Category Archives: Personal

The irony of Toy Story

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Regular readers (hello, Mum and Louise) have complained that they want me to post more stuff about my daughter. I am about to grant their wish. Kind of.

So, one of the joys of having a little child is that you can watch Disney movies for hours and hours on end. And I mean hours. Bambi was a recent favourite, though we have to fast forward the bit where Bambi’s Mum ‘goes’ and the whole second half of the movie when Bambi and his chums become old. Apparently, babies are best.

My daughter is also obsessed with her toys coming to life, which made Toy Story an obvious purchase. Bought last week, both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 have now been watched within an inch of their digital lives. The second film – in case you’ve forgotten – is a morality tale (what else? After all, it is Disney) about grown ups collecting toys, when they should really be played with by kids.

So, we’ve loved the films and the characters, such as those cool, green aliens that go ‘Oooooh’. My wife remembered we had one of the little aliens upstairs. Even better, the alien key ring was still in its packaging. Which meant I was able to pass it off to my daughter as a ‘new toy’, rather than a piece of tat I’d forgotten that was stuck at the bottom of the wardrobe.

First, it seems weird that I’d kept the toy in the packaging. Was I keeping it fresh to auction at some later date? No, I’d simply bought it in the US and lobbed it in the wardrobe. As I said, I’d forgotten about it – honestly.

So, I gave the toy to my daughter. And then the obvious thought entered my head: was my packaged alien key ring actually worth something? After she tore open the packaging, I checked eBay and found stacks of ‘pristine’ collectables for sale. Err, great. But isn’t that slightly crap?

And even worse, I bought both DVDs – because they were cheaper in this form – in a ‘Collectors’ Special Edition’ box. Which is even more ironic, seeing as the makers of the film have endorsed the ‘collectability’.

Toy Story 3 is out next year, which is great. So, expect more collectables and limited edition Buzz Lightyears. And as my daugther said to her Mummy just three minutes ago: “When’s Christmas?”

Hey, now that’s irony. And the key ring is worthless, by the way.

Twenty albums that rocked my world

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I am off work at the moment – which gives me the opportunity to have a look at the blog and ponder life’s great curiosities. Which brings me to the subsequent list; the 20 albums that have had the biggest impact on my musical listening habits. It’s a kind of chronology and they’re not necessarily my favourite albums – but many would be near that collection, too.

  • Nik Kershaw – Human Racing: ‘The Riddle’ was my first album but ‘Human Racing’ is better; ‘Wouldn’t it be good’ still sounds fantastic.
  • Jane Wiedlin – Fur: The sound of travelling around Birmingham in the late 80s. Wonderful and melancholic dub pop.
  • Pet Shop Boys – Please: Just fantastic. Consistent pop crafters for 20-odd years, ‘Please’ remains their finest moment. Some of the electronics sound amazing; MGMT but two decades earlier.
  • The Human League – Dare: As above, amazing electronics. ‘Reproduction’ – with its pretentious art pop – introduced me to the The League. Then I fell in love with ‘Dare’, whose Casio-led notes sound mega cool today.
  • Prefab Sprout – From Langley Park To Memphis: ‘Steve McQueen’ is peerless but ‘Langley Park’ sucked me in. Lovely and lilting.
  • New Order – Technique: I bought ‘Technique’ on my 15th birthday. For about three years, I was obsessed with New Order and Joy Division.
  • Cocteau Twins – Heaven Or Las Vegas: Just an amazing sound; a wonderful blend of pop and discordant guitar.
  • Slowdive – Just For A Day: I borrowed the album on cassette from someone at school and played it on my Walkman. I can remember thinking it was pretty special.
  • My Bloody Valentine – Loveless: Alternate tunings and a fabulous wall of sound. Still listen to ‘Loveless’; still finding something new buried in the noise.
  • Bark Psychosis – Hex: Incredible, jazz-tinted post-rock. The soundtrack to my years as a postgraduate time-waster.
  • Global Communication – 76:14: I liked Aphex Twin, too. But Global Communication’s epic ambience spent more time on my stereo.
  • Dubstar – Disgraceful: A kind of mixed-up pop version of all of the above; pop, dub, shoegaze – sweet and under-rated.
  • Red House Painters – Red House Painters (Rollercoaster): Sadcore at its finest. Being sad has never sounded better.
  • Sigur Ros – Ágætis Byrjun: The first convincing shoegaze album since Slowdive’s mid-90s demise; Sigur Ros’ subsequent global success was surprising and marvellous.
  • Brian Eno – Music For Airports: Nothing and everything happens. It just builds and builds, slowly and repetitively.
  • Thomas Newman – American Beauty: I love Thomas Newman. His scores are off-kilter and intriguing.
  • Mahogany – The Dream of a Modern Day: Like a shoegaze Stereolab, with layers of effects-laden guitars.
  • M83 – Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts: French nu-gaze from ultra hip Euro stars.
  • Ulrich Schnauss – A Strangely Isolated Place: The sound is both familiar and different. Layered like the shoegaze and post-rock albums of the 1990s, but with an electronic twist.
  • Stars of The Lid – And Their Refinement Of The Decline: Slow, droney and unbelievably elegant.

Football reading group

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I have only ever been in one reading group. It was several years ago and the group only read books on one theme: football. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it was a select group – just me and a couple of mates. The premise was fairly standard; read a different book about football each month.

It wasn’t as difficult to find books as you might expect. It wasn’t as boring as some of you might expect, either. Beyond the ghostwritten autobiographies and first person accounts of hardcore hooliganism, there’s a surprisingly excellent range of football books.

Saying that, however, the first book we read was Steve Claridge’s autobiography – a tedious tale of gambling, crap cars and rubbish performances for rubbish clubs. I refused to read the chapter on Birmingham City, which other members of the group said was ridiculous. But I have my standards.

The group lasted for a year-or-so before we ran out of ideas. There are only so many socio-economic accounts about the history of German football worth reading. Well one, actually: ‘tor!’.

In fact, the group split for good when one member suggested branching into cricket. I was vehement that I hadn’t joined a football reading group to read books about cricket. And that was that. But maybe it’s time for a re-start?

Top five games for a little girl

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My daughter is 25 months old. She has a bunch of favourite games but the following five are probably the most popular:

  • Shop – Soft toys take various roles in the shop, such as shopkeeper, shop assistant, customer and ‘stand back’ (the security guard, basically). The shop usually sells make believe food (cake, ice cream, toast), or various items from around the house (metal frog, little ball, Daddy’s keys). ‘Shop’ is an all-time favourite game.
  • Doctor’s – Soft toys take on various role in the surgery. One toy normally takes on the role of main doctor and other toys usually fulfil a range of health professional positions. My daugther sometimes like to be the nurse. Other toys act as patients and are put to bed. Illnesses normally include spots, coughs, sneezes and ear complaints (such as a snail, or a spider, in the ear).
  • Cave – The duvet on the bed becomes a cave. Sometimes the cave monster vists, sometimes it’s the ghost. Both cause my daughter to become hysterical – the cave monster makes her laugh, the ghost makes her scream. Variations include ‘Shop in the Cave’ – which is like Shop, but in the cave – and ‘Who is it?’ – where she guesses which toy has come to visit the cave.
  • Hide and Seeks – As you might expect, someone hides – either Mummy, Daddy or a soft toy – and my daughter goes a-hunting. There’s a stairs-based variation, too – which no one understands and makes her tense because we forget the rules. Luckily, stairs-based ‘Hide and Seeks’ has fallen out of favour recently.
  • Little Spider – A new game, where a small toy spider climbs the stairs and goes looking for food. He normally eats pretend flies or dragonflies. The latter make little spider cough and sneeze, for some reason.

Tracklist One: January Sales

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What’s on my jukebox? Here’s my ‘January Sales’ tracklist – a lovely blend of post-rock, electronica and shoegaze:

  1. Cradle (Kyte Remix) – The Joy Formidable: Shouty indie pop turned all fuzzy and layered by nu-gazers Kyte. 
  2. Michael A Grammar – Broadcast: Angular pop by Brummie chaps Broadcast. My feet are dancing so much. 
  3. Everything With You – The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart: So infectious, the sound of C86 and shoegaze in a blender. 
  4. My Own Strange Path – M83: French shoegazers go all electronic and produce a futuristic movie score.
  5. Fire Flies And Empty Skies – God Is An Astronaut: Post-rock on a poppy jaunt, via a Jonny Marr-like suspended fourth.
  6. I Know You So Well – Immanu El: Slow and lovely; belting post-rock from your new Scandinavian friends. 
  7. Paint A Rainbow – My Bloody Valentine: Fast, choppy and poppy from the pre-’Isn’t Anything’ Valentines.
  8. Linus And Lucy – Vince Guaraldi: Charlie Brown and the jazzy sound of summer holidays with my little sister.
  9. A Year Without Summer – Epic45: The sad sound of autumn in the grey West Midlands.
  10. Flood Out – Televise: Ex-Slowdive stalwart takes shoegaze to its post-rock coda.

You never forget your first interactive giraffe

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Copyrighters and marketing dudes love to find a sales gimmick and flog it within an inch of its life. Take the seemingly straightforward ‘my first’ concept, which allows companies to tag products that are intrinsically linked to childhood, such as dolls and toy cars. The result should be a tug at parents’ heart strings and a consequential tug on the purse strings.

Except it’s not always as simple as that. M&S is tagging everything ‘my first’, from model steering wheels to polar bears. But perhaps the oddest is ‘My First Interactive Giraffe’:

Great, eh? I mean one thing’s for sure – you never forget your first interactive giraffe, do you? It’s like a rite of passage.

Sorry? What was that? You never had an interactive giraffe and, worse, you don’t even understand what an interactive giraffe is. Well, if the picture above doesn’t help, take a squizz at the description below from mydeco.com: “An exciting introduction to the world of playtime, this interactive toy will have them entertained for hours of fun”

Which – apart from the rubbish English and lack of clarity – explains absolutely everything. Ah, no. It doesn’t, actually. Apologies.

Ten New Year resolutions

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Hope you had a nice Christmas. Here are my ten New Year resolutions. I can’t keep number 10 – I just have to hope it is realised. Have a good one:

  1. Tidy the house regularly. Rather than just when visitors are coming.
  2. Stop using the internet so much. I spend a lot of time looking at rubbish.
  3. And actually phone people.
  4. Eat less yeast.
  5. Try and enjoy fruit.
  6. Keep my beard trim. Perhaps.
  7. Encourage my daughter to wear a coat. And prepare to admit defeat.
  8. Get fit, or something.
  9. Complete Mario Galaxy.
  10. Mid-May, celebrate the Villa winning the League.

A league table of my top 15 favourite bands

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Although a member for a good while longer, I’ve only really been using Last.fm for just over six months. It’s pretty good. I like the way it recommends stuff based on your listening history – I’ve found some new stuff through that, which is nice. The charts that show your favourite bands and tracks are particularly cool. My top 15 most listened to bands of the last six months-or-so is very shoegaze/post rock biased:

  1. Slowdive 
  2. Stars of the Lid
  3. Helios
  4. Sigur Ros
  5. Goldmund
  6. M83
  7. Immanu El
  8. Mahogany
  9. Mogwai
  10. God is an Astronaut
  11. Boards of Canada
  12. My Bloody Valentine
  13. Monster Movie
  14. Styrofoam
  15. Eluvium

Basically, I like stuff that drones. I pretty much know something is going to be my bag when I read words and terms in a review like dischord, processed sound, tape loops, repetition and electronica. Nice.

Emmanuel Eboué is just a small fish in a bigger prawn sandwich

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“It was a moment that summed up the vein-bulging temper and perversity of the modern football fan,” begins David Hytner’s review of the Arsenal vs Wigan game  from last Saturday. “It perhaps went even further and offered pointers about society in general.”

Hytner was referring to Arsenal’s own fans booing Emmanuel Eboué for a series of mistakes. Eboué was eventually substituted. Whether the incident offered a broader comment on society is a moot point but I really liked this part of Hytner’s review:

“Blame the credit crunch. Attending matches is not cheap, especially in these parlous times and, after a hard week, some modern fans have no time for underperforming players, particularly not those who earn in a week what they do in a year. They pay their money, they bubble with indignation and they have a right to express their opinions. Loudly. Call it Wembley syndrome. The England players Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole would relate to that. Many supporters no longer feel the duty to support. They are now consumers and, if the product is not up to scratch, they wonder why they should tolerate it.”

Everyone is a consumer now; everyone is obsessed with consuming. Rather than being about cheap boiled sweets and empty stands, football is more about champagne and Sky’s TV money. The ordinary man (or woman) on the stands has been pushed to the side, not just by money-obsessed executives – but also by the game itself and its obsession with ‘markets’ and ‘consumers’. And that is the saddest thing of all.

Nick Drake and Zippy from Rainbow

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Nick Drake would surely have approved of this:

Nick Drake performs Rainbow (kind of)

There’s real attention to detail, especially the sad face at the window. But it’s just the titles – no Zippy, I’m afraid. The orange one often appears in YouTube searches in our house, primarily because my daughter is a big fan of Rainbow. She is not the only fan, though.

Personally, I like the DVD where Zippy’s cousin from the US, Zippo, turns up and spends most of the episode rapping. I can’t find it on YouTube, but take it from me – it’s excellent stuff. By means of an apology, here’s some more information on Zippo from Wikipedia :

Zippo, Zippy’s cousin, identical in appearance to Zippy, who would make the occasional guest appearance. Originally portrayed as an eloquent Frenchman, but a later episode depicted him as an American-accented rapper with loud, flashy clothing.