Something For The Weekend 42

Dave,

I know you’re heading off with your “fiancé” on your holibags tomorrow (or is it today?) so here’s just a brief(ish) summary of three things I’ve been up to culture-wise recently in case you get a bit bored talking about wedding preparations or china patterns or the whole valance-versus-voile debate and want to come home and go out drinking and bullsh#ting with me.

Sports
Some people would say that “sports” is nothing to do with culture. To those people I’d smile smugly, dive into my extensive vocabulary, summon up my best debating club posture and say, “…well I think you’re really stupid too, so there…” and then we’d agree that I was right and move on with our lives. As you well know Dave, this weekend sees the 19th annual running of the Training Centre Golf Outing (sponsored by Tacky Productions Inc. – a subsidiary of Tacky Worldwide Inc.) and as a former winner you must be devastated at missing out because instead, you’ve chosen a fortnight of “you WILL wear a pink cravat on the day David” and “we can’t have her sitting next to him” and “NO, I won’t do it THAT way just because we’re getting married.”

You’ll be sadly missed by all the boys, although to be honest, your recent Red Bull-fuelled, club-throwing tantrums were getting to be a bit wearing and exposing your extra nipple every five minutes was leaving some of the lads feeling sadly inadequate. I’m sure wherever you go on holiday though you'll be logging on to THE GREATEST WEBSITE IN THE WORLD to get all the latest news about who won, who threw it away and who went back to Inverkeithing with some trollop from the pub. If there were more readers here than just you and me Dave, (I think I might do a wee test next week to find out) they too could get involved by reading all the “hilarious” stories from past years, viewing dodgy photographs of ridiculous haircuts and red cardigans (WTF?) and even placing on-line bets on all their favourite golfers. An interweb experience like no other.

Television
In celebration of Independence Day across the Atlantic in the colonies, I’ll tell you that my current favourite American television outputage is ‘The Daily Show’ on More 4 and ‘The Colbert Report’ on FX. Funny, clever, smart, informed and insightful are just some of the adjectives I use to describe myself for watching these programmes and, if you ever manage to regain command of the remote control – a long shot I know - you should definitely check them out.

Literature
I’ve just started reading another novel by Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre (thank you Russell) called “One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night” which appealed to me instantly because of the synopsis on the back…

“…the touching story of what unfolds when the former pupils of an ordinary Glasgow high school are reunited after fifteen long years; reminiscence, reconciliation, old secrets, rekindled passions, joy, laughter, hijackers, murder, vengeance, machine guns, rocket-launchers… that sort of thing.”

I’m not saying it’s exactly the same as the high school reunion I attended back in 2002 (we had grenades instead of rocket-launchers) but it was enough to hook me from the word go. In truth, I’ve only reached page 70 so am still getting introduced to all the characters but one section in particular made me sit up and shout out “Holy Sh#t, that’s ME!” when I read it the other night.

One of the former pupils, a wise-cracking smart arse when he was in school, is now enjoying a healthy relationship with a girl he idolised fifteen years previously, the two of them having “found each other” after leading very separate post-school lives. He’s recently discovered that she’s pregnant and this passage describes the surprisingly positive things that went through his brain when he first found out. Ladies, expect this if I ever knock you up…

“Responsibility suddenly sounded like a fourteen- rather than four-letter word. Parenthood sounded like a great adventure rather than a waste of Steve Martin. And growing up sounded plausibly achievable. Once his whizzing brain had calmed down a wee bit and he discovered that such ludicrous thoughts were actually there to stay, he appreciated that he shouldn’t have been so amazed at the strength with which his paternal instincts had suddenly kicked in. It was hundreds of thousands of years of genetic programming against a brief decade or so of late twentieth-century pseudo-individualism. Besides, bottle feeding a wean at three in the morning would provide a unique opportunity to revisit the Moonlighting back-catalogue.”

YYYYYES! Four seasons of David Addison, Maddie Hayes, Bruce Willis, Cybill Shepherd, ying, yang, yadda, yadda, will they, won’t they… best late-80s television ever. Along with ‘Thirty Something’. And ‘Cheers’ of course. And especially ‘Northern Exposure’.

Have a great holiday Dave, get some Factor 30 on that extra nipple and hope to catch up soon when you return.

Cheers, Edge