Are We Living in a Simulation?

Buadrillard, Eco et alia have developed Jorge Luis Borges' idea of "the Map of the Empire which perfectly co-incided with the Empire itself" into The Philosophy of Simulation. As hard-headed "realists" we assume that we have an intuitive grasp of where reality stops and simulation begins. The cartographer who constructed the great Map of the Empire presumably knew that the Empire itself was real. Or did he? Could such an assumption be philosophically warranted?

According to Nick Bostrom, and others, the strong likelihood is that we are living in a computer simulation.

The logic is as follows: At least one of these propositions is true: (1) The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small. (2) Almost no technologically mature civilisations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours. (3) You are almost certainly in a simulation. Each of these propositions seems prima facie implausible but let's work through them logically: If proposition (1) is false (there may be some highly dangerous technological development which sufficiently advanced civilisations inevitably develop which then destroys them, but let's, optimistically, assume this isn't so) then we, and/or other human or alien civilisation(s), have a good chance of reaching technological maturity. It then seems most unlikely that, with the corresponding exponential growth of computer processing power, that we/they are not going to harness a fraction of their technological resources to exploring the possibility of simulating human minds within the context of greater simulated or virtual realities. If we reject propositions (1) and (2) then it is logically inconsistent to reject proposition (3) since such an advanced civilisation could reasonably be expected to generate an astronomical number of simulated minds and these would, inevitably, far outnumber the non-simulated or "real" minds powered by organic brains. We, and the world we live in, are therefore (if we accept the logic) almost certainly part of a simulation.

This theory dovetails nicely with the subject of time travel. The most likely way for future generations to "visit the past" would be, I'd suggest, for them to visit a computer-generated simulation/virtual reality. If we follow Bostrom's logic, even if, as is currently thought likely, a technologically mature civilisation is incapable of harnessing enough energy to "really" travel in time it would probably have the capacity to generate an almost infinite number of exact replicas of the past. It is very, therefore, likely that we are currently "living" in just such an "ancestor simulation".

The controversial aspect of the Nick Bostrom's argument relates to the assumption of "substrate-independence" i.e. It is not an essential property of consciousness that it is implemented on carbon-based biological neural networks inside a cranium: silicon-based processors inside a computer could in principle do the trick as well. If we accept the proposition that advanced computers are likely to be capable of simulating a human mind then the logic appears sound. If we accept that technologically mature civilisations are likely to be capable of replicating the functionality of organic brain tissue in silico then it seems inconcievable that they should choose not to devote a fraction of their technological resources to this very task and thus reach, what could be referred to as, a "posthuman" stage of development. If we also assume that technological development is not likely to be constrained by the extinction of the species then the conclusion that posthuman civilizations would have enough computing power to run hugely many ancestor-simulations even while using only a tiny fraction of their resources for that purpose is philosophically warranted.

Bostrom's logic is quite simple: The refutation of the first two, prima facie implausible, propositions, the above caveat notwithstanding, clearly warrants acceptance of the third. If either, or both, of the first two propositions are true then the third proposition is clearly false. If you accept that the first two propositions are probably false, as do I, the high likelihood is, the "substrate-independence" assumption notwithstanding, that we are indeed "living in a simulation" (hence the "almost certainly" caveat).

Having refuted the first two propositions, one reason why we might not be living in a simulation could, of course, be that we are the original civilisation approaching technological maturity but, if we accept the proposition that technologically mature civilisations would be capable of and predisposed towards running ancestor-simulations then the high likelihood is that we are not the original civilisation but rather a replicated civilisation residing in a simulation rather than the "real" world.

Indeed the simulation theory leads inevitably to the conclusion that those who created the simulation we inhabit are themselves part of a simulation devised by an even older, more technologically sophisticated race. Simulations generated by, and within, simulations are not only foreseeable but inevitable if the simulated civilisations are to "authentically" replicate the original civilisation.

What really interests me, however, is even if we could determine that we were living in a simulation would we act any differently? Would we be liberated from all moral and ethical constraints or would pragmatic consequentialism (adherence to the simulation's internal rules of reward and punishment) lead us to act in much the same way? Would liberation from the prospect of punishment in the afterlife (for the God, or Devil, fearing amongst us) prompt us to adopt a pragmatic strategy such as "everything is permitted provided you don't get caught"? Probably not. Presumably any "omniscient", "omnipotent" (or merely sadistic) simulation programmer would have thought of constructing another level to the simulation? Your fate in that "afterlife", or "aftersim", could well depend on how you behaved in your present simulated incarnation. Even if we were living in a simulation, the best way to predict what would happen next in our simulation would be the ordinary methods – extrapolation of past trends, scientific modelling, common sense and so on. If you thought you were in a simulation, you should, probably, get on with your life in much the same way as if you were convinced that you are living a non-simulated life.

The Aladdin Casino and The New McCarthyism

It's my sad duty to convey the news that all is not well in Sin City.

At the end of the movie Casino Bobby De Niro lamented the Kafka-esque metamorphosis of Las Vegas from a mob-controlled den of vice, gambling, sleaze, decadence, and hedonism to a family-orientated theme park. Cocktail Angst's Last Tango in Vegas (featured on the Vegas Swings compilation) poses the question What happened to the seeds that Frankie sowed; what have they done to Bugsy's town? The answer is inescapable. They killed it stone dead. I'll tell you why....

Now I'm no fan of Michael Moore. I think he's a talented polemicist who never lets the facts stand in the way of a good story. I'm not going to elaborate on this because it's only my view and, for the purposes of this argument, it matters not a jot what I think of the guy. What matters is he has a right to express his views and people have a right to hear him and make their own minds up.

Not, it seems, in Bush's America. "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" just got a little less free and a lot more paranoid and scared.

It's been coming for a while. Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks was forced into making a public apology to Bush after she had the "temerity" to remark in London recently that the current President made her ashamed to come from Texas. Irate callers, apparently, jammed country music radio station switchboards demanding an embargo be placed on the Dixie Chicks music and "concerned and patriotic citizens" called for boycotts of their records and the Dixie Chicks record label. An amusing parody of Maines' apology can be found here

So much so worrying but now The Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas has jumped on the populist bandwagon that is The New McCarthyism.

Singer Linda Ronstadt appeared at The Aladdin a few days ago. She dedicated a song to Moore and urged people to go and see his new movie Farenheit 9/11. What followed could have been described as farcical if it wasn't so disturbing. First of all a significant minority of the audience decided to storm out of the theatre demanding their money back. Some allegedly threw their cocktails in the air and tore down posters advertising the gig. Next the Aladdin, in it's finite wisdom, elected to curtail Ronstadt's performance and eject her from the premises, not even having the courtesy to allow her to go back to her suite to change and collect her luggage.

The Casino claimed that "Ms Ronstadt was hired to entertain the guests of the Aladdin, not to espouse her political views." They claimed that she was engaged to sing and not to talk politics.

So singers shouldn't be allowed to talk? Should stand-up comedians be allowed to sing? Should singers introduce their songs with a song? I once saw Al Green sing his travel itinerary to an appreciative audience but even he talked a little. Al talked about Christianity and stuff like that. I guess that was beyond his remit?

If Linda Ronstadt had sung a song attacking the Bush administration or one in tribute to Michael Moore that would, presumably, have been fine by with The Aladdin ~ I assume they're not proposing that singers be prohibited from singing about political matters? If they are it loooks like we just lost approximately half the world's legacy of popular song! If she had sung a pro-Moore or anti-Bush song I'll bet you a whisky sour to all the beer in Brooklyn that the monkey in charge of the casino would still have thrown her out.

If we follow the Aladdin's reasoning to it's absurd conclusion stand-up comedians would be within their rights to tell "unpatriotic" jokes about the Iraqi campaign but would be in deep trouble if they sang about it. People who go to see comedians, according to Aladdin logic, pay to hear jokes (and only jokes) and jokes critical of the Bush administration are still jokes, right?

Tom Cruise gave an excruciatingly jingoistic speech at the Oscars following 9/11. Presumably the literal-minded Aladdin management would suggest his ass should have been thrown out onto the red carpet because award ceremonies are, duh, for giving out awards? I doubt it.

And why should actors express their political opinions in public anyway?

I know Vegas is another world but I didn't realise performers had to check their political views at the casino door. So are we to assume, then, that certain venues in certain cities are off-limits to politics. Which venues in which towns are appropriate for the expression of political opinions? New York, L.A. and San Francisco are OK, I guess. Vegas, Houston and Salt Lake City are, I'm guessing, out? Or is it just that some political views are off-limits wherever they're expressed in "The Land of the Free" these days?

Vegas has changed and that's a fact. I'm sure the casino bosses were AOK with Frank Sinatra's racist jokes about Rat Pack "buddy" Sammy Davis Jnr. back in the day and the Chairman of the Board's sexist treatment of "broads" probably had Sam Giancana and co. rolling in the aisles when they weren't too busy relieving the count room of the mob's share of the casino profits. Of course I'm just being facetious now but I'm sure Vegas wasn't exactly off-limits to politics when Sinatra and co. were smoothing JFK's passage to the White House.

The Aladdin and some irate customers claimed that they had no warning that the show might contain political content. As a matter of fact Linda Ronstadt is a well-known opinionated liberal and she'd introduced the same song with a reference to Michael Moore at all her other tour dates. Presumably if Ronstadt had been made aware of the fact that different standards apply in Vegas then perhaps she could have confined herself to the stereotypical preconception her audience had of her?

Now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the whole point of art was to provoke, amuse, surprise, stimulate and excite? Not in America it seems.

Rock and roll, and popular music in general, have never been, and should never be, about conformism. If you can predict exactly what an artist is going to do or say on stage then you're probably at an anodyne Celine Dion concert with an audience composed of conformist cadavers and the blue-rinse brigade. Of course any audience have the right to vote with their feet if they don't like what an artist sings or says. They have the right to decline to buy their product. They don't have the right to prevent them from saying and singing what they like.

The casino was, no doubt, trying to make cheap promotional capital by pandering to prevailing populist political sentiment. This is Vegas we're talking about after all. Nothing goes down in Vegas if money isn't at the root of it. I'll warrant this was all about "the dead presidents" rather than the brain-dead president.

One thing's for sure a venue would be roundly castigated by British public opinion if it pulled a cheap political stunt like this. Trying to ingratiate yourself with the current administration by attacking freedom of political and artistic expression is not a tactic anyone would even think of using in the U.K. Who would want to be known as a censorious sycophant? I know Huey Lewis sang It's hip to be square but why the Hell did the Yanks have to take him so seriously?

You can't disengage people from their political views and you certainly can't disengage politics from music. One of my favourite albums of all-time is an undeniably political record: "What's Goin' On" by Marvin Gaye.

Ironically America has a particularly rich tradition of political music. From rock to r'n'b, funk, soul and rap (the most overtly political genre of music yet) politics and music have been inseparable.

Singers, musicians, artists, comedians and creative people generally are multi-faceted individuals. From the moment they take to the stage to the moment they leave it they own the stage. They can say, do and sing what they like. It's called freedom of artistic expression.

If artists break the law alert the approproriate authorities. Otherwise let performers perform. The minute baboons in dinner jackets begin censoring their performances and pandering to populist, reactionary sentiment is the minute we're all in big trouble. And the moment "intelligent" people (The Aladdin's egregious act has had more than it's share of apologists in the American media) start approving of the actions of reactionary baboons in dinner jackets is the moment the party ends.

Looks like, in Vegas at any rate, that time is now.

A few thoughts on the demise of Frasier

The imminent demise of one of my favourite shows prompted me to trawl through the internet looking for information about upcoming Frasier dvd releases. I can't imagine life without my regular "Frasier fix" and Paramount repeats just won't do ~ I need nice shiny Frasier artefacts assuming pride of place in my dvd collection and I need them now. I recently discovered a lone copy of series 2 hidden forlornly, and almost apologetically, behind the massed ranks of Friends dvds in my local record store and I was alarmed at the implications for aspiring completists amongst us.

Now, I wouldn't consider myself a Frasier aficionado and I'm certainly not an anorak. I couldn't even tell you the names of more than a handful of episodes. But one thing I do know is this: I feel sad that Frasier is coming to an end. All that sentimental rubbish that Friends' fans spout about losing their ersatz "buddies" is starting to hit home. What will life be like without Frasier and Niles' dry wit, erudite charm and endearing pretensions? Diminished without a doubt. Frasier was such a rich and rewarding viewing experience for me because it was populated almost exclusively by characters I'd really like to hang out with and shoot the breeze with. I'm gonna miss those guys and gals. Sadly, there's little doubt that we'll never see Frasier's likes again. Frasier represented one of the few remaining recalcitrant ghettos of intelligence in the dumbed-down dystopia that is contemporary t.v. programming.

What have we got left? The West Wing, The Sopranos and The Simpsons, at a push. Not that there ever was a golden age of intelligent t.v. Shows like Twin Peaks, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and Larry Sanders were always the exception rather than the rule. However we're now fairly and squarely in the grip of lowest common denominator scheduling. I've got about 900 channels and I can't find anything worth watching on any of them. Jackass, Big Brother, Pop Idol and their execrable ilk seem to be the template for the future. I suspect even the insipid "Friends" will seem like an anachronistic example of intellectual humour to future generations.

I never really understood the alleged "rivalry" between Friends and Frasier. To compare the entertaining antics of the stylish Seattle sophisticates to the anodyne adventures of a bunch of vacuous telegenic New York yuppies is the equivalent of proposing that Manhattan and Ace Ventura Pet Detective be accorded equal status in the pantheon of cinematic comedy. My sister and my wife both love Friends and I've been subjected to the infernal show more times than I'd care to admit yet I've failed to smile once let alone laugh. I don't know if it's a "chick" thing, and due to the affection those nearest and dearest to me obviously possess for the show I'm naturally reluctant to claim that it's a "thick" thing, but I just don't "get" it. I'm sure the writers on Friends are smart people and I'm equally sure that they were "slumming it" and "writing down" for the sake of the ratings.

The thing I love about Frasier is that it's never been afraid to shoot for the stars. It never patronises and underestimates the intelligence of the viewer. And, as the excellent final series has proved, it was never afraid to take risks. One of the last episodes (Crock Tales) was a brilliantly subtle deconstruction of the inanity of "rival" shows as well as a touching reaffirmation of all that has been, and is, unique about Frasier. This wonderful episode was certainly nostalgic and sentimental but in Frasier's inimitably endearing, imaginative, intelligent and idiosyncratic way. Thankfully the formulaic predictability of other shows has never been Frasier's modus operandi. We can argue until the cows come home about which were the best episodes, and seasons, or moan about how the show lost some of it's sparkle in seasons 8-10 but the truth is the worst of Frasier was always far superior to the best of practically any other show. One thing's for sure though: I've never met a Frasier fan I didn't like.

As Steely Dan once sang: Sharing the things we know and love, with those of our kind; Libations, sensations, that stagger the mind. Frasier is quite simply one of the best things in life, and it's always been an axiomatic principle of mine that "if you like Frasier too then we're going to get along just fine."

Playaz & Hataz

If Miles Davis and Ernest Hemingway could have produced a child it would have been Ewan. True creative writing genius is a rare beast, and of all the current posters in here I can think of only one – Ewan is clearly the 400 lb gorilla in our midst ~ Nathan Hasalbauer, President, International High IQ Society, New York.

Ewan - A profound and enlightening writer for the masses, a light sardonic touch. A real post-post modernist outlook that gives him the look of a man on the edge of civilization; not dire, but an optimistically dire perspective. Sees life through the eyes of an Underworld traveller but with the panoramic scope of a flying hedonist. Darts through the mesosphere with a yawn and sometimes a slyly held middle finger ~ Will Weatherley, Southern California

He a jazz record. Don’t look. Listen ~ Robbie, Berkeley

A misanthropist with a mean streak a mile wide ~ Robert, San Francisco

Pretentious p**** ~ P.B., Kirkcaldy

Fear Is The Mind Killer

Rayzd: Fear is The Mind Killer.

In the beginning was The Word.

Warning: Intelligent Lyrics. Lyrical dexterity to make Eminem sound tongue-tied. G, I really didn’t bargain on a profound thinker, but here he comes, movin’ to the beat, speakin’ in tongues. U can bet UR bo2m $ the text-messaging teens don’t give a sh^t about language. Try texting “Ludwig Wittgenstein” and stay fashionable. G even drops “verisimilitude” into the verbal mix.

Then came The Beat.

The Beat Goes On… Polyrythmically paradiddling daddy-o Buddy Rich on the sticks; daughter Cathy, drunk and 12.5 years old, swingin’ like a vet on lead vocals.

The Beat Goes On… Ginsberg’s angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

The Beat Goes On… Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzband's marijuana, hipsters, peace & junk & drums!

The Beat Goes On... The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..

The Beat Goes On… Jack Kerouac genuflecting at the feet of Slim Gaillard during Groove Juice Special in some subterranean San Francisco jazz joint. Hit that Jive, Jack.

The Beat Goes On… Someone flicks a switch and suddenly I’m in a club in Montemarte discussing Derrida, impressing the chicks with a working knowledge of French Symbolism, drinking Absinthe and smoking jazz cigarettes while some impromptu bebop combo on a cartographic tip valiantly attempts to map the mysterious contours of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.

The Beat Stops. Dead... Cowell & Fuller's grim telegenic progeny monopolise the pop charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Soulless pap pre-packaged by accountants, produced by robots and purchased by media-lobotomized zombies.

Welcome to The Now Generation : Proponents of perpetual present. Speed freaks, intoxicated amnesiacs, Benzedrine buzzers, adrenaline junkies. Senseless speed annihilating memory, annihilating distance, annihilating past, present and future. G-Clef da Mad Komposa watches the kids on their freeway glide. Cruisin’ down the infinite highway. Past the point of no return. Going nowhere. Fast.

To The Now Generation, the amnesiac hordes, their last heartbeat is history and yesterday is anachronistic antiquity. “Back to the source” means last year. Old school is the nanosecond before Now. The past is sampled, recycled and assimilated into the New without a flicker of recognition from the amnesia kids.

Let’s go back, way back.... and when I say “old” I mean this was the school Methuselah used to play hookey from. Louis, Cab and co. were rapping over swing beats long before Dr. Dre enrolled for pre-med , back before Snoop Dog was a pup, way before Ol’ Dirty was a glint in poppa Bastard’s eye. “Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism, homeyz” jokes some sinister Jim Carrey doppelgangbanger in his inimitable Cab Calloway meets Jerry Lewis persona non gratification of the Kyoto Protocolonic irrigation. Solid gone, G’s been blowin’ his horn since before the Now Generation were born. He’s always packin’ heat; hardwired to the street; keepin’ his shit sweet; tight to the beat.

The Beat Is Back.... Rayzde’s polyrhythmic beat alchemy: Hip-hop, drum & bass, jazz and swing flavours weave around eachother like suspicious women talking about the same punk. RZA jamming with Illinois Jacquet. Profoundly cinematic: One day Abel Ferrara or Jim Jarmusch is gonna get hip to the Rayzde tip. King of New York meets Ghost Dog. Rayzde’s soundtracks echo the languorous malevolence of Ferrara favourite Schooly D’s lean gangsta rap creations and the dense, multi-layered soundscapes of the Wu-Tang Clan are an obvious influence but there’s so much more in the mix. Dig that hipster vibe. These cats cut up, fold-in and subvert genres like Bill Burroughs on Benzedrine. Gangsta cool spliced with the ghost of swing past and a scintilla of Sun Ra’s extra-terrestrial mysticism. Frank White crawling like a vampire through these suburban streets, making love to these women, languid and bittersweet. Karen Carpenter lamenting Rainy Days and Mondays just like old times.

Here, There and Everywhere : Master magician G makes Paul McCartney sound hip. Hell, G could probably make Joe McCarthy sound hip. Prestidigitational perfection.

Thugbrat : Taut, dynamic reworking of one of New Yalloppin’ City’s finest tracks.
Your Mind: Jakineko’s virtuoso vocals, G-Clef’s alto and Mike Seropyan’s tenor do battle over a drum and bass backing; everybody wins.

I Know You Love Me: Hip-Hoperatic. Surreal and haunting tale of unrequited passion.

Nobody Knows : Peter Hartmann handles the vocal duties on another angst-ridden tale of lost love. G-Clef and Metatron trade rhymes: Ninja assassins exchanging blows to the solar plexus over Still Dre’s looped backing track.

We : Ghetto Swing Extreme reloaded. Sublime fusion of jazz and hip-hop. Gang Starr and Guru’s Jazzmatazz project strived to segue seamlessly between jazz and rap but G and his crew make this sh^t seem effortless.

I’m Beginning to See the Light : Dark, claustrophobic reading of Ellington’s swing standard. Voices and samples drop in and out like disembodied spirits: The Avaricious, the Wrathful and the Sullen live and direct from The Fifth Circle of Hell.

You and Whose Army : Radiohead get the Rayzd treatment.

Like Me : G’s laconic, propulsive rap, redolent of Rakim, complements Peter’s ethereal vocal perfectly.

Lost in a Dream: Lyrical, languid and lovely. Beautiful vocal from Jaki. G-Clef’s alto and tenor sax work is superb and Lord Sledge’s trumpet and Peter’s acoustic bass give this track an intimate, organic small combo sound.

Apparition : The ghost of Duke Ellington introduces this wonderful track. G and Pete take care of business delivering a bottom end heavy-mix of experimental electronics and electric bass. Jaki brings another great vocal to the table while Metatron and G-Clef rap around each other like mirror image matadors making moves with no bull. The track eventually careers off into improvisation and distortion.

Theme from Dune: Eno gets the Rayzd workover.

Toxic culture shock syndrome for Now Generation brats addicted to the pop pap pusher’s placebo: Rayzd are the real deal. Creative, independent music with integrity lovingly crafted by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

FITMK : Masterpiece. F**k fear. Open your mind.

eugene ionesco

The Cool Scene ~ Twelve New Ways to Fly

Vegas Swings

Let's rewind to the halcyon days of the town they call "Lost Wages", back before they strapped a sack of dynamite to The Sands. This is Bugsy's town but its Frankie's world and Dino, Sammy and co. have the whole sweet swingin' sphere locked down tight into a Nevada state of mind. Fast forward forty plus years and a new breed of sultans of swing are blowin' cooler than an Ipanema breeze and hotter than an Acapulco afternoon. Welcome to the new lounge and swing generation. Vegas Swings once again.

THE YALLOPPIN' HOUNDS
This smokin' NYC combo mix street swing, jazz and hip-hop. Dr.Dre meets Count Basie Orchestra, or theWu Tang jammin' with Duke Ellington. G-clef Da Mad Komposa and his crew know Cab Calloway and the zoot suited swing pioneers were the prototype for for today's rap superstars. The Hounds' sound tougher than a Bronx street hood but tender like midnight in Manhattan. Harlem Apollo meets the Rainbow Room. Romantic Thugz is the East Coast anthem for the neo-swing generation, the cool New York hipster flipside to Californian cats Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's hedonistic West Coast sound. Daddy Make It Feel Good is another truly outstanding track from The Hounds., true pioneers of swing/hip-hop/jazz crossover. Long may they continue to innovate and inspire. For more info go to www.yalloppinhounds.com

THE RAY GELATO GIANTS
“Close your eyes and imagine the scene : the time is the golden 1950’s era of Las Vegas, Nevada. You’re new in town, just driving around, checking out what’s hot From the Desert Inn, the Sahara, the Sands, and the other casino lounges you hear the sounds of Louis Prima & Keely Smith, Dean Martin, The Treniers, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. If only you could have been there and heard that great music, felt that excitement, tasted that electric atmosphere”Revisit the halcyon days of the Las Vegas lounges with the UK’s very own Ray Gelato and the Giants. This combo swings like Sam Butera and the Witnesses, Louis Prima’s legendary backing group, in their prime. For more info go to www.raygelato.com

H.B. RADKE & THE JET CITY SWINGERS
This swingin’ Seattle septet swings most righteously. Lounge lizards par excellence, HB Radke and the Jet City Swingers are for the cocktail culture cognoscenti. Included here is a hipster take on Bacharach’s I’ll Never Fall in Love Again and a showstopping version of “I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane” which has become a set-closing classic at Vegas. As a special bonus for this cd hepcat HB and Seattle’s most swinging combo recorded a special version of Viva Las Vegas for our exclusive delectation and delight. What a top guy and what a top band! For more info go to www.radke.com

THE GOOD FELLAS The Good Fellas are a superb swinging combo from Italy. Led by charismatic bandleader Lucky Luciano these guys first came to attention in 1997 backing Ray Gelato on Gangsters of Swing. On the cover of the Bologna-based swingers’ debut cd Salute! they look like the cast from a Martin Scorsese movie : real Italian mafiosa style!, A nice mix of indigineous Italian numbers and swing classics. Their main influences are Louis Prima and Sam Butera and the Witnesses. The Good Fellas certainly emulate the sounds of these dynamite Vegas swing outfits but their Italian language vocals give their sound an interesting new dimension. For more info go to ww.goodfellasitaly.com

DAVE’S TRUE STORY
NYC duo DTS are musical maestro Dave Cauter and beguiling chanteuse Kelly Flint, mainstays of the Big Apple’s cult underground neo-lounge scene. Hipsters, bohemians and lounge lizards can catch Dave’s True Story playing regularly at clubs like The Living Room, The Cooler, and The Stinger Club. DTS create a beguiling jazz noir sound redolent of smoky nightcubs and sultry sirens. DTS’s lyrics are literate, wordy and ironic, evoking the heyday of bohemia but with a hip postmodern twist. Kelly sounds like a latter day Julie London; conspiratorially cool as any fatally flawed femme fatale should be she narrates the tale of the crazy chick in the “Sequined Mermaid Dress.” For more info go to www.davestruestory.com

SOPHIE GARNER & HER SWING KINGS
This hot UK swing combo go loco down South America way with a sensational version of Earl Grant's classic House of Bamboo. The vocal duties are handled by a fabulous UK singer called Sophie Garner who features on this track as her alter ego flamboyant Brazilian chanteuse "Coco Calypso." Many great artists have covered this tune including the incomparable Andy Williams, but Sophie and her 8-piece backing band bring some new, decidely spicy, ingredients to the table and succeed in supplying an already exotic cocktail with a sassy new kick. For more info go to www.swingkings.co.uk

THE FAT CATS
Swinging stockbrokers from Stoke. Charismatic corporate raiders “united by a love of swing, jump-blues, ska, dirty skanky beats and cold hard profit.” Fat Cats on The Prowl is taken from the bands debut cd Keeping Up With the Dow Joneses and is a superb slice of neo-swing with a street-wise UK sensibility. Like how Big Bad Voodoo Daddy might sound if they came from Sheffield instead of Los Angeles and featured in one of Guy Ritchie’s gritty gangster flicks rather than Swingers. These guys put the “urban” in “urbane” and the “street” in “street swing.” For more info go to www.thefatcats.net

JET SET SIX NYC’s
JS-6 take a full measure of lounge lizard cool, add a liberal dash of hipster swing, lashings of catchy melodic pop, witty lyrics, a great sense of humor and a twist of 60’s kitsch then shake vigorously until the irresistible retro party sound of Jet Set Six explodes like Vesuvius over Pompeii. JS-6 are not just a fun band -these guys can play. Punchy horns and irresistible rhythms are their trademark. And of course there’s the leader of the pack chief songwriter, vocalist and guitarist John Ceperano, a smooth crooner with a gift for wonderfully witty wordplay.JS-6 featured regularly at the World Trade Centre Windows on the World restaurant, where John also promoted kitsch retro nights like Spy-Fi Fridays. For more info go to www.jetsetsix.com

SEKS BOMBA
Seks Bomba are an eccentric, eclectic combo from Boston. Their music is an exotic cocktail of surf, lounge, exotica, 60’s psychedelia/ Hammond-led instrumentals and Lalo Schifrin/Quincy Jones/Hugo Montenegro style soundtracks. Add a twist of bossa nova and garnish the whole intoxicating combo with Bacharach’s pop sensibility and you have a very pleasurable mix of cocktail cool, esoteric exotica and cheezy eazy. Take The Ventures, Dick Dale, Booker T and the MG’s, Henry Mancini, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Burt Bacharach, stir well and pour liberally over an imaginary James Bond flick set in a 60’s go-go club and you might just get something which sounds a little like Seks Bomba. For more info go to www.bomba.com

COCKTAIL ANGST
Cocktail Angst are a combo creating a commotion on the NYC neo-lounge circuit. Beguiling chanteuse and songwriter Toby Williams’ style is reminiscent of Peggy Lee at her most world-weary and intoxicating. Take a dash of Is That All There Is era Lee, add a splash of psychedelia, a twist of mordant wit and garnish with a liberal sprinkling of urbane sophistication. “Good Luck Charm”is as evocative an homage to the lure of Vegas as any, ever. Last Tango in Vegas bemoans the conversion of Nevada’s magnificently seedy oasis into a Disneyland-style theme park (“What have they done to Bugsy’s town?”) Cocktail Angst : wonderfully evocative, sinister, literate lounge music for aficionados. For more info go to www.cocktailangst.com

SHAG Cover art for Vegas Swings is an original work by hip Californian lounge artist Josh Agle ("Shag"). Shag's work is influenced by avant-garde animation of the 50's and early 60's as well as commercial art of the same period and is sought after by collectors worldwide, including the obligatory Movie Stars, Rock Stars and Hollywood Producers eager to hang "Shag Art" on their walls. and he exhibits regularly in galleries in New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Tokyo and his native California. When not painting Shag spends his time "converting his home/studio into a supervillian's hideout of space-age gadgets and martinis at noon". For more info go to www.shag-art.com

Frankie Sumatra ~ Nov 2003

Gangs of New York

OK, I've just seen this sucker ~ it usually takes the best part of a month for these Hollywood blockbusters to make the leap from L.A. to a magic lantern house in the vicinity of Casa del ionesco: and I thought we were living in the digital age - same old, same old. Parochial Edinboro, Scotchland, I'm guessing, isn't high on Miramax's hitlist for opening weekend market penetration.

A few months back my assessment of this movie was:

"The DiCaprio factor chills me to the bone...

That and the fact that Marty's been locked away in an editing room since the late 20th century cutting this baby down to bite-sized blockbuster dimensions. Miramax head honcho Harv. Weinstein is rumoured to have "taken an active interest" in the final cut. This is not a good thing.

My best guess: after last year's African-American triple whammy of Halle, Denzil and Sidney expect the Academy to finally get around to patronising the woefully marginalized Italian-American community by awarding Marty a long overdue "Best Director" gong.

You can bet Gangs of New York will be no Raging Bull."

Now I've seen it my opinion is the same but with additions.

Di Caprio: bad move. A sop to the youth demographic. What was I saying about Art being compromised by Commerce? Scorsese is the ultimate cinematic artist but Diaz and Di Caprio were mistakes: bland, photogenic ciphers.

Worst scene? The scar-kissing fiasco. I'm ready to believe the callow putz Di Caprio is fresh outta the birth canal but a battle-scarred warrior?

Funniest moment? Bill da Butcher headbutting Leo half a dozen times and scarring him "beyond repair":

I want you to live in shame!

Bill, buddy, have a word with Leo's agent, willya? The biggest concession you're gonna get is:

My client is prepared to hang out in the shadows, vaguely angst-ridden, with Cameron Diaz for 5 minutes tops, baby. After that it's business as usual.

Photogenic scars barely visible to the human eye but enough to suggest character-forming catharsis. I thought we'd just gone into flashback the next time we saw Leo onscreen after the trauma. Nice work, makeup dept!

Having said that Daniel Day-Lewis sold out his Irish heritage magnificently as Bill da Butcher. A faultless impersonation of Bobby De Niro: method devouring method ~ quintessential post-modern movie magic.

True star of the film: Edinburgh's own Gazza McCormack as Bill's mute henchman. Gazza was offered a speaking part but refused to utter the line Die Hibernian scum. A true Celtic warrior.

Killer Movie Scenes ~ Hellzapoppin' ~ The Lindyhop Scene

One of my favourite movie moments is from an obscure, surreal comedy flick from 1941 called Hellzapoppin' which starred the, now long-forgotten, comedy duo Olsen & Johnson.

Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson starred in a legendary 1930's Broadway show of the same name which preceded the movie version. The long-running stage show was, according to contemporary reviews, generally considered far superior to the later celluloid incarnation.

It must have been some show because, amongst other inspired delights Hellzapoppin' (the movie) contains probably the most exhilirating dance sequence ever committed to film (and that includes Jean-Luc Godard's fantastic Bande à Part in which Anna Karina dances The Madison so intoxicatingly with Sami Frey & Claude Brasseur - the cinematic dance which later inspired Quentin Tarantino to name his production company after the movie and which provided the template for John Travolta & Uma Thurman's Jackrabbit Slim sequence in Pulp Fiction).

The lindyhop dance routine in Hellzapoppin', performed by The Harlem Congaroo Dancers (choreographed by the legendary Frankie Manning), to the accompaniment of an impromptu jam session by swing pioneers Slim Gaillard & Slam Stewart and their band, has to be seen to be believed and is, probably, my favourite movie sequence of all time.

It's hard to believe it dates from 1941: it makes all subsequent movie dance routines look anaemic by comparison. The routine is so wild and abandoned it's hard to believe it's happening in real time and hasn't been speeded-up. The ferocity with which the dancers are propelled like projectiles by the leads in a series of ever-more improbable ariel moves seems, to the modern sensibility, to be not only politically incorrect but borderline illegal. One thing's for sure: never has a dance routine seemed so vital.

This is a moment of bona fide cinematic genius, the likes of which, I'll venture to say, has never been and will never be eclipsed in the history of Hollywood. The audacious power of this sequence is only reinforced by it's utter incongruity within the context of the movie. Like many of Hellzapoppin's best scenes there is no reason for this sequence to be included, it has no relevance to the "plot" but what delights here is the wonderfully organic development of this scene.

A couple of household workers (Slim and Slam) are tidying up a music room and when curiosity gets the better of them they can't resist trying out the piano and stand-up bass for themselves. At first hesitant, they quickly discover they have an improbable knack for knockin' out a swingin' tune. The sweet musical commotion attracts the interest of the cook who, needless to say, starts blowing a mean trumpet. More inspirational savant horn players, recruited from the ranks of curious passers-by, join in and a fantastic percussionist materialises from somewhere within the talented ranks of domestic servitude. The chambermaids start dancing wildly with the mechanics, the cooks with the female kitchen staff and before we know it we have a scene of intoxicating musical hedonism and astonishing dancing.

The scene disappears as inexplicably as it appeared: the players and dancers melting back into their subordinate roles as domestic servants and minor players within the movie and the "plot" resumes as if nothing has happened. I'm sure this scene could be interpreted, politically and sociologically, as both a libertarian subversion of stereotypical class/ race/ gender roles and a reactionary confirmation of them but I'll leave that to the academics. One thing I do know is this scene is pure cinematic genius.

Only a handful of current directors have the inspiration, the artistic integrity and the audacity to surprise, confuse and amaze (David Lynch is one of the very few who springs to mind) but it's hard to imagine a movie which so comprehensively subverts prevailing cinematic conventions as HC Potter's utterly unique Hellzapoppin'.

There are also many inspired comic moments from surreal comedians Olsen & Johnson which, subsequently, clearly influenced everyone from Tex Avery to Monty Python. Hellzapoppin' is rather patchy: many of the jokes fall flat and it suffers from having a bogus romantic plot grafted on by nervous studio execs (plus çá change..) but at it's best is inspired, inventive and iconoclastic.

What I'd give to be able to travel back in time to witness the Broadway show first hand! There was next to no script: the entire show was completely spontaneous and improvised each night and no two shows were ever the same. I'd love to have seen it but I guess I'll just have to settle for this contemporary review of Olsen and Johnson's "rambunctious, nonsensical buffoonery.":

The masters of "anything-goes-mayhem" created their most chaotic conglomeration of comedy routines for the stage smash Hellzapoppin', which opened at New York's 46th Street Theater on September 22, 1938.

Broadway critic Brooks Atkinson wrote:

Folks, it's going to be a little difficult to describe this one. Anything goes in Hellzapoppin' -- noise, vulgarity, and practical joking. Olsen and Johnson make their entrance in a clownish automobile, and the uproar begins. There is no relief, even during the intermission, when a clown roams the aisles. You can hear some lymphatic fiddling by rotund Shirley Wayne who looks as though she has just finished frying a mess of doughnuts. It is mainly a helter-skelter assembly of low comedy gags to an ear-splitting sound accompaniment. If you can imagine a demented vaudeville brawl without the Marx brothers, Hellzapoppin is it ... and a good part of it is loud, low, and funny!"

Opening with a mock newsreel in which Hitler spoke with a Yiddish accent, Hellzapoppin' had slapstick hilarity and so many wild audience participation gags that the score by composer Sammy Fain and lyricist Charles Tobias was almost an afterthought; as if anyone cared about songs with titles like "Fuddle Dee Duddle"? Midgets, clowns and trained pigeons added a circus touch, and performers kept plowing through the audience with all sorts of interactive gags. New skits were constantly being added, and audiences kept coming back for fresh doses of the insanity.

The show consisted of two acts with 25 scenes, during which the audience was bombarded with eggs and bananas. Then when the lights went out, the audience was besieged with rubber snakes and spiders. A woman ran up and down the aisles shouting out in a loud tenement voice for "Oscar! Oscar!" Meanwhile, a ticket salesman began to hawk tickets for a rival show (I Married an Angel). The Broadway madness ran for a record breaking 1,404 performances.

Hellzapoppin' Swing Dance Routine

Planet Dan

The arrival of a new Dan album provides the perfect pretext for the cognoscenti to break out the hats and hooters and rev up the motor scooters.

Now it's nine immaculate alien artefacts, polished to perfection and unleashed on an unworthy world. Add in Fagen's magna opera The Nightfly & Kamakiriad and you've got a first eleven capable of capturing the World Cup of Cool.

A statutory prohibition should be placed upon Dan reviews until such time as the reviewer has adequately assimilated their latest languorous, languid, bittersweet, blissful, cryptic, cynical, entrancing, encoded communiqué into the bloodstream.

Like love affairs Don & Walt’s work can only be evaluated and contextualized in retrospect. As assuredly as ephemeral lipstick traces mutate into life's lingering leitmotifs, the Dan’s spectral melodies and enigmatic lyrics haunt past, present and future, defying definition.

As Pretzel Logic suggests, it’s time for a retrospective trip round Planet Dan, Don & Walt’s off-world theme park: Your Kamakiri awaits. Lock the cool rolling bubble into samba mode and let our guide, Senor Trip Star, take the strain. Drop me off in Groove time, amigo.

Memo to the Carmaker Corporation : We could sure use a routing satellite with a personal touch. I miss my old chauffeur Ernie’s easy smile and well-honed homilies. I never really bargained on a profound thinker but here he comes; moving’ to the beat, speaking’ in tongues. Ernie knows Planet Dan like the back of his hand. One of Don & Walt’s “Cabs to the Stars” guys. Typical Ernie:

Avoid that Barry town beat, boys. Over there in Barry town they do things very strange. I picked up this fare the other day. Wanted me to take him to The Netherlands. Coulda sworn he said the Netherworld.

In the sales pitch they told me I could expect to, and I quote, “crawl like a viper through these suburban streets, make love to these women languid and bittersweet”. Yeah, right! First job I get is to deliver a consignment of bodacious cowboys to The Custerdome.

I been all over Planet Dan : The Manitee Bar, Laughing Pines, Cape Sincere, Club Hi Ho (that junction between Bleak and Divine is a beaut) then I get this: Proceed from Shielus to the Reefs of Kizmar, Stargate to the Outer Worlds.

Who do these clowns think I am? Some kinda Philip K. Dickless wonder?

I ain’t budgin’ from the foot of Mt. Belzoni without Don & Walt’s personal say so. The Trans-island Skyway is a dangerous place I can tell you, amigo.

Until I hear different I’m gonna stick to my usual route: Magnolia Boulevard, Biscayne Bay, Café D’Escargot, Slow Hand Row, you know the rest.

Still, I guess you heard the news? They say Cathy Barberian finally sang that roulade. It came as a relief to us all, I can tell you.

A pair of geeky jazz-punk hipster subversives name their band after a dildo in a Bill Burroughs novel and proceed to smuggle nuggets of brilliantly barbed ironic content into the rock mainstream. Don & Walt fashion a deceptively smooth sound, betraying both unimpeachable musicality and a Bacharach-like ability to render the most complex, shape-shifting arrangements accessible to the listener, by utilising basic magician’s misdirection: cranking the hook factor up to 11. Sweet sentiment-free sarcasm and mellifluous misanthropy covertly couriered on butterfly wings direct to the mainstream. Popular musical stealth bombs, lovingly adopted by lounge singers and execrable jazz-funk outfits witlessly claiming improbable kinship with our faux-bland revolutionaries.

A neat summation of Don & Walt’s Âge D'or?

Sharing the things we know and love with those of my kind,
Libations, sensations, to stagger the mind should suffice.

I’m only just starting to get a handle on 2vN and you want me to wax lyrical about Everything Must Go already? Hell, Gaucho’s Time Out of Mind only revealed it’s latest exquisite core of meaning last weekend when that fragile, precious, vulnerable, beautiful blonde and I diversified our emotional investment portfolio by supplementing gilt-edged friendship with speculative raids into spirituality and physicality with delightful, delicious dividends.

EMG.

A few months back : That deceptive first impression (for what it's worth) : Blues Beach: Kamakiriad deluxe; Things I Miss The Most : Stone cold classic, no argument; Slang of Ages : Next time you get the urge to croon, Walt...don't.
Definitive review to follow no time soon.

Now : That deceptive second impression (for what it’s worth) : The Last Mall : The Four Horsemen of the Gapocalypse ; Blues Beach: Kamakiriad deluxe ; Things I Miss The Most : stone cold classic, no argument; Slang of Ages : Next time you get the urge to croon, Walt...don't.
Definitive review to follow no time soon.

Hell, what can I do but review 2vN?

2vN finds Don & Walt locked in tight to a predatory groove : Hey Nineteen: The Sequel stretched membrane-thin over an entire album's duration.

Rock stars of a certain age can’t find solace in anything but the narcotic buzz of youth. Not in art, not in literature, not in music or drugs. Nothing can compare with a pretty nineteen year old’s streamlined vacuity. Nineteen glides through the world effortlessly. Noise free. No static at all. And when she goes she leaves almost nothing of herself. No vapour trail. No messy detritus of the psyche. A snapshot of grace, a frozen moment of perfection locked away from the malevolent influence of time’s idling assassin.

In 2vN Don & Walt sound a decade older, a decade more embittered. Kids today can barely remember Janet Jackson let alone 'Retha Franklin. The Dan's clipped, crystalline funk sounds ever more brittle and other-worldly. An alien artefact: Anaemic, extra-terrestrial Earth Wind & Ice doppelgangers jammin' Siberian-style; snare drum sounding crisp and dry as a winter morning in Tunguska, tighter than security at a Presidential motorcade.

What a Shame About Me : Yet another Dan “Here’s to the losers” anthem but instead of Deacon Blues' seductive outlaw chic ~I'll learn to work the saxophone, I'll play just what I feel, Drink Scotch whisky all night long, And die behind the wheel ~ we're treated to the unedifying sound of old men whining ~
I said babe you look delicious and you're standing very close, But this is like Lower Broadway, And you're talking to a ghost, Take a good look it's easy to see, What a shame about me.

Atypical Dan disdain for the Dionysian is a temporary aberration. Polymorphously perverse service is promptly resumed when barely post-pubescent Janie Runaway hops off the Tampa-NYC bus and strays straight into the predatory pair’s headlights. Post-Janie Don & Walt are still sizzling like Viagra-fuelled isotopes at the sight of yet another pulchritudinous playpal.

This Almost Gothic chick pure science with a splash of black cat succumbs to the cheesiest of chat up routines: You be the showgirl, I’ll be Sinatra, way back in ‘59.

The old ones are the best and Don & Walt are older, and, arguably, still better, than the rest combined.

Cousin Dupree is the Dan’s modest contribution to the canon of classic popular songs satirizing good ol' down home Southern fried incest and child molestation.

Straight from Cousin Dupree's frying pan into Negative Girl’s cold white flame, Don & Walt run the gamut of middle-aged men’s emotions from A to B.

Dupree’s killer dreary architecture of your soul line notwithstanding, this album is thematically moribund and lyrically uninspired. The Kamakiri’s on cruise control, locked in tight to a faux-ironic predatory groove.

Planet Prosaic populated by men of a certain age desperately searching for one last hedonistic fling before the prostate problems kick in. Sounds like New York City Penitentiary to me : Lower Broadway, Dean & Deluca, Gramercy Park, Bleecker Street. Where are those exotic destinations now? Ernie’s confined to the Big Apple these days.

Drop me off in Groovetime, Mr Borgnine, and don’t spare the horses.

Your chariot awaits, Snake.

Just like Ernie. A subtle deconstruction of Demetrius and the Gladiators via Escape from New York and still time for an easy smile and a well-honed homily. Happy retirement, fella.

eugene ionesco

The Behemoths of Bigotry

Remember those halcyon days when football on the t.v. used to be confined to the Cup Final and the occasional international match? Now you can't move for the bloody stuff. Arsenal and Fulham ladies can't have a kick about in a public park without some t.v. johnnies turning up team- handed to broadcast the ensuing "spectacle" to all of half a dozen disinterested viewers. The delights of Stockport v. Rotherham or equivalent was clearly never going to entice a sufficient number of subscribers to part with their hard earned cash to float ITV Digital's boat so it was hardly a surprise when the ill-conceived SPLTV balloon was punctured by the Scylla and Charybdis of Scottish football the Old Firm. The gruesome twosome were undoubtedly correct to question the assumptions behind the projections but the timing and the motivation behind their bi-partite decision could be called into question. It really wasn't all that surprising to hear ostensibly opposing sections of the sectarian divide singing from the same hymn sheet. The faith which unites them both is the gospel according to Filthy Lucre.

Clearly the behemoths of bigotry are labouring under the misapprehension that owning the rights to the most loathsome brand names in world football has some currency in the modern world. Let's face it Murray, Quinn and co.: no-one wants you and your Neanderthal fans. The ever diminishing number of goons in the shrinking ghetto of recalcitrant sectarianism which clings tenaciously onto central Scotland like a limpet are still forcing their progeny to adopt the tarnished colours of the Old Firm but to the rest of the civilised world they are an anachronism, anathema to all right thinking people. The Old Firm's money men and their spin doctors can try to spring clean their respective club's images all they like but they just can't shift those stubborn stains deposited by their vile followers. Give them a camera opportunity and they just can't help disgracing themselves and their clubs by donning Ingerlund tops, impersonating doomed airliners careering into skyscrapers, abusing minute's silences for irrelevant dignitaries and generally spouting racist, bigoted claptrap. Celtic fans' bogus Oirish republican rebel stuff wouldn't wash in Boston theme bar on St.Paddy's day and Rangers' royalist, unionist, orange order hokum has as much relevance to contemporary life on this planet as flat earth theory.

Come on you losers get with the programme. You guys are in dire need of a media-friendly makeover. Your image just won't cut it in today's sophisticated marketplace. How can dandy Davy Murray hope to hang out with the Real Madrids, the Barcelonas and the Milans of the increasingly cosmopolitan football world with the knuckle scrapers in tow? How can Dermot gad about with the glitterati with you guys getting in the way? It's like dragging Rab C.Nesbitt along to a Chanel couture show. String vests, Special Brew and sectarianism are so passe darlings. Oh Mr.Murray I forgot. Your club and your Celtic cronies in the infernal Old Firm cartel from hell have been mining a rich vein of sectarianism for years. Just another marketing opportunity to facilitate wider dissemination of the brand. Protestant? Catholic? It's all just brand differentiation. Either way it's the same old corporate bullsh*t peddled by the same pushers. Was it not the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland himself, Scots born Dr. John Reid, who committed the unforgivable gaffe of acknowledging the "rich traditions" of the Irish republican and loyalist movements as convenient hooks to hang the Old Firm's future brand expansion strategies on? Clearly the astute modern businessmen behind Scotland's footballing aristos and aspirants to the Champions League top table couldn't still be exploiting the Battle of the Boyne as a merchandising opportunity? Or could they? Does the Pope sh*t in the woods? If he did I'm sure you could get the "'ra fishul vi-day-o doon ra Barras".

Billy from Bathgate and Timmy from Tillicoutry you've been conned all along. This bogus bigotry bullsh*t was just a marketing ploy to get you and your retarded family to part with your dole check for the new away kit. The money men hate you too just like we do. And when they've had their cake, eaten it and sold the crumbs off the table to the highest bidder they'll jettison you and your inbred kin just like they'll cast off the rest of the teams in this mickey mouse league they've been imprisoned in against their will for the last century and a bit. What passes for rough charm and salt of the earth sartorial swagger in a saloon bar in Kilmarnock on a wet Tuesday night is just not going to cut it on the catwalks of Milan. So start gearing up for the 21st century rather than the middle ages suckers. I guess you all know what happened to Irish theme pubs? So late 20th century they seem positively pre-Jurassic. Celtic wouldn't want to end up like "Biddy McGees" surely?

In the short term I guess the Old Firm could be banking on hiving off the rights to their home games and selling them to Rupert the Bull (the only poker player left in the game) or creating their own "Bigot TV." media conglomerates to beam the enticing spectacle of the Old Firm ritually humiliating the likes of Dunfermline and Partick Thistle by cable, satellite, internet and homing pigeon all the way from Wallamazoo to Butt**ck, Idaho. Even the gruesome twosome's fans, possessing as they do the attention spans of goldfish and the intellect of gnats, could conceivably get bored with this fare. No wonder SPLTV's subscriber projections seemed optimistic. The projected figures of viewers liable to pitch in £10 a month for the privilege of watching these mismatches let alone the dubious joys afforded by "local interest only" encounters between plucky also-rans like Kilmarnock and Motherwell must have been so low as to be statistically insignificant. Intruding on the private grief of Motherwell fans is at best peculiar and at worst downright perverse. Let's be honest Scottish football is an exercise in collective masochism. The misguided notion that it's a spectator sport is clearly buffoonery of the highest order. Rather like inflatable women and penile enhancement technology it's a product aimed fairly and squarely at a niche market consisting chiefly of harmless perverts and the criminally insane. The idea that there were hordes of subscribers queuing up to subsidise this televised tosh was surely a fevered dream conceived by an Al Qa'ida warlord (presumably high on Afghan spangles holed up in some cave network listening to the D.J Smack Poppy's bangin' U.S. barrage) , hastily scribbled in the Pashtun dialect on the back of an american propaganda leaflet and conveyed by carrier pigeon to the nerve centre of media terrorist Chris Morris's cell in Guantananamo Bay. I'm sure it didn't take ESPN long to figure out that their bizarre decision to broadcast the likes of Dundee v.St.Johnstone direct into the beating heart of Buenos Aries a couple of years back was in danger of being misinterpreted as an act of aggression against the Argentinean nation, Claudia Cannigia or not.

Pay per view was never designed for the mundane pleasures afforded by football. Football is wallpaper and the particularly annoying woodchip variety at that. As ubiquitous on terrestrial t.v. as Ally McCoist or Gary Lineker and just as brain numbingly bland. Like high class hookers you know the facility to pay for it is there if you want it but with frisky fillies queuing up to give it away for free you wouldn't actually dream of using it. Who's to say the stuff you pay for would be any better than the bog standard issue anyway. They're not all Liverpool 4 Newcastle 3 edge of the seat thrillers. If I'm paying top dollar I want top quality product. As Chris Morris observed as the second tower of the WTC fell a jaded t.v. audience were already switching off their sets complaining they'd seen it all before. If I'd subscribed to Al-Jazeera pay-per-view on the promise of exclusive Al Qa'ida terrorist atrocities following on from the success of the WTC season opener I'd be pretty pi**ed off if the best they could come up with was an incompetent bloody shoebomber who couldn't ignite his Reeboks. If Sky want me to bump up my credit card balance for some televisual pleasure then " Antipodean ass aerobics with the perky, pocket-size, pop princess" is much more likely to light my fire than the SPL. The frisson of guilty pleasure provoked by "unspecified adult entertainment £5.99" cropping up on your statement is more readily explicable to an irate mrs.ionesco when she opens the mail than the unequivocally sordid "Barnsley v. Grimsby". In the fall-out from the t.v. football meltdown the media moguls are going to have think of more imaginative ways to get us to part with the green folding stuff.

The era of "sports entertainment" beckons. Franchise football existing in a realm beyond national boundaries but maximising merchandising opportunities presented by the same old cartoon stereotypes a la WWF. My own team Queen of the South are about to relocate to San Francisco where in accordance with the local demographic we'll be renamed Queens of the South-West. Handlebar moustaches and biker gear will be de rigeuer for the fans and "the club strip" will be the Full Monty. George Michael and Boy George will perform a duet of the team song live from the Golden Gate Bridge. The bad news is they're both in the squad as are The Village People. The good news is the Kylester's pink pound appeal gets her a starting position too. Our first match is against Vinnie Jones' Hollywood XI starring Rod Stewart, Robbie Williams, Jay-Lo, P Diddy and The Rock. Then we play Dermot Desmond's Boston Celtic featuring Bono, Shane McGowan, some tw*t from Westlife, Michael Flatley and the cast of Riverdance in the world's biggest Irish theme bar in New York on St.Paddy's Day. Then it's David Murray's Cor Blimey Guv'nor London Rangers at some infernal Ibizan discotheque full of lager louts larging it in Ingerlund tops and annexing the Balearics for the "master race". Come on Rupert sort it out!

eugene ionesco

Tinseltown pays tribute to The King of the Beats

Tinseltown pays tribute to the king of the Beats?

Maybe I dreamt it but I’m pretty sure I read recently that ham-fisted Hollywood helmsman Joel Schumacher is lined up to direct the long-awaited movie adaption of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

What’s next?

Michael Bay’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu?

Kevin Costner’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus?

The Farrelly Brothers' Finnegans Wake?

Waiting for Godot: the Musical?

On Vacation With The Wrathful, The Avaricious & The Sullen

Taking shelter in the rain-lashed and windswept Stadio del Ballast the other night, during the hooped marvels pulsating encounter with the footballing enigma that is Queen of the South, the mind occasionally wandered from the enticing spectacle of watching beleaguered ballboys chasing footballs as yet another misdirected pass careered over the advertising hoardings towards Coatbridge.

Thoughts of escape to a more congenial climate and where to spend my summer holidays. Not for me the sex, sand and sangria combo favoured by the lumpen-proletariat. The lure of lager louts “having it large” on some once-idyllic island turned dumping ground for the detritus of our nation’s youth should once again prove resistible. Barry from Barnsley and his beered-up buddies baring their backsides in the Balearics to skimpily dressed slappers from Scunthorpe called Shirley and Sandra who, in turn, are seeking squalid sexual shenanigans with a moustachioed married Latin lothario called Manuel who waits on tables at some squalid local cantina which serves chips with everything. Nights of pills and passion with pasty faced pre-pubescents leering at live sex shows in superannuated Ibizan discotheques playing pumping house music. Is that Judge Jules on the decks or is he the one in flagrante delicto with that slack-jawed slut from Shrewsbury? The Manumissionary position, no doubt, choreographed to the insistent 132bpm pulse of a computer programme masquerading as music. Come on Judge, the reputation of the judiciary is at stake! Shouldn’t you be dispensing short sharp shocks to parking ticket defaulters, and acquitting mass murderers on technicalities, rather than “larging it” in the Balearics?

Ibiza is out and Ayai Napa is even worse. Packs of gun totin’, gang bangin’, ho pimpin’ homeboys from Hounslow enjoying a spot of recreational car jacking and drive-by shooting set to a resistible speed garage soundtrack.

On the subject of the Souf London massive: it’s good to see Pat Kane lambaste Ali G in the papers this week for stereotyping hip-hop culture. Po-faced Pat makes a hue and cry about the a nice white middle class Jewish boy impersonating an Asian impersonating an L.A. gangsta rapper because he’s “debasing black American culture”. I thought pallid Pat did a good enough job of that already when he subjected his band’s second-rate sanitised white boy soul onto an unsuspecting public.

What’s the fuss about appropriation anyway? Hip-hop culture is based on theft, or sampling beats as it’s known on “the street”. However appropriation of white suburban kids money is the name of the game. The people who want to buy into this gangsta shtick (the black community wants to buy out) are the same nerds who bought into Kiss and Whitesnake back in the day. Comic book caricatures introducing a vicarious element of danger into sanitised suburban lives. Who’s more black and white minstrel: Ali G or P.Diddy lounging poolside at his Hampton’s hideaway kickin’ that ghetto playboy millionaire vibe? Layin’ down some phat trax in his Cape Cod crib to pick the pocket money of his pasty-faced pre-pubescent homeyz.

It seems wherever you go in the world you can’t get away from imperialism. Us Brits have exported corporate clubbing to every corner of the globe. Cream Kabul is on the cards I fear. Now they’re calling Las Vegas the “new Ibiza”. From Frankie, Sammy and Dino treading the boards at the Sands casino accompanied by the swinging arrangements of the Count Basie Orchestra to Pete Tong “rolling another phat one" at the Luxor and giving a shout out to stag parties from Stockton-on-Tees and hen nights from Huddersfield. Progress? I don't think so.

Our society has been lobotomised by the crushing conformity of a popular “culture” in which a cartel of corporate cash accumulators and chartered accountants masquerading as mediators of taste (Cowell, Tong and their cronies) annex the airwaves, tabloids and t.v. channels, populate them with their sycophants and flunkies and peddle their lowest common denominator crap. Then they export the brainwashed progeny of our infernal zombie nation to unsuspecting lands overseas to spread the virus. Lager louts and alcopoptastic text-messaging minions are multiplying like a mestasicising tumour.

I too am a loup-garou. A zombie host carrying the parasite of popular culture within my diseased carcass. My fixation with Miss Minogue’s pert posterior attests to my addiction to InTraV (the fix of popular culture, infotainment and propaganda delivered straight into my blood supply by the media conglomerates). I’m hardwired to the pop mainframe and I can’t escape.

My stepmother was clearly an agent of evil and introduced me to the dark side at an early age. I remember in chilling detail her early exhortations to watch the televisual output of the pop anti-Christ himself Noel Edmonds: The thing I like about Noel is he appeals to young and old alike. Unlike Tony Wilson I didn’t spend the 80’s having it grande with the likes of New Order and The Happy Mondays down at the Hac. I was one of “Edmonds' 24 hour House Party people.”

And what a grim party it was. A middle-aged man with a mullet and a comfortable sweater luring small children into his lair with promises of plentiful pranks with a pink prat called Mr.Blobby. Perhaps my pursuit of the posterial perfection promised by the perky pop princess is a shallow attempt to exorcise the ghost of Edmonds and consign Crinkly Bottom to the crapola. Post-Traumatic Edmonds Syndrome is surely to blame for my fevered dreams during which I imagine I’m the rear end of a pantomime Anne Widdicombe committed to an eternal summer season in Margate and my fetishistic fantasy of being ensnared in the Widdyweb while the cat-loving conservative composes putrid poetry about her pussy.

But back to the subject of holidays. Even my old Vegas hideaway has been bastardised by Brits on tour. The Axis of Evil Tour is a tempter though. An enticingly Brit-free 7 countries in 7 days with the ever-present danger of a tactical nuclear strike from Dubya to add a certain adventurous frisson for adrenaline junkies.

I think I’ll stay at home this summer while our yobs are exporting themselves world-wide like a particularly virulent case of bubonic plague. It’s a good job the sycophantic goon we’ve got for a Prime Minister has turned us into the 51st state of the union otherwise our status as a cheap steel producer and breeding ground for al-Qa'ida terrorists would undoubtedly place us on the short list for a “goodwill nuclear message” from Dubya.

eugene ionesco

Chillin' Wit' Da Playaz On Da Red Rug: The Oscars 2002

It was an honour and a privilege to hang out with the stars at the Oscars courtesy of Acciesworld. Imagine my surprise when news of this all expenses paid junket to Tinseltown arrived at casa del eugenio attached to Bobby (the great Gilberto’s carrier pigeon extraordinaire). Not for me the instantaneous thrill of communication by e-mail. I prefer the more sedate and traditional joys afforded by strapping indecipherable messages to airborne rodents. Computers are “so last year” guys and the really good news is Dixons haven’t yet worked out how to sting you for an extended warranty on a pigeon.

Anyhow the Hollywood gig sounded right up my Sunset Boulevard. The opportunity of cruisin’ down the Cali coast in my soft top caddy with my fly girl at my side, Big Punishing Mo Fo on the boomin’ system and my homey B Surreal kickin’ it all the way live from Oaktown on the Bay down to Inglewood was too good, I mean bad, to miss. Larbert would have to wait. I consoled myself with the thought that there would be other Saturday afternoons at Ochilview.

We flew into San Fran and hooked up with my favourite gang: Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci. They looked like a Robert Mapplethorpe still, these guys were dressed to kill. My buddies were talkin’ about cruisin’ down to a gay disco on the outskirts of Frisco when I realised I’d got in tow with the wrong dudes. My homies B Surreal, MC Death from Above and DJ Louis Theroux were still standing at the baggage terminal when I got back from my ride with the Village People.

We sweet talked some honey at Hertz into hookin’ us up with a Merc convertible with in-car jacuzzi, Bang & Olufsen, turntables, cocktail bar and laptop with DVD, CDR and carrier pigeon ports. I tell you man this car was a chick magnet. The honeyz were all over us like Vesuvius over Pompeii. While I was soundin’ out some hottie’s hubcaps DJ Louis Theroux was layin’ down a stone cold gangsta groove on the decks by looping some breaks from Clarissa Dickson Wright’s The Fat Lady Sings album and droppin’ in some samples from the bootleg Ol’ Dirty Bastard meets Anne Widdicombe white label that’s been bustin’ out all over Basingstoke’s more discerning dancefloors this panto season. B Surreal was rollin’ up another phat jazz cigarette when he realised the only “chronic” we had on board was MC Death from Above’s angina. Luckily we did have a bag of “Fisherman’s Friends” and some travel sickness lozenges.

We cruised on down through Steinbeck’s old stamping ground Monterey where The Grapes of Wrath and my homey B Surreal’s “farmer giles” have now become inextricably linked in the anals, I mean annals, of street poetry. Down through Clint’s Carmel cabana, a quick 18 holes at Pebble Beach (that course was so expensive we coulda had 18 hos instead and still had change for seafood chowder). We caught some rays, a wave and a communicable disease from the surfer chicks at the Big Sur and then we rolled on down to Hearst Castle which we’d hired for the weekend. Relaxing poolside at William Randolph’s old crib, the cabana was rockin’ most righteously to the intoxicating sound of a faux-naive investigative reporter flippin’ vinyl like burgers at a barbecue while B Surreal and the boys were plying high class hookers with cheap alcohol. Maybe that’s what old Orson was banging on about at the end of “Kane”. Hos ‘n’ Bud. I’m sure Citizen Hearst was canin’ it in Cali with the poolside party posse long before Tongy and co. came on the scene.

I tell you man that party was such a blast we had to bury the remnants in a lead-lined casket somewhere in the South Pacific under strictly controlled conditions. We were still surfin’ on the seismic tremors from that shindig when we cruised into South Central in the City of Angels. I don’t know where “Los Angeles” were hangin’ that day but it wasn’t in the 'hood with my homeys' and me unless you’re talking about the gang of Chicano street hoodlums who were our welcoming committee. We didn’t stick around to discover if they were the apocryphal messengers of God with dirty faces or a buncha low ridin’ Carlito Brigante wannabes from the barrio. Let’s just say we hot-tailed it down to the Hilton at Marina Del Rey without stopping to discuss the niceties of car jacking with the boyz in the hood.

Anyway next thing we know and we’re gliding down the red carpet at the Kodak Theatre with the paparazzi taking pictures of the Galliano gowns and the Dior dresses. I told my homeys to stick to Armani threads but they insisted on the frocks. “There’s Whoopi and Kate Winslett in a stunning red dress” said Louis. “Must be a big dress” I speculated. ‘You’re right Holmes, that’s no frock it’s a marquee” confirmed my man.

And before we knew it the lights dimmed and the midget formerly known as Nicole Kidman’s defiantly heterosexual husband was straight into the Sept. 11th schtick. Then I fell asleep. Next thing I remember is Halle Berry doing her bit for the emancipation of the African-American race. Let’s be honest. As a black power activist she’s a trim bit of skirt if not exactly Malcolm X. I guess she was just surfing on that tide of black power unleashed by Sidney Poitier in his extraordinary acceptance speech for his honorary award. Now Sidney I can dig. When he was the guest they least expected in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner the KKK were burning cats in Mississippi for real. Nowadays we’ve got positive discrimination and our Afro-American buddies are having their cake, eating it and selling the crumbs to emasculated guilt-ridden white liberals hamstrung by political correctness. Proactive “ghetto” entrepreneurs are selling us bogus black culture like a dodgy timeshare in the Costa del Crime. Cheap holidays in other people’s misery flogged by bogus tour guides in bandannas and dungarees. Peddling cartoon versions of recalcitrant criminality, misogyny and stereotypical representations of “ghetto life” is the new Black and White Minstrel Show, but this time the patronising scam is perpetrated by authentic Harlem hucksters and Compton carnies like Russell Simmons, P Diddy and Suge Knight rather than whitey. Hence it’s characterised as “indigenous African-American culture” and must be protected like an endangered species rather than hounded out of house and home like some socially inept dinner guest who keeps grabbing his crotch during the hors d’ouevres. Johnny Cochrane, Snoop, Dr.Dre, Mike Tyson, O.J.Simpson, Diddy, Biggy, the So Solid Crew et al are at the vanguard of the new consciousness, mining a rich vein of criminality both real and imagined. These playaz are pimpin’ that ghetto vibe while simultaneously dealing from a deck heavily loaded with race cards.

Good to see Ashley Walters, Grange Hill child actor turned So Solid Crew ubergangsta given the benefit of the doubt by our judiciary for brandishing a gun at a traffic warden. Now I’m no fan of traffic wardens but they’re hardly going to discharge an AK47 into your twitching corpse ghetto style. “It’s a jungle, I think I’m going under, New Zealand put on 250 for the first wicket and some bitch-assed traffic warden just gave me a ticket, Gaz Gates is keepin’ UK garage outta the charts the spiky- haired muthafu*ker, I think I’m gonna have to smoke some sucka”. The soap star turned black sheep was just playing another role and wasn’t really a hard-core criminal. I’m sure his not so solid mate who broke the jaw of a teenage female fan who rejected his advances was just “getting into ghetto persona” as a PR exercise. These new kids on the gangsta block should switch on to Chuck D and Public Enemy. Don’t Believe the Hype, guys. The dangers of “doing a Westwood” are all too obvious. One minute you’re a nice vicar’s son from Essex, the next some homey’s bustin’ a cap in your ass Tupac-style in a drive-by shooting. Life inevitably imitates art as the Hollywood scriptwriters who created the blueprint for the Islamic terror outrage of Sept. 11th will happily attest. We live in the age of the reality tv and self-fulfilling media prophecy. Imagine a scenario, any scenario. Commit it to vinyl, celluloid or disc and it will eventually come to pass as assuredly, as inexorably and depressingly as death, taxes and the new series of Pop Idol.

On the subject of Sept.11th I thank my lucky stars that old “Mr. Potato Head” himself Tom Hanks wasn’t nominated for a gong this year. Another of his insufferably sanctimonious acceptance speeches suffused with post Sept.11th sentimentality juxtaposed with the Cirque de Soleil, Paul McCartney and Enya would surely have been too much to bear. Cirque de Soleil are the new Torvill and Dean. Mime, dance and gymnastics is a combination which should be prohibited by law and penalised by death. Now showing in the psychological torture unit at Camp X-Ray: “Tom Hanks introduces Cirque de Soleil’s tribute to Sept.11th with a soundtrack by Enya.” Al Qa’ida prisoners no doubt got the full unexpurgated version intercut with Hanks’ 1993 victory speech for Philadelphia, where he accepted the award on behalf of all AIDS victims, the entire gay community and all those who had met their maker with the unforgettably po(tato)-faced tribute “My work is magnified by the fact that the Streets of Heaven are crowded with angels.” You could magnify Hanks’ work with an electron microscope and still not spot any talent.

Did A Beautiful Mind really win best picture? Now Jennifer Connolly certainly provided the beauty but it wasn’t her mind I was interested in. Good to see macho Russell Crowe get his come uppance in the best actor stakes though. If they were handing out awards for surly bully boys he’d be at the head of the queue fighting with the doormen..

But back to the divine Miss Berry. As an actress she’s a trim bit of skirt if not exactly Joan Crawford. To be honest she’s barely Joan Collins but this was the “PC Oscars” after all. I could have sworn I heard someone on Radio 1 today claiming Miss Berry has (retrospectively) paved the way for that geezer who plays Doctor Truman in “Easties” getting a job on the show as a GP rather than as an itinerant vagabond with a propensity for crack cocaine. Maybe I just imagined it but I doubt it.

Now Denzil I can’t argue with. He was the Devil incarnate in Training Day, another movie trippin’ out on that gangsta vibe but the man’s a class act and I don’t give a monkeys whether he’s black, white or leopard print with pink stripes.

If we’re going to continue with this ceremonial charade where the increasingly self-important film community get to patronise an ethnic minority or disadvantaged group each year then let’s hope we get some positive discrimination for the woefully marginalised Italian- American community sometime soon. Another ethnic group condemned to the role of gangster/outlaw in our increasingly homogenised culture. So how come Marty Scorcese, the best director of the last 30 years, hasn’t won an Oscar yet? Let me guess what piece of shit won the Oscar for Best Picture the year of Raging Bull? What masterpiece triumphed when Good Fellas came out? Maybe the Italo-American’s don’t have a PR department like the Afro-Americans have or they haven’t figured out how to pimp the rotting corpse of their popular culture’s stereotypes yet. They’re too busy hangin’ out down “da Bing” eatin’ pasta and listening to the Chairman of the Board no doubt. Surely these guys can get off their wiseguy asses and put the legacy of Sam “OG” Giancana, Santo Trafficante, John Gotti, Al Capone, Don Corleone and co. to work? Who needs to hitch a ride in the back of a ghetto gangsta cadillac when they can cruise up the boulevard on a souped up Cosa Nostra Coupdavil?

And what about surrealist maverick David Lynch? How many gongs were handed out for Mulholland Drive, Lynch’s masterfully oblique and maddeningly obscure study of two fit birds going hard at it? You guessed right film fans. Zilcherooni. Is drinking from the furry cup not fashionable this year? Sexual orientation or skin tone it’s always hard to predict which way the Academy will go. Lynch backed the wrong horse it’s true but can console himself with the reassuring fact that filming hot girl on girl action is always a pleasure and never a chore. Lynch is Dali with hot babes instead of limp time-pieces (a displacement which makes perfect sense in the surrealist universe - introduce some steamy lesbo action and I guarantee you lose your floppy clock syndrome) The inaugural eugene ionesco award for motion pictures has to go to “Mulholland Drive” the sexiest, smartest, most surreal and downright fun film of the year. And Kylie’s ass is nowhere in sight.
Mmmmm. Dave, I think I’ve got an idea for you next flick...

eugene ionesco

When Hell Freezes Over

As I luxuriate in the hot tub at “Casa del eugenio” awaiting the arrival of the latest hot consignment of Playboy bunnies thoughtfully winging their way towards me in my good buddy Hugh “Playcadaver” Hefner’s private jet the mind wanders from the bewitching smorgasbord of interactive curling opportunities provided by BBC Digital and the unspeakable horror of the Cram/Balding interface.

Cram/Balding: if I wanted to watch bogus mating rituals involving uncharismatic goons in comfortable sweaters feigning interest in obscure winter sports I’m sure there’s a dodgy internet site somewhere offering perverts the opportunity to download this sort of thing after mrs.ionesco has gone to bed. Cram/Balding’s clumsy attempts to use dreary ice dance routines as a precursor to stilted foreplay make the McCoist/Yorath combo look as compatible as toast and cheese, surf ‘n’ turf or, my own personal favourite, big breasted babes and AK 47 assault rifles. But I digress...

The Winter Olympics: several weeks of unmitigated tedium watching Baltic biatheletes, Canadian curlers and and Siberian skiers compete in a series of ever more baffling winter pursuits masquerading as sport. Who can doubt that right now in the depths of Camp X-Ray Al Qa’ida prisoners are being subjected to the psychological torture of watching endless reruns of Torvill & Dean’s ice dance routines set to the infernal soundtrack of Ravel’s Bolero?

Still it was nice to see Rhona and the girls sweep their brooms to a gold medal. At the Winter Olympics this harmless activity is called a sport. At Casa del ionesco, as my well-trained Phillipino “home help” will happily attest, it’s called housework.

What about the skeleton though? How we cheered as plucky Brit Alex Coomber propelled us into the medal table by sliding down some ice head first on a tea tray. And an unexpected bronze In the skiing! A trio of medals is apparently our greatest haul since the Jurassic era. Good job we sent a squad of 350!

Looks like lottery funding is finally producing the goods. Another 50 million a year over the next 4 and a quartet of medals surely beckons in 2006. What I want to know is who’s the guy who decides how much cash gets allocated to each sport? Decisions, decisions. Which minority sport will I subsidise today? Dwarf tossing or worm charming? I can bet you it wasn’t like that back in King Arthur’s day. Camelot had loftier aspirations back then. The pursuit of the Holy Grail for one. Well, I guess they gave up the chase for that worthless vessel after they won the licence to perpetrate the lottery scam. Robin Hood in reverse: steal from the poor and give to the rich with a skim off the top for good causes as a PR exercise. I can imagine the descendants of that noble lineage of knights gathered at the round table dividing the spoils. I’m sure it’s like a card game at Sam Giancana’s joint. The house always wins.

Now don't get me wrong. I couldn’t do that job. I’d blow it all on that holy trinity of minority sports: booze, broads and blackjack. They say, “let he who I without sin cast the first stone”. They never tell you the rest: “Once Cliff Richard has had a go let he who is without virtue cast the rest”. So I reckon I’m qualified to comment. Maybe my homey B Surreal could get a job in the profit split department. Granted when the four man bob comes looking for their money he’ll have spazzed it on Bud, mary jane and 1000 dollar hos. My guess is the medal table in 2006 is going to look much the same anyway. On the plus side the poolside party at B’s cabana will have rocked most righteously.

I’d kick minority “sports” into touch and plough all our resources into the proper sport of 22 grown men kicking an inflated sheep’s bladder around a field. Who can doubt some superannuated ice dancing nonentities from Swindon are to blame for our footballing buccaneers plundering their way through Europe with swashbuckling 0-0 draws in Lithuania and pillaging 1-1 draws in the Faroes?

On the subject of authenticity it was good to hear rock dinosaur Elton John berate the spawn of Simon Cowell recently. The interchangeable telegenic foetuses Cowell and his infernal cartel of pop impressarios promote as popstars should be drowned at birth.

How many of them can hold a candle in the wind to the divine Miss Minogue? Not too many I’ll warrant. Ignore the curmudgeons who say she’s just an anodyne automaton. A robobabe with a perfectly sculpted rear passing off bland, formulaic Cathy Dennis penned ditties as post-modern pop confections. Admittedly her ass is so goddamn perfect she undoubtedly delegates her bowel movements to some underpaid lackey / sphincter surrogate. Body swerve those grumblers who say she’s a vacuous pin up girl for the Now Generation whose career has been sponsored by the same fawning feminists, proselytising post-modernists and gay glitterati who elevated Madge from wannabe pop slut with the class of a Coney Island hooker to multi media-corporate ubervixen with the class of a Coney Island hooker. From naive young soap star showcasing the pre-packaged pop pap of pistol packin’ Pete Waterman to superannuated,slinky sex goddess crooning the camp crap of Cowell croney Cathy, Kylie has traversed the broad spectrum of popular music from A to B.

But back to the balding piano player carping from the sidelines: Hey gramps get hip to the trip! Get with the programme why dontcha! I remember back in the day when Ludwig Van won Classical Idol they’d wheel on some old timer who claimed music had been rubbish since the halcyon days of the Gregorian chant and how it’s been downhill all the way since the 11th century.

Before anyone puts forward the misguided notion that Aussie with attitude Natalie Imbruglia is the “thinking man’s Kylie” and that pop music is an infinitely rich and subtly variegated medium which can embrace the “dog ate my giro” earnestness of the Manic Street Preachers AND the frothy pop confections of the divine Miss Minogue let me just say this:

I don’t need my pop idols to consider the implications of the human genome project for Mankind in the 21st century. We’ve got boffins aplenty for that. If in doubt apply the simple but effective “jacuzzi test”. Who would you rather hang out with in the hot tub? Kylie or Bamber Gascoigne? Maybe your idea of fun is to lure Stephen Hawking between the sheets but I’d settle for some perky pop princess’s anodyne aerobicized ass any day.

Keep it surreal

eugene ionesco

Ocean's XI

I know the original was no Citizen Kane but at least it had a few redeeming features: the sultans of swing, the cognoscenti of cool, the princes of pizzazz, the crowned heads of chutzpah....The Rat Pack: Dean Martin’s swingin’ rendition of Ain’t That a Kick in the Head was worth the price of admission alone.

If the first flick was chaotically undisciplined: an extemporaneous mess filtered through the alcoholic stupor of the principals (who squeezed the shoot in around a hectic schedule of carousing, cavorting and crooning at The Sands), Steve Soderbergh’s remake, by comparison, has all the pre-meditated “charm” of a profit and loss account.

It was a no-brainer right from the get-go: lock down a fail-safe cast of box office heavyweights, light the blue touch paper, retire to a safe distance and watch the feigned fun explode all over the Nevada sky: Perhaps Kerouac should have written, the only people for me are the boring, pretty ones?

The cast’s faux-spontaneous schtick is risible: a bunch of conceited goons throwing a party to which the audience hasn’t been invited.

Clooney as Danny Ocean, though no Sinatra, certainly possesses a scintilla of style but Brad Pitt was so wooden Soderbergh should have chopped him up for kindling, started a bonfire and thrown the rest of the cast on top.

There’s more wood on display here than in Jenna Jameson meets Pinocchio. Matt Damon isn’t so much a pale facsimile of Charisma as an anaemic forgery, and, please, don’t get me started on Don Cheadle…

What was that "mockney" accent all about?
Cor blimey, luv a duck, time to do a runner back to Blighty before the Old Bill gets wind of this casino caper.
Cheadle sounded like Dick Van Dyke in Lock, Stock and an Egregious "English" Accent.

Now come on Steve Soderbergh. I know you had some critical credit in the bank after Traffic, "Sex, Lies, Ad Neauseum. and Erin Whatshernameagain? but where did you find Don’s voice coach? Did you really think the guy who worked with Daphne's ersatz English family on Frasier was the right man for the job?

Last I heard, no-one in sanity’s catchment area is claiming the original was a classic, but a modicum of the Rat Pack’s indisputable cool certainly rubbed off on the project: Soderbergh’s version couldn’t swing if you nailed it to a pendulum.

If the first flick possessed the effortless, though slightly infuriating, charm of a Bardot, the remake’s ersatz pizzazz is reminiscent of a fake-tanned, silicone-enhanced, peroxide-blonde dental hygienist from Basildon named Debbie.

Now, don’t get me wrong: there’s fun, of a sort, to be had with Debbie, but it’s a vacuous, unsatisfying, vaguely sordid type of fun which appeals almost exclusively to the lumpen-proletariat.

The wrathful, the avaricious and the sullen are the Devil’s own demographic but, disconcertingly, the dead hand of Hollywood still has a rigid digit on the Purgatorial Pulse.

Ewan McNaught (eugene/Frankie Sumatra)

If Miles Davis and Ernest Hemingway could have produced a child it would have been Ewan. True creative writing genius is a rare beast, and of all the current posters in here I can think of only one – Ewan is clearly the 400 lb gorilla in our midst

Nathan Hasalbauer, President, International High IQ Society, New York

Casa del Ionesco is wonderful little site, a repository of intelligent commentary and interesting articles culled from the net and blogosphere. And your picture is great. I frequent the Casa a few times a week. Keep it up.

Husain Naqvi, 3Quarksdaily.com

Ewan - A profound and enlightening writer for the masses, a light sardonic touch. A real post-post modernist outlook that gives him the look of a man on the edge of civilization; not dire, but an optimistically dire perspective. Sees life through the eyes of an Underworld traveller but with the panoramic scope of a flying hedonist. Darts through the mesosphere with a yawn and sometimes a slyly held middle finger

Will Weatherley, Southern California

He a jazz record. Don’t look. Listen

Robbie, Berkeley

A misanthropist with a mean streak a mile wide

Robert, San Francisco

Pretentious p****

P.B., Kirkcaldy

IHIQS interview

Atomic Magazine profile

Graeme Jamieson

Graeme Jamieson is a rhymer of rhythm.
If you're unsure of what he’s trying to do; there’s a patter of pulp there, if you’re ready to chew. Published all over the world, he’s just been ‘made’ by New York’s leading Lounge & Cocktail Culture web site, Tommy White Tie , and this for a bona fide flâneur who still lives in Edinburgh. He’s a neoligistic wordsmith who knows what time it is, while this, his freest form is: "different and intelligent… kind of like the guy who’s off in the corner inhaling nitrous and spouting off all sorts of incredibly coherent nonsense that leaves the rest of the room saying "you’re wacked" but safe in the knowledge he’s brilliant." —Senator, Consigliere, TWT

“A professional lounger” —Dazed & Confused