Bringing it all back home

I’ve been back in Dublin since Christmas Eve. Every year I find myself less in touch yet more reconciled with the city. After 5 years I feel my links with it are no longer vital. I suppose that as the years pass in BCN, the young roots I have planted there strengthen, while those in Dublin weaken from neglect.

I have to say that the Vodafone poster ads that greeted me in arrivals made me cringe. While I respect and applaud the attempt to represent Irish culture, I feel embarrassed by its provinciality – its lack of sophistication. Of course, that may just be me. I am not claiming to be a worldly sophisticate. Nor am I under any illusion that Barcelona is less provincial than Dublin. But Barcelona isn’t my home city. Nobody gets embarrassed by other people’s families, do they? Just their own.

When I lived in Dublin, I used to bemoan (being hypercritical, I moaned a lot) RTE’s failure to represent Irish culture to its viewers. I guess it can’t be easy operating in the shadow of the (once?) great BBC. Anyway, I don’t know to what extent it is a failure on the part of the national broadcaster, and not, rather, a national failure occasioned by our forsaking of our native tongue. After all, TG4 has made a good job of representing us to ourselves using a language that the vast majority do not understand.
The Vodafone ads are evidence of a culture that is trying to create its self-image. My failure to identify with them may simply be just that: my failure. I got to thinking about the crude old placard ads that used to appear on RTE after the international ones. Des Kelly carpets and Boylan’s shoes sales were announced in 5 seconds with a voiceover and a few words on a block background. A national embarrassment, I thought as a child. In those days I felt hugely aggrieved by RTE. Until mid-afternoon all you had to look at were the big numbers 1 or 2 on the screen. With the other British channels broadcasting from early in the morning, it seemed like pure laziness on the part of Montrose. My disappointment was compounded then by an output for children that was nowhere near as entertaining as what the BBC was broadcasting. Say the words “childhood” and “depression” to me and I’ll think of Angus McNally on Anything Goes, Anois agus Aris, and Garda Patrol. Indeed my disappointment has never really left me. The inexplicable decisions taken regarding presenters (Pat Kenny doing entertainment television!!!!!). along with the dire programmes that passed for comedy were the cause of my enamorment of the BBC and consequently of British politics. I read a comment on Disillusioned Lefty recently along the lines of how British politics held the author’s attention much more than Irish politics and I could understand exactly what he was saying. Back in the 1980s I was utterly seduced by the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe et al. swanning in and out of 10 Downing Street and pulling away in Jaguar XJ6s.
British politics gave us the suave and brutal Michael Portillo in the mid-1980s. Who did Irish politics give us? Brian Cowen?

I realise now that none of this is good. You could say that I’m plainly showing up a failure to engage with politics at any real level. I would counter, though, that I was simply ahead of my time in deciding that in politics image is key! Like I said earlier, it can’t be easy competing with the mighty BBC, even though Channel 4 and ITV have never really had any problems, have they? So was Montrose the problem or was its failure to get to grips with Irish culture simply a symptom of an ailing culture?

I won’t be flippant and say that I don’t care anymore. I do. All the same, I feel less responsible for coming up with an answer to that question than I did in the past. Anyway, not really being in touch with what’s going on here these days, I think it would be irresponsible of me to try to provide some answers.

My brother has on loan a beautiful Cannondale R3000. That’s something like €5,000 worth of road bike. I took her out on Christmas day for a short spin to Howth Head. As I cycled along the sea front through Clontarf and past Dollymount to Sutton and Howth I thought of Dublin’s former grandeur. I don’t know if it’s simply imagined – a result of reading Joyce, perhaps. It’s hard to associate grandeur with TB and consumption and slums, but maybe they are its necessary foundations. I think for a long time it was difficult to be committed to Ireland. She was “the sow that eats her young”, as Joyce put it. But today, I firmly believe in a commitment to Dublin and Ireland. Am I being hypocritical if I don’t share it? I support it. Maybe in the future I’ll come back and affirm a commitment to Ireland. In the meantime, I’ll simply say that I understand that commitment. There is hope.

King Kong

Well, Peter Jackson's mega-remake of King Kong finally made it to our screens last week and so, on Saturday night, I made myself as comfortable as I could in my seat in the main screen of the Yelmo Cineplex in Barcelona and prepared to be enthralled.

There are few 3 hr movies I'm prepared to go to see at 11.30 at night (not being a huge fan of late sessions, be they in a cinema, a bar or wherever) but I was itching to see Kong. I was a kid before the first VCRs became popular (I'm talking about before betamax and V2000 even) but that's not to say that we didn't have home entertainment. Our "home cinema" was in some ways more faithful to that term than the ubiquitous miniature loudspeakers and integrated amplifiers that you find in people's homes today. Cine Hi8 consisted of a projector and a projector screen. I guess Hi8 must have meant "8 minute highlights" because I think that's all the time the reels we had lasted. So we had the final climactic 8 minutes of Star Wars, the famous gorilla scene from Disney's Jungle Book (I Wanna Be Like You - oo - oo), the duel scene from Disney's The Sword & the Stone, and 8 climactic minutes from the original King Kong movie.

My siblings and I loved King Kong. Even though we'd seen it countless times, we would sit mesmerised when the curtains were drawn at the New York city theatre to reveal a huge shackled ape. I guess we were no sophisticates at that age because we could completely buy the illusion, which I imagine some pretty crude 1930s special effects weret trying to create. It's been years since I watched it. The projector and its screen were brought out less and less as we got older, and when my mother finally relented on her threat to walk out of the house the day a vcr was brought into it, the CineHi8 was definitively pushed into retirement by 4 ungrateful children already afflicted by a keeping-up-with -the-Joneses obsession.

King Kong is pure cinema. It is, to me, what Hollywood does best: large-scale. Over the last 10 or so years, with the rapid advances being made in digital and computer effects, the industry has churned out more than a few films which failed because of their failure to harmonise the new effects and the more traditional stays of a movie, like plot and characters. It was as if they were experimenting with a new formula that was so potent yet crude it had a tendency to blow up in their faces. In the last few years, directors seem more and more to be getting the hang of these unweildy effects and cinema-goers have been treated to some memorable scenes which have completely sustained the illusion: the Trojan fleet in Troy and the Germanic battles at the beginning of Gladiator come to mind along with Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy. Of course Jackson is probably the director who has dedicated himself most to the employment of digital computer effects to ehance a movie. Perhaps better than anybody, he has understod how a movie cannot be subordinated to its special effects and how its success in fact depends on the reverse.

As an exercise in such, Kong is perhaps much more complete a film than the LOTR threesome. LOTR had the advantage of being pure fantasy with no connection to our modern world. Kong, on the other hand, takes place in the most modern city in the world, New York, albeit in the 1930s. Interestingly, I think Jackson's decision not to set the story in the present works hugely in the film's favour as it allows the special effects to retain a certain simplicity. The choice of cast is excellent. Jack Black sufficiently keeps in check his more exuberant tendencies to give a complete performance as Denham, the cinema director whose passion for his art makes him a brilliant and visionary director while a terrible human being at the same time. Adrien Brody, as Driscoll, has enough character and sensitivy to make sure he is not overshadowed by Kong in the scenes that they share, while at the same time wisely not trying to overshadow the beast either. And Naomi Watts is wonderful in her range, playing Ann Darrow as an at first unremarkable young woman who is then transformed into an astonishing emblem of femininity through Kong's attentions to her.

Jackson remains essentially faithful to the original film while managing to evolve it. A film like Kong almost demands to be remade in order to take advantage of today's digital effects. As I said above, and it may seem obvious, the success of a film incorporating digital effects depends entirely on whether or not those effects are subordinated to the telling of the story. There are certain effects in Kong which seem to protrude inelegantly from the screen's clean corners, and, indeed, there are certain plot resolutions which would seem to indicate that handling the mammoth issue of Kong sometimes meant that the director lost his perspective. But the central effect, Kong, is masterful. The illusion is sustained from the very moment we hear him roar from the depths of his habitat right through to the moment when he slumps from the top of the Empire State Building. The story is as clever as the effects that help to sustain it too with Jackson juxtaposing his Skull islanders with his Manhattan islanders throughout the story. Watt's transformation over the course of the movie from stumbling, insecure swooner into a poised and utterly self-enlightened specimen of femininity is wonderful to watch. She is wooed first by Brody and then by Kong, and it takes the alpha-male braun of the gorilla to awaken her to herself. This awakening culiminates in her noble rejection of Brody's character when Kong is captured. After Kong, he must come across as rather effete to the woman who was previously reduced to giggling girlfoolery in his presence.

Universal Studios are banking on Kong being a slow burner at the box office. The film's failure to live up to forecasts in its first weekend's box office takings has prompted Universal to look for comparisons with Titanic, which in its first weekend did not give any sign that it would go on to be the biggest grossing film of all time. However, while Kong certainly deserves to out-gross Cameron's mega-production, I'm not sure that it will. After all, a major draw of Titanic was its love story and, while King Kong might be getting the two thumbs up in bestiality forums all over the internet, I can't see the non-star-driven "love story" element of the film drawing the same number of crowds as its maritime-mayem counterpart did using Leonardo and Kate.

This Christmas the cinema isn't likely to hold much attraction for right-wing Christians , what with two of the most acclaimed films showing being about either gay love or interspecies love! But if you're not a right-wing Christian, this Christmas, give 3 hours of your life to a beast. You won't regret it!

Vatican cyclical condemning youths' "social uselessness" suppressed

A Vatican cyclical thought to offer the new pope's views (and that of his council) on the issue of youths in society has allegedly been suppressed by Vatican higher-ups fearful of the response it might provoke from secular world leaders and liberal media.

The cyclical, an estimated 30,000 words in length, is believed to argue that today's society is becoming too tolerant of youths and is dangerously close to treating them as social equals. The document inveighs against those who support the "so-called `youth' culture" and warns of the danger of promoting it as an alternative viable lifestyle.

This unprecedented Vatican parry against a sizeable sector of society has apparently been motivated by alarm within the Holy See at the increasingly high profile of youths in western society since the second world war. The Vatican is believed to be worried about the evergrowing number of youth pursuits aimed at nothing more than providing pleasure for non-adults. One section of the suppressed article lists off "worrying pursuits" such as, skateboarding, free-ride, urban freestyle, urban free-ride, biketrial, and online gaming, as well as "alarming tendencies". One example given of these latter was so-called "boy youth"'s habits of wearing trousers below their hips and thus leaving exposed their underwear. It goes on to express shock that "girl youths" are beginning to imitate this tendency - proof, in the Vatican's eyes, of the morally corrupt nature of all youth on the one hand, and a complete lack of personal will on the part of the female ones on the other.

The document condemns the "social uselessness" of all of the above pursuits and tendencies. Sources who have read the paper say that it harks back to days when youth was something that society actively discouraged and managed to keep in check. 19th century industrial society's placing of youth in factories and coalmines as well as society-in-general's age long habit of sending youths to their deaths in war are two examples given by the authors of what they believe were correct attempts on the part of society to make youth "socially useful".

The document goes on to say that youth will not be accepted into Catholic semenaries because of a lack of what it calls "affective maturity". Such an attitude on the part of the Vatican today is in stark contrast with that held in former times when youth made up 99% of the influx into semanaries. Anticipating reaction to this change of position, the document argues that in the past the Vatican had attempted to adopt a Christian attitude to youth, and aid society in its job of making them socially useful by taking them under its wing and reforming them. It points out that it was not alone in such an endeavour as organisations such as the Boy Scouts and the Nazi Youth were set up for more or less the same purpose. It laments that over the last 50 years youth has proven its inherent unsuitability to clerical life and relinquished any claims it might have made to being considered as a social equal to adulthood. For overwhelming support for the belief on the part of the Vatican that youth is irredeemably corrupt, the document argues, one need look no further than the huge number of clerical abuse scandals that have come to light in recent years. The authors of the document state that the "disgusting, unspeakable, and shameful" abuse at the hands of children suffered by thousands of innocent Catholic priests throughout the world is justification enough for Rome's new departure on the subject of this social sector.

This writer could not manage to obtain any comment on the suppressed cyclical from leaders of Catholic Youth organisations, which, like Catholic Gay organisations, are clearly fighting an uphill battle for acceptance in the eyes of today's Vatican.

Max Biaggi gets his comeuppance

Max Biaggi's hopes of getting a seat in next year's motogp nosedived yesterday when Bridgestone made it clear that they were not prepared to shoe a 3rd bike for the Kawasaki team. Since he was vetoed by HRC for next year (it has overall decision over who rides its RCVs on its satellite teams) after a poor performance as their #1 factory rider this season accompanied by typical Biaggi displays of ill-temper and resentful outbursts directed at his employers, the 3 time motogp runner-up has been trying to secure himself a seat with one of the other competitive teams in the paddock. Needless to say his nemesis Valentino Rossi's employers, Yamaha, quickly made it known that his services were not of interest. Ducati have already lined up Caparossi and Gibernau on their Desmosedicis and Suzuki also declined an offer from Biaggi's backers, Camel, to fund a third bike. They've landed world superbike young gun Chris Vermulen to replace retiring Kenny Roberts Jr.for next year alongside young John Hopkins.

Why is everybody turning the Roman down? He's notoriously hard to work with and after a lacklustre year with the might of HRC behind him, teams must reckon that he'd be absolutely unput-upable-with next year in teams with less resources than the Japanese giant.

It now appears that Biaggi's only chances of avoiding forced early retirement are if Camel manages to persuade HRC to climbdown and allow Biaggi a seat on Sito Pons' satellite team. Camel has sponsored it for the last few years and Biaggi rode for the team in the 2003/4 seasons. Camel has repeatedly threatened to follow Telefonica Movistar out of motogp sponsorship but HRC have so far refused to budge. Pons has lined up young aussie Casey Stoner alongside Spanish Carlos Checa. If Camel and Biaggi prevail it's likely that Stoner will lose his seat and might find himself obliged to reopen negotiations with Yamaha, who could give him a seat on Herve Poncheral's dysfunctional Tech 3 satellite team.

At 34, the Italian Emperor only has one or two more seasons left in him, surely, and Camel's loyalty to him is, to me, inexplicable. Motogp sponsors seem to be extremely conservative. Alex Barros, Carlos Checa, Troy Bayliss and Kenny Roberts Jr. all managed to keep seats in the 20 strong paddock over the years even though they have not really been accompanied by results. Bayliss, Roberts Jr. and Barros have all been forced into retirement this year as team managers are taking on younger riders. This is no small way due to Marco Melandri's excellent year at Team Gresini where he deposed his team mate Sete Gibernau as championship runner-up. Melandri had spent his two first years in motogp at Yamaha Tech 3, where he had not exactly shone. Next season he'll be joined by young Spaniard Toni Elias, who rookied at the very same Tech 3 team this season and has brought his sponsors, Fortuna, with him to Honda Team Gresini. With young Dani Pedrosa (20) along with Casey Stoner (20) and Chris Vermulen(24)
all joining the motogp paddock for next season, and with this year's runner-up, Melandri (24) and third-placer, Nicky Hayden (24) promising to stay on top of their game, the average age of the paddock will drop considerably and will get a well-needed injection of new blood and life. in 2006.

Biaggi should be obliged to join his aging colleagues, Roberts Jr. et al., after his disastrous performance this year on supposedly the best bike in the paddock. Of course, he could ride for WCM or TeamRoberts but I don't think such a fall from grace would sit well with the Roman's temper.

UPDATE
Well Max Biaggi went ahead and announced at the Bologna motorshow that he'll be riding with Kawa next season. He said he'd gotten assurances from Bridgestone that tyres won't be a problem. If this is indeed true, that means that Sito Pons will be left without a sponsor as Biaggi will bring Camel with him. It does look as if Biaggi isn't simply thinking wishfully as Casey Stoner has abandoned his Honda RCV and Pons to reunite with his 250cc manager, Lucio Cecchinello on a one-rider motogp project using a Yamaha M1!
Who exactly is served by Biaggi getting on a Ninja next season? Everybody'd like to see Rossi on a Ninja but I doubt that Biaggi will be drawing in the crowds and viewers with this move. Apart from his loyal Italian fanbase, who would have been sad to see Biaggi forced into retirement this year? Come to think of it, who would have even noticed?