SONNET: COUNTING TIME

-
My first brush with death:
aged nine,
I saw Daniel Day Lewis
in Last of the Mohicans.

It was the last day of
first school,
and as the credits rolled,
my eyes streamed.

'So life is that
short, and then you die?'
'Yes' said my Dad.

'But that is also what makes it
so
worth while'.

KEATS BIOPIC: BRIGHT STAR

 

The best thing about this was the pared-down ordinariness of the portrait.

Keats has suffered more than most because of some hysterical, not to say excessive, admirers. So it was good to see him here as a pretty average guy able to evoke a world of magic in his writing.

There was a great line that went something like 'the poet is the least interesting thing about a work'. I think starting from this sceptical premise and then trying to create your own core of interest stands as a good methodology for any biopic.

With some pretty spot-on cinematography ('poetic-visual'?), and some brilliantly nuanced acting from the three leads, the poetry could be sprinkled on top in a nicely subtle ancillary way, obviating any capital K Keats bullshit.

Despite having enjoyed the odd Weezer tune back in the day, I doubt I'll ever get around to listening to Raditude.

But this is surely either greatest, or the most spectacularly risible album cover I've ever seen.

By some way.

AN EDUCATION

  -

The Graduate in reverse?

Education and self-abnegation win out against individual freedom, hedonism.

ST JAMES'S PARK RENAMING: A MORE COLLOQUIAL (YET PERHAPS MORE LINGUISTICALLY ALIVE AND CERTAINLY MORE TRENCHANT) RESPONSE

-

PAUL MORLEY ON X-FACTOR

-
I've got pretty ambivalent feelings about Paul Morley, but I thought this was brilliant.

Nicely not-too-oblique.

ON THE PROPOSED RENAMING OF ST JAMES'S PARK

-
"Let this
be a lesson
to you:
names
don’t matter!
Remember
Shakespeare,
Nietzsche,
think of
Derrida.

Meaning slips
and slides,
is not
fascistic,
cannot
be controlled,
has
no memory,
soon runs
out of juice."

See this
wagon full of
terrapins
stalling and
then 
failing,
in a final
abject disaster,
halfway down
the A69.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE?

Friends.

Perhaps the most pernicious cultural institution in recent memory (Radio One's Live Lounge) is now the presenting vehicle of FEARNE FUCKING COTTON.

In light of which, how has FATM's bile-inducing, stage-school-awful, Live-Lounge-incarnate cover of 'You've Got the Love' managed to slip through the credibility net?

'THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION IS THE PRESENT TENSE'

-
That photo:
the two of us,

you holding me aloft
in a dangle of triumph.

In those days we
were round and hopeful,

joy thread tautly
on our spirit-level gaze.

‘Respect for you – that
I did not expect,

looking up
into those spry pupils;

a face so sharply
distinct from my own’.

Later on the scales would tilt,
splashing endless excessive

effusions of water
all over your brain.

NEW BIG BOI TUNE

Dreamy, dirty, laconic, fantastic.