The Ultimate Fantasy Girlfriend: Greta Garbo

My great comedy heroes, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, probably invented the concept of the 'Fantasy Girlfriend', or created it for me, at any rate, when I first heard this celebrated skit of theirs at about the age of 12. My French teacher at school had a huge library of recorded comedy, mostly radio shows from his own youth, and would treat us to extended sessions of this rather than continuing with lessons in the last week or two of term, after our exams were out of the way. This provided my first exposure to a lot of classic BBC radio comedy like ITMA and Round The Horne and Hancock's Half Hour, and also to the great monologists like Gerard Hoffnung, Victor Borge, Peter Ustinov, Alan Bennett, and Bob Newhart. But it was Pete & Dud, already known to me from scattered recollections of some of their TV shows in my very early childhood in the late '60s and early '70s, that I loved the most - and this skit in particular.

This was my first introduction to Greta Garbo as an ultimate romantic fantasy figure. At that time she was known to me only as a name, the unforgettably alliterative name of someone famous yet at the same time obscure. I think I was perhaps dimly aware that she was now chiefly famous for her reclusiveness. There was no Internet back then, so we didn't have ready availability to the luminous portraits of her which later so beguiled me. She wasn't featured in advertising. Her films, which, I suppose, were felt to have dated rather badly, were not shown on TV. I think I had no idea, really, who she was or what she had looked like, until quite a bit later, sometime in the second half of my teens.

I have the film historians David Gill and Kevin Brownlow to thank for introducing me to Garbo properly. Hollywood, their exquisite 13-part documentary series for Thames TV on the silent movie era in America aired in the autumn of 1980, when I was 16; it was a life-changing moment for me. I was utterly enraptured, not just by Garbo, but by all the other almost-forgotten greats of that period. As a result of the success of this series, BBC2 and Channel 4, our minority 'artsy' TV stations, began to show some of these classic silent films. The superb physical comedian Harold Lloyd was a particular favourite of mine (a decade later, Gill and Brownlow produced a three-part series devoted to him, placing him alongside Chaplin and Keaton as The Third Genius of silent comedy); but we also got to see some D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, and Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, and, of course, the bewitching Garbo. 

And then, finally, one Christmas, I think, round about 1982, BBC2 got around to showing a short season of her talkies: Anna Christie, Grand Hotel, Queen Christina, Marie Walewska, and Camille. It was, no doubt, the tragic aspect of these roles, her nobility in suffering, which attracted me quite as much as her limpid eyes and sculpted cheekbones. Bravery in facing pain, dignity in enduring injustice always inspires - even if it's merely being acted out on the stage or screen. In a woman, it invokes the male's protective instincts as well, I think, something which is often the beginning of love. That enigmatic and aloof quality of hers, the Scandinavian froideur (I wonder what the Swedish word for that is? I bet it sounds sexy!), the provoking unknowability was part of the magic too. Yes, these are dangerous and frustrating qualities for a boy to become attracted to, but there it is - what can you do?

Ever since I started this series (crikey - more than 5 years ago!), I knew I'd have to do a post on Greta Garbo one day. Ever since my blog friend JES did this post two-and-a-half years ago, I knew what the culmination of it would be. In that post he introduced me to this montage of scenes from her 1928 film The Mysterious Lady (playing opposite Conrad Nagel), and I was blown away by it. It is quite simply the sexiest video I have ever seen, and perfectly encapsulates how utterly compelling Greta Garbo was.

The hauntingly Satiesque piano music here is an arrangement of the Pixies' song Where Is My Mind? by French musician Maxence Cyrin, from an album called Novo Piano in which he gave several contemporary songs a classical makeover. He also created this ravishing video. You can check out more of his work on his Youtube channel.

There are a few other nice montages of images of Greta here and here and here, and a couple of great collections of photos here and here. You could also check out the New York Times obituary on her, and this radio programme of reminiscences about her by her nephew Scott Reisfield. And I have just learned that Kevin Brownlow made a documentary tribute to her in 2005; I want to see that.

Telling stories

Last week over on The Barstool, I paid homage to Michelle Shocked as one of my favourite singer-songwriters - an admission I felt some of my readers (over there, at any rate) might have found somewhat 'unexpected'.

I find myself surprised that I haven't mentioned her on here more often.

One of the things that has inhibited me is perhaps that there's comparatively little of her work available on YouTube. My absolute favourite of her songs is a very early one called The Ballad of Patch-Eye and Meg, which is a charming little tune and an exquisitely crafted lyric - a seemingly rather frivolous catalogue song ambushing you at the end with an unexpected flash of insight that creates a perfect moment of distilled heartache. I especially love the fact that the song's ostensible subjects - a reminiscence of childhood, a long-ago failed love affair - are in fact just pretexts for something that I find even more joyous and profound: this is a celebration of the craft of story-telling.

Alas, there's still - as far as I can discover - no video of Michelle performing this herself. So, we'll have to make do with this - an animated video accompanying a cover of the song by a German singer who calls herself Banjochrystal.

However, among the videos that Michelle has posted herself, this is the one I like best, Wanted Man - another that beautifully demonstrates her natural flair as a raconteuse. The embed code isn't working, unfortunately. But do go and check that performance out - marvellous stuff.

Fantasy Girlfriend leftovers

Since the blogs are about to go poof! (Hadn't you heard? The End of the World is coming!), I find myself in an unseemly rush to polish off a lot of posts I've had planned for a while (well, everything from a few days to three years) but haven't got around to. And my regular series are going to be cut off in their prime, with many projected future instalments now never to see the light of day.

I do have one final 'Fantasy Girlfriend' post planned for next weekend (an ultimate glamour icon, the fantasy girlfriend par excellence - can you guess who it might be?), but this week, here's a rundown of some of the gorgeous ladies who failed to make the cut.

Alas, no, there'll now never be a 'Fantasy Girlfriend' tribute to many of my favourite female singers... like the exquisite Linda Thompson, or any of these recently memorialised over on The Barstool, or the outrageously sexy Mylène Farmer ("the French Madonna", a recommendation of my cosmopolitan buddy Little Anthony; there's a very stylish mini-movie to accompany her song Libertine - I don't care for the music, but the raunch is great fun!), or - if I were to delve a little further back - like Grace Slick and Joan Baez. Ah, Joan Baez.

There'll never be another post on a favourite actress (some, but not all, of whom I've previously listed here). The omission of Jenny Agutter will particularly rile my friend The British Cowboy. At least we can enjoy a picture of her here.

Heck, I could have had a whole series on French actresses, but the fabulous Isabelle Huppert is the only one to have found a place in this strand. How did I omit Isabelle Adjani, Miou-Mou, Emmanuelle Béart, Anne Parillaud, Eva Green, Audrey Tautou, and so many others? How did I omit Sophie Marceau? Especially Sophie Marceau in La Fille de d'Artagnan?! (Dressed as a man. Leather tunic. Swashbucking swordplay. Thigh-boots. Oh, my!)

Looking back to an earlier era, how did I omit such haunting crushes of my childhood as Romy Schneider (notably in What's New, Pussycat?) and Jean Seberg (notably in The Mouse That Roared)? Or Catherine Deneuve (still gorgeous today; in the Sixties, perhaps the most beautiful woman on the planet)??

I never got around to doing a post on a female comedian, although there have been several I've had a soft spot for over the years (humour is one of the highest expressions of intelligence; and intelligence is the ultimate sexy for me): Ellen DeGeneres (yes, yes, I know), or the stunning redhead Joely Fisher, who played her best friend in her '90s sitcom, or Carol Cleveland (glamorous foil to the Pythons), or the lovely Australian stand-up Sarah Kendall (who I met at the Edinburgh Fringe some years ago), or the delightfully ditsy and deadpan surreal Hattie Hayridge.

I'll never now do a post on Audrey Hepburn (or will I??). Perhaps just as well: I fear my words would be inadequate to do her justice.

Nor on Barbara Eden, as Jeannie in I Dream Of Jeannie - my favourite TV programme when I was 9 or 10. (Although, actually, I somehow rather preferred her evil sister, Jeannie II. I wonder if this is because I have an unfortunate attraction to a mean streak in women, or if it's just that I prefer brunettes to blondes. They were both played by Barbara Eden, anyway; it was her charm that made the characters so appealing. And she's a blonde. Not that I'm immune to blondes, of course. Far from it!)

Nor on Jane Fonda - particularly Jane Fonda as Barbarella! (Although Jane Fonda as Cat Ballou also makes a strong claim.) The infamous opening sequence where she strips off her spacesuit in zero-gravity is one of my earliest and most enduring erotic memories (I caught a glimpse of it on late-night TV when I was about six, before being hastily despatched to bed by my embarrassed parents).

Nor on 'Lady Helen Manners' (mentioned on here once before, back in the early days) - an English society beauty from the turn of the last century, of whom I found two pictures in a book I used to own of Victorian photography. The pictures were far apart in the book, and not obviously related: one was of a bewitchingly pretty little girl of no more than about ten years old, the other of a mesmerisingly beautiful young woman in her late teens or early twenties. They were both remarkable pictures, and it was rather stunning to discover that they were of the same person, to realise that whatever it was that she had that made her so compelling, she'd had it since she was a child. I've lost that book long ago, and I've never been able to find those photographs, or anything about her online. But perhaps that's because I had misremembered her name. I suspect that it must have been the woman below, Lady Marjorie Manners. I still can't locate those photographs, though.

Nor on one of my earliest and most potent crushes (not quite as early as these two '60s sirens, but probably before I'd turned eight), Helga Anders, the young star of White Horses, a black-and-white German/Yugoslavian TV drama about a Lipizzaner stud farm which seemed to be on endless rotation on BBC children's television during the late '60s and early '70s. The insidiously pretty theme tune was probably the main key to its popularity. And I suppose this show really shouldn't have appealed to boys; but we're largely immune to peer pressure and macho stereotyping until we get to nine or ten, I think. As has often been noted, guys dig chicks with skills: the rapport 'Julia' enjoyed with her horses was most impressive (I would have liked to have been that horse coming to wake her up every morning!), and I still find this little scene from the opening credits of her riding across the fields on a white stallion rather exciting.

Well, I'll never do a post about any of these ladies - apart from this post, obviously.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Nina Simone

I've commented a number of times before on my propensity to fall in love with a woman's voice, especially a fine singing voice. And since this might be the last entry in my 'Fantasy Girlfriends' series (or the last but one), I thought it was about time I honoured the singer whom I have admired more than any other.

Nina Simone was hardly classically beautiful, not the obvious head-turner that so many of my more superficial choices in this series have been. But damn, she had character - a ferocious intelligence, a devilish sense of humour, an utter intolerance of bullshit, courage, determination, and an impassioned commitment to the American civil rights cause and more generally to the ideals of equality and social justice for all. It's the personality that enraptures me rather than her looks. And the talent, of course. As well as that astonishingly rich and passionate voice, she was a classically trained pianist, and tried to fuse classical elements like the formal intricacy of her beloved Bach with her jazz playing.

I don't think I've ever heard a Nina Simone performance - any performance of any song - that didn't leave me slack-jawed and weak-kneed with admiration and delight. Now that there's such a profusion of her work becoming available online, I can lose myself on Youtube for days at a time.

Here are a just a few favourites....

First of all, a glimpse of her political side in the brief interview accompanying these performances of Revolution and Strange Fruit.

Second, a rare early performance of one of the most famous of her own compositions, Mississippi Goddamn - another scathing comment on the civil rights struggle.

And finally, something rather more upbeat - the Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse song Feeling Good.

Of course, I've posted about Nina on here once before, with a clip of her coruscating performance of I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free from the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival.
And I'm going to post one of her love songs, He Needs Me, over on The Barstool today as well.

Oppressed by Fate! (Yet again!)

Trouble always comes in threes, they say.

It seems there may be something to that.

Last Thursday (as chance would have it, the first day for ages when I had a ton of urgent work to do on my computer, most of it requiring regular online access for fact-checking, or communicating with employers by e-mail), my Internet connection suddenly started getting glitchy, then failed altogether. I thought at first that the censors were raising their game ahead of this week's National Party Congress in Beijing, and having taken undue offence at my attempts to do some Googling about Deng Xiaoping, had decided not merely to torpedo my VPN connection, but to sever my access completely. It transpired that in fact my imprudent Google search had not been the triggering event; it was just a freakish coincidence that China Unicom had chosen that precise second to cut off my Internet service for non-payment. It seems they date the term of your subscription from the 1st of the month in which you commence it, even if you didn't take up the service until near the end of the month. And, of course, this being China, they don't tell anyone this. Even my landlord, who's been suffering with Unicom for years, was completely taken by surprise by this, by my (well, his - it's in his name) subscription being terminated three weeks before we'd expected. Easy enough to get the service restored, once we realised what the problem was - but it was hugely inconvenient timing, wiping out the best part of an afternoon's work for me.

The next day, my washing-machine suddenly lost power in the middle of doing a load of laundry. Particularly inconvenient, since I was off on my holidays a few days later, and needed to wash some clothes I was going to take with me. And particularly worrying, since the problem would appear to be a loose wire, and hence the whole machine - and indeed, the wet floor of my bathroom - might very well have become live. And four days later, I'm still waiting for my landlord to arrange a repair or replacement under his warranty. Grrrrr.

Well, I thought a nice cup of tea would calm me down. At which point, of course, my electric kettle inexplicably ceased to function as well.

This is starting to seem sinister. I do hope it isn't going to be any more than three things that go wrong for me...

It seems as though Lenka's Trouble Is A Friend Of Mine is becoming my theme song!



[Ah, well, as it happens... while I was writing this post, I suffered a a major computer freeze-up, one of those where even Ctrl-Alt-Delete won't get you out of jail. Had to crash the computer by removing the battery, and it then took an agonising 10 minutes or so to boot up again. Most alarming.

And I'd had a particularly disastrous experience at the hairdresser's just a day or two before, suffering at the hands of an especially dopey young cutter who just couldn't grasp the concept of symmetry.

Maybe I am destined to suffer three groups of three bad things???]

Film List - Oneiric

Film theorists have commented extensively on the similarities between film and dreams, both in the nature of the experience (one lapses into a trance-like state, an entirely passive and powerless witness, the body lulled into a state of inaction close to sleep) and in the narrative form (the story told primarily through visual images, often discontinuous, and relying heavily on symbols and archetypes to present ideas of deep resonance, universal significance). And many films make use of dream sequences, where they are deliberately trying to recreate the character of a dream narrative. I think Terry Gilliam is one of the best directors for evoking that sense of being in a dream; I particularly like the fight with the giant samurai in Brazil (and it might be argued that most of his films are 'dreamlike' in their entirety, since they tend to portray the subjective experience of a protagonist who has lost touch with reality).

However, for this month's list, I want to do a rundown of some of the films I recall as striking me as particularly dreamlike all the way through, and Gilliam's don't have that effect on me. There are a number of features that contribute to such an effect: highly stylised visuals (many of these picks are in black-and-white, or use saturated colours); discordant, disconcerting, disorienting elements (particularly in the music soundtrack or background noises); limited or meaningless dialogue (lots of overlapping, indistinct, or wilfully trivial or nonsensical fragments of speech overpowering one's attempt to comprehend what's going on); recurring - often seemingly irrelevant - motifs (such as the cloudscapes in Rumble Fish); surreal or non-realistic elements (deliberate lapses in continuity, or unusual techniques such as extended POV shots); a heavy use of symbolism; a strong sense of tempo in the editing; and narrative discontinuity (occasional sudden time-jumps that challenge you to work out what has happened in the interim).

Here, then, are some films that I think exemplify this oneiric quality.

Memorably Oneiric Films

Last Year At Marienbad

(Dir. Alain Resnais, 1961)

Impenetrable, pretentious, and far too long (god, is it really only 94 minutes? it feels much longer!), this is a film I am unable to love. But it is the classic oneiric film, impossible to omit from a list such as this.

The Trial

(Dir. Orson Welles, 1962)

Welles' version of Kafka's celebrated study in paranoia is one of the best ever film adaptations of a great book.

Elvira Madigan

(Dir. Bo Widerberg, 1967)

A classic tale of doomed love, with exquisite photography but very little dialogue.

2001: A Space Odyssey

(Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

And I'm not thinking just of the very creepy final sequences of Bowman travelling through the Stargate and being transformed into the Star Child. The whole film has those unsettling oneiric qualities I identified above.

Figures In A Landscape

(Dir. Joseph Losey, 1970)

I've only seen this once, late night on TV when I was a kid 35 or more years ago, so I'm not clear on the oneiric qualities of the story presentation, but it is certainly oneiric in its concept: Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell are two fugitives being pursued across country by a helicopter. There's almost no dialogue, and no explanation of the situation; just this relentless scenario of threat and evasion.

THX 1138

(Dir. George Lucas, 1971)

The film school graduation project of the Star Wars creator is far and away his best film (better even than American Graffiti, which is pretty good). Robert Duvall is a slave worker in a subterranean city controlled by computers and robots. When he stops taking his sedatives, he begins to think of rebelling against the system. It's a mesmerising dystopian vision. Unfortunately, compulsive tinkerer that he is, Lucas has added a lot of modified footage to the DVD version now available. Why mess with a masterpiece?

Aguirre - The Wrath of God

(Dir. Werner Herzog, 1972)

One of the first films I saw when I started university, and one of the most haunting; one I perhaps prefer even over the other magnificent Herzog/Kinski collaboration Fitzcarraldo. It depicts the descent into despair and insanity of a small party of conquistadors on a vain quest for El Dorado.

Liquid Sky

(Dir. Slava Tsukerman, 1982)

The Russian emigré director's 'cult classic' is perhaps the weirdest film I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of very weird films; they used to do seasons of them at my favourite undergraduate cinema hangout, Oxford's Penultimate Picture Palace*). I didn't particularly like it, but it certainly lingers in the memory.

Rumble Fish

(Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1983)

Long a favourite of mine, I watched this again just recently, and it gave me the idea for this selection - possibly the most dreamlike of all these films.

The Last Battle

(Dir. Luc Besson, 1983)

Besson's first feature, and possibly his best: a bleak post-apocalyptic adventure, and without dialogue.

The Sacrifice

(Dir. Andrey Tarkovsky, 1986)

The challenging Russian director's final film is a strange parable about an old man striking a bargain with God to avert a worldwide nuclear war.

Drowning By Numbers

(Dir. Peter Greenaway, 1988)

Greenaway's mannered style tends to baffle and irritate more than charm, but his more successful efforts are oddly compelling; and this, I think, is my favourite of them - and the most dreamlike.

My Own Private Idaho

(Dir. Gus Van Sant, 1991)

I found the wilfully weird story unengaging, but its images of the American landscape imprinted themselves irrevocably in my brain - and I was pleased to recognise many of the locations when I visited the States for the first time a few years later.

Institute Benjamenta

(Dir. The Brothers Quay, 1995)

I was driven to seek this one out after blog-friend JES mentioned it last year. The Quays, best known for their surreal stop-motion animation, here produce a haunting live action fable with an eerily Kafkaesque feel.

Pi

(Dir. Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

Aronofsky's calling card is a devastating study of paranoid schizophrenia, shot in luminous black-and-white.

Punch-Drunk Love

(Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)

I was lucky enough to catch this on late-night television just recently, having never heard of it before. Anderson subverts the concept of the romantic comedy, turning the form into something much richer, darker, and stranger. And much to my surprise, Adam Sandler - who I usually can't stand - is superb in this.


The New World
(Dir. Terence Malick, 2005)
I only got to see this just recently on cable TV. Malick's rendition of the Pocahontas story is fragmentary, episodic, allusive, almost devoid of dialogue, and not very compelling or even coherent in a conventional narrative sense. But it is visually sumptuous and utterly mesmerising - a lyrical evocation of a pre-industrial world.

Antichrist

(Dir. Lars von Trier, 2009)

This dark and brutal misogynistic fable is certainly hard to watch, but it is one of the few films of recent years that have completely blown me away - and which, despite my discomfort in viewing it, I find myself compelled to revisit once or twice a year.

Meek's Cutoff

(Dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

One of the best Westerns of the past couple of decades, bravely devoid of a conventional story: we simply observe three wagon train families lost in the wilderness.

And lastly....

Blue Velvet

(Dir. David Lynch, 1986)

All of Lynch's work has elements of the oneiric about it (particularly Eraserhead and The Elephant Man - though I confess I've never been able to stay awake through the former, having attempted to watch it two or three times on late-night TV), but I think this is my favourite of his films, and the one that is most thoroughly dreamlike in its entirety (but Roger Ebert didn't like it!). Plus, of course, it provides the perfect theme song for this post...

An afterthought...

A lot of Jim Jarmusch's films have something of the oneiric about them too, especially the early ones, Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, and Mystery Train, or his recent The Limits of Control (which I've already written about on here). I was finding it difficult to choose between them, and inadvertently omitted him altogether. After another 24 hours' rumination, I realise that his most outré work is probably his 'psychedelic Western', 1995's Dead Man - very oneiric, that.

* After some years in mothballs, the PPP was reborn as the Ultimate Picture Palace. And I have just learned via its brief Wikipedia entry that last year a documentary was made about the cinema, The Ultimate Survivor. I look forward to seeing that.

This week, on The Barstool....

I have been distracting myself from the crushing tedium of an extended Chinese public holiday (and the crushing tedium of a job rewriting some articles on Chinese diplomacy [and boy, was I tempted to put that in inverted commas!]) with an impromptu festival of my favourite musical form - a 'Blues Week'.

So far, I've posted some terrific Youtube clips of Fleetwood Mac (their original 1960s incarnation), Cream, ZZ Top, and AC/DC. And there's some more great stuff lined up for Saturday and Sunday. Go and take a look.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Suzanne Vega

I am particularly susceptible to the charm of a woman's voice, especially a woman's singing voice, and so singers are often among the leading contenders for inclusion in this series; I've previously done posts here in praise of Margo Timmins and Liz Phair. I don't know how I've gone so long without adding the exquisite Suzanne Vega to the list. Well, I have celebrated her over on my other blog, Barstool Blues, adding her songs Gypsy and Caramel to my 'Great Love Songs' series; but now it's time to honour her here as well.

Of course, I always maintain that it is qualities of mind and character that attract me to a woman rather than her appearance, although Suzanne's high cheekbones and flame-red hair certainly enhance her appeal for me. However, it is the quality of her songwriting, and the intelligence and sensitivity she exudes in her interviews and her writing (check out her contributions to the Measure for Measure series, a blog on the craft of songwriting which the New York Times ran a few years ago), that really beguile me. That, and her vigorous involvement in numerous worthy causes, such as Amnesty International. And the poise, dignity, and gentle humour she displays in her live performances. And the flame-red hair.

It's hard to choose one song of hers to complete this post; she has so many good songs. Her Blood Makes Noise, a rather creepy piece about hypochondria with a ridiculously hooky bassline, has long been a favourite of mine.

But so has this, the quietly beautiful Tired Of Sleeping.

And I suppose I'll never be your Maggie May would be the most appropriate way to round this off, her polite-but-firm rebuff to a younger man's adulation.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Esperanza Spalding

Ah, America - land of inspiration! Last time I was staying here, I serendipitously discovered the imperiously elegant beauty of jazz singer Angela Hagenbach, via an exhibition of photographic portraits that was showing at the nearby Museum of Black History in Alexandria, VA. This time, I happened to be vegging out with a cookery programme on PBS when a solicitation for donations to the network came on, presented by the exquisitely lovely and ridiculously talented Ms Spalding. How had I not been aware of her for the past several years? Oh yes, I'd been living in China for a decade - silly me! Even with the Internet, it's not easy to keep your finger on the pulse of global culture there.

Ms Spalding, I gather, was a classically trained multi-instrumentalist during her childhood, but has come to specialise in playing jazz bass. Like this....

Froog mad-dogging it again

Gosh, it was nearly four years ago that I first attempted to post this classic Noel Coward song, to accompany a description of the masochism of trying to run during the hottest part of the day.

Today, having been busy with some e-mailing and such during the morning, I didn't set out from my Del Ray holiday headquarters on my run down to, and along, the Potomac until exactly 12pm. Venturing out at noon, in such a hot country, is asking for trouble!

Luckily, the weather is relatively cool today. But the humidity down by the river hits you like a brick wall, and has almost invariably been halting me in my tracks over the past couple of weeks, sucking all the energy out of me, reducing me almost instantly to a long restorative spell of walking. 

It's probably a little unrealistic of me to be attempting an 8 or 9-mile run when I am around 20lbs overweight. But I feel that, if I slow down enough, I ought to be able to manage it - to keep going at a very modest plod for 80 minutes or so. Alas, it seems not. I seem to have lost the 'forever pace', the speed where I am sufficiently within my capacity for exertion that I can keep going and going and going - indefinitely, if necessary (I have most often tended to use this slower-than-usual pace when exploring new routes, and am uncertain how long it's going to take me to get back to my point of origin).

It is dispiriting to be reminded that I have been "woefully out of shape" and struggling with my running for at least four years now. I am starting to worry not just that I have run my last marathon, but that I may soon have to accept that I can't run any more at all. Boo.

Well, I will try to raise my spirits with this sublime celebration of the Englishman abroad from Mr Coward. (I hope I am not going to be a jinx again: the previous clip I posted was pulled only a couple of months later.)

There are good versions of this also by Colin Baldy and The Muppets, but the original is still the best.

Nearly done...

After nearly 24 days, the end of the 2012 European Football Championships is at last at hand. (Go here if you want to ridicule - or be awed by! - my perspicacity in attempting to analyse who was likely to win, and why.)

I first posted this Fast Show clip a couple of years ago, but I can't resist putting it up again now - because it does so beautifully encapsulate what a warm place football holds at the core of childhood memory for so many of us who grew up in England in the 1970s.

And here's a further little dollop of nostalgia, a clip of the BBC Saturday late-evening football highlights show Match of the Day, with its oh-so-evocative theme music. (This is apparently the opening show from the 1970-1971 season - still in black & white! - and the first time that the famous tune was used.)

Vilnius calling

Blog-friend JES, in the last of his regular Friday lucky bag posts of literary and other oddities, included a video of a band called Freaks On Floor (I would have preferred a definite article in there, but what can you do?), a pleasant-sounding indie pop trio from Lithuania.

It's part of a project called Vilnius Temperature, in which young film-maker Saunias Baradinskas seeks to showcase his local music scene. Various bands, mostly of a rather more jazzy or folky feel, and often quite quirkily 'experimental', perform one of their songs - seemingly in one take - in the open air, at various seasons of the year (the resulting video being tagged with the temperature at the time). Baradinskas spoke about the idea at a TedX event in Vilnius last year.

I couldn't help but suspect that JES might have made this selection at least partly to taunt me, since I have revealed on here once or twice that - after conducting some online research - Vilnius is my leading fantasy relocation destination.

The vigorous music scene is one of the things I have most enjoyed in my time in Beijing, and I would hope to have similar opportunities to enjoy plenty of good live gigs wherever I move to next. Vilnius is looking quite promising on that front.

I haven't had time to work through all of the Vilnius Temperature videos yet (over 30 of them on YouTube now), but so far this - by a band called Garbonitas Bosistas - is the performance, and the video, that I think I like best.

However, this, a song called Energy by the rather more commercial Saulės Kliošas, a jazz outfit with an upbeat, R'n'B flavour about them, is a very close second. Their lead singer, Justė Starinskaitė, is really rather stunning. Although, I'm told, by the standards prevailing in the Baltic Republics, she is only averagely beautiful - which could be another reason to move there. Or a reason to keep well away...

I have endeavoured to find out what these band names mean, but Lithuanian-English translation tools online all seem baffled by them (except that Saulės would seem to mean 'sun' or 'sunny'). Is Lithuanian an unusually tricky language? Or do Lithuanian musicians all favour nonsense words for their band names?

I feel FREE

Leaving one's home of ten years is a bit of an ordeal. Having to do so at short notice, without much of a plan of what to do next, is even worse. And to do this against a backdrop of increasing government hostility and harassment - what regular Chinese folks are starting to call a "white purge" - and a succession of illnesses, injuries, and mishaps is really very unpleasant. I have been oozing stress out of every pore for the past couple of weeks.

But I have finally finished all of my outstanding bits and pieces of work and taken care of the most important of my leaving chores (bought a flight out, confirmed my first accommodation on arrival, obtained a big wedge of foreign currency, etc.), leaving myself with SIX DAYS CLEAR before I leave. I still have a fair amount of running around to do (buying presents for people, trying to firm up a sub-let on my apartment, having farewell drinks and such), but the pressure is mostly off now. And I find I am looking forward to a change of scene, to getting away - for a while, at least - from the oppressive atmosphere of this crazy, wicked, obtuse country.

I'm feeling quite uncommonly buoyant, actually; positively exhilarated about the imminent prospect of escape.

So, apologies if I've been more than usually grumpy and navel-gazing over the last few weeks. Time, at last, for some happy stuff!

And what is more uplifting than Cream's I Feel Free? I was tempted to embed this famous TV appearance (not sure which show this is; one of the precursors of Top of the Pops in the UK, I suppose), or this montage of stills from Easy Rider, in which the song was featured, but I finally plumped for this - one of the earliest examples of a promo video? - in which the trio caper around the countryside in cassocks. It has something of a Monkees feel to it. Or Python... Or Pete and Dud....

Ah, Pete and Dud. Yes, that reminiscence puts me in mind of this, something else that always makes me feel good - one of the great comedy duo's very finest hours, the climax of their 1967 feature film Bedazzled, featuring the Leaping Order of St Beryl. (The original skit featuring this idea from their BBC TV show Not Only... But Also can be seen here.)

My Fantasy Girlfriend - Liz Phair

I have a weakness for 'rock chicks'. Who doesn't?

But Liz is more than just an eye-catching figure up on the stage or a ballsy interviewee, she's a truly incandescent talent. Her debut album Exile in Guyville emerged while I was on my great back-packing expedition in the early '90s. A friend I was visiting in China introduced me to it in the spring of 1994 and made a cassette copy of it for me to take with me on my further travels - and so it became hardwired into my brain as the 'soundtrack' to that year of adventures, and associated particularly strongly with my first experience of China. Hence, I dare say, she surfaces in my thoughts at this particular juncture because I am reflecting back a lot on my time here as I stand on the brink of departure (uncertain quite when or whether I shall return, and definitely moving towards a final withdrawal within the the next 12 months).

I was initially bowled over by the music, fascinated by the personality forcing itself into my brain through the earphones of my battered old Walkman. I had never seen a picture of her. And while one of course likes to fantasise that people one admires will also be quite physically attractive, and those fantasies are not usually too far disappointed with music stars who tend somehow to scrub up well, I was unprepared for the discovery later in the year that she was breathtakingly pretty as well - not the elaborately airbrushed beauty of the supermodel or the alienating perfection of the super-actress, but a believable, accessible, girl-next-door sort of prettiness, and all the more devastating for that.

The knee-trembling revelation came for me with her appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone. I can't remember now quite when that came out. I think it must have been towards the end of 1994, when I'd reached New York and was just about to head back home to the UK again. Of course, I bought a copy. Two, actually. I wanted to have one to show to friends and one to keep under wraps as a souvenir of this bewitching indie diva who had kept me company through so many strange experiences during the last 9 months on the road.

I confess there was a more straightforwardly erotic dimension to her appeal as well. Many of her lyrics are exaggeratedly forthright about sex, and suggest a persona that is uninhibited almost to the point of nymphomania. As I have observed on here more than once before, the art is not necessarily the life; but the image she presents of herself in several of the songs on that fabulous first album - and in many more subsequently - does set the imagination racing rather.

She doesn't have a label any more, but put out her last album, Funstyle, independently. She's always been  too edgy and free-spirited to get on very well with record companies, but she's been producing music - consistently inconsistent, but regularly interesting - for 20 years now, defiantly ploughing her own furrow. As she said to fans on her website: "This is my journey. I'll keep sending you postcards."  Apparently, there may be another album - and a book! - in the works. I'm particularly looking forward to the book: she has an astonishing facility with words, is one of the most impressive lyricists of our era; I have a hunch her extended prose will be just as good.

Smart, sassy, talented (a more than decent guitar player, to boot), heart-meltingly pretty, and a bit of a handful in the bedroom - Liz P would seem to be the complete package.

Here's Never Said, one of the best songs from that great first album (the original video; I'd never seen it before). Rolling Stone ranked Exile in Guyville at No. 328 in their '500 Best Albums of All Time'; I would have placed it at least 250 spots higher. You could also check out this much mellower live acoustic version.

And here's another, Divorce Song (from which I quoted a passage in my Lyrics Quiz a while back), set to a montage of more photos of the lovely lady.

My Fantasy Girlfriend - 'Roxette'

I should, of course, more properly say Marie Fredriksson - since I have absolutely no interest in threesomes, nor in men, however hunky and rock-starry they may be (sorry to disappoint you, Per). Marie, however, the statuesque blonde singer with the Swedish pop duo who were so big in the late '80s and early '90s, has always had quite a hold over me.

The severely short hairstyle was a key part of the appeal. Though I like long hair too, a woman's neck is an area of particular fascination for me, so I do, on the whole, prefer short haircuts which show this off. She wore a lot of leather, too; that always helps! And, of course, there's something about Scandinavians (I am rather more often smitten with Norwegians and Danes, but it's hard to say no to a Swede).

Moreover, Ms Fredriksson is closely associated in my mind with my first trip to China (which was 18 years ago this month). Near the end of that three-month adventure, I found myself playing host to a motley crew of English teachers from various schools and colleges I'd visited out in the sticks, who were treating themselves to a rare weekend of 'excitement' in the big city of Wuhan, where I'd been based. On the Saturday evening they dragged me off to a nightclub - quite possibly the city's only one at that point - where we were just about the only people present and the drink was unaffordable. We stayed about an hour or so; a torture made bearable, I think, by the mellowing effect of one of my mate Toby's 'special cigarettes'. I kept myself entertained by watching the continuous loop of Roxette videos being shown on the TV screens. They were evidently very big in China at the time (I think they'd been one of the first foreign acts allowed to perform in the country, just a year or two earlier). I hadn't known they'd released so many songs and videos: there seemed to be at least 7 or 8 in the loop, most of which I'd never heard before. It was in these rather odd circumstances that I developed a slight fixation on the lovely Marie.

She's an inspiringly tough and brave lady too, returning to performance after a very serious run-in with cancer a decade ago. And she's still looking very striking in her fifties. The band played in Beijing a week or two ago... but I'm not quite enough of a fan to pay top dollar for a show like that. My music-mad buddy Badr went to see them and had a good time, although he noted that the attendance was a little disappointing (the gig didn't seem to be that well promoted, and it was on a Monday, for heaven's sake - NOBODY goes out on a Monday! - but the Wukesong Arena is a HUGE venue, so even a 60% turnout is a lot of people).

Here's one of their biggest hits, The Look.

Hmm, I find it's not nearly so arresting when I'm not spliffed up in a dreary Chinese nightclub....

When I started searching YouTube just now, I was reminded that the great English blues-rock band Dr Feelgood did a song called Roxette back in the '70s (I wonder if that's where our Swedes got the idea for the band name?). I think I'll throw that in for good measure.

Ah yes, that's much better!!

Recently, on The Barstool...

It's been a bit longer than usual - 9 weeks - since I last did a roundup of what's been going on over on the dark side.

Well, we had a new entry in my 'Great Dating Disasters' series - an account of a rather lovely, but inevitably very brief, liaison with a much younger girl. There was this frivolous piece on interactive video games you can play at the urinal - inspired by a genuine news story (from Japan, of course). And I was delighted to find that YouTube finally has Pete and Dud's pillar-box scene (from the film Bedazzled), which I have always considered the best ever explanation of the fall of Lucifer. I've shared the recipe for what is currently my favourite cocktail, come up with a novel bar promotion idea or two, and expounded on why very cheap drink is actually a BAD promotional idea. I've also recently discovered a rather wonderful new (time-wasting!) website.

Overall, a rather slow couple of months, though. Well, slow for bar reviews and such, because I didn't go out very much over the holiday period. However, the slew of 'significant' days following each other in quick succession gave me plenty of excuses to post some great music...

I celebrated the advent of the Chinese New Year with the opening scene from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, in which Kate Capshaw sings Anything Goes "in Chinese" (comment discussion evinced some scepticisim about how good her language coaching had been), while Australia Day - this year, only a few days later - was marked by posting a version of Down Under performed just a few years ago in LA by Colin Hay with the Ringo Starr All-Star Band (there's also a brief clip of former Aussie PM Bob Hawke sculling a beer at a recent cricket match!). A couple of days after that, I sought to dispel the holiday blues with the irresistibly bouncy Birdland from '80s electro-jazz outfit Weather Report. Then, on Bob Marley's birthday we had Stop The Train (actually a Peter Tosh song rather than one of Bob's, and I found a version of his to accompany the early Wailers one - double happiness!). A few days after that, Jorma Kaukonen was in town: I didn't go to see him because he was playing at bloody Yugong Yishan, but I did taunt myself for the omission by posting a performance by him of Hesitation Blues. Then, on Mardi Gras, I posted Tom Waits singing his I Wish I Was In New Orleans, followed up a few days later by some other versions of the song (and another song of the same name by a young star of American roots music, Ben Prestage). Then, last weekend, for St Patrick's Day I posted a few versions of Whiskey In The Jar. Lots to enjoy there.

But of course, the BIG NEWS over on my other blog has been the 'return' - after 3 years or more of silence - of the once highly popular Band Names Game. Please go and check that out, and leave some band name suggestions of your own.

This week's memorable offerings have included Single-Click Generation, Freddy's Fingers, Zombie Snot, Full Metal Jackass, Haunted Spouse, Rhythmic Pastimes, The Glass Melangerie, Archbishop Of Hell, The Mostly Deads, Barefoot Actors, and My Personal Spammer. Think you can do better? Click on the link!