Bush family Christmas video

One more moment of craziness to avoid writing a proper blog. I put it on Facebook but can’t resist posting it here too. This is not a spoof, Brits, this is the genuine article:

(super, super gutted. I should be at Proud Galleries right now partying with the Xtra Mile Crowd but circumstances have conspired and I’m at home, sober. tears before bedtime)

Cross-eyed Hammas fighter

At the risk of this blog becoming a series of pointless short posts about the Beeb… Did the BBC make this Hammas fighter cross-eyed, or does he just look like a muppet in real life?

(this is the cover photo on today’s BBC News website story about the ceasefire ending)

Screenwiped

From: complaintresponse@bbc.co.uk
Subject: BBC Complaints [T2008121000HPS010Z4860158]
Date: 18 December 2008 14:34:53 GMT

Dear Mr T-T
Thanks for your e-mail regarding ‘Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe’.

I understand you’re unhappy that swearing is beeped out during the programme, despite a language warning at the very start. 

As far as I know, the beeping out during the programme is inserted by the programme makers and is intended to be humorous.

Thanks for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.

Regards
Rick Miles
BBC Complaints

ELECTION NIGHT

Right, I’ve totally failed to finish and publish a tour diary and now it’s election night so our rock’n'roll adventures will just have to wait.

Tonight we’re (obviously) staying up to watch the results and I’ll be blogging live here anything that strikes me. You are more than welcome to comment, argue, or whatever. I’ll also be on Twitter and joining Dean’s group blog HERE. 

Cheers, see you on the other side.

The Gathering Storm

I’m no anti-American, seriously, not in a million years. I don’t subscribe to any of the Brit crap about USA stupidity or the lack-of-irony myth, when my own experience has been almost exclusively that of open-minded, open-hearted people. They’ve maintained welcoming curiosity and in many cases good manners that have long gone in many parts of Drunk UK.

But it’s worth really thinking about some of the raw aggression and open racism that has surfaced in the crowds at the increasingly desperate McCain/Palin rallies recently. The heckles need to be tied to the possible defeat of the conservative ticket, the economic problems and the slow decay of the American Empire: and I think they, as much as anything, signal the truly dreadful possibilities ahead in that land.

I love the USA so much. A month doesn’t go by when we don’t sit at home seriously weighing up the possibilities of moving to southern California and, when the boys from Entourage went out to Joshua Tree last week to take shrooms, I felt a physical longing for that place. No, it doesn’t conflict with my politics, obviously you can love a land, people, culture, counter-culture, even streets and buildings, without loving its government or systems. And anyway, if I was to move somewhere purely for politics, I’d be in Cuba or Venezuela right now, so that makes no sense.

However, I think there’s a truly epic gathering storm, as the great empire of the 20th century makes way for the great empires of the 21st, in the far east. You can see it in Simon Schama’s exploration of the water problems in the Colorado basin and even hints of it in Stephen Fry’s lighter-in-tone but equally perceptive jaunt.

They are used to opulence and it’s running out. They are used to freedom and – in order to maintain control as resources thin – it will be reigned in. Some are used to tying morally regressive patriarchy to isolationist elegy, when now, both are seeping away. Some are used to ignoring the Other America, the underbelly of The Wire and Hurricane Katrina and no health insurance, yet now that underbelly is rising. They are used to cheap gas (it’s still half the price of ours) but that’s ebbing fast and relies on their enemies.

They are used to being winners and deifying the concept of victory, yet they are headed – in so many ways – for defeat. There’s still no bigger insult than ‘loser’ in the USA.

They are armed. 

By the way, I’ve just boshed off a complaint to the BBC about last night’s execrable Panorama, which, despite touting itself as a balanced look at the US election, turned out to be a strangely Fox News-esque and unBeeblike hatchet job, moulding scarcely any real content into a negative picture of Obama’s rise, while avoiding any similar study of his two rivals and ignoring his running-mate completely.

Simply: to bring up the Reverend Wright connection as an argument undermining Obama (in an emotive way, juxtaposing the worst soundclip over a photo of them together), yet not mention a single issue about Palin (such as her exorcism by a far more extreme religious nut, who has run people out of their homes for being witches, or her links to Alaskan Independence movements, or the bridge to nowhere, or McCain’s Keating scandal, or – for god’s sake – her rampant creationist extremism), instead letting the ‘hockey mom’ myth stand and presenting her as a mainstream populist alternative, was beyond biased, it was dangerously irresponsible and misleading for the UK public about what is really going on inside the USA.

While there is definitely some space for questions about Obama’s lack of legislative substance and fast rise through Chicago’s political scene, it was despicable that they let McCain and Palin off similar (any!) scrutiny.

Howard, the… Duck!

Last night I tricked Howard from Halifax into filming his suicide, for use as a hard-hitting allegorical short film about the economic collapse. I phoned his agent on the pretext of casting for a BBC one-off drama version of Death Of A Salesman. His agent was my sister’s friend Phill, although I have no idea why. Phill is a lovely fella but he’s not an agent at all, let alone the representative for the round-faced speccy Halifax man.

Anyway, I booked Howard for an advance fee of £10, plus he wanted tuna sandwiches and ginger beer, plus a high repeat percentage and a small percentage of advertising revenue, even though there are no adverts on the BBC. Then we all went to an office complex in Bournemouth and shot what we pretended was the first day of this extensive, expensive TV movie, except that everyone there – crew, hospitality, actors – were all just pretending, in order to get the one vital scene, which was Howard shooting himself in the face with a gun. I swapped the blanks myself.

Once that was done, we all went home and I phoned his agent back to apologise for the tragic accident and explain that the BBC had cancelled our production out of respect for Howard’s family, so we had to quit. 

Then I edited together this shit-hot snuff short out of the one scene that mattered, with some prime Johnny Cash in the background like the final scene of Generation Kill. I can’t remember which song though. When I woke up this morning, for a few seconds I was so convinced it was real, I was itching to get on my Mac to look again at the film, because it was an anti-capitalist masterpiece and Howard had truly died for a Good Cause.

I was gutted when I realised.

teaching creationism

Isn’t it funny how creationists always seem so… unevolved?
Bill Hicks

I feel quite sorry for the Royal Society’s director of education, Michael Reiss, for the heat he’s taken over the last few days, after his daft suggestion that, to appease a small minority of UK kids (still fewer than 10%) who have an in-built opposition to evolutionary theory (thanks to their upbringing), discussion of creationism should be included in science class.

He’s dead wrong of course. Strategically, morally and historically. And there’s a slight chance, I guess, that he’s deliberately stirring the pudding with Satan’s wooden spoon to cause problems for his fellow scientists. 

But let’s face it, he’s an old fella, it’s much more likely he’s just weary of the insanity, tired of allowing the subject to become the elephant in the room, and trying to plot a tidy, less stressful route through the mess.

One could almost begin to suspect that those stoking up the storm around his comments are trying to encourage creationist/unintelligent design elements to fight harder. It concerns me that the BBC and other media outlets (especially the liberal ones) gave the story such heady prominence, when Reiss’ original comments were just one bloke, and came couched in such careful terms.

Forget the inflammatory subject matter for a sec and look at this in general terms: since when did what kids believe when they show up at school have an effect on what teachers impart in class!? That’s right, they’re also adding Second Life to geography, pot-smoking to art class, emo studies to the RE curriculum and setting up a GCSE in Facebook apps.  

The subtext that really needs facing is this: kids with an inbuilt ‘disbelief’ in the overwhelming, extraordinarily compelling amount of evidence that backs up evolutionary theory have been brainwashed to a degree that comes close to child abuse by fanatically religious nutsack parents. They don’t need convincing, they need rescuing. End of.

I just discovered Poe’s Law, which relates originally to creationism but is now expanded to take in wider fundamentalism. First described by Nathan Poe in observation of debates on a religious website, the law states:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.

Poe’s Law leads inevitably to Poe’s Paradox, which infects almost all fundamentalist organisations of any size online:

In any fundamentalist group where Poe’s Law applies, a paradox exists where any new person (or idea) sufficiently fundamentalist to be accepted by the group, is likely to be so ridiculous that they risk being rejected as a parodist (or parody).

Beautiful. You really can’t argue with fundamentalists but you can snigger like mad as you walk the fuck away.

Let’s come at it from the other end. Instead of demanding the god botherers shut the fuck up about what ludicrous inanities they think should be taught, let’s add some of our own ‘truths’ into the mix.

The Norse or Greek creation myths, for example. Let’s teach Sherlock Holmes as historical fact – lots of kids turn up at school believing in Sherlock Holmes. And of course we need to teach the Presidency of Josiah Bartlett as historical truth – there’s as much real evidence for it as there is for the 8,000 year-old planet. It was on TV, for a start.

Ruar Juar

It’s just music.
Charlie Parker

Never go with a hippy to a second location.
Jack Donaghy

Three episodes into Generation Kill. See it if you can, it’s outstanding – feels to me like one of the truest TV or film accounts of war I’ve ever seen. Thank-you Deano! Drastically better than BBC2’s disappointing Burn Up, which even Bradley Whitford’s tour-de-force neocon couldn’t rescue. In fact, Whitford’s part is so enticingly written compared to the dramatic-pause obsessed liberals, it almost upsets the intention of the show and makes you long for climate catastrophe. Stop flagging up your message or trying to direct our emotions and just tell the story! That’s what Burns and Simon do for HBO and it’s fucking wonderful.

Interesting that everybody is (finally) talking about The Wire in the UK (see previous blog) because Season 5 has hit the FX Channel, yet nobody is mentioning the team’s newer work, even in passing. 

I am not enjoying Jury Service.

Last week we sent a Nigerian man to prison for a minimum of 10 years, for smuggling cocaine. He was caught in a random check at London City Airport, where they found nearly 3 kilos sewn into his luggage. In his customs interview, speaking in Ebo through an interpreter, he claimed to have been under duress, saying that back in Nigeria two men and a woman had threatened him and his pregnant wife, forcing him to carry the drugs. A likely story! But… that interpreter was bloody rubbish – and the interview was badly transcribed as well – making the whole document hard work. And then the defendant decided (at the last minute, it seemed) not to take the stand and speak under oath in his own defence. 

Meanwhile the prosecution used a forged business email found amongst some genuine ones, along with a few suspicious (though in no way smoking gunnish) texts to make a liar of our defendent. Without knowing anything about what really happened in Nigeria, or what had happened to his wife and family during the year he’d already spent on remand in a UK jail, we convicted.  

Even though the duress claim stank and he probably did it, in retrospect I feel well uncomfortable with the guilty verdict. The defense was poor at clarifying their version of events, so much so that, throughout the trial, I actually assumed they felt they didn’t really need to build a case – with the burden resting on the prosecution to disprove duress.

There were also delays and logistical fuck-ups. We lost half a day’s court time because the agency supplying an interpreter had only booked the woman for the first day and had to bus a replacement down at short notice. At another point we were sent out because a photocopied document had a page out of order. Given what people involved in the court system earn, perhaps their shit should be smoother? With hindsight I’m shocked the prosecution didn’t need to do more and, honestly, I assumed the judge was going to direct us to aquit, until I found myself in the jury room.

Anyway, then I needed an easy ride for the second week but I’ve been dumped onto another stressful case and wasn’t able to slide out the back door.

Last time I made this particular contribution to society, in the late 1990s in Wood Green Crown Court, it was a great experience. The case I sat on then was short, painless and fascinating. My day job agreed to pay me, so I didn’t have to faff around with claim forms and I spent most of the period at home, being told I wasn’t needed, day after day. This spare time was so unexpected (and uncommitted to other stuff), I finished writing and recording the bulk of Beatverse during those two weeks. This time around no music is being made and I think I’ve just lost the Cambridge Folk Festival trip, thanks to the second case. Boo hiss.

Culture Show… oh god.

Quick preamble because it’s a red letter day: Monmouth Coffee has finally reached Brighton, albeit in a small way. Coffee@33, so fresh on Trafalgar Street they don’t have a business card or website yet, is using Monmouth’s espresso blend and – joy of joys – they reckon they can sell me a kilo of any Monmouth single estate beans/grind without a mark-up, if I give them a week’s notice. Trafalgar Street is notoriously tough to crack, so if you’re a Brighton coffee ponce and want to taste something to compete with Red Roaster (well, better than really, though in not such nice surroundings), check it out and, once you’ve seen the light, encourage them to train down the whole range.

I know I’ve got on the Culture Show’s arse before in The Morning Star about their overall turdiness but this week takes the fucking biscuit. I was so excited about the David Simon interview. The Wire sits alongside The West Wing as my favourite TV ever and those in the know will agree, Simon is not only one of the finest television writers but has revitalised the whole art. Well…

“…he now stands accused of breaking the laws of writing for TV. David Simon has been detained by The Culture Show for questioning.” 

Geddit!?

Yes, Lauren Laverne does the eight-minute interview (with heavy clips, so less than two minutes of actual insight from the subject) in a mock-up Police interview room, using a cassette of ‘controversial’ statements and challenging him on ‘breaking TV writing laws’. For fuckedy-fuckedy-fuck’s sakes!

Laverne: “We’ve intercepted a few of your communications… That is your voice on that tape… Can you explain yourself?”

Cripes chief, can someone put the programme-makers out of my misery?

Simon patiently plays along (“This may be something you’ll have to lock me up for…”) but, Christ, I wish he’d pulled rank and told them to fuck right off. The man had fascinating, probably important themes to develop, if they’d only let him.

“Wherever an institution has been given free sway, it has devoured individuals.” 

Yesterday I watched the first episode of Generation Kill, new HBO mini-series based on the book by Rolling Stone journo Evan Wright, who was ‘embedded’ with US marines during the invasion of Iraq. Adapted by Ed Burns and David Simon, it is vivid, downbeat, realistic, without over-embellishment and, so far, bloody brilliant. They are reaching toward truth – and can TV drama do any more than that? 

Surprise, no mention of this series in the interview. And since the only actual Wire plug was Season 5 starting on the FX Channel, it makes me wonder if the BBC has bought the rights to show the whole of The Wire from Season 1 in the near future and was getting some early familiarisation in, without telling us. At least that would be cash well spent.

The thing is, like Mark Kermode, who is one of the best critics on telly, Lauren Laverne’s no gimp, she can run a show and pull off a heavyweight interview when needs be. The Chris Addison chat in the same show is absolutely fine. Now she has to face whichever monkeys are throwing out shit idea after shit idea and stand them down. It’s time to climb off the gimmicks. This was the first time I’ve seen David Simon on British TV, though admittedly I haven’t gone looking. Now wouldn’t it have been fantastic if it was a straightforward lengthy and detailed interview. I’m tired of your weak shit!

By the way, same programme: if you take a talented folksy sounding new band (Clare & The Reasons) and give them their first TV exposure, please give us a teensy bit of background and PLEASE let them sing one of their own fucking songs, instead of a Tears For Fears cover given a sub Michael Andrews acoustica treatment. And could we have more homegrown bands please, instead of obsessing with already-signed American acts?

Honestly, someone should give me a TV channel.