What are the 100 greatest novels ever written? (That’s novels, not plays or poems… sorry Milton and Shakespeare…) Following the criteria from the 100 greatest albums list, here are the rules:
1) Don’t think about it too much. If something feels like it belongs, it probably does. And if something feels out of place, it probably is. You can argue all day about the relative merits of CS Lewis’ ‘The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe’ and Philip Pullman’s ‘The Golden Compass’, but in the end only one of those feels like it belongs on the list.
2) It is not necessary for me to have read a novel, or even to intend reading it, for it to be included. I would rather be smashed in the head by ‘Clarissa’ than read it – it doesn’t matter, it still belongs here.
3) On a related note, whether I liked the novel or not is also irrelevant. It pains me physically to leave off awesome books like William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ and Martin Amis’ ‘Money’ at the expense of snore-fests like ‘Women in Love’ and ‘Great Expectations’, but that’s the way it has to be.
4) A little bit of research is required. You might think that something like George Eliot’s ‘The Mill on the Floss’, because it’s always billed as a ‘classic’, is generally considered amongst the greatest ever novels, but take a quick glance at a few ‘best-of’ lists and you will soon realise it is not. And who knew Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son’ was so famous?
With those rules in mind, here is the final list:
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Emma – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Go Tell it on the Mountain – William Baldwin
Old Goriot – Honore de Balzac
Herzog – Saul Bellow
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
The Outsider – Albert Camus
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
The Woman In White – Wilkie Collins
The Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser
The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
A Passage to India – EM Forster
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
The Tin Drum – Gunter Grass
I, Claudius – Robert Graves
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Trial – Franz Kafka
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderos de Laclos
Sons and Lovers – DH Lawrence
Women in Love – DH Lawrence
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Call of the Wild – Jack London
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Beloved – Toni Morrison
The Tale of Genji – Shikibu Murasaki
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
U.S.A. Trilogy – John Dos Passos
Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
The Catcher In The Rye – JD Salinger
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
Charlotte’s Web – EB White
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Native Son – Richard Wright
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Finger Points Outwards - No.22
A research article that I wrote with Tom Bolton, entitled 'Earnings of employees who are reliant on minimum rates of pay', has been released on the Fair Work Australia website.
Despite its 33-page length, this was actually a very quick article to write! (The graphs take up a lot of room.)
Despite its 33-page length, this was actually a very quick article to write! (The graphs take up a lot of room.)
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Wooden Finger Year in Music: Part Three
THE (IR)RELEVANCE OF MICHAEL JACKSON
To me, the statements following Michael Jackson’s death of his impact upon pop music seemed a little overblown given that his main impact over the past fifteen years has been to fill the gossip mags and serve as the easiest of punchlines. But it may be that I’m selling Jacko short. To help answer this, I decided to refresh my memory on exactly what hits he had post-‘Dangerous’. Turns out he had only three US Top 10 hits - ‘Scream’ (with sister Janet, who was still kinda relevant at that stage), ‘You Are Not Alone’ and ‘You Rock My World’ – with only the second of those reaching #1 (for one week). In the UK he had three #1s – ‘Earth Song’, ‘You Are Not Alone’ and ‘Blood On The Dance Floor’. Internationally, ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ is really the only other song that had much of an impact. So it would seem that my initial impression that MJ had disappeared up his Neverland over this period was correct.
However, in this respect, Michael Jackson is hardly alone. Consider what his main rival of the early ‘80s – the artist who I think is currently known as Prince – has achieved over the same time. To his credit, unlike Jackson, Prince still regularly released records, but only ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ and ‘I Hate U’ could be considered hits, and they were released back in 1995. And I doubt that Prince has been making truckloads of albums-of-the-year lists during that time. So perhaps Michael Jackson’s decline is simply symptomatic of the fall in popularity that occurs with all musicians.
What about Madonna? She’s done considerably better, with ‘You’ll See’, ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’, ‘Frozen’, ‘Ray of Light’, ‘Music’, ‘Don’t Tell Me’, ‘Beautiful Stranger’, that god-awful ‘American Pie’ cover, ‘Me Against The Music’, ‘Die Another Day’, ‘American Life’, ‘Hung Up’, and ‘4 Minutes’. But Madonna is something of a phenomenon – the biggest hit-maker this side of the Beatles. Bruce Springsteen’s had basically nothing since ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ (though his albums do consistently well), Sting basically nothing since he teamed up with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart for ‘All for Love’, and Billy Joel basically nothing since ‘The River of Dreams’. And so on. I guess you only really need to sell 100 million copies of something once in your lifetime and you’ve had an impact. RIP MJ. You still had more hits than me.
THE WOODEN FINGER GIG OF THE YEAR
It’s hard to forget the first five or so minutes of the Flaming Lips (at Festival Hall) – the big screen with the swirling, pulsating colours and the go-go girl in silhouette, her opening her legs up wide and each of the band members emerging on to the stage, Wayne Coyne making his appearance inside his Zorb-like ‘space bubble’, kids dressed up as green frogs and pink kitty cats dancing free-form at either end, large yellow balloons being bounced around by the crowd on the floor, Coyne rolling his ‘space bubble’ across our fingertips (did he reach us?), and bash! ‘Race For The Prize’ starts up like a military march for the irretrievably demented. Earlier that day I had lifted a particularly bothersome burden from my shoulders, and watching the balloons float around made me feel as if I myself were lighter than air. Best. Entrance. Ever. The set-list that followed was pretty fab – ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’, ‘Yoshimi…’, ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’, ‘Do You Realise?’ – although I could have done without some of the Bush-bashing that went on (not that I have much sympathy for Bush, but I don’t think you should necessarily assume your whole audience agrees with you). I’m still not sure whether the Flaming Lips are simply a novelty act on an epic scale, but they packed more effort, fun and epilepsy-inducing images into their show than just about everyone else I saw put together.
THE WOODEN FINGER ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
5. The Horrors – Primary Colours: Sounds like it was recorded in a dark, giant tunnel in a coal mining town and all the tracks are pretty compulsive, but it drops a few spots because I actually don’t really listen to it that much.
4. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest: ‘Two Weeks’ and ‘Cheerleader’ are the perfect ‘wake-up-with-a-hangover-and-walk-down-the-street-feeling-the-cool-breeze-on-your-face’ type songs. Because, you know, you always need a couple of those…
3. Future of the Left – Travels With Myself And Another: Crunching guitars and irreverent lyrics made it a welcome antidote to all the synthetic pop going around, and that includes the next two albums on this list…
2. La Roux – La Roux: The opening few tracks grate on me a bit, but the middle part of the album – ‘Bulletproof’, ‘I’m Not Your Toy’, ‘Cover My Eyes’, ‘As If By Magic’ and ‘Fascination’ – is such a perfect encapsulation of synth-pop that they may as well retire the genre.
1. Passion Pit – Manners: Yes, I still can’t believe he sings the entire album in that falsetto and I don’t want to smash my iPod to pieces. However, it contains three tracks that are addictive-as-Wii – ‘Little Secrets’, ‘The Reeling’, and the track that never ceases to amaze me how it’s not a complete mess ‘Sleepyhead’ – and in a year without a record that towered over the world like a monolith that’s enough to get it the top spot.
To me, the statements following Michael Jackson’s death of his impact upon pop music seemed a little overblown given that his main impact over the past fifteen years has been to fill the gossip mags and serve as the easiest of punchlines. But it may be that I’m selling Jacko short. To help answer this, I decided to refresh my memory on exactly what hits he had post-‘Dangerous’. Turns out he had only three US Top 10 hits - ‘Scream’ (with sister Janet, who was still kinda relevant at that stage), ‘You Are Not Alone’ and ‘You Rock My World’ – with only the second of those reaching #1 (for one week). In the UK he had three #1s – ‘Earth Song’, ‘You Are Not Alone’ and ‘Blood On The Dance Floor’. Internationally, ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ is really the only other song that had much of an impact. So it would seem that my initial impression that MJ had disappeared up his Neverland over this period was correct.
However, in this respect, Michael Jackson is hardly alone. Consider what his main rival of the early ‘80s – the artist who I think is currently known as Prince – has achieved over the same time. To his credit, unlike Jackson, Prince still regularly released records, but only ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ and ‘I Hate U’ could be considered hits, and they were released back in 1995. And I doubt that Prince has been making truckloads of albums-of-the-year lists during that time. So perhaps Michael Jackson’s decline is simply symptomatic of the fall in popularity that occurs with all musicians.
What about Madonna? She’s done considerably better, with ‘You’ll See’, ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’, ‘Frozen’, ‘Ray of Light’, ‘Music’, ‘Don’t Tell Me’, ‘Beautiful Stranger’, that god-awful ‘American Pie’ cover, ‘Me Against The Music’, ‘Die Another Day’, ‘American Life’, ‘Hung Up’, and ‘4 Minutes’. But Madonna is something of a phenomenon – the biggest hit-maker this side of the Beatles. Bruce Springsteen’s had basically nothing since ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ (though his albums do consistently well), Sting basically nothing since he teamed up with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart for ‘All for Love’, and Billy Joel basically nothing since ‘The River of Dreams’. And so on. I guess you only really need to sell 100 million copies of something once in your lifetime and you’ve had an impact. RIP MJ. You still had more hits than me.
THE WOODEN FINGER GIG OF THE YEAR
It’s hard to forget the first five or so minutes of the Flaming Lips (at Festival Hall) – the big screen with the swirling, pulsating colours and the go-go girl in silhouette, her opening her legs up wide and each of the band members emerging on to the stage, Wayne Coyne making his appearance inside his Zorb-like ‘space bubble’, kids dressed up as green frogs and pink kitty cats dancing free-form at either end, large yellow balloons being bounced around by the crowd on the floor, Coyne rolling his ‘space bubble’ across our fingertips (did he reach us?), and bash! ‘Race For The Prize’ starts up like a military march for the irretrievably demented. Earlier that day I had lifted a particularly bothersome burden from my shoulders, and watching the balloons float around made me feel as if I myself were lighter than air. Best. Entrance. Ever. The set-list that followed was pretty fab – ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’, ‘Yoshimi…’, ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’, ‘Do You Realise?’ – although I could have done without some of the Bush-bashing that went on (not that I have much sympathy for Bush, but I don’t think you should necessarily assume your whole audience agrees with you). I’m still not sure whether the Flaming Lips are simply a novelty act on an epic scale, but they packed more effort, fun and epilepsy-inducing images into their show than just about everyone else I saw put together.
THE WOODEN FINGER ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
5. The Horrors – Primary Colours: Sounds like it was recorded in a dark, giant tunnel in a coal mining town and all the tracks are pretty compulsive, but it drops a few spots because I actually don’t really listen to it that much.
4. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest: ‘Two Weeks’ and ‘Cheerleader’ are the perfect ‘wake-up-with-a-hangover-and-walk-down-the-street-feeling-the-cool-breeze-on-your-face’ type songs. Because, you know, you always need a couple of those…
3. Future of the Left – Travels With Myself And Another: Crunching guitars and irreverent lyrics made it a welcome antidote to all the synthetic pop going around, and that includes the next two albums on this list…
2. La Roux – La Roux: The opening few tracks grate on me a bit, but the middle part of the album – ‘Bulletproof’, ‘I’m Not Your Toy’, ‘Cover My Eyes’, ‘As If By Magic’ and ‘Fascination’ – is such a perfect encapsulation of synth-pop that they may as well retire the genre.
1. Passion Pit – Manners: Yes, I still can’t believe he sings the entire album in that falsetto and I don’t want to smash my iPod to pieces. However, it contains three tracks that are addictive-as-Wii – ‘Little Secrets’, ‘The Reeling’, and the track that never ceases to amaze me how it’s not a complete mess ‘Sleepyhead’ – and in a year without a record that towered over the world like a monolith that’s enough to get it the top spot.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Wooden Finger Year in Music: Part Two
THE ‘MARCONI PLAYS THE MAMBA’ MEMORIAL MOST CRINGE-WORTHY LINE OF 2009
David Guetta/Akon’s ‘Sexy Bitch’ was a track that made me shiver in parts of my spine I didn’t know I had, and the line “I’m tryna find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful” almost caused a complete vertebral meltdown. Firstly, that’s way too many syllables to fit into one line. Secondly, unless you’re sixty years old or a spelling bee contestant the word ‘disrespectful’ is about as anti-climatic as it gets. Thirdly, when you spend the rest of the song using words like ‘bitch’, ‘hoe’ and ‘booty’, then one wonders whether you really know what ‘disrespectful’ means or if someone at your pool party happened to bring along a thesaurus (yeah, I know, it’s meant to be ironic – I think – but it doesn’t work). All of these problems could have been solved with one simple substitution, “I’m tryna find the words to describe this girl but I’m an asshole.” Now that’s a worldwide smash…
FOUR WALLS AND WHAT FOR YOUR GIRLS?
Is that lyric in Animal Collective’s ‘My Girls’ ‘I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls’ or ‘four walls and adobe slats for my girls’? Either way – what the hell?! Who can help us out here?
“adobe slabs refers to building a home from the ground up like way back in the day. basically stating that as father he's going to work hard in providing for his children.” – tonyjames, SongMeanings
“I assume that “adobe slats/slabs” is a part of a home that’s protective but exists in contrast to the four walls. This suggests it’s a roof. But as far as I can make out, roofing in adobe architecture doesn’t involve slats or slabs made of adobe; rather, it involves a wood or metal frame onto which adobe bricks are placed, which are then in turn sealed with adobe mortar.
Conclusion: Animal Collective failed Indigenous American Architecture 101.” – Dickdogfood, Idolator
“adobe slats’, it would appear, are a form of roof tile used fairly commonly in Portugal.” – Tim Miller, God Is In The TV
You know we're in a conundrum when not even Uncle Wiki can help us out ('adobe slabs' is mentioned on a page about Fort Verde State Historical Park, 'adobe slats' gets you nowhere). For what it's worth, it sounds to me like he is saying 'slats' - I'll take that guy's word they're used in Portugal.
David Guetta/Akon’s ‘Sexy Bitch’ was a track that made me shiver in parts of my spine I didn’t know I had, and the line “I’m tryna find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful” almost caused a complete vertebral meltdown. Firstly, that’s way too many syllables to fit into one line. Secondly, unless you’re sixty years old or a spelling bee contestant the word ‘disrespectful’ is about as anti-climatic as it gets. Thirdly, when you spend the rest of the song using words like ‘bitch’, ‘hoe’ and ‘booty’, then one wonders whether you really know what ‘disrespectful’ means or if someone at your pool party happened to bring along a thesaurus (yeah, I know, it’s meant to be ironic – I think – but it doesn’t work). All of these problems could have been solved with one simple substitution, “I’m tryna find the words to describe this girl but I’m an asshole.” Now that’s a worldwide smash…
FOUR WALLS AND WHAT FOR YOUR GIRLS?
Is that lyric in Animal Collective’s ‘My Girls’ ‘I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls’ or ‘four walls and adobe slats for my girls’? Either way – what the hell?! Who can help us out here?
“adobe slabs refers to building a home from the ground up like way back in the day. basically stating that as father he's going to work hard in providing for his children.” – tonyjames, SongMeanings
“I assume that “adobe slats/slabs” is a part of a home that’s protective but exists in contrast to the four walls. This suggests it’s a roof. But as far as I can make out, roofing in adobe architecture doesn’t involve slats or slabs made of adobe; rather, it involves a wood or metal frame onto which adobe bricks are placed, which are then in turn sealed with adobe mortar.
Conclusion: Animal Collective failed Indigenous American Architecture 101.” – Dickdogfood, Idolator
“adobe slats’, it would appear, are a form of roof tile used fairly commonly in Portugal.” – Tim Miller, God Is In The TV
You know we're in a conundrum when not even Uncle Wiki can help us out ('adobe slabs' is mentioned on a page about Fort Verde State Historical Park, 'adobe slats' gets you nowhere). For what it's worth, it sounds to me like he is saying 'slats' - I'll take that guy's word they're used in Portugal.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
My Top 25 Highlights From Our Trip Around the USA
25. Dinosaurs I have heard of at the American Museum of Natural History
24. Smelly sealions at Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf
23. 826 Valencia – a tutorial centre run by McSweeney’s, fronted by a pirate store
22. Charlie the fluffy toy labrador from FAO Schwarz (and Joe the Pistons-supporting teddy from the NBA Store)
21. Football, baseball and Sam Adams at every bar
20. Finding t-shirts of a monkey with a magnum and a Star Wars Fab Four slogan (Luke & Leia & Han & Chewie) within two blocks of each other at the Haight
19. Finding a hat to fit my generously sized head at J.Crew near Rockefeller
18. Comedy at Gotham, two doors from our hotel in Chelsea
17. Reading SuperFreakonomics
16. Cheeseburger pizza (think a Big Mac, sliced-up and spread on a pizza base)
15. Central, Prospect and Golden Gate Parks
14. Getting to the top of the Empire State Building on a clear night without having to queue
13. Attending a Halloween party (and seeing somebody dressed as a Sudoku puzzle)
12. James Gandolfini shouting ‘F--- the hamster!’ in ‘God of Carnage’
11. Staying at the Hotel Chelsea
10. Reading Bill Simmons’ ‘The Book of Basketball’
9. The Day of the Dead parade in the Mission in SF
8. Dinner at Cafeteria on W17 St and Sixth Avenue – oddball menu but mind-blowingly awesome
7. The rollercoasters at Knott’s Berry Farm, particularly the Silver Bullet (high speed, lots of bends and loops, legs dangling), Montezuma’s Revenge (40 seconds, forwards and backwards around a large loop), and the Ghost Rider (terrifying wooden rickety death-trap)
6. Spending my birthday at the Blue Note listening to the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars
5. Carving the pumpkin from hell
4. The Museum of Modern Art – Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’, Warhol’s soup cans, Lichenstein’s ‘Drowning Girl’, Pollock’s ‘Full Fathom Five’, Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’, and a couple of dozen Picassos.
3. New York Knicks v Boston Celtics at Madison Square Garden (it was a pre-season match, but still…)
2. ‘The Beatles – Love’ by the Cirque du Soleil
1. The Golden Gate Bridge on a clear warm San Francisco afternoon
24. Smelly sealions at Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf
23. 826 Valencia – a tutorial centre run by McSweeney’s, fronted by a pirate store
22. Charlie the fluffy toy labrador from FAO Schwarz (and Joe the Pistons-supporting teddy from the NBA Store)
21. Football, baseball and Sam Adams at every bar
20. Finding t-shirts of a monkey with a magnum and a Star Wars Fab Four slogan (Luke & Leia & Han & Chewie) within two blocks of each other at the Haight
19. Finding a hat to fit my generously sized head at J.Crew near Rockefeller
18. Comedy at Gotham, two doors from our hotel in Chelsea
17. Reading SuperFreakonomics
16. Cheeseburger pizza (think a Big Mac, sliced-up and spread on a pizza base)
15. Central, Prospect and Golden Gate Parks
14. Getting to the top of the Empire State Building on a clear night without having to queue
13. Attending a Halloween party (and seeing somebody dressed as a Sudoku puzzle)
12. James Gandolfini shouting ‘F--- the hamster!’ in ‘God of Carnage’
11. Staying at the Hotel Chelsea
10. Reading Bill Simmons’ ‘The Book of Basketball’
9. The Day of the Dead parade in the Mission in SF
8. Dinner at Cafeteria on W17 St and Sixth Avenue – oddball menu but mind-blowingly awesome
7. The rollercoasters at Knott’s Berry Farm, particularly the Silver Bullet (high speed, lots of bends and loops, legs dangling), Montezuma’s Revenge (40 seconds, forwards and backwards around a large loop), and the Ghost Rider (terrifying wooden rickety death-trap)
6. Spending my birthday at the Blue Note listening to the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars
5. Carving the pumpkin from hell
4. The Museum of Modern Art – Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’, Warhol’s soup cans, Lichenstein’s ‘Drowning Girl’, Pollock’s ‘Full Fathom Five’, Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’, and a couple of dozen Picassos.
3. New York Knicks v Boston Celtics at Madison Square Garden (it was a pre-season match, but still…)
2. ‘The Beatles – Love’ by the Cirque du Soleil
1. The Golden Gate Bridge on a clear warm San Francisco afternoon
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The War on Tomatoes - Round One
According to Uncle Wiki, a common tomato disease is the ‘tobacco mosaic virus’, and ‘for this reason smoking or use of tobacco products are discouraged around tomatoes’. Thus, for my first strike against The Bright Red Menace, I decided to see how it would stand up to being skewered by a flaming, tobacco-filled cigar. Admittedly, the fact that I’d chosen a small, flimsy $3.50 cigar perhaps did not suggest that I had the level of commitment to the cause that I should have – however, not being a smoker I wasn’t sure that I would be able to get the thing lighted in the first place.
As it turned out, my main difficulty with the whole lighting-the-stoogie process was getting my cheapo Bic lighter to flame on – once I’d mastered that I was puffing away like a Cuban playboy. The tomato trembled, knowing that it was mere moments away from having a fiery stick poked up its rear. Mere moments, did I say? By gum, cigars take a long time to smoke! I suppose I could have just taken a couple of puffs and then let the tomato have what was coming to it, but I wanted to get most of my 350 cents worth here.
My first clue that my plan may not have been the Machiavellian scheme I imagined it to be came when, halfway through my cigar, I pressed it to the tomato’s pudgy exterior, and the end-third of it crumpled into ash. Perhaps if I spread the ash around, my red nemesis’ outer layers would wither away… but this too proved futile. Slightly perturbed, I determined to smoke my weapon of choice for a bit longer and then run it through that bastard like a needle through an eyeball. Alas, the tomato proved its capabilities of doubling as a red, round ashtray and my cigar crumpled faster than my car’s rear bumper bar.
As a last desperate measure I decided to stick the tomato in the crisper for a couple of days and hope that somehow the tobacco would erode it given time. No, it did not. When I took the tomato it was as healthy as ever, only with a sprinkling of well-preserved tobacco on the top to improve its flavour. Disgusted, I dumped the thing in its only rightful home – the garbage. This round was lost, but the result would be different next time…
Tomatoes: 1, Me: 0.
As it turned out, my main difficulty with the whole lighting-the-stoogie process was getting my cheapo Bic lighter to flame on – once I’d mastered that I was puffing away like a Cuban playboy. The tomato trembled, knowing that it was mere moments away from having a fiery stick poked up its rear. Mere moments, did I say? By gum, cigars take a long time to smoke! I suppose I could have just taken a couple of puffs and then let the tomato have what was coming to it, but I wanted to get most of my 350 cents worth here.
My first clue that my plan may not have been the Machiavellian scheme I imagined it to be came when, halfway through my cigar, I pressed it to the tomato’s pudgy exterior, and the end-third of it crumpled into ash. Perhaps if I spread the ash around, my red nemesis’ outer layers would wither away… but this too proved futile. Slightly perturbed, I determined to smoke my weapon of choice for a bit longer and then run it through that bastard like a needle through an eyeball. Alas, the tomato proved its capabilities of doubling as a red, round ashtray and my cigar crumpled faster than my car’s rear bumper bar.
As a last desperate measure I decided to stick the tomato in the crisper for a couple of days and hope that somehow the tobacco would erode it given time. No, it did not. When I took the tomato it was as healthy as ever, only with a sprinkling of well-preserved tobacco on the top to improve its flavour. Disgusted, I dumped the thing in its only rightful home – the garbage. This round was lost, but the result would be different next time…
Tomatoes: 1, Me: 0.
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Wooden Finger Year in Music: Part One
HOWLING BELLS V THE TEMPER TRAP
Hometown
Howling Bells: Sydney, now based in London
The Temper Trap: Melbourne
Winner: The Temper Trap
Hit single
Howling Bells: ‘Into The Chaos’ – played on indie radio stations and nowhere else
The Temper Trap: ‘Sweet Disposition’ – played everywhere, including twice in the movie (500) Days of Summer
Winner: The Temper Trap
Lead singer
Howling Bells: The sexy, elfin-like Juanita Stein
The Temper Trap: The exotic but unpronounceable Dougy Mandagi
Winner: Howling Bells
Album title
Howling Bells: The awesome and enticing ‘Radio Wars’
The Temper Trap: The vague and underwhelming ‘Conditions’
Winner: Howling Bells
CD package
Howling Bells: Hardcover booklet with brightly coloured band shots
The Temper Trap: Flip-cover package with fuzzy shots of… what exactly?
Winner: Howling Bells
Festival presence in their homeland
Howling Bells: V Festival
The Temper Trap: V Festival, Falls Festival and Big Day Out – doesn’t get much bigger than that
Winner: The Temper Trap
Er... the music?
Howling Bells: Lush with a hint of brooding
The Temper Trap: Broody with a hint of lushness
Winner: Much of a muchness
Verdict: 3-all - it's a tie, folks!
THE VAMPIRE WEEKEND AWARD FOR THE ARTIST WHO I REALLY QUITE LIKE BUT WHO STILL SHITS ME IN SOME WAY
With her bright red hair and thin pale limbs, Florence Welch (title character of UK band Florence and the Machine) is hard to scrape your eyes off, particularly when she’s flailing about like some mystic earth nymph (see picture below). And no doubt the girl can sing and her debut album, ‘Lungs’, which won the Critics Choice award at the BRITS, is a pleasure to listen to. But (to riff on Mike Skinner) my god does she know she is one of the beautiful people. I’ve hardly seen a shot of her in which she isn’t striking some form of melodramatic pose, the liner notes to her album being a good example. Similarly, her songs feel a little overproduced – even top tracks such as ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’ can not go two lines without the choral voices chiming in and trying to whisk us off to some enchanting fantasyland (where if Midas is king then I’m betting Florence is a regal personage of some sort). Yes, I would take her over the hordes of unimaginative pop strumpets any day of the week, but she’s young, she’s pretty, the indie media drool over her and she laps it up… damn her to hell…
THE TOP FIVE LINES FROM THE LATEST FUTURE OF THE LEFT ALBUM
5. if I eat what i fuck and i fuck what i eat am i worthy? (I AM CIVIL SERVICE)
4. slight bowel movements preceded the bloodless coup (THROWING BRICKS AT TRAINS)
3. call me anna, velociraptor, excuse my manner, I'm having such a bad day (YIN/POST-YIN).
2. lapsed catholics are the worst, it's part of who they were, and who they'll be again (LAPSED CATHOLICS)
1. yeah sure, satan rules, but that doesn't mean i can't be practical (YOU NEED SATAN MORE THAN HE NEEDS YOU)
Hometown
Howling Bells: Sydney, now based in London
The Temper Trap: Melbourne
Winner: The Temper Trap
Hit single
Howling Bells: ‘Into The Chaos’ – played on indie radio stations and nowhere else
The Temper Trap: ‘Sweet Disposition’ – played everywhere, including twice in the movie (500) Days of Summer
Winner: The Temper Trap
Lead singer
Howling Bells: The sexy, elfin-like Juanita Stein
The Temper Trap: The exotic but unpronounceable Dougy Mandagi
Winner: Howling Bells
Album title
Howling Bells: The awesome and enticing ‘Radio Wars’
The Temper Trap: The vague and underwhelming ‘Conditions’
Winner: Howling Bells
CD package
Howling Bells: Hardcover booklet with brightly coloured band shots
The Temper Trap: Flip-cover package with fuzzy shots of… what exactly?
Winner: Howling Bells
Festival presence in their homeland
Howling Bells: V Festival
The Temper Trap: V Festival, Falls Festival and Big Day Out – doesn’t get much bigger than that
Winner: The Temper Trap
Er... the music?
Howling Bells: Lush with a hint of brooding
The Temper Trap: Broody with a hint of lushness
Winner: Much of a muchness
Verdict: 3-all - it's a tie, folks!
THE VAMPIRE WEEKEND AWARD FOR THE ARTIST WHO I REALLY QUITE LIKE BUT WHO STILL SHITS ME IN SOME WAY
With her bright red hair and thin pale limbs, Florence Welch (title character of UK band Florence and the Machine) is hard to scrape your eyes off, particularly when she’s flailing about like some mystic earth nymph (see picture below). And no doubt the girl can sing and her debut album, ‘Lungs’, which won the Critics Choice award at the BRITS, is a pleasure to listen to. But (to riff on Mike Skinner) my god does she know she is one of the beautiful people. I’ve hardly seen a shot of her in which she isn’t striking some form of melodramatic pose, the liner notes to her album being a good example. Similarly, her songs feel a little overproduced – even top tracks such as ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’ can not go two lines without the choral voices chiming in and trying to whisk us off to some enchanting fantasyland (where if Midas is king then I’m betting Florence is a regal personage of some sort). Yes, I would take her over the hordes of unimaginative pop strumpets any day of the week, but she’s young, she’s pretty, the indie media drool over her and she laps it up… damn her to hell…
THE TOP FIVE LINES FROM THE LATEST FUTURE OF THE LEFT ALBUM
5. if I eat what i fuck and i fuck what i eat am i worthy? (I AM CIVIL SERVICE)
4. slight bowel movements preceded the bloodless coup (THROWING BRICKS AT TRAINS)
3. call me anna, velociraptor, excuse my manner, I'm having such a bad day (YIN/POST-YIN).
2. lapsed catholics are the worst, it's part of who they were, and who they'll be again (LAPSED CATHOLICS)
1. yeah sure, satan rules, but that doesn't mean i can't be practical (YOU NEED SATAN MORE THAN HE NEEDS YOU)
Friday, October 2, 2009
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