Esquire (May 2009) now on stands: includes vampires

I haven't yet been able to prise my copy of this month's Esquire away from my wife, but I'm very much looking forward to it, because I know it contains an essay by my friend Dan Davies about the Hillsborough disaster, at which he was present; and on the basis of previous discussions with him on this very subject I strongly suspect that what he has written, 20 years on from the tragedy, will be extremely powerful and enlightening.

My own contribution to this ish is a review of the newly released Swedish vampire movie Let The Right One In, which I thought was generally terrific. But the money sentence in the write-up runs like so:

"At heart we know that the best fairytales are not about under-age wish-fulfilment but, rather, the getting of wisdom: the sorcerer’s apprentice makes a devil’s pact, and there’s a price to pay for a wish to come true."

This sentiment is certainly hinted at in the movie, but finally it comes down on the side of under-age wish fulfilment, and who wouldn't, these days?

Run DMC, right and exact

In the early spring of 1985 I bought RUN DMC's long-playing record King of Rock at my local record emporium, brought it home and listened to it in a state of uncontainable excitement. So much so that I called up a schoolfriend, someone with whom I'd talked casually about 'maybe forming a band', and played the title-cut of the album down the phone to him. He didn't seem to like it too much. Hard to fully appreciate rap music down the phone, to be fair, but then I don't think the chap in question would have come round to that sound if he'd spend ten years poring over the master-tapes in Abbey Road.
That said, it was only 18 months later that their cover of 'Walk This Way' made RUN DMC a household name, but in a way it was a shame that the heavy metal aspect of their particular fusion had to be made so explicit and radio-friendly. And nothing they did thereafter was embraced by the mainstream, which possibly hurt them, though they were hurt by other things too.
Anyhow, I say all of this in contented reminiscence because RUN DMC are now formally installed in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and their eulogist, eloquent as only he can be, was Marshall Mathers.

James Lasdun reviewed in FT by RTK

I am, in footballing parlance, a massive, massive fan of James Lasdun, so it was a deeply satisfying assignment for me to be asked to review his latest collection of short stories, It's Beginning To Hurt, for the Financial Times, who have now run the write-up in today's 'Weekend' edition, online here. On a personal note, this is the first time I've written about Lasdun since I reviewed his previous collection Three Evenings for my college paper back in 1992... He gave a reading in the college bookstore not long thereafter, at which I was really pleased to chat with him, and yet more pleased that he had read and appreciated my 'notice'. He was already a highly-rated writer then, and has become only more so in the intervening years: unquestionably one of the finest in contemporary English fiction.

PMQs by RTK

A friend kindly invited me up to the Gods of the press gallery for yesterday afternoon's Prime Minister's Questions, and so I took the rarefied air of the Mother of Parliaments for the first time in 6 or 7 years. Not much changes, of course. This is England. The halls of the palace still have the feel of those uppercrust-if-slightly-faded European hotels. And the chamber remains an august bear-pit created for boorish 'adversarial' behaviour.

I should stress that I am no Hercules, and no Adonis, no Einstein neither, nor am I anyone's spring chicken; yet it does still seem to me that Commons debates and exchanges are a setting that permits a staggering number of paunchy, purple-faced, intellectually vapid specimens of manhood to hoot and bray scornfully from their seats as if they were ready for a principled punch-up in the street that very moment. When, in fact, it seems obvious that most of them could neither argue or fight their way out of the proverbial soggy paper bag.

It's still a bit surprising to my fragile ears how much noise gets made when people, such as the Prime Minister, are speaking. But this is what MPs have to get hardened to, and you see why women and other people with manners usually need a while to get habituated. I'm reminded though of what Christopher Hitchens habitually said when facing a tough anti-war crowd: if only you could hear how foolish you sound when you boo...

Gordon Brown is a seasoned and robust performer at the despatch box, and his scornful smiles toward the Opposition benches when on top are clearly deeply felt. But he's not nimble on his feet in any respect, and utterly rubbish at a number of the things that Blair carried off in his sleep, notably running away with the Leader of the Opposition's last question of PMQs, so as to rally his own benches. That said, Blair was never down so low in the polls, a fact that is possibly Cameron's strongest debating point. Cameron too is a very assured performer, though he's looking noticeably older all of a sudden: most likely this is the toll of grief for his son.