respect your elders: June 2005

The list of all lists

After the gig post, I was going to attempt some humorous lists, then I saw this and I realised there was no point:

Look at his face!

Just look at his face!

I met him last week you know *casually polishes finger nails*

Normal not normal

Here's a thing: do a Google image search for 'weird'. Now do a Google image search for 'normal'. Tell me 'normal' isn't normal.

A new logo

I've been looking for a new logo and I came across this rather fantastic random typography generator from www.metaatem.net / www.flickr.com:

$Radio City \$ $\"e\"$

Wrist management

It's amazing how little you can do with only one arm.

That is all.

There is good and bad in everything

Bit of a mixed weekend really. First, I went to see New Order in Hyde Park and bugger me if they didn't take my advice and go and play four Joy Division songs (including Atmosphere), not to mention Love Vigilantes, Temptation and 'bloody Blue Monday again'.

Add some very bad jokes about hay fever, Bernard's gay-uncle-at-a-wedding dancing Hooky making Bass God Batman shapes with the spotlight and berating the 'moshpit dads' and it added up to one of the top five gigs I've ever seen*

Now the bad bit: I sprained my wrist playing football and I'm in agony.
Even worse, the save I made to sparin my wrist was the only good thing I did all match. I only went in goal because I was playing so shit.

*The other four, Nick Hornby style:

1. Brian Wilson's SMiLE at the RFH
2. Prince showcase, 2000
3. Beck, Nottingham Rock City
4. Prince, Lovesexy. Wembley Arena

What the internet was invented for

You thought it was something to do with military communications systems, right?
Rubbish, it was so people could show the world things like this:

Toast in the Post

Must try it with a nice Battenberg...

FCUK and the end of civilisation as we know it

PS I've just noticed that in a post below I said 'no-one gives a fcuk' I promise this was a typo. Nothing gets my goat more than Trevor Beattie basing an entire ad campaign around nearly saying 'fuck' like a naughty schoolboy and then upsetting pensioners by plastering it all over their high streets. In fact that's as good a manifesto for this site as any

Goths of Summer

Have you ever wondered what goths do in summer? You'd think they'd go into hybernation or sleep in soil-lined coffins or something, but oh no: last week I spotted an intire international convention of them - 30+ - all sat under a tree in Regents Park telling goth stories.
But considering it's been over 30 degrees all week, it must be pretty hard to stay true to your goth ideals at a time like this. I feel for them, I really do (I wouldn't go so far as to say my heart bleeds, mind). It must be tough with all that pasty white skin, sweaty black rubber and leather and squelchy net stockings. And the make-up must run to buggery and get all over your black clothes. In all seriousness, you've got to admire someone who puts themselves through so much discomfort when it would be so much easier to stick on a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of Speedos.
This morning I saw a goth who'd actually cracked it: black flip flops (for the Australians amongst you, that's 'thongs'); black linen Cambodian-style three-quarter length trousers, black t-shirt, black bandana with his hair neatly tied up at the back of his head, Chinese Emperor-style.
Word.
He still obviously had Fields of the Nephilim on his iPod though.
(There's another thing: obviously any discerning goth would go for the black iPod - but it's got bloody U2 logos all over it. What to do?)

I'm so excited by the whole subject I think I might devote an entire website to The Summer of Goth. In the meantime, here's some pictures of some sweaty big-boned people suffering for their art:

Goth Picnic!

Aww...

Chav Bomb

On the way to work today, I saw a discarded Burberry make-up bag sat in the middle of the pavement directly opposite a tube exit. If it was any other type of bag, the police would have cordoned off the street and closed the tube station, but since it was Burberry, people just ignored it. The aesthetics of terrorism in action. What if it had been planted by a Chav Separatist movement?

Pimms Monthly

You've got to love tatler magazine. It's the law. Why? Well, take a look at some of the names of the staff on their masthead for a start. I promise you none of these are made up, not even the last one...

leon st amour
ticky hedley-dent
debbonaire von bismarck
sebastian shakespeare
katleen pelsmakers
clare milford haven

How the media works, parts 1-3

1995: Oasis release (What's the Story) Morning Glory; Blur release The Great Escape. The music weeklies decide to pin their 5-star reviews on Blur and denounce Oasis as the 'singing electricians'. The Blur album bombs, the Oasis album is retrospectively declared a masterpiece

1997: Oasis release Be Here Now. It's patently their worst album to date, but the press, having burned their own fingers last time round, are terrified of not securing much-needed, circulation-boosting interviews with the band, and so declare it a masterpiece.

2005: Coldplay release X&Y. It's patently their dullest album to date, but the press are terrified of not securing much-needed, circulation-boosting interviews with the band, and so declare it a masterpiece.

Postscript:
NME's X&Y review: 'So it is that this has become the most anticipated third album since Oasis’ ‘Be Here Now’. [But] Oasis' third album was an overblown opus to the excesses of cocaine and the good life. This is a great, great record that has just raised the bar for everyone.' Rating: 9'

NME's Be Here Now Review (oddly missing from their online archive): 'Mammoth... each song already resonates with the vast, communal spirit that has propelled them thus far... here are yet another 11 songs the slightly sozzled world will be bursting to sing.' Rating: 10

Live bleeps

Talking of fictional electronic superstars, it occurs to me that three of the best live albums ever are by electronic bands which, by their nature, aren't supposed to be able to cut it live, while the majority of rock bands singularly fail to rock in the flesh.

Those albums in full:

Daft Punk Alive 1997

Kraftwerk - Minimum Maximum

Depeche Mode - 101

Guitar bands could learn a lot from this: live albums are interesting because of the interaction with the fans. look at Dylan's 'Albert Hall' bootleg. No one gives a fcuk about your guitar solos, they want to hear the crowd - even for the heckles and slow handclaps. What the three albums above all manage is to recreate the rush of clubbing by recording the crowd going nuts. It's all you need

Daft plastic

Proof that young'uns do good stuff too occassionally

I want one!

Pun Corner

First in a regular series, devoted to the worst pun in the media each week. The inagural prize goes to: 'Third Frock From The Sun' in the Observer Magazine. It's a fashion story. Featuring frocks. And there's at least three of them. Genius

Rod Liddle: a warning from history

Ladies: here's a simple rule of thumb that will help you through your lives: don't sleep with Rod Liddle. Quite why you want to is beyond me. He must have a magnetic personality, although he does a pretty good job of hiding it in his endless tedious columns about his affairs in anyone that'll print it: The Times, The Spectator, GQ. Talking of which, has anyone noticed how GQ has become obssessed with adultery? It's the new thing apparently. No need to feel guilty any more! Some vacuous twats in London do it. Yay! This month they even give us the startling news that women have affairs too!! Fuck people over for 2005, we say.

The secret of comedy revealed

Shit acting + bad script + Johnny Vaughn = turkey

It is rocket science actually

Things I don't get, part 1

This is the perfect example of the Elders raison d'etre (that's French): last night, New Order were on Jools Holland. They played the title track from their new album (Waiting for the Sirens Call), and it sounded pretty good: as good as you could possibly hope for really, even if the rest of the album is a bit rubbish.

But here's a thing: at the end, they did the Joy Division song 'Transmission'.
Despite the fact that the singer of that particular song has been dead for nearly a quarter of a century, and despite some bloke who looks like one of the League Of Gentlemen sneaking into the band without anyone noticing, it sounded fantastic.
That wasn't the 'thing' I mentioned. This is: how come, when every new indie band in a secondhand jumper is wanking on about their Joy Division obsession - how come the band that used to actually be Joy Division are recording rubbish mid-life crisis rock when they can quite clearly still cut it when they can be arsed?

Eh? Eh?

And while we're at it, who the fuck is that drummer in Oasis? When did he happen?
Christ on a bike

A note on the design

"What design?" you ask.
"Hahahaha," I reply, a little too maniacally nervous to get away with it.
You see, as you might expect from a tea-drinking, elders-promoting fool with the word 'Battenburg cake' at the top of his website, I'm a bit of a luddite*.
Fortunately, in the year or so since my lame attempts on lazyjournalism.com, the idiot-proof Blogger templates have improved no end, and they've even made it easier to post pictures, which will be adorning this site as soon as I download the thingamyjig.
Please bear with us during these 'construction periods' (let's hope it doesn't take as long as Wembley, eh?). I'll do my utmost to have all sorts of twiddly stuff and links presently, although I should warn you that the last time I had a fiddle with the source code I ended up with black type on a black page.
You will notice, however, that I have already displayed masterey in both 'clicky' links and itallics. Phew. Time for a lie down...

*I'll have you know, mind: I was dancing drunkenly to speed garage the other night like an embarrassing uncle at a wedding

An explantation, of sorts

Respect Your Elders is dedicated to the knowledge that old folk have got it sussed. Not in the sense that we're going to start posting downloadable knitting patterns or anything; we just mean that the world has quite clearly gone to bollocks now that more and more of us lot are in charge of it.
When they were young'uns, popular culture was something thrilling and exciting and dangerous that they thought might change the world for the better. Nowadays it's boiled down to the bare bones, like a chicken stock you forgot to turn off while the Eastenders Omnibus was on. Want an example? This week's great cultural debate was about whether a cartoon frog with pixellated genitals or a dullard with a child called 'Apple' deserve to be number one in what was once known as the 'pop parade'.
See what we mean? Utter bollocks.

So, this site will be divided between two poles:
(a) the shit stuff we glean from pop culture. Think pixellated amphibian penis
(b) the good stuff. Anything befitting the spirit of the elders, even if it comes from a 16-year-old yout in Hackney

In the meantime, here's the weirdest Japanese fetish we've found this month:

topless former champion Romanian gymnast porn