Writer Dennis Cass has a website, but far more importantly, he gets promotion like no other writer before has ever gotten promotion. Watch and learn.

If an actor ever approached the interview process with the self-appreciation of Simon Hattenstone in this interview with Ewan McGregor, then he would be eviscerated… by the press. The trick seems to be insult the actor and his work, then write about how they clam up. I’m all for the critical voice; I haven’t liked a Woody Allen film since “Crimes and Misdemeanors”, and the constraints of an interview junket must make it hard to get yourself up for a 15 minute chat, but it seems Monsieur Hattenstone’s dream interview subject is himself…

“In 2006, following the first motorcycle journey, they adopted a four-year-old Mongolian girl Jamiyan. That must have been a life-changing trip, I say. “I won’t discuss that with you, so you could ask me another question.” Why won’t he discuss it? “I’ve never discussed it with a journalist and I’m not about to change that.” Fair enough, but he could handle it a little more elegantly. After all it is hardly the most intrusive question in the world; he has agreed to be interviewed and how hard would it have been to say, “Yes, she has brought us much joy but I’d prefer not to talk about her.”

I don’t know. Isn’t that pretty much what he said?

I blame it all on Lucifer’s Dreambox. This American Life has become a Showtime TV series, and now that you can see things (Ira Glass’s glasses - Ira’s Glasses?) while listening, the show feels a little stretched.

Bummer. The truth is, I’ve only recently become fully alive to the exotic delight of people talking to me on my iPod instead of singing me songs, so I’m delighted to welcome Speechification into my earholes.

The tireless and multi-talented connector Russell Davies is involved, so speechification is worth a listen. Available as a podcast on iTunes, too. Now that’s what I call chat.

Did you ever get a deep tissue sports massage? I did once and let me tell you, there’s nothing remotely relaxing about them. I was early for mine, and as I sat in the reception and glanced around, I saw a small sign behind the counter, above a display case selling elbow pads, knee supports and analgesic sprays. “Non-erotic massage centre”, it read. As if it need be said, I thought. This place was utterly antiseptic, white painted, and above all sporty.

As I waited, I noticed the well-worn guestbook sitting on top of the pile of magazines beside me. Why not, I thought, and began to flick through testimonials from recovering sportsmen (I’d take a guest book over a bad magazine any day).

The messages were largely as you would expect - lots of exclamation points, plenty of misspelling, and a few smiley faces drawn in felt-tip pen.
“Thanks for helping sort out my adductor mussel – this place rocks! SteveK”.
“Wow - thumbs of steal. I need another massage to recover!!!!!!! Kelly”.
“So good to get my gloots back. You guys rule!! DL.”

And beneath that, this little gem, by Anonymous:

“Non erotic my ass!! Man oh man, that’s the best rub-and-tug I ever got!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!”

Here’s a list of search terms entered which brought people to lozenge in the last week. I’m in no position to question the sanity of the searchers - it’s a fairly accurate road map of the inside of my brain.

whatever in greece words
katie holmes prisoner window
getting a tattoo, +”xanax”
dive bars in london
thick saliva from dog mouth
lozenge
skinheads teardrop tattoo
mini cooper to rent in london
essays about you can’t kill the rooster
hip berlin
bar names
lozenge wordpress
most heard songs
i love dublin
stripclubs in la with no entrance fee
the bewlay brothers
bleener

When we travel, we work our bodies at high speed then switch to absolute inertia with no notice in between. It’s a nausea-inducing cocktail of standing and running, waiting and queueing, sprinting to gates and sitting, then running to form a line, getting past the gate and queueing to board, then frantically finding overhead bins and stuffing luggage into them while everyone else is waiting, then sitting down and waiting to use the toilet while everyone else stuffs luggage into overhead bins.

When we queue for the toilet we’re asked to rush back to our seats for take-off, then “this is your captain speaking and relax - we’re queueing for the runway”. We’re nearly falling asleep in our seats when we’re shot through the air, then we cannot rest as we circle our home town queueing to land, then we land too fast, taxi too slow, squirm in agony waiting for the doors to open, then sprint to the taxi queue, stand in the line, finally reach the top and ask our driver to step on it. Why do we make travel so unpleasant? Why can’t we train ourselves not to fight for every inch, minute and air mile?

At the gate for a Ryanair flight back to Dublin recently, I was part of a scene involving people of six different nationalities, a scene in which each of us behaved in a way that was perfectly emblematic of our country’s national character, and all of which was bad for everyone’s health.

I was the first person to clear airport security because I needed to be somewhere in Dublin that night, and I reasoned that if I got onto the plane first, I could sit in Seat 1A and once the plane landed I could bolt for the taxi. The gate was in a glass-walled room, through the middle of which ran a partition of those elasticated belts that click into each other (with which I cannot help myself from interfering when I am in any line). At the front of this partition was a sign indicating that the left hand side was for those who had paid for prioirty boarding, and for the rest to go to the right. Around the perimeter of the room were seats.

I had paid for priority boarding and I was first in the room, but there was no way I was going to be the guy who stands at the counter when the plane hasn’t yet landed - a one-man army of tension. I took a seat on the left. Immediately, a short Italian man in his sixties walked up to the desk on my side, the priority side, put his suitcase on the ground right in front of it then walked around and took a seat on the non-priority side. Clearly, he didn’t want to be the guy who stands at the counter when the plane hasn’t even landed either, but nor did he want to lose out – hence the suitcase which, standing alone in the middle of the room, could only have seemed more like a bomb had a sparkling fuse been shortening on top.

Within a few minutes, a Scottish couple in their fifties (hill-walkers, I’m certain), entered, saw the bag, walked around it and stood in front of it facing the desk, as if they weren’t speaking to the suitcase anymore. I watched the short Italian man take this in, then jump to his feet because the Irish had arrived and we were ready to form our national queue – that circular confluence of bodies brushing off each other, nudging forward behind each other’s backs, spilling around the sides to gain tiny advantages.

Being Irish myself, I had to finagle my way into the centre of the organism. As soon as I stood up, a Russian family sat down where I had been, and seemed happy to watch the rest of us standing when the plane hadn’t yet landed. Being Russian, they realised the utter futility of hope - for them a seat is more than they could have hoped for.

Five Italian ticket collectors materialised at the desk, causing our queueing organism to envelop it with anticipation. The ticket collectors were oblivious to our beating pulse and the musk of tension which clung to our t-shirts. They might have come from a langourous picnic in the car-park, and were continuing a heated conversation that might have been about murder. Fingers were drawn across throats, hands made violent chopping motions, and through the window we saw the plane screeching onto the tarmac and taxiing around to our gate. Outside, Les Irlandais spilled onto the tarmac and were herded into a shuttle bus. The Scottish hillwalkers could now see through the steel hull of the plane into the cabin, and could read the mind of the captain. They tried to tell the Italian ticket collectors it was okay to start collecting tickets, but it wasn’t until the frazzled Polish stewardess ran across the tarmac and began to beat at the glass window with her fists that they paused their animated conversation.

We were already late, and the Polish stewardess wanted to get home to Dublin. The queue pressed forward onto the desk, and as a hand reached out for the first priority boarding card, the Italian man with the suitcase was neck-and-neck with the Scottish hillwalkers. Out of nowhere a party of six people from… North-East Europe slid into the top of the queue, using their handsome children as protective armour. Recriminations, filthy looks and red-faced muttering abounded, the queue squeezed ever tighter, and I am ashamed to report that there was sprinting on the tarmac and wanton overtaking of women and infants.

Most of all, there was gleeful schadenfreude on board, when the North-Eastern European family found that they could not fit their luggage in the overhead bin and it was removed for stowage in the hold. As the tin can climbed into the sky, how we laughed; me and the Italian man, the Scottish hillwalkers, and the Polish stewardess. How we were winning.

Nothing has to power to drag you back to a place and time more clearly than music - except smell. A friend recently turned me onto these DJ sets from Sir Henry’s in Cork, and I’ve fallen into a vortex.

From what distance does nostalgia become acceptable? From years 0-30 I absolutely detested it and all reminiscing, thinking it was tantamount to saying that the business of creating a life was over. But from where I’m now sitting, Ronnie Whelan is bossing the midfield and Viz is still funny.

1) i’ve just been asked to join this group on flickr:
السلام عليكم
قروب بدوي للعلوم الطيبه وهبه الريح وفله الحجاج والصور الذربه
يقول للجميع مرحبا والله ومسهلا
القروب قروبكم
والمحل محلكم
اخوكم
بدوي

the online translator offers this by way of explanation:
“The peace on you,
Bedouin for the flags granted him the wind,
the pilgrims and the masts says for the all welcomed and Allah and laxative
The place in place of you,
Make brotherly you,
Bedouin.

Hang on. Laxatives?

2) Philip Larkin described his own appearance as “a cross between an egg and a bloodhound”. Bless him.

3) After satisfying a recent bagel jones, I got to wondering about the origin of the word jonesin. it transpires that it may - or may not be - Great Jones Street in New York.

That’s all for now. Make brotherly you Bedouin.

for the same reason that I love Musical Rooms, I love the shit out of Random Rules . It’s a weekly interview with a musician wherein they hit random on their iPod and talk about whatever track comes up. It’s far more interesting than reading an unfortunate journalist trying to find a fresh way of describing another cookie-cutter interviewing experience with an apathetic musician who doesn’t want to discuss their love life.

This is from the latest random rules, with Canadian rapper, Cadence Weapon.
Elephant Man, “The Way We Roll (Remix feat. Busta Rhymes and Shaggy)”
CW: I have never heard this song before, but it might be really good. I like Elephant Man. I used to be on a huge dancehall kick in 2003. I was listening to almost exclusively dancehall that year. I remember I really liked Elephant Man, because all his raps were about how his dick was so big—like an elephant trunk, you know? I guess that’s the whole meaning behind his name. It’s not that he feels separated from society. He just has a really big dick.

I guess that’s dancehall deconstructed pretty much forever.

Every Saturday morning, the Irish gather in many of the beautiful towns of mainland Europe to play a game that might be unique to our people, and at which we can be said to be truly world-class. The location is unimportant, though the smaller the town, the more fiendishly difficult and exciting it can be. Some of the best venues for it are Carcasonne, Dubrovnik and Rimini. The rules are the same for every place; they are unwritten, they are known by each of us, and we have learned them by instinct.

I am of course, referring to “get-out-of-my-face-this-is-my-special-time-and-you’re-ruining-it-by-just-being-here”, or GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH. GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH is a refined version of hide-and-seek, sponsored by Ryanair, wherein we get points for spotting another Irish person and more points for avoiding them. GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH sounds elementary until you add a crucial detail – we’re all looking for the same thing.

The airlines have dumped us here before we’ve figured out why we wanted to come. Our lives are busy so we didn’t do research beyond the in-flight magazine which suggested the three things you just have to see/taste/buy in Carcasonne/Dubrovnik/Rimini. We got in late last night and ate dinner in our hotel, had a few drinks and hit the hay. None of us has much time to spare this weekend, so come Saturday morning, we are fed, watered, factored and ready to see/taste/buy.

The best time to play GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH is Saturday morning - the crowd will dissipate by Sunday. I started at 10.30 and immediately heard singing in a small square. I should have heeded the puckered mouth of a passing Sardinian woman but I didn’t and I walked into a yodelling stag party, lobster-armed, rugby shirted (bonus points because I recognised one of them from the bookshop at the airport). I swung back on my heel as if lassoed by an invisible tour guide, and ducked into a wine shop for cover.

The bell rang out as I entered the cellar. The shop was hewn from the rock; ancient and truly Sardinian, Produce was stacked on shelves that had been carved to fit the contour of the thick, cool marble walls, and was pleasingly ethnic. Local wine, tins of sardines, pig’s snouts and the ubiquitous Orangina. I wandered through aisles, inspecting local delices and holding trinkets aloft - this is what a foreign holiday is all about, poncing about aimlessly, losing oneself among the smells and flavours of another place. The bell tinkled.

- Where’s a good place to get a cup of coffee around here, somewhere not too expensive?

I had a peek around the aisle – Irish-mother-and-daughter (bonus points for mother-daughter combo, and also bonus points because I recognised these two from the Aircoach). The Sardinian man behind the counter had been coiffed to perfection but was probably not the sharpest block of Parmesan in the room. He was scrutinising them as if they had demanded to see his underpants, right now. In mitigation, coffee in Italy is a euro, everywhere, and even thought I had only been there for a morning, I already knew that the average number of café’s on any given Sardinian street was at around the thirty mark. Actually, there was so much information for the poor gent to impart that he simply didn’t know where to begin, and just looked at them blankly. He may not even have spoken English, yet before he managed to formulate an answer in a foreign tongue, they turned on their hell and left, and I heard daughter say to mother – “Thanks a lot. God they’re so rude, aren’t they?”

I should have known not to go to the church, but I did, because I always do when I’m away. Don’t we all? (Do tourists of all creeds and nationalities step into churches on their holidays or is it just we, or is it just me?). Arriving moments after a wedding party had left gave it the sense of a vacated crime scene. Confetti was blowing around the marble steps having been flung from the hands of relatives into the air and onto the train of a bride, moments before. I could see Sardinian bride and groom being congratulated by friends a few yards away.

The bride was wearing a deep purple crushed velvet dress and dark wine lipstick. The groom did not look unlike Tim Roth and wore a tonic suit and spiky wet-look hair. Neither was in the first flush of youth, and if I had to judge, I would say it was a ceremony borne of an ultimatum. The people passing them had clearly been at the wedding, or else were locals who knew them. They kissed both parties on either cheek, said a few funny words and went on. The women congratulated the bride and the men gave the groom a cigarette, and one by one the women tottered down the hill on the cobbles and the men slipped into a dingy bar across the way.

This was not the bar in which the wedding reception was being held; yet the groom kept glancing over longingly. Clearly, it was that place that you go for the few before the few before the many. It’s an utterly Irish tradition, or so I had thought until that very moment - travel broadens the mind. Finally, he leaned over and whispered something in his bride’s ear, and her face turned to thunder. Before she could respond, he pecked his wife on the cheek and trotted across the road into the bar.

From within, a big cheer went up. The bride tottered on with her bridesmaids, and watching the scene, I felt like a tourist again, even though I could have been in Birr, Aughrim, Loughrea. Everywhere has been discovered by others and will be re-discovered again, and there’s a limit to the number of temples, trinkets and devastating sunsets you can gawk at. But you never get tired of people - specially your own kin. That and GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH.