Gary Glitter

Apparently, Thailand has threatened Gary Glitter with detention for his refusal to continue his journey from Vietnam to the UK. Surely detention is the last place to put him, what with all the young school children who will be there, doing their lines. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to put him in a prison?

Labels: news

Olympics

What a good Olympics we are having. But it has been interesting to hear the post–event interviews with the British athletes who are actually winning a few gold and other medals for once. When asked what they feel, “relief” seems to be the surprising commonest answer, often coupled with some technical remarks along the lines that they were glad that they had been able to “raise the strike–rate to 41.8, and execute in the final 500”, or whatever. The way we think about the Olympics has gone from “it’s not the winning, it’s the taking part” where the emotion is surprise and delight at making the final, to the Weakest Link, where the great fear is “…and Britain, you leave with nothing” after four years of killing yourself training to the exclusion of all else in your life. It’s the American/Ozzie professional mentality that the papers have been saying for years that we ought to emulate if we want to win enything in the modern era. Still, I kind of miss the great British tradition of amateurism, sportsmanship and getting a first from Oxford without doing any revision.

Labels: sport

Having now had the opportunity to mull over what I take away from the Henry Rollins gig, I think the key points are his admirable forswearing of cynicism, curiosity about other cultures and continuing devotion to “sticking it to the man”. I am also left with the feeling that it would be good to get back down the gym. In my initial comments, I did not mention the story he told about a guy he met in Vietnam who instead of saying “hello” would shout “what’s your life?!” (imagine this in the voice of the shiny green–suit bar owning guy from Good Morning Vietnam). I am thinking of adopting this form of greeting in the office.

Henry Rollins

Went to see Henry Rollins’ spoken word show at the IndigO₂ tonight. Interesting to see him, having known about him for years and having heard some of his music. Stamina was impressive. He spoke for almost three hours without a break. The first half was good — in parts angry, funny, informative. It seemed to flag in the second half and he lost the audience a bit. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of the war in Iraq, the section about it came across as over–simplistic and over–blown. From what little I know about the Iraq situation, it is not fair to characterise it as a straightforward invasion, which all of the invaded are of course going to resist to their last breath, analogous to Belgium invading the United States.

The last hour or so was talking about a documentary that he has been travelling around the world making, the production of which has obviously been a big part of his life for the last few months. However, I thought he talked about this documentary for too long and that this section didn’t have the energy or focus of the first half. The discussion of the interviews that he did about the troubles in Northern Ireland seemed a bit pointless. He was (rightly) anxious to avoid adopting any position on the underlying issues, but as a result all we were really left with absent actually seeing the interviews was that the grey–haired former paramilitary killers to whom he spoke were “fucking hardcore”. The (lengthy) discussion in the final segment of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA and the rebuilding of New Orleans seemed a lot more in depth, but was a bit lost on the London crowd, who I also think were getting knackered and in need of a break.

The venue wasn’t bad (Rollins remarking that it was a bit sterile and new, which was a fair comment), but the crowd were pretty passive, which I got the impression wasn’t what Rollins would have preferred.

Labels: diary, theatre

Morroco

Just got back from a fortnight in Morocco. Just under a week walking in the High Atlas and the remainder of the time split between relaxing at a family–type resort with a pool and at a riad in the Medina in Marrakech. A good trip. The mountains were great and Marrakech is a lot of fun and a pretty crazy–seeming place. Some photos here.

Labels: diary, travel