Dadblog

Another question about male reactions to female fashions. If a woman is wearing a very tight t-shirt with an interesting design (say, a still from a Tasmanian Devil Warner Bros. cartoon, as I saw this morning), is it OK to read the said design with any degree of interest? Or should I ignore it completely? Or should I try some combination of the two, with my eyes skidding towards said female chest before skidding away again in a desperate attempt to avoid sleaziness, thus leading to a feeling of frustration that I didn’t really appreciate the T-shirt design?

It’s very confusing.

You know you’re getting old when the former tribal certainties fall away. I turned on the telly last night to watch the Champion’s League Final in full expectation of cheering Milan on to victory against the former Auld Enemy On Merseyside, and ended the evening exhausted and exhilirated at the triumph of the Fraternal Comrades On Merseyside. I even shook my next door neighbour’s hand (he’s a Liverpool fan, and looked a bit surprised).

So well done, soft lads. Or rather, well done the two soft lads and the nine foreigners who finished the match on the pitch. Oops, sorry, tribal certainties again.

And I know I haven’t blogged about the FA Cup Final. I was there, but somehow it’s all fading into a blur….

I don’t know why I thought this was funny. But it is.

Factoid of the day, from a GU article on the Seventies TV series spin-off:

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | The big league: For over a decade, starting at the end of the 1960s, these movies were a staple of British cinema, and with good reason. They were very successful. You may be shocked to learn, as I was, that though Diamonds Are Forever was the most profitable Bond film, it was outgrossed in the UK by the first On the Buses movie. It tells you everything you need to know about Britain in 1971.

It does indeed. Read the whole article - it’s fantastic.

Someone said recently that Trackback is broken, killed by a tsunami of crappy little idiots promoting casinoes and really awful-sounding porn. But I’m reluctant to take it off the site, because occasionally things like this happen: someone appending a link to a Scorpions MP3 site on the bottom of a post about Icelandic women and their taste in music. What on earth lay behind that, then?

I love Gorillaz. I love Feel Good Inc. And for some reason the words, which I can barely hear, have been haunting me. Maybe it was the Jamie Hewlett video, with its floating windmills and groupies and shades of De La Soul. So I went and found the lyrics on the Web.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahafeel good (x7) Santa’s breaking down on a camel’s back. They just have to go ‘cos they don’t hold back So all you fill the streets it’s appealing to see You wont get out the county, ‘cos you’re bad and free You’ve got a new horizon It’s ephermal style. A melancholy town where we never smile. And all I wanna hear is the message beep. My dreams, they’ve got to kiss, because I don’t get sleep, no…

Windmill, Windmill for the land. Learn forever hand in hand Take it all in on your stride It is sticking, falling down Love forever love is free Let’s turn forever you and me Windmill, windmill for the land Is everybody in?

Laughing gas these hazmats, fast cats, Lining them up-a like ass cracks, Ladies, homies, at the track its my chocolate attack. Shit, I’m stepping in the heart of this here Care bear bumping in the heart of this here watch me as I gravitate hahahahahahaa. Yo, we gonna go ghost town, this motown, with yo sound you’re in the place you gonna bite the dust can’t fight with us With yo sound you kill the INC. so dont stop, get it, get it until you’re cheddar header. Yo, watch the way I navigate

Hahahahahahahahaafeel good (x2)

Windmill, Windmill for the land. Learn forever hand in hand Take it all in on your stride It is sticking, falling down Love forever love is free Let’s turn forever you and me Windmill, windmill for the land Is everybody in?

Dont stop, get it, get it we are your captains in it (feel good) steady, watch me navigate, ahahahahahhaa. (feel good) Dont stop, get it, get it we are your captains in it (feel good) steady, watch me navigate (feel good) ah huhah huhah huhah huh Ahahahahahahahaaaa

Is Damon having a laugh? Yes, I think he probably is. Moral of the story: if you can’t hear the lyrics, you’re probably not supposed to…

On my recent trip to Oz, I met up with an old friend from my Yahoo! days, Alan Jones, and we spent a fruitful few hours over a lunchtime and an evening discussing life, the universe and everything. Al hit 40 last year and made the decision to do some of the things that all men should do before they die. Top of his list was rock-climbing, top of mine were learning to play golf and learning to sail. This gives you some idea of our respective attitudes to danger.

Al, however, had already done the one thing that every man should do: he’d managed a rock band. The band in question is Karma County, and they’re really very good. Al’s also put together their new album, which features a single and video starring (wait for it) Bryan Brown.

Bryan Brown!!!. For me, Bryan Brown is something of a hero. He made perhaps the quintessential great 80s movie, FX: Murder By Illusion. He outclassed Tom Cruise in Cocktail. He even made Along Came Polly watchable (he was very funny in that). And he’s what every Englishman admires about Australians. The fact that someone I know has met Bryan Brown, let alone put him in a rock video by a band he is managing, is pant-wettingly exciting.

In the song, Dexter and Sinistra, Brown narrates the story of an Aussie suburban couple against a smooth Grant Lee Buffalo-style folksy background. I enjoyed it tremendously. Al’s put the video on his own website: you can stream it here.

You can buy their stuff through their website - I’m sticking in an order now. Let’s try and build up some 50 quid bloke momentum on this. Maybe it’ll persuade Al to stop rock climbing and take up rock management (see what I did there?) full-time.

Oh Jesus. This is just awful

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Hundreds of African boys go missing in London: Detectives investigating the murder of a West African boy nicknamed Adam, whose partially clothed torso was discovered in the Thames in September 2001, said they had asked London schools for details of black boys who had gone missing recently in an attempt to identify the child. The answer was shocking: 300 boys between the ages of four and seven vanished from London schools between July and September 2001, and police only ever traced two of them.

And no-one knew? No-one leaked something to a local journalist? No-one mentioned it to their wife? No-one discussed it with their mate down the pub?

Of course they did. Of course they knew. Of course it got out. We all just ignored it. Suddenly, Malcolm Glazer doesn’t seem nearly so important.

Yes, I’m a Manchester United supporter. And yes I’m pissed off. But not with the Glazers directly - they’re only doing what you’d expect them to do, and at least they have some interest in sports. No, it’s the sodding Irish horsemen, Magnier and Macmanus, who’ve pushed me over the edge. These blustering arrogant toerags bought their stake in United to fuel a petty little row with Alex Ferguson. They then messed the club about for two years, distracting the board and playing silly buggers, as the club entered the start of a period of decline and should really have been thinking about the future. And then they sold their stake to Glazer and allowed him to make a run for the whole club. And they did it because they could. I hope they choke on horseshit.

Next in line for the splenetic outburst of a disaffected supporter: Martin Chuffing Edwards. The loser scion of a local family, who made a mess of the 80s and then took the club onto the stock market while fraternising with ladies of an unsavoury sort and generally acting the part of spoiled, moronic playboy. It was his stake, sold on to a Harry Dobson, that pushed the deal over the edge. How sodding appropriate. It’s like he’s struck from beyond the grave, or from beyond whatever house of ill repute he’s in this week. Incompetent capitalism always has a longer shelf life than you’d like.

So Glazer only comes third in the league of iniquity. But the fact that he’s buying this club in the face of such opposition says an awful lot about his arrogance. No-one ever got rich from owning a football club. The margins just aren’t there. The only reason for an individual to buy a club is personal vanity. When that vanity is tied up in local pride (as is the case with Wigan Athletic’s Dave Whelan) the results can be outstanding. When vanity is sitting in a Florida golf club trying to understand the offside rule, we’re all in trouble.

My forecast: Glazer to sell after five years, by which time United will be a solid third or fourth in the table (after a Liverpool resurgence) and we’ll have just appointed Glenn Hoddle as manager. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

(Via Reuters: Top News.)

Naples hopes to cut crime with scooter ban: So goes the logic of the latest attempt to curb crime in the southern Italian city of Naples — a scooter ban to aid police chasing common crooks who famously rob pedestrians and speed away through the historic centre’s narrow alleyways.

A scooter ban in Naples? What will they ban next? Meatballs?