Friday, January 22, 2010
Retail Therapy
Supermarkets are strange places. They seem to be continually able to buck the trends that are detectable elsewhere. We are living in a time of fiscal rectitude and economic despondency and the evidence is all around us. Half completed housing estates, shabby unkempt public spaces, boarded up main streets, disfigured potholed roads – these have recently become, and will remain, features of our landscape. But the supermarket seems to be miraculously immune to any downward spiral. The supermarket just gets shinier and happier. They get bigger and brighter and more replete when everything else is getting smaller, dirtier and sparser.
And aren’t they a reassuring presence? Essential supplies and essential positive reinforcement. The cosy glow of a million sparkling apples and symmetrically arranged bovine body parts.
"I understand the music, I understand the movies, I even see how comic books can tell us things. But there are full professors in this place who read nothing but cereal boxes. It's the only avant-garde we've got."
Don Delillo, White Noise 1984
And aren’t they a reassuring presence? Essential supplies and essential positive reinforcement. The cosy glow of a million sparkling apples and symmetrically arranged bovine body parts.
"I understand the music, I understand the movies, I even see how comic books can tell us things. But there are full professors in this place who read nothing but cereal boxes. It's the only avant-garde we've got."
Don Delillo, White Noise 1984
Your Not Too Bad Self
You can’t be anything but cynical when it comes to RTE and home grown comedy. Recent efforts in this area have been successful in the same way that, say, Paddy Neary was successful in identifying, rooting out and eradicating irregularities and corruption in the financial services sector. But, as the same Paddy is well aware, we as a nation are more than willing to forgive, forget and forge on.
We are not so churlish as to resurrect past embarrassments when it comes to evaluating new output. We can look with fresh, unjaundiced eyes. Which is just as well because if you were to analyse “Your Bad Self” in a job lot with all of the station’s comedy offerings of the last two years, it would only make a barely discernible scrawl on the credit side of the ledger but taken in isolation it is in fact, wait for it , quite flippin’ good.
It passes the crucial comedic test of being able to creep up on you a couple of days afterwards to illicit a bout of involuntary chortling. This has been my experience at any rate with sketches such as the unfortunate paper cut guy, the chap trying in vain to find his self defence class, the x men shop assistant and the piece de resistance so far, the horse trader trying to buy a pair of glasses.
RTE has produced something very funny, all on its lonesome. Something is very wrong in the universe.
We are not so churlish as to resurrect past embarrassments when it comes to evaluating new output. We can look with fresh, unjaundiced eyes. Which is just as well because if you were to analyse “Your Bad Self” in a job lot with all of the station’s comedy offerings of the last two years, it would only make a barely discernible scrawl on the credit side of the ledger but taken in isolation it is in fact, wait for it , quite flippin’ good.
It passes the crucial comedic test of being able to creep up on you a couple of days afterwards to illicit a bout of involuntary chortling. This has been my experience at any rate with sketches such as the unfortunate paper cut guy, the chap trying in vain to find his self defence class, the x men shop assistant and the piece de resistance so far, the horse trader trying to buy a pair of glasses.
RTE has produced something very funny, all on its lonesome. Something is very wrong in the universe.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Horses For Courses
In the wake of the recent wintry weather there has been a lot of comment and apparent surprise at the inadequacy of the government’s reaction. All of it misplaced as far as I am concerned.
I mean was there genuine shock or outrage in the west of the country last year when Sligo Rovers failed to win the Champions League? No there wasn’t. Instead there was an implicit understanding on the part of the supporters that their team was several million light years away from being capable of winning the Champions League. Did we witness scenes of civil unrest in Ballinasloe last Spring when the local club professional Gearoid Mac Giolla Padraig failed to win The Masters in Augusta? No. Because a quick assessment of the achievements, capabilities and limitations of the individual in question could not possibly yield any other conclusion.
We seem to be incapable of applying the same type of measured judgements to members of the cabinet. We harbour some sort of irrational expectation that people with a consistent track record of malpractice, negligence and incompetence are miraculously going to defy logic, precedent and history and actually do something useful.
Noel Dempsey was in Malta for most of it, well thank Christ for that. Imagine the mess we’d have on our hands if the clown was actually around to make a few decisions.
You might get away with entering a Shetland pony in the Gold Cup, but don’t get too despondent when he can’t get over the first fence.
I mean was there genuine shock or outrage in the west of the country last year when Sligo Rovers failed to win the Champions League? No there wasn’t. Instead there was an implicit understanding on the part of the supporters that their team was several million light years away from being capable of winning the Champions League. Did we witness scenes of civil unrest in Ballinasloe last Spring when the local club professional Gearoid Mac Giolla Padraig failed to win The Masters in Augusta? No. Because a quick assessment of the achievements, capabilities and limitations of the individual in question could not possibly yield any other conclusion.
We seem to be incapable of applying the same type of measured judgements to members of the cabinet. We harbour some sort of irrational expectation that people with a consistent track record of malpractice, negligence and incompetence are miraculously going to defy logic, precedent and history and actually do something useful.
Noel Dempsey was in Malta for most of it, well thank Christ for that. Imagine the mess we’d have on our hands if the clown was actually around to make a few decisions.
You might get away with entering a Shetland pony in the Gold Cup, but don’t get too despondent when he can’t get over the first fence.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Five & Dime
I imagine you will be as surprised as I was to learn that there were only three records released throughout the entire nineteen eighties. They are “99 Red Balloons”, “Money for Nothing” and “Don’t You Want Me”. You may have thought that musicians such as REM, New Order, The Blue Nile, Prefab Sprout, Husker Du, Sonic Youth or The Stone Roses were around during the nineteen eighties but you would be mistaken. History will definitively record that there was only Nina, The Human League and Dire Straits.
One would expect our public representatives to be well turned out. They appear in the Dail on a daily basis in the presence of TV cameras and are always liable to be doorstepped by a crew anxious to glean their views on the issues of the day. So they should be well groomed and presentable, at a minimum. Joan Burton however does not seem to be a lady who is content to do things to the minimum standard required. Joan has taken the personal grooming ball and done a Forrest Gump with it. I don’t think I have seen her show up on any occasion with a head of hair that bears even the slightest resemblance to the previous day. And I’m not just talking about style here – I’m talking length, colour, shape, texture, footprint. It seems to me that Vidal Sassoon is doing a bit of moonlighting in Joan’s constituency office. We are all familiar with the tendency of women of a certain age to indulge in the daily wash and blow dry but this goes way beyond that. What is apparent here is a virtual quotidienne reinvention of the wheel. Auburn and long for an Oireachtas sub committee gives way to black and bobbed for a crucial Dail vote which in turn gives way to sandy and cropped for a bit of weekend slumming and low key constituency work. There’s regular multi tasking and then there’s Joan Burton style multi personality multi tasking. A different concept altogether, and the next big thing.
I recently went to a hardware store in the local town to buy a new hammer. The cashier told me it was €15 but I insisted upon giving him €25 for it on the basis that this is what it might be worth in ten years time. He seemed very happy with this arrangement. I was glad to help him out and be his friend.
It doesn’t take our friends in the Irish Farmers Association too long to apportion a monetary value to the odd meteorological anomaly. An IFA head by the name of Eddie Donnelly was on The Last Word last week in the early stages of the big freeze confidently predicting that this instalment of disagreeable weather would cost farmers €50 million. Eddie made no attempt to devise a figure which might imply that a shred of science had gone into its calculation. €50 million. Nice round number, easy enough for everyone to get their head around. At that stage about two inches of snow had fallen so presumably Eddie was basing his figures on the internationally accepted rule of thumb for when it’s a bit tricky to get silage to your livestock of a million per millimeter. A mill a mill. Lovely jubbly.
I recently opened a supplement to a daily newspaper and came across a feature on how the recession is affecting all of our kids. It was so enlightening and instructive that I found myself lamenting the fact that the editor hadn’t capitalised on the idea and turned it into a series chronicling the impact of the downturn on those we tend to overlook – “Badgers and the Bust”, “Cheyenne Dry”, “Rathkeale Rectitude”, “Insolvent Incas”, “Eskimonics”, “The Bankrupt Bedouin”. It could run and run.
One would expect our public representatives to be well turned out. They appear in the Dail on a daily basis in the presence of TV cameras and are always liable to be doorstepped by a crew anxious to glean their views on the issues of the day. So they should be well groomed and presentable, at a minimum. Joan Burton however does not seem to be a lady who is content to do things to the minimum standard required. Joan has taken the personal grooming ball and done a Forrest Gump with it. I don’t think I have seen her show up on any occasion with a head of hair that bears even the slightest resemblance to the previous day. And I’m not just talking about style here – I’m talking length, colour, shape, texture, footprint. It seems to me that Vidal Sassoon is doing a bit of moonlighting in Joan’s constituency office. We are all familiar with the tendency of women of a certain age to indulge in the daily wash and blow dry but this goes way beyond that. What is apparent here is a virtual quotidienne reinvention of the wheel. Auburn and long for an Oireachtas sub committee gives way to black and bobbed for a crucial Dail vote which in turn gives way to sandy and cropped for a bit of weekend slumming and low key constituency work. There’s regular multi tasking and then there’s Joan Burton style multi personality multi tasking. A different concept altogether, and the next big thing.
I recently went to a hardware store in the local town to buy a new hammer. The cashier told me it was €15 but I insisted upon giving him €25 for it on the basis that this is what it might be worth in ten years time. He seemed very happy with this arrangement. I was glad to help him out and be his friend.
It doesn’t take our friends in the Irish Farmers Association too long to apportion a monetary value to the odd meteorological anomaly. An IFA head by the name of Eddie Donnelly was on The Last Word last week in the early stages of the big freeze confidently predicting that this instalment of disagreeable weather would cost farmers €50 million. Eddie made no attempt to devise a figure which might imply that a shred of science had gone into its calculation. €50 million. Nice round number, easy enough for everyone to get their head around. At that stage about two inches of snow had fallen so presumably Eddie was basing his figures on the internationally accepted rule of thumb for when it’s a bit tricky to get silage to your livestock of a million per millimeter. A mill a mill. Lovely jubbly.
I recently opened a supplement to a daily newspaper and came across a feature on how the recession is affecting all of our kids. It was so enlightening and instructive that I found myself lamenting the fact that the editor hadn’t capitalised on the idea and turned it into a series chronicling the impact of the downturn on those we tend to overlook – “Badgers and the Bust”, “Cheyenne Dry”, “Rathkeale Rectitude”, “Insolvent Incas”, “Eskimonics”, “The Bankrupt Bedouin”. It could run and run.
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