Madness and civilization

The casual reader, so we are constantly told by erudite literary pundits such as Charlotte Rampling, Anita Pallenberg and/or Princess Margaret in the bath, is usually won or lost within the first couple of sentences. Here’s a fine example of how to begin a book review (in this instance, of George W Bush’s Decision Points, by Eliot Weinberger in the London Review of Books):

In the late 1960s, George Bush Jr was at Yale, branding the asses of pledges to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity with a hot coathanger. Michel Foucault was at the Societé française de philosophie, considering the question, ‘What is an author?’

The two, needless to say, never met...

Decline and fail

Evelyn Waugh, interviewed in 1964, offers his opinion on James Joyce:

He began writing quite well and you can see him going mad as he wrote, and his last books... only fit to be set for examinations at Cambridge.

A Pleasant Evening In The Aegean

Earlier today I finished a chapter in the ongoing work in progress, with an appropriate cliffhanger point: a terrorist pressing the button on his laptop to set off the Very Bad Thing (no, I'm not telling you). I thought I'd jump ahead a bit now. The last act of the book is set on the island of Andros, in the Aegean. It's a lifelong fascination with Greece that probably made me set the action there, and I know someone in Athens who's been a source of good information on the island (thanks, Selene!). And so I thought I'd gather some images, show you what the place is like... just so you can see for yourselves.

Jammy Helen Mirren

...so there we were, Charles Frith and me, lounging in Bed Supperclub, watching the floor show (gymnasts, gay pharaohs, a surveyor in teeny hotpants, King Kong), debating whether gorgonzola tart really classifies as a pudding and discussing hallucinogens and religion and search engine optimisation and I pondered the number of people who come to this blog on the promise of underclad images of three specific ladies, Charlotte Rampling in particular and whether they were more significant than adding catnip keyboards like *bosoms!* *bottoms!* *extreme  sexy rudeness with bosoms and bottoms!!!* and for some reason we decided that the most tempting come-on would be the three-word phrase at the top of this post. So there.

But then I received an e-mail from my dad asking why I had yet to commemorate the passing of Pete Postlethwaite, custodian of the finest cheekbones in the business, so here’s a little something that probably won’t grab so much traffic but hey, ultimately, who’s counting?

Biting the hand

At CNNGo, I grumble about all the nice restaurants that give me free meals. Cleverly naming no names, so if anybody gets shirty, I can say “No, of course I didn’t mean your place...”

We’re only making wreaths for Nigel

And I thought Helen was going to give birth to the Antichrist. 

My new favourite song

I must admit that I’m not all that familiar with the work of the punk-jazz quartet The Bird Architects, although they do seem to push a few Ornette-shaped buttons, which would suggest that they’re worthy of further investigation. Never mind that though... just look what this tune’s called:

BIRD ARCHITECTS - CULTURAL SNOW

Bird Architects | Myspace Music Videos