Cardiff Central’s new library opened at the end of last month, so it’s been open for about six weeks now. Upon the ribbon being sluiced and the revolving door being manually spun for the first time, this building instantly became the best thing in Cardiff, no questions asked, even less answered. Winchester’s library reopened a couple of years ago; a massively inferior complex built in a hexagonal geometric anomaly that looks like a Micro Machines replica of the Library Of Congress annexed to a smoothie bar, but having revisited the Winchester ‘Discovery Centre’ (no libraries allowed, under Hampshire County Council rulings) I made a few base-level conclusions.
My new book shop or library test is the Richard Ford test. Richard Ford is an amazing author, his most well known work being the Frank Bascombe Trilogy; The Sportswriter (probably the single greatest novel I’ve ever suffered the ecstasy of reading), Independence Day (the much lauded sequel) and The Lay of the Land (The finale), all of which I would recommend to anyone without even merest hesitation. The Richard Ford test is to see whether the literary institution in question has any Richard Ford books in it, especially the ones which aren’t the Bascombe novels The Winchester ‘Discovery‘ Centre, despite being several stories smaller than Cardiff’s magnum opus, and generally giving the impression that antique pig farmer swap meets and crusty folk nights are as important, if not more so, to a libarary as the books themselves, it has a shitload of Ford. Including, I was excited momentarily to see, a copy of Wilderness, which is pretty much impossible to find anywhere except the obvious. It almost made me want to join in the discovery, but I wasn’t carrying twenty five proofs of address, my passport or a portable retina scan. Cardiff Central Library had zero Richard Ford books in it. None! Zero! Zip! Zilch! Fucking nothing-a-doodle-doo. Failure.
That’s about the only fault that springs to mind though, the rest of it is a ridiculous geometrical nightmare, that looks like it was designed by a box of schoolchildren in a wet playtime, but it so overbearing and exciting, you can’t help but run around inside getting overexcited by things you’ve seen a million times before. There are pointless ostentatious chairs which you can’t sit on wearing a dress (not that I was), hundreds of special chairs with arm rests on, which I didn’t think would work at all, until I sat down in one by a window on the top floor, overlooking the sex shop on Mill Lane and the Wyndham Arcade, and realised that they are anatomical perfection for the lazy reader. You’re physically forced to sit hunched over a book and consume that fucker.
There are entire floors or half-floors dedicated to things I don’t understand, and machines that look like CAT Scanners and bent backed old duffers plonking about using light emitting desktop computers and sprawling out maps and other technical documents one step away from being tapestries. They also have these audiobooks which are basically miniature mp3 players with the book loaded onto them, so all you have to do is slot in headphones and it’s party time with Peter Carey. I loaned His Illegal Self and then spent the rest of the gloomy April afternoon before going to James’s birthday drinks, meandering around Bute Park in figures of 8 listening to a woman attempt a variety of bad accents and age-affected vocal lilts as she tried to convey an Italian American, a teenage teller, an elderly grandmother and small boy all having one conversation. It was like watching someone trying to juggle a ball, a knife, a tortoise and a flaming globdule of filthy wax, on a unicycle. Also, and this wasn’t any credit to the library, apart from maybe being rewarded for existing, but in the reading area where they chuck all the daily papers for people to read (alas, not on giant sticks), but there was a Muslim reading a copy of The Satanic Verses. I saw him later outside Boots and he was still reading it. I’m not sure why this was such a good thing, but it was.
There’s an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer is explaining to, I think Jerry and George about how good he is at karate, because he’s significantly better at kicking the ass of the other people in his class. The joke comes from the fact he’s joined a beginners karate class with a bunch of 8 and 9 year olds who are obviously going to have their ass kicked by a lanky hipster doofus. A couple of days ago I went and saw a terrible British comedy called Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel, starring erm, The Irish Guy from The IT Crowd, Shirley Ghostman, and some odious wanker who can’t act, but was in Shameless. Inexplicably, this film also has Anna Faris in it, who can pretty much top the US box office off her own merit, so what she’s doing in this low budget and more or less unwatchable British Sci Fi “lads down the boozer” comedy is beyond me. But she’s Anna Faris, and is therefore completely awesome by default, and this is where the Seinfeld comparison comes in, because she’s so much better than everything else about the film, it’s like watching a 34 year old powerhouse. doing karate with a feeble 9 year old. I was tempted to write her a letter, but that’s a bit 2006.
Thursday 30 April 2009
Tuesday 14 April 2009
Shout
I don’t remember making any promises.
I’ve become increasingly obsessed with pathetic forms of self-regulating anger management, I hadn’t even vaguely thought about the phrase ‘anger management’, until the other day until reading on an internet website about US domestic box office figures, where until last week, the pisspoor comedy and career low for Jack Nicholson of the same time, had the highest opening weekend in April of all time. Clearly April is a barren wasteland in American cinemas. It was beaten, amusingly, by Fast and Furious, a film so angry and spiky and masculine, it almost literally reeks of gasoline, like when BOB is lurking in Twin Peaks.
I digress. Actual anger management, is something I’ve thought about even less than I’ve thought about the Adam Sandler vehicle. Until November last year, it was well documented that well, that there has only been one documented incident of me getting angry, the infamous “shut the fuck up and show some fucking respect” slice of ridiculousness from All Tomorrows Parties which will probably be on my gravestone, it being so out of character and aimed at probably two of the least deserving people I’ve ever met. Last November, a similarly undeserving soul (Pav) was fearing for his life after I threatened to kill him at a house party for the heinous crime of turning off the radio and putting some proper music back on. I don’t know why I’d put the radio on, but boy was I unhappy it had been turned off. I say he was fearing for his life, but I don’t believe for one second I was being taken seriously. I don’t know how I’d even go about thinking about killing somebody else, there just isn’t enough murderous thought real estate spare in the sprawling avenues normally occupied by thoughts of elaborate suicide. Add to these previously isolated cases an incident at work where a preposterous self-imporant no-name author, (the type who uses a pen name so her books would be shelved next to or near several superior scribes in the shitty post-Bridget Jones chick lit vomit section of your local bookstore) whose uppity and deluded opinions of herself (high) and myself (low) caused me to slam open a door and smash a foot long dent into the plasterboard wall of the basement corridor.
A couple of weeks ago, I flew too close to the sun whilst out drinking and thought (incorrectly) that because the rose wine being sold at £4.99 in the Prince of Wales was pretty cheap, and didn’t really taste that much of alcohol, that meant it wasn’t. By the time I’d gone out the side door of the pub for a cigarette, pissed over the wheels of a car parked around the back of WH Smith, swaggered back into the pub and failed entirely to hold my own in conversation with Jo or Lisa without resorting to making up words or just letting out random sounds. It’s like I was learning to talk at the age of 26. Anyway, I lost my phone somewhere between getting out of the taxi, and getting into my house, and this enraged me to the point of going barking mad, and after attempting a wide variety of massively idiotic attempts to find it, including ringing the number on my house phone, and then returning to the street outside and crawling on my hands and knees, looking underneath cars and in hedgerows to see or hear either a little neon square, or whatever terrible present ringtone I had on my last phone during it’s final days, the only solution was to fling open the bathroom door in a dramatic and pompous way, and knock it off it’s hinges. There have been a couple of other minor incidents recently, but they’re more boring than anything, so I’ll put them to one side.
So, to the management. Not that any of these anecdotes have caused anything other than minor hysteria at the time, and a general lack of conviction from anyone else that I’m being anything other than a compete fool, but I have been doing some minor things to combat the increasing waves of anger hovering in the air around me. The first is regular baths. Admittedly, this sounds like I’ve been more than content to let the filth settle neatly in a fine layer on my skin for random and irregular periods of time, but reset assured, this is not the case. A bath, watching an episode of Seinfeld or Arrested Development, or listening to Stars of the Lid or The Blue Nile on a portable DVD player. Heaven. I even did the done thing amongst flake-eating losers and invested in bottles of allegedly anger-destroying (my inference) radox bubble bath. Partial credit!
In January, I quit drinking. On April 12th, I quit again. In January I swapped Red Bull for Pro Plus. On April 12th I did the same. I can’t comment entirely on the pros and cons of this, but it’s cheaper at least. I’ve also quit smoking again, declared myself asexual, and I’m going to press on with learning how to complete cryptic crosswords, and I’m reading more books. For a pair of fleeting moments in the past few months, I half thought about falling in love again, but luckily my common sense was restored, and it proved the possibility of positivity was anomalous, rather than me thinking I’d been consistently reading the love interests intentions wrong for so long.
Right now I'm sat at the living room table with lemon and ginger tea, which smells like I should have a cold, and today in Poundland ("keeping our price promises since 1992!") I bought two slide packets of Lemon Sherbert tealights. The scent was a lie, although I've just looked at the packet again and it draws no reference to them actually smelling like lemon sherbert, but then I can't think why they'd have chosen this name otherwise. I'm not putting one in my mouth, it smells like burnt tealight.
Some of my rage has been lifted lately because I’m on the cusp of giving up on music. That’s an exaggeration actually. I’m not going to give up on it, I mean today alone I downloaded the new Black Dice album (incredible) and the new Bill Callahan album (less incredible) as well as The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby and the Range (still amazing after all these years, although it’s not the same without Grant Coleman reading the Radio Solent football results at the end). But no longer will I ever see a band t shirt, a vocal appreciation for a band, or a habit forming indicating a person or groups musical taste alliance. I was never a ‘rock is so much better than crappy pop music’ twats at school, and although I’ve very much learned my lesson with thinking that someone liking, for example, Bill Callahan or Black Dice, automatically makes them on my wavelength, and how this is painfully untrue, there will still part of me which thought music, above film, books and anything else was ultimately the route to anyone else’s personality. I’ve been to see two bands this year; Wavves and Wintersleep. I pretty much hated everyone else there at both gigs. Anyone can like anything these days, and the money people save on not buying any records anymore means they have more money to spent on going to see the bands, and therefore you get more people, and therefore more shitbags at every gig you go to. Wavves was rubbish anyway, we all got what we deserved.
I’ve become increasingly obsessed with pathetic forms of self-regulating anger management, I hadn’t even vaguely thought about the phrase ‘anger management’, until the other day until reading on an internet website about US domestic box office figures, where until last week, the pisspoor comedy and career low for Jack Nicholson of the same time, had the highest opening weekend in April of all time. Clearly April is a barren wasteland in American cinemas. It was beaten, amusingly, by Fast and Furious, a film so angry and spiky and masculine, it almost literally reeks of gasoline, like when BOB is lurking in Twin Peaks.
I digress. Actual anger management, is something I’ve thought about even less than I’ve thought about the Adam Sandler vehicle. Until November last year, it was well documented that well, that there has only been one documented incident of me getting angry, the infamous “shut the fuck up and show some fucking respect” slice of ridiculousness from All Tomorrows Parties which will probably be on my gravestone, it being so out of character and aimed at probably two of the least deserving people I’ve ever met. Last November, a similarly undeserving soul (Pav) was fearing for his life after I threatened to kill him at a house party for the heinous crime of turning off the radio and putting some proper music back on. I don’t know why I’d put the radio on, but boy was I unhappy it had been turned off. I say he was fearing for his life, but I don’t believe for one second I was being taken seriously. I don’t know how I’d even go about thinking about killing somebody else, there just isn’t enough murderous thought real estate spare in the sprawling avenues normally occupied by thoughts of elaborate suicide. Add to these previously isolated cases an incident at work where a preposterous self-imporant no-name author, (the type who uses a pen name so her books would be shelved next to or near several superior scribes in the shitty post-Bridget Jones chick lit vomit section of your local bookstore) whose uppity and deluded opinions of herself (high) and myself (low) caused me to slam open a door and smash a foot long dent into the plasterboard wall of the basement corridor.
A couple of weeks ago, I flew too close to the sun whilst out drinking and thought (incorrectly) that because the rose wine being sold at £4.99 in the Prince of Wales was pretty cheap, and didn’t really taste that much of alcohol, that meant it wasn’t. By the time I’d gone out the side door of the pub for a cigarette, pissed over the wheels of a car parked around the back of WH Smith, swaggered back into the pub and failed entirely to hold my own in conversation with Jo or Lisa without resorting to making up words or just letting out random sounds. It’s like I was learning to talk at the age of 26. Anyway, I lost my phone somewhere between getting out of the taxi, and getting into my house, and this enraged me to the point of going barking mad, and after attempting a wide variety of massively idiotic attempts to find it, including ringing the number on my house phone, and then returning to the street outside and crawling on my hands and knees, looking underneath cars and in hedgerows to see or hear either a little neon square, or whatever terrible present ringtone I had on my last phone during it’s final days, the only solution was to fling open the bathroom door in a dramatic and pompous way, and knock it off it’s hinges. There have been a couple of other minor incidents recently, but they’re more boring than anything, so I’ll put them to one side.
So, to the management. Not that any of these anecdotes have caused anything other than minor hysteria at the time, and a general lack of conviction from anyone else that I’m being anything other than a compete fool, but I have been doing some minor things to combat the increasing waves of anger hovering in the air around me. The first is regular baths. Admittedly, this sounds like I’ve been more than content to let the filth settle neatly in a fine layer on my skin for random and irregular periods of time, but reset assured, this is not the case. A bath, watching an episode of Seinfeld or Arrested Development, or listening to Stars of the Lid or The Blue Nile on a portable DVD player. Heaven. I even did the done thing amongst flake-eating losers and invested in bottles of allegedly anger-destroying (my inference) radox bubble bath. Partial credit!
In January, I quit drinking. On April 12th, I quit again. In January I swapped Red Bull for Pro Plus. On April 12th I did the same. I can’t comment entirely on the pros and cons of this, but it’s cheaper at least. I’ve also quit smoking again, declared myself asexual, and I’m going to press on with learning how to complete cryptic crosswords, and I’m reading more books. For a pair of fleeting moments in the past few months, I half thought about falling in love again, but luckily my common sense was restored, and it proved the possibility of positivity was anomalous, rather than me thinking I’d been consistently reading the love interests intentions wrong for so long.
Right now I'm sat at the living room table with lemon and ginger tea, which smells like I should have a cold, and today in Poundland ("keeping our price promises since 1992!") I bought two slide packets of Lemon Sherbert tealights. The scent was a lie, although I've just looked at the packet again and it draws no reference to them actually smelling like lemon sherbert, but then I can't think why they'd have chosen this name otherwise. I'm not putting one in my mouth, it smells like burnt tealight.
Some of my rage has been lifted lately because I’m on the cusp of giving up on music. That’s an exaggeration actually. I’m not going to give up on it, I mean today alone I downloaded the new Black Dice album (incredible) and the new Bill Callahan album (less incredible) as well as The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby and the Range (still amazing after all these years, although it’s not the same without Grant Coleman reading the Radio Solent football results at the end). But no longer will I ever see a band t shirt, a vocal appreciation for a band, or a habit forming indicating a person or groups musical taste alliance. I was never a ‘rock is so much better than crappy pop music’ twats at school, and although I’ve very much learned my lesson with thinking that someone liking, for example, Bill Callahan or Black Dice, automatically makes them on my wavelength, and how this is painfully untrue, there will still part of me which thought music, above film, books and anything else was ultimately the route to anyone else’s personality. I’ve been to see two bands this year; Wavves and Wintersleep. I pretty much hated everyone else there at both gigs. Anyone can like anything these days, and the money people save on not buying any records anymore means they have more money to spent on going to see the bands, and therefore you get more people, and therefore more shitbags at every gig you go to. Wavves was rubbish anyway, we all got what we deserved.
"and I will lay my head, lay my head low"
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