SOCIETY: THE BRITISH AIRWAYS STRIKE AND THE DAILY MAIL

British Airways gets more of its planes airborne as mothers drag children along to the picket party   Children, too young to understand the strikes, brandished placards with the words 'Backing BA Cabin Crew'

 At the top, the Daily Mail's opening to an online piece about the BA strike. Note in the headline the use of the word 'drag'. Now substitute that for the word 'bring' and notice the difference. It tells you everything you need to know about the DM's attitude towards the strike.

I've no doubt at all that bringing along their children to the protest is a political move on behalf of the strikers. It's a good one and a valid one. To how many people is the image of cabin crew a bunch of long-legged sluttish women and lecherous men (if they aren't gay, or both)? Bringing along their kids reminds the public that a great many of these strikers are family men and women who are fighting for their jobs. It also emphasises that they are picketing peacefully and in accordance with all the rules.

It's a legal strike by desperate people against a management that resorts to dirty tricks and intimidation. I've seen several strikers interviewed on tv with their identities hidden because of their fear of management intimidation.

Me, I say fuck the Daily Mail and support the strikers.

FOOD REVISITED

I have now completely stopped eating meat and chicken (duck & turkey) and started including much larger portions of fresh vegetables. For lunch yesterday, I bought a bag of rocket, kale and shredded beetroot at Asda to which I added french dressing and ate with a small tinned of mackerel in tomato sauce. I didn't realise it was beetroot I was eating until I looked at the label more closely and got quite a shock as I hate beetroot, at least in its cooked form. Shredded and raw, it's actually very nice. 

For dinner I stir-fried a bag of stir-fry Asda fresh veg, added teryaki sauce, something called Asian Spice (a mix of stuff like chili, cinnamon, etc) and some prawns and mussels. Susan arrived just as I was finishing and ate the last mouthful which, surprisingly, she liked.

Lunch today was the remainder of that first bag  with tinned sardines. Dinner will be a similar stir-fry to yesterday but I'm going to try tofu with it. I've also been back to Asda for more bags of salad, stir-fry veg, and a couple of different kinds of salad dressing. 

I've never been much of a salad eater before but I do like these bags from Asda. Next week I'm going to have a trip down to the fish quay and see what's available. I've a feeling I'm on a roll with this.

BONNIE

Twelve years ago on a mild Spring Saturday lunchtime and Susan was standing in the street talking to Anne a neighbour when a scrawny cat with hardly any fur on her back and tail appeared. It was in such a state, Susan carried it into the house and gave it to me to look after as she was off to see her mother. I fed her, made a fuss of her, and cleared up her vomited after she'd gobbled down too much food in too short a time. She was also in heat. Within a week we'd had her neutered and de-flead -her condition was due to a flea allergy. When Anne first saw her she called her the ugliest cat she'd ever seen. I named her Bonnie. The vet thought she was about three years old.

She didn't like our other two cats, Lucy and BB,  and spat at them and they soon learned to keep her distance. I sometimes called her Miss Hiss. She did like affection from us but generally for a short time, although the periods grew longer as she got older. Her dislike for other cats remained unabated and the others we gradually brought home a few years later all learned to keep a respectful distance as Bonnie only attacked if they got too close. Susan and I loved this scrawny idiosyncratic bundle and I confess she was my favourite.

About a year ago she started to lose some weight and I suspected she was on her way out but somehow she stabilised and carried on as usual, scaring the other cats and putting her paws on either side of my neck when I picked her up as if she was cuddling me. In early autumn last year, she started disappearing for days, often staying out overnight. Then, abruptly, she must have decided the weather had grown too cold for wandering  as, until last week, she hardly left the house. And then she was off again. 

This week, on Monday, she disappeared and didn't come back till Wednesday teatime, not long after Susan had knocked on some doors in the next streets whose gardens we were sure she'd been visiting. She disappeared under an armchair and stayed there, eating and drinking little, until this morning when she came out to lay in sunshine streaming through the windows. When Susan got back from our charity shop this lunchtime, she thought Bonnie's breathing seemed laboured so she got her an apointment with Honour at Vets4Pets late this afternoon.

Honour checked her out, x-rayed her chest and found a mass that was pushing Bonnie's lungs up against her spine so that she could hardly breathe. There was only one solution and so I held her as her breathing slowly subsided. Because we loved her so much we had to let her go.

MUSIC: THE HIGHWAYMEN

These are The Highwaymen, a country super-group consisting of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson and below is a picture of the CD which collects together their first two studio albums. After that is a live album and a lesser third studio outing released several years after the first two.

Super-groups have a tendency to be less than the sum of their individual parts for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's simply a mismatch. Sometimes the individuals concerned are trying to avoid standing on each others toes and the result lacks any edge. In this case it's a bunch of strong-willed but old buddies who know each other well and the result is a very polite recording, though they are clearly having fun. Each member sings a line or a verse in turn and then they harmonise on the chorus. The musicianship (don't know who played what or what sidemen were employed as there are no details provided on the inlay) is precise, skilled and tasteful, often moving from Country to Country-Rock.

The two best songs are the 1st and 10th which opened the respective original albums. Not being a country fan, I've no idea if any songs are standards (apart from Cash's Big River) or original to the albums or somewhere in between, but they're largely enjoyable with good hooks. The vocals are all strong and impeccable -you wouldn't expect anything else- and the harmonies are more rough and vigorous but still good.

The result, an enjoyable accessible CD that's well worth having but does nothing much to convert me to Country.

SOCIETY: FOOD

For a few years, back in the mid-90's, I became a vegetarian. This is a good thing. A balanced vegetarian diet is excellent for health and it's good for the environment in that it wastes less energy and resources producing crops for animal feed. But I also became an evangelical vegetarian. I became a born-again vegetarian and I started acting in the way that born-again religious fundamentalists -the sort of people I despise- behave. This is a bad thing.

I drifted back to eating animals, partly because Susan wouldn't go veggie which always struck me as odd given her strong anti-vivisection beliefs, and partly because I just liked eating animals. I still believed that vegetarianism was a moral and physically beneficial choice, I just didn't practise it.

Now I find myself feeling uncomfortable eating meat and fowl and have decided to stop. Instead, I'm going on a diet of seafood (fish and crustacae) and vegetables, but mainly vegetarian. Ultimately I hope to go completely veggie.

But the one thing I'm not going to do is get on my high horse and pontificate on the benefits and on my obvious moral superiority -that last phrase was meant ironically. I really do have no intention of moralising. This is something I have decided suits me and that's all. I'm not going to be dogmatic about and if, or when, I have lapses (such as eating turkey with the rest of the family on Xmas Day), then so be it.

There's also a whopping piece of hypocrisy in my views but you probably didn't spot it because, like everyone else which includes me until just recently, you view animals as a hierarchy. Mammals are on the top, followed by birds, down to reptiles, fish, crustacae and the like, then insects. Because we are mammals and because mammals evolved last and are the most sophisticated biologically, they are, therefore, more important, better.

But what I am actually doing by partly substituting fish and seafood for birds and mammals is taking more lives. I doubt if, during the course of my life, I've consumed more than the equivalent of a couple of hundred entire mammals (cows, pigs, mainly). I've probably eaten several thousand chickens. But I have probably consumed over 20,000 fish and hundreds of thousands of shrimp, prawns, squid and crabs. On Saturday night alone, I ate about 20 dead animals (prawns). Only our heirarchical system of values differentiates between than and eating 20 cows. I would argue that there is no moral difference between a prawn and a cow. Each has a life and I have chosen to take it.

None of this is going to affect my decision to eat fish as a supplement to a primarily vegetarian diet, I'm just offering it as a different way of looking at what we eat. In the meantime and as of yesterday, I have now stopped eating meat and fowl and I feel good about it.

SOCIETY: CHRISTIAN NAMES

Just a quickie about something which mildly annoyed me earlier this week concerning a piece in the Online (Daily) Mail. No surprise there then.

Shock, horror! Policepersons were told not ask for an individual's Christian name as they might not be Christian and, therefore, offended. They should instead ask for their personal name. Political correctness gone mad! screams the Mail.

I'm sorry, but how is it wrong to ask for a personal or forename from someone who isn't a Christian and therefore does not have a Christian name? To ask a Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, etc for a Christian name is to ask for something they do not possess and it's both stupid and ignorant to do so.

It's been many years since, while working as a librarian in Sunderland City library with its wide range of users from all sorts of religions and cultures, that  I have asked anyone for their Christian name and I've refrained from asking for this on the grounds of common sense and politeness. It's practical not politically correct -an overused phrase for any slight change in the status quo that someone objects to. It's politically correct and, therefore, it must be bad. In most cases anything smeared with that label is merely a form of politeness and since when was that a bad thing?

TV: SKINS SERIES 4.8, NAOMI & EMILY

It needed to pull a rabbit out the hat to salvage the mess of this series but, despite some good scenes, it didn't do what was needed. But then what was needed was for most of the scripts to be scrapped and rewritten from scratch before the series started.

It ends with Cook breaking into the home of psycho-shrink, conveniently discovering Fred's bloody clothes neatly folded and bagged in the first room he enters, having a confrontation with psycho-shrink where he declaims himself over the course of a diatribe to be totally worthless climaxing with a screamed, "I'm Cook!" and launching an attack on psycho shrink. Black screen. Credits. The end.

It begins with Thomas running around a track and being discovered by a coach who, it seems, within 24 hours gets him an athletic scholarship at Harvard, though this last information isn't announced until nearly the end.

Pandora visits Effy in hospital, Katie is already there, and sings Effy a song she's written especially for her. It's lovely, sweet, a little bit clumsy and absolutely perfect as is the scene itself and also reminds us how criminally underused this character has been during this series. Later, and before Thomas's revelation, Pandora says she's going away, to Harvard on a history scholarship, shame-facedly admitting that she might have taken more exams tham she let on. This is a lot more believable than Thomas's miracle scholarship as there was always more to Pandora than at first appeared. 

Saving money on paying the actress who plays Lara, JJ appears at one point with baby Albert to let us know that they're still together.

But the key characters this final episode are Naomi and Emily. For a full description, and a more perceptive one than I can provide, I refer you to AfterEllen's recap which is well worth reading for the insight into these two much-loved characters.

Much of the first half of the episode takes place at Naomi's house where several people have been crashing out including Cook (who is fucking an Effy-lookalike) and Pandora. Also Mandy, the tall girl from the previous episode who has designs on Emily and who we find in bed together. Nothing has happened as Emily was, the previous evening, too drunk to fuck as the saying goes and Naomi thinks Mandy is straight,though she is shortly disillusioned of that fact when Mandy says bluntly to Naomi, in a very brief scene where the actress playing Mandy is very powerful, that if Naomi doesn't want Emily, she most certainly does.

Turns out it's Freddy's birthday so the gang get together in Freddy's shed for, unknowingly, a wake and here several things are resolved. Most notably Naomi and Emily's relationship. Naomi arrives just as JJ is asking who's going next in a truth game. I will, she says and does, revealing all the truths and motivations for actions and behaviour since the beginning of Series 3. She's loved Emily since she was 12 years old and it took her three years to get the courage to speak to her; she went with men to convince herself she wasn't gay and failed; she was terrified of the power that loving Emily gave Emily over her and everything she's done was in order to push Emily away so she won't be frightened any more; and its all been for nothing because despite herself she can't stop loving Emily. And, finally, they come together.

And that, really, is the end of Skins. Series 4, I suppose, hasn't been all that bad -there are certainly many good things in it- but it just doesn't come anywhere near the exhuberance and magic of Series 3 when these characters were introduced and really is a massive disappointment.

SOCIETY: SPIKED MAGAZINE

This is an online magazine and you can find it here-

https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/12776ebd4e2c1f01

or if that doesn't work just use Google. The handsome devil below is Brendan O'Neill the editor. Hey, I have to have a picture of something here, right?

Spiked was formed from the ashes of LM magazine (or Living Marxism as it used to be known before it went trendy -FM, GQ, etc) after LM went down the tubes following a guilty verdict in a case of libel (details in this week's Spiked and very interesting it is too).  

Not unexpectedly, Spiked is of a left-wing nature with a strong libertarian bent so while I don't find everything interesting or agree with it at every stage, I know where it's coming from which is pretty much the same place I am. It deals with politics, the economy, society, culture, sport, occasionally science, etc. (Can there be an etc after those categories?) 

The editorial team regard it as a duty to question everything and certainly aren't afraid of taking a tough or extreme stance. They happily take on accepted wisdom, icons, pillars of society. But not just because they are being awkward but because they believe (often rightly) that they have a strong case to make and an alternative view that needs to be heard.

Just a relatively minor matter raised in this week's issue. The Daily Telegraph reports that 40,000 hookers are on their way to South Africa for the World Cup. The writer suspected he'd read this story before somewhere. Ah yes. The Independent 2006: 40,000 hookers head for Germany for the World Cup. Didn't happen then. Won't happen now. Spiked's title for the piece.-

Stop this illicit trade in bullshit stories

They have certainly reminded me to check my own beliefs and attitudes more than once. So:

Accept nothing! Question everything!

And read Spiked while you're at it.

TV GLEE REVISITED

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you should have a fairish if uneven idea of the kind of music I like. What I don't like under any circumstances is a collection of covers by a bunch of teenager actors and a couple of adults put together on a tv show about a glee club. It's my idea of hell on earth. It's mediocre and soulless. It's bland (see previous posts) in the extreme. If such a thing existed I would make it my mission on earth to stamp it to a bloody collective pulp and exterminate memories of it from all of humanity.

But then I started watching Glee and.... and.... I.. uh... um...

I was wrong.

It's wonderful and it isn't bland. And it's s hell of a lot better than Skins Series 4 (last ep to be reviewed/recapped soon).

Despite what I said a few weeks ago, I... I'm even going to buy the two soundtrack albums from the first season. This should be the tv show and music from hell for me but it works. It just works. It's great and I love it and it makes me smile and laugh and part of me wants to punch me in the face for writing that.

Somebody help me please!

DOGS: KAISER UPDATE.

The ab

The above is from Saturday's Sunderland Echo and is a piece about the proposed legislation against 'dangerous' breeds. Andrea and Susan were interviewed -like many, they think the new laws would only hurt conscientious dog owners and make no difference to those at whom the legislation is aimed. Tying in with this is Kaiser's story (he's above with Margaret -not Mary as I said in the previous piece- as an example of a so-called dangerous breed.

My view is, as a generalisation, that there's no such thing as a dangerous breed only a stupid owner. That said, breeders can force inbreeding on dogs which can physically and mentally damage them. But a normal healthy dog, irrespective of breed and properly trained, is not dangerous.

I also read a piece on the Daily Mail Online this morning where a rottweiler stopped a woman -not his owner- from being raped in a park. It chased off the woman's attacker then circled the woman and his owner guarding them against any further attack. Good boy.

Post script

Sorry, seem to have had a brainfart. This should have appeared (and will in a minute) in my cat rescue blog to which see for the full story of Kaiser and my miracle touch.

TV: SKINS SERIES 4.7 EFFY

1. Effy in brief.

So Effy is in the nuthouse and being treated by a psychiatrist who is even nuttier than she is. He convinces her to suppress from her memories all the bad things which have happened resulting at one point in her not even knowing who Cook is. When she cracks up again, Freddie tells the psychiatrist they don't want her treating Effy. At this point Skins moves ludicrously into schlock-horror psycho-killer mode when the nutty psychiatrist lures Freddie to his house where, offscreen so we aren't really sure what's happened, he appears to bash Freddie's brains out. While this in itself is no loss, the act itself is where Skins jumps the shark and just about completely forfeits any pretense at reality, heightened or otherwise.

2. What else happens.

They get their exam results. Naomi gets 3 A's, Emily gets BBC (a joke?), JJ does good, etc.  Effy, who hasn't even taken her exams, fails the lot. But no. Wait! Here's the oh so kind Principal  (yes, I know, we all thought he was a total shit) has given her new results -all A's. Hurrah! The fact that she might otherwise have the college's new improved results plays no part of this. I was a little amazed that he could do this given that the exams are externally set and marked. But this is Skins land where psychiatrists can be psycho killers.No sign of Lara, not much else happens.

3. Why this series is the biggest disappointment in the entire history of television (a slight exaggeration, but not much).

I absolutely adored the previous series (see my extended essay/recap at the start of my blog) and probably repeat watched it more than anything else. Then, even in solo episodes, members of the group played a large part. Here one or two of them might appear in glorified cameos and that's about it. There is no group. Bluntly, it's gone completely up its own arse. I'm so disgusted I've even cancelled my pre-order for the DVD.

In between writing bits of this, I've checked the recap over on AfterEllen and the writer thinks the same as me about the nutty psychiatrist and Freddy's death. We don't usually agree -she recapped JJ's episode and seemed to spend most of it talking about Emily's & Noami's extended cameo- but we're as one on this. The last episode has a hell of a lot to do to redeem itself.

Oh well, Channel 4 have just authorised another two series with a new cast. Please let them be better than this one which has gone from brilliant to crap.

MUSIC: JOHNNY CASH THE DEFINITIVE REVIEW

1.

Okay, the title's a joke, this is anything but a definitive review of Johnny Cash's career. But it is my thoughts on this artist after a couple of weeks steeping myself in a single disc compilation, a 3-disc set of his Sun recordings, a 2-disc set of the extended Folsom Prison and San Quentin concerts, and one of his late Rick Rubin-produced recordings, which together I think comprises a pretty good, though in no way definitive, representation of his career.

 

2. From the beginning to the end.

Having listened to more of JC since I first heard this CD, I'm more than ever convinced that it is an excellent collection of some of the best of his work from the first till the last. If you only have one Johnny Cash disc in your collection, though you should have more, this is as good as any particularly because there is a good sampling of his later work which I'll go into later.

3. How it all began.

Most artists reach a creative and skill peak at some time in their career. It may be early on succeeded by a decline. It may in the middle and look like a bell curve. Or it may come late and represent a continuous ascent. This early work just proves that Johnny Cash reached his peak early. While there is the odd clunker and dated sound, he had his powerful voice, a gift for writing songs and making those of others his own, and an attitude from the very beginning. He hit the ground running and never stopped.

This particular set isn't 'complete' and the notes could be a lot better, but with 54 tracks at a cheap price it will do for me.

4. The man in charge.

In 1968 and then in 1969 Cash played concerts at two legendary tough prisons and had some of the hardest men in America eating out of his hand and showing his heart on his sleeve (excuse the use of cliche).

With an enormous repertoire at his fingertips, there is a great emphasis on crime, punishment and imprisonment. This could have been dark and grim and sometimes it is but there is as much light as there is shade and Cash makes his audience laugh as much as he rouses them. It's a masterclass in audience control as he has these hundreds of hard hard men exactly where he wants. On the second album his song San Quentin is a searing angry masterpiece which goes down so well he sings it again straight afterwards. These are his people he's playing and singing for, the working class and dispossessed of America and they know it and respond accordingly. If they are his people, he is their voice.

Extra tracks aside, this is an excellent box set. Each 20+ page booklet includes new material written by Cash as well as others and plenty of photographs. Only one caveat: I can't listen to one after the other because it's too much of a good thing. That apart this is a magnificent piece of work.

5. And in the end.

This is American III: Solitary Man, one of a much and deservedly praised late-life recordings produced masterfully by Rick Rubin. I'll probably buy them all at some point.

Despite the number of guest backing singers (including Tom Petty, Cash's wife June Carter, & Sheryl Crowe) and musicians (Petty again, Randy Scruggs) they never for a moment detract or distract from Cash's voice which remains as strong and intense as ever. Always an outstanding interpreter of other peoples' songs, here is a masterclass as he tackles Petty's I Won't Back Down, U2's One, Nick Cave's The Mercy Seat (which could have been written by Cash himself), among other plus three of his own songs. This isn't Country and it isn't Rock, it's just pure music that warms and then shatters the soul.

This journey actually ends on the compilation mentioned first. It ends with Nine Inch Nails' Hurt in one of the most affecting and emotionally wrenching heartbreaking things I've ever heard. Cash reached a peak at the beginning of hsi career and he stayed there all his life.

I've come to Johnny Cash relatively late in my own life -just ten years younger than he was when he died. But better late than never because I know that I'll be listening to him for the rest of it.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...

From 1966-1969 I attended Edge Hill College of Education to train to be a teacher. To cut a long story short: I fucked up at the last hurdle and failed. I never wonder what my life would have been like if I'd passed. It never even occurred to me to even think about the idea of wondering what my life would have been like if I'd passed until now. The photograph above is of the main entrance which doesn't look any different from when I attended, probably because, as I've just checked, it was taken in 1962. 

(I've learned recently that Jonathan Pryce the actor attended around the same time I did. Wonder if I knew him at all?)

Lately I've been thinking about writing the occasional autobiographical piece but not neccessarily the ones that those who know me would expect. I'd been planning to write about an outdoor pursuits weekend I went on during my final year. Thinking of that made me think about people I knew then.

Cutting a long story short, my two best mates there were Rob Proctor and Dave Bell. I don't remember seeing Rob since I left (though my memory may be wrong on that) but the last time I saw Dave was in Nelson Lancashire, where he and Rob came from, in the mid-70's when I attended a party at his house (and the less said about that the better as I behaved not as well as I should -blame the drink) and Dave was, at the time, a Liberal councillor. 

At college, the three of us and a bunch of others in our merry band were all keen fellwalkers and Rob founded a college society so we could do just that. Rob was around my height (I think, maybe a little taller, my memory is notoriously unreliable), but Dave was an ectomorph, bespectacled, tall and lean suffering from a prematurely receding hairline and we got on really well.

From time to time during my last five years at work I attempted to locate Dave and Rob over the Internet with a complete lack of success. Then, two days ago, I decided to contact the local Nelson & Colne Liberal Democratic Party to see if anyone there knew anything about Dave. Within 24 hours I had both his email and his physical addresses and I appreciate the efforts of those concerned very much. I've since emailed Dave, or David as he'll have been called for many years now, making a general enquiry about how he is and briefly mentioning what I've been doing since I met Susan. That was a day and a half ago and still no reply. No reason why there should be. I'm probably someone he hasn't thought about in decades, just a vaguely remembered figure from a period in his life that ended forty years ago.

People play an important part in your life for brief periods of time and then disappear and become consigned to the past as new people and new important events change the shape of your life. It's the past, it's gone, just fading echoes. You've moved on. You rarely look back.

Perhaps that's as it should be.

AMAZON REVIEWING

Anyone who's ever paid the most cursory glance at this blog will know that I regularly review stuff on Amazon and am a member of Amazon Vine where I get free stuff twice a month to review. I don't review everything I buy for several reasons. The item may not grab me enough to inspire me. It may have a number of reviews already to which anything I might have to say would be superfluous (Kurosawa's Seven Samurai or Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin to name but two, though I might post a brief comment here). Or I might not have the technical vocabulary to adequately assess something. None of these apply to Vine items which I have to review and, as a consequence, some of my Vine reviews are among the poorest I've written and rarely among the best.

Which neatly brings me onto my next point. As you all know, you can vote on any review as being helpful or unhelpful and add a comment should you wish. This voting affects a reviewer's Amazon ranking. Since I started reviewing back at the end of 2003 when I was probably about 500,000th in the rankings, I've steadily climbed up the rankings to eventually attain Top 1000 Reviewer and then recently  Top 500 Reviewer status, ending up in 463rd position yesterday.

Now on the Amazon Vine Forum, a regular grumble is about idiots who regularly pile negative votes on certain reviewers in an attempt to bring them down or to boost the standings of others. This manages to be annoying but singularly pointless as an Amazon ranking brings absolutely no benefit at all except for a certain amount of personal satisfaction. The people who do this are genuinely stupid and small-minded tunnel-visioned obsessives. Members of the forum have been regularly agitating for Amazon to do something about this and now it appears that they have.

I checked my ranking yesterday and got quite a shock. Until yesterday morning I stood at 463 with 899 helpful votes out of a total of 1099 and an 82% helpful rating. I now stand at 230 with 849/1012 and 84% helpful rating.

What Amazon appear to done is clear out a lot of negative voting and, to a lesser extent, positive, and cleared out many reviewers who haven't contributed anything in the last couple of years to focus on those currently active. While some Forum contributors have dropped in the rankings, many of us have improved dramatically and the consensus is (and it would, wouldn't it?) be that the new rankings are fairer and more accurate and a well-deserved slap in the face for those neggers who will hopefully find a new playground to piss in.

MEETING AT THE BLUE REEF AQUARIUM

This appeared yesterday (minus photos at the end) on my Cat Rescue blog.

Different way to spend Sunday. We had a meeting with Lynn and Mary of Pawz4Thought. Although Lynn was the mainstay of P4W, it's now very much under the aegis of Mary who also voluntarily  rescues stranded seals and keeps them housed, away from the public, temporarily on the Blue Reef Aquarium site, hence the meeting being there. When Mary took the reins it (the charity) was weeks away from going under.

The purpose of the meeting was to see what we (that is, Animal Krackers) could learn from Mary and to look at ways we could be of mutual help. What we discussed is, for the moment, confidential but it was an interesting and valuable meeting which left us taking a fresh look at what we are doing as a charity. Us, in this case, was me and Susan. Originally I wasn't even down to go but then Anne our Treasurer dropped out because a friends from Australia was visiting, Andrea went sick, and Gordon had a last minute something to do. 

The meeting was held upstairs from the cafe in a roped off section (presumably open during the busier summer months) and then in area where Mary houses the seals. Sadly she didn't have any when we were there but we did have to walk through much of the aquarium to get to it. Apart from seeing the inhabitants of various tanks, we passed through the otter area where it was feeding time and the bred-in-captivity seals' tank. Fascinating and delightful and we (Susan and I) are definitely going again and  will also spend some time at Tynemouth to walk along the shore (a very attractive area I haven't been to for decades) and, no doubt, go shopping.

I haven't been overly busy since the last posting. I took the cat (now named Florence) for its mastectomy at Roker Park vets on Friday and it's currently recovering well. Just waiting now for the results of the biopsy.

Let's see what happens the rest of this week.

TV: SKINS SERIES 4.6 JJ

Oh yes, thankfully a lighter episode in which, like his episode in Series 3, he has sex. But this time a lot of it.

When he's not in his room playing with his ukele (not a euphemism) or adding Captain's Log entries to his audio diary, he's working part-time, along with Thomas, in a warehouse-style supermarket where do just about everything -work on the tills (where he flirts with elderly ladies), stack the shelves, clean the toilets, and, in JJ's case, fixate on Lara an attractive girl who also works there. This is a source of amusement to Thomas who gently teases him about it. In order to get JJ to finally act he threatens to ask her out himself and hares off to do so. JJ grabs hold of a microphone and asks her out over the tannoy. Her reply, "Yes. Sure."

Back home with Celia his fussy protective kindly mother (who cheerfully sings along with him the rude lyrics to songs as she drives him home from work -I wanna fuck your pussy/Fuck your pussy, etc) and his uncommunicative father whose face, hidden behind a newspaper, we don't actually see until over halfway through, Freddie arrrives with a large bundle that contains Cook who intends to hide in JJ's bedroom. Cook also gives him advice on women which of course causes disaster for JJ.

He arrives two hours early but Lara lets him in anyway and introduces him to Albert -her nine month old baby- and leaves them together while she gets ready. JJ entertains the bairn with magic tricks, attempts to change his nappy, and gets wee in his mouth. At this point he's interrupted by the babysitter, Gary who happens to be Albert's father and an unpleasant chav. They finally get to the pub where JJ attempts to be sophisticated and follow Cook's rules. This results in him spraying Lara's drink all over her and trying to escape through the toilet window -the ladies' toilet window. Before all this, he sees and talks brief to an uncomfortable Emily who has arrived with a young Asian woman who clearly has desings on Em.

JJ finds Lara sitting on a bench not far away from the pub and she tells him she just wants him to be himself -the  person who flirts with old ladies and makes them smile. She kisses him. He kisses her back. Then they are suddenly in her house ripping each others clothes off and there's no sign of Gary. Wonder where he went to?

He gets home two days later to find an extremely uncomfortable and annoyed Cook whose prescence is still unknown to JJ's parents.

JJ and his mother go to see the psychiatrist, the same bland old fart with simplistic platititudes we met in the previous series. JJ loses his temper and stalks out to kick things. Unfortunately his exit from the centre is gleefully seen by Gary who informs JJ he'll waste no time in telling Lara. Surprisingly though, he hasn't by the time JJ takes Lara and Albert to meet Emily and Naomi whom he describes as being fun. If you've been watching the series or reading these posts you'll know that fun is not the word to describe them these days as they are a good advertisement for the joys of being single. Naomi absent-mindedly starts to light a spliff in the prescence of Albert the baby until Lara sharply asks her not to.  JJ mentions meeting Emily and... He can't even get the words out before Emily interrupts and gets him into another room on a pretext so flimsy not even Albert would believe it. Emily doesn't want Naomi to know about the girl even though she isn't interested in her and she starts moaning about the horrors of being in a relationship and accuses Lara of using JJ. JJ points out that relationships aren't the problem it's what you do with them and leaves Emily crying.

Now, do we think that a visit to JJ's parents will be any more successful? No, neither did I, especially as, once again, Lara brings Albert and Celia accidentally calls her a slut. Lara goes to the toilet where she can't get in, JJ and his mother arrives, lots of shouting, Lara leaves, and JJ tells Cook to come out. Celia tells Cook to leave before she remembers he's been there and tells the authorities.

Back at work, Gary is around and taunts JJ who, despite being restrained by Thomas, loses his temper and nuts him in full view of Lara who is upstairs in the office and dumps him over the tannoy.

At home JJ is in his room when his father arrives. He tells JJ that while he indulges Celia's overprotectiveness and her and JJ's visits to the psychiatrist, he remembers picking JJ up from infant school and while the other kids would be running around shouting and fighting, there would be JJ making an imitation telescope out of toilet rolls and he knew then that JJ would be okay. In other words, he accepts JJ totally for what he is, quirks and all, and he sees nothing wrong with it, he has faith in his son.

JJ searches out Gary to apologise, to even let Gary hit him if that's what it takes and there we learn that Gary isn't the moron we assumed. He loves Albert and desperately wants to be part of his life and he understands that Lara doesn't love him as he loves her. He's frightened that another man would replace him as Albert's father but nevertheless gives a tacit approval to JJ being with her.

That evening, along with a ukelele orchestra (of which we have to assume he's a member and not hired for the occasion), he throws a boot at Lara's bedroom window. When she opens it, he sings Spandau Ballet's True accompanied by said ukele orchestra. At the end, Lara slams the window shut only to reappear at the front door moments later. She embraces JJ and it ends with them on bed together, facing each other with legs around their backs, as the theme from Star Trek swells up and the background becomes a starscape.

While it's open as to whether JJ can really mature in the accepted sense, it is clear that he can cope as he is because is a decent human being, albeit one prone to self and outwardly-directed rages when frustrated. but these rages have an external cause and aren't innate. JJ can manage and his caring nature is found attractive by those, like Lara, with eyes to see it.

Next week it's Effy. Oh god.

DVD, GRAPHIC NOVELS: RECENT AMAZON REVIEWS

Rob Zombie Presents The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto [DVD] [2008]

Brain-freezingly bad.

1* rating

It didn't have to be. It had the elements to be an entertaining parody of the luchador (masked wrestler) movie and mexican horror but director Rob zombie insists on throwing in everything including the ktichen sink, the toilet system, and the sewers. It's drowned in noise, grotesqueries, cartoon violence (well, it is a cartoon), sex, nudity, (none of these bad things in themselves), humour (crude, obvious, unfunny), songs, music, bad taste (but not interesting bad taste), infinitely extendable boobs and bottoms, horror, parody, satire, all of it hurled in your face non-stop in a way that manages to be mentally draining, wearisome, and boring at the same time.

After only 74 minutes I was so glad to eject this monstrous turkey and just physically could not bring myself to watch the extras (deleted scenes, extended -dear lord, no!- scenes, full length animatic, and trailer) because I had really seen enough. Brain-damaged teenagers on drugs might like this but I can't imagine it appealing to anyone else and I love movies with bad taste -the legendary 'Street Trash' for example- but this is just awful beyond belief. I'd sooner watch 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' than see this again.

Avoid at all at costs. 

Paul Butterfield Blues Band

An Anthology: The Elektra Years

As good as it gets.

5* review

In the mid-60's there were two names in white boy blues that stood out -John Mayall in the UK and Paul Butterfield in the USA. It's easy to lay your hands on umpteen Mayal albums and collections, less so for Butterfield who was, arguably, the more authentic (by having racially diverse bands from the very beginning). Now, however, anyone interested in checking out Butterfield can lay their hands on this excellent introduction to this artist.

It perceptively creams off the best of his Elektra albums, presenting the tracks in chronological order which shows Butterfield and the band's development from its rootsiest blues to experiments with jazz fusion and raga. Like Mayall in the UK, he utilised a succession of great musicians: terrific rhythm sections including Jerome Arnold, Sam Lay,and Billy Davenport; hotshot guitarists and keyboard players including Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, and Mark Naftalin; and later a horn section which included David Sanborn; plus, of course, Butterfield himself as lead vocalist and the only harp player the band ever needed. The 24-page booklet includes an excellent account of the band's history, full track details, and a few photos.

Any complaints? Only Amazon's current excessive price. You can buy the download for far less but then you miss out on the booklet which is an essential part of the package, so I would recommend you do as I did and buy a copy from Amazon Marketplace. And buy it you should because it represents a pinnacle in one corner of modern music. This really is great stuff. 

Ignition City Volume 1 by Warren Ellis Edition: Paperback Price: £11.49

After the two-fisted space age...

4* review

..Earth has retreated within itself, tired of alien attacks and corrupting influences. The only place you might get off Earth is Ignition City and that is one of the last places on Earth any sane person would want to visit.

Taking as its premise that the black and white movie serials of the 30's and early 40's featuring heroes like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, and then thinly disguising them, were real, Ellis take us to 1956 when it looks like the Space Age is over. It opens in Berlin where Mary Raven is talking to Buster Crabbe -a real-life hero and frogman (i.e. diver) who died while (so the story goes) attempting to sabotage a Russian ship during the Cold War. Learning her father, the hero Rock Raven, has been murdered, Mary, herself a space adventurer and tough-girl, heads off to Ignition City to get his effects.

And if I tell you what happens next... Well, I'm just not going to as you should find out for yourself.

Some background details, however. Ignition City is a slum where despised aliens live along with corrupted or beaten down heroes of the Space Age, some of them hoping forlornly to get on board a rocket and head off for a final adventure or just to escape an unbearable Earth. It's a brutal and dangerous place where the predominant colour seems to be a faeces-brown. The language reflects this and this is not a graphic novel for kids or the squeamish, but then it is written by Warren Ellis who isn't known for pulling punches.

At the novel's conclusion, certain events have happened which make it clear that there will (or should) be a sequel while wrapping up the initial plotline of what really happened to Mary's father and why and the consequences thereof. Definitely not for all tastes but well worth a look. More please, Mr Ellis, sir. 

Post Script.

But this being my blog, I don't have to worry about spoilers. One thing I didn't mention in the review, which I should have done, is that Ignition City is located on an artificial island near the centre and there is a ban on flying over anything but the access route. The reason for this is that the local marshall, a rocketeer modelled on Commander Cody, is in league with the government and killed Mary's father who discovered that they were hiding Kurrgh, the Ming the Merciless figure who makes Hitler look like an amateur and who was supposed to be dead, in exchange for his technological expertise. Mary  kills the marshall and takes his badge.

It's grim and gritty but fun too and I'm looking forward to the next volume. I just hope Ellis, as he is wont, doesn't get distracted by other projects.

No Hero

by Warren Ellis Edition: Paperback

Price: £10.49

Deconstructing the super-hero

4* review

Warren Ellis is fascinated by the concept of the super-hero. Whether he actually likes it or loathes it or simultaneously likes and loathes the concept I don't know. What I do know is that he has written some of the best super-hero stories of modern times -Planetary- and some of the most (not bad but) horrendous -like this one, which falls into the deconstruction category, a theme to which he keeps returning. I can't begin to describe it without giving away what it's about, though I can outline the setup.

Since 1966 a group of superheroes has been defending individuals, 'the little man'. Sometimes they die and are replaced. Following the murder of two of the group, a very straight-edge young man who wants to become a super-hero starts acting as a vigilante to advertise his suitability and he is duly recruited.

What happens next you will have to find out for yourself. Needless to say there are deep dark and dangerous secrets. There is incredibly brutal violence and genuine horror. This is not for the faint-hearted and is about as far away from Superman as you can get. Don't say I didn't warn you. 

Post Script.

Full of bitter ironies, the superheroes lead by an immortal are actually the secret rulers of the world and have save the planet from global warming and Ronald Regan, in other words our world. Cutting out the content of four issues, our hero is a plant by the government and a psychopath whose purpose was to infiltrate the group, gain super powers, and kill them all. This is he does, finally taking the leader into space where he'll continually die and come to life again and die but never get back to Earth where he could regenerate. Our hero, exposed ot the rigours of space just dies. Then the planet, given a stability by the super-heroes, degenerates into a chaos far far worse than our world is.

This is really bitter and cynical stuff from Ellis. I quite liked it but it's a one-off and I don't think I'm likely to want to read it again so I've added it to my Amazon Marketplace listing. Ignition City, however, I'm keeping.

DVD: SEVEN SAMURAI (1954, BFI)

And, yes, it is as good as it's supposed to be. Despite being over three hours long and watching it over two days, I never felt it dragged. It isn't a barrel of laughs though there are a few along the way -Toshiro Mifune's (see image) manic performance being one of them. Unlike its western remake The Magnificent Seven, it's neither an elegy nor a romantic tribute, rather it's the opposite. The samurai are ronin, not shiny knights in their lord's bright armour, but on their own trying to make a living wherever they can. All are well characterised and different from each other, though not quite the archetypes  of TMS. Each has their own reason for helping the farmers against the bandits. While there is action and plenty of it, this is also a very thoughtful film about roles and responsibilities which questions the values of the time, not just of the period but of when it was made.

I'm really glad I bought it. I'm going to make Red Beard my next Kurosawa to watch, prior to Ran, and will probably pick up Yojimbo, another movie later turned into a Western. All being well over 2 hours each I won't be watching them consecutively, however.