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º July 16th - July 22nd 2001
Sunday Italian gears
Saturday Why are you so sassy, Flip?
Friday Guilty!
Thursday Epiphany
Wednesday Before...and after
Tuesday What a prick
Monday Movies
º Sunday 22nd July 2001
David and Jonathan enjoyed meeting Ron (and Marlon) and spent the rest of the day shopping.
A pleasant blogmeet in the park yesterday; several familiar faces, several missing faces and several new faces: Jen seems to be first off the mark with an eye-witness report.
How many gears do Italian police vans have?
News that the Italian police who shot protestor Carlo Giuliani then proceeded to reverse over him raises ironic echoes of that old joke whose punchline must now be revised to: "Four reverse - and one forward in case the demonstrators come from behind."
º Saturday 21st July 2001
The anti-globalisation protestor shot dead in Genoa yesterday was identified as Carlo Giuliani. Ironically enough, I recall that is the same name as the man who founded The Bank of America. (I wrote a corporate video for them once, so shoot me.)
"The bloggers," I am reliably informed, "have landed" and it is "very very hot and sunny" in New York. My, my, the joys of roaming. Meanwhile I'm off to the Blogmeet in the Park, under a cloud-mottled sky.
I always liked Winsor McKay, and a Google search for Little Nemo in Sumberland turned up this:
...not the greatest frame he ever drew but it reminds me of Andy, David and I in the backrooms of Hamburg...
º Friday 20th July 2001
Oh God, I'm so happy I could spit: guilty, Guilty, GUILTY!
Why is it so absurdly easy to loathe Jeffrey Archer?
Is it that one of the records he selected on Desert Island Discs was 'Oh Lord, It's Hard To Be Humble When You're Perfect In Every Way'?
Is it because he took to wearing a Pearly King's cap during his short-lived attempt to become Mayor of London?
Is it the absurdity of his stated ambition to win a Nobel Prize for Literature?
Is it because the books that appear under his name (and which have made him millions) are not only unspeakably badly-written ('grindingly predictable', 'flatulent banality') but are reportedly not even written by him at all?
Is it because, having talked his way into a peerage, he then chose to become "Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare" (despite having been born on City Road)?
Is it because that ridiculous judge in the original libel case asked the jury to look at Archer's wife and ask themselves if they could believe somebody would cheat on her: "Has she elegance? Has she fragrance?" And that Archer then won half a million pounds in damages?
Is it because we later discovered not only that he was cheating on her big time, but that she knew all about it (flagrant rather than fragrant)?
is it because his mother, who has apparantly been extremely ill for a very long time, managed to arrange to die with the very best timing possible - on the very last day of his trial?
Is it because even that august Tory organ the Daily Telegraph described him as a fantasist, a bully, vainglorious, vulgar, phoney, bizarre, weird and scary (and all that in just one article)?
Is it because a separate, earlier article in the same paper by no less than Gyles Brandreth, a friend of his, described him as rash, boastful, bombastic, quite unreal, unreliable, and absurd?
Is it because this sometime deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is the third in a glorious trilogy of convicted cheap-crook Tory politicians that includes Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken?
Is it because we never did hear the whole truth about the claims that he was sacked from the United Nations Association for fiddling his expenses, that his son James was sacked from an investment bank for manipulating shares-prices, that he himself indulged in illegal insider-trading in Anglia TV shares, that he walked out of a store in Toronto with three suits he hadn't paid for?
Is it because he has consistently lied about every single aspect of his life: his grandfather's non-existent role as Lord Mayor of Bristol, his own non-existent record as being the youngest-ever GLC councillor and youngest-ever MP, his non-existent degree from the University of California, his fraudulent description of himself as a 'research graduate' on his marriage certificate, his father's job as "British Consul for Singapore" (er, no actually, he was a convicted fraudster and bigamist), his time at Brasenose College, Oxford (on a teacher training course), the 57 million pounds he raised with his Simple Truth concert (try 4), his three A-levels (try none)?
No.
It's because despite the numerous times he's been found out, and the numerous apologies, Jeffrey Bloody Archer always bounces back, his confidence in his own abilities apparently undimmed and untarnished.
This is the true confidence trick: to believe, against all odds, in your own self-worth rather than the values of others. In small doses, it can be charming. In larger doses, a salutary over-compensation.
On the scale practised by Archer, however, such self-deception is not only pathological, but deeply dangerous.
This is a man who must never be allowed within a hundred yards of a public position ever again. And, whilst you're at it, make him stop writing those bloody books too.
º Thursday 19th July 2001
"My dad is a technician at Exxon and my mom is a secretary in a Chevron Dealership, so I guess you could say I've got fossil fuels in my blood," says Tyler Dunman, pro-Bush demonstrator, in Bonn, smiling, blissfully unaware of what he's just said.
Dear person who keeps arriving here by way of a Google search for iansie. I am Ian, my domain is iansie.com, and this blog is called Blogadoon. (I admit it's not heavily branded.)
Please bookmark this url, or add it your links page, thus leaving more room for the spicy search request listings (like stoned fuck photo or sexaholic cartoons or gay Baghdad skinhead.) I thank you.
Very funny, Marjorie. And thank you too, Dan. (I think.)
I've made some amendments and minor updates to my Gay London pages, not least to accomodate this e-mail, which I quote without comment:
Hello,
I searched for The Cock and Comfort on the internet and came across your site. This bar will be under new ownership from 19 July 2001. It will no longer be a 'gay' venue. We will be anticipating a mixed crowd into our 60's/70's decor and music (60's garage/rock, easy listening, jazz, ska, reggae, funk and tons of soul). All customers welcome. it will be open from around 5th August 2001.
Many thanks
Epiphany Appleseed
º Wednesday 18th July 2001
A week or so ago I referred to shedding a second skin - "an event that managed to be, at the same time, both head-spinningly transformative and mind-numbingly trivial."
You'll have guessed by now - yup, I got a haircut. (See, told you it was trivial.)
Please bear in mind, though, that this was my first professional haircut in ten years. And that I had about five inches taken off. And that, were it not for an episode with a pair of scissors in the bathroom earlier this year, that would have been more like twelve inches. ("I had a foot taken off my head yesterday".)
I never set out to grow my hair. I just fell out of the habit of getting it cut. After a prolonged period of incarceration in my country home (was I writing a book perhaps?) I noticed that I could pull it back from my forehead with both hands and still have a little bit left over.
So, naturally enough, I left off getting it cut until there was enough to pull together with an elastic band. But that looked like a baby duck's bottom, so I let it grow a bit more. And so on.
By the time I moved permanently back down to London in 1995, and started going out on the gay scene again, I had a fully-fledged pony-tail. Just when every other gay man over 18 was going in for the shaven-headed look. But once you've grown hair that long, it's kinda hard to bid it goodbye. Plus, I reckoned, there have to be at least some men out there with a hair-fetish. And, if nothing else, it was distinctive. ("Ian" "Which Ian?" "Ian with the hair" "Oh, that Ian...")
Over the next five years, I never did find any hair-fetishists. (Well, no attractive hair-fetishists.) And on the rare occasions that I did mange to cop-off, I discovered what a total pain long-hair can be. Sure, it's kinda romantic to pull off your hair-band with a sweeping gesture and let it all hang out. And sure, it probably looks kinda intriguing spread out on the pillow like that. But let me tell you, giving a blow-job with hair that hangs down past someone else's ass is not straightforward.
I went through stages with tying it back, or letting it out. I washed it a lot lest it look lank. I tried to find a way that made it look like Renaissance gypsy-ringlets. And failed. I tied it back and doubled the pony-tail over so that it looked ever so slightly Japanese (I even stuck a pencil in it from time to time.) I imagined the fun I could have with it and three cans of hairspray, like a latter-day Elsa Lanchester.
But as maturity overtook me, and gravity took its toll, the days when I glanced in a mirror and saw Max Wall looking back at me came thicker and faster. There is character, there is eccentricity, there is scarey and there is just plain weird. Let's just say that I seemed to have left character quite a way behind.
I spent no little time indulging in amateur psycho-analysis. I'd always been conscious that part of the reason for having non-average hair was to screen out the vapid tossers who couldn't cope with someone just a little bit different from the mass. (And, Lord knows, that strategy worked all too well.)
But maybe I was persisting in looking strange because, at heart, I really didn't want to be found attractive? Was I, quite literally, hiding behind my hair, a grizly gay Veronica Lake? Passive-aggressive hair? Hmmmmm.
The advent of summer at The Vauxhall was what really put the tin lid on it. With more and more people brandishing cameras in my face, and more and more photographs that made me look like something that shouldn't have been let out of the attic, I finally prepared to bid my hair a long farewell.
But how to get it cut? Where to get it cut? And when?
I was tempted, very tempted, to just shave the whole damn lot off. I even experimented in Photoshop to see what I might look like with a number one cut. (Answer: Like the love-child of Peter Gabriel and Neil Tennant. Hmm.) There was wild talk of a sponsored shave, at a pound an inch.
My friends got bored, very bored, with listening to me ranting on about it. I would lie in bed when I woke, planning my day: "Could always go and get a haircut? Nah." I scouted out potential hairdressing salons from the tops of buses. I obsessed.
And then, at 1630hrs on Thursday 28th June, I walked into a small barbershop behind Brick Lane, sat down in the chair, and said "I hope you're up for a challenge."
Frankly, I don't know who was more terrified, myself or the barber. He lifted bits of it up on the end of a comb, the way they do, frowning. He said "It's very... long." He said "It's a job for a hairdresser, really." And then he set to.
I sat, avoiding the mirror, cataloguing the barbershop impedimenta: the combs sunk in mysterious bright blue vats of disinfectant, the dulled stainless steel clippers and other bits of ironmongery, the holiday postcards, the car-repair calendar, the radio tuned to Capital Gold. I told myself it was just a haircut. I told myself that if I hated it I still held the buzzcut option in reserve.
And then the barber sighed, put down his scissors, and said "Well, I dunno where you're going tonight mate, but you're definitely guaranteed to pull." And I looked up. And do you know, I rather liked it.
A good old-fashioned short-back-and-sides. With a slightly inappropriate schoolboy air, to be sure. And surely he could have trimmed those whitening sideburns back to near-invisibility. But all in all, fairly fetching. Best of all, I didn't look like my Dad.
Reactions have been many and varied. Some people seem to have not even noticed, which I find difficult to cope with ("Hello! No hair!? Hellooo?"). The word "smart" has been used quite a lot. The word "younger" has been used quite a lot (always with a slightly tentative air, as if to suggest I could be sensitive on the subject, as if.)
At least one person has enquired if I've noticed my 'pullability-factor' increasing, which I take as a complex, if somewhat back-handed, compliment. (I record, for the scientific record, that I felt hornier than a dog with two dicks for the first few days after the Cut. So Samson be damned.)
But there, it's done. My face, such as it is, is Out and Proud. Pay me a compliment next time you see me, ok?
º Tuesday 17th July 2001
The post-adolescent experience in a nutshell:
14.7.01
Conundrum of the moment is what to get with the birthday money that I'll hopefully get from my family. Should I put it towards an external hard disc, the gorgeous (but let's face it, completely out-priced) Canon Digital IXUS or Harman Kardon Mac Soundsticks?
15.7.01
Receive, through the post, £40 worth of Sainsbury's vouchers from my mother and grandmother.
Now look here PwC - if I'm going to be single-handedly responsible for educating you about life beyond your desk, the least you can do is give me some damn work.
(And judging by my experience of working with some of your software, an experienced user-interface designer could be just what you need, ahem, ahem.)
Charles Shaar Murray concludes his (sadly off-line) review of 'The Game of War' (a biography of Situationist Guy Debord) in last Sunday's Independent: Two things emerge from this book. First, that Guy Debord was a visionary thinker who has helped us all to define the central dilemma of the current era: the conflict between the demands of the human condition, and the needs of the human heart. And second: Jesus! What a prick!
º Monday 16th July 2001
I'm frankly astonished that David didn't attempt to up his hit-count by pointing out that according to Google Zeitgeist, the top five mis-spelt words are: Ticket Master, Wimbeldon, morpheous, Victoria Secret, and Anna Kornikova.
Daniel Clever-Clogs at Venusberg has been collecting portmanteau movies. Rather than add to his (frankly really rather too) long list, here are mine:
Carry On Doctor Zhivago
The popular surgeon-poet Dr Yury Zhivago is sacked after being discovered in a compromising position on the roof of the nurses' home. The proletariat are determined not to lose him, and so take on the might of Dr Tinkle (Tom Courtenay) and the overpowering Matron (Julie Christie).
Tea for 2001
"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't let you brew that."
Jane Airplane!
Plain and poor, Jane Eyre comes to work for Thornfield Airlines and can't help but be attracted to the vibrant chief pilot Mr. Rochester, a man twice her age. Jane heroically pilots the plane to safety after a terrible explosion caused by Rochester's mad wife smoking in the toilets.
Mr Smith Goes to Washington Square
Naive and idealistic Jefferson Smith, leader of the Boy Rangers, has found the man of his dreams in presidential hopeful Morris Townsend, but their romance is strongly opposed by Townsend's father. Understandably enough, Smith's plans for a national boys' camp do not bear fruit.
Prêt à Night Porter
Former teenage Nazi concentration camp inmate (Sophia Loren) and the S.S. officer who was her torturer/lover (Marcello Mastroianni) accidentally meet again in Paris where he works as a couturier. The fabulous collection of fetish wear that results takes the jaded fashion world by storm.
Delicatessen of the D'Urbevilles
A young country girl goes to work at the supermarket owned by her aristocratic relatives in an attempt at helping her family to raise some money. Her plan works all too well when her cousin Alec turns her into a best-selling terrine.
Apparently: Sandi Toksvig's live-in lover is the woman who reads the shipping forecast on Radio 4.
I suppose I quite enjoyed Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, not least for the busy busy busy central chapter where he explains just exactly what it is that a chef does.
But, my goodness, for someone who purports to be telling it like it is, he don't half lay on the snobbery a bit thick at times: "..in the thin air at the peak of the culinary Mount Olympus, where the three- and four-star demi-gods dwell - guys like Eric Ripert, Gret Kunz, Bouley, Palladin, Keller, you know the names, I don't have to tell you.."
Excuse me. Who?
There were some real dogs on the grassy knoll at The Vauxhall yesterday.
The nicest, naturally, was Charlie (or was that Sharlie?). The nastiest was a small brown chihuahua that might have made a good pencil-case if it could sit still for long enough.
As others see us. A long, but acerbic, piece by Tony Judt in the current issue of The New York Review of Books looks at the state of the nation, and the railways in particular, and deduces that we Brits are becoming "post-post-politics" - that is, about to become deeply pissed-off with the low standard of service provided by the state.
Some nice jabs at Blair: "What seems to grate most is the ersatz quality of Tony Blair and his politics... He is not so much sincere as Sincere... There is nothing contrived about Tony Blair's inauthenticity. He came by it honestly, as it were... He is the gnome in England's Garden of Forgetting."
As for Londoners: "It is an international truism today that London is once again 'swinging.' It is prosperous, bustling, cosmopolitan: a world-class financial and cultural mecca, etc. Among young Europeans it is the place to be. And something odd has happened to Londoners themselves - they actually seem to believe everything they hear about their city, which may account for Labour's success there.
"The skeptical, mocking Cockney has been replaced by a town full of civic cheerleaders. No one seriously denies that Britain's capital city is overpriced and overcrowded, that its transport system is inadequate, its laboring classes cannot afford housing, and its Victorian-era sewage system is dangerously dilapidated. But Londoners today happily entertain a form of cognitive dissonance: yes, it's all true, they concede - but all the same, London is 'back.'"
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