Another birthday today

But I hope to keep going to 75, which is exactly the number of candles this great Texan outlaw extinguished last week. By the way, the choice of today's video was not influenced by any kind of morbid thoughts. It's actually funny in a noirish kind of way. And our blog motif, runs through it, too: "Gravedigger, when you dig my grave / Could you make it shallow? So that I can feel the rain."

To mark the birthday, I am planning to go to Highgate Cemetery on Sunday morning and upon reaching the grave of Karl Marx a minute of silence will be observed for all those who have perished in the name of his evil notion that the choice is between capitalism and Communism. The episode will end with a pint in The Flask and a discussion of this futuristic scenario:

One hundred years from now, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev are resuscitated from their cryptogenically frozen state. Gorbachev logs on to the Economist and bursts out laughing.
"Why are you laughing?" asks Reagan.
"Because it says here that United States is now a socialist federation," Gorbachev explains.
Reagan calls up the Financial Times and laughs even harder. "Why are YOU laughing?" asks Gorbachev.
Reagan explains: "It says that everything is quiet on the border between Poland and China."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 9 May 2008 at 12:00 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The horror! The horror!

Leave it to the Sun to come with "Evil dad Fritzl and the Nazis". But Brendan O'Neill didn't buy the national-guilt-by-association line and he let fly at the British media in a heavily-commented Comment is Free piece. However, Christopher Caldwell deserves praise for pointing out in the Financial Times that horrific and all as the Amstetten saga is, we should not avert our eyes from it. Those "quality newspapers" that turn up their noses at this kind of story, he notes "have grown biased against rare, unclassifiable or once-in-a-lifetime stories. This is another way of saying they have grown biased against news itself. Readers, apparently, have not." Indeed.

Meanwhile, Austria has to deal with the fact that Austrian life, sometimes, has nothing to do with the idyll of the Alps. As in most modern societies, many people live in awful relationships, are lonely and are subjected to violence, often, sexual violence. There is no love in their world. And how does "official" Austria respond to this? By producing the likes of Klingendes Österreich, in which this character wanders around the country, dressed like he's living in the 19th century and speaking a type of faux peasant dialect. In this kitsch Austria, the only thing in the cellars is wine. A horror idyll.

By the way, it was rather tasteless of Ireland's Sunday Business Post to devote the lead story of its property section to explaining how to convert a cellar into living space. "But the humble basement has become a swanky space in many London homes, with owners digging down instead of trading up in order to find more space." What kind of Lebensraum do these people have in mind exactly?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 8 May 2008 at 6:04 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Watching the grass grow

The Rainy Day investment last year in myfootballclub.co.uk has paid off, at least in terms of pleasure if not profit. Utilizing the wisdom of crowds, we, the members, raised enough money to buy Ebbsfleet United and all the hard work will be rewarded on Saturday in Wembley Stadium when our heroes step out on to that holy ground to battle Torquay United for the FA Trophy. Naturally, Rainy Day will be there shouting to the point of hoarseness: "Come on the Fleet!" And as the BIG day draws near, Beat the Weather, a song featuring Ebbsfleet's groundsman Peter Norton, is racing up the dance charts. Beat that Chelsea! Eat your heart out Arsenal!

From a club Q&A with Peter Norton, here are some gems of gardening wisdom.

Q: Top tips for domestic lawns?
A: "Cut it regular, fertilize, and when it's dry, water it for plenty of moisture."

Q: Do you have any vices?
A: "Just my pipe and the odd Guinness."

Q: What's you favourite tool in the shed?
A: "My fork, without a doubt."

Q: You mention Storm troopers in your rap. Are you a fan of Star Wars?
A: "I was talking about storm troopers in the war but I do like the film. I like Mel Gibson and his Lethal Weapon films."

Q: Did you play football in your youth?
A: "Yes. I was the right half for Empire Paper Mills FC who I used to work for. I also looked after the pitch."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 7 May 2008 at 12:18 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The ghosts of Wembley past

Going to Wembley on Saturday. Will be listening for echoes of the legendary 1966 World Cup Final. Will keep an ear open for resonances of the classic 1975 FA Cup Final between the flamboyant West Ham, and Fulham, their uncompromising London rivals. But of all the past Wembley events, it's the one that took place on Saturday 12 July 1986 that we regret most having missed. Queen were in their heaven and Freddie Mercury, RIP, gave the performance of a lifetime. Immortal, this.

"These are the days it never rains but it pours," Freddie sang. And Michel de Montaigne wrote: "Let us disarm death of his novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, 'Well, and what if it had been death itself?' and, thereupon, let us encourage and fortify ourselves." That to Study Philosophy Is to Learn To Die.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 6 May 2008 at 12:26 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Waves of trivia and nostalgia

So there we were on Friday. Hanging out at the water-cooler (a bottle of bubbly, actually) and whiling away the time with a trivia quiz about the one European institution that commands something like endearment — The Eurovision Song Contest. Here's a test: Who won it for the UK by a record 70-point margin in Dublin on 3 May 1997 with the song Love Shine a Light? (And you get an extra dix points if you know that Marc Roberts of Ireland was the runner up with Mysterious Woman).

It was, of course, Katrina and the Waves. Reacting to her win, Katrina said it was the second landslide victory in a week. You see, Tony Blair had won the 1997 British general election two days previously. Eerily, our trivia joust was taking place at the same time as Gordon and Ken were getting a hammering in the local elections. Surely some kind of omen, eh?

Anyway, the ascent of Labour in 1997 marked the beginning of the end for Katrina and the Waves. The band never reached the same heights again and Katrina Leskanich went on to a solo career. But in that funny way in which memory works, all that talk of the band, and the bubbly, and the Champions League, and a recent visit to Merseyside, soon had me humming their 1984 song Going Down to Liverpool, which was covered brilliantly by The Bangles, who were so big in the mid-'80s that they could afford an extraterrestrial, emotionless, unmusical chauffeur.

"Hey now, where you going with that UB40 in your hand? / I said hey now, all through this green and pleasant land." All Brit trivia nerds will know that this was a reference to a form issued by the Department of Health and Social Security for claiming the dole. It meant Unemployment Benefit Form 40. And then there was this reggae band...

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 5 May 2008 at 6:13 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Week...

... of video coming up here. And we're starting today because there's so much video and so little time. All the big issues, the rout of Labour in London, Ebbsfleet United, Wembly, the horrors of Austria and another birthday, will be addressed via video here in the coming days, but we're starting with the race for the White House, Instead of Obama-Clinton, however, we're concentrating on John McCain, who is said to possess a fearsome temper, which some view as a drawback.

Hot off the presses is The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter and it contains a public exchange that is said to have taken place between McCain and his wife, Cindy, during his 1992 Senate bid. At one point, she teasingly stroked his hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."

So, McCain was in Iowa on May Day and an incident during his campaign rally in the Polk County Convention Complex produced this headline from the Des Moines Register, "McCain fields audience question on whether he called wife an expletive". Roll the video...

The man who asked the c-word question, by the way, is a Baptist minister.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 4 May 2008 at 8:05 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

...end

Evening Standard ...of those plans by Red Ken & Co. to stage a party next year in London to celebrate the 50th year in office/bed of the Cuban tyrant Castro. That's how bad things had become. No wonder the city's oppressed citizens booted out the loony left. And it was a far more decisive victory than Rainy Day had predicted. Boris won 1,168,738 votes (53 per cent) to Ken's 1,028,966 (47 per cent) after the second preferences of the other eight candidates were redistributed to the two front-runners. Special congratulations for fantastic round-the-clock blogging of the results to Iain Dale. "I shall have a lie in and then watch West Ham win 5-0 at Old Trafford" he promised his loyal, but tired readers. Iain got it right about Boris, but he's backing the wrong horse in the 12.45 at Manchester today.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 3 May 2008 at 7:58 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)