Frank McCourt is unwell

I was born and reared in Limerick city. We have some good writers here, amongst them: Kate O'Brien, Michael Hartnett, and of course the one who travelled the furthest, Frank McCourt.

Frank McCourt had mixed experiences when he returned to Limerick after the book was published and had become such a runaway hit all over the world: a small but vocal number of people didn't like what he had been writing about and made it difficult for him to live in Limerick, but by far the majority of people in Limerick did what people do everywhere in small cities that suddenly find a hugely successful home grown writer in their midst: welcome and celebrate him. I have heard that whenever he came back to Limerick he could sometimes be found joining in the 'Angela's Ashes walking tour' here. Just wandered by, like another tourist. Signed books and chatted away, unassumingly.

I have heard that Frank McCourt is very unwell. I am sorry to hear that, and wish him well, really. There's something of the sheer eejitry about the way that some people in Limerick responded to that book, a very peculiar Limerick combination of snobbery and shame, and you know, it's not particularly my cup of tea either but it really touched a lot of people who read it, including people from Limerick who remembered that time in its history, who lived alongside him. That book succeeded mostly from word of mouth. And that's a real kind of success.

God bless you, sir.

The Red Man In The Door

Do you have to be on facebook to see this? Is that how it works? A short play of mine will be performed in London on Sunday. You're welcome. The play is called "The Red Man In The Door" and it has been described as a "brilliant new short play" by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord. We will see.

Ok so it's a few days late for the 4th

... but it's never too late for this.

(via Cosmic Variance)

The 2 Train: sweet and groovy

So I'd like to introduce you to The 2 Train: my new band! The 2 Train is me, Lucy Foley (voice) and Ross Bonadonna (guitar). We play a mixture of jazz, pop and bossa nova songs. Ross and I have been playing together since he discovered I could sing, and this past March we recorded a bunch of songs by the fireplace here in Clare. You can hear them on our myspace page. We're also busy making my first album in Wombat Recording, and I look forward to being busy with both projects for a while yet.

We're available for bookings throughout Ireland, Europe and New York, and you can contact us at the address on both the myspace page and from my website.

Missus, today

Missus, who knew a cushy number when she climbed in my window and saw it. About halfway down the comments on this post, we're talking cats and rescue.

Two wet squiglets

There is also video. Who wants to see video? Please register your interest in the comments.

Inevitably, this has to happen

Four squiglets in the bath

Hey, if you don't like the occasionally cute moments on this blog, there are plenty of other uncute places on the internet for you to loiter.

Wild mothers

In yet another example of how callous mothers often are in the wild, a koala mother has flung one of her newly born twin babies out of her pouch, to be delightedly hand raised by a human in a Crocodile Dundee hat who has thought fully provided a koala soft toy for it to climb on, instead of a pouch. We are so judgmental about our own species' examples of indifferent mothering, when cute furry creatures seem to abandon or eat their own young as a matter of course.

The Unfit Koala Mother was last seen climbing a tree, serenely, with the remaining twin secure in her pouch. There are thus far no indications that other koalas are going to prosecute. A nursing mother koala at a nearby zoo was asked for her opinion, and she just shrugged.

So here is the moment you've been waiting for: video of the koala baby getting bottle fed, with a feast of other wildlife video snippets on the page.

This is the kind of thing I have to deal with lately

Leaving New York, from the sky

Looking for Lucy

This guy made a tumblr and postered downtown Manhattan with these posters and postcards, apparently in the hope that he would find some chick he walked a couple of blocks home one evening. This is the kind of madness that New York sets off every minute of every day.

Actually, the site and postering campaign seems to be to publicise this internet tv series. It's pretty grim. For the real deal, go to the Craigslist missed connections page.

Ordinary people, at picnic

Apparently Michael Jackson spent some time in Ireland a couple of years ago. He was trying to find a place to live here. None of it worked out, but some stories have emerged from that time. This anecdote was one I thought illustrated something very nicely. Something about massively different worlds, at picnic.

Pat O'Hagan of estate agents Savills showed the star and his children around a "large, important country house in Co Meath" in September 2006, then priced at "around €20m".

Picnic

He was told to arrive at the house to show around an unnamed client and that there was to be nobody else on the premises. There was also a request that the party be permitted to have a picnic on the grounds of the property. "The picnic request made sense -- they could hardly stop in McDonalds or Supermacs on their way back, and he had to feed the kids. We had salad and sandwiches and crisps and a glass of wine," said Mr O'Hagan.

"Michael chatted away . . . He spoke about doing three concerts a day from the time he was very young. He had a certain amount of resentment against his father because of the amount of pushing that was done when he was young.

"The kids were there, rolling down the lawns, which were wet, and they went to feed the chickens in the yard. They were lovely, they were very well-mannered kids and he was very attentive to them. It was a group of ordinary people having a chat and a picnic out of the boot of the car."

The Black Toad

Alphabet street

This is short, but kinda cool. Also the only actual youtube video of Prince singing Alphabet Street that I could find at 3am last night. Sometimes you just need it.

A few interesting Michael Jackson links

Ok, well if you're looking for some way beneath the MJ myth, you might want to start with this. Oh, love of Lisa Simpson has revealed some of the finest humanity in many human hearts, and this is very sweet indeed.



MJ wrote "Do the Bartman"! because he loved Bart Simpson so much. Well I feel Michael Jackson's heart here. This is lovely.

A journalist who knew MJ personally for years, talks.

Lisa Marie Presley is having a unique experience of MJ's death. (via LA Times)

This is pretty mesmerising. I wondered on facebook how MJ might have looked if he hadn't been interfered with, and Tabitha came up with this and this. Wow. How open and plain human those possible versions of himself look. The Mail version looks the most plausible to me. That kind of fame does not lead a person to looking like a binman. It has its own sheen, its own patina.

It all went arseways after Thriller. A generally good wnyc Soundcheck show, looking at Thriller, and the impact it had on MJ's career. Specifically, the crippling effects of success. He never made another great album again. It's such a pity. He clearly had it in him, still. The man was a phenomenon.

An article about the album he had (partly?) recorded when he died.

Man, his affairs are so messy. So much debt, and motherless children. There is some talk that Debbie Rowe will probably reclaim the two children of hers, and she is likely to get custody, being their natural mother. So what of the third child? Is the family to be split up? Isn't the whole situation bad enough? It's a mess.

So. He sold over 800 million records in his lifetime. His appeal spans generations of childhoods. Off the Wall and Thriller are such profoundly groovy records. I mean, they just groove.

But I don't know what he was trying to pull off with the London gigs. I think his whole relationship with fame was so deeply enmeshed with his own sense of self worth and existence, that it was just folly all the way down. How can a man of 50 try to recreate the kind of spectacle that he was famed for 25 years previously? It is a pity he could not just start with what he actually was, rather than endlessly clawing for the next thing that could kick his fame into what it had been. That time is gone, probably forever, for everybody.

Because deep inside all that crazyshit that Michael Jackson had become, there was this:

A balloon on Houston street

Less than a minute later, a yellow cab ran over it and it burst.

Oh the jetlag

Ok I got up early today but I am absolutely fecked. I'm hoping an early night tonight can do it.

The guy in the middle was a depressed fish in the window of a restaurant on 5th ave around the corner from us, who just stayed in this position the whole time I stood there gazing at him. It is like he knows.

I never saw him again after this.

The man in the blue suit; the man in the white suit

So the security queue at JFK was a nightmare of inefficiency and chaos, with a guy in a blue suit and blue latex gloves in a desk in the middle of it all, looking around at anyone who sniffed and took everybody's passports and put a little mark on them. I suppose they had to give him something to do. His job was to look out for sniffles. Seriously.

It's not going to be so easy to get rid of swine flu but they have to look like officialty is making its moves to get the situation under control or some other suitable platitude. The lousy news is that swine flu is expected to run riot this winter. The good news is that fatalities are commensurate with any other normal flu, which is to say, very very few.

I cannot believe I am blogging about swine flu. It is so hard to care. It was the guy in the blue suit in the madly inefficient JFK queues what made me do it. Here's a picture of David Byrne's gig at the Prospect Park Bandshell a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I know you can't see David Byrne. He was wearing white. He's in the middle.

Wing of the plane as dawn broke