Dadblog

I was bored with the old look-and-feel. And I wanted something old school and serif. So I nicked this from MovableStyle, and I like it a lot. White background, black text. Nothing fancy. The English Breakfast of web design….

…and Simon’s got a brand new weblog.

Nice design, too. I wonder if he did it himself?

Fashion, especially women’s fashion, is something of a closed book to me. Yes, I know that sounds like David Starkey (and, as anyone who gets Word magazine will tell you, David Starkey really is an arsehole).

But I digress. Fashion, closed book, me. And it occurred to me this morning that an awful lot of women, including my wife, are going round wearing something which only a few years ago would have been considered outrageous. I’m talking about boots. Specifically long black leather boots. With very high heels.

I’m imagining a conversation in, say, 1998.

“What shall I wear with these skintight jeans I’ve got on, darling?”

“Well, how about a knee-high pair of black leather boots with incredibly high heels that fit snugly at the calf and have a vaguely sadomasochistic air about them. That’d be nice.”

Cue long stare and contemptuous roll of the eyes.

Not that I’m complaining, you understand. What red-blooded male would complain about a woman in high-heeled boots, for Christ’s sake? And that’s the point. When men’s fantasies and women’s fashion overlap, the men all start becoming deeply uncomfortable.

And don’t get me started on the huge underwear poster on Kennington Park Road. Let’s just say there’s a new accident black spot in the capital.

One of the ironies of my marriage is that the only relatively cool music which my wife likes, reggae, has always been a complete mystery to me. Not for lack of trying; I’ve bought all the standard Bob Marley CDs in an attempt to penetrate the mystery, but it’s always seemed a bit, well, vapid to me.

Until today. Today, I went past the dodgy CD outlet on Leather Lane market, where they were selling Trojan CD box sets for seven quid. I picked up the Ska and the UK Hits box sets. Haven’t listened to the Ska set yet, but the UK hits set is chuffing marvellous. You Can Get It If You Really Want. Uptown Top Ranking. Love of the Common People. Young Gifted and Black.

OK, so it’s like approaching punk rock via the Police. But it’s a start. Give it six months, and I’ll be crashing out to Lee Scratch Perry before you can say Electric Avenue.

This year’s retail marketing phenomenon is Cillit Bang, a cleaner of some description which has the most amazingly cod-traditional ad campaign and which seems to be able to dissolve the camouflage off a Sherman tank. So intrigued have we all been by this product that it’s spawned an FAQ website.

Having killed comments on this blog by requiring Typekey authentication, two days ago I took authentication off, put my tin hat on, and waited. I got one genuine comment (for which thank you), and last night my first spam:

Thanks for that insightful comment! It makes interesting reading, especially when I need a cash advance.

This has a certain comical beauty, but I still hope the person who sent it comes to a sticky end.

Dear Richard

I’ve always been a big fan of yours. I’ve sneered at the sneerers who knock you, who accuse you of being too smooth, too middle-of-the-road, too bloody successful by half. But I remember the glory days: Not the Nine O’Clock News, Blackadder, Four Weddings and a Funeral. Those things sustained me through Notting Hill, Love Actually and the first Bridget Jones film. Those three films I thought were a bit rubbish, actually, but they had their very funny moments, and you’d racked up so many comedy brownie points in the early Nineties that I didn’t care.

Richard, last night I saw Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason.

Richard, what were you thinking?

Richard, you’re one of four (count ‘em!) screenwriters credited on this film. Did none of you wake up one morning and think to themselves “there isn’t a single funny line in this movie, the set-up is unoriginal, the actors are too old, it just isn’t going to work”?

Richard, one of your co-writers was Andrew Davies, who can claim to be the leading TV screenwriter of the modern era. Did neither of you at any time, over a nice meal somewhere relaxed, say “this movie’s shit”?

Or didn’t you care?

I’m writing this for two reasons.

One, to say that you’ve now officially exhausted your comedy credits. In fact, Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason is so awful that it would exhaust the comedy credits of Monty Python, Bill Murray, the Goons and Bill Hicks. No-one, but no-one, could survive this nuclear bomb of awfulness.

Two, to claim back the two-and-a-half hours I wasted watching your movie. My car needs cleaning. That would be a start.

Thanks

Lloyd

PS - My wife (yes, she’s a woman) hated it too. As you know, this means you’re really in trouble.

PPS - If you’re one of the many British film critics who either praised this film or was ambivalent about it: I know where you all live. A copy of Eureka by Nic Roeg (which, prior to Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason, was the worst film I’ve ever seen) is on its way to you.

Crap crap crap crap crap crap mildly funny drugs scene crap crap crap crap crap.

A while ago, I blogged that Microsoft had apparently lost its mind. Now, as is generally the case, the world has caught up with my extraordinary prescience:

You know the drill–the spyware, the Trojan horses, the corporate firedrill that is announced not by IT but by a stream of emails from co-workers you haven’t heard from since the last exploit. It’s been years since I lived in the Northeast, where you learn that tentative way of walking on icy streets with a center of balance that can recover from a slip. Move to California or Charleston and you slowly unlimber and stride more openly–like Mr. Natural for the hippies among us who remember Zap Comics. That’s the feeling I get from Windows now–a vague unease, a tension, a sense that I can’t count on the machine to get out of the way and let me listen and relax.

Steve Gillmor said that. Wow. Like double wow. I wonder if Microsoft is going to pay him $10 million to shut up, too?

Not much to say here, but if you haven’t seen The Incredibles yet, do so. It’s, er, incredible. I’ve been having impure thoughts about Elastigirl which, combined with putting a warm laptop in my lap, has made me a bit twitchy since seeing the movie.

Back in the day, when iTunes was just a snippet in Steve Jobs’ bespectacled, polo-necked eye, we loved Peoplesound. It promised free music from up-and-coming bands, which you could listen to and then order, anachronistically, as a sampler CD.

I did this twice. Once with Helicopter Girl (remember her?) and once with Farrah. The Helicopter Girl CD I lost, but the Farrah CD has remained an absolute favourite for five years now, boasting as it does the song Living for the Weekend, which has the finest opening verse in Christendom:

He’s not a guy that you’d call understanding
She sees him weekdays just to keep her hand in
He’s not affectionate and won’t be kissed
He never cried when they saw Schindler’s list
He never acted on some great ambition
His hair was ginger but he called it titian
When he admitted that he loved the Mission
He had to go

How good is that? And how good is the news that Farrah are still at it? And have an album out to boot: Me Too. I believe the music pundits call this kind of thing Power Pop, but, as Billy Joel so memorably called it, it’s still rock ‘n’ roll to me. I’m going to buy it. You should too.