busker

DUI IDIOCY

Except in his case, judgment equally clouded, TD proceeded to smash into the saintly Ernie Franz, crushing not just bones but his aspirations as a doctor.

I'm used to the quip about youth being squandered on the young, but what in God's name are these children using for brains?

Duffner is 19. Even after he's done his six-months' porridge, he has hefty years ahead to mope and agonise over the consequences of his stupidity.

We live in a milksop age of tolerance and understanding - and I have no doubt Duffner will work that to hand-wringing penitent best advantage - but all I feel is cold-eyed ill will and anger.

Indeed, it may not be a bad idea if the tears he shed on confronting Franz in the courtroom flood anew each time he fondles a bottle or winks at the wagging fingers of anxious friends.

To throw the youth's words back at him, there is *indeed* no saying how sorry he can be, and bravo Judge Roof for pointing out that nor has the victim been the same since that day.

The forgiving Franz hopes that Duffner will "make something beautiful of his life" and work to help others prevent such accidents in the future. It's a nice image, a fresh-faced young man bending to the task of leading others back to the paths of righteousness.

How about another scenario, on behalf of all those who will *not* now benefit from Mr Franz's medical expertise? Something as appropriately UN-glamorous as a forlorn shape quivering in the corner.

"Egad! What's with *that* dude?"

"He drove drunk and ruined someone's life."

"Eeuwww ... No more hooch for me, Benson - put the stopper back on the decanter."

Blunkett - the musical!

The fall of blubbing Blunkett being turned into a musical.

Well, if they can make a tuneful hit out of those Jerry Springer circuses, I suppose British politics is child's play.

What a pity Johnnie Ray isn't alive to play the perfect part of DB.

And what a humdinger of a part for some hot actress to portray the voracious - and distinctly fanciable - Kimberly Quinn.

Copacetic

I first glimpsed it in an office email back in June 2004 but dismissed it as a Bushist sort of word not worth further investigation. Then, as is so often the case, I started tripping over it all over the place, and not just from folks who babble in biz speke or jargonese.

I tried it on various educated pals in Europe but got only blank looks and the offer of another whiskey.

At least it's acknowledged as

• a Weird word.
• Orig. unknown

From: ~*~aNoNyMoUs~*~

Not quite sure what it all means, but aNoNyMoUs sounds divinely intelligent.

Now that I've had this first fan mail, I'm wondering how one expresses thanks when it comes from 'mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com'?

I should frame these immortal words and hang them over my monitor as inspiration for future postings.

"omg i love your post on Napoleon Dynamite! i know you don't know me but im totally in love with that movie!

Napoleon Dynamite!!!! all the WAY

"but my lips hurt real bad"

"tina you fat lard come get some dinner"

Way to be! RAWK on!

2005 Bloggies

Vote for your favorite "best meme" of 2004.

Napoleon Dynamite

Virtuoso appearance by Jon Heder - totally in character - on the David Letterman show, reading out the famous list of "Top Ten Signs You're Not the Most Popular Guy in your High School".

He even launches into *that* dance to illustrate one of the signs ...

Ingenious movie, perfectly cast throughout.

I saw it twice in the Pavilion and twice on DVD for the hilarious special features commentary.

Best of all, look what a cool dude JH is in real life ....

When does one stop feeling British?

This timely Daily Torygraph piece speaks for all us displacèds in this world sans frontières.

Chutzpah

The pub's scoffable assertion that 'the new building would "enhance" public views by giving customers a new place from which to enjoy looking at the waterfront.'

Nix Prolix

Bad Movie Accents

Others figuring high in this pantheon of parvenu pronunciations:

• Ken Branagh's excruciating Merkan accent in Dead Again
• Bob Hoskins' appalling southern preacher in The White River Kid
• "Sir" Michael Caine's laughable effort in Secondhand Lions (opposite the gritty Robert Duvall, to boot)
• Any of James Cromwell or Tom Wilkinson's efforts.

New Year's Resolution ~ Cut down on 'terror'

If I bring any message back, it's that our leaders can do our security a favour just by economising on the use of the word in their rhetoric. Sure, the danger is real enough, but the definition encourages lazy thinking.

'Terrorist' is a woefully inadequate identification. Like 'infantryman' or 'cavalryman', it merely describes a method of engaging in combat. It's also a seductively pejorative label, but an unhelpful term in encouraging reasoned responses to today's various practitioners of violence.

Conventional armed forces kill far more 'innocent civilians' while pursuing their purposes than any terrorist group has contrived, as many Iraqis, Afghans and Palestinians would testify after experience at the hands of the US and Israeli armies and air forces. Yet most people feel less abhorrence towards the old way of war because it operates within frameworks of ritual and order with which we are familiar.

We take for granted a right to go about our daily lives in peace. We resent a phenomenon which strikes without warning, impelled by groups which lack the legitimacy of nation-states, which do not oblige us with formal declarations of war, or clothe themselves in distinguishable uniforms.

We dislike terrorism partly because we reject our antagonists' perception that we are engaged in conflict with them, and partly also because such a form of attack does not suit nation-states' traditional means of defence.

Terrorism is simply one means of applying force in pursuit of political ends. It is traditionally adopted by the weak, who cannot hope to prevail in a conventional contest. Because the military power of the United States and its allies is today overwhelming, we must assume that terrorism - asymmetric warfare - will be the dominant tactic adopted by our enemies in the future, whatever regional conflicts persist between more evenly matched opponents.

It would be nice if one of his speechifyers could, using words of one syllable, fashion a pragmatic case for Bush to show even vague awareness that terrorists can also usefully be classified in political and ideological terms, rather than, crudely and misleadingly, by the mere means which they employ to fight us.

The biggest mistake made by the Bush administration since 9/11 has been to proclaim a universalist 'war on international terror', in which it has appeared happy to ally itself with President Putin of Russia in his struggle against the Chechens, with Prime Minister Sharon against the Palestinians, and indeed with almost any national regime facing attack by terrorist means. The US President thus seeks to throw the power of his country into a struggle against a methodology he recoils from, rather than undertake the harder but much more useful task of categorising terrorist causes on their merits, and carefully denominating worthy friends and foes.

The declaration of a 'war against terror' falsely implies a contest that can be waged principally through the deployment of conventional military might, which it cannot. Some terrorist movements operate beyond the pale of possible political dialogue - al-Qa'eda to name but one. Others do not. Most people who have studied the problem of Chechnya believe that it must be resolved by political means, rather than by Moscow's crude application of force. The Chechen separatists may employ repugnant methods to pursue their ends, but it seems madness to endorse implicitly or explicitly President Putin's response to them.

In the Middle East, the most plausible means of ending Palestinian violence is to give Palestinian people something to lose, not least self-respect, as an alternative to the chronic despair created by unrelenting repression. In Gaza and the West Bank today, terrorism and the manufacture of grievances are the only thriving industries. Does anyone seriously suppose that Israeli military operations can achieve conclusive success against Hamas and their brethren? Or, for that matter, that Israel might be susceptible to offering the Palestinians a reasonable settlement without the threat or reality of Palestinian violence?

Someone needs to make a case against treating all dissident forces which employ terrorist means as part of a common global manifestation of evil, which can only be addressed by military might.

The objection to casual denunciations of foes as 'terrorists' is that such language can persuade politicians, who should know better, that they can abdicate responsibility for seeking non-military means of addressing an issue. Such an approach can promote a deadly political laziness.

Some terrorist movements - Baader-Meinhof and the Italian Red Brigades spring to mind - require only a law-enforcement response, because they represent no plausible political cause and are wedded to violence for its own sake in the fashion of 19th-century anarchists. History suggests, however, that most terrorist campaigns are best addressed by a mix of political generosity towards the community from which terrorists come, and armed suppression of irreconcilable men of violence.

There should be no 'war on international terror', but rather campaigns tailored to address the nature of differing hostile groups which use terrorist means.

The 'war on terror' is a phrase cynically abused by President Bush to further his own re-election. Now that he has secured another four-year lease on the White House, it would be a boon to the world if he abandoned such unhelpful sloganising.

Snappy, the Little Crocodile

Her family posted the song on the Web as a joke, but a Cologne radio station got hold of it and turned the ditty about a crocodile into a mega hit.

Fraülein Gruttmann is the youngest recording artist ever to make it into the German Top 10, let alone to the No. 1 spot.

Her delightful composition not just beat out Kylie Minogue, Linkin Park et ilk, but has even appeared as remixes in dance clubs.

NOTE: Once on the page. click on the words "Das Schnappi-Video" - or you can try here for what sounds like an even fancier arrangement.

Katie Melua

Born 1984 in ex-USSR Georgia, KM lived in Moscow til age nine when dad got a job as a heart surgeon in Belfast.

Hers is not my kind of voice - a bit waily-screechy - but I expect a lot of her fans have half an earphone on the crooning and most of a mouse scrolling thru the sexy pics sites already sprouting round the melodious Muscovite.

Do I detect a touch of the Keira Knightley moue?

Prepubs and Prowlers

From the UK, timely Guardian piece on teamwork 'twixt Lancashire fuzz and internet safety charity, Childnet International.

Far Left for Frisell

I left Frisell's last Tractor gig stunned and admiring - torn between tossing the Telecaster into Puget Sound and getting straight back to conquering his arrangement of Blue Moon - but I won't be attending the Feb 7 rave because I'm such a sissy over fighting for a decent seat.

I like to see as well as hear at these live performances and BF has the infuriating habit of facing the band rather give his audience a view of his stunning plectrum and fret work.

Last time, Bill stood left on stage, resolutely facing the band and sparing the audience narry a glimpse of his genius hand-i-work.

Facing the stage, you need to be far left if not perched on the drummer's shoulders to get a decent view.

Et voilà! See how the great man's playing to bassist Muempfer, completely sideways to the audience. Great for the band, but paying audience beware.

Hapless Weather Man

Takes a while to download on slower PCs but worth sympathising with - we've all been there, albeit not on camera in full view of the whole state.

Catch-Up

• Weather-wise, stay west, I guess. Blimey, it's rough back east.
• Iraqi elections
• Babs Boxer biffing the bizarrely-named 'Condoleezza' Rice (where do people conjure these names from?). Nothing will come of Eezza getting her ears boxed but it's fun to see her cornered with that thunder-brow look.

  It also sounds as if her employer's linguistic gauchery is catching: boxed into a corner over her scant regard for The Truth, Dolee's best defensive gurgle was "I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity." Careful, Eeezzers, that's almost a week's quota of syllables.

• Will Arkin's Power Geyser now out
• Tsunami latests
• TV-wise, Numb3rs looks good
• Nion. Wonder how many hits nion dot *com* is burdened with? Speaking of the latter, good to see I'm accompanied by the likes of:
  • Ed Asner
  • Mike Berg
  • Noam
  • Ry Cooder
  • Pete Coyote
  • Ellsberg
  • Ferlinghetti, no less
  • Ricke Lee Jones
  • Babs Kingsolver
  • Studs Terkel
  • Alice Walker
• Zhao Ziyang - a name to conjure with: I was in Hong Kong in '89 and watched the TVB coverage of the Tiananmen massacre, later joining the crowds in Victoria Park where gwei-los and 'yan' united if only for a while.
• The Man, Simon Winchester delivering his usual adept interview
• Weddings/Celebs: Full marks to Charles Evans (73) nuptialising the very tasty Bonnie Lynn Pfeifer (50).
• And just in, the sad passing of a legend, Johnny Carson: may the trouper Rest very much In Peace. A true son of Nebraska's oddly pronounced Norfolk ('Norfork', according to the locals; anything to be different these days.)

High School Wish List Advice

But I have two daughters going thru the US education system, and I eavesdrop on the BHS students as they swap experiences, and my eye was naturally caught by this intriguing list of What You'll Wish You'd Known in High School.

Pants on Fire

Two rather good sites on Natural Born Fibbers, and how to detect lies.

Satisfied with Life?

Also has a nifty 8-step guide to a more satisfying life:

1. Count your blessings
   
2. Practice acts of kindness
   
3. Savour Lifes joys
   
4. Thank a mentor
   
5. Learn to forgive
   
6. Invest time and energy in friends and family
   
7. Take care of your body
   
8. Develop strategies for coping with stress and hardships
   

Blink

Suddenly - burningly - I need to read it and have decided to myself for my birthday.

MG was originally booked for Sunday Jan 23rd at our very own Eagle Harbor Books. Thanks to Julie Leung, I'm alerted he's now scheduled for Monday March 7. More time to read the book and prepare sensible questions.

¤¤ Shrinking World Syndrome: Friday, I'm driving back from Safeway and NPR are interviewing someone who has me riveted.

In true Gladwellian fashion, based on his few minutes' talk about 'blinding' and conscious versus subconscious prejudices, I make an instant decision to buy whatever he's selling.

Who does it turn out to be? None other than Gladwell himself, plugging The Book.

MINOLity Report

As you recall, I filed a report last November about returning from a month abroad to a costlier water bill than the months either side.

Let's see what Minol squeezes out for my December/1st week January absence.

InauGspicious

Instead of straining for class (as these affairs always do), why not simply offer something genuinely regal like the Trump/Knauss nuptial?

To tell the truth, I rather suspected we'd be landed with such one-track viewing so, to wrest back some dignity and class to the day, I rented the hilarious Harold & Kumar go to White Castle. Absolutely splendid movie with ace performances by the eponymous heros, a great interview by Bobby Lee (who hands in a devastating cameo as yer typical nerdy asian student), and some real beauty in the form of Paula Garcés.

Not that the day is *completely* wasted. Thanks to the webbèd world I inhabit to the increasing exclusion of actual Life, I have reading matter galore:

• The UK press's take on today's BuSHfoonery.
• The Beeb's take on the tastier tongue-tied tidbits.
• Helpful White House Cliffs Notes.
• Good old Bill Buckley - always good on cutting to the chase, asking what the deuce Bush is actually saying.
  
• David Corn on talking back. (S'truth, can you imagine Dubya's beetle-browed gaze of horror - that panicking chimpanzee look of his - if he had to tongue it solo? Reminds me of his look when visiting the Houses of Parliament and observing Question Time with MPs leveling unscripted barbed questions at each other).

Heirloom

There are two inscriptions on the flyleaf, one in my father's unmistakeable neat hand, 'D.R. Holmes, Bradford Grammar School', and another in beautiful flowing script, 'David Ronald Holmes, Ashville College, Harrogate, Xmas 1924'.

Also given to me, the beautiful silver paper knife atop the dictionary.

pink tsunami

If China Forbes looks as luscious as she sounds, I shall ... well, who knows what I might not get up to. I'm told the audience will be dancing in the aisles.

Quick question ref PM's website 'Scoop': does that not look like a fashionable tsunami?

In which case, how very topical of the band.

Road Safety

Good letter from Squeaky Wheels' Dana Berg on road safety including use of cell phones.

It's an international blight and one of the highlights of my trip abroad was seeing fuzz in both Greece and Italy haul over some babbling oaf and fine them on the spot as a rumbling crowd gathered with clenching fists and dark mutterings of more summary justice they had planned once the coast was clear.

Blogging bookseller sacked

Joe Gordon of UK-based Waterstones bookseller is the latest.

We're coming due some landmark court case on this sort of nonsense.

Leung Time No See

Famed for looking thru people with frosty unseeing glare, I've set myself the task of recognising her first.

So what do I do on my first shopping jaunt home in this land of ultra-correctitude where fair maids call the cops at the slightest hint of an appreciative gaze or compliment?

Just cruise the aisles, colliding trollies as I check out every comely Leung-alike brunette.

I knew there was a good reason why I don't collect friends.

Harry the Nazi

Still very silly of master Hewitt to have regalia'd up, but Steyn has thye perspective.

Farewell, Folk Hero

I doubt anyone outside the Amazon crew know his name, but the 'Zon's music editor, Marc Greilsamer, is moving on and I for one will miss his sharp eye and incisive pen.

I never really understood the use of 'resonate' 'til I came across MG's list of all-time favourites, which does just that. Maybe for you, too.

Here's the tribute they posted on the site:

"[Mark's] been the unseen authority and editorial voice behind Amazon.com's Country, Folk, Jazz, and Rap pages. And, after six-plus years of working for Amazon.com, has bid us a fond farewell.

Check out his exhaustive list of all-time favorite CDs and discover essentials that belong in any hardcore music fan's collection"

Kilted Buffoon

God knows where he dredges his humourless cracks from but I suspect he is not long for our screens.

As for guests, I know we're meant to be considerate to our ancients, but *what* possible excuse could there have been to haul some old codger on with a name like Regius Philby? I kept straining to hear some reference to whatever field he was in but sans success.

The two clearly deserved each other and I suspect Mr McFerguson will soon be joining Regius in deserved anonymity.

Back in the Swing

• My early morning Safeway/Starbucks hazelnut latte and NYT have yet to retrieve their gloss. No sooner seated than I ignored the paper and ogled the bustling shoppers as if I'd just emerged from some jungle, which in a way I have.
• From what I did manage to take in from the newspaper, there's a lot of news about. Having gone relatively TV-less for the past 6 weeks, I'm wholly out of touch with the world: tsunami goings-on, Palestine, the further gaucheries of Bush ...
• Speaking of whom, my return is badly mistimed. I should have checked the inauguration date and ensured I was well away from the overblown nonsense: pomp, gravitas and ceremony are not American fields of expertise.

  That said, it's odd to be back where people aren't constantly clasping my hand in sympathy over my country of domicile. It's almost as if people regard that grotesque 'tsunami' of votes that returned Bush to the White House as a mini-calamity of itself.

  America is viewed as an unrivaled power with but a single focus and wholly uninterested in foreigners or any sort of consultation. Bush himself is, of course, deeply disliked and held in contempt. People seldom use his P-word title in the same breath lest they cheapen the office and insult others of genuinely presidential stature. Nor is anyone in any doubt that not single mangled syllable comes from his own pigmy vocabulary but from writers skilled in scripts that lend themselves to Bush's genius for reduction ad absurdio.

• Tsunami - as usual, its the good old Beeb but I liked Boostmarketing's take on the fake version.
• Trust William Safire to get to the heart: a tsunami (Japanese tsu, 'harbour', nami 'waves') is *not* a 'tidal wave', the high water water wave caused by the movement of the tide which sweeps round the earth twice in 24 hours and is due chiefly to the effects of lunar gravity. A tsunami is the wave induced by an earthquake or submarine landslide.
• TV: truly it's an Idiot Box, or have NBC 'Today''s Couric and Lauer got even sillier and more frivolous in my absence?
• I must spend more time in our local police station. I went there to file a report on my stolen check and found it fascinating to sit on that bench just inside and listen as each newcomer detailed their woes.
• As usual, guitar picking Islander Bill Frisell is the only music to jolt me from my torpor.

  I've been listening to 'gone, just like a train' (sic, lower titling on the album) and marveling at not just BF's playing but the drummer to royalty Jim Keltner and bassist Viktor Krauss (yes, bro of Alison).

  Cover design: Love the music tho' I do, I'll never share Frisell's fondness for those bizarre Woodring daubs he so favors.

  He did it to us with his ace album with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones (see right), which I promptly shoved in a plain wrapper so's not to flinch every time I reached for the masterpiece.

Homecoming Rules

I *seem* to be getting better at handling those first depressing hours.

• Haul suitcase into bedroom and make yourself unpack the essentials: gifts, toiletries, clothes to wardrobe, books/CDs to be shelved
• Run deep bath with all the perfumes of Araby into which clamber with your mountain of mail at hand, a large rubbish bag and stout paper knife. Now is not the time to be faint-hearted.
• Separate bills from private mail and all decent reading/listening matter. Everything else is junk you will never get round to. Toss into the basket.
• Submerge in bath, wash hair and shave and soap assorted nooks and crannies.
• Towel and talc down and pamper yourself with welcome-home unguents. Pour large whiskey
• Boot up 'puter pay those online bills you can kill there and now. Reward self with fresh slug of scotch.
• Do NOT play those Greek/Italian CDs you brought back to relive those blissful days. It's over.
• Over.
• Top up scotch
• Make list of pals to phone in order of cheery conversation. Halve that list and check freshness of scotch.
• Ignore the damn'd phone
• Turn on radio and check news: you're back in the land of the living, laboring and impecunious. Lay out ingredients for a *proper* meal. Plenty of months ahead for a slacker's Hotpocket. Heavy lifting is required: reviving food and a good bouteille de vin is essential.
• Put Django Reinhardt on sound system and crank up vol.
• Light cig, open diary and plan next day's action, starting with emails 0800-0900hrs, phone calls 0930-100. At least two unbreakable appointments for the next day's afternoon.
• Kill CD and take down trusty dusty guitar and strum once only all those songs you wrote on hol.
• Cork the whiskey and return bottle to drinks cabinet; that's enough of the hard stuff.
• Attend to cooking and whistle a happy tune as you knead that steak into shape. Raise your glass of Volnay and toast a damn'd good time.

Homebound

Oh I just got back from Harlem
Ont he very last day of Autumn
Made it through customs, took the bus into town
The flat looked cold and empty
The chairs unused and dusty
Just a few old letters and papers lying around ...

• Bill Frisell's 'gone, just like a train'
• Diana Krall 'Live in Paris'
• Coltrane's 'Favourite Things' (I know, it should have been
  in my collection long ago)
• Best of Roberto Carlos
• The stunning Lucinda Williams' 'Car Wheels on a Gravel Road'
• The Essential Electric Light Orchestra

Blogging about Blogging

Plus he gives a plug to that sacked air hostess who I see has started a quasi Bloggers Bill of Rights

In view of my own summary ejection, I should I suppose add Enthusa Enterprises to the black list but - you know - I still feel oddly embarrassed for the old squad. As if some well-meaning colleague - of portly stature, slight pretensions to dress code and corporate speke, nothwithstanding - had suddenly been asked to accelerate the pace and deliver something a leettle extra ... and promptly fallen flat on their face.

CORFU TUSCAN RAMBLINGS

Jerry Springer

No one of any class has even *heard* of Mr Springer, so the news reports in the Guardian and Torygraph mean absolutely nothing to them.

I, on the other hand, have squandered whole swathes of hours before the Idiot Box, enthralled by the grotesque spectacle.

My expert explanations and imitations make me the guru favourite of le tout Corfu and beyond.

Burma Tsunami

A paltry 53 dead and 21 missing is a ludicrous lie to be peddling.