Panadola Diction

I’m not ever going to try and compete with cutty edge music blogs, or laboriously listen to everything that comes out to save you the bother. No. Why would I do that? I prefer to listen to some new stuff, and lots of old stuff, and catch on to things five months after all the really advanced musotards*.

Also, having demolished my 30gb Creative Zen, and having borrowed a 2gb iPod Nano from a child, I’ve been forced to somewhat streamline my portable collection. Here be a few notes on newish stuff I’ve been listening to of late:

• The Breeders - Mountain Battles: I really like this album, it’s gone onto my ‘play all the way through’ album rotation.
• Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Real Emotional Thrash: Again, I really like this, it grew on me steadily with each listen. It’s not quite Pavement, but it’s a near as we’re going to get these days.
• Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil: Entertaining in parts. I like the sound of ‘Bad Kids’ for some reason.
• Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid: Only put this on this week, so not sure yet. I love ‘Grounds for Divorce’, but the rest of it is of a different ilk. Possibly a grower.
• Lykke Li - Youth Novel: Likable stuff, though I generally flick after the first half of the album. Nice summery sounds though.
• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!: Only put it on the iPod last night, but already liking the sound of it.
• Santogold - Santogold: Again, it’s very new to me, but I don’t know what to make of this. Lots of genre-hopping, and I’m strugging to listen to ‘I’m a Lady’ with a straight face.

That’s about it, there’s other stuff on there too, old reliables, digital comfort blankets, jam on toast, pints of Smithwicks, but I’m not going to list those.

Here’s a muxtape with some songs on it. It may change whenever I feel like changing it, rendering its link to the above list obsolete, or at least rendering my telling you what’s actually on it now pointless. What’s a muxtape? Go see.

2gb really isn’t enough. I don’t like not being able to select an album from an extensive collection when I’m walking somewhere, and I’m not organised enough to plan ahead and predict what albums I’ll want to listen to tomorrow. I’m glad I didn’t like music** back in the days of CD’s and tapes, I would have had to carry a rucksack around.

In other news, there’s a new branch of Real Gourmet Burger in Ballsbridge (there’s been one in Dun Laoghaire for a while). It’s great (polite staff, good burgers) and it’s jammed. Why someone didn’t open a chain like this years ago is beyond me, it seems like the most obvious idea in the history of dining.

*No offence, musotards, I’m just sulking in your shadows.

**Pre 2000ish I led a sheltered musical life, surrounded largely by people who liked dance compilations, like Best of Euphoria 4 for example. But dancing is wrong. I dabbled in bits and pieces of good stuff (the first album I ever bought was Beck’s Odelay, quite by accident, I bought it with a book token. That’s quite iron-ee.) But I generally wasn’t that fussed with music, or audio in general.

Any transparent discussion about the new Sky One revival of classic ITV show Gladiators must be based on comparisons with the original. By the original, I mean series 1 to 5, hosted by John Fashanu and Ulrika Johnson. After that I didn’t care. Jeremy Guscott didn’t say AWOOGA!

Ian Wright is an irritating man, but was a good footballer, an Arsenal legend - he scored lots of goals and made me happy. He even kicked Peter Schmeichel in the face. That made me happy too. He was shafted by Graham Taylor, who inexplicably preferred to play David Hirst, or Nigel Clough, or Brian Deane, or even Paul Stewart ahead of him during his reign as England manager. He was also largely ignored by Terry Venables, and despite making various telling cameo appearances for Glen Hoddle’s England, unfortunately his international career was littered with what-might-have-beens. He then became a television pundit and a presenter and I hate him.

John Fashanu scored a few goals for Wimbledon, won the FA Cup, played twice for England and wrote the Fashanu Report about corruption in Nigeria. Then he became a television presenter. He smiled a lot, wore huge waistcoats, roundhouse-kicked the air and shouted AWOOGA!

Ulrika Johnson was a Swedish weather-girl-turned-slapper-tabloid-lady, who no longer retains any relevance in the public sphere. She is attracted to deviant television presenters, beefy steroid-boys, deviant footballers and balding football managers. She wasn’t a bad presenter, and I neither liked nor disliked her. Later, she was sometimes amusing, and often a useful butt of jokes on Shooting Stars with Reeves and Mortimer.

Kirsty Gallacher is the daughter of golfer, Bernard Gallacher. She is easy on the eye and the ear, and has never offended anybody in her entire life.

In an ideal world, John Fashanu and Kirsty Gallacher would present Gladiators.

Apart from the presenters, the rest of the show is largely the same. Some of the games have added fire and water, and the colour palette has been de-nintified. I don’t know if I will watch another episode, but it seems to have retained the harmless humour of the original, and I still find most of the games quite entertaining.

I haven’t seen enough of the actual Gladiators to compare them to their predecessors, but I think it’s safe to say that nobody can compare with Jet or Shadow, in terms of hotness or scariness, respectively. And I’m also pretty sure that a contender like Eunice Huthart will never be found again. The mouthy scouser dominated the show in 1994, and went on to be a stunt woman in many movies, and (scarcely believably) a body double for Angelina Jolie and Famke Janssen, amongst others.

So to conclude, here is a poster of one of the most fantastic collaborations of all time - Diane ‘Jet’ Youdale playing Dick Whittington opposite Ray ‘Alf Stewart’ Meagher. It’s got nothing to do with Gladiators, but it’s something else Sky One could revive, perhaps. Diane is pretty interesting, according to her own website. She used to hate her reflection, and her skills include:

• Teaching
• Writing
• Public Speaking
• Surfing
• Reflexology
• Motorbiking
• Wall Climbing
• Swinging from chains and catching people with her legs
• Hair flicking
• Pretending to know about computer games (anyone remember the Games Mistress?)

I didn’t win the Hennessy New Irish Writer award today. Well, I didn’t enter, but, after reading the winning story, I’m thinking maybe I should have. Maybe we all should have. Come to your own conclusions here.

Another competition, which I did enter, but, alas, didn’t win either, was the Francis McManus RTÉ Radio competition. Joe O’Donnell won, details here. Joe has written and directed extensively for Glenroe, so I don’t mind losing out to him - what a legend. Sunday nights haven’t been the same since it (and Where in the World) left our screens. Bring them both back! But ditch Stephen Brennan, jees, what a moaner.

Here’s a classic clip of Dick: Glenroe

And here’s a must-have book for fans of geographical TV quiz shows. That’s Theresa up there with the big earrings, in case you were wondering.

I wonder what I won’t win tomorrow.

If looks could kill, Seamus Heaney would have injured me yesterday. I passed the old codger on Nassau St, and he tried to look the face off of me.

Perhaps he was in a bad mood, due to a lack of turf to lean on, or some other poet-specific complaint.

Or, more probably, he was annoyed about the Americans who stand waiting for instruction beside their coaches and completely block the footpath, whilst staring across the road and saying things like, “Oh look Hank, Kilkenny is in Dublin, isn’t that neat.”

Or maybe he just doesn’t like the look of me.

(edit) Note - the following paragraph contains no useful information. Don’t bother reading it.

This post was looking fine in work in Explorer, but looked messed up in Firefox when i got home. This is/was partly because HTML makes no sense, and largely because I don’t understand this template. Old Seamus seemed to be interfering with the picture of boys from Son of Rambow in the next post. The only way I could find to keep him confined to this post is to write more, thus enlengthening the post, and allowing Mr Heaney ample room. What an elegant solution. I deserve a Nobel Prize for skillz.

I have no inclination today. Inclination to do what? Exactly.

Here are some of the things floating around on the millpond of my brain:

• Why are Queens of the Stone Age supporting Linkin Park?
• Why do people buy novelty or retro bicycles? For example, the orange ‘high-nelly’ ones that used to be sold in that pointless shop on George’s St, which is now a pharmacy I think. Or, those San Diego style ‘cruiser‘ bicycles, which have no proper brakes. These both cost more than your average bicycle, they offer no advanced functionality (in fact they commonly offer reduced functionality), they make you look like a pretentious ‘tard, and they make people like me aware that you have no common sense. I’m all for novelty and retro in general, but not with bicycles.
• I won the Spanish lottery for the 2nd time yesterday. This time, I won €785,120. I have to call the nice lottery man on the premium telephone number later.
• Why won’t Stinging Fly hurry up and send me a rejection letter in response to the story I sent them? I need closure. (I know, it’s not even been two weeks…. I have no patience.) 
• It’s work-drinks tomorrow night. We accidentally invited a government minister who’s email is similar to that of one of the chaps here, he can’t make it, shame. He did ask us (via his personal secretary) to let him know how it goes though, as he was amused by the twelve “reply to all” emails that followed the group-invite, written in pirate-speak.
• Prague on Saturday.
• I have purchased a day-ticket to the O2 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park, for July 4th. Morrissey, Beck, The National, Guillemots, Siouxsie Sioux, Dirty Pretty Things, New York Dolls and Lightspeed Champion will be on show. I’ve never seen Morrissey live, and haven’t seen Beck since Witnness 2000, so, yes, good.
• I am definitely not going to Oxegen this year.
• I hope they add some more quality to the Electric Picnic lineup. But I’ll go for the pies anyway.
• Shouldn’t deodorant actually be called ‘odorant’?
• Is eating a whole block of cheese in one sitting worse for you than eating the same amount of cheese over the course of a week?
• Robots can ride bicycles (see above).
• I’ll stop this now.

Big News!

Podcasts*. I hate that word. Panadola Diction is officially experimenting with making little mp3 files of formerly vinyl-based material available online.

I have finally gotten around to purchasing this, and with the help of many wires, I’ve managed to rip some songs from my dusty old records. So here, for your listening pleasure, in glorious mono (hopefully I’ll figure stereo soon), is a short playlist of vinyl rips. I would say mix, but they’re not mixed at all, they are simply put end to end. I’m no disk jockey.

I’ve taken five songs from my pile of 7″ singles, just to start with. If things go according to plan, and if anyone listens to them, hopefully there’ll be more.

The playlist for Podcast #1 is as follows:

1. Make It Wit Chu (Accoustic) - Queens of the Stone Age
2. The Exploding Boy - The Cure
3. Ordinary Son (Part Une) - Ungdomskulen
4. A New Career In A New Town - David Bowie
5. Work Is A Four-letter Word - The Smiths

If any has any tips or suggestions for the best file format/file sizes/audio quality - etc to use for these things, leave a comment, thanks.

*Disclaimer - Panadola Diction is a crap non-profit blog. If anyone important is disgruntled by this podcast and wants me to take any material down, for serious reasons, email jusk@panadoladiction[dot]com, or leave a comment, and I will do so without fuss.

 

 Panadola Diction Podcast #1: The Vinyl Test [15:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (39)

So no post lately, you may have noticed. Work stole my internet, thus limitating my blogoutput. I feel so limitated. Good news though, there are whisperings of a restoration of internet access privileges soon.

In the mean time, I will concern myself with the threat of imminent flooding. I’ve been told I should be sandbagging, due to my proximity to the Liffey (I’ve got an eye on it out my window as we speak), but I remain confident that I will not need to take any action. I’m basing that confidence on my neighbours’ apparent inaction. If they sandbag I’ll sheep. I’ve brought guitars upstairs, the rest would all dry out.

 

No, I’m not looking for bundles of sticks for burning, I’m referring to BBC Radio 1’s bizarre decision to censor The Pogues’ Christmas classic, Fairytale of New York, as it ‘may offend’ some of their listeners.

So far, over 95% of voters on the BBC website have said ‘no’ it should not be censored. Who are the other 4.x percent? (Do let me know if you’re one of them) And why this year? The song was released in 1987 - so why censor it 20 years later? Was it not offensive enough last year?

Where will this PC shite end? With the complete disambiguation of the English language?

What would become of the man carrying a faggot on his back, smoking a fag on his way home to a plate of faggots after a hard day’s faggoting in the metal workshop, while his wife faggots away at her knitting, looking forward to her husband’s return so she can burn his faggot?

Maybe if Kirsty MacColl had sung “You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy homosexual” it would be less offensive?

Might I also suggest that the HSC borrow some of the Westboro Nazi Baptist Church’s placards and slogans, and launch a new anti-smoking campaign. Surely Catholic Ireland would kick the habit if they only knew that God hates fags. That’s why he makes smokers stand out in the cold outside pubs.

Don’t forget to burn the ashen faggot this Christmas, or you’ll get four years of bad luck.

And here is a recipe for you - Merry Christmas Faggots