This Here... 14.pdf

This Here...

“...sucked all the creative air out of the rooms...” (H Waldrop)

E GOTORIAL

into seeing this latest epic asap, especially given the good

buzz surrounding it. But no, not in this case. I was vaguely

reminded of my unwillingness to go see the original Star

Wars , in that case primarily because I was put off by the

relentless hype. When The Empire Strikes Back came out, I

saw both in a special double feature at the local ﬂick nearest

to Tufnell Park, where I was then living, and reﬂected

afterwards that I was glad I hadn’t given in on the ﬁrst one,

since although I liked Empire a lot, the ﬁrst one, eh, not so

much, since it suffers from the same problem as the later

Lord of the Rings epics, in that the central character, be it

Frodo Baggins or Luke Skywalker, is an insufferable little tit.

BB complains that we rarely sit and watch anything on TV

together (with the possible exceptions of TNA Wrestling,

which I’ve managed to get her into, and the local news at

dinner time). This isn’t really surprising, since when I’m

working (most of the time since September, but sadly not so

much this month), I’m ready for bed around 8 since I get up

at 4am or so most days, and in any case whereas her taste

runs to whatever is on the Hallmark or Lifetime channels,

mine is an eclectic mix of rasslin’, MSNBC and Family Guy

reruns.

Overall I thought

the newest

incarnation of

Star Trek was

bloody good! I

especially liked

the neat, if

obvious

explanation for

the continuity

differences

between this and

Roddenberry’s

original. The

recreation of each character’s younger version was also for

the most part spot-on, and Nimoy’s turn as the older Spock

was integral rather than distracting. The sequel, possibly out

in 2012, presumably before the end of the world kicks in,

may actually get me into the theater again, though I’m

probably due maybe one more theater movie before then.

Crank 3 , maybe?

Nevertheless,

this Valentine’s

weekend I was

persuaded to

participate in the

purchase of a

pay-per-view

movie for

Saturday night,

which is how I

ﬁnally got to see

the J.J. Abrams’

Star Trek .

Spot the insufferable tit

For those who may have forgotten why I rarely tend to see

all these blockbuster epics when they come out, I dislike

going to the theater primarily because I have a strong

aversion to the smell of popcorn, at least the stuff they sell in

the ciné parlors, which always reminds me of warmed-over

cat sick. There are very rare exceptions, the most recent

being Watchmen , which we saw after Corﬂu Zed during our

sojourn in Hollywood in a rather upscale joint with little

overt evidence of feline regurgitation. You might have also

thought that given my notable history as a Star Trek fandom

refugee, having run ST cons back in the day, that I’d be well

It’s all good.

Nic Farey, February 2010

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T HE C OMPANY OF D OGS

given ahead of time) has been top-notch - these people like

to make sure you’re as well-informed as possible about your

pet’s condition.

Firstly, thanks to all those who expressed sympathy (in locs

and elsewhere) on the loss of the wonderful Bosstone. After

six months or so, we were chatting to Lindsey, top bartender

at our awesome local Aces & Ales, and it transpired that due

to a forced move into an apartment, she and her husband

were no longer able to keep their dog and were looking for a

home for her. “I’ll take her!”, I offered, only then adding “Er

- what kind of dog?”

BB has been banging on for years about wanting a lapdog of

some description, which it quickly turned out that this one

transparently isn’t. Lulu is a shepherd mix of some stripe,

we think possibly Akita and maybe even a dollop of mastiff.

She weighs in at 50 pounds or so (23 kilos in French money)

and appears to have fairly boundless energy interspersed

with periods of recuperative sleep .

We retrieved a nicely groggy beast after a couple days,

bringing her home all the while singing “Did I Shave My

Leg for This?” Although short-haired, her coat is still not

quite fully grown back in after three months. The surgeon

tells us that it will be something like six months before she’s

back to full trim, although the way she boings about the

place right now you couldn’t tell.

LULU

We managed to get all BB’s progeny here for the Xmas hols,

and one of our projects was to try to get to the animal shelter

and rescue some kind of tinier mutt for her. The fairly

thorough website gives you a decent list to look through, but

of course that’s no substitute for actually going to see the

animal. We’d picked out a couple of likely prospects - there

weren’t really that many since she’s a terrier fan (Yorkies

especially since future Oscar-winner son Dan has one) and

almost everything round here seems to be some kind of

chihuahua mix. The assumption has to be that not only are

there a lot of chihuahuas around, but they also apparently

like to fuck a lot and aren’t too fussy about who with.

(Several fannish pet names suggest themselves at this point.)

Almost all the puppies we went to look at were already

gone, and the one that wasn’t was obviously much too

aggressive. Somewhat disappointed, we browsed the rest of

the kennels, at least the smaller dog parts, in a fairly cursory

way before coming back outside, since Dan and Joe wanted

to get over to the Strip for some bar-hopping.

We took her to the local vet for an update of shots, and

asked them to check out the fact that she appeared to be

favoring one back leg somewhat. Having checked her out

thoroughly, the X-Rays showed she had a condition which,

despite having some intense sports-sounding descriptor

(patellar luxation), basically meant that her knees are

fucked. The simple description of this condition is that the

kneecap jumps out of place. In Lulu’s case this was because

the usual “groove” in which the patella resides was

extremely shallow - this is a condition that tends to affect

smaller dogs more frequently, I’m told. Corrective surgery is

the solution: they go in and make a new groove for the

kneecap. Ah well, lucky for the poor pooch that I still had

money (apart from ﬁxing the knee, the surgery also excises

$1300 from the wallet). This having been said, I have no

complaints about the Mountain Vista Animal Hospital, who

are a concerned, caring and able bunch and, compared to

what I would have likely paid back in Maryland, pretty

fuckin cheap actually. Also I have to say the quality of

information given there (including the quote for the surgery

As we walked toward the exit, past the rather small exercise

pens, we noticed a woman with a small, chocolate-colored

dog which was a little oasis of calm amid the expected

cacophony. We asked the lady walking this little mutt what

the story was, and it transpired she was waiting for her

daughter (who works at the shelter) to conﬁrm that,

although originally interested in adopting the dog, wasn’t

now going to do so. “I’ll take her!”, I cried, in a ﬂash of déjà

vu.

It took a minute to get all this sorted out, as there’s

understandably a bit of paperwork involved, and as the dog

hadn’t yet been spayed we’d have to wait until that

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procedure was carried out, meaning we’d be able to collect

her on Boxing Day (26th December for you heathen

colonials).

And so it came to pass that we collected “Godiva” (who

would of course get a new name), all the while a little

trepidatious about how BB, not to mention Lulu, would take

to the new arrival, and moderately ceremoniously dumped

her in BB’s lap. Bill, of course, took a bunch of photos,

including this one in which he swears she’s smiling!

We’ve been accredited by no less than the great luminaries in

this area, the Katzes, as ﬁne and willing party hosts - a chore

which isn’t so bad when you got a bob or two. BB loves being

the thoughtful hostess, although the party lead-up is when

she tends to become Martha Stewart, causing the rest of us to

hide in the ofﬁce/under tables/up the pub etc. As 2009

Boxing Day fell on a Saturday, and we’d been encouraged to

throw fan bashes on Vegrants “off weeks” (meetings are ﬁrst

and third Saturdays of the month, barring special visits by

out-of-town luminaries eg Steve Green), and I thought back

to my Hitchin days when my good friend Tony Russell and

his much-missed late wife Erika always had open house on

Boxing Day. Dubbed “Waifs and Strays” by Erika, who was

German, there would be a hot dish of some kind in a

crockpot, but mostly meats, cheeses, bread and pickles, and

of course a suitable amount of drink. Both as a kind of thank

you to our Vegas friends and in part as a small tribute to

Erika’s generosity of years past, the invitations to “Waifs and

Strays” at the Farey house were pinged out. I also wanted to

show off the rebuilt deck, since me and a couple of the lads

from Able Body had got this ﬁnished up a few days prior.

You get an idea from this photo, but basically it looks like a

rug pattern in redwood. I invited the chaps and their

families along too so they could share in the plaudits.

BB & B

After some bantering, bandying and bartering over the next

couple days, the latest addition to the family is rechristened

“Bailey”, and she has celebrated ever since by chewing up

anything she can get them little pointy teeth on and being

fairly recalcitrant about being house-trained. Oh yeah, she is

of course a chihuahua mix.

L-R: Brandon, me, Kevin after a hard day’s drinking work

T UNES! (R EDUX )

It’s probably interesting to note that BB was barely aware of

the Clash before she met me (other than the knowledge that

she liked the song ‘Rock the Casbah’), and was also unaware

of many of the bands and artists of whom I am rather fond.

Having sat in the Sarf Lunnun park where Difford and

Tilbrook were said to have composed the basics of many of

their songs, and having a great afﬁnity for “slice of life”

songwriting (cf the Clash’s ‘Stay Free’) it’s no surprise that I

would be a fan of Squeeze. Early singles like ‘Cool for Cats’

and most notably ‘Up the Junction’ struck a chord with

many people, reﬂecting accurately the lives they were

leading with catchy tunes, memorable wordplay and wry

observation, often with more than a hint of gritty realism

concealed in the mix (this latter being most evident in one of

my favorite Squeeze songs, ‘Vicky Verky’ from the third

album Argybargy . ‘Another Nail in my Heart’, also from that

disc, was one song I seemed to instantly know all the words

to.)

Post- Argybargy, 1980 saw the departure of the stylish and

often irreverent Jools Holland who was replaced by Paul

Carrack, who had been a member of the chart-toppers Ace

Since we were told to pick the dog up after 4pm, I more or

less arranged ahead of time for Bill Mills to drive us up

there, since I knew I was going to be more or less (more)

unﬁt by that point. The pickup actually took well over an

hour (the place is 20 minutes away) and of course BB’s usual

paranoia was in full-on mode after we’d been disappeared

for a while. Fortunately the duties of the hostess kept her

occupied while we continued our stealth mission.

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(‘How Long’) and had also played with Roxy Music! Carrack

ended up only staying with the band for this one album,

though he did rejoin

later, and was the

lead vocal on

probably Squeeze’s

best-known single

worldwide:

‘Tempted’. The

album, in many

ways a signiﬁcant

change of direction

for the boys, was

East Side Story .

Although presaged

in this respect to a

large extent by Argybargy , East Side Story was considered by

most critics to mark a turning point for the band, away from

the “New Wave” tag with which they’d inexplicably been

lumped, and into more varied styles. ‘Tempted’ is a ﬁne slice

of blue-eyed soul, something the boys could be said to have

perfected with the later ‘Black Coffee in Bed’ (BB’s favorite).

‘Messed Around’ is pure rockabilly, and the single ‘Labelled

With Love’ is a straight-up cry-in-yer-beer country lament.

Glenn Tilbrook was said to have thought this song too

country, but was supposedly persuaded by producer Elvis

Costello, whose own country album Almost Blue would hit

the racks later that same year. It’s easy to see this track as a

kind of novelty item threatening, along with the mega-hit

‘Tempted’, to overshadow the set, but really there isn’t a duff

tune anywhere in the lot.

David Fricke, in his Rolling Stone review, compares the

Difford/Tilbrook writing team to Lennon/McCartney, an

over-the-top comparison to be sure, and all the less accurate

since it’s well-known that almost every Beatles song credited

to L/M was really either Lennon or McCartney, whereas

Squeeze tunes were a genuine collaboration (usually

Difford’s lyrics and Tilbrook’s music). This having been said,

there’s no doubt that the sheer songcraft evident in gems like

‘In Quintessence’, ‘Piccadilly’ and ‘Someone Else’s Heart’

ﬁrmly establishes the team in the ﬁrst

division along with contemporaries Costello

and Nick Lowe.

The replacement of Jools Holland dimmed

the overall personality quotient of the band

somewhat (the underrated and very solid

rhythm section of Bentley & Lavis rarely get

face time), but Paul Carrack seems to bring

more of a stylistic variation to proceedings.

And Carrack, in a music press interview

after ‘Tempted’ became a hit was memorable

to me (a fellow keyboard player). Asked

what improvement he might make to the

overall design of instruments, he gave a most succinct

answer: “Ashtrays.”

R ASSLIN’

The big news of late is of course the arrival of Hulk Hogan

and a large number of his clapped-out pals at TNA, and the

rather sweeping changes this has brought about. On the

immediate plus side, the “Hogan debut” show, a live three-

hour special which went out on a Monday night in direct

competition with WWE Raw , won the ratings hands down

and, according to Online World of Wrestling columnist Jay

Shannon, also produced the superior show. WWE’s

programming response was to bring back Bret “the Hitman”

Hart after 12 years, still seething from the Montreal Screwjob,

to have Vince McMahon kick him in the nuts, both

ﬁguratively and literally.

My own initial reaction to the acquisition of Hogan as what

appears to be the “face” of TNA, and knowing that the

perennial heel administrator Eric “Easy E” Bischoff was

coming along for the ride, was that with head writer Vince

Russo, TNA now has all the people in place who were

considered to be the main contributors to the wrecking of

WCW. I was willing, however, (and still am to an extent) to

give them some leeway, even though they bring back Sean

Waltman (X-Pac) and Scott Hall (who is not allowed to

actually wrestle, it seems, presumably due to the usual

locomotive breath), even though they dug up the Nasty Boys

from whatever tuppeny regional promotion they had been

hiding in, even though there are unsettling signs that once

again this is looking like payday for the Hulksters otherwise

unemployable buddies.

The tease at the Genesis PPV with the appearance of Jeff

Hardy, whom I still cannot fuckin stand but would

undoubtedly be a huge draw has yet to result in an actual

signing. Perhaps they’re worried that he and Hall would be

too much of a pisshead quotient. However, the additions of

Brian Kendrick and Ken Anderson have to be seen as

positives. Both are accomplished heels, Kendrick can add

even more ﬁzz to the X Division with his undoubted skills,

and Anderson (formerly “Kennedy”) is one

of the best workers of the mic there is,

unerringly drawing huge heat from any

crowd. Although, given TNA’s predilection

for face/heel turns, maybe we can expect

both to be on the side of the angels ere long.

Speaking of turns (and Arnie the K has

wondered aloud whether there’s anybody

the company hasn’t turned at some time or

another), the heel turn of champion A J

Styles can be said to have generated a huge

TWANG! noise, which would be the bounds

of credulity stretched to breaking point,

further exacerbated by the presence of Ric

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Flair, taking the champ under his ﬂabby wing and

announcing to all and sundry that Styles is “the new Nature

Boy”. The fact that this came out of nowhere, has no internal

logic, and is not even remotely believable given Styles’

known reputation as a born-again goody-two-shoes, and

treats a previous attempt at turning A J heel (which was cut

very short) as never having happened, makes it all the

worse. The only conceivable spin I can put on this to make

any sense out of it at all is that Flair will be turned upon at

some point and denigrated as a sinister Svengali ﬁgure,

intent on the corruption of TNA’s ﬁnest, noblest... well, you

get the drift. The concept of Flair as manipulator at least

yields a ring of truth when rapped lightly and held up to the

ear. As heel turns go, even Bill Goldberg’s ill-advised and

badly handled switch back in the WCW days was better than

this.

The Against All Odds PPV on February 14th was mostly

about the 8-man tournament to anoint the #1 challenger for

the winner of the Styles/Samoa Joe World Heavyweight

Championship match. Every match in this knockout

tournament except the last was uncannily predicted by Jay

Shannon (at onlineworldofwrestling.com), who correctly

deduced the ﬁnal pairing of D’Angelo Dinero and Mr.

Anderson, but not the eventual winner (Dinero).

Anderson contributes to his eventual loss. The PPV was

solid, if unspectacular (having no X-Division matches

obviates a lot of the usual high spots), and even the two

bathroom break bouts (3D/Nasty Boys and Foley/Abyss)

came off better than expected.

Hopefully the promotion will start to bring some stability to

the storylines, which did happen at the PPV to an extent, and

in any case is easier to do with a more focused event such as

this. It remains to be seen how Hogan’s monster ego will

work with the still excellent TNA roster. And one thing Arnie

is right about: Lord, the Hulkster is fuckin’ incoherent

sometimes!

L OCO C ITATO

[[Editorial comment looks like this. Yes, the date is correct

on Sheryl’s loc, which should of course have appeared in #13,

but only just turned up in the clutter that is still the East

Side Insurgent Ofﬁce...]]

From: 25509 Jonnie Court, Gaithersburg MD 20882

September 4

Sheryl Birkhead ( BS, MS, BS, DVM ) writes:

Okay, I’m ignoring all the very speciﬁc signs that the Saint

Leonard address is a bit passé , but I’ll just go

with it and presume mail forwarding is in

effect.

Several points of clariﬁcation on my last loc...

apparently (sounded plausible to me ) the

coaxial cable from about 1975 needed to be

replaced - or rather that new cable would be

much more efﬁcient (as per the electrician).

[[While this might appear to be instant

bollocks, the sparky may have had a point,

since (a) the insulation component of coax

does degrade over time (causing signal loss),

and/or (b) the impedance value of your old

cable may be inappropriate for the honkin’

new digital age...]]

I have a small woodstove in the basement ﬁreplace and a

woodstove insert in the upstairs ﬁreplace. Ironically (the guy

who built and sold the house gave me all the paperwork) the

original BuckStove lasted from 1980 to 2006. The insert I had

put in (I had to settle for what the chimney sweep people

carried - around here not many people have such things!)

when the old one died (and I had ﬂue liners put in) needs the

ﬁrebricks replaced - after only 3 seasons of use. I had no idea

about this - but understand the concept of the ceramic “tiles”

needing to be replaced... but after only three seasons???? Oh

well, in the big scheme of things it is one of the cheaper

things that needs doing.

The roof antenna is wired into the TV in the living room and

down into the little under-the-stairs room in the basement

In retrospect this should have been an easy call, since, as Jay

also predicted, AJ Styles retained his championship, so

having Anderson take the #1 contender spot would have

created an unlikely heel/heel matchup (although as I

commented earlier, I fully expect Mr. A to turn face at some

point - possibly around the same time Matt Morgan’s

inevitable heel turn occurs). The wisdom of having the

Championship match before the tournament ﬁnal on the card

is a bit suspect, since most knowledgeable fans would then

have deduced the Dinero win. The bookers tried to make this

a less likely outcome by having the Pope attacked by (yawn)

Hall and Waltman immediately before the ﬁnal match, with

the result that he barely makes it to the ring in time.

Excellent heel work and characteristic cockiness from Mr.

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