Get On With It...

This is the last song I will ever sing...

No I've changed my mind again. Goodnight and thank you.

Morrissey, Disappointed - Bona Drag, 1990

Goodness me, has it really been a month? I have been neglectful. A whole month. It's almost enough for me to trot out the Blogger's Apology. You know the one... where Tumblrs and Wordpressers and Bloggerers start their latest offerings with a profound and painfully sincere mea culpa to their apparently distraught readers about why they have had to fend for themselves in the world for the past day/week/month/year(s) without any insight or learned counsel from the oracle that is they. There will then follow a lengthy attempt to justify being MIA, most of which can be summed up by the word 'life.'

I was going to have a look for some choice examples from the internet for you, but I was worried it might seem mean. Fortunately someone with far less scruples has saved me the job, having created the excellent blog 'Sorry I Haven't Posted - Inspiring Apologies from Today's World Wide Web.' Have a look, it's very funny.

That said, being absent for a while has made me think maybe its time to wrap it all up on here. There are no financial rewards, nor are there people queuing up to offer writing jobs in the media (I believe there are things called journalists who do years of training to do that kind of thing, and failing that, celebrities). More dispiritingly, the most popular post on Mint Custard remains what I thought was a cute story about why bears don't wear underpants. I would be happy if this was due to an appreciation of creative writing or a love of bears or somesuch but according to Statcounter the main reason people visit that page is because they have typed 'gay bears' or 'Bear Grylls nude' into Google.

Fortunately I know that my reasons for writing are mostly selfish. Parents and people in the military will be familiar with the concept of sharing information on a 'need to know' basis. I have long suspected that Mint Custard and countless other blogs operate from the opposite, a 'need to tell' basis. Whether people want to know or not, we are not capable of keeping our opinions to ourselves. It churns inside of us and we cannot keep our traps shut. You may cover our typing fingers with over-sized children's mittens, but we will find a way to proffer our tuppenceworths on the interwebs. We must, because that is who we are.

What makes each individual blogger like this will be unique to them. Perhaps they are those loud, opinionated people in the real world; brash, confident, convinced of their innate rightness on any topic before them. Maybe they are the complete opposite; tiny mice whose blogs give them the courage and a voice to talk about things that matter to them, and where someone, anyone, might listen for the first time in their quiet lives.

Whilst I am under no illusions that I am a 'need to share' person, I know I also write because it makes me happy. I'm no great wordsmith - in fact, and though its a painful truth, its still true, I'm not even Miranda Devine - but it still makes me happy to try (try to write, not to be Miranda Devine, though I bet I look better than she does in a skirt suit).

I've spent the past month continuing my Tw*tter experiment (@mintcustard for those who wish to know), connecting with people in different ways, and finding new ways to make pithy remarks in 140 characters. The problem is whilst I quite like using Tw*tter, it does make me feel like a crazy old man shouting through the cracks in the window of an abandoned house at passers-by. Yes I'm still sharing, and the internet still does the same collective shrug it gives blog posts, it's less rewarding because the process of writing is removed.

Clearly those 140 characters are enough for many people, but I've come to realise - or perhaps to affirm - that it's not quite enough for me. I have missed being here, bashing away at the keyboard trying to string sentences together about stuff that excites me and things that I want to talk about. Look over to the right in the subject cloud. There's a lot of them.

To the collective shrug, keep on shrugging. But to those that do listen and respond and comment and contact, thank you - you bring me great happiness. And to those that did notice I was gone so long, a quiet but sincere 'sorry.' Please know that I'm listening when you mutter under your collective breaths, 'get on with it...'

Just Another Twit

Friends, I have a confession to make. I never thought I would say this, and I feel a bit dirty as I do, but I have been dabbling in Tw*tter. I haven't been doing it much. I mean, I don't have a problem or anything. It's under control. I know my limits. I'm not an addict. It's just a friend said 'Go on, have a try. It's fun. Just a little tweet. It won't hurt you. You know you want to. And then another friend said 'I do it and I'm fine, right? I'm not like those people either. Just one tweet. C'mon. Join us.'

So I did. I was on a very long bus journey with no book and the words of my persuavive pals in my head. So I had a peek. And a play. And a poke. And then I typed @mintcustard into the box and it was still available. And I was pleased. So I told people. On Twitter. And people wrote back. Straight away. And it was nice. So I did it again. And they wrote back again. So I did it again. And again. And again. And now I can't write. Sentences. Anymore.

OK, I can, but I must admit that my previous view of Tw*tter as being a waste of breath, time and internet have been challenged of late. That said, my dabblings to date have taught me three semi-interesting facts, which like all unfettered twits I just can't wait to share:

1. I was right. There are unquestionably people using Tw*tter who should not be allowed to go within 100 metres of a keyboard or mobile phone. People who use Tw*tter a bit like loud mad people use quiet trains. People who don't wait to be asked to tell you how they are feeling, which they report via a series of parentheses, colons, semi colons and acronymns. Some of these people are my friends. They take pictures of every meal, accompanied by the word Yum. Such people, whilst friends, have been 'unfollowed' as quickly as they were 'followed'.
2. Tw*tter is the new comedy. In my review last year of the Bedroom Philosopher's superlative show Songs from the 86 Tram I carried on a bit about how difficult it must be to make it as a comedian in this world. Television opportunities are rare and mostly require people to change their acts to fit into whatever the show is doing. It's been a bit of a revelation to be able to follow comedians I love and some I've never heard of and see just how genuinely creative and funny people can be. @isysuttie, @serafinowicz, @sarahksilverman and @ivanbrackenbury I already had expectations for but the best find so far has been @meganamram, a Los Angeles based funny lady whose Tweets (and blog) regularly brighten my day. Take a minute to let her do the same to you.
3. It works. I'll admit that the main reason for my succumbing to Tw*tter was to try and get more people to read Mint Custard. Plain. Simple. Shameless. Like all of us online narcissists I've seen how many people read these words and it's not very many really. Most of the time that's fine, but sometimes you write something you like and you're proud of and you think wouldn't it be nice if someone actually read this. Having seen the number of people who visit Mint Custard increase 1000% after friends with F*cebook and Tw*tter have posted a link, I was forced to question my very 20th century approach to information sharing. The result? Well, it works. People have been here and even better, it's led me to them and their blogs and thoughts and ideas and creativity, which surely is the point.

Of course the challenge now is to write things that merit a visit. It would be sad to be like many of the tw*ts out there who think that the 140 characters they fart into the internets is all that is required.

Anyway, to any new casual visitors, thanks for dropping by. Please stay a while and have a look around. It's not all rubbish. And to all those people who have been here for the past 3 years, you know I still love you the most, right?

Bumble Fever

I promise to stop going on about cricket but I couldn’t finish without a special mention for my man of the series. He wasn’t playing or part of the backroom staff, or even one of the decision-impaired umpires. He was David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd, former England coach and now (forgive me Richie Benaud) the best cricket commentator in the business.


Given Channel 9’s cricket broadcasting hegemony in Australia, those of us without pay TV have been denied the joys of a Bumble commentary. Cheers then to SBS for picking up Fox Sports’ broadcast from the UK, Bumble and all.

It’s not just Bumble’s droll Lancashire delivery that makes him so lovable. As a former England player and coach his knowledge of the game is superb. That’s to be expected from most commentators, but it’s the way Bumble shares his knowledge and love of the game through his commentary that sets him apart. He’s a bit like your favourite teacher or slightly deranged uncle – never patronising, always inspiring and generally fucking hilarious.

His spell gently mocking Freddie Flintoff’s lazy running on Saturday was quite brilliant. Super Fred, hero of all England in his final test match, about to have knee surgery and there’s Bumble laughing at him ambling about between the stumps. There has been much of the same throughout the summer with Bumble backing up his on-air antics with his first ever Tw*tter account – something akin to giving your grandad his first mobile phone with $50 worth of prepaid.

To add icing to the Bumble love-in cake he’s quite into his music, and is a big fan of The Fall and Half Man Half Biscuit. Compare that to Channel 9’s ready-for-pasture Tony Grieg and painfully parochial Bill Lawry and its clear that we’re going to miss Bumble when summer comes around down here.

For those already having withdrawals, here’s a compilation of some of his antics on Sky Sports, including his straight faced ‘pitch reports’ from a dry-ski slope and a wooded hillside. Not quite the same as hearing him in all his commentating glory but it will do for now.

Bumble, thanks for the memories and if you need showing round the local indie record shops next year I'll be glad to help out.

We Still Like the Moon

There's lots of space stuff going on to mark the 40th anniversary of the first moon landings and as an avowed lunar-lover I felt it was only right that I cobble together a bit of a list of moon-related things that make me smile, as a kind of poor man's tribute....

We Choose the Moon: Ever with a finger somewhere near where the pulse might be I only found out about this yesterday but it's had me hooked ever since. We Choose the Moon is a real time replaying of all the audio from the Apollo 11 mission, from lift-off through to splashdown. Every exchange between Mission Control and Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong is rebroadcast in a 'as it happened' stylee and both parties transmissions have also been recreated as Tweets on Tw*tter - making it perhaps the first and only time that Tw*tter has been vaguely useful - if only for hard-of-hearing space geeks.

Apollo - Atmospheres and Soundtracks: sublime 1983 ambient album from Brian Eno originally created as the soundtrack to moon landing documentary For All Mankind. I've never seen the movie but the music is superb in its own right. There are noises in amongst the warm synths that recall the engine noises from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Other songs give a genuine sense of weightlessness, a fact not lost on Danny Boyle who memorably used the track Deep Blue Day to soundtrack Ewan McGregor's unlikely toilet swim in Trainspotting. Eno is introducing a live performance of music from the album on 20/21 July at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. Click here for more details.

We Like the Moon: the spongmonkeys singing their pean to the genius of the moon is still one of my favourite things on the internet six years after it was first posted. We Like the Moon is pre-You Tube genius from Joel Veitch who turns everything he touches into weird, creepy, hilarious gold. His site, rathergood.com is blocked by the firewall at my work as 'Fun and Games' - I feel like writing to IT and saying 'yes, but they're the best goddam fun and games on the internet. Pray, let us play...'

Planet Houston: I love the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies - an affection I'll articulate in more depth at some later date if you're lucky. However take a moment to enjoy some pure camp comic joy from Superman II as Kryptonian villains Ursa, Non and General Zod run riot on the lunar surface. Oh Terence, what were you thinking...

Audrey singing Moon River: one woman, one guitar, lots of tears from Mint Custard over the years. And all before breakfast.

Others Know Me As Clive... it seems strange to think there was a time when Vince Noir and Howard Moon weren't famous in every student household across the land or their Mighty Boosh logo plastered on t-shirts, mugs or the neatly tattooed wrist of the girl who works in a coffee shop near my old work. That said, let not their current ubiquity nor decreasing returns shade their early glory. Here's a nice compilation of Noel as the Moon, and another showcasing the incomparable jazz funk spirit that is Mr Howard Moon.

In the Shadow of the Moon: beautiful and remarkably poignant 2006 documentary retelling the full story of all the Apollo missions. Told using archive footage and retrospective interviews from all the surviving moonwalkers (apart from the ever reclusive Armstrong) it humanises images that have long since become iconic. Some of the footage of lone astronauts walking across the lunar surface is both breathtaking and awe inspiring and shows just how strange it must have been to look back across the heavens and see the Earth so far away. It also salutes the lives lost throughout the race to the moon including the crew of Apollo 1 who died in a training mission in January 1967. Worth a watch and the bigger the screen the better.

Moon the Loon: fireworks in toilets, cars in swimming pools, televisions out of hotel windows, week long benders with Oliver Reed, smashing up his equipment, ever ready to play the village idiot alone or with friends, a premature drug related death and one of the most attention grabbing drummers in rock history. If it's a rock and roll cliche Keith Moon probably invented it.

Moonlighting: oh what a strange little televisual beast this was. There was far more going on within the doors of the Blue Moon detective agency, workplace of unlikely comrades David Addison (Bruce Willis) and Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) than my ten year old brain could take in. To me it was funny and quirky and I liked Bruce, but it's only with rewatching that I got to appreciate just how far out there Moonlighting could be. A great show for breaking through the televisual 'fourth wall' in a manner commonly seen in British comedy shows like Monty Python (and latterly A Bit of Fry and Laurie and That Mitchell and Web Look) Moonlighting was smartly written and knowingly acted in a way that allowed it to get away with murder. Check out the Moonlighting entry on Wikipedia for the story behind how even the show's cancellation was turned into a plot line in which Maddie and David were turfed out of the studio lot as their set was dismantled around them. It's hard to imagine a show like this being as popular nowadays. It's even harder to imagine that Bruce Willis ever had that much hair.

Fate up against your will: there are of course approximately two and a half billion songs about the moon, so picking one to accompany Audrey Hepburn's moment of beauty is a tough call. I've always had a soft spot for the fifties versions of Blue Moon and whilst I'm not a big fan of the song I like Michael Stipe's Elvis impression when he sings "hey baby" in REM's Man on the Moon. Tides of the Moon by Mercury Rev and Marquee Moon by Television are both ace, whilst there's whole albums worth in Air's Moon Safari, Cat Power's Moon Pix and (lest we forget) Pink Floyd's magnum opus. And yet above them all there is the moment where Echo and the Bunnymen's brilliance straddled both the underground and overground in epic never to be repeated fashion. It may be one of their most famous songs, but whether you hear it on a jukebox, in the background of a movie soundtrack, on a walkman on your way home in the rain or nestled alongside the other gems from Ocean Rain, the Killing Moon is still a work of great beauty.

Ali G interviews Buzz Aldrin: "what do you say to all those conspiracy theorists who ask you 'does the moon really exist?'" Sacha Baron Cohen does his best to wind up an unflappable Buzz Aldrin and both end up winners.

Now must get back to Apollo 11... the crew have just woken up...

Dot versus the Tw*ts

'TimesFashion on Tw*tter – be our 10,000th follower.' I saw this today on the Times website and it got my blood churning a bit. A link led to earth-shattering revelations such as ‘flares a no go in the rain’ and ‘it's the perfect weather to wear a big cardi as a coat - teamed mine with leggings, tunic and pumps.’

Setting aside the ego and vanity issues associated with thinking that strangers might give a monkeys about the minutiae of your life (and it is minutiae as ‘tweets’ are limited to 140 characters per post) there is something disconcertingly ugly about the language involved in Tw*tter.

Media commentators have long spoken of celebrity being the new religion, but ‘Be our 10,000th follower’ sounds like an invitation to join a new world order. It would seem that a decade watching regular Joes and Joans on Big Brother et al have left people believing that if we all act like celebrities then we too can have followers. And why not turn it into a popularity competition too?

I’m aware that there is hypocrisy in someone who writes a blog anonymously and pointlessly in the hope that someone will have the occasional gander, attacking a social networking site. However, I still keep coming to the conclusion that Tw*tter is one of the worst ideas that mankind has ever spewed up. Most bloggers at least try and have something to say and put a bit more effort in than just describing the colour of their pants. Tw*tterers are almost encouraged to say the first thing that leaps into their heads, like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show.

It was therefore nice to see the whole shallow phenomenon neatly summed up by June Brown, the grand dame of English soap operas, better known to the world as Dot Cotton. June is up for a BAFTA award this week for a thoughtful and moving Alan Bennett Talking Heads-like monologue on Eastenders last year. If she wins she’ll be the first soap actor ever to take home a BAFTA. At 82 she’s no doubt seen a lot of guff in her time, but the freshness of her distain for the Tw*tterers as revealed in this week’s Guardian made me smile:

"What on earth do they call it - Twitter?" She repeats it witheringly. ‘Twit-ter. That's what it is. Telling everybody what they're doing! And talking about themselves in the third person. 'June is about to go to the lavatory.' 'June has just changed the sheets on her bed, don't ask her why.' I mean, really." Her fellow BAFTA nominee Stephen Fry Twitters all the time, I tell her. "Does he? Oh, I'm ashamed of him. He's such a lovely man. Such a clever, lovely man with a nice relationship. What does he need to do that for? He should read a book.” Hear hear Dorothy, hear hear.