We have been watching an interesting series of programmes in which persons addicted to botox and cosmetic surgery are introduced to persons with horrible disfiguring medical conditions. Over the course of every show, it is of course the job of … Continue reading
People my age and younger have begun dropping like flies, and I often find myself wondering which of the various diseases that have claimed them will eventually send me an email asking, “You didn’t honestly think I wasn’t going to … Continue reading
As a Santorum supporter, I am commonly asked if I share the candidate’s fear that the legalization of gay “marriage” will lead inexorably to wholesale bestiality and other even more unspeakable perversity. In candour, I do not, but only because the vast majority of Americans now reside in urban and suburban environments in which they rarely encounter the sorts of animals that are good for sex, such as sheep and a couple of the more docile breeds of goat. Continue reading
There have been been nearly as many proposed solutions to the problem of undocumented aliens pouring into our country looking for low-paying, degrading, and often dangerous work (removing asbestos — that sort of thing) as national politicians. For several years, I favoured the idea of rounding up all the undocumented residents of the country and getting them to join hands along the length of the Mexican border Continue reading
After church yesterday, my colleagues Earle and I — Jennifer felt she needed to have her fingernails attended to, though they looked fine to me and Earle — travelled to Sniffingham, in the southeast corner of the county, to talk about Sen. Rick Santorum’s compelling conservative vision of the American future with Wally and Deb F—, originally from Fresno, California. The couple repatriated to the UK in 2006 because of their adoration of the music of James Blount, apparently not realising that the singer/songwriter had himself moved to Los Angeles, whose name most Brits are unable or unwilling to pronounce properly; mispronouncing foreign place names is Brits’ second favourite recreation, after alcoholism. Continue reading
Why, at the beginning and end of debates, do politicians who’ve been spending millions of dollars trying to convince TV viewers that their opponents are the lowest form of human life beam at those opponents as though at long-lost friends? They seem to imagine they weill be seen as fantastically good sports, the sort with whom one might wish to shoot nine holes on a weekend afternoon. They’re mistaken Continue reading
I began working for American Expatriates for Santorum in earnest yesterday, and it was by turns exhilarating and frustrating — exhilarating because it feels so good, so right, to have committed myself to the causes of decency and American exceptionalism, the second because there are so few prospective converts in Kent, the county on whose coast I reside. Such notables as Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and the mathematician and philosopher Alfred Whitehead were all born in Kent, mostly in the London suburbs in the county’s northwest corner, not to mention The Beatles, David Beckham, Michael Jordan, Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Ali, and H. G. Continue reading
Yesterday was the most momentous of 2012, or whatever year it is now, so far. In the morning, I received my first injection of human growth hormone Continue reading
Writer. Composer. Videographer Continue reading
[Decades hence, I will surely be celebrated posthumously as one of the great songwriters of the last quarter of the 20th century, and of the first quarter of the 21st. But I see no reason why we shouldn’t begin a detailed consideration of my oeuvre right now, while I’m still around and able to comment.] So this Miranda Lambert person, who apparently isn’t a character on Sex and the City , but a country singer, was miffed at this Chris Brown person’s being featured at the Grammys, and tweeted that he needed to listen to her song about domestic violence. Well, I’ve got a song about domestic violence of my own Continue reading
[Decades hence, I will be celebrated posthumously as one of the great songwriters of the last quarter of the 20th century, and of the first quarter of the 21st. But I see no reason why we shouldn’t begin a detailed consideration of my oeuvre right now, while I’m still around and able to comment.] Not long after moving to the UK for the first time, in the summer of 2002, I resolved once more to become a famous producer, a dream I’d entertained briefly in 1973, with the Reform School Girls. Continue reading
[Decades hence, I will be celebrated posthumously as one of the great songwriters of the last quarter of the 20th century, and of the first quarter of the 21st. But I see no reason why we shouldn’t begin a detailed consideration of my oeuvre right now, while I’m still around and able to comment.] As with virtually all my songs, I composed the music for Me at My Worst before the lyrics. Continue reading
It’s tricky leaving a very cold place for a week’s holiday in a supposedly very warm one. You don’t want to freeze while waiting for the bus to the train station, or while awaiting connecting trains, but you also hardly want to land in Egypt weighed down by the gigantic hooded winter coat you bought during your brief self-banishment to Wisconsin. You wear a hooded sweatshirt, resolve to think warm thoughts, and hope for the best. Continue reading
Twenty years ago today I was working on my ill-fated (as never-to-be-published) biography of the entertainment mogul and dickhead David Geffen, and pondering whether his having given $1 million to a gay charity whose identity I’ve forgotten constituted generosity. Having just sold his record company for $800 million, he had months before been ordained as a billionaire. Continue reading
[Please read yesterday's entry first!] The bride’s father, who, after all, is the one out of whose pocket the band’s deposit came, gets on the phone with the bandleader, though he is at first too furious to speak coherently. As she sputters and hisses, the bandleader is tempted simply to break the connection, but instead becomes lost in a reverie about an earlier bride’s father he made furious. It was about a year before, and the happy couple’s guests were getting on the bandleader’s tits by requesting nothing but songs he loathed playing. Continue reading
Surmising, from the indiscreet utterance of one of her bridesmaids, that the band isn’t going to turn up, the bride herself gets on one of the bridesmaids’ iPhones to say WTF. It isn’t that one of her bridesmaids has multiple iPhones — imagine how expensive that would be! — but rather that several of the bridesmaids have them, and one, Tamsyn, has offered the bride the use of hers. English can be dicey in such matters, and simply isn’t very good on pronouns. Continue reading
Audrey Mendelsohn lived out the final couple of years of her life in a thick fog of dementia in one of those old folks’ depositories with an incongruously cheerful name and meticulous landscaping, in Gurnee, Illinois, a state I suspect she’d never visited while sentient. When I visited her there for the first time after not seeing her for six years (during which she’d essentially ceased to be herself), I exploded in tears. In my profound foolishness, I’d always imagined I’d have a chance to apologize for how awfully I’d treated her during her last years in California. Continue reading
In my own childhood, I suffered from what might be seen as a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome. Though I was awful as sports, I identified myself in terms of them Continue reading
The weather here is spectacular, and we have walked down to the beach just west of the port the past two afternoons to bask in the sunshine. Today a saddening tableau unfolded before us. In the age-old universal tradition, a boy of around 20 hurtled from behind us into the sea, daring it to be too cold for him One of his pals followed. Continue reading
Decades ago, after I’d performed with my little rock group at the world-famous Whisky a-Go-Go, someone asked if I’d been a professional dancer, and my girlfriend related having heard a young woman in the audience observe to her friend, “All he’s got going for him is his looks.” On the last night of 2010, I was nearly that flattered again when my friend Janet asked me to make a lasagna for the intimate New Year’s Eve potluck dinner she and Nathan had resolved to host. It turned out that my lasagna was the main course, and two of my four fellow diners seemed to like it well enough to request a second portion. Continue reading
Liberal and so-called progressive (hereinafter, LSCP) acquaintances are forever challenging my fierce opposition to gay marriage, and I’m forever flabbergasted by their failing to see how they shoot themselves in the foot by supporting the idea. I’m not even going to mention Leviticus’s revelation that God views same-sexed erotic interaction as abominable; we’ve been through that and through that and through that Continue reading
Even the most devoted of us common sense conservatives trying to clear Gov. Palin’s path to the White House has to pause every now and again to, as the young people say, “chill out”. Continue reading
A great many Palin-related blogs, though I hate to use that remarkably ugly word,. are the work of liberals and so-called progressives whose freedom of speech would be rescinded in a society in which common sense enjoyed greater veneration, but at least they serve to remind us constantly of the shameless perversity of those who would slow Gov Continue reading
If I had any reason to believe that liberals and so-called progressives (hereinafter LSCPs) in high places read today’s column, I wouldn’t write it, because it contains some revelations that could cause a lot of trouble if they fell into the wrong hands. You’ll notice that in the past few weeks a lot of actual Republicans have been taking shots at Gov Continue reading
That I almost missed Sarah Palin’s Third World Hell Holes last night had nothing to do with the frightful blizzard-like weather that kept me from the gym for the second day in succession (the place was to have been locked tight on Christmas). Rather, it was to do with the fact that, while making myself an ultradeluxe lasagna, with roasted carrots and zucchini, to enjoy over the course of the week to come, I was tuned into the Food Network on the little TV in the kitchen, and they kept showing commercials for catheters. Continue reading
