TN2 Issue 9

Two TRINITY NEWS

FILM

MUSIC

SUBMARINE

by Aisling Deng

BOOKS

FASHION

ART

issue 9 15 Mar 2011

FOOD

&

REVIEWS

OPENERS

#9

WHY’S EVERYBODY LOOK SO STRANGE? Karl McDonald

C

hanges are afoot. As of last Tuesday, there is a new TN2 Editor-elect. After a long, complex, esoteric ritual involving pizza and promises to improve the website, votes were cast, and this year’s Film Editor Alex Towers emerged victorious. He’s been responsible for more than his fair share of cool stuff this year, and he’s certainly a capable gentleman, so I am delighted to transfer the state secrets to him.

We’re not done with this year yet, though.

The more perceptive amongst you may have noticed that this issue is numbered 9, which will have appeared a fierce pancake to you given that the last issue you held in your hand was Issue 7. What happened to Issue 8, you demand to be told. How did it slip into the lacuna? Well, it did exist, actually.

It was the Ball Guide, a sixty-four page fancy-looking magazine on real paper that the whole Trinity News and TN2 staff suspended their usual activities to contribute to. There might still be some copies around, pick it up.

There’s a board game named after Genockey in it.

Ball Guide is past and Alex Towers is future, but we make a point of living in the Now, do we not? Or at least we can’t avoid it.

So to entertain as you try to pass this particular moment in time, this issue has interviews with the wonderful cast of Richard Ayoade’s Submarine as well as web comic writer Zach Weiner, indie pop nostalgists The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and drone-metal guywho-gave-Kurt-Cobain-the-Gun Dylan Carson from Earth. For those who are physically as well as philosophically hungry, there’s a piece on Irish food blogs, and an insight into the world of art actually made out of food.

That’s not all, though.

Turn to page four. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to experience “the most important election in living memory” whilst under the influence of Lysergic acid diethylamide, well, stop wondering. TN2 does that thought experiment for you. Hitherto suspiciously quiet contributor Anthony Walsh bobs and weaves his way through Labour deputies, packets of crisps, campaign gossip and a permanent disqualification from becoming a pilot in order to experience something with a genuine possibility of being unique. But sure them Fianna Fáil fellas look like their faces are melting anyway, am I right? Har har har. Enjoy the issue.

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THE MAP IS NOT THE ART I N C OLLEGE

Study for Purgatory I & II (1985)

by Patrick Ireland Patrick Ireland is the name adopted by Irish born artist Brian O’Doherty in 1972, as a form of protest against the Troubles in Northern Ireland. His installation The Purgatory of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Homunculus, Rope Drawing #73 was exhibited at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, here in Trinity College, in 1985, and was the first all-gallery installation to hit Ireland. The work drew its inspiration from James Joyce’s 1939 novel Finnegan’s Wake, whose title character was named H.C. Earwicker. In the installation, a single line of rope ricochets off the walls of the gallery in a complex pattern, ending in the hand of the spectator who would have been seated at a table in the centre of the room. When seen from this perspective, the rope perfectly frames the motif painted on the opposite wall. Ireland’s preparatory works for the installation, as seen here, use Ordnance Survey maps of Dublin city upon which are drawn a series of overlapping, criss-crossing lines, which ultimately create the multi-angled shape of the rebounding rope used in the Douglas Hyde installation. Instead of utilising just simple pencil strokes though, Ireland achieves this shape using a series of quotes from Joyce’s text to create the lines. Their strong, bold forms contrast with the fine grey outlines of the map, and allude to Joyce’s ability to “verbally map” the city. Jennifer Duignam

TWO-HEADED BOY FILM

The Thing With Two Heads (1972) USA This week we have artwork from a genre we haven’t featured here before: Blaxploitation.

The movement is a treasure trove for achingly badass posters, like this one-sheet for the 1972 film The Thing With Two Heads. Although the artwork itself promises fights, fuzz, chicks and choppers, the real appeal comes with its hysterically ludicrous tagline: “They transplanted a WHITE BIGOT’S HEAD onto a SOUL BROTHER’S BODY!” The botched operation hasn’t bothered the two-headed daredevil abomination however and he looks more than happy straddling his dirt bike and jumping out of the poster. Well that’s not true.

The “White Bigot” head actually looks terrified. But that’s understandable. So while the plots plausibility might be questionable, one thing is certain: I must see this film.

Alex Towers

#9

TERRITORY.

MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF: 15th March 2011

4 LYSERGIC BLISS Anthony Walsh considers glory-hunting, Buffalo crisps and avoiding having to lift up Róisín Shorthall while at the recent election count. On LSD.

7 ARTISAN CUISINE Jennifer Duignam looks at the use of food as art

8 PURE AS THE DRIVEN SNOW Ana Kinsella talks to Brooklyn indie pop champs The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart as they release their second album.

10 PRO-SKUB Mairéad Casey talks to web comic writer Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal about his work and the state of the art in general.

12 VAMPIRE BLUES James Kelly celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

13 SKY OF BLUE, SEA OF GREEN Aisling Deng speaks to Yasmin Paige and Craig Roberts, co-leads in Richard Ayoade’s coming-of-age movie Submarine.

16 SLOW JABRONI

SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY FASHION The Parlour, located in the JCR of

Goldsmith Hall, is a project of the JCR with an aim of creating a social space in our university for events such as live DJs, bands and artist showcases. Niall Morahan, known for Electric Relaxation as well as other events and club nights around the city, is volunteering his time to try and get the project off of the ground. The staff of the JCR have transformed the JCR from a dull area of couches and a broken PS2 into a rather arty space of golden chairs and china tea sets. Instead of advertising for various club nights there is now a lovely collection of local artists’ work adorning the wall.

Launch week saw DJ sets, pancakes and live sets from the likes of Rhino Magic and Market Force. Organiser Morahan stressed that the Parlour is a project by students for students and wants to advertise that anyone can come and contribute. “It’s something that’s going to be constantly changing.”

Keith Grehan

Gheorghe Rusu talks to Dylan Carson of seminal drone band Earth about cat ownership and playing everything slowly.

19 REVIEWS Sentence of the week: “If you’re the kind of person who might quite fancy watching Felicity Jones comically sliding down a ski-slope on her stomach to the strains of Paloma Faith’s Upside Down, well then fuck you.” Also Radiohead, Crackbird, more.

26 DAS CAPO Oisín Murphy on hypocrisy and public backlash against celebrities who do ridiculous stuff.

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: Gheorghe Rusu, Keith Grehan. Theatre: Jamie Leptien. TV: James Kelly, Michael Barry. Images: Eoin Kirwan, Martin McKenna. Design: Gearóid O’Rourke, Martin McKenna . General assistance: Aoife Crowley. Fuelled by: knowing exactly what Animal Collective are about, no smoking or caffeine, Pictures For Sad Children, Zubr.

3

FE ATURE

FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE COUNT

by Anthony Walsh

A

revolution has taken place. Ireland has a new government. The centreright party which guided the country into this massive economic crisis has been replaced by a centreright party. Things have truly changed at last. Until recently a figure of gross ridicule, Enda Kenny has somehow led Fine Gael into office. Nietzsche was right: you’ll never get the crowd to cry Hosanna until you ride into town on an ass.

Before all this occurred, I proposed to our erstwhile editor here at TN2 that I write an article about the RDS election count as if it were a piece of anthropology, an idea I thought sounded exceedingly clever at the time.

Soon after Karl agreed to it, though, I realised I had very little idea what my proposal meant.

The concept had come from a book by the French anthropologist, Marc Augé, entitled ‘Un ethnologue dans 4

le métro’. It’s a book I’ve never read. I don’t own a copy of it. I know pretty much nothing about it, in fact. At times, I do confess, I’m not even sure what anthropology is exactly. On the day of the election, I tried and failed to get a hold of the book to use as a template for the piece. In its place, I got a hold of some lysergic acid diethylamide. LSD would save my skin.

And so my attorney and I arrive at the RDS just after twelve on a crisp Saturday afternoon. After producing our press credentials, our wrists are stamped by the woman in charge. “These won’t get you into Copper’s tonight, lads,” she laughs, a joke she has undoubtedly made to every young person who has passed her way so far. The confidence with which she does so proves a dark foreboding of the kind of young person we can expect to come across inside.

Just through the door, we are immediately greeted

“ I order a drink, drop my acid and attempt to observe things from a more objective, anthropological perspective.”

by a cast of ridiculous characters. A drooling Labour zombie seems to have shuffled out of a nearby skip. A community of Allen Ginsbergs sits guarding Mannix Flynn’s sandwiches in a state of proud indifference.

Some mutton dressed as lamb swaggers terrifyingly across the hall, her bare legs strewn with varicose veins, her mouth full of buffalo crisps.

Thinking it best to stay out of their way for a while, we make for the bar. I order a drink, drop my acid and attempt to observe things from a more objective, anthropological perspective – whatever the hell that means.

It is said by some that Irish politics is boring in comparison to its English and American cousins. I’m not sure to what extent this comment is fair. But disaster certainly begets interest. And, since the crash, Irish politics has definitely grown more compelling, if never more convincing. It’s strange, then, to see that this bar

full of soon-to-be victorious Fine Gael hacks have their eyes glued not to the election coverage screened on one wall, but to a rugby match on the other.

Meanwhile, the leathered bulk of the Sinn Féin faithful sit in a corner wearing thick, unironic moustaches flecked generously with foam. If ever a sticker was superfluous in signifying party loyalties, it is theirs. Just after midday, their table is piled high with empty bottles and glasses – and crisp packets, of course. Have they been here all night? Of course not, my attorney reasons.

The bar staff are simply afraid to clear their table. They cheer raucously every time their party’s name is mentioned, but otherwise pay little attention to the election coverage on screen above them and none at all to the foreign games shown on the opposite.

At the bar, Fine Gael candidate for Dublin SouthEast, Eoghan Murphy stands among his people. With his hair and suit cut in the same style and by the same tailor, Murphy is a young man who clearly wishes to make Irish politics less boring by injecting it with the

Photos by Eoin Kirwan

5

stylized vacuity of the American system. “I fucking hate that guy,” I tell my attorney, but immediately grow worried. Here’s somebody I curse every time I see his UCDinduced face on posters or TV. But proximity is a great leveler. It seems unacceptable to say these things about a person within earshot. The acid creeps up my spine and I grow quietly unnerved.

It seems as if Murphy and his hacks are staring me down. And the Shinners, are they stirring too? The decision to flee the bar comes suddenly.

At the TV area near the main entrance, RTÉ and TV3 are broadcasting live. There I see Tommy Broughan, a Labour TD who still campaigns on the strength of his rosette. Bidding farewell to one of his campaigners, who has had enough by now, Broughan seems to me not diminished by the dinner-plate of a rosette pinned to his lapel, but somehow enlarged by it. The rules of proportion have fallen out of kilter for me. I don’t know if I can take this any longer.

To Broughan’s right, the election coverage has ended on the TV3 screen. Two lads stand watching Take Me Out – procreation by democratic means – munching on an inevitable packet of crisps. Christ almighty – more fucking crisps. In the last election, Mr. Tayto appeared on election posters as part of a publicity campaign.

What a shame he didn’t actually run. The only lasting impression I take from this day is of the enduring love the political classes have for the humble potato crisp.

A crowd begins to gather around us. We sense an announcement about to be made. The RDS staff pull a barrier clear to make more room. They motion my attorney and me to come forward.

“Us?” “Yeah – you. We have to make more room, come on.”

We move timidly into this new space, and are reluctantly followed by the rest of those waiting around the spot where we’d previously stood.

“Where’s Róisín?” one of the staff asks my attorney.

“Who’s Róisín?” he replies.

Some people in the crowd overhear this, and I feel their quizzical gaze upon us. Next, Labour TD Róisín Shortall arrives with her family in tow. Suddenly this new space is packed, but we remain at the front, justbehind of the Shortalls, as her election is announced.

A gang of photographers start taking pictures.

“What the fuck is going on?” I whisper. My attorney begins clapping politely amidst the roars of Labour hacks.

6

“Christ, are we going to have to lift her up on our shoulders?” Our terrified eyes are blinded by the flashes of electoral success. But from what I can make out, Shortall has mercifully little intention of going anywhere near my shoulders.

Next up, Dessie Ellis is deemed to be elected and the Shinners do what they do best – cheer loudly, that is.

More confident now in the ridiculous situation we find ourselves, I cheer loudly too. The Shortall camp throw confused looks of disapproval my way.

Who the fuck are we? Glory hunters, that’s who – which, as it happens, is not much different from anybody else in attendance today. By and large, politicians and their campaigning hacks don’t stick around at these events unless victory is a distinct likelihood. What would be the point in showing your party loyalty when there’s no possibility of getting a job out of it? I note a total absence of Fianna Fáil stickers.

This red sea parts and we skedaddle. My attorney bumps into one of his many acquintances, who makes a revelation which somebody in Trinity News of more serious intention would be very interested to hear. Realizing his indiscretion, he makes some attempt to ensure that what he has said is off-the-record. My brain is completely frazzled, however, and it’s only after we’ve left him that my attorney explains what just happened. His secret’s safe with me: I’m an anthropologist after all, not a reporter.

We’re growing tired of this place. But out of sheer journalistic integrity, I convince my attorney to do one last lap of the hall with me. In a distant corner, a battered vending machine catches his eye. “I’m gonna get something,” he says, pointing towards it. “Like what?” I ask. “Dunno – I’m not even hungry. Just bored.” As we approach, the machine ages before my acid-eyeballs. By the time we reach it, the wrinkled old dame has faded to look about a hundred years old. And inside it, of course, confronting us at eye-level, there grazed three proud rows of buffalo crisps.

“So this–” says my attorney. “This is where the buffalo roam.”

We made for the exit. Though dark outside, the darkest hour before the dawn did not seem to be even nearly upon us.

As we moved away from Ballsbridge, however, I could hear a strange noise coming from the RDS. It was the crowd – they cried Hosanna.

“As we moved away from Ballsbridge, however, I could hear a strange noise coming from the RDS...”

“...it was the crowd - they cried Hosanna.”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

O

From top: Antoni, Lick and Lather, Antoni, Gnaw, Gormley, Bed, Gonzales-Torres, Placebo, Gonzales-Torres, Portrait of Ross.

ften, I find myself in some sort of gallery or museum during my lunch break. Admittedly, I have a very strange timetable, so lunchtime is a somewhat vague term for me. But usually it means my stomach has been rumbling for at least 5 minutes, and the people surrounding me have begun looking for the angry bear that has escaped the zoo.

Such an event occurred just last week when, on an impromptu tour of the National Gallery, the hunger pangs began and I found myself dreaming of a museum dedicated entirely to food. This line of thought eventually led me to wonder whether or not there was such a thing as an edible work of art, a piece on display in an actual museum or gallery that I could feasibly munch on. After a little bit of Googling, I managed to come up trumps, and found that not only do such things exist, but some of them are made of chocolate.

First up, we have the work of Bahamian born artist Janine Antoni, who regularly uses perishable materials in her art. Her piece “Lick and Lather” saw the artist create a series of portrait busts of herself using chocolate and soap, alternating between the two materials in each sculpture to create a line of artworks with contrasting colours, texture and smells. Antoni then altered the originals, in the case of the chocolate sculptures by licking them, causing them to lose the definition of their features. The colour of the chocolate sculptures changes as a result of this process, with the areas the artist has licked turning a much lighter shade of brown. Visitors to the original exhibition commented on the overwhelming smell the sculptures produced in the space, and their sudden wish to visit the nearest sweet shop after their trip to the gallery.

Another work in chocolate by Antoni is the installation “Gnaw.” Here, Antoni took a 600lb block of chocolate, and began to carve into it using only her teeth. Working at the task for large portions of the day, Antoni worked her jaw to breaking point, but unfortunately enjoyed none of the benefits of the endeavour. Instead of eating the chocolate she shaved from the block, the artist spat out the chewed pieces, which she later melted down and recast in heart shape cases for display alongside the cube in the original installation. As part of this piece, Antoni also carved a 600lb cube of lard using the same method, which would have no doubt been a much tougher test than biting the chocolate. It also makes the installation a lot less appetising when roaming around the galleries hungry.

Of course, not everybody has quite as sweet a tooth as me, so for the more savoury inclined gallery goer works such as Antony Gormley’s “Bed” might be more appealing. In this installation, the artist created a rectangular sculpture from 8,000 slices of white bread, which he then proceeded to carve his own impression into. The slices removed were eaten by the artist, and the void created echoed in a

ART

second sculpture of the same dimensions. By the time the artist reached the end of the process though, the bread had begun to decay and go mouldy. In order to preserve the sculpture, it had to be disassembled in its entirety, before dipping each slice in paraffin wax. These were then dried by the artist using the radiators in his flat, leaving him with some slightly peeved house mates I’m sure.

The final piece on our list of yummy food based artworks comes from Felix Gonzalez-

ANTONI TOOK A 600 POUND BLOCK OF CHOCOLATE, AND BEGAN TO CARVE INTO IT USING ONLY HER TEETH. Torres, an American, Cuban-born artist who passed away in 1996. He became famous for his “candy spill” installations, in which the artist would use a carefully measured weight of hard boiled sweets to create a sculpture of sorts within the gallery space. In his “Untitled (Placebo)” 1200 pounds – the equivalent of 40,000 pieces – of these sweets carpet the gallery floor, and visitors are invited to take a piece or two with them as they leave the exhibition. The sculpture thus gradually dwindles as the day goes on, but the installation is replenished every morning, ensuring it never disappears entirely. In contrast, another of Gonzalez-Torres’ sweet based works “Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)” is entirely dependent on this idea of depletion, and the supply of sweets is never topped-up. The shrinking of the artwork reflects a very personal element in the artist’s own life. His partner Ross had recently died from AIDs related causes when Gonzalez-Torres first began the installation, and the gradual disappearance of the piece and its slow drop in weight from day-to-day, reflects Ross’s deteriorating condition as he succumbed to the disease in his final few months.

And so concludes our slightly strange tour of the artworks around the world using food as their basic materials. The variety of these kind of pieces, and their inclusion in a number of important collections around the globe, shows that food-based sculpture is slowly becoming a more accepted form of art in the modern market. However, I’m not entirely sure how thrilled the various galleries would be if they knew how seriously I’ve considered sampling some of these artworks should I find myself in their institution and the angry bear surfaces. Perhaps I should rethink the times of my gallery visits so. Jennifer Duignam 7

MUSIC

GROWING PAINS

by Ana Kinsella

or those of you who haven’t been paying attention, there’s been a kind of yearning nostalgic trend in recent months and years for a return to the early 1990s, in terms of music, fashion and aesthetics. In fashion this is seen in endless plaid shirts, longer hemlines and Dr. Martens, as well as countless blogs championing Kurt and Courtney as contemporary style icons.

The music of the 1990s is making a comeback too, albeit a somewhat-updated one, and this has manifested itself in myriad new albums either washed in reverb or else closely imitating seminal bands like Neutral Milk Hotel or Teenage Fanclub. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are a good example of this, with their self-titled debut release in 2009 blatantly modelled on the twee indie-pop of the late 1980s and after. The forthcoming album from the Brooklyn band, titled Belong, takes this imitation further by borrowing prolific production duo Flood and Alan Moulder, known for their work on records by The Smashing Pumpkins, The Jesus and Mary Chain and My 8

Bloody Valentine. I asked singer/keyboardist Peggy Wang if this was a conscious attempt to adopt a new direction and chase the sound that the pair made on earlier records. “We set out to do this style of music that we call ‘noisy pop’, and it just seemed like the right direction to go in, because the lyrics on the new record are more immediate and more in the moment.

To compare it to the first album, it’s not so nostalgic.”

Yet it’s clear nostalgia still plays a big role on Belong as it’s heavily influenced by the music the band listened to during their formative years.

“A lot of us grew up on those 90s bands like the Smashing Pumpkins and that sort of alternative music.” Peggy said. “I think with

“WE SET OUT TO DO THIS STYLE OF MUSIC WE CALL ‘NOISY POP’.”

our first album, we got a lot of comparisons to My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain. And those are bands that we are definitely into but for me personally, the sound of a band like Smashing Pumpkins was more important. They were my favourite band when I was like 15, but I was too naive to pinpoint the elements of what I liked about that sort of music until now, with this album.

Later on when I did discover things like early My Bloody Valentine or the older bands on Slumberband Records (POBPAH’s US record label), like Rocketship and The Aislers Set that was when I was able to go back and look at bands like the Smashing Pumpkins and say, woah, this has actually a lot of the same elements of this newer stuff I’ve been discovering.” So while Belong will be a slightly new direction for the band, it’s clear that it’s not going to represent a radical new departure from their earlier releases which got almost instantly labelled as sounding like twee or indie-pop relics straight from the UK’s C-86 scene some 25 years ago. I asked Peggy if she found those labels to be limiting in any sense.

“The thing is, a lot of my favourite music

“THE MUSIC ITSELF ISN’T TOO CUTESY AND A LOT OF THE LYRICS ARE ACTUALLY QUITE DARK AND MISERABLE AND SAD.” would sharing those adjectives - twee and indie-pop - so it’s kind of like we’re making the sort of music that we’ve always liked.

There are other styles of music that I like but (twee and indie-pop) are my favourite genres.

Personally, I’m not one of those people who’s like, ‘oh, I like all kinds of music! I love world music and country music and so on.’ I’m quite particular in what I like and what I don’t like.

Other than that I think that our music could possibly be labelled as twee and I think that

there are some perhaps ‘wussy’ elements about it, but a lot of people end up being surprised when they come to our live shows. Because they see that we’re not a cutesy, whimsy band. The music itself isn’t too cutesy and a lot of the lyrics are actually quite dark and miserable and sad.”

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart aren’t the only band around right now combining the superficially ‘cutesy’ or ‘wussy’ with something a lot more sinister. I mention bands like Vivian Girls or Christmas Island, both bands who could be said to hide dark undercurrents under a music that’s influenced by a lot of the same precursors as POBPAH. “We toured with Vivian Girls in Europe a couple of years back, and there’s definitely a lot of crossover with the fans,” Peggy says, “and to a degree we ended up lumped together geographically and stylistically with lots of other bands like them and others, but they have different roots to us. They grew up on more punk stuff than we did and obviously they have the whole girl-group harmony thing going on. Whereas I feel like for us we bonded initially over bands like My Bloody Valentine

and this band called the Manhattan Love Suicides and early Yo La Tengo stuff. But it’s funny, at first (Vivian Girls) got mentioned a lot in relation to the C-86 cassette, like we did, but they hadn’t ever heard the C-86 tape before. Somebody told them that they sounded a lot like that, but when they went and checked it out they thought, well, this isn’t very good.

Whereas for us it’s a comparison we’d appreciate, stylistically.”

But trends like these are just trends, they don’t stick around forever. If it’s cool right now to dress like a young Winona Ryder and to douse your songs in reverb, then you can be sure that a year or two on, it’s going to start to look really uncool. I asked Peggy if she had an escape-plan for the day POBPAH’s schtick runs dry and this twee thing becomes a byword for the unfashionable. “Well, that’s interesting to think about, but the thing is, when we started POBPAH the whole thing wasn’t in fashion. So we never had this expectation of oh, we can now capitalise on this trend now, wahey. This was just the kind of sound that we were into, that we grew up listening to, so it’s what we wanted to make ourselves too.”

9

COMICS

by Alex Towers

THE FUNNY PAGES

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nline comics started out like the shy kid starting out in a new school, barely stepping outside the bounds and only funny if you shared the same pool of references. Penny Arcade were one of the first breakout comics and developed an enormous following. They were and still are the “two gamers on a couch” comedy archetype, spawning countless emulators but very few equals. As the internet expanded and broadband meant that we no longer had to wait for images to load at tantalizing pace trudging 10

down the screen. The web-comic was no longer the property of gamers and computer programmers, it spread its little wings and now there is estimated to be over 38,000 comics on the net, meaning infinite variety and a comic catering to every imaginable niche, from gaga-day strips in the style of Peanuts to epic story-arcs, from the literary and historical parodies of Hark! A Vagrant to the fantastical adventures of a boy and his dog in Copper.

Writers and artists are not constrained by the preferences and schedules of publishers and this complete freedom of expression brings

out the best and the worst in standards of fiction. These websites are non-profit, depending wholly on a fan-base that enjoy a comic enough to either donate to the site or buy the web-cartoonist’s self-designed tie-in merchandise or self-published works, meaning only a handful manage to earn a living wage from these labours of love.

I was lucky enough to speak to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weiner, who is among this handful of web-comicists who have become self-sufficient from their work.

He describes how when it all got started for

him, he never expected he’d considering comics as a viable career, “Back in high school I drew comics mostly for friends. It wasn’t until a few years out of college that I decided I had to do it for a living. I think you’ll find similar stories for most of the people in my cartooning “generation.” The idea of doing it for a huge audience didn’t dawn on many of us till we were already in the thick of things.”

SMBC updates almost daily and his style largely consists of bait-and-switch gags whereby he frequently sets up a situation and then subverts either the established premise of the audience’s expectations and usually spiked with pitch-black humour. On the evolution of his style and his penchant for one-panel comics he says, “I’ve actually gone through a 360 on this issue. I started off doing multi-panels, but eventually got annoyed with the idea of having to dance around the jokes. I suspect most people start with characters and have them proceed to jokes. I would start with jokes then try to find the right character’s mouth to stuff them in. As such, the old strip got up to about a dozen significant characters within 100 strips or so. It occurred to me that it’d be much easier just to do single panels, so that I could get to the matter directly. Lately, I’ve reversed back. In fact, I’m planning to do a 10 panel comic this very night. Much like the character problem I had earlier, I eventually found single panels to be too confining. Nowadays, I don’t limit myself - I do long, short, and even graph-based comics. SMBC has sort of morphed into my all-purpose thought and joke depository, and readers seem to enjoy this.”

On his trademark comedy of misdirection I asked if he believed that sequential images could better subvert reader’s preconceived notions, “I think every medium can subvert expectations very well, but they operate in different ways. Prose is good because the monotonous strings of words can get you offguard. One of my favourite P.G. Wodehouse misdirection lines – and I’m paraphrasing here, is “She looked as if she were poured into her dress and forgot to say ‘when.’” In movies, you can get away with a lot by just having a character inflect his lines to throw the audience off-guard. In comics, you have access to both these modes of attack, though perhaps in somewhat limited form.”

Recently a SMBC comic was taken out of context and posted on the National Organisation for Marriage website, a group who primarily act as lobbyists against same-sex marriage (otherwise known as the “gay-storm” video people). However NOM made the egregious error of “hotlinking” the image, that is, displaying an image that was accessed directly from SMBC’s database; he was then able to change the image to a rainbow flag and attach a quote from Thomas Jefferson with a message of equality for all. He added on his blog that though there seems to be the idea out there that action through the internet has no significant effect, “This generation fights in a new way but we fight just as hard.” He says that the “the whole NOM thing was a great experience in validating my view that “good deeds are good PR,” ad that now luckily “I have a large enough audience now that I can usually right wrongs with people misusing

my stuff. For example, sometimes people fail to give proper credit to images I make, and via twitter I can usually “release the hounds.” ” One way thing that distinguishes webcomics from their print media siblings is the very direct connection and access web-cartoonists have with their fans who sometimes give the feedback and criticism of a chorus of editors. Weiner explains that for him “Like a lot of web-cartoonists, I don’t have any experience NOT doing this through the Internet.

It is probably quite a bit more personal than it was for cartoonists in the past. I get daily emails from readers sending accolades and complaints. It’s good because it keeps you on your toes, but it can be bad if you take it too seriously.” In the early days of the web-comic, theorist Scott McCloud predicted that the online comic had the potential to become an “infinite canvas” they are not confined to the width and length of the page but can instead be read as a type of scroll or linked web. However in practice this theory did not quite pan out, “Here’s my take on Scott McCloud, and I suspect most working cartoonists agree: I love Scott McCloud’s ideas. That said, many of his ideas did not work out. The infinite canvas, in my opinion, just never really made it outside of the high-art forms of comicking, because nobody wants to read on an infinite canvas.”

Web-cartoonists who can often convert their comics into self-published books for the fans who want a tangible collection of comics they love; SMBC too is getting its own book which is coming out soon and will be published by retired Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

Web-comics have rejuvenated the comic medium, finally pushing comics out the cul-

“SMBC HAS SORT OF MORPHED INTO MY ALL-PURPOSE THOUGHT AND JOKE DEPOSITORY, AND READERS SEEM TO ENJOY THIS.” tural ghetto and the rebranding them in the way that slapping on the term “graphic novel” always aimed to do but never could. Finally Weiner speculates on the future for web-comics as an industry and a form, “The big change happening now in comics, which I think is the most important thing for the future, is people are growing up on web-comics. We’re just now getting to a stage where we have readers who aren’t “converts.” I suspect this will have three big intertwined results: far more audience members, far more cartoonists making a living online and that the more popular comics will be more mainstream in their sense of humour.” Adding reflectively, “In general, I have no problem with any of that happening.

The only big downside is that (I suspect) the somewhat cosy community we have will be too big and business-oriented to maintain the same level of camaraderie.”

Highly recommended: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal – Awesome-sauce (and Zach didn’t make us say that) Nedroid – Comic chronicling the wonderfully weird friendship of an ego-maniacal bird and his friend Beartato – he’s part bear and part potato, you see Octopus Pie – cute slice of life comic centring around two NYC twenty-somethings...better than it sounds!

Oglaf – NSFW! No really... NSFW. Dinosaur Comics – Excitable dinosaurs with a lot to talk about (below).

Hark! A vagrant – Literary/history parody comic (below).

Dresden Codak – Partly epic transhumanist yarn, partly nerdy science humour, all awesome.

Freak Angels – Warren Ellis’ weekly webcomic that sees a group of Midwich Cuckoos all grown-up.

Pictures For Sad Children – Humour ranging from cloudy to pitch-black (below).

Perry Bible Fellowship – This defunct surrealist gag-based strip is still a classic (below).

11

TV DIARY #8

by James Kelly Charlie Sheen has been the man who has hogged the headlines for the past week, pushing aside the comparatively insignificant formation of the 31st Dáil, and the Japanese tsunami. Basically Charlie Sheen has gone a bit mad, and in the process has become a meme, joining the ranks of Kate’s Party and Keyboard Cat. So, does this spell the end for Two and a Half Men? The whole Sheen controversy began over the show, so he was the main (read: only) selling point, I can’t see CBS legitimately bringing the show back. I hope to God they don’t.

Recently I sat down to watch the show, to put aside all my prejudices and judge it on its own merits. It’s terrible. I think part of the problem with the show is the fact that it has been on air for about eight years. The storylines become more and more ridiculous every year, and the jokes more tired. You could argue that it is difficult for any comedy to stay fresh for eight years, but this isn’t true for The Office, now in its seventh year, and it certainly wasn’t true for the likes of Seinfeld or Friends.

Part of the problem is the unwillingness of the writings to significantly develop any of the core characters beyond an infantile level of maturity, and the failure to introduce interesting characters makes the show static. Over its eight years the core characters like Alan (Jon Cryer), who was once a sympathetic loser, and Berta (Conchata Ferrell ) the ‘sharp-tongued’ maid have been caricatures of what they once were. I’ve never seen the appeal of shows like Everybody Loves Raymond and its ilk, but never were these shows near as uncomfortable and downright toxic as the outdated sexist and homophobic comments made on Two and a Half Men. The show appeals to the lowest common denominator, and honestly I sometimes wonder if the writers of the show are dared to see how many anal jokes they can cram into a tiny space – cram and tiny space? there’s definitely a joke to be had there.

I hope this spells the end for Two and a Half Men, and that the rumours of John Stamos or Rob Lowe replacing Sheen are not true. Two and a Half Men represents the very worst qualities of American sitcoms and comedies, and really does a disservice to other great shows. Don’t watch Two and a Half Men, watch 30 Rock, or Community, Eastbound and Bound, or the new Jason Biggs show Mad Love (it’s a charming little show worth a watch). Basically, just watch anything 12

HIGH STAKES

R

ecently I realised something terrifying: 2011 marks the fifteenth anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, it began this very month a decade and a half ago. This makes me feel very old. If you’ve never seen Buffy, then you are missing out on one of the most original shows I’ve ever seen.

To break it down for you, Buffy is the story of a young woman who moves to a small Californian town Sunnydale, and who happens to be the Slayer, a woman born once a generation to single-handedly fight the hordes of evil. Sunnydale also happens to stand above a gateway to Hell, so that just adds to the fun.

But, as any fan of Buffy can tell you, it is about so much more than vampires, with the monsters-of-the-week acting as a metaphor for the bigger issues in the show, from boy troubles to abandonment issues, Buffy covered it all. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading NOW and go watch it. You won’t regret it.

In many ways Buffy has become the archetype of a strong heroine – strong and sexy, one of the most kickass heroes ever, but with a sensitive side. From the ball buster Nikita to the sassy Nurse Jackie, these heroines owe a lot to Buffy. Reversing social norms like there’s no tomorrow, Buffy empowered a generation of women to take no prisoners, and continues to be a role model. Buffy influenced shows from Lost, Popular and Doctor Who. You can pretty much divide Buffy’s seven seasons into three categories: one – three are the high school years, four and five are the struggling transition to adulthood years, and six and seven deal with darker, adult themes and see Buffy become a mentor figure. Everyone has their favourite season. For me, Season Two, with the introduction of Angelus, is one of the finest seasons of scripted TV out there, managing to sustain an arc of the entire twenty two episodes while never pandering too much to fans. Others prefer Three, with

Faith, the anti-heroine Slayer, or five, with the introduction of Buffy’s sister Dawn creating a new dynamic in the show, it’s terrific ‘Big Bad’ Glory and the shock ending. Although six, and to a lesser extent four, are seen as the weaker years, I can guarantee you that they are still better than ninety percent of what’s on TV now.

Buffy, along with Friends, is the most iconic show of the Nineties and early Noughties, and the academic studies that have stemmed from the show are a testament to the complexity of Joss Whedon’s writing, and the quality of the show. How Buffy looked so realistic, so professional, especially in later years, on the budget it had is something I’ll never understand. Although the ratings were never record-breaking and the show was criminally overlooked for awards, Buffy is a show that I will go back to time and again because of the sheer quality, in its writing, its acting, its plotting. On this

“ON THIS FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF BUFFY, GO BACK AND REWATCH TV AT ITS BEST.” fifteenth anniversary of Buffy, go back and rewatch TV at its best, and have a think about how the show has paved the way for scripted TV in its present form.

Buffy Season Eight – the official continuance of sagas of both Buffy and Angel - has been released in comic book form, and collected volumes can found in most bookshops.

James Kelly

FILM

THE LIFE AQUATIC

by Aisling Deng

13

B

etween men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship,” proclaimed Oscar Wilde. Submarine is a coming of age film that keenly, but not meanly, attests to this. It explores the murky waters of relationships while sparkling darkly with wit. The films director Richard Ayoade is perhaps better known for his acting, most notably as Moss from The IT Crowd, and cameos in The Mighty Boosh and Nathan Barley. However after his involvement in some cult television and directing a string of music videos for the likes of the Arctic Monkeys and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, Ayoade turned his attention to adopting Joe Dunthorne’s novel Submarine after proudcer Mark Herbert optioned it. Soon into production, Ben Stiller, a fan of Garth Marenghi, discovered Ayoade’s script and came onboard as an executive producer.

While the cast boasts Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor and Paddy Considine, the real gems are the two leads: Craig Roberts as teenage misfit Oliver Tate and his pyromaniac girlfriend Jordana played by Yasmin Paige. The film painstakingly chronicles the tribulations of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood.

As Oliver awkwardly navigates the narrative between precocity and pretense, he finds little 14

solace in his peers who dub him a “gaylord’ and even less so in the adults around him (his mother silently hugs him for 45 seconds when he reveals he has a girlfriend). However Oliver believes himself to be a demi-savior to those around him.

As a result, he adopts a unorthodox yet determined view to solving problems he encounters. Instead of putting out the fire, he pisses on it. He attempts to atone for humiliating an overweight girl by typing a self-help manual for her and later schemes to poison his girlfriend’s dog so that she is better prepared for her mother’s imminent death. He watches with wide-eyed wonder, feeding voyeuristically on whatever struggling species he can find in the desolate Welsh landscape.

Oliver’s iconoclasm is richly punctured by his ironic existentialist commentary, delivered brilliantly by the deadpan Craig Roberts.

It’s a performance that begs comparison with Jason Schwartsman’sMax Fisher in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore.

It is this anomalous narrative voice which initially drew Ayoade to the novel; ‘Oliver is a quite self-obsessed and self-regarding 15-year-old. What I liked from the novel is that he’s quite mean-spirited in some senses, and he somehow thinks he can get out of things by being able to describe and comprehend them.

And that somewhat exempts him from having any moral responsibility. It seemed like a different type of character even though I guess it’s a well-mined area.’

With critics raving after screenings across the film-festival circuit (including being chosen to open the recent Dublin Film Festival) and after a dramatic bidding war for distribution rights, it seems Ayoade has crafted a quiet triumph and it appears that Submarine won’t be low-profile submerged indie fare. So in an attempt to understand more about the film as it opens in Irish cinemas, I talked to the two leads in Submarine, Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige, about abusive relationships, depression and rap music.

“RICHARD AYOADE IS THE CALMEST GUY IN THE WORLD. I WOULD CALL HIM A GENIUS BUT HE DOESN’T LIKE BEING CALLED THAT.”

What attracted you to this particular project?

Craig Roberts: The money.

Yasmin Paige (singing): Money and the cars, cars and clothes…

CR: I mean it was a really awesome script and when I met Richard I realised how cool he was. It’s also the fact that everything about the film was really good.

YP: I had never read anything like it really before. I read the book when we started the film, but I mean the script that Richard wrote was just brilliant. I had never read dialogue like that before, it really felt ’non-British’ and I just thought that it was great and something I would really love to do it.

It has a really French new-wave feel to it. I’ ve watched a couple of Éric Rohmer films and the way the guys idealise women…

YP: Yes! And also it always has a protagonist like Éric Rohmer.

The woman has a kind of hold on the man YP: They’re almost like temptresses in a way.

Nostalgia is a prominent theme employed in the film, worth the furore of promoting it at different festivals. A year later how do you feel about the film and what have you learned in retrospect?

CR: I could have done it better. I could have been better in it. I could have maybe stopped drinking alcohol YP: Yeah showing up late, not knowing your lines CR: Well what do you think looking back?

YP: I can only comment on my own experience but it’ s weird because it still feels quite present even though it’s been a year since we filmed it...

CR: It feels like ages for me. They took way too long to edit it. I just realized how good of a shoot it was actually. How friendly everyone was. I had never been on a set like that and having a director like Richard - I think he is one of a kind.

What about Richard truly makes him so?

CR: The hitting.

YP: Yeah. And the shouting CR: When he would hit us.

YP: The abuse. No. It’s hard. You can’ t describe it or put it into an adjective CR: He’s the calmest guy in the world. I would call him a genius but he doesn’ t like being called that YP: He’s just amazing. He’s got a great sense of individuality. He’s got a unique style, he knows exactly what he wants and he loves doing it you know. I can’t articulate how much we enjoyed working with him.

CR: I’ ve always wanted to know what goes on n his head, like what’s he thinking because he is such a quiet, serene guy.

Would he crack jokes?

CR: His whole life is cracking jokes.

YP: But he was always really calm. It was so fun, Richard loved running around with the Super-8 camera and we were just happy…

The title Submarine is interesting on several levels. What does it mean or symbolize for

you personally?

YP: This probably sounds silly but because in Submarine a lot of the characters are kind of in their own bubble and world and in their heads and you know I thought that submarines are kind of like them being in that sort of containment.

CR: For me it sort of means your heads exploding because a submarine goes really low down And the pressure gets to you?

YP: Yeah CR: If it goes really low down and if you go that low down without a submarine then phew!

YP: Dead CR: You’ re going to pop YP: Explode!

CR: Like popcorn. The pressure of life YP: Maybe we should have asked the writer of the book why he called it Submarine. I wish we had prepared…

So the metaphor of the sea being 6 miles deep touches on depression that is an undercurrent through the film. A lot of coming of age films don’t really touch on the subject. How did you approach it?

CR: I think every sort of kid coming of age is depressed.

YP: Yeah I think that adults always expect kids not be depressed because they’re like “ You don’t have anything to worry about you don’ t have to pay bills’ but I even thought Oliver is very self- absorbed and you know he’s very certain and indulgent in his depression, he’s always seeing himself from an existentialist’s view, set apart from the rest… I suppose it’ s about the perils and worries of youth. In the grand scheme of life they’re not that important but when you’ re young they do feel terribly so and you do enjoy wallowing in self pity, like ‘ Oh, I feel so sorry for myself.’

CR: If we had moved the film into the 21st century, the film wouldn’ t have been funny because he would have had an XBox. YP: Yeah you see Oliver’ s outlet was music and writing but Craig’ s is XBox. CR: …killing people.

“FOR ME IT SORT OF MEANS YOUR HEAD’S EXPLODING BECAUSE A SUBMARINE GOES REALLY LOW DOWN.”

Richard has said that for him the main struggle was filming out of sequence, so how did you get ‘ in the zone’ ?

CR: There was no real process; I tried to stay in character for the whole screen test but that didn’t really work. But I tried to get into the right frame of mind through this playlist of Eminem that is really weird because it’s so not Oliver.

Iambic pentameters.

CR: Yeah!

What were your favorite scenes?

YP: I suppose I like the scenes when Jordana comes over to Oliver’s house for an ‘ evening of lovemaking’. I also like the scenes where Oliver poses the hypothetical question ‘Who would you save in this situation?’ to his parents. He asks his mum then asks his dad and gets two different answers. Those are my two favorite bits in the movie… Je ne sais quoi!

15

MUSIC

DESCENT TO THE ZENITH

16

On the heels of Earth’s 8th studio release and pinnacle of their 20-year-strong legacy, Gheorghe Rusu chats with the founding father and prodigal son of drone metal, now an avid folk, jazz and blues fan, about his roots, approach to live performance and cats, but unfortunately not about his dark relationship with Kurt Cobain.

D

o you remember the 80s?

Of course you don’t. But while our generation was busy being spawned, across the pond, the music world was going through a billion things at once. We forget that, in a decade reluctantly remembered for synthesisers and bad quiffs and mullets, the scene was quaking and bubbling, ready to give way to the musical children of Reaganism. With the digital sampler, hip hop went from underground beatboxing circles to stereos everywhere. Motown’s formerly fresh-faced sirs, Jackson and Wonder, reached unprecedented peaks, as their label-mates carried on giving pop a good name. At the abandoned epicentre of garage rock, Seattle, grunge (by way of punk, alt rock and New Wave) was hatching plans for world domination.

Elsewhere, arena rock birthed various heavier forms of itself, among them speed metal. And one man was having none of it.

He rejected their ways and instead carved

“I READ A LOT. A LOT OF HISTORY, A LOT OF FICTION. AND ALSO TAKE CARE OF FIVE CATS.” his own monolithic mark, not only choosing a road less travelled, but a road never before travelled at all. Dylan Carlson, armed with a guitar and a single chord, shredded at a pace so slow you’d swear he’d never heard of the concept of time. Decelerating and blending the high-gain sludge of The Melvins with the mindset of early minimalist composers, Carlson and Earth didn’t rework the definition of music, they tore it up, one 30-second note at a time.

“I always thought stuff sounded better that way, and that was a time when everyone was trying to be as fast as possible. They treated it like a sports event or something, just worrying about how fast they could play.”

In contrast to this, Carlson’s best friend was Kurt Cobain, and Nirvana aren’t exactly known for their down-tempo songs. Being roommates and musicians, they made ‘sonic collages’, and used heroin (Dylan had

introduced it to Kurt), but I’m not allowed to prod. He hints at it, though. When I ask him if he still listens to his old records, he responds with self-aware poignancy.

“To me, each record is such a slice of a certain time, so if I want to remember that, I’ll go back to it. I really like Phase 3 [littered with shorter, minimalist keys and guitar]... because that was such a bad time in my life, and it’s amazing that it got made at all. There’s a bitter triumph to it. [The feedback-soaked, hour-plus, three-track] Earth 2, I hadn’t listened to in a long time. I was surprised by the tracks on it, I can’t really remember recording them,” he chuckles.

At the peak of his drug use, he sold his shotgun to Cobain for dope money. Yes, that shotgun. After Cobain’s ill-fated incident, Carlson, traumatised, moved to LA, abandoning music and working various jobs. He doesn’t have any tortured anecdotes (“I never had to be a coal-miner or anything like that.”). He didn’t touch a guitar for six years: “I started playing music again around 2000, 2001. I hadn’t had a guitar since Pentastar [Earth’s fourth and most conventional album, featuring fuzzed out rock’n’roll numbers and a Hendrix cover].

I knew I wanted to play again. I wasn’t really planning on doing the whole band thing, or making records.”

Helping him was current Earth drummer and partner Adrienne Davies. “She definitely prompted me to start again. I actually met her a long time ago, when I first did Earth. Then when I came back to Seattle after being gone, I ran into her at a show and we hit it off. Me and Adrienne just started jamming, and it all started to come together, to fall into place.”

During Earth’s hiatus, others carried the torch of what Dylan started. Bands like Sunn O))) and Boris further pioneered the drone sound, bringing it to a wider audience.

“I think what’s cool about Sunn and Boris is that, like us, they have their influences but they’re trying to do something unique.

They’re not just retreading, they’re doing their own thing,” muses Dylan. These giants in their own right sing his praises often; how does he feel about this?

“It’s flattering, and humbling. I’m friends with them all now, and I’m on [Sunn member] Greg’s label, and they’ve obviously been very supportive of me. I’m thankful. A lot of people vanish for a few years, and come back, and no one cares, and they helped keep the whole thing alive.”

Earth’s music, nowadays, is mellower, no longer as dense or loud. They’ve traded electric influences for more organic ones. “Right now I’m on a big Fairport Convention kick, and stuff like Pentangle. Also that African

band, Tinariwen.” Asked about the change in sound, he downplays any major shift, highlighting the consistencies. “There’s certain elements that are distinctly us, that are always going to be there. Slower tempos, longer songs. But within that there’s areas to grow.”

“MY DRUG-USING DAYS ARE BEHIND ME. I DON’T WORRY ABOUT GETTING CAUGHT WITH AN ILLEGAL SUBSTANCE ANY MORE.” The discourse takes an endearing turn when I ask what he does in his time away from music. ”I read a lot. A lot of history, a lot of fiction. And also take care of five cats.”

You don’t expect someone with ties to metal to be fond of conventional pets, but I guess The Osbournes softened the culture shock. I ask for their names. “There’s Ozzy, Cranky, Blackjack, Little Dude, and Shylo.” Adorable.

The new reincarnation of Earth has been touring extensively (playing three Irish dates in April), and, considering the lengths of the songs, performing them so often must become a chore. Improv is the solution. “We try to add to the songs. Not every night is a great night, bursting with creativity, but I don’t want to do a ‘Here’s the song like it is on the disc’ kind of performance. It’s funny because our music has so much repetition in it, but having to repeat it, that’s what I don’t like. Playing live is definitely my favourite part.”

As for the negatives of touring, Dylan’s biggest beef is airports. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve brought on a guitar case and it’s had to be searched. Luckily it’s never gone beyond that, I mean, my drug-using days are behind me. I don’t worry about getting caught with an illegal substance anymore,” he jokingly hints at his troubled past again.

The release of Angels of Darkness earlier in the year reiterates their newfound distinctive, cleaner sound, in which Carlson’s guitar explores melody and space as opposed to texture. I wonder if there’s another overhaul on the horizon. “I don’t have any plans. The sequel to this album is already done, so I guess I’ll be milking it for another two years,“ Dylan laughs, “but I don’t know about the future.

We’ll see what happens.” Gheorghe Rusu 17

SEX

RECIPE

BUTTERED UP

REDEEMING VICE

Rose Ponsonby & Sadhbh O’Brien

The Booty Call

MONDAY My housemate and I have been playing a lot of

GTA Vice City recently. We’re ignoring the increasingly daunting academic tasks on our respective plates. As he pumps round after round into the already dead body of a prostitute while screaming “take that you fucking slut,” I do the dishes in the kitchen. I know that he only enjoys prostitute massacres on an ironic level. Indeed, I wouldn’t be averse to murdering the odd prostitute myself. The thing is though; he is a comparatively well-adjusted, sexually fulfilled guy, with a lovely girlfriend. I’m none of those things, with no girlfriend. So maybe when I’m shooting these young women, shouting “stop running away,” I’m being mostly ironic, but a little fucked up.

TU ESDAY I check my emails between classes. Chat side-

bar. There are four young ladies online, ‘available,’ with green icons beside their names. I’d say, “been there, done that,” or something else hilariously insensitive, but three of these women have, to varying degrees and through variously serious romantic entanglements, shaped the person that I am now. The fourth is a current object of desire; she’s in one of my classes. When placed directly beside my romantic failures, and they are exactly that, failures, her inclusion in the coincidental list makes me feel a little sad.

WEDNESDAY I try positive thinking today. I am a single

male. I am sexually interested in literally some women. I am romantically interested in fewer women. But I am not emotionally invested in any women! I am free, nobody’s but my own! I go to class. She smiles at me and I smile at her. That’s a brilliant feeling, like a glorious sherbet rush.

And it hits me. How can I consider myself emotionally autonomous when a pretty girl’s smile can affect me to this degree?

TH U RSDAY “What are you up to?” I’ve never tried a booty

call before. I don’t think I would be trying one if I weren’t a little drunk at seven o’clock on a Thursday evening and completely alone. I’m supposed to be doing my dissertation but the fridge full of beer won’t allow me. There are no Europa League matches to occupy me tonight, so this is all the fault of the European football schedule. My phone vibrates with her response. “Hi! I’m okay. Lonely and bored.

How are you? What are you up to?” God, she’s very eager.

This is why I ceased communications with her previously.

My stupid conscience kicks in and doesn’t allow me to continue with this pursuit. I’d feel bad for her gimp boyfriend.

FRIDAY I text the girl from my class. “Are you around for a

cup of something nice today?” That’s 11am. Maybe she isn’t interested, but at least put me out of my misery. 7pm. A text. “Sick all day. U around Monday?” Ha. “No, may as well fucking leave it now.”

18

“So maybe when I’m shooting these young women, shouting “stop running away,” I’m being mostly ironic.”

The Bretzel Bakery makes really great bread, and has been doing just that for over 140 years now. The bakery is a local Portobello favourite and one of the few surviving remnants of the area’s Jewish past. Luckily, its Jewish roots mean it’s a great source of speciality breads, perfect for a celiac-friendly rye loaf, or a Pareve (dairy free) variety. This is proper, honest-to-goodness food.

No additives, no preservatives, just gorgeous, fluffy, goodness. Finally the Bretzel has its first cookbook in the works, presenting new ways to overindulge in their trademark loaves.

Bread and butter pudding is a brilliantly improbable dessert. The ingredients are basic, the execution routine, yet the result is unusually delicious. The key, naturally, is in the humble breadslice, and its happy knack for soakage, giving us the gloriously mushy consistency that makes this dessert a classic.

William at Bretzel Bakery’s

BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING 1 medium gratin dish 100g sultanas, grated zest of small orange tsp bicarbonate of soda, 6 slices white bread 40g butter, very soft, 4 eggs vanilla pod or tsp vanilla essence 150g caster sugar, sprinkle demerara sugar 250ml cream Heat the sultanas with about 150ml of water and the bicarbonate of soda. The water should just cover the sultanas. Simmer for 5 to 10 minutes until the liquid has soaked into the fruit – mushy! Add the orange zest.

Cut the crusts off the bread, butter generously on both sides and put three slices on the base of the gratin dish. They should fit snugly in one neat layer. When the sultanas are ready, spread them over the bread, and then add the last three slices of bread.

Heat the cream until just starting to boil. Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla. Pour the hot cream into this and keep whisking. Pour this custard on to the bread and sultana layers and leave to soak for at least half an hour.

Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Don’t overcook. Serve with ice cream or cream. A great way to use up bread from the Bretzel that you didn’t get around to eating!

&

REVIEWS Films

Books

Restaurants

Music

Guilty pleasures

KING OF LIMBS

by Gheorghe Rusu

19

&

N/S

THE KING OF LIMBS Radiohead

S

ince 2000, Radiohead have been uniformly praised for their constant shifts in sound. It happened with Kid A, when they semi-abandoned rock and infuriated or delighted their followers with a drastic makeover in the form of computer-aided music. People called it a masterpiece. It topped countless lists. Companion Amnesiac tends to be seen as an afterthought, and Hail To The Thief seems by all accounts (the band’s included) a hesitant return to more traditional songwriting, but they were still eaten up and earned well-deserved accolades. In Rainbows, like HTTT, married digital and live instrumentation and influence even further and more seamlessly than its predecessor, again balancing the beautiful sparkle of their serenades with surrealist bangers.

And then there was the hoo-hah of the release strategy, springing it upon their unsuspecting audience like nobody’s business. With “Free” as a pricing option, no less. Radical and unprecedented, the always-evolving Radiohead.

Well, they’ve done it again. One week’s notice, six days’ worth of nail-shredding anticipation, one pleasant surprise arriving one day early. You can’t blame us for salivating at the announcement and release like drones, because Radiohead are one of the most inspired, creative, talented and consistent bands of our time. They’ve only gotten better with each subsequent release, building on unmatched material with even more bravado. The bad news is, this is where the trend stops. This is a wholly new beast, and not always a pretty one. It’s also not free, and at times it’s doubtful 20

it’s worth your money as much as any of its predecessors.

It’s not a bad record by any means, but it’s markedly different. When you consider the change here from In Rainbows, to call OK Computer to Kid A a huge shift seems almost like nitpicking. They don’t merely do away with some of their instruments, they do away with entire song structures. They take their stream-of-consciousness arrangements to a whole new level. Songs tend to finish the way they start, ambiently and with minimal detours. Even more remarkably, it’s hard to distinguish guitar among the tools used, synthesisers taking centre stage, and drummer Phil Selway relinquishing most duties to electronic beats or Thom Yorke’s acoustic percussion, like on Give Up The Ghost. This is a standout, but also an anomaly for King Of Limbs.

It’s folksy (a choir lulls to a simple and rare acoustic guitar backing, as strings and horns wriggle their way in), in contrast to the rest of the album’s electronic consistence. Bloom, the first track, sets the mood with a DJ Shadowesque synth loop that recedes to an IDM beat and fuzzy bleeps. Thom’s self-manipulated vocals make their debut, with a deceptive slur reminiscent of Amnesiac’s Like Spinning Plates. The album peaks and dips like a bastard, though, in terms of quality. Next, Morning Mr Magpie introduces a pretty inconsequential and redundant riff, to make up what is one of their few frustratingly grating songs: as Thom wails with needless determination, he highlights his own lyrical shortcomings. I suppose it was to be expected. The couple of

non-album tracks that preceded this release hinted at their increasingly experimental ethos, the moodier turn towards an undefinable style, but not to the extent of the weak cuts here.

Not only that, but there is a distinct lack of their trademark, token upbeat numbers.

There is no Optimistic, no Myxomatosis, no Bodysnatchers. The closest we come is Little

By Little, which blends a sitar-like rhythm guitar with an industrial beat, a platter for Yorke to serve up his lyrical mediocrity: “Little by little, by hook or by crook / I am such a tease and you are such a flirt.” Thankfully, there are some welcome additions to the band’s canon: lead single Lotus Flower propels with strong vocal hooks that burrow themselves deep into the hummable subconscious, and Codex recalls In Rainbows closer Videotape, a haunting, slow-burning piano piece.

Radiohead have set the bar pretty high for themselves, so perhaps it’s harsh of me to scrutinise them so profusely. But as a Scottish smart-ass once said, “If Foals’ Total Life Forever had been released by Rihanna instead of her own 2010 record, idiots on the internet would be calling it one of the greatest records ever made.” The same applies here, surely.

Had some artist of lesser credibility made this, it’d probably be turning heads and ears the world over, but we have to judge it by Radiohead’s own immaculate standard. They’ve made their bed, and now, we all have to lie in it, no matter how uncomfortable it is compared to what we’re accustomed to. It’s good, but not good enough. Gheorghe Rusu

I

II.1

CRACKBIRD

NO ROMANCE Nancy Harris

Crane Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

FOOD Tweets have been flying fast and furious

as the hipster and foodie communities of Dublin are swept up by the latest food craze to hit the city, namely – Crackbird. The brain-chick of Joe Macken, the man behind the ever-delicious Jo’burger, Crackbird is a ‘pop-up’ restaurant tucked away in Temple Bar’s dingy Crane Lane. Serving ‘addictive’ chicken (hence the name), Crackbird is creating a stir for all the right reasons, and first and foremost of these is that the restaurant is offering a free feed to anyone who tweets them to reserve seats. Yes, knock me down with a feather, you read right, free food. To reserve tweetseats just tweet #tweetseats@crackBIRDdublin, followed by your name, reservation date and time, and no. of people. The restaurant tweet back at you to let you know if they have availability at that time or not, and it’s as simple as that. There are six ‘free’ tweetseat sittings a day running every two hours from twelve noon, with the other seats left free for paying customers.

‘Pop-up’ restaurants have been steadily advancing across the globe, though Crackbird is a slightly generous take on the term as, having popped-up and opened its wings to the public on February 21st, it will stick around until May 22nd before closing up and flying away.

Although the restaurant is set up in temporary surroundings the décor is still engaging, and seems like an eclectic mixture of Gruel and Jo’burger, with mismatched napkins galore, and spritzy drinks such as homemade lemonade (€2.50) served out of bulbous jars

with those little thin straws you used to get at birthday parties when you were seven. There is also an emphasis on sharing and communal eating and the prices reflect this. Quite simply, the more you order, the cheaper it is. So while half a chicken for one person costs €9.95, a whole bird shared between two is €17.95. The same applies to drink, with a single bottle of Pilsner priced at €4.75, but opt for a crate instead and only pay €3.75 a bottle.

A stomach growling with hunger is the best thing you can bring with you to Crackbird as when they say you get half a chicken, they really mean half a bird, a big bird at that. The crunchy, succulent ‘Skillet-fried buttermilk chicken’ arrives heaped and glistening in a bucket. The ‘Super crisp soy garlic chicken’ also comes by the bucket load, and packs quite a flavour punch. If you’re not ready to gorge on half a chicken, you can always plump for ‘Wings by the dozen’ (€11.95), or for a lighter meal try the ‘Semolina crunch chicken’ or ‘Chilli Chicken crunches’, both €4.95 including your choice of one dipping sauce. Various quirky sides such as couscous, slaw, and roast parsnip and nigella seed salad are on offer to accompany the heaps of chicken placed before you. The final element needed to complete the meal is one of the range of sauces on offer for dipping purposes, don’t miss the whipped feta and burnt lemon creation. The only downside to all this chicken deliciousness is that sadly the birds aren’t free-range, but from a small co-op farm in Cavan. Rose Ponsonby

THE ATRE Nancy Harris’ triptych of short

plays delves into an ordinary set of personal histories, in each case prodding beneath the surface at the sensitive tissue below. The 50-minute segments hinge on their setting, as circumstances draw characters out of their comfort zone and into self-revelation. The settings also account for the most of the play’ s laugh- out-loud moments: final segment aside, the scenarios are prime sketch-show material. The first is set after Laura has got in contact with an old schoolmate, “posh Gael” , now a photographer known for her portraits of prostitutes, eunuchs and hermaphrodites.

Laura, who had always admired Gael’s don’tgive-a-shit attitude in school but been too “ weak” to adopt it herself, has gotten in touch with an unusual favour to ask. Would Gael photograph her in sexy poses for an album she wants to make for her boyfriend?

It’s a premise so full of potential for awkwardness that you wonder why either of them would agree to it, but they’ ve done so when the play starts, and it is this kind of Peep Show territory that makes the ensuing revelations so flinch-inducingly poignant. Despite the open coffin that sits centre-stage, the second segment is lighter than the first, with the dead mother inside acting as a third character who may or may not be listening. This becomes a comic pivot for much of the action as Stephen Brennan’s solid middle-class Dub finds his wife an excessively zealous psychologist with reason to believe he’s hiding something.

Lastly, we find ourselves looking in on a West Cork cottage, as a son and grandson lower their ailing granny Peg into a wheelchair and coerce her towards a Dublin nursing home. What is most impressive about Harris’ first full-length production in Ireland is her ability to be funny and insightful about the darkest of subject matter, resisting the easy path of pessimism and choosing instead the thorny, uncomfortably human truth. From the most uncomfortable silences come the biggest laughs. The truths of cancer, parental cruelty and internet perversity are felt with as much force by the audience as they are by the characters, as if Harris herself is in the act of revelation, saying that these are real issues, so let’s have no romance. Jamie Leptien 21

&

II.1

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE N/S Queens of the Stone Age

CHALET GIRL Director: Phil Traill FILM Every now and then a film comes along

of such little worth, such little artistic merit that it should be pulled from cinemas, incinerated and then buried in a dankly remote bog.

Chalet Girl, a self-proclaimed “Snow-mantic comedy” is such a film.

This cinematic miscarriage tells the story of Kim (Felicity Jones) who used to be skateboarder but now works in a burger bar because her mother died and her father is a shut-in. For some reason she then takes a job looking after the lodge of a wealthy family in the Alps. Although there are initial hurdles, she somehow overcomes them and then manages to sleep with Ed Westwick. Hurray.

The most damning thing about director Phil Traill’s sophomore effort (his previous opus was last year’s abhorrent All About Steve) is its complete lack of redeeming characteristics. Every single vaguely amusing line (most often delivered by one of the two Bill’s in the cast- either Nighy or Bailey) is almost immediately spoiled by one of intensely profound excruciation. Limping along from poor set-ups to glaringly obvious conclusions, the films ninety-seven minutes feels three times as long. Kim accidently puts caviar on scrambled eggs! Kim throws a house party and someone breaks the stereo! If this wasn’t enough, saccharine pop songs are crudely slathered over nearly everything, ensuring that any schadenfreude one could reap from watching Kim’s wretched pratfalls is sapped entirely by the constant presence of the inane soundtrack.

However, according to a Telegraph article, Chalet Girl is based on the genuine practice of sending the daughters of Britain’s elite to toil in Ski lodges as maids/nannies/mistresses so they may glean some ‘real world experience’.

If only Chalet Girl approached anything of the abject darkness of that article. If only the part where Kim miraculously discovers she is a dab hand at snowboarding could be replaced with her beginning a maliciously illicit affair with Bill Nighy’s jaded patriarch. If only.

However if you’re the kind of person who might quite fancy watching Felicity Jones comically sliding down a ski-slope on her stomach to the strains of Paloma Faith’s Upside Down, well then fuck you. Alex Towers 22

M USIC Born from the ashes of stoner-rock gi-

ants Kyuss, this guitarist-turned-frontman’s follow up act is an unlikely success story. Josh Homme has always loved creating a dirty, loose and raw sound, seemingly a million miles away from the more clean cut radio acts of the time. QOTSA found success on their singles on 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, harnessing and focusing Homme’s natural song-writing ability and trimming back on the dirt which defined his earlier work, instead drawing on his keen ear for melody and catchy hooks.

The re-release of the band’s first album is an excellent opportunity to have a fresh look at where it all began, to go back to the grimy beginnings, for better and for worse.

Opener Regular John makes their statement quite clear indeed: this isn’t an album about riffs or hooks, it’s all groove. The opening chord is put to some serious use, and it takes a full minute before they change it. It doesn’t feel samey though, and the occasional flourish of chord progressions sprinkled throughout is genuinely inspired.

At first, Homme seems unsure of himself whilst singing, but his vocals serve to compliment to music in a minimalist way, keeping the focus on the all-important groove.

It’s markedly different to Kyuss, whose lead singer, John Garcia, favoured a much more aggressive approach; whereas both bands are defined by Homme’s masculine, inebriated sound, the Queens easily distinguish

themselves by vocals alone, giving a much more relaxed vibe.

Avon is the closest Homme comes to hinting at the future sound of Queens: a mid tempo, tightly focused track built on a solid riff, with interesting bass variations and layered falsetto vocals that would come to characterise much of the band’s later work. It’s one of the clear standouts on the album, and easily sits alongside their more famous fare, namely No One Knows and Little Sister, though it’s still noticeably rawer, as keeping with the acid-drenched style of the rest of album.

What’s interesting about the re-release, aside from the improved mastering and production, are the B-sides. Rather than being tacked on at the end like most special editions, here they are actually slotted into the sequencing proper as if they were always there.

It’s a move that works remarkably well, and actually improve the album’s flow: Bronze gives us a more melodic affair to break up the repetition, and the instrumental These Aren’t The Droids You’re Looking For is worth it for the name alone.

Clearly, the album is best listened to with a beer in hand (or possibly a different substance, though I couldn’t possibly endorse that. No sir.) There’s fewer highlights than on their later albums, but it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable standalone, more aloof, more primal and just all round filthier. And sometimes, that’s all you need. Mark Daly

II.1

HATE: A ROMANCE Yristan Garcia

BOOKS Tristan Gar-

II.2

LIMITLESS Director: Neil Burger

FILM With the libraries crammed full of har-

ried looking students intently devouring books with bloodshot eyes and grinding teeth its clear exam season is beginning. And as we all head once more into the breach of red bull fueled panic attacks, there will always be those who decide to leave studying till things turn desperate. Who tell themselves that you only really need two solid weeks of work and that the exams are ages away – we haven’t even gotten to the Trinity Ball yet. So if you’re type of person that’s reading this and feeling reassured, Limitless might just be the slice of heartening escapism you might enjoy.

The film tells the story of schlubly writer Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper). Eddie cannot hold down a job or girlfriend and is unable to bring himself to write so much as the first word of his long gestating novel. Stumbling from cigarette to whiskey to sitting alone in his hole of an apartment clipping his toenails, it’s not surprising he begins to accept he has no future. But then his estranged brother-inlaw shows up and offers him a pill. A pill he claims that can solve all of Eddie’s problems by allowing him to access the whole of his brain (as apparently humans normally only use 20%). After some understandable speculation Eddie, deciding his life cannot possibly get much worse, downs the little clear tablet.

Instantly he begins to perceive his world differently, he is able to remember finite information with startling accuracy, he notices miniscule details that others do not and is suddenly

more handsome and charming. His bleary eyes become bluer and the chubby layabout begins to look more like Bradley Cooper. After securing more of the magical little pills, he finishes his novel in a week then sets his sights on Wall Street and political office.

However the filmmakers really shouldn’t have decided on the title Limitless. After a fairly interesting first section, the plot’s confines mean the rest of film feels like it never really knows quite where it’s going. When Eddie runs out of the drug and a scabby exuser shows up to offer croaky warnings of the withdrawal symptoms, it appears to be turning into a an addiction drama. Then, realizing that this doesn’t really sit with the ‘action thriller’ genre that was being strived for earlier, they decide to gloss over the addiction storyline and move onto a shadowy conspiracy with a knife-weilding assassin. Also thrown into the mix is a Serbian loan-shark with a taste for Eddie’s magic pill, Eddie’s shallow and thoroughly pointless girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) and a shady Wall Street CEO (Robert DeNiro - once again phoning it in for the paycheck). With all the unsettled plot strands you begin to realise that Limitless is in fact thoroughly limited. It cannot escape its limitations. It sets itself up, but then does not now how to end.

Not a great film then. But with exams approaching the thought of a solve-all pill existing isn’t entirely unappealing.

Alex Towers

cia claims from the very start of Hate: A Romance, his debut novel centring on the philosophical implications of bareback homosexual sex, that the work is in no way autobiographical – an understandable clarification to make.

Spanning from the 1980s – “a cultural and intellectual wasteland except when it came to TV, free-market economics and western homosexuality” – all the way up the present day, the novel chronicles the lives of four main characters: Doumé, a leader and activist in the gay community; Leibo, a public intellectual who makes his way down the well-trodden path from the left to the right of the political spectrum; Willie, an under-educated iconoclast who rises to prominence in gay community; and finally Liz, the impassive narrator who works as a cultural journalist for Libération.

The novel begins as Doumé fondly recalls the joie de vivre that existed in the gay community before the AIDS crisis. “What made it all the more fun was that it seemed so political. We’d ditched the political parties, Trotsky, the discussions, the ‘workers’. […] You fucked and it was political.” That all ended with AIDS. Awareness programmes were setup, promiscuity was discouraged and condoms became an item of faith. When Doumé and Willie end their relationship of five years, Willie – too young to have experienced sex as a political act – comes to see AIDS as, “a moral argument that’s trying to police our sexuality,” and starts a counter-movement encouraging bareback sex, setting-up infection parties and describing of the act of infection as an ‘impregnation’. ‘Hate’ relies heavily on quotations, but Garcia can write a nicely turned simile: “The slow sound of the Sunday traffic out the window, under the gray clouds like wet cardboard, like the fur of a cat.”

If ‘Hate’ seems a touch labyrinthine for a novel with only four characters that are properly explored, it is because on top of the cast of bit-parts played by lovers and friends, philosophers and cultural critics are frenchly evoked as if they too were characters. Leibo remembers. Even under-educated Willie evokes Spinoza, whose pantheism Willie doesn’t seem to understand but uses as a justification for spreading AIDS. “Real hate – like Spinoza said, hate is where it’s at.” He’s right, of course. ‘Hate’ is where it’s at.

Kevin Breathnach 23

II.1

SPURIOUS

something a little different for lunch. The quality is variable however, so don’t go along expecting to have the best Thai meal of your life. That said, the portions are huge, the price is right, and quite frankly anything that’s not a sandwich gets my vote. Rose Ponsonby

Lars Iyer

III

BOOKS Spurious is the handsomely produced

first novel of Lars Iyer. It deals with the concerns of two intellectuals in what they believe to be the End of Times. W. worries that he has never had an idea, while the unnamed narrator ‘I’ (one thinks of another shambolic duo, Withnail and I) is more pressingly concerned by his flat, which has become consumed by damp. “Is it two lips of a mouth that have opened, and I am the word it is trying to say?”

“Have I ever had an idea?, he asks.” Has who ever had an idea? The way quotations are structured throughout leads the reader to conflate the identity of the two characters.

Does the other one really exist? The tension between high and low culture, which the book comically, the somewhat tiresomely exploits, owes much to Woody Allen. “Thought, when it comes, always surprises him, says W. But he’s ready with his notebook, he says, which he keeps in his man bag. That’s why I need a man bag, he says.” But Iyer’s real exemplar is Samuel Beckett, whose method of progression through repetition is well-forged in this book. This is a comedy of sure metaphysical depth. Kevin Breathnach

that will bring their daughter back to life for three days. They agree to have the ritual performed, but of course their decision is not without dire consequences. As any other horror film would tell you, what goes in the ground, should stay there.

Wake Wood is not for the faint of heart.

It is full of graphic body horror and shocking gore, typically just for the sake of it. The disgusting visuals combined with a ludicrous premise that’s too po-faced to take seriously.

But the performances work, and though the film is highly ridiculous, it’s never completely stupid. Wake Wood is engaging and well executed enough to be worth watching if ninety minutes of gorey horror is your kind of thing, but if not, stay away. Zander Sirlin

I

YUM THAI Duke Street, Dublin 2

II.2

WAKE WOOD Director: David Keating FILM Wake Wood follows a married couple,

Patrick, a veterinarian, and Louise, a pharmacist, whose daughter, Alice, has been mauled and killed by a vicious dog on her birthday.

Grieving the loss of their child, the couple relocates to the fictional Irish country town of Wake Wood, where something is clearly amiss.

There they learn from Wake Wood’s leader, Arthur (Timothy Spall), of a pagan ritual 24

FOOD Can’t face one more pappy sandwich,

Panini or staggeringly overpriced soup? Well, rejoice and look no further than Yum Thai, the little noodle bar that giving lunchtime the shake up it so desperately needs! Situated in Duke St, opposite Carluccios, Yum Thai can be seen to be doing a roaring trade in noodle and curry dishes during the lunch rush, thanks in large part to the fact that all mains are only €5.

With minimal seating inside and outside, the aim of the game is to just grab your box of noodle goodness and retire to some other location to chow down. Serving firm Asian favourites such as Phad Thai, Sweet and Sour Chicken, and Red and Green Thai curry, all blessedly made without any MSG, Yum Thai is definitely worth a try if you’re jonesing for

HAMLET AT THE HELIX William Shakespeare

THE ATRE This was a second-rate produc-

tion of Hamlet, with some redeeming accomplishments, and some minor disasters. The essentials of the performance were generally impressive, if miles from the surface. On balance, we are led to an overwhelming question: after the award-winning success of Second Age Theatre’s 2010 Hamlet production, why do we need a different production hot on its heels?

This time around the budget was clearly minimal. . Unforgivably, Conor Madden, an inconsistent Hamlet, mixed up his lines at one point. With a couple of notable exceptions his tone of relentless exasperation failed to capture the diversity of the part. Still worse was the costume design; or more precisely – its lack of design. Most of the cast was attired in overlarge suits that seemed to have been picked up towards the end of the January sales. Hamlet was different. Bouncing around in high-top sneakers and skinny jeans, his choice of morose youthful expression was limited to the rails of Topshop. The set design was equally drab. Three walls of trembling plywood does little to distinguish a performance of one of history’s most regularly performed plays.

These sorts of inadequacies are as fatal as Laertes’ ‘unction of a mountebank’. In such light, the individual performances showed astonishing vitality. Frank McCusker achieved finesse, polish and terrific flashes of dread as Claudius. And a small cast of actors doubling and tripling minor parts offered steady and at times delightful support. One of the rays of light was a magnificent gravedigger scene that transplanted the badinage of inner-city Dubs to Denmark. It is not simple coincidence that Madden’s version of Hamlet peaked in the same scene. Removed from the ordinariness of the rest of this production, his gentler manner was revelatory. Like the performance as a whole, it displayed material for a more sophisticated effort. Nicholas Bland

How to…

GUILT Y PLE ASURES

BE THE WORST TYPE OF FILM NERD

by Seán Mc Tiernan

Rap Music ONE Enjoy Kevin Smith. Refer to him and other people

as “Sir”.

T WO Point out that Quentin Tarantino writes “great fucking dialogue” and/or has a foot fetish.

THREE Give out about people quoting Anchorman and Family Guy while spending an equivalent amount of time quoting Big Lebowski in the same contextless way.

FOUR Complain about movies being commercialised and test-screened as if making money and attempting to be popular is a thing that has just now happened in movies.

FIVE Talk about directors using nicknames and as if you were mates with them.

SIX Say anything about Star Wars that isn’t prefaced with “I know it’s a movie for children but...”

SE VEN Use the word “oeuvre”.

EIGHT Let people know the differences between the book and movie and that the foreign language original was better.

NINE Talk about Old Boy. TEN Automatically assume foreign language and “indie” movies are better. Come up with a bullshit justification of this, like “something something... Hollywood machine... something something.”

ELE VEN Autmotically dismiss foreign language and indie films, painting yourself as someone who can fully appreciate popular cinema.

T WELVE Complain that nowadays there are too many zombie movies and that vampires are no longer about sex as if the 80s didn’t happen and Ann Rice isn’t the worst shit ever.

THIRTEEN Pick a popular director and aggressively tell people why they’re artistically valid and “masters”.

FOURTEEN Automatically accept the auteur theory as truth because it makes it easier to pontificate.

FIF TEEN Talk about film critics like they’re First Division football teams. Say “Kermode” as knowingly as possible SIXTEEN Crack open the revelation that you think The Dark Knight is “overrated” or “pro-Bush”.

SE VENTEEN Loudly wet your pants about Tree Of Life before either pointedly Not explaining what it is, implying everyone Should know what it is, or pointedly explaining what it is , implying those present are not smart enough for anything.

EIGHTEEN Insist movies were better in the 70s.

NINE TEEN Tell people Inception wasn’t hard to understand.

“Complain that vampires are no longer about sex as if the 80s didn’t happen and Ann Rice isn’t the worst shit ever.”

by Karl McDonald

You know where I’m coming from here. When you’re by yourself, headphones in, there’s nothing guilty about how much you’re enjoying Dr. Dre talking about how back he is while Snoop Dogg implies that he’s smoking weed. There’s even a chance that you, like me, ended up accidentally advancing past the dozen or so hip hop albums acceptable for the average rockist and ended up uttering Waka Flocka Flame lyrics out loud on a bus by mistake. There are few greater social faux pas today than giving the impression that you are enjoying yourself in a non-ironic way when you listen to rap music.

Fuck people though, they’re always wrong. No matter what vaguely awkward Irish society might want to imply, I don’t listen to hip hop just because I want to feel gangsta. I don’t mind feeling a little gangsta if that’s where the track takes me, but that’s not my aim.

Rap music is great. It’s a mode unto itself. All those postmodern questions about textuality and truth are right there in front of you as you listen to Lil B claim to have perpetrated ten armed robberies with the same tone of voice that he uses to claim that hoes are on his dick because he looks like Jesus (he doesn’t look like Jesus). In Jay-Z’s book, he said that one of his main aims was to prove that rap is poetry. It’s not poetry. It’s a different thing. You read a poem in your own internal voice. When you hear a rap song, you hear it in the rapper’s voice. There are no cover versions. It’s about an individual voice, one-to-one verbal communication.

Considering that rap music as we know it now has been around for a roughly comparable amount of time to U2, it’s been changing at an alarming rate, assimilating and reimagining.

Of course, there’s some actual guilt involved. Misogyny and homophobia are still pretty rampant in the world outside of Kanye (who is fairly misogynistic, actually), and no-one seems too bothered about questioning why rappers don’t habitually spell the word trigger ‘trigga’ in the wake of the decision that the N-word isn’t the N-word if you pronounce it a certain way. Fuck it though. It’s definitely worth the hassle.

25

Das Capo

EMBRACE THE MARGIN Oisín Murphy

he crises of liberalism are many, if various more right-leaning media organs are to be believed, engaged as they are in the perpetual process of suggesting crisis in the paper tiger (which is, by rhetorical necessity, also toothless and clawless) that is contemporary liberalism. Our modern, socially-tolerant society is built on the erosion of fundamental and traditional freedoms, we are given to understand. The values that brought about modernity are being washed away by the ever-rising tide of Political Correctness, all the attendant social and political change that necessitated it and the Western conditions of dubious equality which can (attempt to) foster diversity of any sort other than the political. Of course, this is well-worn territory: the question of the validity of existing socio-political conditions (as liberal) is the overarching discursive cupola under which all media commentary exists, as deferential to one agenda or another, the popular understanding of political issues being increasingly reduced to the left/right paradigm that serves this hegemonic reductiveness so well.

But if there is a crisis in liberalism, it is surely the misappropriation of the values of Political Correctness (which, at inception, were noble in their pursuit of equality and, one hastens to add, ought to be the defining factor in how we view PC as a linguistic concept) to serve a growing tendency towards the marginalisation of oppositional thought or speech, by some. The deeply unpleasant behaviour of Andy Gray and Richard Keys was met with justified condemnation, but also by the direct and incongruous disparagement of their characters, establishing a division between enlightenment and ignorance not on an ideological, but personal level. Lauren Laverne,¹ in interview with The Guardian, saw not bad acts, but bad people, labeling the pair as ‘horrible’ and, in doing so, added to the already bulging sac of indignant opprobrium directed at the two (Gray losing his job at Sky during the controversy, and Keys resigning in solidarity), with the process being again repeated in the wake of John Galliano’s drunken, anti-Semitic tirade in which he actually said ‘I love Hitler’ (a phrase which is both immediately offensive and, in another context, absurdly hilarious). There is a celebrity precedent for such outbursts, with Mel Gibson being perhaps the most high-profile example, but the public response to them (and its circular relationship with the concerned media) can often tend towards the hypocritical.

What value is there to be gained from referring to Galliano as a racist idiot, or labelling Keys and Gray chauvinistic morons, or saying that Mel Gibson is a big shithead with no dick?

By marginalising individuals in possession 26

“What value is there to be gained from referring to Galliano as a racist idiot, or labelling Keys and Gray chauvinistic morons, or saying that Mel Gibson is a big shithead with no dick?”

of deviant or incendiary opinions (or those who simply say offensive things), how can we engage on a discursive level with the ideas we find to be abject in the first instance? It’s easy and gratifying to say that somebody is stupid if they don’t agree with you, but it is also arrogant, reductive and ultimately detrimental to social harmony, especially so if such behaviour is lent legitimacy by its prevalence in the media. In the same way that saying ‘anyone who doesn’t like House is a moron’ is clearly silly and (more than likely) born of a combination of intellectual insecurity and liking House (which are perhaps not always mutually exclusive things), suggesting that anyone who expresses sexual, racial or class prejudice is an idiot is manifestly untrue and also a complete abdication of the social responsibility to pursue enlightenment, on a broader societal level as well as the individual, which one ought to embrace. Certainly, sexual, racial and class prejudices are bad things, but bad things which we must believe are destructible through genuine engagement, rather than the sort of playground segregationist tactics employed by many with a vested interest in sneering and moral posturing.

All of which has nothing to do with PC on a fundamental, ideological level, but represents the co-option of its core values by an irresponsible fragment of modern, liberal society, represented (perhaps disproportionately) in an indignant media. The theatre of popular hatred might be commercially viable, but we must recognise the moral fallout. While college publications foster many with aspirations of being a collegiate Charlie Brooker, we must also call for a more contemplative model of sociopolitical analysis, which denies self-promotion and biddable entertainment (predicated on notions of ideological homogeneity) in favour of an inclusive and non-partisan popular discourse. And anyone who thinks otherwise is a massive fucking dickhead.²

¹ I believe that Lauren Laverne’s heart is in the right place here, and am by no means identifying her as anything but part of a wider tendency in media commentary towards derogatory sensationalism in lieu of genuine discursive engagement. ² This is the punch-line I have chosen to end my article with, I hope you found it amusing and read it in the fleetingly ironic spirit it was intended.*

Competition

Listening to as much Streets as we are in preparation for the Trinity Ball? To win a free copy of Mike Skinner’s latest, Computers and Blues, email tn2@trinitynews.ie with the subject line “Bangers Not Anthems”. If you do that, you’ve won. Pick up a copy of the Ball Guide for more Ball-related fun.