“From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.
What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.”
Went to see Tom Waits on Friday night in the Phoenix Park. Sweet-fucking-Jesus-having-a-wank-up-on-the-cross was it amazing. He came on at 8.25pm and played until after 11. Just brilliant with a nice mix of old numbers and his later brand of insane, grinding, fucked up noise.
Found this footage on youtube, sound quality is pretty awful.
When he played Tom Traubert’s Blues the audience creamed their jeans (even the women!).
I subscribe to a great site called pulp of the day. Every day they put up a new pulp magazine cover.
I love this stuff.
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These next two aren’t from pulp of the day, just found somewhere on the net.
Tales To Astonish issue 27 – January 1962. The first appearance of Hank Pym/Ant Man – soon to star in his own movie from Marvel. Cover and interior pencils by the great Jack Kirby.
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Crime SuspenStories issue 22 – May 1954. Cover by Johnny Craig. This cover brought a lot of trouble to EC, there were claims that they were corrupting the youth of America which lead to calls for comics to be censored. The great thing about it was that this was a censored cover. Before publication they sliced the bottom inch off of the original which showed strands of bloody muscle and sinew hanging from the woman’s neck!
My brother Gerry sent me this great video of Seasick Steve calling out a guy in the audience for being a cunt.
We were at this gig. It was in Tripod, which must be the worst venue in the whole of fucking Dublin (actually, no, it ties with The Academy on Middle Abbey Street – they are both entirely shit, but in subtly different ways).
Tripod is basically a nightclub that sometimes has live music. This means that whenever a good band or act comes to play, you can be sure that at east 30% of the audience are there only because of the nightclub vibe.
It was Seasick Steve for fucks sake and every second person at the gig was dressed in their best clubbing gear – I saw dozens of feather haired pricks wearing fitted black shirts with white collar and cuffs (always the hallmark of a complete cunt) actually standing with their backs to the stage while they talked really loudly about whatever big-titted retard they happened to be polishing their wilted, poisoned cocks to that week.
We saw one ridiculously short twat actually standing on his tip-toes at the bar beside a much taller girl. What did he think, that if stood on his tip-toes for the rest of his life she might never notice.
I’ve no problem with people who want to get dressed up and jump about like a bunch of epileptic fuckwits and wave glowsticks around like a fifteen year old at his first Scooter concert . . . just don’t come to a fucking blues gig to do it.
So, that’s why Tripod is shit.
The Academy is shit because it used to be called HQ and back then it was the best venue in town – just a really fucking great place to watch a gig – great beer, cool crowd of people who really cared about seeing the gig and who knew to shut the fuck up when the band was on. I saw some great acts there: Buddy Guy, Peter Green, John Paul Jones playing old Led Zep tracks on his eight string bass, Robert Plant and The Priory Of Brion, Big Bill Morganfield.
But of course they had to fuck with it and rip out all the seats so they could fit more in and rearrange it and these days it’s just a complete clusterfuck with really bad acoustics.
Gigs these days seem to be full of people who don’t like music.
I was at an Australian Pink Floyd gig in the Olympia a few years back and when we got there we realised that they had sold most of the balcony seats to some corporate event, there were hundreds of middle-aged pricks in dinner jackets all standing around drinking wine from plastic glasses. They all sat down then (we were completely surrounded by them) and spent the next two hours taking the piss out of the music and rolling their eyes and having a chat.
Who are these people? Where do the come from? And why don’t they fuck off with themselves?
Was up in Dublin for the weekend, went to see Dead Man’s Shoes at the IFI. I’ve seen this six or seven times but it was good to see it on the big screen.
They also showed Paddy Considine’s new short film, Dog Altogether, which was excellent. Considine did a Q&A afterwards, seems like a good egg.
Even the three borderline-retarded mooks sitting across the way from us who laughed a little too loudly at the violent bits and then sprayed deodorant on themselves halfway through the short couldn’t spoil what was a thoroughly pleasant afternoon. There was a technical hitch with the sound system that meant the short film had to be started again after about thirty seconds, the largest and most stupid looking one opined loudly that “Paddy Consintine won’t be happy with that!”
As we left they were discussing the sound Considine’s hand gun had made, apparently, because of the distinctive “whoop” it could only have been a “.22” They also agreed that one of the executions had been “text book.” Stupid fucking twats.
Got some great news yesterday. Nature editor Henry Gee emailed me to say that he’s accepting my short story “Spamface” for publication in the Futures section of an upcoming issue.
