Boxing idiots

Tv has really started to annoy me. Even the shows I like seem to have become infected by some edict from above that they must be accessible to absolute dribbling idiots.

I love Masterchef. I always have.

I loved it in the 80’s when Lloyd Grossman would walk between three kitchens in a big black studio as three amateur chefs would create their best dishes which would then be calmly and intelligently discussed between Lloyd and a professional chef before deciding who would go on to the next round. I love it now because it makes me laugh.

The calm, sophistication and dignity is long gone. Replaced with contestants visibly having mini-breakdowns or spouting hackneyed hyperbole about ‘going all the way’ and shots of the hosts watching them cook with expressions of incredulous disgust, pity and anger. When the tastings come, the hosts don’t so much discuss merits as unleash fury upon the contestants for the temerity they have displayed at having served up such crap (despite only having had 10 minutes to conceive and cook it, three cameras in their faces and the pervasive awareness that the two hosts are stood about two feet behind them audibly whispering to the camera that the food is blatantly going to be shit).

That said, I like it. Who wouldn’t? High drama and delicious looking grub. What a combination. But that doesn’t make it good.  To me, Masterchef is endemic of many problems in modern British television.

The most notable decline in standards over the past few decades has been the way programme makers view their own audience. Television has gone from addressing it’s audience to being slightly condescending to patronising and now has hit the bottom of the barrel with a splodge in which it actually constructs programmes seemingly designed for the comprehension of absolute blithering idiots. These programmes start with what is essentially a trailer for themselves.

What is Masterchef? Well, it’s a cooking competition. If you had never seen Masterchef and turned on midway through episode 3, the average human brain would recognise it as a cooking competition within probably three seconds. Yet each show starts with a little trailer that not just explains the concept but tries to hard sell it. With slam zooms into the eyes and knives of it’s average-twat-off-the-street contestants, quotable judgements from it’s presenters (eg ‘you should be ASHAMED! SWILL!’ ‘This is PERFECT, GENIUS!’), it is rounded off by the narrator issuing the non-sequitur ‘cooking doesn’t get better than this’. Is she referring to the cooking on the show – which by it’s very nature DOES get better than this as they are all plebs off the street aspiring to reach the standard of Michelin starred chefs the quick way. Or is she somehow suggesting that the television presentation of cookery doesn’t get better than this? And how does she define better? What is it being judged against?

Essentially, it means NOTHING. A bold statement of no obvious meaning designed to convince you to watch a programme that you are already watching.

We’re then treated to a montage of London and the four contestants in their street clothes pacing purposefully through it on their way to the Masterchef ‘headquarters’ which is, in itself, a ludicrous construct. Why do we need to believe that Gregg Wallace (originally enigmatically described as an ‘ingredients expert’, now introduced as ‘Masterchef judge’. Which is like saying ‘the reason he is qualified to judge on this show is because he is the judge of this show’) and Michel Roux jr have what is essentially a batcave hidden in a secret London location? As the contestants pace, enter and get changed into their whites, like a trailer for a war film, we hear Wallace and Roux bark – as if they think they are Lou Gossett Jr in An Officer and a Gentleman – about wanting the BEST and how HARD it’s going to be. You almost expect their opening line to the assembled spotty youths to feature the phrase ‘right, you ‘orrible bunch of queers and faggots, drop and give me FIFTY”. This is a cookery show.

Brilliantly, in the first round of the current series, the contestanst aren’t even allowed to cook for Roux! They’re kicked down a psychological staircase by being told they’re not even good enough to cook for the actual host of the show. One of them is sent home in this round. Can you imagine the shame of that? That’s like being told ‘we’re not just going to let you go out there and open boxes in front of Noel Edmonds, in fact, we’re going to make you compete for the priviledge and one of you probably doesn’t even open boxes well enough to waste Noel Edmonds’s valuable box-opening-watching time anyway’.

In these ‘trailers’ we get a preview of dishes and comments that we’ll see later in -as I’ve already pointed out – the show you are already watching. It appeals to the idea that the entire audience has A.D.D and must have their hand held and assured that even if you’re not enjoying this bit, you will enjoy the next bit or the bit after that. Meanwhile, those of us with brains are wondering why we’re even being assured how great it will be and told what’s going to happen since we’ve sat down to watch it anyway. In fact, some of us have switched off because the whole thing has started to seem idiotic.

Masterchef somehow places itself higher up the intellectual ladder by restricting the patronising crap to the start of the show, programmes earlier in the day are flecked with insidious little recaps to remind the brainless viewer (or the ones too stupid to catch up if they recklessly joined the show 10 minutes in) of both what has happened so far and what will definitely be happening in the future in case you don’t like what has happened so far or is happening right now. This is, of course, counter-productive as with so much recapping and previewing, casual viewers have to watch at least five minutes of the show to work out if they’ve already seen it or not, a further three minutes to work out whether they actually want to see it and a couple more minutes just to confirm they actually are watching it, not just a trailer or retrospective.

And the modern retrospective is a new and curious thing in of itself. Documentaries used to be about things that had happened but the past has been shunted up our rear ends and some kind of polls have informed programme makers that rather than learn about the past we didn’t actually experience ourselves, we prefer our documentaries to merely recap pop culture from an easily recalled period of history (say the last five years). While I was cooking last night, I watched a documentary on Ricky Gervais that had been made by Channel 4. I t was made up largely of clips from his shows (that anyone who even had a passing interest in Ricky Gervais would have seen ad infinitum) bookended by celebrities describing the clip you either were about to or had just seen. Not dissecting or contextualising. Just describing.

I had a similar experience a few weeks ago when attracted by the ‘new feature length documentary’, I bought the new DVD edition of This Is Spinal Tap. This time it was Gervais’s turn to sit in a studio and describe clips of a film anyone who had bought the DVD would presumably have already seen at least once (and if they hadn’t – it would have ruined every surprise the film contained). A parade of rubbish celebrities – Justin Lee Collins, Eddie Izzard, some rubbish twat from Kasabian just verbally recreating their favourite scenes as their favourite scenes (which were also our favourite scenes until we realised that made us a bit like Kasabian) are shown as they describe them.

This seems very representative of the modern notion of commercial documentary. The presenting of things you have aleady seen and know about. Is this aimed at anybody in particular?

I suppose so. There are doubtless legions of idiots out there who seem to appreciate that. You only have to listen to radio phone ins or the comments of those who participate in this horrible ‘interactive’ element that has emerged in modern tv which provokes the rubbish audience to not merely watch rubbish tv but add to the unrelenting rubbishness of it with their worthless rubbish opinions.

One of my least favourite expressions is ‘I’m entitled to my opinion’. Sometimes opinion is insightful and enlightening (this blog for example) but, more often than not, it is uninformed defensive drivel of which the owner has not actually thought about or understood how they came about it. The assertion of the entitlement to one’s opinion is usually the defence offered when that opinion is challenged on a factual or critical basis. I’m entitled to fart anywhere but I don’t expect that to be considered a worthy response to a debate I do not understand. Although, actually, that would be awesome.

Why can’t there be good television anymore? The documentary this weekend that celebrated Monty Python’s 40th anniversary didn’t even scratch the surface of the people or the phenomenon, yet a documentary my friend Mark recently showed me that was broadcast on the BBC 15 years earlier had, in the same running time, given you a deeper understanding and appreciation of what it was and why it was. Why can’t documentary just be an intelligent dialogue with the subjects and participants? I’m assuming that anyone watching a documentary about Monty Python is already familiar with the basic story, characters and the iconic moments – so who is this aimed at? If you are going to make a documentary about pop culture, shouldn’t you be telling the audience the stuff that they DON’T know? Filling in the gaps, revealing the secrets, giving us a greater understanding and appreciation of what we have been familiar with for decades. Am I the only person frustrated by this?

If we found a way of ressurecting Shakespeare, would we want him to explain his influences and motivations or just recall his favourite scenes from his work and tell us the order in which he wrote them.

Probably neither. I’m sure, once seated in the darkened studio under the warm spotlight, he’d just be asked which his favourite bit from Ricky Gervais’s last stand up dvd was and if he could possibly quote it for the camera.

Save.

I don’t really care about iphones.

I got an ipod touch when they came out because I left my previous ipod on the roof of my car in a rainstorm (don’t ask). My friend Jamie introduced me to ‘apps’, I downloaded a guitar you can strum, a lightsabre simulator and some remote control thing for itunes which Ive never really used because who needs a remote control for a laptop. It’s on your lap. This was all a year ago. The novelty wore off quickly. I use my ipod now for listening to music. Which is why I bought it.

In the last few months, the proliferation of iphones has become obscene and I’ve watched my friends fall one by one into the trap of thinking they hold the key to the fucking universe. Literally, in some cases – on Sunday I almost reversed my car over my friend Ben who, having got out of the car so I could reverse into the tight space outside my house, preceded to stand IN that space, holding his iphone up to the skies to find out the names of the stars he could see.

Every one of my friends is becoming increasingly boring as they live vicariously through their smooth tablet of technology. They’re reading books on them, identifying constellations, playing musical instruments and wittering on endlessly as if – firstly – they’re the only person with one and secondly these experiences are somehow more satisfying than actually reading a fucking book, looking at the fucking stars or playing an actual fucking musical instrument. Apparently experiencing the joys of life through a four inch screen make them even better. I think an iphone is just a way of putting life through a smug filter. I personally don’t need to spend £30 a month on a mobile phone tariff to feel superior whilst actually being homogenized.

These apps are getting more and more sophisticated, though. Some have practical applications, others will offer you things you never would have thought you would need but will change your life. And other peoples. And like so much western consumerism, they might change your life in the most insignificant of ways but change that of someone else to the absolute detriment. You can probably tell, I’m getting specific here. I recently found out about an app which turns your iphone into a scanner. So you go into a shop, you find a product you want to buy, you scan it and then your iphone links you straight to an online price comparison chart where you can instantly order that product through an online seller for the lowest price possible.

I own a completely independent shop that is half dvd rental/half comic shop. This app has the potential to turn my shop into essentially a free physical showroom for amazon.com. I’m sure this is the height of wonderful convenience for Mr Iphone who can save a couple of quid and still have the tactile experience of browsing in a funky shop but it’ll be the end of independent shops. We operate at break-even as is, profit has been an alien concept for a couple of years. If we pay the staff’s wages AND the rent AND the rates of a month and don’t end up owing money, we call that month a successful one. This is not a sob story or a moan, I don’t feel entitled to a living and am aware that business is cutthroat and ultimately you’re responsible for your own success or failure. It’s more an appeal to those of you who might not have given it much thought what such actions can lead to.

I’d imagine anyone reading this is already well aware that any perceived ‘bargains’ you might get are a false economy. If you are saving money, someone else is paying. When you get your fruit and veg cheap at the supermarket, it’s because that multinational chain is putting the squeeze on farmers worldwide. When you get your Primark dress for £2.99, it’s because it is manufactured in a horrible sweatshop somewhere and the £20 you would have had to spend anywhere else is coming out of the paypacket of the person who actually made the garment. I certainly don’t compare my downturn in revenue to the horrors subjected to those people but I think it’s important to shatter the myth of independent business.

The amount of times I’ve been in a corner shop or grocery store and heard people saying things akin to ‘what a rip off” or ‘they just exploit you cos they know you can’t get to the supermarket’. You can’t expect the consumer to know what’s going on behind the scenes but the equation is fairly simple. If a corner shop wants to sell baked beans, they have to go to the cash and carry to buy a tray of tins. That tray probably costs say £3.60 for 12 tins – 30p a tin. Now the retailer has to make a profit on that tin and a profit that will contribute to covering all of his overheads – the rent, bills and wages. So, if he puts 30p on that tin and sells it for 60p, he’ll probably be making, at most, 5p of pure profit.

Meanwhile, because the supermarkets are buying their beans nationally, for all of their stores in huge bulk, they can buy that same tray of 12 tins for maybe £1.50. In fact, as with the milk scandal fairly recently, sometimes the big supermarket chains collude with each other and drive down the prices even lower. They can essentially hold the manufacturers to ransom. And clever business dictates that they should and do. So, they can sell that same tin of beans for 30p and still turn a better slice of pure profit. The consumer ’saves’ 30p – but at the cost of strengthening a multi-national corporation and putting local and independent traders out of business. Which changes the character of an area (some of us remember when every high street in the UK had its own character, now they are identical blends of McDonalds, Starbucks, Carphone Warehouse, HMV, Pret a Manger and Borders) and adds to the utter homogenization of the world and, in my paranoid dreams will lead to us all Metropolis-style eventually being enslaved into working uniformed jobs for one huge corporation. Isn’t that inevitable as independent businesses disappear and corporations strengthen?

I’ve been quite aware for a couple of years of a specific breed of asshole who comes into my shop, walks around looking at the dvds with a pen and paper and writes down titles of the films he wants to see, goes home and orders them from Lovefilm. I have tricks that subtly out them and once outed they are made politely aware that they won’t be welcome back. And now I can look forward to a slew of iphoned wankers literally scanning my shelves and giving their business instantly to other companies whilst still in my shop? Fantastic.

I have one regular customer who I hate (my staff will tell you I probably only have one who I don’t hate – but they exaggerate) He brings a comic up, asks how much it is (‘that one is £2.60′) gives a nervous smile and says ‘really? Are you sure? It’s only £2.20 online’. He’ll also point out that the American price on the cover is $2.99 which, at the current exchange rate comes in at less than £1.90. The subtle implication is that he’s onto my game. He’s aware that I’m swindling him out of as much as 70p. He’s on to me.

Of course what he doesn’t understand is that, firstly, the American price has no bearing on anything. By the time the comics reach me, they’ve had import duties and taxes slapped on them and the wholesaler has to turn a profit too. This means that I’m paying only a shade under that £1.90 cover price myself. The online sellers have far fewer overheads and buy in far greater quantities, meaning they get a bigger bulk discount and can turn a profit easier at £2.20. The pure profit I would make selling a comic at £2.20 would actually be a loss of about 30p. The maths isn’t so hard – say I did make 30p profit on a comic and my rent, staffing and rates comes in at about 6k a month, I’d have to sell about twenty thousand comics a month to cover it. Do you think I’m selling twenty thousand comics a month?

So, to the smart alecs who think we’re buying our product at anywhere near the same price as the online retailers and are gloriously capitalizing on it to exploit the consumer… fuck you. I don’t know an independent retailer who isn’t struggling to even cover the running costs of their business these days and if you’re seriously happy to come in with your iphone and start scanning our stock to look for better online deals, please make sure you first download the app which utilizes GPS to tell you exactly how far up your stupid rectum I have jammed it. Thanks.

What’s a sin?

Today is Yom Kippur – the Jewish day of atonement. I’m Jewish, you might not have known that. I love being Jewish.

I’m fasting – which you’re supposed to do sunset to sunset on Yom Kippur. I’m not working – as you’re not supposed to do on Yom Kippur. I’m not at the synagogue – where you are supposed to be on Yom Kippur. I’m writing a blog – which I believe god has yet to set a clear rule about although Jews being Jews it could be debated back and forward either way for the next few thousand years.

This is perhaps the main reason I love Judaism – I believe it is the only religion which encourages its followers to actively question it. Actually, that is another reason I love it – it is a religion without followers, you are either born Jewish or you aren’t (if your mother is Jewish, you are) unlike other religions, you do not follow it – you are it. It is also non-evangelical so if you aren’t it, you won’t find any Jews trying to make you it. This is perhaps also the one thing that sits uneasily with me as I know and have known people raised Jewish whose fathers are Jewish but whom the more orthodox of my people will coldly reject. I fully respect the religion that feels no need to be evangelical and attempt to indoctrinate but the snottiness of rejecting those who passionately want to belong is discrimination and smacks of the notions of racial purity which have threatened to destroy us many times over the centuries.

So, Yom Kippur is essentially the big one, the most important day of the year in Judaism. taken at face value it is the day when God seals and inscribes each person’s fate for the next year in his book. I can practically hear your eyes rolling. What a ludicrous and implausible image, right? The old man with a big white flowing beard sat at his desk with a pen – probably a quill – going ‘Hmmmm… Rosenberg? He’s fasted and is sat in the synagogue praying… he can have a GOOD year!’ That’s the first time the similarity between God on Yom Kippur and Santa Claus has struck me. How did that never occur to me before? both of them old men with big white beards making lists of whose been naughty and nice. Only one of them is going to come down your chimney and leave expensive electrical goods under a tree and the other is going to decide whether or not to bankrupt you this year. Wait a minute. These guys might be working together.

And why not? It’s very easy to dismiss the notion of God as easily as it is the notion of Santa. I’m fully aware I’m in danger of sounding like one of those twats on Radio 2 religious programming right now so I should declare my agnosticism. ‘What?’ I would hear you cry, if you were in the room with me right now ‘WHAT?’ Because some of you probably don’t know what agnostic means and those that do would assume that someone as enlightened and cool as myself would be an atheist.

I hate atheism. I hate it because I hate anything that is closed-minded. Do I believe in God? I don’t know. I did when I was younger. Nothing has happened to change that other than the continued assertion of his improbability. Why is that question even really important? At the end of the day, I find the people who are happy to absolutely dismiss the notion of a god as small-minded and ridiculous as those who absolutely insist he does exist and controls everything. The truth is, we don’t know, we probably never will know – not in this lifetime – and it’s absolutely OK to say ‘I don’t know’.

Why must we always be forced to make a decision? Especially on things we couldn’t possibly have the answer for? God, ghosts, aliens – I don’t know. I can see the argument for them, I can see how ridiculous the notions seem in cold reality. I can see how they could exist, I can see how they would be an emotional crutch for weak people. But at the end of the day… I DON’T KNOW. And I’m probably never going to know. So my opinion is just little more than a scraping together of things I’ve heard and the kind of personality I want to project.

My sister got married earlier this year to a lovely bloke. I was absolutely honoured to be his best man and it makes me so happy that she ended up with him. He treats her brilliantly, he’s so much fun to be around, he’s a cheeky fucker and I get to geek out with him about Doctor Who. Their wedding was a really really nice day, a fantastic atmosphere, no probs, fun from beginning to end. But I had some trepidation going into it. His family is Jewish and my family is Jewish. So, everyone expected that there would be a traditional Jewish wedding but it turned out that wasn’t what the couple wanted. That was weird. It actually really bothered me. In our family it’s only me and my sister left who were really raised practicing Jews. My cousins are all non-practicing. So, my parents only shot at throwing a Jewish wedding was for my sis. I felt bad for them. But it’s my sister and bro-in-law’s wedding, so it absolutely should be their choice what kind of wedding it is and how it goes. They shouldn’t feel under pressure from anybody to dictate how their day should go. And the day went great. It was my favourite wedding I’ve ever been to.

The thing is, when I talked to my bro-in-law about why he didn’t want a Jewish wedding, he told me it was because he didn’t believe in God. That made me so sad. not that he didn’t believe in God – I don’t think I know anyone who does – but that he was prepared to turn his back on all the amazing, brilliant, beautiful stuff our religion offers for that reason alone. A Jewish wedding is a fantastic thing – under the chuppa, breaking the glass, mad dancing in concentric circles and throwing the groom up in the air on table cloths and carrying the couple around on chairs. It’s a celebration like nobody else can throw and, as I said before, because of the nature of our religion it doesn’t matter whether you believe in God or not, you’re born Jewish so you are Jewish so you’re entitled to all the wonderful stuff that goes with that.

You see, I think we’re cutting off our noses to spite our faces. We so proudly walk around declaring our atheism and scoffing at the notion of God that we throw out all the fantastic things that go with religion other than the dogmatic indoctrination. On face value alone, I love the music of my religion. I love the sound of a whole community chorusing in song – it’s absolutely beautiful. I like the sound and the look of the Hebrew language. I like the stories. I like the dancing. I like the arguing. I like the old Jewish guys who fall asleep mid-service. I like going to New York and eating in the Kosher delis. I like potato latkes and pickled cucumbers. I don’t like the ultra-orthodox Jews with the hats and curly bits so much. I think they close themselves off to a lot of what life has to offer by being so dogmatic. That’s their choice though and I respect it. But I don’t like that they are so fervent and self-righteous. That seems closed-minded and arrogant.

My grandmother died 2 years ago and it still upsets me. Especially on religious holidays like this. My sister no longer comes back to Oxford for them and my mother finds it stressful to properly ‘do’ the things that you’re supposed to. So it ends up, as it will tonight, my mum dad and me sat around a table eating a hastily prepared and partially microwaved (bleurgh) meal and just getting through it as quickly as we can. it’s not the same without my grandma, sister and also my great aunt who died several years ago. And I realise now that that is what defines my religion for me.

Yom Kippur is an arduous day – by 4pm you are feeling the lack of food and you still have about four hours to go before the fast is broken. But it was worth it because we’d all convene at my grandma’s house and we’d break the fast with honey cake and whiskey and chopped liver. Then we’d all gravitate to the dinner table and eat a huge meal with roast chicken (she always made an ‘experimental’ veggie option for me), loads of fluffy mashed potatoes, all kinds of veg, pickled cucumber and cucumber salad which she made with razor-thin slices of cucumber and acetic acid. and we’d talk and joke and eat into the night.

This is why religion is good. It unites you with your family and gives you a reason to spend time together appreciating each other and the culture you come from. It preserves your heritage and grants you belonging to a worldwide community of people who will consider you family, even when you have none. It connects you to your ancestors and by keeping going the traditional rituals brings you closer to them and allows you to pass on things that have been important and central to the circumstances of your own existence. That is beautiful.

So, do I believe that today my name is being written into a book and my fate sealed? It sounds unlikely. But you know what? It’s a pretty damn good thing to take a day off once a year, eat no food – so you don’t have the energy to get on with stuff – and just sit and think about how you might be judged on your behaviour over the last year. The people you might have wronged, the mistakes you might have made and to confront yourself with them. If once a year, everyone’s families expected them to do this, then closed the day off sat around a big table full of food stuffing themselves silly – wouldn’t the world be a little better for it?

The great thing about this day and age is that you don’t have to be dogmatic. You’re allowed to say that you don’t believe in the hokey pre-science (and indeed pre-Richard Dawkins) stories that are told but you’re also allowed to enjoy telling and hearing them and you’re allowed to take comfort in the beautiful ancient rituals that your own family have been doing for centuries. Eating special foods, lighting candles, singing songs. The feeling of magic and unity that most people only get on Christmas Day is kind of on offer throughout the year. It’s just a shame how proudly people reject all of the beauty, tradition, wisdom and community that religion has to offer over a matter as stupid as belief.

It is the fashion now to declare yourself atheist and turn your back on religion. It makes you feel enlightened and clever. But it’s so much better to just admit you don’t fucking know and have a good time with your people and all that your culture has to offer.

Waking up Tom Greeves.

My good friend Tom Greeves just posted this…

http://bigtommygspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/09/other-things-that-i-hate.html

and I’ve decided that as much as I love him, it’s probably time to give him that friendly slap across the jowels and wake him to some semblance of reality. He’s a brilliant chap but he suffers from that same clouding of judgement that most Tory’s possess. The list of things he hates and why he hates them give a wonderful dichotomy of the Tory mind at work. So let’s see if we can’t get in there and make a little difference, eh?

Rap music. It is invariably dreadful. So is hip-hop and R & B. And by the way, you’re not a musician if you’re just a DJ.

As in so much poor criticism, Tom mistakes his tastes for a generalised truth. I actually share his general dislike for rap and hip hop – it isn’t really to my taste – but I can fully acknowledge the brilliance of a lot of it. Public Enemy and Run DMC are undeniably amazing and, love him or loathe him, Eminem is masterful. I detest ‘rap culture’ – the mysogony, violence, desperate worship of symbols of wealth. It’s lazy crude and quite ridiculous to me but I appreciate where it has come from – which is the continued suppressions and disenfranchisement of an entire race by the white right wing. What they’re doing is supposed to be distasteful and confrontational and scary to those who would rather these people be silenced. At it’s best, rap is poetry, expression and promotion of it’s own philosophy and experience. Up until fairly recent times, literacy and self-expression have been the luxury of the educated, rap can be a pure, honest, skillfull AND musically thrilling insight into a social underclass. I think that’s brilliant – whethr I enjoy listening to it or not.

As for DJ’s, Tom is probably thinking of Noel Edmonds or Dave Lee Travis. Again, most dance music is not to my taste but I think guys like DJ Shadow who create unbelievably good music from samples, loops and beats are probably far greater musicians than many of the three-chord riff purveyors who trouble our charts.

Sketch comedy. With a few notable exceptions (Fry & Laurie, Mitchell and Webb and some of the stuff I’ve seen some Oxford Imps do), sketch is the worst of the comedy forms. If an idea or a character is worth exploring, it deserves a sitcom or a movie. Sketch shows typically rely on fleeting ideas that don’t have that durability, and feature the endless repetition of catchphrases and scenarios. Remarkably, a large proportion of the country delight in this idiocy.
Oh, and by the way, not only should you not quote Monty Python, you shouldn’t like it. It’s crap. All surreal comedy is.

Again, I don’t mind generalisations if they’re used comedically but you know… A lot of sketch comedy is abhorrent. I totally agree with that. But anyone who has seen Graham Linehan’s Big Train will attest that sketch comedy can be so much funnier and less tiresome than your average sitcom. Isn’t it better to explore and despatch an idea in 3 minutes than drag it out over 10 years? I recently bought the Fast Show box set which was a post-modern response to Whitehouse and Higson’s tenure on the lamentable Harry Enfield’s comedy swill shows. It’s hard to make it 5 minutes in that show without belly laughing or just applauding their general skill.

As for Monty Python, I’m kind of bored of defending them. Yes, their work is dated. Yes, much of the original series was hit-and-miss. The point is that they opened comedy up. They cracked the mainstream to be open to something other than vaudeville and gentle good humour. They were odd, challenging and artistic. If all surreal comedy is crap then I feel very sorry that Tom will never know the joys of Reeves & Mortimer who continue to bring me incomparable joy.

Left wing politics. Every left winger is a grotesque hypocrite. No exceptions. It is natural for man to seek the best life possible for himself and his loved ones. Anyone who denies this fundamental truth is evil.

Again, if there were some comedy in this, I’d totally let it pass but this is just bile and bullshit. ‘No exceptions’. That is the equivalent of saying every Tory is a frightened bigot – no exceptions. Which I would say myself, but will resist saying until I have met every single one of them and am comfortable making such an insane generalisation.

Yes Tom, it is natural for man to seek the best life possible for himself and his loved ones.  But does the concept of human nature justify the indulgence of it? To me, that statement is a pathetic justification of the worst excesses of humanity. I’m sure Rupert Murdoch is just seeking the best life possible for himself and his loved ones – does that mean he should be excused for or allowed to attempt to destroy the integrity and purpose of journalism? Hitler was just trying to seek the best life possible, wasn’t he? That kind of excusing monsterous behaviour is detestable, it is the root cause of slavery, suppression, the destruction of natural resources, culture, society and every kind of negative ‘ism’ out there. The only chance to have a genuine ‘best’ life is to create an enlightened and fair society. Is that possible? Not right now, no, it’s a progression. We’re only about thirty years away from abolishing the death sentence in this country, it’ll be a slow crawl out of the primordial soup from cavemen killing each other on whims to constructing a society where everyone is included, valued and content.

It’s an easy and pathetic trick the right-wing uses to say ‘if Al Gore cares so much, why does he fly?’ Well, at least when he flies it’s because he’s on his way somewhere to spread education and a positive message – a far worthier carbon footprint than many of his fellow ‘big house dwellers’. I think it’s akin to saying ‘well, if you’re so anti-immigration, why do you allow foreigners to clean your house/collect your rubbish/cook in your restaurants?’ The right wing are FAR less likely to act on their beliefs than the left. They just enjoy espousing them.

I’ve always found that the right wing is built entirely on fear – on preservation and protection. It is inhabited by people who are comfortable or see themselves as comfortable desperately protecting what they have (be it their wealth, country, privelidge) regardless as to who pays the price for their comfort. The industrialists who make their money from sweat-shop produced items, the catering magnates who poison their customers and encourage unhealthy eating on a global basis, the property tycoons who create a false economy which destroys independent business and leaves normal people homeless. It’s bollocks. It’s completely unfair. That is not me advocating communism, I’m just pointing out there is a difference between providing a good life for your family and indulging in a lifestyle that is detrimental to other people’s families.

I don’t deny the truth that it is natural for man to seek the best life possible for himself and his loved ones. I don’t think any left-winger would EVER deny that. We just think there are ways of doing that without being a total cunt.

Musicians who pontificate on politics. They are, as a rule, simply not well enough equipped intellectually to do so interestingly. (Frank Turner is an admirable exception.) And although this is not an original observation, it is worth reminding ourselves that Bono could do a lot more good by giving almost all his money away to development projects than he does by spouting bullshit. The fact that he hasn’t inhibited his lavish lifestyle in any way is proof that he doesn’t really care about this stuff.
(Likewise Al Gore would downsize to a smaller home and stop taking private jets if he gave a damn about climate change.)

As far as Bono is concerned, I agree completely. But I think music as a form of political expression or protest is a valid and beautiful thing. It’s just when mediocre twats like Bono and Chris Martin who don’t actual use their music to convey their ‘beliefs’ that it is unpalatable.

Golf. Come on, be serious. It is an immensely dull sport. The fact that golf clubs are massively reactionary doesn’t make up for that.

I have no opinion on golf.

Art. I can’t connect to any form of fine art apart from cartoons and photographs.

Then I feel very, very, very sorry for you. At least you have Scooby Doo, I suppose.

American stand-up. Steven Wright is great. So was Mitch Hedberg. But most famous American stand-ups aren’t funny. In fairness, neither are most famous English stand-ups. But American audiences often react in a really weird way – applauding comics instead of laughing at them. It’s a dull response to a dull phenomenon. Comedy is nothing if it’s not funny.
Conversely, if you want to see a room full of shrieking halfwits, watch Def Comedy Jam.
And if you think you can learn about politics from a comedian (who isn’t me) then you are a moron.

If you think you can teach politics, you’re the moron Greevesy. Lenny Bruce. LENNY BRUCE. He didn’t just teach politics through his comedy, he CHANGED THEM. To a lesser extent, Bill Hicks. Even Mark Thomas and Michael Moore (whose methods I don’t like – although they’re no worse than the right wing he is combatting). Comedy and especially satire are probably some of the strongest forms of educating about politics. I agree that there is something not great generally about American stand-up, though.

The Beatles. I don’t mean the music. I mean the people. I also hate Elvis. They are / were all monsters. But God Bless Bob Dylan for teaming up with Starbucks, and thus showing all the old hippies that everyone’s a capitalist at heart.

That’s a new one on me. Hating the Beatles non-musically. Why are/were they all monsters exactly? It’s funny how lefties save the term ‘monster’ for mass-murderers but you’re comfortable applying it to musicians who were advocates for peace, love and vegetarianism. Those BASTARDS! Dylan’s Starbucks coup was a shame.

Cars. When I learn to drive, I want the safest car I can afford. I’m not remotely interested in anything else (least of all its environmental impact).

I’ll go easy on you as a non-driver but, um, all cars have to be safe. Although, I suppose the Tory ideal of a safe car is a tank that could run all over any stray immigrants. All cars have to pass stringent saftey tests. If you’re inferring that electric cars are any less safe than a combustion enigne and 10 gallons of petrol…. then you’re nuts.

Fair trade food. Don’t kid yourself. Fair trade chocolate isn’t nearly as nice as the stuff that’s loaded with sugar. And the Co-op’s food is terrible. Nor is it sustainable to pay farmers over the odds for their products. What we all need is genuine, worldwide free trade.

I think you might have missed the point of fair trade here, mate. It isn’t to pay farmers OVER the odds. It is to pay them a fair wage. The ‘odds’ are set by multinational corporations who for sake of providing the best lives possible for their obscenely rich shareholders and those their obscenely rich shareholders love, impose an unfair economy on the farmers who are often lucky to break even on their running expenses. The point of fair trade is to say just because a country is stricken with poverty, maybe capitalising on their misfortune isn’t the right thing to do when we can afford to pay them fairly and the consumer doesn’t mind paying a few pence more knowing that they aren’t contributing to keeping communities in misery.

As for fair trade chocolate not being as ‘nice’, that’s probably because your Tory tastebuds are used to the cheap and nasty chemicals, flavouring and needless amount of sugar that goes with ‘free trade’ commercial processed food.

Tom still hasn’t responded to my blog a while ago about the realities of free trade and I assume that is because he can’t. Free trade actually has become a monster. Everything that we have lost on this planet has been in the name of greed and lining somebody’s pocket. Free trade is now reaching it’s obvious end result – a few corporations which are destroying or assimilating all competition and becoming more powerful than governments. Hooray for free trade.

Skiing. Would you be very shocked to learn that I don’t wish to risk life and limb by throwing myself down a mountain?

I have no opinion on skiing.

Camping. Sleeping in a tent, eating tepid beans, wallowing in the mud and sharing a lavatory with fifty other people is what you do if you’re poor. It’s not a way to spend a holiday.

Some people like to actually be in nature rather than see it in a cartoon or photograph. I can respect that.

That is all. My work is done. Let us see if Tom chooses to respond – and if he does, how? Will it be the typical Tory patronising response (‘Bless’), could it be the comic swagger of writing my views  off as ‘liberal’, ‘hippy’ or ‘commie’. Or will he have the balls to either engage intelligently with what I’ve said and offer a coherent counter-argument or admit I might have a point?

THE NATION AWAITS.

Me me me me me.

When I was living in Edinburgh about 8 years ago, I remember seeing a crowd of rubberneckers gawping at what was clearly the scene of a nasty accident on Princes Street – the main, and busiest,  street of the city. I never want to be one of those type of people but I certainly clocked a bus with it’s windscreen smashed and bloodied and a cordened off area of the road where whoever’s blood it had been had clearly landed.

It was ghoulish but that’s life. Accidents happen. People get hurt and people die. It’s worth taking a moment to be thankful to be walking past that scene rather than a player in it.

A few days later, I found out the details of what had happened. It was a Saturday afternoon, some teenage lad had been nicking CDs from HMV and had been spotted by a security guard. The lad had sprinted out of the shop, pursued by the guard and had run blindly into the busy road, across 3 lanes of traffic, finally meeting his grisly end by running infront of a speed-limit-adhering bus that couldn’t possibly have seen him coming.

What a pathetic and tragic waste of life. Not the kid. I couldn’t care less that he died. There are people in this world who contribute to making it a better place and there are people who just exist within it. Those whose existence actually makes the world a worse place  (and this is in no way a class issue – I’d be positively elated if any of the executives from Trafigura had a similar, if not more painful demise) deserve no sympathy.

The thought I couldn’t keep out of my head is how his final act had been a cacophony of selfishness. I couldn’t care less about a multinational like HMV having stock stolen from them (although that in no way exonerates anyone who steals anything) , the waste of life I’m thinking about and where my sympathy absolutely, painfully, lay was with the security guard and the bus driver. However you look at it, and although no blame could or was apportioned them, one of them had chased a boy to his death, the other had killed him. The burden of guilt that would put on any human being must be unimaginable. Throw in the youth of the victim, the pettiness of the crime he was running from and the violence of his death. Any decent person in either of their positions wouldn’t be able to just close themselves off to that. I bet it still haunts them even a decade later.

Can you imagine being in that position? Just going about your business, doing your job, the way you’d been trained, within all the parameters of legal and moral right and then suddenly, indelibly,  having someone’s blood on your hands?

I felt it important to start this post with that story. The following is something I’ve wanted to write about for a while but have been trying to find an angle to convey my feelings without sounding petty or – worse -  like Jeremy Clarkson. What I’m about to say is not grounded in the smugness of being a driver or the sense of self-entitlement to the roads (which I pay my road tax for, etc, etc) and especially not allying myself with the pathetically trite ‘anti-hippy’ sentiment. But it is something I very strongly feel.

I hate cyclists.

I really, really do. This isn’t to say I find them a ‘nuisance’ or find their promotion of the healthy/environmentally sound lifestyle smug, this is to say they need to be regulated. They are a danger to themselves and others.

I’m not anti-cycling and I’m certainly not against them as people, I’m just against them conceptually. I don’t understand how it can be a good idea when you have roads full of big, fast, solid automobiles, that unlicensed, unregulated, unprotected human beings on flimsy wheels can be allowed to just dance about between them. You’d never see a motorcyclist without at least a helmet, if not – almost always – a full set of protective leathers, meaning that if the worst happened, their head is well protected and their body should be spared at least the friction and gravel scars of making contact with the road, if not the broken bones.

One of our regular customers came off his bike on High Street a few days ago, he came away with a broken arm, collarbone and nasty gash on his head. A head injury. That means his head made contact with the road, so the only thing stopping him from having his brains smashed out was, presumably, the speed he was travelling. I see bikes going very fast around here.

On my drive down Cowley Road this morning, I counted 26 cyclists. Only four of them were wearing helmets – and I’m going to discount one of them because he was TEXTING on his phone – whilst cycling at a pretty good clip.

3 out of 26 is little more than 10%. And it’s not like the other 22 were foolhardy teenagers, it was a completely broad mix of age ranges and socio-economic backgrounds. Male pensioners, middle aged women, academics, chavs, none of them in helmets. Meaning that if one of them makes one bad split second choice, even if I’m driving at the new speed limit of 20, they could still end up through my windscreen, under my wheels or bouncing off my bonnet and smashing their heads open right outside the new health centre. To be entirely selfish – that’s not fair on me! I’m doing nothing wrong. I shouldn’t be put in that position. It is entirely avoidable by either seperating the bikes from the cars or making it completely illegal to ride without (at least) a helmet.

“But the bikes ARE separated from the cars!” I (don’t actually but would if they were here) hear the Oxonians cry. “There are special bike lanes THROUGHOUT the city”. Yes, there are. But there is no enforcement of them. They are merely an option for cyclists who are just as likely to opt to use the road or – incredibly – the pavement. I really believe that pedestrians should be given the right to push pavement cyclists back onto the road as violently as they see fit. The amount of times in this city I’ve been clipped or whipped past by a bike on the pavement is amazing.

So, they’re a hazard to drivers, a risk to pedestrians and an absolute danger to themselves – but it’s somehow OK? I just can’t process it. If a cyclist knocks over a pedestrian, there is no way of identifying them – no licence plate, there are also apparently no enforced laws about the physical state of the bike itself. You can be driving a brakeless, loose-wheeled death trap that could cause a pile-up but nobody is looking out for that. As the nights get darker, we will once again see the rise of our old friend The Phantom Cyclist. No lights, nothing reflective, just bombing around at high speeds, waiting to kill a pedestrian or be knocked flying by a car who might never even know that he’d just left them bleeding to death in the road. I make a point of shouting ‘GET SOME FUCKING LIGHTS’ at these people. But I shouldn’t have to.

I don’t understand how this form of transport is so completely unregulated. I know the police are overstretched but I can’t help feeling the efforts that are gone to in this country to ensure that cars aren’t parked for a second longer than paid for on public streets… I don’t want to be the guy who whinges about speed cameras…. and rightfully getting untaxed/un MOT’d cars off the road could be even slightly diverted towards our two-wheeled friends.

To risk sounding Clarkson-y, The fact is that drivers DO pay road tax, also if you talk to any driver you’ll find that they also end up paying a bunch of parking and congestions fees throughout the year and the occasional speeding fine too. We also legally have to have INSURANCE and an MOT and be clearly displaying our numberplate.

I can see the arguments for not taxing cyclists – it encourages healthiness and cuts down on emissions – but I can’t understand why they don’t have to have insurance, why they are not regulated by licence plates (or are licence plates solely there to profit from speed cameras?), why they are not legally required to stick to bike lanes or wear protective gear or have lights?

As someone who considers himself a safe and considerate driver and never wants to be involved with a road fatality, I ask this very sincerely.

Seriously, why????

Reasons to be cheerful (Part 4)

I’m not having a great day.

I won’t bore you (or sate your insidious noseyness) with the details but I woke up with a little grey cloud over my head, took it to the gym with me, came home to find another little grey cloud waiting for me, created a third little grey cloud as a direct response and now apparently have my own little eco-system.

I got to work (late) and, logging on to Twitter found a link to this article…

http://bit.ly/pTwgC

…posted by Tom Humberstone ( http://www.ventedspleen.com/ ) Which was, strangely, exactly what I needed. I don’t think I’ve ever so quickly had an ailment of the soul antidoted. The little list at the end there reminded me of one of my favourite songs as a nipper. This one…

…ach, since I’m posting Ian Dury clips, I can’t leave out this one. I’ve got a feeling this is the first song I ever fell in love with. …

So, for the first – and probably only – time on Grumptimism, here is a list of things about modern life which are not only not rubbish but are fucking brilliant…

Ipods,  Radio 4, Radio 2, Radio 6, the concept (if not the output) of the BBC, BBC iplayer, youtube, wikipedia, etsy.com, being able to play scrabble online, being able to play my drums at 3am, music, music, music, – this may take a while – ‘May You Never’ by John Martyn, absolutely everything by The Pogues (yes, including the album without Shane), every band that ever came from Oxford (except Shirley), KISS then, Sex Pistols now, every hallowed moment of The Last Waltz, Cheap Trick album covers (pretty guys on the front, ugly guys on the back) Cheap Trick live at Budokan! sushi (and the dream that one day they will deliver), chinese fake meat at The Pink Giraffe, pizza at Fratellis, friends in other countries, trains, driving, Edinburgh, Scottish highlands, DOCTOR WHO! original Star Wars triogy, BRIAN BLESSED! action figures! extra features on DVDS! remastered classic albums with bonus tracks, those ‘classic albums’ dvds, ghost stories, cottages, the countryside, old people who smile and say ‘Good Morning!’ all animals and some fish, shagging, showering, weeing, farting, high-fives, really good handshakes, all forms of sincere cuddles, most kissing, walking really slowly (ambling), standing on the back of a shopping trolley and gliding down the aisle, some weddings, the sound of a whole Jewish community harmonising in song in a synagouge, judaism in general (not the blokes in the hats with the curly bits, though. Why must some people ruin the beauty of religion by taking it so seriously. Ooops… litle bit grumpy there…..) The Incredible Hulk, The Goon, Scott Pilgrim, any film directed by Albert Brooks, ET, American Werewolf, Tootsie, Curb Your Enthusiasm, everyone who has ever worked for Videosyncratic (except for those I fired – not including Liam, who is ace), blue jeans, black t-shirts, woolly hats, THE WINTER!!!! snow and rain and hail and fog and mist and all the weather we do so well in this country, Doc Marten boots, Heinz baked beans – on toast, with cheese, farmers markets, good craft fairs, things made of wood, open fires, closed fires, fireworks, families (especially big sisters), old photos of family, photos of you with your friends, my friends, memories, mammories, mimicry, the HAHA in Bury Knowle Park, collecting things, keeping things, sharing things, making things, smashing things to pieces, playing with toys! playing with toys with kids! hanging out with little Tom and being called Jomp, calling people stupid names, MAKING FILMS! films about films,  going to nerdfests, parcels from Amazon, record shops, book shops, toy shops, VIDEO SHOPS, the chug-chug-chug canal boats make, getting a text message, London, Paris, New York, home. Yetis and cupcakes. past and future.

So it’s not all bad.

Your own, your own, your own.

“There’s only one way of life and that’s your own, your own, your own”

Those words changed my view of the world in 1991. I was 14, going on 15 and scouring the racks upstairs in the Cornmarket branch of Our Price when the cover of the album Levelling The Land by The Levellers just jumped out at me – bright vibrant colours in what could only be described as punk rock wood cut style. I kne notihing about the band but bought the album on sight alone.  Even if the music sucked, it was a record I wanted to own. There’s something that’ll be lost when it all switches to download.

The Levellers are considered very corny now. They were always kind of a joke to a lot of people – they were dog on a string crusties, they lived in trucks and had dreadlocks yet were dominating the indie charts. I had discovered The Clash a year earlier and that was where my head was. But I was staunchly aware that The Clash were of another generation, they weren’t singing about anything that affected me. In fairness, neither were The Levellers – I was a middle class 14 year old in Oxford, they were scabies-riddled grown ups out fighting with the police and being oppressed (although I’m sure underneath it all, they were middle class 14 year olds too) .

I fell in love with them from the first listen of that album, and listened to it obsessively. I still feel the pull to listen to that album for a couple of weeks as spring turns to summer every year. The line I quoted at the outset of this post is the chorus of their anthem One Way. It isn’t supposed to be said, or even, particularly sung, but shouted at the top of your voice as you punch your fist in the air. I found this out to my utter delight the following year when I saw The Levs live for the first of many many times.

A couple of years ago, I read Billy Bragg’s fantastic autobiography/polemic The Progressive Patriot in which he talked about how attending the Rock Against Racism gig, at which he first saw The Clash and Tom Robinson play, politicized him. It was these bands, their songs and their lyrics which opened his eyes to the world around him. The Levellers did that for me. I was a member of their fan club – On The Fiddle – and a few times a year, they’d send you a magazine created mainly by guys in the band full of radical lefty politics. I loved it. My mum was worried my name would be on some government list. I secretly yearned that to be true. I became kind of right-on. I went on some marches and put some posters up around school. Became very scruffy. One Way was my anthem, constantly in my head. Their gigs were evangelical to me, a whole crowd moving and stinking as one. You could spot the real fans, we knew when to punch the air and shout ‘Hooray!’ duirng The Riverflow (after ‘we’re going to change the world!” -HOORAY! and ‘you’re still with us today ‘ – HOORAY!).

The height of The Levellers fame came when the Tory government passed the Criminal Justice Act in ‘93. As I recall, it made everything ‘good’ – squatting, illegal raves, etc very illegal. It also extended the police’s right to stop and search and generally gave them more powers. It was draconian and evil. Although far far far less so than the patriot act a decade later. Charlie and Mark of The Levellers were on the cover of the NME burning it! Rebels!

I went on the marches, put up the posters, voiced my outrage and one day got hold of a copy of the bill and read it with vigour. To my utter shock, I found out that I rather agreed with it. I thought about it long and hard and realised that – yes – squatters must be a nightmare. Imagine saving all your life to buy a property, then before you get to do anything with it, these filthy little bastards are in there and have rights!!!! Sod that! And those poor farmers who come to till their land only to find it covered in glowsticks, faeces and one naked man from Cornwall proclaiming his wide-eyed love for everything.

As for the police. Well… I’d been raised to respect them and they always seemed to be doing a rather good job. The only time they seemed to be these facist beasts was when hordes of smelly people were throwing bricks at them.

The Levellers spoke out against following perceived wisdom – to think about things and find your own One Way, I realised that mine was a bit different to theirs. But that’s ok. It was mine. Even if I rejected the black and white anger of their politics, it was them who had given me the impetus to really think about who was running things and how they were doing that. They instilled in me a healthy cynicism of authority and the need to question the motives of those who try to control my future.

Fast forward nearly 20 years.

The way I see it, in modern terms, it started with Woody Guthrie, passed through Bob Dylan, into The Clash, down through Billy Bragg, into The Levellers and then stopped. That’s how I see it. I know there were many others. But from the early 90s to today, I’ve not seen it anywhere. The protest song is dead. The charts – always full of pop – have become full of crap. The pop is manufactured, the ‘indie’ is empty (Keane, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, where did you bastards come from?), Folk hasn’t bothered the charts since The Pogues lost Macgowan in the early 90s, Rock has become the mainstream and in doing so has cut it’s hair, had a shower and embraced the philosophy of the corporations. Mainstream music is just a noxious swill of derivative crap, corporate enterprise and commercial rebellion. The kids today don’t even realise that they are NOT the unaffected loners and outsiders of society, they are the mainstream and have been sold their disaffection as if it were a can of cola.

A couple of years ago, my friends in the band Dive Dive started mentioning this guy Frank Turner. He’d been the lead singer in a UK Hardcore band I’d heard of called Million Dead, who were quite well known. I was always divided about Hardcore punk. I loved the ethos, loved the anger, loved the attitude but it just gave me a headache. Too shouty and gutteral and aggresive to be fun. I like to see the words Henry Rollins, but I like to seem the qualified with ‘Spoken Word’.

Anyway, they were helpin Frank record his first solo stuff and they thought I’d like it, since I still rattled on about the Levellers and the Pogues from time to time – this was folk punk. Or as Frank’s own little genre came to be known – Campfire Punkrock. The first time I saw him play live, I knew he was something special, he had the ferocity of hardcore, the political righteousness of punk, but he played on an acoustic guitar, sang with his own voice and was a fine and catchy songwriter.

His song Thatcher Fucked The Kids was stunning. It filled in the blanks as to what had happened since protest songs were last sung and today.

You’ve got a generation raised on the welfare state,
Enjoyed all its benefits and did just great,
But as soon as they were settled as the richest of the rich,
They kicked away the ladder, told the rest of us that life’s a bitch.
And it’s no surprise that all the fuck-ups
Didn’t show up until the kids had grown up.
But when no one ever smiles or ever helps a stranger,
Is it any fucking wonder our society’s in danger of collapse?

It’s catchy, angry, rowdy, funny, it’s really a great song. Over the last few years, I’ve had the pleasure of watching Frank go from strength to strength. I honestly thought that there was no real niche for him in the modern world. He had a few Million Dead fans still following him but really it was back to square one for him.

His first album – Sleep is For The Weak was great and quickly became one of my favourites. Whenever I played the album in the shop, people would dig it and come and ask what it was. I noticed that he had genuine cross-appeal. Middle-aged folk were impressed by his craft and old-school anger, the kids liked the rockingness and attitude.

I still never for a second believed that Frank would make it past a small but devoted following. But had incredible respect for the way he conducted himself. I’ve known many musicians over the year and believe me, they are lazy cunts. In all the time I’ve known him, Frank has never sat still. He continuously has travelled the world with his guitar playing any house party, record shop, coffee house or gig that would have him. After each show, he jumps off the stage and – in the old days – chatted with anyone who wanted to approach him and – these days – happily signs autographs and poses for photos with anyone who asks. He treats them with respect and friendliness.

I wasn’t going to go on about his second album Love, Ire and Song, which is also ace, but realised it might be my only excuse to post the above video which was directed by ME.

Anyway, Frank’s star has actually risen. His second album got some notice, some respect, some airplay. His audiences started to swell and sell out as a matter of course. I’m convinced this is due not only to his talent but because once you see him live, it’s amazingly hard not to become evangelical about him. By making real time for each of his fans, he has won them for life and they will happily get his name out there. I can’t even imagine The Levellers jumping into the crowd and actually talking to everyone. Like most musicians, after a hard show, I’m sure they just want to get back into their vans and get drunk, laid and rested.

Over the last year, I’ve noticed the dynamic of Frank’s shows change. He is still fantastic but I find myself enjoying them less and less. His legion of fans annoy the living shit out of me. I’ve given up trying to film him live anymore in fear of getting crushed by over-zealous young boys and girls, desperate to feel part of a ‘happening’. After shows, it’s harder to say hi as the mob of people waiting for autographs, photos, hugs and handshakes is essentially the whole crowd and, gawd bless him, he’ll talk to them all. They idolise him, sing along with every lyric, hang on his every word, whoop, holler and punch the air.

I’m an old bastard now and he is this generation’s Levellers. He actually toured with them last year, had he had his band with him and not just been acoustic, he’d have blown them off their own stage. He definitely outclassed them.

I realised that as much as I hate his audience, they are exactly what I was, wide-eyed innocents becoming politicized and having their minds broadened. Seduced at first by the coolness of feeling angry and political but, hopefully, going on to actually think for themselves. Culture is supposed to inform and educate as well as entertain and, for my money, Frank is the only political singer out there with a chance of really speaking to this generation of British kids. And he is the right guy to do it, his views are intelligent and not extreme (like the old Levs), he acknowledges reality and apathy and his songs are not so much a call to arms as a call to minds. He is what the kids should be listening to.

So, why am I rambling on about him? Well, his third album is released today. It is called Poetry of The Deed. This song is on it….

Last week, the album was made Radio 1’s album of the week. The week before, he played to 15,000 people at the Reading festival. He’s getting there. And he’s still signed to an independent label. Frank cracking the mainstream would be, I truly believe, one of the best things that could happen to British music in a long time. This is what our charts should be full of. People with a message, talent and proper respect for those who support him.

Trust me?

If so, click this link…..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poetry-Deed-Frank-Turner/dp/B002D1GO18/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1252340315&sr=8-1

and buy his cd… or download it from itunes.  Because if enough people buy it this week, it could chart high and who knows what kind of precedent that might set for decent music. Worth a shot, and even if it doesn’t work out, you’ve just found your next favourite album.

Just say no.

When I was at Truck Festival earlier this summer, I made a brief, at the time unimportant choice which has lead to a rather liberating decision in my life that I am enjoying greatly.

If I recall correctly, I was stood outside the village pub tent where I bumped into my chum Stuart Fowkes (regular readers of this page will be familiar with this legendary figure). I can’t immediately remember what we were discussing but something was said which earned a high-five. Both being of the larger-handed persuasion, it was one of the more satisfying high-fives of my life – full palm contact, resplendent cracking sound, no flinching or recoil. It was such a good high-five, in fact, that it attracted unwanted attention.

Some sweaty little teenage ‘fun haver’ bounded over and – having apparently identified me as the master of the high-five – held his hand aloft hoping to share in the glory.  I had no interest in having skin contact with this grubby little squirt, so my hand remained at my side.

‘High five, man!’ he encouraged. ‘No’ I told him firmly but politely. ‘Why not??” he protested. ‘Because you didn’t earn one’, I told him. He lowered his hand and offered it to me for a handshake. This seemed even less appealing. I ust shook my head. ‘You won’t shake my hand?’ he spluttered. I shook my head again, slightly less politely, with a medium glare. He had been slighted in front of his friends. Were we in a more urban setting, and were he slightly less middle-class and doughy, I would no doubt have been shot. But I wasn’t. Denied the high-five and even a handshake, ‘well, what can I have?’ he whined. I told him I’d give him a half-nod of acknowledgment. He was excited by this. I raised an eyebrow and gave him the half nod. He was sated.

A couple of weeks later, two young men in cheap suits strode into my shop with clipboards under their arms. This means only one thing – they’re selling advertising for a new local magazine.  We get at least 5 such marketing squads in a week. I politely always explain that we have no funds for advertising (‘well, our rates…..’ ‘is it free?’ ‘no’ ‘we have NO FUNDS FOR ADVERTISING’) Print advertising has never worked for us, neither have flyers really. It’s a waste – especially in some crappy local ‘what’s on’ guide. There is only one local whats on guide worth anything and that is the brilliant Nightshift magazine. The others come and go in one issue – if that. So, anyway, the two lads stride in, one of them announces ‘I’m Dean, this is Matt’ and offers me his hand to shake. I smile but ignore the oustretched hand. ‘We’re doing no advertising, sorry’. ‘WOW!’ he exclaims, at my seemingly supernatural ability to guess his motivations. He asked me how I knew and I explained that young men in cheap suits with clipboards called Dean don’t just swagger in in the middle of the day to rent films or buy comics. He was a stereotype all the way down to his excessive use of the word ‘mate’ and rubbish pretence at any kind of interest in the shop itself, right down to the boring anecdote about some film him and his ‘missus’ watched the other day.

I have no money for advertising, if I did, I would work out what would suit me best and then buy it. Advertising is not the kind of thing I buy on a whim. And the quickest way to alienate me is to send a young man called Dean in to waste my time by pantomiming chummy indifference for five minutes followed by a ‘tell you what, mate, why don’t I just leave a ratecard? No pressure and if you call me direct, I reckon I can even do you a decent discount! What was your name?’

People in advertising are horrible. The concept of advertising is fairly horrible in of itself, but those who proudly make a living from it are really the worst kind of cunts. Especially the ones who just waste your time. Our stationary supplier – who’s a lovely bloke – will literally stick his head round the door every couple of weeks and go ‘need anything?’ if you say no he goes ‘ok! see you next time!’ and vanishes. That is a perfect business relationship. If they just stuck their head round the door and went ‘Need to advertise in the first and likely only issue of a rubbish magazine where the articles are mere generic puff pieces punctuating 30 pages of ads for businesses you’ll never use?’ I could shout back ‘no’ or even ‘no thanks’ on a good day and they at least would have my respect. But these guys offer no respect, they think that their slimy banter is ingratiating themselves and for years I’ve played along.

A handshake is a beautiful thing. I’m a big fan of the handshake.  Literally handed down from long past generations, it is a proper, respectful and decent greeting between men (yes, between men). The subtle variety of handshakes is a thing of wonder too….

The strong single movement – ‘let’s DO this!’

The double-handed clasp – sincerity and warmth

The shake with forearm clasp – sincerity and deep respect

The single hand clasp with hug – ‘my BROTHER!’

The classic – ’so good to see you!’

The limp offering – ‘this is not a handshake, it is a wet fish, I do not trust you’

I love to shake hands. I love it! In the last two days, I’ve had two handshakes. One with Richard Ramage, the other Tim Turan – both guys who I’m thrilled to see and whose company I cherish. How do I express this to them? With a firm classic! Now, surely if I use this same firm classic on a young man called Dean who has come in and wasted my time and lied to me and whose very presence is an act of gross disrespect, then I am diminshing the glory of the shake.

We must preserve the handshake as a sincere and honest gesture. These advertisers are looking to abuse the handshake. They think by opening with a handshake before they’ve even revealed their nefarious scheme, that they have created some kind of bond. THEY ARE RAPING THE BONDS OF SHAKING. A handshake is a fine business tool, but only in a sincere situation. Had I asked them to come in and they had negotiated a good deal for me – well, then they are deserving of maybe a strong single, or at least a classic. These guys have come in specifically to try to slime money out of me. They deserve no shake. They, in fact, deserve the two-fingered anti-shake.

So I’m not shaking hands with salesmen anymore.

There is a great sense of liberation in not shaking hands with people you don’t want to shake hands with. Don’t be bullied into it. Save your handshakes only for those deserving and let those that would steal them from you have to execute the awkward remove and squirm manouevre. Give it a go!

Chilly chilly.

Last night, just before I went to bed, I decided to work out what my most favourite song ever is.

Obviously, this is an impossible task. I’m a music fiend with a rubbish memory so I must have 200 most favourite songs ever and at any one time only be able to recall maybe 5 of them. Although my lifelong dream has been to appear on Desert Island Discs (no, really!), I’m fully aware that should the opportunity ever present itself I’d need to take a month of work to scour through my cds, records and tapes and then phone everyone I’ve ever been friends with to ask them what I was listening to obsessively at the time we were hanging out.

So, the challenege was clearly an exercise in bed-avoidance and staying up late – which at the age of 33 has apparently still not lost its novelty – but, bizarrely, within seconds of thinking ‘hmmm, what’s my most favourite song ever?’ one title popped into my head – a song I haven’t thought about in a while – and sat there immovable. As if to say ‘I’m your most favourite song ever, Jon’ and as much as I tried to protest, question it and bombard it with Levellers and Candyskins song titles, proudly it sat there confident in it’s correctness until I could deny it no longer.

My most favourite song ever is Waterloo Sunset.

I can’t remember the first time I heard it, I have no significant memories attatched to it. I’m reasonably sure it’s one of those songs that I just grew up knowing, like the entire Beatles back catalogue, although I don’t remember my folks ever playing it to me. Mum definitely sang other Kinks songs around the house – Dedicated Follower of Fashion, All The Day and All of the Night, You Really Got Me – the jauniter songs. Any song that survives that wide-eyed-sarcastically-phrased treatment must be of an epically durable quality.

I do adore The Kinks. I think they stand alone in that era of 60s/70s pop in being neither bubblegum or overtly emotional. They fit comfortably into the style and sound of their era yet there is a subtle edginess, an obvious intelligence and a huge darkness which they try neither to hide or acknowledge.

Lola – their laissez-faire celebration of transvestites.

The Village Green Preservation Society – which is not only the greatest song ever written about Englishness but posseses the most gorgeous ambiguity of intent – is it celebrating our culture and its preservation or is it mocking middle England’s resistance to change and progress?.

I’d like to meet the person who could argue against The Kinks being the quintessential English band of our lifetimes. Britpop owes them an obvious debt but never bested them. Anyway, as I was saying, for me, Waterloo Sunset sits somewhat outside the canon of killer songs they gave us. I think maybe because I don’t consider it a Kinks song. I think of it more of a Ray Davies song. Ray was the lead singer and creative heart of the band but to me this was always much more his song, far more personal and their only song on which the rest of the band are just merely incidental players. Not just incidental, really. Extraneous. As haunting as Dave Davies’s backing vocals are, Waterloo Sunset is a song for one man to sing alone.This next video is a way better rendition to my ears and eyes.

The song itself, despite being a hauntingly beautiful pop tune, has always spoken to me. Davies has had a long and well documented struggle with Depression and this song is drenched with sadness yet manages to retain a glorious optimism.The song is unique in that it seems utterly resistant to being covered. Many have tried but it’s Davies’s blend of confidence and reticence that is the magic element which brings the song to life.

Bowie has tried….

…but doesn’t have the fragility to pull it off.

Cathy Dennis had a bit of a hit with it in the 90’s….

But a beautiful girl singing it infront of a hip young band just feels like the most vaccuous interpretation imaginable. Swill.

I’d say the most respected cover of it was by Elliot Smith whose intrinsic angst made Ray Davies look like Timmy Mallett – he ended up killing himself by stabbing himself in the heart (Smith, not Mallett – lamentably)…

….but there is something off kilter about an American singing about Terry and Julie that doesn’t sit right. It is too English of a song.

It is Ray’s song. It needs and allows no interpretation except for by the man himself. The older he gets, the more beautiful the song becomes.

This is a man who, despite his own crippling sadness, can take joy in the happiness of strangers he observes in a world which scares him and can take ultimate happiness in the daily beauty of nature. As long as he sees the sunset, he can get by – it’s enough. It’s fine. I guess that just echos my world view – there is so much I don’t understand about modern life – people are so busy and it does make me feel dizzy and the lights are definitely too bright – but the one thing they can never change is that the sun is always going to rise and always going to set and there is a great comfort in that. You can rip out the trees, pollute the water, cement over every inch of grass but at the end of the day, whatever monstrosities you build and people you indoctrinate, they’ll all get bathed in that beautiful warm orange light and whether they notice it or not, it will always be of great comfort to those of us who still have a soul.

Ray crops up every now and then, last year he put out a great little album called Working Man’s Cafe. The following video is something I just adore. The song almost feels like a companion piece to Village Green Preservation Society in which a guy who was a hip young thing in the 60’s now suddenly realises what all those old farts were on about as he sees all that was once dear and familiar to him has passed even the point of preservation. It’s all gone.

The preservation of a British identity has unfotunately become the call of the far right and the racists of this country. I don’t think I particularly want the things they do. I like our multicultural society and feel that the modern working class should both start working and get a little class but the continuing obliteration of our little cultural peculiarities in the name of global corporatisation is a tragic thing. Still, as long as I gaze on an Oxfordshire sunset, I am in paradise.

THAT’S ENOUGH! That’s enough.

I really don’t like horror films.

I used to dig horror films. I was about to launch into an anecdote about the first horror film I ever saw, but I’ll save that for later. In the summer of ‘85, when I was a fledgling, 9 year old film geek begging my mother for money to rent videos every single day, she decided to give me my first taste of film education. I could have a film a day, but I was to work through the oeuvre of Hitchcock. I don’t know why she chose him in particular, but that was the deal. If I was so intent on spending each afternoon in front of the box, I was to be getting education with my entertainment. And I liked Hitchcock. The experience somewhat broke through my self-imposed barrier of not watching anything in black & white (like eating greens and cleaning my room this is still an issue for me and launches me into a schizophrenic internal dialogue of mutual self-hatred ‘oooh maybe I’ll buy some spinach/you don’t like spinach, you’re just trying to feel grown up, you won’t actually eat it’ ‘oooh, I’ll take this film home tonight/it’s black and white, you won’t watch it/yes I will! I’ve been waiting to see this!/We’ll seee.’) I should stress that I do eat greens, keep my bedroom tidy and watch black and white films, it’s just that these actions are rarely unaccompanied by inner chaos.  Where was I? Hitchcock!

Of all the Hitchcock films I was working through, there was a question rising within me. Was my mum going to let me watch Psycho? I had, of course, read about it in detail in my film books, which I treasured and pored over endlessly. I knew what it was about, knew it was a horror film, the day came and I pulled it off the shelf in the shop (Oxford Video – don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore) and handed it to my mum. She gave me a look for a moment and asked if I was sure. Of course I wasn’t sure but I was interested. Psycho was good. I don’t think I was ever scared, it was more the feeling of something scary might be about to happen that kept me on edge. When it was over, I thought it was pretty good. I retain to this day and certain honesty in my responses to films (and hopefully most other things). Whilst I believe it valid that people label Psycho as a work of genius, removed from the context of it’s era, it’s not really all that it’s cracked up to be. Yes, intellectually, I get it all, the sleight of hand of setting Janet Leigh up as the main character, then killing her so early in the film, the brutality, the twists – it’s a well-made piece but so many film-makers have picked up the ball and run with it since that as a visceral horror piece, it pales in comparison to – say – John Carpenter’s Halloween. I generally regard what people label as ‘classics’ with a certain amount of mistrust. Citizen Kane is boring. As is most of the Truffaut and Godard that I’ve seen. David Lynch is the greatest example of the Emperor’s new clothes in cinematic history. I’m not a heathen, I just don’t need to be told by received wisdom what are the ‘best’ films. These lists rarely include ‘Sullivan’s Travels, ‘My Life’, ‘Tootsie’, ‘Silent Running’, ‘Leningrad Cowboys Go America’ or…. well I’ll get to the last one shortly. Once again I’ve distracted myself and gone wildly off topic.

As a pre-teen and teenager, I liked horror films, that is really all I’m trying to say. I liked all films, really and it’s probably notable that I never put horror posters up on my wall or collected ephemera related to them. They were sordid, fun, challenging little experiences. Dad would tape some for me off late night TV, friends at school would lend me videos. I’d gather with friends and we’d inevitably end up at someone’s house watching something unsuitable. I vividly remember my first viewings of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining (we didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on) and the scariest of the lot – a little known film starring Anthony Hopkins called Audrey Rose. I’ve never seen it since – never even seen it available – and kind of have no interest in seeing it again since with age, experience and cynicism, it would only betray my memories.

Right through uni and into my mid-twenties, horror films meant the same to me as they had then. I didn’t *love* horror films or get much from them, but I enjoyed the experience of sitting with a group of friends with the mutual aim of getting a little scared and shaken up. Good times. Although I’ve watched many horror films alone, I find the experience a bit intense and pointless. You don’t go to a theme park alone and just ride on the scariest rollercoaster and then wander off home – you go with friends, you share the experience, the point of it is screaming together, creating shared memories and discussing it after.

A few years ago, I lost my taste for horror films – firstly on an intellectual, then an emotional level. I think what put me off was the film Final Destination and it’s first sequel. I thought these films were great. They were brilliant. the franchise basically distilled the entire modern horror genre to perfection. They gave the audience exaclty – and only – what the audience most wanted. For those who have not seen, the premise is that a group of teenagers – a school party – are about to board an airplane but one of them has a premonition that it is going to explode. He forced his friends off the plane, which takes off and promptly explodes. They have cheated death. But death is not happy about that. We don’t ever see death as a character – just as a force – as one by one in elaborate and brilliantly playful scenarios, each of these ‘lucky’ teenagers gets killed by ‘freak’ accidents. So, essentially, the filmmakers had worked out that horror fans don’t care for plot or character, they just want that constant feeling of ‘Oh shit – it’s about to happen!’ followed by a gory money shot of dismemberment and brutality. When I realised this, it upset me. I don’t want to be the kind of guy who gets his kicks from dismemberment and brutality – I’m not that kind of guy. Then as my teens got further and further away from me and I’ve grown to regard teenagers as – essentially – children, I genuinely started to find these films disturbing. Why is it ok – indeed fun – to show kids being brutally murdered? It just stopped making sense. how can people watch a news report about such a thing and say ‘that’s terrible and tragic and wrong’ and then slip in a DVD of exactly the same thing and say ‘this is fun! I like the guy who’s killing them!!!!’ As friends have started having kids, it’s been even more grating. When I was a teenager, the idea of seeing stereotypes of people I knew getting their comeuppance was very enticing and amusing but I no longer see teenagers as my peers – I see them as people’s kids. And however shitty a teenager may be, they deserve the chance to get past that hormonal rush and fulfill their potential. I understand this might seemingly contradict my last post which slagged off that whole generation. I don’t want to spend time with them, but I don’t think they should be hacked to death.

So. I really don’t like horror films.

But there is one that I love. In fact, love doesn’t even do it justice. Love is an emotional response, this film I love emotionally and respect intellectually.

Yesterday, I spent the day revelling in this film and watching it receive the retrospective and attention it was due as part of the Frightfest film festival in London. Truth be told, I felt a little gutted that I was not the only one there because since I was pretty young, this has always been my film. Until recently, nobody ever really talked about this film and that has always confused me as, for my money, it is simply one of the best films ever made ever. Ever. Ever ever ever. EVER. So to be sat in a huge cinema watching it, full of people, like me, who it meant so much to (including – frustratingly – Justin Lee Collins who, after having stood next to for a couple of minutes can confirm that *yes* he really is like that in real life) was a strange feeling. But then to be able to participate in a huge round of applause for the director John Landis and Director of Photography Robert Paynter, who were both in attendance, was one of the pleasures of my life. And to shake Landis by the hand and tell him how much joy and inspiration his film has brought me over the years was even better.

I use the film during some of the screenwriting courses I teach as a way of explaining the concept of theme. I ask the class – those who have seen the film, at least – to name films ‘like’ American Werewolf. I am always saddened, but never surprised, to get the same answers; ‘The Howling’ ‘Wolfen’ ‘The Wolfman’ – a list of werewolf or monster movies. This is why American Werewolf has always been overlooked. Because people think it’s a werewolf film. This means a whole section of society will never watch this film. It will be, has been, dismissed out of hand. You can tell by a film’s title if you’re going to want to see it. Just as I know I’ll never watch the film ‘Lovely and Amazing’ – despite not knowing ANYTHING bar its title, many would understandably avoid a film called ‘An American Werewolf in London’.

I show my class a clip from near the beginning of the film – David and Jack, two young American hitchhikers exploring the moors in Yorkshire have found shelter in a strange little pub – The Slaughtered Lamb. Although initially frostily received, their presence is tolerated until they ask about a five pointed star drawn on the wall, framed by candles. The question silences the room and they are told to leave. A debate breaks out as to whther they should be allowed to go – something is out there – but the boys go anyway with the advice ’stick to the road’ and ‘beware the moon’. Pleased to just be out of the pub, the lads hike onwards for another village through the dark and rain. Goofing about, they inadvertently leave the road. By the time they realise, it is too late. Hunted by an unseen creature in one of cinema’s scariest scenes (and remarkably one of the few to capture fear so realistically – bad jokes punctuated by genuine laments) are subject to a brutal attack. Jack is ripped apart and David… well, I don’t want to give too much away.

Anyway, when I show this scene, those who haven’t seen the film usually want to watch more. But instead, I show them a clip from Alan Parker’s film Midnight Express. This is a film based on a true story about an American who tried to smuggle a fairly small quantity of hashish out of Turkey but was caught and jailed in inhuman conditions for a sentence of 30 years. The scene I show them is of the attempt to smuggle. Despite the extreme tension, he manages to get past customs and succesfully make it to the plane, but just as he starts to relax, a whole squadron of armed police turn up for him and find his stash.

At face value, the two films have nothing in common, yet thematically they are identical – a young likable American, away from home, doesn’t heed a piece of simple advice and ends up paying a cost so outrageously out of proportion to the crime, our sympathies lie with him in the extreme.

And I think it is this sense of sympathy that sets American Werewolf apart from anything else in its supposed genre. The only low point of my day yesterday was hearing Landis say how he hates hearing his film referred to as ‘comedy horror’ or ‘horror comedy’ (it is the deftest blend of genres probably ever. No, Shaun of The Dead doesn’t even come close), he claims the film is an outright horror film. I think he does himself a huge disservice with that tag. The tenets of the horror genre are gimmickry and a somewhat salacious need to see gore. American Werewolf IS gory…. but you really don’t see anyone getting killed. The gore comes not in the scenes of death but in the scenes of sadness.

An oscar was created for this film – Best Special Effects Make-Up. The film is now 27 years old and the special effects make-up are still BETTER than any such thing on screen since. You could say they were ahead of their time, well they still are. Watching the film on a brand new remastered digital projection yesterday, the effects still… look.. real. Despite the technical genius, you find that most film-makers light special effects in a very particular way – keeping as much in the dark as possible. The two biggest effects achievements of this film are done in FULL light.

The first is of these is three weeks after the attack, David has woken up in hospital in London and the case is practically closed – he is told that jack was killed, he was lucky to survive this attack from ‘a madman’. As he is recuperating, one morning David receives a visit from Jack. Although he has had the blood washed off him, Jack is still pretty fresh from the attack – his throat has been ripped out – flappy skin hanging down as he talks – and his face has been ripped into three by an almighty paw slash. Yet there he is, in full light, making jovial conversation as he warns david of his own fate. To have seen the attack in full light would have been horrible and not unnecessary but to see the effect in a calm, completely unscary scene is just kind of maudlin and sad. It isn’t a gimmick, it’s a reality David is faced with.

Ignoring Jack’s advice to kill himself, come the full moon, David transforms. Most transformations in horror films are rather quick, or shown in as much darkness or close-up as possible. This transformation seems to last for ages and we are shown the entire thing in full light and bone-crunching honesty. It hurts. It hurts David and we feel horrible for him. We feel worse for him than for his victims because their fates are quicker. It blows me away that this sequence is still as incredible to me today as it was the first time I saw it, mouth agape and wide-eyed.

Everything is just RIGHT about this film. The two leads – their first film roles – are so likable and natural. The supporting cast is made up of brilliant British character actors bringing gravitas to what, on paper, is a ridiculous story. perfect special effects, an amazingly tight and effective and tragic story. Beautiful photography. Bags of character. There is just no film like it. And like all the best stories, the simplicity is in the point of it, the central message, the moral of the story if you will.

As Landis wrote above his signature on my poster – ‘Stick to the road!’.

Genius.