Here I have to balance my ever-burgeoning admiration for Colin Farrell against my extreme wariness of anything Neil Jordan puts his name to. (For my money it goes like this- do see Mona Lisa, Company of Wolves, End of the Affair, The Butcher Boy….worth a look The Good Thief, Angel.….meh Michael Collins…..avoid like the plague Interview with a Vampire, The Crying Game).
The new Neil Jordan/Colin Farrell movie coming in the spring. It’s called Ondine, which in case you don’t know, mythology fans, is a German water nymph and it’s about a selkie which is an Irish mermaid…..
My heart isn’t in writing anything about yesterdays debacle at the Tin Mine or as I said to a Kopite, “The You’ll Never Walk Again Derby”. My thoughts agree with the sentiments of Mark O’Brien’s report at When Skies Are Grey- we bottled it. And while I’m sure I’ll feel differently in a few days, for now, yes, definitely fuck off Everton.
Oh yeah and to the comedian with the “Steaua Bucharest 1986″ banner on the Kop? Do you really want to highlight that the best Everton team for a generation were cheated out of competing for the European Cup because of your wall-pushing murdering breathren? Because Liverpool fans murdered 36 people? How’s that funny? Does the memory of Hillsborough allow you cover for you excesses & wipe out the consequences of Heysel?
A few weeks back I got some flak for giving the big thumbs up to Elvis’ tv room.
So to those people who were dubious about that interior decorating, I say- you are gonna love this-
Yet again the wonderful If Charlie Parker Were A Gunslinger site delves into Lifestyles of the Rich & Tasteless and gives us this fabulous picture of Sophia Loren’s Rome apartment circa 1964.
Check out the burnt orange chairs, seemingly de rigueur in the homes of stars in the Sixties. With matching lamps, by golly!!! Marvel at what appears to be a jewel-encrusted radiogram, bookended by two statues quiet possibly looted from a small Italian church!!! Note the four-poster bed with a quilt of the exact same pattern your granny had!!!! Dig the contrast between what appears to be a genuine 16th or 17th century ceiling and the genuine 1960’s powder blue shag carpet!!
Best of all, stare open-mouthed at La Loren reclining on her four poster bed, quiet possibly making plans for an evening of romance and playfulness in the Roman night and imagine that it all might end back here, in this very room, a night of passion and sensuality under the watchful gaze of the Madonna and Christchild. Framed with what could possibly be an early rendition of the flag of the European Union.Italians, dio boia.
As one commentator on the If Charlie Parker site remarked, who was she living with, the Pope?
If this were the Renaissance I would at least bet on her being secretly married to a Cardinal, at the very least.
I say good for her. What do you expect for a poor kid from Naples made good? Or Tupelo Mississippi for that matter…bloody Ikea?
And now that I think about it, if you ended up in La Loren’s bedroom in a sultry Roman night in 1964, would you really be checking out the decor…..seriously????
….while checking out video for the post below I came across these two historical artifacts. The first is the earliest known footage of the Merseyside Derby……from 1902. Everton win, cue “much handshaking”.
The second is from the excellent British Pathe Film newsreel site which has a treasure trove of video, including this look at the 1967 Everton-Liverpool 5th round F.A. cup tie, played at Goodison but beamed back to Anfield and shown on big screens around the Tin Mine. The clip concentrates on the technological innovation, but we do get a look at my all-time Everton hero Alan Ball scoring the winner……
I was going to post on the build-up to the Merseyside Derby and explain why like many others I hate derby week and it’s attendant ratcheting up of disdain and loathing one for the other, but I will abstain from giving the rachet another twist.
Then I found myself on an Everton internet forum writing these words about the Lovables, in reply to someone who said he had a friend who believed Liverpool F.C. to be evil.
“I don’t know if I think they are evil but an institution like a football club can have a collective ethos. And theirs is hugely arrogant, insular and defensive, constantly put upon with a horrible victim’s complex. There is something twisted and small-minded- a nastiness, a spitefulness.”
(His response- “Can we get all that on a banner?”)
So I thought I might I expound on the collective ethos that blankets our horrible neighbours and quickly said “no, better blue me, why go there? I don’t want to write about them anyway” Instead, here’s some of my fave derby moments, which I hope we’ll add to come the weekend.
The first two goals on this video are iconic. Andy King’s great goal ended a long dry spell of grim draws and grimmer defeats. Oh how I rubbed the smug Kopite noses in it on the following Monday morning at school. The Sharp goal signaled the resurgence of Everton under Howard Kendall for all the world to see. Everton never looked back and went on to be Champions…..
Summoning up all our feelings about Liverpool, Kevin Sheedy scores from a wonderful freekick and salutes the Kop….
Liverpool’s current tormentor Tim Cahill, scoring from an Arteta freekick. What’s satisfying about this is that you can hear some Red say, “Tim fucking Cahill AGAIN…”
After an uninspired cup exit, routine wins (can anything ever be routine for Everton…?) against Sunderland & at Wigan have set the Blues up for a run of games that have loomed large since the fixtures were announced last summer- Liverpool at the tin mine, home games against league leaders Chelsea, the Europa league first leg with Sporting Lisbon, Man Utd., Sporting away and finishing the month away at Tottenham. A return of eight points or better in the Premier League and advancing to the next round in Europe will rocket a season that was spiraling out of control before Christmas into a Spring full of hope and possibility. Nil satis……
…….or if you happen to have this in your possession …..call me. I mean who isn’t in the market for a genuine 14th Century Baltic German Pirate’s impaled skull??????
(Kudos to Capt. C. Jack Rackham and her trusty sidekick Ashley for bringing this to my notice)
Robert Christgau, the music critic for the Village Voice was unknown to me and probably to everybody else in Ireland. The Voice obviously wasn’t sold in Dublin and back then “on line” was something you did at the chipper or the dole office, except we called it “queueing”.
Anyway, after thumbing through the book at the bookshop and laughing here and nodding in agreement there, I decided I could stand to have my own prejudices reinforced and maybe even expanded so I bought it, took it home, no doubt dipping into it on the train out of town (more laughing, more nodding probably). Already an avid consumer of rock’n'roll, punk, the burgeoning “new wave”, country music, the country blues, Irish folk music (which leaves Christgau cold apparently) and whatever else caught my ear, the book served as a sort of musical compass and pointed me in all sorts of interesting directions. It allowed an absolute neophyte direction and a map into African music, pointed up new artists I had missed or dismissed, sent me back to old favorites with a different perspective.
(Of course there were missteps. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (Polydor, 1972). Seriously Robert I bought that one on your recommendation and fuck me but to these ears it’s well nigh unlistenable. )
Anyway, one Saturday I’m in town and there is a sale at the C.I.E Hall in Marlborough St. You know old clothes, books, records……and for 50 pence apiece (why do I remember that?) I buy Give It Up the Bonnie Raitt album and Kate & Anna McGarrigle.
(Now I can almost hear you say “Really Paul, Bonnie Raitt and the McGarrigle sisters? You were trying to impress some chick with your sensitive, open, more feminine side…..” And I say “oh do fuck off, if you wanted to show your sensitive, open, feminine side back in 1981 you got one of these bleedin’ haircuts and bought Spandau feckin’ Ballet albums……and I don’t do bleach or Spandau feckin’ Ballet”.)
Truth be told I was delighted to pick up albums that Christgau had recommended highly, that were not available new and was more than happy to give them a spin. And I wasn’t disappointed. If I played the Raitt album more back then and hardly ever do so now, as the years turned I am far more likely to pull out the McGarrigle sisters album and give it a whirl. It’s an infectious mix of voice and playing and I find myself laughing and singing along. It has aged to a fine mellow vintage, something lasting and timeless. So when I found out that Kate McGarrigle had passed on I felt more than a touch of sadness, for her yes, but also for a lost time when you could go into a working man’s hall and browse a thrift sale and come out with little treasures for fifty pence.
Back many, many years ago while starting off in the book trade, I expressed my admiration for Robert Parker to a canny book buyer at a NY city store. Agreeing with me, he nonetheless directed to some other writers- Stephen Greenleaf, Loren Estlemann, Joseph Hansen, James Crumley- who had breathed new life into the “down these mean streets a man must go who himself is not mean” p.i. genre. They wrote out there on the margins of popularity and their excellence never broke them through to best-seller status. The world’s loss I say, my gain.
Robert Parker of course did achieve bestseller status and richly deserved it was too. I don’t think I’ve ever picked up one of his books that wasn’t enjoyable, some tremendously so. His finest creation, Spenser, (“like the poet”) is an essential part of the private eye canon. And though he went on to write other excellent novels, it is Spenser he will be remembered for. And according to my friend the book buyer, like many an author before him Parker had at one point tired of Spenser and decided to “kill him”.
The story, maybe apocryphal, goes like this. Parker approaches his publisher with an idea for a new Spenser novel. Susan, Spenser’s inamorata, leaves Spenser for another man. Spenser, spiralling into drink and despair, seeks her out and insane with jealousy, tries to kill her. He in turn is tracked down by Hawk and is himself killed. Hawk and Susan ride off into the sunset together. It’s Parker and Spenser’s Reichenbach Falls moment and there is no escape.
Understandably the publisher is appalled at this murder of his cash cow and uses every weapon in his armory to persuade Parker against this course. Successfully so and a novel appears, “Catskill Eagle” which resembles this plot, without Hawk having to off Spenser and with our hero getting the girl back.
Maybe the publisher should have let Parker have his way, if indeed he did want to bump off his creation. After “Catskill Eagle”, an off-kilter novel that reads more like Rambo than Spenser, the series veers off into pleasurable ordinariness, fun but not the edgy reconstruct of the genre of the earlier novels. Still, if you’ve never read “Looking for Rachel Wallace” or “Early Autumn” you could do a lot worse than pick them up and spend some time with one of detective fictions great characters.
The always fascinating blog “If Charlie Parker Were A Gunslinger……” publishes this fabulous picture of Elvis’ TV room circa the early-70’s and yes, I now have my color scheme for my home theatre. I’m guessing this is post-Priscilla and what we have is pure bachelor pad motif here.
Check out that black and gold color scheme! Revel in the shag carpet! Note the yellow brick road detail around the edge of the room and the “Taking Care of Business” lightning bolt on the wall! And pillows!!! Elvis, like yours truly, obviously loved loads of pillows and cushions for his lounging pleasure, after a hard day doing shitty movies!!! And who doesn’t like odd Monkey sculpture conversation pieces to help break the ice when you are introduced to the King of Rock’n'Roll??? Man, this is the most! Replace those old RCA’s with a monster flat screen and a Bose sound system and you transform your old Heartbreak Hotel decor into the Mansion on the Hill. Way to go, King!!!
