A VIEW FROM A BRIDGE AT THEATRE ROYAL

Global warming has been treating Glasgow kind.

Visitors have been going outside for all day trips , confidently stating they will not take an overcoat , there was a time not long ago when such a statement was like Scotts companion saying " i maybe gone some time" , it would have been an incredulous utterance of someone who had lost the will to carry on and fatally exposed oneself to a slow lingering end.

Some Glaswegians have also made seemingly reckless decisions to take a Book with them to the local park without bothering to have a carrier bag in case it gets wet in a spontaneous downpour.And yet , no ones laughs in their face , such laissez faire abandon is seen as entirely normal behaviour , it is now taken completely for granted that the sun will shine on for hour after hour;afternoon into evening ; day after day.

Alas Glasgows paradise is Hell for the Tropical zones.The temperatures have gone from hot to unbearable to positively a danger to health and well being.It is barely out of May yet Pakistan is suffering record levels of rising mercury , with the promise of worse to come when the scorching heat really kicks in.

Earlier today i voted in the European Parliamentary elections , i cast my ballot for the SNP which is the local nationalist left of centre party.It is always a bad sign when voting national socialist is seen as the moderate civil libertarian way to go.But these are strange days for democracy indeed.

The SNP have got a good track record of not supporting various ill advised imperialist adventures and have also given my Good Friend Osama Saeed the ticket to run as an MP candidate for the Glasgow Central constituency in the Westminster Parliamentary elections.Though most importantly they have allowed quality People like Osama to inculcate a major input on SNP policy as well advisory platforms and forums.This has led to the SNP having an enlightened partnership and solid mutual discourse with the Muslim Community which has served all parties with great benefit.

Win ; lose or Draw Osama is well poised to have a great contribution to a Strong Scotland in with the Muslims play a full and active part.With Osamas domestic contributions and the US Climate policy Scotland could become , well Scotland (under the Sun).


But we are also tasting the backlash of the sunny weather , the Theatre was very hot and stuffy.You know things have really changed when lack of air-conditioning is the main complaint of the evening.The cast deserve a special mention for delivering a fine performances all round.

The Play itself has many themes , family;social;class;loyalty , but the most important one is that one should not miss an opportunity to apologise when a chance is presented.If you do that most things can be rectified.

BARCA WHOOP CHELSEA AND MAN UTD

Barca played the game as it should be.

Chelsea had other ideas.

Check-out this video , It cost millions to put together:



Worth every penny.

What makes you think this man was biased



I thought he played a blinder.

But its good to see Drogba is taking this philosophically:



The referee called 2 of the decisions right , and the two errors were from the assistant who should have "assisted" the referee as he had a better angle.All in All the ref got 4/4 , 100% right.

The the referees do have a case , and this is where Drogbas Karma may help, in that Players literally taking "dives" do not help decision making.More so than referees players and managers have to make a "gentlemans agreement" not to "fool" the ref.That would help the most.

The Anger from the Chelsea players was mainly misplaced frustration emanating from a major strategic error they made when the barca player was sent off.Though Chelsea were absolutely right in playing a defensive ( even destructive) game whilst the tie was 0-0 or even 1-0 , they should not have made it their religion and culture , they should have been flexible enough to change things with circumstances.

When the Barca player was sent off , they were chasing the game and only had the one strategy to play for the last 20 minutes of the match , namely to keep throwing players forward in the hope that if the one chance comes the player it falls to will have the skill;technique and composure to take it , that is the time that Chelsea should have changed tact and make the last moments be spent mostly in the Barca half.

Chelsea , on the other hand , should have shown the sophistication to use the sending off to completely change the posture of the game and put Barca on the back foot , it is not as if chelsea do not know how to maintain possession when required.Instead , Chelsea kept dogmatic faith in hoping that the opposition will not ultimately get a shot on target and paid the price , a very high risk strategy that can come unstuck.

But the good thing in all this is that Drogba has apologised.A Person should always be allowed a way back and given the opportunity to make amends and rectify.

And so on to Man Utd.

Essex will be like a morgue today.

This how the loyal never say die fans are taking it this mourning.



And Spain is no place to be for anyone that has an early start the next morning.



Though People living in Lahore will hardly notice the difference from any other quiet night out.

WAITING FOR GODOT

As a special belated birthday treat i went to see a marvelous production of Waiting for Godot in Edinburgh.My Wife could not go , which made the treat even more enjoyable.

A Golden Triangle of Three World class actors and a legendary playwright made the play the Theatre Event of the year.I was very lucky to get a front row ticket right in the middle.So close i could see the boils on McKellens feet , and the sweat gushing beneath Callows heavy clownlike makeup.

Just before one of my friends tipped me about the play i had read a perceptive article by Terry Eagleton in The New Left Review which put a very sharp and precise look into the personal circumstances of Beckett.If you go to your local reference library , get NLR ( New Left review) no. 40 July/Aug issue and read Terry Eagletons article from page 67.It tells you all about what Beckett was upto in the lead-up time and his thought processes prior to writing it , which leads to a clearer perspective of what he was trying to say in the play.He had been in France fighting for the resistance against the Nazis and saw a lot of his peers in that period turn from lefties to righties by the end of the war (Orwell etc) ; add that to being held suspiciously by the Brit handlers of the resistance because he was "republican" and having to handle explosives as well as hide from the Gestapo and at many points starvation.All these strains make up the tensions and absurdities in his experience.It gives his opinion of dogmas and ideologies of Western thought at the time he began Godot.

It was actually written after the War and is more than anything else a critique of the failure of leftism to defeat fascistic tendencies and Becketts take on the bankruptcy of Western thought to deliver on the early promise of the enlightenment.If you watch the play with this understanding in mind , you will find it a rallying call and challenge to invite todays generation to come up with inspiration and fresh ideas that offer something much better than we have at the moment , rather than a bleak play that has no positive outlook or answer to offer.

The problem with Capitalism and Communism ( socialist and fascist varieties) is that they basically have the same goals, namely to rule the world.The only difference is that capitalists have a load of dough , and Communists have loose change and buttons , and a bizarre unshakable belief that the man on the street is going to happily put his life on the line in order to hand the reins of power into their untried hands.The proof in the pudding is that the Blair cabinet was loaded with People who were an almost monty-python type parody of Communists ( John Reid ; Blunkett etc) who then turned into an almost monty-python type of Bush-Whack Imperialists without actually ditching any of their core beliefs.Which proves a Communist is basically a capitalist , and the revolutions they call for are actually Elite Change and not societal change as they claim in their rhetoric.They seem to have expunged from their discourse that the Soviet Union was one of the most unsubtle and crass experiments in imperialism ever undertaken from their collective marxist memories.These days youll be taken aback at how much from the same hymn sheet appear the speeches of Bush neo-cons like Cheney and Rumsfeld and the statements about the world and how to solve it that come out of ultra-lefties trying to teach People in South America and the Middle East to adopt Marxism.It is like Dogma of the worst kind has completely taken over the ideas of the enlightenment like an incurable computer virus.It is precisely because of this that i think a fresh way of looking at the message of Godot is well worth looking at , because we are at present going through the same malaise and lack of confidence in the system and its direction that Beckett was feeling when he wrote it.

Some say the play is not about anything really , a meaning-less play about nothing much.That has certainly been the view of the work for the last few decades.But , and this is the big butt , the "meaningless" aspect has rather been a description of how we have collectively reached a cul-de-sac or a Thinkers block.Hence the challenge is to come up with fresh workable ideas.The main failing of the ideas around the time he wrote it was that they all treated Human Beings as commodities rather than spiritual beings.Once you do that you end up advocating an ill fitting 2 dimensional template for a 3 dimensional problem and run into the kind of dead end that this play describes.I think the problem lies in that both systems ( Capitalism and Communism )treat Humans as a commodity.Once you do that then , as one correctly observes , the best you will do is become just another hue of capitalism.Hence the quite dramatic , yet consistent , sprint of many radical neo-cons , and also Rupert Murdoch , from extreme left to far-out right.


Though the play initially only had McKellen and Stewart at first , a third legend joined the roadshow.Its like a dream come true for me, Callow is a legend in his own lavatory ( if you know what i mean) and my favourite Theatre Actor.He is full of shit , and i mean that in a good way.He has revived many a Dickensian lecture tour performance and written an excellent biography on Charles Laughton.He also wrote an excellent bio-novel called "Love is where it falls" about a platonic relationship with Peggy Ramsay , the literally and drama agent that brought Wide Sargasso Sea to Worldwide attention when she convinced Jean Rhys that the public would take to her Novel.

The production itself dispensed with the recent tradition of having long drawn out pregnant pauses , this gave the play a surprising release.

GINGERS LAST STAND

Would you believe in am reading a very insightful and erudite account of General Custers Last Stand by Stephen E. Ambrose called Crazy Horse and Custer.

The race for the Title in Scotland this year also culminated in a last stand , this time between a bunch of lame ducks competing against dead ducks.Alas the lame ducks done their job so well , the dead ducks came out on top , giving a new meaning to the phrase dead heat.

The real architects of this miraculous season was the Board , but this is the story of the fall guy.

The last day of the season was the clash of the Titans ( well tic-huns ), this set of games will have everything: poor passing ; first touches like a barndoor; sclaffs ; hysterical activity at the dugouts and thats just when the teams were warming up before going into the dressing room to get their kit on.

Whatever happened it should be Gingers last stand.Even if all went right it would be a bitter taste win.If it went wrong it would will be bitter on the stands.In fact , infighting among supporters in the stands if the Celtic performance petered out and events at Tannadice went in favour of the Huns was a source of much speculation and concern.

Below is an artistic representation of what the infighting in section 404 could have looked like looked like.(Well if Colin Powell can use artistic cartoon cutout representations why not us).



( As you can see the swear words have been dubbed by grunts).

In the event Gingers last stand was a pitiful damp squib , the theme and motto of the season. The lethargy and lack of urgency on the pitch infected the fans and everyone left in a tiptoe dirge like fashion , some before the whistle (including the players it would seem) and most after the whistle.

Well Celtic spent most of the season trying to turn us into stone , at this rate CP could turn into the worlds biggest cathedral.This weekend the fait accompli reached its zenith.

Celtic have been making innovative and valiant attempts to lose the league for a couple of seasons now.But they are no match for the Gers.No matter what imaginative schemes we come up with to give up leads; or go one better and have no leads to give up in the first place, the gers match us ; then lower the bar further.Alas we finally cracked it and left the Gers high and dry at the top of the heap with no option to return.To be fair to them Rangers provided a lot of laughs , but , unfortunately so did we.

Strachan does have to accept responsibility for failing to put the best players on the park at the same time for other than entirely professional reasons.

All in all the difference in Gingers Last Stand as opposed to Custer was that Custer had more imagination and vision.

But in the interests of fairness the last word should go to Ginger himself , speaking at the Tommy Burns Tribute match.



( the language in the commentary is not Russian , but Gaelic )

JACKSON BROWNE AT GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

Having seen some youtube clips from the US Tour he done a few months back i was expecting an acoustic concert with him on stage with a guitar and stool.

But i was most surprised and pleased when he come on with a full band , with backing singers to boot.

The first half of the concert had a very favourite song of mine called Barricades of Heaven.




In the second half an all time favourite of my Friend called Lives in the Balance raised the already high standards to near fever pitch , and thereafter he kept going.



Later we discussed a couple of Books by Nobel Prize Winning Novelist J.M.Coetzee , my pal really likes Disgrace , he was wondering who could possibly portray the lead character of the book in a film version that is being proposed as the character is a complete coont , then he found out the the actor playing him is John Malkovitch , and so his concerns that the film may not to justice to the Book were fully allayed.

My favourite Book by Coetzee is Slowman , it captures his real talent which is interpersonal relations between a small subset of characters.

I have just managed to resolve the Coetzee paradox pontificated in Diary of a Bad year by the time we came at the end of the Jackson Browne Concert. The reason is he takes the Zeno Paradox he mentions on page 94 of The Diary of a Bad Year , as Jackson was clattering the keys during the encore i realised Coetzees Zeno fires of the arrow in the wrong direction , thereafter everything is tainted , the mathematical formula , as it where, is wrong.He makes a fundamental wrong conclusion that all the "wrong" is part of the African psyche , and not the ultimate resulting endgame of the concept of the Modern State, which was a colonial project enhancing tool whose whole premise was to cause division;incohesion and eternal dependency of an External power.This means that any Nth point is not going to be identified because the trajectory is wrong from the very outset , and will always come out in mistaken conclusions which seek to find blame in the prime victim and not the architect of the original sin. Alas this false belief that the modern nation state is "the end of societal history" that can be exported en-masse to the whole non-western World has permeated both left and right alike , even though the West have only dug themselves out from perpetual wars when they created supra-nation state structures that became a region of rights rather than reasons for endless war. I dont know if Coetzee is a brilliant writer that is employing a double-irony , but he comes across as being an octave or two down in terms of perception from what you would expect from a later day Nobel Prize winner. Therefore when he blames "banditry" on the African mind , his verdict is misplaced , whereas as Theroux would , rightly ,blame it the "managerial State" for turning a once proud People into "Pissed off Peanut Farmers" reduced to highway banditry.

Anyway , when i related my Eureka moment to my pal he said " your right, Coetzee is a brilliant writer that is employing a double-irony".