Tuesday 22nd May

Comedy= Tragedy + Time

This formula has always troubled me. It is hard to know who to credit it to. Many people have said similar things throughout history. Another is the line about comedy being when someone else suffers, but you don’t. As soundbites they kind of work, but I have never felt comfortable accepting them as absolute truths. But then, I have never been good at maths.

In preparation of a master’s course I begin in October, I am having to “book up” on works of drama, from classic to contemporary, beginning with The Theban Plays: a trilogy of works by Sophocles, which include the ever-infamous story of Oedipus. In their own time, (around 429 BC in the case of Oedipus the King) these great tragedies were performed as entertainment, but they were also educational, keeping alive old traditions and old stories. People didn’t go to see a new play, but rather to contemplate eternal truths. Language and culture shift parallel to one another, and much of the specifics of the story are alien (and to an extent distracting) to me as a modern person. But eternal truths are eternal, unlike the girl-band Eternal, who lasted six years.

The essential theme of Sophocles’ tragedy trilogy is that of man encountering “more than man”: the forces that appear to govern life. In Poetics (335 BC), the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory, Aristotle spoke of tragic drama as being a series of reversals and discoveries to bring about pity or fear in an audience. Key to this was that the tragic characters (even if kings or queens) were portrayed as universal, relatable figures. Even if they were the focus of hatred in a play, they were never pantomime villains, but rather had a balance of dislikeable and likeable traits.

According to Aristotle, the most effective form of dramatic discovery in tragedy is one that is accompanied by a reversal, that is, “a change from one state of affairs to the opposite”. The same could be said of good comedy.

Aristotle is believed to have written another volume specifically on comedy, which has been lost to time. In Poetics he only mentions it briefly, stating that comedy is “a species of ugliness or badness”, but in a form that is “not painful or injurous”. He continues, “comedy aims at representing men as worse than they are… tragedy as better”, i.e. in comedy, deserving of pain, and in tragedy, undeserving.

Of course, much time has passed since the day of Ancient Greece (hence the name), and it is perhaps no longer as easy to separate comedy from tragedy thus. But this having been said, The Theban Plays and Aristotle’s Poetics remain key texts to contemporary dramatists to this very minute, despite the many trends and changes to life and culture since. So who am I to doubt their eternal wisdom?

In being awarded his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, Samuel Beckett, the Irish novelist, poet, playwright, was commended by the judges for his writing, in which modern man “acquires elevation” through his own destitution.  Beckett, perhaps more than any other dramatist presents a problem for a clear definition of comedy or tragedy. His plays are equally both.

In Beckett’s works, physical and verbal comedy is used to explore the idea of the individual in opposition to forces greater than himself, death and bureaucracy, and trapped by language. Though his plays famously offer little reprieve for the characters, they are founded on a rigorous philosophy of humour as self-defence against loss.

We each have our own sense of humour, formed by local and cultural influences. This sense has its public and private forms, and changes as we grow, and it is unique to our individual psychologies. Therefore, this uncomfortable balance between comedy and tragedy is not something that can be defined by any one person from anyone’s perspective but their own. I can’t deny that to see someone else suffer, if it is without serious consequence, is funny, sometimes, but for me, this not enough for a definitive definition of all humour.

There is no doubt in my mind that comedy is a form of rebellion. But rather than being an act of confrontation, good comedy is a show of weakness, be it feigned or under (perhaps hidden) control.

In a documentary I saw which tried (and disappointingly failed) to seek the link between spiritual enlightenment and the ability to laugh, actor/comedian Mike Myers spoke of his compulsion to act silly as being a defensive gesture, albeit through acts of self-violence. “I wanna be the architect of my own embarrassment, thank you very much”. For me, comedy is more than a genre, but a philosophy, teaching a strategy of levity that opposes societal determinism, or your Fate as decreed by The Gods perhaps.

And so back to that mother-lover immemorial, Oedipus. In order to stave off my unresolved questions about tragedy’s relationship to comedy, I went to see a comic retelling of the story, Oedipussy, at the Lyric Hammersmith in London. To say none of my questions were resolved would be to forget the numerous new questions the show raised, all of which are private and deeply regretted. To end on a quote from Aristotle’s Poetics, “Poetry is the product either of a man of great natural ability or of one not wholly sane”.

Tuesday 15th May

This weekend I visited a friend in Oslo, Norway, for the first time. I flew with Ryanair, from Stansted: possibly the worst combination for any journey.

Ryanair’s chairs are a few degrees forward of upright, and unadjustable, and with everyone sat in a position the inverse of natural comfort, it’s hard not to look at the space as resembling the inside of a Playmobil aeroplane; our mannequin-like forms rigid in their uniformity. When you pull the armrest down there is the sound of cheap plastic rubbing against cheap plastic, that indelible squeak of quality. In actually leaving the ground, Ryanair planes truly illustrate the wonder of air travel. It really is amazing that such a piece of crap could fly through the sky. The engines make so much noise that you feel like you are in a washing machine on fast spin, for the length of your journey. If a car makes a lot of noise, you take it to the garage. In Ryanair terms, a lot of engine noise means all is as good as it can be.

Of the numerous times I have flown, only on a couple of occasions have the passengers roundly clapped the “flight team” upon landing. The first time this happened I clapped along, slightly worried as to what I had missed during my nap. A fire? A drought? A plague of locusts ripping the wings to shreds? I find this kind of behaviour all very unnecessary. Yes, it is amazing that we are able to fly through the air in a metal box, and touch back to earth without exploding in a ball of flames. But surely we are all used enough to it by now to move on. It is the engineer’s job  to understand the physics, and the pilot to know what to do to not kill us in relation to said physics. Even if you did understanding either job completely, I don’t think that feeling of amazement would actually be resolved. It is essentially incredible.

There is a lot I don’t understand about many things. I don’t applaud birds. I don’t high-five-low-five-on-the-side-down-below-you’re-too-slow my doctor. With flying, it is of course that feeling of having had your life in the pilot and crew’s hands for the length of your journey that compels applause. But surely the trustworthiness of the pilot in this endeavour is integral to our unspoken agreement. If you don’t kill me, I won’t kill anyone else. I personally don’t find it surprising that they have good judgement in this regard, or at least I don’t think it worthy of exceptional thanks. Again, I silently applaud your skills, but it is your job. I know you don’t expect to be clapped, so don’t expect me to join in when others decide to. Maybe that’s why pilots don’t reveal themselves to the passengers before a flight. In our minds they are superhuman figures, perfect and flawless in every way. If I saw my pilot had stubby thumbs, even I might be prone to a round of applause when we land, or a panicked emergency exit mid-flight.

Maybe it’s just me, but I always sense upon landing a moment’s indecision, in which everyone is looking around at everyone else to see whether we are going to clap or not. Their is a general agreement to the idea, but not many will start it off. To be the one clapper is not a happy feeling. When a Ryanair plane lands on time they play a recording of a trumpet triumphantly sounding off. Again, for me, this is unnecessary embellishment. Planes are meant to be on time.

Thinking about it some more, the only thing worse than the clap at the end of a flight would be if it became habit for people to clap and cheer during take off, like a bunch of blokes goading a mate to chug a yard of ale in one sitting.

-

Oslo was fun. The people were nice. My main cultural learnings to take back to the UK were:

1) Norwegians have something called “Brown Cheese”, which a friend of me told me is cheese stirred so slowly that it turns brown. Mmmm. It is essentially caramelised dairy. I have now tried it, and will never have to taste it again. Phew.

2) They have a squareabout, as opposed to a roundabout, in Oslo, where cars have to take sharp corners around a central island. The sign for a squareabout is identical to that of a roundabout.

3) All liquors and wines are sold at the state-run Wine-Monopoly. You have to applaud them for their honesty in calling it that. The government makes all the profit from booze, and they don’t lie about it.

4) It is ridiculously expensive to live in Norway. To buy a tin of kidney beans, you have to hand the cashier your own kidney.

-

It doesn’t matter what the Youtube video is, if there are more then three comments underneath, at least one will be highly abusive. I find it amazing that anyone who puts a video up gets emotional when this happens. It is proven that if you put boys in front of a keyboard they would rather use it to serve the god of filth, than any greater force.

Kids nowadays have such access to inappropriate material; violent, pornographic, offensive. In my day you had to make do with that soiled sheet from the Daily Sport which lay by the swings in the park, which you kicked around playfully to cop a glance. Either that or you had to buy your booby-pics off that friend-of-a-friend, the fat one with the moustache, for 20p a page (10p if there was writing on the second side). Today these friend-of-a-friend porn vendors are a dying breed. Alas. Gone with the written letter and Christian values.

Monday 7th May

Nothing makes me much sadder than seeing roadside trees that have been cut down unnecessarily. I’m sure they (whoever they are) justify it by saying it was “outgrowing itself”, or some bullshit, but for me there is no justification for it. The other day I noticed that three trees had been chopped to sad stumps next to the Highfields Park, at the University of Nottingham. Was it blocking the cars’ view of the park? Or the dog’s view of the road? Either way, I lazily hate the nonspecific people who decided that was a good idea, in a completely middle-class disenfranchised way.
-

Do bin-men ever get to their own house on their rounds and realise they have forgotten to put the bins out? Is there a system whereby bin-men are given routes away from their own residence to avoid conflict of interest?
-

The other day I bought eggs from Aldi. They are the cheapest free range eggs in town. Dirt cheap. So much so, that I was almost expecting to crack them open, and for rocks to fall out. They are so cheap that Aldi has had to limit purchases to three boxes per customer. Forget the petrol shortages, I can see the egg queue slowly forming. It reminded me of a time when I saw two (almost certainly) homeless guys shoplift four big blocks of Cathedral City extra-mature Cheddar from a Co-op. The first thing I thought was maybe one day cheese will be a precious commodity, and we’ll all have to fight tooth and nail for a wheel of Brie, and those other little things we take for granted nowadays. The second thing I thought was those homeless dudes are going to be experiencing a lot of phlegm over the next week. I wonder if they went down the road and stole some pickled onions from the Polish Deli, then sauntered into town and nicked some crackers and port from Waitrose. I’d like to think so.

I wrote recently about how the word “organic” has been held hostage by advertisers and marketing teams, as a byword for quality, as a tool for branding. Well I recently came across a sign for an eatery that claimed that all their pasties were “hand-baked”.

I’m familiar with the term hand-made... You’ll often see claims to “hand-made sandwiches” on signs outside pubs, which qualify a measure of homeliness, of realness, as if to say “we are from another era, where people care enough about you to personally finger your ham baps”. You will also at times see claims to the home-made; mostly in cafes, advertising cakes of some kind or another. But due to the evolution of some very particular rules in language etiquette, you wouldn’t see a cafe claim to have “home-made sandwiches”, or “hand-made cakes”; the former suggesting soggy egg-mayonnaise rolls driven to the shop in a shoebox in the boot, the latter suggesting fingerprints in your chocolate log.

You might see home-baked, perhaps at a cake stall at a village fete, and you can even buy “half-baked baguettes” from supermarkets. But hand-baked?

It sounds like an unnecessarily painful procedure. But maybe to hand-bake a pasty is a kind of ritual branding, a rite of passage, and written into Greggs’ manifesto (I assume they have one) as a way of bringing their staff together into a subterranean society of minimum-wage bakers, which I’m sure exists in the stockrooms or basements of every store, and then across every Greggs nationwide. Like Scientology, but northern.

-

So, the other day MCA of the Beastie Boys died. As an ode to him, here are some typically original lyrics from the man:

Pass me the scalpel, I’ll make an incision 
I’ll cut off the part of your brain that does the bitching 
Put it in formaldehyde and put it on a shelf 
And you can show it to your friends and say “that’s my old self”

Wednesday 25th April

I’m not really a strong swimmer. I learned quite late, and at school was always in the lower-skilled class, along with the kids who sank to the bottom like a rubber brick. Nowadays I’m adequate enough, but am confidently overtaken by all, save the sixty-five year-old ladies who swim side-by-side nattering. I’m an occasional water-swallower, one of those swimmers who hold their breath and then take in a sudden gasp every few strokes: that one breath sometimes coinciding with a wave. Swimming backstroke my legs sometimes drift downwards to a diagonal. It can resemble a backwards doggy paddle, which for a dog would actually be the best stroke going. As it is, with me a fully-qualified human being, I must appear more like someone in rehabilitation after a big accident.

I’m sure life guards have a sixth sense for scoping out possible disasters in the pool, even at first sight of the swimmer. As I approach the edge of the pool, with my definite sense of unease and beard that needs a trim, I must come across as a potential drowner.
-

I like seeing cats sat on windowsills, when they are indoors, but behind drawn curtains. At the best of times cats look incredibly relaxed: their bums seem to me the most comfortable bums to sit on in all God’s fine work. If The Eternal He has a portfolio, then cat’s bums would be on the sheet about bums, as a masterpiece of comfort. Like a Renault Espace.

Cats are incredibly private, as we all know, and though they look calm at most times, we can’t doubt that if they’ve been out, they’ve probably been up to some borderline ninja activities, or at least a bit of wanton torture. They can land on all fours from walls five times their height. They deserve their rests. When they are sat indoors, on a windowsill, between the curtain and the glass, next to ornaments (maybe a decorative vase with dry flowers or a picture frame with its back to us) they seem to be at their most pensive. Observing the world passing by, like a gap-year student in a European cafe.

I like it when they are sat next to Wireless internet routers. They share a similar form, and both blink with occasional rapidity, before returning to their original inanimate state. Routers are cats for the allergic. The router, however, gets very little from observing the street outside your house. It’s seen it all before on Google street view.
-

A couple of weeks ago I listened on the radio to a stand-up show by a young British comedian, whose name escapes me right now. He did a show all about the idea of “Outamation”, that is, information outside of what we need to know, like if an acquaintance told you about their diarrhoea when you ask them if they’re alright. He used the example of annual “round-robins”; letters sent by distant relatives to you at New Year’s, to update you on their life’s happenings. It was a great show, and I’m annoyed I can’t remember the comedian’s name.

But what the show did make me remember recently was an experience I had with “outamation”. Once I was expecting someone I didn’t know very well to take part in an event I organised, as one of the main guests. On the day he should have caught his plane, I got an email from him saying he had missed his flight. I called him to see what had happened, and what we were going to do. He went into a story about how his wife’s sister was pregnant, and how she was married to footballer Nicolas Anelka’s brother, and how this woman had started to go into labour, and that his wife had took a train to Paris to be with her, leaving him with their kids to look after, hence the missed flight.

What I loved about this excuse was his mention of Nicolas Anelka, which he must have seen as a kind of qualifying boon for the story. “He might think I’m making this up, but if I mention Nicolas Anelka’s brother, then he will have to believe me. Because who would have enough cunning to fabricate something so banal as a detail to a lie?” It kind of worked, I suppose. I have never doubted the truth of the story, as pathetic as it kind of is. But the nature of this “outamation” was brought into full focus the next time I saw this guy at another event, where he didn’t even remember my name, despite all the bother and financial loss he put me and my company through. I realised that for him, I must have been outamation.

Friday 20th April

I hate it when airlines put hidden taxes on tickets. It defies belief that in today’s age, where the consumer has ever more power in the substance and presentation of products, that this practice should be allowed to continue. A flight is listed as £89 return, then by the time you’ve ticked the box that specifies that yes, you would like the plane to have seatbelts, and yes, you do intend on bringing your legs with you, the cost is double what was advertised. I wouldn’t be surprised if before long EasyJet developed another string to its corporate bow with a sperm bank (EasyWank?), and offered passengers on their flights reduced ticket prices or perhaps adequate leg room if they *ahem* fulfilled some prior obligations.

To be fair on the airlines, who don’t need my faux-sympathy, it happens often with VAT on other products too. Speaking to someone or another on the phone, they’ll instruct you that whatever it is you want will cost x amount, “minus VAT”. They say it in such a way as to say “Look, I know how money is tight. If I could do anything about it, you wouldn’t have to pay this much. Tell you what. I’ll talk to the boss for you… The boss says no. Sorry. It’s out of my hands”. If they really cared, they should reduce what they are charging by the amount of the VAT plonked on top. That’s caring. Don’t give me faux-sympathy, Mr. hi-fi salesman. I’m buying a hi-fi. I like to get my faux-sympathy from HSBC ”Maggie” in India, who is always a pleasure to talk to, and never has unwanted surprises for me.
-

Listening to a Leonard Cohen album the other day, I was taken aback to hear him mention organic soup. The song was written in the seventies, and for a moment that word jarred a little in my mind. But it wasn’t long before I remembered that “organic” existed as an idea long before it became a branding buzz word. It’s funny. I suddenly remembered having used that word in different contexts, before organic freetrade local hand-picked produce became all the rage. I’m all for organic food, but it was only listening carefully to a song that I had heard many times before, that I realised that the word underwent cultural rebranding around ten years ago, and now it is almost inseparable from the image of packaging, in my mind at least.
-

Going swimming the other day, I suddenly had the thought that lifeguards must have many, many pairs of swimming shorts/costumes. It made me wonder. Do they have formal trunks? Work trunks and fun trunks? When they go to the sea on holiday, does it feel like they’ve taken their work with them? If you lived in a country where being in the sea is second nature, would you own a pair of funeral trunks?

On a slightly different note, yesterday I cut up a pair of old underpants to make a set of three handkerchiefs. I was getting frustrated with pocketfuls of screwed up toilet tissue, and thought I’d do my bit to save the planet, whilst finding a new use for some holey-unusable underwear. I like to think of these odd-shaped hankies as being the realisation of my middle-class values, albeit with a hobo chic edge.
-

I watched a programme called The Story of Slapstick the other day on BBC iPlayer. Being a big fan of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, I had high hopes for an intellectual dissection of the psychological precedent for clowning around, its historical roots, or at least a slightly intelligent attempt at a survey of slapstick from the Commedia dell’Arte until today. But what I got was another one of those cheap-as-chips, piece of crap “best of” clip shows, and a poor one at that.

It was obvious that the lack of guests of any repute or relevance was down either to cost-cutting at the BBC, or a general weariness from celebrities to do any more of these crappy shows. Of about four guests, one was Mathew Horne off Gavin & Stacey, who to my mind has no relation to slapstick at all, apart from doing a rubbish sketch show with James Corden a couple of years ago, which was canned after one series. He looked as if he knew he shouldn’t be there, that it wasn’t his realm. I’m sure after the failure of their sketch show, both he and James Corden would have squirmed to have seen him described as an “Actor and Comedian” on the programme.

As is usually the case with these kind of shows, the programme used largely BBC archive footage, unwilling as they were to shell out money to pay for permission to take clips from elsewhere. All in all, it was massively underwhelming. There was no context drawn-up for the occurrence of slapstick (Commedia dell’Arte were mentioned for thirty seconds), and no discussion of how performers’ approaches to slapstick nowadays is different to fifty years ago. Clearly when Vic & Bob hit each other with oversized frying pans for five minutes, there is something to be said of post-modernity, the deconstruction of comic tradition, and slapstick as both anti-intellectual and intelligent. Sigh. High hopes. Dashed.

To cure my post-show annoyance, I started to rewatch my Ren & Stimpy boxset. I love Ren & Stimpy. It was only after watching that crap documentary, that I realised how influential Ren & Stimpy have been to my sense of humour. It’s so grotesque and childish and absurd. I love it. Checking the back of the box, the boxset claimed to contain an episode previously banned worldwide, “Man’s Best Friend”, which according to the internet was the reason Ren & Stimpy’s creator John Kricfalusi was kicked off his own show. From series three onwards the show was in the sole hands of Nickolodeon, and it became a pale version of its former self. Watching back over the shows of series one and two, I’m only surprised they even allowed the cartoon to be shown at all, especially at a time when children could watch it. But I’m not complaining. Mr. Kricfalusi’s warped imagination informed much of what I like and do today, for better or worse.

The boxset did not in fact have the banned episode. Though it was written on the box, the BBFC took the decision to prevent said episode from appearing on the DVD boxset in the UK. It is available on US versions, and also via Jimmy Internet, right here:

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/6092893/The_Ren_Stimpy_Show_Man_s_best_Friend

In most part it is an average episode of the show, but at around 8:19  it gets particularly graphic. If you are squeamish, you may not wish to watch it.

Monday 9th April

I am not an adequate cook. Even dishes I can make relatively well are done book-in-hand, without confidence, despite having been prepared many times before. The other day I tried to bake a Rye-Wholemeal mix loaf without the instructions that come on the back of the flour bag I call friend. It came out tasting like bread, but unrisen; when sliced, like thick, fragile crackers. My wife could see my mistakes building as I blundered through the preparation and cooking process, and kept offering me advice. Though I could feel all deteriorate before me, I kept blindly, stubbornly, keeping-on in my own way, claiming to have done things I hadn’t done (having actually missed important stages of the dough preparation process), and angrily declaring to be about to do things I wouldn’t actually have remembered without her intervention. Sometimes it’s easier to cook crap bread than to admit you’re wrong.

Though having been together for many years I still find myself doing things I don’t want to do, like making the bed or washing up, more out fear of my wife’s reaction, than for feeling these tasks are necessary and for the good of all. I will even rush to appear to be mid-task when I hear her keys in the door, so as to appear the embodiment of thoughtfulness when she steps in the house. After doing so, I will probably have a little grace with the washing up, or whatever else is awaiting my attention. It’s pathetic, I know, but really there are so many oppositions between the male and female brains that sometimes it is fair enough to (privately, silently) admit that you have done something just for the other’s sake, consciously, as much out of anxiety as kindness, and really as a defensive manoeuvre. I know my love is partly built on fear of no hot dinners. I am a simple man. I fry eggs. I make Hungarian Borscht soup. I make inferior breads. Among her many talents, my wife is a great cook, and that is a favour worth keeping. I’d like to say I have my own specific skills that she is equally in debt to, but really she does everything better than me.
-

On Saturday evening I went to see Headhunters, a Norwegian thriller. It was the most bloody film I’ve ever seen. At one point someone’s face is completely ripped off in a car crash, and you see the hole in their head full on.

It is a fantastic film. But I am happy to admit that I had to cover my eyes for prolonged periods of stabbing. I was sat next to a guy in his fifties who routinely laughed at all the brutal killing on screen, along with many others in the auditorium. Why the hell were they laughing? Yes, the film had a kind of self-conscious revelry to it, and an absurd humour to some of the set-pieces… but actual out-loud laughter? I thought it was young people who were meant to be desensitised to violence.

I’ll gladly watch any film from start to finish, no matter the content. I have even sat through pile of crap films like Irreversible, which uses an act of explicitly portrayed sexual-violence as a prolonged and central sequence, despite wishing at the end that I hadn’t wasted my time and money. I’m no prude, and yet, I do find myself squeamish to certain levels of simulated depravity, and can find myself disliking a piece of drama if it seems to enjoy its own rudeness or grossness too much. I must admit, probably to widespread disbelief, that I gave up on watching the celebrated TV show The Wire after episode one, because it had too much swearing in it. I wasn’t offended by it, exactly, but I just couldn’t focus on the meaning of the dialogue, with so many distractions. Frankly, I found all the swearing to just be annoying. I will try watching it again at some point, I promise.
-

I’m not much of a football fan, not anymore. As a teenager I got into playing and watching it, mostly as a tool for survival at secondary school, where pretty much every boy played the game. At one time I was pretty fanatical about it, but, as time has passed, my interest has wained. And now, as every season comes and goes, the players I originally looked up to age and retire, to be replaced by new faces, and somehow with that change, my interest too has moved on. It’s just so incessant, that constant flux of teams, players, coaches. Everything has become such a matter of finance nowadays, that somehow it’s not as pure a pleasure, following a team. I guess my experience of and current disaffection from football is partly due to the fact that I introduced myself to football, and don’t have a family of supporters above me to maintain my passion. But really, as I mature (in some ways) I see less to relate to or aspire to in the game, and its world. Football is slowly reaching a point in my life where it is as important to me as Curling: when world class performers are competing to the peak of their art, I may very well watch,  but the rest of the time I may very well forget it exists.

Something that has always annoyed me in football is the game of comparisons that pundits play to fill time when no one is actually kicking a ball about. Why compare a player living today with one who stopped playing forty years ago? Lionel Messi is the greatest player I have ever seen play, and for many people he is the greatest ever footballer. But Pele, the Brazilian football legend who has until now claimed the title as greatest ever player, has very clearly stated his own opinion on the matter, saying “When Messi has scored 1,283 goals like me, when he’s won three World Cups, we’ll talk about it.”

Pele was, luckily for him, born during the golden-age of Brasilian football, and consequently he played in some of the best teams South-America has ever produced. In club football, he only ever played in Brasil, for his hometown club Santos, and it is well documented that many of the goals in his record-breaking career were in fact scored in pointless exhibition matches with inferior teams. But even though he is clearly an idiot defending his fragile and precious records, still it is not fair to refute Pele’s claim to his ‘crown’. Messi and Pele are from entirely different eras, and the game of football has changed so much in the intervening years.

The best quote I have ever read about comparing footballers across eras came from former Manchester United Assistant-Manager Carlos Queiroz. Speaking about midfielder Ryan Giggs back in 2007, Queiroz said, very poetically:

“You cannot be a special person in the world if you are a copy of something. You really become a star when, with your football, your art, your style, you create your own identity. So the best tribute we can pay to Ryan Giggs is not that he compares to George Best or anyone. It is to say that he won the right to be Ryan Giggs.”

Tuesday 3rd April

In the last couple of days there has been much debate in the UK about a proposed new law mooted by our coalition government, which would reportedly allow intelligence officers to access your emails, calls and texts as they happen, without a warrant, rather than retrospectively. Under 2009 EU legislation, internet service providers are currently obliged to keep details of our web access history, email and internet phone calls for 12 months. But these new measures would extend their powers to social networks such as Facebook, and offer unprecedented access to our private conversations.

I’m no conspiracy theorist*, nor a terrorist (honestly, kind World-Web-Watchmen), or even a paedophile (close brackets), so I have little to worry about… or do I? DO I? Someone please bring perspective to this issue, because I have none.

*(How many conspiracy theorists of any real self-worth actually use that term to describe themselves? Even if your theory is outlandish, surely you have your own kind of logic to your reasoning; enough to distance yourself from such a Hollywood cliche, which would see you as a quirky ginger outsider with a penchant for cutting one-liners, and an eventual role in saving the world from Aliens/natural disaster/Germans)

It is said that if we don’t have anything to worry about, then we shouldn’t worry, but pardon me if I feel a little uneasy at the prospect of having my inbox under scrutiny.

I have friends who refuse to join Facebook. I have other friends who join Facebook, then leave. I have some other friends, who have Facebook accounts, but claim Facebook is a waste of time anyway. I have always scoffed at those friends who refuse to join Facebook without any understanding of how it can be good. I scoff even louder (sore throat possible) at those who complain about it, even when they know they love it. But those who leave, knowing it’s not for them… there’s a righteousness in the act which I respect. And I must admit, I find myself tempted by that option increasingly.

I avoid using Facebook as a social medium, ie. for small talk, but rather use it as a kind of extended email system, to share video links, to publicise events. I certainly do not give into any applications, games or trinkets. It just doesn’t interest me to waste my time there. I do that well enough in the real world: I don’t need an extended territory of regret. In other words, I know what I get from it, and I limit my time there. But despite my early efforts, Facebook has increasingly become a place where my private, social and work personas meet, without definite boundaries between them. I’m tagged in photos taken by other people at parties, on holiday, at work… it is really is a bit of a mess, and all publically viewable. When it comes to pin numbers and passwords, we are always told to be vigilant. But what is vigilant when it comes to collective memory-sharing?

My anxiety is partly fuelled by the fact that I have never turned down a Facebook friend request. When I meet new people at parties, friends houses, through work, I’ll hear their name, but more often than not it will slip from my mind within ten seconds. It is not strange for me to know someone casually for several years without having any idea what their name is. It often gets to a point where I come across as rude, failing to introduce them to other friends of mine in order to avoid the embarrassment of my neglect. Once I had to introduce one person whose name I had forgotten to another person whose name I had forgotten. In this circumstance, rather than coming across as one kind of idiot, I decided to improvise for each of them ironic and insulting nicknames, thus coming across as a different kind of idiot, to forgo nonconsensual shame. But an ambient consequence of my bad memory has been that when on Facebook, I’d rather accept a “friendship” than outrightly reject them. I don’t know if this is generous, or commonplace, or even a little egoistic, but nonetheless, that is my policy. Subsequently I might have befriended any number of famous spies (do such people exist?) or maniacs.

I feel like the mess I’ve created has left me lacking control of my account. I don’t know what kind of threat can be wrought on my reputation if someone was to (very easily) get hold of a photo of me in my Speedos, but with recent news developments and the scaremongering that has accompanied it (like an ugly cousin taken to a party because she has feelings too), I am getting an itch in my finger, every time I hold it over the delete key. Nb. I have a MAC, so actually ‘Backspace’ would be more accurate, but if I wrote that you would have no idea what I meant.

Is it time to leave Facebook? The company’s programmers/developers/idiots keep changing the interface every few months, making it less usable, so maybe it is time to cut my losses, as someone other than me might say, and set up a work only account, void of personality and personal details. That said, if I didn’t use Facebook, then no one would ever visit this blog, and then where would I be? Sat in the same place no doubt, but rather than choosing not to go to any of the events I have been invited to by my virtual friends, I would be abjectly wishing I knew what events were taking place that I had been excluded from, by being little analogue me.

Wednesday 28th March

What is it about newspapers that make them so attractive to purchase, and then unreadable when you get them home, only until they are headed for the recycling? I will occasionally buy a Saturday or Sunday newspaper, laden with magazine sections and supplements, but I rarely feel the compulsion to spend the full 24 hours of said day digesting all the information it contains. In fact, I rarely scratch the surface. Newspapers sit around my house for months in steadily increasing piles, making chairs unusable, or lining the floor by my bed, like I live in fear of stray Hamsters.

But as material for papier-mache, or as an expendable work surface for shoe polishing, they instantly grow new features: developing fresh pages with columns written about things I like by people I like. They are all of a sudden interesting in ways they weren’t when I first bought them. When the news is new, I feel anxious to evaluate and consume what is vital, to stay up to date. But when it is already old, I am comforted by it. This has happened. That has happened. I get a similar experience watching old television adverts or weather forecasts on VHS tapes from the 90s. I am unthreatened.

-

When I die I want to be dressed in a shell-suit, and then cremated at my funeral service. I will produce a green smoke. As the guests leave the venue, consoling each other for their terrible loss no doubt, I want a pre-recorded video of my face, under-lit for dramatic effect, laughing maniacally, to be projected into the smoke, as the sound of my voice, run through many echo effects, and maybe even a bit of light flange*, booms out of some disguised speakers.

(*From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Flanging (pronounced “flan-jing”) is an audio effect produced by mixing two identical signals together, with one signal delayed by a small and gradually changing period, usually smaller than 20 milliseconds.)

-

On sunny days like those we have enjoyed recently in the UK, I often wish I was Mike Tyson. Lying on the park I can excuse the foul-mouthed banter of the nearby rabble of teens, smoking “naughty cigarettes” and flirting loudly with each other. I can even forgive the annoying “cool tutor” from their college who turns up and mucks in with the banter, before demanding a toke from their “fun fag”. OMG grown-ups can be cool too!

But twats who just leave their cans and bags of trash on the grass, like the world was built for them: I have no time for them. Maybe their mums clear up for them at home, wipe their bums still, iron their socks. Maybe their mums also work as park cleaners when they’re not busy scouring congealed ignorance from the lining of their distressed jeans.

But maybe, just maybe, they need Mike Tyson, not even the real one, but a Mike Tyson-type, to once stick their trash in their faces, before politely, in Mike Tyson’s high, child-like voice, they are reminded that parks are for everyone. Even the yobbish teenagers collated their bits and got rid. But alas, in my straw hat, shop-bought lemonade in a leaky thermos, reading Sophocles in Boots sunglasses, such reprimands are naturally not advisable.

Thursday 22nd March

I have been lucky to experience comedian Jack Whitehall in action three times in the past week. The first was on a repeat of Have I Got News For You, the second on Radio 4 quiz Wordaholics, and then on Channel 5′s Comedy Kings (Still available for those in the UK here: http://www.channel5.com/shows/comedy-kings-best-of-just-for-laughs/episodes/episode-7-212), doing what he does.

I had not been a fan of his until now. For a while he has just been “the young one” on comedy panel shows and mainstream stand-up circuit, but now he really seems to be holding ground among esteemed company. My favourite Jack Whitehall joke from this week’s shows was this one from his position as panelist on word-play radio quiz Wordaholics. When asked what his favourite word was, he replied:

“I like the word Homophobic. Now wait, bear with me… Because I wouldn’t describe myself as being Homophobic, but then, I would say that I’m Homophobic like i’m Arachnophobic. I’m not scared of spiders, I’m not scared of gays, though I would probably scream if I saw one in my bath.”

Another stand-up who has surprised me recently was Noel Fielding. The Mighty Boosh commanded such a big, devoted following, and being the pretentious egotist that I am, it took me a while to actually get round to watching it. I can’t help it. I have “hype-filters”, wherby I hate anything too many people like, even if it is patently great: especially if I haven’t seen it.

“The Boosh” was like a moderate cult, amongst them real geeks -not trendies in buttoned up shirts and dark-frame glasses, but REAL geeks, who might, at any moment, bring a crossbow into school and end it all. People would tell me I should watch it, try to recreate sketches to “make me realise”, and use words like “quirky” and “surreal” as superlatives. I did eventually give in, though grudgingly, and actually enjoyed it enough to now own it on DVD. Towards the end of series two it did become a little jaded though, and consequently, when Noel Fielding’s new solo-series Luxury Comedy came out, I had mixed expectations.

The show, for me, is more hit than miss. I like his art-school approach to the comedy sketch: scrappy costumes, hand-made props, painted backdrops. Much of what made Mighty Boosh original is present again here, but the less-linear thrust of the show gives it a different feeling. His self-conscious naïveté can come across as a little smug at times on these shows, a little self-indulgent when the joke falls flat, but when it works, it works.

I hadn’t seen Noel Fielding as a stand-up until this week, but by Youtube “Exquisite Link Hopping” (watching a video of choice and then following a trail of suggested videos until you see something better than your original selection), I came across a short routine he did in 2008, or thereabouts. For nearly five minutes he did an impression of a Blue Bottle fly. There is something fantastic about the bravado of a performer who can sustain weird through a routine, and not rely on snappy punchlines. In his routine you could see the seeds of his Mighty Boosh and Luxury Comedy writing, the raw stage of sketches and characters. I kind of preferred it this way, stripped back and without the costumes. Though his technicolour poncho and heeled shoes might classify as costume to some, I believe these were his own clothes.

-

If you buy enough of your clothes from Primark you might be eligible for a discount, if you agree to work as mannequin in one of their window displays. If your friends with expensive organic Fairtrade clothes (god how pretentious of them) reprimand you for wearing cheap clothes, tell them that your clothes are actually hand-made by your grandma. When they point out the Primark label poking up from your collar, tell them that your grandma works in a Primark factory. If you want to look casual when out and about, why not sling your jacket over your shoulder? (Nb. make sure you are still holding the jacket when you do this, or you may lose your jacket) Some people will say this an unnatural position, reserved for older clothes-catalogue models, or politicians talking to normal people when in rolled-up shirt sleeves. Don’t listen to them. Let us claim ownership over these positions. These people always seem happier than the rest of us, in thrall to the wonder of existence, with well-conditioned hair. It is also a good way of covering stains on your back, like ingrained sweat discolouration.

-

And now a window into where I live.

Vignettes of Sneinton #1
A man in shorts and jumper out for a jog, wears trainers on his hands, as protection from the cold.

Vignettes of Sneinton #2
Two girls of ten/eleven/twelve years walk up my street shouting at each other. One is pretty fat with long hair that I think has been crimped. She walks ahead, being shouted at by, and shouting back to a friend, who is some distance behind. As her friend, a skinny girl in glasses, gets closer to my window, I see she has her shoes in her hands, and she is in tears. It seems the fat girl told the skinny one to take her shoes off in the street, or to give her her shoes, or something along these lines. They argue, the skinny girl sat on the edge of the pavement, struggling to put her shoes back on, the fat girl stood a little up the road, denying having threatened her friend. At times she seems like she is going to leave, then she doubles back in another fit of denial.

Skinny Girl: And your never coming round mine again!
Fat Girl: Good, I don’t want to. And don’t bother coming round mine neever. I’ve wanted to say that my whole life!

They seem unsure as to whether they are genuinely breaking up their friendship though, flitting between insult and apology, albeit through sweary, gritted teeth. For two kids, their vocabulary and grasp of the notion of consciousness of the self are quite sophisticated. The Fat Girl’s closing argument:

“I know what I said. Did I say take your shoes off, or I’ll rip yer to shreds? No I didn’t! I know my own mind. My head, my body, my mind! My arse, my tits, my FANNEEEHH!!”

fanny |ˈfanē|

noun ( pl. -nies)

1 informal a person’s buttocks.

2 Brit., vulgar slang a woman’s genitals.

Monday 19th March

The idea of context is an elusive one. I have been thinking about this recently in terms of what we might say to a group of old friends, and what we can say to people we don’t know so well. An example would be a kind of joke that plays heavily on irony, which if construed incorrectly might be seen as offensive, or even prejudiced. Context is obviously key. If people know you, then they should know “where you are coming from” with a joke. So if it is out of character for you to say such and such a thing, then instantly, your friends know to put their “irony filters” on, and know to treat it as a joke. Whether it is funny or not is a different matter. Of course, we each have our own personal depth of irony-morality, something determined by our upbringings. (I say “depth”, because I often get told I have “brought the conversation down”.) But if we are spending time with some people regularly, we come to know what kind of thing you can and can’t say; what people will accept. The human mind is designed to evaluate danger in the face of another human at a moment’s notice, (will this person co-operate with my desire to live?) and beyond that initial “measuring” we continue to evaluate as we go along; as we get to know them. Often a joke can be an interesting test for another’s personality. I think you can tell a lot about someone by how they react to humour. At least, this is how I build my relationships: looking for friends who can sink to low lows.

But “where someone is coming from” in telling a joke is tricky territory. As I have said in recent posts, some comedians speak about some topics without any direct experiences of said subject matter, whilst others seem to profit from, at times, innocuous connections to said ideas. How can we claim privilege over any idea, be it racial, cultural, political, ideological, or whatever? There is no answer to that, other than to say all communication is appropriation. We are constantly borrowing and mutating ideas, and in our contemporary society, with its multitude of influences and confused moralities, can we actually take anything at face value? I realised today that I do not, and that this is a good thing. By adopting a kind of naive skepticism, I find that I rarely worry about things that aren’t worth worrying about. (I realise now that this sentence doesn’t make exact sense: of course we don’t worry about things we don’t worry about. But I think you should get what I mean; I have a low threshold)

Context is in many ways a form of measured public conscience. It isn’t the conscience of obvious rights and wrongs. In trying to construct a suitable simile for this idea, I realised that any definition of “right” and “wrong” is impossible. First I thought an obvious right would be keeping forks with forks, and knives with knives in their own compartments in the cutlery drawer. But then I realised that I was thinking only from the position of me and my relationship with cutlery. This is just my approach. Then I thought an obvious wrong would be to kill your own mother. But then, thinking again, I realised that I was thinking only from the position of me and my relationship with my mum. And not killing my mum is just my approach to the problem of her putting forks in the wrong compartment.

Here is a definitive definition of context in the everyday. My father-in-law is Japanese. (This will not come as a great shock to anyone who knows me.) Last week he came to stay with us, and on the morning he was leaving for London he insisted on hoovering the spare room, where he had been sleeping for the past five nights. Because he was Japanese, and because of my familiarity with Japanese culture and the Japanese “persona”,  I didn’t give the act a second thought. But if it had been an English guest suggesting the same thing, I would have been extremely worried as to what they had got up to over the five nights. Nb. British law still applies to the Spare Room: it is not my house’s equivalent of international waters.

-

I joined my wife and father-in-law on Saturday evening in London for a meal and some light sight-seeing on Sunday. On the way back to Nottingham I took my first ever first-class train journey. It was only £1 more than a standard fare, so I thought it was an opportune treat. Imagine my outright disgust then, when the all-powerful train manager decided to declassify the first class carriages, as recompense for failing to print seat reservations for the journey… What kind of cruel justice is this? What can £1 buy you nowadays? Nothing. In times of economic hardship, surely economic boundaries should be reinforced, not collapsed? We don’t want people thinking they are better than they are. Aspiration= delusion=credit card debts=unemployment=aspiration=∞

I didn’t even go for the free tea, out of spite. If anyone could get one, I didn’t want it.

-

People often say they feel guilty if they ignore Big Issue sellers, or other homeless people. I don’t. I don’t apologise to Primark for not popping in on my way past, nor do I extract money from every ATM I pass. When I walk through the city centre of Nottingham I walk with my head down, and ignore everyone, everything. Often I receive texts from friends saying that I “blanked them” the other day when they saw me in town. When I am out and about, nothing exists. I am in a frosted bubble that protects me from everything. With my eyes pointed to the ground, I use the constellations of chewing gum that decorate the pavements as my visual guide from place to place, whilst tip-toeing around suspect sticky puddles.

-

I have been ill for almost two weeks now. And no, it is not “man flu”, because I have not been exchanging fluids with any men recently. Men have real flu too, ladies. Just because we don’t lose a load of blood every month, don’t belittle our pain.

I don’t mind getting ill so much. When I feel a sniffle building, I’m almost excited. “Lemsip!” There is a silver lining to every cloud. I love Lemsip. Foreign friends who have tried Lemsip when ill visiting the UK (which is everyone who normally lives in a warmer country. What a bunch of wooses) have come to know Lemsip as “that magic lemon potion”. It is indeed magic. And wonderful. It is sherbet for grown-ups.