EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

Festivale

Earl’s Court is home this week to The Great British Beer Festival, making it the one time in the year that it’s actually acceptable to drink round there. Beer festivals are enormous fun, and if you play it right you can get nicely sozzed while still keeping hold of the niceties of social behaviour. Here are the tips that I and my partners in ale, the Beeranauts, have come up with over the years.

1) Food. As important as a beer glass. There’s a mass of food stalls in the central area, and you can even get a salad if you’re some kind of girly wuss. I would recommend a decent cooked breakfast before you even start. There are plenty of cafes and pubs that open early to serve food on the Earl’s Court Road. Don’t enter the Exhibition Hall without a well and truly lined stomach.

2) Get your bearings. The programme is vital to planning out your day. It tells you plenty about all the beer on offer, the itinerary of bands on the music stage, and where you can find the award-winners. If you’re a bit of a ticker like me, this is essential. Also, if you’re a civilised type, now’s the time to find a table and set camp for the day. We tend not to, which leads to tired legs after a few hours. Some people brought fold-out picnic chairs this year, which seems like a smart idea.

3) Freebies. Keep your eyes open. The Bombardier stand was giving away free t-shirts, and beer mats and other goodies are always up for grabs. Plenty of good merchandising at curiously affordable prices here as well. Don’t just be thinking all your money for the day is going on beer.

4) The half-in-a-pint-glass trick. This has served us well. The first thing you do once you’re in the hall is to buy a glass, £3 deposit, a nice souvenir for the day. It comes in pint, half and third sizes. The Beeranauts always buy pint glasses, and order halves. This way, you can fit in more brews through the day. More importantly, the volunteers behind the pumps always err on the generous side on servings. You always get a bit more than a half, which can add up to almost a full pint over the course of a day.

5) Keep an eye on your glass. If you don’t, some thieving tyke will have it away. That means you have to spend out another £3 if you want to keep going. This happened to me at the end of the day, which I would like to think is the action of some higher power telling me that I needed to stop drinking, and that I didn’t need another commerative pint glass. Shame though. I was enjoying that cider.

6) People-watch. All human life is here, and it’s all getting nicely tweaked on the finest ales known to man. With a camera, or even a notebook and pen, the artist has character material to last for years. The Beeranaut’s personal favourite was the guy in the greasy leather stetson, body warmer and sand-camo combat strides, with no shirt and a wild spill of white hair. King Of The Show. Also, don’t assume this is a man-only thing. Plenty of girls at the show, and they seemed to be on the dark ales too.

7) Move outside your comfort zone. You will never get another opportunity to try different and interesting beers from all over the globe, so try a glass of something you would’t normally. Lager drinkers, try a stout. Bitter boys, get a perry down you. If you think all American beer is watery froth, there’s a stall full of craft brewers ready to prove you wrong with some of the strongest ales of the show. My tastes have changed radically over the past year or so, and that’s down to trying and enjoying new stuff at beerfests in Battersea, Reading and Earl’s Court.

8. Do the day shift. The halls get intolerably crowded in the evenings, so if you can, do a day shift and leave early. I tend to find six hours does it for me anyway, so we’re normally done and heading home by 6ish. Can’t say that I’m really good for anything when I get back, but at least I’m normally in one piece, and happy after a fun, woozy day out.

My recommendations? Well, the Beeranauts did a tour of each other’s home counties, which led to some interesting choices. The treat for us was probably Wood’s Shropshire Lass, which was recommended as a good alternative to the 2010 Champion Ale, Castle Rock Harvest Pale Ale. But I also loved Tunnel’s Late OTT from Nuneaton, Warwickshire, and the dark and complex Felstar Crix Forest from the heart of Essex. I don’t think we had a duff beer all day.

I tweeted everything I drank, so you can see the full list by checking out the hashtag #gbbfun.

Me and Rev Sherlock in our Beer Pride t-shirts

How A Phone Changed My Life

***UPDATED***

to include link to Clive Thompson’s article in Wired on the death of the phone call.

This morning I downloaded the new Arcade Fire album, that I had pre ordered over the weekend (initial review – the sound of the autumn, you need this in your life), then checked my Twitter feed before heading off to the station. On the train, I began to write the post you’re now reading. I have a couple of photos of the cats that I took, cropped, post-processed and will drop onto Flickr at some point this morning.

I did all this on one device. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that was in all the papers a month ago. The one that was irreparably broken and was to be recalled at a cost of billions.

That didn’t happen, although my device is now snug and secure in a free case the manufacturers were good enough to offer to anyone that was having problems with phone reception.

That was not my experience. It has not been the experience of hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. This phone is rock solid. Although I can’t talk on behalf of the worldwide user base for this device, I want to go on record, and state that it is the best phone I’ve ever owned. It grabs and holds onto signal without a problem, and 3G reception is a dream. The only point at which it drops a call is on the train, in the signal-free zone somewhere in Southall which kills a conversation with every phone.

But I didn’t really buy the device to be a phone. Along with the general trend of mobile users, I would much rather text than phone anyway, and the software keyboard on this phone is a joy. I’m up to about 30 wpm on it, both thumbs a blur on the surface.

I bought this device primarily as a street computer, and in that aspect it succeeds admirably. It’s an excellent music and video player, a more than adequate word processor, and an amazing camera. With a couple of application downloads it becomes a powerful image capture hub that does significantly more than the camera I dropped £200 on a few years ago. If I felt the urge, I could even edit video on it. In fact, people already have.

This sounds like a gush from someone blinking in the full glare of the Reality Distortion Field. Yes, I know there are plenty of devices out there that do all this and more, that are not proprietary and locked to one platform. Yes, fine, it was expensive. Yes, fine, I queued for almost six hours to get my mitts on one.

You know what? Don’t care. Completely worth it. If I need to check my email, look up something on Wikipedia, while away a dull ten minutes with a game, then this is the device I reach for. My Blackbook is currently on loan to a greater cause (more on that later) and with this and my little Linux netbook, I’ve hardly missed it. It gets used every day. It will get used every day. It’s the most 21st century thing I own. Until the next one.

Please, feel free to hit me up in the comments and tell me why your phone is better than mine. I’d love to know what I’ve been doing wrong!

The Missing Bit

The announcement yesterday from Jeremy Hunt that the UK Film Council is to be abolished came as one heck of a shock. After a couple of appalled, sweary outbursts on Facebook and Twitter, I had a nose at the Wikipedia entry and had a bit of a think about what it is and what it does.

Film-makers like Michael Booth don’t seem too bothered. In fact, he and many others are looking on it as good news. Another X&HTeam-mate, Nick Scott, has also pointed out that his major source of funding isn’t the Film Council. It’s Full Tilt Poker. Both these gentlemen have found innovative ways to get their films funded and out to their audiences that don’t include an agency they viewed as bloated, corrupt, and in Michael’s case a shill for US interests.

It’s true that for the kind of film makers that I count as friends, the end of the Film Council can be met with a cautious cheer. Accusations of cronyism and snobbery have been rife since the council was formed ten years ago. You’re fine as long as you want to make a certain kind of film, with a certain approach. Let’s look at the kind of films that have benefitted from Film Council funding over the past decade.

Continue reading The Missing Bit

Low Gear

It is perhaps the BBC’s biggest money-spinner, generating millions of pounds in revenue. You can buy books, a monthly magazine, toys and games and even cakes emblazoned with the images of the hosts. It’s enormously popular, boasting a loyal and worldwide fanbase.

It’s Top Gear, and I hate it. It’s a prime example of safe Sunday programming that just plods on and on and on doing the same old stuff week after week. It’s turned into a smug, bloated cliche. It’s not even interesting enough for satirists and comedians to have a pop at it now. It just sits there, taking up a chunk of primetime scheduling, getting in the way and stinking up the joint. It’s like Last Of The Summer Wine for petrolheads. Songs of Praise for the sort of person that buys every new Clapton compilation, regardless of how many versions of the same songs they own.

Why do I hate Top Gear? Let me count the ways.

Continue reading Low Gear

The Sky Is Beginning To Bruise, And We Shall Be Forced To Camp

We spent the weekend with TLC’s side of the family, parked in a row of 5 caravans beside a pretty fishing lake in the Warwickshire countryside. It was an excuse to chill, relax, kick back, doze out, laze around, flop about and generally be at one with nature. There were children, dogs and balls to throw at both.

Oh, and we ate and drank like champions, which isn’t too tricky when you have five barbies, assorted gas grills and fridges groaning with beer and wine. As you can see from the map, there’s a brewery just down the way, which due to circumstances beyond our control I didn’t get to visit. I was assured by the sore-headed gentlemen of the group that it was very good, and well worth a visit.

It was as close to idyllic as I’d seen in a while, and yet another example of Britain’s countryside at it’s best. There was no power or facilities other than the ones we brought with us. And yet we had a great time. I didn’t even mind blowing up the air bed with a manual foot pump.

I’d do it again in an instant – although probably not in a tent. That’s a bit too close to nature. But caravans and camper vans are great, and anyone who thinks otherwise, or grumbles at being stuck behind one on the motorway has clearly never had a fun time on a lake. Their loss.

Here’s a short Flickr set of the day.

The Girl Everyone Wants

It’s taken me a while, so my apologies for being late to the party. But I think I’ve finally figured it out. I’ve realised that the Twilight Saga is a work of utter genius.

Now, I understand your misgivings, Readership. Lord knows, I shared them for long enough. A visit to the third and most recent instalment of the series, Eclipse (documented with neat charm by the wise and lovely WDW here) was tantamount to torture for me. I was the only male of voting age in the cinema. The smirk from the attendant on taking my ticket should have been warning enough. The phrase “enjoy the film” have never been uttered with less sincerity.

We left the cinema with screaming headaches and jaws agape. In the pub afterwards (because trying to make sense of the film sober at that point was a task equal to knitting with live squids) we worked round and round the problem, before coming to the conclusion that many many people had arrived at way before us.

The Twilight films are utter shit. They don’t work as romance, as horror, as drama. They don’t properly work as films. They’re prime examples of a money-grab, where a franchise with a popular following is flung onto the screen with little care and attention. The fans will go and see it regardless, as long as there’s plenty of close-ups of the stars smouldering. Or topless. Preferably both.

I travelled home, swearing that this would be the last time I went to see a film on a dare, or under the assumption that it would be entertainingly bad.

And then, gods help me, I started thinking about it some more. Admittedly, I hadn’t stopped drinking. This probably contributed to my relaxed state of mind. And it led to an epiphany. I realised the essential point to the Twilight films.

The reason that the drama is so wooden, the acting so minimal, is that we are supposed to see through it. The Twilight films are Brechtian, concealing a deeper truth behind the faux-“thrills” on screen. The actors are not playing roles, they’re archetypes. They’re symbols. They may as well (and probably should) be carrying around placards stating their intentions. We’re not supposed to believe that the Cullens are actually vampires, for heaven’s sake. That’s why all the vampiric tropes have been stripped away. No fangs. No fear of daylight.

No. The Twilight films are about greed, and how desire for a single object can destroy a carefully balanced system. It’s a treatise on economics, and a telling satire on our culture and the focus on wanting what the other guy has.

Consider. There are two families living in an isolated location, who have come to a fragile piece after centuries of enmity. They stay away from each other, and the balance is maintained.

Then an object enters this system, that the scions of both families decide that they want. It could be a car. It could be a nice jacket. In the case of the Twilight saga, it happens to be a girl. It really doesn’t matter. Bella Swan is not a character in the accepted sense of the word. She’s the equivalent of Helen of Troy. She exists simply to be fought over. In true cinematic terms, she’s a maguffin. She’s the thing that everyone in the film is chasing after for their own purposes, and therefore helps to move things along. The boys, Haircut and Six-Pack, want her without really knowing why. There certainly seems to be no sexual attraction visible. Kisses are exchanged to drive the other guy mad, not as an expression of desire.

Meanwhile the villains of the piece, Redhead and CreepyGirl, want her as a weakness they can use to exploit the others. If they can have her, or at least prevent Haircut and Six-Pack from having her, then they have won. Possession of the Object of Desire is all. Everything else is subsumed into that simple, primal urge. All focus is on the fragile, Pantene-haired creature whose expression never changes.

It would be easy to compare her porcelain features to a mask, which would then strengthen the arguments towards Twilight becoming a modern form of Greek tragedy. But this would be a mistake. There is real heart and emotion at the core of Greek drama. No. what we have here is more akin to a cool scientific procedure. Elements are set adrift in a hermetically sealed environment (very little takes place outside Forks, and the forests that close it off from the world outside) to interact weakly with each other. The words “love”, “need”, and “desire” are used but there is never any sense that the elements using them understand their meaning. The only term that makes any sense in this context is “want”. Everyone wants Bella, but they wouldn’t know what to do with her if they got her. Having her is not the point. It’s the wanting that matters.

It’s this understanding of the illogical and destructive power of greed that makes the Twilight Saga such a clever and rewarding piece of art. It’s completely fascinating, and I’m saddened that it’s taken me this long to cotton onto the ideas that make the film tick. Fancy me thinking it was just a godawful soul-less teen franchise. I really should know better.

I can’t wait to see what happens in Breaking Dawn…

Fandom – when obsession becomes passion

My post on fandom a couple of weeks ago was very much coloured by the fact that I’m not part of a fan community. I thought that this would give me an objective outside view of the world. All it really did was provide a barricade behind which I could lob brickbats and snarks without fear of blowback. That’s unfair to a lot of people, and nudges me dangerously close to the kind of snobbish commentary that drives me to fizzing spasms of rage when it’s directed at something I happen to like.

I’ve decided to offer a right to reply to a friend and writer who is deeply involved in fandom. WDW runs a very well respected blog on one of the more interesting A-listers on the scene, Jake Gyllenhaal. She knows the highs and lows of being a fan, and I’m delighted to offer her a slot on X&HT in order to set me straight.

Continue reading Fandom – when obsession becomes passion

What I Did On My Holidays Pt. 2

TLC and I are big on parks and gardens. We’re paid up members of the National Trust, and like to support the work that they and organisations like them do for the great British countryside.

One of our days out on our recent holiday to Norfolk was a visit to Sandringham, the Christmas retreat of the Royal Family. This was, as you’d expect, stunning. It goes to show what you can do with a decent budget, and it’s the first time that I’ve seen a point to the Civil List. It’s not the cheapest of days out, but it’s one with plenty to see and do, making it reasonable value for money.

We were there on a breezy, overcast day. That didn’t matter.

Music Should Be Free (or at least cheap!)

I’m not big on torrenting music. With a SpotifyUnlimited account I can listen to pretty much anything that tickles my fancy, and MySpace or Last.FM are still worthy tools for checking out any recommendations that come my way. And of course, if I come across any mixtapes on my wanderings, I’ll snaffle them up too. The process of discovery is part of the fun.

Here are some of my favourite finds from the past couple of weeks.

The new Nine Inch Nails side project How To Destroy Angels has posted an EP on their site. If you like the idea of NIN with sweet female vocals, you’ll like this, s’all I’m saying.

http://www.howtodestroyangels.com/

90’s singer/songwriter Jane Siberry has decided to go the free/pay-it-forward route with her entire back catalogue. Her earlier albums are especially worth a listen, and it’s fascinating to track the changes she’s gone through over the years. Still touring, still writing, still got it.

http://www.janesiberry.com/janesiberry/music.html

As a taster for the new album out next week, Big Boi has dropped a mixtape of goodies that includes some Outkast classics. So fresh and so clean.

http://bigboi.com/2010/07/01/download-the-big-boi-mixtape-for-dummies/

I’m not the biggest fan of La Roux. I find her work derivative, and her voice scrapes my nerve endings like cheese wire on glass. But her Jamacian vacation with remixers Major Lazer takes the material into strange, dubby new territory and has me bouncing around like the dancers in the ‘Pon The Floor video.

http://sub.maddecent.com/lazerproof/

Omar Rodruiguez Lopez of The Mars Volta is constantly spraying out interesting psych-proggy weirdness, and has begun collaborating with John Frusciante. The last two albums documenting this collaboration are available for free, or donation to arts charities. The earlier of the two albums is especially good for zoning out to on a long train ride.

http://omardigital.rodriguezlopezproductions.com/

Finally, I’d like to recommend Zoe Keating’s new album, Into The Trees. Her cello-driven, darkly cinematic soundscapes are a must, and will come into their own this autumn. On downloads alone the album is already top 20 in the Billboard classical charts, and deserves to break big everywhere. The download will set you back $8, which is hardly a piggy-bank shatterer. Give it a go.

http://www.zoekeating.com/

Friday Fiction: I’ll be Your Mirror

A little squib that was written and didn’t make the cut for The Campaign For Real Fear. It addresses the way we all spend so much time looking at ourselves these days – and what if one day we look and something else is looking back. It’s a common enough horror meme, I guess, but by mixing it up with ideas of infection, invasion and zombification, hopefully I’ve come up with something fresh.

Note: a horror story. Which is why it’s tucked behind a More tag.

Continue reading Friday Fiction: I’ll be Your Mirror