We can get them for you wholesale..

I had to drive out to Glasnevin yesterday morning before work and ended up spending about an hour stuck in traffic coming back in to the city. Sitting there, going nowhere fast with hundreds of other drivers, I reflected again on how happy I am to live relatively near to town. If I drive in to work I can get there in about 15 minutes from the house. If I walk (not in this weather, of course) it takes about 40 minutes. I don't know how other people deal with the traffic but for me, life's too short to spend hours sitting in a queue listening to morning radio..

Anyway, there I was, crawling along the side of an industrial estate, when I noticed this sign on my left. Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries Transformation & Prayer City.

I'd love to know what's going on in there.. Miracles made to order perhaps?

Arts Lives

Another great episode of RTE's Arts Lives last night, this time featuring author John Banville. Having sat through Monday night's creepy and over-the-top Death Duties (State Pathologist Marie Cassidy describing her role, interrupted by lots of grisly reconstructions), it was refreshing, after last week's excellent Graham Linehan episode to see another quality and insightful documentary on RTE.

Banville is an author I've never learned to love. His work has often frustrated me and I'm afraid I have to admit that I never even finished his Booker winning The Sea. Perhaps I should go back to it. Lately I find I have less time to read but more desire to do so..

Anyway, the documentary was terrific. He was frank, funny, a little egotistic and apologetic where he felt he needed to be. His occasional pretensiousness seemed to genuinely embarrass him, which endeared him to the viewer. This viewer, at least. He displayed some remorse for a withering review he wrote of Ian McEwan's Saturday for the New Tork Times. In his defence he said that the review was more of a reaction to the other reviews he read at the time and not the book itself but still he said he was sorry for how he came across. And then he qualified it by saying he was a little bit sorry but not too much!

The documentary ended with Banville talking about death and how he had no fear of it but that he didn't ever want it to happen. He talked of how much joy he got from life (I believe he used the word exquisite to describe it), and as the documentary ended with shots of him walking around a rainy Dublin, it was hard not to agree with him.

Terrific stuff all round. And with features on Patrick McCabe and Ronnie Drew still to come in the series, it looks like it's going to be well worth setting the dvd recorder for Tuesday nights. If I knew how to set the dvd recorder..

Josh sticks

I've really tried but I can't stop listening to this song. Sometimes a song just gets in and there's nothing you can do to get it out again. Nick Hornby, writing in 31 Songs, describes first hearing Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" and having to listen to it again and again until he 'solved' it. That's how I've been with Josh Ritter's 'Right Moves' for the last few days.

Recently I started going through a series of concerts that npr in the states has made available for downloading. There's a great archive of live shows there and I've been dipping in and out. Some are better than others but so far I've found real belters from Nick Lowe, Cat Power and Arcade Fire. And now, added to the lsit, is Josh Ritter. I bought Ritter's first album 'Golden Age of Radio' about 5 years ago. I think he's from the Amrerican mid-west but he was touring regularly over here and getting a bit of attention. It's a good album but it never made enough of an impression for me to stick with him. Since then, he's been over here dozens of time and released several records but apart from the odd thing on the radio I've not heard much of him at all. The radio broadcast from Washington is from last Autumn and features a decent cross section of work from his catalogue to date. He seems to be an engaging live performer who, as well as having a fantastic band, appears to have a strong bond with his audience and a nice line in self-depracating storytelling.

So in the middle of the show comes 'The Right Moves'. I'm not saying it's the best thing I've ever heard and I'm not saying I'll even remember it 6 months from now (actually, I suspect I will) but have a listen and tell me that it's not great. I know it's deeply unfashionable and certainly doesn't sit comfortably in any current music trends but as pop songs go I think it's a cracker. It's got horns! It's got a fantastic bass line (check out the bass player's moustache too)! It's got a chorus that could amost be a Dolly Parton song (and that's a good thing) Better still, it's got a band that actually seems to be enjoying the experience of playing it! No miserable self-concious shoe-gazers here..

And check out the lyrics.. So it seems that our hero has been dumped by a girl but she's come back to him for a second chance. He treats her suspiciously and asks her where she's been and what she's doing back in town. While he's dithering, she kisses him and he's right back to where he started. The last verse is where all his insecurities and fears revisit him..

I heard the night birds picking up the song
You threw your hair back and sang along
And I realized that I might lose you, you might lose me
Drift apart in the night and never know why and not know how
I said what if we are like the Northern sky?
What if there are things that come between us that we cant take back and we cant make right?
You said I don't know darling, but I'm here with you
and were coming to the chorus now!

I love the way, right at the end, when the listener is expecting an answer or a promise from the girl, Ritter steps away from the narration competely and directs us to the chorus. There's no easy solution or happy ending. Instead there's ambivalence and a little faith. And isn't that just the way that it works in real life too? Now, perhaps he just didn't know how to finish the song and copped out of ending it properly but I think it's fantastic. Perhaps I've just been drinking too much happy juice lately!

Again, it'll probably pass in time and I'll never want to listen to it again. That's ok. The thing is that this weekend it's brought me a lot of happiness and isn't that the point of music anyway?



Enjoy.

What kind of washery is this?

And so it begins..

This is a clip from last Friday night's RTE news. Barack Obama has very distant relatives in Moneygall, Co. Offaly so RTE sent Ray Colgan (kicking and screaming, one would hope) to Offaly to meet the locals and see how election fever has gripped that particular part of the country. I suppose you could say that it's all a bit of harmless news but it always annoys me to see Irish people setting themselves up for a bit of ridicule at the first sign of a tv camera.

"He's one of our own" said the woman holding the baby. No, love - he really isn't.

"Maybe Moneygall will be the Ballyporeen of the future" said Obama's distant relative. Well, we can all dream, can't we?

Of course the situation isn't helped by Obama himself. I was watching the news on ITV reporting from Iowa on Friday night. When the reporter approached Obama and told him he was from England, the candidate responded by saying that he had ancestors in Ireland and was looking forward to going over and having a pint someday..

It's only going to get worse. Incidentally I thought the Irish were supposed to be Clinton supporters. Seems to me like we're just backing the winning horse after it crosses the finish line. Far from being interested in US politics, we're just interested in whatever actors and rock stars tell us about US politics. As far as I can tell Irish people aren't even interested in politics here, never mind the US.

Anyway, sure isn't is all just a bit of craic..

It's all on youtube..

Christopher Walken is a a strange old fish, isn't he? He's been terrible in so many bad films yet, amongst most of my generation, he's considered to be a bit of a legend. I don't really know why though. Is it just because of that great cameo in Pulp Fiction and a Fatboy Slim video? Possibly. Anyway, I saw this on Satuday Zoo when it was on tv years ago but haven't seen it since. I was talking about it last night and I found it this morning on youtube.. Of course I did - isn't everything is on youtube?

All it takes is one bad Apple

Disaster!

I was over in London just before Christmas and Steve gave me an old wireless router that he had going spare. I took it home and spent last Saturday trying to hook it up to the broadband box in my house. After a little headscratching, several swear words directed at my network configuration and many system restarts, I got it all working. In a flurry of excitement and industry I moved all the cables downstairs, hooked up the cordless phone that I got months ago and settled optimistically into a brave new world of wireless internet and cordless telephones..

Having spent the next few days painting my bathroom (red, as you're asking) and finally fixing the stain on the ceiling of my living room (you know - the one that miraculously appeared as Garth Hudson from The Band) I was sitting at home on New Year's Day anticipating a year of frenzied blog activity and wireless online shenanigans when my Macbook Pro died. Dead. Nothing. No power at all. Dead to the world. At first I thought it was just the battery but when I plugged in the battery charger nothing happened.. I've been looking for clues online and while there does seem to be a problem with Macbook Pro batteries (this is where Steve in London smiles to himself and says 'I told you so') but I don't understand why it won't start-up at all when it's connected to the mains..

So for the next while I'm going to be blogging from work and relying on stolen moments on friends' laptops.. The previous post was done on a Dell PC.. Seriously, how do people use those things? I know this subject has been done to death but going from my laptop to a PC is like changing from the car you're used to driving to another one where the pedals are in the glove box, the gears are under your seat and you can only see out the back window. But hey - I'm nothing if not a quick learner so how can it possibly be a problem. I'm not going to let a dead laptop stop me from pressing on with new year's resolution no. 1!

I just hope I haven't lost the novel I was working on at the time. I was about 3 sentences into the first paragraph when it happened. But they were quality sentences.

Coming around again..

So this is 2008? Where on earth does the time go? Same place as my hair, I suppose*. It seems like no time at all since 2007 was knocking on our door looking to come in and now we've pushed it out the back door, taken out the good china and welcomed in a shiny new year. I've been avoiding putting up any kind of year-end list because, well.., because I just haven't been blogging at all lately. If I had the time in December, you would have read about how the best record I heard all year was Wilco's Sky Blus Sky, the best film I saw was The Lives of Others and the best book was Catherine O'Flynn's 'What Was Lost'. And Wilco's show in Vicar Street would have been taking home the prize in the highly competitive 'Best gig of the year that wasn't Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in December' category. Although Richard Hawley's gig (also at Vicar Street) was terrific. He's back next month. You should go.

Here's some other things that happened in 2007.

January: I passed my driving test.

February: I crashed my car.

March: I signed up, and started training, for the Four Peaks challenge.

April: Asked myself why I had signed up for the Four Peaks challenge.

May: I started this blog (a pathetic 86 posts in 2007. Must try harder in 2008).

June: I started jogging in the park.

July: I hurt my knee jogging in the park.

August: I turned thirty-bloody-five.

September: Finally gave in and bought so-called 'media wanker' glasses confirming
what people have been saying for years.

October: Endured first ever massage. Traumatised by mid-massage interruption,
disappointed by non-offer of happy ending.

November: Started jogging again.

December: Stopped jogging. Again.

So that was last year but what about 2008? Well I can bang out a few new year's resolutions as well as the next man. Apart from the same ones that everyone else has (lose weight, get fit, drink less, exercise more, watch less tv, finish Anne Enright's 'The Gathering', call home more often, start reading the news sections of the Sunday papers and not just the glossies and the tv guide, clear out the shed, go to church, help the aged, watch our carbon footprint and eat more vegetables) here are some of mine:

1. Blog more. I know - it's an obvious one, isn't it? The last few months of the year showed a bit of a drop-off in volume, if not the quality (he kidded himself!) of the posts. I really enjoy doing this and want to be doing it more so let's see how I can get on with increasing the number of entries. The lack of posts certainly isn't a reflection on the amount of things I'd like to post about so it's just a case of finding time and, let's face it, it's not like I'm rushed off my feet here at the Towers.

2. Stop buying stuff! I don't want to buy or receive another dvd or book until I've exhausted at least 50% of the things sitting on my shelf. Seriosuly, it's getting ridiculous. Another Christmas has passed and with it I'm adding to my collection of books and films. I could stay in for a year and still I wouldn't get through it all so this year I'm going ot make a real effort to get stuck into the backlog. Although you're mad if you think I'm going to get to the end of Guy Ritchie's Revolver (what was I thinking?!!) or finish The Gathering.

3. Take more time off. It's a hard life, isn't it? I'm carrying the better part of 2 weeks holidays over from 2007. That's becasue I didn't really get away last year at all. Hopefully that's going to change in 08. Already I have vague plans to go to France and New York this year and I'm overdue a trip to Prague too. I had hoped to have a long break last Autumn but it didn't happen and by Christmas I was running on empty. That's not going to happen this year.

4. Do more things. Even it means doing them alone. It's funny how few things we do on our own. By that, I'm referring to gigs, cinema, theatre etc.. I skipped a lot of events I wanted see last year because I couldn't find anyone who wanted to come along. Yet one of the reasons I loved the Wilco gig in November so much was because I was alone and didn't need to worry about whether or not the person with me was enjoying the show. Of course, nobody likes to be johnnynomates but if you can get over the feleing that everyone in the building is looking at you and things you're a sad case, it's really quite liberating!

5. Lose weight. Hey - I'm just like everybody else! Seriosuly,once again December has taking its toll on my waistline. I've always been quite fortunate in that whenever I try to lose weight I can do it easily. However, at the same time, I've always been quite unfortunate that those occasions are few and far between! But January is one of them and already I'm feeling better. Amazing the difference that eating vegetables and fish and drinking lots of water makes. The Government really ought to try to spread the word about that!

Happy new year to all of you.

*I think I've stolen that line from Bill Bryson. If not, feel free to correct me.