Random Brand

What is soon to happen around here

2010-05-23T17:16:00.001+01:00

Stay tuned all two of you counting me and a Google spider. This is what will happen. Still love this lot in their prime.

Back like Lazarus Damn it

2009-07-23T13:52:00.001+01:00

This corner of the electric madness has been far too quiet for too long…
What better way to begin to re-energise than by off genre operatic absurdity. A mate of mine at my last gig reminded me of the genius of well timed Maiden when sitting at a desk helpless and enraged as a caged bear with a glued on clown suit. Excuse this rare lapse of taste and hear the wonderment…

Another great gone: Lux Interior checks out

2009-02-06T09:58:00.002Z

Went quite innocently yesterday to take a look at Microsoft's new very innovative celebrity related site, Wonderwall and the first news that I saw cut me down. Lux Interior dead from some heart thing. Much like the Ramones, many critics and sometime fans alike made the mistake of assuming that their unchanging style was some kind of postmodern, mannerist schtick. It was absolutely sincere. This was not a novelty act, it was Elvis, Iggy and a thousand and one garagepunk and rockabilly switchblade and speed nightmares vomited up into the post punk era. In the liner notes of their latest comp, Lux confessed that this assumption 'cuts us to our very core'. When everything around you is a joke, serious wickedness can be safely and stupidly ignored.

Lost Bands of the 80s Part XXX

2009-01-13T20:05:00.003Z

Got into these cats because I am a rabid Nick Cave fan and he dug them heavily. Former head of the LA Blondie Fan Club, overindulger and unwitting creator of hair metaller Vince Neil's early look Jeffery Lee Pierce had talent to spare. 4 great LPs, lineup changes, etc etc then total burnout. The Grim Reaper ended the chance of any comeback in 1996 when Jeffery died. A sad fate for a great band. Robert Johnson brought into the Hacienda can't fail to inspire.

The Brothers Johnson Get Enthused

2008-10-22T11:16:00.001+01:00

Friend in the office saw I was glum as a penguin in an Aga and suggested this. Further evidence that disco was a viable form which was drowned in too much product, Travolta trash and Rick Dees cheese.

A younger Young

2008-10-15T18:10:00.001+01:00

The BBC used to be cooler, in a way, than it is today. This is a potent example. Not much needs to be said about the song or the man, of course.

Italo guilt and the DX7 magicians

2008-08-22T23:44:00.002+01:00

I have a real soft spot for Italo. Long after Disco Duck banished disco from all but the most adventurous non-black or straight dancefloors, the ghost of the Munich machine kept stalking the continent. This unnamed fashion boy is just a front (most probably - apologies if not of course!) of some hidden beat genius.

Studio bound geniuz

2008-07-23T11:53:00.003+01:00

This is one of those bands that I have have never disliked but never dug. Their ridiculous name put me off like a badly monikered cocktail. Friend sent me a link to this vid. The song is wonderful in itself but the video is funny and at the same time well observed. It has the one fucking big single chip video camera in the studio look down to perfection and a narrative palindrome. Matt Berry is a midas of wonderment.

Why Can't We Live Together

2008-05-30T21:21:00.001+01:00

A friend sent this to many today in the office. I was not aware of it, nor Timmy Thomas at all. No idea who the alluring woman in need of a wardrobe change (or removal) is but the vid is ace. Looks a bit like the kind of footage one saw in DJ Shadow's 'Midnight in a perfect world' vid. Astonishing. So minimal and heartfelt.

And it goes on...Wire returns

2008-05-16T22:56:00.001+01:00

Been quiet again. As were Wire after 1979ish before emerging again in 1987 with pure genius of a more ‘New Wave’ informed nature. I love this track. It somehow reminds me of teenage sexual fumblings but I doubt that is what it is about at all. Just gorgeous.

A different dimension of the 80s again

2008-03-16T13:25:00.001Z

It is a real shame that Marc Almond and Dave Ball are often thought of as proverbial one hit wonders by the foolish. It is true that after a wonderful debut LP and some singles the creative fuel tank seemed to get a bit thinner and contaminated with West End theatre refuse. However, before 1983 and everything going safe and wrong one could see this chameleonic combination of Motown, Kenneth Anger fetishism and Kraftwerk on mainstream TV. Sad how times change...

Better Days? Depeche Mode's Polar Opposite in 1985

2008-02-03T00:58:00.001Z

Once again we have a band that producers of today would still be aware of (not to mention those that name now past it fashionista club nights). The 80s can suck if all one remembers are Leg Warmers and Wham! but hipsters have long known there is more to matters than this. These cats from Sheffield made some serious art. As much as I love synthpop, this is about as pop as a pulsar and is the industrial alternative.

Bob Fossil's Disco Love

2007-12-02T18:26:00.002Z

I'd totally forgotten about this song. Never was into these cats but it ends up being played on The Mighty Boosh by Bob Fossil (Rich Fulcher) doing some innovative dancing. I tracked it down as it was a sample on one of my favourite De La Soul tracks - the slinky beats and synth work are genius. Damn. Easy to laugh at the video now but in a cold, recession shocked 1981 it is genius. It speaks ill of our era that I doubt anything that is a number one single now will age this well.

"The British Phil Spector" has a moment of genius

2007-10-28T11:39:00.001Z

Joe Meek was kind of a "British Phil Spector", but there was so much more to him than that. His concept record 'I hear a new world' and his gleeful use of electronics produced a unique and innovative sound - mostly recorded in a small studio on the Holloway Road. The lady heard Siouxsie on the radio (presumably plugging her ho-hum new record) saying that this track was the first one that captured her imagination. I can see why - and a lot of the ethereal best of her sound is hinted at here. This is a gothic/western/romantic masterpiece. The fact it is from 1961 is all the more remarkable.

ESG feeling moody

2007-09-12T12:51:00.001+01:00

Well here is another example of the divergence in taste between the producer and the consumer in music and film. Producers have stayed eclectic and have pillaged (or just Xeroxed)references that the genre segregated, limited mainstream media ensures regular consumers never see or hear.

ESG were the original early 80s hip as a stack of jeans minimal funkateers. Noticed by the likes of A Certain Ratio and countless hip hop cats - along with the producers of all sorts of pop. As noted elsewhere, they played the Hacienda on opening night and the Paradise Garage on its closing night. Sadly, they seem now to have announced their retirement but here is a vital live performance of 'Moody'.

The Beatles - Improved

2007-09-07T17:17:00.001+01:00

Sorry to hear that she split up with Budgie and am not so sure about the new record, but at her peak...damn...

The man who could have been Prince

2007-08-31T21:35:00.001+01:00

Funny how the culture market and the capacity of artists for elephantine chemical indulgence mediates between excellence and mediocrity. Rick James lost it by the early 80s in a storm of drink and powder but was a mega, mega genius at his best - melding funk and 70s rock into a perfect fusion. He became a figure of fun a tragedy but forget all that while he shows you what 80s funk could have been. Enjoy.

Das Model

2007-08-09T15:07:00.001+01:00

This is just about perfect. Why is today so stupid compared to the imagined futures of the past?

Synth sleaze

2007-08-06T17:08:00.001+01:00

Stupid, embarassing softcore that inspired countless Italian cannibal related riffs. But the music is nifty...

Honest TV

2007-06-28T13:49:00.001+01:00

I really like honesty on TV. Too many programmes fake a social agenda of some kind or pretend they have some value outside of momentary flickers of interest between the adverts. The Japanese have no such qualms. Not only are they supremely creative even in contexts of low intent, but make no attempt to hide their glee in doing so. That said, anyone playing a one string bass to this needs to have a gfood think about themselves.

Local narratives - unending cities

2007-06-09T15:33:00.001+01:00

A local narrative
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman

Camilo Jose Vergara is a major influence on my own amateurish photography efforts and the link above to his Invincible Cities project is a wonderful way to explore what he’s doing. It links anthropology, social history, architectural theory and anything else relevant into an evolving chronicle of the spaces and places in America’s cities that evolve through decay into some kind of new stasis – as no particular configuration seems to be stable enough to sustain itself for long. Barber shops become liquor stores then bookies before being knocked down or else devolving into bookies. Camilo has the patience to chronicle this process of decay, rebirth and sometimes death over decades and the results are a stark lesson to anyone who thinks that gentrification and urban renewal are swift or simple processes. Urban decay is a US specialty (with some cities depopulating by half or more over a few decades – like Detroit) but has made an appearance in the UK as well. Over here, it often is a kind of donut shaped rot where the inner bits stay rich and healthy to some degree, as do some of the outer suburban belt while the in-between parts die. Our part of London is kind of in between the phenomena and needs just a bit of a push to get better, but is subject to neglect as it is not quite awful enough to merit means-tested attention.

2007-02-04T19:33:00.000Z

Return of an old hero: A film that won’t suck

I spend a lot of time on here ranting about how much contemporary film, at least that you can see down the multiplex blows dead buffalo. I maintain this is the case (Dreamgirls anyone?).

On a small scale there is still some hope. David’s Lynch’s latest effort has a UK distributor, finally and we will be able to see it in March. I am a bit upset about the fact it was shot on MiniDV (which is sort of like Picasso painting on bogroll) but their is no denying the flexibility and low costs of digital. After seeing this Italian trailer, my eyes are drooling…

2007-01-21T20:12:00.000Z

Better Days: Detroit '82

This came through on the ironic tip in this week's Holy Moly! and was presented as almost comedic. Punters were urged to sing the words of Madonna's risble lite-house cash in 'Vogue'. Wrong. This track, considered by many to be the first Detroit techno record, cuts as deep and fresh as a gin-soaked razor even today. A Number of Names have much to be proud of...And forget the clothes and hair these disco scenesters are the real thing. Damn.

2006-12-30T16:51:00.000Z

Holidaze Special Brew

Its a trusim that this special time of year is especially notable for novelty TV. Could not help noticing a reference in The Guide to this choice piece of BabyBel forom 1977. Lucas did it but disowned it, yet it reveals much of his artistic vision. He may be a cynical hack but this really does take the biscuit...

Microwaved Rubber Nachos

2006-12-10T18:20:00.000Z

Better than the real thing?
Hmmm. Well I can't help but notice posters saturating nearly every surface for Eragon - some kind of fantasy rubbish in the style of Lord of the Rings. Now genre has always gone in cycles - going all the way back to Shakespeare's day when a successful play with say a disguised ruler as a theme would lead to a spate of things of inspired imitation.

While I have less than no interest in the fantasy genre (I associate it with both spotty sados and Rick Wakeman) I noticed this campaign because it was yet another example of the mainstream appropriation of B. While most B markets were dead on their feet before video delivered the death blow, the copycat film market stayed with us. A trip to the video store would reveal 'Carnosaur' next to Jurassic Park etc as the knuckle dragging punters would have just seen the big budget B yet would be hungry for a knockoff. Eragon shows that just like with that run of modern day sword and sandalness that followed Gladiator no market is left to anyone other than the mainstream these days. But they do take their time.

The taglines on the posters make me think of a booming voice but the words are pure comedy: "When darkness falls. The. Last. Dragon...Will choose its rider who will be a fucking annoying kid hero of some kind."

Back when people with style, speed and a sense fun were riffing off the latest hot product from Hollywood you got things like the Star Wars on the cheap wonder referenced above. I'll take it over the likes of Eragon any day - rather than just reheat what it is copying it adds things (like female flesh and David Hasselhoff) that were missing the first time round. Lovely. And exposes just how silly Star Wars was in the first place in the process...

Shanghaied at the Odeon

2006-11-09T20:57:00.000Z

A rainy day and an unavoidable family outing turned into every cinemaphile’s nightmare: an enforced trip to a mainstream multiplex. Saw the best thing on there – The Departed. Marty Scorcsese’s rip off riff on the HK neo-noir classic Infernal Affairs. At least I did not have to watch The Devil Wears Prada, which would have made me eat my own hands before driving drunk with nothing but stumps in a stolen van towards LA on a mission to bugger Anne Hathaway.

It was awful, especially knowing that this is as good as it gets in the plastic zone. Hit with clichés like hail, I had to stop myself guffawing. Jack Nicholson has clearly been dead since 1989. DiCaprio and Damon could barely carry a 30 second biscuit advert. Marky Mark still has three nipples.

What was sad is it was like eating a meal from a once great chef who has been restricted to the same rather small fridge for thirty years. The results are competent but wearily familiar and emphasise persistent flaws more than they recall past glories. Broad-brush Catholic ethnic hood stereotypes. The wonderful word: “fuck”. Cruxifiction metaphors. A self consciously ok record collection.

Hey, at least I did not have to sit through the costume turdbomb he did last, but the man behind a few of my all time favourites should be doing better than this. Damn.

Red asphalt and champagne

2006-09-10T22:19:00.000+01:00

Bavaesque moon
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Some crimes truly are beyond comprehension. Poverty can lead to moments of desperate depravity and tasteless violence, dysfunctional minds to worse (or at best the surreal – one of our neighbours was held up with a banana). However, there is one act that society should tolerate even less than drooling cretins yanking the wire through their pockets in the Curry’s TV section during Holby City or lubing up a bemused horse: Celebrity drunk driving.

There seems to have been a spate of this recently – Mel ‘Sugartits’ Gibson Nazi ranting, F-lister Caprice ‘Pissed on the road because I have VD please play net poker’ Bourret and most recently, the adjective-defying Paris ‘The only reason I could find Banksy cool again briefly’ Hilton all have been caught sauced at speed.

If you are a ‘sleb, you can always, always, always afford a taxi. Or even a fucking chauffer with a background in Formula One if you need some speed to go with the booze/gak/etc and want to take it to the next level. There is the argument that if one has a serious motor driving it is a thrill in itself, but being chained in a concrete hole with seatless bogs is a bit of a let down. I am glad Paris was caged for longer than convenient but saddened that she was in a circumstance of relative privacy rather than handcuffed to a bench in a cell filled with scatologically obsessive and very creative sexual deviants armed with laxatives, duct tape and a camcorder. She could also learn about decadence from the gentleman whose adventures are to be found on the link above…

Londimium and the Isblington troll

2006-07-28T19:14:00.000+01:00

Marker critics part 7673
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

If you put your ear to the ground of the media you can hear the sound of the great stampede after the next novelty, coming along like a bag of dog mess floating along a canal.

A couple of months ago I looked at the Observer Music Monthly, which is for the unhipster looking for the latest titles to make him the ‘forty quid bloke’ at HMV. On the cover was a young woman best described as a 4/10 edging down towards a 3, pretending to laugh on Primrose Hill to trail a feature by the intensely annoying Miranda Sawyer (an aging, expensively educated hack specialising in taking money for celebrating trivia) on ‘Lily the Kid: The perfect pop star.’

I soon realised, to my horror, that the bald-headed salt tadpoles of professional waste of skin and Listerine fairy Keith FUCKING ALLEN had spread his ignorant seed and begot an artiste of similar weight to himself. Her mouthy mockney ignorance, despite a string of expulsions from pricey schools was celebrated both by herself and the charming Miranda, the tone of whose prose read like the uncritical sweaty gruntings one would associate with some impossibly submissive sex act. Lily knows nothing, and even less about music. This gives her the blank slate of credibility.

Of course, despite having a manager for the six years it took her to break out like wind from a tramp’s trousers, its all down to her profile on MySpace. Hmmmm. In American marcomms there is a great term for simulated grass roots growth – ‘astroturfing’. One would have thought that allegedly trained journalists, bombarded 24/7 by PR would see through the con. In fact, a brave post on the Observer’s blog rumbled the shit by mentioning that when taking a mobile call at the close of an ‘innit’-erview she switched to a rather more plummy tone.

A few weeks later, she has emerged like a moth of wet bogroll from her media cuckoon and is everywhere, like the smell of rotting Durian fruits down an alleyway. I cast my eyes on another odious profile by mistake and she was lauded for her giggly admission that she does not know the difference between a guitar and a bass- a distinction that could be heard easily by an educationally subnormal squirrel monkey. It’s cool to be rich, dumb and well connected. The saturation marketing for this methane is everywhere, her airbrushed face all over the tube walls like bricks. One can only hope the backlash comes quick and fast like pissfoam. Maybe we should all watch people be unsafe instead…

Boggin boomboxen

2006-07-04T17:54:00.000+01:00

Feral in the Kitchens Section
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

A new social phenomena is exploding on our bus network like hot protein out of a one string guitar player’s pornopowered riffing. The latest generation of mobiles can store and play back low quality audio files with ease.

This is nothing new, but the wrong sort have figured it out. The type that regret that headphones make audio personal as you can’t share the latest bits of cynical, sugary ear excrement doing the rounds. Get on a rammed bendy bus and before you know it a clash of tinny, muffled beats, insipid sexual longings and phallocentric oaths will fill the air like the pong from rained on food waste.

It is my fantasy to don a suit of armour and strap a mid-80s bass heavy Hitachi model to my chest and board the bus banging out the reductivist sound of Detroit Booty Bass – the sound of a real street much harder than any local estate. People raised on dodgy 2-step and macho shouting would be blown away by the likes of DJ Assault chanting “ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS” over crude, jackhammer beats.

I did actually try this on a smaller scale – much to the chagrin of the lady of the house -loading the first verse of DJ Assault’s rather poor ‘Yo Relatives’ onto my handset and later when accosted by a lone chav larvae forcing out a muffled DIY CD:UK I took action. Slipping into a seat in the back opposite, I played the harsh sound of “YOUR MAMA YOUR DADDY YOUR SISTERS A HO. HO HO HO HO HO…” to see if a message was received. They turned up the crap, and I put it on repeat, bopping my head like an electroshock patient. This seemed to quiet things, though I am sorry to report that upon my exiting of the bus there was a window based exchange of masturbatory gestures. Maybe I am becoming feral too under the heat and pressure.

I’m certainly not alone. At my last visit to the Nordic temple of genteel shame (pIKEA) I noticed that one area in the kitchens section had been converted into an impromptu and very fragrant baby changing area, another had the evidence of shoplifted 15p tins of Swedish Perry consumed en masse in a moment of private pleasure. It made sense. You could start a commune in there if you had weapons to fend off the staff.

Sun sex sand and snotty screens

2006-05-30T20:06:00.000+01:00

Words to live by
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

As soon as I heard David Lynch’s Inland Empire would not be premiering in Cannes, any urine-sodden embers of interest I had in this self-congratulatory blingfest were extinguished. However, from afar matters remain amusing. The poor reception given to a risible film from a pointless potboiler mentioned before in these pages was encouraging, but will mean little to knuckle-draggers at the Odeon.

What was better was the judicious use of “Boo” at a criminally overrated dynastic daughter of a Holywood waster. I remember eating stale popcorn while confined in the dark, watching the celluloid spack that it is Godfather Part III and noticing a particularly wooden performance from a dark haired, nose based actrice. Nepotism was in the house, as emerging dazed from a blizzard of Bolivian and dubious winemaking, Francis was ensuring the family business had an auteristic future. Later on, she celebrated Scarlett Johansson’s rear and Bill Murray’s deadpan skills in a piece based on the idea that, hey, Japan is really rather different and being there can seem lonely. It slid across the critical radar inoffensively like a tiny rubber cockroach on some imaginary Gozilla set.

Now she has combined period drama with post-punk, casting underfed, aging prom queen Dunst as Marie Antoinette, the misunderstood fun loving inbred who partied to the end, not smelling the fecal writing on the wall for a Regime that had outlived any kind of relevance in a world of reason. All concerned must have been assured of the brilliance of the project. The dichotomy of modern music and sensibilities in a period setting, edgy director, teen friendly cast and punky marketing would have had the focus group creatives as erect as an ill advised ‘astroturf’ web marketing campaign. Who would have expected an instant chorus of mockery to spoil the party? Like a bunch of monkey turds inserted amongst the Maltesers at an office function. Hopefully in the end a few fewer gimps will burn cash to see it when it emerges like a gilded, uncool cloud of flatus in the Autumn.

In the end, the judges continued the tradition of mistaking cack-handed propaganda for art and awarded old Stalinist Ken Loach the prize for his rant on the Irish Civil War. Of course, for Ken a Civil War can be confusing as it usually involves two sides with competing political claims (as well as atrocities to their name). This doesn’t work well with a tabloid binary worldview coupled to a comic book reading of Marxism. For Ken, a much better idea is to tell the story of plucky Celts fighting off genocidal Brits. Never mind the complex tragedies of Home Rule or the fact that De Valera’s legacy is that of a blood-soaked clown unable to accept the Treaty on offer as the best solution on the table, the whole thing is extremely good v. very bad much like Iraq in the eyes of the rump hard left. Put your plastic shamrock away please, Ken, as to sensible eyes this guff has less complexity than the average paramilitary mural.

A dramatist would see a tragic and bloody divorce, much like the partition of India. A polemicist sees only victims and villains, alongside a chance at export markets. One just hopes that the yoof will see it is a melodramatic romp and not even the smallest glimmer of history. Or drama.

If it is neither arthouse nor grindhouse it is nothing of value.

Revenge of the Weird:

2006-03-26T18:43:00.000+01:00

Wandsworth gets interesting
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

When there was a kind of semi-functional taste arbitation other than Wal-Mart functioning in the culture industry genre works, conspiratorial nonsense, UFOs etc would be widely distributed paperbacks with promotion and hardback credibility given to things of more serious ‘intent’. The obliteration of the high/low cultural distinction imposed by the Romantics in a kind of opiate snobbery is liberating, but not without cost.

I remember a time when books about UFOs, religious conspiracies and other paranoiac nonsense were a guilty pleasure of shut-ins, curtain-twitchers, street corner mumblers and their unwashed friends. They were sold in American supermarkets, the back of Smiths, or shifty places with a curtained section at the rear for Japanese fart video distro. Pre-Jaws/Star Wars era New World Pictures and Warners were by in large in different markets. There is no way 1977 Hollywood would have made Death Race 2000, just as there is no way circa 77 drive-in land would have made Barry Lyndon. Now Hollywood would make neither, choosing instead to steal the easy formulas of B without the old transgression. Spielberg and Lucas showed the moneymen that formula and youth markets were worth stealing poor Roger Corman’s lunch to get at. It probably will owe a few lunches soon to Dan Brown, but he would be able to pick up the bill for X-Men 4, unless he is pick-pocketed by the Revenge of the Weird. ‘B’ has now taken over the bookshelves but has lost its trashy energy and sense of experiment in the process.

For now awaiting a verdict are two hairy bits of oddball who noticed that Brown had reached into the storm drain to retrieve an old bit of conspiratorial smegma – Holy Blood: Holy Grail to Xerox into his $200m+ potboiler. Jesus’ descendants are alive and well and having drinks in a Parisian Masonic Lodge or something and the Pope has bugged the world so anyone talking about it will be killed. Never mind that the lack of Biblical DNA sample availability renders this an unprovable assumption – as Richard Nixon found out some secrets are just too fucking big to keep. The latter point is a deadly fact for any conspiracy theory.

One wished that there was some way both sides could lose in a court case, though Brown repulsing the challenge would be better on balance for delaying the encroaching fungus of abused copyright. In any event, it is great to see the Weird reaching up from the bog to bite the gilded bum that cynically got the credibility long denied it, despite its paranoid passion.

I must say that if I had somehow hallucinated a interesting conspiracy – say that James Mason was in fact a malign shape-shifting alien over 2,000 years old that had actually kidnapped the real spirit of Easter, a blue Armadillo, replacing him in children’s minds with the image of a rabbit in preparation for a world takeover, written a bestselling but forgotten book about it only to have a failed singer-songwriter make more money than would be needed to buy Belize twenty years later by scribbling crap about it, I would go to violence before I went to Law.

Britney’s mates stole your TV

2006-02-26T18:28:00.000Z

Estate Exterior SE5
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Noticed a post by a cat called Mike Evangelist – an ex-Appleteer who was involved in the development in lickworthy products such as Final Cut Pro and is urging a boycott of HD. Apart from playing back gorgeous 1080p trailers for shite video game like mainstream films on my trusty Mac I do not have HD. The people who control the bandwidth in the UK seem to have decided that UK Gold +1 (the channel for when you forgot when the repeat of ‘Birds of a Feather’ was on but were only off by one hour) and endless streams of soontobeanescort showbiz rejects desperately attempting to get livestock to text in to win or whatever are a better application for all those bytes. Actually, the only thing separating the girl with the desperate eyes and bad skin on UK Quiz thing whatever from, say, Kate Garraway is access to PR, luck and better grooming – but I digress.

Soon the content creeps are going to attempt to fill their troughs with another ‘buy what you have in a snazzy new format’ type deal with the emergence of high def DVD formats. I’m not too bothered as I reckon one will see ‘Ally McBeal Remastered’ long before anything I would want emerges but Mike’s point is a better one.

The day when all of our senses will be subject to 'rights management', with a Direct Debit to the content goons to compensate them direct any time we say, see or hear anything vaguely copyrighted is now closer. If this stops gimps from using catchphrases from the latest unthreatening sitcom practictioners as every utterance of ‘Am I bovvered, I’m a lady etc’ incurs a terrible cost mankind will have moved forward. However…

When the hidefwhatever discs come, they will have more strings attached than a piece of well knit winter clothing. You will only be able to play them back if they phone home over the net and say both the disc and device are suitably locked down. Not to mention that the ‘rights’ of the discs owner (who is seen by the content clowns as a criminal conspirator) can be changed at any point. It can be assumes that the real dream is a kind of personal pay per view, where you buy a nice silver disc that charges you every time you use it and extra when there are friends round.

One can only hope that angry consumers, crackers, hackers and dodgy Far Eastern manufacturers will render this backdoor parasitism as impotent as the DVD Region nonsense. Only buy what you can own, kids!

Blessed exempt and the nameless

2006-01-25T19:39:00.000Z

Bin full of gialli
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Society’s attitude towards substances has declined in many respects since the Victorian age. What once were considered private vices at worst or medical problems at best are now shunted into the world of criminality. As the days of Capone demonstrated, people want to self-medicate for pleasure, foolishness, anaesthesia, hastened death whatever and it is the role of State to minimise harm rather than pretend it can be prevented, creating criminal supernormal profits in the hypocrisy. These arguments are too well rehearsed to breathe again and change may come in some places over generations but at present the law is worse than an ass – The idea that identakit city centres infested by ethanol fuelled barbarism is more pleasant than people giggling quietly in Amsterdam style caffs is self evidently obscene.

People with connections, luck, bodies of note or all three are exempt from normal life and law. When the videos of ‘La Moss’ hoovering and passing round large amounts of fun chalk on a grainy mobile cam appeared in the pig press, I realised that the chances of her facing the same fate as an unlucky youth not beloved of industry caught out with half a wrap of heavily cut crap half dead after a party was as slim as the genitals of a dried cuttlefish. The Bill are making noises due to the aging mannequin’s arrogance about the whole thing but the amusing image of the Croydonwaif unironocially cuffed to a bench in a piss reeking cell for a long time will never come real. “The jury found him famous…” etc.

On another puff page did noticed the not quite 21 Keira Knightley ripped out of her tiny brain at some Beverly Hills party being propped up by her grimacing madeforlife ‘playwright’ mum Sharman Macdonald like a piece of supple shoe leather stretched over some matchsticks. Of course, Stateside while you can get an assault rifle five years before you can touch grog absurdity is taken to Hummer proportions. However, the idea that pixies from Pirates of the Caribbean 3 are held to a happier standard than poor high school kids who just want a good time smells of injustice. I’ve seen them ‘card’ people with grey hair over there. Maybe if the blessed paid the same price as the nameless the world could change.

Sticky critics and the hoodie chasers

2006-01-14T18:44:00.000Z

Marrakech Modernity
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

For a simple salaryman, the holidays come and go as fast as an openhanded slap from a youth on a speeding minibike fitted with a cameraphone and a rubber arm on one of the handlebars.

Struggling along the Northern Line back to the ranch feeling like Travis Bickle on absinthe and paint fumes, I found myself reading the Evening Standard again. It feels dirty – at least the thing is cheaper than a tin of warm pop but one of the presumably news rich Great Cities surely could find it in itself to support a newspaper with more weighty content. Sure it is tabloid crude but I can live with that. Sam Fuller was tabloid crude but the Standard is devolving into some kind of combination of Heat!, a gossip website populated with bubbly sycophants and a haphazard crime column.

Page 2 is often occupied by stories such as the odious hippychic fleshwisp personpuppet that is Sienna Miller, whose IMDB credits are a slur on cinema, deciding to have a new haircut inspired by mid-80s Bowie. Then on to a bevy of columns usually more shallow than a pub urinal (City Lives? Single Life? Minty hair cake?!). It is as if the rag got mixed up with Now! at the presses.

As Social Control compelled me from creating any kind of compelling news myself on public transport, I wondered if the Government’s latest attempt to corral the feral through parenting classes mild repression et al would have an unintended consequence: The silencing of the amateur, chewing gum and pen armed critics who are the only defence against the sugarculture machine that pimps its wares all over the Tube system. How else will the dead eyes of Reese Witherspoon be enlivened? Who would else would counter the march of the Woman in White with the incontestable statement “Haile Selasssie I the world is a whore”? How will the anatomy on display in the latest tired bumpf for “Chicago” be taken into three dimensions with discarded oral sculpture? Food for thought, etc…

Check the link: Vintage horror and soulfulness were never so much fun...

Mazes, retail crack and the cardrat adventure

2005-11-27T16:44:00.000Z

Brothel doorway on Berwick Street
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

IKEA is a remarkable invention and the evolution of its advertising is an interesting, perhaps cautionary tale. A few years back there was this stuff produced by cultish Chiat/Day survivors or something involving motifs like Swedish gangsters admiring towels and a mysterious tattooed man who did things like lock staff away if they did not understand brand concepts properly. Amusing, well shot etc and made me less ashamed of going there despite the fact that it was more stressful than being forced to staple rabid rats to bits of card at gunpoint. Then the Nordic jokers rejected style in favour of day-glo inclusivity with a campaign based on a palette consisting of skittles and happy meal packaging, complete with non-threatening, non-aspirational gimps filling their living spaces and identities with generic plastic and particleboard tat. As the place is so far beyond needing conventional forms of Marcomms all that is about now are some feeble tube cards saying that if you pay less for your kitchen you can somehow work less. Never mind that most of us electric slaves are on some form of feeble salary and whether a kitchen costs a bit more is a question of marginal madness on the consumer debt front for all but the lucky. The difference between posting onesself a nail bomb filled with battery acid and one adding a few old pushpins and a desiccated mouse to the mix.

Not much can be said about pikea that has not been said elsewhere. I have noticed that I have not a single friend who has not said that a visit there is a last ditch, very stressful experience resulting in expenditure over £100 regardless of what they intended to purchase. The maze is well designed with cul de sacs maximising the chance for impulse purchases of redundant oven gloves and PRC frying pans en route to escape. The standard of design oscillates between passable faux modernism, post modern migraine and plain suburban beige ugh but appears to be going through one of its better phases, at least in the case of TV stands. I am dissenter who is helpless to resist, slumping around the place stewing in guilt for not finding a better way. Except when the proper shops have a seconds sale.

Jumping someone else's train

2005-11-13T17:57:00.000Z

A wall in Verona
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Christmas and the run up to it is a great time for yesterday’s peddlers of sonic dried candy floss residue for the charts to put together yet another ‘best of’ or ‘ultimate collection’ of some sort as a stocking filler for people whose cultural landscape is less evolved than that of a bit of plankton grooving along to the vibrations of defecating mackerel. The tunnels and pathways of commute Hades have received a plastering of related promotional announcements, most of which are so far beneath contempt as to breach the very limits of gravity. One very well promoted one deserves special recognition for odium as those responsible have somehow escaped sufficient critical censure throughout the years. I stared at the thing and noticed several periodicals pimping the same in between my periodic questioning as to whether the Northern Line’s signalling system is comprised of fag ends, chewing gum and a stolen ‘AAA’ battery. The no-so-recent revival of the electro sound and interest in 80s retro by those that crawled the carpet during its early days has offered a tardy commercial opportunity to a tired couple of chancers who made it far bigger than deserved.

Eurythmics. A name like that screams modernity, an international outlook or at least some kind of relevance. Not in this case. 1983- get anyone with passable musical nous into some London studio with some analogue synth gear, chemical inducement and some fucking time on their hands and you will get one notable single. ‘Sweet Dreams (are made of this).’ is one such record. Fine – credit there but lots of good electropop was made back then by duos of wankers who at least had the decency to go away after they had burned out their three minutes of possible creativity. The living cartoon that is Dave Stewart and faux soul foghorn Annie Lennox were too clever for that. Further hits came like a periodic hailstorm of frozen mucus, most notable being ‘There must be an Angel, playing with my heart as I spew predicable O-level couplets in a stupid wig, yeah, etc.’ the ‘arty’ video for which involved men arsing about in unicorn outfits. A maelstrom of artfully packaged MOR followed on. And on and on. Lennox even created a solo record that forever will be on ‘repeat’ for suburban emotional cripples and corporate events organisers.

In the same era, Soft Cell merged synths rather more convincingly with Motown (rather than Dusty Springfield, the sozzled sound of best avoided wedding receptions) and the queerer side of Soho. Yet this more artful and dangerous duo were painted as the one hit wonders that Stewart and Lennox should have been. The culture market is a strange place indeed.

Sleb-breeders and the ticking zeitgeist

2005-10-08T14:09:00.000+01:00

Maxim Topless Cafe
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

The squares don’t know its all a fix. The received metaphwoars, the agenda and how what pops up when, where and how is determined elsewhere. From time to time a narrative appears in parts before dipping into mist, unresolved and undebated until the puppeteers get tired again and revive it like last weeks coffee in the microwave.

Breeding. All life does it in some form, some messier and more eccentric than others (marsupailness is not to be derided, but the scatological aspects need reform). For great apes like us it is a bigger challenge, of course. One often taken too lightly but that requires coping. The fact that Westerners are multiplying slower, not a new phenomenon, has been doing the rounds again, along with the rest of the metanarrative flotsam. The doctors have noticed that female fertility becomes problematic after 35. Maybe.

Yet the loss of freedom and installation of a hoover in one’s pocket for two decades before drifting towards to void is rather difficult, at least in London, before then, if not after, if not ever. Maybe I fetishise sleep at the moment, but there you go. Our systems are not family friendly anymore, but the attentions of the masses are too dilute to demand change – safe, clean state crèches or urban schools that are rather more than storage centres for the feral.

But if you can afford a scheduled Caesarean with a lipo chaser, an army of carers and piss shit spittle scream dealers-with the credit should not be forthcoming, in any form. The slebcrew breeds loudly, is getting knocked up younger and younger and never tires of expelling noise at its seminal achievements. Saw an Anna Friel junket photoshoot in the Sundays within which in between discussing the legacy of a film and tv credits list that sounds like an existential indictment, starting with a girlongirl snog in fucking Brookside, flitting in inconsequence and ending now with JD Sports: The Movie, she talks of the wonders of breeding as is if she was the first and last.

Not unique but the meat puppets that can afford to play at families without pain or sacrifice should find something else to talk about. Like gardening stratagems or the latest trends in sock design. Never mind.

Fuselage sauna book club

2005-08-31T19:47:00.000+01:00

It's true you know
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Melting in a metal tube on a global warming enhanced summer’s day, I’ve been conjuring some non-insights. Mass market popular fiction has always been an easy target of bile, but at least it once was interesting. In every fog of automatic prose, on the back of the shelf one could find a ‘Dimestore Dostoevsky’ like Jim Thompson (who I never tire of advocating) – banging out genre tales at a speed more akin to typing than writing, but somehow managing to fuse in thematic and stylistic innovation along with psychological and societal insights. In a lurid style and on cheap paper.

Looking around, it seems that today the unstoppable zombie world of anti-feminist ‘chick lit’ remains in the ascendancy like a fart from the bottom of a bubble bath. Hitting every possible demographic with the icy precision of really, really good direct marketing. On the other side of the gender stereotype divide, its testosterone Parsons/Hornby doppelganger spews across Sunday supplements and into Smiths with unending energy. Looking over shoulders at the odd snippet, these things really could, and someday in the name of speed will be, written by software packages. Umberto Eco once wondered at the intricacies of Ian Fleming’s innovative nonsense and discovered that it was, in fact, an escape machine for an embittered, emasculated male bourgeoisie.

Yet in a time of smartphone and cheap flight plenty, what could there be to escape from but the endless march of convenience and pleasure? Well, some are more blessed with choice and capital than others but the last revenge of the departed proletariat is this: The horrible imbalance between work and leisure, the individual being the space between labour and its product, is not markedly different from that described by Orwell with horror in the Road to Wigan Pier when illustrating the plight of the industrial classes of the 30s. So little pieces of inky bubblegum are needed to speed the journey of the many – its just sad that the conditions of production today are more favourable to the vapid giltposh shit in his shuttered chateau than the likes of poor Jim.

Dispatched: An odorous delivery

2005-08-06T12:39:00.000+01:00

Words to live by
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

I have long loved Dispatches. It’s one of the last pieces of mainstream terrestrial television I always look forward to. It informs and intrigues on important and esoteric issues.

When I saw that the programme would be making the old Quixotic investigative case for higher quality food than is made available by the UK’s supermarket cartel (expensive limp salads, chickens raised on feathers, dung and concrete, etc etc) I was mildly intrigued. This has been done before, well, by the likes of Panorama, countless authors, worthies and TV chefs looking for a good bit of PR, to little effect. I try to rebel where I can, but shopping hours and availability are a bit of a sad block.

Looked at the listing and it admitted ‘Jane Moore’ was the presenter. My brain was puzzled but blocked the idea in the same sanity prevention reflex that means if I coughed up a small herd of New Zealand sheep I would just turn away and forget it forever, a shameful secret. Surely, certainly it was someone I had not heard of. Some erudite, intrepid woman of letters must share the same unhappy moniker as that slaggy scribbler I occasionally avoid when examining a bog-based Red Top on a Wednesday. No way that even in an era of Dumb that a programme long on the forefront of excellence would commission such a beast. It would be like Sadie Fucking Frost presenting Newsnight – a surreal interjection from a cruel and humorous alternative dimension. Only a co-incidence to share the name of the perpetrator of tomes such as ‘Dot.Homme’ and newsprint Big Brother breast analysis.

No. The phosphors lit up and there it was. A true joke with a fat cheque for a punchline. Aged and decidedly orange (the image helpers airbrush amusingly neglected all flesh below the chin) it began to squawk about the stress of being a ‘working’ mother with three loud fuckfruits and massive house – not to mention a personal shopper. This of course means sympathy for all of us time and cash poor proles out there, and she can really relate. The lady of the house left the room in incomprehending disgust after a couple of minutes. I soldiered on for another few – hypnotised, like a man seeing a dog’s egg put in blender with some rocks as she had the absurd cruelties of factory farming that a well read ten year old would assume amazingly revealed. Yet her expensive snot smears of copy often nestle next to adverts for two for one frozen colon burgers and chicken fat/intestine/skin based Fun Shapes. Not that her moist and knuckle dragging fan base could spell hypocrisy. I would have preferred to have the programme hijacked by laddish nightmare Jamie Oliver, his VW van filled with hooting idiocy and a gang of second rank Sanisbury’s purchasing managers. Fuck it.

No matter. There may or may not have been better times.

The many splendours of forbidden electric death

2005-07-04T20:05:00.000+01:00

Picture(74)
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Communicating public safety messages to feral individuals is a marketing challenge of the highest order. Given the number of rootless, hooded individuals making their intimidating presence felt at every bus stop and kebab joint, to ensure that they have some concept of public safety is vital. Was using the alleged rail system the other day and noticed a poster recommending ‘No messin’. A model in a hoodie looked quite happy to have found new hobbies boasting in the copy that ‘I used to hang around the tracks. Now I have something better to do.’ Clearly a lifestyle breakthrough. When you think about it, there are many other things to do that are better than vandalising sidings, throwing bottles at commuter cattle cars or sticking gum on the tracks to see what happens. £264m is spent every year cleaning it up.

Frankly, a nice spot of sock based paint huffing is a more commendable and interesting habit. The campaign is apparently aimed at the 9 to 16 year old demographic that is causing the most trouble and includes a handy URL. A wiser marketer would point out that visiting any URL is probably a better thing to do than arsing about in the sidings, spitting at passing carriages and include some helpful links to hardcore. When you get to the site, you are invited to ‘Get a real buzz, real respect and real skills’. Of course, tagging would seem a skill to some. You can turn up to a leisure centre in a dying city such as Eastbourne and learn about sports you should have learned about in school, including boules. Anyone who can organise themselves enough to register for one of these ‘live’ events is probably not the sort to be, uh, ‘messin’ in the first place.

TfL’s recent campaign with a similar purpose is far better. On the Underground there are adverts in a glossy, crass style for fictitious commodity records and film with a bar through the centre saying that the cultural pissbag involved has been cancelled because the star was killed at an early age trying to stare down a bus or something. They are genuinely striking, look real and probably work.

Which is more than can probably be said of this joke. Well meaning rail consultants trying to communicate with criminal larvae from Darwin’s Waiting Room are like confused civil servants trying to contact Martians with a bent coat hanger and a Walkman. Far better to lay it out: ‘If you are mutilated or killed you are even less likely to be of interest to the opposite sex and if you are sent to prison the chances of an enthusiastic and unexpected conjugal visit at the back door are profound. Therefore stay the fuck away from the tracks.’

Lancing the Boyle

2005-06-15T20:33:00.000+01:00

Westerns
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Underground adverts are not unlike aggressive beggars or flashers. Even more so when you come out of the station and are confronted with a poster pimping the same cultural excreta that has been saturating every wall and surface in the tunnels. Walkways and escalators are covered with colourful noise from Dewynters – the wise vertically integrated marketing people that have very successfully corned (or else cornered) the market in attracting philistine hordes to the latest cash in musical (I am waiting for more meritless back catalogues to be pilfered – maybe a musical based on Don Henley’s 1980s solo output set amongst witty, desirable American high school kids?) or turgid ‘new play’ starring someone who may have been in EastEnders around 1996 about divorcees with a long line in one liners. Emerging from a hailstorm of saccharine nonsense once again, I was confronted by a mass of freckles and slightly cheeky looking childness set against a blue sky with falling pound notes.

Millions ‘The Danny Boyle film you can take your kids to see!’

He was back – the man behind the celluloid methane bomb that was ‘The Beach’ has somehow taken advantage of the tax break slush fund nature of the UK’s film industry to make more product.

Boyle let me down and led me astray. As a youth, I was amused by Shallow Grave – a sub par thriller based around a formula more tired than a half remembered ‘knock knock’ joke. Then was I was completely enthralled by his magnum opus:

Trainfuckingspottingposterssayingchooselifeinevery
tediousstudenthallsforfuckingyears

I loved it and I was an oaf for doing so. It is a piece of grunge-y zeitgeist-y merchandise with a self consciously great soundtrack that has aged worse than a packet of special Irn Bru tie in edition ‘Lunchables’ left absent mindedly under a radiator for ten years. Oh, and if Irvine Welsh thinks he some kind of tartan Joyce for the ‘E’ generation than you can call me Will. I also had a copy of the ‘Reservoir Dogs’ screenplay at this time, sadly.

So now ‘Millions’ – a trivial moral fable about two kids who get into lots of obvious choices and fake peril with the aid of £229k in stolen cash. And they have to spend it in a few days as the UK is changing over to the Euro. This thing must have spent a very long time in development indeed, as the chances of that happening at all are rather low. One kid is a consumer, the other some kind of religious loser who talks to saints and wants to give it away in a random and inequitable fashion. Lots of innovation there. If either had any sense they would call one of the numbers in the back of in flight magazines and call some shifty buggers from Aruba to look after it for them. Of course I have not seen it as knowing my luck, I would be crushed and electrocuted by a falling projector – and would not want such a thing as my last memory. Hopefully when Gordon closes the loophole we will see less of this sort of refuse.

Holiday moments with bog brush haircuts

2005-06-04T11:39:00.000+01:00

bogbrushcrulo
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Holiday companies are clearly not as liable for the strictures of the Trade Description Act as other firms. Referring to Lido de Jesolo as the ‘Venetian Riviera’ is about as accurate as calling Hastings the London Riviera – at least Jesolo was sort of a German/Italianate version so light on taste but also missing new age English seaside pleasures such as the sight of DSS drug zombies shuffling along piers as the faded, green stains in the vague shape of a Bulldog gently peel on the be-sovereigned Dagenham Man nearby.

No matter how nice a trip is, if you make the mistake of going with package types there will be moments when one’s fear of mortality exits for a time. Listening to conversations that have less use than frog flatulence, the cackling of smug retirees (who really should be more sympathetic to those of us of a generation that will work for another fifteen years than them and retire on a pension smaller than the daily takings of a bad busker) and the loud antics of chav larvae makes one wish voiding for a moment, before seeing something beautiful again.

Italians, for all the dodgy accounting, do really have more casual style than Northern Europeans. The shaded driver is as impervious to the presence of this bog brushed creature as he should be.

Noble ape surveys 'chavalanche'

2005-04-07T18:13:00.000+01:00

gorilla
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Apes are better than people in many respects.

Gorillas do not get bad faux Celtic themed tats above the crack of their misshapen arse and squit out gangs of mewling, rowing thug larvae to blow whistles in the ‘Moonlight World’ home of remarkable prosiminans that can be stressed to death by loud sounds or use flash photography on noble beasts to the accompaniment of vulgar noises.

A trip to the Zoo is rare due to the expense and the stress of swimming through crowds often in possession of less knowledge of fauna and conservation concern than a lump of Tesco ‘Value’ range frozen mince. Brains seem to be in decline as well – with people shouting ‘look at the lion!’ in front of the enclosure of a sedate, and very obvious, tiger. Lions do not have stripes.

Bored and confined as they might be, its probably far better for the few remaining Gorillas on the planet to be behind glass in Regents Park, amusing their inferior cousins, than running from forests being burned down in ignorant attempts at agriculture and into the arms of virtual cannibals who would far rather turn them into a tragic, smoked culinary novelty than realise they could be the key to regional prosperity.

The regal ennui of the fellow pictured in the midst of all the tourist bustle is to be admired.

9 plastic noises of modern 'B'

2005-03-20T20:11:00.000Z

times square
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Been noticing coyly sexy flyposters and hype for an example of where 'B' is today. Hey sex, drugs, bonking, rock and roll, gigs, fuckin, indieee, banging, drinking, sticky lager residue floors and fag ash, money shots, musing in a boho way has got to be aspirational and cool, yeah? No.

Michael Winterbottom. The name of a Nordic themed porn star. I've witnessed his product: The overwrought costumery of Jude, which barely rates five of ten as an adaptation of a classic novel and is most remarkable for that offensively over-regarded Kate Winslet's career enhancing nude appearance.

The next: Welcome to Sarajevo. Its first three minutes were brilliant before slipping into 'human interest' emotional pornography one might sadly expect from a director who cut his teeth on the tube. Yet the talent is there: ability to make something mainstream yet pretentious is to be commended. The IMDB marketing blurb says it well:

"For this celebrated, outrageous, adrenaline-loving bunch of reporters, home is the latest war zone. Now, one of them is about to do the unthinkable--get emotionally involved."

Its all guff but the second sentence is the real assault. Because, of course the only way for mainstream livestock to understand immense human tragedies is by shrinking the incomprehensible macro down into a bit of soap worthy cheese spread.

A few bits demonstrated Winterbottom is capable of more, namely the topping with a random sniper attack on likeable, ordinary victims and tailing with David Owen's dark instruction for the poor Bosnians not to 'dream' the West had some interest in granting them the right to live. Like using two bits of fine ciabatta to mask the odor of a fecal sandwich filling.

Budgets seem to have shrunk still further in 'independent' (no, I don't mean fucking Miramax) cinema and so now Wintery seems to be in a world of DV - because of course who would work in DV unless they were forced? Unless they are making installations or something.

Of course, audiences should be bored with money shots, rather than shocked by them. My calculations suggest that at current west end prices, its 89p per tepid derivative track (and presumably protein dose). The free publicity for putting out 'the most explicit spack drenched film ever!!' at an Odeon means there is little risk of not making the cash back.

The bands involved reveal the notions of a 44 year-old-man who thinks that the irrelevant bog roll of the NME is a taste arbiter. Michael Nyman - a few good soundtracks, Primal Scream - talent in spades, I once was a fan, etc - forgiven. Franz Ferdinand - Gang of Four tribute band. I don't fucking care. Dandy Warhols and the rest just fellate dead goat and are best left to tedious students, unaware of the metal postcard in the post when the fun ends and the incense gets stale.

So that's the best B can do today in the UK: A DV shot faux porn film with an NME connection that refuses to admit its true nature. By a brilliant exploitationist who is probably too pretentious and steeped in worthy mediocrity to admit it to himself.

All power to the exploitationist - hey, I'd be filming THE CAMDEN RIPPER if I could - but only if he has self-knowledge as thus and sneaks in some art. It is with fast food that the quality of the ingredients are most vital. Others did it better with less money and no acclaim. Why can't today be different?

'For customer use only'

2005-03-13T19:17:00.000Z

Picture(32)
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

One of the many inconveniences of being an animal is the need to expel waste. Now, facilities for doing so in a heavy traffic shopping area are usually poor, biohazardous bogs lacking loo roll or any sign of cleanliness which are inevitably abused in ways sexual and gastrointestinal beyond the ken of California's most methed up porn product disseminators. Nonetheless, chain cafes and (at a push) chain pubs can sometimes be passable to a man in need.

However, too many people are too ashamed to pop into a Cafe Nero or brave the Sheryl Crow 'Best' of blare in Starbucks to make stink with no intention of buying beverages. The key is to go in like you belong, look around for a phantom person you are meeting and, not seeing them as they do not exist, look at your watch, before confidently striding to the white telephone.

Abuses of electricity

2005-02-19T13:12:00.000Z

americanbarpraha
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Thursday night we were kept up by the people who live in the adjacent compartment of this butchered Victorian villa - again. They are special people. It is not clear if they work or at what - one may be Antipodean but the residents change so quickly you cannot be sure. There are several abuses of electricity and our ears that they commonly subject us to. Firstly, there may be some kind of keyboard in there that one of them plays, though their repertoire seems to consist solely of a poorly interpreted Imagine™. Practice, though skill levels have yet to approach that of a second rate pub bore, often occurs as late as midnight on a weeknight. Imagine has always been bad enough to contaminate the memory of the Beatles proper work - like being served a bowl of nasal mucus for a pudding after a passable meal.

This can be accompanied by maximum volume viewing of ITV - the channel for people who find the candy floss of BBC1 too challenging, the proper trash of Five too worrying and the other two terrestrials an alien experience. Or else the reprehensible sound of DFS adverts - Katie Melua: the music of middle-aged compulsive female masturbators, again at the wattage one associates with an improvised rave.

This night I was treated to the sounds of Jerry Show me the Money Fucking Maguire. I have encountered this vehicle for that sexually ambiguous militant Scientologist before - in intoxicated captivity. On a long haul flight and worn down with low-grade free spirits, it was thrust into my face on the tiny LCD seatback screen. As always, I did not choose to listen except for a few minutes I caught with sound by choice. Such as the moment pointless helium voiced Renee Zellweger, who really does look slightly better fattened, 'playing' the single mum of a kid so cutely annoying as to make a sensible man self administer a vasectomy with a teaspoon, blubs 'You had me at hello' to her rich, handsome suburban conquest. I'd rather watch a documentary on diseases of the foot or something.

As I listened to the cliches abounding at 1am, dreading a busy day, wondering what self defence aspects of the law had been tested aggressively, I wished I could have ripped the carpet in the hallway up and chewed out the electrics going into their flat like a wronged rodent to make the noise stop.

A better use of electricity was found by the operators of the American Bar in Prague, who have some very nice lights and a giant brass coffee machine dating from the 1890s: Here are the lights¦

Why can't I touch it?

2005-02-10T09:49:00.000Z

As I was in the midst of another pointless, hellish commute and as a very, very insane man paced up and down the carriage, performing a remarkable paranoid monologue, I noticed a headline in the bubblegummy Metro spread on the 'BRITS':

Joss Stone – The new queen of the streets

Its absurdity and obscenity struck me dumb. Well, not really as nothing surprises me that is spewed out of a mass culture so ignorant and worthless as to be beyond irony. Nonetheless, the notion of some shagtastic pixie from Devon being the new hope of soul is less believable than the Care in the Community entertainer on the tube being the next Serge Gainsbourg. This meat puppet is being compared to Aretha Franklin, yet you could find far better vocalisations than her attempts on the b-sides of the most hopeless looking, forgotten cash in disco records of the early 80s.

At least the awful Brummie bra model Jamelia, who is imitating an utterly worthless tradition, namely the overproduced, nasal ‘R and B’ that has wrecked African American music in a way even the worst disco could not, came away gongless. Not that it matters as I am sure MasterCard or whomever sews it up beforehand on the basis of a focus group.

Affable Scotsmen ripping off Gang of Four, Robbie Williams being lauded as the best songwriter of the last 25 years, lithe American popsters with obvious little designer implants to accentuate their genius in way years of spouting a plasticated shadow of ska could not, disguised Christian rockers singing a duet…

I longed in vain for a horrible accident involving defective pyrotechnics and a burst sewage pipe. And that’s just from being subjected to the media miasma on it all – much of which mentioned that ‘real’ music was back as the industry grinned and sued a few more downloaders. Hopefully Charles and Camilla will block the front pages tomorrow….

mole mission

2005-01-03T18:49:00.000Z

mole mission
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

My, my - the holidays do come and go as quickly as a glue huffing pickpocket plying his trade on the hordes of gothkidz in Camden. Been busy with nothing.

A while back, I noticed this new Kinder Surprise display in a shop in Hammersmith near my workplace whose only other positive attribute is a good price on large bottles of proper Nigerian Guinness and realised that it was an instructive example of the everyday obscenity that the world needs more of. This Mole Mission™ is clearly pornographic in intent - the gleeful rodent wielding an impossibly violent electric phallus of some sort. I have since seen it elsewhere and can only congratulate the designers and product planners who unleashed this little Teutonic jape into the retail landscape.

Imaginary Giallo locale - Brighton seafront evening

2004-12-09T17:50:00.000Z

brighton1
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

I have been rather busy and thus rather lazy with my leisure. Dont know if anyone is watching yet (or at all) and rather doubt it.

Was down on the Brighton seafront and always notice this building, which seems to attract the birds that once favoured the (now arson gutted) West Pier. It is being restored or something, people are buying flats in it but it could be a dubious enterprise. At the moment, it appears to be some sort of DSS flophouse. I walked in a few yards when the door used to be open and it stank of urine, methadone and mould. Didnt feel hard enough to go further. The various remaining urchins inside, who may or may not know they are about to be joined by bemused yuppies supping at the property trough, have employed fairy lights and other stratagems to add a random sparkle to the lovely decaying edifice. This is from some months ago so who knows what is going on now. Its probably cold.

If films other than export romcoms, mockney monkey gangsta and unchallengingly ironic comedies with BBC One wannabees and faded Hollywood stars were still made in the UK, somebody would notice it would be a great location for a modernised British Giallo or even a credible Noir.

Anni di Piombo

2004-11-20T21:02:00.000Z

Well, here is the first bit of electric spew. I need to work out how to post other kinds of media and a list of my favourite links before I get too far or I may get bored. I intend to review films, records and tv shows that I have blatantly not seen. Because: I don’t need to in order to give a full, firm and fair assessment. I may advocate stuff that interests and amuses me. I may select a meat puppet that is taking up space in my face for dissection and deconstruction because they have annoyed me or because they are rich and worthless.

Starting in the very back of the cultural u-bend I wanted to point out this indispensable if poorly titled and designed site to everyone who has not visited it. Awfulplasticsurgery.com does what it says on the tin and beautifully reveals and examines the many alterations and enhancements of the puppet people who feed the ears, eyes and express the aspirations of all the multiplex livestock out there. I’ve never been sure how my fellow males could ever, ever consider someone with implants sexy. Even in the depths of early teenage woodery I was wholly unable to jam the pink oboe to any AV actresses who had gone under the knife. A chance to review the ongoing devolution of Nicole Kidman’s face is worth a quick visit alone…