ON BARBERISM

I fucking hate musicals. Loathe them with a passion that borders on genocidal zealotry. Ask me to go to see a musical with you – go on, I dare you. Just make sure you take out a comprehensive medical insurance policy first (especially you Yanks and your ludicrous excuse for a health system), because the merest suggestion might induce me to lash out in flailing convulsions of total revulsion: at the show for being a plotless, brain-wrecking waste of the precious seconds to my ever waning life, and at you for even suggesting that I might just be the kind of mentally vacuous miscreant that would voluntarily subject himself to such torture. I’d rather ram a corkscrew up my dickhole.

The preceding paragraph sums up my opinion of musical theatre prior to my discovery on one Steven Sondheim. Whereas pretty much every musical running on the West End/ Broadway/ some town hall rented out by a university Gilbert and Sullivan society are still quite able to drive me to eradicative levels or rage, the inclusion of The Sondheim Factor acts as a catalysing agent that results in an almost alchemical conversion of the constituent parts of staged shit into a joyous experience for all.

How is the possible? Possibly because Sondheim doesn’t treat his audience like idiots, pitching his witty wordplay and complex compositions far above the proles who normally turn up to these things looking for glitter and a catchy ditty to bop along to. He also chooses some brilliant subject matter – piss off Joseph and your chorus-line of God-squad crooners, I’m going to see the one about US presidential assassins, thank-you-very-much.

Which brings me to Sweeny Todd, considered to be a pinnacle of the form. I have not seen it on stage, but I must admit the film will have me snapping up tickets should it ever come my way. I’m not a Tim Burton fan. His films always promise a dark edge, yet never capitalise upon it. Not so this time around: the darkness is reaped in full, from an opening send-up of the shitehole that is London (cast in an almost completely desaturated tone) through to the inevitable murders and body disposal thereafter.

Ahh, the murders. Half of the cinema didn’t realise the flick was sporting an shiny new 18 certificate, and boy does the film exploit it. Arterial spray gushes in a most theatrical fashion barely seen outside of a Fulci splatterthon. Many hands were raised to eyes. There’s nastier stuff still, but I shan’t spoil it for you.

The cast are brilliantly engaging, with quite a few unexpectedly good singers among them (Johnny Depp? Alan Rickman? Timothy Spall?!) and all carry off Sondheim’s brilliant writing wonderfully.

So, drag me to the musicals if you must, but let me assure you – the blood had better be on the stage, or the aisles will be swimming with it.

Something That Made Me Laugh™

ON THE NEED TO SEND JUST £2 A MONTH

Due to the coinciding needs of a professional dive qualification and a place to do it on the cheap, I’m currently ensconced in my parent’s house for the next month or so. My parents happen to live about seven miles from anywhere of note, up in the bucolic climes of Aberdeenshire.

Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot stress the need for your donations to help ease the plight of the people of rural Scotland. People here have to contend with day-to-day struggles on a scale that borders on the incomprehensible. Men and women are forced by circumstances to live in tiny dwellings, sometimes referred to as “crofts”, with only a small fireplace or stove within to provide what sliver of warmth is available. The must toil each day, sometimes travelling for miles to find wood, food and supplies, usually only enough to last for a single week. Some even must cook on antiquated equipment, sometimes up to and over fifty years old.

The men are often required to train dogs rudimentary skills in order to hunt large mammals by chasing and trapping them in jury-rigged enclosures. Their outdoor life exposes them to the harshest of conditions: rain, snow, wind and slightly heavier varieties of rain are frequently encountered. Worst of all, the countryside is filled with mud. Gallons of the stuff. I’ve seen these conditions reduce grown men to tears.

The struggle to survive here has recently led to the formation of armed gangs, roaming from field to field and mercilessly slaughtering their rivals, known only as the “pheasants”. Attempts to curtail their activities are rendered hopeless by the slim-to-none police presence.

But there is hope. For a donation of just £2 a month, you can help teach them the skills to build their own Tesco Metro store, which can sustain an entire rural community. Just 30p can end up buying them a Guardian subscription, which will increase literacy and awareness of offers on timeshare gîtes on the Côte d’Azure.

People in Aberdeenshire don’t need to live on handouts. But a helping hand today could bring a brighter, tourist-friendly tomorrow. Act today. Please.

Something That Made Me Laugh™

ON THE INABILITY TO FIND A DATE

I want somebody to explain calendars to me. Not the general purpose of them, obviously. I’m not some sort or hermetically sealed reprobate mindlessly poking at the world with clammy fingers in some vain attempt to gain the merest frisson of understanding of the world about him, contrary to what some people may think. No, I “get” calendars. The problem is that I don’t get calendars. In the sense of acquisition. Of finding them. Of picking the bloody things up, cradling them like the downy feathers of the rarest tropical bird and conveying them into my house and finding an appropriate vertical surface upon which they may be affixed.

I keep finding that calendars must be bought well in advance of the year in which they are to be used. You are expected to go and obtain your date-monitoring device before the new year rolls around, because after that, all unpurchased calendars will be rounded up and sent to calendar concentration camps, never to be seen or heard from again, save for the few that manage to make it into January undetected and into to 50% off bargain box. These calendars are invariably the popular survivors of their world: month upon month of Dr. Who and Little Britain, cats in compromising positions and still life effigies of tastefully arranged flowers in frosted glass vases. All will soon wing their way onto walls and just as quickly be subsumed into the general bland mire.

Society expects all of us wishing to escape the unintentional hilarity of the Cliff Richard calendar to rush out and ensure that the next year is all planned for by the preceding September. Sadly, I seem to have missed the public notice of this decree. I wander dazed into shops looking for something nice to replace the H.R. Giger calendar that adorned my fridge for the past twelve months, only to discover that the best on offer those that cater to some highly specific and downright bizarre public whims: Waterskiing West Highland Terriers anyone?

I guess I’ll just have to battle on this year not knowing one day from another and let all my days just blur into one stream of continuity. Ought to be a new spin on things.

ON REINTRODUCTIONS

Well here we are: another year to chalk up on out life tally, and a leap year since the last time I bothered to write even to much as the merest footnote upon these pages. The reason? Boredom and laziness for the most part, leading neatly into a general forgetfulness of this blog’s existence. Still, there’s always time to turn over a new leaf.

So, what’s happened over this gulf of unreported time? Here’s a potted summary:

• I graduated university with a 2.1 degree in Marine Biology
• I made friends with a whole bunch of people
• I formed a country/folk/blues band and released an album
• I had something of a falling out with God
• I made a bunch of zero budget films
• I discovered you can win small art competitions with nothing but a copy of photoshop and a few hours on your hands
• I became part of a very successful improv comedy group
  
• I realised that what I want to do in life is make films about animals and shit.

At this moment in time I’m away from the cultured climes of St Andrews that treated me so well, and am now transplanted to the oh-so-woeful northeast.

“But why would you do such a thing?” you may ask (or probably may not, hence my asking that question for you. You never ask me about anything any more. Why do you even bother coming back here?). Well, I’ve hit something of a wall – further progress along my chosen career path requires extended training in SCUBA diving, and operating from up here is by far my cheapest option*.

* see: “Mooching off of my parents”.

So that’s the situation. As of the time of writing, I’ve already completed one half of a requisite first aid course, and am now perfectly prepared to pump anyone’s chest one hundred times a minute, pending prior consent (consent may be implied by, but not limited to: asking, nodding, sideways glances, facing away, use of a pogo stick, listening to hip-hop, rapidly drumming a spoon against your filtrum, choking, observation of choking hazards and direct denial of consent).

So there’s the skinny. Next week: Fun With Defibrilators!