Last in The Line

Millvina Dean, the last Titanic survivor, has died.

She was just nine weeks old when the ship sank in 1912, and lived to be 97.

One of the reasons I’m mentioning this is that she was a guest on the Late Late Show the time I was a member of the audience (how I ended up in the audience is a whole other story). She was vivacious and funny, and seemed determined to enjoy the second chance at life she had been given to the full. As she said herself, “if it hadn’t been for Titanic I would have just lived an ordinary life. Once they found the wreck, and then they found me, I was able to travel all over the place, having the best of everything.”

The other reason I’m mentioning it is because of how the Irish Times refers to her in the last paragraph below:

It is, as always with the Times, painfully accurate.

I think Millvena would have found it hilarious.

Read It and Weep, Partly With Laughter

I was reading the Irish Times on the Dart this morning, turned to page 2, and a photo caught the corner of my eye.

Although the happily smiling person in it bore little resemblance to the brooding serial-killer whose picture accompanies his comments on the Web, I just knew that it was XBox.

Sure enough, on Page 17 there is this piece written by our good friend and fellow blogger.

The great thing about the article is that he doesn’t curtail his usual style in any way. As with all his posts it’s brave, funny and borderline pornographic, and yet still makes you sad at the pain and disappointment going on behind the humour.

Fair play to the Irish Times for publishing it, and also for publishing little extracts from some of his posts, including the hilariously yucky one about when they had to do it despite having flu. It’s startling different to the style of article you’ll usually read in the Times, and I can’t wait to see what reaction it gets on the Letters page over the next couple of days.

So, what next for Xbox?

I expect to see him soon on Miriam O’Callaghan (I’m not sure that sentence came out as I meant it), on the Late Late Show (they thought Tommy Tiernan was shocking) and finally on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.

The discussion between XBox and Jonathan about sperm samples will not be for the faint-hearted.

Nice Work if You Can Get It

I had a look at the jobs page in the Irish Times yesterday to see what chance, if any, the people who are going to be let go from our place on Tuesday have of finding a job quickly.

It’s worrying that there were only three pages of job ads, where there used to be a whole seperate pull-out.

But this job DID catch my eye.

It shows how little attention we pay to what goes on in the EU that I bet you all didn’t even know such a job existed. Who holds it now, and why are they leaving?

It’s not quite “Top of the World Ma”, but it’s the next step down.

Anyway, I’m thinking of applying for it myself.

After all, George Bush did the equivalent job across the Atlantic for the past eight years, so how hard can it be?

Forever Blowing Bubbles

This list of Premier League fixtures appeared in yesterday’s Irish Times. Have a look at the first match.

For those of you who have never heard of them, West Hamwich are an Essex club who, when he was 13, tried to sign local lad David Beckhamwich.

They are not to be confused with Gothamwich, Ian Bothamwich or a Toasted Hamwich Sandwich.

Another Great Kate

Today’s post is a bit of a cheat, since I’m not doing the best of the writing.

It might make me feel a bit less of a fraud if I regard Kate Holmquist as a Guest Contributor.

It’s January, it’s freezing, everyone seems to have flu, I spent the day doing the payroll for the office and it sank home how much Leni’s Levy is going to cost me and everyone else while TDs still get unvouched tax-free expenses and six weeks Christmas holidays.

Then I read yesterday’s paper on the DART on the way home. Stuff about the recession, about job losses in Waterford, child abuse in Cloyne, death in Gaza.

And then I read this piece.It’s warm, it’s heartfelt, it’s touching, and it made me more eager to get home to see my own Tinkids (though this eagerness lasted exactly as long as it took me to say “Hi, kids!” and the three of them to say “Uhnnh”).

It’s a beautiful article which perfectly illustrates  the joy and agony of watching your children both grow and also grow away from you.

I’ve always thought Kate was a great writer, since way back when she was Kathryn and her husband Ferdia was still really ill, and she used to write about how difficult that was, but today’s piece is one of my favourites ever.

The Art of Crime?

Back in June, when I was about six weeks into blogging, an article appeared in the Irish Times Magazine about ’street art’. It extensively featured quotes from a graffitist called Maser, and finished with him saying “I love this city, I really do”.

I was enraged by the Times giving credibility to this vandal, and wrote a snippy little piece called ‘Paint Balls’, attacking Maser, journalist Eoin Butler and editor Geraldine Kennedy.

In reply I got my first ever comment. It was from a guy called Brian, who attacked me (calling me a retard among other things) over the fact that I compared graffitists to arsonists, and also on three other counts: that I didn’t realise that Maser now had a job, so was no longer a vandal; that the journalist was laughing at Maser the whole way through; and for thinking that Geraldine Kennedy personally authorised every article in the Times.

I was startled and panicked, and in a reply that still makes me cringe when I think about it I promised to read the article again to see if I had misread the tone, and thanked him for his comment (oh, Tinman!). I went home, read the article again, and realised that I was right, but hadn’t the stomach to carry the fight any further, so I didn’t add another comment.

This post to date has been written entirely from memory. I’ve had no need to go back and look up the previous post or the comments, as they are still burned in shamefired acid into my brain. I’ve often been tempted to go back and delete my cowardly reply, or at least add another, braver, wittier one, but I’ve left the whole thing there as a reminder to myself of how crap I was at the start, and also how fragile and vulnerable I was.

Anyway, fast forward four months, and the Irish Times Magazine has a piece about ’street art’ again. This time it runs to four pages, by two journalists, and the magazine’s cover is illustrated by: Maser!

Doesn’t look like they’re mocking these guys to me. They quote an idiot from the New York Times who used Maser’s “work” as “both a metaphor for and a guide to 21st-century Dublin”. They print touching shit about how these guys feel being out in the middle of the night, seeing foxes, “being out there with the city”. Why don’t they become milkmen?

They quote a bloke called Asbestos, who says “when you don’t have an immediate knowledge of it, it just looks like mindless vandalism”. And the journalist Davin O’Dwyer astonishingly says “But for every piece of work by Maser there are countless tags of negligible merit – scrawls rather than abstract typography”.

That’s the Times colours fitted (or possibly sprayed) firmly to the mast then – Maser is acceptable, his work is a good thing, and we should all be thankful to have such a creative talent blessing us with his art free of charge.

Bollocks.

I do have an immediate knowledge of it, as I’ve to walk and train-ride past acres of it every day. And Asbestos is right, it DOES just look like mindless vandalism. That’s because it is. It’s the crass, city-spoiling, soul-destroying product of selfish louts, who think their desire for ’self-expression’ is more important than the feelings and wishes of the other citizens of Dublin.

The other journalist in the piece, Cathy Dillon, lists the Top Irish Street Artists (ith amach do chroí, Blog award winners). Among them she lists DBC, whose work she says is visible, among other places, on the wall of Marian College in Ballsbridge.

Real street art

It might have been interesting to interview the principal of Marian College. Or the owners of shops who have graffiti all over their shutters. Or the creator of the Last Supper mural in the Millennium Walkway, which has had this kind of crap sprayed on it. Or just any ordinary member of the public walking along any city-centre street. Just, like, to ask them what they think of it all.

But that would have been too much like real journalism. The whole thing is a pathetic attempt at making the Times more trendy and acceptable to young people. And Geraldine Kennedy, as editor, has to take the blame for that. I know she doesn’t commission every piece, but she controls the direction of the newspaper, and to say that it has nothing to do with her is like saying that Brian Lenihan is not actually taking Medical Cards away from over-70s because it won’t actually be him writing the letters telling them they’re not getting them.

That’s my opinion, anyway. And if you don’t like it this time, Brian, I couldn’t give a shite.

Paint Balls

As part of the decline in standards of the Irish Times since Geraldine Kennedy took over as editor, they publish articles aimed at the ’yoof’ to give the paper some ’street cred’. In a lot of cases they do get interesting & witty writing. Sometimes though, they get crap of such proportions that you’d wonder is anyone in there actually doing any editing anymore.

The Magazine with the June 7th edition includes an article on graffiti by Eoin Butler.  The opening tag is encouraging: “Works of art or mindless vandalism? There’s more to graffiti than meets the eye.” The bad news, though, is that this is the last even semi-negative comment in the piece.

It starts with the ludicrous “Street art is a growing phenomenon that seeks to take art out of museums and beautify the urban landscape.” It gets worse. “What connects these disparate artists is an urge for public self-expression, coupled with a relaxed attitude toward public vandalism.” The practice is referred to throughout as street art – the word graffiti is used just four times in the article. These sentences are written by Eoin Butler himself – they are not quotes from graffiti writers. Clearly he is in total thrall to these impish law-benders.

But never fear, he had no problem finding a ’street-artist’ willing to curb his contempt for the establishment long enough to suck in the oxygen of publicity. Maser (“a respected visual artist”) steps up to the plate to talk bollocks with absolutely no sense of irony. “It’s a subculture..” he reckons (whatever that means). When he is caught (“beautifying” a building, in Butler’s fawning words) he is angry at the way he is treated by the authorities. The next part merits quoting in full.

One aspect in particular still raises his ire. “When they caught me, I was using red paint and some of it had gotten on my hands. So the arresting officer said ‘Look, lads. I caught him red-handed!’ And I was like…” He rolls his eyes.

The humourless, talentless, twat. He chunters on through the rest of the article about how he’s been hired by companies to participate in live graffiti jams & branded exhibitions, & how this does not make him  a hypocrite. The photo over the piece shows his commissioned graffito on the wall of the Andrews Lane Theatre. “Eye heart-symbol My City”, it proclaims. The article ends: “It’s not a lie by the way,” he interjects, pointing to the slogan, “I love this city, I really do.”

Not one of his remarks are challenged by Butler. So allow me. The people who cover the streets of the city every weekend in cigarette-butts, Dutch Gold cans and vomit would also claim to love this city, and would be apoplectic with rage if you suggested to them that their behaviour illustrates clearly that they don’t. If Maser loved Dublin, he’d leave it the fuck alone. What Maser loves is himself. And he has decided, as so many of his ilk do, that this self-love is more important than the wishes, feelings or aesthetic tastes of all other Dubliners.

To Eoin Butler: these people do not “beautify the urban landscape”. They make the centre of Dublin look filthy and disgusting. You let Maser spout a lot of shite about the etiquette of graffiti (not crossing out someone’s else’s tag). Oh God, spare us from scumbags with a “code” among themselves. You didn’t ask him what the rules are about other people’s property. Is it OK to graffiti a shop wall? A shop shutter? A house wall? The GPO? At what point does Maser accept that it’s just vandalism?

Because that’s all it is - the same mentality as breaking windows or smashing up bus-shelters. It’s done not out of artistic desire - if it was he’d buy some paper and pencils - but a wish to expunge an inner anger through damaging things that you know will inconvenience or upset other people.

And, Ms Kennedy, the Irish Times has given this mindless vandal newspaper space. You’ve legitimised what he does. If he were an arsonist, what would be the difference?