Flotsam & Jetsam IX

 

 Well, thank god the tube strike has been suspended, getting to work has been tricky to say the least for the past few days, although delays have given me the opportunity to tear into the superb new William Gibson novel, ‘Spook Country‘. This is the first book he’s written set in the past – February 2006 to be exact – as Gibson feels that the speed of modern technological advancement renders future predictions redundant. The novel follows three divergent characters (typical of Gibson), a former rock star, a Cuban-Chinese criminal counterfeiter, and a pill popping addict mysteriously coerced into domestic espionage as they unearth a mystery concerning data exchanges on i-pods, contemporary virtual art, and a sinister cargo crate inbound from Iraq…

For fans, it contains all the usual cool references to otaku, fringe and hipster culture, riffing on fashion, design, architecture, computing, technology, consumerism, advertising, linguistics and just about everything else – you can feel very smug with yourself if you ‘get’ half the references.  I missed Gibson’s London visit on his current book tour (ggrrr) but one of the regulars on his authorised website has put together a superb ‘Cyberspace guide to London‘ which isn’t as nerdish as it sounds – give it a look. Finally, here is a nice sypnosis of his first ‘sprawl’ trilogy of books.

For this post’s movie scene I’ve opted for another Scorsese moment, but for a reason. I stumbled across a post about a couple of Scorsese documentaries they’re screening in New York, which lead to this, and then to this – hence my choice. That Steve chap is quite a character eh? Talk about a ‘colourful’ life. I’ve been looking for a copy of ‘American Boy‘ for years so it was quite a moment to see it unfold on YouTube. If you’re interested and get through all six parts, you’ll note a couple of stories that Tarantino has stolen, verbatum, for his movies.

 

What if you were an alien, going about your space business in the wild lands of alpha centuri and this ricocheted off your windscreen? Would you know how it make it work? Yes, it’s a recreation of the gold disk on Voyager 1, now officially the most distant man made object in history. Great stuff, but any attempt to summarise human experience without a ‘Pixies’ track is woefully inadequate. You’d have thought <snigger>, that they’d have included ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ <guffaw> or perhaps, <chuckle> ‘Space Oddity’, oh dear, I kill myself sometimes. Seriously though, wasn’t it nice when we got together as a species and did things like this, like spend millions of dollars sending a gold record into space on a wild errand rather than bomb the fuck out of each other? <sigh>…..

Speaking of music, anyone remember the Melody Maker? Was one of your favourite sections ‘Mr. Agreeable’ adjacent to the letters section? Well, he’s back and is as insultingly inventive as ever. I’m sure I read that Charlie Brooker was the man behind the facade, can anyone else back this up? Anyway, here is some more indie retro madness, some genius has uploaded a selection of extracts from the countdown’s on ‘The Chart Show‘ – it gets a bit samey, but contains some hilarious footage nonetheless – I’d forgotten ‘Birdland‘ existed….