Unposted on Election Night: Spoilers for Vengeance

 Okay, a little more about what's happening in US... 

 B.J. Novak's superb comedy "Vengeance" – released in 2022, but only caught by me on the plane back from Vancouver last August – charts an aspiring true-crime podcaster's attempts to document "the new American reality". And I mean charts. The film is a text. So this post isn't an in-depth review, just a recommendation. I'd originally meant to put it out as an immediate response to Trump's election victory back in November, because I thought: what rational reader wouldn't be thinking "Wait, what the hell's going on?" and I'd enjoyed the film as a search for some answers. Then I didn't post it, and now I've learnt the film's leaving Netflix on February 8th, so quick, HERE IT IS*

 I'll return to "Vengeance" in a bit, and maybe it's too late now for post mortems, maybe no-one's in the mood for "What happened was...", but it's only going to get later, so here's another search for answers I meant to share – answers other than just "Everyone's Abandoned Democracy", which seems hopeless if true – and by the way, I'm so glad Jon Stewart's back...

 

 "What happened was, the country felt like Government wasn't working for them, and – the Democrats, in particular – were taking their hard-earned money, and giving it to people who didn't deserve it as much as them. And so the Democrats got shellacked."

 Or, as Jennifer Pahlka puts it even more succinctly in this article:

"the reality is that Republicans let their voters choose the candidate, and Democrats didn't - twice." 

 Maybe what resounded most, then, rewatching "Vengeance" after Trump's terrifying majority, were its final words, so here are SPOILERS... Our hero's initial understanding of events, before he even arrives in Texas, has proved completely correct: the girl he hooked up with in New York was just a hookup, and despite the conspiracy narratives spun by her family, she did die of an opiate overdose. But his understanding of everything else now – how to act, how to choose, how to love, how to remember... the big stuff – is scorched earth, and when he concludes to her mother, as we're all taught to conclude, "No regrets", the Texan muses back:

"I never understood that... No regrets... In my life, everything starts with a regret... Ends with a regret... In between, regrets... It's all regrets... You run as fast as you can from the last regret... And of course you're just running straight into the next one... That's life... It's all regrets... That's what you should say... No other way to be alive... It's all regrets... Make 'em count."

 

"So Six Flags, the theme park..."

 

"Exactly."

 

* UPDATE: For those who can, it's now up on All4 HERE.

Sometimes this blog will just be Daniel Hodges.

 

 It's important to me to keep this blog from becoming just another reaction to the big thing, a somewhere else from stuff. But I acknowledged Trump when he won back in 2016, so I'll allow him another mention here. Daniel Hodges' reaction to the presidential pardons of insurrectionists who tried to gouge out his eyes is the kind of cold, heartfelt reality check his country needs as many of and as soon as it can get, and unlike the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde's sermon to Trump upon his inauguration (reaction shit posted below) – which I'm guessing most readers will have already seen – it's an address explicitly directed to "everyone watching", so I'm happy to boost those numbers. 

 

 Another great reminder of how much power we do and don't have right now is a fleeting story I saw on instagram, which said – perhaps in reaction to the breadth of the brim on Melania's hat – "If you've kissed a loved one on the cheek today, remember, you're more powerful than the president." 

 We have more resources for reaching out to and checking upon each other than have ever existed before. Let's use them. I hope you're all doing tremendously.

Placeholding Shreds of Tom Driberg

 Fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to explain further why, but for now here's a picture of Tom Driberg. I don't expect you to know who he is. I didn't until just now. Initially a member of the Communist Party, and openly gay when it was incredibly illegal, Driberg became Chairman of the Labour Party in 1958, but there's a lot more to know about him than even that. Here's a brief extract from the wikipedia entry where I found his picture:

One of Driberg's elaborate hoaxes was a concert called "Homage to Beethoven", which featured megaphones, typewriters and a flushing lavatory. Newspaper accounts of this event raised the interest of the occultist Aleister Crowley.

 But that's not why I was resarching Tom Driberg either. I was researching him because his was the name which turned up when I searched "MP Driberg 1946," which I did after reading this point of order recorded in Hansard on the thirteenth of March 1946...

FASCIST ACTIVITIES (ALBERT HALL MEETING)

HC Deb 13 March 1946 vol 420 cc1113-4 1113

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper in the name of Mr. Driberg:

137. To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is aware that a public demonstration is to be held at the Albert Hall, on Wednesday, 13th March, by a body known as the Britons' Vigilantes Action League; and if, in view of the fact that much of the propaganda of this League is identical with that of our enemies in the late war and of the consequent likelihood that a breach of the peace will be provoked, he will prevent this demonstration from taking place. 

 

Mrs. Braddock

On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the urgency and the possible far-reaching effect of any reply which may be given, can we have an oral answer to Question No. 137?

 

Mr. Speaker 

No, I can see no need and this is not a matter for me to decide.

 

Mr. Driberg 

Further to that point of Order, Mr. Speaker. Should I be in Order in raising on the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Bill this afternoon the question of this Fascist demonstration?

Mr. Speaker  

That is a matter for the Chairman of the Committee. It has nothing to do with me.

Mr. Driberg  

May I, in view of the urgency of this matter, ask your leave, Mr. Speaker, to move the Adjournment of the House on a definite matter of urgent public importance—that is, the revival of Fascism in this country and the public demonstration by Fascists which is due to take place at the Albert Hall tonight?

Mr. Speaker  

That is hypothetical, and I cannot accept it.

Back to Women's Garments (Down pointing)

 ... And that's what turned up when I searched "the Briton's Vigilantes Action League," which I did because they're mentioned on the front page of the Daily Mail from the sixteenth of March 1946, in a story entitled "Police crushed by Communist demonstrators," and I know about that because it's currently a prop in Love Goddess.

 

 I never really think about 1946. As I say, hopefully more to follow. Click to enlarge.

Tom and Jerry used to be Cops.

 Let's endure a mad old cartoon about skeletons for Hallowe'en proper, shall we? 

 Before the famous cat and mouse, before the male leads of The Good Life – but after Pierce Egan's 1821 box office hit that I've only just learnt about* – Tom and Jerry were apparently these two guys on the right, and after last week's dancing, and Saturday's march, I look upon their floating, supple forms now with envy.  

 

 I'm back rehearsing The Love Goddess this week, and the trick to dancing seems to be to get the top half of my body to hold up the bottom half, which after forty-eight years of having my bottom half hold up the top half is quite a revelation. There's a sexy dance in this too, although not on the same level as Tex Avery, or Jessica Rabbit, or Betty Boop, or actually any woman drawn outside of a toilet cubicle on a building site. I think the animators knew too that they weren't up to this task without any reference material, which is why they spent more time having their vamp just take incredibly deep breaths in a low cut top while standing still.

 

  Has David Cairns written about this cartoon? Of course he has. Do the skeletons all start playing each other's ribs like xylophones at any point? Well actually, not quite. We're literally a second into the action when either Tom or Jerry turns his hat into a telescope, so let's not expect too many set-ups and pay-offs. 

 

 Apart from that though, Magic Mummy is just your standard, run-of-the-mill , proudly-gay-police-force-hunting-down-a-necrophiliac-Svengali cartoon from the thirties. I don't think it was one of the ones Dad used to show us on his Super 8 projector, but the scratchy soprano of its wind machine still summons the dread of many he did. Skeletons were such a faff to draw, weren't they? Happy Hallowe'en, ol' unattendees!

 

 

"At last"?!

 

 *UPDATE: I have also just learnt that "Tom and Jerry" was a drink! Okay. I reckon the drink was named after the play, and the cops were named after the drink, and the animals were named after the cops (Joseph Barbera worked on both cartoons) and the neighbours were named after the animals.

Breaking

  No wonder that podium's always doing a double take. 

 I reached the end of yesterday wondering how I'd managed to get so little done given how little I currently have to do, and only realised with Liz Truss' resignation today how much time I've spent simply checking who's in charge.

 

 

 To be fair to the Daily Mail, she lasted longer than an hour. She also lasted longer than Andrew Neil when he tried to launch a similarly naked culture war over on that GB News then left after two weeks. And how long will the Tories last? Sorry, I mean the Conservatives! I'm trying to stop using the T word, as I have a theory the way they've managed to stay in office for so long is by having two names: the "Tories", who soak up the bad news and the hate, and the "Conservatives" who actually appear on the ballot paper, name unsullied. We'll see if this works again. I've no idea when. Anyway hats off to the Daily Star's "Will Liz Truss last longer than this lettuce" live feed, a properly salient piece of journalism – Yes I know we all know about it, but this is an archive too. To whoever's reading this in years to come: Shush, I know political chaos is never a prelude to good news, but let me enjoy this. Right, the rain's just stopped, laptop closing, I'm off for a walk. 

More Strands

 

 Sweet flipped birds of freedom. Here.

 And yesterday footage went online of riot police joining an anti-Khamenei march. I must remember it's the absence of fear here that's so uplifiting, not the absence of danger. A week ago, a day earlier in the same day that the first student protestors were beaten and fired upon in the Sharif Univeristy in Tehran, my BBC Persian friend Faren shared an Iranian video of a white-haired badass turning heads on the tube by slapping the crap out of two men complaining about her uncovered head. Stills don't do the video justice. You can see it here. I asked Faren what the onlookers were saying at the end and learnt some colloquial Farsi: "Pashmam" very loosely translates as, "Well, blow me!" But its literal translation into English is: "My hair!"

 

BIG Asgardian News!!! (Still Watin' For Lembit)

 

 Speaking of motherhood...

 The Space Parliament of Asgardia (the hard-drive orbiting Earth, chairman: Lembit Öpik) has just had its seventeenth (?!) international cyber-sitting, and put all three days of it up online, as is the Agardian way. I haven't taken minutes of the whole thing as before – because there are hour and hours of it – but looking in on the opening day I did notice a development you might want to hear about.

 We're seventeen minutes into the first day, Lembit's late again, and someone's just complimented the Minister of Manufacturing Jacob Mulder's presentation skills, suggesting he should get his own radio show, which is nice, but just everyone's basically hanging around. Then Egbert Edelbrœk asks if he should play a commercial, and Jacob laughs, but no, Egbert's not joking, he's made a presentational video which was going to be played later so they might as well play it now. 

 And to my enormous surprise we then see... well, firstly, this:

 Because it's always nice to get a glimpse of someone's wallpaper for a split second (this looks A LOT dirtier when only glimpsed) but then the video...

 

 Is this Asgardia?! Is this what's up there, the hard-drive? Or just a plan for what to send up next?

 "Is there sound?" someone asks. 

 Interesting shape too. I don't really know what a butt plug looks like, but it does look like something you might use to plug a butt. And what does "Spaceborn United" mean?

 Then we get a cross section...

 

 And it takes me a moment to realise what I'm looking at...

 

 Oh wow, that's...

 

  ... 

 And then it ends. 

 By which point Lembit has joined us to start proceedings, munching on something, crisps? "Bon appetit, Mr. Chairman," to quote Ariadne Gallardo. Voting is about to start, Lembit explains: "You can vote Yes, No, or I don't know"...

. برای زن، زندگی، آزادی

  My friend Faren is almost finished packing. Moving tomorrow. As I mentioned before she's had a testing  fortnight, and I offered to help with her boxes, but she asked me to go to Trafalgar Square instead. So I went and I took these videos and photographs and far more.

 

 A demonstration was being held to honour Mahsa Amini, the woman murdered by Iranian police for her inappropriate headwear. People were calling for revolution, and saying her name, and angry and smiling. It was glorious. It had the quality of glory. The Square was in full bloom.

 

 I saw a new statue on the fourth plinth, which I thought had been reserved for the Queen. But this was of Malawian preacher and freedom fighter John Chilembwe. It had gone up three days ago.

 

 The work of sculptor Samson Kambalu, it recreates a photograph taken in 1914 of Chilembwe refusing to take his hat off in front of the white colonialist over whom he now towers. Now he was looking on. Chilembwe would later stage his own uprising in Malawi.

  I remember when Boris Johnson was mayor, he tried to turn this plinth into a war memorial. Without meaning a shred of disrespect to the late Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park, I'm happy that didn't happen. Particularly today. As I say, full bloom.

Come On Pilgrim

(source)   

 

 "It's basically a pilgrimage," said Gemma, "There were a couple behind me from York. They asked me what else I was going to see while in London." They'd been down for Diana as well apparently. Gemma Brockis of course lives in London, like me. Having decided it would be crazy to miss probably the biggest act of local political theatre since the beheading of Charles the First, she had joined the queue on Saturday at 4am and was out of Westminster Hall fourteen hours later to come over and help me with a self tape, buzzing. It was great to hear her.

  Because in spite of my decades working in tourist attractions, I tend to forget when I talk about London's "community" or public spaces how much of destination this city is, how much of a venue it is. And the night I walked from Victoria to Hyde Park Corner a week earlier seeing nothing but an occupying army of fences and police, I had known nothing about The Queue to come. It hadn't occured to me that my back yard might have to present itself as the centre of the world for a spell, again.

 

  I also forgot – or it never occured to me – watching and rewatching King Prince Charles lose his temper over a pen in Nothern Ireland, that not only had his mother just died, he was there to reaffirm the legitimacy of – and shake hands once again with – the killers of his favourite uncle. If the biggest story from that visit was a leaky pen I guess he was doing his job, poor sod. It's easy to associate the idea of kings and queens with fantasy, and conclude that their inclusion in a political system is a sign of immaturity, but a far more crucial ingredient of fantasy is heroism and, like Yoda in the good films, the Queen was never heroic. It wasn't her job to make history, just to exist in it, and her speeches weren't meant to rouse. "It is at times such as these..." was her catchphrase.

 

 "She was a little old lady," Gemma said. "Immortal crown. Mortal wearer. The Queen is dead. Long live the King. That's the power of it." 

 That it might be safer for a nation – particularly a nation as historically in love with the idea of empire as ours – to concentrate its hero worship upon someone whose job is simply to receive that worship without seeking it, was an idea that the Queen exemplified for seventy years. "Seventy years. She met Eisenhower. In the fifties. A female head of state!" And this was something else Gemma said that really chimed, particularly in a week which has seen Lindsey Graham attempt a nationwide abortion ban in the US and the murder of Mahsa Amini by morality police in Iran. Without – perhaps uniquely – ever having to be sexualised, masculinised or martyred – from the moment she was on the throne – "here," said Gemma, "was a woman people listened to."

 

Horniman, Presepe, Gorgon and Queue

 Today I returned to Sydenham Hill. 

 Here's a video. See if you can find the white triangle to press to make it play...

 

 

 Bella (real name unknown – originator of the "Woodlouse or Moth?" round) had invited me the Horniman Museum, to be among butterflies.

 I am an idiot for never having been in a butterfly house before.

 The pyschedelic antiquarian decadence of these animals' final act upstages any flame, and made me want to redecorate. 

 I also loved the remains of a "gorgon's-head brittlestar" in the Horniman proper, and took a picture to celebrate Natalie Haynes' new book.

 

 Elsewhere, in the newly re-de-othered World Gallery, an Italian nativity scene – or presepe – showcased foot-high likenesses of the late Queen flanked by Michael Jackson and Silvio Berlusconi...

 

 It was getting quite cold by the time we took the train to Blackfriars to see The Queue. After all, it was there.

 I'd been told it moved fast, but I was still surprised how fast, and genuinely envied those in line. I would have loved to know what it was like to be in a queue that fast. Maybe not for the full twenty hours, but I couldn't say when the excitement would wear off.

 However nothing about it struck me as "uniquely British", apart from the accents. Isn't lying in state quite an international thing? Don't they all have queues? Does this not happen at Mecca? I wonder if what's actually uniquely British is mistaking community spirit for patriotism. Probably not even that. Parliament Square was closed to traffic. As people had reported, a lot of "just being there together" was happening, which is what I like to think should happen in a public space. I love a good pedestrianisation.

 

I Bloody Love Big Pictures

 

 On the last train out of France a week ago, I checked the map on my phone to see if it sould show us going through the channel tunnel, and was surprised to see a shape I didn't recognise: the shape of the channel itself. I was reminded of what I'd felt seeing a map of the Mediterranean in a charity shop window in Clapham. There was nothing here I could recognise as a country, or two countries, or three. Just a place. Just land and water. I zoomed out. 

 And I still didn't recognise anything. I was familiar with the shape on the left, of course, but nothing stood out. Great Britain didn't stand out. And now I could see, for example, why Norwich had had that centuries-long history with the Netherlands, because why wouldn't you? If one pictures the British Isles on a rectangle – which is the shape most pictures appear on, let's face it – all of that land in the bottom right corner is missing, isn't it, airbrushed out like Trotsky? We're not brought up on maps of Britain, but on portraits. Shakespeare's definitely a bit to blame for this. I heard somewhere that countries are actually quite a new idea though*, so I still have hope.

 Here's a zebra-crossing to nowhere.

 * I'll tell you where I heard that, actually. I've only just started listening to the "In Our Time" podcast, and it was in an episode on the battle of Traflagar here. "In Our Time" is brilliant, by the way. In the last episode I learnt that before the dinosaurs, the world was ruled by crocodiles! Some went around on their hind legs! Some had hooves, some had beaks, some were the size of whales! An entire planet of crocodiles! And it was Earth! MERRY CROCMAS!

 

(image source)

"Shouldn't they have called it Conspira-sea?"

 My friend Phil asked that, in the flesh. I bumped into him this evening, sharing beers with three more friends by the boating lake; one advantage of the parks filling up is a heightened chance of chance encounters. I'd watched Seaspiracy the night before, and when I got back in tonight and everyone had gone home, I followed it up with 2014's Cowspiracy. The one follows the other almost beat for beat, and who can blame it? Some of those beats are glaringly dumb – for example, the title – but some are brilliant, and the former documentary's disputed revelations are now common talking points. Maybe the same will happen to Seaspiracy, whose claim that over forty per cent of the plastic in our oceans comes from fishing seems far less disputed. As with Cowspiracy, the documentary's most powerful moments might come from seeing the shadow of some higher authority fall over the faces of mainstream environmentalists when asked if anything should be done about this: the good guys fall silent for what seems like minutes, standing at a crossroads invisible to the viewer. 

 

"He had a point..." is literally the voice over for this shot.

 

  However, also as with Cowspiracy, the documentary's dumbest moments come from awkwardly staging a moral awakening on the part of our innocent protoganist: "I left there feeling confused" becomes a catchphrase. I commend Ali Tabrizi's bravery, but literally every scene he appears in feels like a bad spoof, and one feels almost duty-bound not to take them seriously. But I'll probably stop eating fish anyway. And if this film's revelations end up having as strong an impact as Cowspiracy's, I won't even have to recommend it.

Celebrating the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Progress

 

 

 From March 2016, a piece on US Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, later blocked in favour of former "Devil's Triangle" "boofer" Brett Kavanaugh 

(seen here chatting with Kamala Harris)

 And, from February the 22nd of this year, Merrick Garland speaking as Nominee for Attorney General:

"July 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Department of Justice... Celebrating DOJ's 150th year reminds us of the origins of the Department, which was founded during Reconstruction, in the aftermath of the Civil War, to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. The first Attorney General appointed by President Grant to head the new Department led it in a concerted battle to protect black voting rights from the violence of white supremacists, successfully prosecuting hundreds of cases against members of the Ku Klux Klan... That mission remains urgent because we do not yet have equal justice. Communities of colour and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system... If confirmed, I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6th."  

 Confirmed today. 

 Seventy votes to thirty.

 

"It Was Good While It Lasted"

 Ah! Here's where I got "statue lovers" from: this great post-Charlottesville piece from John Oliver back in 2017. Following the tearing down of the (very nicely sculpted) statue of human trafficker Edward Colston, it's funny to see these "pro-history" arguments rolled out again, but not funny ha ha.

 Bristol Police's own response to the toppling, however, had me absolutely beaming, and feeling even, I don't know, pride?

Good man. https://t.co/VmYvlsGRoW

— Peter Davis (@TweeterDavis) June 7, 2020

... Probably, if I'm honest, more pride than I felt hearing the response of my local MP. I mean, I get it, softly softly and everything, but either the statue should have been taken down, or it shouldn't. Show a little gratitude, hon. And that's all from White Guys Talk About Statues for tonight. Hope you're all doing tremendously.

I Don't Want To Sleep Before Wishing Breonna Taylor Happy Birthday

Thanks to my sis Aunjanue Ellis for sharing this gorgeous video with me. The Black People’s “Happy Birthday” for #BreonnaTaylor. Sounds beautiful. I know she hears it. May we not have to sing in absence of our sisters and brothers. But in their presence. Living fully + joyfully. pic.twitter.com/cDniDb4Ibc

— Ava DuVernay (@ava) June 6, 2020

 

VIEW FROM ABOVE: Easily the largest group of #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators yet in Portland, Maine tonight. #NEWSCENTERmaine pic.twitter.com/YvrwOYQoJj

— Zach Blanchard (@ZachBlanchard) June 6, 2020

 

It’s nearly 10 p.m. in Louisville and the birthday party for #BreonnaTaylor continues. pic.twitter.com/PkYyT3zRD4

— Mandy McLaren (@mandy_mclaren) June 6, 2020

 I could go on.

 It's 4:10 in Britain on the night of what would have been Breonna Taylor's twenty-seventh birthday, and it looks like a hell of a party. And sure, I haven't wanted this blog to be the news because as I said wayyyyyyy back, when Cameron became Prime Minister and I made a gif of Brian Haw that no longer loads, "who wants to be the news?" but maybe that's changing. Again. As long as there's new hope I'll post hope, but I have little to report because I'm still staying in, apart from the night walks, but tonight as I walked to Portabello Road and back, what life I saw on the streets bore both an absence of fear and an absence of tutting. I stopped missing South London, although that said this is a new walk for me, so maybe it was always like this before the isolation. I also want to share this by James McMaster before I sleep: "You’ll want to know what happened last night around the capitol building of the country’s most segregated state..." and he's right, because it was exactly what I wanted to read...

 "I saw so much pent up joy released. I saw young people meet new people, entering into new friendships and flirtations founded in the possibility of a better world... It was the world as it could be, a rehearsal for the world we’re all fighting for. It was an autonomous zone, a racial rapprochement on black terms... All of this was unthinkable just a week ago..." but I really recommend reading it all.
 And I'm glad I took a break from the Shakespeare in time for this.
 Shakespeare's a great critic of systems, but absolutely no believer in change, even if he secretly desired it. Both his tragedies and comedies depend upon that hopelessness but I don't blame him for keeping those desires a secret, even from himself, there were on heads on spikes a stone's throw from his theatre. I might give it another week though.
 And I'm less worried about civil war than I was. But I might still post about it. Oh and the Lindsey Graham thing is fun too! This has been the news.
 I hope you're all doing tremendously. Stay safe.

Where the Wild Things Are

(originally posted on myspace here)

Statement:

The voice of Garnier boarded the 23:53 from London Bridge bearing Sauvignon Blanc and a bucket of popcorn in a 5p plastic bag from Marks and Spencers and having made his way through those standing to a spare aisle seat across from two still-sobre women in what it is perfectly acceptable these days to refer to as fake tan, perched his purchases. A punnet of two drumsticks was then brought out and as he fumbled around for a corner to open, the voice of Garnier felt a sudden pang about the boldness of eating chicken in quarters these confined, but calculating that were it not polished off on the journey he would only have to share it at the other end the voice of Garnier persevered, elbows tight by his side, managing finally to break into the packaging with the sharpest of a bunch of keys. Avoiding eye contact, still dandling the bag on his knee and doing his best to keep his beard clear of the meat while he ate he now began to notice traces of blood appear on his finger tips. It was on the chicken too, which didn't taste raw, and on further inspection the voice of Garnier discovered the source of the blood was in fact his own split mouth. Meanwhile on a pin-board in Brockley his beloved beamed beside two new housemates in a polaroid taken the night before by Police Constable Wolf.

Give her a place to stand and she'll move the Earth.