last updated Sunday June 21, 2009
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last updated Sunday June 21, 2009 |
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28th August
Oh God, not again! Another of my letters to the Guardian has been published - this time in today's Weekend magazine: "Alexander Chancellor's piece on Tony Blair's slimy hobnobbing with Silvio Berlusconi was spot-on (Guide To Age, August 21). So much so, in fact, that I am no longer angry with him for his silly piece on Lord Hesketh a few weeks ago." I just can't control myself, can I, let's face it.
27th August
Fionacat points me to an excellent article in today's Guardian about biscuit dunking. "Modern technology and the age-old appeal of slightly soggy but warm crumbs have come together in Britain's first league table for biscuit-dunkers," runs the report. "Using retort stands, stopwatches and formulae with names such as optimum dunking threshold, a team of food scientists have crowned the humble ginger nut as the runaway best option for cognoscenti. A hundred volunteers joined the process at laboratories in London, to allow for individual human variation in the process." The report goes on to pronounce on the dunkability of other British favourites such as Digestives ("Quick immersion yields rich caramel flavours, while dense texture remains nice although the bite is softened") and Rich Tea ("Far too porous - the biscuit soaks up the tea and goes flimsy in a flash. Great only for those without teeth").
21st August
Last Saturday there was an essay in the Guardian Review by Duncan Sprott about Greek poet Constantin Cavafy in which he asks "What do we have left of Cavafy in translation?" This rang a bell and I immediately dashed off a letter to the Guardian, which they've printed today: "One recent interpretation is Leonard Cohen's Alexandra Leaving (on the 2001 album Ten New Songs), based on Cavafy's poem The God Forsakes Antony, in which Cohen adapts Marcus Antonius's loss of his beloved city of Alexandria into a man's loss of a woman." Obviously I knew about the song but I have to admit that credit for the explanation is due here to an article on the Leonard Cohen Files by one Demetris Tsemperis about the song, poem, translation and poet.
I also added a paragraph to my original letter which wasn't published, explaining that Cohen has translated or adapted at least two other poems by other poets for his songs, the first being Take This Waltz, based on Little Viennese Waltz by Federico Garcia Lorca (from I'm Your Man, 1988), and the other being Go No More A-Roving, from the poem of the same name by "Lord" Byron, the opening track of Cohen's as-yet unreleased new album Dear Heather. I still haven't managed to complete my account of our trip to the Leonard Cohen Event in New York last June and doubt whether I ever will at my current rate of working, but I will say that the participants were lucky enough to hear an exclusive preview of most of the tracks from Dear Heather, of which Go No More A-Roving was probably the best.
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Elsewhere in today's Guardian is an excellent piece by Alexander Chancellor on Tony Blair's recent trip to Tuscany, where he was courted by the thoroughly oily prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. "To have accepted the hospitality of Berlusconi, a rightwing entrepreneur of immense wealth, questionable business practices and anti-constitutional tendencies, who is furthermore currently under attack for messing up his bit of Sardinian coastline, seemed a recklessly provocative decision," writes Chancellor. "Its arrogance takes the breath away."
11th August
They've probably corrected it by now, but I couldn't help but snigger at a spelling error in an interview with "Lord" Sebastian Coe in today's Independent. Asked "Who would sing in the opening ceremony of your dream Olympic Games and who would be presenting your gold medal?", Coe replied, "Easy: Billie Holiday would sing and Leicester Young would present my medal."
8th August
There's a nice interview with Woody Allen in today's Guardian headlined "Why I love London". Woody was cornered by the Guardian journo while shooting his latest film in my very own home town. "You have such beautiful skies," he's quoted, "when they're overcast." As much as I moan during the winter, I have to admit a certain fondness for our grey climate myself, and this quote reminds me of the opening of Radio Days - a lovely crane shot of (I think) Coney Island in the pouring rain, accompanied by the Allen voice-over, "Of course it wasn't always raining, but that was when it was at its most beautiful." In the interview he goes on: "I never shoot in the sun if I can help it because everything looks much better without it. The sun has been the bane of my existence." As someone who recently got sunstroke after sitting in a suburban garden for a few hours I have to admit I identify with that as well.
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Of all the random news stories about Leonard Cohen that come to my attention these days thanks to setting up a Google News Alert for the great Canadian, the following has to be the silliest since, er, the one the other day about the bank robber whose defence was "Leonard Cohen did it." The Sunday Herald reports, "Karaoke is about to be collectivised in Scotland thanks to the country’s leading lefties who are to stage a socialist version of Stars In Their Eyes this week at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival." For readers unfamiliar with Stars In Their Eyes, this is a TV show in which members of the public - and occasionally celebrities - dress up and perform a song as a favourite singer. The story goes on: "Bill Spiers, the general secretary of the STUC, will transform himself from a firebrand trade unionist into arch musical miserabilist Leonard Cohen." I don't know quite why I find this funny. But I do.
5th August
A correspondent to today's Guardian writes: "It can hardly be a surprise that the west does not intervene in Sudan. The last time that the west forcefully intervened against an oppressive dictatorship that sanctioned the killing of its own people, millions of people demonstrated in opposition."
This argument for why the west will not intervene in Sudan is both offensive and mistaken. Yes, millions of us did protest against the Iraq war which we knew then was unjust and which is proving to be more so with every new death at the hands of the occupying US army. But no, the governments took no notice of our protests. Whatever the west does or doesn’t do in Sudan will depend more on what’s in it for the governments than the will of the people.
2nd August
Something truly Thoughtcatular happened today when a white Bengal tiger escaped in New York while being transferred between cages as the circus he was travelling with set up in the Queens district. Luckily nobody was eaten, although the big cat - named Apollo - did cause at least five car crashes as he growled around those mean streets. Of course, this being America, police arrived armed with machine guns - I'm surprised in fact they didn't invade a small country; maybe George Bush is getting the message? - but thankfully Apollo wasn't hurt. I should add as a Russell Hoban fan that one aspect of the incident, wherein circus staff tried to entice Apollo back to his cage with hunks of raw meat, was oddly reminiscent of Hoban's great early novel The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, in which the main character Jachin-Boaz wanders a modern city armed with several pounds of beefsteak to try and placate the lion he feels is following him. And then of course there's Life of Pi, which is probably even more appropriate because it concerns a tiger, rather than a lion, but this riff on Great Cats In Literature could go on. Maybe another time...
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Thoughtcat's Reporters on the Frontline are doing themselves proud this week. Our Lady of West Drayton emails me a link to another BBC-reported oddity, this time concerning something called The Library of Unwritten Books. This is not, actually, the story of my life, nor even a hitherto unknown Samuel Beckett play, but in fact a real institution run by a couple of people who go up to people on the street and ask them if they have a book "in them" that they've never written nor, probably, ever will. They then turn this story of a non-story into a, er, story (albeit a very short story) which they add to their "library". Just as well they haven't come up to me or they'd never get away, that's all I can say. Seriously, senior librarian of the unwritten collection Sam Brown has an interesting point when he says, "A good unwritten book doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a good written book." Yes, but equally a great written book could sound like total crap if all that existed of it was a naff summary. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, don't you know, Sam.
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There's a musically right-on and politically offbeat feature in today's Guardian with the intriguing headline Can jazz stop Bush?, about the Liberation Music Orchestra who are playing at the Edinburgh Festival this week. Founder Charlie Haden, who made the frist LMO album in the early seventies as a musical protest against US atrocities in Vietnam and Cambodia, says he has always believed in "an America worthy of the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr, and the majesty of the Statue of Liberty", and is now jamming lividly in F sharp about "the Republicans' theft of the election four years ago, and the situation in Iraq".
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Politically speaking the Daily Telegraph is one of our more odious newspapers, but it does occasionally have the interesting non-political item, such as today's interview with happening Thai film director Pen Ek Ratanaurang. The interview is actually on the subject of his hero Jim Jarmusch, but it gives good mention of the Thai guy's latest film The Last Life In the Universe, currently wowing international audiences and bringing Thai cinema back into the headlines for the first time since Tears of the Black Tiger a few years ago. Not to blow my own trumpet or anything but being married as I am to a Thai woman, I saw the former film on DVD a few months ago before all the farangs started going wild about it, and I can confirm it's very weird but also very good. And, not only all this, but Ratanaurang confesses to being a closet Leonard Cohen fan too! Small world eh.
1st August
A hysterical bit of bizarre local (Canadian) news from the Ottawa Sun is today brought to me (and you, you lucky people!) via Our Lady of Vermont. Edmonton bank robber Eugene Monias (43) failed in his attempt to persuade the judge at his hearing that it was not he who burglarised said financial institution but in fact lookalike singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (69). "A police officer ... agreed there were similarities between Cohen and Monias," reports the paper. "However, Monias has numerous distinctive tattoos, including a skull and snake on his right forearm and a heart inscribed with 'love mom' on his left forearm, whereas Cohen does not."