Captain James W Kirk?

Just seen Star Trek, you know, the post- 911 one where Kirk appears to be modeled on America's previous President.

You know; the stupid one.

I think I preferred the Star Fleet commander when he was a JFK manqué.

However, it's good rip-roaring fun anyway, although the allegory of America as a bunch of inexperienced amateurs muddling through with nothing other than self - belief is a little troubling, if that's how they now see themselves.

Anyway, I don't care if she IS a shoplifter; I'd still shag Spock's mum!

There, that's what passes for a film review in the blogosphere, if that still exists in the Twitter era.

Event Planners Do The Stupidest Things

Yes, this was a "conference" about sustainability in the supply chain.

Everyone got a vinyl souvenir party bag, full of unread landfill printed on coated gloss to ensure it's unrecyclability.

What is it about the environment that the Tory young don't get?

Actually, the conference was an interesting contrast of styles, between those that came into the field because of their personal commitment to the cause (fluid, confident and enthused), and those representing the corporations in the interests of commercial acceptance of the new eco-marketing directives; the individuals who had drawn the short straw and had to recite the company line from memory (hesitant, monotonous and unconvincing).

Beware those that reiterate that "these days, we all have to care about the environment!", like it's news.

They're the ones with the 4x4 parked on the paved-over garden who have recently written to the president of their golf club complaining about the lack of water on the greens.

Yes, we can tell.

At Last; The End.

In 1988, when I began working in Holborn, this premises was a gentlemen's outfitters which was having a closing down sale.


That closing down sale continued for over twenty years. I have no idea how long the closing down sale had been there before I arrived, but I suspect that it was the longest closing down sale in history.



It became a landmark. You'd say "walk past the closing sale store and take a left", confident that it rivaled the British Museum in it's steadfastness.

Prime Ministers came and went, political systems changed, Iraq got invaded twice in that time. There was no internet when the sale began.

Yet finally, I missed it's passing. I missed the point at which the closing down sale became a real closing down sale, and the day when someone wrote "Last Day Today" on the window (enlarge to view).

Was it written on the last day? I can't imagine that they could resist scribbling it well before the shutters came down for good, just for old time's sake.

Oh, Mr Brown; Really!

I'm listening to James Brown's "Down & Out in New York City", where the Godfather of Soul sings:

"Earn your dime boy, give me a shine boy"

What could it possibly mean?

Tilting At Windmills in Mill Hill

I was the hapless recipient of a bizarre road rage incident earlier today.

On leaving the plumbers' merchant, I found my car hemmed in by another outside the newsagent. Aware that the other driver was probably only collecting the daily paper, I climbed in my car and sorted myself out, prepared to wait a minute for the other to move.

However, the passenger of the other car decided that it was probably best to begin signalling to the driver by sounding the horn.

The passenger sounded the horn rather a lot, so that when the driver, and aging jew with ridiculous classes, emerged from the newsagent, he assumed that I had done the honking. He stood before my car doing the cupped ear "did I hear something" gesture before shouting at me a waving his arms around. I pointed at his passenger, but this only exacerbated his rage which was epic.

He then felt compelled to act out the pantomime of taking an age to leave; slowly climbing into the car, sitting there a while, starting the car, sitting there a while, pulling forward a little bit, but not enough to allow me to leave, just to make the point. Then, before leaving, he pulled alongside, winding down his window and giving me a foul-mouthed tirade before driving off, bizarrely satisfied that he had won our row, no doubt in a heart-palpitating rage.

Pointless, and a lesson to us all of how not to live our lives.

The Streets - He's behind you, he's got swine flu

Mike Skinner's timely ditty.

News Latest: 2 for 1

I'm unsure how Greggs the bakers feel about the juxtaposition of their fantastic offer with the arrival of an apparently malign medic.

Unless they're actually in on the act?

I'd give the fresh cream apple turnovers a wide berth, just in case.

No Spitting on the Bus

I was sat in the quiet carriage on the train today, and on observing the signs and the little pictograms representing no mobiles; no music; no smoking, began to ponder when, in our continually cigarette-free world how much longer we will be posting "no smoking" signs, as our society seems to have grasped the notion of the public ban comprehensively.

I say this as someone who has lived long enough to recall my childhood travels upon the local buses which carried the warning "spitting prohibited - fine £5".

In fact, I believe that some buses carried this notice up until the mid - seventies, within gobbing distance of the phlegm strewn punk years.

Graphics

Worth wading through

People Smote Latest

Not a good week to be struck by anything in the Evening Standard.

However, if I may make a couple of suggestions, I believe that the struggling local paper could make a few amendments and sell shed-loads more.

IE: picture one, just remove the last word of the sentence. Much more interesting.

As for picture two; add the words "-seeking missile".

There you go; increased circulation, more entertainment, and let's face it, no-ones goes to the Standard for the truth.

Shoebox Visits: Enfield

Not many shops like this anymore.

Well not since that nutter shot someone and dumped the body in the canal strapped to a moped with fishing tackle.

No one needs that kind of press.

Satisfaction: Go Girls!

Dogs in Pubs Special

My local as a lad, The Red Lion, was a mid-seventies shit-hole in the era before anybody thought that pubs should be anything more than a place that men could meet and get drunk.

It was rough as arseholes, but the only fight I ever saw there was between a couple of dogs that took exception to each other and overturned the old boys table by the cigarette machine.

That was back in the days when old men, dogs and cigarettes were welcome in our pubs.

About fifteen years ago, on leaving a Weatherspoons, a chatted to a couple sat outside in the cold with their collie. They explained that the dog was unwelcome in the bar and had to endure the weather as a result. I assumed that this was just indicative of Weatherspoons corporate sprawl in its mission to destroy the English pub.

It was therefore a bitter disappointment to see that the no-dogs policy won, as bars became anodyne and child-centered and the rest of us had to sit at home unwanted with our cheap supermarket tinnies.

However, my local now, which was poorly run until a year ago, is undergoing a rennaisance, not just in employing staff who actually know how to serve, but in being indiscriminate as to who they allow in.

There were four dogs in tonight. The big wolf dog, who is a regular; a large headed sweetheart of a Lab cross who was love on legs; a rather non pit-bull variant poorly supervised by some slag with low-self esteem, and finally, with a large group of lesbians on a denim-themed night out, a big grey aging Lurcher with the longest snout I've ever seen.

The best part was when the Lurcher joined it's lesbian friends in the restaurant section. No one objected, and the sky didn't fall in, so a little bit of England managed to sprout like a lily through asphalt.

Dogs in pubs NOW! Woof Woof!

Ireland In The News

BBC presents run of the mill rampant bull in supermarket story

Step On Etc.

The best electric guitar that I ever owned was an Epiphone Les Paul Junior double-cut in cherry which I bought in 1996 from a now extinct music store in Muswell Hill.

It was confined space, which despite its comforting intimacy, raised a problem as I inspected the guitar. As I began to run through my limited guitar store repetoire I found myself competing with a chap who was nervously trying out a trombone over by the door. Whenever I started, he started. When I stopped, he stopped. Basically, he wanted me to mask the cacophony that he was generating. This meant that I had no idea what the guitar sounded like, unless I was planning to play in a band alongside a novice trombone player.

That was only thirteen years ago, yet that kind of shop, where you could buy electric guitars alongside trombones seems something from a distant past.

I mention this on the news of the death of Johnny Roadhouse who equipped an entire generation of Mancunian musicians. His shop window was once described as resembling the contents of a dredged canal.

Great days.

Put It Away!

Some years back, in a previous home in North London, I lived down the road from a Greek family, the son of which owned a BMW.

You knew that he owned a BMW because he spent most evenings cleaning and polishing it, or carrying out "essential maintenance". It was always parked conspicuously, yet unwisely, directly outside of his parents' house, despite its vulnerability to insane speed that other motorists would exhibit in careering blindly over the adjacent railway bridge.

And just in case anyone missed the point that this young lad owned a BMW, he would spend the rest of his time sitting on the wall outside of his house with his mates, talking about the BMW that he owned, the one that was just there in front of them.

I was given the impression that, to this young man there was little point in owning a BMW if no-one knew about the fact.

(I assume this is why young men now wear their Calvin Klein underpants on the outside. There is no point in paying the premium for underpants if no-one apart from your mum knows about it).

I mention this because purely to remark about an incident in my street this morning.

It's a quiet street with a settled older community, where families have lived there long enough to have raised children and seen them leave.

This is not true though in one particular household, where the son, a man in his forties, still lives at home with his elderly mother. However, this man may still be living with his mother, but he owns a Jaguar. Yes a Jaguar. It's raven black and has a soft-top.

This is a rather outstanding car for our street, as it's probably the only vehicle without a dent in it!

Anyway, despite his age, this chap feels compelled to manifest all the same compulsions of my earlier neighbour, particularly when it comes to the carwash preoccupation. Again, one assumes that this vehicle, rather than a successful career, or a lasting child-rearing marriage, represents the apogee of his life-achievement.

Whatever; I'm past caring since this morning's "display" when I witnessed a step too far. I had set out for work and was just getting into my stride when, on passing the said Jaguar car, I saw the owner emerge from his mother's house dress only in a towel. Yes, a towel, draped around his waste, partly obscured by the pendulous beergut that rested upon it. He didn't even have slippers, it was like he stepped out of the bath, barely covered his modesty and then just walked out into the street, like he was living in Liverpool or something.

He then padded over to his Jaguar, opened the boot (trunk), removed a suit and a white shirt, shut the boot and padded back into the house.

a) He was practically naked.

b) He is using a shiny Jaguar as a wardrobe.

c) He lives in my street.

We're having enough trouble with maintaining our inflated house prices as it is with the recession, without this white-trash floor-show turning up on Google Street View!

I feel cheapened and unclean.

Bacchanalian Debauchery Encouraged!

The Evening Standard recommends an hedonistic response to the recession.

Chemical Warfare Latest

I'm very sceptical about the way the authorities tend to group the copycat would-be activists with real terrorists, just to bump up the numbers to back claims about the size of the ongoing threat.

Let's face it, you're always going to get the unhinged loners with mental illness issues attracted to the appeal of the ultimate outsider status that comes with radical causes.

However, when Gloucester resident Sahnoun Daifallah set out to take on the world, I suspect that he was hoping for a better sobriquet than Urine Spray Man.

"Oh my God: what's that smell?"

"Look: it's Urine Spray Man!"

Röyksopp

And it is to the Royal Festival Hall to wade amongst gay men for the appearance of Röyksopp with Fever Ray.


Thirty years ago a pal and I contemplated the problem of playing electronic music live, in that the equipment alone rendered one static.

The Human League bridged the gap some of the way with a slide show, but they still seemed rooted.

Well, in 2009 having enormous amounts of digital computer driven technology is certainly an advantage, but Torbjorn seemed to have it nailed, simply by wearing a stovepipe hat.

Why didn't we think of that?

Actually, I spent most of the evening comparing everything to the state of affairs in the seventies. My partner drew the conclusion that I was talking like a man who had just come out of prison after a long sentence.

Röyksopp were good fun incidently.