Budapest

This is it until Monday as I'm off to get my pipe cleaned in Budapest - well, Pest, as the Buda side of town is moribund, unless nature really is your thing. And it's not mine. Yes, the great Evan Dando based The Outdoor Type on me.

As for the great Simpsons outing, I'm going with Lenny. Awww shucks. It can't be Waylon - he's already soooo out, man. Out there with Wibble Wobble Williams.

Hold tight.

Stick a Lit Cigar Right Up His Arse

On any avge. day the yarbles of Johnny Borrell would t the b, but lo - we have a late contender...

Here be PURE LONDON YARBLES of the first water.

After skimming it - it deserves no more - think Jagger, think Valentino, think Byron ... Think think think. This is moronic non-journalism; a moronic analysis of a non-issue by an anti-talent scribe.

Yeah: apart from that ...

This guy should go and avail himself of some bukkake shots. He almost makes Libby Purves seem proper and interesting, as opposed to being her usual wet flannel - like your mother with her flannel of spittle annoyingly trying to dab your cheeks clean.

Right: I am off to rack one out.

Red Is the Colour of My True Love's Eyes

This article is a jolly little round-up of recent blurbs on our majestic city, though, of course, the ne plus ultra, the daddy, remains Peter Ackroyd's tome (tome? That should be 'tomb' - carrying its lead weight around will kill you) published back in 2000. And as he insists, "Red is the colour of London." Yeah: sex, blood and guilt.

Further to the article: the Boat Race? The fucking Boat Race? A few hours when a bunch of interlopers come and pretend to care about nothing. That event, my friends, has SFA to do with the Mighty Smoke.

Yeah, I know I do get carried away, but 'majestic' and 'mighty' merely reflect how much I adore this place.

PS: today's Guardian also has a brief piece on (and links to) David Mitchell, author of Number9Dream and Cloud Atlas.

Link

New York Just Keeps On Killing Its Soul

This news from our sister ship has me laughing and crying. We just know how it's going to pan out now, don't we?

The city where you can't smoke anywhere you really want to smoke shall have its Brooklyn Cool Filter Lucky Cigarettes Bridge.

And yes, any American readers out there, collectively you are our sister: a younger sister, beautiful, with beautiful friends, and beautiful ideas, at times heavenly - but at times petulant, demanding and full of shit.

Hey! Don't worry, you should hear what we think of the French. You got problems with them now?

The Boy Looks At Johnny

Step forward and take a bow Mr Johnny Borrell.

Here be true yarbles.

If only his songs were half as good as you'd think they'd be, when he can yarble like this!

Muslim Dope

This piece in today's Times reflects my own experiences with Muslims past and present. Yes, they do know how to have a laugh...

I have known since my college days how useful Muslim friends could be. For example, not -on the whole - being drinkers (though do see the article) they are a good source of wheels to get about town and to and fro parties.

Plus, not drinking, they tend to compensate for that lack by having plenty of dope on them.

And their sisters often have such beautiful skin...need I go on?

PS: right now I'd kill six bears for a bacon sandwich...

I Am Not An Animal

"Excuse me regional types..."

As I put it previously below, so here comes DA (archive link via BOAT DRINKS) with a more worked-out response.

So where do I stand?

I stand with I Am Not An Animal, the BBC's latest cult comic offering. Okay, a little so-so in places, a few longeurs, but hey: Glen Belt and his classic number The Day My Computer Said Hello, which he predicted would be "number one in Africa".

And there was more, much more - and there'll be more here another time, probably to celebrate its DVD release.

Until then people: "Out of my way. To London - and let me at the cocaine baguettes."

Link

Little Britain

Slate follows up the story of the achievment of one Huw Lobb - the man who beat the horse - with this run through of our wacky little isle.

"Man Is a Nazi to Animals"

No, not necessarily the views of the management ... but a quote from the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer that you can find here - scroll down to the article A Tale of Two Writers.

The (Norman) Lebrecht's Weekly Index link is also in my BOAT DRINKS list opposite under his name.

Tube Goss

The late Alan Bleasdale (late? well, let's face it: he's finished) once remarked of Guardian readers that they are the type of person who is "the last to find out and the first to know".

I keep that in mind as I try and temper my childlike glee at discovering Tube Gossip last week, and since then the home site where you van find it, and lots of other great bits and pieces e.g. a piss-take of Bono's willingness to pay tribute to anybody. (I hear he's still pretty busy dropping his arch soundbites into the aureoles of Andrea Corr.)

The link is also available in my BOAT DRINKS list, under Tube Gossip.

As Darryl Kerrigan (played by the great Michael Caton) puts it in The Castle, (possibly Australia's greatest comedy film ?) whenever he receives another piece of heartfelt trash from one of his spawn: "That is going straight to the pool room."

Death On the Stairs

This week's NME splashes on the turmoil in Albion. Nothing much new, though Pete Doherty does lash out at the grand a day/week habit he's supposed to have. He puts it at about £50 a day.

Just hope the guy pulls through, casue they're pretty shit without him. Like the Beatles without Lennon etc etc etc.

And I'm glad I saw them back in February of last year, before it all went pears.

Rozzers Rule Clubland

The Observer Monthly Music Magazine has this piece on NYC club life from the late 70s through to just about now.

Boy, what a racket! (Not that it's not the same here.)

Yeah, Right - Bingeing Babes Are to Blame For Everything

This piece of fluff in the Observer reminded me of a Friday night a few weeks ago when we were drinking down the Pierhead Tavern on Manchester Road, and a gaggle of girls dragged this wastrel of a guy outside and proceeded to kick the shit out of him.

Okay, not that remarkable a site nowadays, but for us in the packed out pub it was a boat drinks moment that made the night.

And this is not some snarky Chav-baiting thing; if the truth be told I'm with Julie B aka the Bristol Lisper on this - though not quite all the way down the line.

Despite her comments on those who use the phrase 'white trash', I'm still labelling my love FAUX WHITE TRASH ROCK & ROLL! (right now it's the Crucial Three of the Strokes, the Libertines and the Kings of Leon) - and she's completely wrong about some things, notably that:

• YES it is a good thing that communism has all but gone
• MARTIN AMIS is the fucking don of living English fiction wriiters. Full stop.

But you try telling her any of that.

Honey, Please Get Out of My Face

Now I kiss people hello and, if they're on coke, I can smell it and I immediately want to hurl. I know that demon.

- Tara Palmer-Tomkinson talking about her oldest friend.

Hurl, girl? Hurl girl? Well, you are renowned somewhat for your magic fingers. While plucky mother Liz Hurley is more of a scissor sister...

Really, I envy Tara. I do. I sadly - and jealously - admire her for a decade long career (a decade long? Half a lifetime!) of doing absolutely fuck all.

I console myself with the thought that Judge Time shall be merciless and that there shall never be any tears shed over her grave.

There: that's my daily bitch done.

"At the End of the Day . . . "

Completely fucked on Sunday (as per) but managed to trot down to the local mini-souk for some basic revivifiers - milk, coke, Pringles, bread, cheese, baked beans and chocolate bars. Yeah, it's the diet of champions!

Well, sometimes the booster has already been to eleven, and needs some time off. Though I say: get that lot inside you, pop a couple of pills and you can take old Russia - out of my way Napoleon!

Anyway, as I took a year out of my life deciding which flavour Pringles to hit, by the tills there was a woman loitering around, holding court while two or three regulars passed through.

And she took the record. Obliterated it.

What record? The number of times someone can use the phrase 'at the end of the day' in a conversation. I swear, two in three of her sentences kicked off with that phrase. She used it like we all munch Pringles.

In case you're in any doubt as to my hatred of said phrase, I'll quote you some Arthur Smith. (Who he? A dodgy old pisshead comedian, though a recent show by him based on the songs of Leonard Cohen was fantastic. A must see. So he has talent.) As he pointed out during an episode of that iffy series Grumpy Old Men:

Swearing? There's nothing wrong with a bit of swearing, in the right place, for emphasis. I'll tell you what swearing is to me: it's people using "at the end of the day" all the fucking time. That's swearing.

Morningwood Rock!

A band yet to come over here as far as I know but who are throwing all the right shapes and making all the right noises to stroll into THE GREAT FAUX WHITE TRASH ROCK & ROLL PANTHEON is Morningwood.

There's a video and an MP3 up on their site at the mo. I'm never wrong - well, not since laughing aloud at Thom Yorke's Flock of Seagulls mullet back in 1993 (which, natch, he's returning to so it seems . . .) and Radiohead's sub-REM soundscape. Well, they sold Valium Music to the USA big-time.

See? I was right to be wrong! I say this: Morningwood shall grace the front of NME and Spin et al.

They've got a great lithe Mama Cass-esque singer, if you believe the hype (as you see I do) and they're gonna be much, much better than the vastly overrated Yeah Yeah Yeah's and the amusing but built-to-implode-within-two-years Scissor Sisters.

(Go on: have a delve through your old stack and find that probably pristine copy of Deeliite's debut album. Got it? Well, you might as well stick your SS disc in there now . . .)