Quick Quintet: You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

There is a lot of music that I love and a lot of bands that have shaped my life. We all have an inner soundtrack and The Jam, The Pogues, The Smiths, The Damned, The Cure, Pulp, Blur and Oasis all feature highly on mine. 

You know how it is - there are certain songs that no matter where you are or what you're doing, or how tired you are, you just have to get up and dance. They may not even be your favourites, but they have a certain rhythm or connotations that cannot be ignored. I blame other people for most of them...

5 Songs I Have to Dance to:

1. Debaser - The Pixies; Manchester Academy and anywhere in Manchester when I was a student with the Essex Girl - those were the days, my friend...
2. Baggy Trousers - Madness; doesn't everyone our age? It's guaranteed to turn any do into a flashback to the primary school disco
3. Groove is in the Heart - Deee-Lite; Thermal Girl is entirely to blame for this one
4. White Riot - The Clash; not played very often, but for years this was my Friday-night-going-out-song. It's fast, furious, frenetic and gets me every time
5. Sweet Child O' Mine - Guns N' Roses; partly the fault of Our Man in London, I remember a particular gig in 1987, and it fires up my inner rock-chick

Quick Quintet: Morning routine

Because I am a creature of habit, and I am not particularly good in the mornings, I have a checklist of things that I do each morning before I leave the house. It includes, but is certainly not limited to:

5 Things I Do Every Morning:

1. Get up
2. Brush my teeth
3. Make the bed
4. Have a cup of tea
5. Feed the cat

Introducing the Quick Quintet

I thought I would kick off the month with the 'Quick Qunitet' - it's basically a list (how strange for a Libran to come up with a list!) of five things on whatever random topic I happen to be musing. I'll try and post one a day and I invite you all to join in - answer the question in the comments.

Five Sounds That Make Me Happy:

1. Pop, glug glug - the first pour of a good wine (or beer) on a Friday evening
2. The Kop Choir in full voice singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone'
3. My cat purring in contentment
4. Birdsong - specifically the wood pigeons or whatever they are that roost in my parents' garden
5. Someone saying 'I love you' and meaning it

I welcome your suggestions for topics. There's been a lot of bad news and negativity around recently, so let's stay away from the bad stuff!

Boy Books

The latest list to challenge my Libran (and female) sensibilities is Esqire's 75 Books Every Man Should Read. Clearly, I am not a man, but I'm always interested in the difference in reading habits between the sexes, so I took a look. I have read about a third of their list so I suppose I am entitled to some insight.

One of the things I took from this list is that men don't read books by women - we know this anyway. Often on men's top ten favourite reading lists, the only female author you will find is Harper Lee. I often thought this was because, what with the androgynous name and general lack of public appearances, many blokes think she is a man. Perhaps the same is true of Flannery O'Connor, as she is the only female included in the 75. I think that's pretty shallow. But then, why 'should' someone read a book? To find out about things they don't know, or to reaffirm what they already do?

The books have little blurbs to sum them up. A large proportion are about war. Others are about dogs, horses and cattle or mountains and seafaring - exploration in other words. Men 'should' read about tough manly heroes and their pursuit of survival; adjectives include raw, unrelenting and revenge.

They admire stories about slaves, prison, spies, scandal, presidents, journalists, detectives and the Holocaust; apparently these are manly topics. They are also encouraged to read tales of mateship, farting and sex; childhood, highschool and college. There is usually an edge about having a passionate longing (whether or not it is requited) with your best friend's girlfriend/wife and a troubled relationship with your father.

Of course, there are heaps of titles about drugs and drinking. Descriptions are full of words such as crazy, drunk, hallucinatory, boozing, brawling, fighting, whiskey and defeat. Naturally this leads to a chronic onset of navel-gazing; dirty, damned, grotesque, trapped, desolation, darkness, loss of self.
It's no surprise that the quintissential boy book, Heart of Darkness makes it onto the list, although I am puzzled by the omission of Albert Caumus' L'Etranger. Apparently men should read of cold brilliance, sparseness, animalism, brutality and deception.

I find this list somewhat depressing, mainly because it suggests that men are still living in the past. They dream of swashbuckling adventures where men were tough and women were unimportant. If there was a war to fight, then all the better, as they could prove their valour and value. They could then adopt an attractive world-weary pose to demonstrate strength and knowledge of unspeakable things. When they lost their pioneering capabilities they retreated into drugs and alcohol, unable to face reality, assuming a delusional paranoia that everyone was out to get them.

In real life they are drinking in bars, working in offices and playing pointless computer games by themselves. They read these fantasies but they don't discuss them (how many men do you know in book clubs?) because they like to believe they are the explorer who has discovered new territory. They still don't have any friends and they still don't care what women think.

Annoying Songs

I feel it's time for another list, so here is my list of the top 20 most annoying songs ever:

1. Macarena – Los Del Rio; Superman – Black Lace; The Birdy Song – The Tweets; YMCA – Village People; The Time Warp
Any song with built-in actions; if I wanted to do exactly the same movements as a room-full of other co-ordinately-challenged people to some execrable music, I’d go to the gym.

2. From this moment – Shania Twain
Shameless manipulation – as if she didn’t just sit down and go, ‘I’m going to write a revoltingly mushy song that everyone will want to play at their wedding and I can garner immense royalties from it, never mind that the song itself is a pile of pap.’

3. Star Trekkin' – The Firm
I hate most ‘novelty’ songs but this is one of the worst. My best mate once left a pint of bitter behind when this came on the jukebox and he stormed out of the pub. Being the good friend I am I quickly downed my pint (and his) and followed him out.



4. I Wish I Could Fly – Keith Harris and Orville
This is another of the worst combining ‘novelty’ with childish lyrics and climb every mountain sentiment. Pass the bucket.

5. The Gambler­ – Kenny Rogers
It’s country, which is bad enough in itself, but it also encourages ukuleles/banjos, muppets, spontaneous sing-a-longs among drunken hen parties in New Zealand, and hoe-downs; are those the same thing?



6. Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond
This song came out in 1969; surely to God after 40 years people might have moved on, but no. In New Zealand hordes of folk young enough to know better will run to the dance floor screaming, ‘I love this song!’ whenever it’s played – and that’s far too often. Their own music must be horrendous if they prefer this saccharine nonsense.

7. Word Up – Cameo
In fact any song (and there are many) that include the lyric, ‘wave/put your hands in the air like you just don’t care’. I blame this for being the first.

8. Bliss – Th’ Dudes
I’d never heard this song before I came to New Zealand, where it is played at every rugby event you will ever go to and it’s not as if they need any more encouragement. New Zealand has much of great substance and beauty to offer, and then there’s this.



9. Ironic – Alanis Morissette
Something is ironic if it the situation renders bad something that at any other time would have been good. Hence the death row pardon two minutes two late is ironic. The black fly in your chardonnay isn’t. If you’re going to sing a song about an adjective, you should at least know what it means.

10. Save the Best for Last – Vanessa Williams
For similar reasons to the above; the snow may well come down in June, especially if you live in the Southern hemisphere. No matter how much it rhymes, the sun will never go round the moon. Don’t be so stupid.

11. Emotions – Mariah Carey
Or in fact any song by the screaming human vibrator – just pick a note and stick with it. Your warbling and trilling may show off your voice to your yodelling teacher, but it’s ruining the song. I blame you personally for Christina Aguilera.

12. Everything I do, I do it for you – Bryan Adams Perhaps it’s not his fault, but this song was number one in England forever. Okay, so it was ‘only’ 16 consecutive weeks but it felt like forever, and it’s still the longest in British chart history. It was the theme tune to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves so reminds me of Kevin Costner, and that’s never a good thing. It was summer 1991; I split up with my boyfriend and I just wanted to go back to Manchester.

13. Snoopy’s Christmas – The Royal Guardsmen Why is this song so popular in New Zealand? Despite attempts to secularise/ commercialise it, Christmas is by definition a religious holiday – the clue’s in the name. If you don’t like it; you don’t have to celebrate it. Celebrate Thanksgiving instead.

14. Every Rose Has Its Thorn – Poison; More Than Words – Extreme; Wind of Change – Scorpions; Don’t Want to Miss a Thing – Aerosmith
Any song in which a rock band does their slow and sultry power ballad to try and prove they can sing – they generally can’t. I love Guns n' Roses as much as the next bogan rock chick, but November Rain is a total wash-out.



15. Heal the World – Michael Jackson I know he’s dead now so we’re all meant worship at his cult of self-delusion but this has got to be the pinnacle of nausea from the prince of hypocrisy. All issue songs are ridiculous – let’s all buy a record/ wear a ribbon or a PVC bracelet to show that we really, really care about something we don’t give a toss about otherwise.

16. We Built This City – Starship; Can’t Fight This Feeling – REO Speedwagon; When the Going Gets Tough (the Tough Get Going) – Billy Ocean
I lived in America in the mid 80s – when we were on the coach to basketball/football matches, the rest of the team played the above mindless tosh. I sat stoically with my walkman on listening to The Cure, The Clash and Billy Bragg. When the batteries ran out I suffered. Boy, how I suffered.

17. There’s No One Quite Like Grandma – St Winifred’s School Choir
Three words – singing children; no! This was number one for two weeks over Christmas in 1980. This is even more remarkable because it was at the same as John Lennon was shot, and it kept his (Just Like) Starting Over off the top spot. Apparently the St Winifred’s School Choir reformed last year to do a ‘charity version’ – I’d pay them to shut up.



18. Greatest Love of All – Whitney Houston
One of the worst examples of ‘climb every mountain’ songs you’ll ever hear – yeah, yeah, you’re wonderful and you learned it all from kids. This song is all the more painful because she has such a great voice and could have used it for good rather than drivel.

19. Can’t Get You Out of My Head – Kylie Minogue
I really like Kylie, bless her, but this song is just too infuriatingly catchy for its own good. I find myself singing it out loud when I’m cycling or running, which earns me some odd looks because I don’t’ own an i-pod. I also inadvertently match my stroke to its rhythm when swimming. 50 lengths of that can drive you crazy.

20. I Dreamed a Dream; Don’t Cry for Me Argentina; I Don’t Know How to Love Him; Love Changes Everything; Memory
All of these are actually great songs in their place, which is in a musical. The only song that can possibly exist outside a musical is One Night in Bangkok. They should not be played in isolation or released as singles onto the charts.

Best films of the decade - part 2

Carryng on from where I left off yesterday, here are my further musings on the films I have seen on the combined 'best of/definitive' films of the last decade from The Times and The Telegraph.

The Last King of Scotland: Great film, great acting and James McAvoy

Little Miss Sunshine: Made me laugh and cry out loud: very embarrassing and very surprising!

The Lives of Others: Quite simply outstanding

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring / The Return of the King: The first one was the best, I was bored by the end – just get on with it for God’s sake! There's a reason neither listed the middle of the trilogy - it was mind-numbingly dull. The projector broke down four times while I watched this film; I thought I would never get out of there alive. NZ went into orgiastic self-congratulatory mode.

Memento: I love Guy Pearce – I loved this film

Michael Clayton: Guess what; good actors and a good script can make a great film. It's a suspense, but not a thriller.

Milk: Not bad for an ‘issues’ film, but I love Sean Penn – the man can do no wrong. I prefer Mystic River as his better performance of the decade, however.

Minority Report: I like future-world-gone-wrong films, and they go very wrong here indeed


Moulin Rouge: Who thought it would be a good idea to take two actors who patently can't sing and put them in a musical? It seemed to work - Parisian slums never looked so glamorous and sales of absinthe rocketed

Mulholland Drive: I never got David Lynch, so I watched this to see if it would help – it didn’t

No Country for Old Men: Would have been a great film with one of the most excellent scenes – flipping the coin at the gas store – but ruined by the rambling pseudo psychoanalysis at the end

The Pianist: Adrien Brody shone, America continued it's love/hate relationship with Roman Polanski. Whatever you think of the man, he makes a damn fine film

The Piano Teacher: Ouch! Painfully uncomfortable to watch, deeply disturbing and typically European

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Is it weird when you and your mum fancy the same bloke? Johnny Depp desperately deserves an Oscar for making pirates sexy again.

The Queen: I love Helen Mirren and I love The Queen

The Royal Tenenbaums: So much hype; so many good actors; so ultimately disappointing

School of Rock: Strangely appealing – grown men acting like geeky teenagers is occasionally funny – as long as it’s not real life

Shrek: I'm not a big fan of animation or kid's films, but I'll make an exception for the grumpy green ogre and the funky soundtrack

Sideways: Great understated film although merlot gets a shockingly bad rap

Slumdog Millionaire: How could anyone not like this film?

Spiderman: Not a patch on Batman but Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are cute together

Syriana: Everything's political - I love stuff like this

There Will Be Blood: Will there ever! Often compared with No Country For Old Men, I preferred this, but then I studied the book at university

This is England: Margaret Thatcher has so much to answer for; this film is part of her legacy – brilliant (the film, not the legacy)

Traffic: Ho hum; too worthy for it's own good

United 93: Why did I watch it when I knew it would all end so badly? Depressingly realistic

The Wind That Shakes the Barley: I never expected Ken Loach to sympathise with the IRA – nearly walked out of the cinema in disgust

Films of the decade?

'Tis the season to compile lists of 'best of's. As it is a year with a 9 at the end, we can extend that for a whole ten years! The latest list from The Times sent to tyrannise me is The 100 Best Films of the Decade. Unlike The Telegraph list of 100 Books That Defined the Noughties, this list goes further by suggesting they are the best films.

I have of course had a look, and find I have seen 41 of their 100. I then realised that The Telegraph had done a list of 100 Films That Defined the Noughties, so I had a look at that too. Curiously, I discovered I had seen 41 of their choices too (20 of which were the same). I neither agree nor disagree with thier order on the list, but these are my comments on what I have seen of their chosen films, in alphabetical order:


28 Days Later: According to Him Outdoors, this is the perfect Valentine’s Day flick. Great opening scene - kind of like The Day of the Triffids but with zombies

About Schmidt: Sometimes I just don’t understand why films get nominated for Oscars

Amelie: Utterly nauseating. Some of my best friends liked it; I try not to hold that against them

Atonement: I liked the film almost as much as the book - high praise, indeed!

Billy Elliot: Any film with The Jam and The Clash on the soundtrack has got to be good, and this is superb

Bend it Like Beckham: Some fantastic actors explain the off-side rule. And some others launch their career

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan:is niiiice. How that man is still alive is beyond me

Bowling for Columbine: Guns don’t kill people: highly-charged testosterone-fuelled morons do

The Bourne Supremacy / The Bourne Ultimatum: Good action films but I’ve seen better. I suppose they were filmed in tandem (like LOTR) so should get similar kudos, but I wish cinematographers would learn to hold the camera steady!

Brokeback Mountain: What is it about the words ‘short story’ that Ang Lee failed to understand? Two men lie and cheat on their wives – why is this a big deal? Why should I feel sorry for them? Because they’re gay? So what? Lying and cheating is lying and cheating.

Casino Royale: Bond is back – I wasn’t sure about a blonde Bond, but he really is a living action man

Children of Men: In the future there is Clive Owen and no children – I can’t wait!

Chopper: Played ‘drink along a swear word’ to this – got very very drunk

The Constant Gardener: Despite the bland title, this was a spectacularly good film

Control: Great music; great acting (even from Samantha ‘yes, it-would-kill-me-to-smile' Morton); great directing; great city – what more can I say?

Crash: We learn that racism is like so not cool

Dancer in the Dark: Bjork is just plain weird

The Dark Knight: I know it’s sacrilegious, but I preferred Jack Nicholson’s Joker

The Departed: Classy drama/thriller from the in-crowd

The Devil Wears Prada: Saw this on a plane and was surprised to find myself enjoying it. I liked the Meryl Streep character – and Emily Blunt – but wanted to slap the insipid assistant

Downfall: Powerful, frightening, mesmerising, German

Erin Brockovich: Julia Roberts proves she's not just a pretty face

Gladiator: It took a long time for Russell Crowe to worm his way back into my good books after this talent-free epic. I bet he was gutted

Good Night, and Good Luck: I so wanted to like it and yet I can barely remember it

Gomorrah: The matter-of-fact unglamorous violence scared the shit out of me – I never liked Naples much anyway

Gosforth Park: Brilliantly acted upstairs/downstairs drama works on so many levels - ha!

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: It's not the best but it was the first. Apparently J.K. Rowling stipulated that all the actors must be British, which is why the deries of films remains so fine

In the Loop: One of the best films I’ve seen this year


Kill Bill: Women with good figures everywhere drove blokes wild dressing up in yellow leather. As far as I'm concerned, the 2000s was simply not Tarantino's decade.

I'll continue this later...

The tyranny of book lists

The Telegraph has released a list of 100 books that defined the noughties. It's interesting. It doesn't claim these are the best books written in the past decade; just the ones that have had the most impact on the book-reading (and even non-book-reading) populace.

Top of the list is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - fair enough. The publishing world would certainly be a different place if it weren't for the boy wizard. As the author of the piece, Brian MacArthur notes, "If you don’t know what a Muggle is by now, you’re either Rip van Winkle or enormously stubborn."

He also points out the influence of the Richard and Judy book club (the 100 titles they selected sold 30 million copies), the politics of the Blair years, and the impact of the war on terrorism and the resulting conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the decade of the rise of the non-celebrity (Jade Goody) and the runaway best-seller (Dan Brown).

Of course, there are the usual spurious splutters of indignation from the faux-literati; "Can't believe you've not included..."; "Don't make me laugh"; "I'm not being a snob, but..."; "Are these things written to reflect the vox populai?"; "A list to give any aspiring writer who still has a clean conscience a lifelong stomach ache. Filled with trivia, morbidity, and sheer horror."; "You missed..." These from people who clearly didn't get the point of the article.

And MacArthur writes well - how about this description of Speaking for Myself by Cherie Blair - "Prime Minister’s wife turns into Lady Macbeth. The rest of the country cringes." - this one of Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss - "Bossy, humorous punctuation primer that taught us to love the semicolon." - or this of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - "Grim, grim grim: teenage girl is raped and murdered, and watches her family from heaven. Everyone loved it."

Naturally, being a list-loving Libran, the first thing I did was see how many books on the list I have actually read (14), how many are on my bookshelves waiting to be read (14) and how many others I might actually read having seen this list (19).

I say I love lists, but actually they tyrannise me. When I see such a list, I feel compelled to somehow validate myself by measuring up to it. And I end up buying more books. Every time we move house, we cart boxes and boxes of my books from place to place and yet I still buy more and go regularly to the library. It's a serious addiction.

I realised recently that even if I never buy another book and live to an average life expectancy, I won't be able to read all the books I own. It was a sobering thought. And yet I still buy them. I blame the reviews and the lists which point out failings in my literary knowledge. I think perhaps I need help.

Susan Hill has the same problem as me, but she is famous, so she has written a book about it. In Howard's End is on the Landing she describes how she eschewed bookshops for a year and only read books from her own bookshelves. She came up with a list of 40 books that "I think I could manage with alone, for the rest of my life". I don't think I need to read this list as it would only put more pressure on me.

Also, despite assurances that the book is "charming", I'm really not sure that I could cope with the envy sure to ensue from reading descriptions of cosy farmhouse life snug around the aga in the sumptuous kitchen while her Shakespearean scholar husband (I didn't know she was married to Stanley Wells) potters about in the background. They're bound to have a big ginger cat too.

Anyway, I have my own system. It's not exactly fool-proof, but it sort of works, and I do work my way through several of my volumes. I'll tell you about it in another post. Meanwhile, I've got some books to return to the library...