Say it ain’t so(ld)!

I was in Ranelagh a few weeks ago, and while strolling casually past the best pizza place in the universe, panic swept over me. Why? Because of the large ‘To Let’ sign attached to the side of the building.

As I got closer, I realised the interior had been completely cleared out, and a piece of A4 paper stuck to the window informed me that the restaurant was ‘Closed for Refurbishment’.

More recently, I passed by again, and it still says the same thing.

I have a horrible, horrible (did I mention horrible??) feeling that they aren’t refurbishing. Which leads me to wonder, how can I go on without their Chairman Mao pizza? How can any of us??

If anyone has any info on this please let me know. Can we start a petition maybe??

Not a good day

It’s not a good day. But this might cheer you up, or make you think.

Why I could never support Tim Henman

Let’s get one thing straight before I get firebombed by Henman supporters (those who remain after the emergence of the Scottish Andy Murray as the next ‘Great White Hope‘).

Tim Henman seems like a decent guy. He handles himself well on court, with one notable exception, and equally he handles the frankly manic pressure he has been put under for 14 solid years to win Wimbledon on behalf of the british (broadcasting corporation). He even had the sense of humour to make a joke (and an ad, and probably some money) out of the passing of the guard when Henman Hill became ‘Murray Mound’ as soon as the young Scot emerged as a much more serious contender in last year’s competition.

Despite all this, and the hilariously cheesy ads for Persil, I can’t like him, and I won’t like him, and I sure as all hell won’t support him.

You see, it’s bad enough that the BBC are openly obsessed. Opening this year’s broadcast, Sue Barker broke the sorry news that the rains were coming - and Murray was not. Within the same breath, Henman Hill was reborn, and, in between some fairly obnoxious interviews with Murray’s mother and coach begging for a date when they could once again harass poor Andy, the focus shifted. Henman would be crowned king once more. Even John McEnroe, in his usual seat at the commentator’s box, couldn’t keep quiet about this very open obsession with ‘he who might be champion’ (whoever he might be).

Miraculously, this attitude isn’t the reason I could never support Tim Henman.

It comes down to the people who do support him - not Sue Barker, not the rest of the BBC’s hideously biased staff (I can almost forgive them that, given where they’re from and all that), but the individuals on seats at centre court.

Wimbledon sells itself on tradition - all Pimms and strawberries and white-only tennis gear. One of the key traditions in lawn tennis (that being the official name) is basic respect for your opponent. Crucial to this concept, particularly in a public match, is that your supporters respect your opponent too. Not so with Henman though.

When Henman plays, and wins, the world is wonderful, birds sing in trees, the sun comes out, and the strawberries taste that much sweeter.

When Henman starts losing, the crowd get behind him, in a big way.

Then the evil thing happens. Henman’s opponent gets a little knocked off course by the constant mexican wave. Henman’s opponent ups his unforced errors. The crowd…. cheers. Yes, it’s true, and it’s disgusting. You don’t cheer an unforced error. Ever. Even if Federer is 6-0 6-0 5-0 and 40-0 up against some poor qualifier from west kerry, you do not cheer an unforced error. Unless you’re supporting Henman.

When Henman starts losing, the crowd gets behind him, so much so that his opponent may hit a double fault. Then what? The crowd cheers. The whole crowd stands, and applauds, and cheers. Let me be clear about this again. Even if Federer is 6-0 6-0 5-0 and 40-0 up against your childhood best friend who overcame great personal hardship to get from the skeilig islands to Wimbledon centre court - YOU DO NOT CHEER A DOUBLE FAULT. EVER.

Unless you’re cheering for Henman. Henman the Good, Henman the Great, Henman the Great British Hope.

It’s disgusting. They should be banned for life.

Yippee!!!!

Wimbledon has started.

Shrek 3

The first Shrek film is easily one of my favourite films - ever. Not just because he was green and scottish, but because it was so damned clever. There are so many clever jokes and references that no matter how often I watch it it keeps me laughing. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the ‘threequel’.

Personally, I don’t think they should have made a sequel at all. If something is so right first time, then really, why ruin it? Sequels as a concept barely ever work, with the (constantly noted) exception of The Godfather Part Two. By halfway through the second film, the jokes were getting a bit old, we loved Shrek anyway and Fiona had copped on to herself and started loving him too and realistically the whole kingdom wasn’t about to decide that they didn’t really want to kill Ogres just because the princess happened to marry a particularly friendly one.

But it’s too late to take back Shrek 2, and with the frankly disastrous news that Shrek 4 is already in the pipeline, the time had come to load up on popcorn and pick’n'mix  in the hope that Shrek 3 would be okay.

Ten minutes in I was eating the sweets as fast as I could in the hope that a sugar rush would make it better.

Not that it was altogether awful, but for the first twenty minutes I didn’t laugh once. The strange thing was that the rest of the audience were clearly in ribbons laughing, which made me wonder if they were drunk, or being paid, or in fact a recording added in to the film’s soundtrack for fear of disaster.

There is only so far wrong you can go with a character like Shrek and a comic like Mike Myers. The supporting cast of characters - both in the animated sense and the rest of the voice cast - are equally wonderful, but you have to wonder why Jennifer Saunders didn’t want to come back to play the Fairy Godmother again, and why everyone else didn’t realise she had a point. On that, her absence is very badly dealt with, almost to the point of being uncomfortable.

The plot is standard and fine - the king is dying, they need a new king, they go to find a kid called Arthur, and with a little help from new-age healer Merlin (Eric Idle, fantastico), they get back to the kingdom just in time to find [Prince] Charming up to his usual tricks of trying to steal the crown for himself.  It stays smart, I’ll give it that, though the princesses (Fiona, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty) forming some sort of overdressed vigilante group to fight for their right to drink tea from small china cups is a bit OTT.

The 90 minutes flows well enough that you don’t notice the time going, which is always a good sign, but every now and then it seems a little too tired - like the writers put all their best jokes into the first one and now they all know they’re just dragging it out for the cash. In doing so, they are in serious danger of diluting what was once a film to be genuinely proud of (in fact it should be obligatory watching for all over-30s), and ending up with a franchise as appetising as Shrek’s swamp food.

Crazy/Genius

If you make one venture into the land of culture this summer, make sure it’s a trip to the Codex Leicester, which is on display at the Chester Beatty Library from now until August.

I went to see it yesterday, and even if you’re not a book geek, a history geek, and a stationery geek, it’s an incredible exhibition. The main display of the 30 pages of the codex are surrounded by a collection of Leonardo’s library of ‘inspiration’ - incredible old tomes from around the world, about everything from the evolution of man to anatomy to military strategy.

Many of them are from China and the Middle East, which, while fascinating, is also a little bit depressing. We in the western world have managed to convince ourselves (or be convinced) that we are the ones who discovered pretty much everything, and thus we’re the brains of the planet. In actual fact we couldn’t be more wrong, and there’s an interesting point made at the exhibition that the ‘great minds’ of China figured a lot of the great mysteries of the universe out long before the Renaissance hit Europe - but that for a variety of reasons (oppression, boredom, etc) they stopped looking for anything beyond that.

The other sad thing about it is of course the reminder that Iran and Iraq are where it all started, and beyond the bloody massacre that’s going on there at the moment (and probably well into the future), the very foundations of civilization are being bombed to shreds.

The codex itself - essentially thirty pages of mirror-imaged scribblings of a madman who happened to also be a literal genius - is fascinating. It’s full of drawings, and significant scientific ‘conclusions’ which he keeps track of throughout. For example, after about 10 pages he notes that he has now formed ‘853 conclusions’. Scary stuff. Amusingly there are also fairly frequent notes reminding himself to be more structured and clear in his doodling so that readers will be able to follow what he’s saying. In fairness, if that was the plan wouldn’t it have made more sense to eh… write… ‘forwards’?

Technology does come to the rescue, which is hardly surprising considering who owns the codex these days! There are a number of computer consoles where you can ‘flick’ through the pages, and see them in reverse. So if you happen to speak Renaissance Italian, you’ll be able to read it for yourself!

Stuck in Discworld

I’ve been trying to read Terry Pratchett’s first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, for months now. Which is quite pathetic considering it’s a small, short book. When I was about 12 the guy I sat beside in school was obsessed with Pratchett but I mainly thought he was crazy - blame the cover art. I was also a little too engrossed in Stephen King then, and now, but the Hogfather special at Christmas allowed me to be sucked in. Now I can’t get out. And not in a good way.

There is little in this world as pleasurable as being completely immersed in a wonderful book, so well written that the outside world seems unbearable by comparison. Instead, I am imprisoned in a narrative which, while fascinating, I just can’t engage with. Maybe it’s because of the rain.

The problem of course is that I can’t walk away, I have to finish it, despite this having become a chore rather than a apleasure. I have a stack of books as high as the ceiling that I would like to read next but I can’t allow myself to accidentally throw this one in the bath and be done with it. Does that make me crazy?

A Civilised Media?

This article in the Tuesday’s Indo made me think for all the wrong reasons.

Ségolène Royal has split from her long-term partner (”and father of her four children”), which isn’t really news to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to the recent french presidential election.

What is interesting, to me at least, is the reference in the article to the “french media tradition” which didn’t go digging for this dirt. It was quite obvious that Royal’s partner, François Hollande, was ‘otherwise engaged’. This side of the channel that would have been fodder for the tabloids, and a nice distraction from anything real. In france? Nobody wants to know. Or maybe nobody wants to be the one putting it in print.

Which makes you wonder where we have gone so far wrong. I can only presume that the ‘media tradition’ is based around what people want to read - hence because the French basically have more interest in real issues, the love life or lack thereof of their potential president isn’t the biggest issue. Whereas here we like to ignore little things like “the taoiseach is a liar and a thief” so that the same photo of him and his daughter’s fabulously photogenic twins can be splashed everywhere.

There’s something of a stereotype of France as a ‘civilised’ country, and while as a theory it may not stand up to certain kinds of scrutiny, it certainly seems that their media (or perhaps their readers?) are a lot more civilised than certain elements of ours.

ATMs Get Smarty

Picture the scene. It’s late on a Saturday night. You’ve waited an hour for your taxi into town. You’re halfway there and realise you have no cash, so you ask the friendly taxi driver to pull over. You run in to spar/centra and approach the ATM. You request €70. You wait. Nothing happens. You wait. The machine tells you it cannot fulfill your request because it has no €10 notes. Then it spits out your card.

Frustration sets in, but you need the money and your taxi fare is increasing by the minute. So you re-enter your card, punch in the relevant codes again, go through the whole rigamarole, and request €80. Then you wait. And nothing happens. So you wait some more. Then the machine tells you it cannot fulfill your request because it has no €20 notes. Then it spits out your card.

Hysteria sets in. You consider kicking the machine. You realise there are now two others waiting for you behind the queue, probably assuming you have no cash because you’re an alcoholic loon who forgot you spent all the cash last night and must now sustain yourself on stale bread and rainwater for the rest of the week. You become aware that they probably think you’re going to rob them.

“Seriously - if it had no tens, and no twenties, why couldn’t it tell me the first time?!?!”

One last time then. You enter the card, you enter your PIN, you request €100, having realised your taxi fare has now increased by at least €20 and you’ll need the extra drink by the time you get to your destination. You wait. The machine hums a little and starts to splutter. You wait. The machine spits out your card. Along with two nice, crisp, LATE, €50 notes.

Your journey may now continue.

Until yesterday, this was everyday life. Or every-week life. ATMs control our money, our lives, our destiny, and yet they can’t do a simple thing like letting us know their potential for money dispensation before we make our requests. But a new era has dawned. And we have UlsterBank to thank for that.

In Rathmines, there is an ATM. An ATM that looks like no other, but when you insert your card, it states categorically “Sorry, no €10″ in both the €10 and €30 option-slots. Which means? No time-wasting, no nonsense. It’s all nice and simple from that point on. Beautiful work Mr. ATM Designer Man. You’re my hero.

Fox sake

Maybe it’s too easy to attack the likes of Fox News for their ’style’ of journalism, or the Fox network in general for their ’style’ of broadcasting, but even if they weren’t stuck so far up Bush’s a$$ they can no longer see the pilot light, this is going too far.

I fully appreciate that there’s a religious basis for thinking contraception is evil. As a letter to today’s Times points out, the catholic church are more than willing to remind anyone and everyone of this. But here we have a major television network, one that has the potential to reach millions of young people who seriously need to get this message, claiming that they can’t show this ad because “Contraceptive advertising must stress health related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”

Someone, please, explain to me what’s healthy about a fourteen year old getting pregnant by a random stranger they had unprotected sex with while drunk???