Apr 13 Oprah Winfrey has put her book club back on the shelf. Bookstores are crying into their coffee cups, as the regular sales of 600,000 are lost. Some of the customers will never come back. Others will find a taste of their own, divergent from Harpo's schmaltzy picks. Norah Vincent, in the LA Times, makes the telling point that Winfrey, like Beans & Noodles, has helped to homogenise US tastes at the expense of niche voices, such as her own. "They are the generic market force that always pushes the charming, singular neighborhood bookstore cafe out of business or the quirky black comic novel into the remainder bin; the bland cultural juggernaut that makes every corner of America look the same and, more frightening, think the same."
Yet America still reads. She still has a popular figure leading a mass crusade towards literacy, towards exploring one's horizons, and working independently of the publishing houses. There's no-one doing that in the UK. Indeed, the closest this country has to a national book club is a crassly unfunny sitcom of that name. Yes, we've spawned JK Rowling, but I'd not heard of her work before her publishers made a press stunt of a book launch.
One-time funny sites: Etiquette Hell For those people who get annoyed by the demands of the Victorian wedding myth.
Amazingly bad video of the day: History
- Mai Tai. 1985. To a T. Vignettes of the three-piece female group telling a suitor (always the same suitor) that his advances were rejected. Coupled with some amazingly naff Quantel graphics - in the chorus, the girls wear silver suits with a lightning flash, and have digitally-added comet tails coming out of them. Oh for the days when digital effects were digital effects, candles streaked on cheap film, and guys could dress like Prince for no adequately explored reason.
The Friday Five circulates the net on a weekly basis. Generally, not before Friday night, so I don't get it till Saturday. Here's this week's set...
1. What is your favorite restaurant and why? There is a very nice Italian place on the Euston Road, just by the top of the Tottenham Court Road, the name of which I do not know. It's as cheap as one gets in central London, as quiet as one gets in Central London, and serves excellent grub.
2. What fast food restaurant are you partial to? Fast food restaurant. Ha ha ha. Least unlikely to find me patronising a Burger King, but far more likely to find me at the sandwich counter. In the States, Schlotzky's Deli has my order.
3. What are your standards and rules for tipping? UK: Usually nil, but something (up to 10%) for outstanding service. Europe: similar rules apply, though slightly less likely to leave nothing. US: Around 15% for standard service, I'm more tempted to round in the server's favour if they've done a good job. Rarely less than 10%.
4. Do you usually order an appetizer and/or dessert? One or the other, not both. When I'm alone, it's dessert.
5. What do you usually order to drink at a restaurant? The house cola, or a lemonade.
Apr 12 Blimey, it's been busy this week. Nothing specific, it just seems that the time has gone nowhere.
Top footballer David Beckham broke his foot on Wednesday night. By Friday, the tabs were printing pictures of Becks' foot on their front pages, and asking their readers to concentrate on the footballer's health at midday. This is the sort of collective consciousness that *can* make a difference, but only if it's harnessed carefully. Tabloids are not the right way to do it, I fear.
Bit of a relapse on the eating this week, but consideration of the important things helps. As it always does.
Very much enjoying reruns of The Crystal Maze
1992 on Challenge. Witty, funny, annoying, hugely entertaining.
The US army is developing a sandwich that can last up to three years without becoming inedible. This is nothing new, as veterans of the British Rail buffets circa 1980 will know. There, sandwiches would live for two or three years, and sausage rolls had a sell-by date at least six years in the future.
Apr 10 How's about a bit more about the weaver? Five by five?
Apr 9 The conclusion to the mourning for the Queen Mother.
Royalists say that this week has shown the royal family can still unite the nation like nothing else. I've not seen this happen; instead, I've seen a nation that is deeply unsure what it wants from its figureheads. Do we want the perfect nuclear family, embodied by Victoria and Albert? Do we want someone we can treat as our sister, like Diana? Do we want learned men of letters, like Charles? Real people, like Anne and Zara? A matriarch, like Elizabeth Sr?
In the last ten days, familiar certainties about the position of regality have been buried along with the person who embodied them. Welcome to the brave new world of uncertainty. Prepare your positions for when Brenda passes on; the rows after that event will be furious, though the tributes will compare her to her mother.
Apr 8 Birmingham council tenants reject an offer to improve their homes sooner by taking them out of council control and putting them into a not-for-dividend trust. This is a snub to the ruling Labour party's much vaunted public-private partnership, and the council leaders instantly threaten that useful upgrades and maintenance will not be done. This is, of course, complete pish and nonsense. It's the second time the Birmingham public has told The Party to go stick its head in a pig; last October, they rejected The Party's prejudices for elected mayors, but were still lumbered with a cabinet of professional councillors.
The search for a coherent foreign policy continues, as semi-literate Republican leader Rev Dubya Bush of the Seventh Day Morons tells Iraq that he will send the bombers in unless Sadaam Hisseun allows UN inspectors to monitor that country's weapons, and ensure it doesn't have any chemical, biological or nuclear armaments. The residents of Tehran and Riyadah instantly run for cover. It's worth noting that no-one ever asks to monitor the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that the US is admits to have. His foreign policy representative, Colin Powell - a man who cannot even pronounce his own name correctly - is sent to talk peace with Israel. He lands in Morocco to ask for directions, and is sent round the houses to Egypt and Spain. Dubya's mate the Rev Blair of St Albion's warns him that the United Nations can help to keep the peace in Iraq.