Broken Britain - The death of Scooby Doo

Yesterday I was walking down Clapham Road when I came across the post-apocalyptic scene below. Outside a council estate were the remains of a bonfire, and on top of the charcoal was an eviscerated, man-sized Scooby Doo costume.

I very much fear for the well-being of the last man to wear the costume.

Heroic indie failure #2

My enthusiasm for minority interest indie eccentrics has been covered here before. Wasted genius is endlessly fascinating. I was introduced early on to the king of them all, Lawrence, when his band Denim supported Pulp at my first ever gig.

They were too weird for my tiny little brain to cope with at the time, especially as my luxuriantly bushy curtains were probably interfering with my hearing. But subsequently I got into their album Denim On Ice in a very major way. It's literally a work of madness, divided into three roughly themed sections that I doubt anyone other than Lawrence has ever been able to listen to all the way through in one go. There's just so many ideas and musical styles on there, often in the same song; for example, brilliant eighties/Ultravox parody Synthesizers In The Rain has a Russian fol-de-rol interlude for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately Denim on Ice was as close to stardom as poor old Lawrence got. He fried his brain and ended up a methadone addict living in sheltered accomodation in Victoria, releasing appalling novelty records under the name Go Kart Mozart. There's some pretty distressing recent footage out there of him looking like an emaciated, NME-reading gargoyle. But in songs like Brumburger (below) he combined great pop songs with a genuinely odd outlook on life in a unique way. Any song with the lines "My mate's got a garage and it's full of stuffed animals / I snuck in there once and I stole a cat" deserves a certain respect.

It's a staycation, yah?

I am not very good at planning holidays, which means I am not very good at taking holidays, which means I realised in March that I had lots of time to take off work that would disappear at the end of April. Boo to that, so for the next two weeks I am Oval's stay-at-home blogger in residence.

It's now 9am on the first day where I'm not working and everyone else is (ie the best kind of day off). I've been awake since 6.40am as the missus showed a queenly disdain for the notion of setting her own alarm and letting me sleep. Phone alarms are too complicated for girls, apparently. No matter - the pleasure I got from forcefully ejecting her to start her deranged morning ritual, safe in the knowledge that I had nothing more stressful than a bath to get through, was better than a lie in.

Now I'm up and ready to P.A.R.T.Y. There is but one pleasure-destroyer lurking in the flat, ready to consume me at any moment. It may have a cheery name and wink its little red eye at me all the time, but it only brings misery. If you dare, look upon the flat, uncaring face of evil:

Oh hellish implement of eternal work, why dost thou torment me? Every new message is a potential day-ruiner. I could accidentally on purpose destroy it, but then the terror of the not-knowing may prove worse than the dull thumping reality of the knowing. I should ignore it, but I can't. Instead I will sit here, scanning the messages pretty much in real time. I may as well go to the office dressed as a ghost and sit at my desk watching my inbox fill up.

Enough of that defeatist talk. I'm not wasting my holiday. No, I'm going to drink a bottle of champagne clean the flat and then sample the seediest delights that Soho has to offer go to John Lewis to buy some lightbulbs.

If you can bare it, I will blog more than usual too.

The last gasp of yoof

Exciting times ahead. I've applied for membership of the bafflingly age-restrictive 20 Something Blogger network. I won't deny that my motivation is partially to enrage Webby, who having recently hit 30 is now too ancient and revolting to apply. Apparently, if he visits the site his screen will fill with live feeds to dozens of gorgeous 21 year olds retching and saying "No way, Grandad!" in an exotic variety of languages.

But aside from that, this could be my ticket to an Indian summer in my dying months as a 20 something. I want to lol and rofl and lmao with people who arrange parties in squats through MySpace and take meow meow and put pictures of their bums on Twitter. I'll befriend these dangerous, beautiful youths by never seeming to have the time to type the words "to" or "you" and raving about cutting edge (and entirely fictitious) bands. Hey fella, u clocked the Fridge Handbags yet?  They're like totally spudrocking.

Then this blog will become an enormous youth culture online sensation. I'll be like Belle de Jour but without needing to have it off with strangers in hotels for cash. I'll quit the day job and throw myself into the London celebrity scene, guided by my friends from 20 Something Bloggers on what to wear, where to wear it and what slang to say when I get there. I'll get a job with Channel 4 introducing episodes of Friends on Sunday mornings and appear in a Lady Gaga video dressed like a sexy robot lobster.
 
Then, on 23 May 2011, I'll be expelled from paradise. My 20 Something friends will turn their backs, disgusted by my decrepitude. Peaches Geldof will stop returning my tweets and I'll be replaced on Channel 4 by a talking cartoon syringe. My girlfriend will have left me and I'll die of bitterness and regret by Christmas.

On reflection, maybe I shouldn't mix with the youth of the internet. My membership status is pending, which must mean someone from the network will along soon to make sure I'm not an undercover OAP. 20 Something Blogger representative, I implore you - turn me down. I'm not one of your kind.

Florence ITgales

In my current job I work in earshot of an IT suport team. Forget nurses, firemen and Battersea Dogs Home volunteers - these are the true heroes of the modern age. Beyond the "have you tried turning it on and off?" cliches, the patience with which they manage the daily slew of mundane problems presented as potentially career-ending disasters is unbelievable.

Recent critical issues which have had me running the short distance across the office to their wire-strewn triage area, whimpering all the way, include:

• Paper jam in the printer
• I've forgotten my password so many times I've been locked out of my computer
• The page numbering on my Word document's gone really weird
• Paper jam in the other printer
• I've poured a cup of tea into my keyboard and now it's fizzing

In each case they dry my tears on a discarded Excel doc, stroll to my computer with the unhurried air of someone who has seen this exact problem literally hundreds of times before, and sort it out in seconds while I hop from one foot to the other behind them, biting my nails and squeaking. Most importantly, at no point do they make me feel like the techno-moron that I so plainly am.

But in terms of pecking order, I'm so low down that I barely have a beak. They really earn their money when dealing with insane requests from senior types of a certain age who tend to: not understand technology; not want to understand technology; lose things like Blackberries easily and often; and consider delay of any kind for any reason completely intolerable.

At my last company I asked the IT manager what the most idiotic problem he'd been faced with was. He told me that he took a call from an extremely important and short-tempered person in an absolute fury - his mouse had stopped working overnight. "It's a disgrace, I've got an extremely ugent blah that needs to be done in an hour, get your useless arse over here this instant" and so on.

So the IT chap went over to the empurpled exec's desk in the open plan office to find him furiously tapping and rolling an apparently dead mouse. This was because he'd grabbed the mouse that was connected to the vacant computer next to his. To diagnose this would have publically shamed the exec in the eyes of all those in the vicinity - not likely to improve the career prospects of a young computer specialist. So what did this noble fellow do? He apologised profusely, announced that the central circuitry of the mouse had suffered a fatal combustion, and advised that the exec get a coffee while he found a replacement. When the coast was clear he put the 'dead' mouse back on its original mat and retrieved the correct one from underneath a pile of papers. The exec completed his dull whatever in time and with his public standing unblemished.

IT folk - you are the best of us. Keep up the good work. And ohmygod ohmygod the printer's out of magenta toner and I've got to get this presentation printed by PLEASE HELP ME YOU'VE GO TO HELP ME!

Wuzza wuzza

Instinctively I feel that the imminent closure of BBC 6 Music is a Bad Thing, although as I never listen to anything on it other than the magnificent Adam & Joe Show, which is on sabbatical anyway, it's hard for me to make a compelling case.  They keep poor old crack-addled Craig Charles off the streets but that's about all I can say.  So I'll link instead to this protest song by Adam Buxton, which I fear relies a bit too much on the Adam & Joe "wuzza wuzza" Bowie impression in-joke to truly become the Free Nelson Mandela of its age.

The grief-driven news cycle

Having covered Newsnight recently I avoided writing about the recent Jon Venables-themed Question Time discussion.  There's only so much bragging about watching high-brow TV (albeit while covered in breadcrumbs and flicking through insane Red Dwarf tributes on You Tube) that one blog can sustain.  If I had, I would have mentioned the contrast between Will Self's humane common sense and the soon-to-be Baroness Vorderman's shrill tub-thumping.  As Self twittered shortly afterwards, "I'll have an F and a U please, Carol".

David Mitchell is very good in the Observer today on the public fascination with Venables' crime and the citation of it in any wider debate:

The Venables case is so horrifying, unusual and unrepresentative, such an outlier on the graph, that making it the focus of a discussion about how convicted criminals should be treated not only perilously weights the debate against clemency but is logically absurd.  You may as well cite Adolf Hitler as a reason for not encouraging children to paint.

I concur.  I also think it is alarming that the grief-scrambled pronouncements of Denise Bulger are being treated by the mainstream media (current BBC headline - "James Bulger's mother calls for commissioner's sacking") as proposals worthy of ministerial debate.  As the person whose life has been most forcefully and permanently ruined by James (never Jamie - that was a newspaper invention, as if his victimhood needed any more emphasis) Bulger's death, she is also the least qualified person in the country to have a say in the handling of his killers within a legal system built on impartiality.  Yet whenever the case seeps back into the headlines she is rushed onto breakfast TV to rail against her son's killers, which is then reported as if it should have bearing on judicial process.  Surely it is the greatest kind of cruelty to repeatedly give her such a platform, and so the expectation that her wishes will be carried out, when they can not and should not be?

Anyway, I doubt this sort of thing is what you're here for. Somehow this blog has found its way onto a site called Bloggapedia, where it is disdainfully described as covering "a range of fascinating and essential subjects such as [my] domestic cleaning habits, proudly obscure musical tastes and endless British social hang-ups".  I supposed that's fair enough.  Expect posts in the coming weeks on my dysfunctional relationship with Windolene, the underappreciated genius of Baader Meinhoff and why I find the whole nod/smile/avoid eye contact dynamic tricky when walking towards someone you know down a long stretch of office corridor.

Oh, and the Kennington Park laboratory experiment made an unwelcome return on Friday morning.  I intend to invest in some bolt cutters.

The ghost of Mary Whitehouse

If you didn't see last night's Newsnight discussion on the Gordon Brown bullying uproar, watch it on iPlayer immediately.  It was brilliant TV.  Paxman mediated, and stoked vigorously, a rumble between Andrew Rawnsley (the Observer journo who broke the story), Roy Hattersley (indignantly spraying like a tomcat), David Steel and a Times hack while John Prescott's disembodied blubbery head floated above them all, bellowing incoherently via videolink.

It was a strange discussion - a group of political and media professionals attacking a journalist for not being willing to reveal his confidential sources.  You would have thought the "off the record" concept would be one with which they would be intimately familiar, but apparently not.  Prescott worked himself up into a particuarly petulant tizzy, howling like a wounded bison at one point when he though Rawnsley was being given too much airtime.

There was also a very odd example of the BBC's namby-pamby terror of causing any offence to anyone.  Paxman read out an extract of our poor doomed PM's alleged ravings that included a Bad Word.  I didn't really notice at the time, because I'm an adult who interacts with other adults in the year 2010.  Like literally 100% of the Newsnight audience.  But a few minutes later, under orders from an earpiece minion, Paxo apologised for his dreadful lapse, his big horse face clearly registering his disgust at having to do so.

It was a full 2 hours after the watershed and the Bad Word was important context as part of the discussion.  Any youngsters inexplicably watching would have been more traumatised by the scary melty-faced man on the video screen and his terrible grammar than sweary old Paxman.  A brainless concession that patronised rather than respected the audience.  Harrumph!

Yours,
Disgusted of Oval

Famous wankers

I've been enjoying this Word website discussion on famous people who are abject tools in real life:

/www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/famous-people-you-have-met-who-are-wankers

Being a generally good natured forum it also includes plenty on very nice celebs (for example: "Michael Caine was nice as pie when my son (then 3) wee'd on his shoes in Harrods.  MC said "never mind son" in his very best Alfie voice and wiped his expensive loafers down with some toilet roll"). 

Worth a read if you're bored - given that you're reading this blog you must almost be at the sewing-name-tags-into-your-socks stage already.  A few choice samples:

• I witnessed Jeremy Clarkson reduce a pretty young sales girl to tears when she could not supply him with what he was asking for immediately.  It was awful.  It wasn't so much what he said, but the way he said it. His face contorted in that horrid, condescending, smug little snarl he has.
  
• My colleague Jane was responsible for two Morrissey album campaigns - marketing, promo etc.  She was a lifelong fan, but remained professional and scrupulous about every aspect of the campaign, accompanying him to interviews, attending to his every need - of which there were very many.
  
  Moz appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, his first TV interview for years and years.  This was A Big Deal.  Ross interviews each guest for a good 45 minutes or so, which is then cut down to bitesize for broadcast.  For 35 of his alloted 45, Morrissey, bizarrely, laid in to David Bowie, denouncing him as a fake, a sell-out, a has-been, a charlatan.  This saw to discomfit Ross, he being a lifelong Bowie obsessive.  Indeed, it appeared to be a tactic or strategy on Morrissey's part, for God knows why.  The remaining 10 minutes were full of nothing very much but uncomfortable pauses, ums and ahs.  The resulting broadcast interview, culled solely from those 10 minutes, was an embarrassing disaster.
  
  Returning to the green room, Jane sought to reassure the clearly disturbed Morrissey, offering Don't worries and It'll be fines, etc.
  
  Next morning at the office, Jane received a fax from Morrissey (he communicated mostly via fax) 'Jane, I bombed last night and you weren't man enough to tell me.  I think it would be best if we don't see each other again.'  To say Jane was upset would be something of an understatement.  Nice bloke.
• At a cricket match in Weston Supermare a young boy spots John Cleese sitting in a deck chair enjoying the day's sport apparently unrecognised by those around him.  The boy approaches and asks for an autograph. JC leans in close and whispers "What happens next is not your fault".  JC then stands up and gives the boy two minutes of the full Basil Fawlty righteous indignation and furious anger.  Arm waving, who do you think you are, I only came to watch the cricket in peace, the full package.  Those around watch in stunned silence at this appalling behaviour.  When he had finished JC leant in close to the boy again and whispered "Thanks, no-one will bother me for the rest of the match now", signed the autograph and returned to his seat.

Literary corner

This article on the Guardian website reminded me about one of my favourite books - The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis.  Well worth a read.  The article deals with the plot and so on but suffice to say it's a weird combination of brilliantly funny and horribly sad.

I tend to apply a famine or feast approach to authors, so I haven't read much Kingsley in recent years following a period of a major obsession.  This madness peaked with the purchase of his collected letters, all 1212 pages of them. They sit on my bookcase as the literary equivalent of ordering an enormous cake when you're not even hungry. Selected randomly, I give you the following indispensible classic from 27 May 1964:

Dear Miss Barber

I hereby resign from the Society of Authors.  I was just about prepared to go on paying £2-12-6 a year to an organisation that does nothing for me, but when the price goes up to £5-5-0 I jib.

Yours sincerely etc

I would put it in the bog but I'm not sure how much the missus wants to sprain her wrists wrestling with a gigantic brick just to read racist letters to Philip Larkin.

The recent publicity around Martin son-of-Kingsley's latest pile of pretentious wank-fodder has also made me nostalgic.  One of the happiest days of my life was when I realised that no one was making me read London Fields and its endless turgid sentences, and that I could just stop and read something else instead.  The only Martin Amis worth reading is his autobiography Experience, and that's because it's mainly about Kingsley and Fred West (one of whose victims was Martin's cousin).  Just skip any reference to his teeth or Saul Bellow.

That's also where I got my favourite Fred West fact - that he used to munch onions like anyone else would eat an apple.