Sinister

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March 2005

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Sinister: a stranger's hand on my favourite dress
by owen lowery 04 Mar '05

04 Mar '05

Well Hello there Thought I'd de-lurk for a quick post That's 2 years in a row I've posted now, I wonder if I'll manage in 2006 or if it'll be back to the good old days of lurkerdom like 2003. Earlier this week I rediscovered the fun of going to gigs, I'd not been to a decent one in ages (one of the problems of living in a cultural backwater like Newcastle) but got to relive my childhood when an old friend rang out of the blue to say he had a spare ticket to see the Wedding Present.So what do you do when somebody offers you a free ticket to see the guys who were your favourite band 15 years ago? Well one upset girlfriend and a small argument later and I was on my way. So I ended the night with a broken toe, a cigarette burn, a few pints of beer on my clothes, multiple bruises and a huge grin on my face. Just like being 17 again rather than 27. So now of course I feel the need to go to more gigs. Obviously there's nobody good playing here for the next year or so but what the hell, I'll just see the local rubbish and have fun anyway. I suppose a few trips to visit friends in Glasgow and Edinburgh could also help the situation as they seem to get a hell of a lot more gigs than we do here. Anyway, here I am waffling on with no content whatsoever, you lot should get back to writting loads of cool, witty and touching posts and I wouldn't have to bore you with my ramblings. Go on you know you want to. Owen PS Good luck to Sunderland tonight all we need is a draw and we're top of the championship Ha'way the lads so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens (William Carlos Williams) http://www.Care2.com Free e-mail. 100MB storage. Helps charities. Make a Difference: Tell car makers to clean up their act - http://www.care2.com/go/z/cleancars +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: It Feels Like Overground
by P F 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

English voices grow harder to credit the longer the trip goes on, the further I get from the sodden island. Charles and Camilla the story like an Amis replay. Running along moving walkways, running and gasping at airports, always the walking way. Behind a lady flying to DC, beside a dude who sleeps then watches a movie. The mechanics of flying bring less thrill than sometimes � no equivalent of the curling cruise over Dublin bay; we rise above England and are up in the clouds. A calm channel plays birdsong: it�s hard to turn it off. Virgin aesthetics: the safety video with its cartoons of cool people, a long way from the real fear of a crash, voiced by Behr and Reeves. Even the sickbag has its own commissioned painting, perverse defiance of the object. Garden State�s first shot is inside an aeroplane, heading for a crash: extraordinary what it�s OK to show on a plane nowadays; so much for censoring all worries. The film�s atmosphere ought to be right � NJ, autumn, rain, drifting � but it�s just like a mediocre TV show, a Portman�s Creek, resorting at times to �this is the part of the movie where you�re supposed to say� type lines. Alfie is worse still. I have managed not to see Law much in films all these years: here he�s utterly obnoxious, and not in a way foreign to his reality. The style of speech, the expressions, the voice, the confidences � it�s all his as well as the character�s, makes me think him hopeless. Turbulence, rocky times in the air, but at Dulles I am back in the USA. Think of Ireland again, the stony ground of the casual airport. Customs line: long time since I�ve been framed as such an alien. Perhaps they�re tougher on all this now, amid their flags and painted soldiers, while a TV above dismally shows the Beckhams, of whom thousands of miles have not spared me the instant sight. The green cards asking if you�re involved in terrorism, or crime; somehow the request whether you were involved in the German government 1933-1945 carries a different piquancy, in its political specificity, its tabbed years. They photograph your face and thumbprints, in a scared new world. The voices gone across now, transferred to another accent, seeking Transfers, sent back from those heavy queues to Check-In where it�s sparse, light, downtime in the great halls. Miss the flight, lose my case, lose my jumper. I am surprised at Customs making me unlace and cool my boots, then abandoning me to don them again on the other side. Boarding gate sprint down modern, down contemporary culture vacuum halls: risen above the runways are the coffee shops and the stalls selling US T-shirts including don�t blame me, I voted for Kerry. How that smarting wound lingers. I think I could be late � no, I am early still, the pilot and hostess assure me; sit and read, they advise, for the plane�s delayed. The boarding gate moves, the number changes: a customer like a cheerier Merritt inquires about it. I wait with The Fortress of Solitude, black and white boys playing stickball and talking Spider-Man. How books, like records, can claim a place, fill a time, a Washington hour. The light changes a little, from a 1950s afternoon to a drowsy American evening. Smaller plane, internal flight. I�m beside a mid-aged brother, working man with a mobile. Lights of DC golden circling below; I wonder where the big famous things are, the white sepulchres, whether W is in town, why I can�t see the Beltway. My man thinks we�re going over Philly when it must be Jersey. Newark's bliss of no more Customs, that ordeal fully performed: up and down escalators and stairs, round one dulled carousel after another. Directions are remarkably bad: half the time in New York I will give better directions than the natives. Talking polite English doesn�t quite work with some of these folk; not till the Hotel Mona Lisa will everyone be so polite back. At Info they tell of a door-to-door van: I go get $100 out, sign up for the van at a panel of redcoated characters, 2 Hispanic, one lady like it�s 1985 and Queen Latifah is back. Bill Murray needs to walk into shot and begin some banter. In no time I hear them call my name (I hear them call my name) and a tubby Colombian is showing me how my suitcase rolls; reassurance of this Virgil, this agent of the last lap. Others in front of me, Europeans maybe, don�t talk through the journey: it feels like a roundabout route to Manhattan, for the great landmarks are visible on the skyline out left from the start, and we drive away from them, plunge into stilled Jersey traffic, slow roads at eight o�clock like it was still rush hour. Towers, freeways, factories coming and going on either side; cars with their number plates declaring New Jersey / Garden State, don�t remind me, or occasionally a more specific New York / Park Avenue. The radio is on, dumb perpetual news whose casters also read the adverts: you enter a world and find how fixed it is on these local vexations, local news and chances. Madison Square Garden to buy ground for a new stadium. Bigger things too: you can encounter large changes through the sudden slant of a foreign radio. Vicious New AIDS variety discovered. And the one that counts for most: Miller was the author of Death of a Salesman, also wrote The Misfits for his wife Marilyn Monroe� the past tense tells you, like with Diana, what�s happened. Broadway dimmed its lights tonight to honour playwright Arthur Miller. The news goes round and round. Through the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan at last, uptown, a ways to go to drop off these passengers and get down the grid. Lights, buildings, avenues and streets, thrill of signs, yellow cabs, this world like no other, Broadway boogie woozy. It may be hard to realize at the instant but this is as vivid as anything that will happen: the first New York hour is the epiphanic centre of it all. One by one the van sheds its load; a woman writing on psychology and here �to party�, no, she doesn�t mean it (but it�s funny the way Yanks say �party� for having fun), is the last before me. Then my geezer drives me a long way round, giving me a tour, the Park there, Rockefeller Centre flashing by on our right, 5th Avenue, - you�ve heard of Mr Donald Trump? Look, his face on the side of this building; polite interested responses and questions; he lives in Queens, goes to business school, yes it has things to do; he tells his associate he has 3 more to drop off when it�s only me. Madison Avenue, the narrow front of the Hotel Sal Mineo: he�s out on the sidewalk telling the doorman who I am, and that dude in his suit is fulsomely welcoming the minute I get out. Their management must make a big deal of first impressions, sidewalk encounters: where would it count more to treat the customer right? I am at an intense centre of politeness, consumer manners, attentive positive discourse. I try to clamber to their level. Thank you, it�s great to be here, I say, like I�m celebrating the triumph of the journey. I�d make a good Yank, all this positivity. He loads the case onto a rack and all is happening at once � I pay my man $20 and keeping the change is taken for granted, I keep a receipt, now my man is wheeling me in, I grab my bag and we walk in to the lobby, muted yellow light, taste, chic, a live jazz band playing to our right, he smiles at this, hey, that�s nice. - Would that be the *real* Jacques Derrida, sir? - Oh, I wouldn't go that far. Up to reception where two pretty uniformed girls wait, and they�re kind of pros, not menial, this place is high class: even menial work here is a cut above, is a career. She swipes my card to cover expenses, they�ll be big don�t you worry. It�s about 2:30am my time, I tell her, I think I�d better just get some rest. The room with one wall orange, three white, a minibar that looks enticing till you see the price, everything provided but everything you use bearing an ogre of a cost to pay at the end. After 21 hours on the go you�d think I would sleep long. I don�t. I wake at five in the morning, fourteen flights up. __________________________________ Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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