Dadblog

Being a soppy old romantic, last night was a winner. To celebrate our anniversary, my wife had booked a cab, secreted a bottle of bubbly and a couple of glasses in a bag, and booked a table at the People’s Palace. The cab dropped us off on Waterloo Bridge, and we glugged champagne while pretending to be Terry and Julie and watching the sun set over London (this always leads to a conversation along the lines of “wow, we live here,” “yeah, it’s amazing,” “do you think people in little towns do things like this?”, “no, I don’t”). We walked down to the embankment and continued the champagne on rain-drenched benches, agreeing that London actually looks best when it’s just been raining, so everything’s wet and shiny grey. Then to the People’s Palace for a slap-up meal and more wine.

All in all, a memorable anniversary. My head disagrees this morning, but never mind….

Today is our 14th wedding anniversary, which, a quick web search yesterday told me, is Ivory. So, of course, instead of buying some elephant foot litter bins and a complete dinner service fashioned out of a tusk, I adopted an Indian elephant on behalf of my wife (I also bought some jewellery - when buying a present, always throw in some jewellery, it puts everything in a good light).

But it wasn’t any old elephant, oh no. It was a particularly appropriate elephant:

Kiruba is a female Asian elephant who lives in Corbett National Park, in the Terai Arc lowlands of India. Kiruba is the dominant female in an extended family of 24 elephants. As the matriarch of the group she is relied upon to find food, water and safe habitat.

A matriarchal elephant - very good for my wife. They can discuss the shortcomings of their husbands over a red wine and some nuts.

Of course, no-one at home’s entirely sure that Kiruba really exists, but I’m sure our welcome pack will include a letter from her (though the handwriting won’t be up to much, elephant’s not possessing hands and everything), and she’ll never forget to send her quarterly update. Maybe it’ll be like one of those Christmas round robin letters Simon Hoggart loves so much: “We’re all very pleased with Narigu, whose trunk injury earlier in the year didn’t stop her entering the gymkhana, and who hopes to go to Elephant University and study Peanut Communications.”

Me, I got a labeller (excellent, as any David Allen fan will tell you), and a “Remember 1990″ card with a CD in it. The CD has a picture of Sinead O’Connor on it. I also got a T-shirt with Sabbath Zeppelin Purple on it, which everyone this morning says “shows my age”.

A big day for dad-related stuff. In the morning, my daughter slammed her chin into the side of a swimming pool at her first diving lesson and drove her teeth into her lower lip, leading to a tearful call from my wife who was on her way to the dentist and then to A&E. My daughter’s going to be fine, thankfully, but her lip looks like it’s gone a few rounds with Ali. What’s interesting (for me, anyway) is how upset I was about the potential aesthetic impact of the accident - will there be a scar? Will her teeth be chipped? Nothing to do with the fact that she’s a girl, of course…..

In the evening, things were much better - I took my son to his first gig. Fountains of Wayne at Carling Islington Academy, supported (fabulously) by the mighty Glenn Tilbrook, who has long hair and now looks like a really cool uncle (as all middle-aged rockstars are required to look, obviously). FoW were great - punchy and loud and intelligent all at the same time time - and they did an encore with Tillbrook which featured Red Dragon Tattoo and Another Nail in my Heart. My son loved it - he sat on the corner of the bar, shouted “shit!” with rock ‘n’ roll abandon during Bright Future in Sales, and basically had a much better time than I did at my first gig, which was Asia at Wembley Arena for reasons I can no longer fathom.

Kids, eh?

From the always wonderful TV Cream’s A-Z of Summer Telly:

I is for … “I LOVE MY MOM AND DAD AND MY BROTHERS TOO, AND THE GROOVY WAY
WE GET ALONG”
For years, British kids were assured that The Flintstones, that bedrock of
barely amusing buffoonery, actually played as an adult comedy series across
the pond. Of course, this couldn’t possibly be true, as all the business
about sliding down dinosaurs’ necks and Fred’s feet making that patented
Hanna Barbera twangy-whizz-bang sound whenever he ran was strictly
juvenilia, right? But WAIT TILL YOUR FATHER GETS HOME? That was a different
proposition altogether, with its animated depiction of a typical ’70s
American household. So ‘adult’, in fact, was the show that it even dared to
give the titular parent a dull workaday occupation, with Harry Boyle (voiced
by Tom “Sunday, Monday” Bosley) schlepping out of the house every day to run
his restaurant supply business. Alongside that, there was more than a whiff
of pubescence about offspring Chet, Alice, and Jamie, the former being far
more of a potential dopehead than Shaggy off of Scooby Doo. And better yet,
there was baffling and scary American politics as McCarthy-ite next door
neighbour Ralph and his Company B anti-communist force regularly went about
their business persecuting hippies. Heady stuff indeed, and the fact it was
normally mired in the No Man’s Land that bridged the end of children’s telly
and the onset of Martin Lewis just added to its lustre.

Just arrived in the post, the latest shipment from Amazon: the first Neu! album, Elvis at Sun, Ed Harcourt’s From Every Sphere and the DVD of Richard Pryor Live in Concert. Can’t wait to show that last one to the kids.

On first listen, the Neu! is amazing (I’m sadly ignorant on Krautrock, despite Julian Cope’s best efforts). Michael Rother’s website is very good for those wishing to plunge into this dark water even further…

Went to see Will Smith in I Robot on Tuesday night, and what a silly load of nonsense it was. The main thing I remember from the Asimov stories when I read them as a teenager was the ingenious ways he found around the original three laws of robotics; part intellectual exercise, part demonstration of the nonsense of trying to present reality in written laws, especially when there’s only three of them.

But now it’s been Hollywoodised, the way to get round the three laws is just to reprogram the robots to ignore them! Ta-dah! What an insipid watering down of an interesting mind puzzle - thus has Hollywood dumbed down through the decades.

Apologies for the delay in posting. All my blogging time is being taken up with upgrading to MT3.0, and it’s not proved to be straightforward. Still struggling with comment authentication - grrrrr!

I am once again indebted to my remarkable young female friend for putting together a list of all the wildlife we saw in Corsica, like the one she did for me after our trip to Norfolk. There’s some additional fish tacked on at the end, which the responsibility for misnaming is mine:

Natterjack Toad, Green Toad, Common Frog tadpoles, Common Frog, Sand Lizard, Common Wall Lizard, Grass Snake, Moorish Gecko, Rock Urchin, Dotted Sea Slug, White-tailed Eagle, Hooded Crow, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Kestrel, Hoopoe, Buzzard, Northern Goshawk, Eleanora’s Falcon, Barn Owl, Sparrow, Robin, Swallow, Andouin’s Gull, Egret, Starling, Woodchat Shrike, Jay, Peregrin Falcon, Herring Gull, Prawns, Mitten Crab, Shore Crab, Edible Crab, Egyptian Grasshopper, Peppered Moth, Great Green Bush Cricket, Greenbottle, Wood Cricket, Horse Fly, Blue-winged Grasshopper, Flesh Fly, Migratory Locust, Stag Beetle, Dark Bush Cricket, Devil’s Coachbox, Purple Emperor, German Wasp, Swallowtail Moth, Hornet, Small Blue Moth, Harvester Ant, Large White Moth, Carpenter Bee, Small Heath Moth, Honey bee, Praying Mantis, Mason Bee, Hummingbird Moth, Hawk Moth, Privet Hawk Moth, Hover Fly, Cat, Dog, Mouse, Corsican Mouse, Noctale Bat, Horse, Red Fox, Sheep, Cows, Mullet, Sea Bream, Moray Eel, Grouper, Peacock Wrasse, Rainbow Wrasse….and more….

Google that, Google!

And we still didn’t see the chuffing wild boar!

Great site with stuff you’ve never noticed in The Shining, including:

4. In one scene, Jack notices his wife trying to read over his shoulder while he’s typing. He tears the sheet from the typewriter and throws it on the floor. When Wendy leaves and Jack turns around to begin typing again, there’s a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter. Kubrick doesn’t make mistakes like that. The Overlook is actually feeding Jack paper.

He’s right, goddamnit!

UPDATE: From my colleague Paul - the footage at the start of the film shot from a helicopter is actually unused footage from The Deer Hunter.

My son became obsessed with Fountains of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers while on holiday, but we’re sanctimonious about him swearing so he sang the chorus to track 2 as “I’ve got to get my beep together, ‘cos I can’t live like this forever.”

Leading my daughter to tell him: “It’s not beep. It’s shit.”

I fang yoo.