Meeting old friends again

”Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night….” I don’t know if Bruce and the guys realised it, but they had a lot of expectations to live up to last night in Dublin. Me and Bruce go back a long way and it’s been five years since I’ve last seen him and the E. street band play. I failed to get tickets for Belfast last year, succeeded in going to Arnhem, but returned home gig-less, bitterly disappointed and angry at Bruce’s poor immune system. Then finally the Dublin gigs were announced and thanks to a coordinated approach by myself and my husband (he queuing for 2 hours in the early morning, me hovering anxiously over the laptop in work) and success!! We are finally getting to see the mighty Bruce and the E. Street Band in the flesh again! No pressure guys, no pressure. So 8 pm Thursday night I was in a great spot in the pit, worrying that a last minute hitch would stop them from coming on. It was getting late. The familiar nerves gnawed in my stomach. Would they be as good as I remembered? Had age caught up with them? Then ten past eight, Bruce skipped onto stage from behind Clarence’s coat tails grinning like a school boy playing hooky and blasted into ‘Promised Land’. The first few notes shook me with delight. The guitars were sharp, the stage lifted with energy, Bruce shook his booty in front of the crowd: ahhhh the guys are back in town and I was home again. As the gig went on my smile got broader and voice hoarser from shouting all the words – Reason to Believe, Darkness, She’s the One..it got better and better and still the encore to cap the night off. Waiting for the band to come back on I looked at Clarence sitting quietly in his armchair at the side also waiting, too stiff to take that long walk off the stage. Things change over time. My first ever gig was the Tunnel of Love tour in the same venue. Twenty years later and we were all older, stiffer, lives changed. Danny has passed on to a better place. The songs remain a constant though, the older ones taking on new nuances over time, the new ones evolving out of a different place. What changes will have happened the next time they return? I wondered, before being rocked out of my reverie by the beautiful, familiar, soaring notes of Thunderoad. Who knows and who cares? The only future I’m thinking about now is Sunday night when I get to do it all again….

Know Your Place!

We may consider the caste system in India alien and marvel at the concepts in Huxley’s “Brave New World”; realities and fiction where each person has their predefined place in society. But this week, we discovered in Celtic Tiger Ireland that the same wishes lie purring in the souls of our esteemed reporters. If you’re a writer for one of the national papers, you may rant and offer your opinion on all around you. No matter how crazy, vitriolic or plain stupid, you are allowed a national voice and pay cheque to boot. However if you’re a mere blogger, apparently you should know your place and keep your ideas to yourself. Only those fortunate to be employed as writers, may express and share their thoughts with others. The rest of us should simply listen and learn. Us non-reporters should suck up the tripe, which is being sold to us as validated opinions under the banner of the “Irish Independent” or “Irish Times”. At least that seems to be the opinion of one of these writers.
However this “blog opinion vs reporter opinion” debate, which has raged over the airways and blogways of this country is actually missing the real question, which has been raised by the argument. How long more are we going to put up with the giant male egos on the national TV, papers and radio? When are RTE and the newspapers going to take the platform away from Kevin Myers and John Waters and give it to some new blood, unencumbered by their huge opinion of themselves? Maybe then we may have intelligent commentary on matters that interest the majority of the population. Now that would be a Brave New World indeed.

Man Flu

If there’s anything more likely to prove that men are indeed from Mars and women are from somewhere very far away from Mars, is when men get sick. We’re all familiar with ‘man-flu’. What’s known as a common cold in females mutates into the bubonic plague when it manifests in the male body. The simple blowing of a runny nose takes on the proportions of stopping Niagara Falls (hence the marketing of MANSIZE tissues) and it’s no coincidence that ads for pain relief feature bare chested muscular hulks, holding their heads which throb with pain of gigantic proportions. Everyone knows, particularly the male advertising execs, men never get headaches, they get Migraines.
Yet perversely, I’ve observed in my own male specimen that when he is genuinely ill you never hear a peek about it and the doctor is to be avoided at all costs. In fact cost is usually the reason for not going for a check up. “Ah sure what would I be doing giving that fella 50 quid when he’s only going to tell me what I already know myself,” says the same man, who without a second thought, will blow the same amount of money (and more) on Paddy Power. No, far better to suffer in relative silence, bother the women in their life for their opinion, ignore them and only be spurned into action after reading something on the internet.
This is clearly the other reason why women were designed to give birth. The first is that women are adept multi-taskers and so can juggle being pregnant, looking after the home and working at the same time. If men were in child they would clearly only be able to sit still for nine months concentrating on ‘being pregnant’. Every slight discomfort during that time would be hugely significant, however once labour actually begun they wouldn’t go near the hospital. “I don’t know if my waters broke, sure I’d never notice that sort of thing while I’m watching the match. Contractions? I’d say it’s just indigestion. I read on a forum that indigestion is very common at this stage.” If men were responsible for the procreation of life the human race would have died out years ago. Unfortunately the result of this evolution is that women have to put up with the strange mix of hypochondria and medic phobia in the male of the species; and there’s no pill to cure that pain.

An Obscure View

It’s hard work watching ‘The View’. There I was on Monday night, the minimum requirements at the ready: pen and paper for note taking, thesaurus just in case and bottle of wine to wash the waffle down.
This week two films were reviewed. Lofty language was used to tell me the cinematography was profound, the characterisation sublime, the interpretation of the novel insightful. My head spun with the adjectives (the notebook and thesaurus came in handy). At the end of it my vocabulary was enhanced but I remained sadly in the dark on two points: Did they enjoy it? Should I spend 10 euro and a Sunday afternoon going to see it?
The predictable format lends itself to this obscurity. The panal comprises of: an eccentric individual, usually female; an arts related person who hasn’t done anything much of late and you’re never too sure why he’s there and novelist/poet/musician/journalist, usually male and full of their own importance. The rules are: eccentric lady loves the obscure stuff, novelist may like the mainstream but his ego won’t allow him to admit it, while the other guy disagrees with them both in order to raise his media profile. So by the end of the discussion, arts woman feels self-satisfied, the novelist smug and the other guy important. And the viewer? Confused.
Arts review programmes always veer towards the pretentious, and in a way you have to run with it. It’s a bit like complaining about Bertie, we grumble, but if he cleaned up his act it wouldn’t be the same. However, the cinema, unlike alternative dance, modern art or arguably theatre, is an art form enjoyed and discussed by the majority from all walks of life. The average Joe who is still awake at 11pm on Monday night deserves to watch an understandable film review on the only show of this type shown on RTE. The only possible way of attaining this is to invite a member of the public as a guest on the show to offer their enlightened view, the only qualification needed being a valid TV license.
Until this happens, ‘The View’ will remain obscured by images of it’s own grandeur and this film goer will be sticking with RottenTomatoes.com in the future.

Traffic News

I propose that Traffic reports on the radio are renamed Minority reports. Does anyone know who benefits from them? Each morning on the way to work I’m driven crazy; not by the traffic, but by the hushed anxious tones every five minutes telling me how things ‘are moving out there’. This is not news to me as I’m in the car, either moving or not moving. Depending on the time I leave the house, I can anticipate with uncanny accuracy which of these actions I’ll be doing, without a radio presenter telling me. I’ve commuted in Dublin for 6 years now and never recall anyone at work sighing in relief that they caught the traffic news before they left the house as it saved them from a big delay. In Dublin it’s the same streets with the same problems every single day. And can you do anything about it? Can you take a bus or change the way you drive to work or school? The answer is invariably “No, are you having a laugh?” Our public transport system is a mess. There is no underground. The buses run in packs, as they must leave the sparse bus lanes to get clogged down in the same traffic as the rest of us. (Added to which the drivers don’t seem to follow a timetable other than that based on their smoking breaks, but that’s another day’s rant.) The light rail network is great, running frequently and swiftly, however by rush hour they are packed so tightly they resemble 3rd class carriages on a rickety Indian train, rather than state of the art commuter travel in a European capital city. However it’s safe to say that most people are resigned to driving the same route into the city no matter where they start from, because that’s how our poor road system is designed and therefore why there is constant gridlock each day. The rest of the people don’t ever need to use these roads and can avoid them altogether. So to whom exactly is the traffic report of use to? The tiny number of people who may live near their work in a congested area and can chose to walk or drive, depending on the traffic.
As I said, a minority report.

These days..

Well, one of my christmas presents this year was a diary. "A diary?" I scoffed, "I've no use for that!" Then I got to thinking how I used to faithfully record my business every day throughout college (More concise than the books of diaries clogging my shelves, my college carreer could have been summed up in one line: some drinking, a little studying interspersed by lots of hangovers) and wouldn't it be nice to start a diary again? Of course this being the internet age I am obliged to diary online cos that's just the way it is these days. It's the internet age, computer communities, online allegiances. Even though I seem to meet people less and less, I officially "stay in touch" with more people than ever. Quick emails or texts are the new lifeblood of friendships and are just as superficial as the relationships they often sustain. I send virtual hugs and buy drinks and crazy gifts through Facebook. I have list of friends as long as my arm on Bebo and know what mood people are in, who they are/snogging/partyingwith/marrying, even though I barely know their second name. Yet I haven't had a good conversation in ages. However I can't stop this virtual reality so I join up to the bloggers community, whatever that is, and add to the driftwood in cyberspace.