Please hold, your life is important to us

I’m suffering yet more post-natal regrets about the Noughties book: now I realise that I didn’t give nearly enough space to the works of Douglas Coupland. I’ve already discussed the fact that several of his books have a tendency to degenerate into loosely connected strings of one-liners, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe this simply reflects the direction in which culture and society is developing; as the interminable Big Brother retrospectives have proved, our attention spans today can’t even cope with the Warholian 900 seconds.

In Coupland’s most recent novel, Generation A, one of the main characters is a Sri Lankan call centre worker called Harj, who defines his own professional identity as

...a chunk of disgraced meat at the end of a phone line, forced by the global economy to discuss colour samples and waffle-knit jerseys with people who wish they were dead.

which would have been useful in my deliciously fleeting contribution to the BBC2 show History of Now, in which I discussed the ersatz Englands being constructed right now in the cubicles of Bangalore. And Harj also encapsulates the Noughties interface of capitalism and celebrity culture with his prank commerce site:

For $4.99 you could visit my site and download one hour of household silence from rooms belonging to a range of celebrities, all of whom promised to donate their royalties to charity. There was Mick Jagger (London; metropolitan), Garth Brooks (rural; some jet noise in the background), Cameron Diaz (Miami; sunny, sexy, flirty)) and so forth. For cachet, I threw in household silences from the Tribeca lofts of underworld rock survivor Lou Reed and motherly experimental performance artist Laurie Anderson.

This is pop

A quick piece I wrote about the pop/celeb culture of the past decade for the Australian women’s magazine Madison. You need to scroll down before you get to my bit. Incidentally, they removed my stuff about The Truman Show and replaced it with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Their gaff, their rules, I suppose.

And talking of films, when I think of Madison, this is what comes to mind:

Feasting on Stephen

...and the next time someone suggests that poorly argued, badly written, self-indulgent blogs are debasing culture and making it harder for conscientious, thoroughly researched journalism to get a look-in, just refer them to this.

Jondrytay, Anton Vowl, Charlie Brooker and Michael Deacon weigh in, as do many others.

Eventually, Moir apologises, but misses the point. Her worst sin isn’t the snide fag-bashing that’s been a staple of the right-wing tabloids for decades. It’s the standard of her journalism that stinks; and it took the derided Twitterati to point it out.

PS: Another angle.

Tepid

The CoolBrands 2009/10 supplement that came with yesterday’s Observer does seem utterly self-defeating. For a start, there has to be a variant of the Groucho Marx rule; any cool adhering to a brand would surely be stripped away by appearing on such a list. And even if that weren’t the case, would you accept the findings of an ‘Expert Council’ including the likes of Trevor Nelson, Sadie Frost and someone who describes himself as “an impassioned digital media visonary”?

PS: Elsewhere in the paper, one of Ms Frost’s former husbands is quoted as saying, 30 years ago:

A cultural identity is a great outlet for people's frustrations. Kids have always spent what little they have on records and haircuts. They’ve never spent it on books by Karl Marx.

He don’t mean Jack

In the intellectual hothouse that is Twitter, Billy has raised a sound point; who is the most famous person not to have his/her own Wikipedia page? Although of course such a distinction might just prod the individual in question to such a level of notoriety that a page miraculously appears. Upon such paradoxes is the modern world founded.

Goody awful poetry

There has been much gnashing of garments and renting of teeth among the literati about who the next Poet Laureate should be. Gnash not, for I have discovered the perfect candidate. His name is Dermot Byrne, and his application for the post came in the form of a post on the BBC’s Have Your Say forum; specifically, in a thread asking “What is Jade Goody’s legacy?”* Here it is, in full:

Goodnight sweet Jade
Your time has passed
May heaven or hell be filled with your laugh
You may not have been beautiful
You may not have been smart
But like Diana you'll always be in our hearts

What Byrne has done so brilliantly is to create something that has sufficient form that we recognise it as poetry; yet the work contains within it such a dazzling array of technical badness that we start to doubt our frames of reference. “Is this a poem?” becomes “Is anything else a poem?”; in the same way as, when we are confronted with someone of monumental stupidity, we are forced to question how we define humanity. Also, it is possibly unique in the tradition of elegiac verse in that it raises the distinct possibility that the subject might be roasting in eternal, unimaginable torment, thus expressing the mixed responses that the mention of Jade’s name provokes, and doubtless providing great comfort to her family at this difficult time.

In its heartfelt crapness, the poem brilliantly embodies its subject; its seamless blending of form, function and content verges on genius. This makes Dermot Byrne my candidate for the Laureateship.

However, I would also like to draw attention the the contribution from one Maria of New York City, who vouchsafes to us the fact that “I personally think death sucks btw”. How so very true.

* Near enough eight digits, I would have guessed, when you add the book deals, the perfume and the wodge from OK!

Good mourning

Thoughts about Jade and Natasha, at First Drafts.

VK computer

In which I tell Tim Berners-Lee that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Chuck out the syrup

The obituaries of Charlton Heston concur: here was an example of life following art. As Moses and Ben Hur, El Cid and George Taylor, he played men who stood for dignity and freedom, and whether or not you agree that civil rights and gun rights are morally equivalent, he stuck his neck out for both. Then, when the scourge of Alzheimer’s confronted him, he faced it as he had faced the Egyptians and the gorillas, with great bravery.

But in one small area, his heroism slipped. Unflinching in his defence of African-Americans and gun-owners, Heston was never quite brave enough to acknowledge his own baldness. He set his granite jaw and battered nose against injustice, but from his own genetic inheritance, he cowered beneath a succession of increasingly preposterous toupees, of the sort that even Frankie Howerd might have spurned as unbecoming. As Chuck wielded his trusty flintlock, his wig looked like something he’d just shot.

As someone whose time in the barber’s chair becomes more cursory with each successive visit, I know that few men welcome baldness. But why do so many still persist in fighting it, and make themselves look even more ridiculous than they would in their natural state? As with boob jobs and facelifts, wigs rarely go unnoticed, especially by the many websites dedicated to seeking them out. And if we know someone wears a wig, we assume that person is insecure, or vain, or in denial about the aging process – surely a worse sin than baldness (or, for that matter, sagging breasts or jowls).

Wigs are about more than baldness – they are about honesty and dignity, or the lack of them. Everyone knows that Bruce Forsyth wears a (bad) hairpiece, but few raise the subject in his company. The man is 80 years old now – is it really so shameful to be bald? Maybe not, but if he were to ditch his syrup now, he would be admitting that he’s been fibbing for the last three decades or so. Increasing numbers – Sean Connery, Patrick Stewart and Bruce Willis, for example – are proud of their slaphead status. But others, and I’m sure you know the names, still cower beneath the weave. Come on, guys, when even Heston’s namesake Bobby abandoned his combover, surely the game was up.

There are obvious parallels with homosexuality. I’m sure there are some people in the public eye who have never bothered to come out because everyone knows anyway, and any big announcement would be an embarrassing anticlimax. But wig-wearers don’t need to say anything. They just need to ditch their hairy friends once and for all, and allow their scalps to shine out and proud. Do it, slapheads. Go to the only place where Charlton Heston feared to tread.

Wednesday I'm in love

I've long had a furtive thing about Christina Ricci. OK, maybe not so furtive. She's all growed up now, and anyway, Small Boo says I'm allowed Lucy Liu and Christina if she's allowed Steve Buscemi and Daniel Auteuil.

But I've just discovered something devastating. Ms Ricci, in direct contravention of my own first rule of the modern intellectual, has admitted to owning more shoes than books.

So, over to you lot. Have you ever felt an intense admiration (intellectual, moral, carnal, your choice) for a famous person, only for the scales to fall from your eyes when that person was exposed as categorically second-rate?

Separated at near-death?

Klaus Kinski, late thespian lunatic, father to Nastassja, muse-cum-nemesis of Werner Herzog.

Anita Pallenberg, 60s car-crash beauty, sometime paramour of three Rolling Stones, who has recently appeared in a film with Werner Herzog.

Two countries, separated by a common celebrity culture

So, it was Christmas, so I watched the last ever Extras. Twice. The BBC version, and the one shown in the States, on HBO. This isn't a case of a no-holds-barred remake, as happened to The Office, but a few gentle tweaks to the script to make it more palatable to a Stateside audience.

First, the scene in the department store. In the original, we heard a Jade Goody doll emitting a racist tirade; on HBO, for the benefit of those unacquainted with Ms Goody, she is replaced by Michael Richards (aka Cosmo Kramer), who had a similar fall from grace a while back. This is just about feasible, as Seinfeld was pretty popular on the east side of the pond. But then the manager's line about Same Difference (Brit reality show act) is replaced by one about Sanjaya (US equivalent, but without the slightly iffy incest overtones, and not from Pompey, apparently). I know this isn't documentary realism, but one of the strengths of Gervais's shows is that they are at least grounded in observation and recognition. It's not just that a British shop wouldn't stock a Sanjaya doll: nobody in the scene, Andy, Maggie nor the manager, would have the faintest clue who Sanjaya was.

Things get even dafter towards the end. In the Big Brother house, June Sarpong claims that she wants to become a proper journalist, but then looks stupid because she doesn't know who Kate Adie is. Except that, for North American viewers, Adie is replaced by Katie Couric. Why would a British TV performer be expected to know the anchor of the CBS Evening News? What purpose does this serve.

I don't want this to turn into an "Americans are stupid" post, because they're not, or no more than the Brits or the Belgians or the Bhutanese, at least. But Americans exist in a media environment which appears to have very low expectations of them, and this can't fail to have an effect. First, there is no appeal to a sense of curiosity. Of course American viewers would be unfamiliar with Jade Goody. Lucky them. But they're never put in a position where they have to find out who she is, even via the simple task of keying her name into Google.

Moreover, American viewers will get a skewed perception of the rest of the world, and will end up believeing that the rest of us know and care about Katie Couric or Sanjaya. The funny thing is, lots of foreigners do know about Couric and Sanjaya: not necessarily because they watch CBS News or American Idol, but because the US product they do see is not adapted for their market, so any such references appear, unamended. So they Google them. Not necessarily the primary use for which this wonderful technology was intended, but hey, wuddeva. The thing is, if America is to remain the sole hyperpower (a status that may come under threat in the future, but we're not there yet), this monocular idea of what's going on beyond the nation's borders can only be unhealthy.

Oh look. Mike Huckabee just won the Republican caucus in Iowa. Point made, I think.

PS: More Huckabee stuff here.

The holy trinity

When I was 17, I was selected to take part in the Canadian National Student Debating Seminar, taking place that year in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Earnest young gobshites from the length and breadth of Canada were billeted on kindly and respectable residents of the town; I was taken in by the mayor of Halifax himself.

As one might expect from a gentleman in such an exalted position, the mayor had met the great and good of all nations, a fact of which he was quietly proud. Above his mantelpiece were three framed photographs, depicting the most prestigious of these encounters: the mayor meeting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; the mayor meeting His Holiness Pope John Paul II; and the mayor meeting...


Kenny New Year, everyone.

I married my daughter's ASBO

In which I am inordinately pleased with the headline.

Also, James from Miscellany Symposium alerts me to the news that Radiohead (ask your gran) are banging yet another nail into the increasingly decrepit coffin of the dear old rock album as we used to know it. Or playing a desperate publicity game, it's all much the same thing. Someone should really write a book about the subject.

And finally - who's going to do the wedding video for these two?

And even finallyer - NUNFIGHTING!!! Bet Jeremy Kyle's jealous.

Following the footsteps of a rag doll dance

Of course, the worst thing about celebrity culture is the misplaced sense that the private lives of famous people can affect our own; that their happiness or heartache is as important as our friends', our families', our own.

Still, I must admit that I gulped rather hard when I discovered that Siouxsie and Budgie have split up.

And on a completely different level, this story fills me with admiration and humility and anger and all sorts of things. What do you think?

Big Sister

The news that Posh Spice-looky-likey off of Big Brother Chanelle went to LA dressed as Posh Spice, but Posh Spice wouldn't see her really ought to set me off on a Baudrillardian flight of fancy about how many simulacra you can fit on a size zero dressmaker's dummy. But instead I'll just point out that if Chanelle looks like anyone, it's Angela Rippon.

Yes/No/Maybe

I'm a big fan of Amy Winehouse. She's hugely talented and genuinely interesting, which automatically raises her above about 96% of her pop contemporaries. But if, as it appears, she's undergoing treatment for overindulgence in extra-strong fizzy pop and/or special sweeties, do you reckon she now regrets recording a song that would be such a gift to lazy tabloid sub-editors? I mean, it's not as if George Michael wrote a song called "They tried to get me to flash my willy at a policeman in a public convenience in Los Angeles but I said no, no, no", is it?

Six degrees of conversation

A list of famous people to whom I have spoken on the telephone, but have never met.

Elvis Costello, Mark Almond (pop stars). These were both phone interviews. Costello was in a very jolly mood, despite the fact he'd just been on The Big Breakfast. This was disappointing, as I was hoping to get him to say something dyspeptic and cruel. He was rather uncomplimentary about Status Quo, but otherwise he just mused about playing gigs where the punters have to get home before midnight, because that's what they arranged with the babysitter. Marc was a bit scatty, but charming. And, no, I didn't ask about the stomach pump, and it's not true.

Herbie Mann (legendary jazz flautist). Another interview. A little crabby, but he was dying at the time, so that was fair enough. Admitted the only modern music he listened to was Sting, which really wasn't fair enough.

Steve Lillywhite (record producer and ex-Mr Kirsty MacColl). He called my flat because he needed to speak to his next-door neighbour, a violinist who was getting off his face in my living-room. I said, "I'll just get him." Steve said, "Thanks."

Justin de Villeneuve (who discovered Twiggy). He wanted to talk to my flatmate, because she was working on a play about his life, starring Paul King (who sang 'Love and Pride', and ended up working for VH1). I said, "I'll just get her." Justin said, "Thanks," but in a more languid manner than Steve had done. This, I think, epitomises the difference between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes (explorer, marathon runner, posh nutter). Needed to talk to the editor of a magazine I was working on. I said I'd get the editor to call back. Sir Ranulph said: "Well, there's not much point in calling until it gets dark. I'm going to be hammering in fenceposts for the rest of the afternoon."

Simon Hickson (off of cult kids' TV duo Trevor and Simon, the analogue Ant and Dec). Phoned to discuss a request I'd made to numerous worthies to contribute their memories of university to a book I was compiling. Nothing came of it. On second thoughts, maybe it was Trevor, not Simon.

Your turn.

PS: As soon as I posted this, I remembered two more: Steven Wells, aka Swells, aka Seething Wells, aka Susan Williams, who used to place thinly-disguised SWP tracts in the NME, disguised as glowing reviews of disposable pop guff and/or death metal; and Manda Rin from Glaswegian lo-fi trio Bis (who did 'Kandy Pop').

One step behind

J. Lo's new album will be ska-tinged, according to an interview in Harper's Bazaar.

No it bloody won't. It will sound a bit like Gwen Stefani. Now, sorry if I turn into Mark Lamarr for a moment, but how fucking dare this ludicrous woman presume that the corporate schlock she foists on her simpleton fanbase will have even the vaguest sniff of ska. She cannot sing; she cannot act; she wears more makeup than a Pattaya ladyboy; her sole contribution to human happiness is the suggestion that women with big arses can be attractive, and Carl Malcolm could have told her that already. She has no idea of the quivering joy that people like John Holt, Desmond Dekker, Jackie Mittoo, Toots Hibbert, Jerry Dammers or Pauline Black have brought to so many; she is a witless parasite, not fit to buff up the band on Prince Buster's trilby.

Thank you.

I will now calm down with some virtual bubblewrap, kindly provided by Grammar Puss; chortle merrily at a crazed slab of art history from First Nations, flagged up by the ever-fruitful Patroclus; and attempt to rearrange the words "John", "sex" and "Prescott" to create a phrase that doesn't provoke uncontrollable vomiting.

Gas and air

Of course, when one is considering great art, questions of authenticity and verisimilitude can be set to one side.

But when one is discussing fucking hideous tat like Daniel Edwards's 'controversial' (ho-hum) Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston...


...then maybe it's appropriate to point out that back in the real world, if such a concept is useful in the Spears sphere, Britney had a Caesarean.