Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Stop it!

In terms of over-using an expression in general conversation, is anyone else sick of people saying 'in terms of'? I was listening to the radio this morning and the presenters and reporters couldn't ask or answer a question without throwing 'in terms of' at the wall several times.. It's all over the BBC as well at the moment. I don't know when it started but it seems to have overtaken 'at the end of the day', 'literally' and 'amaaaaazing' in terms of words and expression that are being flogged to death at the moment.

Drive on

Ok - I've hung in as long as I can on this one but I give up now.. Does anybody know what the rules are regarding provisional drivers in this country?

The reaction to the news that the government has decided to try to enforce the laws about provisional drivers has been hilarious. The face that they climbed down as quickly as they did is not so funny.. I have real sympathy for learner drivers who need their car for work. And I've got as much sympathy for learner drivers who are genuinely trying to get their full licence but there's a lot of chancers out there who have never sat a drving test and have no intention of doing so. They're the ones who've repsonded to the news of the clampdown with outrage and indignation. One corresepndent to the Irish Independent the other day claimed that it was provisional drivers who were responsible for Fianna Fail wininng the last election. Really?

I think Noel Dempsey was very foolish if it thought he could change the rules overnight and not expect the reaction he got. It may have been ill-advised but I like that he's showing willing and hopefully the opposition will get off his back and see if he can really do something about the problem in the timeline he's suggested.

Anyway, I've exhausted myself on the topic over the weekend so I'll shut up for now. However can we all agree that people who have put their L plates upside down should have their licences cancelled? It's a bit of an epidemic in this town. If the driver of this car doesn't know up from down, should they really be let loose on the road?

Slept it off..

Rubbish! Tried that toxic cleanser stuff last night and felt the very same when I woke up this morning. Althoguh in its defence the plaster thingy that I put on my feet had turned from white to a dirty murky brown so maybe there's something in it..

It may have been optimistic to expect several weeks overindulgence to be cleansed over the course of 7 hours sleep.

Still - I may stick to the water, fruit and vegetable approach from here on. That never fails..

Monday, October 29, 2007

Sleep it off..


Been away for a few days and haven't been on top of the blog at all. I've lots to talk about when I get a minute.

So I spent the weekend in Tipperary and Cork overeating, over-drinking and genrerally overindulging.. Now it's the end of the long weekend and the there's about 4 or 5 weeks before the Christmas silliness will start to kick in so I'm going to try a little healthy detox..

To help me on my way, I'm going to give this a lash tonight. I picked it up over the weekend after me massage (no, really) and it's supposed to draw out all the toxins in my body through my feet. Overnight. Sounds like bollox to me but we'll give it a go in the name of research.. There's a magic silver bag sachet that I'm supposed to put on an adhesive strip and then put the whole thing on the soles of my feet. As I sleep the Agarikus Mushroom, Eucalyptus tree vine and Tourmaline Bio Stone will do the trick. According to the (lovely) packaging, this product has been tested on the Toxic Twins so that's ok.

Wait - didn't they used to call Steven Tyler and Joe Perry from Aerosmith the Toxic Twins? Well who doesn't want to look like them?! So, I'm going toput this stuff on in a minute and hopefully I'll wake up fresh faced and energised in the morning. Or not...

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Would you buy a used car from this man?

I have no problem with this. Not surprisingly Dylan is taking a bit of a hammering for appearing in this new ad for Cadillac. Cue lots of commentators bleating about selling-out. As if he didn't do that years and years ago. The fact that he's doing it to promote his own radio show too doesn't seem to be buying him much slack. I dunno - does Dylan's position as the most signifcant artist of the last 50 years (I know that's debatable but who else comes close?) suffer because he does a commercial for a car? Is his credibility really at risk because he appeared in a commercial for Victoria's Secret?

In this longer version of the ad, which is more of a tie-in with his radio show than a commerical, Dylan claims, "You know what's even better than a great road tune? Not having some DJ talking all over it. Unless, of course, that DJ is me." Now, I just think that's funny.

Is doing an ad for a car company more or less an act of artistic bankruptcy than releasing yet another cash-in compilation album, as Dylan did recently? Or several terrible live albums of barely recognisable old songs? Or performing hundreds of lousy shows under the influence of booze, drugs or with contempt for your audience? I'm not so sure any of these things are influenced by artistic pursuits as much as they are by financial pursuits. And as long as people are prepared to hand over cash for them I've no problem with that either..

As far as I know, there's no sponsorship of his radio shows. There's certainly no ads during it a from those vintage ads he sometimes plays for products that no longer exist) so why shouldn't the producers try to make a bit of cash to keep the show on the air and pay for a few mint juleps? The shows are so good that Dylan could start making ads for Cillit Bang and I still wouldn't care.. "Hi I'm Bob Dylan..."

Ultiamtely it's all about making a buck. Salvador Dali went on What's My Line and Orson Wells did commericals for frozen food but nobody seems to mind now. When Dylan dies, do you think anyone will care about a Cadillac commercial? By the way, if you've never listened to this clip of Orson Wells recording a frozen peas commerical, you really should. Who'd want to be the writer or director dealing with him that day..

And while we're at it I've got no problem with these either.. Although Bob's is way cooler than Macca's..

A fate better than death?

All this talk in the papers about Steve 'Stan' Staunton's position as Irish manager is making me laugh a bit. I keep hearing and reading that today is the day a decision will be made on his future and he's expected to pay the ultimate price for failure. Now call me pedantic, but isn't the ultimate price usually death? And not an €800,000 pay-off and a few 'another fine mess you've got us into' headlines in the tabs. He really must be hurting today..

If the punishment for failing to beat the likes of Cyprus at home really was death, perhaps we'd have seen a bit more commitment to the cause on Wednesday night..

But hey - let's not waste time talking about football. As someone who's been accused of bearing more than a passing resemblance to Staunton, I'll be glad to see the back of him!

A pint of your finest..

Alright - I've been warned not to go on about this too much but I really can't let the opportunity pass without reporting that I gave blood last week for the first time. I'd been to the clinic once before about 6 years ago. The company I worked for at the time organised a bus to come and take several of us down to D'Olier Sreet to give up a pint of the red stuff. We all rolled in and, one-by-one, realised that for a variety of reasons, including foreign nationality, recent illnesses, iron deficiency, unprotected sex with dubious characters and regular, enthuiastic consumption of various class A drugs, we wouldn't be able to donate. I won't say what my excuse was but let me assure you that there's never been a problem with my iron levels!

So, I went in last Thursday evening and filled out the questionnaire they give you when you arrive. There's lots of questions about drug use, medical history and general well-being etc. to consider. You have to answer no to all the questions. Which is easy because nobody would ever say yes to any of them! Not to a stranger at least. If the answer to any of the questions was yes, I think I'd just bin the form and run for the hills. No need to let a middle-aged woman know what you've been up to.. As it was, I was brought into a consultation room where a man looked at my form and asked me all the questions again. As if I might answer the question 'have you had unprotected sex with someone who has paid for sex in the last 12 months' any differently the second time around. Unless, of course, they think you might have odne it in the time you were waiting between completing the form and having the consultation. It's possible I guess.

So after I passed the test, I was taken into a room where my blood was tested for iron content (or something - I wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying) and then I was led into the Bloody Chamber. Actually that's not what it was called but I thought it sounded better. The woman taking blood out of me didn't laugh though.. They took my blood pressure first which was good, I think. 100 over 60. That's good, isn't it? After that they tried to find a vein which was a bit of an effort. I've never been the veiniest of boys really - although the same can't be said for me being the vainest of boys, a title for which I've been competing aggressively for some time now. In the end, they gave up on my left arm, moved on to the right and hit gold. Or blood, I suppose. And that was it. I was given a little dog toy (but not a toy dog, which might have been fun) to exercise my fist, told not to cross my legs (which seemesed a bit silly - but I guess it's really important) and spend about 10 minutes chating to a lovely woman about rugby and tennis. Two subjects that I dont really have 10 minutes worth of chitterchatter going spare. Still - i held in and waited patiently while she extracted a pint of really red blood from my right arm. I'm sure everyone says that their blood seems really dark but it did.. Much darker than when you cut a finger or something.

Afterwards I went off to the little canteen and had chocolate and Guinness. They actually give you Guinness. I thought that was a bit of a myth but they really did. In a way I was worried Id be one of those people who faints after they give blood but afterwards I was a little put out that I felt fine. I was hoping for some kind of wooziness or something. Just for kicks really. But no, I felt fine throughout. It really is quite painless. I'm actually a little embarassed that it took me this long to give blood. I expect I'll be back sooner rather than later. I'm going to find out this week what kind of blood I've got. I hope it's something rare. I expect it won't be though.


Actually, if anyone from the Blood Transfusion Board is reading (you never know - someone claiming to be from Dublin Port posted last week!), I have to give them top marks for the operation in there. I know that it's their job to make people feel good and well looked after but they're really doing great work.

Go on - drop in some time and give them a pint. You'll feel better and, more importantly, so will someone else.

Squirreled Away


I was up in the Botanic Gardens on Saturday and it was overrun with these little feckers. It was the same up in the Phoenix Park last week. I dunno - I think this buggers have been getting by on their cuteness for too long. It seems I'm not the only one.

Maybe it's because I'm a redhead that I feel like I have to stick up for my squirrel brothers but clearly these grey bullys have been pushing their luck lately. And they're killing the trees and knocking over birdfeeders too (although in fairness that doesn't sound like the most heinous offence).

Not sure that this is the answer though.. Squirrel, egg and chips, anyone?

Friday, October 19, 2007

Some films

Spoiler Alert!!

Kings is the Irish language version of Jimmy Murphy's play 'The Kings of the Kilburn High Road' and if you didn't know it was a play going in, you'd probably have guessed by the time it ended. In the late 1970s, six friends leave Connemara and travel to London in search of work, fortune and a few jars. Jumping forward to 2007, we find that while they all managed to find work of one kind or another - at least for a while, only one has found any kind of fortune. However, all of them, of course, have managed to find a few jars. And a few after that.. One of the 6 has died, having supposedly slipped onto the tracks and under an oncoming tube and the remaining 5 come together for his funeral. Simmering resentments between the 5 old friends come to the fore over the course of a drunken wake in the back room of their local boozer.. It's a hard old film to get through and there's not a lot of laughs to be had. Which is to say that there's no laughs to be had whatsoever. But it's nice to see a mostly accomplished Irish film, even if it's a little stagey by times..

Speaking of accomplished Irish films, Garage has arrived in Irish cinemas weighed down with ecstatic reviews and glowing recommendations. I'm not so sure.. It’s a slight enough story about Josie, a simple-minded garage attendant in a small Irish village. Josie lives along, has no family and is the butt of most people’s jokes. His boss sends a surly 15 year-old to work in the Garage with Josie and gradually they get to know each other. Josie buys drinks for the young lad and his friends and, in return, the teenagers let Josie hang around with them.. Eventually, Josie makes a foolish misjudgement that sets a sequence of events in motion that leads to a heartbreaking conclusion. Nothing happens quickly in Garage but what does happen is credible and happens at its own pace. Pat Shortt is terrific as Josie but I’m not sure the film is the masterpiece that many claim it to be. It does seem that that every few years an Irish film arrives on our screens to much praise but is quickly forgotten. I can’t help feeling that Garage may suffer the same fate. Irish critics tend to operate a policy of ‘shower with praise first and ask questions later’ when it comes to films. Still, for all that, Garage is well worth a look..

And then there was Control, Anton Corbijn’s much praised biopic of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis who died aged 23 in 1980. It’s a great-looking film and I’m finding it hard to think of much that’s wrong with it. I suppose if you’ve no interest in the story then it might be a bit of a slog. In fairness though, I’ve never had much time for Joy Division’s music but I was taken along by the energy and excitement of a new band making music and finding an audience. And then the realisation amongst the band members that Curtis’ epilepsy and depression was in danger of undoing their potential.. I read recently that none of the band really took his depression too seriously and never thought he might harm himself. One can only wonder what might have happened if they could have helped him. Although I suppose they were just kids.. Sam Riley, a musician with little acting experience is terrific as Curtis, overcome with guilt about his failed relationships, anxiety about his growing fame and fear over his epileptic attacks. Samantha Morton, perhaps the finest English actor of the day, is completely believable as Debbie, Curtis’ wife. The film has been based on Debbie Curtis’ book, Touching From a Distance, and Morton manages to find the right balance in her portrayal of Debbie from teenage girlfriend to wife and mother, capturing the loss of innocence and optimism as Curtis isolates her and pushes her aside. And the scene where she comes home to find Curtis body is extraordinary. It’s shot from outside the house and is held together by her performance alone and she does a fantastic job with it. It’s also worth saying that, for a film dealing with depression and suicide, there’s a lot of humour too. Obviously any film with Tony Wilson as a main character is going to have a few laughs at his expense, but Toby Keppell deserves a nod for his humourous portrayal of Rob Bretton, Joy Division’s manager. In fact in a film that’s going to bring a lot of attention to Sam Riley and Samantha Morton for their performances, I think Keppell very quietly was the star of the show..

And the soundtrack is fantastic!

And finally, The Counterfeiters.. What a grim, challenging and ambiguous film this is.. In 1936, Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch, a Jewish criminal, known throughout the underworld as the greatest forger in Germany is arrested by Inspector Herzog of the Berlin Fraud Squad. Salomon is sent to a concentration camp where his illustrations and pictures of guards earn him special privileges. Eventually he is moved to a special wing in the Sachsenhausen camp where Herzog, his captor years earlier, is ruuning a top secret forgery unit, Operation Bernhard. Salomon is put in charge of a team of artists, printers and bankers who’ve been plucked from various camps and instructed to produce forgeries of foreign currency, specifically sterling and dollars. The unit are housed separately to all the other prisoners and are given luxury motivational treats like bedsheets and a ping pong table. Salomon and the inmates are left with a choice. Do they produce the forgeries that will be flooded into the market and prolong the Nazi war effort or do they try to sabotage the operation risking their own lives. This isn’t some kind of heroic Escape to Victory caper though. The choices are real and complicated and the hero of the film, we have to remind ourselves, is a criminal after all. He’s struggling to decide what’s the right thing to do and what’s the criminal thing to do. His instinct is to produce the greatest forgeries of all time but to say he's conflicted would be putting it mildly. He wants to stay alive while some of his colleagues, particularly Burger, a Communist printer whose wife has been killed trying to escape from Aushwitz, are prepared to give up their lives in order to sabotage the Nazi plan. When the war ends, the prisoners in the forgery unit have to justify themselves and their actions to the other prisoners that have been living in atrocious conditions just yards away.

The Counterfeiters is a riveting film about morality and life and death decisions. Was Salomon a hero? Did he do the right thing? Did he betray his country or save his unit? I'm still not sure that I know and I’ve been trying not to think too much about what I'd do in the same situation..

Incidentally, and here's the spoiler, all these films feature suicides of varying importance to the plot. That's 4 in a row. It's time for some comedies!

Go on - tell us what you really think.

Had to laugh at this report from breakingnews this morning.. So another truck drives into a bridge in town and screws up rush hour traffic for everyone. I love the quote from Iarnród Éireann's spokesman. A man who clearly isn't interested in mincing his words anymore..

Iarnród Éireann has described the truck driver responsible for this morning's incident as an "idiot" who failed to check his height and his route.

"The bridges around the Grand Canal Dock area are visibly very low," a spokesman said. "It takes a peculiar type of moron not to be aware of that."


Now there's a man who's prepared to say what the rest of us are thinking.

And what's with these dodgy drivers? The poor old Dice Bar still hasn't re-opened since a bin lorry drove into the side of the it while trying to avoid an oncoming tram..

Friday, October 12, 2007

Destructive criticism

These ads for Dublin Port started appearing in newspapers a couple of months ago.There's a lot of good work being produced in design, illustration and advertising these days and occasionally some bad work. Bad doesn't come close to describing this stuff though. Previously I'd only seen the Joyce and Behan versions but this morning I spotted the Beckett one on a bus shelter. I did a bit of research when I got into the office and discovered that there's another 4 to come. And they're getting worse. The illustrations are terrible, the colours make me queasy and the hierarchy of the text is all over the place. There's no consistency in the message that's being communicated and even the copy itself (with the exception of the extracts from the writers themselves) looks like it was written by a 12 year old. From Lithuania. No offence intended to any Lithaunian readers..

According to the blurb over on Dublin Port's website, The campaign reacquaints Dubliners with the humour, wit, irreverence, vision, and insight which has endeared these Irish writers not only to the Irish but to the world at large. Dublin Port Company’s aim is also to capture the imagination of the travelling public and to encourage them to follow in the footsteps of these great writers. The campaign will bring Irish writers to the public in a new, more accessible way.

Weaving these portraits together with some of their famous quotes we see that Art, Literature and Sea travel can be combined for a great textured life.


Yeah, that's great and all but why are the illustrations so bad? And why is there no consistent message? And why is there a need to tell us that Oscar Wilde spent several years in the closet? I haven't seen bad work on this large a scale for some time.. I don't like to put people down and God knows there's lots of bad work that we could pick on but I mean, look at these..



Mommie Dearest

I mean, really? Who swings a child by the ankles? "It was not immediately clear what sentence she could receive." Well, no - I wouldn't think there's been much precedent on this one..

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Outta the way, skippy!

Clever men, clever words..

I've only discovered today that Stephan Fry has a blog. And what a fantastic discovery! I shouldn't be surprised. The following paragraph is from a long essay, or blessay as he calls it, about Fame. Why we crave it, what it means to be famous, what it means to not be famous and so on. And on. It's quite long but well worth a look. The section I'm pasting here is his response to frequently being asked 'What fame's like?'

"Is it fun? Or, as student journalists always ask, what’s it like? ‘What’s it like working with Natalie Portman, what’s it like doing QI, what’s it like being famous?’ I don’t know what it is like. What is being English like? What is wearing a hat like? What’s eating Thai red curry like? I don’t believe that I can answer any question formulated that way. So, student journalists, tyro profilers and rooky reporters out there, seriously, quite seriously never ask a ‘what’s it like’ question, it instantly reveals your crapness. I used to try getting surreal when asked the question and say things like ‘being famous is like wearing blue pyjamas at the opera. It’s like kissing Neil Young, but only on Wednesdays. It’s like a silver disc gummed to the ear of a wolverine. It’s like licking crumbs from the belly of a waitress called Eileen. It’s like lemon polenta cake but slightly wider. It’s like moonrise on the planet Posker.’ I mean honestly. What’s it like?? Stop it at once."

I also found this link yesterday on the Word website. It's a list of the 10 most incomprehensible Bob Dylan interviews of all time.. I've watched a few of them and, really, you don't need to waste your time, but I did laugh when I read his account on why he decided to become a star..

"Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?"

That's it - I'm done! Take away my keyboard!

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The Last Waltz

It took me a long time to figure out The Band. I got a Best Of many years ago that I couldn't get to grips with at all but a few years ago I picked up The Last Waltz on DVD and it all fell into place. If you haven't seen it, you really should. I know it looks like a bunch of old crusty beardies (actually at the time I think they were younger than I am now!) singing strange songs about civil war veterans and alcoholic gamblers but there's so much to enjoy from the music and old road stories to the special guests (Van the Man!), not to mention the set design and Martin Scorcese's direction. You can pick it up for less than the price of 2 pints in town. I watched it again last night and have spent a bit of time this evening looking at other clips online..

Anyway, at Robbie Robert's instigation, it was supposed to be their last gig but the rest of them carried on for many years afterwards without him. Looking at footage on youtube it's kinda pathetic to see what became of them. Even after Richard Manuel killed himself in 1986, the others limped on without him through the 90s like a once-great fighter who's been beaten too many times but just doesn't know how to stop..

In the film, Rick Danko is the star of the show. Boyish good looks, pots of nervous energy (enhanced by drugs, I supppose) and the best voice in a band that was blessed with not one, but three great singers. And a fantastic musician of course. There's a heartbreaking sequence where he's interviewed by Scorcese in the months after the concert. Scorcese asks him what he's been doing since the last show and it becomes clear that apart from working on a solo record that was never going to amount to anything, he hadn't been doing much at all. As much as Robertson was sick of touring, it seemed that Danko and the others needed to be out on the road. I never got to see him - he played in Whelans shortly before he died in 1999 and I've always wished I'd gone to see him.. Tragic is probably pushing it a bit but it does seem a great shame that most of the artists that were guests at The Last Waltz - Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Joni, Neil Diamond (eeek!), Emmylou Harris etc. are all still going strong but the musicians they were there to honour are either dead or long forgotten..

Anyway, in the film Robertson talks about why he was quitting touring. He says something about life on the road being an impossible life and he was getting out before it killed him. Look at this clip of Rick singing It Makes No Difference 20 years after singing the same song at The Last Waltz and you can't really blame him. Danko died in his sleep 2 years later. A real shame.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Clery's clock at 8pm

I had some broken phone issues at the weekend and instead of endless texts saying 'where are you now?' and 'i'll be there in 10 minutes' I had to go back to the old way of meeting people. Which is to say I had to nominate a location and a time and then show up at said location at the agreed time. I believe that sometime in the last century that's how people met up and arranged things..

Seriously, it was a revelation. I'm not suggesting for a second that i'm prepared to chuck out the phone or anything like that but for a day or so it was a kick to not have to rely on it for constant updates and pointless jabbering.. And nobody does pointless jabbering like I do!

There's beauty everywhere..

I was in a taxi the other heading into town. I don't normally take taxis during the day as it always seems a bit of a shame not to get the exercise instead but we were running late and I had no way to contact the person I was meeting.. So we jumped into the first cab i saw and told the smelly old man driving the smelly old car where we needed to go.

On we went and since we were chatting in the back, we weren't paying much attention to the driver other than to note that he was listening to some sort of power ballads compilation album. You know the sort - Winds of Change, Total Eclipse of the Heart, that sort of thing. Anyway, Jennifer Rush's The Power of Love came on and after we stopped talking for a moment I realised he was singing along. But instead of belting it out like La Rush did, he was singing very slowly and deliberately under his breath. Try imagining the broad Dublin accent of Ronnie Drew mixed with the whispery, economy of Leonard Cohen's delivery. And then drop it several octaves.

When he worked up to the bit about 'The sound of your heart beating, made it clear suddenly. The feeling that I can't go on is light-years away' I was almost in floods! I said almost.. Funny how on the right day, in the right weather (it was a lovely sunny Saturday) you can find beauty in the strangest places..

Made me laugh..

This is an ad that's been running on tv here for the last year or so for the Financial Regulator.

And this is a bunch of messers on the bus.. They may have been drinking but there's something to admire in it..