In the Seinfeld episode The Frogger, the eponymous Jerry and his “short, stocky, slow-witted and bald” best friend George Costanza visit a soon-to-be closed down pizza parlour they used to frequent at high school. They discover that the owner still has the old Frogger arcade game they used to play as kids, and the Frogger machine still displays George’s high score of 860,630 points. George regards this as his greatest ever achievement, so resolves to buy the machine off the pizza parlour owner (“I’m never gonna have a child. If I lose this Frogger high score, that’s it for me”). Things, of course, don’t exactly go according to plan.
To add insult to injury, Pat Laffaye of Westport, Conneticut -- a real person, no less -- has recently beaten George’s fictional high score.
Poor old George Costanza -- nothing ever goes his way. Oh well, at least he’s still the Lord of the Idiots.
HBO have just released a teaser trailer for Treme, the new series from The Wire’s creator David Simon. The show is set in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans and centres around a group of local musicians. It stars Wire alumni Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters (who played Bunk Moreland and Lester Freamon in the Baltimore-set TV masterpiece) as well as the mighty John Goodman and -- somewhat bizarrely -- Elvis Costello.
I meant to write this on Friday night, but I was sick so I didn’t.
Friday would have been the 75th birthday of Mr Elvis Aaron Presley, a name you probably won’t need to look up in Wikipedia. Like most anniversaries (or, for that matter, most things in life), the news coverage was a fairly predictable affair. Stock footage covering both ends of his career followed by smug observations about Elvis impersonators and obligatory soundbites from eccentric fans, which invariably consisted of a random great granny from The King’s original target demographic (who, ideally, doesn’t much care for modern music) juxtaposed with some young arsehole with a quiff. I assume the latter was “going through a phase” and his or her parents were probably into Britpop or hip hop.
Personally speaking, I’ve always been rather fond of Elvis. My parents’ were part of his original target demographic, you see, and some of the first songs I ever heard were by The King. In psychological circles that’s known as imprint vulnerability. I’m also old enough to remember what I was doing when I first heard that he’d died. I was putting on a snake belt and getting ready to go to infant school.
In any case, in memory of Elvis I planned to spend Friday night watching Bubba Ho-Tep and listening to Gravelands by The King and Porcelain Monkey by Warren Zevon. Unfortunately I was sick, so I didn’t. To the best of my knowledge, Bubba Ho-Tep, Gravelands by The King and Porcelain Monkey by Warren Zevon did not feature prominently in the mainstream media’s coverage of the Elvis anniversary. I suppose that’s the reason why God created the Blogosphere and idiots like me.
Bubba Ho-Tep, in case you don’t know, was a blackly comic but strangely touching independent film directed by Don Cascarelli that was released in 2004 or thereabouts. It featured the mighty Bruce Campbell playing an aging Elvis who cheated death in 1977 and now finds himself living in a Texan rest home. Together with an elderly black guy -- who may or may not be JFK -- he has to face down a deranged mummy who’s preying on the souls of pensioners.
It’s one of my favourite movies of the last decade, and I cringe a little as I type that. Blog logic -- or blogic, if you will -- states that I’m now have to follow through on that comment by churning out a list of my favourite films of the decade. More bad haiku, then.
Gravelands, on the other hand, is a 1997 album which features cover versions of songs by dead rock stars performed by an Elvis impersonator from Belfast whose real name is James Brown. Yes, I know that sounds like the ingredients for some God-awful novelty record, but it really is quite wonderful. ‘The King’ really does sound like The King, the musicians really do sound like the Takin’ Care of Business Band and the choice of songs is priceless. They make it sound as though Nirvana’s Come as You Are, Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart and AC/DC’s Whole Lotta Rosie are new additions to the Presley back catalogue. To put it another way, it gives us a weird glimpse into a parallel world where Elvis got to live for another couple of decades and Rick Rubin helped him rehabilitate his legacy.
Finally, there’s Porcelain Monkey by the late Warren Zevon, which featured a blistering riff and some brilliant lyrics:
From a shotgun shack singing Pentecostal hymns
Through the wrought iron gates to the TV room
He had a little world, it was smaller than your hand
It’s a rockabilly ride from the glitter to the gloom
Left behind by the latest trends
Eating fried chicken with his regicidal friends
That’s how the story ends
With a porcelain monkey
Zevon, however, was not what you might call a fan of Elvis. In an interview in 2000 he said:
“He furthered the cause of ripping off a culture we’ve already oppressed for 400 years in my country. But I don’t know how much is individual brilliance, genius, and how much is just the currents of culture. Being at a cultural crossroads can be luck, you know? Don’t be absolutely sure that Soundgarden wasn’t as good as the Rolling Stones. They just came 30 years too late to be innovative.”
I’m a big fan of Zevon’s, but that’s a pretty harsh and iconoclastic position to take, even by his standards. The 6th Century sage Chilon of Sparta once said “Let only good be spoken of the dead”, but if that’s the case then how have Channel 5 documentary makers managed to stay in business? And does this lofty ideal still apply when the person wagging a finger at a dead rock star is another dead rock star?
I can’t say for certain, but I do know that Zevon’s Life’ll Kill Ya is one of my favourite albums of the decade. I cringe a little as I type that, too.
I guess that means I’ll be churning out even more bad haiku.
As a blogger, I’m contractually obliged to produce and publish annual lists of things wot I like. It’s one of those tedious tasks in life you try to put off until the last moment and always bitterly resent, like getting your car serviced, completing a tax return or flossing. If I don’t do it, though, bad things might happen. I could lose my weblog licence, get a nasty email from Technorati or even end up with a terrible gum disease.
So what follows are my favourite films of 2009 at this particular moment in time. These are movies that were released in the UK between 1st January and 31st December 2009 that I watched during this period, and it doesn’t include any films that were released during this period that I watched last night with Clare. Which is a shame, really, because otherwise Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell might have been a contender.
Just like last year, each entry comes complete with a lovingly hand-crafted piece of bad haiku.
WHAT DIVERGENT COURSES DID STEPHEN DEDALUS AND LEOPLOLD BLOOM’S RESPECTIVE TRAMS FOLLOW?
Stephen’s 11A tram followed Birmingham’s outer ring road in an anti-clockwise direction; Bloom’s 11C tram followed Birmingham’s outer ring road in a clockwise direction.
AT WHAT POINT ON THE ROUTE DID THEIR TWO TRAMS CONVERGE?
In Cotteridge.
WHAT WERE THE NAMES OF STEPHEN’S FELLOW PASSENGERS?
Rev Al Green, Mr Edward G. Baston, Mr Mose Lee, Mr Bart Lee Green, Mr Bill Slee, Mr Derek End, Mr Dud Heston, Mr Frank Lee, Mr Thor Ochs, Fr Garret Greene, Miss Cassandra L. Vale, Dr R. Bourne, Mrs Hayley Mills, Mr Lee Bank, Mr Laurence ‘Loz’ Ells, Miss Minnie ‘Min’ Worth, Mr Kit & Mrs Mia Greene, Mr Oz Kot, Mr Rube Berry, Miss Sally Oak, Mrs Sally Park, Mrs Shell Dunne, Lt Col Shaw Teeth (Retired), Mr Tighe Burne, Dr Winston Greene, Mr Wes Teeth, Mr Ty Slee and Mr Alan Rock.
IN WHAT STATE OF HEATH DID STEPHEN FIND HIMSELF?
Gravely Ill.
WHERE WAS STEPHEN’S TRAM LOCATED IN SPACE-TIME?
At 2.30pm on 14th June 1914, Stephen’s 11A tram (maximum seating capacity approximately 45) was negotiating Erdington’s Six Ways traffic roundabout as it followed the 27 mile imperfectly circular outer ring road of the city of Birmingham (population approximately 840,000): which was part of the county known as Warwickshire (population approximately 1.3 million): which was part of the country called England (population approximately 34 million); which was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (population approximately 46 million): which was part of the continent of Europe (population approximately 450 million): which was part of a planet known locally as Earth (population approximately 1.8 billion) which was currently following a 150,000,000 mile imperfectly circular orbit of its neighbouring Sun (maximum seating capacity approximately nil).
Over the last couple of years Clare has become a big fan of the seminal 90s sitcom Seinfeld. This, it must be said, is largely my fault.
I’m also a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the mighty meta-cringecom from Seinfeld’s co-creator Larry David. Despite my best efforts, however, Clare has somehow managed to remain immune to its toe-curling charms.
I think this picture from Curb’s season 7 finale may change her mind:
‘You’ve all seen that Busch beer commercial where the girl in the short hot pants opens the beer bottle on her belt buckle, leaves it there, lets it foam over her hand and over the bottle and the voiceover goes: “Get yourself a BUSCH!”
‘Hmmm. You know what that looks like..?’
Bill Hicks – Relentless
Local chocolate giant Cadbury are in the news today. The board are resisting a hostile takeover bid from US food giant Kraft, saying that the “derisory” bid is an attempt buy the company “on the cheap”. If the poster advertising the Cadbury Flake on the Pershore Road in Cotteridge is anything to go by, it looks as though this fight might get dirty:
Hmmm. You know what that looks like..?
Of course, the humble Cadbury Flake has had a long tradition of employing soft-focus erotic imagery in its advertising campaigns. This time around, however, the firm seem to be aiming for something a bit more blunt and obvious than a girl in an overflowing bath or a gecko scuttling across a telephone. The slogan “Succumb to the crumb” is particularly suggestive. Is it just my filthy mind, or is that first word positively loaded with phonetic ambiguity?
Those advertising people: they just can’t help themselves.
While flying through an early-90s Cosmic Rave Bombardment, Tom was bitten by a radio & crash-landed into the heart of a Grammar Bomb explosion. Emerging from the wreckage, he found himself imbued with strange, blather-writing powers and the proportionate strength & speed of a 39 year-old Irishman. Despised by a world he has sworn to perplex, he strives to bring nonsense to the masses on a semi-irregular basis.
