Earnest pubescent scribery
A poem someone wrote seriously when they were young – REVIEWED
I’m not precisely sure how old this amateur poet was when he authored these lines, but considering that it’s very likely the only reason you would openly publish stuff this terrible is if you literally considered yourself to be a different person when you wrote it, I’m presuming he was a teenager.
As a genre, pubescent poetry normally adheres to certain tropes; the main one being a high level of crapness. People feel comfortable laughing at its crapness because the experiences and sentiments recounted (the world is a sad, bad and outrageously unreasonable place) are often so universal that, actually, you are laughing at your own teenage self as much as anyone else.
And this poem is crap, there’s no doubt about that (especially its deflative non-sequiteur of a last line, which in a lengthy footnote the author himself has proclaimed “bloody awful”). But it’s difficult to laugh uproariously at it and not just because the footnote also tells us it is inspired by a transvestite called Sally (who some may remember as a character from a C4 show The Fried Chicken Shop) whom the poet witnessed experiencing abuse on a Clapham street.
I have been thinking about Sally a lot recently, because I see her several times a week around the south London neighbourhood of West Norwood. I have witnessed almost identical situations to the one the poet is recounting, but I have to admit, I’ve never had the urge to return home and write 20 lines of irregularly rhyming verse about it. And that made me think: people really are different. Some people, for instance, see an elderly, provocatively-dressed transvestite being mocked in a south London street and decide to write a poem about it. Others see an elderly, provocatively-dressed transvestite being mocked in a south London street and don’t. And we should learn to accept that: not laugh, or judge or, indeed, “heckle” and “holler” – but instead just enjoy the beautiful plurality of humanity. And write some poetry about it. If we want to. 9/10.
RA
Re-constituted riffage
The modern supergroup – REVIEWED
The music world must sometimes feel like it has pulled pop culture’s short straw. While cinema teams Batman with Superman, pop pairs Meghan Trainor with John Legend. When Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers Assemble and Captain America pool Hollywood’s biggest stars and make them wear full-body Lycra, music has the Billboard awards with performances from Hozier, Nick Jonas and Pitbull featuring Chris Brown.
The good news though is that musicians are finally stepping up. They’re getting together and forming supergroups of steel. No longer where pop stars go to die, or a hodgepodge of musicians who look like they met at Ronnie Scotts on open mic night, In 2015, supergroups have got it down. Exhibit A: The Seasoned Rocker Supergroup Who Make Riffs Of Grunge Awesomeness. This would be Ten Commandos, who combine ex-members of Queens of the Stone Age, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and OFF!, with everyone’s favourite gravelly rent-a-frontman Mark Lanegan, to make a track that could rouse skeletons in the desert.
Exhibit B: The Jazz Wig-Out In The Peruvian Rainforest That May Or May Not Be Assisted By Psychotropic Substances. That’s Flying Lotus’s Woke with Shabazz Palaces and Thundercat, whose sticky, syrupy melange should probably come with a manual, or a blunt, to explain it. These are the two formulas that make Supergroups 2015 work: be so cool and wear so much black you style it out, or make something so confusing that it runs circles around everybody.
Well done, modern supergroups. Well done. Next stop: the multimillion dollar concert movie. 10/10
KH
Bitey shamblers
The humble zombie – REVIEWED
Ah, the zombie, necrotic denizen of the wasteland, selfless cannon fodder for obtuse societal allegory. You teach us so much, dear zombie – the value of family, of life, of proximity to bats – and ask nothing in return besides the occasional helping of neurone tartare.
Admittedly, in biological terms, zombies don’t really make sense. If a person is pulled apart like a freshly-baked soup roll by a herd of the undead, scattering their vital innards and supportive musculature like damp confetti, how does that person, re-animated, function? Move? “Survive”? Logically, they should crumple to the ground like a sodden flannel, spending the whole of their not-quite-afterlife grunting in an immobile cowpat of rotting skin. No textbooks offer the answer to this, leaving me no option but to assume zombies by their very nature are illogical.
Nevertheless, in every other respect, the zombie is pretty much faultless. Clothing: raggedy muck chique. Face: “no make-up and I don’t care” confidence. Social life: thriving, always found in large groups. They’re impulsive, yet predictable, like the perfect spouse. Am I saying I wish the zombie apocalypse would just hurry up and happen? Well, let’s put it this way: The Tories are in power. The Wombats are still around. Last night I paid £16 to go to the cinema. Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. 7/10.
LH
Men kicking a windy bag into a net fewer times than some other men
“Can you review how Scotland nearly qualify for major football tournaments and then fall at the last hurdle in comedically tragic circumstances every.single.time.” (Jonathan Kay, Cambridge) – REVIEWED
I can review that. No problem. Because it won’t take very bloody long. Scotland last qualified for a major football tournament in 1998. I remember it well because me and my dad drove to watch Scotland in Bordeaux (actually my dad drove, I got scared by the autoroute), where they scraped a point with Norway, the only one they got in the competition. They had already been beaten by Brazil but my dad and I left the game thinking a point might be alright because, in the end, Scotland would surely beat their final opponents, Morocco. A week later, they lost 3-0.
Scotland nearly got to the European Championships in 2000, losing a tight – pretty damn terrible – play off with the Auld Enemy, England. They got nowhere near the 2002 World Cup in Japan. By 2004 they’d hired a German manager, Berti Vogts, who took them to the playoffs for the European Championships only to be abjectly humiliated by the Dutch 6-1 on aggregate. 2006 World Cup they got nowhere near again. Under Alex McLeish they teased their fans into thinking they might have a chance at the 2008 Euros by beating France 1-0 away but they finished third in their group. 2010, third. 2012 3rd again. 2014 it’s looking like being fourth.
Now one way to look at this is to say that Scotland keep getting close. Another way is to say that they’re getting less close each time and while they might do ok against nations less equipped than themselves, Scotland always lose to anyone good. In that sense, Scotland are like England only with a lower seeding. Just another reason why the UK is #bettertogether.
I rate this thesis 5/10.
PM
