Year: 2003

Two things on BBC news caught my eye as I munched on my sarnies today:

1) Liverpool was named European Capital of Culture for 2008 today. Someone from the council told the BBC website that: “This is like Liverpool winning the Champions League, Everton winning the double and the Beatles reforming all on the same day – and Steve Spielberg coming to the city to make a Hollywood blockbuster about it.”
Hmm, I think I’d settle for just one of those, you know.

2) Someone was shot dead in brb in Chinatown yesterday. Bloody hell!

On a slightly lighter note, I found this article about how people don’t check the signature on your credit card slip rather entertaining.

I had a call from someone at Ticketmaster earlier this afternoon to make sure I was aware that the time has changed for the gig I am going to on Friday night. I was actually, as they’ve already sent me a letter about it, and an email. The gig is at the Royal Albert Hall, and I believe most of the tickets would have been sold through Ticketmaster. So that means that some poor guy is phoning thousands of people to remind them about the change. They called me on my mobile as well.

Well, I guess that finally explains what they do with those extortionate booking fees that they charge.

And still the spam keeps coming. For some reason, I’ve been getting a lot of unsolicited emails offering to enlarge certain parts of my anatomy recently. As I said before, which website was it that I visited where I accidentally ticked the box indicating I needed, um, assistance in this area?

One of the emails this morning carried the subject heading “Break Down Walls with your humongous kn*b” (What, you mean literally? Why? Why would you want that? It would just be awkward, surely…)

Despite removing my email address from this website (at least as far as automated systems crawling the web for addresses are concerned, hopefully!), there’s still been no let up. Maybe I should attend the third annual Nigerian email conference for some handy advice.

All in all, a lovely weekend. Saturday was one of those rare gorgeous sunny days when everything is just perfect out – it was only slightly marred for me by getting caught up in the rugby crowd around Twickenham on my way over to Clapham for a barbie on the Common (oh and nearly breaking my back slugging the cooler around). However, we managed to overcome the difficulties (find ice, find beer, try to find cold beer, fail to find cold beer, find ice in Iceland, make warm beer cold…) and spent a lovely afternoon drinking and eating half cooked sausages (and leaving a couple of small black scars on the grass – yes I know it says to use the disposable BBQ on a “heat-resistant surface”, but, c’mon, who reads instructions?).

Also, appreciate the comedy value of the packaging for Tesco disposable BBQs. They are labelled as “the complete barbeque in one box”, with the caveat, in block letters, of “FOOD NOT INCLUDED”.

Sunday completed the full selection of seasons for the weekend, by providing us with Winter, Spring and Autumn as we wandered round Greenwich in the rain/sun/rain/humidity…

And I almost forgot to talk about last night’s TV. Somehow I found myself watching the Jamie Theakston-narrated “documentary” Shops, Robbers and Videotape last night. This hour of unquestioning pro-CCTV propaganda wasn’t exactly balanced journalism, of the kind you might, foolishly, expect the BBC to generate. More a cheap homegrown version of all those police camera car chase shows that Channel 5 get from the states.

No, this was the kind of program that was quite prepared to use the term “Big Brother” in connection with the state of the art integrated CCTV system installed in Soho that provided most of its material, but, unfortunately, it clearly meant “Big Brother” as in the TV show, not as in 1984.

Anyway, I felt rather uncomfortable about the way the program accepted CCTV as a thoroughly good thing, without bothering to question whether there might be a downside (taking the “if you haven’t got anything to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about” point of view so beloved of compulsory ID card advocates).

Setting aside the fact that Jamie Theakston was narrating (surely someone averse to having his picture taken without his consent), there was also something very Brass Eye drugs episode about a lot of the footage.

Combine that with the somewhat over-zealous policing on display (I can’t be the only person who feels slightly uncomfortable about the way the talking heads from the force admitted that they enjoy going after people spotted on the CCTV because it’s exciting, and “gets [them] out of their daily routine”, and then having to watch four of them pile on top of some guy they suspected of dealing drugs). Then there’s the fact that they didn’t seem to actually catch anyone (except the odd handbag thief and someone who’d just bought Cannabis – and you could hear the disappointment in the WPC’s voice when she told us that it was only Cannabis).

Anyway, like the idealistic fool that I am, I’d like to see a bit more balance, but then why would you expect the BBC to bite the hand that feeds it, when there’s hours of cheap, sensationalist TV footage available for just the price of interviewing a couple of policemen?

Oh, there’s more privacy-related news in this week’s Need To Know…

Oh, and speaking of anniversaries…

Hypocrisy is a wonderful thing. The third leader in today’s Guardian bemoans the curse of what it refers to as “premature anniversitis” (anniversaries being noted in the media at length for weeks around the actual event, as with recent coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Everest ascent). The column goes on to remark that “a little leadership by example is in order”, “anniversaries will continue to be duly and arbitrarily marked – but only on the right days”.

So we can expect The Guardian not to copy the activities of other papers, where “Everest anniversary articles have been appearing everywhere for months; and ‘William at 21’ is already in full flood, even though the happy day is still more than three weeks away…” Oh, so, you mean articles like the one on page 13 of today’s paper, then, about Prince William, on life at St Andrews and, um, turning 21?

There’s much to write about today – the line-up, last night’s TV, six months ;), Blair in Kuwait and the missing WMDs, the backpedalling of the Bush administration over WMDs, the interview with Salam Pax in the Guardian… where should I start?

As ever, with the line-up, it’s the clashes that stand out. I mean yes, I can’t miss the essentials, like the Manics on Sunday, The Flaming Lips/Radiohead double header on Saturday night, but hang on, what about the three way Radiohead-SFA-Lamb clash on Saturday night? Doves or Moby? Can I catch The Libertines on Saturday afternoon and still make it back to the main stage for Polyphonic Spree/Turin Brakes/Supergrass/Flaming Lips/Radiohead?

Oh, and, on a technicality, what’s John Cale (off-of the Velvet Underground) doing playing in the “new” tent?

Anyway, excuse me while I go off and start circling bands in the paper like a kid at Christmas with the TV pages of the Radio Times (oh, and maybe do some work). I’ll be back later. In the mean time, I found this (now removed) page rather amusing: “NME.com will reveal the line up tomorrow [er… just as soon as we’ve bought The Guardian or Q and copied it out of there]”

It was “only Brit in the room” territory again last night, when I went to see Melbourne’s Something For Kate at the Mean Fiddler.

To be honest, never having heard either band before, I think I got more value from the support, The Mutts (lazy pseudo-music critic generalisation: BRMC meets The Music, er, backstage at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig). Having said that, Something For Kate’s brand of inoffensive guitar rock was, well, inoffensive enough. You know, sounds like the sort of thing I normally like.

I also appreciated the comedy value of arriving at the venue to find that all the touts were touting for the gig next door (“Ben Harper. Any spare tickets for Ben Harper. I’ll buy or sell…”)

Something like the second sentence that my mum said to me when I finally got back home to Southport on Friday night, after the long day at work and the three hour train journey in true Virgin trains comfort (complete with complementary drunk bloke singing loudly from Crewe – and nearly-as-drunk scouser telling him (almost) to “calm down”), was “we’ve got a bit of a surprise for you…”

I knew what she meant as soon as she said it – they’ve been threatening to do it for a while now. Then she took me upstairs to what used to be my bedroom to show me how they had completely redecorated my room without telling me!

It could be worse, I suppose, they could have thrown all my stuff out (see March 2, 2003 entry towards the bottom).

And don’t get me wrong, it does look very nice now, it’s just not “my” room any more. It felt like I was staying in the guest room. Oh well, there goes my childhood. Ripped out and replaced for a very reasonable price at IKEA.

The rest of the weekend was very nice though. Popped into Liverpool briefly, got slightly sunburnt, ate extensively, avoided both Big Brother and the Eurovision nul points incident, and returned to London more tired than I left.

Excellent.

Now that I have that off my chest, I can remark on the fact that it’s Friday. woo, and indeed hoo! This week seems to have absolutely flown by.

Now that the hangover has cleared up, I’m looking forward to a relaxing bank holiday weekend in sunny Southport.