March 2008 Archives

Busy days, busy days, and getting busier.  My father and brother fly in at the crack of dawn tomorrow for a rare visit from the US, so I'll be a guide for the week.  To kick us off, the long-promised iPod of Loo (a phrase which I'll be explaining to my relatives this very week):

Look Away by Big Country (remember them?  Remember "In a Big Country"?  This song's better and so much fun to sing)

Looks Like Mona Lisa by Michelle Shocked ("She'd love nothing better than to rob the Louvre blind.")

The Loop by Morrissey (Not his best, but you've got to throw a bone to Morrissy fans now and then or they stalk you).

Loose Tongue by Neil Finn (a riff straight out of Aerosmith and a great bridge)

Thinking Up Looking Down by Lightning Seeds (I'm showing my age this ep (no Arctic Monkeys, no Killers) but a great song is a great song).

And now, to the loo.

You may have noticed new photos on the site.  You're not wrong.  I've finally updated them to the current set that actually far more resemble how I look.  New photos here and on Biog and Contact page (where I look especially broody).  Also, some back reviews added to the Journo page, and my new book The Knife of Never Letting Go has been added to the Books page. 

Enjoy (now read the diary entry below because I only wrote it a few hours ago and you probably haven't seen it yet).

Saw Never So Good at the National last night.  Now, many of you won't need to read past "Jeremy Irons as Harold Macmillan" to decide that you don't want to go, and you might be right.  I found it dull and undramatic, and Jeremy Irons pretty hammy (and constantly fluffing his lines; I mean, for Christ's sake, it's hardly Shakespeare).  My other half liked it a lot, so there you go, two opinions, but I have a bone to pick with three things:

1.  Let's call them excessive special effects.  Everything's trundling along quite slowly and quietly and then there's just this absurdly huge explosion, enough to give half the audience (most of whom were old enough to have served in Macmillan's Cabinet) heart failure.  As ploys to wake up a dozing audience go, it's pretty cynical.

2.  Non-period dressed stagehands.  The bleeding ensemble is HUGE.  Surely some of them could have moved the park benches in and out, rather than jarring-looking men in black t-shirts and phone headsets?

3.  The Jeremy Irons ego-fest.  Okay, fine, he's the lead, a big star, Oscar-winning actor, blah blah blah, but Pip Carter plays the young Harold Macmillan and shadows him for the entire play.  Surely, then, when the curtain call is made, Irons and Carter should come out together?  But no, we've got the ensemble bowing, then the main cast (including Carter), and then Jeremy all on his own, getting rather too much special praise, in my opinion.

Actors, can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em.

As I write this, big fat flakes of snow are falling into my back garden on Easter Sunday.  And did you see the hail on Good Friday?  There are probably metaphors here, if you were that way inclined.  I'm not.  Plus, it's hard to imagine a meteorological Passion in Bromley.

I reviewed The Dog of the Marriage by Amy Hempel in yesterday's Guardian.  A brilliant book, about which I've threatened to eat my shoes, so watch this space.

I also saw God of Carnage on the West End on Friday.  It's the new Yasmina Reza play (she who wrote Art and who seems like a fantastically difficult woman, doesn't she?), translated by Christopher Hampton, and starring Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott.  I went in wary of intolerable pretentiousness, but it's actually quite funny.  90 minutes, no interval (so £45 is a bit steep, thank you very much), but it flies by like a really smart sitcom.  It was still in previews, so the timing wasn't quite right and Ken Stott played to the audience too much, but not bad.  Very middle-class French.

And, tooting my own horn (I'm allowed), a very nice early review of my own book on the Bertrams website.  Toot toot.

To the Egyptians, Ka was the life force part of your soul.  When you died, it was your ka that left your body and, presumably, the ka of your 100 cats that were buried with you.  (This, according to Wikipedia anyway, so it's probably actually Ko, the Persians, and bats).  Either way, a life force iPod ep that turns out to be rather good:

Kaleid (When Worlds Mix) by Depeche Mode (probably the last of their good instrumentals)

Karaoke Soul by Tom McRae (dig the violins, the most urgent McRae ever stirs himself to)

Kare Kare by Crowded House (from their brilliant Together Alone album, one which I've twice given as a gift, so you know I mean it)

Karma Police by Radiohead (skipping over Karma Chameleon, a song everyone owns but nobody likes)

Kashmir by Led Zeppelin (the worship of Zep has always eluded me, but this song makes me think of P Diddy and Godzilla and I laugh through all 8 minutes of it).

Next up, the iPod of Loo.

(and while we're talking music, can someone please stifle the career of Duffy?  Seriously, people.  Amy Winehouse for Anglicans)

I've put this on the Events page, but it's not quite laying out like I want it to (and who checks the events page anyway?).  So, I'll put it here, too.  I've got an apperance lined up at the Brighton Festival under its "26 Letters" banner.  It's called:

So You Want To Write For Children?, at the Old Market on 9 May 2008 at 7.30pm.  It's chaired by Nicholas Tucker, and I'll be there with the author Katy Moran and our editor at Walker Denise Johnstone-Burt.  Tickets are £7.50 and can be bought through the link.  Should be fun.  I'll do my best.

In theatre news, I saw Major Barbara at the National last night, with Simon Russell Beale.  Very entertaining, though I wonder if some scenes of Barbara and Adolphus have been cut because by the end, it didn't feel like I knew why they were make the decisions they were.  Still, good fun.

Caught up on two cultural events that seem to have passed me by:  First, I finally saw The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, which turned out to be extremely moving and not in a stupid way.  I don't need to recommend it, as you've almost certainly already seen it.

Second, I finally, finally, finally saw The History Boys.  Yes, I know, but frankly, I'm wondering a little what the big deal is.  It's very funny and very eloquent, but it's also overlong (that final scene before the interval takes forever) and not really believable in any respect.  The boys don't seem like real boys, the school doesn't seem like a real school, and Hector and Irwin don't seem like real teachers.

For instance, after a full hour of getting to know Hector as a louche bon vivant, do we really think he'd cave so easily to the motorcycle-groping accusation?  Wouldn't his character have had some explanation at the ready, no matter how wrong-headed or overblown or needlessly literary?  And wouldn't that have been more ambiguous and interesting, made us feel a bit more uncomfortable about him?  Lovely language and writing, but I'm not quite sold.

Had my usual Saturday run with my running club this morning and pulled up at four miles with a gimpy foot.  Lordy, it hurts, even after the requisite cup of a tea and a hot bath.  Gives me an excuse to lay about on a Sunday, though, which is always welcome.

I'm in today's Guardian, with a review of Rick Moody's The Omega Force.  Not a great book, though my response is more bafflement than harshness.  I wonder if Moody has really gotten over that nonsense spouted about him by the asshole Dale Peck (look it up, snicker to yourself, then wonder for good reason why you've never heard of Dale Peck).  Still, what can you do?  By coincidence, the next book I'm reviewing is the collected stories of Amy Hempel, to which Rick Moody writes the introduction.  I don't want to scoop my own review, but I'd be out buying the Amy Hempel now to beat the rush.

So, that's my day, limping home, putting my feet up, laughing myself silly at Harry Hill's TV Burp and hoping no one in the neighbouring house can tell that's what I'm watching.  How my reputation would suffer...

Saw a preview of The Man Who Had All The Luck at the Donmar last night.  It was originally a disaster for Arthur Miller, only running for four nights.  Sixty years later, it's being rediscovered.

What an odd play.  There's an awful lot of old-fashioned fussiness and self-conscious Americana that hasn't stood up well to parody over the years, but there's also a proper fable about the nature of luck and how it can be destructive.  I think the ending is too pat, but the acting is really wonderful, even when it has to get all Millerian and overwrought.

Even the American accents are pretty good, aside from one guy who sounds a bit too much like Ahab.  There's one clunking exception, though.  The hero's brother is called Amos, which everyone insists on pronouncing the English way, to rhyme with "Hay Moss".  Americans don't say it that way; we only accent the first syllable (not both) and rhyme it with "Seamus".  It distracted me all evening.

Well, that and the plonker who sat behind me braying about why he didn't like Arthur Miller.  This, even before the curtain came up.  Why buy a ticket then?

On a day when the stock market hyper-ventilates wolf yet again, the oddly unsavoury Alan Duncan MP announces his intent to civil partnership, and there are a million poverty stricken folk in the countryside, it's probably a good time for the long-awaited (and, I'm sure, desperately anticipated) iPod of Don't.

Eschewing all obvious contenders ("Don't Stop", "Don't Stop Now", "Don't Stop Me Now"), we begin with:

Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington by Vic Reeves (Vic Reeves doing Noel Coward; could you ask for a better start?)

Don't Let's Start by They Might Be Giants (who are this list's proxies for the Nick Cave Rule)

Don't Come The Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim by Kirsty MacColl (the late and much-missed Kirsty's finest moment, imo)

Don't Dream It's Over by Crowded House (and possibly Neil Finn's finest moment)

Don't Change by INXS (certainly their finest moment; put it on you workout mix, it's great to run to)

Trust me, you'll like these.