Two Trinity News
Film
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issue 1 21 sep 2010
Food
&
Reviews
savage dublin by Alex Towers
#1
no trivia
welcome the
Karl McDonald
And so, as the world turns, another issue of TN2 is born, straight out the dungeons of House Six. With the transformative power of a redesign put to good use, this week’s paper brings you Dublin, Cromwellian warts and all. Alongside prominent young fellas such as the brilliantly perplexing band Adebisi Shank and the controversially violent director Brendan Muldowney, we have a lay person’s guide to art in the city, a visit to Moore Street and a few pictorial examples of what the populace of our fair city actually look like in the fashion spread. Complementary to this hurdle ford jingoism, we have smoked somniphobic game designer Jason Rohrer out of his lair and, with the utmost pride and sincerity, presented to you a handy guide to faking celebrity deaths on the internet. Plus, as with every magazine ever produced, much more. This year’s TN2 is a reflection of what the precocious students of this college actually think about the Dublin 2 bubble they inhabit: the people they want to talk to, the places they want to talk about and the ideas they want to spread. There’s no point in pretending we’re a fullyformed, Sunday breakfast culture supplement, because we’re not. Nor were we meant to be. We reside in the space in between, as people receiving an education the country might not even be able to use, waking up late and maybe a little hungover but still full of ideas. If it’s not too pretentious to have a motto, try this: smart writing about stupid stuff, and vice versa. Does that appeal to you? Don’t just sit there! Get up, get out, get involved (or just email me at tn2@trinitynews.ie) So, using the power vested in me by whoever decided it was a good idea to let me decide what goes into a newspaper supplement, I bid you a pleasant read. We’re here all year.
keep sketch The highlight of your week, sketched.
Words by Jamie Leptien, Photos by Cáit Fahey
A
s a southside resident and Trinity student of three years, you become a bit overly familiar with the Grafton Street Area. I must have walked several marathons in the shadow of shopfronts from the top of Dawson Street to the bottom of George’s Street, where the easy window-shopping bubble ends. Obviously convenience has a lot to do with it, but it’s only when Google Maps informs me that Moore Street is the same distance away from Trinity’s Front Arch as St. Stephen’s Green that I begin to see my hesitancy to leave as a kind of psychological complex peculiar to the area. It’s a kind of goldfish- bowl syndrome, circling around endlessly with no particular purpose, yet mysteriously disinclined to leave. It would help explain why you occasionally hear Trinity students speaking about the Northside as if it was a distant foreign country. And why, looking back, I have so few standout memories, just a vague sense of comfortable repetition. Happily though, there is a cure: facing down this 2
fe ature
international business traveller
lazy fear of leaving the pedestrian pavestones for the 8-lane highway on O’Connell Bridge and grocery shopping on Moore Street, that most quintessentially Dublin institution. On a sunny September morning, over slabs of fish brought in that morning from Blanchardstown, I talk an entirely different kind of cod psychology with seller and Moore Street committee member Margaret Buckley. The reason the stalls that make up Moore Street’s spine have remained popular since before even the 1916 Rising, she tells me, is the simple fact that they’re “still the cheapest in the city, cheaper than any supermarket.” I don’t doubt her. I remember going down Moore Street in first year with a ¤2 coin and returning with several kilos of fish. Known locally as “dealers”, the women selling fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and flowers on Moore Street are living reminders of Dublin’s rich tradition of street trading. A stall on Moore Street is the birthright of a few Dublin families, whose women pass on the mantel from generation to generation. Neither love nor money could get you a spot there today, so they’re rightfully proud of their ancient turf. On either side of these historic stalls, a loud and colourful mix of African hair shops, Halal minimarkets
Over slabs of fish brought in that morning from Blanchardstown, I talk an entirely different kind of cod psychology.
and Chinese electronic shops have replaced the traditional butchers and bakers. But in talking to both shopowners and street-traders I soon realise that the divide between old and new, local and global is largely superficial. The Moore Street business formula is a uniquely winning combination of keen competition and mutual benefits: everyone seems aware that their continued survival is reliant on the success of the Moore Street brand. As a butcher at Troy’s puts it, “when the street is busy, we’re busy”. Fruit and Veg seller Catherine Kennedy tells me that it was the immigrant shop-owners that revitalised the street in the 1990s when most of shops had been left to go derelict: “these people opened them up and brought people back into the street so it’s definitely a good thing. They’re just trying to earn a living like everybody else”. This live-and-let-live attitude is part of a general goodwill on Moore Street that surprises me: until I strike up a conversation everyone seems indifferent at best. But in that sense Moore Street exemplifies the paradoxes of city living, always changing yet remaining the same, simultaneously alienating and liberating, competitive yet cooperative, goldfish bowl and Atlantic ocean, depending on how (or if) you look at it. 3
openers
Wanderlist #1 M usic Brooklyn is a great place to be, whether living of visiting. It’s at the heart of various music scenes, close to world class cultural institutions and the beer is cheap. But the primary benefit, clearly, is the ability to listen to hip hop songs that mention the word Brooklyn while you are actually there. One obvious example is Brooklyn Zoo by the Ol’ Dirty Bastard, which meanders threateningly over a jazz piano loop for a few minutes before repeating the “Brooklyn!” in ODB’s sing-song style about fifteen times over the hook. Jay-Z is also a safe place to look for a shoutout - one highlight is the intro to What More Can I Say? from the Black Album, in which the self-proclaimed ‘best rapper alive’ lays a preparatory ‘Brooklyn stand up’ before tirelessly restating his own greatness. Brooklyn Go Hard, a more recent Hov cut built over a Santogold sample, is undermined by the fact that he claims on Empire State of Mind to live beside De Niro in Tribeca now. We like Brooklyn, not so much Manhattan. The most famous Brooklyn in hip hop is the Beastie Boys’ No Sleep Til Brooklyn, and this still stands up in an old school kind of way. But, after three months of steady research and experimentation, the ‘Brooklyn!’ of the hip-hop connoisseur is obvious: Talib Kweli’s mid-bar ‘WHERE BROOKLYN?’ (answered with a “whaaaat!”) on Black Star’s Definition (1994) is peerless.
trinitynews.ie m usic Online Music Editor Keith Grehan presents album reviews of Pet Shop pop princes Hurts and musical chameleon Eels. He’s also got the first in a series of scene introductions, with an overview of the lo-fi movement of the past few years, featuring Surfer Blood, Wavves and more. Bernard Shaw regular and beat impresario Orlando will weigh in on Tuesday with a chilled ‘tropical hip hop’ mix, and interviews with Thread Pulls and others will appear over the course of the week. Watch www.trinitynews.ie/musicblog fe atu re Check out the rest of the photos
from Cáit Fahey’s trip to Dame Street (pages 2 and 3 of this issue) in their high resolution glory. Grumpy Nigerian shopowners and plenty of crusty Dubs feature in this piece of visual history.
e tc Watch for Games Editor Andy Ka-
vanagh’s forthcoming YouTube channel of delights. Find the full gamut of TN2 content on the web for convenient liking and linking purposes. Join us on Twitter at @ tn2magazine for updates and hourly inanity from your favourite magazine.
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if you really can’t keep ArT in c ollege
Cactus Provisoire (1967) by Alexander Calder Fellows Square Ever cut across the large square of grass while in a rush to the Arts Building? Chances are you’ve had to dodge Alexander Calder’s epic sculpture Cactus Provisoire along the way. One of the most striking sculptures on campus, the piece dominates the space between the Arts Building and the Old Library, taking centre stage in Fellow’s Square. Born into a highly artistic family, Calder broke away from the classical leanings of his parents to create a completely new approach to sculpture, incorporating movement and innovative materials into his designs. The latter can be seen in the monumental, static pieces of sculpture nicknamed “Stabiles” that he created over the course of his career, an example of which is the Cactus Provisoire. The sculpture is made from large, flat panels of metal fabricated in an industrial style, with its large scale rivets and struts clearly visible for all to see. The piece entered the college art collection following an anonymous donation from a graduate of the college and Paul Koralek, one of the principal architects of the Berkeley library, was a member of the selection committee. Painted black, the sculpture sits on a circle of cobblestones, and you can spot Calder’s signature on one of its arms, soldered onto the metal alongside the year it was created. Jennifer Duignam
Be afraid. Be very afraid. FILM
The Fly (1986) Poland These days most of the movie posters for new releases are crude meshes of photoshopped stars and overzealous critical reactions, crudely shaped into the same basic design. But every now and again the publicity material for a film can evolve into something that could be described as a conceptual masterpiece. This Polish poster was designed by famed graphic artist Eugeniusz Skorwider for David Kronenberg’s 1986 science fiction horror film The Fly. Those who have seen the film will know the poster bears little to no relation to any scene whatsoever, but that’s why it such a great poster. A surreal almost childish drawing of a stubble-sporting Karl Pilkington lookalike, vomiting yellow puke onto a red background is certainly more entertaining than any of the art gracing multiplexes at the moment. Alex Towers
#1
off the lawn...
may contain traces of: 20 September 2010
2 two for a pound Jamie Leptien and Cáit Fahey visit Moore Street
6 here i sit and contemplate Karl McDonald finds Adebisi Shank at the end of the rainbow.
8 revenge is a dish best served cold Alex Towers grills director Brendan Muldowney about assaulting the audience in his new movie Savage
11 your eyes will go square James Kelly previews the season’s TV, and shows you his diary.
12 don’t hate the player Andy Kavanagh talks to renowned game designer Jason Rohrer
13 you’re only massive Ana Kinsella and Aisling Deng stalk and talk Fresher style.
16 why is there no good art in here? Jennifer Duignam breaks down Dublin’s art scene for dummies
18 Sexipe An anonymous sex diary, and an excellent recipe for smoothies.
kick ass, chew bubblegum Game s It’s taken twelve years of development, the involvement of four different studios, four different publishers, three engine changes, three teaser trailers and one high-profile lawsuit, but it seems as though finally, after over a decade in development hell, Duke Nukem is finally ready to make us ‘hail to the king’ once more in Duke Nukem Forever. Having long since become the butt of many jokes about its ridiculous development time, Duke Nukem Forever is finally going to be completed by Gearbox Software, the studio that brought us the critically acclaimed Borderlands. Gearbox will be aided by Triptych Games, a new studio founded from the remnants of the previous DNF team at 3D Realms, and Piranha Games, whose portfolio includes ports of Medal of Honor and Need for Speed for the PSP. Duke Nukem Forever is slated for an early 2011 release and while we’ve heard similar statements before, it seems like this time, you really can bet on Duke. Andy Kavanagh
19 Reviews This issue, Grinderman, Weezer, Seamus Heaney, Enter The Void, The Clarendon Bar and more face TN2’s scrutiny
25 Guilty Pleasures/how t0 Guilty about the NFL, learning how to fake celebrity deaths
26 das capo Oisín Murphy swings swords and cuts clowns.
Contributors Editor: Karl McDonald. Art: Jennifer Duignam, Catherine Gaffney. Books: Stuart Winchester, Kevin Breathnach. Fashion: Ana Kinsella, Aisling Deng. Film: Alex Towers, Mairéad Casey. Food: Sadhbh O’Brien, Rose Ponsonby. Games: Andy Kavanagh. Music: Sophie Elizabeth Smith, Gheorghe Rusu, Keith Grehan. Theatre: Jamie Leptien. TV: James Kelly, Michael Barry. Images: Eoin Beglin, Cáit Fahey, Caoimhe Lavelle, Fuchsia Macaree, Martin McKenna. Design: Gearóid O’Rourke, Martin McKenna. General assistance: Aoife Crowley. Fuelled by: Fela Kuti, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Pepsi Max, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Tom Lowe.
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Illustration by Eoin Beglin 6
Music
divebombing at the gates of hell by Karl McDonald
P
lug in your blender. Feed in as many musical notes as you can find. Extract the energy of fifteen ADHD children and throw that in too. Add the absurdness of Japanese pop culture, the thundering dynamics of post-hardcore and the robots-withpersonality appeal of someone like Daft Punk. Blend till it’s liquid and then serve on a rainbow. You’ve just made Adebisi Shank. With their second album, conveniently entitled This Is the Second Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank, they have upped the game, not only for themselves, but for Irish music in general. It’s not longer a game of catch-up with New York and London. It’s not about paying dues to the Hot Press-major label continuum any more. They set up their own label, Richter Collective, and it now churns out half a dozen quality, weird Irish albums a year.
2010 IN dublin MUSIC Conor O’Brien’s Villagers, recently signed to the king of UK indie labels Domino, reach number one in Ireland with Becoming A Jackal. Richter Collective keeps up the pace with albums by Jogging, Enemies and Redneck Manifesto, plus 7” singles by LogikpartyBelfast’s Not Squares Popical Island is formed as a loose collective of indie pop bands (e.g. Squarehead, So Cow) releasing the Popical Island #1 compilation. Profanity-laced synth pop champions Fight Like Apes return with a second record produced by Gang of Four’s Andy Gill. Still crazy, natch.
With that in place, they recorded a surrealist rainbow rock extravaganza and launched it to a sardine-packed, feral, stage-invading crowd in Whelans. The question everyone’s asking: where the hell did that come from? Red-hooded bassist Vinny ponders: “It’s a fun mind game though to pretend to be a different band, you know, like “What would it sound like if we were David Bowie’s backing band?” And then you play around for a bit, and usually fall on the ground laughing from how horrible it sounds. But then when you’re completely distracted by laughing and good vibes, something will happen and you’ll be like... oh that’s interesting. Let’s go there. It’s just a cheap trick to get your fucking stupid BRAIN out of the way and let the music happen.” Having travelled to Baltimore to record their debut album, they decided to stay home for the follow-up. “Last time we recorded thousands of miles from home and we could only bring what we could cram in our carryon bags. This time we were basically doing it in our houses so we could use all our little crappy keyboards and whatever madness was lying around. It was a pretty inspiring way to do things” Mick, the band’s drummer and the founder of Richter Collective, explains further. “With this one we had more time to take with it. On the first album it’d be [guitarist] Lar’s tune or my tune or Vinny’s tune. This one was pure collaboration. No-one came into the practice space with anything. We wrote all the songs
“I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. I think the whole concept of a guilty pleasure is beyond bullshit.”
together.” The band spent a surreal week in August above Arcade Fire in Hype Machine’s top ten after blogger Nialler9 contributed their International Dreamboat to a multi-national blog project. It wasn’t their first taste of international success, however. Though they’ve toured the usual spots, it’s Japan that has, in a somewhat unlikely turn of events, taken to them the most. Why is this? Above all else, the Japanese audience respects musicianship, professionalism and songwriting ability so obviously they haven’t noticed yet that we have none of those things. What we do have though is an amazing label called Parabolica,” Vinny says. Mick says “Even the pop music over there is kind of a bit odd. It’s not like mainstream stuff over here. The same with TV. All pop culture is a bit… it’s really different. Quite strange and alien really. Maybe we’re incredibly poppy over there.” One of the things that sets Adebisi apart from all of the other red-hooded instrumental three-piece rainbow post-hardcore bands out there is their apparent preoccupation with kitsch culture. Vinny’s chiptune side project The Vinny Club explores this more thoroughly, but with track titles like ‘Micromachines’ and ‘DODR’ [Dawn of the Dead Remake] it’s unavoidable in the day job too. Mick is amused by it. “Yeah, Vinny does like all sorts of weird shit. He especially likes weird 90s shit that’s not popular any more. That’s his bag. All the weird weird stuff you see on Twitter would be him.” Vinny’s more defensive. “I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. I think the whole concept of a guilty pleasure is beyond bullshit. You love what you love, you know, and if you love it you shouldn’t have to figure out why you love it. So yes. I also love Mick and Lar, but more in an ironic way – they’re like, so bad they’re like, good.” It’s more than just fun, though. From Adebisi Shank sprang the Richter Collective, one Irish record label committed to doing it ‘the right way’. With bands like BATS and even veterans Redneck Manifesto releasing albums with Richter, it’s an unavoidable force in Dublin music. “I guess we started the foundations of Richter from Adebisi.” Vinny, as usual, has a slightly different take. “Mick would know better than I would, but the label definitely started because there was nobody stupid enough to trick into putting out our records. Somehow Mick managed to trick himself. He’s gonna be so pissed off when he finds out!” 7
film
8
letthe
great axe fall by Alex Towers
owadays the description “revenge film” can be a bit of a burden for any new release that purports to offer a fresh take on the genre. Though often derided as oversimplistic, mindless and unnecessarily sadistic, films in which the hero inflicts a terrible retribution on those who have wronged him (or her) have enjoyed a comeback lately. Quentin Tarantino kicked it off the with his Kill Bills, Gasper Noé pushed the envelope with Irréversible and the surprise success of Liam Neeson’s Taken shows that audiences are willing to look past plot simplicity, provided there is a hefty amount of vengeful violence dished out. Their designs are often duplicates of each other: Act I has a wrong committed, Act II shows the wronged person planning payback, and Act III has the payback acted out. However, their popularity is beyond dispute. But such films can also
develop beyond the basic “get them back” approach, and can be used to explore more psychological aspects. Scorsese’s Taxi Driver could hardly be labelled as just a “revenge film”, nor could Sam Peckinpath’s Straw Dogs. These are the films that detail the innate tribulations and aftermath that come with seeking vengeance. Director Brendan Muldowney’s new thriller Savage is such a film. After a string of award-winning short films, Muldowney has emerged with a debut of shocking severity and uncompromising aggression. Savage tells the story of Paul Graynor, a naïve and lonely press photographer who, following a incomprehensibly brutal and random attack, must try to regain control of his life whilst nursing desperate desires for vengeance. However, Muldowney’s film eschews many of the conventions of the genre, instead presenting a chilling reflection of masculinity, anger and hostility set in an overtly grim and menacing manifestation of Dublin. I had the opportunity to interview Muldowney about Savage and 9
he discussed the reasons he wanted to make his first film such a relentless assault on the senses. So how did you come up with the idea for Savage? The idea for the film really came from two things. The first was a case involving a man called Bernhard Goetz who became known as the subway vigilante. He shot four lads on a subway in New York after they tried to mug him. When it went to court, the trial became quite contentious - it transpired he had been mugged before and had taken to carrying a gun sort of looking for trouble. So there were people saying he was a mad vigilante and others saying that he had every right to defend himself. This is what interested me - the idea of the two sides to the story. We’ve had similar cases in Ireland, particularly the farmer who shot a traveler. I think he had been robbed and had taken to actually sitting with his shotgun almost waiting for them [Pádraig Nally was convicted of manslaughter, but this was overturned in an appeal in December 2006]. So I actually think there is something really interesting in the idea that after someone is violated they can go off the rails, yet remain within there rights as they are just defending themselves. In a way this film separates itself from other revenge thrillers. You show Paul’s breakdown after the attack in excruciating detail and you really get a sense that he is losing his mind. Yes, exactly and that leads into the other influence I had when making Savage. Revenge films, if you actually take a look at some of them, many are really quite clever. And there are other films that I might not label as revenge films, but instead are films that deal with violence without giving easy answers. Of course I’d have to say I was also heavily influenced by another obsession of mine - violence, and the whole inherent ugliness of it. I mean I’ll always remember seeing the violence in the North and especially the media focus on it. I recall reading the morning paper and seeing bodies that were stripped and beaten. So I
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do think that there is this consideration that seeing violence in the media, can have a very profound effect on you The violence in Savage is so beyond the normal violence seen in cinemas. I was turning away at points due to it being too visceral. Believe it or not, if you were to actually look at the violence in this film, there’s actually very little. There’s a cut here and there. It’s mostly suggested rather than shown. Maybe it’s the way you conveyed the reality of it. It doesn’t start over-the-top or ridiculous. In fact, the scene at the beginning when Paul is attacked starts off like the kind of thing you see every night in Dublin. Well, that scene is all about control, it’s about bullying someone and really degrading him or her. I think that’s what is really uncomfortable about it. It’s happened to us all. When I was growing up I certainty experienced it. A thug will try and exert control over you and they are nearly having fun with it. It’s a really nasty side of human nature and something I wanted to convey in the film. And in terms of the violence in the film, I think what really makes it work is the reality. Well I can’t really call it the reality. But it’s not easy, it’s not simple and it’s not the way you expect it to be. In addition to the violence there are a lot of scenes that are darkly comical. Yeah but you know that again comes back to the reality. I did want to show how some things could be funny, despite the subject matter. And so I enjoyed it being funny but also wanted it to say: “things never really go the way you expect them to”. This is especially true with the violence and the different types of violence you can use. For example there’s the reality of violence, like Michael Haneke [director of Funny Games and The White Ribbon] or certain other directors might use. Even Scorsese to a point. Actually, his violence is still a little bit cartoonish. And there’s also just stupid gore in films like Hostel which you can’t really believe because it’s so over the
top. But I prefer the less is more approach. Now you may think that I didn’t use that, but I think I did. In the end there is very little violence actually present in the film. But is there a particular message you’re trying to convey with Savage? Is it just that violence begets more violence? Not really. What I’m really trying to achieve is to assault the audience and make them feel the same way I have felt when I witnessed violent scenes in the media or read about them in the paper. I wanted to capture that sort of broken-heartedness that you can feel. It’s as if you can sense your humanity breaking. I don’t know how that makes other people feel, I just know that it’s definitely good for me. But again the film is not about violence. Then again, lots of people see different messages. I really wanted to leave the audience with a visual and emotional impact, so they will all go off in different ways. Some will be waiting for Paul to explode and take revenge while others will be dreading it. You portrayed Dublin as a nightmarish labyrinth. It was actually unrecognisable as Dublin as most would know it. Is this your view of our nations capital? No. To me this is Dublin of Paul Gaynor. It’s his particular journey especially after his attack. How he sees Dublin and what he’s going though, so you and me wouldn’t see the dark alleyways as he would. The use of sound in the film also significantly adds to the paranoia and desperation, making it very uncomfortable to watch at times. Again I wanted it to be an assault on the senses. When you’re dealing with a fractured mind you have to realise how to show it. Even if I had 10 million I would still be faced with this problem of how much do you show? I wanted to use sound to get inside the head of Paul. So that’s why the sirens are so loud, and the baby crying and the IV drips and all that stuff. It’s all part of Paul’s breakdown.
tv
i notice you’re gangster.
As always, the start of the college year announces a similar changeover in television programming. It thankfully heralds the end to bumper coverage of minority sports, and the slowing down of those on the Xposé hamster wheel. In their places comes the Fall season of new programming, both domestic and international, with all the rigorous ratings hazing and bizarre initiation rites that it entails. The most impressive of this year’s bunch, in terms of cast and production clout, is undoubtedly HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. Created by Terence Winter (The Sopranos), and with Martin Scorcese (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, etc) as executive producer, the series promises to shine a light on life in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, with particular attention paid to the relationship between the mob and those in public office. The series itself follows on the heels of other recent period pieces. As has already been proven by series like Deadwood, (and, of course, Mad Men), placing the action in a different timeframe can allow a series to be more thorough in its working through of
of a layered gangster plot focused around members of ethnic minorities. Scorcese has also very recently proved a dab hand at period detail and dialogue in his Shutter Island, something that will no doubt ensure a sufficient amount of talking out of the side of the mouth and gams that won’t quit to bookend the series’ plot. On the other end of the crime scale comes CBS’ reheating of Hawaii 5-0. This version will similarly deal with the workings of a new police taskforce set up by the Governor of Hawaii (fortunately not in order to reclaim policing of the state from Dog The Bounty Hunter). The series will follow the son of the original protagonist, also called Steve McGarrett, as he tries to track down the person responsible for his father’s murder. Another clever concesby James Kelly sion to continuity is granted by naming his new partner Danny, prolonging the legacy of the famous line “Book ‘im, Danno.” contemporary issues and anxieties. This may The fate of the series will be interesting in be because we have a less loaded perception of terms of what it will say about the general didifferent eras, and are thus less likely to object rection of the crime procedural. CSI, Criminal to conclusions that are presented, as in this Minds et al. all take themselves very seriously, case, in pinstripes and tail feathers. something which has eradicated the level of However, the series has a number playfulness that cop shows from the of other things going for it that Seventies engaged in. Also neshould ensure it manages glected by most modern crime to bypass the more tired dramas is the series-long war ‘n’ capitalism analonarrative arc, something Camelot: Currently filming in Ireland, gies of its contextual central to most crime will star Joseph Fiennes and former Bond predecessors. It will shows produced in that girl Eva Green as Merlin and evil Morgana certainly benefit from era. respectively. Expect flimsy bodies and the past experiences While initial signs medieval decor. of those involved. show that the makers Indeed, in some reare not unaware of Nikita: A female spy thriller that’s heavily in spects Boardwalk these facts, the show’s Empire is business the Alias/Dark Angel mode, starring Maggie original format means Q as a renegade assassin trying to bring as usual for Scorcese, that the new series will down the organisation that trained her. with the series boasthave to work hard to ing his familiar structure avoid any whiff of kitsch.
Also
tv diary #1 A staple in TN2 for the upcoming year, the TV Diary will be my way of updating people on what I’m watching and also, it works as a kind of review section where I’ll be recommending shows or otherwise, tearing them to pieces. I’m open to all genres and types and appreciate good television it all its guises. If there are any shows you think I should be watching and haven’t written about feel free to let me know at tv@trinitynews.ie Summer is traditionally a time of drought in the TV schedule as networks and broadcasters gear up for the upcoming winter months when people are stuck inside and telly is a more appealing option. But for me, this summer has been a time of catching up on some great shows I’ve missed during the year. One of the highlights of these was United States of Tara, a Showtime series starring Toni
by James Kelly Collette (Muriel from Muriel’s Wedding!) as the titular character. Tara suffers from multiple personality disorder and in the first season the audience is introduced to both her family and her three ‘alters’ – one a slutty teenager, one a prim housewife and the third, a man. Collette gives a stunning turn, immersing herself in the different personalities amazingly well, and earning an Emmy to boot. In the hands of a lesser actress the show would be in danger of falling into a vehicle for their career, but no fear of that with Colette. The supporting cast are all strong, with the exception of her husband. The mystery of why Tara has these personalities is the
overarching theme while each family member has their own separate story. On the strength of the first season, I would recommend the show to anyone with an interest in quirky ‘dramadies’. Sitting firmly in the Channel 4 comedy stables is The IT Crowd, which is a simple sitcom filmed in front of an audience, moving away from the recent trend in British comedies as ‘mockumentaries’. Now in its fourth season, it follows the lives of the three-strong IT department of fictional company Reynholm Industries. Either ignored or hated by the rest of the company, geeks Roy and Moss are joined by technophobe Jen as ‘relationship manager’. Cue comedic situations. With a clever script and a strong cast, The IT Crowd is a likeable distraction and one of the better shows to come from the UK in recent years.
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games
ames are going through a pretty important transition right now. In addition to finally being embraced as a medium by generations of naysayers and skeptics, the longterm fans and aficionados are growing weary of the same old formulaic approaches to game design and storytelling. While big budget studios seem for the most part content to ride the waves of sequels, the indie development scene has flourished with bright minds and brighter ideas, and continues to produce innovative gaming experiences. Of all the independent developers to rise to prominence this generation, few are as relevant and forward-thinking as Jason Rohrer, the man behind the enigmatic experience that is Sleep is Death. “I don’t think ‘narrative’ and ‘game’ mix very well in general, regardless of whether the narrative is linear or not. Yes, you can look at player activity in any game, even chess, and see something like a story playing out. But a narrative requires narration and that seems to require a narrator, which sounds quite like an author, someone who constructs the story ahead of time for other people to experience later. Even if you’re talking about non-linear narrative, you’re still talking about authorship. Someone authored all of those branches and stitched the whole thing together.” “Anything pre-authored is going to fight with interactivity in the game.” This attitude towards storytelling in game design is a key element in the philosophy behind Sleep is Death, a game played by two players online where the plot is sewn together in realtime by both parties, leading to a completely unique experience every time. “Sleep is Death is a tool for telling stories, but it completely abandons the idea of pre-authoring any part of those stories. More importantly, I as the game maker did not put any story at all into the game ahead of time. An SID story unfolds 12
“Anything preauthored is going to fight with interactivity in the game” by Andy Kavanagh completely interactively, live, with substantial input from the player or players at every turn.” While Sleep is Death is regarded by many as the ultimate non-linear gaming experience, mainstream studios have yet to explore its design choices in any of their own frameworks, possibly for fear of alienating their audiences. Jason feels the problem is not a close-minded audience or a lack of creativity on the part of mainstream developers, but fear of a potential misuse of that creativity. “I think that people are willing to accept new things and readily embrace them, if they are good. That’s the hard part, really. The risk is not that the audience will reject any new thing. The risk is that you will be unable to figure out how to make that new thing really good before you release it to the audience. Many ideas sound great on paper but end up as a real mess once they are implemented. It’s risky for a publisher to green-light a new idea for that reason. On the other hand, we have proven formulas for making old ideas into good games. All we need to do is copy existing good games that used those ideas.” This cycle of re-hashed ideas and gameplay
mechanics has played a major role in defining games as we know them today. We recognise games the same way we recognise music and movies, by categorising the different types on offer and laying down guidelines for what we expect from each category. While this has helped games become more accessible to the uninitiated, it has also conditioned generations of players into dismissing anything that doesn’t fit with their expectations. Thus, it has become difficult to argue the case that games are an, admittedly young, artform. “I think it’s mostly an issue of artistic merit and overall quality. When people argue that games are art, the detractors immediately ask for examples, and those examples are hard to produce, especially in the world of mainstream games. Because we don’t have examples to discuss, the argument becomes theoretical: can games be art someday? And that’s an argument that will never be settled.” But Jason does believe that games will be considered art one day, and that the cultural shift will breed a more conscientious consumer. “It seems that as we push the medium toward greater artistic merit, the results of that push will likely appeal more to the hardcore followers of that medium than they will to the casual consumers. I think you’ll need to be pretty well-versed in the language of games to be able to understand the ways in which games will have that greater artistic merit when they have it.” Sleep is Death is available to purchase from www.sleepisdeath.net for whatever price the customer feels is appropriate. Rohrer considers it a sign of where games are headed. “I don’t believe in intellectual property, so I don’t believe in the idea of ‘piracy’. People are paying for a service when they pay to get SID from me, they’re not paying for a copy or a license or whatever other made up things. If they don’t pay me, they can’t get SID from me, and there’s no way for them to ‘steal’ that.”
Fashion
i see you, you’re walking cross the campus
S
tarting your college career can be a scary time filled with anxiety, stress and excitement. It can also be a perfect time for you to completely and utterlyreinvent yourself, disowning the old you who lived in dowdy uniform skirts and slacks and Tippex’ed schoolbags and dirty ratty runners in favour of a new, more cosmopolitan version. This will probably involve a new wardrobe, or at least a handy upgrade of the old one. Luckily this season the high street has got your back, with a plethora of trendy schoolbags, jackets and boots out there to help you forget all about those long hours spent tracing ‘PT + UM 4EVA T.L.N.D’ on the back of the bus. We’ve been out and about snapping the most stylish students Trinity has to offer to help inspire you before you hit the shops with shopping list in hand. My shopping tips for this Autumn? Girls should look out for heeled brogues, baggy striped sweaters, oversize knit cardigans and a perfect pair of jeans. Boys, stick to darker jeans, well- fitting hoodies or jumpers,
by Ana Kinsella button-down shirts, brightly-coloured teeshirts and some decent runners - dump the beat-up dirty-looking white ones you’ve had for years please. Everyone should be on the look out for a decent winter coat. My vote goes to the humble parka, making yet another comeback this season, tweaked and glammed-up to avoid all connotations of the Gallagher brothers and the scruffier parts of the 1990s. Make sure to explore the shops outside of Grafton St, particularly the city centre’s pretty decent charity shops and its weekend flea markets and car boot sales. Most importantly, don’t just copy the perfectly put-together girl sitting two rows ahead of you in your first lecture. Look for inspiration everywhere, inside and outside of Trinity. Buy the things you like and remember to look for things you will actually wear everyday because if you’ve been in uniform for six years,
Most importantly, don’t just copy the perfectly put-together girl sitting two rows ahead of you in your first lecture. Look for inspiration everywhere, inside and outside of Trinity. dressing yourself appropriately every single day can be a surprisingly difficult part of entering the new, grown-up world past secondary school. Trust me on this one: 4 years out of school and still it takes me all morning to put together an outfit that society deems relatively acceptable. Maybe it’s better not to listen to me then, but to look instead to thestylish students we tracked down on the following pages. 13
fashion
Name: Rob
Name: Gemma
Where did you get your jacket? Zara
Where did you get your outfit? Velvet bow from H&M, vintage jacket from a flea market, leather shorts from Wild Child, belt from American Apparel, shoes from Urban Outfitters, bag from a thrift store in Canada and foxtail from the Niagara Falls Gift Shop
How would you describe your style in three words? Eh... simple, stylish... that’s only two isn’t it.
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Black? Yeah, colourless.
What was your best buy? A great vintage blazer that I got in Absolute Vintage in London. It’s green and stripey with leather trimmed cuffs, I love that thing!
Do you have any style icons? I’m not really that into fashion. Or fashionable people anyway. So I wouldn’t really say I have any.
How would you describe your personal style? I really try do the opposite of my uniform in work, which is very prim and proper, so my personal style tends to be quite oversized and unstructured.
What’s your best buy? I got a coat in Kooples in Paris, which is a new brand. All their stuff is unisex. I honestly could have bought anything there, but I got this coat that I’m really happy with.
Any style icons? Phoebe Philo, that woman is a goddess. And Little My from the Moomins (right). What was your biggest fashion mistake? Two words: track and suit.
HIT GIRL More action figure than Valley of the Dolls, from the siren red hair to the acid wash shorts and exclamation mark high heels this D.I.Y approach punches, slaps and smacks of attitude.
MAN AND SUPERMAN A Bernard Shaw doppleganger. Like Superman, distinct character is discernable under the staple sharp suit in details such as the pastel shirt, crest-print tie and glasses, worn with a smile and underpined by good humour.
Name: Hazel How would you describe your style in three words? Probably earthy grunge. I know that’s only two words, but it pretty much sums it up
RIOT GRRRL Playing with proportions is often hard to pull off, but this cool comme des garcons turn with a French chic colour palette is balanced by subtle statements such as the Susan Sontag-esque hair, tattoo and helmet.
Do you have any style icons? Let me think... It’s okay if you don’t. Well I love Kate Moss, but everyone loves Kate Moss, that’s a bit insipid. What’s your best buy? Oh, this leather pencil skirt I got in a vintage shop in Australia. It cost me $4.50. I think I’m going to wear it to my graduation.
Interviews by Ana Kinsella
Commentaries by Aisling Deng
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art
run away without leaving home by Jennifer Duignam
elcome to TN2’s Beginner’s Guide to Art in Dublin! Over the following two pages we aim to give you a brief introduction to the wealth of visual art on offer in the city, highlighting as many galleries and institutes as we can in as few words as possible. Check out our “Must See” for each of the galleries mentioned for a quick and fun way to while away the time between lectures. National Gallery of Ireland Merrion Square, Dublin 2 Founded in 1854, the National Gallery of Ireland sits on the grounds of Leinster House and has entrances from both Merrion Square and Clare Street. With such easy accessfrom Trinity, it’s the perfect place to spend a few hours when you need a break from the stress of a looming essay deadline. The Gallery has increased in size four-fold since its inception, and is home to artworks that range in date from the 14th century right up to the 16
present day. Probably the best known piece in its collection is Caravaggio’s “The Taking of Christ”, which was dramatically rediscovered after two centuries by an NGI staff member in the Jesuit House of Studies in Leeson Street during the 1990s. Other international artists represented in the Gallery’s vast collection include El Greco, Rembrandt, John Constable, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, some of whom can be seen in the new exhibition “Highlights of European Art 1850-1950”. Irish art is also highly prized at the Gallery, as evidenced by the magnificent Yeats Museum which pays homage to the artistic achievements of Jack B. Yeats, his father John Butler Yeats and other members of their family. M ust See: “Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid,” by Johannes Vermeer. Irish Museum of Modern Art Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin 8 IMMA was established in 1991 and has since become a pioneer in the collection and exhibition of modern and contemporary art in Ireland. With a collection that numbers over 4,500 works of art, the Museum operates a system of rotating temporary
exhibitions, which use certain themes or individual artists as their inspiration. Each runs for three or four months, with up to four exhibitions taking place alongside each other at any one time. As a result, the programme at IMMA is dynamic and ever changing, guaranteeing you a fascinating visit every time. A recent donation of 76 pieces of post-war American art by the artist Brian O’Doherty and his wife Barbara Novak, only adds to IMMA’s stunning reputation, with original works from Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns and Marcel Duchamp making their way to the institute. The Museum celebrates its twentieth birthday next year, so keep your eyes peeled for any upcoming events planned to celebrate the occasion. M ust See: “The Drummer” by Barry Flanagan. Douglas Hyde Gallery Trinity College, Dublin 2 Located just inside the Nassau Street entrance to the college, the Douglas Hyde Gallery was originally built as an artistic institution of Trinity, but became an independent entity in 1984. Its prominent location and
Clockwise from left: “The Drummer” by Barry Flanagan at IMMA, the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, [Courtesy IMMA], Claude Monet’s “Argenteuil basin with a single sailboat” from the National Gallery [Courtesy NGI], the exterior of the Hugh Lane on Parnell Square [Courtesy Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery], Dana Schutz, Tourette’s Paintings, July 2010 [Courtesy Douglas Hyde Gallery]
eclectic exhibition programme means there are new and exciting shows constantly passing through the Gallery, and as a result it’s always worth a visit. The Gallery in recent years has made an extra effort to showcase art that is usually shied away from in popular culture, but still retains a strong focus on exhibiting artworks by both established and emerging talent from around the globe. They regularly run talks, free film screenings and tours of the gallery, while their programme of musical events has become increasingly well known for bringing world-class talent to Dublin. Previous performers who have played the Douglas Hyde include Sufjan Stevens, Laura Veirs and Jim White, as well as Houston-based outsider folk legend Jandek, whose concert coincided with an exhibition of his album covers in 2008. M ust See: Their upcoming exhibition “Holding Together” which celebrates 50 years of the Modern Art Collection in Trinity College (24th September- 3rd November). Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery Parnell Square North, Dublin 1 The Hugh Lane Gallery opened its doors to
the public on the 20th January, 1908, making it one of the first modern art galleries in the world. It takes its name from the wealthy Irish-born art dealer, Sir Hugh Lane, who gifted a collection of artworks to the city of Dublin with the condition that the City Council establish a new gallery in which to house them. The donation of artworks included pieces by leading contemporary artists from Ireland and across Europe, including a number of Impressionist masterpieces which are shared on a rotation basis with the National Gallery in London. Other notable works in the collection include those of Irish artists Séan Scully, Louis Le Brocquy and Sir John Lavery, while the studio of Francis Bacon was catalogued, packed and transported from its original site in London to the Hugh Lane, where it was reassembled in its entirety, complete with paintstained walls and a vast collection of ephemera. Only when you experience the chaos of the space first hand do you realise what an enormous undertaking this was. M ust See: The Stained Glass room, which holds works by Harry Clarke, Evie Hone and James Scanlon.
Museum of Decorative Arts and History Collins Barracks, Benburb St, Dublin 7 Just a Luas trip away, The Museum of Decorative Arts and History occupies the refurbished grounds of Collins Barracks. Originally built in 1702, they were the oldest continously occupied barracks in the world, having housed both British and Irish forces through three centuries. The Museum of Decorative Arts and History moved into the complex in 1997 and has sought to showcase as much of their vast collection of artefacts as possible since then. The Museum’s current exhibitions are as diverse as a chronicle of Irish fashion through the years, the Albert Bender collection of Asian Art and a profile of the Irish artist, Eileen Grey, which includes examples of her prolific interior design career and the influence of Japanese Art on her work. Their “Out of Storage” exhibition is designed to give visitors a glimpse into the variety of artefacts the Museum holds in its collection, where medieval wooden sculptures sit alongside delicately worked lace and Greek vases share space with 18th century glass wine bottles. M ust See: Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Albert Bender Exhibition. 17
SeX
recipe
blending in
Training Day
Sadhbh O’Brien & Rose Ponsonby
The straight guy with a secret
Tuesday I have the day off. I exercise, and reward
myself with another masturbation session. Out of the shower I sit down on my bed and immediately search online for something kinky. Having been watching hardcore pornography since I was 13, it now requires something out of the ordinary to turn me on. I decide, as a quiet rebuke to the females who reject me, to watch gay porn, which I have also done since I was 13, though I have never had an experience with a male. I climax to a threesome of two men thrusting in and out of willing third, whom I identify with.
Wednesday I am horny, but this time my interest takes a new direction. I log onto a local personal websites and cruise through the ‘men for men’ section, idly clicking through pictures of engorged penises and their proud owners. A headline involving “Training for young, bi/ straight ‘bottom’ men,” registers an interest. The man 6’3” and large - claims to enjoy ‘training’ young bottom men in ‘man on man’ sex. I know I am a bottom because of a previous relationship with a woman who indulged my submissive side, penetrating my ass with a strap-on regularly. I do not climax. Instead I allow my sex-drive to swell. Th u rsday I wake up thinking of it, and respond to
the ad. I use a pseudonym and give non-specific information about myself, though I do send a very graphic picture. Within an hour I get a response. I find my heart beating faster and my erection throbbing. I go for a run and arrive back with a request to call him to confirm a time to meet. I sit fondling myself as I call. He seems calm and collected, and speaks well. I suggest we meet up the following day. He agrees.
Friday I go for another run to pass the time, but find
most of my day dominated by sitting at my computer watching gay porn. I’m excited and nervous. I arrive at his apartment, which is in a nice part of town, and am put at ease by his demeanour. We talk about some of his art on the walls, but do not share any private information about ourselves. After a short period he takes the lead and we undress. He dominates me slowly, pushing my limits. I am incredibly horny at this point, and ask him to take me as I’d seen in my pornos throughout the day. I climax incredibly hard, and am immediately brought down to earth. I shower and get dressed. I thank him for everything, shake his hand and leave. I walk into a local park to sit down and think. I’m not overly impressed, and slightly underwhelmed. Pleasant, but not for me. Three days later I have sex with an attractive woman and I feel good about myself. I tell no one of my internet liason.
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“He dominates me slowly, pushing my limits. I am incredibly horny at this point, and ask him to take me as I’d seen in my pornos throughout the day.”
With the summer coming to an end, we are desperately trying to hang onto it for as long as possible, so this week we thought we’d bring you a little bit of sunshine in a glass to help keep winter at bay: smoothies! Delightful to drink, foolproof to make, pretty as a picture and nutritious to boot, smoothies are the perfect fruity pick me up! Experiment with different combinations of fresh fruit, frozen berries, milk, natural or flavoured yoghurt, and dashes of fruit juices to suit your mood. Is your fruit bowl rapidly becoming a banana graveyard? Stop the rot and pop those black-skinned beauties in the freezer, ready to be whizzed at a moment’s notice. To start you on the road to smoothie heaven, here are two delicious recipes, one dairy, one not, which will convert even the most reluctant smoothie drinker into an ardent devotee.
Sadhbh and Rose’s
Banana Oat Breakfast Smoothie
1 Banana, preferably ripe 30g Oats 125ml Milk 125ml Natural Yoghurt 2 teaspoons Honey Pinch of cinnamon (optional) Chuck everything into a blender and whizz until smooth. To serve, pour into a glass, add ice and a cheery straw if desired, and enjoy smoothie bliss.
Strawberry Banana Smoothie Handful of strawberries (10-12), frozen or fresh 1 Banana, preferably ripe A dash (c.100ml) Orange juice, or other fruit juice Sugar, to taste, if you must. Add everything to the blender and process until smooth. Add more juice for a runnier consistency if desired. To serve, pour into a glass over ice, and enjoy immediately.
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reviews Films
Books
the return of nick cave
Restaurants
Music
Guilty pleasures
by Sophie Elizabeth Smith
Illustration by Fuchsia Macaree 19
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II.1
grinderman Grinderman 2
I
n Shakespeare’s King Lear, the titular character asks the Earl of Gloucester, who, rather unfortunately, has just had his eyes gouged out, how he sees the world. His response? “I see it feelingly” Nick Cave sees the world feelingly. His musical body of work squirms with the immensity of its own weight. It is vast and intimidating, technicoloured with eclecticism, but ultimately sculpted from an intense, ardent spectrum of emotion. In an interview with The Times over a decade ago Cave himself acknowledged, “I seem to have a much greater capacity to feel things”. Enduringly experimental, his first musical manifestation was the musically macabre Birthday Party, which oozed a gothic morbidity suggestive of Cave’s inherent rage and torment. He was romantically painted as the post- punk Prince of Darkness, a prophet of doom, writing lyrics in blood, ruled by heroin. Cave’s turn with the Bad Seeds, whilst still harbouring perverse, melancholic undertones (read: an entire album of ballads detailing crimes of passion) was marked by other fervent sentiments; poignant preoccupations with love, sex, religion, the divine. Tender Prey was dedicated to a nineteen year old boy killed by corrupt Brazilian police, Kicking Against the Pricks is a compilation of coverings blues and folk songs from John Lee Hooker to Johnny Cash named after a verse in the Bible, the confessional, introspective The Boatman’s Call is partly inspired by 20
Cave’s break up with PJ Harvey. Conjuring something strangely magical and portentous through an opulent narrative prose, Cave made myths and literary allusions and set them to a soundtrack that segued from blues and free jazz to gospel and rock. It may have been suggested that Nick Cave transcends genre, but he is firmly entrenched in his own feeling. “I don’t know what people are interested in, and I don’t care, to be honest”, he declared in 1998. Such self-interest has spawned an inventive arsenal of noir romantic love songs and vitriolic jagged guitar blasts. Exhaustive in their detailing of personal experience and emotion, they are all delivered in that characteristic, baritone voice that has the ability to render skin mindbogglingly goosepimpled. Grinderman, however, is something different, though it consistly exclusively of Bad Seeds. Nick Cave’s latest musical incarnation stylistically, can be seen as a regression, back to garage rock grass roots, to the post-punk band that played proto-punk cover songs. The ability of multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis to weave rich, flourishing arrangements that stir throat lumps and exhilarate to dizzying heights was prominent on the last Bad Seeds LP before the birth of Grinderman. So too was Cave’s propensity to conjure vivid dreams and fabulous characters. With the Seeds spin-off’s eponymous first album, Grinderman, it seemed that it was Jim Sclavunos’ NY No Wave background (with a CV boasting stints with Sonic Youth, the Cramps
and Teenage Jesus & the Jerks) was to be drawn upon next. No ornate metaphorical lyrics or musicality, no contrition. Grinderman arose from elemental desires. Instead of lush instrumentation there was Cave’s raw and rudimentary guitar and improvised accompaniments that lent the group a flavour of the free-form and frenetic. Animalistic, sleazy guitar-driven melodies were the scandalously charged companion pieces to a subtext that related the frailty of the male psyche. Cave had abandoned the ballad for wild, raw rock. Grinderman 2 shares numerous traits with its equally inventively-named predecessor. The wolf featured on the cover art points towards a thematic consistency that widely includes lyrical content and song structure. Album opener Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man begins with thirty gentle, meandering seconds of finger noise from reverb-soaked electric guitar strings and then breaks into a fracas of crooked, fuzzencrusted riffs, drums that thrash and roll, and urgent primal screams. These become the rapturous hallmarks of the record. “We took shelter under her body... we sucked her dry”; the overtly sexual nuances of the début track continue throughout the album, which drips with grit, sex, and mirthful filth. On Worm Tamer Cave croons “and you know I’m only happy when I’m inside her” before comparing himself to the Loch Ness Monster: “two great big humps and then I’m gone”. Panting innuendo, woozy feedback and a smouldering bassline are juxtaposed with vocal harmonies in a major key. It makes for an oddly enlivening combination. The album administers a staple, sordid psychedelia, with lyrical references to Cave’s obsessions with sex and religion. Heathen Child paints a picture of a thumb-sucking, Buddha-bashing, gun-slinging temptress in a bath tub whilst on Kitchenette he mirthfully asserts “I stick my fingers in your biscuit jar and crush all your gingerbread men”. Yet for all the insatiable sleaze, there are moments when it’s a bit anticlimactic. The Stoogesstyle blues riffs, though snakingly seductive, can be samey, particularly on weak closer Bellringer Blues. Redemption songs come in the slight departures from form. Palaces of Montezuma is a serene and uplifting exercise in pop, acoustically strummed, feedback free, and one of the few moments of respite on an album that grinds like a writhing mass on a dancefloor; just as hard, just as vulgar, though probably infinitely more invigorating. Sophie Elizabeth Smith
“I don’t know what people are interested in, and I don’t care to be honest.”
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II.2
Human chain
tamara drewe Director: Stephen Frears
Seamus Heaney
“Death,” wrote Saul Bellow, “is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.” Seamus Heaney has not been known to shirk the issue of death. Though his first outing, Death of a Naturalist, opens with the purpose and propulsion of ‘Digging’, a spectre hangs over such poems as ‘Blackberries’ and ‘Mid-Term Break’. And given the title of his first collection, ‘death’ was in some sense the very first word of his published existence. But Heaney has never laid down dark backing as assiduously as in Human Chain, his newly published twelfth collection. In ‘A Herbal’, an adaptation of Eugène Guillevic’s ‘Herbier de Bretagne’, Heaney studies the flora of the graveyard: “Everywhere plants / Flourish among graves, / Sinking their roots/ In all the dynasties / Of the dead.” In this poem, which is bound to appear in many future anthologies, Heaney seems to nominate the eponymous human chain as resistance, if not to death, then to the separations caused by death. He suggests that in such dynasties of the dead, “beyond / Maps and atlases,” the human chain is strongest – “where all is woven into /And of itself, like a nest / Of crosshatched grassblades”. ‘Chanson d’Aventure’ details the ambulance ride he took with his wife, “ensconced / In her vacated corner seat, me flat on my back,” following the stroke he had in 2006: “no transport/ Ever like it until then.” As if pulling him from death, the poet’s wife takes his hand, which “lay flop-heavy as a bellpull”. The human chain unbroken still. Yet dark backing alone does not a mirror make. To see anything at all clearly, the glass of the mirror must be silvered. Although Hu-
“Everywhere plants Flourish among graves Sinking their roots In all the dynasties Of the dead.” man Chain gets off to a slow enough start lyrically, there is much imagery in evidence that might be called silvering. In ‘The Conway Stewart’, a poem which recalls his poetic arrival ‘Digging’, Heaney describes receiving a pen as a present from his parents: “The nib
Film Tamara Drewe is supposedly the tale of
uncapped, / Treating it to its first deep snorkel / In a newly opened ink-bottle.” ‘Route 110’ portrays a woman working in a bookshop: “right hand at work / In the slack marsupial vent / Of her change-pocket, thinking what to charge/ For a used copy of Aeneid VI.” In ‘Hermit Songs’, Heaney remembers learning to read at school: “Tongue-tried words / Finger-traced, retraced, lip-read.” The lyrical buoyancy of these lines is reminiscent of Hopkins’ sprung-rhythm. Finally, there is an image quite appropriate to all Saul Bellow’s talk of mirrors. In ‘Wraiths’, Heaney pictures himself as a child going to the Gaeltacht: “when a flit of the foreknown / Blinked off a sunlit lake near the horizon.” Heaney the Younger once looked into the distant water to see reflected in it the future; now Heaney the Elder remembers that same sunlit water and sees reflected in it the past. A fine collection, its reflections crystal. Kevin Breathnach
a former ugly duckling but now exceptionally beautiful newspaper journalist who returns to her countryside home, only to find herself caught in a love- tetragon/quadrangle/square. The promotional poster of Gemma Arterton in a red tank top and Daisy Duke shorts – which she only wears for about thirty seconds of the film, would also lead one to believe this. In actuality the titular character is far more of a catalyst than a protagonist. This is one of the problems that faithful film adaptations of graphic novels must face; how to translate a serial comic’s ability to develop upon a vast array of characters with seemingly little to do with one another yet without becoming sluggish or meandering away from the plot. Zack Snyder’s faithful film of Watchmen comes to mind as divisive example of a successful adaptation which had many who had not read the comic finding it difficult to follow. On the whole, Tamara Drewe’s leisurely pace means it succeeds for the most part. However, though this was an entertaining and well-told story, there were some disappointing directorial decisions made by Frears. The fade-in split-screens were annoying every time they popped up, and they did so a lot. There was also the unfortunate choice of soundtrack: I doubt anyone would ever want to hear the songs of the film’s fictional band Swipe again much less throughout the film. Often funny, sometimes a little cringe-worthy, the film is threaded with wry British humour throughout. Gently, it pokes fun at middleclass rural Britons, particularly eccentric literary types. But satirical as it may be, this romantic tragicomedy’s strength lies in the way it absorbs reality instead of continually trying to defy it and ignore it. In the world of the film of course old flames linger and new ones ignite but actions have consequences, characters act to their detriment and some loose ends remain untied. Though admittedly the writers seem to believe that an absentee father is suitable motivation for every decision Tamara makes, the characters are not written in such as way that they are to be liked despite their many flaws but accepted as they are, complicated and irreconcilable. Alex Towers 21
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II.1
Room Emma Donoghue
II.2
weezer Hurley
Books Children in novels can be many
things: funny, articulate, symbolic, naïve, revealing, endearing – and that’s just Oliver Twist. But making a child the focus of your novel can cause all sorts of difficulties, as Emma Donoghue’s Room testifies. Her main character is a five-year old called Jack. Jack has been raised in captivity – the son of a rapist and his kidnapped victim. It’s hardly cutesy subject matter, yet Donoghue’s decision to make Jack her narrator has imbued it with a saccharine and dissatisfying flavour. Each page is covered with examples of baby talk – unnatural in many children of five, and particularly unconvincing given the fact that his only point of human contact is his articulate, intelligent mother. He may love Dora the Explorer, but is only allowed to watch an hour of television a day. His manner of speaking thus comes across as a manipulative trick on D o n o g h u e ’s part. It is as if her linguistic choices are a way of convincing us of his inherent sweetness and innocence in order to make us feel all the more outraged by his horrific upbringing. In a novel whose plot is affecting enough on its own, this is wholly unnecessary. That said, occasionally it works well. Jack’s mother comes across as psychologically wounded, but his young age and absolute devotion to her blinds him to his fact. The meagre glimpses into her mind that Donoghue offers make a refreshing change from the obsessively psychological treatments of characters in other modern novels. We may nod our heads at certain passages and sagely mutter phrases like ‘Separation anxiety’ and ‘preOedipal’, but Jack does not. Room is a genuinely upsetting novel, and if not exactly timely (being two years too late to cash in on Fritzlmania) it still manages to tell a story that will tap into the nightmares of many readers. Perhaps this means that the child narrator will not be such an issue for other readers. But in a world after A Child Called It and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it might be time to let the adults do the talking. Hannah Farrell 22
m usic I am one of the Weezer fans who never got past the first record, The Blue Album. I heard dribs and drabs from later albums, but my respect for Weezer slowly disintegrated when every year they released an ocean bottom-dwelling album or single named something like Girls or the infamous Beverly Hills. For me, Beverly Hills was a low point for Weezer. However, I decided to approach their latest effort, the comically titled Hurley, with completely open arms. I hoped for a Weezer album that I could listen to all the way through without wincing. This record has a tiny glimpse of hope right at the beginning, with a short section of an orchestra tuning up before the opening track Memories kicks in. This little introduction suggests they are perhaps going for a more mature sound, but after 40 seconds it becomes evident that they have not made any drastic changes to their style. It is catchy, but at the same time it is just a tad bit too throwaway. Sadly this is the effect most of the record has. The next track that catches the ear is Unspoken, a soulful acoustic track, that doesn’t really sound like anything they’ve done before. That is of course, until the second half arrives and they realize there hasn’t been any loud electric guitars yet (apparently the introduction of electric guitars connotes large mounds
of emotion in the Weezer song-writing school of Hurley). The track that follows is the abysmal Where’s My Sex? an overtly long rant in which former cultural icon Rivers Cuomo professes to not being able to leave his home without “his sex”, and how he feels like an alien without “his sex”. It seems odd that he would write song like this when he has a wife, unless of course this is an admission of sex addiction. At 14 tracks, it’s quite the investment of your time, especially as the standout track is a cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida. Oddly enough this is because it is an exact cover, with nothing Weezer about it. It’s simply a note for note replica but with Rivers Cuomo’s voice. It’s not that it’s a bad album, none of the songs are shockingly awful, (with the glaringly obvious exception of “Where’s My Sex?”), there is just a complete lack of progression. These are grown men, still writing geek rock songs at an age when they have wives and kids and have millions of dollars. The original sound they started with has now been massively overdone in the past by themselves and many alt-rock bands since, yet they continue to strive to perfect it instead of updating it. It’s like an aural purgatory. Toby Evans
I
clarendon bar 30 Clarendon St, Dublin 2
II.2
enter the void Director: Gaspar Noé
Film Gaspar Noé’s follow up to his highly
controversial Irréversible, is a twisted antinarrative maelstrom of a movie that takes in life, death, regret, tragedy, despair, anger, the effects of drug-use, incest, abortion, explicit sex scenes and reincarnation, all wrapped up in one swirling mass of jaw-dropping celluloid. Nathaniel Brown plays expatriate Oscar, an American living in Tokyo who is unemployed and experimenting with several illegal substances, including the hallucinogen DMT. Using money from his new-found drug-dealing escapades, he saves up enough cash to buy his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) a flight ticket to the Japanese capital. Their parents were killed in a car crash years earlier and the two siblings made a pact that they would always stay together. After being separated through foster-care since they were kids, the two can now finally attempt to live up to their promise. After Linda arrives, she soon starts to take some narcotics herself and also gains employment in a sleazy strip bar, eventually ending up in a relationship with the owner. These scenes and much of the movie are told in flash-backs, Oscar having already been gunned down by police in a drug-bust at The Void, a small downtown bar. Noé’s movie is not so much focused on actual plot details but seemingly on bombarding the audience with trippy visuals, disturbing sex scenes, emotional gut-wrenching and even some jump out of your seat shock
moments. Filmed from several different perspectives, including dizzying, camera-spinning panoramas of Tokyo and POV shots complete with blinking and blurred vision, Enter the Void starts like a hallucinogenic version of the Prodigy’s video for Smack My Bitch Up, and pretty much assaults the viewer for the rest of the quite lengthy running time. The director should be commended for not just giving the audience everything neatly packaged a lá Hollywood; indeed, Noé’s liberated camera exhibits a revolutionary freedom from the constraints and expectations of ordinary narrative film. But the fact that Enter the Void comes across like a really bad trip mixed with a horrific nightmare, viewers might indeed be glad when the whole thing is over and would hardly want to repeat the experience again. The ominous tones and murky techno beats on the soundtrack do a fantastic job of complementing the visual feast on display here. However, those suffering from epilepsy or motion sickness would be best advised to stay well clear of this film, as it might be more a case of exit the audience than Enter the Void. It really is that head-swimming at times. Although the movie does contain moments of sheer mastery it falls short of the masterpiece the director so desperately wants it to be. Fascinating and disturbing, incredible and frustrating, Noé’s newest slice of cinematic barrage is certainly worth watching but hardly an enjoyable experience. You have been warned. Robert O’Reilly
food My first memories of the Clarendon Bar, on the corner of Chatham Street and Clarendon Street, are from my early teens when I’d occasionally visit the then bustling location for drinks with the family. Step forward eight or nine years and it must be the easiest place in town to get a seat. Seemingly drowning in an area that can offer some of Dublin’s best-known and most-loved restaurants, the Clarendon has been forgotten in favour of close-by Busyfeet & Coco, Metro Cafe and the multitude of Italian offerings just across the road. What most people don’t seem to realise is that this restaurant has noticed its falling numbers, and is now offering what must be one of the best deals in the city. Running all day, every day, €8.95 will get you either soup or dessert, plus one of the main course specials. Changing all the time, but with returning favourites, these specials can be Mexican enchiladas, beef and Guinness pie, lasagne, or some other hearty classic. With the soup accompanied by bread and the main course by better than average chunky golden chips, it’s a veritable feast and this makes up for the fact that the food is of varying quality. The soup is probably the tastiest stage in the meal, and I’d always recommend choosing this over the
desserts, which are small and are served with endless drizzles of coulis, which I can only imagine is there to add flavour where it did not already exist. However, the main courses can sometimes suffer from over-salting. The fact that the Clarendon is rarely busy means that the little basement table with great views of people walking by can usually be nabbed for a lengthy stay and a great chat. Sports being shown in the main bar generally result in a clientele of middle-aged men in suits popping in to see if their bets have come up lucky that day. Both the music and the interiors are understated, but in a bar that serves good food at great prices, and in a notably friendly manner, that hardly matters anyway. Robyn Kelly 23
II.2
the vaselines
by a pitch-perfect Michael Jai White, (who also is on writing duties). Hell-bent on revenge after his younger brother is gunned down in an alleyway by mobsters, Dynamite begins an odyssey of Kung Fu fighting the living daylights out of every smack dealer and gangster he can get his hands on. The film really does feel like a genuine mov-
Sex With An X
everyone with Thai, Korean and Chinese stalls mixed in with Spanish, Mexican, Caribbean, Lebanese and German offerings, all at reasonable prices. The much admired Pieminister (a staple of the Electric Picnic food experience) is also in residence with their mouth-watering organic/free-range pies, mash and ‘groovy’. It is worth getting there in good time for lunch though, as by 2pm many of the stalls have been stripped bare and pickings are slim. Great fun, and super tasty, the Market is worth a visit, and the Iveagh Gardens just across the road provide the perfect location to chow down on the cuisine of your choice. Rose Ponsonby
II.1
M usic As well as being Kurt Cobain’s most
favourite songwriters in the whole world Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee’s indie pop paragons The Vaselines were twee as fuck, but they were the good kind of twee, like mixtapes from your boyfriend and girls in knee socks. Now, twenty years and a considerable amount of Sub Pop compilations and reissues later, Sex with an X is just as delightfully fizzy and winsome as their début Dum Dum, from the perky feedback pop of Ruined to the Cramps-tinted slice of shoegaze The Devil’s Inside Me. The boy/girl vocal harmonies, Casio keyboard melodies are coupled with neat blues riffs, cute references to Rubix cubes and declarations that “the ‘80s were shit” on It Wasn’t All Duran Duran, and Overweight but Over You is a punchy break up song about fat people getting closure that uses charming food metaphors, “I’ve no appetite for you and me when you twist me round like some old spaghetti. And it’s all only slightly less adorable when you remember they’re old enough to be your mam and dad. Sophie Elizabeth Smith
ie release from the 1970’s, complete with retro split screen overuse, boom mics dropping into the frame, extravagant attire, outrageous haircuts and unabashed heaps of politically incorrectness. Featuring instantly quotable Tarantino-style lines of dialogue such as “doughnuts don’t wear alligator shoes” and unforgettably ridiculous scenarios that would even have Shaft chuckling in the aisles, Black Dynamite is a hilarious cinematic ass-whoopin’ of the highest calibre. Now can you dig that, sucka? Robert O’Reilly
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harcourt street market Park Place, Upper Hatch St, Dublin 2
II.1
black Dynamite Director: Scott Sanders Film Scott Sanders’ blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite explodes onto Irish cinema screens like Superfly T.N.T. on laughing gas. It’s the story of a martial arts master and ex- CIA agent who is determined to fight ‘The Man’ all the way to the top, while also attempting to charm as many women into bed as he can. The man is Black Dynamite and is played
24
Food On a Tuesday and a Thursday, tucked away behind the back of the Odeon, the Harcourt Street Market is to be found bustling with life as office workers en masse fling away their ham sandwiches in favour of some truly tasty lunchtime alternatives. Though officially branded a Farmer’s Market, it is really more of a lunch market, with a multitude of stalls offering up a remarkable array of hot food for immediate consumption. Running from 10-4pm, there is something for
how i escaped my certain fate Stewart Lee BooksStew-
art Lee’s jokes are not the type that might be repeated in a review such as this, not because they are obscene – though often they are – but because they don’t really amount to jokes as we know them. Instead, his intention is, “to take people on funny journeys into spaces they wouldn’t have expected to arrive at in a stand-up comedy set.” In How I Escaped My Certain Fate, a book of writing built around the heavily-footnoted transcripts of his last three shows, Lee expresses derision at much of mainstream stand-up, “with its funny faces and jokes.” But to focus on such contempt would do a disservice to this insightful account into the mechanics of his subversive routines. Separated from Lee’s monotonous delivery, something of the act is inevitably lost on the page. Consequently, it is the expansive footnotes that are generally of most interest here. “Humour can be dissected as a frog can,” E.B. White famously wrote, “but the thing dies in the process.” Lee disproves this, dissecting and explaining his ongoing act in hilarious detail. “Deconstruct and do it anyway,” says one footnote. It might well be a manifesto. Kevin Breathnach
How to…
guilt y ple asures
fake a celebrity death Luke O’Connell
one Like everything in life, begin with a Facebook
status: “RIP Clinton Morrison” seemed to trip off the tongue. It worked, and within minutes my idiot friends were chiming in with incredulous questions.
t wo Set up a Facebook page, ideally with a moving sub-
title like “Prince of Hearts”. Get your friends to invite their friends for you to avoid being labelled a pestering prick. Make a dodgy imitation BBC News obituary, based on George Best’s. Leave in bits about “champagne lifestyle” and the 2005 date. Change Wikipedia.
three Just as the kettle is beginning to boil, email Sheffield Wednesday and offer your condolences. Get as many people as possible to do this. Use nostalgic language as you recall his “sumptious lob against China” or his “famous (if controversial) cross-field kick in the Bolton game of ‘04”. Solecisms here are a plus: true football fans have a notorious distrust of conventional grammar rules. When Lindsey, the club secretary, replies asking you to call her and insisting “Clinton Morrison is fine, I spoke to him just a few minutes ago, we need to find out how this awful rumour started”, claim that you heard about it “down the local pub”. fou r Lindsey, who obviously has nothing better to do, replies saying that “Clinton is hoping to score for us tonight against Notts County in the Johnstone’s paint Trophy so the message will get out that he is very much alive and kicking!!!!!”, ignore at least four of her exclamation marks, but admire her little football joke, which may or may not have been deliberate. five Photoshop “MORRISON IN ‘ZOMBIE’ PROBE”, “‘I AM NOT DEAD’ SCREAMS MORRISON CORPSE”, etc, onto The Sun front page. At this stage, Clinton should issue a statement on his official Facebook saying something like: “despite how much previous fans want me dead spreadin’ their sick pages, i’m still here.. and not long came off from a nice 2-1 win over Notts County :)” Translation: “I AM NOT DEAD, but I am continuing to play irrelevant football.” six Deny all allegations that you are, or ever have been, a “bitter Coventry City fan”. Actually, you thought Sheffield Wednesday was a holy day until very recently. Sit back and watch as Wednesday forums plot their act of revenge, including numerous phone calls to the English police, led by that maniac Lindsey. Do not fret: although they are a zealous bunch, they will forget all about it come the next match.
“I never wanted to kill him per se, of course, but something about him seemed ripe for cyber-murder. Why Clinton Morrison? Why not, I thought.”
icarly by Karl McDonald
Nickelodeon is the stuff of childhood. Where would we be today without the moral lessons we learned in front of endless repeats of Sabrina the Teenage Witch or, better still, Kenan and Kel. Whenever there was homework to be done, Nickelodeon was there, beaming the white teeth of its youth presenters into our brains, giving us an early, skewed definition of teenage cool. For most, it ended there. Some people graduated to Hollyoaks. Others just retreated to screens they could hold on their laps. I would have been among the latter, but such is my attention deficiency, I developed a need to have the TV on in the background while I refreshed the whole internet. So I lived through the next generation’s Nickelodeon. I lived through Drake and Josh, and learned, despite the ridiculous plots and unforgiveably cartoonish peripheral characters, to love it. Despite all efforts on the part of the writers to make it so, it wasn’t Drake who made it out the other end a megastar. His music was amongst the worst imaginable and, against the grain of plot and script, he was actually more annoying than his hapless brother Josh, who surprised everyone with his role as stoner-depressive Luke alongside Ben Kingsley in 2008’s The Wackness. And the younger sister Megan? Well, she ended up as iCarly. There is no-one on earth who believes me when I say I genuinely enjoy watching iCarly, for reasons unrelated to dodgy morality or mental illness, but I do. Alongside Sam, whose thing is that she eats a lot and is rude, and Freddy, who is a loveable tech-nerd, Carly presents a web show. The also trio find time to get into MMA fights, go to Japan and create an ‘electro-magnetic’ Christmas tree, all against the backdrop of a weird passive teenage tension between the two girls and Freddy, whom they outwardly claim is gross. That’s before we even get started on Carly’s older brother and guardian Spencer, who invented the world’s most complex kinetic sculpture but still managed to set a crash cymbal on fire by hitting it. It’s hungover couch day TV at its best, just likeable characters, great stories and ridiculous side-plots featuring exploding muffin baskets. Celebrities such as Nathan from Wavves and Bethany from Best Coast are fans. Admittedly they live together and smoke quite a lot of weed, but still. You’re missing out. 25
Das Capo
the cult of the self Oisín Murphy
W
e love reading things about how great we are. Producing things to align with this reality seems to be the cardinal purpose of the Irish media and, most likely, the various medias of other self-satisfied, post-ironic societies. From the inevitable Freshers’ Week commentary in student ‘papers that lists some “hilarious” college stereotypes and “what to look out for” in them, stopping short of asking you which one you are/secretly wish you were, and implicitly divulging which one the writer of the piece sees him/herself as by being slightly less cutting and more aspirational in their description thereof; to the utterly dickless, affectionate, modern social satire kick-started by Paul Howard and currently being flogged to within an inch of its now-long-overdue mortality by whatever middle-aged gentleman is writing the embarrassingly transparent Victoria Gallagher-O’Houlihan pieces on the back of The Ticket every week; we’ve pretty much exhausted our capacity for genuine self-awareness with incongruous, misplaced diffidence played out in tandem with our quintessential brand of Hibernian pleonexy, a trend which has contributed, amongst other things, both to the rise of Jedward as a marketable franchise and the establishment of Copperface Jacks as a venue for getting some super triple ironic frottage going, even though most people would probably say you’re too middle-class and educated to go there. It seems as though the Irish print media, and I’m speaking as broadly as possible here, is contractuallybound to reaffirm its readers’ own prejudices and proclivities in the same way it’s obliged to attach four stars to anything Imelda May does, perhaps due to some National Interests And The Press concordat I must’ve missed out on. But where exactly does this kind of pandering lead us? To the point where anything of Irish provenance in the arts is instantly deemed noteworthy by virtue of its nationality, and any hijacked American scene buffoonery we latch onto en masse is spared any real examination by being covered in two lines in the Hot or Not “Index” of the Irish Times weekend supplement, apparently. This sort of wanton blitheness shown towards the morality of our own lives makes for easy writing for the various staffers in our national newspapers. Now that it’s established that people of a certain social standing want to read endlessly about fashion, Róisín Ingle’s insipid life and see Brendan O’Connor’s goiterous head on every second page of their weekend cultural intubation, along with students wishing for edgy commentary, positive reviews of buzz-albums and articles about sex to make them feel grown-up, you could say that editors on either side of the publications coin have it pretty easy, from a commercial standpoint at least. In addition to that, it’s about as likely that the editor of the Sunday Independent will decide to cut down on the “Irish model” jokes as it is that a college newspaper 26
The student press coverage you’ll read will tend towards the valorisation of a very specific (and largely non-academic) notion of “being a student” in that self-mythologising way that just screams “colleeeeeeeege!”
will be genuinely caustic in its satirisation of a candidate in the Students’ Union elections next year - because the people writing about the people you read about, in each, are mates with one another. And once you’ve found a profitable formula that satisfies everyone who is, to your mind, worth satisfying, there’s no reason to deviate from it. For a lot of you, this will be your first year in college, and probably your first time reading a college newspaper. At this point, an important thing to realise about college is that, regrettably, there are a lot of dicks here. Of course, any estimation of what constitutes one being a dick is entirely subjective and it’s unlikely that you’ll encounter anyone who isn’t thought to be a dick by at least one other person, but the student press coverage you’ll read will tend towards the valorisation of a very specific (and largely non-academic) notion of “being a student” in that self-mythologising and un-self-regarding way that just screams “colleeeeeeeege!” and, sadly, that same reductive attitude will be prevalent amongst many of your peers, particularly in your first year. Indeed, we’re all more than capable of making such analyses without me having to devote a column to it. However the most important aspect of such broad criticism is the conflation of wider social and cultural trends with their journalistic counterparts, acknowledging the co-dependence of “you can retake the exam, but you can never retake the party” commentary and people who want to be told to go to parties at the expense of exams. This dichotomy exists because it’s easier for one to live in a state of suspended reality if there’s an institutionalised, ideological framework in place in the dominant media to support and extol such conduct. Though if Ireland’s lotus-eating, middle-class students were to be confronted with a predominantly critical college media, in all likelihood the general behavioural currents wouldn’t be affected. We would merely act out with indignation what we once acted out with complacency and entitlement. Though cultural roots run deep, the problem is at the heart of the media, as much as anything. In its most organic state, should it merely exist as an response to capitalistic demand rather than as a sociological apparatus with its own innate critical potential? And particularly in college, where the commercial pressures that act on “real-world” publications do not exist (at least not to the same degree), should the role of student newspapers be to mimic the linguistics of those higher up the food-chain, or to behave with a hermetic integrity of their own? In reality, it’s up to the readers of college publications to decide what they want from them. I’m not holding my breath, however. In five years’ time we’ll all probably be in Front Square betting on a steeplechase between former members of the constabulary with bars of soap taped to their feet, under the grim eyes of George Salmon, and I hope TN2 will be there to tell you how utterly wonderful it is.