There's One Caught Every Minute

Cheats, eh? You gotta love ‘em: they provide a wonderful boost for supporters of the idea that the world changes but human nature remains the same.

Poker has always attracted them. Marked cards, labeled ‘advantage tools’, were advertised in newspapers (presumably not in the ‘Sporting Goods’ section). The more adventurous might progress to ‘Lazy Tongues’. These wonderfully cranky contraptions were inserted in the sharper’s sleeve and could whisk away unwanted cards and substitute aces. Unfortunately, if the lever was pressed at the wrong time, the tongue could punch the mark in the gut as they were shaking hands.

Years on and cheats still provide belly laughs. Sholem J. Weisner, 26, of Brooklyn, New York, has recently been rumbled using advantage tools in the Mohegan Sun Casino during a game of Texas hold ‘em.

Poker won’t miss him: it’s difficult to achieve legendary status if you can’t detect the security differences between a modern casino and a paddle boat frothing up the Mississippi in the 1840s.

Caught in his hotel room with $55,000, the not-so-sharper is charged with cheating, larceny and criminal trespass. He was available neither for comment nor for a part in Ocean’s 14.

Payback Poker

You’re at the poker table, raking in pots. You’re cool, sophisticated and you swing in your chair, secure in the knowledge that you’re the best there.

You call a raise and see another flop. Ah, the perfect double date: KQ, top two. Check to the raiser. Pot sized bet? Pah! Let’s go all in. He calls, the action blurs and the money ships to him. He had pocket jacks and caught a third rogue on the river. The pigeon, ‘madforit17’, types ‘lucky me’ in the chat. His shirt is probably Hawaiian. Your light goes out, the world turns, the game moves on, you’ve read ‘em and wept.

Annoyed? There might be an outlet for those feelings of injustice, one that does not involve a complicated revenge fantasy and ravenous penguins.

Last weekend saw the first ‘scalp’ tournament at the Paddy Power Irish Open. Players prepared to pony up the €330 entrance fee earned a €30 bounty every time they busted an opponent. It’s an exciting new development, already picked up by online poker. Just when the fish thought it was safe to return to the river: Poker II: The Scalp – This Time It’s Personal.

Check Out

It’s all happening in Australia. Someone is changing jobs. But who? Here’s a clue:

Writer Nelson Algren suggests ‘Never play cards with a man named Doc’. Well, we need to include a man with a nametag that states, ‘Hi, I’m Darren - I’m happy to help you’.

Darren Booth, a 19 year old, part time supermarket worker, has gone from bags to riches by wheeling away the $91,000 1st prize in the Adelaide Hold ‘em championship at the Skycity casino.

He won his share of the $340,000 pool, beating a smattering of TV known pros, including 2005 WSOP winner, Aussie Joe Hachem. Impressed? It gets better - he had to win his seat by playing regional tournaments.

As Hatchem gushed, ‘It is fantastic that a young man, playing his first tournament, triumphs’

The shelf stacker started playing poker only recently, so his game was unblemished by crippling fears of outrageous breaches of probability. (Ed – too much personal pain.) He even had the humility to return to work the next day, but his future will surely amount to more than a stack of beans. It could be fame, fortune and his own Wikipedia page. Australia heralds a new dawn.

The Man Everyone's Watching

Guess who’s back?

Yes, that’s right, you got it, it’s former US Senator Alfonse D’Amato!

Since being prised from the US taxpayer’s payroll, he’s developed various ways of keeping his tonsils in the limelight, so it was no surprise he found the media when at the recent Vegas Global Gaming Expo trade show. It takes a certain type of personality to attract attention when surrounded by must-have consumer goodies showcased in America’s playground but, boy is Alf the man!

Bravely speaking against the advice of his spin doctor, he said he expects online poker to be reinstated in its US homeland by 2009.

Don’t want to hold your breath? Neither did the ex-Senator. His blether continued and hinted that imminent sanctions by the World Trade Organisation would shovel on the pressure to Congress to fold their unpopular anti-online gaming hand.

Word, words, words as Hamlet would have it. But wait! Alfonso is not just about boosting his media profile. Oh dearie me, no. He’s the political poster boy of the Poker Players’ Alliance and lobbies for legislation of its favourite card game. With camera conscious Alf in our corner, the Senate’s loss could yet be poker’s gain.

Once in a Lifetime or Every Tea-time

Let’s make sure London leaves a proper lasting legacy after the 2012 Olympics. So far, the logo has been mocked and the stadium labelled functional and boring. We need to create an event to give the worldwide audience a taste of what it’s like to live in this great city in the 21st century.

The marathon won’t suffice. Yes, it highlights the architecture but the streets are cordoned off. It’s like looking at the lycra kit without the athlete or a wallet without the cash and cards. It cannot convey the psychology of the city. We need something else.

To have an event recognised by the IOC, it must promote ‘a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.’ Perfect. Let’s nominate a walk during central London’s rush hour. What activity better fits the Olympic motto of ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger?’

With a speed that would have participants sectioned in the countryside, it will give spectators a true, bustling, taste of London. TV helicopter shots could capture this flowing beauty, a site to rival the Tour De France’s peloton in full flow.

Competitors are awarded points for assertiveness, aesthetic merit and self-absorption. Judges will also look for the maintenance of an impassive, uninterested facial expression.
Athletes will have to combine pace with intuitive grace as they slide their shoulders away from incoming people and trudge ever forward. Coaches can train competitors to accept a free newspaper without losing momentum. Points are deducted if the walk is briefly interrupted and Olympians go toe to toe with any ‘tutting’ males.

Athletes will then reach the tube line having performed disciplines such as cancelling a tai-chi class and carrying a skinny latte raised over the head, a cardboard beacon to the Olympian ideal. Bonus points are available on the downward escalator for recognising flirtation, awareness of advertising and tipping buskers whilst staving off a category five panic attack.

By the end of their ordeal, the competitors will have a far greater understanding of London life. It would generate a better legacy than any commerative coin. If the Dutch sport Korfball can be recognised as an Olympic event partly because it guarantees a ‘full range of intense emotion’, I feel we are onto a winner. Inspired by Beijing’s slogan of ‘Light the Passion, Share the Dream’, we could offer ‘Fight the Crowds, Share the Tension’. With only 1708 days to go, it’s time to start lobbying.

Ugly Matters

‘Modern culture in crisis’: ‘the world is becoming ugly’, claims this month’s Ecologist magazine so I tossed it onto the shop floor and reached for Playboy. After fourteen minutes, I felt a growing sense of desensitisation so I retrieved the green magazine: it had stuck to the gum on my unlaced trainers. As my credit card was swiped, I felt good about myself and left the shop, ready for some brisk, fresh, air-conditioning. The mall was my oyster.

I was instantly reminded of my need for coffee and the cafes were a mere escalator ride away. Latte and ecology, enjoyed in a man-made biosphere: what could be better?

According to The Ecologist, quite a lot. Four pages are devoted to examples of ugliness. Some are predictable - fake tans and bagged salad - others are personal and poetic – ‘I feel ugly when I tread on a snail’- and then there is this one -

‘People. There are somewhere in the region of 6 and half billion of them, 60m in this country alone, barely sentient, clogging up the roads in their metal contraptions, obsessed with celebrity and fashion, constantly looking to fulfil their every want and fantasy by seeking a new high or craving sex (which frankly just results in more of them) and burning up resources like they were infinite. I’m sure some of them have utility but I would do away with most of them if I could.’

- which is either superbly sarcastic, or written by someone struggling to have his intimacy needs met by animal fur. You decide.

Inspired by the depressing article, here are my suggestions:

Nodding in agreement at a piece of reported speech, then reading ‘says Ann Widdecombe’.

Walking past a gym on a beautiful day and seeing people inside, on running machines, listening to iPods.

Waking up the morning after the night before, slowly becoming aware of the extent of film on my teeth and then discovering the remnants of onion rings on my lower molar

Shop fronts forced to deploy corrugated iron, which is then daubed with the graffiti of hatred.

Bad tempered, aggressive dogs – ever since I read a theory suggesting pets represent the owner’s inner child.

Unwashed pillows - a stark reminder of the drool that seeps out during sleep and our capacity to adversely affect the environment, even when deprived of consciousness

Maybe I should delete pillows soaked in spit, as I’m powerless to stop it. Real ugliness, brutally exposed by our animal loving friend, is neglect of responsibility – to oneself, to others, to the planet. It is depressing, but there is hope. Appalled by some consumer monstrosities, many readers are fighting back. They are angry at the depth of neglect. They are not allowing themselves to become detached and are acting within their communities. They are forcing change.

One reader had an opposite experience of a village in Southern Sudan. It had been heavily bombed and the women had lost their men. When the village was blitzed again, and they were told news of the fatalities, the women’s eyes remained lustreless, like shoppers on a day lacking must-have bargains. They displayed more concern for their flowers and livestock. The exposure to trauma had left them emotionally detached and their empathy for human life obliterated. They felt powerless.

Looking around at the mess in the food hall, (note my lack of action) I was reminded that plenty of filmmakers have suggested that shopping malls and suburbia can turn people into dispassionate blobs, who slowly lose their belief that they can be agents for change. It’s desensitisation by design. By contrast, ugliness can generate an energising response, one to be appreciated before it is bombed or brain-washed out of us.

Dispassion has helped create a bi-polar attitude. The Sudanese village women cherished the environment, with little regard to the life of the individual. The west cherishes the life of the individual with too little regard for the environment. For the developed world, it is as if the earth has become humanity’s Dorian Gray picture, its ignored decay a consequence of the belief that one can stem off the physical symptoms of the ageing process. (‘Because you are worth it’, remember?)

When presented with his picture of physical and moral ugliness, Dorian (‘a man with a wild terror of dying and yet indifferent to life itself’) tries to stab the painting and kills himself in the process. That could yet happen here.

In the nineties, an urban myth suggested Mc Donalds had developed plans to project its mighty ‘M’ logo onto the full moon, thus enlightening six billion hungry (some of them dangerously so) consumers of the corporation’s heavily salted produce. It is a shame that particularly ugly idea didn’t reach fruition. Maybe we would have gazed at our Dorian Gray picture without resorting to the knife. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, even those of us gazing at the stars might have been forced to acknowledge the stench forming in the gutter below.

Heady Matters

A friend recently asked if I’ve ever had a bad hair day. I lifted my face to the clouds and roared with laughter. My baseball cap fell off. My friend guffawed.

I came close to having a bad hair decade. At one stage of its growth, my hairstyle took a phone-call from Tim Burton’s casting director. Rent Edward Scissorhands and look very closely at the topiary. I’ll say no more.

It began when I went to see Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’. I remember thinking that the real lesson of the tale was that if you have hair like Charlie Sheen, you should be beaten with a xylophone hammer. Traumatised by displays of power hair, I needed to rebel, to send ripples through my community and to commit crimes against paternity. I grew a mullet.

After the mullet, came the pony-tail, then something that slowly conquered my back and was formerly declared an area of outstanding national mockery. They were hard years, featuring Magoo glasses and green caps. They formed scars on my psyche that still send shock-waves through my hair.

I looked like I had been rejected from a buskers’ union. That was partly the point but what I thought was self expression was lack of direction. I should have looked for role models. I should have studied team sports.

There are athletes who steadfastly maintain sensible haircuts. Indeed, some of them are not just sensible, but are the very archetype of sensible, an ideal of a hairstyle, that has been mystically formed to provide corrective guidance for those tempted by the ways of the crimper. The athletes provide the kind of self-less public service that should, at the very least, merit an Esther Rantzen special.

Witness Michael Owen a striker who has always known where the gel is. Such is Owen’s talismanic quality that a previous England manager based one of his pre-match tactical talks on the symmetrical perfection of the player’s hairstyle. (“You see lads, he’s kept it flat at the back, even in the middle and the front line is well forward but could track back later.” It produced a dull but solid performance, leaving two key members of David Beckham’s appearance consultancy team weeping into their man-bags.)

Owen’s sensible haircuts are reassuring to the team as they do not disturb its cohesion. They blend. They guide the individual to tribal belonging and are a consequence of joining a group of older players at a young age. The fresh- faced interloper wants to look the part: young bobbies grow moustaches and focused hard working athletes adopt a bland hairstyle. That’s the point I just didn’t get.

Michael Owen dashed over the threshold of adulthood and immersed himself in the bath of team belonging. I just stood there, looking for a signpost, shaking my head and shoulders. He needed to belong, I needed to be lost. They were choices that have shaped our personalities.


Although his hairstyle choice was healthier than mine, it can lead to other problems. During post-match interviews he sometimes sounds like the bureaucrat who can quote the rulebook. It is one symptom of the recently labelled condition ‘grouphair’. (The review of the label’s accuracy is still pending from an independent peer group). Its sufferers avoid promoting any hairstyles that might be outside the comfort zone of consensus styling. However, because the condition drives members towards unanimity, they occasionally slip up and forget that they also exist (at times) outside the constraint of the team.

Michael Vaughn, sometime England cricket captain and full time grouphair sufferer, said, in a recent interview, “This is not about Michael Vaughn. This is about cricket.”

There’s the rub. Too often, Michael Vaughn thinks of himself as Michael Vaughn the cricket player. It has become too big a part of him. He has sacrificed too much identity on his temple. My hair was a formless mess reflecting my confusion but by letting someone shape your style too early, you may lose out on a bit of individualism. One can become interchangeable. No one wants to mould it like Michael because he shapes it like everybody else. The future is WikiHair: team belonging assisted by a team of consultants. Ask David Beckham.

This Book is not to be doubted

Don DeLillo's recent novel, 'Falling Man', features a character, Keith, who is lucky enough to escape from the World Trade Center on September 11.

Before the attacks, he was a player in a home poker game, a place to experience the joy of routine and ritual:

"No food. Food was out. No gin or vodka. No beer that was not dark. They issued a mandate against all beer that was not dark and against all beer that was not Beck’s dark. They did this because Keith told them a story he’d heard about a cemetery in Germany, in Cologne, where four good friends, card-players in a game that had lasted four or five decades, were buried in the configuration in which they’d been seated, invariably, at the card table, with two of the gravestones facing the other two, each player in his time-honoured place."

In the years that follow the attacks, he is unable to go back to work and becomes a professional poker player. He feels the alienation:

"There was no language, it seemed, to tell them how he spent his days and nights."

He now desperately needs the ritual but cannot control it:

"He was fitting into something that was made to his shape. He was never more himself than in these rooms, with a dealer crying out a vacancy at table seventeen. There were the times when there was nothing outside, no flash of history or memory that he might unknowingly summon in the routine run of cards."

By the end of the novel, he has become a slave to the cards:

"Days fade, nights drag on, check-and-raise, wake-and-sleep. He wondered if he was becoming a self-operating mechanism, like a humanoid robot that understands two hundred voice commands, far-seeing, touch sensitive but totally, rigidly, controllable."

Keith arrived at that point because of the events of September 11.

I'll say no more.

Extreme Tolerance

Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show today aired a discussion about adultery.

I wonder how many other nations could have moulded this caller:

'If I found another man in bed with my wife, I'd make him a cup of tea.'

Hmmm

This story will now replace the cross-eyed bear in my nightmares:

BEIJING, China

A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday.

The 30-year-old man fainted at a cyber cafe in the city of Guangzhou Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe, it said. The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.

The report did not say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing.
The report said that about 100 other Web surfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man's death."

China has 140 million Internet users, second only to the U.S.. It is one of the world's biggest markets for online games, with tens of millions of players, many of whom hunker down for hours in front of PCs in public Internet cafes.

Several cities have clinics to treat what psychiatrists have dubbed "Internet addiction" in users, many of them children and teenagers, who play online games or surf the Web for days at a time.

Just the Comparisons, Ma'am

Andrew Marr brings his Scottish eyes to a new series on Radio 4 called 'Unmasking The English', broadcast on Mondays at 9am and also archived online.

The first programme proceeded along predictable lines by including references to Jerusalem and attitudes to sporting humiliations but, after twenty minutes, Marr produced a gem.

After a slight ramble about the history of English amateurism, he warned against rumours of its demise.

'For', he said authoritatively, 'Boris Johnson is Miss Marple'.

It Goes On All Around You

Here is a small scene from ‘Airplane’. Disaster is yet to strike and a stewardess is attending to the passengers. She approaches a middle aged couple:

‘Would either of you like another cup of coffee?’

The wife says:

‘I will, but Jim won't.’

However, Jim pipes up with:

‘I think I will have another cup of coffee.’

His wife is troubled and the audience benefits from her thoughts:

‘Jim never has a second cup at home…’

It’s a terrible omen. Jim is out of his routine. The end is nigh.

In ‘Airplane’, Jim has the security of an inflatable co-pilot. If only life were like that. We create comfort zones and think they are airbags. Therefore, when Jim makes his portentous request, we sense he is stretching a comfort zone. One day he is ordering a second cup of coffee, the next he is inventing allotment jazz and passionately unearthing turnips. We feel the wife’s anxiety because we know our comfort zones can define our identity.

Not convinced?

OK, I will be as honest as possible and try to communicate how I am defined by one of my comfort zones. Hopefully the insight can provoke some sort of internal recognition in the reader and we can start a trend to challenge our comfort zones. Or, maybe the preceding sentence is just idealistic bollocks and this is pure self indulgence. Either way, for better or worse, come along for the ride. Please keep your arms in the car, don’t stand up and try not to scream.

You see, dear rider, I avoid groups if they have a rigid sense of hierarchy. I can’t handle them. I’m a gregarious person and I love social groups but if there is a whiff of structure, I start to feel nauseous. It explains (partly) why after 8 years’ work in an office, I earned only a minimal promotion and, for two years, found myself working in an independent role. Likewise, when I volunteered for a committee in a charity, my initial interest quickly waned as I sensed its politics.

It suits me to make my living playing cards, not carrying them. The poker table is a gathering of individuals who will compete against each other and I am comfortable joining that group because no one brings any privileges to the table. I find it quite liberating.

As Eric Berne, a transactional psychiatrist wrote:

‘Each person designs his own life. Freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs and power gives him the freedom to interfere with the desires of others.’

Poker affords me a healthy dose of the former and I do not crave the latter. However, the theory’s wording is suspect. ‘Interfere’ is a negative spin on leadership. Politics within a group maybe depressing, stressful and divisive, but my inability to deal with it deprives me of the pleasure of interdependence. It also makes me reluctant to join Facebook.

It is a great example of how avoidance of transitory stress can impair an individual’s life. It’s my mental conditioning. I’ll bring back our friend Eric Berne again:

‘The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when is he is confronted with what goes on outside his skull’.

It’s a thought that can seem either deeply profound or achingly simplistic, probably depending on how often you are getting laid. For now, and possibly revealing the frequency of my sexual encounters, let’s assume it’s the former. I see a group: my head tells me to avoid it.

The positive spin would be because, as Berne has it, I don’t want anyone to have the freedom to interfere with my desires. The negative take is that I lack the drive to positively influence society. I’m preserving my emotional responses and not benefiting from meeting new boundaries. Its only benefit is a life free from mild anxiety.

But comfort zones are understandable. We have a biological imperative to feel on familiar territory before we can meet our basic needs. We just take it too far. As children we play, we take risks and sometimes end up with grazed knees. We learn that the bruise is a temporary blemish which doubles as a badge of honour, proving we are not afraid of the playground. In stable homes, we are happy to have new experiences because we are still being tucked up in bed.

As comfort zone adults, we have to assume the foetal position without a bedtime story and aware of the existence of James Blunt. No wonder the childhood joy of creating imaginary friends can become the adult misery of having irrational fears. Why add to them by having the stress of new encounters?

It’s crazy isn’t it? One comfort zone, when unraveled and dissected, is revealed to have such a wide ranging effect on one’s life. I remain, in my little one man boat, calmly drifting along, reluctant to change course in case I encounter clouds. I may as well be lying on the base of the boat, with my arms crossed, eyes closed and a coin on my tongue.

Well, gawd darnit, it’s time to uncross my arms, open my eyes and wake up to smell the second cup of coffee. Hell, I might even remove the coin before I drink. The battle against my comfort zones has started and this particular journey is over. We have a repeat offer, which is half price and guarantees the same ride. However, I suggest you try the rest of the theme park.

This Thing We Do

Last night, the last episodes of the Sopranos started their run on E4 at 10.00pm. Fans have been marking the occasion in original ways.


As Villa Park, Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho surprised seasoned media watchers with a new hairstyle, a clear tribute to Paulie Walnuts, Tony Soprano's henchman.







It promises to be an interesting, and traumatic, nine weeks.

It Is Written

On Monday, the following were recommendations listed on my Amazon page:

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut – Mike Mullane, a man intriguingly labelled “the Bill Bryson of Space Travel” (although given recent news stories about their antics, we should wait for the account of the corn-fed, NASA version of Jeffrey Bernard)

Addicted to Love: The Kate Moss Story by Fred Vermorel

Bigger Deal: A Year on the New Poker Circuit by Anthony Holden.

One of these makes perfect sense (insert easy joke here) but I was somewhat baffled by the other two.

I decided not to click “Why is this recommended for you?”

It would be boring and, possibly, bring back hideous memories of a dark night of the soul when I had seen another stack of chips go south and used Amazon as an escape to a fantasy of being the next Buzz Lightyear.

Suddenly it hit me: Amazon was trying to tell me something about my character. For those who have tired of hearing guidance from star-gazers bedecked in purple, I urge you to flock to the Amazonian Temple and submit to its teachings.

Here’s the difference: Every time you pay for advice from a low status, work-shy, mumbo-jumbo expert, they are simply reading your body language and telling you what you want to hear.

(Incidentally, I would have thought visiting one of these characters, asking: “Where I am going wrong with my relationships?”, could simply be answered with, “Well, the fact that you are in a tent, on a pier, asking a stranger that question probably speaks volumes about the depth of your disclosure to your family and friends. That will be £50 please. Paypal accepted. Palm greasing preferred. God complex indulged)

Amazon has gone way past the interpretation of hand clasping. Using the mystical method of book-browsing, it has built up a lengthy database of my thoughts and has compiled a highly accurate profile of me, one that slices through my fragile notions of self. Devastating in its accuracy, I have spent the last 48 hours shuffling from park, to bar, to bed, a creature dissembled and gaping in the mirror, horrified at the mystery therein.

It started when bought a book by Oliver James. Part of it is about attachment patterns in relationships and it sets forth the theories of John Bowlby. Their premise is that our childhood bonding with paternal figures sets the pattern that we will recreate in our adult relationships. It is interesting, stimulating, and probably accurate.

If all goes well, we have secure attachment patterns: we are happy to be relied upon and accept the support of others. Apparently, this occurs in 50% of the UK population.

However, the other 50% are divided into three unfortunate categories that almost guarantee a life playing relationship dodgeball.

Given some of the screaming they can cause, please try to imagine a fairground barker describing the following:

Pattern 1: ‘The Avoidant’-

‘I am comfortable without close emotional relationships – it is very important to me to feel independent and self sufficient and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.’

They prefer work to love, believing success in the former creates happiness in the latter.

Pattern 2: The Clinger -

‘I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others but I often find others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships but I sometimes worry that others don’t value me as much as I value them.’

Their relationships have highs and lows. They often feature jealously, conflict and dissatisfaction.

The final one in this gallery of rogues is the bastion of reliability that is: ‘The Wobbler’ -

‘I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships but I find it difficult to trust others completely or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others’

They have a tendency to drift off into their own world but also crave intense emotional engagement.

At the moment, all of this probably seems a bit tenuous and you are wondering about the exact connection between 60s psychology and Amazon’s book recommendations. All I ask is that you look a little bit closer and try to grasp the complexities of the unconscious.

Firstly, all three books are related to stories that have been in the news this year.
Let’s start with Mike Mullane and Riding Rockets. This is lifted from the blurb:

‘A blast from start to finish, Riding Rockets is a straight-from-the-gut account of what it means to be an astronaut, just in time for this latest generation of stargazers.’

I wondered why I would be interested in astronauts, but I discovered it appeared on my list in March, just after the story about Lisa Nowak appeared. Lisa, you may recall, was the astronaut who, after being trusted to fly to the international space station last July, returned to earth with a bang, when in February she was charged with attempted kidnapping and battery. She discovered she had a rival for her lover’s affections so she drove a 1000 miles from Houston to Orlando, armed with pepper spray, wearing a trench coat, wig and adult nappy. She did all this to protect something she described as ‘more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship’.

She also wrote to her lover’s mother:

“Bill is absolutely the best person I've ever known and I love him more than ever I knew possible”.

This could be lifted from Oliver James’ book and I think we can also detect a few signs of “jealousy, conflict and dissatisfaction”.

Bowlby would be happy. We can safely pat the text-book and pigeon-hole her as a clinger. (If verdicts go against her, she may well struggle to meet her intimacy needs during a spell in chokey, although at least she is trained for cramped, claustrophobic conditions.)

However, I was still on the first act of this cyber Nancy Drew. It was the contemplation of ‘Kate Moss: Addicted to Love,’ that led to the crucial moment of detection. It was making its first appearance on my Amazon recommendations and had obviously been triggered by the recent woes of her boyfriend, Pete Doherty. He’s had an affair and has been using the Daily Mirror as his mouthpiece for his attempts to win her back.

Here are some of his comments, lifted from the paper:

“I love her with all of my bones. I like the way she walks and talks. I love her bones.”

In his next breath, he comments that she can be “bad-tempered” and “nasty”. Oh Pete, you are wobbling, mate, wobbling. Pray that Amazon sells its last copy of this book before Kate gets to it.

However, thoughts of Pete’s prevarications were not long on my mind as I realised I had been hit by the mystical rule of three, so beloved of our tent dwelling friends. The recommendations, innocently born all those months ago when I ordered the Oliver James book, were offering me the kind of insight usually trigged by ingesting peyote.

I am, I suddenly realised, an avoidant.

It was obvious when I considered the final book. As the title suggests, ‘Bigger Deal’, is the sequel to a card-player book, ‘Big Deal’, in which Anthony Holden, The Observer’s opera critic and biographer of Prince Charles, spends a year on the poker circuit, which culminate with his entry in the World Series of Poker. It’s my favourite poker book, scholarly, honest and insightful. I first read it when I was unemployed and unemployable in Liverpool (some may argue that, 18 years hence, all that has changed is geography). Internet poker had not changed my life and the idea of turning professional was laughable.

Its depiction of showdowns with Amarillo Slim, Doyle Brunson and other poker legends are enthralling but they are coupled with honest mediations on his own psychological flaws. He also describes the effect the game was having on his relationship with a woman only ever named as ‘The Moll’. It stayed with me as a warning of how the ability to control one’s emotions, so necessary for success at the tables, is not conducive to the maintenance of any relationship that demands intimacy or disclosure. ‘Shut up and deal’ might be a good way of keeping the game going but its relationship equivalent quickly results in the sound of closing doors.

From playing poker, to space-walking, to being Pete Doherty, career choices can resonate in one’s relationships. The drive to make it as an astronaut also meant Captain Novak could not accept the possibility that something she described as ‘not quite a romantic relationship’ had finished. She was determined to take off in the car immediately, pausing only to embrace her nappies, and get what she wanted.

Similarly, the combination of the need for approval and arrogance necessary to produce Pete Doherty’s career as a, well, whatever it is that he does, can also create a scenario in which he finds himself in bed with a model (just not the one he’s having a relationship with). Then, the same logic of character persuades him it is a good idea to use the Daily Mirror, the understanding paper that exposed Kate’s enthusiasm for cocaine, to try and win her back.

And, finally, the hard bit. The emotional neutrality that causes my relative success at the tables is one of many factors that lead me to relationship dead ends. I’m emotionally stubborn. Remember the cliché about cutting off you nose to spite your face? Well, in relationships, I’m the guy who is told he has a gangrenous leg and, seeing the looming two-man saw, would rather grasp the whiskey bottle than ask for a second opinion. Far better that I get to operate my own crutches (for the rest of my life) than accept some short term nursing.

Armed with this fresh insight from Amazon’s customer tracking software, it’s time for to me to hobble forward and accept my failings. I have to realise that if I am to get anywhere with relationships I have to stop treating them like a hand of poker and folding at the first sign of conflict.

The worst players are those who don’t learn from their mistakes and are doomed to repeat losing, egotistical moves. But that’s just them. They’re losers.

Me?

‘Shut up and…..no.

That’s not right.

Can I let you know?’


PS. This whole post could also be summarised by the news that my iTunes ‘Top 25 Most Played’ list currently has a worryingly high rating for track 2 of the Grinderman album.

Flicking Through

Any gallery display that has the title, ‘How We Are’ would be failing in its duty if it didn’t reflect the British sense of humour. Tate Britain’s current photographic exhibition is ultimately successful in depicting our love of a laugh, but it is a slow build-up as the first room is crammed with images of Queen Victoria and numerous other subjects who are not amused. It is, however, always engaging.

The 19th century camera was far from ideal for capturing fleeting expressions of character and the only people with enough space in their diaries to pose were the upper-classes. Consequently, the initial images give the impression that early cameras could capture the moustache, but not the chin. Moreover, it is not until the models start to believe the photographer’s assertions that the contraption won’t explode that we see anything resembling emotion. However as the room progresses, the variety of faces from Britain’s pre-laughter era slowly increases. The poses remain stern but they start to suggest that the subject has a pulse, and, towards the end of the room, there is the first of many examples of our fancy for dressing-up.

The room climaxes with Hugh Diamond’s photos and his collection seems to delineate the moment when the camera captured more than just stoical faces. Unfortunately, the subjects are ‘insane’. They are predominantly women, presumably institutionalised because they were capable of more than one facial expression. How times change. If they were banged up in the Big Brother house, they would be voted off for their inability to emote.

The second room covers the early part of the 20th century, leading to the end of the First World War. The photograph is increasingly used for political purposes and there are some interesting shots of the Suffragettes: the images from the criminal record office proved to be an effective recruitment tool to their cause, a reminder that images can have a power beyond their original intention. This theme is explored further with the arrival of the snapshot camera and the democratisation of photography: a child’s confused face, once just a picture in a family album is now, on the gallery wall, part of a living history.

As the exhibition evolves into its third room, there is a sense that the establishment has cottoned onto the image’s power to manipulate the viewer’s emotions. In the preceding room, the brutal, shocking images of the First World War were damaging to the nation’s perception of itself. However, the shots from the Second World War are largely cosy, such as the one of an injured, but un-bloodied, serviceman being safely loaded onto a biplane by serene members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. The epitome is probably the collection by Captain Alfred George Burkham. His aerial photos of the Thames are inspiring, but look as authentic as the climax of the original King Kong.

One pin prick to the bubble created by the clean-cut, wartime images is the row of Percy Hennell photos. They are of plastic surgery patients from the RAF hospital. The images are arresting, disturbing, and an effective counterpoint to the propaganda.

The twenty five years following the Second World War is the focus of the 4th room and it provides an interesting snapshot of the nation’s changing focus. There is a prevalence of rural photographs from the 1940s which are highly similar to those of the 19th century. It is as if professional photographers (or, the organisers of the exhibition) were aware of the nation’s need for reminders of simpler times, to help forge on and blank out the war’s blitzed city aftermath. Although it is predominantly an exhibition of urban landscapes, there are regular reminders of the role of the countryside in forming the national psyche.

The gallery traces the hangover of war and the growing aspirations of Britain in the fifties. The people are in these images are fed up with the ‘make do and mend’ movement and fully embrace the decade’s Mark’s and Spark’s revolution. There is innocence on display, captured by Charlie Phillips’ inter-racial shots of Notting Hill, and they are a reminder of a time when we would socialise in the street. There are no shots of the area’s riots in 1958, but neither are there any of the following year’s carnival. These images highlight history by showing ordinary people, living through it, not making it.

The next room, 1970-1990, highlights the growth of possibilities for a career in photography, as professionals pursued more than just studio portraiture. With the rise of Thatcherism, a lot of them found a market for photographic satire. There are plenty of shots of offices but it is a hilarious quartet of images called, ‘Looking for Love’ that provides the essence of the exhibition.

It documents the opening of Britain’s first disco-pub and features four couples coming together on the dance floor. The first three images offer a pair about to embark on their first kiss. Trepidation and uncertainty colour their faces as they fumble forwards, dancers of insecurity and nerves. The final shot features two young men hugging each other and they look ecstatic.

It’s a penetrating collection of images because it illustrates the fear of embarrassment and then contrasts it with matey, drunken belonging. It nails the theme of self-consciousness, present throughout the exhibition. Seemingly, if we are to enjoy the company of our fellow Brits, we have to be in work, in costume or intoxicated.

What else could explain the ‘Horn Dancers’, a picture of three 19th century sourpusses, seemingly dressed for a frat party, snapped by Benjamin Stone? It’s the perfect image to comprehend how eccentricity can be born from the anxious need to structure time. In some ways, the costume is a comfort uniform: it helps us to avoid that difficult nonsense of, ‘What do you, then?’ and we cannot be accused of making a scene when we are dressed in clothes fit for the stage.

The exhibition concludes with images taking us into the 21st century but still avoids depiction of celebrity and focuses on changing landscapes. Some of the images from the last ten years highlight the process of Americanisation. Multiplexes, shopping malls and industrial complexes are leaping up in the hinterland between town and country. It is almost as if the pioneer spirit is at its most conquering when presented with land that most closely resembles a prairie.

At one of its final points, the exhibition invites visitors to contribute their own photographs to a gallery, where it will be displayed at Tate Britain, Tate Online and The Observer’s web-site. If interested there are further details here.

It is a project to be encouraged because the exhibition works as a comprehensive family album of Britain and it should be expanded. The shared history resonates and thickens the blood. When you see images of people laughing, holding their hats, on the beach at Blackpool, it doesn’t matter if you have never seen the place; you will have been through a similar experience and sent the saucy postcard. In some ways, it is eerie, like seeing one of your facial expressions on a photo of your grandfather; but, when that passes, you feel connected, amused and proud. Maybe even a tad self-conscious. It’s a poignant experience, as it always is when you open the family album.

Teddybook

Imaginary friends are making an uncharacteristic toddle into the limelight. Apparently, they are highly beneficial to a child's imagination and development.

I sometimes wonder whether blogging is the similar behaviour in adults.

Typing away in a world of one's own seems dangerously close to Big Bird claiming another sighting of Mr Snuffleupugus.

But I'm not sure.

What do you think Mr Herbert?

Quotations about poker.

From The Independent's guide book to the game:

Poker is as elaborate waste of human intelligence as you could find outside an advertising agency.

Raymond Chandler

Poker reveals to the frank observer something else of import - it will teach him about his own nature. Many bad players do not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge.

David Mamet

Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring, or hard and impersonal, fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just.

Lou Krieger

Poker may be a branch of psychological warfare, an art form or indeed a way of life - but is also a game, in which money is simply the means of keeping score.

Anthony Holden.

Serious poker is no more about gambling than rock climbing is about taking risks.

Alfred Alvarez

Is it a reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a ball? Poker's the only game fit for a grown man. Then, your hand is against every man's, and every man's is against yours. Teamwork? Who ever made a fortune by teamwork? There's only one way to make a fortune, and that's to down the fellow who's up against you.

W. Somerset Maugham

Stop Press!

Eyebrows is honoured to have a guest contributor!

Joey Barton, the recently re-bailed critic and professional footballer, continues his annual appraisal of the summer books.

Here, he offers his insights on the publishing event of the year, the release of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows*'.

Without further ado, Joey - from the 'ead, son:

"I was a kid. I went to school. It had magic and I had adventures. Here are my books."

So there we have it.

Frank Lampard, writer, home movie enthusiast and weight-watcher, was not available for comment as he refused to leave the comfort of the bathroom cabinet.

We had arranged to have the thoughts of David James, artist, model and environmental activist, but, unfortunately, there was an incident in his local Waterstone's which has left him hospitalised. Trying to bypass the queue, his son threw him a copy of the hardback from the corner of the shop and the player is now receiving treatment for a suspected fractured metatarsal.

In an ironic twist, he is unable to read the book during his hospital stay as medical staff have strapped his hands in an attempt to limit any further injury.

*Any readers who suspect this suspiciously timed post is a cynical attempt to increase the blog's Google hits are hereby accused of not learning the moral lessons of the HARRY POTTER series, written by J.K ROWLING, and adapted into films starring DANIEL RADCLIFFE.

Who needs jackets when you have potatoes?

There is a memorable scene in Mike Newell’s film ‘Donnie Brasco’. Johnny Depp plays the eponymous undercover FBI agent, who has surfaced to give his colleagues the wiretap recordings of his life in the mob. Fascinated by the lingo of the crew, one of desk bound agents asks about ‘forgeddaboutit’, the second most common word on the tapes. Depp, replete in gangster chic and cooling his forehead with a can of beer, says it can mean, “Go to hell”, “I agree with you”, “I disagree with you” but, sometimes, it just means “forgeddaboutit”.*

In the four years my flatmate and I have shared together, the term, ‘your friend’, has reached a similar status. If forgeddaboutit is a diverse shibboleth in the arena of racketeering, extortion and usury, for us, ‘your friend’, performs the same function in the world of quaffing, pasta-boiling and sink scrubbing.

First deployed, I think, by me, it has proved to be an example of evolution as much as the variation in beak sizes on the Galapagos Islands that prompted Charlie ‘The Beard’ Darwin to crack open the notebooks and scribble his way into history.

Real friends or, mates, often arrive at the flat and sense how ‘The Beard’ must have felt. Sea-sick with excitement, they often flaunt their tonsils when they first hear the shared shorthand. When they need to rush off to suddenly remembered engagements, it is because they have glimpsed the future and they are intimidated. If we occasionally have to eat more of the prepared food due to their unforeseen departure then that is just one belly promoting consequence of our communication evolution.

Originally, The Term, simply referred to ‘the one in the bar that smiles when she serves you lager’. It was unsophisticated and now seems as laughable as eighties’ mobile phones. Its original purpose survived for six months until, in a moment now shrouded in history, my flatmate used it to crack wise. Out with a group of friends, (crucially not ‘your friends’) he took me to one side.

He said “I see your friend is working tonight.”

Dumbfounded and impressed, as there had been no sightings for an age, I managed to splutter, “What? She’s back? You mean the Polish girl?”

He sipped on a beer.

“No”

“I mean the Polish girl’s boyfriend.”

If, to the casual reader, the above does not appear to be the height of comedy, I can only say, that night was not one of easy slumber for Groucho Marx. I expect soon, very soon, to be contacted by Malcolm Gladwell, author of ‘The Tipping Point’.

Since That Moment, The Term has proved Its versatility in the unforgiving theatre that is male conversational bonding. Now, It can mean a person glimpsed on Clapham high street; or her ambling companion, nervously avoiding the cracks in the pavement whilst trying to read her own palm; or someone who may, years ago, served frappacinos in a vaguely flirtatious manner in a venue frequented once on a trip to Basingstoke; or her father; or a lass ‘your dad’ might consider sleeping with (‘your dad’ denotes not, as the converted may have gathered, the other’s father, but a nearby gentleman who, usually, has found himself free from the constraints of bricks ‘n mortar, and whose fingers enjoy the texture of brown paper). It goes on and on and on.

It is a conversational journey. Some critics may suggest Its significance in the flat provides incontestable evidence of arrested development and wonder if we wear swaddling. Those bozos could never be a friend of ours. We may not be living the life where everything we want is a phone call away (unless everything is defined as vegetable-free food) and it may seem like we a couple of schnooks making a pansy-assed attempt to talk-the-talk, but without It, life would be duller, our speech more leaden, our friendship more formal. We’d be a couple of regular Johnny Tescos.

It’s us or them, and if your friend doesn’t understand, forgeddaboutit.


*Not to be confused with a scene from ‘Mickey Blue Eyes’, the title of which is missing, somewhere, another word beginning with F.

Skilled 21st Century Human

Whilst not condoning the severe breach of professional ethics and only commenting because there is a healthy distance from events, I do think this guy must be quite a character:

'A German therapist stands accused of taking advantage of a female patient with a split personality - by using one alter ego for sex, another to clean and a third to give him money.'

I hope he stays away from poker.

A quick post to recommend ' Big Babies, Or: Why Can’t We Just Grow Up?', Michael Bywater's book about how culture is becoming more and more infantile. He argues that the Baby-Boomers are in control and they are committed to perpetual infantility. As a result, the rest of us become Big Babies.

At times, it's a bit repetitive and he's prone to ranting, but the writing is always first class. It's also short and he's a gifted comedian.

Here he is on the ubiquity of adverts:

'we would be advised not to linger too long over our lovemaking, in case an advertiser sneaks in through the window and glues an ad to our arse'

On the trend to home entertainment:

'Interesting to see how, for example, Blockbuster Video attempts to synthesise the old cinema-going experience with its sacraments of popcorn and coke, both served in a bucket; perhaps they should also sell urinal cakes for that authentic movie-theatre smell and, ideally, you should, for a premium, be able to hire a pervert who would creep in, sit next to you and put your hand on his thing.'

He is not the only voice on this topic but he's one of the most entertaining.

'As far as I'm concerned, progress peaked with frozen pizza'

Bruce Willis has said ‘Hair loss is God’s way of telling me that I’m human’. Presumably, sequels are God’s way of telling the rest of us that we are sheep, but it’s no time to ponder as Bruce is back in ‘Die Hard 4.0’. Combined with the recent ‘Rocky Balboa’, and the forthcoming Rambo movie, it is clearly time to be reminded that important deeds can be still performed by aging, multi-millionaire owners of a novelty restaurant chain. At least Sly and Brucie haven’t gone into politics.

When Willis’ New York cop John McClane appeared in 1988, he described himself as, ‘The monkey in the wrench.’ After 19 years, much has changed, but we can take comfort from the fact that John ‘still has his moments’, although he’s less prone to promoting vest awareness.

This time, all he has to do, is pick up a kid and drop him off to the FBI. ‘How hard can that be, huh?’ The lad is Justin Long, an actor touching 30, but with a boyish face and thus in need of mentoring. He plays a hacker, and when his apartment is hit by serious looking chaps with rocket launchers, SMGs and leather jackets, we are fired into a plot based on cyber-terrorism.

Real life terrorist movements are often amorphous, dispersed into the community and lack handy, cackling protagonist types, but rather than tackle any of that difficult bollocks, ‘Die Hard 4.0’ simply puts Timothy Olyphant in a van, tucks in his shirt and scripts lines like, ‘You don’t know what I am capable of’. It’s pure Hollywood fundamentalism. He’s aided by some disturbed lackeys that appear to have swapped the joys of acrobatics for those of power inputting, and they type ’n tumble their way through the dastardly scheme.

Evil Tim’s love interest is provided by Maggie Q, who has said,

‘I'm just totally into being strong. There's something about wanting to get a jar out of a cupboard, or moving a sofa and not having to call for help. There's comfort in that’

so this time, Bruce is really up against it.

To criticise a Die Hard movie for lacking an intelligent plot is like attacking ‘Tom and Jerry’ for not tackling the plight of domestic cats. Director Len Wiseman, fresh from offering Kate Beckinsale his hand in marriage, proves capable of providing well choreographed action thrills, which, had the palette been more colourful, would not look out of place in The Simpson’s movie.

It’s silly and best seen in a packed cinema, full of enthusiastic drunkards, who are happy to indulge in ‘let’s kick some ass’ whooping. It’s insane, with the character development of a video game and the dialogue is instantly forgettable but, when the action is moving, it’s a riot. The tagline of the original was, ‘It will blow you out of theatre!’ Today, those words are as likely to be seen on a promotional poster as a ciggy in a snug, but we can still join Bruce for some passive smirking.

A Guy Walks Out of the Psychiatrist's Office

SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!

This post is about the climax to 'The Sopranos' and will wreck your enjoyment if you have not yet watched it.

If the above applies, please do not read any further as the ending is best experienced with as little information as possible.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The edition of ‘The Commercial Appeal’, a Memphis daily, printed on 17/08/77, had a headline, “‘Are you sure there’s no mistake?’

– The Desired Answer Never Came.”

30 years ago, the reaction to the death of ‘The King’ was similar to the audience’s response to the climax of ‘The Sopranos’. Its final episode, ‘Made In America’, provided no gift-wrapped resolution and provoked a range of emotional responses from viewers. At first, shock and disbelief reigned. Some threatened to cancel their subscription to HBO, the cable company that had provided their Sunday ritual of family belonging.

Things like the end of important TV shows or the death of rock gods should not happen like this. Tony, like Elvis, was, ‘the sort of god the public wants today. He was overweight, he dressed out of date and he took too many prescription drugs, just like us.’ The end left us, in the words of Soprano crew member Paulie Walnuts, ‘halfway up the ass’.

The previous episode, ‘The Blue Comet’, featured an escalation of the war between Jersey and New York. It ended with Tony holed up in a safe house, gun by his side, trying to fall asleep on an uncovered mattress. Seemingly, some kind of catharsis beckoned.

‘Made In America’ brilliantly continued the tension. Tony, the family-oriented everyman, fills the frame, sleeping, looking like he’s dead. His day begins, like it does for most of us: bleary-eyed, momentarily confused and irritated by media intrusion. The difference, and the dramatic imperative, provided by the bedside instrument of death. The scene evoked Lester Burnham’s comment in ‘American Beauty’, “Remember those posters that said, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life?’ Well, that’s true of every day except one. The day you die.”

It was the springboard for 60 minutes of anticipation, paranoia and suspense. Throughout, the creator, David Chase, manipulated the audience and played with its studio-led perceptions of a series finale. The first major scene was a tense, delayed meeting at an airport, which featured an image of Tony, caught in headlights, looking vulnerable. FBI Agent Harris had been responding to a false alarm, a recurrent theme throughout the episode.

We’d been set-up to believe Tony might be killed by one of his own men, an informer for the FBI, a rat. Instead, the scene in the safe-house just had a comment about a stray cat killing a mouse in the cellar. Tony’s depressed son, AJ, fresh out of a suicide treatment centre, parks his SUV on some leaves that are set alight by the heat of the vehicle. Smoke creeps into the car, just as he is about to have sex with his girlfriend. They survive but the SUV explodes, its CD player choked on Dylan singing, ‘Life goes on all around you’.

The mob war between Jersey and New York is resolved without major escalation - there is hardly a raised voice at the sit-down. Later, there is a scene of great tension as Paulie arrives at the strip-club to meet a henchman, Carlo, and we expect blood to spill. Instead, the finger on the trigger becomes the thumb on the phone.

And so it goes on. The crew’s lawyer, Mink, tries to cover his burger with ketchup. Frustrated by his attorney’s clapping noises, Tony tries his hand, but has to throw the bottle away in disgust. Even he couldn’t supply the free flowing red stuff.

So, after fifty five minutes of confusion and misdirection, we are led to the final scene, following Tony as he enters the ice cream parlour. It’s five minutes of brilliantly sustained tension and paranoia.

For a peerless breakdown of the scene’s symbolism, I strongly recommend this excellent post by Bob Harris. It is an extremely thorough analysis of the events and his construction is faultless. He provides a step by step explanation as to why it points to death and a funeral. He begins with the comment from an earlier episode, by Bobby Baccalieri, Tony’s brother-in-law, ‘you probably don’t even hear it when it happens’.

He then mentions the framing of the shot that references ‘The Last Supper’. He also points out that from the moment the guy in the ‘Member’s Only’ jacket (‘when you put it on, something happens’) enters the parlour Chase frequently has him in the frame. The jacket’s trip to the bathroom is a reference to ‘The Godfather’ and the film’s ‘Sollozo’ murder was Tony’s favourite scene.

Bob makes plenty of other points, all valid, that illustrate Chase was foretelling death. My favourite is the onion rings: they are eaten like communion wafers. Whilst in no way denying that many indicators could point to Tony’s death, most of the scenes throughout the episode did not reach the obvious conclusion.

I appreciate David Chase has said, of the climax:

‘Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there’,

which strongly suggests a definite ending.

However, he has also said:

‘I don’t think art should give answers. I think art should only raise questions, a lot of which may be even dissonant and you don’t even know you’re being asked a question, but that it creates some kind of tension inside you’.

Admittedly, although extremely appropriate for his show’s climax, it was not a direct reference to 'The Sopranos'. This, however, is:

‘This is what Hollywood has done to America. Do you have to have closure on every little thing? Isn't there any mystery in the world? In life, you don't get an ending to every story. You can't tie a little ribbon on everything and say it's over. And yeah, I know...'The Sopranos isn't life.' But it's based on it!'

The series has always reflected American life, so it is appropriate, during a time, ‘where people might be terrorists, or they could be pistachio salesmen’, there is an uncertain ending to the show. To conclude that Tony is popped is to neglect the possibility he looks up and sees Meadow, his daughter. In its final moment, Chase gives us the dominant theme of The Sopranos (and all great art): love and death. To have a debate about which interpretation is more valid is as inappropriate as unleashing an Alsatian in a graveyard.

The last five minutes does suggest death, but I think it is the audience who is 86-ed. It is our time that is over. It also highlights our dependency on television. Even for a show that frequently features characters passively watching screens, ‘Made in America’, has an abundance of scenes depicting people gawping at images.

It has: a monitor showing Bobby Baccalieri’s tombstone; Tony’s crew killing time with ‘The Twilight Zone’; Agent Harris absorbing a broadcast about fundamentalism; Mink peeping at the strippers displayed on the monitors at the ‘Bing’; a screen depicting a heart beat; Tony sees ‘Little Miss Sunshine’; and finally AJ, (‘He used to just veg in front of that TV’) seemingly cured of his depression by watching an explosion, laughing at the dancing Bush. We are constantly reminded of the presence of screens and passive experiences.

We were the tourists on the bus leaving Little Italy. We, like New York mobster, Butch, found ourselves, confused, in Chinatown, wondering where our world has gone. He turns back. We cannot. For ten seconds, we are the cat, transfixed, looking at a screen of death. Chase cut off our life support. We didn’t hear it when it happened.

Desperate, in a shocked state, we found ourselves, (like the characters throughout 'The Sopranos') in denial, trying to create more bearable alternatives: ‘I saw the Meadow ending. It may as well be ‘ELVIS LIVES!’. Jolted out of existence, we expected answers from the puppet-master. Many found themselves at the Pearly Gates of the HBO web-site, clamouring for information, crashing it in the process, learning only that the American creator was not there, he was not in heaven.

He was in France.

Chase has argued that network TV drama is like religion: it offers the same message every week and people find that reassuring. The ending of 'The Sopranos' removes that comfort zone and pops the viewers’ belief system. We will not always be reassured by life, or our philosophies or, shock, our TVs.

Even Bart Simpson realised this:

‘If TV has taught me anything, it’s that miracles always happen to poor kids at Christmas.’ [Later] ‘It seems impossible, but I guess TV has betrayed me.’

With the prevalence of TV sets, it is impossible not to sympathise with Bart. As Michael Bywater puts it in his book, ‘Big Babies, Or Why Can’t We Just Grow Up?’,

‘There is television in taxis now because our minds need to be distracted from being in a taxi, in the world, in the street. And we can’t turn it off. There is no way to turn it off.’

David Chase did turn it off. By ending our existence in 'The Sopranos', he challenged our faith in conventional narrative, our expectation that ‘this is how things are’. Sometimes, the desired answer does not come. It doesn’t matter whether we believe in this:

or this







or this:





there will always be uncertainty. We can only count on death. We left 'The Sopranos' as we will probably leave this earth: wanting more and never knowing, specifically, what happens next. We spent time with a family, we loved them, we were annoyed by them, they made us laugh, they shocked us, but most of the time we were comfortable in their company. Now we are left ‘in a lonely place’.

We had family. Redefined. Now we just have

Sailing on the waters of free enterprise

The French cosmetics company L’Oreal has recently changed its advertising slogan from: ‘Because I’m worth it’ to ‘Because you’re worth it’. (The slogan for the male line is ‘Because you're worth it too’. One of the products will ‘rejuvenate expressions’ and another offers a ‘long-lasting healthy look’; most reassuring in these troubled times for masculinity.)

L’Oreal thinks the consumer feels uneasy proclaiming ‘I buy it because I deserve it’ so they now flog the same product by easing guilt. It’s a slightly quieter version of consumerism, but not one which is about to state: ‘Because we're all worth it’. Christ, no. Let’s not go nuts. Products are still sold on a philosophy of privilege and by appealing to the ego.

It is a small change of strategy that might help explain why it has been suggested that we may have reached a ‘high tide mark for individualism’ (read the post here). It is a piece written by a marketing man and its main arguments are: the rise of China and India; growing awareness of global problems; and the Internet’s peer to peer networks. He wonders how marketing strategies will adapt. They may not have to.

Individualism is still a potent force if Nike can continue to advocate conscience-free triumph with ‘Just Do It’. The corporation still has a colossal turnover, for years boosted by the process of ‘doing it’ to Cambodian children. Its brand is almost as popular in ‘other regarding’ societies as it is in ‘self-regarding’ marketplaces, a fact that might counter the suggestion that the rise of the Indian and Chinese economies will cause the emergence of a newer, more community oriented world.

A clue to the future is offered by the arrival of a ‘tasteful, understated’ Starbucks in the Forbidden City. Clearly, it is diffucult to see it as a physical representation of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, the vision of his country's future articulated by Deng Xiaoping, when he was Leader of China. He was using the patter of the snake-oil salesman to pitch capitalism to his people.

His words helped pave the way for the arrival of Starbucks. Moreover, they created circumstances that make it likely that China will influenced by individualism and the philosophy’s concomitant belief in the all-healing powers of the free-market. As China and India pursue their economic advancement and experience urbanisation, the workplace is likely to dominate their lives.

Already, for a lot of westerners, the office is one of the few places where they experience community. The Puritans advocated work as escape from terror. In the 21st century, that is still the case. In work there can be a constant pressure to maintain the correct ‘face’ and, because the group is competitive, it affects the bonding rituals that are important for emotional well being. It fosters distrust and isolation, perfect conditions for marketing based on rewards, privileges and reassurances. It is a model of going to work, feeling insecure, arriving home exhausted and drinking the beer that knows we need to ‘belong’. Consumers in India and China will increasingly be exposed to those pressures.

Starbucks is not the only western presence in the Forbidden City. The corporation that use to implore ‘Don’t Leave Home Without It’ now has its logo plastered in major museums. Just when people should be feeling a connection with history, they are aware of a brand that currently has a slogan ‘My Card. My Life.’ We are urged to consider ourselves at all times and that is not always beneficial.

Consider two visuals of mass togetherness: the home supporters at a football ground, scarves in the air, a mass of unified colour and chanting as one:

and, a scene from Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’, which depicts a multitude of workers, drearily trudging to clock on:

The first offers what Nietzsche termed ‘the transient joy of self-loss’, the freedom from the responsibility of conscious thought; the second, a vision of a down trodden mass, an image close to Karl Marx’s term ‘lumpenproletariat'.

Individualism has prompted huge strides because it has given the majority of the west the voice to criticise existing social structures; but its flip side has helped to create a distrust of communal pleasures, which is a problem if one’s only experience of group belonging is the workplace.

Peer to peer networks provide some of the necessary connection but contact is limited to the screen and, most of the time, characters are anonymous or nebulous. It is a poor substitute for team belonging and it can never replicate the joy of self surrender. To put it another way, it is the sound of two hands typing compared with noise of community applause.

If one’s experiences of community are competitive or based on ambiguous avatars, conditions are rife for distrusting, critical paranoia, which can find its expression with anonymous bloggers, ranting to an audience of one. It is the same paranoia that produces the critical comments made from the arses on the upholstery of SUVs: on a two mile drive to an UK supermarket, the occupants pass judgement on the ‘chavs’ they see through tinted glass.

The paranoid criticisms help maintain social divisions: these can then be exploited by advertising and so individualism’s potential to affect structural change becomes, instead, a focus on the mobility of the individual. Products become overly important, so when one’s critical faculties do come into play, they are not always used for the most worthy of causes (unless the recipes for Mars bars and Coco-Cola are vital for a balanced existence.)

This sugar-coating of the ability to affect change might explain the success of ‘cause marketing’. Pioneered in the 80s by our reassuring friends American Express, it managed to raise money for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. Crucially, it also created an upsurge in both new users of the card and usage amongst the existiing customers. Spending on cause marketing is rising at a dramatic rate. So when you next buy a luxury branded cosmetic (because you are worth it) you can also ease your guilt about not doing enough to clean up the dirty parts of the world. (Heaven forbid that anyone suggest the cash be raised by direct taxation.)

Individualism will survive and hopefully produce a climate that encourages the scrutiny of corporations. (Given their influence, it is somewhat odd they are not often subject to the same level of inspection as western democracies. Possibly it is because they manufacture the products that give us our branded identities and to examine that too heavily might cause a few personal breakdowns.) The continuing pull of individualism will award us the power to: influence the recipe of a soft drink; to enjoy it in Beijing; to pay for it with ‘my card’, with 0.5% of its cost going to charity. It is individualistic infantilism, which will survive until climate change provides a devastating peek-a-boo moment.

The future?

It’s like the present: Coke is it.

Education, education, educaton

I have lifted this from Chekov because I think it is interesting, insightful and biographical:

You have only one defect ...your extraordinary lack of education...educated people in my opinion must satisfy the following conditions:

1. They respect a man's personality, and therefore are always tolerant, gentile, polite and tolerant. They do not make a riot about a little hammer or a lost rubber; living with others they do not make a favour of it, and when leaving do not say, "It is impossible to live with you!" They excuse noise and cold, and over-roasted meat, and witticisms, and the presence of other people in their house....

2. They are compassionate, and not only with beggars and cats, for they grieve in their soul for what the naked eye does not see...They do not sleep for nights so as to to help their parents pay for their brothers' studies, to buy clothes for their mother....

3. They respect other people's property and therefore they pay their debts.

4. They are pure in heart and fear a lie as they fear fire. They do not lie, even in trifles. A lie is humiliating to the listener, and it debases the speaker before his own eyes. They do not show off; they behave in public just as they behave in home; they do not throw dust in the eyes of humbler people, and do not make up soul to soul conversations when they are not asked. Out of respect people's ears they are often silent.

5. They do not belittle themselves to arouse the compassion of others. They do not play on the strings of other people's souls so that they shall sigh over and fondle them. They do not say: "People don't understand me!" because all that produces is a cheap effect; it is vulgar, musty, false.

6. They are not vain-glorious. They do not care about such false diamonds as acquaintanceship with celebrities, shaking hands with the drunken P__, the raptures of a well-met fellow at the salon, popularity in public houses....Doing a farthing's worth, they do not walk about with their briefcases as if they had done a hundred roubles' worth, and do not boast of having been admitted where others are not admitted.

It's from a letter to his brother and, at times, it shows but it is still interesting.

Lobes of Learning

'A History of Modern Britain', broadcast on Tuesdays, 9pm BBC2, is Andrew Marr's next step on the road to becoming a Superdon. After heroically fighting flagging sales at 'The Independent', and withstanding the venom of the cruel Impersonator, he now displays his extraordinary gift as a TV historian, waging a personal vendetta against ignorance.

Marr knows he cannot join the elite Superdons without distinct enunciation. David Starkey has his cold consonants conveying intellectual menace, Simon Schama has a roller-coaster approach to stressing syllables and so Andrew Marr had goes for a slow, deliberate, head-nodding delivery.

It is an admirable achievement for Marr and it obviously helps him rein in his gesticulations. He is often seated, hands clasped, looking like he has just finished the 'how to' volume on gravitas. As a consequence of his restraint, sometimes his delivery begins to quicken, as he bubbles with excitement, but it serves to add to the wonderful whole.

The first programme dealt with the post-war years, with Atlee's newly elected government and its vision of a 'new Jerusalem'; but the history also covers cultural changes, with an applaudable nod to Ealing Studios and a focus on the emergence of a desire for non-conformist clothing. (A social development concisely covered by 'The Onion's' headline: MAN VENTURES OUTSIDE HATLESS)

It's well narrated and edited and I could have watched it all day. Well done Andrew Marr, the cape's in the post.