Dadblog

I’m moving, for a while. I’m going to move Dadblog to Yahoo! 360 for a month or two, to see if I like it. Here’s the link to Dadblog@360. I’m also turning off comments on here while I’m over there. Wave goodbye to my search ranking!

A truly, truly magnificent work of journalism from the Daily Mail: a story about how Cliff Richard is selling up in Britain and moving to New York with his new best friend, a former Catholic priest called John McElynn. Apparently, Cliff and John are now inseparable:

McElynn, 52, is often described as Sir Cliff’s property manager and general factotum, who organises the singer’s increasingly hectic social life. Those who know the singer, though, credit his new mentor with far more influence. Broadcaster Gloria Hunniford, for example, says McElynn has helped him ’spread his wings’.Another friend of the couple said: “He opened Cliff’s eyes to the many joys his millions can buy him.” Significantly, his decision to buy luxurious homes abroad came after he met McElynn. These include the Barbados villa, where the Blairs have spent their past three summer holidays.

The only reference to homosexuality in the entire piece seems to be the fact that Mr McElynn originally came from Queens. I fang yew.

You could not make it up:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The deputy press secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was put on leave and his security clearance suspended on Wednesday after being arrested on charges of using the Internet to try to seduce a 14-year-old girl, an official said.

Brian Doyle, 55, was arrested on Tuesday night in a sex- sting operation and accused of obscenely propositioning an undercover agent he thought was a teen-ager.

The Homeland Security department is one of the federal agencies responsible for investigating child pornography and online exploitation of children, through its immigration and customs unit and the
Secret Service. Department officials said those agencies were not involved in this case.

How desperately stupid would you have to be? Or maybe the Department isn’t actually looking at stuff online at all, and we can all stop worrying about our civil liberties (unless we’re underage girls).

Jesus: this from the Register

A man from Teeside was dragged from a plane and questioned for three hours under the Terrorism Act after a cabbie reported him because he was worried about his choice of music.

Harraj Mann, from Teeside, suffered the interogation after he got a cab to Durham airport and plugged his MP3 player into the taxi’s stereo.

After playing Procol Harem, which the cabbie enjoyed, he played the Clash’s London Calling and Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song. These clearly didn’t go down so well because the taxi driver reported his passenger to police once they arrived at Durham airport.

I was in Paris this week for work, and in under 48 hours I managed to squeeze in the two essential Parisien experiences: a meal which was almost a religious experience in its quality, and a demonstration.

First the meal. A good friend took me to a restaurant called L’Escargot Montorgueil a few blocks north of the Pompidou Centre, in the first arrondisement, and we decided to go for it. I ate snails for the first time (delicious, but it’s all in the sauces, apparently), and for the main course had lamb cooked inside a breadcrumb shell and then removed and served. It was an unbelievable experience. We order a stupidly priced bottle of red wine, had a Campari-based aperitif, and drank 1969 Armagnac with our coffee. Unbelievable. I can’t recommend it enough.

Then the demo. We were sitting on the Eurostar a couple of minutes before leaving, and suddenly dozens of young people started walking down the platforms and onto the tracks. The dozens soon swelled to hundreds, the message came on the train intercom that we weren’t going anywhere while the demo was happening, and we waited. And waited. And waited. For nearly three hours.

There were several weird things about this. The first weird thing was how unbothered most people on the Eurostar were. They seemed to treat it as a kind of tourist activity, soaking in the sight of the French apparently demoing each other into stasis. Then there were the riot police, which showed up after half an hour and santered off towards the students, somewhat unhurriedly. It was all a bit of a game (and something funny happened: when the police first appeared, a group of young female students started singing the Stormtrooper March from Star Wars).

But the really weird thing was that, because we were on the Eurostar, we were in an area fenced off from the rest of the station, so it was like watching from inside a cage. The fact that most of us were English just emphasised this. Here we were, ready to head back smugly to our own country where The Unions Have Been Defeated and The Labour Market Is Flexible and Economic Growth Is Accelerating, and we were watching the French social model turn in on itself on the other side of a fence. Still, they all looked like they were having a nice time. Even the riot police were smiling.

Jack White and Brendan Benson in the same band was already a good idea. But the web design for their band’s site, www.theraconteurs.com, makes me love the idea even more. I’m going out to buy the album. Now.