Not again!

Sickening news from the US, where it appears some nutter with a gun has committed an atrocity against innocents.

The coverage of this US shooting is essentially on two fronts.  The first being shots of (rightly) very upset people in a small town in Connecticut trying to articulate their grief and shock in a way that a news editor has deemed suitable for broadcast, when the actual but unbroadcastable reality is probably somebody sitting on their sofa, clutching a cup of tea, or a beer, and occasionally muttering ‘but…why?’ for several minutes, hours or days based on their proximity to the event, or empathy.

The other front is reporting the issue of gun control. 

This is very much an American thing, where the media clips that run with the story are invariably of automatic weapons, handguns, and row upon row of guns for sale in, apparently, ‘Guns R Us’.

The British attitude towards gun control was settled years ago, in tragic circumstances.  We had our tragedy and the Government quite rightly acted swiftly and decisively.  Anyone who bleated about an infringement of their ‘right’ to own as many bloody guns as they wanted was quietly taken aside and asked to stop talking, preferably about anything, ever, again.

But it’s more complex than outright prohibition.  If you are a responsible citizen, or have a use for them, there’s nothing wrong with owning a gun, or guns.  Certainly, if you shoot game, you’ll want to be able to select the right gun and the right shot to bag something for the table or hopelessly outclass the chap at the next peg, depending on the sort of day you have in store.  If you are keeping down pests such as rats or foxes, you won’t want something that is going to result in a cloud of shot and sudden air-conditioning in the barn.  If you want to deal with an urban fox, I suggest a thermos of scotch, a head light and a shovel.  Lastly, when dealing with the Taliban, one will need a rifle, a suitable sidearm as an auxiliary weapon, and, favourite of all, a mobile ‘phone with your mate who controls the Predator Drone in the area on speed dial 1.

What baffles me is the American fondness for automatic weapons.  Hand guns in particular.  What game are these used to bring down?  And in terms of home security, are they really as good as, say, a new front door with deadlocks?  Of course, I appreciate that many Americans do go hunting at the weekend, blending into the countryside in their camouflage trousers and high-viz orange vests, looking for all the world like elves who work for the Highway Department, and they take their automatic weapons with them.  And I know that fearsome beasts lurk in the American woods, bears, wolves, hillbillies, oh my.  But, seriously, automatic weapons?  For hunting?  Are the bears wearing armour?  If you are so shit at hunting that it takes you a clip and a half to put down Yogi, then you need to do three things.

First, you need to get your ass to the Highlands and learn how to stalk.  This is not the same as that thing you did with that cute girl from accounts that resulted in you having to move to another city after the court case.  This means stealthily tracking your prey.  First lesson is free – don’t crush your beer can while burping when a few yards from anything with more teeth than you.

Second, learn to shoot.  One shot with your eyes open is better than several hundred with them closed.  Remember that bit in ‘Predator’ where Arnie’s team level half the jungle?  Yea, good wasn’t it?  But they didn’t kill the Predator.

Finally, get your fat ass to Norfolk, find a decent gun shop and buy yourself a proper, man sized, grown up hunting piece.  I mean something put together by a craftsman.  It is not designed to make you look like a hard-ass in your Facebook photos.  It is deigned to bring about the sure and certain destruction of anything you point it at, which you better know how to cook.  And while you are there, get yourself a decent fishing rod and a tweed jacket.

There’s nothing wrong with owning a gun.  Or guns.  There is something very wrong with owning a gun, or guns, without good reason.

What happened in Connecticut was horrific.  And while gun control is not a UK issue, and it’s certainly not up to the UK to tell the US how to run their own affairs, it doesn’t, it can’t, stop us looking at the images from another school, another facebook photo of another nutter, and thinking, along with the throat-drying, heart-numbing horror of it all, ‘what the hell will it take?’.  Maybe the best way to protect innocents isn’t guns, it’s gun control.

Rich Hall - cultural commentator

Do we need a successor to Charlie Brooker now that he is happy and has lost his edge? I nominate Rich Hall as the emerging force in cultural commentary. If you get a chance to see his ‘Deep South’ documentary, it’s worth a watch. Mostly a straightforward, but good, handling of the way that literature and cinema have portrayed the Southern USA, there is one marvellous scene where, standing in a cotton field, he loudly disclaims about the evils of the movie-bipocs ‘Ray’ and ‘Walk the line’, explaining that Jamie Foxx received an academy award while Wakeeeeemmm (whatever) Phoenix was only nominated because ‘Jamie Foxx made a slightly better job of raping the corpse of Ray Charles than Wakeem Phoenix did of raping the corpse of Johnny Cash.

As I sat there open mouthed he then vented spleen about the sort of person who needs a movie to help them find great music, the implication clearly stated that if you didn’t know about Johnny Cash before you saw this film, you’re an idiot.

I can’t do the rant justice – I’d have to invent a new font called ‘bile’, and print it out on a printer loaded with vitriol rather than ink onto a sheet of flame.

The rant ends with his shouting ‘f**k you!’ into camera, addressing anyone and everyone without a Johnny Cash record in their collection.

Almost as good is his analysis of Hillbilly culture – a hillbilly is somebody who holds a grudge, resists outside interference and brews his own hooch. Another term might be ‘Scotsman’.

In praise of…Amy Winehouse

The British have an interesting and perversely selective approach to adopting aspects of other cultures. Generally, we take something which is great in its native country and make it crap. This is a shame because we’ve already got enough crap stuff of our own without needing to import more. Lager is a good example – fantastic in the countries where lager is the national drink, but when Britain, a country traditionally suspicious of any drink you can see through, makes lager, it produces fizzy urine (and after six pints so do I).

The one imported mutated triumph is chicken tikka masala. Apparently unknown in India, this is Britain’s favourite curry – adapted to the British palate by removing the spices and adding yoghurt. It’s usually served with lager.

The British are perhaps worst when they try and imitate Americans. There’s nothing sadder than a group of sullen teenagers hanging round the centre of a shire town dressed in jeans that are tailored to let their arse hang out of them in a way which used to be described as ‘builder’s crack’ but is now hip, or possibly hop and wearing their baseball caps back to front. I don’t know much about Compton but I bet there are very few thatched buildings there. The incongruity of transplanting transatlantic behaviour results in a scene as ludicrous as a load of pink-coated toffs from the Berkely Hunt engaging in a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail (which would actually be quite fun, blood-sports enthusiasts may be used to dealing with hunt sabs, but enraged Commanch may be another matter).

Being tragically unhip, the only thing I knew about Amy Winehouse is that she always looks like she needs a bath and that she’s reported to be too busy drinking to spend time washing. Hearing ‘Rehab’ on the radio, I got hold of the album.

Jesus Christ! What a voice! What a talent! The odd thing is that after looking her up on the internet, she does not appear to be a black woman born in 1930 in the South who went on to make a living singing in Harlem clubs before an untimely death involving drink, gunfire, drugs, an enraged boyfriend or all of the above at once with a reindeer thrown in for added effect. She’s from Croydon.

How can it be then, that when I put her music on, I don’t even have to close my eyes to start imagining being in a very small, very hot, very very smoky club at about two in the morning, with my shirt sticking to my back, my eye sockets feeling like they are full of grit, the bottle of bourbon nearly empty on the small, round, sticky table in front of me, listening mesmerised to the woman on stage who appears to be channelling Ella. You can tell its nostalgia because you can’t smoke indoors anymore. I’m not even sure you can smoke in your own head anymore.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that she’s famous and, er, troubled. I guess you don’t get a voice like that without suffering a bit; songs about heartbreak do not write themselves. When was the last time Mick Jagger was inspired by suffering? I’m looking forward to him writing a song about his knees playing him up when its damp, but apart from that where do you draw inspiration from? Amy may well draw it from the bottom of a Smirnoff bottle but I guess it’s not the drinking that makes the songs interesting, but what happens after the bottle is empty. For me the answer is usually ‘passing out with your shoes on’ and occasionally ‘vomiting’. That, and a complete lack of musical talent, is why when I’m in a right old state I’m described as ‘pissed’ and Amy is ‘exhausted’.