Pink-Slip Bait

Damn you Michele - I'm way too busy to get caught-up in this crap today. But, like a pack of Cheddars or lemon drops, once opened it cannot be put away.

Clear that snow away and get back to work, wontchya?

OMFG - OGWT ???

One of my kids has a part-time job in our local county lending library. I went to pick him up to give him a ride home the other night, but turned up too early, and so I wiled away a quarter of an hour browsing the shelves. Shambling past the "New Additions" section looking at books which obviously weren't, I was startled to find there a DVD of this: The Old Grey Whistle Test, featuring a hundred truly excellent bands and legendary presenter, Whispering Bob Harris.

Now, the question is: how the heck did a DVD for the OGWT end-up in a Ventura County lending library here in sunny Schemie Valley? The show is completely unknown here: it doesn't even run on BBC America. Has to be a Brit, with a hankering for the Old Country that the library could scratch?

I had completely forgotten its existence - a shocking lapse - and am being punished now by its theme tune, which has been running around in my head ever since. How could I have forgotten about Whistle Test? It ran late at night on BBC2, and was the television equivalent to John Peel's radio show: it was hard-core serious, its featured bands eclectic, interesting, epitomizing Rock music, and later, punk or ska or reggae - whatever was new and breaking. The rough, bleeding edge of rock, Ziggy to Zeppelin, Elton John to Thin Lizzy, all back in the days they were new and fresh and vital. And all thoughout the many years it ran, presented by Whispering Bob, who spoke and smiled softly, despite his balding 70's hippy hair.

It was a kind of rock show that we do not see any more - at least, not in America, probably not in Britain either? After it went off-air Channel 4 came up with a roughly similar show hosted by Jools Holland, himself an accomplished musician who played keyboards for Squeeze. But it was never as good as Whistle Test. Not to me, at least: but by that time I was losing interest in rock music, beginning my slide into elder conservatism that holds that music, books, television, whatever, these days isn't a patch on what it used to be, in my day.

What has become of Whispering Bob, I'm left to wonder? Perhaps the answer, a "Bob Harris Country" radio show, as mentioned this morning by Norm Geras, in a fit of synchronicity?

Spooky, though.

LATER: That can't be Bob, CAN'T BE! Surely not? That's a BBC Radio 2 show, and he can not have been reduced to that, has he? I don't want to think about that! I really don't want to think about the alternative: that BBC Radio 2 might have caught-up with me? That I must now be counted its intended audience? That would be beyond awful: it would mean that I, young-at-heart Bearded, am now a blue-rinsed Tory grandma, who listens to Jimmy Young or Terry Wogan while knitting a sweater? For that, people, is BBC Radio 2.

No. I deny! No! No!! Nooooooooooooooo!!!

Bookshelf Meme

From TP <- Annika

"Copy the list from the last person in the chain, delete the names of the authors you don't have on your home library shelves and replace them with names of authors you do have. Bold the replacements."

1. Robertson Davies
   
2. Anthony Burgess
   
3. Kurt Vonnegut
   
4. J.R.R. Tolkien
   
5. John Le Carré
   
6. Neal Stephenson
   
7. Stephen King
   
8. James Ellroy
   
9. William Shakespeare
   
10. Al Franken
    

La Conchita

I didn't recognise the name at all, it was the pictures: I must have driven past La Conchita a hundred times? It sits packed in a hollow off PCH, the 101, the road we drive to Santa Barbara and other points north. A tiny town, a pretty little D-shaped town, ringed by the ocean and stunning steep cliffs. Almost by ritual my wife will point it out as we drive past, the town that had the landslide few years back, where wreckage of homes destroyed ten years ago can still be seen from the highway. Play "spot the ruin" with the kids.

When it rains here, finally, in southern California, it often pours: but even if it doesn't, even if all that happens is a drizzled mist that barely blurs your glasses, traffic will grind to a halt, cars will crash, local TV News will cry "Storm Watch!!", oil-skinned and sou'westered reporters will stand all day all night at freeway overpasses, pointing at the rain. Weathermen, giggle-eyed, able at last to play with their Doppler 2000 rain radar toys, track the cells, this season's buzzword, in continuous loop.

This year, this time, it has been different. The rains these past few weeks have been stupendous: drenching, roaring, day-and-night relentless while they lasted. An inch-and-a-half in my own back yard one night: the victory dance of six or seven inches more, carried away by a dozen small drains at last overwhelmed. They've stopped now.

Fire, Quake, Flood, Slide: the four seasons of southern California. Bound not to the run of the earth about the sun, but more it seems to the trail of dirty planetary feet through the houses of the crystal constellations? A year ago and change we were ablaze. And now a soaken-tailed El Nino brings us floods, and landslides.

And once a decade, so it seems, the mountains must fall on La Conchita. The only town where you can buy beachfront properties for a buck fifty, so the story goes. The governor visited yesterday - Arnold, Schwarzenegger - there to visit, to rally the diggers, commiserate with locals, declare an emergency to open-up State funds. I like the guy - more than I thought I would, at least - but he really, really needs to work on his patter. You can guess what he said, of course you can: "A lady here said to me, We'll be beck!" And that's the plan: to build it all again. Ready for the next one.