celticman's blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04vkcgz/tony-bennett-lady-gaga-cheek-to-cheek-live I don’t listen to music much. The radio in my van turns on automatically. I turn it off automatically. I prefer listening to the engine whining and failing instead. Elvis was on BBC 4 last night, it was the young Elvis, not the bloated star he later became. Elvis live at, probably, Las Vegas. I listened for two minutes during the adverts. He was terrible...

Kris Commons, Scottish footballer of the year with 32 goals last season, described by Chris Sutton as the nearest Celtic have got to a Lubo Moravcik and voted as the best player in Scottish football by his fellow professionals is leaving Celtic –why? He’s 31. Lubo Moravcik was 49 (well 33) when he came to Celtic, or so it seemed as the time. He scores on his debut against Dundee and a fortnight later against Rangers and let’s face it, there’s no...

Remember the internet in December 1983? Morphing about the place with floppy-disk hair talking about equality, freedom and changing the world. How we laughed loading up computers like washing machines. We’d go to bed, get up in the morning and it would be making that strange noise as it dry humped data, trying to get its insides out. We’d explain comparing a computer to an electrical typewriter was the wrong analogy. One worked by electricity...

Note: nobody in Hollywood has a normal sounding name, the screenplay was by Joss Whedon with help from Zak Penn. I’m not sure why dear old Joss needed any help with his screenplay but when Walt Disney Studios is paying out (a declared) $220 you can be sure they want bang, bang, bang for their buck. And boy do they get it. There’s a fight every ten seconds involving Loki, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Scarlett Johansson (I can’t...

I prefer books but I’ve got a Kindle. I’ve downloaded Katy Brand’s Brenda Monk is Funny and read about 16% of it (Kindle doesn’t do page numbers). Brenda Monk isn’t funny, but the novel does give an interesting and readable account of the British comedy circuit. Dominic Frisby claims to be a comedian. I’ve got to about 11% of Frisby’s book and I’m sure he is. It’s Social Darwinism in its purest form, laissez-faire capitalism doesn’t work because...

Owen Jones (2012) Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. We live in a something for nothing society, but only one party, only one class ensure that its members get away with it. What’s more the top centile of wealth that own almost everything, and everybody, are lauded for their efforts in wealth generation. We eat gruel. Well, not exactly, gruel. Pre-school meals and after-school care in my district are being stopped. Merry Christmas...

I’m not normal me. I can’t bear to be in the same room as Jeremy Kyle. I want to smash his face in. I really do. I know it will never happen. But that doesn’t stop me hating him. Switch off the telly, turn it over, and watch something else. It’s as simple as that. He doesn’t do any harm. It’s only a laugh. I’m not laughing. What has made Jeremy Kyle a very rich man has been peddling other people’s misery. Imagine hosting a musical evening for...

Yeh, I know, it’s that time of year when they show old films and wheel out stories about the Angel of Mons, and of our boys in the trenches singing Kristlenacht with the Huns and kicking a ball about no man’s land. Or that old Capra favourite It’s A Wonderful Life in which George Bailey (Henry Ford) wishes he’d never been born. I’m from Clydebank, so I know how he feels. One of the key scenes which establishes George Bailey’s creditability is...

[Vintage] Raymond Carver (2009 [1993] will you please be quiet? (2009 [1993]) what we talk about when we talk about love . I’ve read some of these stories before. From the latter collection, for example, Why Don’t You Dance? This has everything you need in a short story and the premise is simple enough to make sense and complex enough to leave the reader asking questions. Simply put, you don’t have to eat a whole orange to know it’s an orange...

Command forms in writing are written with an exclamation mark. Keep out the boozer! Old dogs bite too! Carpe diem! Fuck there’s old Pat Powell! Drop dead! Yes, he did the last of these yesterday. My brother Bod phoned to tell me. He was going to go up and see him, but like many other things in life something else came up. Old Pat would have understood. They say when people stop eating that’s their time’s up. In old Pat’s case it was probably...