Any Other Business: Part LXIV

As the title suggests, so forth.

As You Were!

And so back to level 3 (plus) lockdown, but the schools stay open. You see the fact that the very noticeable spike in numbers during the level 5 lockdown just happened to coincide with the return of the schools after the mid-term break is just noise not the signal. The signal is that wet pubs are to blame for everything. That’s what compelling evidence, which hasn’t been independently parsed, tells the neo-prohibitionists in the government. And furthermore you, yes you, are to blame: once again you, yes you, got complacent. Indeed this time around the complacency, and the letting down of the guard, and all the other irritating chiding clichés, took on even more magical properties; because, when this line of attack from NPHET voices started, it had not actually been 2 weeks since the announcement of the vaccine, which would mean that people had …  relaxed in anticipation of the announcement? Yes, clearly that makes more sense than not: Bad people!

Here’s my playlist… Give it a listen when you’re ready to take things a bit more seriously…

Spotify these 60 songs for a 00s mood

Metric – Help I’m Alive // Snow Patrol – Spitting Games // Gwen Stefani – What You Waiting For? // Red Hot Chili Peppers – By the Way // Morrissey – Last of the Gang to Die // The Postal Service –The District Sleeps Alone Tonight // Moby – Porcelain // Clint Mansell – Lux Aeterna // Metric – Stadium Love // Interpol – Mammoth // Auf Der Maur – Followed the Waves // Arcade Fire – Neighbourhood 3 (Power Out) // Modest Mouse – Float On // Madison Avenue – Don’t Call Me Baby // Gwen Stefani – Rich Girl // Gnarls Barkley – Crazy // Regina Spektor – Fidelity // Coldplay – Trouble // Metric – Poster of a Girl // The Postal Service – Such Great Heights // Auf Der Maur – Skin Receiver // Muse – Supermassive Black Hole // Gwen Stefani – Hollaback Girl // Lady Gaga – Bad Romance // Muse – Time is Running Out // Modest Mouse – Ocean Breathes Salty // Temper Trap –Sweet Disposition // Muse – Starlight // The Killers – Mr Brightside // The Killers – Smile Like You Mean It // Arcade Fire – Rebellion (Lies) // Coldplay – In My Place // Muse – Stockholm Syndrome // Broken Social Scene – Lover’s Spit // Garbage – Bleed Like Me // Morrissey – Life is a Pigsty // Coldplay – The Scientist // The Killers – All These Things That I’ve Done // Vanessa Carlton – A Thousand Miles // REM –Imitation of Life // Wheatus – Teenage Dirtbag // Modest Mouse – Fire It Up // Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around // Arcade Fire – Black Mirror // Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard – Why So Serious? // Auf Der Maur – Real A Lie // Moby – Natural Blues // The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army // Tomoyasu Hotei – Battle without Honour or Humanity // Morrissey – Irish Blood, English Heart // Interpol – Evil // Linkin Park – In the End // Moby – Extreme Ways // Red Hot Chili Peppers – Venice Queen // The Postal Service – Nothing Better // David Holmes – Gritty Shaker // Interpol – Obstacle 1 // Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero // Red Hot Chili Peppers – Zephyr Song //Howard Shore – The Fellowship of the Ring theme

Glee: The 3-D Concert Movie

Glee: The 3-D Concert Movie is less concert film, featuring most of the cast of Glee performing in character, and more socio-political manifesto by Ryan Murphy.

The film opens with backstage interviews with the Glee cast. Oddly some of them stay in character and some don’t. Their character names then flash up on screen during their on-stage introduction and Artie stays in his wheelchair just to hammer home that they’re performing in character as New Directions, sort of. If the film wants to refer to the performers by character name, I’m happy to oblige and save myself a visit to IMDb. Proceedings begin, of course, with the trademark god-awful cover of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’. The words ‘of course’ apply to most of the numbers. This is a greatest hits package of songs that the show has affixed to particular characters, all of whom get the chance to step up and strut their stuff.

Miss Holliday cameos for one Ce Loo song, but Mr Schuster is conspicuously absent. Puck, Mercedes and Artie all get to show off with solo songs but the most notable turn is Britney’s energetic performance of ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’, which is outrageously sleazy, and leads to the thought that 3-D works well for horror and animation but is perhaps also something that could enhance musicals. Not that it works particularly well here, the choreography is too basic for there to really be anything to show off, but there are moments when it adds something. But while they fail to exploit the third dimension these are good performances – Mike Chang can dance! As indeed can the other secondary characters. But then the lead characters can really sing. Rachel belts out ‘Firework’, and, as Nadine O’Regan has noted, Katy Perry’s lungs resemble those of a blue whale.

Regrettably this is not solely a concert film. There are endless inserts following three Glee fans. Apparently Glee cures Asperger’s, makes dwarves (their term) popular and enables gay students survive high school. Apparently I hallucinated three hilarious pre-Glee seasons of Ugly Betty valorising a hopeless nerd, celebrating difference and positively depicting a fabulous high school student… Lady GaGa’s ‘Born This Way’ is the show-climaxing statement of socio-political intent, but Glee cannot sustain this solving-all-the-world’s-problems-with-a-soft-shoe-shuffle pomposity – what could? Glee is just a TV show with glaring limitations. It’s a blender which flattens all music. Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and Massive Attack’s ‘Inertia Creeps’ would all emerge sounding the same, as deeply over-produced pop. I previously criticised its lack of ambition beside Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, and here Kurt performs ‘I Want to Hold your Hand’ – precisely as Taymor reinterpreted it! Even their innovations are derivative!!

This is a genuinely enjoyable concert, but the documentary segments are actually mildly disturbing…

2/5

(P.S. Stay on after the credits for another signature song…)

The Ashen Road

A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement….

What’s a train?

Oh silly me, I forgot you were born after the hauntingly vague apocalypse.

So I wouldn’t know what a train was.

No, you wouldn’t.

Okay.

Okay.

The man smiled sadly. The man and the boy trudged onwards along the ashen road. The road was covered in ash, the ground on either side was covered in ash, and the trees set back from the road were ashy, probably because they were ash-trees. Ash was everywhere, even in his memories, as his wife had been called Ash, even though she had had a willowy figure. His wife. He remembered her desertion of them without emotion. It had been too long ago for the concept of emotion to remain after the language had died that could express it.

The man woke from a dream. Even his dreams were pallid and ashen. He tried to get back to sleep, hoping that maybe this dream would have some flash of vivid colour. He returned to his dream, he was following a pig in the dark but without being able to reach it. The pig had something on its back – it was carrying fire in a container with glazed sides that allowed the light to escape. The man realised he would never catch the pig. Then he woke and wept.

What’ll we do for food now?

We’ll get by. We always do. Do you remember the time we came across a bunker full of food, and before that the time we stumbled onto a truck full of food, or the time we were hunting for mushrooms in a field, down on our hands and knees rooting like pigs, and then we found a dead pig.

You think that will happen again?

Well, maybe not it exactly, but… Something will turn up, it always does, it’s like some secular intervention keeps putting food just a bit further down the road despite the fact that all life was wiped out some years ago by that oddly unspecified event.

Is that how other people survive?

Yes, that and eating each other.

But we’d never do that.

No.

Never?

Not unless it was someone truly evil. Like Lady GaGa.

Okay.

Okay.

The boy was excited when the man returned from the woods beside the road.

Who’s that?

Who?

That old man in the distance, further along the ashen road.

He looks like a Jungian Archetype.

What?

Damn! I forgot.

You wouldn’t know because the apocalypse happened, somehow, before you were born but a Jungian Archetype is a reference to Star Wars.

Star Wars?

A Film.

Film?

Never mind, the point is that if the man has a beard, he’ll be wise.

You have a beard.

Ah, but my beard’s not white. If his is white he’s wise, if he’s also British then we’re really in luck. He’ll know what’s going on for sure.

The old man stopped walking when he heard the sound of their footsteps. The man approached slowly, and tried to convey by holding his hands out that he meant no harm to the old man.

I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you, about the apocalypse.

Go ahead.

What reason?

That question makes no sense.

I was being cryptic for the sake of the boy. Can you save us?

Yes. I have a book that can rebuild technology.

REALLY?

Yes, boy of indeterminate age, I have in my mind….The old man tapped his forehead….

The complete King James Bible.

The what?

The boy stood with a confused expression on his face while the old man smiled and the man looked like he was recovering from a nasty shock.

The King James Bible, said the man, disappointed. A book that can’t even get Pi right and you expect it to rebuild civilisation?

Oh, I’m sorry, I must be mistaken, I thought you were characters from the Book of Eli. My Bad.

The old man shuffled off down along the ashen road.

I always thought Jung was full of crap said the man, before coughing so violently that blood dripped ominously from his mouth.

Later. The man was huddled in his blanket. A grizzled man stood looking at him with compassion. Life ebbing, the boy crying.

But I don’t want to leave you.

Don’t be afraid. Remember what I taught you about Hollywood clichés.

To carry the flame, and always just be myself.

Yes. And even the last man on earth can have a happy ending. You just have to believe…

The boy cried for a time. Then he followed his new father figure. If civilisation ever returned, he was sure his dead father’s story would win many awards. For bravery, and other things.