Friday, January 31, 2003 :

London sunset

I sent an email to a mate overseas the other day, in which I wrote, among other things

“…looking on the bright side, we've had the most beautiful turquoise and pink sunsets over London for the last three days. Probably due to pollution, but incredible, unreal looking, like a futuristic painting or something”.

I was wishing I’d been able to grab a camera for a picture. Just stumbled across a site belonging to someone who did exactly that.

Thursday, January 30, 2003 :

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra II

A second trip to the Barbican to see the LCJO, this time playing a set of the music of Benny Goodman. I enjoyed this very much. The sound seemed better than on Monday. The structure of the evening also benefited by having a band leader at the front, calling the tunes. This role was taken by Bob Wilber, a cool and charismatic old dude, who has actually played with Benny Goodman and plays a really mean clarinet in the Goodman style, as he demonstrated on tunes like “Benny Rides Again” and “Clarinet à la King”. Throughout the evening, he and Vic Goines, the young clarinet player from the LCJO, traded band leading duties. Goines did some great stuff (“Clarinaid” in particular showcasing his skills), while Wilber provided visual entertainment by grooving at the back. They did some great dueling clarinets stuff too when they both stayed up the front. Highlights were the classic Benny Goodman number “Sing, Sing, Sing” with some fantastic stuff from Herlin Riley on drums and a good solo from Wynton Marsalis and the high–energy encore, “One O'Clock Jump” with people taking solos all over the shop.

Reflected by Wilber’s comment about “the modest guy at the back who is the main reason why most of you are here tonight”, Marsalis took a fairly low–key role, not taking more than his share of solos, but he did some great stuff when he did, most notably in “When the Angels Sing”, playing about with the mute and also letting rip with a clean, powerful sound.

As in the Art Blakey set, Riley on drums, Richard Johnson on piano and Carlos Henriquez on bass set a solid foundation for everyone else and had plenty of flair when they were called upon to do a solo. These three were certainly one of the best things about this band.

As an overall impression of the evening, there seemed more energy and fun about this performance than Monday’s, with Wilber pointing and nodding recognition when a soloist did some good stuff and the feeling that the musicians were really trying to come up with something to beat the last guy when they stood up for a solo. I think if I’d heard this gig at a more intimate venue like Ronnie Scott’s, it would have been even better, but tonight still had the “Yeah!” factor.

Wednesday, January 29, 2003 :

Sounds like more snow is on the way.

Can you own the copyright in your own ugly mug? According to this article in This is London, a Russian law firm is to sue on the allegation that Dobby, the irritating elf from Harry Potter II, is modelled on President Vladimir Putin. Presumably, if you could sue for this, Spitting Image would never have happened.

Iraq to chair UN disarmament conference

Oh the irony. Due to standard alphabetical rotation, the forthcoming 25th anniversary session of the UN disarmament conference in Geneva is to be chaired by Iraq.

Tuesday, January 28, 2003 :

Lincoln Center Jazz

Saw the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Barbican last night, musical director Wynton Marsalis, playing the music of Art Blakey and Wynton Marsalis. Good, but I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I had hoped. I’m no great expert, but I’m not sure whether the sound was quite right for the large size of the hall. It seemed that the microphones weren’t picking up everything consistently, making the complicated passages confusing. This was also reflected in the fact that I didn’t hear the name of a single musician, despite soloists being name–checked by Marsalis after every tune.

On the other hand, the hall was too big to quite carry off playing unamplified, as Marsalis was attempting on some occasions. Maybe as a result of this, there were times when things sounded over–complicated and lacking the feelgood, soulful swing that is one of the things I love about jazz as opposed to so many other art forms — the kind of virtuosity that takes you past all the artistic and intellectual pretension prevalent in so much art (I’m thinking classical music, contemporary dance, painting, to name a few examples) and shows you a good time and makes you want to stand up and shout “yeah!” rather than just stroking your beard and muttering “interesting” to a companion.

About half of the second set after the interval was taken up by a new “jazz ballet” by Jazz Exchange, music provided by some of the Lincoln Center orchestra. This wasn’t entirely convincing either — the choreography seemed fairly uninteresting “jazz” dance and I soon found my attention wandering. I don’t think that the choreographer would have filled the Barbican Hall other than on the coattails of Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz orchestra — finding a parity of talent always a problem in collaborations.

Having said all that, there’s no doubt that these are damn good musicians. Over the course of the evening there were great passages coming from many directions, sounding best when it was pared down to a straight solo allowed to ring out over backing from bass, drums and piano (all three of whom were excellent — really enjoyed these guys). I thought one of the other trumpet players did some really good things too.

UPDATE 30/01/03: From seeing the LCJO again tonight, I can now identify this trumpet player as Ryan Kisor, who had another good performance doing the Benny Goodman set.

Friday, January 24, 2003 :

Alcohol free? Who they tryna fool?!

I have succeeded in eschewing all booze so far this year, despite finding myself in a pub on a couple of occasions, having to deal with the temptations of après ski, restaurant meals and a boozy night in Valmorel’s one club, the Clover (named after the margarine?). The weirdest bit so far has been the other night when, once I’d nicely settled into my non–boozing rhythm, that buffoon Chrish (who has also given up the sauce for January) thought it would be a good idea to turn up at my flat with a four–pack of Kaliber. He really fancied the malty taste of lager, apparently, and thought I might too.

What a strange, unsatisfactory experience. Like a reverse nicorette patch — tastes right (more or less), looks right but completely lacks the active ingredient. So you’re left high and dry no matter how much you drink, even more gasping for a pint than when you started because you’ve invited all the drinking synapses to pop out of their burrows and now they’re scurrying around your brain like rabbits, waiting to be blasted with both barrels of alcohol, which doesn’t happen. If you had 20 cans of the stuff, you’d just keep drinking. And thoughts of lager are suddenly back to the fore in what was looking like an easy run–in to the end of the month. Makes one wonder who the hell actually drinks Kaliber — if you were never a drinker you won’t like it, and if you were, you’ll fucking hate it.

Typomania

You probably won't see a funnier typo than the one in paragraph 2 line 5 of this letter. Oh deary me. It's perfect.

Tuesday, January 21, 2003 :

Properly back in the UK after a good weekend snowboarding in Valmorel. Great stuff. Pleased with myself for managing to see the weekend away without breaking the booze ban. Unfortunately, I did not manage to see the weekend away without contracting some bloody awful ’flu variant which has left me feeling like I just ran 15 miles with my head in a steel bucket filled with the smoke from 20 packs of Gauloise sans filtre. Can’t even bring myself to eat anything. Not the John West.

Monday, January 20, 2003 :

An interesting article concerning the landslide investigation tux referred to last week. Given the issue raised by Tux as to the prominence of UK participants, note that this article says the website had 250.000 subscribers, of which the Economist piece says 7.000 were in the UK. 7.000 is an appalling number. 250.000 is unimaginably appalling.

Wednesday, January 15, 2003 :

Oh, one thing I was going to mention. I was shocked last night to hear my American girlfriend state matter–of–factly that England was “known” for paedophiles. As in, if you ask an American to name somewhere that paedophiles come from, they’d say England (along with movie villans and butlers, presumably). At first I thought she wasn’t serious, but it turns out that her view is that “you guys do have a lot of them”. Funny how nations perceive each other. I suppose I’d think of Belgium first in connection with paedophiles, but only because of that big abuse scandal involving all sorts of senior public figures a while back. But this subject is enormously in the news these days, with lots of anti–abuse adverts on television also. I don’t know what the statistics are about how big a problem this is in England, or whether it’s any bigger proportionally than in America.

How about this article in which John Le Carre submits that America has gone mad. Not exactly new thinking.

Always strapped, so my money I keep

In other news, has the right to self defence been unacceptably eroded in this country with a negative impact on the amount of violent crime, as this article submits?

I think they’re super

What bollocks. In this article, supermarkets are being criticised for supplying a greater variety of food, of better quality, at a cheaper price. The author criticises the accurate, computerised monitoring of customer demand that allows supermarkets to predict what customers will want and order it fresh and in bulk each day so that the demand is met as precisely as possible, as bringing despair to farmers and being the antithesis of a free market.

The idea seems to be that if food is cheap enough to allow people to eat as much as they want, we will get fatter, and local farmers might go out of business. Because the food they supply is of lower quality, more expensive and of less variety. Well, no shit, local farmers.

Somebody is producing the food sold in the supermarkets, and in every other industry, producers have to compete in the market. The reason hand–crafted furniture sells at a premium to mass–produced IKEA is because it is perceived to be of better quality. Is the suggestion that in this one area alone, we should ban supermarkets and eat more expensive, worse food in order to help local farmers and because the expensive, low grade food would cause us to lose weight?

Far from being the negative factor scorned by the article, the introduction of kumquats, year–round fresh vegetables, vine tomatos and so on by supermarkets is a damn good thing for the British diet. The article seems to hark back to a good old British “we’d buy what the farmers brought to the back door and if there wasn’t enough, we went without” Blitz mentality. This is not a good thing. Who wants to go back to eating the odd apple in season and spending the rest of the year subsisting on Mother’s Pride sliced white and dripping sandwiches? For customers, supermarkets are the way forward.

Whatever happened to ...

"Air"? I listened to Moon Safari last night for the first time in ages and its cracking. Has anyone heard anything by them since?

Monday, January 13, 2003 :

Gearing up for a quick snowboarding foray to Valmorel next weekend. Apparently, there might be a bit more snow falling at altitude tonight, then that’ll be it for the week. However, there should be plenty there to last us and since it’s not expected to be too sunny in the meantime, with a bit of luck it won’t have all turned to ice by the time we get there. I fly out on Thursday evening to spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning on the slopes. The trickiest bit could be continuing to observe the booze ban with all the boozehounds that’ll be there…

Antitrust laws in action. If you bought a CD in the USA between 1995 and 2000, you may qualify for free money. Get in.

Friday, January 10, 2003 :

The land of excess

I know petrol is cheap over there but surely a 500bhp V10 engine is slightly excessive for a motorbike, even in America?

Quiz for you

English sweet - chocolate covered creamy "wafer" - red and white packaging - not a kitkat. Can you name that sugary snack?

Thursday, January 09, 2003 :

For all your pork product information needs and much, much more Jamon Internet, online home of the inestimable Sharkster, just went live.

Ham News

Me and my paletilla are feeling somewhat belittled today. Had a drink last night with my buddy Pablo who was telling me about the "matanza" he and the boys did this winter. There were about 12 of them and between them they bought a serrano hog - a big one too - and one of them kept it in the garden. Come the appointed hour, they borrowed the necessary stand and gear from a local slaughterhouse and Mr Porky got his chips. A lot of blood apparently (although they didn't collect it for morcilla) but not as much squealing as expected. There's a lot of steps involved actually - for instance you have to take the tongue around to the vet so that he can give you the all clear. Then there are bits you can eat straight away - you fry em up to see if you need to add salt before making the hams and sausages. All in all it apparently takes about two days and around 6 bottles of aguardiente and sounds a total laugh. Plus you end up with as much pork product as anyone can reasonably need.

This has been bugging me for a while. What does GOP mean? I understood it referred to the US Republican Party, but why GOP? The press bandy it about all the time and never explain it. Well I finally made the effort and looked it up. It stands for Grand Old Party and dates back many years.

Cyclists? I hate cyclists.

Another run–in with a stupid, holier–than–thou cyclist today on the way into work. Typically aggressive response from said cyclist despite being clearly in the wrong. CYCLISTS, WAIT YOUR TURN.

Wednesday, January 08, 2003 :

Statto's Delight

After suffering more tiresome iberian condescension last night I have devoted my morning to demonstrating, without casting aspersions related to fascist dictators, that we've got the best league in Europe. So check it out

In other news, it’s currently dumping snow on London in a way I have never seen for as long as I’ve lived here. I think we should be given the day off!

Last night at the circus

I was lucky enough to get free tickets to the first night of the current run of the Cirque du soleil production, Saltimbanco, at the Royal Albert Hall. And how lucky was that!? Captivating stuff. These guys are really good.

Tuesday, January 07, 2003 :

Correcting my previous post, I have given up booze for today. This really is the only way to give up booze.

Zidane

I don't know if any of you saw highlights of Madrid taking Valencia to the cleaners on Sunday. Suffice it to say that "Telemadrid" interrupted the broadcast of the film they were showing (Cool Hand Luke or "El Indomitable") in order to inform us of the score. Difficult to know what to make of it - the pitch was waterlogged and Valencia were the better side, but got sent home 4-1 (having only let in 8 all season) thanks to a sending off, Roberto Carlos and most of all, Zinedine Zidane, who did things on the waterlogged pitch that have people here making comparisons with other legendary figures known to have walked on water. Anyway, if you get a chance to see the highlights - take it.

Friday, January 03, 2003 :

I have given up booze for January.

Thursday, January 02, 2003 :

Carrying on with the climate of fear in the land of the free, this is a nice one about how you can now get arrested in Virginia for being in a bar (no, not car, BAR) while under the influence of alcohol.

Saw Bowling for Columbine yesterday. While Michael Moore is sometimes irritating with his faux–naïf questions and a bit cheeky about setting people up to promote his own point of view with no intention of giving them a fair chance at responding, some of it was bleakly funny and hard to argue with. When talking about the state of fear that he claims that the US media and government is trying to engender amongst the public, he cut to President Bush at a press conference:

“Today, the Justice Department did issue a blanket alert. It was in recognition of a general threat we received. This is not the first time the Justice Department have acted like this. I hope it’s the last, but given the attitude of the evildoers, it may not be”.

And it was amusing to see him trot out for “interview” a few dumb police officers and manifestly crazy gun–nuts, although wheeling out easy targets like this was never going to add much weight to his case (egs “so, do you think that the right to bear arms extends to nuclear weapons” and, discussing a hunting dog that had set off a rifle and shot someone in the leg, “will the dog be charged with any crime” and “do you think the dog knew what it was doing”).

Coupled with the headline shooting tragedies, the oft–quoted gun homicide statistics were extremely telling about what a mad place America is — Britain, Canda, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, all under 200 per year, America over 11,000. There MUST be something in that. In response, Charlton Heston did himself and the NRA no favours by allowing Moore to make a complete ass out of him, although again it was not what you could call a fair interview. Verdict? — a bit too partisan but cleverly done and thought provoking: worth seeing.

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