almost witty

Thanks to the wonders of commercial sponsorship, and a misguided belief that the public should be allowed to vote for the BAFTA Best Programme of 2005 (rather like the great American public being allowed to vote for Best Programme at the Emmys), click here to make your vote for the Pioneer Audience Award for Best Programme of 2005

I would of course humbly suggest Doctor Who, but that’s up to you

Imagine, for a second, that you’re lucky enough to be a Londoner, who loves the tube so much you’ve made various useful / silly maps of the Tube, hold the world record for going round the entire system in the quickest time possible, and even occasionally help to raise money for charity (not to mention traveller numbers). And they, frankly, need all the help they can get.

So how do you reward these interesting endeveaours from my mate Geoff? You threaten to take his website offline unless he removes said maps. Fortunately, because London Transport are such nice chaps (not), they’ve given him a deadline of Monday midnight (UK time).

So if you have any interest in the London Underground, and the only iconic urban transportaton map in the world (well, can you draw the New York metro map from memory?), then run and download these versions quickly, before the lawyers get to you too. and if you happen to have non-UK webspace, you might want to offer to mirror them.

As Amateur Transplants once sung in their hilarious song:

“London Underground. They’re all lazy f**king useless c**ts.“

I’d download that song (and make a suitable donation to charity) before the chuffin’ lawyers get their hands on that gem too. Even though half my mates at London Underground listen to the song on a regular basis.

So it’s Monday morning. Since the Oscars are on a premium-subscription channel over here, I can’t watch the Oscars 2006 live. So I’m electing to hang on till 10pm tonight before I can watch the highlights programme, and till then I was resolved to try and avoid hearing about as much as I can.

This plan falls flat almost straight away when, in the WH Smiths of Crewe railway station at 7.30am, the news comes on over the radio to announce the shock of a gay cowboy movie being beat by a film that says that it’s occasionally ok to be a racist in Los Angeles. (Disclaimer: Haven’t seen either movie - I’m just being satirical, maaaan)

Make it to work, and I eventually realise that I have to avoid pretty much every single blog or website in order to keep my Oscars purity. But I think I just about managed it. So roll on 10pm.

On Sunday, I got to indulge in a pleasure that’s getting rarer and rarer as the years advance, the summer of my life turns to the brown autumnal leaves and as my body prefers to stay in blissful sleep rather than facing the world.

A pleasure that I was so keen to relive, that I had to go 100 miles out of my way, and swerve past sheep on the road in Carmarthenshire to enjoy. (Just think, about 15 years in Wales, and this is the first time I had to swerve past sheep on an open road)

Yes, I got to listen to the *whole* of the UK Top 40 - all three hours of it with JK & Joel, who are like a really annoying and slightly gay version of Dick’n'Dom. I half expected them to be murmuring bogies throughout.

But what the hell happened to the charts? Time was that if I listened in, I could at least finally go “ahhh, that’s that tune” that I had heard but never placed, and mostly hear new tunes that had passed the peer-review of being popular and therefore worthy of my ears.

Not this time, it seems. A full 7 weeks after the JCB Song was number 1, it’s still in the UK Top 20 - at number 14. The awful X-Factor finalist song That’s My Ego (oh, alright, it’s That’s My Goal but it still sounds like ego to me) - which was number one at Christmas six weeks, is even higher at 12. Madonna’s Hung Up, which was out in October for goodness’ sake, is STILL in the charts at number 15. And let us not dirty this blog with that Blunt song, which has actually gone *back* into the UK top 40 this week.

Which wouldn’t be as bad if there were new good songs to replace it. But the only songs I like in the top ten is from Candi Stanton (a re-mix) or Dead or Alive (a re-issue). In fact, the first cool new song isn’t in the charts till Goldfrapp makes an appearance at number 15. And I’ll probably have to begrudgingly admit an admiration for The Magic Numbers at number 20.

I’ve always prided myself on having a populist ecletic music taste. From synth-electro-pop to poodle-haired rock, I like some songs from almost every genre. I’ve resisted the general online movement towards peer-recommendations from a particular genre, because even I cannot listen to the Pet Shop Boys all day long. I crave variety. But if the charts (and therefore the radio stations) are no longer going to be my source for new electic-genre music that I wouldn’t hear otherwise, where else can I go?

Geofftech’s surprise at the high number of circumcised men in the United States reminded me of this little anecdote.

On one of my holidays in the USA, I stayed at the cheapest hostel in San Francisco (somewhere down the Mission district) and got to know a few of the temporary residents. One of whom was a soft-spoken blonde American dude who was constantly touting around a guitar.

It was a bit of a surprise to me to find that he wasn’t in fact a Californian, but some other quiet part of the US. He was on his travels and had “settled” in San Francisco for want of something better to do, aside from composing songs and lusting after a German girl at the hostel.

So it came to pass we (quasi-Californian dude, German girl and a bunch of others) were in the kitchen, supping on a beer, when somehow the conversation turned to circumcision.

This sparked off a huge rant from the hitherto reasonably-quiet guitar person about how circumcision was evil, how it had been forced on him by his parents from birth, and how it was a savage denial of his “sexual rights”.

Not only that, he’d composed two songs about it. One of the worst things in life is being subjected to songs written by a complete stranger done acapella, with no beats or any recognisable hook, and yet being asked to appreciate it as you would the latest chart-topper. And after he performed his two songs about circumcision unasked, he looked at his surrounding audience (who were mostly international travellers) for a reaction. Most of them looked on blankly. Especially the German girl.

I think she left the next morning without offering her love to the guitarist. Wonder if that led to another savage song about the denial of sexual rights…