January 7th - January 13th 2002
Sunday The Fall of the Towers
Saturday Jacobson on King
Friday Brent Cross
Thursday Fred Barnes
Wednesday Unreal
Tuesday Sesquipedalian
Monday Chris McKoy
Sunday 13th January 2002
"In his junior or senior year [Cary] had done a set of perhaps seven drawings he'd called The Fall of the Towers.
"They were multiple portrait studies, three to five heads on a sheet: a variety of children and old people, men and women, boys and girls, some clearly middle class, some explicitly working class, reacted to a catastrophic incident, outside the frame and never shown - this one with a look of curiousity, that one with an expression of distrust, another with an excited gaze, but most with a stupefied fascination hardly distinguishable from indifference.
"Today I suspect that as figurative drawings go, they were pretty good. But I was overwhelmed by them - at least by what I took to be the concept behind them."
- Science fiction author Samuel R Delany recalling, in his 1988 auto-biography The Motion of Light in Water, an incident from the 1950s.
Saturday 12th January 2002
"I consider the treatment of Jonathan King a scandal. Not just his sentence but our universal approval of it. I do not say he is innocent of the charges brought against him, nor do I say those charges have been trumped up: I say that the crimes of which he has been found guilty do not amount to a hill of beans.
"I am a hanging man when it comes to sexual assault on small children. Hanging, drawing, quartering. Touch a child, and you should expect mankind to turn medieval on you. Tar, feathers, Stanley knives, the lot.
"But a 15-year-old boy - especially a 15-year-old boy who keeps coming back for more - is no small child.
"Which is not to say I remotely understand why anyone should want to do it. Having shared gym changing-rooms with 30 naked sewer-brained teenage boys at a time, I will go to the grave not seeing the appeal.
"If that were the charge - inexplicable bad taste in sexual matters - then I'd happily see Jonathan King in jail for life. Ditto inexplicable bad taste in music..."
Irascible author Howard Jacobson, in his column in today's Independent, coming - somewhat unexpectedly - to the defence of Jonathan King.
Friday 11th January 2002
I popped into the Spiral after work last night for two reasons: I fancied a couple of late pints, and I wanted to catch up with John the barman. I wasn't looking for a cheery night with an attractive throng. Wise move. Total of number of customers: 5.
Thankfully, the Shoreditch Health Club was slightly busier. Couldn't help noticing the name of one of the featured players in one of the porn movies: Brent Cross.
Thursday 10th January 2002
I mentioned Three Queer Lives a while ago, and promised more. Re-reading the review, I was struck by the lack of parallels between the lives of Dirk Bogarde (qv) and one of the queer lives in question, a music-hall artiste called Fred Barnes.
Both men began their careers as good-looking matinée-idols but Fred, fifty years too early to benefit from the protection of the Rank Organisation's PR department, rapidly acquired a reputation as an extravagantly predatory homosexual.
Dirk Bogarde's father was the art critic of The Times. Fred's father was a butcher; he turned up at the stage door one night carrying an axe with which he threatened to "put an end to Fred's cavortings" but, on being told that Fred was not at the theatre, went home and (somehow?) used the axe to kill himself instead.
Fred's behaviour became increasingly eccentric and he could regularly be seen walking down the Charing Cross Road in a white cashmere jacket with matching plus-fours, knee-length pink stockings and a marmoset on his shoulder. Bogarde owned a couple of yappy dogs but never, as far as I know, a marmoset.
Bogarde did own a Rolls-Royce however, and so did Fred. The latter became, as one contemporary put it, "a welcome sight to many an unemployed man".
In 1924, Fred was charged with being drunk in charge of a motor-vehicle and sentenced to a month in Pentonville. Press reports failed to note what others had observed: a half-naked sailor fleeing the car moments after the crash, his remaining clothing bundled under his arm.
Unlike Bogarde, Fred's career declined dramatically in his thirties and shortly before his death he could be found singing for his supper in Southend pubs, cadging drinks and small change, the marmoset on his shoulder replaced by a pet chicken.
Both men enjoyed warm relations with members of His Majesty's Armed Forces, relations that, in Fred's case, resulted in him being banned from Olympia during the annual run of Royal Tournament:
Gradually, there would be a vague stirring in the distance; then shouting and then the sound of running feet. What are they saying? What? 'He's in again! He's in again!'... The Military Police and their self-righteous sympathisers feel personally insulted and are running to catch Fred Barnes if they can, and throw him out neck and crop. But scores of young sailors are running to find him first...
Wednesday 9th January 2002
Every year, my minimal-at-best interest in television revives slightly during the autumn season when, for some reason, the programmers cram anything remotely resembling intelligent viewing into just a few short months.
And then, every year, Christmas brings everything to a crashing halt with a parade of programmes so banal they make watching your wallpaper seem attractive. (I mean, really, how awful is it when the most entertaining thing you see for a fortnight is the drag-queen edition of The Weakest Link?)
And every year, just when you've decided it can't get any worse, January comes around with a succession of mind-numbing crap that makes you itch to pour a kettle-full of boiling water down the back of the set.
(But hey, look on the bright side, we can always go out and win the Pop Quiz instead.)
In my desperate search for entertainment, I even found myself starting to get interested in Pop Idol. And I'm with troubled-diva on this one: William rules.
I also (oh the shame!) watched a brief snatch (mot juste, I think) of the Big Brother round up - whilst I'm not exactly panting to watch some girlie housemate masturbating beneath the duvet, one can't help but wonder: how come those damn foreigners manage to have so much more sex?
Speaking of which, keep an eye on Footballer's Wives. It's a pile of shite by all accounts but, according to at least one review, it does at least contain "a healthy ration of male buttock-shots, and even the odd flash of penis".
There's always The Sopranos, of course, thank God. Sex is breaking out there too. Did you see that hot shag in the reptile house in last week's episode? Not as shocking as a few months ago, which featured some guy rogering a stripper whilst she blew a policeman: "Watch those braces, honey". Can you say "family values"? (Thankfully, we'll never know what Mary Whitehouse would have made of it.)
Something tells me we won't be seeing much male nudity in Will and Grace any time soon, but this Salon article (scroll down) confirms reports that the second season moves considerably nearer the knuckle. (Guess who gets to say: "Heterosexual marriage is just wrong! I mean, if God had intended man and woman to be together, he would've given them both penises!")
Extraordinary freak of nature that I am, I don't have access to digital or satellite TV, and am thereby denied access to all sorts of cult viewing. Thanks to the miracle of newspaper reviews, however, I somehow manage to keep up to date with some of the more shocking news: the Vulcans have no word for thank-you.
In Boston, early last year, a 13 year old boy had to have skin grafts after attempting to imitate a human-barbecue stunt from a popular MTV show, JackassTV.
Last Sunday, a 14 year old boy doused his T-shirt with methylated spirit before setting himself on fire in a similar attempt to copy a stunt from the show.
A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said: "People need to remember that what they see on television is not real."
Right.
Tuesday 8th January 2002
One of the many things I like about the interwebnet is that, when you wake up with some obscure word running through your head, tapping the certifiably erroneous spelling into Google brings you a response that provides the correct spelling, and hence a definition.
One of the things I don't like about the interwebnet is that it can't (yet) provide an explanation for why I wake up with a word that means "Of a foot and a half in length".
(Note to those of you who happen to be aware that I went home with someone last night: don't go there.)
Five recent headlines that made me titter, often for reasons I can't quite explain:
1. Fans likely to queue for sight of Pavarotti on stage
2. Oliver reveals his naked ignorance on Desert Island
3. Bin Laden overheard giving orders from cave
4. Thinking about exercise 'can beef up biceps'
5. Most oppressed women in world take timid steps towards freedom
Monday 7th January 2002
"The gay community in London is devastated by the loss a man of seemingly unlimited energy and vitality and somebody whose positive attitude to life was an inspiration. The black community loses of one of their brightest up-and-coming stars. He would have celebrated his 31st birthday last Saturday, and was on the brink of major international recognition as an openly gay black DJ who was capable of reaching people's souls with his music, cutting through boundaries and definitions."
RIP Chris McKoy - January 5th 1971, December 29th 2001
A very large proportion of my acquaintance vowed to stay clear of the Vauxhall Tavern for at least the first few weeks of 2002; a very large proportion of them were there yesterday. Jolly good: welcome to the New Year, same as the Old Year.
Nice to see a table-full of them at the Dukes later on in the evening though. Quite the Brown Hatter's tea party - with Marcus as sleepy dormouse.
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