Posts by Rich Lock
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Hard News: Squatting in the Square, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I’ve got an expat friend who was faintly shocked to find, on meeting his Guardian-reading, Labour-voting upper-middle class in-laws for the first time and getting interrogated like he was applying for a job at Buck House. Even better, apparently, it was a mutually bewildering experience because all the status markers he accrued in New Zealand don’t mean a lot on the other side of the world.
Coming back to the UK after nearly 10 years in NZ was a rather rude reminder of how integral and pervasive class markers are here at all levels of society, both vertically and horizontally (geographically where you're from - accent). Most people will have another UK-er pegged within the first half-a-dozen words, whether you or they realise it or not, and will adjust their social interaction accordingly. The faint kiwi accent I've picked up is to a large extent letting me sidestep that and actually have two-way interaction with people as individuals rather than a set of mutual preconceptions. It's refreshing.
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Hard News: Squatting in the Square, in reply to Russell Brown,
Rockingham Estate, where I lived in Elephant & Castle. It’s interesting the way the old estates have lasted longer than some of the modernist edifices
Innit. Rockingham was a good place to live - those blocks are solidly built to last No real problems with damp, leaks, mould etc. The style gives them a sort of architectural 'warmth'. Never any real trouble or 'vibes' when wandering around.
The later estates, though: Aylesbury, Heygate.....'a neo-brutalist architectural aesthetic' as wiki puts it.
If you haven't seen it, I recommend the BBC series 'the secret history of our streets', and ep1 in particular. A case study in how to destroy communities thanks to an intractable vision of utopian living that bears no relation to reality.
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Tangentially related but interesting piece here discussing studies that show how pollies in the US perceive the views of their electorates.
This probably applies globally, too: I remember reading something recently in the UK about the gay marriage debate - someone who sat in on the house of lords debates and was struck by the gulf between the issue as it appeared to be perceived by the lords, and how it was percieved by of the electorate at large - yer (every)man on the clapham omnibus, as it were.
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Oh, and 'Bob'? If you really have the courage of your convictions and aren't just trolling, how about using your real name?
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Bob Dobelina,
If my daughter came home and said she’d been wandering around in a park at night I’d tell her it’s a dumb thing to do and it’s unfortunate that’s the reality of it. If something happened to her, I wouldn’t tell her she asked for it but I would suggest that she regulate her behaviour to align with reality.
And if your son came home and said he'd been wandering around town late at night on a Friday or Saturday night and had happened to run into some guys who gave him a bashing....? Well, wandering around town where you know there are drunken yahoos is just a dumb thing to do, right? It's unfortunate but that's the reality of it. He should regulate his behaviour to align with reality.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Story, in reply to Russell Brown,
They've given this the new name of EDM, but basically, it's the same music than in 2005 would just have been a form of 'ouse.
It's a pretty big umbrella, though. There's plenty of lazy superstar dj's who seem to be churning out bangers not much different from Ibiza '99 and pretending to mix live while playing a pre-recoded set, but it's a bit unfair to throw them all in there and say it's house. That was just about possible when D'n'B came along, but there's too much diversity and history now. Throwing the dubstep side of things in with EDM is convenient, but it's big enough and diverse enough to be a genre all of it's own. While Skrillix is....not my cup of tea, I'll happily listen to someone like Excision, and there's plenty of diverse influences to pick out of his mixes and original stuff: hip-hop, house, metal, pop. Naturally, now that he's getting superstar big, Teh Haterz are giving him flak for selling out and going lamestream.
There's also EBM, for those who like rave for goths. Clear roots in what used to be called Industrial - Skinny Puppy, Front 242, GGFH, etc, but generally with a 4/4 beat you can swing your pants to - a clear house/trance influence. Post-band, one of GGFH was a trance DJ in Cali for a while in the '90's. It's fascinating to trace the roots and influences, for those who are into that sort of thing (<cough>middle-aged men<cough>), but all the various scenes are far too big and amorphous now for easy pigeonholing. It used to be possible to easily keep up with the details of what was happening in multiple genres. Even if you weren't a hardcore fan and/or only liked a band or two in a genre, you'd know the names and be able to pick out the tunes. There's just too much diversity and history to dive in that deep now across multiple genres - only really possible if you really want to limit yourself to one style (no, thank you). At least there's always new stuff to discover!
Unfortunately, the press release, attributed to Frank Sargeson, has a whacking great grammatical error in its first sentence. It's so disappointing, but I'm sure I'll move past it eventually.
I feel you're pain.
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Hard News: Moving on, in reply to Danielle,
I don’t know if it’s peculiar to us, but it’s awfully tiresome.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/
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Hard News: Moving on, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
I have lots of interesting conversations about television (Breaking Bad, anyone?)
Interesting that you mention ‘Breaking Bad’ as an example of television, because here in the UK……it isn’t (TV, that is). Breaking Bad works as a good example of the shift in broadcast plate tectonics. When it was on ‘mainstream’ UK TV, it was kicked around the schedules on different channels for the first three series and usually given a graveyard slot. From season 4 onwards, Netflix had exclusive rights. There has been a recent spike in Netflix membership which has been attributed to Breaking Bad season 5. We get episodes avaiable on Netflix a day after broadcast in the US.
Breaking Bad is one example of several dozen purely online shows available through the two main outlets – Lovefilm or Netflix: The Vikings, Copper, Breaking Bad. All exclusively online. Hemlock Grove is a netflix original – funded by and produced exclusively for netflix, bypassing broadcast tv entirely. High production values, high budgets, as good as and mostly better than, anything ‘made for TV’.
I used to watch most of my ‘TV’ in NZ via rented DVD box sets. You would struggle to find a DVD rental place in the UK now – the last Blockbuster Video in this city closed down a couple of months after we arrived.
Anyway, ‘Breaking Bad’! ‘Ozymandias’ – bloody hell…..needed a drink after that……down to the last two episodes, now.
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Hard News: Friday Music: History, motherfuckers, in reply to Danielle,
I think Aggressive Trendy Lefty Feminists don’t actually have paid work.
I assumed you were all secretly funded by some sort of Commie-Nazi slush fund. Zombie Stalin on the Moon, or something.
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Hard News: Event Season, in reply to Gary Young,
here are more ways to get around heaven and earth than just cars.