A Mystery: Why Can’t We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

Audiophile: Dimanche à Bamako – Amadou ét Mariam
Off My Shelf: Emperor Shaka the Great – Mazisi Kunene
Midday Matineé: The First of the Few [1942]
Starring: Leslie Howard, David Niven and Rosamund John
Directed by: Leslie Howard

I said I would.

It’s a full body cast this time.

Audiophile: Mar Azul – Rosalia de Souza
Off My Shelf: To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Midday Matineé:  The Dam Busters [1955]
Starring: Michael Redgrave, Richard Todd, Charles Carson, Ursula Jeans and Basil Sydney
Directed by: Michael Anderson

Yep, what was once a gleam in my eye is now a spit-drooling, diaper-soiling, milk-upchucking, sleep-thieving, paediatrician-tormenting ‘bundle-of-joy’. Well, he’s also the cutest little thing I’ve ever clapped these old eyes on and he’s the proud owner of a gummy smile that would melt both polar icecaps simultaneously. That alone more than makes up for the tectonic shifts he’s wrought upon my life. I called on my mom the other day and holding her hand, I led her down memory lane trying get her to recall just what kind of child I made. “Not-so-good”, she replied. Turns out I was the dark side of a pair of twins. Whilst my brother cooed contentedly, gulped down whatever was put in his mouth and went No. 2 on cue, I sulked, spat and constipated my way to an ambulatory childhood.

Some say Karma’s a bitch but boy do I hope her soft side will fall for my dubious charms.

Anyhow, in my new-found zeal as the  paterfamilias, I determined that a means of getting around exclusive to the lad was necessary.  To wit, a stroller was in order and the one below was definitely de rigueur .

Handy things, these Quinny strollers, a good mix of looks, light-weight and stolid durability won me over in no time at all. Can’t say the same for the VIPassenger though, he took to it like a tabby-cat to water. Ultimately, though when he finally correlated the trundling orange-and-gunmetal monster to the great outdoors and an escape from the now-claustrophobic confines of the house where his nanny is constantly hovering, poised to stuff assorted bland foods into his unprepared mouth, he’s now set up camp permanently in the pushchair’s seat.

As potter around the neighbourhood with the little fellow, I can’t help but reflect on the symbolism of how life always seems to come full circle every time just like the slowly revolving wheels. Soon enough my boy will be making the transition from being pushed around on one three-wheeled contraption to pedalling himself about on another. And soon after that in deference to bipedal ability, fully functional inner ears and the vitality of youth, the grand leap to two-wheeled vehicles awaits.

I in turn, have fallen victim to the twin vices of self-acclerated ageing and the excessive self-consciousness borne of absolute vanity. As a result I have spurned the wholesome cholesterol-bashing, heart rate-raising clean living allure of pedal-power for the ozone-destroying seductiveness of four wheels propelled by a boxer engine. The V8 below is a pleasant hallucination and besides as I suck pensively on a sour grape, I’m ‘convinced’ the damned thing lacks sufficient headroom, ground clearance, boot space, hi-def sound system, thermal vision windscreen and laser guided missiles anyway.

With God’s grace, my boy will be a grown man by the time the smell of burnt rubber has long ceased to quicken my pulse. Perhaps it never will but either way I will be old and maybe life will come full circle. The younger will have to wipe my drool, shop for adult diapers, mash my food in a blender, speak slowly in a singsong voice, adjust my blanket regularly, keep track of my medication and yes, push me around on the stroller for adults.

Shoot me now.

Audiophile: Chara – Baden Powell
Off My Shelf: Catcher in the Rye – J.D Salinger
Midday Matineé:  Citizen Kane [1941]
Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingmore, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins
Directed by: Orson Welles

Silverstone, Northamptonshire
England
11 July 2010

Whilst the ‘beautiful game’ (patronized by hooligans) will be drawing the curtain on its premier event, we petrolheads will be raising it on the 2nd half of the formula 1 season nipping in and out of the shires of Northampton and Buckingham. The British Grand prix brings home Lewis Hamilton heading the drivers standings with fellow McLaren-Mercedes team mate Jenson Button breathing down his neck in 2nd place a mere 6 points behind.

Football levels the playing field (this time for Africa?)  and motorsport really makes use of the bridges that have been built between erstwhile antagonists. A quick look at the F1 drivers standings showed that the top two drivers (Button and Hamilton) are British driving for a British team powered by a German company. Sebastian Vettel’s a German driving for a French team sponsored by a Thai/Austrian energy drink company. The Italians have Spanish and Brazilians drivers for them and even the superficially all-German Mercedes GP team has  British and Japanese skeletons in its closet.

Hamilton will be coming on as home favourite having taken the chequered flag last in 2008 and stumbled awfully in 2009. He  now appears to be regaining his winning form with 5 podium positions so far, rising from 3rd in Bahrain to 2nd in China (The McLaren 1-2 with Button) and the European GP and finally taking the cup in Turkey and Canada. His team mate on the other hand is yet to win at Silverstone.  Button though, has quickly turned around the label ‘The most talented driver never to have won the GP’ to become an exciting pilot to watch on the F1 track and become a force to reckon with. All he needed it seems was to have the right team backing him, which he got from Brawn GP in 2009 and this season with McLaren Mercedes.

The circuit at Silverstone played host to the 5th round of the MotoGP championship. Jorge Lorenzo riding for the Fiat Yamaha racing team pipped Repsol Honda’s Andrea Dovisioso to the post on that particular day out. The sport is missing the presence of Lorenzo’s team mate and defending world champion Valentino Rossi  who suffered a compound fracture of his tibia after a crash during the 2nd free practice session for the Italian GP.

Audiophile: The boys are back in town  – Thin Lizzy
Off my shelf: 1984 – George Orwell
Midday Matineé: Trainspotting [1996]
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, Johnny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner and Kelly Macdonald
Directed by: Danny Boyle

Created by Oatmeal

Audiophile: Moto – Freshly Ground
Off my shelf: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym – Edgar Allan Poe
Midday Matineé: Easy Rider [1969] (way too many double entendres here)
Starring: Peter Fonda (Fonder), Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson
Directed by: Dennis Hopper

It has been quite sometime since I posted anything here. Now that it’s tax season and I’m 2 days short of the deadline, what better way to distract myself from the unwelcome reminder of just how close to penury I am than by posting an entry instead of my tax returns? I finally got to put some money in my wallet the other day and the leather broke out in a rash. There was a fight between the habitual denizens (business cards, club cards, supermarket coupons) and the cash which was promptly ejected for trespassing. I’m convinced my bank account has a nagging personality; it’s always reminding me of what I don’t have and what I haven’t done. Honestly I feel like asking for a divorce only I’m afraid I’ll be taken to the cleaners if I dared.

I really hate doing my taxes, mainly because I feel like the emperor at that moment when it dawns on him just how butt-naked he is in his new clothes. I also hate filling in forms, which is what tax returns are mainly made out of. I could do it online but I truly detest pointing and clicking and entering and tapping out on keyboards.What truly gets my boxers in a tangle however, is a little box right at the bottom where government gloats over how much money they managed to stick up out of me.

What’s truly worse is the government’s lazier than I am. I’m betting my bottom dollar the guy who took over Zaccheus’ job is right now goofing off waiting for me to deliver my returns. I wish for a real tax collector to come round to my house, a big, black ledger and stubby pencil in hand. We’d play a little game of hide-and-go-seek for a couple of days, I’d set the dogs on him, he’d set some legionnaires on me and after cooling off a bit we’d realise it costs a lot more to keep me locked up than I’d ever pay in taxes and I really do like the smell of freedom. So the whole business would be settled like gentlemen through a regular payment plan and we’d get to do it all over again until I’m rich enough to demand a tax break or else I’ll relocate my business interests to another country.

Always put off to tomorrow what you can do today because tomorrow you can get someone else to do it.

Lyrics | – Tomorrow lyrics

Audiophile: So flute – St. Germain
Off my shelf: Leading the revolution – Gary Hamel
Midday Matineé: The Pianist [2002]
Starring: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Emilia Fox, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman and Michal Zebrowski
Directed by: Roman Polanski

The release of iPhone 4 has me considering breaking the 6th, 8th and 10th commandments with alarming regularity and not loving Steve Jobs even in the slightest. Those twin plates of ‘toughened’ glass held together by an aluminum band now rule my every thought and even have me waking up in a cold sweat every night.

Adding insult to injury, apple fling unabashed, bold-eyed temptation the way of older generation iPhone owners by releasing OS 4, kind of like a viewing trailer to your favourite film only instead of simply buying a ticket to watch it, you’ll have to take ownership of the whole theater. Now that’s just hitting below the belt, right where the crown jewels hang about and adjacent to where an imminent paperweight is often clipped. Boy do I now know what 2G iPhone owners felt like when the 3G(S) came out.

As I lug away the spitbucket of my unbridled desire, a test drive the Opera  Mini browser for the iPhone had the audience sleeping through the entire third act. Loading was a cinch, accessing my blog page easy enough, with the posts neatly laid out in an Rss feed format. However, I tried putting in a new post and it was all thumbs from there. Blog title: yes, Content: no. Definitely gets a thumbs-down for that. I suppose we’ll have to skip the aria and go on Safari instead.

Audiophile: You can’t tell me nothing – Kanye West
Off my shelf: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym – Edgar Allan Poe
Midday Matineé: The Wild Bunch [1969]
Starring: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Jaime Sanchez, Warren Oates, Emilio Fernandez and Ben Johnson
Directed by: Sam Pekinpah

Audiophile: Fables of Faubus – Charlie Mingus
Off my shelf: My Man Jeeves – P. G. Wodehouse
Midday Matinee: Some Like it Hot [1959]
Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, George Raft and Pat O’Brien
Directed by: Billy Wilder

Christmas is always a magical time for me mainly because money does tend to always put on a vanishing act at this time of year. No matter how hard one saved during the year, carefully feathering the Christmas nest, the stuff seems to simply just evaporate, even in sub-zero temperatures! Magic, I tell you. It could be something to do with all those brightly lit ‘SALE’ signs on shop windows and jingle-belled Muzak (that sounds suspiciously like old Ebenezer Scrooge shaking a bag of gold sovereigns) insidiously streaming from the speakers at the mall.

Going to the supermarket the other day, I noticed they had put out one of those horrid mechanical santas that do a what is supposed to be a jolly jig but comes off more as a poorly choreographed epileptic fit. Anyway, there’s this little boy about four or five years old trailing behind his mom as she was getting a shopping cart. When they turned to go in, the little chap encountered the festive Frankenstein.

He started, eyes went big as saucers and he burst into terrified tears.

The horror. The horror.

At the end of it all, my hall/bedsitter will be decked with boughs of holly or plastic trinkets Made in China, Christmas Cards will be purchased having forgetten to send them on in good time, a quick text message will be fired off to the loved ones. Then I’ll lovingly select and wrap virtual gifts to friends on Facebook and its off for a quick huddle to ward off the chill of Twinter.

At church on Sunday, the minister had a most positive and uplifting message for the congregation this festive season. “My brothers and sisters in Christ” said he, “as you celebrate the birth of our saviour, please do bear in mind that January is but 6 days away”.

Audiophile: Stranger in Moscow – Michael Jackson
Off my shelf: Captains Courageous – Rudyard Kipling
Midday Matinee: Valkyrie [2009]
Starring: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Carice van Houten, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, Tom Wilkinson & Bill Nighy.
Directed by: Bryan Singer & Christopher McQuarrie

The prophets of doom are out again banging the drum but it would seem Richard Branson’s gone deaf in one (or perhaps both) ears. The launch of his space-touring venture ‘Virgin Galactic’ has me thinking he’s cocking a snook at those chaps trying to save the planet. I’m surprised Greenpeace aren’t picketing his London flat. Virgin Galactic will at $ 200 000 a pop, take punters on a sub-orbital flight in which one will experience 5 full minutes of weightlessness. That’s $ 40 000 a minute. More money than sense says I.

Anyway, I can help you experience weightlessness real easy at virtually no cost; just step into an elevator on the top floor of the empire state building and I’ll obligingly cut the cable. That particular invitation goes out to you George W. Bush. Alternatively, go up on Branson’s craft and I hope you run into a Klingon battlecruiser up there.

Someone in the US is paying attention though, greenhouse gases have been declared a health hazard meaning president Obama can bypass those fat cats in oxygen masks on capitol hill and impose laws regulating emissions. Goodbye Cadillac Escalade, I’ll miss your smoke belching rear and brick-like aerodynamics.

Don’t hug trees, they don’t hug back and only make your clothes dirty and you look silly. Plant some new ones instead.

Audiophile: Heard it through the grapevine – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Off my shelf: Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Midday Matinee: Inglourious Basterds [2009] Starring: Christoph Waltz, Brad Pitt, Til Schweiger, Eli Roth, Melànie Laurent, Michael Fassbender, Diane Krüger & Daniel Brühl
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino.