Jumpin' Jack Flash

I have finally managed to get my new TV. I'm so glad the saga is over. The final chapter in this drama was written thanks to my work-mate Stuart Andrews who agreed to accompany me to the Brunswick Shopping Centre to pick up my new telly. Thanks Stuart! I owe you one, even though you said you believe in paying it forward.
 
Now that this amazing piece of furniture has entered my new home, the place is slowly but surely becoming more than just a place to sleep, make some home-cooked meals, and use a private bathroom.

The first thing I watched was the BBC evening news. The EU constitution signing ceremony was supposed to be the top story of the day, but it was clearly upstaged by reports on Arafat's bad health and the new video from Osama bin Laden. Heavy! BBC One's light entertainment programme Have I Got News for You with Robin Cook seemed quaint in light of the new bin Laden video...especially because it made no reference to it.

I did not watch TV all evening because I needed to do some work for the upcoming Popular Culture conference I'm attending next week in NY. After that it was great to wind down the day with one of my favourite movies from the 80s: Jumpin' Jack Flash with Whoppi Goldberg. It was on Channel 5 (i.e. with commercial interruptions) so at one point I drifted away to ITV for about half an hour to watch a repeat of Going Home with John Peel.

What a great way to end this week. I've now been living in Scarborough for two months.

Teenage Kicks (in memory of John Peel)

The top story on the 2pm BBC radio news today was about John Peel's death from a heart attack while on holiday in Peru. What a loss! He was truly a unique person who can never be replaced...and I say that not as a cliche about someone who just died, but because he changed the way many of us listen to music. There's so much music I know I'd never have heard if it wasn't for him.

Although I listened to his radio programmes for many years, I only met him once, briefly, in London in October 1988 just outside BBC Broadcasting House at the top of Regent Street. I can still see him shoving a bag full of records into the back of his car as he prepared to drive back home. His producer, the late John Walters, was one of my tutors at the BBC Training Centre just up the road.

John Peel was still at it at the age of 65, of course. Unlike most other people who are still at it at that sort of age, he never became pathetic or a caricature of himself.

Listening to his Radio 1 show exactly two weeks ago on a bus from Manchester to Scarborough I realized that he was still possessed by the spirit of the avantgarde: on a continuous quest to discover the musicians who are capturing the sound of their time away from any mainstream compromise.

Thankfully the BBC has great archives and the Strange Fruit record label has already given us access to some of the best Peel Sessions. His record shed should be turned into a world heritage site.

True?

Matthew Vella from Newsworks interviewed me a few days ago. The interview was for a feature in TRUE magazine, which is published with the Malta Today Sunday newspaper. If I understood Matthew correctly, the article was supposed to appear today. None of the news agents in Scarborough sell Malta Today. So much for Spiritus Mundi.

I've posted the original text of the interview on my personal website for anyone who wants to compare it to whatever was published...if it was published today. I'm always fascinated by how things change by the time they are printed, to say nothing of how they are interpreted by each reader. There's always more than simply meets the eye, even in what appears to be a simple text.

Here's a little tidbit that certainly did not appear today: about 11 years ago Matthew was a young pupil at Stella Maris College and I was one of his teachers. I can still remember the look on his face when the lesson of the day was to question everything: authority, reality, and most of all, the media.

Do you believe what you see or hear in the media? How can you be sure that what you believe to be true is true for everyone? Do you really believe that it matters for everyone?

Is that Jacques Derrida I hear rolling in his fresh grave?