you here?” which received the loud reply, “How to hate the Irish!” fell rather flat in comparison.
Moran chain-smoked throughout, which brought on a few bouts of coughing and one big sneeze - the Black Books scene where Bernard describes the feeling of smoking your umpteenth fag whilst drinking yet another glass of warm east European piss with “This is heaven!” sprang to mind. It came as no surprise to learn that Moran disapproves of the large health warnings on cigarette packs – they shouldn’t deal with the consequences of smoking, he reasoned. Rather, they should tackle why you are smoking in the first place. “Call her” was one suggested alternative. This is where Moran really shines as a stand-up in my opinion – the Bernard Black-isms are hilarious (as was the piss-take about trendy crop-tops and visible underwear), but it’s really on another level when he hits upon a truth about life at the moment and holds it up for everyone to see. All good stand-up comedians have done this since stand-up began, of course, and I was reminded of one of those when Moran availed himself of the tall bar chair he had derided earlier in the evening. With fag in one hand, glass of wine in the other, he became a twenty-first century Dave Allen. The act changed, too, with more philosophising about life, having children and relationships, rather than dark, bitter ranting about how shit the countryside is. This obviously proved too much for one couple, who left via the only route available – right in front of the stage.
This may have influenced the show’s ending, which was quite precipitate, with Moran leaving the stage only to reappear almost immediately for a three-minute encore about nasal hair. As he said with only mild irony, “Imagine in your jobs you have a boss who praises you about your photocopying. Well this is how I feel at times like this.”

I'm Not The Only One

I've always thought Warren Ellis was a good chap, and this post on his blog just confirms my opinion;

"When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will rise up and put bloody Coldplay on my jukebox," said the barman, with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. And he wasn't wrong. There they were, the restless dead, listening to bloody Coldplay and drinking Magners. Wearing sensible shoes and talking about Big Brother and Pop Idol and Strictly Dance Fever. Sending each other video ringtones with that bastard frog in them.

The dead were back on Earth, and the worst thing was that you couldn't tell them apart from any other mediocre fucker on the street.

The War Against...Technology ?

Anyone else look at these photos of an exhibition called Design for the Computer Obsessive and think it was some comment on Islam? No? Just me, then...