London Road. Not paved with gold.
I don’t have sat-nav. I have a phone with maps on it. It’s not as good. As I found out on the Staffordshire moors at dusk, last week. It doesn’t have what my mum calls ‘that patient woman’ who directs you soothingly into a swollen ford to your certain death.
With Google maps, sat-navs and location-aware iphone apps leading us all precisely where we want to go, aimless wandering is the last taboo of the always-connected.
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That joke isn't funny anymore
Imagine this. You’re in the ODEON watching the latest post-modern, irony-strewn computer animated adaptation of a kid’s book, but you’re so into it that, rather than miss the next smartass one-liner, you piss into your empty coke carton and throw it over the audience in front of you.
Or you’re at the Playhouse, but you really can’t be arsed getting into the play, so you hold up your iPhone and record the best bits, so you can watch it later.
Afterwards, you take in a meal at a restaurant, and you notice they’ve got your favourite dessert on the menu. Carried away with the excitement of it all, you elicit to show your appreciation by lobbing your bottle of mineral water at the waiter. Continue reading
Spiritualized?
Two gigs, two churches, two cities, two days.
But last night’s Grizzly Bear gig at Manchester Cathedral ( I think it was a Grizzly Bear gig. It might have been an iPhone convention) made me uneasy – and not just because the 15th century building wasn’t designed to accommodate a touring Americana band and its audience (the space just didn’t work). It’s a shame, because Grizzly Bear fans, on the whole, do look a lot like Jesus.
It could have worked. The Cathedral’s an intimate, shadowy place, with enough reverb to make Cheryl Cole sound soothing. But it didn’t. Continue reading
Direct Line. Insurance for voice-over artists' pensions.
What puzzles me about Stephen Fry is not his on-again off-again love affair with twitter. I’m with him on that one. No, it’s that a man so erudite, compassionate and thoroughly – at least, seemingly – decent would sell a little portion of his soul to Direct Line insurance, in a faustian pact with Paul Merton, to voiceover a hideously conceived, inane animation. Ho-ho-ho, the silly big red telephone is chasing away a bumble bee from a picnic. Isn’t the insurance business warm, fuzzy and huggable?
Er, no. It’s not. It’s a business as slippery as a bag of jellied eels coated in Vaseline Intensive Care. One which will do anything it can to wheedle its way out of coughing up when we make a legitimate claim. Ho ho ho, if there’s any vol-au-vents left, they’re mine. But, sorry, you’re not getting a penny for your soiled carpet, old woman, your lifetime customer value’s just not worth it.
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