"He was a man to take his pleasures seriously. The trick was to set the fragment on the centre of the tongue and, after a moment's spreading sensation, push the potato up hard to shatter against the roof of the mouth. His theory was that the rigid irregular surface caused tiny abrasions in the soft flesh into which salt and chemicals poured, creating a mild and distinctive pleasure-pain."
Ian McEwan, Solar (Jonathan Cape: London, 2010)
The distortion of television and popular culture is nowhere more apparent than in the intimate relationship of bullets and bodies. Hollywood tells us that a Saturday Night Special can put a man on the pavement, yet ballistics experts know that no bullet short of an artillery shell is capable of knocking a human being off his feet...
Although the popular belief that many people fall down upon being shot is generally accurate, experts have determined that this occurs not for physiological reasons, but as a learned response. People who have been shot believe they are supposed to fall immediately to the ground, so they do. Proof of the phenomenon is evident in its opposite: There are countless cases in which people - often people whose mental processes are impaired by drugs or alcohol - are shot repeatedly, sustaining lethal wounds; yet despite the severity of their injuries, they continue to flee or resist for long periods of time.
For his degree show, Alex Fear is planning on installing a working brothel at Goldsmiths. Don't the lecturers mind? "Funnily enough, they don't," he claims, "although they are concerned about the illegality of it."
Fear grew up infatuated with pop culture. He has had haircuts modelled on all four members of McFly and says of that boy band: "I really love them, and still can't tell if I'm being ironic or not." He claims that coming to Goldsmiths was the only option for him.
"I will design a town in the image of your face
Round the wrinkles of your eyes, my footsteps you can trace
We could promenade down the infranasal depression
The streets of your hands will never feel a recession."
"John Hammond told me once that I should take over Columbia Records," [Dylan producer Bob] Johnston says, as if telling the story of a broken treaty, of how his Apache ancestors were driven from their land. "And so I said, 'Well, how do you do it?' I went up and met with Paley and Stanton [William S. Paley, the legendary capitalist buccaneer who bought the tiny Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928, was chairman of the board of CBS, Frank Stanton had been president of the company since 1946] and those people up there, and they said, 'What would you do if you came into this?' And I says, 'Well, you're not gonna like it and you won't do it, but I think the first thing is, you should get your shit together. And by that, you should have the tenth floor of attorneys. And the eleventh floor of accountants. And the twelfth floor of music. And they should never be allowed to pass one another. Whatever you want to do, however you want to cheat, and fuck these artists around, is your opinion - but at least give them the opportunity of doing something, without people who tap their foot and whistle out of tune, and judge what's being made according to what somebody did last week, to keep their job six months longer.' And I said, 'If you do that, the music will always be the music, and those son-of-a-bitches will never have the chance at it, you can make all the money you want to, but they can't fuck with the music.' Paley said, 'That's very interesting.' John walked out and said, 'You didn't want the job, did you?'"Greil Marcus, Like a Rolling Stone, London: 2005, fn. p143
To demonstrate the weird logic of homicidal monomania, [writer Joseph] Stapleton recounted a horrible story about a mild-mannered young man who was so obsessed with windmills that he would gaze at them for days on end. In 1843, friends tried to distract him from his fixation by moving him to an area with no mills. There the windmill man lured a boy into a wood, then killed and mutilated him. His motive, he explained, was the hope that as a punishment he would be taken to a place where there just might be a mill.Kate Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, London: 2008, fn. p236
Who's the best James Bond?
Sean Connery, of course. I met Lazenby once. It was really bizarre. I was in an airport on my way to do Die Another Day and this old guy walks up and goes, "Hey Michael, how are you doing?" Shakes my hand. "Love your work!" I'm like, "Thanks very much." He just stood there staring at me. I felt very embarrassed because I thought, "This guy knows me and I don't know him." Then, five seconds later, it was like, "Holy shit! You're George Lazenby!" And he was like, "YES, I AM!" I said, "Wow! I'm on the way to do a Bond film right now!" He goes, "Put a word in for me, wouldja? I think I should be a Bond villain - don't you think I'd be a great Bond villain?" I said, "I'll mention that to Barbara [Broccoli]."
Did you?
No.
"After loads of Radio interviews (usually radio five or the asian network) with me defending violent videogames from cunts, the BBC have finally elevated me to TV cunt. Watch BBC News 24 at 5.30 today (Thursday) where I'll be calling some child cuntologist a fascist fuck and telling the government that we're all heading for some "V For Vendetta" type shit because of their insidious bannery."
"I ain't done no telly shit for about 12 years so I'm shitting it a bit. I've also got an interview at 1.30 on bbc radiowales and 2.30 on bbc 1xtra, with the radio 5 thing this morning I'll probably have reached everyone in the country by the end of the day."
"I remember ‘Just Say No’ was voted in the top 10 worst songs of all time, along with the Orville tune ‘I Wish I Could Fly’, which my brother sang on."
"My mum turned around to us both and said 'I can't believe I've got two sons who were part of two of the worst records ever'."
That's when I worked with the Sex Pistols, by the way. Maybe you'll wonder why I've kept from documenting my own experiences with the band in a special chapter. The answer is a simple one: they were all ungrateful, back-stabbing bastards. At first they'd been been known as the Swankers and had played old Small Faces songs alongside such unpunk and insipid old sixties pop numbers as 'Build Me Up Buttercup' and 'Everlasting Love'. I changed all that and got them into the Stooges and Modern Lovers.Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff (Faber: London, 2007)
"What if a really annoying jabbering, bearded bloke latches on to me on the first day and decides I'm his best mate and won't leave me alone, and I'm stuck with him in some Arizonian wilderness and the sun's beating down and he's talking and talking and farting for comic effect and eating sandwiches and walking around with egg mayonnaise round his mouth until I want to grab the nearest rock and stove his skull in, and carry on smashing and smashing and roaring at the sky until the others dash over to pull me off him, but by then I've gone totally feral and start coming at them with the rock, which by now is all matted with gore and brain and beard hair, and I manage to clock one of them hard in the temple and they're flat on the ground, limbs jerking like an electrocuted dog, but as I swing for the next one some self-appointed hero rugby-tackles me, but I'm still putting up a fight so in desperation they all stamp on my neck until they're certain I'm dead, then throw my body in the river and make a lifelong pact to tell no one the truth of what happened that day?"
"It is like having a blanket that is too small for the bed. You pull the blanket up to keep your chest warm and your feet stick out. I cannot buy a bigger blanket because the supermarket is closed. But I am content because the blanket is cashmere. It is no ordinary blanket."
"The white luminous globes hanging from the ceiling and the rows of children bent over their work were reflected in the darkened window-panes through whose mirrored surface the just discernible tops of the apple trees were like black coral in the depths of the ocean."Vertigo, WG Sebald (trans. Michael Hulse)
Laverne: It's been a fantastic day for rock, and indeed, roll, here at Tea in the Park.
Lowe: So we've established that it's two things or one thing? I'm confused still.
Laverne: It's a hendiadys, technically.
Lowe: It's a what?!
Laverne: A hendiadys - two disparate concepts expressed in one unified idea. So Calvin Harris was amazing, Klaxons were brilliant, CSS were fantastic...
[she continues as Lowe mutters to himself, looking a bit ashamed]
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