Ironic detachment

So, I watched this show earlier on BBC4 about Britpop. Thinking about it now, I'm not even sure if they said it in there at all. But it just popped into my mind a little bit ago. So, my mission for today is to see if I can use it in a conversation somehow. Good thing it is pub night today.

Original ground zero

This weekend, I did a bit of exploring by bike. Yesterday, I went with a bike group riding around Epping Forest. It is a quite pretty and ancient forest (8000 BC) and it is cool that 6000 acres of forest exists just a moderate bike ride from east London. It rained hard too and we got very wet and muddy. It was a nice ride up the tow paths along the River Lea (ok, going past the big recycling center wasn't terribly pretty and rather smelly for quite some time after) and then through the funky old town of Waltham Abbey.

On Saturday, I went to see ground zero. That is 0.0°, the center of the world. Ok, at least an arbitrary center that eventually everybody agreed on. But the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. It was a nice ride down the Regent Canal,

past Limehouse Basin,

and then through Canary Wharf

and under the Thames through the pedestrian tunnel.

I've really liked the canals so far. There seems to be a whole culture of people who cruise up and down the canals all over the country. I'm not sure how many of them live full time on their boats. But it makes for pretty scenery as you are riding and the tow paths are a great way to get through town since they bypass normal traffic.

I'm not so sure I'm convinced by the tunnel to Greenwich. Walking a long way in an old tunnel 50 meters under the Thames, I just don't know.

The lift operators were pretty funny, he was sprawled out on his stool and I don't think he took his eyes off the gossip magazine he was reading the whole time to operate it.

Greenwich Park itself was nice. It is a rather large park with a nice view from the top of the hill.

There was a super long line to go into the observatory and I'm not sure I saw the point. I've probably crossed over or had my feet on the Prime Meridian lots of times in the past few weeks, so I don't think my life would be any richer to have toured the site. Sure it was free, but the line looked like a drag. Besides, it was starting to rain and I wanted to get home before it really started coming down.

The worst song ever

Ok, I ran across an old story on the BBC website about the worst song ever and it got me thinking, so what is the worst song ever. Sure I don't think Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da is that great of a song, but it certainly isn't the worst song ever.

Reading the comments that were left on that page made me think and sort of illustrated the problem here. I mean what's the criteria here. Obviously MacArthur Park by Richard Harris is a totally terrible song but I'll still listen to it and laugh at it. It is just so far beyond bad that it is funny. And there are a lot more songs in that category that are just so awful but they are funny. Heck, I think that most satanic speed death metal is totally funny, especially all that stuff from Norway.

I know for myself, the two songs that I detest, that I want to claw my ears out whenever they come on are American Pie by Don McLean and You're So Vain by Carly Simon. American Pie is probably out in front right now because the grocery store I used to shop in had it on their tape loop of songs they used to play, so generally, if I didn't hurry, I would hear it each time I went shopping. But still, You're So Vain probably makes me want to die more when I hear it.

But as bad as those songs are, I agree with one of the comments that if you have ever heard O Superman by Laurie Anderson, then you can have no doubt what the worst song of all time is. Unfortunately, I've heard O Superman, so it is going to top my list then. Even though it doesn't induce the desire to kill myself like the other two songs, it is bad mostly because it defies the whole concept of music and goodness and songness and probably a lot of other things.

It was like one of the 3 videos that Channel 12 had for FM TV and I not only had to hear the song but also see it. And it goes on for like 45 minutes and it has that endless ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha part all through it. I don't know if Laurie Anderson has other songs that don't suck or if she is a genius or whatever, this song is so bad that there is no way I would ever want to know any of that.

Hmm, what about Mambo No 5 by Lou Bega, mustn't forget that one.

It could be worse, I could be in Hull

Smash. What's that sound? Oh, it is just the smug and reassuring sound of somebody else's community being slammed. The news this morning that is making the rounds is the release yesterday of the worst places to live in the UK and Hull topped the list. (Hmm, I shouldn't get so smug, I looked at a place to live in #4, Hackney. But I did hate it and rejected it, so there.)

So, they even trotted out the mayor of Hull on GMTV this morning to lamely attempt to defend his city. A preschool breakfast program, I think that was the bulk of his defense as he hopefully suggested that perhaps they weren't a total failure, maybe they were an F++.

But these surveys are pretty funny. The List. They never really talk much about those places that are at the top of the list of the best places. Yeah, there was a list of those too, but I didn't bother looking at it. It is much more fun looking at the losers. And I suppose if you had like 8 zillion pounds, you would already be living in the best places, so what's the point.

In Colorado, the loser list was forever topped by Pueblo and after a while they just stopped even trying to defend themselves. I suppose too that part of my proud heritage was attending the University of Colorado, which is usually on the list of top 10 party schools. Woo, go Buffs, we are just oh so proud. But I guess we will see too what will happen here once the drinking laws go 24 hours.

The next big thing

Ok, I'm determined, I'm not going to get left behind. I was a bit late on the whole weblog thing and probably on a bunch of things before that. I need to be ahead of the trend this time, my finger on the pulse of the cutting edge. Hmm, that sounds dangerous, doesn't it?

But podcasting, that's it, isn't it? But I need to be on the cutting edge of that since that is already starting to take off. I need something new, something that hasn't been done before. Ok, maybe something that nobody would bother to do because it is just too stupid. Yeah, that's the angle.

So, get ready for this one. It is going to rock. Ok, not literally. You can't use rock because all the evil copyright stuff will come down on top of you. So, I'm going to record my life. Oh yeah, this is going to be great. 30 minutes of what it sounds like me riding my bike to work. 10 minutes of my typing, creating these little masterpieces for this weblog, 45 minutes of the bloop beep sounds that AIM makes as I'm chatting, 8 hours of the noise of my flat while I'm at work.

Oh, this is going to be great. Look, I even swiped one of those buttons for the feed. Click there and you will totally live my life. It will be better than rocking, it will be totally real.

Wait, you mean I have to record this stuff too? And upload it and all that? Hmm, that sounds like a pain and a bother. Hmm, maybe I should start looking for the next next trend then. Stay tuned. The next trend is going to rock even harder.

(Hmm, I need to starting making all my titles based on songs. This one, of course the fabulous Dictators.)

Rock snobbery

The topic of rock snobbery seems to have been bandied around lately, probably because there is some new book out on it and he has been hitting the circuit plugging it. But I've always wondered, am I a rock snob? I look at my list of favorite albums I have below and you know, it has Captain Beefheart, who seems to be consistently mentioned as the one that rock snobs really love.

Ok, sure, I didn't hear that album until college, which is probably when most rock snobs are made, but I do think it is a great album. But I'm not sure if I really care about being a snob for other people's sake. Sure I like throwing out there how much I love Metal Urbain or Josef K because of their nice obscurity. So, what is it about the obscurity that I like?

I think the biggest trend in my taste seems to be first albums. U2, Echo and the Bunnymen, R.E.M. and so on, it is all their first albums I love the best. I think that's probably the key for me. With like U2, I will admit that I'm slightly turned off by how their popularity grew but I think it is mostly a feeling thing for me.

I think there are a lot of songs on say like the Joshua Tree that are quite superior to anything on Boy but the feel of the album is different. I like that feeling of first albums, the energy and rawness, the time they are just finding their way and learning how to play their instruments. And since these are likely the songs they have spent so much time on, throwing themselves into to get their break and the record contract, it just sounds different than when they are established and they are more worried about do we record this next album in the south of France or in the Bahamas.

But blah blah blah, I'm totally a rock snob, aren't I? There is just something nice about listening to something that nobody has ever heard before. A funny guide though, if you wish to pursue your own rock snobbery is the one on Your Band Sucks and the followup article . I would say that I even threw in the Cars on my list as sort of that guilty pleasure band. Sure they sucked in the end and were critically savaged after they made it big, but I still have fond memories of listening to their first few albums in 7th grade.

So, anyways, there is this new band that I've been listening to, they are really fantastic, but I'm sure that you have never heard of them...

Big Brother, please go away

Big Brother, I mean really, do people watch this thing? I was just flipping through channels and there it was again, spellbinding video of people sleeping. Gee, I certainly hope I had the vcr running capturing that exciting moment.

But really, is this the most breathtakingly boring endless bit of tv conceivable? I might as well just program Channel 4 and E4 out of my receiver for who knows how long. Didn't this thing start back like last winter or something? Will somebody tell me when this thing is finally going to be over? I've tried searching for this numerous times but I can't find it anywhere.

I find endless things on who is getting evicted and all the latest gossip about, well, I don't know what the gossip is about, I can't be bothered to watch the stuff, why would I want to read about it too. But will somebody tell me when this thing is over? If it is going to be like September or October, well, ok, I'll deal with it but it would be nice to have a date I can look forward to. I can find plenty of information about when the next eviction is going to be but nowhere does it say the suffering will be over on this date.

Don't get me wrong, I've watched probably more than my share of cheezy reality tv shows. I mean please bring back Temptation Island. That show rocked. I've suffered through crap tv reality shows too, Joe Millionaire and even the stupid sequel. God help me, I even watched the one with the midgets. I watched the Bachelor series decline into sheer boredom (I missed the last few seasons of the US one but the UK version was really awful. Like none of them even pretended to like each other - "I think I fancy him but I'm not sure yet"). But in terms of suck-o-rama, Big Brother is not only boring and total crap, but it seems to never ever end. Please, no more.

Going Underground

So, I suppose you have all heard about the events with London mass transit lately. On July 7th, I really didn't get my money's worth out of my daily ticket that day.


Luckily, I didn't really have that many places to go or very far to go, especially after most everything closed down. It was quite odd walking through Covent Garden and it was completely deserted, or everything in Leicester Square was shut up. The restaurant we did finally find around there that was open, they seemed happy to see anybody at all and for quite some time, we were the only ones in the whole place.


I've taken it a few times since then, just today in fact (on a Thursday even). We sat in one station for about 15 minutes as they kept announcing on the loudspeaker that a few stops up, the police were searching a train, so we might be there for a bit while they did that. Everybody mostly just listened to their ipods.

Mostly, I have been riding my bike to work, which is probably way more dangerous than taking the subway. It is a bit freaky nosing out there in front of one of those huge buses. I usually try to follow somebody else who looks like they know what they are doing.

And I feel a little better riding in the middle of a pack, especially when you are shifting into the center lanes in one of the roundabouts. It is probably just as easy to hit 10 people on bikes as just a single person, but still, it makes me feel a bit better.

But dangers aside, it is probably healthier riding my bike and it is much more enjoyable. Eventually, I'll stop getting lost every day. Ok, I generally know where I am, but you take one wrong turn and you can get turned around really fast. You can't just go straight anywhere.

Again, slavishly following the trend

Ok, since everybody is doing it, gotta make my own list of my favorite, umm, it turned out to be 74 albums. Was that what the rules specified? Well, I sort of cheated a bit too since I sort of stuck with the best album from each band thing considering I could have filled the list with all of the albums from Joy Division, ok, both of them, well, maybe I should use a better example. But a bunch of bands could have had a lot more albums thrown in there, but I figured I should spread out between more artists.

Gee this is sad, I'm looking at these, is Elastica basically the only one of these that is much later than the early 90s (and most of that album was pretty much swiped right from old Wire albums.) So, am I totally trapped in the mid 80s? You know sonny, they just don't make those albums like they used to. Well, they don't really make all that many albums anymore.

Not that I think more recent stuff is uniformly awful, yeah, don't get me started on how Clear Channel has destroyed radio as we know it (thank you so much for BBC 6 Music, totally worth my tv license right there alone), but there is probably something about albums you listen to over and over during high school and college. They are the ones that change your lfe and get you through the crap of growing up. There are probably a few albums from the last five years that I might think of later that are worthy of being on this list, but I can't really think of them right now.

And I guess a lot of these are the American versions or best of albums. I'm not such a stickler on that sort of thing. Yeah most of that album by The Church was released on other things first, but that was the album that I had and loved. And if I had to break down Happily Ever After into two albums, I guess I would pick Faith then. Sure I should have picked the actual album that most of the songs by the Buzzcocks were from, but I loved that singles one and it was the one I had that got played the most often.

So, let the listing begin. (Ok, probably a couple of these on this list are jokes. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which ones.)

Bauhaus - Burning From the Inside
Beatles - The Beatles (The White Album) (or maybe Revolver)
Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica
Big Black - Atomizer
Big Star - #1 Record
Birthday Party - Birthday Party
Black Flag - My War
Billy Bragg - Brewing Up With Billy Bragg
Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician
Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady
Cars - Cars
Celibate Rifles - Les Fusiles Celibataires
Chocolate Watchband - The Best of The Chocolate Watchband
The Church - The Church
Circle Jerks - Group Sex
Clash - London Calling
Cocteau Twins - Treasure
Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True
Cramps - Songs the Lord Taught Us
Cure - ... Happily Ever After
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
Dream Syndicate - Days of Wine and Roses
Echo and the Bunnymen - Crocodiles
Elastica - Elastica
Elvis Presley - The Sun Sessions
English Beat - I Just Can't Stop It
Shelley Fabares - Shelley! (although Best Of has Johnny Get Angry on it)
The Fall - The Wonderful Frightening World of The Fall (or perhaps Perverted by Language)
Fear - The Record
Feelies - The Good Earth
Flipper - Generic Flipper
Gang of Four - Entertainment!
Germs - (GI)
Go-Go's - Beauty and the Beat
Gun Club - Fire of Love
Happy Flowers - Making the Bunny Pay
Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Frenzy
Jimi Hendrix Experience - Smash Hits
Hoodoo Gurus - Stonage Romeos
Husker Du - Zen Arcade
Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power
Jam - All Mod Cons (or perhaps Snap!)
Josef K - Only Fun In Town
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures (maybe Closer on other days)
Killing Joke - Killing Joke
Meat Puppets - II
Metal Urbain - L' Age d'or
Midnight Oil - 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Minor Threat - Minor Threat
Minutemen - Double Nickles on the Dime
Naked Raygun - Throb Throb
New Order - Movement
Nirvana - Nevermind
Pretenders - Pretenders
R.E.M. - Murmur
Replacements - Let It Be
Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks
Section 25 - From The Hip
Siouxie and the Banshees - The Scream (or maybe Once Upon A Time)
Smiths - Smiths
Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight
Sonic Youth - Sister (maybe Daydream Nation on other days)
Specials - Specials
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
Squirrel Bait - Squirrel Bait
Steel Pole Bathtub - Butterfly Love
Swans - Greed
Thor - Unchained
U2 - Boy
Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground and Nico
Who - Quadrophenia
Wire - Pink Flag
X - Los Angeles
XTC - Black Sea (or maybe English Settlement)

On the bus

Ok, here is a little example of the customer service to illustrate my point. This was overheard yesterday when I was on the bus, this exchange between the bus driver and somebody at a bus stop.

Where's the 432?

It just went by.

The sign said it was the 401.

Oh, he must have forgotten to change the sign.

Well, that's just fucking great.

Well, it isn't my fault, is it. (This wasn't spoken as a question.)

The bus drivers are like the worst. Sometimes they make all the stops, but they don't care. Whether you get on the bus or not makes no difference to them. They get paid the same and their shift ends at the same time. Sometimes you have to almost jump in front of the bus to get them to stop (which for you kids at home is not something you should try because the buses are huge and the drivers are scary drivers) and still if they don't feel like stopping, they will keep going on.

Slavishly following the trend?

Seems like you are nothing without one of these bl*g things (hate hate hate that word, oh why must it be such a stupid word?). Will I become all powerful and have politicians knocking on my door asking for a nice mention in my little page? Will I tip the media my way, back where I think it should be?

Or will it mostly be things like, so why is customer service in the UK so abysmally bad? They don't really say 'piss off or I won't help you at all', well not outright. It isn't even East Coast rude bad which is always jarring coming from a West Coast mentality. You pay for a courier to deliver something to you and spend two days getting an answering machine trying to set up the delivery and then when you finally get a real person to answer the phone, you get 'piss off and maybe we will deliver it tomorrow or maybe we won't deliver it at all and we will just send it back, so there'.

Oh, there is a friendly face on top of it and a nice accent, but you know when you walk out the door, they are saying, what a prat that was. I worked in this guy's computer shop for a few weeks and it was funny to see the things he would say about the customers after they left. He just clipped them for a good sum and he was chuckling about how stupid they were and how easy it was to take them.

Hmm, yeah, probably more of that then.