Coeur blimey

I have discovered a fine new type of offal: calf's heart! It's not all tough like lamb's heart -- it's like a cross between liver and steak. I recommend it. But mainly I just wrote this for the pun.

Tom

Lair on a Shoe-String

Here are some (bad) images of St Stephen's Church, Hyde Park (see 'Quietly this morning'). It's scarier in real life. Also I couldn't include the ominously barred gates because a van went past just as I was taking the photo.

Incidentally I saw a bus driver walking through Hyde Park wearing a bomber jacket with the Greyhound logo on the front and a great big compass-and-square on the back! I tried to explain to my friends why this was so funny, but they didn't seem to understand.

Oh yes, Harry sent me these links from the ever-more-eccentric Richard Thompson page. It appears his popularity has nosedived to the level where he is reduced to playing gigs in a school.

Chorley
Back to Blighty...

Finally I am cross about the Guardian and their 'send letters to an American telling them to vote Democrat' campaign. James (Pawley)'s blog has links to the spleenville correspondence etc (although you have to put up with a lot of right-wing yelling if you read this). Did somebody not think that Americans might not like to be told what to do by English left-wingers? And that it might make them cross? And vote for Bush?

Quietly this morning beside the subsided herds of water I walk

Fall's here at last, and I've flooded my apartment. I left the kitchen sink filling while I went to have a bath. I can only assume my carpet will dry one day. Sadly, I didn't really approach the master, Richard Gowan, in terms of destruction. The only thing below my apartment is the laundry room, which luckily for me has a big drain in the middle of its floor...

So anyway, I think I've found the United Brotherhood of Carpenters' lair (see 'It's the bloody masons, Lewis!'): my street, you see, is like any other suburban street in America, except for the fact that it has a great big rotting hulk of a disused Hawksmoor-style church nestling between two of its clapboard houses. St Stephen's has a fab baroque facade, complete with ominously padlocked and barred gates, and a large window broken in several places, which has been graffiti-ed over so it looks a bit like punk stained glass. I'll try to get a polaroid up on the site this week. If you don't hear from me, it may be because the carpenters don't like strangers photographing their building...

Indie Corpuscles

As we all know, Duncan is secretly the drummer from the Pretenders. But who knew that Ian Shadforth was drummer for the Pixies? I think a conspiracy is going on. Is Mark Chaloner in fact the drummer from Einsturzende Neubaten? I think we should be told.

Between a rap and a hard place

On Saturday my friend Elizabeth and I went to watch our mutual friend Melissa playing Ultimate Frisbee (or 'Ultimate', if you're in the know). Unfortunately, we arrived just as her team were finishing up being thoroughly beaten by the opposition, and quickly found ourselves with nothing to spectate upon. As it was close to freezing, and the next match was not due to start for half an hour or so, we decided to investigate the sound of music, coming from an array of large tents on the far side of the park. Was it perhaps a free concert? Some sort of outdoor Hallowe'en fun? No. It was a Nation of Islam Louis Farrakhan Prostate Cancer benefit gig, attended by about 50 people. Just as we arrived, the stage was taken by two rappers, who seemed very cross. Since it was hard to tell whether they were more cross about the misdeeds of Whitey or the possibility of prostate cancer, we quickly left.

CAMRA, I see, has named the Dog and Bell in Deptford London Pub of the Year. Did we ever go to it while we lived there, real ale connoisseurs as we were? No. Bugger. Although Adam will be pleased to see that West Middlesex's pub of the year is the Red Lion of Ealing.

Peter Owen has turned down Steve Aylett's magnificent book Lint, which some of you may remember my saying was the funniest thing I'd read in ages. Luckily it will still come out in the States v. soon, so order copies from there!

Finally, several people have noted that they weren't able to post comments on the blog -- I've fixed this now and anyone should be able to comment on new posts from this one on.

While Rome burns...

As in excess of 50 million people tune in every week, Professor Robert Thompson calls the presidential debates 'by far the most successul new television show of the fall season' and he's not wrong. Kerry went into the debates with, according to the New York Times, 'the commentariat [...] writing his obituary', but now it's Bush who 'does not have the momentum'. National Public Radio went even further, calling Wednesday 'a terrible night for the President'. High drama. With the election on a knife-edge, truckloads of U of C students are driving to Wisconsin to campaign to Get Out the Vote, with the logic that if they can help beat Bush there, Illinois can fend for itself.

So I thought, what better time to consider the relative merits of the English versus the American fry-up? After three weeks of visiting the diner, I'm feeling homesick for baked beans and blood products. Do you know what? Sausages here are tiny and taste of nothing. Bacon is all hard, small and thin, and the yolk of my over-easy eggs has no flavour. On the upside, hash browns that are actually made of real potato: Mmm.

One more word of warning. Don't cook tripe. I tried last Sunday and it was foul.

Midgets don't just make porn

I thought people might be interested to know (if they don't already) about a new discovery I made over the weekend: Jed Buell's all-midget Western musical from 1938. It's entitled The Terror of Tiny Town. There's this website about it too. Track it down.

It's the bloody masons, Lewis!

Is a new world order looming in which buttock cleavage will be compulsory, and everyone will have to have those curious loops on their trousers? The United Brotherhood of Carpenters, America's carpentry union, has a logo you might recognize from your studies of the Evil Empire.

Jacques Deadira

'Jacques Derrida is dead. Long live deconstruction', concluded NPR's obituary, their reporter no doubt silently smirking at the redundant alive/dead binarism. Said Derrida, 'Rumours of my death are excessively reductive'.

NB The Onion kinda beat me on this one with their one-line story 'Jacques Derrida "Dies"'

News item creates excuse for poor pun

It's possible to shatter a wine glass if you sing at the right note, but this morning it was a lack of the right whine that shattered my illusions. Just heard an interview with Bob Dylan and he has, like, a totally normal voice!

just call me gammie

Bob Dylan says 'I didn't have much in common with the generation I was supposed to be the voice of. I was always more of a cow puncher than a pied piper' in his autobiography, Chronicles.

Also, want to read something else terrifying about the Republican party? Funny how easy it is to get worked up about politics over here.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/pickett/cst-nws-pickett08.html

Hello all

Hi there – I thought I'd do this rather than send out round robin emails. Apologies for the impersonal nature, but hey, it's the twenty-first century.

The original Rambling Thomas, for those who don't know, was a twenties blues singer, although, sadly, he didn't live in Chicago. Moving on.

Post-match analysis of last night's presidential debate suggests that Bush emerged the victor. This strikes me as bizarre since he referred to the 'internets', told the audience that 'I'm not telling' when asked who he would appoint to the Supreme Court (before adding that he wouldn't appoint a judge who would reinstitute slavery), and addressed his opponent as 'Senator Kennedy'. Funny country.

Tonight I will be going (again) to Phyllis's Musical Lounge in the Ukranian Village. It's possible that it is owned by Phyllis, in which case one of the three words in its title would be accurate. But I doubt it. I'm rooting for more 'Rock 'n' Bowl'.

Fans of the folk (which probably don't include my neighbours) may be interested in http://www.tam-lin.org/, a website dedicated entirely to the song 'Tam Lin' (including, yes, more than five amusing parodies of the song). Also I enjoyed http://www.cafes.net/ditch/GDgallery.htm, a set of pictures of the members of the Golden Dawn, including a first-rate image of the moustachioed, English MacGregor Mathers dressed as 'The Magus'.

Bye