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I love the British one - Steptoe and Son - I've never seen Sanford & Son... when I was a kid my dad used to turn the show off because he disliked the old man too much to enjoy it. The spitefulness and emotional blackmail look pretty intense today. Can't think of many mainstream comedies where you'd have the son contemplating smothering his father. Great show - I think some of the storylines are the same across both. There are loads of full episodes on Youtube (at least for the time being)

You're likely to dislocate a CD if you clean the car... removing all the wrappers, car park tickets, apple cores as well as the pile of CD cases on the passenger seat. The one that is still in the player will thusly be left behind - and when you start loading the car back up with other CDs you'll have to do a relay with the orphaned disc every time you change albums, placing it in the vacant case in order not to scratch it. so I never wash my car.

no. I mean, yes.

Went to the 'Miro: Sculptor' show at the West Yorkshire Sculpture Park yesterday. This is a really great exhibition... loads of things never seen over here before, amazing gallery setting (also there are a lot of his large format graphics there) - though I'm kind of biased cos I love Miro anyway I recommend it HIGHLY (plus it's free entry - a fiver to park the car) My link

We had a virus at work about 12 years ago. The trouble with Macs (off topic) is when you want to get a new one to run alongside the others, and any software you had two years ago doesn't run properly on the newer system, and if you upgrade the software for the one machine, you need to do it for all - it costs a fortune.

interesting essay. off topic but just re. the class thing earlier, there’s a quote from Michelangelo - something like - “when I am working, I am so free that even in the presence of the pope I unthinkingly put this old felt hat on my head and talk with liberty. So far they haven’t killed me for it..”

There was a short thread on here last year about a jewish poet (whose name I can't remember unfortunately**) who read a piece denouncing TS Eliot's anti-semitism in front of him and a crowd of his friends including Herbert Read - who protested (which shows the peculiar nature of an avant-garde which develops in a place where a man dubbed 'the Angel of Anarchy' can accept a knighthood.) Re. right-wing Wyndham Lewis etc - a very good book which throws light at least on the English reactionary/avant garde dilemma is 'English Art and Modernism' by Paul Harrison - though obviously focused on the visual arts rather than literature, starting with the social utopianism of William Morris versus 'art-for-arts-sake' of Whistler, up through the Bloomsbury snobbishness.. Talking of a fascist avant-garde, the influence of the futurists in Italy shows how the artwork can reach beyond the ideology behind it (if the ideology is genuinely behind it?). And some of Marinetti's rants I quite enjoy... Also, I guess there's some hip-hop which could be classed as right-wing ranting that I can enjoy, while being apalled at the same time **Emanuel Litvinoff

"just to say, fwiw - I read something about this the other day (when this thread began) - a short piece on him by Robin DG kelley re. his essay on Aimé Césaire (which I haven't read) - where he criticizes Surrealist revolutionary practise from his Marxist-Leninist position and blames it for erring in the direction of primitivism and exoticism (much as the Communist party did in the thirties...) Also re. cunnilingus - maybe some African American males were more sexually liberated in the thirties than the seventies - "What is that tastes like gravy" et al... "I tasted last night, the night before, if I keep this appetite I'm going to taste a little more"

Maybe both offer a fork in the road, a negation... Personally I find it hard to get through the working day without being almost pathologically ironic. MomsMobley- Some of the chapters can be read online - My link

The re-runs on TV of 'Top of The Pops' from the period immediately prior to punk put me in no doubt about the importance of the Pistols. I was into punk as a kid (long after it was 'dead') and still love things like Alternative TV, early Buzzcocks etc. But ageing punks, mods, skinheads etc I just don't get

Talking of pedantic - about 1 minute 50 seconds into Pinetop Smith's version of 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out', he speaks the line "as soon as you get back on your feet, lots of friends you sure can meet" in a particularly ironic way. Many a time I've allowed myself a wry, knowing smile as I recognised the contradictory attitude in his doleful delivery, as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion. Indeed, blues is dripping with Irony I believe. "Mama get your hatchet : kill the fly on your baby's head" some are born ironic, some achieve ironic, and others have ironic thrust upon them

The main message of the book, away from the music seemed fair enough* - resistence to the condition of having no identity other than one demanded by somebody else, whether a freedman or a bebop player (not waiting for somebody else to tell you that your music is serious) I’m sure I’m not the only blues listener who first really encountered jazz history with this book and the Murray one - Stomping the Blues - thus getting a pretty circumscribed view of the music. I was slightly (but not very) surprised that there was so little blues (as I regarded it) in the book - Broonzy, Leroy Carr, SBW1 etc dashed off in a half page and Wheatstraw treated as an 'early' pre-formulaic performer. *that is, seems relevant for everyone still - I doubt if Baraka needs me to approve his book!

Wiped I suppose... a 'reusable resource'?

Bring me flowers whiles I'm livin' Then don't bring them when I am dead Bring me flowers whiles I'm livin' Please don't bring them when I am dead And bring ice bags to my bedside Hoo-well-well, to cool my achin' head ... ... Don't bring me flowers after I'm dead A dead man sho' can't smell Don't bring me flowers after I'm dead A dead man sho' can't smell And if I don't go to heaven Hoo-well-well, I sure don't need no flowers in hell. Peetie Wheatstraw

The comments to this article are sad, to say the least. Q "Nobody can actually like Monk; it's impossible. If you say you enjoy Monk's playing, you are a faker and a jerk. Case closed!"

I threw a packet of digestive biscuits at the tv screen recently - as I don't have a gun I guess it amounts to the same thing. My wife made a cheesecake base with the crumbs.

looks like haddock to me

I expect it's less to do with the era and more with the economy - I have a fair amount of Jamaican produced vinyl in which these imperfections are very common indeed. Beatles & Adam Ant far less so I imagine (I have Beatles vinyl but Adam Ant only on a very old cassette!)

Oh yeah - some people were even more upset than that: "PROUD Paul Croft got a tattoo of Harry Potter wizard Albus Dumbledore on his back - but is now being teased by pals after he was outed as GAY. Proud Paul, 36, spent a YEAR having the Hogwarts headmaster etched into his skin as a surprise for his five kids. But the factory worker has been the butt of jokes ever since Harry Potter author JK Rowling revealed last week that Dumbledore was in love with a fellow male sorcerer. Paul, of Nottingham, moaned yesterday: "It's been terrible. I've always liked Dumbledore - just not in that way." http://reason.com/blog/2007/10/29/harry-potter-and-the-tattoo-of

and meanwhile, at the other end of the social scale, 'trying and failing' is embraced at an early age... A snapshot survey suggests many primary school staff are noticing a rise in the number of children wetting or soiling themselves.. "we accept them anyway as we operate in a deprived area and attendance at nursery is usually deemed to be in the child's best interest." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16906442

like I said, just pulling your leg about those books - I just thought it was ironic that's all. As was mentioned earlier, I see this as a problem for only some members of society - getting too much praise and opportunity. But I think on the whole schools and parents encourage effort, even if the media appears to encourage the 'x' factor

just kidding. I have seen the first couple of Potter films countless times. The others are too scary for my kids so I'm not fully used to his adult-style face yet. Of course the kids who go to Hogwarts really can do anything, and don't have to envisage a future behind the counter at JJB Sports

I can't get past the fact that the last guest on the video looks just like Harry Potter - who is responsible for many adults wrongly believing they read books.

i love these things - the 'Firstsounds' website linked from that article has Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's 'Phonautograms' from c1860 - the earliest recordings of the human voice, fascinating and spooky sounds. link

They were great for being creative and doing your own compilations with covers etc - there was stuff you could do with a tape deck that you can't easily do with digital... but the actual legit releases on tape were always rubbish. Didn't even look good. But I love the homemade mix tape.