"NPR: Googling As Journalism (Googling Is Now Journalism)."

Wife had on NPR. The "story" filed by some female roving correspondent was one about an actress who had died. The correspondent, in the process of idly googling, had come across the late actress singing a Sondheim song from Company. She had then, still idly googling (one imagines, face propped up on fist as she wanly chomps on a ham and cheese pastry) looked up other people singing the same song. She came across a Sondheim "masterclass" on an old South Bank Show. She went on with her googling and eventually found one of the composer of Hamilton doing the same song.

I was listening, waiting for her point. In fact, it transpired, the trail –– let us call it the "recent history"  in her browser –– was the entirety of the story. She and the NPR host gushed over her marvelous trail of googles as though it was a proper job completed, hard work done.

Is this to be journalism now? Aimless googling from one thing to another and points in-between? I recall googling Shaun Ryder on The Word years ago, and ending up watching Salvador Dali on What's My Line? Was this a great exclusive and I didn't realize it? Will NPR pay me to go off on googling odysseys, I wonder?

Dear NPR,
                 I can find amazing sites on Google comparatively effortlessly.
                 Just yesterday, idling through Youtube, I watched an episode of Runaround with the late Mike Reid, in which Charles Hawtrey showed up to ask the kids a question (which he systematically fudged). Please may I have a job?

                 Yours,

                   &c.
                   &c.

"Two Funny Memories."

Two funny memories came rushing to me today in the kitchen. Both about the same gurl I used to know. I am never more susceptible to the whooshing rush of recollection than when I am standing knee deep in washing up at the sink or idling at the kitchen work surface.

I was listening to Six Organs of Admittance, Asleep on the Floodplain, a rather dull album, and thinking with a curled lip, it were "music for Lee Ranaldo devotees." People like this sort of thing, but then maybe they are people in the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand and Japan, countries where they are unusually susceptible to minor works by minor types.

It's like listening to French hip-hop.

No matter. The music first made me think of an occasion when me and everyone I knew all liked Will Oldham. We were all going to see him play a show on the Tottenham Court Road. Me, Gorgon, Jonesy, think Matilda went too, and was Pricey there? Harry maybe... was Adkell there...? It was the famous time when my brother harshly and baldly told Gorgon that he looked like Harry Nilsson.

My female ladyfriend at the time, who I liked her right well, she made herself unpopular all through the day leading up to the show by going on about how she didn't like Will Oldham and telling us why. In the Coach and Horses. Everyone else was there to see the show. She was not going to get a sympathetic hearing for her point of view. She was not preaching to the choir. Although she was apt to preach. Anyway, that was rather typical of her, and I liked her for it and I like her in memory for it now. And then we all said cheerio, and left her on the Tottenham Court Road as we filed into the show.

The second memory of the same gal-pal (I use the term extremely facetiously) came to me, continuing my boring thinking about Lee Ranaldo's French fans. That really wide-eyed and lame way the French have of misunderstanding everything. I like the French a lot, but it's nevertheless true. I recalled to me now being in Pere Lechaise cemetery looking for the grave of Proust. There emerged a lad of maybe sixteen summers in a German army jacket, who asked us with great youth and exuberance whether we were looking for the grave of "Jeem". I said, with boiling-over sarcasm, "Oh, ouai, Jeem est le plus chouette." Like John Lydon to Bill Grundy. "Oh yes, we really like his music. It really turns us on."

The other day I was walking on Western towards Franklin when a German with a skateboard under his arm asked me the best way to the Hollywood sign. Could it be done on foot from here. I said, "Not easily. Go up there and keep walking and you'll hit the hills."

Anyway, the memories, they roll in, and it will probably always be this way, Christ willing!, and especially, it seems, when we are in a kitchen.

"New Years With Morrissey."

In our preening overweening self-glory, me, my wife and a few thousand other people were acting under the arrogant illusion that we were going to see in the New Year in the company of S.P. Morrissey. Did we all think that we would be taking hot toddies in the wee hours with Morrissey and Russell Brand and a small circle of intimate bum chums?! We were horribly mistaken. We apologize to Morrissey and his friends and family for the vanity of the thing. The awful delusion.

We went to the show at the Galen Center, a college basketball court, thinking we were going to be spending midnight at the show. That on the stroke of midnight Morrissey would sheik, a la Noddy Holder, "Happy New Years," and launch into a Slade medley. In fact we were turfed out unceremoniously around eleven. We raced frantically for the metro & hopped on the Expo line & changed at 7th Street for the red line, got to Ye Rustic Inn just minutes before midnight. I did not toast Morrissey from the pub hearth.

Mischievous madman of Erin! (Morrissey reinvented himself as an Irishman a while ago, and also as a pseudo-Mexican.)

"What do you think Morrissey is doing now?" I asked my wife, as we were crossing Vermont.
"Who?" she goes. Coming out of a doze. "Mike Myers?"
"Morrissey. You know, the singer we have been watching for the last two hours."
"Oh –– him."

* * * * * * * * * *

On New Year's Eve 2000 I was in Camden, in the Spread Eagle, with Larry Arkansas, when Morrissey came in with a bevy of raven-haired Californian girls, and indeed I did end up sat hugger-mugger with the great good man. They were soon joined by another bevy, now of skinheads from the Old East End. This was when I went up to one of the girls and asked her, "Californian Satanists, right? Right. Dye your hair religiously, right? Yes you do. Love Betty Page. Tikis and lava lamps. Got it. Know Boyd Rice, correct?" She did not know Boyd Rice. Had never heard of him.

I swear to God I swear
I never even knew who Boyd Rice was.
Oh-oh-oh-oh...

I ended up sat with Morrissey. Recalled the good old days we'd had. I'd seen him in Henley Woolworths riffling through the seven inches ten years earlier, had got him to sign a copy of Spin with Lisa Stansfield on the cover. "Ah yes –– I know Woolworths in Henley well." Now we were talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald –– Morrissey had moved into his house in Hollywood –– and I remember recommending he read The Recognitions by William Gaddis. We spoke on, but regrettably I also continued drinking throughout that night. I ended up at another Camden pub, sitting with a girl, and I tried to charm her by saying, "What if I did this?" and emptied two full pints out over the table.
I blacked out and my story ends here.