The Last Word, August 30, 2008

 Summer 1993.  A blindingly sunny, furnace-hot afternoon.  I'm in the dingy office of the flyblown petrol station where I work, talking to John, who has just started his shift.  An angry middle-aged guy suddenly bustles in.

"Where's your air hose?" he shouts.

"Sorry, I'm afraid it's broken," answers John.

Angry Man takes this news rather badly. "What the bloody hell!  Broken - that's just great, that is!  You guys are useless!" he screams.

I can't take any more.

"Look!" I interject, pointing at John. "He didn't break it!  It was broken by cars driving over it fifty times a day!"

Angry Man turns and storms back to his Carina E, sitting forlorn beside the flaccid stub where the air hose should be.

Summer 2008.  A dark, rain-drenched teatime.  My beat-up old wreck has an NCT appointment in one hour.  It’s ready to go, but I just want to check the tyres again.  It's important to have the correct pressure; several of the tests depend on it. 

But I can't find a working air hose. 

At the first garage, the pump works fine but the numbers inside are illegible. 

The second place has one of those "Select desired pressure" machines, where you set the pounds per square inch and then just wait till it beeps; unfortunately, some joker has set it at 51 – explosively high – and the "reduce" button is missing.  

The next station has a shiny new pump but the compressor which powers it isn't turned on, and nobody seems to know where or indeed what it is.

I finally swing into one of those busy ant-heap service stations on the outskirts, with minutes to spare.  A massive Lexus is completely blocking the service area.  Panicking, I corner the attendant.  "Quick, whose car is that?  I need air now!"  He yawns.  "I dunno, dude," he says, picking his nose.  And it's my turn to storm off, muttering insults.

Okay, so for me it just happened to be air hoses.  It could be almost anything.  It could be the anarcho-marxist revolutionary moving home to study accounting after seven years' squatting in Christiania.  It could be the CEO who's devoted to The Smiths, despite hating them in the eighties 'cos the cooler indie kids used to snigger at his Duran Duran lunchbox.  It could be the soccer mom who screams her offspring on at every local sports fixture, after a lifetime avoiding team games and all who play them.

In other words, we become our opposites.  We grow into what we used to hate – or worse, what we used to laugh at.  Time takes us and twists us and turns us inside-out. 

Watching my car skidding comically off the alignment test thingummy in the NCT centre, I suddenly knew how Angry Man felt, that sunny afternoon fifteen years ago.

The Last Word, August 9, 2008

We are the luckiest generation ever.  Coming after the horrors of World War II and before the cannibalism of the pending environmental holocaust, we hit the jackpot: exponential advances in medicine, sexual libertarianism, cheap air travel, Second Life.  Sending men into space is old hat to us.  The entire history of world culture can be compressed onto our iPhones.  Half of all human endeavour is devoted to inventing new entertainments for us to toy with briefly then discard for something new, preferably smaller and endorsed by Brangelina.

And now, finally, we can say with some certainty and not a little pride that the worst song of all time has been released in our lifetimes.  Hey, Sting, Bon Jovi, Backstreet Boys?  It's okay, you can quit trying now - Kid Rock has done it.

Who?  Kid Rock (possibly not his real name).  The song?  "All Summer Long".  It's been squatting atop the Irish singles charts, well, all summer long, like a blood-spattered magpie crouched over the still-twitching corpse of a songbird walloped by a boy racer's wing mirror. 

"All Summer Long" isn't just the worst song ever because it's naturally, you might say accidentally, very bad.  It's perfectly honed, mathematically calculated, precision-engineered bad.  Badness is inherent to what it is: a premeditated, with-malice-aforethought, serious-minded attempt to craft an utterly cynical rawk'n'roll "classic". 

See, Kid Rock sat down one day with his attorneys to discuss the big bucks Bryan Adams still rakes in from his perennial anthem to yee-haw youth, "Summer Of '69".  This is a song which climaxes discos in the Philippines, revs up Afghan militants before each holy skirmish, and soundtracks every Western thirty-something's memory of soft-focus late-80s sexual awakening.  The royalties are staggering.

Consumed with envy, Kid put on his magic nu-metal shorts and tried to replicate Bryan's formula.  But he needed something to start from.  Then there came a stroke of inspiration: Sweet Home Alabama!

Now, this particular Lynyrd Skynrd favourite is beloved by would-be good ol' boys worldwide, even those whose connection with Alabama is as meaningful and intimate as my postman's relationship with Catherine Zeta Jones.  So if ever a song had a chance to compete with "Summer of '69", this was it.  Kid just had to sample the basic riff, sentiment, tone, and fundamental shitkickingness, then cram in more Bud Lite token-rebellious nostalgic clichés than Keith Richards has had diseases.

Nothing too fancy, of course.  Trouble finding words for that teenage feeling of widening horizons, that uniquely empowering sensation of dawning adulthood?  No problem Kid: how about "We were tryin' different things"?  How then to express in mere words the divine fire of wild abandon, the risky rites of modern passage, every day lived furiously and to the full?  Umm, how about "We were smokin' funny things"?  Wow, it even rhymes: "things" with "things"!  To the studio!

The rest, as I said, is history.  We’re privileged to witness it.

The Last Word, August 2, 2008

What intellectually ornate times we live in, what rich and wondrous lives we lead, that we are never even momentarily deprived of life-enriching information on the happy elite who make a living as professional sportspeople!

What bloodless wretch could wait uncomplainingly till match-day to discover which players will comprise the team, when the media can keep us informed for weeks in advance of every swollen pineal gland, hissy fit and minor bout of constipation which might affect the line-up?

Would death not be preferable to the slightest delay in learning that a third possible suitor is considering a bid for Terry Teri Teré, that another Top Golfer is getting divorced/buying a new yacht/holidaying in Antigua, that a war of words broke out between Ferrari teammates in the FHM hospitality hot tub after the Silverstone Grand Prix? 

What a feeble and wan existence this would be if half of the TV news was NOT devoted to sport, if radio bulletins did NOT rush frenetically through the most eviscerated news headlines to arrive, gasping with happy pride, at the vital announcement that Cortez Quixote is going to miss next Wednesday's training session and manager Phillipe DeRichio isn't happy about it.  Over the course of a day's continuous listening, we may even, if fortune smiles, hear a comment on the Quixotegate crisis from the assistant coach or a board member, as long as they aren't too occupied negotiating the corporate complexities of next season's sponsorship deal or a pending share dilution (and if they are, it goes without saying that we must know every intimate detail of those crucial proceedings, too).

And then there's the bliss, the fulfilling ecstasy of the games themselves – or more specifically, the ceremony which surrounds… the trembling anticipation as we await the announcement of whether the formation will be four-four-two or four-three-three; the majestic adoration of the pundits (those Delphic deities, those exalted magi of sport's noble sorcery; how their disparate personalities captivate and enchant us!) as they swivel their seats and smooth their ties; and the solemn sanctity of the analysis, the magic words which give meaning to our passion, validation to our worship. 

For how else could we fill the abyss of our weekends without this theatre of beauty, this dazzling panoply of physical and verbal poetry?  Where else but in the cyclical patterns of league-based sports would we find the inspiration, the grace, to stir our inner selves to the discussion of meaning, of truth, of life itself?  Surely this shared, non-stop carousel of physicality and learned discourse is humankind’s greatest achievement?

I for one would continuously engorge my senses on the dazzling panoply of all televised sports coverage – comment, opinion, rumour, replay – were it not for the unconscionable interruptions of the females of the household, who insist on wasting as much as thirty minutes at a time watching their stupid soap operas. 

It’s incredible how they can tolerate that endless, repetitive, plot-free nonsense.