Andy's Glasses

It was about this time that Steve’s girlfriend arrived in LA. She was a gel, whose name I’m struggling with at the moment, but it’ll come. But as a gel she was unhappy with the level of provisions in their flat. So she wanted to do a ‘shop’. A big shop. And neither Steve nor Joey had a car in LA. Presumably ‘hit men’ don’t use cars or if they do they just rent them or steal them. Steve had his motorcycle shipped over from New York, but that wasn’t much use for ‘big shopping’. Though for all else, it was fantastic. A massive Kawasaki 1100, loud, fast, fabulous. The girlfriend borrowed my car. No problem, I said, I need it for 6 to go to work. “Phah”, she said, “I’ll be back long before then”, as it was about 3 o’clock and the supermarket was one block away. By 5.45 ‘no problem’ had become a potential problem. By 6 it was indeed a real problem. And at 10 past 6 Steve gave me the keys to his bike. Which I’d ridden before but never properly ‘borrowed’. He loved that bike whereas I had nothing but contempt for my car.

And after that we simply ‘car-pooled’. Or ‘bike-pooled’. Just take whatever’s there. And if I got to the bike first, where was the tragedy if I chose the $20,000 bike and kindly left 250 bucks’ worth of Detroit garbage? As I pulled into the car park at the College on a balmy night (they’re all balmy), helmetless (cos I was stupid and there was no ‘helmet law’ in California in 1982), I was indeed the coolest dude that’s ever been in my head.

Saturday Night Live is an American institution. Has been since it started in the 1970s. Its still on now, with Alec Baldwin providing endless amusement as Pres. Trump. By 1982 the show was fielding regular stars like Eddie Murphy, just before he hit the movies. SNL has always been a massive springboard for comedy talent. But I didn’t watch the ‘new’ ones, I was generally out at 10 on a Saturday night. But on the ‘local’ tv channels (as opposed to the networks) they showed the ‘old’ SNLs every night. From the late 70s. And they starred Dan Aykroyd, Chevi Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, all before they became mainstream ‘stars’. I would always watch it when in, they were brilliant. Of course I knew Belushi and Aykroyd from the Blues Brothers (which started as a sketch on SNL) movie and Animal House, Bill Murray from Stripes, but to see them all in early mode, rough cut, unscripted, was fantastic.

And then my hero, John Belushi, died. At Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, couple of blocks from where I was living. He basically snorted himself up his own nostrils. Had a problem. Being John Belushi, it was a big problem. If you’re interested in his incredible life, there’s a biography by Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) called ‘Wired: the short life and fast times of John Belushi’, which is as manic as it is amazing.

So you know what you do when your feeling doomy and gloomy? As Belushi said himself in Animal House: “ROAD TRIP!!!”

And we had a few.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Donald Trump stood up yesterday, in the wake of the the latest of oh,
so many high school shootings and said that the main concern for the
nation was… mental health. Not guns, mental health.

At which point I actually thought ‘he’s right’, this is an issue about
mental health. The President’s mental health. Not that of the shooter.
We all know he’s a fucking nutter already. And we’ve been half way
there with the president’s since those revelations in Steve Bannon’s
book claiming the man ‘unfit’ on insanity grounds.

The President and most of the Republican Party are sponsored by the
biggest lobby in America. The NRA. National Rifle Association. They
represent the immense gun industry in that fine nation and give 2/3/4
million dollar hand-outs regularly to Congressmen and Senators who
speak their language. What they call, with stress on the noble and
democratic; ‘2nd amendment rights’, what everyone else with any common
sense calls ‘the gun problem’. Trump received masses of campaign
dollars from the NRA and is thus now unlike to shoot off the hand that
feeds him.

For Donald Trump I say one thing. That mental health is obviously a
massive issue for anyone who is going to commit mass murder. And a
small percentage (we hope) of people will always suffer from mental
health issues. We don’t know who they are until they ‘explode’,
although in the case this week, it seems everyone from the school to
the FBI did in fact know about Nikolas Cruz. Mainly because his
aspiration in life, openly stated, was to be a ‘high school shooter’.

But if a tiny percentage of kids crack up, for whatever reason, does
Mr President in any way feel that having exposure to virtually
unlimited firearms and ammunition, being raised in a culture of gun
use and bigger-is-better-ism where firearms are concerned and
gun(g)-ho attitudes to shooting in general, does he feel that this has
no influence on such an outcome?? And, of course, access. Nikolas
didn’t just bring ‘a gun’. Like a pistol. No. He brought GUNS! Serious
rapid fire automatic rifles and loads of them, with sacks full of
ammo.

If you go to any mental health institution, what you normally won’t
find lying around in the playroom, is guns. Of any description. So
surely, if mental health is a problem, albeit in a small percentage of
people, wouldn’t there be some benefit in not having 360 million guns
lying around the country? (The current estimate; as many guns as
people).

President Trump is a fuck-wit.

I’ve been in my own battle this week; with man-flu. The dreaded
disease that only affects the fit, strong, brave and gorgeous among
us. Been awful. I’ve been heroic. Almost uncomplaining. Almost.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Warning: food that’s really easy and tasty is gonna kill you. They’ve found the missing link. Possibly. Because they still say that eating ultra-processed foods MAY increase cancer risk. Crossing a road MAY increase the likelihood of getting run over. There again, it may not. Three-headed monsters, 9 feet tall who eat live babies and support Chelsea ‘may’ live on Mars. So they started with an hypothesis; that super-processed foods, factory made, marinated in sauces, filled with preservatives and additives, may increase the risk of cancer. And they do extensive research on 105,000 people. Big test. And find that, yes, that MAY be the case. May not; but may be. Mainly because it would take a very brave scientist to condemn pizza. Even Cornflakes!!! ‘Ultra-processed’ therefore increased cancer risk. And chocolate. At which point it just becomes a matter of ‘well, we’ve all gotta die sometime’.

Your risk of dying, however, is definitely, massively, incredibly, humungously increased by being an American schoolkid. There’s not ‘may’, there’s no ‘within statistical significance’, there’s nothing but a hail of gunfire and dead bodies to prove that theory. And the fact that yesterday’s shooting in Florida was the 19th in the US this year. And we’re half way through February. That’s one shooting every two-and-a-bit days. 17 people died in yesterday’s incident.

And yet Trump, when told off by Theresa May about something tweeted along the lines: ‘we don’t got no jihadis here; America’s doing fine’. Whereas in reality the jihadis can’t get any ammunition for their guns because all the schoolkids are buying it up wholesale. And more people die in America every year in gun crime than die in the rest of the world in terrorist attacks (made that up, sounds about right though). The Trumpesque approach to gun crime adopts the philosophy of ‘the old lady who swallowed a fly’. In that if the baddies have guns, make sure you have bigger guns. The solution to the school problem would therefore be to arm the rest of the kids so they can take out the would-be shooter before he gets on a roll.

Another fucking tragedy, more kids die, but Americans demand ‘the right to bear arms’ and leave them lying around, fully-loaded so anyone can pick them up and go play.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I like to read. I read books, I read newspapers, I read magazines, but only if they come with newspapers, and I read stuff online. But my favourite ‘read’ is after Spurs win. Or even if they don’t ‘win’ in any normally accepted meaning of ‘winning’ but it feels like they did anyway. And I’ve been reading about last night all morning and intend to continue until at least Saturday. Having only just finished reading about the Arsenal game last Saturday. My cup runneth over. Not that we’ve won a cup.

Everyone loves Spurs. Ok, let me reign that in a bit. I love Spurs. Spurs fans generally love Spurs and a few others do too. Obviously not Chelsea fans (hateful and spiteful), West Ham fans (ugly and racist) or Arsenal fans (jealous). But ‘neutrals’ love the way Spurs play because its so gorgeous to watch. And when we play in Europe, then all those ‘neutrals’ can fish out their old, blue-n-white, Gareth Bale scarves, dig the lily-white bobble hats out of the ski-wear cupboard and get on board. Because in those games we’re representing England. The whole nation. From the Prime Minister and the Queen to a bunch of boozy, overweight rugby league fans from Wigan.

And how’d that go last night?

Well let me illuminate, illustrate, demonstrate and possibly hyperventilate over the details. Because God is in the details. Or the devil. Never sure which, not convinced there’s much difference.

We played the mighty Juventus. Not just top of the Italian league but the team no-one scores against. They’re Italians so they’re filthy dirty, cynical as fuck and cheat for all they’re worth. Pulling shirts, kicking ankles, diving to the ground every 3 minutes. It ain’t beautiful but it gets the job done. No-one has scored a goal past them since December. The goalie, the wonderful Buffon, hasn’t personally conceded since November. Ya get the picture; it ain’t easy to score goals in Turin.

So we had the best possible start and conceded a goal after one minute. 10 minutes later they scored again. 2-0 down against the hardest team to score against and we’re looking shaky. “This could end 5-nil!!!” said the pundits, “15-nil!!!!”.

And with ‘olde Spurs’ it would have been. But this weren’t them. This was my boys. This was the stronger, quicker, more resilient, pull-yer-socks-up, go-for-it, a-man’s-gotta-do, new-fangled, cliche-ridden Spurs of now. So they did the seemingly impossible and scored a goal. No prizes for guessing; Harry Kane. Then, later in the game, the equaliser from Christian Eriksen. At which point Spurs were totally dominant, unfazed, unflappable and brilliant. Even to my impartial eyes.

2 ‘away’ goals to bring home and the second leg all square and at Wembley.

Frikkin awesome.

Happy Valentine’s Day

A xxxx

All men are not, contrary to popular belief and certain t-shirts, rapists. Some are very nice. But at times it does kind’a feel like its part of the male condition to ‘lead with yer nob’ and ask questions later, taking advantage of any and every person, sexually, that you can possibly entice, bribe, coerce, blackmail or physically overcome in the process.

And when you read of such things happening at Goldman Sacks, you just think ‘fucking bankers’, in that case, quite literally. And when its Hollywood, there’s a ‘well what d’ya expect?’ kind of attitude that goes with ‘the territory’. A century ago, being an actress was seen in the same light as being a prostitute.

But charities are different. They come with an implicit morality that (certainly) banking and definitely show-biz, don’t. You HAVE to act in an ethical and considerate way when your headline brief is to ‘help people’. Increasing their suffering or giving them food in return only for sexual favours kind’a misses the point. By a fucking mile.

The problem escalates, once whistles are blown. In the case of Oxfam, that’s not the only thing which was blown. Because Oxfam and the others, so it now transpires, have been aware of these problems for years. And faced with the shameful, immoral actions of some of their workers, they chose to try a cover-up. Or, at very least, keep it ‘in house’. Or ‘in Haiti and Chad’, perhaps. But, again, this was not a stag weekend in Las Vegas, where what happens there stays there, this was a systematic and continuing cycle of abuse. So the logic in sending a habitual sex-fiend from Chad over to Haiti was never really going to be a ‘cure’ of his demons, was it?

And cover-ups make the organisations as guilty as the perpetrators. Like the church when they did, and still do, cover up sexual abuse because admitting it might affect their moral standing. Tossers. Covering it up makes them part of the problem rather than any possible solution. It makes them enablers.

And when ‘Christian Aid Overseas’ becomes tarred with the same brush, how good does that make Christians feel? When you adopt the moral high ground it gives you a far greater distance to fall.

Happy righteous Tuesday

A xxxx

The Winter Olympics have begun. In Pyeongchang, South Korea. Not Pyongyang, that’s in North Korea. Who used to be ‘the enemy’ but now are best mates with their neighbours to the south, even sharing sports teams in a joint-Korea friendliness. Its like having a new best friend in the playground who has beaten and bullied you for the past 10 years and carries a knife in the hand that’s not wrapped around your shoulders. Nothing nervy about that at all.

And to show this new accord, this new solidarity, the games are attended by Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong. I never knew Kim had a sister. I knew he had a brother. (Emphasis on the ‘had’). Because Kim had him murdered with a deadly nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur airport last year. But a sister? Where’d she come from?? How come she’s still alive? Why doesn’t she have a silly haircut? Not genetic then, that hair thing, obvs.

The winter Olympics is not, if I’m honest, my preferred sports viewing. I love a ski like the next man. But watching hours of it? Speed skating? Shooting whilst on skis? Yet this event is now effectively the Oscars ceremony for the pharmaceutical industry. They can test not only the effectiveness of all their wonderful, performance-enhancing and muscle-building shit, but also its detectability, or lack thereof. And whether the athletes (or ‘guinea pigs’ as they’re known in medical circles) are playing for ‘Russia’ or using an acronym of ‘The Country that Used to be Russia Before it got Banned for Sytematic, Industrial-sized, State-Compulsory Drug-Abuse and Fucking Cheating’, its still wrong. The last games was a joke. Except in Russia. Putin don’t joke.

But the 3 athletes who are emphatically Russian but didn’t fail drug tests (don’t mean they didn’t do it, like everyone else, just means they didn’t get caught), competing under some novel ‘state-flag-of-convenience’ is even funnier.

So that’s why we love football. Where drug abuse is purely recreational, where cheating is done by hurling yourself, arms spread, into the penalty area, and where we don’t let the Russians play.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Oh by golly, oh by gosh
Arsene Wenger is full of tosh.
His useless dilettantes lost, not a penalty in site
Defeated by a Spurs team full of flair and might

I’m not one to gloat, not one little bit
but the Frenchman needs to realise, his poxy team are shit.
Championship material, right through the ranks
wouldn’t take any one of ’em, even for nothing, thanks.

Ok they can win, at home against rubbish teams
But take them away from Emirates and they crumple at the seams.
You can put all the foreigners you like with unpronounceable names
They still don’t add up to even half a Harry Kane.

I didn’t go to Wembley, couldn’t take the strain
But now I wish I’d been there, even in the rain.
Because that wonderful victory puts us seven points clear
of an Arsenal team now living on nothing but hope and fear.

The Arsenal teams of old traded on skill and style and speed
the present collection of Euro-trash are mainly there for greed.
I’m not surprised Lacazette missed a sitter of an open goal
For just 200 grand a week he might as well be on the dole.

But this is not about Arsenal, they’re just too depressing,
This is about Spurs, I must keep on stressing.
We’re great, we’re good, we’re solid, we’re fast
We can almost start to forget our recent past.

We’re strong and skilful and no longer frail and porous
even all the neutral fans seem to really adore-us
Because we play the game as it should be played
With artistry, finesse, chances created and goals made

We flow and dance and play as a team that truly rocks
With just a very few instances of diving in the box.
Kane and Allie, Eriksen and Dier,
If I said I didn’t love them, I’d be a bloody liar.

What a birthday present for Rachie.

Really, unbelievably, ecstatically happy Sunday

A xxxx

Must have been about 30 years ago. I took a call at work asking me to sponsor something for sick kids or contribute for ailing single-parents or donate to malnourished Africans or something. And I agreed. Sounded good. The charity had a good sounding name and this was not an uncommon occurrence. They said they’d send someone round to pick up the cheque the very next day. But before they arrived I had another call. From a journalist. Who’d just visited the charity’s office and happened to see the name of my company on the list there and called me. “Don’t give them a penny”, she said. “They’re dodgy, a sham, fraudulent, shitty, bottom-feeding, heartstring-plucking con-artists”. Ok.

The journo had in fact been investigating that very charity for her paper because although they were registered and seemingly kosher and everything a charity needs to be, only about 2% of the money raised ever found its way to the bisexual monoped beneficiaries or whoever they were. The other 98% was lost in ‘running the charity’. 6-figure salaries for the directors, a new Porsche every year, ‘business trips’, all expenses paid, to Barbados, Gstaad, Las Vegas.

And since then I’m the most totally cynical person about charities. All of them. Don’t trust them as far as I could fucking throw them. The original ‘Live Aid’ was the biggest success story ever. Bob Geldof raised millions to ‘feed the world’. But not one penny of it ever arrived. No-one, to this day, can work out where it went. Certainly didn’t get spent buying Bob a new wardrobe, scruffy git.

The problem is that I want to be charitable. Its one of the founding principles of the Jews, as it is with Muslims too. And although I’m about as observant a Jew as the Pope, some things, like charity and chopped liver are way deeper than mere praying to God knows who (I should rephrase that but I like it).

They’ve changed the rules now so charities have to be more ‘transparent’ but the CEOs of big organisations will earn big, or they wouldn’t move to the charity sector which needs their expertise. You can’t expect people to work for nothing. But I want to know when the focus on any ‘charity’ has moved from ‘them’ (the needy, the poor, the headline cause) to ‘us’ (those running it). And that is impossible to know.

And I hate Amnesty International and I hate Oxfam because both are overly politicised and blatantly anti-Israel (yes, you CAN be anti-Israel and NOT anti-semitic, but both those charities fail that difference test by any criterion you choose).

And now we learn that bosses at Oxfam are spending OUR money (from our taxes) and your money pledged on the street or in direct debits, on hookers and pornography. Which sounds morally worse than if it was on cars and beer, but its not. Its ‘your’ pleasure with ‘our’ money, whatever that money goes to.

And this is the problem with David Cameron’s wonderful gesture of giving away a massive slice of UK income to ‘overseas aid’. When you can bet at least 7/8ths of it never gets to feed the starving. Unless they’re using hungry hookers.

Give generously.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

The problem with Lila days is that on occasion I have to go to work. Which is very disruptive for Lila because it is undoubtedly her favourite day of the week. When she gets chocolate. Lolipops. Frosties. Hot dogs. And I let her drive the car. Well, ya gotta learn sometime. (Her mum actually tests her blood for sugar and salt every Thursday night, just in case any of the above were true. Fortunately she doens’t test for recreational drugs).

Its very inconvenient that my colleagues take holidays. It means I have to get in ‘early’ and miss my baby-day. Hence the disturbance to blog frequency.

But I saw Lila for a bit early on and she was really pissed off with Arsene Wenger. Like, REALLY, throwing her toys out of the pram. Notice there no quotation marks for that phrase, because in this instance its not a metaphor, its for real.

Wenger was talking about the upcoming North London derby on Saturday specifically about ‘diving’; that lowly, duplicitous art whereby players take a dive upon the gentlest caress of their shins, or sometimes totally caress-less, in order to win a penalty because the ref thinks they’ve been fouled in the penalty area. And its true, diving is the real curse of the modern game. Its cheating, its wrong, nasty and evil. Yet is done by virtually all players given the right circumstances. Or the wrong circumstances.

Wenger said that ‘diving’, which originated over there in Europe, rather than here in Britain, obviously, has now changed and that ‘the English’ are the masters of diving’. And as his Arsenal barely play any Brits at all and Spurs provide the very backbone of the entire England team, some of the more sensitive among us take this as a direct slur.

Much as I really, truly hate diving, even when perpetrated so elegantly by our very own Dele Alli, it actually fills me with shame. I’m embarrassed when our players dive. But they do at times. Though not Harry Kane, which Wenger implied.

Wenger seems to have, as always, viewed the whole diving issue through the empathy-free Wenger-zone of one-sided arrogance. For which he’s famous. His players never ‘dive’. Yeah, right. The ‘dive of the season’ (yes, they rank everything on that intra-web thingumy) was won by Alexis Sanchez (he used to play for Arsenal but was too good so they sold him), and by Santi Cazorla wearing red, and numerous others who hang out at the Emirates. Jack Wilshire was booked for diving.

Ahhh, they weren’t dives, Wenger would probably say. Just like referees don’t give penalties to Arsenal like they do to other teams, so his players NEVER dive. Yeah right, Arsene, right. And if they did, he just didn’t see it, he was busy throwing bottles of water around the dug-out.

Everyone has the right to be a French tosser, but hypocrisy is always unforgivable.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

When is the news not the news? Either when its fake news or when its no news. Or both.

So Donald Trump tweets ‘look at England; their Universal Medical… thing (he almost said it like that, really) is broke and not working’. So we must assume that his use of the word ‘broke’ is not the moronic form of ‘broken’, but in fact ‘broke’ as in ‘stony’, as in bancrupt, as in skint. Cos he’s got ‘broken’ covered with ‘not working’. And the President of the Unaaaarted States of ‘Merica would surely not employ repetition out of ignorance, surely? So the NHS, according to Trump, uber-businessman and savvy beyond savvy, is broke. As it has been since the day it opened, in 1948. The whole point of ‘nationalised healthcare’ is that it is paid for out of the nation’s coffers. Out of taxes. The day they bought their first sticking plaster the balance sheet went into the red and its been there, in ever-increasing degrees, ever since. It has never made a profit, never made a penny, and it never will. As then it wouldn’t be ‘nationalised’ no more, would it? And all this to avoid installing any kind of social medical care in the States. Tosser.

Then there’s Paul Townsley. Who? I’ll tell you who. The other night Jacob Rees-Mogg, Tory leader-in-waiting, uber-nerd bible-basher and Brexiteer to the stars, was giving a talk at Bristol University. Which was infiltrated (ish) by a band of left-wing, balaclava-wearing, militant-types (who in reality were just a bunch’a posh kids in fancy dress) who pushed and shoved weedy little Jacob. A kind of melee ensued in which, in the complete absence of security personnel (so they’re not that bright in Bristol, are they?), several people from the audience stood up and tried to protect the MP. No-one was aware at the time that it was just a kind of ‘stunt’, a protest. And one of the public to move in and help was Paul Townsley. Ohhhhh, him. All well and good so far. Decent chap. Until… NAZI-GATE!!!!!

Someone (with nothing else to do out there in newspaper-land) found a picture of Paul dressed as a nazi officer. OMG. Could it be that Rees-Mogg’s saviour was in fact a NAZI!! Like a real one???? Or was he a nazi sympathizer? Or even a far right radical yearning for the glory days of the Reich? Or could it be possible, as the photo was doubtless gleaned off Facebook, that it was in fact what is known (just ask Prince Harry) as ‘fancy’ and ‘dress’? When those two words are used together, all bets are off. All political correctness flies out of the window. You can dress as Kunte Kinte from Roots. You can dress as Raquel Welch from that stupid dinosaur movie, you can dress as Harvey Weinstein, ffs. But apparently, you can’t dress as a Nazi.

Must be desperate for news,

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx