CALLIRHOE

I can't spell or pronounce Callirhoe Raouzeou but I am crazy about her voice and will keep plugging her until she is famous and can afford to compose and perform at her own pace.

I've got these listings all confused and duplicated and haven't time to sort them out but it doesnt matter if you play anything twice - just fool around and listen to her.

Le Tiroir

Morning Blues.

Myspace search

Pop-up Player: 6 tracks, Midsummers Night.

Hour of the Lynx

de Milo

I've only just found out her name is also that of a flower (see pic) Actually, Poppy Mallow isn't a bad name for a singer.

I know I have raved about her before in talking about Jim Potts' music - in fact, I think I started off to praise Jim but buried him 'neath swoons over Ms Mallow, that sounds very me. But punch in her name in this blog and see what you find.

JAZZ IMPRESSIONS OF MODERNITY

The music of Billy Strayhorn and Thelonious Monk

Yee haw! Music time.

Quand: Saturday 20/3/2010

Pou: Viros ~ 7 Technwn Topos

Heure: 21.30

Reservations: 2661031941 και 6974354460

Sax: Dimos Dimitriadis

Piano: George Kontrafouris

Saving Private Hood

First full length trailer I've seen of the Scott/Crowe lincoln green romp.

Zut et re-zut, that Cate Blanchett is a woman and a half.

But what a lot of Normandy landings they did in those days - goodness, Sherwood-on-Sea isn't in it?

[That is not a cue for Sinbad to launch into a 12-page spoiler revealing that:

Ridley had the Major Oak made in Nippon

Scenes set in Thynghowe were actually filmed in Rummidge

In the death scene at Edwinstowe, you can just hear Cate's Vacheron Constantin playing 'Nearer my God to Thee' on the hour

And above all, Badass is not to calculate that he and Mrs Goodass-to-be bumped boaters on a school outing to Thoresby Hall.

No Braids ~ Sorry, nice story but she was not the one in pigtails whose pencil box Simplers retrieved from Wilkinson III with the piping heroic squeak, "Here you are. Don't mind Wilkers, he's a drip."]

I mean, I don't mind hearing about the pigtails as such and per se but 'Carrie' says it simply isn't so and that you can't simply concertina "all those years" (ouch yaroo) for a good story and then exhale again for the rest of 'the saga' (double ouch. Some issues there, methinks).

Yes, so well - I only wanted to shove a pic in of La CB and maybe a butch one of Russell storming the beaches ...

Ga Ga Beyoncé Phone Video

Terribly clever and v funny and alarmingly Jacksonienne for a chick who walks her own trail.

Brilliant casting and I lose track of the product placement.

Grauniad article

Anna Pickard funny

testmatchsofa

Huge fun. Huge fun.

Bags of leather on willow here in Corfu

Persecuted Toby Young

Good piece on being hounded by Twitter twots by the son of the bloke who coined 'meritocracy'.

The Espresso Book Machine

My next investment opportunity ...

OLD DRIVERS

I'm not fond of or convinced by the 'elderly'.

Actually - and I know Times wingèd chariot and all - I am greatly pissed off and generally venomous of attitude to wrinklies, and when I say 'wrinkly' I know of what I write and will not therefore go into detail and cause you to spew up over your keyboard.

But to this doddering oldie who scrunched his old lady: listen, you crumbling wreck - STFU about the car ... it was you. Even as she felt her brittle bones snap crackle and grandpop, your lady thought resignedly,

"He did it. He actually did it. That idiot fumbling fart, I knew he'd be the death of me one day."

And you are, not just guilty of being old and still around past your Euthanase-by date - way past guiding even a supermarché trolley.

My family doesn't do well by the decrepit.

Some years back, my wife and younger daughter had parked to shop and this whacking great SUV was reversing or traversing or whatever. Anna had opened the door and was half out and the fucking SUV was crumpling the door in on her. People were shouting at the old geezer but he was too deaf or senile to know.

Finally, someone had to slam their shopping down across the hood.

His wheezing excuse: "I never saw you."

I called our excellent insurance man and gave all the details that my excellent wife had collected from all witnesses. I told Gary,

"I want this to really hurt. Think 'jury' at the slightest senile effort to pass this off as a mere accident."

I wouldn't even accept his smarmy insurance agent's suggested garage for the repairs.

I monitored my venal balls-busting revenge on a daily basis. The old man had the gall to imagine himself 'good with words' and phoned me with his sonorous basso profundo to 'talk it over like adults.'

I called him once a day to check his memory of the previous day's chat and to run thru my checklist of audiologist, optician, shrink ...

Then 2 years ago my big girl was hit at 0700hrs on a pedestrian crossing that sent her across the road with accompanying breakage of skin but not bones.

Again, "I didnt see you," croaked the 70+ year-old driver after finally pulling over, many yards down, when the hooting of horns and cornering of bikers and slamming on his roof persuaded him that he might not be able to out-run this one.

Three score years and 10. Pedestrian walkway. Didn't see her.

Georgina said there was an instant circle of witnesses, and of course when its a sweet-faced young girl that's skidded past your wheels, you want to hammer the fart who almost made you a killer.

Long time in chiropractory and hobblery and she has to talk walk past there every day. I know she's alive but it was this old fart kept her from visiting with Anna this summer. Grr.

So pieces like this don't fool me.

I live with an ancienne so the brake pads of patience are scraped brittle bone dry on that one, matron.

But lo! Who commenteth here and saves me from making even more of a charlie of moi-même?

Quicker than a flash, umpteen times caller Simon Baddeley shares Murder by Motorcar.

His anger-kindled intro:

"It's not just the decrepit, its the decrepit at the wheel of 2000 kilos of metal, and take it further - not just the old. My anger is kindled."

"On the 25th of March, 2000, Jane Louisa Puffit, 21 years old, and her friend Stacey Parrey, were killed by a drunk and incompetent driver who was permitted to plead guilty to the minor infraction of "dangerous driving," and accept a punishment modest out of proportion with his culpability.

The link at the beginning is to an excerpt from a letter written in reaction to this juridical convenience by Simon Baddeley, of the School of Public Policy, Birmingham University, England, to Ms. Puffit's parents, followed by a statement from them explaining the effect this "accident" had upon their lives."

ANTS AND CRICKETS - NOT

The Economist is my favorite comic and Charlemagne one of its must-turn-tos

Good snippet about this recent silly buggers Günther/Greece brouhaha not being a simple fable about ants and crickets. Read it and sound smart in the never-likely event that you are in a room with a single person who can tell you without REM wtf is THE BOTTOM LINE about this whole Greichen stricken chicken-licken €uro sicken 'situation'.

Spare me the pie charts and Powerpoints:

You wake one morning.

À la the end of the original Planet of the Apes when Heston is about to ride round the corner and discover his destiny, your bedmate looks round with ashen face from surfing the 'Net news channels:

"Well, we've done it. By we, I mean Greece. By we, I mean we live here so we are all Greeks. WE have done it."

You nod resignedly and stumble to the loo for the morning leak. Yep, there she is - the Statue of Liberty propped inside the bath.

You pop your head back into the bedroom. A world-weary, almost Greek-weary shrug: "Good lord, I thought you were joking.

[Now - down on the rotting floorboards. Remember how Chazza thumped the sand as his bird looked on?]

"You did it! You twits!! You jolly well went and did it!!" Thump pummel thrash sulk.

Balliol - your starter for 10. What exactly is "It"?

No conferring but, speaking of Hezzah bashing the beach, here's Kathimerini also getting back down to earth with a bang.

I Love these Wotchama-Call-ToppleOlogyGizmos

I love the sheer muscular violence of this one

I love the shock ending.

And here's the Guardian's take on it and a few others.

Yeow, scary. That means I spot something one day and the press scrabble to keep up with the zeitgeist the next. Alors - you say Rube, I say Paint, let's Topple the whole thing over.

Human-flesh search engines

There's a headline and a half.

To quote:

"Human-flesh search engines — renrou sousuo yinqing — have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath.

The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results."

Ohh man! That is what I rise each morning to perform. Lemme in!

OLÉ

Tauromachy

Tαυρομαχία

Corrida de Toros

Muleta

Faena

Stocada

Indulto

Recortes

Mozo de Espada

Cuadrilla

I shove that list of bullfighting terms up there because they're short enough to take up space but still allow me to keep the size of that magnificent photo.

Bullfighting, makes me yearn to cock a snoot at all the moaning minnies who come up with unbeatable reasons why I should not thrill to it.

I'd love to be cruising thru Life on a well-upholstered Up-Yours attitude. For one thing, I'd be able to turn an endlessly tolerant and good-natured deaf ear to the torrent of nosy NIMBY-parker ARK bark bleating about bullfighting.

Actually, that docile little fellah up there captures exactly my wimpo readiness to cave in to the Ban the Bull brigade.

There was some kerfuffle a while back over Island magazine referring to this art form in less than hysterical harridan fish-wife tones.

It/we/I had to cave in of course and perform the usual demeaning mea culpa, in the deepest basso profundo faux chastened tones - but this is where an 'Up Yours' attitude comes in so useful and saves so much unruly scuffling among the lower classes.

Come to think of it, there isn't much NIMBY about the fracas is there? I've always attended corridas miles from Acacia Drive but that's exactly where the shrillest protests swell.

Quoth the Observer, "In a clear provocation to its great rival Barcelona, Spain's capital city of Madrid has officially elevated bullfighting to the status of a protected art form [yaayy].

While the parliament of the north-eastern region of Catalonia debates a total ban on bullfighting, Madrid's local government has declared it a protected piece of the region's cultural heritage.

[Muchas yaaays

Esperanza Aguirre, head of the conservative regional government in Madrid, announced that the bullfight was to be included on the list of items of "special cultural value" that were protected by law.

"It is an art-form that deserves to be protected and that has been part of Mediterranean and Spanish culture since time immemorial,"

she said.

The eastern regions of Valencia and Murcia immediately declared the bullfight part of their protected cultural patrimony, thus confirming its new status as a key weapon in the long-running battle of identities waged between Spain's fractious regions.

Here's the bit I like and which sticks it to The Man,

"The move puts the corrida on the same cultural level as Madrid's most important historical buildings and monuments. It gives fight organisers special tax breaks and, critics claim, could see those trying to stop bullfights being taken to court for "damaging" the region's cultural patrimony."

Anyway, it's a super pic and the Grauniad seems to have done its homework - and that's all I care until someone turns me into a bull or the hapless hoss.

Just Gimme Da Ticket

(and I'll be on my way)

So let me start this story while my lips are unliquored and unlacquered and then come back with a bellyful of scotch and hone and tone it into verisimilitude.

It starts with my mother wanting to proceed from her look-in on Holy Trinity church (10:30-11:50am) to her current project, jazzing up the Bosketto Durrell Garden next to the Arts Caff (RIP).

[insert links and fotos relating to bosketto: mum slaving in daylight and then crepuscularly - the one that panicked the mayor - also the one of the Ya-Ya and kids (the other younger Ya Ya), also pics of visit by the Bosketto Team to San Luca incl congressman Lefteris Kuluris and jardinier Giannis Dallas and agragrian Frederiki Brigioti]

We drive the short distance from Mavili to the Garden where I drop and set on fruitless search for parking - no spaces so out past the Palace, round the Jewish quarter, back to the seafront, no spaces, repeat twice more.

Finally I get round and someone is pulling out so I execute dangerous maneuver of pulling left across all traffic. Beeg honking but i am pissed off because of there being no parking, proving for the millionth time that every bitch in life, every hassle and inconvenience stems from frigging gardening.

I see the man in the mirror waving. I get out and sans looking at him go round to the back of the car to examine its rear undercarriage where the problem must be to which he is alerting me, albeit it with excessively solicitous honking. He winds down the window and shouts at me but alas my Greek is not sufficient. I say I cannot see the problem; he informs me he wanted to park there. He gestures with his phone and mouths the word 'police' many times. He is going to phone the police.

I nod and tell him I have the time to wait. At this point the word 'malaka' makes an appearance - several appearances. But I am foreign and do not speak Greek so my expression remains accommodating and patient. He keeps showing me his phone and talking about police and pointing at the space I occupy, having cut so dangerously across.

Ohh - you need to call the police because of the parking ... I am about to express surprise that Greece includes it as a policeable offence to beat someone to a parking spot but just then I see the white of a police car approaching and tell him eagerly, 'Look - here they are.'

Not only here but they have seen me pointing and pull over, two fresh-faced fuzzless Fuzz.

Were I drunk I would draw this out with many a Corfucian quip and y'all would go 'how well he writes, how the truthfulness of this this story blazes off the screen' but i am too sober so you will have to settle for the unscenic route and rumbles of "God this guy is a liar, dont know why he even bothers to type it out. Oy! Gerorff the computer and do something sensible for change."

Loipon, it is explained to the cops that the gentleman is not happy about my parking in his spot and he is practising his right as a citizen to call in the law. Both police speak excellent English, on which I remark and they correctly nod stoney-faced, smarmy foreigner.

I express puzzlement that the busy hard-working police's time is allowed to be taken up with such matters.

I also wring my hands in frustration,

"Oh the number of times I have been moving towards a space but a driver with more speed and skill than me has zipped in first - and I have had to swallow my sadness and move on."

The police and I turn to look glumly at my little Nissan that, innocent tho' it tries to look, seems to have displayed speed and skill enough to enter the space ahead of the good gentleman there - whose speech is now peppered with lacquers and McKlackers and lord knows what else.

I ask the police why the gent is being so rude about them. Rude? Well, you know - he is employing the M-word.

The police exchange looks and the bigger one informs me that the man I have annoyed is not talking to *them*. I nod gravely. I am within a skein of being taken away and 'given the good news', as those Special Forces johnnies have it.

I look at my watch and tell them, OK - just give me the ticket? The ticket? The ticket for the crime. The crime?

Yes, the crime this gentleman here was telephoning about and you arrived so fast - the crime he was waving his phone about as soon as we began to converse. I look at them: there was more talk about police than about my parking sin. I wave at the car and the three of us look again at the Nissan, looking so innocent but clearly guilty of speed and skill.

I am thinking - the crime of being a Motorised Malaka - and a xenos, to boot. What is the one about blacks in Ferraris? BWD - black while driving?

I tell them, just give me the ticket because now we have talked so much that my old mother will be very cold ... and her project is for the Mayor and if he is there to inspect the good progress, he will be impatient, and if congressman Kulouris is there, he too will be impatient.

I'm not positive what Lefteris does but he's a top lawer with political connections via his being i/c cultural heritage buildings or whatever. He told me when they all came up to San Luca.

I look at my file as if to support my need to rescue my mother. This is something the police understand - a file, paperwork - loipon colour photographs.

They start to look at the photos as if checking their validity but my file is full of letter-headed documents and all sort of business cards attached with VERY SENIOR TITLES under the names. Not the Mayor's but they are not looking.

I tell them - please, give me the ticket and I must go to collect mittera mou.

What ticket? I can see it in their eyes: they too have Ya-Yas and the one in the photo is surrounded by burly attorneys with political ambitions, and business cards in Greek, and the talk of the Mayor.

They exchange looks - which one wants to tell the Supe they've brought in a foreigner (and his mother, whom he will have collect and who will almost certainly be being chatted up by the Mayor so *he* will have to come ...

"Right, lads, what have we here? Oh, your Honour, forgive me, I did not see you there. Be right with you, Your Honour.

Right, lads, make it quick, don't want to keep everyone hanging abaht - that gemmun there, is it? And ...?"

"Jumped the parking queue at the Liston, he did, Supe, and this gemmun over here ...."

A very long and loaded silence.

"Yes ... right ... well, I needn't detain you, Your Honour, nor you Kyria, nor you, sir. Yes, lads, just wait in the interview room as I see our guests out."

Dude! Only another 3 hours and they'd be off duty and he'd promised Lia he'd be round ... and dad needs driving to the backgammon game ... what are they looking at? An extra 2 hours form filling and ... why them, FFS?

So we are there and I really *am* getting worried about my mother. I look across to the Boketto gate and see my well-trained mum walking from the playground towards the exit to await me and save me parking again.

I look at the driver who has gone quieter - OK, I say, I would have moved anyway if you had asked me - to the police, if he had asked me I would have moved, but he is calling the police straight away, and you come so I decide why waste police time when they are here so fast - I will accept the penalty and the police duty can be done.

I shrug - very Greekly, I see their nods of approval at my skilful shoulder work - isnt there a line in Hey Jude about it being in the shoulder? That John Lennopoulos ... never missed a trick - I express again my ignorant foreigner surprise that the police have their time occupied by such matter - loipon! In the cause of co-operation and to save these gentleman in uniform from lengthy paperwork (grave nods of appreciative understanding - the xenos is not so bad after all ... as for the m'lacquer over there who started all this in the first place ...)

I go to the car and get in.

"See? I go. Thank you, officers, for explaining to this gentleman how we can make an understanding here."

I edge into the traffic and see in my mirror the Fuzz shaking their heads at the thwarted driver. I flash at mum and pull over to where she is waiting.

"Any problem parking?"

"Nope - cinch."

"Yes, well, it is Sunday and there are usually plenty of spaces. Well! - I've done my inspection and have plenty for my next report."

"Cool - I'll have it typed and ready to send before the committee gets into work tomorrow morning."

On Yer Bike! (but orf my bus) ~ Alert Sinbad of Anorakiana sends in this bit of bloggorial synchronicity.

Will you look at those officious jowels ~ verily a specimen who would have gone to the mat before he let Badass + bike onto his private personal-space omnibus.

Look at that larder of oafish officialdom: you just know what his home life is like, what his kids are like, how he parks his car and where he parks his slippers.

He's every Ford worker and union bigot who's been Orl Right, Jack (now naff off)

Great stuff. Well done Sinbad for resisting pooteresque pouting.