b2009ks

William Boyd, Any Human Heart

2010-09-07T20:38:00.000+01:00

I gather that they are making a film about this, so glad I got in first. Basically, a game of two halves, held together with a weird Bondsian interlude in the middle. Astonishingly believable, and rather upsetting in a way, although anyone would give their eye-teeth to end up like Logan Mountstuart, pottering about France with a couple of dogs for company.

Another plus, a lot of worrying about money and the day-to-day, to balance all the walk on parts by Hemingway, Fleming, etc. etc. (though we all love to name drop).

There's even an index.

Would read more Boyd if the covers didn't have his name plastered across them in the same way.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

2010-09-05T12:58:00.001+01:00

A increasingly rare trip to the cinema by myself (found myself almost at sixth-form levels of embarrassment finding a seat, etc.), essentially because I thought 'what the hell, let's see what's on'.

Turns out there was something starring the likeable chump from Superbad (Michael Cera) and written/produced/directed by Wells' finest (sister-in-law excepted), Edgar Wright. His first Hollywood vehicle seemed well formed, and he must now be seen as the Starsailor side of the Verve/Starsailor equation in relation to Spike Jonz.

But it did mix a clever amount of sincerity, and perhaps a way past irony, etc., in the comic book self-referential form. A homage to David Foster Wallace, perhaps.

I am also reading Any Human Heart, which has managed to get its hooks into me - indeed, I can't remember being so affected, not since Gilead.

Electric Counterpoint, Asphodel Meadows, Carmen

2010-05-17T10:12:00.000+01:00

At the Royal Opera House. The secret to a good ballet, as well as Sarah Lamb, I've discovered, is not just the ballet, but booking a meal during the interval in the Balcony restaurant.

Couldn't quite work out why the critics disliked the Carmen so much (too slight, despite the crude jerky movement?), thought the second piece very mature for a 24-year old, and impressed by the first one; although the promise of the projection wasn't perhaps explored enough?

Sus

2010-05-17T10:09:00.000+01:00

A film, which everyone said was too stagey (without saying that this actually worked very well for the subject matter). Liked it because someone I know was the assistant director, and also liked it in a gloomy way because it was the day after the election. It all seemed worryingly prescient. Let's hope not.

Bike Snob

2010-05-11T20:46:00.000+01:00

Currently, an old Etonian is driving towards Downing Street. I'm sure he's not a snob. However, I have just finished, in a couple of short chomps, Bike Snob.

You probably know the blog, and if you don't you should. There are nice stickers (one is now on my bike), some excellent illustrations, and an altogether well-put together feel - as it should be for BSnobNYC's book.

More than that, it's a great read, probably the perfect introduction to cycling for the neophyte. And what's more, contains some of the best short bits of prose on why cycling is so great. Bike Snob is revealed as a softie at heart.

Doug Cowie, Owen Noone and the Marauder

2009-11-15T23:36:00.002Z

An amiable book, in many senses. Tested by water and fire, Owen and his new just out of college friend form a band based on the Lomax songbook, and in a road trip/buddie movie/rock novel, travel coast to coast in Marauder's first-person memoir of a late friendship.

Good on lots of counts; it's understated, and the things it states seem pretty truthful, not least Marauder's difficulty in finding the right things to say or how to feel what he's feeling; it makes you want to see Owen Noone and the Marauder live; and the trajectory of fame, and expected bottom-of-bin status, is nicely done, too. Great final sentence, something which defeats most novelists, and scoops the award for best use of babushka doll metaphor in literary history.

Museum of Everything, Primrose Hill

2009-10-24T15:26:00.000+01:00

This was clearly mis-selling. There was at least a kitchen sink missing, but what you do get is a warming, creepy, cluttered, obsessed, and fascinating collection of 'Outside Art', which no doubt has phds about it aplenty. This show was 'Secret Art'. All the kind of naive, slightly dowdy stuff that worms its way inside your head; and sadly seems to have informed the Innocent Drinks and all those adverts making use of drawings and doodles at the end of the Great Boom, c. 2007.

Nice offbeat labels, with digs at Hampstead types, neat comments from the bestest still going artist (Ed Ruscha), albeit with wrong apostrophes in decades... Rambling overwarm building was perfect, and the crowd had hipsters, oldsters, posh toddlers, and artsy girls milling around to add to the effect. Sadly, the fairground thing wasn't working. The Revd.' s chapel was perfect, though. And there was even a tea lady and china cups and saucers at the end. I may be back to have a Rich Tea and some Yorkshire tea at some point.

Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in Royal Festival Hall

2009-10-12T23:24:00.004+01:00

I think Spiritualized must be my third favourite band, but the number one in terms of times seen. So, what did I take from this, apart from the odd observation about the fans and the current taste for nostalgia?

Well, along with the free jazz, and bombast, was probably the smallness of the sound. Which was wholly appropriate for one man's attempt to come up with a new language, a thrashing around in the pain of loss, the balm of druggy comfort, and finally the human sound of the choir rescuing, but not bringing much relief at the end of cop shoot cop. Revelations? The reversion to the Elvis lyrics for 'Ladies and Gentlemen...', and the heart-ache in Jason Spaceman's voice in Stay With Me. At the end, he wasn't singing, just crying out.

Kind of as if Berlioz was a punk.

Moon

2009-10-04T18:06:00.001+01:00

Moon (2009) reminded me of one of those annuals from the 1970s or earlier, all full of moon buggies, space craft, and great white rings of light as planets crept in front of a sun. We got a director's Q&A afterwards (Zowie!), which reassured us that this was intentional. An homage, a faked lost gem even, from the highpoint of series SF: Outlanders, and so on. All reassuringly refreshing. But why? Even the future is now the past, it seems...

More tellingly perhaps, even more than the hints at the ethics of cloning, or what is a sentient being with rights, is the loneliness. Something you don't have to grow up the son of a famous pop star to understand, I suspect. And I've always wondered what it would be like to throw up in a spaceman's helmet. It's worse than I thought. Another great date flick, then.

Breaking Away

2009-09-26T15:39:00.001+01:00

Dammit, I’m going to add something to this blog. This film is a must, if you have ever (a) been 19 (b) grew up in a small town (c) wondered what Indiana was like (d) had a passing interest in bikes (e) wondered what Denis Quaid would be like in a good film (f) puzzled about the father/son relationship. Even better is if you see this Gregory’s Girl meets Animal House meets the Road to Rouen as part of the Bike Film Festival. Better still if it’s introduced by Kristian House, who shared the same leg-shaving parental shock moment as the main (or the most prominent of the central quartet). Bikes do, on this occasion Rock.

Although there is a worrying scene where bar tape is applied from the top of the bars, rather than the bottom. And Team Cinzano are, as Skoota noted, a bunch of cunts. I leave you with the final, freeze, frame, ‘Bonjour, Pop!’.

And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks

2009-09-07T23:02:00.000+01:00

Which has very little directly to do with this hard-boiled memoir-cum-fictionalized account of the early beats hanging around New York, drinking Pernod, eating steak, making out with girls, and trying to ship out to France as the Allies try and break out of Cherbourg, all while their pal (who went on to be a well-liked newsman), breaks the skull and kills his infatuated homosexual non-lover. There is a lot of shifting around from bar to bar and bedsit to bedsit, Burroughs and Kerouac get to write a chapter each in turn, and there's an afterword by Burroughs' room mate and executer, which has its own interest (plus he edited the thing). Good bits include the use of 'fink', the quasi-existential, exterior life feel of the prose, and the fact it ain't too long. It also ends, and maybe even works up to, a not bad joke about politicians.

Mazzy Star

2009-09-05T16:55:00.010+01:00

B2009ks is sick. Not very sick. Not sick enough to take a day off work, but sick enough to use up a holiday and spend the day in bed in order to shake off an unwelcome cold and temperature.

Normally the cure would involve black and white films on BBC2, some Agatha Christie or Patricia Highsmith, but most of these resources seem lacking. An attempt to finish And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks met with failure at Burroughs and Karouac's two hander. All that my temperature-addled brain could get was a bunch of proto-beats moving around New York a lot, drinking plenty and sometimes injecting morphine. All very tempting, but not really wholesome enough for recuperation.

However, some respite arrived in a Rough Trade evening on BBC4. I should probably just subscribe to their roster, and not bother about buying anything else. During the 'Rough Trade Live on the BBC' segment they not only reminded me how great James were, but how fun the Raincoats can seem; and that I should also get some early Stiff Little Fingers records. Mazzy Star was the other reminder. I had a great tape from 1993,which used to rattle around my cassette player late at night in my frozen room in York as I tried to write essays, or resolutely finished that bottle of Pernod John idiotically brought back from hitching to France. Dreamy guitars and Sandoval's voice...

My Morning Jacket also had a segment during a live bit at St Luke's (oh, that Ryan Adams evening there was great), and reminded me that apart from a great warm up for Spiritualized at the South Bank, MMJ remained largely unknown, except as Neil Youngist, proto-Fleet Foxes. Am currently digging out some old CDs to rectify this, and am greatly amused by this Rolling Stone description of Evil Urges (which reminds me of that double LP of Urge Overkill, which I now have no means of playing):

"Evil urges, baby," squeals Jim James in the title track of his band's fifth studio album. "They be part of the human way!" A slinky funk strut delivered in Prince-like falsetto that blows up into a proggy Southern-rock guitar duel, "Evil Urges" rallies you to "Dedicate your love to any woman or man/No racial boundary lines, no social subdivisions" and notes that "evil" is often in the ear of the beholder.

But coming from a young band whose first three albums earned them a reputation as hairy torchbearers of guitar-driven classic rock, the title is also about messing with expectations. More so than 2005's mildly experimental Z, Evil Urges explodes the band's sound with the same kind of creative leap that Wilco took on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Radiohead took on Kid A.

MMJ's reverence for Neil Young and Crazy Horse is well documented; their Prince fetish less so. They've covered "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" live, employed Prince-ly nomenclature (see 2005's "It Beats 4 U") and happily mixed drum machines and lengthy guitar jams (see 2002's space-funk-folk-rock epic "Cobra"). But nothing in their discography could anticipate a song like "Highly Suspicious," Evil Urges' biggest WTF moment. Squeaking out rhymes like "Home alone dotting your i's/Peanut-butter-pudding surprise!" in helium falsetto over boogie-rock guitar outbursts, drill-sergeant backing vocals and clipped drum spasms, it's better suited to an I Love the '80s! mix, set between "Little Red Corvette" and Devo's "Whip It," than to a My Morning Jacket album. (And, dude, I don't even want to know what a "peanut-butter-pudding surprise" is.) It's both hilarious and badass.

MMJ also embrace prog rock — a direction that initially seems at odds with their populist jam-band vibe. But James is determined to have it both ways. The elaborate, shimmering vocal overdubs on "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Part 1" recall 10cc's prog-pop landmark "I'm Not in Love." And the record's 13-minute tag-team finale, "Smokin From Shootin" and "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Part 2," morphs between Radiohead's computer-assisted soul, avant-roots rock and a chugging Pink Floyd space anthem. "Oh! This feeling is wonderful! Don't you ever turn it off!" sings James on the latter song, amid majestic Fender Rhodes chords and Loch Ness monster slide guitar, building to a surprise ending sure to result in thousands of spilled bongs. He could be singing about sex. He could be singing about MDMA. And when he notes how long it's been since he's been challenged to think "about the way things are" and "the way they could be," he could even be singing about a certain presidential candidate. Just as there are innumerable sexual metaphors, James knows sex can be a metaphor for innumerable things.

Yet you sense that for all his freaky ambition, James is still an old-fashioned guy trying to reconcile his love of tradition with the modern world. One of the record's standouts is "Librarian," an acoustic love ballad that's so archaic it's clearly a hallucination: The singer wanders through book stacks ("Since we got the Interweb, these hardly get used") and sees his crush listening to the Carpenters on AM radio. But songs, like books, invent their own reality, and by the time he reaches the hoary nerd-girl come-on, "Take off those glasses and let down your hair for me," it's enough to make you forswear your Amazon account

Garrison Keillor, Liberty

2009-08-29T19:37:00.003+01:00

I picked this up as I ran out of the Library on the way to holiday with the vicar, his charming family, and C. It proved very apposite - not least as the central character and JT are great impresarios. Meanwhile, the book was full of wonderful mid-western sentences, and my head read the sentences mostly with Keillor's droll and slightly gloomy tones as the voice (otherwise known as that Honda advert). I also picked up some words, such as Whomping, which is what you do to run up some potato salad. I will have to confirm with Libgyrl.
Keillor is a humorist and a humanist, with a very bleak undertow, and the reflections of a man turning sixty added a touch of existential reflection to the break. Perhaps a good thing, and certainly made one think about the midpoint of one's life.

(picture from kuer90.1)

Tim Krabbé, The Rider

2009-06-28T20:31:00.005+01:00

Another one of those classics, which all riders talk about with respect. And I'm going along with that. If Don Delillo was to write a first person account of someone who may or may not be the author riding a fictional, 120mile race through the centre of France, then this would be it.

Today I went for a ride, not 120miles, but a decent 90miles in the heat, some of it a hilly - but of course, not mountains like The Rider. And I'm quite aware of the step changes, or transformational changes between even being a good amateur rider (which I'm not) and a pro, but for the first time, I got a sense of what it meant to ride, and to ride to beat others. One was stronger than me overall, but I felt much beater than the others; and each small hill, I could out-sprint them all to the top. Minor, minor triumphs, of course, but Krabbe would know what I was talking about.

Control (DVD)

2009-06-23T14:14:00.003+01:00

I have been remiss in posting, and I've even read a few books, so I'll catch up soon.

I've also had one of those red LoveFilm envelopes sitting on top of my DVD player, like a little blinking light, chiding me for not watching it for what must be a couple of months. I seem to be off films at the moment.

However, after yet another Saturday working, and not feeling like roaming the streets, I caught up with it that evening. The film was Control, a black and white biopic of Ian Curtis, of Joy Division, directed by Mr Joshua Tree. Since then, Joy Division have been everywhere, including the front of the NME this week. And the films in the adverts also got referenced at a bbq I went to. What does this all signify? Nothing, but possibly everything...

Liked the Graham Robb character, who must have written that Stone Roses book, and the final shot of the smoke and crematorium. And every rock star needs an Annik.
Otherwise, nicely understated film making (except the self-conscious Black and White).

Journal for Plague Lovers

2009-05-20T22:39:00.003+01:00

In 1995, I had a photo of Richey Manic next to my door. Just about the only 'pop' star I ever stuck up. It was a bad year to be about 27 and in a band.

Perhaps it was because we crashed and almost got killed just in front of the Severn Bridge.

Perhaps it was because of the memory of seeing the 4-REAL cuts in Melody Maker in Street in 1992. Or perhaps it was the comeback gig in Wembley in 1996, before I split up with R.

Whatever, this is the first time since... 29 that an album has had 'it'. I'm still almost crying at the last song. So beautiful. And finally Guns n Roses and the Clash seem to meet properly.

DVD: Son of Rambow

2009-04-21T23:00:00.000+01:00

Skill? Scratch my bluebeard

Matt Seaton, The Escape Artist. Life from the Saddle

2009-04-19T20:21:00.005+01:00

This is the book of 2009 so far, and edges ahead of Murakami, which is on a similar theme. Okay, so it's a cycling memoir, but it's more than that. Seaton finds something in the suffering and pain of riding, and tells his story of amateur riding around London in the '90s, along with snippits about his relationship, his kids, and then his wife's cancer and death.

At the end, you know he's learnt something, in an understated way, that uses the doomed attempt to escape the pack in a race as a metaphor; there's even a passage that evokes Bede's account of the sparrow flying, briefly, through the great hall:

Like the bunch, implacable as a swarm of bees, life eventually overhauled me. The game was up. I had found I could not give up cycling, in the way that the phrase implies, with a single, irrevocable act of renunciation. I could only let it go, little by little, like paying out line to a kite which grows ever more distant, until finally the end of the twine slips though one's fingers, and the kite is away, gone on the wind. When it comes, it is an event that feels more like an accident than an exercise of will.

I suspect my brother might know a little about how that happens, especially with kids (albeit perhaps just for a bit). Seaton writes very well, which is a reward in itself, as well as capturing the taciturn comradery of riders, the late 80s and early 90s London (the fear of Nuclear War, the troubles of those on the left or in the Party after 1989), and on why people ride. The final chapter is brilliantly handled. I even liked the use of dashes for reported speech, which seemed apposite for a memoir. I may have to start shaving my legs now. In any case, I went for a ride.

17. Annie Proulx, Bad Dirt

2009-03-29T11:07:00.003+01:00

Taking some advice from SuperLibryGyrl, I'm warming up for some writing with, appropriately enough, some short stories.

For me, short stories are either something to do with SF or have some natty, Somerset Maughan twist. Oh, or are some sort of slice or snapshot of a rather beat up and sad, Carver-eque life. And AP seems to have covered most of the bases here: a worm-hole leading National Park malefactors to Hell. Check. The bad dirt of a ranch owned (and owned is the word here) by a rugged, divorced, and taciturn rancher at a moment of bitter sweet victory. Check. A glimse of a loveless, sexless (with the marrieds) marriage. Check. Etc.

And lots of neat little lines:

Mitchell Fair and his wife, Eugenie, sped over the whiskey-colored plains in their aging Infiniti, "cutting prairie," said Mitchell under his breath, thinking it sounded western.

Is one of the underplayed ones. And everyone has a great name. Plus, Brokeback Mountain was on the TV last night.

A Proulx seems to have broken this year's book-reading curse, with a bunch of stories that fizz like a lemon sorbet (not something you'd get in Wyoming, mind). Enough to make me ignore recent Carver-esque snaffus.

Bekind Rewind

2009-03-28T16:45:00.001Z

Or, even more kindly, don't bother. Hmph.

Book: Playground of the Gods

2009-03-03T21:54:00.002Z

Perhaps a candidate for the worst title of the year so far, this is possibly the book on Polish history. I've even celebrated the fact by pouring red wine on it.

Why's it good? Well, like the best history books it brings the air of authority and also self-reflexivity, that sense you can trust the author. Which is not what historians are supposed to say, but there you go. And there's not much else written in English on the subject (although the Cambridge Concise History is brilliant in its own way).

Structurally, it works very well, with the narrative placed deftly after the bulk of the analysis. If there is a fault, however, it lies with the revisionism inherent in such a task. Constantly, we are told, things weren't as bad as all that, looking on the other side, we can see a durability of tradition, or a flexibility of the szlachta, etc. Fine, but becomes something of a rhetorical tick

Meanwhile: two TV shows - Mistresses, which is trying a bit too hard, and seems convinced that people are both very nice and devious at heart (which may be true), and Mad Men, which is making me want to get a sharp suit and tie. And possibly fix a strong drink.

Next up: Bolano, 2666. Although given its length, this may be some time.

promise

2009-03-03T17:33:00.001Z

I will post this evening, I will.

TV II: Skins

2009-02-19T22:22:00.002Z

Vindicated:

Scene: a classroom, discussing William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Josie (Teacher): 'But there's no wanking in Hamlet'

Student: 'Yes there is. Loads. Only they call it soliloquising'.

Reminds me: what I have done with Josie's fanzine?

Off to Wales tomorrow. On Walden Pond?

12. TV I: Skins

2009-02-13T12:36:00.005Z

Long time no post. Mea culpa. Either that or the slough of despond.

Sent b2009ks through Typealyzer and je suis:

ESTP - The Doers

The active and playful type. They are especially attuned
to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and
engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with
action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be
very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it
through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for
any period of time.

So, with this ridiculous analysis in mind, I add Skins to the mix.

This is probably the best show on British TV for the last couple of years. Most people hate it, or see it as a sleazy UK-based rip off of the OC or a West Country Hollyoaks. They are wrong. Like Kill Bill being the kind of film characters in Reservoir Dogs watch, Skins is the kind of show that the Inbetweeners or Grange Hill kids watch. It's a couple of steps removed from reality, but more real for all that.

Last night we got a riff on "This Be The Verse" Scene: A table after the divorce is announced. Daughter and her friend: "They Fuck You Up." 'The May Not Mean To." "But they Do". And a lot of Larkin about in the wonderful Sally Phillip's suburban house. Where else do we see suburbia (or Bristol) on the TV in this way? Or a 17th birthday ruined by drugs and the local football team, when all the dippy girl wants is to play twister, wear pajamas, and learn how to make the monkey? Throw in a weird neighbour, some great swearing, a twin's coming out scene, and 'The Final Countdown' and you're ESTP.

And where else captures that weird, heightened sense of possibility and discomfort, c.17-18? This could have been set in Strode College.

Plus the format is good. A series, but each character gets their own episode. One may be speaking and thinking Spanish. One may be in a coma. One may be all about Bill Bailey's dancing dogs. Quirky, but more real than most of what passes for drama. Good music too.

Perhaps best thought of as This Life for the Nu-Rave generation (in the sense of being genuinely new, and about something not seen on TV before, rather than self-satisfied smug 20-something)

Or perhaps I'm just avoiding being middle-aged.

Films II: Le Corbeau

2009-02-02T12:00:00.001Z

Does anyone know how this ends? DVD decided to skip after all hell breaks out and someone dies in a French town, 'comme ici ou ailleurs' after a load of poison pen letters.

I hate DVDs. Should all be distributed on USB sticks, or stick to betamax.

10. Films II, Smart People

2009-01-31T11:04:00.001Z

I sit here sipping coffee out of a thermos plunger cup, bought from Amazon, half watching Two and Half Men, over digital freeview, looking out over the privatized Virgin train line and the shared ownership newbuild, while my robot vacuum scuttles about cleaning the flat; later I'll be off to John's 35th birthday lunch. I wonder when I considered being middle aged, say 25 years ago, I had this in mind. Probably a less stupid robot would have been involved (although I might have glumly predicted a global depression).

But speaking of smart/stupidity, today's entry is a DVD, from LoveFilm (like netflix). They won't get a thorough recording on this blog (hello future, again), like history books, but may get a mention now and then.

I've been ill, so during the week I fired up the laptop and watched Smart People. I think everyone knows the problems with this: not least the unbelievable romance, the smugness, the implausible romcom plot pretending to be the Wonderboys meets that wine drinking film artsiness. Would a book titled 'You Can't Read' really pay for Stanford? And an angsty poem in the New Yorker? Really? But I liked bits of it, not least all the actors enjoying themselves (but not Quaid's limping - an actorly reference to a wife-killing car crash, one assumes), and Page's snarkiness. And every family needs a Haden Church. The scene about the jeans being 'snug' was pretty well done. And I liked the bored lecturer feeling. Plus 'uxorious' is useful word. However, it left me wondering, what's up with Sarah Jessica Parker. Even the final credit shots of the 'happy new family' had her half hidden behind furniture, or almost out of shot. And the few scenes she got were basically the coquettish indie ticks she always does (poor me, I'm a little awkward but look at me being cute). Perhaps it was all truly awful and the director left it all on the cutting room floor. But even Michael Douglas had a Wall Street in him, so when's a decent film going to come along? The very watchable Quaid would also be happier churning out flicks in the 1950s, I reckon.

Back to 2009: now my robot is beeping at me, asking for attention. Not so smart.

Films I: The Wrestler

2009-01-23T09:44:00.000Z

A trip to the cinema on Wednesday, the first in 2009. I had last seen Mickey Rourke sometime in the early 1990s, when a friend, who looked 18, got a copy of Wild Orchid from the video store. Did they? Didn’t they? Much pausing and rewinding didn’t answer the question. And now, here in 2009, was Mickey Rourke looking like ... well, nothing on earth. Perhaps a human Easter Island figure, made out of plasticine, hair dye, and poloni. In the film – a kind of art house rocky, combined with freakish come-back, he really was a wrestler, Raging Bull-Miller-Lite – he makes a series of phone calls to his estranged daughter from increasingly distraught telephone boxes in the bleakest parts of New Jersey. There’s even a pile of moulding railway sleepers next to one. His daughter is living, he suspects, with her girlfriend, and a new sense of purpose provided by his heart attack at the end of a gruesome ‘necro-wrestling’ match, along with some encouragement from his ‘tart with a heart’ stripper, near-squeeze, and 80s poodle-rock fan Marisa Tomei, leads him to try and get in touch with her again. His method? Bearing gifts, including a ridiculous silk, wrestling style sweater with her initial on it. Needless to say, apart from a board-walk memory moment they share, it ends, literally in tears after a drink and sex-induced night of fireman impersonating sex causes him to forget their father-daughter rapprochement dinner. Meanwhile, our man, the ‘Ram’ to give him his ring-side title, bores of his retirement work as a delicatessen sever (we hear earlier how he’s nothing but a used up piece of meat), and returns for one final match, a 20-year on reunion with ‘The Ayatollah’ (now a successful Arizonan car dealer). The symbolism is about as subtle as Rourke’s fascinating, massive face, and somehow as engaging and puzzling. There is the war (‘hit him with the false leg’, veterans lodges, the aforementioned Ayatollah, etc.) He drives a Ram van, he suffers the little children (in his trailer park, who see him as a hero – he is, of course, still a child himself), he sacrifices himself for his crowd, the Passion is quoted by Tomei (I’m not sure if we see more of his butt or hers?), and the cinematography makes the ring a Golgotha. Finally, he sacrifices himself in one final, heartstopping (ahem) ramjam, and we wonder if the director (Aronofsky) is making the point that the crucifixion was one almighty ‘ah, fuck it’ moment. And speaking of, my friend mentioned at the start of this synopsis is now a vicar.

8. Adobe Lightroom 2 Book

2009-01-18T13:35:00.000Z

I once went for a job with a computer upstart, or should that be start up, called Riversoft. I didn't really understand what they did, except that it was something to do with networks, and predicting where the flow of data should go. My job, if I got it, would have been to help write all their 'literature', e.g., their website and manuals. I bluffed a bit about CSS and Ajax, got a bit bogged down in what an IPO was (as it was the height of the boom, it seemed as though Internet and Initial had been conflated), but the crunch came at two points: 1. the salary, which I foolishly lowballed and 2., Foucault.

What does a bald ex-French philosopher and Maoist have to do with computers? Not much, and that may have been the mistake. I was asked to explain something, so I chose to explain Foucault's philosophy, life and thought in five minutes with the use of a marker and whiteboard. I can still remember, hauntingly, my drawing of a bald man in a polo neck. Needless to say, I didn't get the job, and I failed to become the next Bill Gates, or even get a wad of presumably worthless shares a couple of years down the line. I remember being struck at how young they all were.

Since then, any explanatory literature has been attended to with a little more attention than is necessarily warranted by b2009ks. Half the time, I'm imagining the poor hack author trying to churn this stuff out. The other half of the time, I wary of what's probably some keen enthusiast. Which is the case in the Adobe Lightroom 2 Book, the author of which was involved in the creation of the software, and has some plugins to flog, too. But it's a good balance of detail, examples, and some personality of the author. And I know a bit more about how to try and get the best out of my shots, should I wish to. Something idiotic was on the tv - 40 days and 40 nights, which is set in dotcom SF, so all very appropriate. The worst of it, though, was that he tried to distract himself from his celebate vow with making models. Rather like processing photographs.

Foucault, however, would have been out there in the bath houses.

7. Magazines, Part Deux

2009-01-15T19:30:00.001Z

monocle: get knitting
Originally uploaded by M.J.S.

Monocle arrived on Saturday. I'm never quite sure if it's a complicated joke, possibly financed by a Czech artist, either on me, or what. But I like it. This issue was a good one, not least because it was about something current, with good, cheeky reporting on Iceland (get knitting and fishing!), attempting to be positive, and was a truly fantastic, and I mean really great, photo essay on South Korean shipbuilding. The shots look like they are an advert in themselves for the continued existence of Fujifilm film. There was also an interesting piece on running gear, with the natty Uniqlo HeatTech T, which has got me through winter on the bike. And it's cheap, showing it's not a Euro version of the Robb Report, thank god. (Esp. when you add in the free drinks at the sub. reception). Plus a piece on Portland, or rather North Portland, with its 'large stock of classic housing... and signature Craftsman-Style bungalows', which somewhat bitterly amused Mika who came round on Sunday, and whose bro' has been suckered into a Craftsman-Style bungalow on the wrong side of the track and at the wrong mortgage rate.

Could share Mathias Dahlgren's 'Last Meal', too. The Swedish chef (ahem) opts for 'rustic rye and cheese sandwich and a robust cup of black coffee', preferably in the Nyckelviken forest. Not sure about the decision to line-break WHSmith at WH in the 'Observation' sign off, mind (which promises 'tweaks and changes to the line-up, along with our first national survey spotlighting Mexico'. Look forward to it, along with my tote).

Meanwhile, Obama is showing he can't really do reported speech, but he can swear like a mofo.*

*P.S. Canongate have not edited this for non-U.S. readers, so some references, such as "Tim should call himself Tom" can be opaque. On T&T, see Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White (Chicago). I think a PhD will have be written at some point on the influence of American comedy on political rhetoric. And I'm serious about that - what other election has swung or been informed so much on Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show, Bushisms, - and that's before the putative researcher looks at the influence of stand-up on stump speeches, convention orations, and even Obama's admitted early obsession with comedy records? Not least, this gives politicians, such as Giuliani at the Republican convention, an excuse to allude and exploit race and class in public.

6. Our Man Obama

2009-01-09T18:52:00.000Z

"Later, lying alone beneath a mosquito net canopy, I listened to the crickets chirp under the moonlight and remembered the last twitch of life that I'd witnessed a few hours before. I could barely believe my good fortune."

I'm kind of feeling that Dreams From my Father would have been better as an essay. Or, if the editor had left well alone. We get episodes, episodically, all of which mean something meaningful. Nonetheless, where are we? Only making a foray into chapter three (still in the section named 'Origins', the young Obama has made it to Indonesia, where he suspects that power is not always a good, or morally straightforward thing, and that his mother's 'position paper liberalism' and 'needlepoint mid-western values', may not be all that. Not least in a land where even the teachers are corrupt, the US embassy is stuffed with 'caricatures of the ugly American', and where he gets lessons in life from the taciturn, manly Lolo, who wanders the streets at night, nursing a bottle of whisky. More excitingly, perhaps for the 7-year old Barry, he gets a pet monkey on arrival, learns to box, and, as the quotation above notes, sees a chicken getting its throat cut before chomping it down for supper.

So, looking promising so far, although you have to make it through sentences like 'It was as if he had come to mistrust words somehow. Words, and the sentiments words carried'. We're not talking about Bush here, but the whisky-swigging Lolo. But still, do we need this spelled out, and then restated? And words are more than the dress of language, they are that wherewith we cannot speak without, etc. All thoughts you don't need when you're reflecting on how cool it would be to have a pet monkey.

I've also had to christen this week the longest week of the year. It seems to have lasted a month - all chill January skies, mass colds, and silly things at work - as well as some background reading on witchcraft for a lecture due next week.

5. A Calendar

2009-01-06T14:00:00.000Z

We really are scraping the barrel today. Thanks to the American Embassy, today's big read was a US calendar, this month's pin-up being Brice Canyon, which I failed to reach during my trip last year to Las Vegas. Almost as much snow at the Grand Canyon, though. I've also been sticking dates into my new Debrett's diary (remaindered), so it's on topic: proper books to follow (although a few chapters on the Ottoman Empire could be counted, I won't).

To the left you might also make out a print of Sir James Mackintosh, patron saint of the never-finished, and a warning to all who gobble chicken bones (one finished him off), to the right a map of the 2008 Tour de France, and en haute, a map of libraries in Paris, and a photocopy of the title page of Cotton's Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes, natch. You might also spot the Chevalier d'Eon popping out, and the Getty lurking around.

4. Essays

2009-01-05T22:14:00.001Z

Marking essays is rather like reading one of those experimental or postmodernist novels, the kind that tells the same story from several angles, voices and registers. In this case, we've had a couple of takes on Luther and the Spanish empire, with varying degrees of familiarity with syntax, punctuation and sense of what makes a good essay (or even a sentence). Some of them were very good indeed; others, less so.

And, if truth be told, you always learn something from them.

3. Magazines, part I

2009-01-04T17:19:00.000Z

4 days in and I've already succumbed to magazines. And not even paid for magazines, but the kind you pick up for free in overpriced design shops. But, and b2009ks is about honesty if it's about anything, magazines are what people read. Even Google Books is now stuffed to the gills with shiny and colourful magazines. So entry number 3 is a selection of design magazines. Or more bibliographically correct, trade catalogues. Grey literature. Very collectible, it seems now, if you've a pile of pre-1960s swimming pool fixture trade catalogues. More so if it's Victorian.

Design (publisher: BoConcept), Aram (Aram) and The Conran Shop (Conran Shop) have so far provided me with very little information, but a lot of glossy interiors, minute pictures of pieces of expensive furniture, and the occasional thoughtoid, thanks to said designers, such as 'why not go with a bit of colour, such as on your cushions here and there'. Put together with Grand Designs magazine I flicked through on the train down to Somerset, I don't think I've read a more vacuous series of publications.

All this because I need a sofa. The cost differential of somewhere to sit, read (which seems important to this blog) and have a nap between the made-in-china, zero credit and snooty sales-assistant shown designer settees is vast. Even John Lewis doesn't solve your problems. Ikea almost did, but somehow I couldn't do it. All they are is a bit of cloth, wood and possibly some metal. Some springs and a bit of beech if you're lucky. All to show off like an upholstered womb or leather-clad penis, ostentatiously placed in the middle of the main room. 'Look at me! Look at my wonderful minimalist modernist upmyself off-the-peg taste!" No other piece of furniture (or thing I own) makes as much a statement, so expensively, about so little.

Anyway, I got one. Partly out of a desire to stop having to think about it all, and partly because I saw one, calling me, across the floor of the Conrad Shop (in grey). It met all the requirements: comfy, low back, legs, and not too fussy. In 12 weeks, I should be able to sit and read on it. I certainly won't be able to afford to go out and do anything now. Oh, and I saw Paul Weller in Waitrose while I was going about my business doing all this. (As well as met Ms Aram in the Aram store, who was very nice).

2. Barry Obama

2009-01-02T20:37:00.000Z

Barack Obama, Dreams of my Father (Canongate, 2008)

This is a book that I claimed to have read at a party to impress a girl a while back. That probably tells you more about the kind of parties I go to and my attempts to chat people up that I usually care to let on. I reveal it, though, as a reminder of how bad this book makes you feel. Really bad. It's a weird one to read, as it's a memoir wrapped in a series of introductions, first when BO was famous for being the president of a the Harvard Law Review, and then when he was running for the senate. I think he was about 12. Actually, it's even worse - he was barely in his thirties. And now of course, he's about to be president of the USA - President-elect, in the lingo. This is a great thing. And, after 33 pages, it's pretty clear he can write (if write a bit too much). All marvelous. But it's sure good at making you feel a little... inadequate. Barack would have no trouble nattering to the aforementioned party girl.

I'll let you know how I get on. Although I'm sure you've all already read it.

(Oh, and good work Canongate on snagging this for your small, but well-formed, quirky list)

1. Running and Writing

2009-01-02T19:15:00.000Z

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk about when I Talk about Running (Harvill Secker, 2008). Trans. Philip Gabriel.

"At a certain point, though, I decided that I should just write honestly about what I think and feel about running, and stick to my own style" (vii)

Haruki Murakami, the Japanese novelist and translator, can be counted on for a certain number of things in his novels, which he has now been writing for over three decades. The pleasures of cooking, particularly spaghetti and eggs. Ironing. Mysterious girls with beautiful ears. Stubborn and slightly melancholy loners as central figures. Beer. Explicit, tender, and often sad, sex. Slightly faded, drab hotels, usually named ‘Dolphin Hotel’ that open a door into a slightly off-kilter world. Mysterious quests, with talismanic figures offering guidance along the way. Talking cats. Jazz and 1960s rock. There is also a certain style that recalls a twist on the gumshoe novels of Chandler, the short stories of Carver, and science fiction that remind you that Murakami has translated many of the American greats into Japanese.

All this adds up to make him one of the most well-known cult authors, read by millions of young readers who, particularly in the novella Norweigan Wood, have picked up on the sparse style, the counter-cultural references, and the slightly hip-outsider status of his fiction. Now, the term cult doesn’t really cut it as a label for him. Murakami is one of the world’s best selling ‘literary’ writers, is translated widely – and with the epic ‘Wind Up Bird Chronicles’ is clearly gunning alongside the big men on the world-fiction stage, taking aim at the Nobel prize with his gumshoe-magic-realist reflection on the darkness in modern Japanese society and the horrors of World War II. Critics are not sure about him now. Is there something of the Emperor’s New Clothes? Is he too popular? An exercise in stylish Orientalism, in the Edward Said sense?

Murakami has also published essays and the non-fiction ‘After the Quake’ and ‘Underground: the Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche’, both of which he said he felt obligated to write as a novelist. What I Talk about when I Talk about Running falls into this section of his work. Categorised by the publisher as a ‘sporting memoir’ it takes Murakami’s obsession with running as its central theme. And by so doing, places him firmly back into another cult category – that of the dedicated runner, the obsessive long-distance biker, committed swimmer and repeat triathlete.

Murakami has run 26 marathons around the world, one ultramarathon in the north of Japan, several triathlons and jogged solo from Athens to Marathon in the heat of summer. The book offers ten chapters, not-quite-mini essays, recording his training for the 2005 New York marathon, and reflecting on what he things about when he runs, why he runs, and how this relates to his writing. The pain of the marathon after the twenty-second mile. We learn about his training, some of his best and worst runs, his timings, and how he is facing the reality of ageing. He finds bicycles torture machines, and swimming often causes him problems. Even though he is a good swimmer, something about the stress of the event freaks him out (water – and wells – are often a symbol of trauma in his novels). He loses his goggles, smears them in Vaseline instead of saliva, and gets kicked in the head. Some of his time is spent in Cambridge, Mass – ‘Sam Adams beer!’; ‘Dunkin’ Donuts!’ – and some in Japan and Greece. We learn how writing is linked to his running. He ran to keep fit enough to write, but found out that he is a runner. Putting word after word onto paper are a bit like putting one foot in front of the other.

So what is Murakami up to here? The final chapter perhaps gives a clue. He has gone over the chapters, which were written as he went along in his training, when he had the time, and polished until they say exactly what he wants them to say. They have the air of being quickly written, perhaps as though they are a diary, or being demanded by an editor (we learn that he has promised this book for ten years), but we also gather that he is a very careful craftsman, slowly tightening each screw one by one – to borrow a metaphor he likes to use. It feels, he admits, that this is the time to write this book. So, the lightness, the slightness, is a considered ploy. The philosophy is lightly worn, too. There is a lot about reality, how things are as they are. How people are either runners, or they are not. That being a novelist needs talent. And work. This insight is nothing new, but then nor is it flighty, or pretentious, or faux-philosophical essaying.

In this work, Murakami seems to offers two things, as well as a peon to that group of people who are runners, and who will recognize the camaraderie and solitude of those who run, the obsessions, the pleasures, and perhaps that cleanesss of mind that comes from repetitive and exhaustion of the road.

Firstly, it’s a memoir, and given Murakami’s well-known love of privacy (he never, or hardly ever, gives interviews), likely to be the only one we have. He tells us about his early jazz bar, and some of the places he’s lived. We learn a little about his wife, what it is like to work and struggle, how he became a writer one day at a baseball match, how he thinks about his readers, and the way he digs down creatively to find what he wants to write about. He writes carefully about the psychological dangers of writing about the subconscious, digging down into a vein of darkness. Without saying much, we learn a lot. What is the Murakami that is revealed? Self-effacing. Stubborn. Likeable. A little shy. An eye for pretty women. Obsessed by LPs and music. A creature of habit, but able to make sudden changes. A cautious man, but willing to take the risks he wants.

Secondly, it’s an exercise in style. His words try and get at the thing exactly, in a voice that, in translation, is slightly hip, conversational, polite – despite him claiming he’s not a gentleman on the first page. What I Talk About... is a carefully limited world. Writing. Running. Getting older. How a runner knows their own body. Cambridge, Mass. Greece. A matter of tone, as much as content, matched by everyday words, but Murakami has the ability here to do something that gets inside your head, much like his other work. Murakami, by writing about what and how he has become what he is, makes you wonder some of the same things about yourself.