Archive for the 'The Dabbler' Category

In The Dabbler today I consider the film director Pabstus Tack, with a look at his trilogy featuring ponies and bees and bats. Well, a pony and a bee and a bat, to be precise. Go and read it and then come back here and hit that Donate button. You will feel a warm glow in the cockles of your heart, guaranteed.

I hesitate to provide this link to my cupboard in The Dabbler on this fine Friday, for this week I have chosen to besmirch the pages of that splendid blog with a stream of pure unbridled filth. Those of you who, in spite of that warning, proceed to wallow in a swamp of moral turpitude may be amused to discover that, in the Comments, a fellow named George has devised a diverting parlour game which will provide much fun and frolic to those who commandeer their parlours for the playing of games.

This week in The Dabbler I get misty-eyed and nostalgic about something or other. What I might be misty-eyed and nostalgic about is the fact that the piece was written over a quarter of a century ago, which is a somewhat unnerving thought. I did not know then what the piece was “about”, and in the succeeding twenty-five years I have come no closer to grasping the world-shuddering significance lurking within its two hundred and twenty-two words. But world-shuddering significance there is, of that we can be sure. Do let me know if you can work out what it is, because I still haven’t got a clue.

ADDENDUM : I have changed two of those two hundred and twenty-two words for this twenty-first century version, but the meaning, whatever it might be, is not altered in any dramatic, or even undramatic, manner.

In the dying days of the twelvemonth, you can barely open a newspaper or magazine, watch the television or listen to the radio without being confronted by yet another “Review Of The Year” or “Round-Up Of The Key Events Of 2011”. Blather blather blather. The thing about these space-fillers is that they tend to be cobbled together on the hoof, with little thought, and – understandably, I suppose – lack any proper historical perspective. What seems important to hacks as the year takes its last gasps may, in fifty or a hundred years’ time, be quite forgotten, and 2011 may be remembered for other events entirely, ones which, to us who lived through them, seem trivial and unworthy of remark.

So when I was commissioned by the editors of The Dabbler to write my own review of 2011, I put on my futurologist’s cap (satin and wool, tassles, earflaps) and, with the aid of Dr Baxter’s Invigorating Brain Syrup, I looked at the year through the eyes of a Man Of The Future. What would a penniless out of print scribbler of 2111 pick out as the crucial events of 2011? My report is here.

Meanwhile, having got quite a taste for the wearing of the cap and the glugging of the syrup, I am heading further into the future. I have set the controls for 2525, the year of Zager & Evans’ imperishable chart-topper, and will let you know how I get on.

Earlier this week in The Dabbler, Brit reviewed Sweeper!, a novel by the foopballist Steve Bruce. Though I have yet to read the book itself, the review was enough for me to recognise genius. I added a comment, saying: “OK, that’s it. I am destroying everything I have written to date and starting all over again with Steve Bruce as my guide, my teacher, my inspiration.” If anybody thought I was joking, think again. In my cupboard today, you will find the first fruits of my new approach. It’s early doors, and I can’t pretend to have mastered the intricacies of the Brucesque method, but I am trying, I am trying.

Incidentally, astute readers will note a particularly clever metafictional sally in my piece. Brit points to Bruce’s repeated use of fundamental spelling inconsistencies in proper names, and is dismissive of the idea that these may be due to a lack of proofreading or copy editing. I have followed Bruce in giving my hero’s name in a number of variations, and I also refer more than once to the actor Bruce Willis. Not only is there a pleasing Bruce / Bruce echo, but of course Willis once reputedly wrote on an online forum the immortal words “proofreading is for pussies”. I leave you to untangle that one.

I was so delighted by the quotation from Bernard Levin – oops, I really must remember to call him Bernard “Massive, unflagging, moral, exquisitely shaped, enormously vital, enormously funny, strong, supple, human, ripe, generous and graceful” Levin whenever I mention him – that I posted it again today, at The Dabbler.

One point that has occurred to me is the seemingly outrageous omission from the list of “the Jethro Tull”. But I realise that, even in 1970, the great critic intuited that the band led by the hairy monopod flautist would never, ever, vanish down “the memory hole of instant oblivion”.

This week over at The Dabbler I have shoved into my cupboard a classic from the Hooting Yard Treasury of Song. This is of course a plug or puff for next week’s Evening Of Lugubrious Music And Lopsided Prose, attendance at which ought to be compulsory for all devotees of Hooting Yard but is, alas, in these namby pamby wishy washy twee days o’ pap merely voluntary. That said, you really are urged to strain every sinew to cobble together a fiver, to foregather upon Tower Bridge, and then to head more or less in a straight line southwards down Tower Bridge Road until you reach Bermondsey Square, wherein you will find Woolfson & Tay Bookshop/Gallery/Cafe, wherein, at 7.00 PM on Friday 18 November, Mr Key & Mr Spaceman will be providing a woopdy doopdy extravaganza of lugube ‘n’ lop.

This week in The Dabbler I introduce readers to Jimmy Goddard’s seminal masterpiece Cosmic Friends. Yava Hoosita!