Wired

The Wire is the best TV I've seen for bloody ages. Apparently messy, novelistic, totally unflashy, and mind-bendingly good. At least the first three seasons are. I'm breaking my long radio silence on this blog to perform the service of recommending it. And you must watch it from the very beginning.

Sporting life

Now I admit I'm not Mister Sport (though you'll be pleased to hear my golf swing is slowly on the mend after some fundamental re-engineering). But I do like the stats (particularly the stats behind the stats). And so this blog is right up my street. Check it out.

Praise (Phoe)be

I’d like to honour Lisa Kudrow. For three things, none of which is playing Phoebe on Friends.

1) Her brilliant turn in The Opposite Of Sex.
2) Her equally brilliant (though less funny) turn in Happy Endings.
3) Her spectacular performance in The Comeback which makes the whole (and only) season well worth seeing.

How to get ahead in advertising

First rule: don’t create a campaign like this one, which makes a brilliantly clever and entertaining show look like a third-rate revival of a mediocre 1920s tuner.

Second rule: don’t assume sub-par marketing that has worked for Broadway will work for the West End.

Third rule: make sure you’ve really understood that first rule.

Do the right thing 2.0

When did ‘ethical’ change its meaning from ‘morally right’ to ‘environmentally friendly’?

Newsnight for a year had a regular feature Ethical Man, about a journalist trying to live the ‘ethical’ life. This didn’t involve any thought about the morality of any particular action beyond its potential to benefit or harm the environment.

OK, now I admit I believe there’s no objective way of telling what’s morally right or wrong. (Since you ask, utilitarianism is probably the best system out there, but it’s impossible to appeal to its objective truth – or the objective truth of any such structure for making moral decisions.) But I definitely don’t think any behaviour can be described as ethical if you’re not at least thinking about what is or isn’t the most positive course of action in the broadest sense. Just doing what Greenpeace tells you is about as far from a decent definition of ‘ethical’ as I can imagine.

Talking of environmentalism, can someone explain to me why we don't have a carbon tax? Using carbon has external negative effects that aren’t priced into how much carbon costs. So price those negative effects in using a tax. People can then easily decide for themselves how much carbon to use, knowing that they are paying the true cost of their actions. And we’ll all use less of it while avoiding costly and ineffective product regulations, insane cap-and-trade schemes which give existing energy-intensive industries massive freebies, ridiculous ideas about individual carbon allowances, etc.

A fuller (and better, though US-focused) explanation is here.

Fade in

Broadening out the topic a bit, as promised, here are some great first episodes:

Life on Mars – possibly the best first 20 minutes of any TV show ever. A masterclass in setting up a complicated story with economy, humour and incredible dramatic power. And John Simm’s brilliant in it. (Such a shame that he couldn’t act ‘happy’ when he was overlooked for a BAFTA at the recent TV awards. You’d think ten seconds of fake smiling wouldn’t be beyond him.)

The rest of that first episode is still really good, if not quite as perfect. Which is why, for a first episode that is pant-sweatingly exciting and positively compels you to watch the rest of the series, 24 is still the number one.

And, as for comedies, I still maintain that the best ever episode of the (until recently) phenomenally entertaining Curb Your Enthusiasm is the very first, called ‘The Pants Tent’.* It is the model for every subsequent episode (or at least for every good subsequent episode) and yet is hilarious even if it’s the only one you ever saw.

Funny then, that the first episode of Arrested Development is one of the weakest. Too much heavy-handed exposition, too much even heavier-handed kookiness, and a significant smattering of schmaltz. AD became one of the best ever sitcoms, but its beginnings were not particularly auspicious. Which I guess – despite the focus of my last two posts – is a lesson for us all.

* For pedants: I know there was an hour-long special before the series proper, but that’s so not the first episode. I can justify that position at length if required.

Curtain up

OK, here’s a question. What’s the best first scene in any film ever?

I’m not going to be reckless enough to hazard a definitive answer. But I will stake a claim on behalf of Enduring Love – at least to put it in the Top Ten.

As in Ian McEwan’s original novel, the depiction of a freakish balloon accident, with death appearing out of a clear blue sky, is both horrible and breathtaking.

The rest of the film doesn’t remotely measure up to this impeccably directed opening sequence, but that’s only to be expected when said sequence is quite so stunning.

And how about the best start on the stage? Well Aeschylus’s Agamemnon has the most immediately powerful mood-setting first scene of any play before Hamlet. Verdi/Boito’s version of Othello and Wagner’s Rheingold should also get a look-in.

Which reminds me. Another one for the film list: Spaceballs. I’m only half joking.

Next week: best first episodes.

Do the right thing

One of the worthiest causes I've come across for a long time: Ban Comic Sans. Go on, sign the petition and make the world a better place.

My one question is: how can you justify buying anti-Comic Sans merchandise or wearing a 'Ban Comic Sans' T-shirt, and thereby plastering that horrible font all over your home and/or body? Surely the Ban Comic Sans font shouldn't actually be Comic Sans?

Hat tip: Ochmonek.

...but everywhere he is in chains

I am currently on a personal mission not to eat in chain restaurants. This is quite the sacrifice for me, particularly since I have a strong nostalgic and emotional connection to Pizza Express. And their American Hot is a timeless classic. That I’m now salivating about.

Anyway, I’ve been feeling progressively more miffed about the uniformity of restaurant choice even in London’s more interesting neighbourhoods, so I’m taking a stand and using my power in the market to fight identikit eateries. I admit it’s more of an aesthetic than an economic thing. I don’t have a problem with chains that don’t look like chains – like what used to be Conran restaurants. After all, if you run a restaurant that is popular, why shouldn’t you open another one, and another, and another, and so on, giving more people a chance to eat your nice food. And then, I grant you, you’ve got a chain. But please have the imagination to give them different names, paint them different colours, and play around a bit with the menu too.

To that end, may I recommend Great Queen Street in Covent Garden, from (many of) the people who brought you the renowned (but unreservable) Anchor and Hope. Enjoy.

Bee afraid, bee very afraid (sorry)

I’m intrigued to see how this turns out.

Seinfeld (the sitcom) revolutionised the genre, pushing a uniquely cynical view of human behaviour into the enthusiastic embrace of a massive mainstream audience. Seinfeld (the writer) clearly had a lot to do with that, though I suspect Larry David’s personal neuroses provided much of the show’s funniest and most inventive comic content. And Seinfeld (the stand-up comic) – hmm, well, not so hot. So Bee Movie could go either way.

My biggest fear, though, is hands-on producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. One of the greatest achievements of Seinfeld (the sitcom – god, eponymously-titled shows are a pain) was the banishment of ‘hugging and learning’ from this traditionally schmaltzy genre. Katzenberg has produced some brilliant films, but in all of his animated epics – and also his comedies like Shrek – there’s that same heartwarming and morally instructive payoff. Here’s hoping Bee Movie has a more of a sting in its tail. (Sorry again.)

I'm truly intrigued to see how this turns out. Seinfeld - the show - is clearly

Hot thing

Prince is a genius, easily the most talented musician of his generation. So I am very excited about this.

But every pro has its con, and the horrific ligging going on at Prince’s ‘secret’ gig at Koko last week has been detailed minutely – and very entertainingly – by blogger extraordinaire Ochmonek.

ID and ego

More news – and apposite comment from Tim W – on one of the worst elements of Blair’s middling legacy.

I’m not a closed-minded person. Honest. But I still haven’t heard a single good argument for ID cards (or for the even scarier mega-database behind them).

Supporters make two main arguments. First, they say that ID cards will cut the massive cost of benefit fraud. But the vast majority of this fraud is based not on people pretending to be someone they’re not, but on them lying about their situation, e.g. that they have five kids or one arm. Identity theft is also a bigger problem in countries that have ID cards, by the way.

Second, in an attempt to get The Sun onside, Home Office press officers go on about how ID cards will help track foreigners coming into this country and prevent terrorism (often conflating the two). But only Brits or long-term residents will have to get an ID card in the first place, so ID-less visitors can still come and go as they please. And there’s no explanation of how exactly ID cards will stop people blowing themselves and others up. It’s even hard to see what help ID cards might be able to provide after a terrorist incident – it’s not like we’ve had difficulties identifying who was behind 7/7, despite our current lack of ID cards.

And don’t get me started on where the vast sums of money could be better spent, the minuscule chances of the IT system working, why we don’t let some other lucky country try all this first so we can learn from their mistakes, the massive civil liberties issues, etc. A really poor idea all round. Boo.

Comfortably dumb

High concept has long since moved on from its Hollywood home, and now seems poised to take over non-fiction publishing. Books that attempt to capture a key element of the zeitgeist, in business, politics, or culture – and in one easy phrase – are all over the place. If it’s not the ‘tipping point’, it’s the ‘long tail’. A recent addition to the ranks is Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good for You.

Johnson is on to something a bit more interesting – and counter-cultural – than many of his peers. While every newspaper screams about dumbing down (often next to in-depth articles about Kate Middleton’s mum), Johnson points out that popular culture is in fact much more complex and dense (in a good way) than it has ever been before. I’m not sure he’s right that such developments are making us more intelligent (how on earth would you prove that anyway?), but evidence against the charge of mass culture dumbing down is overwhelming.

Even – no, especially – in television, that much-derided chewing gum for the brain, we can see the results of this smartening up right before our eyes. From the arcane web of plot that is The Wire to possibly the most intricately inter-textual sitcom ever, Arrested Development, this trend is particularly prominent in America – the capital of dumb if you’d believe half of the commentariat. And it’s popular, both in terms of ratings and – crucially – DVD sales, which allow much-needed repeat viewings.

But why is classical music not benefiting (in terms of both audience numbers and cultural prominence) from this surge of interest in more challenging cultural fare? A large part of the problem, on the traditional side of things, is the stultifying atmosphere of most concert performances. I’m not arguing for the desperate ideas of some promoters (‘speed-date to the sultry sounds of Mozart’s Requiem!’). But the dress and rituals of orchestral performance – not least the interminable multi-part curtain-calls, far more than at any play or musical I’ve ever seen – are unnecessarily off-putting. And as for opera, in the past few years only Opera North’s ‘Eight Little Greats’ season has really shown innovation in both repertory and presentation. It is hard to encourage new audiences, inspired by the vitality of the best of popular culture, to attend productions that are decades old.

There are signs of hope though, particularly at performances of contemporary classical music, where even traditional bands seem more comfortable pushing the boat out a bit. The London Sinfonietta have been doing some great stuff with Warp records, exploring in performance the connections between the likes of Aphex Twin and Stockhausen. They have also been keen to play around with the performing environment, incorporating massive projections into their concerts (gigs?). Wagner of all opera composers has historically encouraged the largest revolutions in production – and now he seems to be inspiring fresh approaches to concert performances too. Bill Viola’s central involvement in the Tristan Project (currently touring the US) takes the multi-media nature of Wagner’s intentions into new areas with the help of stunning high-definition video art.

We can only hope that these challenges to the orthodoxies of performance practice reach their own irreversible ‘tipping point’ – and encourage more fans of HBO’s The Sopranos to become admirers of Covent Garden’s sopranos too.

Sonic youth

The first English National Opera production to be conducted by new music director Edward Gardner is Britten’s Death in Venice. That feels appropriate. It’s not just that Britten was recently named ENO’s ‘House Composer’. It’s also because there’s something of the tragic and foolish Aschenbach about ENO at the moment. A recent splash of make-up at the Coliseum barely conceals the problems associated with the venue’s age and infirmity. The company’s confidence in its artistic endeavours has taken a battering in the past few years. And they’ve fallen head over heels for captivating young men. Gardner is barely in his 30s. The ageing Aschenbach himself will be played in this new production by preternaturally youthful tenor Ian Bostridge, in his role debut.

But the comparison holds out some hope for ENO, at least in the renewal that can be provided by new faces. And Britten’s opera itself offers another reason for optimism: it shows how the artform can remain timeless, and yet powerfully immediate, far longer than film.

Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice, based like the opera on Thomas Mann’s novella, now manages the perverse feat of appearing both sensationalist and stodgy. Sensationalist in its relentless focus on Aschenbach’s sexuality; stodgy in its limited canvas and monotonous use of music (particularly unforgivable in a film that changes Aschenbach’s profession from writer to composer). Continual repetition of the Adagietto from Mahler’s fifth symphony defeats its apparent object. There are only so many times you can shout ‘I’m melancholy and yearning’ before people are going to stop listening. Or caring.

Britten manages to translate the personal, sexual and artistic conflicts of the book into an altogether more complex, and more modern, work. Even with all that’s changed over the past thirty years, particularly in attitudes towards relationships – however chaste – between men and boys, this work about a dying fin-de-siècle artist still speaks to us. It’s partly the music: Britten makes it seem entirely natural to combine Verdian lyricism and Wagnerian leitmotif in a context wholly at ease with the twentieth century’s various musical revolutions. It’s also the power of the carefully pared-down libretto and the inspired idea of making Tadzio, the object of Aschenbach’s affection, a mute dance role. But more than that, it has a great deal to say even to those of us who are not faded writers with a late-flowering attraction towards boys. It makes Aschenbach more clearly than ever a symbol of European culture in a post-modern age: riven by doubts about its own achievements, casting lustful yet apprehensive glances at apparently more vibrant cultures elsewhere, and torn between reason and fervour. Apollo and Dionysus, given such a strong musical and physical presence in the opera, continue to pull us in opposing directions.

ENO too – willingly or not – demonstrates where we find ourselves culturally in the early twenty-first century. There’s some great stuff going on here, but they don’t really seem to know where they’re heading. Thankfully, unlike Aschenbach, they still have time to decide.

Please release me

Facebook is evil. A couple of friends encouraged me to sign up, and I succumbed. I hadn’t realised it’s a pyramid scheme that trades in your social credibility, at the price of your friendships. If you don’t want to look like a total loser, you have to encourage all your friends to sign up, so you have loads of friends on your homepage. Then they don’t want to look like losers so they have to sign up all their friends. And so on.

Once your homepage is packed with buddies, albeit ones now silently cursing you for infecting them with the Facebook virus, you have to live out your social life in public, ‘poking’ other people and having them ‘write on your wall’. If you want to arrange to see someone over the weekend, you log in, write on their wall, get an e-mail saying they’ve replied, log back in, see what they’ve written on your wall, click through to write on their wall, and before you know it it’s Monday and you haven’t actually met up. Why not just e-mail them direct? Or call? I never thought of myself as a Luddite. But when technology seems to add to the hassle and time of getting things done, rather than making it easier, you can count me out. I closed down my Facebook account last week. And I’ve never felt freer.

Getting better all the time

So Paul McCartney won a Classical Brit for Best Album last night. His Ecce Cor Meum inspired much critical bitching (he didn’t orchestrate it himself, he wrote vocal lines that were impossible for choirboys to sing, wasn’t Lennon the talented one anyway, etc.). But it won over the shadowy judging panel of the British Recording Industry Trust and Sir Paul walked away with another trophy for his groaning mantelpiece.

Fair play to him. It did get me thinking, though. The quality of McCartney's musical output is generally acknowledged to have diminished as he has moved into middle age. Almost all prominent classical composers, on the other hand, have got better and better as they got older. There’s rarely a sense of a talent burnt out within a few years, and often the last testaments of composers are their most innovative work. Beethoven’s Late Quartets. Verdi’s Falstaff. Wagner’s Parsifal. The incredible story of Janacek who suddenly found success in his sixties as he created some exquisite quartets, and some exquisitely painful operas.

But not one pop musician has anything like this progressive trajectory. Think of the greats and there’s not one whose best work has been in his or her later years. Not The Beatles, not Prince, not Dylan, not Madonna. Even those who just write rather than perform (and who you’d think might be immune from the modern quest for youth and novelty) seem to lose their muse as they age – witness Burt Bacharach. Any ideas why? Is classical music more about the craft than the inspiration? Or does pop music bring such worldly rewards that successful artists just can’t be bothered any more?