Song From Under the Floorboards

I saw my friend Amy the other day.
Amy is good with naked women.
We talked about Dostoevsky.

Amy is an artist, but she had never shown me her portfolio before. She is very good at life drawing, and has a real eye for the female form. She had several nude studies on her iPhone, and even on the small screen, the curves of her figures were beautiful and involving.

By coincidence, Amy mentioned that she wanted to read some Dostoevsky, the Russian author I alluded to the other day. I mentioned this book, and the song that Howard Devoto made of it. Devoto restored the original Russian word the translator rendered less poetically; the anonymous narrator addresses the reader from between the floorboards of his apartment.

I am angry, I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it

1982 was a year when I was not good with naked women, and everything in my life felt crooked, rather than curved. "A Song from Under the Floorboards" was an existential crisis you could dance to, with an insistent opening riff that moved harmonically and went nowhere melodically. I was angry, and I felt ill and I felt ugly. These last few months, I have felt it all over again.

This is a song from under the floorboards
This is a song from where the wall is cracked
By force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess
I'm proud as hell of that fact.

I know the highest and the best
I accord them all due respect
But the brightest jewel inside of me
Glows with pleasure at my own stupidity.

This is a song from under the floorboards ....

I was never stupid at school. Stubborn, yes; lazy, distracted... and afraid to speak out. But I did not manage to be stupid. (Yes, dear reader, I knew too much.) And I knew a good thing when I saw it.
I knew beauty, but it was not the involving kind.

I used to make phantoms I could later chase
Images of all that could be desired
Then I got tired of counting all of these blessings
And then I just got tired

This is a song from under the floorboards ...
MAGAZINE

Happy Birthday Billie Holiday

"If I'm going to sing like someone else,
then I don't need to sing at all."

Billie Holiday, born April 7th, 1915

Old Age and Good Living

Vicus Scurra admonished me the other day, for suggesting that the death of John Mortimer made me think about living a more healthy lifestyle. I realised at once that it was a completely inappropriate thing to say.

"An incorrigible bon vivant" - Daily Telegraph

As last night's documentary on BBC4 demonstrated, (it's available on the BBC iPlayer in some parts of the world) the old polymath was seldom seen without a glass in his hand, and had quite a fondness for female company.

Johnny Mortimer was thoroughly liberal in his ethics, his politics, and his practice of the law. The idea that some small group of people might take it upon themselves to tell everybody else what was good and bad for them to read was wholly abhorrent to him.

He was QC for the defence in the Schoolkids' Oz obscenity trial, of whom he said

All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.

Mortimer with Kathy Lette

So, having reflected on the matter, I have decided that I want to take care of my body ,and my chest in particular, so that I can live to a ripe old age, drink fine wine and breathe deeply in the company of beautiful women.

[In] Appropriate Crushes - Kate Jackson

You wouldn't think it to look at her, but...

..she's from Bury St. Edmunds.

Sex and the City

"New York, New York, it's a helluva town,
The Bronx is up and the Battery's down "

Been here for four days,and I still don't know where the plain women hang out. Seriously: there's something unusual when the ugliest crowd you see are the people at the Apple store standing in line to buy iPhones.

After work,the bars fill up with groups of well turned out women, and I feel like an extra in Sex and the City. Around my hotel, yellow cabs dispense them in threes and fours, like money from cash machines.

There are gay men around, and gay women - I'm on the edge of Chelsea and Greenwich Village. Where are the groups of straight men? In another part of town, possibly with the plain girls. Here,they're outnumbered five-to-one.

Two blondes talking with a brunette friend about the man the brunette's been seeing. She likes him, but he's married. Still, she can let him buy her dinner, can't she?

I got into a conversation with a lovely girl who recognised my accent, and told me she'd recently had her heart broken by a man from London. No, she said, she doesn't hate men. She doesn't even hate British men. She just hates him. He dumped her a few weeks ago. She has a date tonight. I wish her luck.

At my hotel, one of the receptionists is showing off a book she's had published. It's about her experiences as a self-destructive teenage punk rock fan. Or as the book calls her, a Death Rock Cutter, which sounds like a spaceship in Star Wars. Still,the book looks very arty.

I walk around the corner to Starbucks, and pass a shoe shop called Shoegasm.They don't seem to stock much for men. Another part of town. Another part of town.

"There are eight million stories in the Naked City"

Katharine Hepburn in 'The Philadelphia Story'

When the alarm clock went off this morning, I was dreaming that I was trying to tell one of the women I love the plot of a film called 'The Philadelphia Story'. I think in the dream, I got the whole thing mixed up with 'Now Voyager'.

They're both romantic comedies from the 1940's. 'Now Voyager' is the one where Bette Davis has psychotherapy. ‘The Philadelphia Story’, on the other hand, is (well, what did the posters say?)

"Broadway's howling year-long comedy hit of the snooty society beauty who slipped and fell - IN LOVE."

Katharine Hepburn plays Tracy Lord Haven, a wealthy, stubborn, arrogant railroad heiress - "married on impulse and divorced in a rage" - who's about to get married for the second time, but still has feelings for her first husband, the dashing and colourful C.K. Dexter Haven, played by Cary Grant.

There's also a lot of interest from a tabloid journalist (Mike Connor, played by Jimmy Stewart) who gets exclusive rights to cover the wedding by threatening to reveal a number of rude (but true) stories about various members of the family.

In true Jane Austen style, proto-husband number two is safe but dull, so you know he isn't going to get the girl. (Heck, he doesn't even get to be on the DVD cover.) In one scene, Hepburn's character considers contracting smallpox in order to postpone the wedding. As you do.

When I was growing up, Katharine Hepburn was probably the oldest woman I ever fancied. Intelligent, good-looking, redheaded and a feminist (you see, even as a teenager, I didn't go for the easy option), she still looked incredibly sexy when she was over ninety. Way to go, girl.

All I Want, Part 1

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be
Oh I hate you some, I hate you some
I love you some
Oh I love you when I forget about me

I want to be strong I want to laugh along
I want to belong to the living
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive
I want to wreck my stockings in some juke box dive
Do you want - do you want - do you want
To dance with me baby
Do you want to take a chance
On maybe finding some sweet romance with me baby
Well, come on

All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too
All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you
I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you
I want to renew you again and again
Applause, applause - life is our cause
When I think of your kisses
My mind see-saws

Do you see - do you see - do you see
How you hurt me baby
So I hurt you too
Then we both get so blue

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Looking for the key to set me free
Oh the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling
Its the unraveling
And it undoes all the joy that could be

I want to have fun, I want to shine like the sun
I want to be the one that you want to see
I want to knit you a sweater
Want to write you a love letter
I want to make you feel better
I want to make you feel free
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm,
Want to make you feel free
I want to make you feel free

Joni Mitchell

Happy Birthday, Fathorse!

"Fathorse" Bertonelli, the Irish Italian actress, is best known for her role in Happy Days , where she played the rock'n'roll biker chick Leather Tuscadero.

Today is also the birthday of the poet Dante...

and Albert Einstein.

If I'd known you were coming, I'd have baked a cake



Baked a cake





Baked a cake


Enjoy your birthday, Fathorse



and good luck in your exams!

Yael Naim - Paris

This morning, my hangover was too severe to cope with the Chris Moyles Show, so I tuned to Chill DAB instead and found this lovely song by Yael Naim.



You might recognise Yael's voice from the MacBook Air commercial (she sings "I'm a new soul" while a hand slides the computer into an envelope.)

In this song, she's singing in Hebrew and French, and the only line I understand is when (I think) she says "I'm so happy here, so why do I cry at night?"

I think that's a reasonable question.

Sometimes sad music makes me really happy.

Get Britain Breast Feeding

It's International Midwives' Day today, which gives me a good reason to blog about three things dear to my heart - women, babies, and breasts.

The charity Best Beginnings wanted to do something about the image breastfeeding has in the UK. For some reason, despite the fact that images of women's breasts are everywhere , the knowledge that you can also pop one into a baby's mouth and give it a healthy meal is somehow seen as a bit meh.

Less than 2 per cent of British babies are exclusively breastfed at six months, which is what the World Health Organisation recommends for all babies. Young mothers (20 and under) are particularly reluctant to feed. The winning poster campaign by two students at Central St. Martins celebrates 'cool, multitasking breasts' and emphasises that breastfeeding enhances intimacy and emotional bonding between a woman and her baby, and a woman and her partner.

By Sophie Barker and Kayleigh Brooks for Get Britain Breast Feeding
(Best Beginnings Central Saint Martins Poster Competition)

http://getbritainbreastfeeding.org.uk/
Read the blog post at Boinkology
Read the article in the Independent

Debbie Lives!

The beautiful and talented Miss Deborah Harry is alive and well and has a new single. And she's still sexy, thirty years on.

If you have daughters, bring them up to be like Debbie.

Drugs Are Bad

Okay, I'm convinced. Drugs really are bad for you.

I blame Mrs. Thatcher. When the hippies and the anarchists and the musicians were running the drug trade, they would never let you get like this. The profit motive has spoiled it for everyone.

If you don't believe me, take a look at Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, the world's most elegantly wasted human being.

He's sixty-four years old, and he looks a lot better than your grandpa, doesn't he? And he gets to hang out with cool guys like Johnny Depp, climb trees, advertise Louis Vuitton, and still gets on with his day job.

So, if you want to take drugs, make sure you have a lot of money, a good doctor, and a good lawyer. And some really nice friends.

If you get into drugs because you're unhappy, messed up in the head, want to escape, or even worse, want to be popular, they won't help you. They'll just make you worse.



Here's two videos of Amy Winehouse from a few years back, when she was talented, curvy, and damned hot. I feel deprived.