Andy's Glasses

Sharon Stone famously said it took her 19 years to become an ‘overnight success’.

A parallel, one must feel, to events on the final day of the football transfer window, yesterday.

Moussa Sissoko, the (ex-)Newcastle midfielder arrives at Spurs so late that the trains had stopped running and he had to take an Uber. The cost from Newcastle; £3674.23, his driver was Mo, who rated a strong ‘4’, the Prius needed recharging at Newport Pagnell, and due to the nature of footballing contracts, Spurs had to pay the player’s agent a commission on the Uber, of £426,839.22. Seems fair.

The saga to sign this player has been ongoing for seemingly, about 7 years, though in reality, only a few months. Footballing time is not like real time. The final day of the transfer window was shown by Einstein to be 3 weeks long.

Yet this ‘day of drama’ (zzzzz) and suspense(!!!) is a distraction. From football. Which started 3 weeks ago. It is, other than the fact that it is NOT good tv, whatever all the tv companies think, a load of bollocks. Because it should end in July. Before the football starts. It would be just as dramatic, just as ‘exciting’, just as mind-numbingly dull listening to Danny Murphy and Jermaine Jenas ‘intellectualise’ a process that is as simple as it is uninteresting as they just wait for players to be bought, about once in every 6 hours of dead time.

Its also a bit ‘Groundhog Day’ as Chelsea re-sign all the players they signed a few years ago, then sold a couple of years later. David Luiz? Is he the man to provide security and consistency at the back? Yeah, right.

But best of all was Bournemouth’s acquisition of Jack Wilshere, on loan from the Arse for a year. The little Cockney Sparrer, the British Bulldog, was about to leave football and star in a movie sequel, as The Man with No Brain. Steve Martin had 2, Jack Wilshere, nil. But Eddie Howe, Bournemouth’s main man, sorted a loan arrangement with Arsenal. Though why, exactly, Arsene Wenger would be prepared to part with the poster-boy for Benson & Hedges is another question. All that talent!!! Ok, not in an England shirt… nor really in an Arsenal shirt for the last few years, but he still remains the finest player to grace many orthopaedic hospitals. AC Milan was also keen to take him on loan but Wilshere chose instead the glamorous and stylish option that Bournemouth could offer. His salary of 80,000 a week will be paid by Bournemouth, into the Hampshire NHS trust directly. But most of all, Wenger couldn’t keep this moron under control. He’s an indisciplined idiot. Good luck Eddie.

Ok, I’m finally ready for the football season now.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Getting angry with tax avoiding companies is only natural. Its part of growing up. So when Starbucks are shown for the exploitative tax dodgers that they are, a lot of people boycotted them. Talking with their feet. Its what we do. It was no loss to me, I’d avoided them for years because their coffee’s shit. So I’d made my, kind’a, ‘pre-tax statement’ ages ago.

But companies are in the end, in some way or another, accountable, first and foremost, to their customers. Without whom, there is no company.

It was harder to boycott Google because it is without a doubt the most essential ‘thing’ in the life of every civilised person in the world. So we just amended their name in our ‘favourites’ to ‘Fucking Google!!’ and let that be sufficient to voice our extreme displeasure. Using another search engine is, quite frankly, unthinkable.

So now its Apple. The biggest company in the world. Paying tax amounting to about 0.005% of their profits, which are expressed in loads of billions every quarter. Even in Ireland that’s low. But that’s how its been.

Until now. When those ‘fucking Europeans’ have voiced their displeasure and demanded a payment of back taxes amounting to 13 billion Euros. To be payed to the Irish government.

Who don’t want it.

I’ll have it. Then everyone can be happy.

The Irish don’t want it because the deal they did with the late Steve Jobs, back in the day, allowed very favourable tax terms. Ok, perhaps not quite as favourable as those mentioned above but creative accounting is what corporations do. And that is why Apple is based in Ireland. And not in the British Virgin Isles, Bermuda or Grand Cayman. Employing 6,000 Irish persons and putting masses of cash into the local and national economy. That was the deal: set up shop here, rather than over there, and we’ll give you all sorts of benefits, because OUR ECONOMY IS SHIT AND WE NEED OVERSEAS INVESTMENT. And it was shit. And now its not. Because of companies like Apple and many others, who took advantage of what the Irish offered in a wonder of quid pro quo which turned the Irish economy around in a decade.

Now Europe wants its quids out of the pro quo and everyone’s up in arms.

As a (fairly) staunch ‘remainer’ (remember THE VOTE?) I’m curious about this. We have some Euro bitch demanding that a sovereign nation (Ireland is an independent republic, in case you missed that) within the Eurozone implement a fine on its favourite company because it breeches European tax laws, not Irish tax laws. They obviously don’t have many, if any.

So really, from my perspective, I don’t give a shit about Apple, nor the 13 million, because I won’t benefit from it in any way at all. But I do care that unelected Euro demigods can try to force an independent country to go back on a long-standing deal because ‘they’ don’t like it.

I normally delete the little ‘signature’ from my words but today, in protest (no idea against whom), I shall leave it in.

Happy Wednesday,

A xxxx

Sent from my iPad

My life changed in 1974. Blazing Saddles came out. And hit the screens with a bang, a crash and an oy-vey! No-one had ever seen anything like it before. Ok, I’d never seen anything like it before. The world learned of Mel Brooks. And of the redefinition of irreverence.

Blazing Saddles attacked every stereotype in Western movies. They had a black sheriff, and consequently employed the ‘n-word’ with abandon throughout. There were Native Americans (red indians, as they were known) who spoke yiddish. There were shit-head red-necks galore, dirty dealers, ballroom whores and baked-bean eaters who farted. And farted. And farted.

And an alcoholic gunslinger played by Gene Wilder.

Who’s role really was to add a subtlety to what would otherwise have been a very good but undiluted slapstick-fest. And their lay the genius of both Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder.

A few years later, even though it had come out a few years earlier but no-one bothered to show it, I saw the Producers. And my life changed again. (Yeah, my life changed a lot back then, pretty much with every movie I saw, every book I read, every girl I passed at the bus-stop). The Producers remains to this day My Favourite Film. There, I’ve said it. I’ve finally reached the zenith of my lifelong equivocation over best movies. The Producers wins. And the Blues Brothers. Play it again, Sam. And Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Gene Wilder was one of The Producers. Playing the nebachy Jewish, panic-attacky mother’s boy accountant (Mel Brooks loves a sterotype like no-one else), the straight man to the comic tour de force that was Zero Mostell; the other Producer. The perfect film. Based on a brilliantly clever ploy (that if a musical production loses money, you don’t have to give back the sponsor’s money; even if you’ve sold 650% of the costs), the two finest of comic talents, ably accompanied by the incredible Dick Strawn as Hitler, and their chosen production that ‘had to fail’; Springtime for Hitler. So brilliant. So Mel Brooks. So Gene Wilder.

Wilder also starred in a film that no-one ever saw, other than me, because I was already ‘his biggest fan’. It was called The Frisco Kid and looking back, it was a bit Mel Brooks derivative but only because it had Gene Wilder and a silly plot. About a Polish rabbi (Wilder) crossing all of America in ‘cowboy days’ and applying the black-hat values of the shtetl to the wild west. Very funny, very Gene Wilder.

When he died yesterday a legend left this world. But left it a much happier and funnier place than we he arrived.

RIP

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’m not ready for the football season yet. Unfortunately, it would appear, neither are Spurs. We’re stuck in ‘1-goal hell’. We score one goal per game. That’s it. If we’re playing a really shit team, like poor Palace, then its enough to win. If the team are a little better than that, like, say Everton, then they score one too. Liverpool were different. They were, according to Liverpool fans, ‘foookin’ greatsch’. They scored first, Spurs never came fully awake. Didn’t need to, it was only Liverpool, but that’s not the point. Ya gotta try. For the fans. But no. We were shit, managed to equalise and that was it; 1-each. September’s our month, ask Harry Kane.

So I’ve always said: if you leave London, do it in a plane. Anywhere your car can take you is just not worth the bother. And yet… and yet… time and again I’m surprised. Not sufficiently to curb my provincia-phobia and my Londoner’s view of the countryside (too big, too green, nuffink ‘appenin’; too far from Shoreditch), but I’m surprised. The pic is Mel and the Cotswolds. Mel’s the orange thing.

Yet marriages can’t survive on football and London alone. Well, mine couldn’t. And because Mel and I are just so ‘in-synch’, we took a road trip. It was perfect. There was a furniture design exhibition. In Cheltenham. Mel loves chairs and tables, I love driving through the countryside very very fast. Then a bit faster still. GET OUT’A ME FAAARRRRKIN’ WAY YA GRASS-CHEWIN’ FAAAARRRRKIN’ BUMPKIN!!!! So 90 miles down to Cheltenham; perfect.

Of course the bad thing about London is that driving here is simply no fun any more. Speed cameras, speed humps, endless traffic lights, bloody pedestrians, even London ones, awful. But you get out past Oxford and the roads are brilliant. They’re just made for exceeding the speed limit.

Came back to a very depressing thing. League table: 1st Manchester City, 2nd Chelsea, 3rd Manchester United. I know, its early days, but still…

Happy Bank Holiday Monday

A xxxx

Phah! Kids! Ha! (That’s my ration of exclamation marks until November.)

When kids are young they like repetition. If a game’s great, play it again. If they like a book or story, read it again. No, let’s try this one, darling. NOOOOOO, WANT DAT ONE ‘GEN. You know what its like. You’ve read the Hungry fucking Caterpillar every fucking night for three fucking months and you’re desperate for either a new story or for the caterpillar to turn into a moth and get beaten to death with a rolled-up newspaper. But no, that’s THE book of the moment, that’s what we read. Grrrrrrrr.

Same with videos. Remember videos? We used them sparingly, in a (as it turned out, as it always is) failed effort to see the tv as something different, a new game, something sparing. Not as the default for all day and night. How’d that work for you?

Anyway, the girls, when young, were allowed the ‘treat’ of tv when all else was done or I got bored of reading the Hungry Caterpillar, or so Mel & I could get drunk secretly in the kitchen, whatever. And they would choose the video.

When they were about 10 and 7, it was Mary Poppins. And only Mary Poppins. Again and again and again. And I’m trying to read the paper and I’ve got Dick Van Dyke’s nauseating faux-cockney as my soundtrack, or the oh so sickly sweet voice of Julie Andrews feeding the fucking birds for tuppence a fucking bag.

So after sufficient time elapsed and I got ever nearer to wielding the pick-axe handle at the tv just thinking about the word supercalafragalistic… I introduced something new to them. For their education. And growth. And enlightenment. I played them MY favourite movie.

The Blues Brothers.

The perfect film. It has amazing music, excitement, car chases, its achingly funny and great fun. Ok, and has quite a bit of swearing, some very stylised violence and lots of abuse. But kids have to learn that shit some time, right?

They loved it. But like LOVED IT. For the next year that was ‘the movie’, ‘the video’, the ‘let’s watch tv’.

My mother wasn’t so impressed with it the first time she sat with them and John Belushi swore at someone. She was shocked. ‘Do you think the girls should be watching that, Andrew?’ she inquired, ever the lady, ever the non-interferer, ever wonderful, and never-ever ‘Andy’. ‘Do you think its appropriate???’

Yeah. I do. I did. I think its very appropriate. You’re never too young to appreciate a totally brilliant movie. Which came on last night on some low-end channel just as I was going to bed. And I just had to watch ‘a bit’, just had to. For the brilliance of Belushi, Aykroyd, Landis, for the memory of the girls long ago, and for my mother. Who is probably still disapproving of it from her heavenly perch.

We’ve got a half a tank of gas, a full pack of cigarettes and its 170 miles to Chicago.

Hit it.

A xxxx

Wow!

I’ll say it again: wow!!

Went to see Yerma last night. Issa play, innit. Something I try to avoid at all times, normally. But these aren’t normal times. Generally, if the tabloid press give a production ‘rave reviews’, it means there’s nudity, probably a lot of farce and tons of swearing. If the broadsheet press ‘rave’ about a play its generally going to be dull and often very opaque. They love a ‘hidden meaning’ and ‘undercurrents’. Most times so ‘hidden’ and ‘under’ that I give up even looking long before the intermission, along with the will to live and the desire for sobriety.

Then along came Yerma. It means: barren, in case your Spanish is as poor as your English. And it was actually written in 1934 by a geezer called Yorca. No relation to Orca, who came later to movie screens. And its the story of a woman’s total decline during her inability to conceive the child she so desperately wants, over about a 4 year period. No pun intended.

That synopsis would normally have me running for the tv sports channels. Another post-feminist cry of sympathy for another woman in crisis. Shoot me now. Except the reviews for Yerma were unequivocal. “It is brilliant”, they said. All of them. No ifs, ands or buts, just plain fucking brilliant. Oooooh, that’s unusual. Except I don’t trust critics. Who all suffer from Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome and if one decides that some boring shit-fest of nothingness ‘speaks’ to him/her, the rest all worry that they’ve missed something essential and join in with the praise-heaping for fear of being thought stupid.

So this play is supposedly brilliant. Well ain’t they all. Its on at the ‘Fringe’, the Young Vic in Waterloo, so its not eye-wateringly, West End theatrical, Michael fucking Ball type expensive. And it stars Billie Piper. The deciding factor. WE SHALL GO!!!!

I’ve always had a thing about Billie Piper. She has a face made of the oddest of parts, any of which would individually cause the bearer to inspire sympathy. She should look like a footballer from the Serbian 2nd division, the village team where they’re all cousins. But on her it works. She has a mouth 6 miles wide, yet manages to cram 7 miles of teeth into it. Ok, she married uber-tosser Chris Evans, loud-mouthed northern ginger Top Gear reject, but we all make mistakes. She was only 9 at the time. I forgave her when she made the ‘Diary of a call-girl’ tv series in which she spent half an hour each week writhing around in frilly underwear and leather. Apparently.

And she is simply, fantastically, believably, heart-crushingly magnificent in the lead. As the inconceivable woman who descends from witty, charming, clever, has-it-all fiesty chick, to total shipwreck in 100 minutes. The set too is spectacular. All set in a glass box in the middle of the theatre. Quite remarkable.

I found a hidden message. That all women are in fact dangerous to the point of insanity and almost any event can trigger the psychopath within. I’m just sayin’; its one way to see it.

I would say ‘go see it NOW’ but (please read very smugly and sneeringly) its sold out. The entire run. It’ll be back though. Its fantastic.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Much as I have no time for statisticians; those evil, mercenary, sold-to-the-highest-bidder quasi know-alls who can ‘prove’ whatever the hell they want, depending on who is paying for the ‘independent research’, I have endless time for proper scientists. And you kind’a need endless time really, when contemplating the universe…

Astronomers have found a new planet. Wow; that’s interesting. There are, in our galaxy alone, millions upon millions of stars, each of which probably has half a dozen or so planets circling them. Its what planets do. They get no choice in the matter. Because the matter of which they are made, which condensed some time after the Big Bang, was sucked into the gravitational orbit of the nearest star. We’re all attracted to ‘stars’, its nothing new, didn’t just begin with Hello! magazine, ya know. Pre-dates it by about 14 billion years. Even before Keith Richards was born. Though you wouldn’t know it to look at him.

This new planet is very exciting. Try to contain yourself. Firstly its ‘star of choice’ is probably our own sun’s nearest neighbour at just 5 light years away. That’s so close that Usain Bolt could run that in about 5 million years, though if his girlfriend was waiting in Jamaica, he’d probably stop a few times for shag-stops along the way. As he does.

The star which the planet circles is Promixa Centauri and the planet is called, sweetly, I think, Proxima B. Nice. But here’s the amazing (ish) thing. And all this is bit difficult because Proxima Centauri is not a big bright star that dazzles in the night sky. No. Its a ‘red dwarf’, which are quite dull. They are the Jeremy Corbyns of the celestial world. So you can’t see Proxima C. with any normal (and I mean ‘normal’ for NASA) telescopes. However, that didn’t stop them finding a ‘blip’ in its light pattern, which could only be accounted for by a planet. And not just any planet, but one ‘a bit like Earth’. It has New York, a Great Wall of China… ok, not that much like Earth. This is the astonomer’s version of ‘a bit like Earth’. In that it orbits in the range of its star that creates the possibility of liquid water. And if your water is liquid, you can sell it in silly bottles with French names and make a killing.

Sorry, if water is liquid, as opposed to ice or steam, then there’s the possibility of life there!!!! We have to assume its not more evolved than us (you call THIS evolution??? Jesus fucking Christ) otherwise the inhabitants would already be here. Talking to us, invading us, communicating with us, eating us, whatever. But life. Maybe.

The mere fact that it is theoretically ‘inhabitable’ has the press calling it a ‘new home’. Estate Agents are already advertising apartments there. The mobile networks are bidding for rights there.

It is exciting though. In that sciency way.

Happy Thursday, boldly going wherever,

A xxxx

This is Jeremy Corbyn. He’s a tosser. Possibly The Tosser. And that’s a very heavy mantle to earn. But Jezza is certainly in contention with his latest act of stupidity and ignorance.

He boarded a Virgin train to Newcastle. I don’t know why. To take coal (not even funny any longer as they haven’t done any mining up there since Arthur Scargill died), to watch lower league football, to enjoy the drunken raving partiness of that city’s nightlife? We just don’t know. Nor particularly care.

He got on the train, sat down on the floor and had himself filmed whilst saying how the trains are so over-crowded the owners should be punished and the entire service put back into the public domain. The workers, he stressed, suck-up nonce that he is, were doing a great job and working very hard. But the owners, fascist capitalist pig-dog, tax-avoiding billionaire that Richard Branson might be; fucking useless. Look at how I’m forced to travel!!!!

That’s not why he’s a tosser. Not for the same old stupid, 1960s hard-left, nationalise-it-all message. Not even for having but one mantra his entire career: what you see is what you get; no spin, no change, just Honest Jez.

He’s a tosser for not realising that in 2016, his were not the only cameras on board the train. Like all trains, it was riddled with cctv. Which showed quite clearly a man who looked remarkably like Jeremy Corbyn, walking past loads of empty seats en route to his little corner of the floor where he chose to sit. And moan about the lack of seating.

Of course, Jeremy and his entourage (not so humble that he doesn’t travel with his posse these days) could have booked seats when they bought their tickets. You can do it on a computer, Jeremy, that machine that is the tool of oppression for the working classes. You can do it on your phone even.

That notwithstanding, it would appear that selling off the rail networks back in Maggie’s day was perhaps not the best move for the traveller. Southern trains has been fucked up for about 6 months and have now announced their next strike days. Such is the level of service that the commuters notice no difference on strike days to ‘normal’ days.

But selling off the energy supplies to private companies; big mistake. Renationalise that if you must. At least it would save me speaking to 17 dickheads a day trying to sell me ‘their’ energy.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

They’re voting today in California. Not whether to elect Jeremy Corbyn as the still leader of the Totally Worthless Party, they’re fortunately spared that rubbish over there. They’re voting on whether to legalise cannabis for ‘recreational purposes’. Not for procreational purposes, though they may be related. Nor for recreational vehicles which shouldn’t be driven under the influence of recreational substances. Shame they don’t do ‘irony’ over there.

Smoking pot is legal in Colorado. Also in Oregon, Washington state and DC. And as well as California, they’re also voting today in Arizona, Nevada, Maine and Massachusetts. The kind’a ‘cool’ states. The normal ones. They ain’a votin’ in Kentucky. Nor Tennessee, Alabama or Georgia. No sirree. Nowhere where people burn in the eternal fires of hell for theya sins. I’ve never actually smoked brimstone but I’m sure you can get a buzz. Of some sort.

It does strike me as rather odd that cannabis is still illegal. You can buy six cans of extra strong lager for about a fiver, with or without Id, get off your face, become hopelessly aggressive, stab three people, drive a stolen car into a crowded bus stop and that’s fine. Because alcohol is society’s drug of choice. To the exclusion, it seems, of all others.

And don’t get me wrong, I like alcohol. But its a bit Orwellian in its ideal. Get the people pissed and they forget their misery. For a time. My life’s shit: I’m going down the pub. But it really doesn’t help. It just feels like it does in the very short term.

Cannabis is different. It doesn’t increase aggression. It calms. It mellows. To the point of near-coma, maybe, but at least its a drug that leads in the right direction. Well, it did when I was a young whippersnapper stoner. And yes, it can lead to ‘psychosis’, whereas alcohol can’t(???), and it can be mildly addictive, but nothing like as badly as tobacco always is. Yet that’s legal too.

So getting off your face is not in itself illegal, nor is using addictive substances. But cannabis is. Makes not a lot of sense to me. If its legal then it can be taxed. What’s wrong with governments? (i appreciate that’s a very complex question and may require several books to answer fully).

Time to go to work, better roll a big fat spliff for the journey. Its fine, long as you don’t inhale.

Mellow Tuesday

A xxxx

Now the Olympics is officially and forever over, the stomach-crunchers give way to the number-crunchers to see who can perform the best statistical analysis of the results. And whatever way you crunch them, America won. Ok, the Russians had overdosed their way out of most of the sports and some (particularly me) reckoned they should have been banned altogether. But this isn’t about drugs. Iss’about medals.

Britain came a fantabulous second. Beating China, who actually won more medals but the tables are ranked on golds. A team with one gold and nothing else would rank above a team with no golds but 472 silver and bronzes. I’m not sayin’ its fair, I’m just sayin’.

But we know all that. History. Now we have the new rankings. The more creative ones, possibly the more significant ones. If they calculate medals (any colour) per capita of national population, New Zealand win. 1 medal for every 250,000 of population, or for every 2,000,000 sheep. Even though the sheep aren’t allowed to compete (they’d fail the drugs testing) I don’t think its fair to leave them out altogether.

Britain, by comparison, won one medal for every 970,000. Which is decent? (who fucking knows, or cares, what any mythical ‘norm’ might be?). Whereas China, who came third in the regular table, won one medal for every 19.5million of population. There’s a lotta Chinamen not pulling their weight out there. Many competing countries don’t have 19.5million of population.

But, of course, in any event there are winners (that’d be us then, smug bastard that I am, doing my bit by watching more tv in the last 3 weeks than in two non-olympic years), and there are losers.

Some nations won nothing. Like the Pacific Island of Nahru, population 10,000. They sent 2 athletes over, itself something of a big achievement. Good luck to them. Bit late I suppose for that.

But how about Chile? Uganda? Zimbabwe? Not a medal between them. Big countries. But nothing like as big as Pakistan, who also scored zero. And what about Saudi Arabia? Massive and massively rich country, they sent over 11 athletes but to no avail. Even though they probably sent them over first class or on a private jet.

A complaint has been lodged by the Saudis to the Olympic Committee for them to instil a fairer cultural mix of sporting events, so as not to discriminate against the Saudis. They want to get rid of the 100m, 200m and all the swimming. And replace them with events in wife-beating, gay-stoning, eating-til-you-vomit, misogyny (5k AND 10k), camel-shagging, terrorist-sponsoring and political repression.

Happy Monday; its over

A xxxx