"He kept a shop in London town,Of fancy clients and good renown..."

A recent splash ad on MySpace tells me there's a new Johnny Depp movie in the offing. A Tim Burton/Johnny Depp venture, which should be about as good as it gets. And perfect for the holidays too: a musical in a nineteenth century London setting. That's Dickens Town, by golly! City of chimney sweeps and cherubic pickpockets and parlor games at the nephew’s and Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, casting a universal benediction on us all. Or, even later along in the century, a child’s deceptive haven of waistcoated rabbits visiting from Oxford and mischievous pixie fairies who live in the Park. Where nannies float down from the coal-soot skies and little lost boys in search of their shadows tap on the nursery windowpane.

But, of course, Mr. Depp is not giving us a new Ebenezer or Mr. Banks or Captain Hook (though the last IS a thought...just sayin'). Instead, his own gallery of risky performances will now include the doomed story of Benjamin Barker, Fleet Street barber convicted of a false crime and sent to Australia. But escaped, and returning home and searching for wife long lost and child long grown.

London London London. Damn me. London.

My first trip over in July 2002, I spent two days on my own in London. World Cup Weekend it was. Using Travelocity, I originally booked some delightful sounding place, but co-workers reading the postal code on my reservation form told me I was well away from City center. So a hasty reshuffling landed me the only reasonable vacancy, something near the Gloucester Station on Cromwell Road (yeah, not forgetting that soon). Later I realized from reading Mrs. Palfrey, a novel by Elizabeth Taylor (No. Not THAT Elizabeth Taylor. The other one.), that I might have been staying in what was more akin to pensioners housing offering a semblance of self-sufficiency in the City and a tenuous toe-hold on middle class respectability. Which would explain the enormous pile of empty gin bottles collecting on the back stoop. But it was cheap and within (what I, urban hill-climber that I am, considered) walking distance to Harrods.

After checking in early in the mid-morning, I headed off in a quest of food and City fun. Slight confusion as the streets twisted and turned about and I was seeing less commercial and more residential and a directional sign saying "Shepherd's Bush" and, drawing on my history of the Who, I knew I was headed in the wrong direction. Back again and finding the Gloucester Station shopping area, I went inside to the first lunch counter I saw and ordered a meat pie. When it arrived, all steamy and flaking, I crooned down to it: "Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop. Does a business, but I've noticed something weird. Lately all her neighbors' cats have disappeared. Wouldn't do in my shop! Just the thought of it is enough to make you sick. And I'm tellin' you...them pussy cats is quick!" And the waitperson behind the counter hustled me out into the street.

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd...

Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece. Listen ye, Andrew Lloyd Weber, and grovel before it.

What doesn't this musical have? Escaped convict, vengeance, lust, barber chairs and medicine shows, cannibalism, madhouses and lunatics, sailors and holiday seaside songs, beggar women whores, corrupt government officials, true love and tragedy. And meat pies. God, that’s good.

Still, I'll confess that I'm more than a little worried about Helena Bonham Carter here. We're not seeing much of her in the preview and we're hearing less. Mind you, I saw the great Lansbury her very own self bring the doting, daffy and quite dangerous Mrs. Lovett to life on the stage in '79. And this after weeks of listening to the original Broadway cast recording of the whole thing so that I would know each bawdy pun and wheedling caress of her voice by heart and can type all this from memory even now.* A canny businesswoman, first and always: "What's my secret? Frankly dear, forgive me candor. Family secret. All to do with herbs. (And mind, now: pronounce that 'H') Things like bein' careful with your coriander. That’s what makes the gravy grander!" A tender mother's heart of tatted doilies and seaside mementos denied its rightful place in the safe haven of home and family: "Nothing's going to harm you, Toby, not while I'm around." A spurned and desperate lover: "Your Lucy! A crazy hag picking bones and rotten spuds out of alley ashcans? Would you wanted to know she ended like that? Yes, I lied because I love you. I've been TWICE the wife she was! Could that THING have cared for you like me...?"

Oh it's a GREAT role. Ms. Carter better be up to it!

But I'm not in London this December. That's breaking a personal record, though we have hopes for January. Still, if I'm not there, the Duke de Mondo is and I’m trying my level best to not be consumed with a deep, resentful envy as a result. Which makes it all the harder to say that his new blog London in Broken C is every bit as good as anything he's written in the past. As with his Dublin of Sinead and the Savage Purple and hometown Belfast, another world-famous metropolis has found in the Duke an able chronicler for the new millennium of all of its wild attractions, its inexplicable eccentricities and its ageless sorrows.


*I'm onboard the Mendocino at this very moment, so there's no Google on hand to double-check. Of course, I could only post this later when next online, but I swear: straight from memory.

"From Brixton's lovely boulevards To Hammersmith's sightly shores"

Ah...me.

From what I can tell, The Duke de Mondo is in the throes of another romantic entanglement, and he has done the very sensible thing of listening to Rum, Sodomy and the Lash while he figures things out:

...Aye, I tell her. These gloriously wretched tableau's and episodes, I been catching glimpses of them e'er since that momentous afternoon when first I hit play on Rum, Sodomy & The Lash.

But the other London Shane talks about, the London of "long-gone songs from day's gone by" carried along the swell o' the Thames, the London of "Rainy Night In Soho," I been pining for that, y'unnerstann.

"Rainy Night In Soho," I remind her, is maybe the most beautiful song ever written, certainly the most beautiful ever written about Soho.

Was goin to be the first song at the wedding I almost stumbled into, by the by. We used to dance drunkenly round the kitchen in time to the sway o' yon strings.

"I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms"

But beyond all that is the startling development that The Duke has made a decision regarding his literary future:

I got a burning in the belly reeks o' a craving for to be heard and read, I say. I point out that the longer I sit here in this back room with the fag in the maw and the fags in the brains, with the fringe getting blacker and the eyes getting redder, with the stacks o' Chapter One Paragraph One getting closer to the roof-slates with each tick o' the time-tock, the longer this goes on, I say, the closer the factory gets.

Fore a fella knows what's happened he's stood in yonder production line checking pharmaceutical paraphernalia for anything out of the ordinary, yacking all about how he's gonna get a novel out one day, soon as my agent gets back to me. Soon as the publisher's ready. Soon as this leg gets fixed. Soon as the doctors let me go. Soon as I get this black from out my lung.

What I say is don't get me wrong, not for a second. The factory, it's a place humming with strong and beautiful and soulful and special and dedicated human beings. But I'd be lying, I say, if I pretended yon grinding and sparking and thumping didn't scare the yellow out my pish.

So aye. I'm going to London. I'm taking a couple bags fulla personality, a guitar tuned to Blue and a case filled wi' y-fronts on account of I wore boxers once in 1999 and my knackers ended up moored off Arran for a fortnight.

Ever the one to encourage and enthuse, I'm reminded of George Orwell's delightfully brilliant Keep the Aspidistra Flying:

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over
The bending poplars, newly bare.

As a matter of fact, though, there was not a breath of wind that afternoon. It was almost as mild as spring. Gordon repeated to himself the poem he had begun yesterday, in a cadenced whisper, simply for the pleasure of the sound of it. He was pleased with the poem at this moment. It was a good poem--or would be when it was finished, anyway. He had forgotten that last night it had almost made him sick.

The plane trees brooded motionless, dimmed by faint wreaths of mist. A tram boomed in the valley far below. Gordon walked up Malkin Hill, rustling instep-deep through the dry, drifted leaves. All down the pavement they were strewn, crinkly and golden, like the rustling flakes of some American breakfast cereal; as though the queen of Brobdingnag had upset her packet of Truweet Breakfast Crisps down the hillside.

Jolly, the windless winter days! Best time of all the year--or so Gordon thought at this moment. He was as happy as you can be when you haven't smoked all day and have only three-halfpence and a Joey in the world. This was Thursday, early-closing day and Gordon's afternoon off. He was going to the house of Paul Doring, the critic, who lived in Coleridge Grove and gave literary tea-parties.

It had taken him an hour or more to get himself ready. Social life is so complicated when your income is two quid a week. He had had a painful shave in cold water immediately after dinner. He had put on his best suit--three years old but just passable when he remembered to press the trousers under his mattress. He had turned
his collar inside out and tied his tie so that the torn place didn't show. With the point of a match he had scraped enough blacking from the tin to polish his shoes. He had even borrowed a needle from Lorenheim and darned his socks--a tedious job, but better than inking the places where your ankle shows through. Also he had procured an empty Gold Flake packet and put into it a single cigarette extracted from the penny-in-the-slot-machine. That was just for the look of the thing. You can't, of course, go to other people's houses with NO cigarettes. But if you have even one it's all right, because when people see one cigarette in a packet they assume that the packet has been full. It is fairly easy to pass the thing off as an accident.

'Have a cigarette?' you say casually to someone.

'Oh--thanks.'

You push the packet open and then register surprise. 'Hell! I'm down to my last. And I could have sworn I had a full packet.'

'Oh, I won't take your last. Have one of MINE,' says the other.

'Oh--thanks.'

And after that, of course, your host and hostess press cigarettes upon you. But you must have ONE cigarette, just for honour's sake.

Hmmm...on second thought, perhaps the Duke should avoid that particular read until he's on his own second or third publication.

I will be following the Duke's September adventures in the City of Dickens and Wilde with great interest.

The Things You Find in Google

Was doing the classically egotistical thing of googling on my name (coupled with Horslips, so as to eliminate the Franklin-Templeton* Fund hits) and found this!

Aaron McMullan Reviews.

Which guilts us into a visit to Mondo Irelando to see what might be new.

Skirting the temptation to read The Duke's opinions on Anne Coulter (and goodness! What is he going to say that Mick Farren doesn't already say with pictures of leather and bondage!) I find that the Duke has gone and seen Brokeback Mountain:

"Hells fire, mean did you ever find yourself all touchy-feely round about a man o' your self-same sex?"

What I say is no, what I say is what kinda mania you hopped on, anyroad?

Behind the eyes, you'll be aware, s'all sortsa flashback.

"D'You Know What I Mean" by Oasis, I'll be damned, s'just gone Number One, this record, sayin, this record's gonna be amazing.

Fella sat beside me way back then, he's sayin aye, I'd wager it'll be tight as a vicar's arse, you can be damn sure ain't gon' be no songs longer than three minutes, ain't gon' be no outlandish production, gon' be focused, oh aye.

Be Here Now, they're calling it. S'gonna be amazing, don't you know?

(And it was, dammit, and I'll defend it to the slight discomfort, best believe it.)

High on the rugged throat o' Gallagher, we set off for to find a tavern might accept a couple moments gruntin' and a cigarette in the yap as answer enough to the question "You got any ID?"

On receipt of a barman sympathetic to our plight, we settled 'side a jukebox stuck on H17, bein "Revolution 9" by The Beatles, that discordant cut/paste symphony spinning close to two dozen times afore someone in the midst of a beered-up brain-wank tore the plug out the wall and trampled the fucker to chards o' mangled mush.

Soon enough, talk took a dive t'wards the mysteries o' the bollocks.

"See", he gets to yackin, "I fancy her, but I can't stand her. Mean to say, I love her, I think, but she curdles the pish in me guts."

Me all nodding. I understand, I'm saying, s'like that lad I asked out, and yet, hetero to the back a the nuts, I am.

"Aye, for sure." And then; "What?"

Sometimes a fella just stumbles into these things, just opens the yap without thinking and next thing anyone knows there he is, flailing in the hedgerows o' hell with those words round about slinging sulphur 'gainst his jowels for all eternity.

Well, like, y'know, that fella. I kinda, y'know.

"And did he?"

Well not then. Later on, like.

Later on round back the club, with the snow to the ankles and the mumbled beats all crashing from beyond the walls. Nothing X-rated, I'm telling him. Just. Y'know.

He studies the end o' his cigarette for a time. "This is some momentous fuckin shit you're flingin on me here."

A silence, aye, thick as the man-slush o' Zeus. Then it's all come on, for fucks sakes, the hell kinda tosser are you, anyroad, a big ol' tosser likes o' which I never once laid eyes on, that's what kind, if'n you accept that sorta banter as Gospel. Fuckin wi' your mentals like there's no tomorrow, that's what I'm doin' here an now.

Couple pints later it's forgotten.

On the kerb by the KFC, the lass is asking me, "So what, then?"

What what?

"Well, did you?"

A shrug from yours truly. Who's to say, in this day and age?

More at the link. And always worth the read.













*Me (to husband who is downstairs): Honey?
Husband: WHAT!!!
Me: Are we related to the Franklin-Templeton people?
Husband: NO!!!
Me: (sotta voice) F*ck.
Husband: I HEARD THAT!!!

"They gave me a sneer and a guitar pick, and a yellow dandelion."

"I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God."
--John Cash.

Look here. About a month ago, I left for Dublin on the southbound train from the Portadown station hours before some strike or another that would hit on Tuesday 28 March, and checked into an airport-side hotel in Dublin in happy anticipation of a flight home via Paris on that same day.

And that very Tuesday morning found me at the Dublin Airport staring at the word "Cancelled" next to my Air France flight.

"What I can do is book you for the same flight tomorrow." said the sweet young thing at the Air France counter after handing me a government-funded mimeograph that explained how there wasn't a whole lot I could do about any of this.
"But what if the strike is still going on tomorrow!" wailed I, good-nature falling apart like a set of EuroDisney mouse-ears left in the rain.
"At this, we would say 'C'est la Vie.'" she replied. "Do you wish the ticket or not?"

So it was WEDNESDAY, March 29 that found me racing through the Parisienne Airport with a scant twenty minutes to catch the plane that would take me home to beloved San Francisco. O it was horrible! Every ugly American impulse to complain, to speak loudly, to demand to see management pounded in my veins. One of the security men actually made a bit of fun of my whimpering. But then...they held the flight for us! And they booked all of us in first class.

When the flight attendent came by for the first meal, he asked my wine preference. "Oh, red wine please" I said. Can't do white. "Very good," he replied. "2003 Merlot or 2002 Pinot Noir?" And then two bottles were flourished for my perusal. A choice of wines on a flight! I wanted to stand up and kiss him. I wanted to say "Condoleezza Rice is so f*ckin' outta line, man. France rocks!" Instead I said "Let's start with the Merlot and see where the flight takes us."

And with a meal of fresh salmon and a glass of a pleasantly brash Merlot, I turned to the inflight entertainment. And that's where I finally saw Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon going to Jackson -- and Nashville and Vegas and San Quentin -- in Walk the Line.

I should have written this film up long before. But fortunately, Duke De Mondo has taken care of all that for me:

The line Walk The Line walks most perilously is the one atween Selective Portrayal an Fuckin Slander. The flaws it presents; took a buncha pills an did some shaggin around; are sparks in the furthest flung corners a the gargantuan fires Cash scorched himself within. The virtues; he was a good lad wrote a good song; are further still from the pulsatin brilliance of his true beauty.

The flick, y’unnerstann, is shallow an predictable where Johnny Cash had the depth a the Mariana’s Trench an the unpredictability o’ an erection in a convent. It’s enjoyable an emotional an touchin, most certainly, but when the credits roll an the real Johnny an June are rippin the speakers apart every which way, a fella can’t help but reflect on the disservice it does to the man.

The True Story Of Johny Cash. Here it is;

Johnny Cash Live At Folsom Prison.

Johnny Cash Live At San Quentin.

Bitter Tears.

America – A 200 Year Salute In Story And Song.

Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads Of The True West.

Songs Of Our Soil.

American Recordings III – Solitary Man.

When those records’ve eaten into your every wakin moment till hardly a note passes your ear ‘thout facin comparison wi those incendiary, astounding, achingly beautiful pieces a work, then most likely you can assume you know as much as there is to know.

Records like shots a blazin fuck to the back a the brains, records about life an about justice an about redemption doesn’t come as easy as the cold turkey montage would have a fella believe. Records that sound like the rumble a the Earth’s gut one minute, an like the opium sanctity a sleep the next.

Records serve as teachers an pupils, records to feed the hunger in the dream-space, y’unnerstann.

Whoever he was, this man Johnny Cash wi the feet all scorched an blistered on account a the heat o’ those dunes, whoever he was, ain't much sight of him in Walk The Line.

Just found myself in the Duke's link list this weekend. So I'll have to repay that courtesy with lots and lots of visits to Mondo Irelando.

More Metal Fret-Wankery on MySpace

Part of the fun of the John Matrix Blues Quintet is seeing what genres its members consider themselves. The current choice of "Death Metal / Afro-beat / Psychobilly" starts out on the right track and then just becomes a mockery of every earnest MySpace band's desire to pigeonhole their music in the proper category so that it will come to the attention of the hordes of American teens taking a break from snapping incriminating cellphone-cam shots of each other.

Before this I believe the JMBQ saw itself as "House / Psychedelic / Disco" - a delightful trio of styles right there.

Two new tracks: The Nib Atrocity and Shoelace Metal Symphony. I detect a Pink Floyd influence myself. Or perhaps Aker Bilk.

The responsible parties for this music also contributed to a round-table discussion on Chick Flicks over at BlogCritics.org. It comes as a pleasant surprise that Duke "Chicks Dig Whinin'" de Mondo is a bit of a romantic:

But if we are to assume, as Sir Fleming did, that two flicks are being presented to yours truly, and that I know nothing about them save for the fact that one's called some shit like Zero Degree X and the other's called Two Folks Love For A Time, I'm gonna go with the fella meets the lady and the lady likes the fella but woe! He's married to some filthy whore treats him like a bag o' busted bladders. Dump that ho, I'll say, and get with that woman writes you songs and then sings them to you but pretends they're covers of Sheryl Crow b-sides cause she knows you got a ring on yonder finger.

Also, such a motion picture is more likely to feature Kirsten Dunst and be written and directed by Woody Allen.

But the Duke also warns:

But if the rest of the flick sucks, well, don't matter how many montages it's got all about he misses her, she misses him, maybe they should put their differences aside and get filthin' again, it ain't gonna save it.

There's a MySpace for us...

I first heard about MySpace via the Duke De Mondo, who said something along the lines of "There's a lot crap music posted on MySpace."

Then I was invited to be a 'friend' to the good folks of Drumming Up Hope back in October. I went through the motions of registering and let it go at that.

In January, the Radiators from Space -- Phil Chevron's and Pete Holidai's great Dublin punk band -- invited me to be their friend.

That got me to upload a vintage photo and make a half-assed attempt at a profile. And to browse around.

Five minutes later, I realized that there was indeed a lot of crap music posted on MySpace...and a lot of good music and a lot of music in between. There's the John Matrix Blues Quintet and their song Arnie Syndrome, for instance, which takes a bunch of my Governor's famous movie quotes and strings them out over some "metal fret-wankery" (as one commentator describes it) and basically calls it a song.

After the first 24 hours of listening to it, I've told more people about this Arnie song than I did in a month about my first Horslips album.

To be fair, if Horslips had sampled a local politician in the mix (Gerry Brown? Sonny Bono? Or--God Forbid--Ronald Reagan?), I'da had an angle.

But imagine my surprise at my coworkers' reaction when I mentioned the source of all this free music. And this forum that has expanded my musical-interest base exponentially by the hour.

Me: So I've registered at MySpace and you'll never guess...
Coworker #1: MySpace? Isn't that for kids?
Coworker #2: You saw that program on TV this weekend? About that girl?
Me: Kids? The guys who got me hooked were playing punk rock in Dublin. In the 70s!
Coworker #2: And then this other thing on the radio was talking about the kids who bully on MySpace.
Me: Okay. There's a whole section on CyberBullying with tips and resources! And it is NOT just for kids.
CoWorker #1: My friend was telling me about MySpace. Actually...his kid was telling me about it.
CoWorker #3: Hey. Ease up. MySpace is a perfectly capable and popular Virtual Social Network. One of the most popular on the net...
Me: There! See?
CoWorker #3:..for kids.

The MySpace Generation

At the same time, her boyfriend IMs her a retail store link to see a new PC he just bought, and she starts chatting with him. She's also postering for the next Buzz-Oven concert by tacking the flier on various friends' MySpace profiles, and she's updating her own blog on Xanga.com, another social network she uses mostly to post photos. The TV is set to TBS, which plays a steady stream of reruns like Friends and Seinfeld -- Adams has a TV in her bedroom as well as in the living room -- but she keeps the volume turned down so she can listen to iTunes over her computer speakers. Simultaneously, she's chatting with dorm mate Carrie Clark, 20, who's doing pretty much the same thing from a laptop on her bed.

You have just entered the world of what you might call Generation @. Being online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for Adams and 3,000-odd Dallas-area youth, just as it is for millions of young Americans across the country. And increasingly, social networks are their medium. As the first cohort to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent, today's teens and twentysomethings are flocking to Web sites like Buzz-Oven as a way to establish their social identities. Here you can get a fast pass to the hip music scene, which carries a hefty amount of social currency offline. It's where you go when you need a friend to nurse you through a breakup, a mentor to tutor you on your calculus homework, an address for the party everyone is going to. For a giant brand like Coke, these networks also offer a direct pipeline to the thirsty but fickle youth market.

Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone, to 40 million members. Youngsters log on so obsessively that MySpace ranked No. 15 on the entire U.S. Internet in terms of page hits in October, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Millions also hang out at other up-and-coming networks such as Facebook.com, which connects college students, and Xanga.com, an agglomeration of shared blogs. A second tier of some 300 smaller sites, such as Buzz-Oven, Classface.com, and Photobucket.com, operate under -- and often inside or next to -- the larger ones.

More at the link.

It was written in 1843, after all...

After pulling out my small copy of A Christmas Carol for yesterday's title quote, I continued reading on a bit for the pure enjoyment of the writing. Came to the part where Marley tells Scrooge to expect his visitors on each subsequent night (it is 2:00 a.m. at this point). Scrooge awakes to hear twelve chimes on the clock and is disoriented by the sense of going backwards or far forwards in time:

“Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “That I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!”

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely colkd, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief because “three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United States’ security if there were no days to count by.

Wow! Slam! Right out of nowhere with that one! Well, who’s your daddy now, Ebenezer?

Moments of aroused chauvinistic patriotism aside, I’m quite happy that A Christmas Carol is out there as one of the seasonal classics. First of all, and most importantly for a holiday story, it can scare the crap out of you as a kid (which it did) and features no less than three speaking parts for ghosts. (TGOCF doesn’t speak…remember?) It stands relatively alone in the field of holiday fiction in its use of the macabre to make a point. The Nightmare Before Christmas now possibly running a close second.

Then there's a whole gamut of family and extended family vignettes: young Ebenezer left at school for the holiday break; the classic office party at Fezziwig’s where we can imagine Ebenezer’s friend Dick dropping trousers and climbing up on the printing press to leave an amusingly inked holiday impression for the Monday morning crew; the lighthouse keepers celebrating alone with grog, song, and companionship; that insufferably cheery nephew’s party (take me away from this, o Spirit!), and – at the heart of it -- the threadbare Cratchit household which is quite depressing if you pay attention to the details. Almost the whole economic scale there.

I believe I’ve read somewhere that Dickens didn’t ‘do’ aristocracy, and their absence in A Christmas Carol is pretty telling. Instead at the very brink of the most cheerful Hallmark moment scene of syrup and sweet, The Ghost of Christmas Present pulls back his robe to reveal two small children:

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say that were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! Are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand toward the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!”

Recommended quick read: John Nichols on “The Rebel Jesus”, Commondreams.org.

***

The other great thing about A Christmas Carol is that it has loaned itself to endless variations and parody over the years. I've seen the lot, but have a special fondness for the Jim Backus-voiced version with the song about Razzle-Berry Dressing:

"Oh Ebenezer, you've done it again!"

(From DVD Movie Guide)

and the WKRP one with the brownie-wielding Dr. Johnny Fever as the Ghost of Christmas Future:

Johnny Ghost: Bailey runs a television station in Chicago. Travis is breeding guard dogs in New Mexico. Venus owns a clothing company called "Upwardly Mobile." Jennifer married and bought herself an entire island off the coast of Sardinia. Les Nessman? The Republican whip of the United States Senate!
Mr Carlson: What about you and me? Fever and me?
Johnny Ghost: Well, Fever just sort of ... disappeared. There were rumours, of course, but really not much else.
Mr Carlson: And me? No no, don't tell me, I don't want to know. I'm dead, aren't I?

But this year, after seeing a Lifetime channel ad for some piece of fluff with a soccer mom over-extending her cellphone bill and not having enough 'face' time for the kids (I may be extrapolating on this plotline, but I'll bet I'm close...) called "A Carol's Christmas" I decided to ignore any more Dickensian tributes, homages, parodies, rip-offs and such.

Then I visited Generic Mugwump...

Now whatever little 'thing' the Duke De Mondo has going for Conor Oberst's fringe (yeah, I finally found that essay), it pales in comparison to the torch his otherwise-sensible friend Aaron Fleming keeps lit for Jeff Fahey.

It is a dark world where highways intersect with crash cymbals, and large portraits of varicose-veined eyes line the sky. Fayhey and his guide reintegrate beside a flaming Porcupine having sex with Bodger, this is indeed a mad world. As Fayhey stands looking at the chaos surrounding him, alphabet spaghetti starts to rain down from the sky. “What is the meaning of all this?” he asks the feedback. “Well,” it replies, “this is what will happen if you continue with this propensity to miss classic films at Christmas.”

And from this morning's visit to obtain these last few links, I see that the Uncle Duke De Mondo has had a change of heart and given us a Holiday themed Mondo Podcast #14.

Why, that even beats of bowl of razzle-berry dressing!

Rumble in Brighton Tonight

Just thought I'd write up an open post to the Duke De Mondo (and perhaps Simon of No Rock&Roll Fun who won't like it one bit) that I have just purchased

Motion Sickness, Bright Eyes
Down in Albion, Babyshambles
Capture/Release, The Rakes

All found at Rounder Records, The Lanes, Brighton. Rounder listed Capture/Release as its personal pick for #2 album of the year. I wasn't too sold on Bright Eyes until I saw the song When the President Talks to God. Down in Albion has received good reviews from other quarters, so there you are: the Mondo Irelando podcasts have made a significant impact on my music purchases to date.

Speaking of Brighton, have met up with a fellow business traveler who was home for a visit from his new digs in Spain. His name is Harry, which is easily remembered because I keep stifling the desire to sing Ray Davies' Harry Rag in his honor.

We started talking about -- what else -- music and he proudly recounted how he had a police record for a long-ago weekend in Brighton back in the days of the Mods and Rockers.

Me: Oh hey! Like Quadrophenia.
Harry: It was brilliant!
Me: Okay. I have to guess if you were a Mod or a Rocker.
(Quick furtive look at hairline, clothing...no clues there.)
Me: A Rocker?
Harry: No! I was a Mod!
Me: Look, you just told me that one of your life goals was to drive a Ford Mustang through the streets of San Francisco. That's something a rocker would want to do. And you knew your classic American cars. That's all I had to go on.
Harry: Nah...not me. Madras jackets, winkle-pickers, the lot.

And so on. Last night, Harry told me about a great three piece blues band down at the Fountain. So we had to go check it out. When they launched into John Mayall's All Your Lovin, Harry and I exchanged looks that said "Not bad, huh?" At the break the musicians stopped by our table, which had grown to a party of six, and we somehow got into a comparative discussion of Gary Moore and Rory Gallagher. "Rory," said the lead guitarist of the trio, "Rory was the pure thing."

And who could disagree?

I left Harry and the others to enjoy the music til closing time. Tonight I'll be solo at the Festival Theatre, but that's the music news so far from Brighton.

75mg: a new album from the Duke De Mondo

I honestly don't know how people close to him can stand the Duke De Mondo.

To be in any real-time proximity must be wearing as all hell.

First there's the writing. His seven-part series 72 Hours Raw in Dublin was like a Red Bull and cigarette-fueled collaboration between Jack Kerouac and Patrick McCabe holed up in the Talbot Street Comfort Inn with nothing but Shane MacGowan and Pete Doherty songs on the mp3 playlist. When I first read it, I actually thought I was encountering someone with decades of writing experience behind him. Not so.

Then there's the website, linked above. One guestbook visitor said "My favorite amateur website ever." It does read a little dark on my own workstation screen, but that screen may be a thing of the past now, so whatever. The design, layout and graphics are -- again -- something you'd expect from someone with years of experience. And it is loaded with essays and rants, sound files and pictures, and god knows what else. I haven't even visited the Asia Extreme section.

And then there's the podcasts. Here, for the first time, we have a chance to hear the early forays of inexperience. Mondo Irelando Podcasts 1 through 3 are worth a listen and probably hold up against 95% of the other podcasts out there. Also, my drop-jawed admiration for anyone who would play a Charles Manson composition (indeed creeping out the audience with the actual recording of Manson singing it) and then follow it with one of their own songs! But I'm getting ahead of the story.

With Podcast 4, there's something more that gets started. And the way that he handled "the following program contains obscene language that may be inappropriate for some listeners" in Podcast 6 should have Stan Freberg crawling out of the grave and dragging his bones to Belfast just to shake the Duke's hand. Podcast 13: brilliant. Simply brilliant.

I've got the gap between Podcast 8 to 12 to cover, and there's apparently a Podcast 14 on its way.

Okay. What else? He's some sort of bigwig at www.blogcritics.org.(The Bubba Ho-Tep review picked at random there.)

And on top of that...he's a songwriter. Because none of that other stuff is apparently enough.

I mean: damn!

I came on this with 120 Removed (April Songs), which I thought was a breakup album with his muse Sinead. Indeed, I still haven't figured that one out, but the first song "I Do Believe You Are the Devil" seemed to be the cathartic release of inviting your buddies over and trashing some poor person from a past relationship. The lyrics described the sort of thing people in San Francisco will pay top dollar for in certain Folsom Street establishments:

I do believe you are the devil,
Got me bent naked for the lash,
Those 120 days of Sodom heading up this way,
Twisting and writhing in the ash.

I'd been listening to buckets of Nick Cave at the time, so I wasn't immediately impressed. Did appreciate the Soggy Bottom Boys chorus of the other guys in the background.

But then there was Chicks Dig Whinin.' "Ah HA!" I thought. I just knew this would be some misogynistic piece of male superiority laughing at female sentiments that I could download and post to the good ladies of Guerilla Girls, who would, in turn, administer a post-feminist cyber-pounding on his ass. But the song did not play out as expected. Instead, it revealed an understanding of female psychology that I'm not too pleased to know is in the hands of the opposite side in this eternal battle of the sexes we've all got going on.

Taken as advice, the song could help a lot of guys get a lot of action:

Chicks dig whinin’, this I know,
Their sympathetic eyes say so,
And whispering to friends – “It’s true,
Man, he’s so cute when he’s so blue”

Chicks dig guys who fantasise,
Bout helping dry her weeping eyes,
And guys who choke on hateful lies,
“I’m sorry! I apologise!”

Chicks dig songs bout loneliness,
And songs bout life that sound like death,
And pausing for to catch my breath…
And cough the shit from out my chest

Chicks dig talk of Jesus from a fella’s not a preacher,
Just some fool left to make sense of senselessness,
And all my senses,
They are dragging me towards her and I’m scared I’ll never reach her,
Chicks dig weary resignated sighs…
Chicks dig when a man can’t help but cry

And it is sung to the tune of Jesus Loves Me. Again: brilliant. Just brilliant.

But he's got a new album out now, and all that's going to happen is everyone who is already a slavering online fan of his hyper-creative output is just going to download it and praise it and pass it along to their friends. (I haven't had a chance yet, but the one track on Mondo Irelando Podcast 13 was pretty damn good.)

What he needs is some new, impartial listeners. Listeners steeped in the full five decades of rock music and not easily swayed by clever graphics or streams of prose. I believe a few Horslips fans should get in there and make their opinions known, certainly, but I encourage any and all to check out 75 mg.

There! Thank God that's finished. It makes me tired just writing about him.