The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Considered as a Gameshow

The best use of the only surviving witness to the Lincoln assassination is surely as a turn on a light-entertainment panel show. I'd say that this is the sort of thing that could only happen on 1950s TV, but I reckon it could easily happen now, too.

The Ghostly Voices of a Distant War

Thanks to the Brown Moses Blog, I came across this video of intercepted radio communications from Qusayr, Syria. There's an English transcription of the conversation behind that link.

Robust Defence

Fulham have just signed Fernando Amorebieta on a free transfer from Athletic Bilbao. This is how he opted to deal with the threat from Barcelona's Lionel Messi, arguably the best player in the world:

Amorebieta received 11 red cards during his playing career in Spain. I look forward to seeing him in the Premier League.

Canadian Football

About 40 years ago my dad came back from being an MA student in Canada, bringing with him this set of posters for the teams in the Canadian Football League. I'm thinking of getting one framed for my wall. Let me know your favourites!

An Accident Waiting To Happen

Billy Bragg - An Accident Waiting To Happen (Live, 1992)

The Hero Bradford Deserves, But Not the One it Needs

We start carrying semi automatics, they buy automatics, we start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor piercing rounds, and you're wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops.

- Jim Gordon, Batman Begins (2005)

I'm not saying that we're definitely going to see someone dressed as a clown committing a series of anarchic crimes across south Yorkshire. I'm just saying that that's the logical progression.

A Wacky Nuremberg

This week it's become apparent that a young fascist has ensconced himself at the University of Liverpool. He's used his Twitter account to invite people to ask him about his philosophy of "culturism" fascism. Craig Sinclair, lead singer of the band Lovecraft has asked the following questions:

@jackbuckby What are your favourite five works of art?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's the best dream you ever had?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's your favourite stage of human evolution?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's the oldest building you've ever been inside?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby How fast is your favourite British person (living or dead)?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What is your least favourite form of artistic expression?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's your favourite red meat side dish?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby Which foreign language would you least like to see an episode of 'Friends' dubbed into?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby How cloudy would it have to be for you to consider taking a precautionary umbrella to Ascot?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's your favourite colour about the real meaning of culturism?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's your least favourite vowel in the word 'Fatwa'?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's the strongest plastic you've ever leaned against?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's your favourite shape of sunroof?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby Where's your favourite swamp?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's the least funniest sex crime you've ever read about?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's your favourite font size?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby Who's your favourite European TV historian?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby What's the longest you've ever waited for a miracle?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 27, 2013

@jackbuckby How warm would a glass of tizer have to be (fahrenheit) before you would tip it away?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 28, 2013

@jackbuckby Describe the most lacklustre tie you own in three words.
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 28, 2013

@jackbuckby What's the smallest mouse you've never kicked?
— Craig Sinclair (@craigsinclair) February 28, 2013

The Robert James Lees Moment

I made it all up...

...and it all came true anyway.

That's the funny part.

Materialising Class in the English Classroom

I'm currently doing work of different kinds at two universities in the north-west. At one, I notice a fair number of students using iPads or laptops in their lectures, and at the other I notice none at all. Have I stumbled on the emergence of some new form of class divide in English HE?

Men Who Hate Thrillers

I'm just back from a conference in Sweden, at which I was not once attacked by any bisexual-hacker-biker-Nazi-serial killers. There is a sense in which this is disappointing.

Skyfall

Daniel Craig is the best Bond ever, but it's on the basis of Casino Royale, not Skyfall. The latter is a film which works for every second of the time that Javier Bardem is on screen, and ambles around a bit aimlessly whenever he isn't.

There are also problems with what this film wants to be. The 50th anniversary hoopla means that it's trying to do a lot of things at once - part homage to the Bond films that people go on about as if Roger Moore was something to be proud of, part post-Bourne dark action thriller. It's on the latter front that it particularly falls down, coming over all multiple-personality as to whether the things that the security services get up to are bad or not. Bardem is great, but if he'd been allowed to be a villain who often tells the truth (like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises) the film would work a lot better. For all the talk about significant deaths in Skyfall, there's nothing here as powerful or moving  as Clive Owen's last words in the first Bourne film.

Skyfall is beautifully shot, and is much better than the incomprehensible low-stakes mess that was Quantum of Solace. But three films in and I'm still waiting for the Bond series that Casino Royale promised, one that was free of baggage like Moneypenny and Q (both of whom are reintroduced here). Some have suggested that with the 50th anniversary out of the way, the sequel I've been waiting for will be coming next. We'll see. 

General Strike

The museum was closed on Thursday due to the general strike in Greece. This was good from the point of view of myself and Dave, because we were running a theoretical seminar at the Irish Institute, and it gave use extra time to prepare. When we went out for lunch at about 3, Exarchia was full of riot police, and we passed some protesters burning boxes in the street - I have no photos of any of this, for all the obvious reasons. This seemed pretty much par for the course, and it was only when I got messages from the UK asking how everything was that I realised the international media had been running a riot story - something must have happened within view of the bar at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, as the old joke goes.

The seminar went well, although it wasn't as like this as we'd hoped:

Walking back from a local bar after the seminar was over we encountered the remnants of some hours-old teargas trapped in a concrete overhang, so I can say that I have been very slightly teargassed. This is endlessly amusing to my dad, due largely to this song. 

Raining, In The City Near The Sea

Tonight in Athens there's a thunderstorm over the hills to the east of the city. Proper forked lightening, too, which you see so often in the Mediterranean, but so rarely at home. It's something of a relief, as the hot weather here has been something of a shock to someone used to British Octobers - I caught the sun by walking through the city yesterday.

I've been in Athens for a week now, working as an assistant on a project in the archives of the National Museum. It's a great opportunity, and I'm hoping that I'm making the most of it.

The thing which most people reading this are probably wondering is what changes I'm seeing in the city due to the economic crisis. I'm not the best placed to answer that, unfortunately, as previously I've at best spent a couple of days in the city. I know that there were some riots on Monday, coinciding with Merkel's visit, but the only evidence I saw of that was a burned-out taxi by the museum the next day. Walking through Exarchia  the other night had a sort of 1980s dystopian feel to it (assisted by Bowie's "Heroes" blaring out from one of the bars), but Exarchia's probably always felt like that, being the main anarchist/punk/junkie area since well before the economic crisis began. There's also the matter of confirmation bias: to some extent, I see the city I want to see.

Over the weekend I've been down to the Kerameikos, the area just outside the main gate of ancient Athens, which was used as a cemetery from the Iron Age down into the Hellenistic and Roman periods. It's a nice site, as no-one seems to go there much, and it acts as a surprisingly quiet little park almost in the centre of modern Athens. One of my main highlights was seeing the wild tortoises which live down there. I even got to see a tortoise fight, which I think was inconclusive, as most tortoise fights probably are.

Today I went down to the new Acropolis Museum, which I've never had the chance to go into before. It's a really great building, although I'm not sure all of the material is displayed in the most useful way. And while I've never been much of a fan of Classical art (I prefer Hellenistic), the Parthenon Sculptures gallery is really good, displaying the material (mostly plaster replicas, of course...) around the outside of a rectangle the same size as that of the Parthenon. This is much better that how the British Museum displays its collection of the originals. The Museum's design also shines in the views you get of the acropolis from the gallery while you're viewing the sculptures.

I'm hoping to take in a football match while I'm here, so that might be my next post.

LA Noire

Posting this month has been down, due mostly to the fact that I've liberated my sister's Xbox 360. The first game I played was LA Noire (a loan from Emily), one of the reasons I wanted to borrow the console in the first place. As might be expected, the period detail is immersive, down to 1940s comedies playing on car radios. The game's real selling point is the investigation mechanics, however, and I'm not aware of any game which has put as much effort into collecting evidence and then using it. It's not enough to suspect things, you have to actually prove that people are lying. Spotting lies is also crucial, thanks to the facial capture technology, which means you spot lies in the same way you will in day-to-day life.

My reservations with the game are twofold: it wasn't entirely clear to me how my results in cases actually affected the overall plot, which makes it feel a little bit like it's on rails - playing some of the cases again might give me a better idea of how true this feeling is. The second is that aspects of the metaplot seem underdeveloped: the dénouement in the "hunt for a serial killer" section is underwhelming, but more important are the relationships of the protagonist with women, which aren't really explored until late in the game. This matters in terms of the choices the protagonist makes, which are significant, but lack impact without a background context.

A minor quibble is that the game is in glorious technicolour: an optional mode allowing you to play it in expressionist, shadowy black-and-white would have been a nice touch. And despite my reservations about some aspects of the plot, LA Noire gets its noir ending spot on. I know that extra cases are available as downloadable content, and I suspect I'll be getting them sooner or later.

EVA

Neil Armstrong's death brought up some discussion of the fact that there are almost no photographs of him on the surface of the moon: most of the photography was assigned to Armstrong, so the pictures are of Aldrin, and it's very hard to tell two men in identical spacesuits apart (later missions added red stripes to the Commander's suit to help with identification). Thanks to my misspent youth collecting things to do with astronomy and spaceflight,  I do have a copy of one of the photographs identified as Armstrong, so here it is (the NASA designation is AS11-40-5886): 

Favela Democracy vs. Europe's Last Stalinist Dictatorship

With the Olympics now over, it's safe for me to talk about my own experience of them - going to the Olympic football at Old Trafford. I got the tickets for me and my parents last year, when they were first released, thinking that there would be lots of football tickets and not many people would want them. Also, with Old Trafford so close, it seemed like the obvious thing to do.

You buy the tickets before it's known which teams will be playing, so when the games were finally announced I found out I'd be seeing Egypt vs. New Zealand and Brazil vs. Belarus. Obviously, I was pretty pleased at getting tickets for Brazil, particularly as Brazil use the Olympic team in building their squad for the next World Cup.

We went out to Old Trafford by tram, with plenty of other people going to the same place - including a Brazilian drummer. For future reference, a drum on a tram is only entertaining for the first five minutes, if that. What was interesting to see the array of football shirts and flags being displayed by people outside the ground - not just the teams that were playing, but people from all parts of the world. In what can only be a 21st century development, there were lots of Mancs in Brazil gear, and lots of Brazilians in Manchester United shirts.

Egypt and New Zealand were up first, and even though they were hardly the main attraction, the ground was pretty full for them. It was an entertaining game, set up nicely by the fact that New Zealand scored first, from one of their few attacks. As those who saw New Zealand at the last World Cup will know, they may not have much going forward, but they're tough to break down. And so it proved, although in point of fact the Egyptians had only themselves to blame, carving out masses of opportunities only to indulge in some comically bad finishing. While Egypt did get an equaliser close to the end of the first half, the pattern repeated in the second half, with a late opportunity to win the game badly squandered, to the particular ire of a group of Egyptian fans to my right.

Egypt on the attack.

As might be expected, the stadium filled up more for the Brazil game. This included the seats directly behind us, which were occupied by a group of lads who had not turned up for Egypt vs. New Zealand, turned up late to Brazil vs. Belarus, moaned that it was not a premier league match, spent a lot of time talking about how drunk/coked up they were going to get afterwards, went early to/came back late from half time, and left before the end of the match. So they were arseholes, but they were authentic British arseholes, of the type that you can find in any given pub. Room should have been found for them in the opening ceremony.

Hulk takes a corner.

The game itself was great, and was once again made so by the fact that Belarus took an unexpected lead with a great header, which was celebrated by myself with some glee. It was unexpected, but not undeserved: they were playing far better than the Brazil team, with the expensive stars looking like they weren't all that interested. Brazil equalised a few minutes later with a real bullet of a header, but Belarus actually had several other opportunities to score in the first half. My favourite of these was when a Belarusian winger did his level best to replicate the magical 1984 goal John Barnes scored against Brazil, which just failed to come off.

Belarus continued to play well in the second half, but their attacking threat faded somewhat. Just after the hour-mark Brazil took the lead in a manner which pretty much sums up Brazil, to me: Neymar conned the referee into giving a free-kick just outside the area, then dispatched it brilliantly into the far corner. Belarus still played well, but it was pretty obvious that they weren't going to get back into it. The real Brazil highlight came three minutes into injury time, with Neymar releasing Oscar into the area with a backheel, resulting in a great goal. It was harsh on Belarus, who didn't really deserve to lose by two goals.

Free-kick to Brazil.

After this match, the teams took some surprising paths. From what we'd seen, we expected Belarus to easily beat Egypt and progress to the later stages, but they actually lost 3-1 to them, with Egypt going through. Brazil made the final, as expected, but then lost 1-2 to Mexico (the margin could have been much bigger). I was glad about that:  Brazil brought the same arrogant, under-motivated attitude to the final that they had to the game I saw.

This was, I realise now, the only competitive international football I'd ever been to, and  I really enjoyed it. Two games for £20 is very good compared to the Premier League, and probably stacks up quite well compared to the more popular Olympic events.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Till there was rock, you only had God

- David Bowie, "Sweet Head" (1972)

There's always a bit of trepidation when you first approach something that's an acknowledged classic, and that's certainly how I felt before listening to Ziggy Stardust for the first time. Fortunately, it's as good as it's supposed to be. "Five Years" is a startling and bleak beginning to what is, after all, one of the definitive glam-rock albums. But it's for that reason that it's important, the nihilism lingering in your head and undercutting the rock-star hedonism that unfolds on most of the rest of the album - which is there in spades on tracks like "Moonage Daydream", "Hang On To Yourself", and "Suffragette City". In some ways it's strange that "Ziggy Stardust" is as low-key as it is, as you might imagine Ziggy's elegy to be more spectacular (although the Bauhaus cover version means that we have both ends covered). It's not an album without its weak spots: Doggett's book is correct in wondering what, exactly, "It Ain't Easy" is doing here, but it's a great album because it contains so much that's good, not because it's perfect.

It's also the case that a step-change here, in that while fame was the object of Hunky Dory, here it's very much the subject. Bowie is no longer content to look at fame from the outside, but to examine it at first hand. The major hurdle that had to be overcome was that David Bowie was not famous, and the key realisation was that fame could be constructed and worn, like a mask. One of the things that's so interesting about the whole Ziggy Stardust phenomenon is the role that performativity plays in it: Ziggy Stardust is a rock star because he tells you that he is, and because he does the things that you have come to expect from the cultural script of rock stardom (In 1972 the script was only about 15 years old, which makes it interesting that the Ziggy Stardust character was able to capture the concept so perfectly and prefigure so much of what was to come: in 1972 Elvis had Five Years left).

In some senses what seems most remarkable now is Bowie's decision to kill off the whole Ziggy Stardust mythology after only a year, at the height of his (now real) stardom. In some alternative universe there's a David Bowie who milked it for all he was worth, touring the world with The Spiders from Mars for 5-6 years, and who in 2012 is a mostly-forgotten piece of nostagic kitsch, like Alvin Stardust. The decision to kill off Ziggy was gutsy, and it resulted in Bowie being able to repeatedly change himself, and take an audience with him. Rock stars and identities are ephemeral, and if you've completely created yourself once, you can do it again and again.

"You don't owe these people any more! You've given them everything!" 'Not everything. Not yet.'

On Sunday I went to see The Dark Knight Rises, before I ended up reading a review or finding out too much about it. My discussion here will CONTAIN SPOILERS, so avoid if you haven't seen the film yet. Also, it'll be a much better read if you know what I'm talking about.

My expectations were high, as I really liked The Dark Knight, but I feel they were fulfilled Getting a superhero film right is notoriously difficult, and the level of difficulty is increased when you've decided to use these archetypes to try and tell a serious story, and give the whole thing enough verisimilitude that you can suspend disbelief about characters like Batman or The Joker existing in what seems very much to be our world. It's a credit to Nolan that he's pulled this off, and has created a film which nicely rounds out the story he wanted to tell.

My favourite of the trilogy is still The Dark Knight, but The Dark Knight Rises is a close second. I feel Batman Begins is easily the weakest of the three. A somewhat weak first film with two good sequels is unusual, but that seems to be what happened.

There are a few comparatively minor things that I don't think completely work in The Dark Knight Rises. Given the running time, more time could have been spent showing us the kinds of inequality in Gotham which allow Bane to take over: as it is, one character tells us that it exists, but we never really get to see it. Similarly, when someone taken to what you've already set up as The Worst Prison In The World, the first thought of the viewer upon seeing it should not be "Oh, that seems all right". Apparently the thing in Room 101 that is the worst thing in the world is Tom Conti talking to you like a kindly uncle, which might be true, but is strange nonetheless.

I'm in two minds about the end. On the one hand, when Chekov's Autopilot finally goes off it seems like a bit of a copout, and makes the line I've used as my title ring a bit hollow. Nolan does deserve credit for making me think that he might actually Kill The Batman, though. Doing that would have left Michael Caine's Alfred with an unhappy ending, but maybe that's part of the price for saving Gotham? The ending which they went with is perfectly good, if perhaps a bit conventional.

Anyway, I really liked it. I still haven't read any reviews, so I can hunt those out and be told why I'm wrong, now.

This Year's Present

An original UK quad film poster for Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970). It spent 40 years folded up before I got it from Amazon Marketplace. As my dad pointed out, this is probably the first thing I've bought that will get more valuable, although that's not why I bought it.

The Polished Surface of a Desk

A long time ago when I was writing for pulps I put into a story a line like "he got out of the car and walked across the sun-drenched sidewalk until the shadow of the awning over the entrance fell across his face like the touch of cool water." They took it out when they published the story. Their readers didn't appreciate this sort of thing: just held up the action. And I set out to prove them wrong. My theory was they just thought they cared nothing about anything but the action; that really, although they didn't know it, they cared very little about the action. The things they really cared about, and that I cared about, were the creation of emotion through dialogue and description; the things they remembered, that haunted them, were not for example that a man got killed, but that in the moment of his death he was trying to pick a paper clip up off the polished surface of a desk, and it kept slipping away from him, so that there was a look of strain on his face and his mouth was half open in a kind of tormented grin, and the last thing in the world he thought about was death. He didn't even hear death knock on the door. That damn little paper clip kept slipping away from his fingers and he just couldn't push it to the edge of the desk and catch it as it fell.

From a letter by Raymond Chandler, which I saw on Letters of Note.