Patrick McGoohan, 1928-2009

It saddens me that we're only a couple of weeks into 2009 and already I find myself writing about the death of one of my cinematic heroes.

Patrick McGoohan passed away after a short illness in his Los Angeles home yesterday. McGoohan, of course, will chiefly be remembered as the writer, co-creator, producer and star of the seminal, subversive and staggeringly brilliant 1960s TV show The Prisoner. As I've probably mentioned elsewhere, The Prisoner was, is and probably always will be one of my all-time favourite television shows and over the years I've watched the each of those 17 episodes - from Arrival through to Fall Out - more times than I care to admit.

In February last year Clare and I spent a lovely weekend in North Wales (which I wrote about here, here and here), and on the way back took a ridiculous detour so I could make my first, long-overdue pilgrimage to "the Village" itself, Portmeirion:

"In the popular imagination - well, in mine, at least - Portmeirion is the place where Patrick McGoohan's famously numerophobic, former-government agent was sent to prison for a resignation he didn't explain. As a huge fan of the cult 60s show The Prisoner, it was weird walking past all those odd buildings, so many of which have been hard-wired into my imagination since Channel 4 repeated the series in 1985. I was pleasantly surprised at how little The Village had changed in the 40-plus years since the show was originally made: Portmeirion's Pantheon, for instance, was still recognisable as the green domed home to Number 2, while the stone boat on the shore still looked as mad and as incongruous as it did back then. Then again, it's a boat. It's made out of stone. How could it not look mad and incongruous?"

Like I said, I'm a fan.

Clare had never seen The Prisoner, and as we walked through Portmeirion's Italianate grounds I told her all about the show. She couldn't believe that somewhere as gorgeously ornate as this could serve as a fictional penitentiary and insisted on watching the series with me at the earliest opportunity. Now Clare's a fan, too, and even little Lily seems to be getting in on the act. Instead of saying "Goodbye", "So long", "Auf Wiedersehen" or even "Adieu" she's become rather partial to that weird and ubiquitous leave-taking phrase from the show, "Be seeing you." She's even mastered that weird salute - where the thumb and forefinger form a circle around the eye - that normally accompanies the phrase. It's quite a thing to see.

But back to Patrick McGoohan. While he will forever be best known as The Prisoner's Number 6, there was more to his illustrious stage, film and TV career than just that. In the 1950s, he so impressed another hero of mine, Orson Welles, with his stage presence that The Great Round One later admitted to feeling "intimidated". In the 60s, besides The Prisoner, he also starred in one of the UK's most successful TV exports, Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), became the highest paid actor in the UK and reportedly turned down the part of James Bond in Dr No on ethical grounds (or so the legend goes). We should also pause to consider the fact that he appeared not once, not twice, not even thrice but on four separate occasions as the murderer du jour in Columbo.

Some of the films he appeared in that deserve special mention include John Sturges' sublime Ice Station Zebra (1968), David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981) and Don Siegal's Escape From Alcatraz (1979). The last desrves special mention as he not only appeared alongside My Favourite Movie Icon of All Time, Mr Clinton Eastwood Jr, but he played Alcatraz Island's sadistic prison warden. I always loved the irony of that.

Patrick McGoohan is survived by his wife of over 50 years Joan Drummond McGoohan and his his three daughters. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Rowlf the Raindog

I was watching The Muppet Show with Clare and Lily this evening. I'd bought Lily the season 2 DVD boxset for Christmas and we were watching the one where the special guest is Peter Sellers. I say that in such an off-hand way you might be forgiven for assuming that I've got a vast, ecyclopaedic knowledge of The Muppet Show and have regularly watched every episode on numerous occasions. The truth is, the last time I saw Peter Sellers appear in The Muppet Show was over 30 years ago and I wasn't much older than Lily is now.

It was still very funny, though.

A few weeks ago I was watching an old VHS tape of The Muppet Movie with Lily. During a scene where Kermit meets Rowlf The Dog in a bar, Lily turned to me and said: "Rowlf The Dog sounds just like Tom Waits."

Lily is five years-old, incredibly smart and a big fan of Tom Waits.

I think she's got a point:

Rowlf The Dog:



Tom Waits:

Woolies RIP

I've never been one to anthropomorphise business entities, so I don't tend to get too upset when a major High Street retailer goes out of business. Sure, I'll always sympathise with the regular people who end up losing their jobs on account of other peoples' errors of judgment and catastrophic SNAFUs, but I don't feel any great sense of personal loss when a well known retail outlet shuts its doors and goes to Jesus. When Ratners went bust, Bejams bit the dust and Rumbelows took its final dirt nap I didn't wear a black armband, close the curtains or shed any tears.

Until today, that is. While walking through Cotteridge in Birmingham I saw my first dead Woolworths store. The place was gutted, the shutters were down and a rather pathetic handwritten sign declared that the shop's safe and a few fittings and fixtures were still available for purchase. As I read the sign, I felt my default setting of disregard be thrown into disarray.

I felt rather sad.

Woolworths, you see, was the place where I bought my first 7" single. The record - for the record - was Cool For Cats by the criminally underrated Squeeze and I bought it with my pocket money from the bargain bin at the Hawthorn Road branch of Woolies in 1979. For most of my childhood, the Hawthorn Road branch of Woolies was the only place I bought records from. Long before I discovered places like Virgin or HMV - or independent outlets like Swordfish, Tempest and the late Frank's Wild Records - Woolies was my local record store.

I bet it was for lots of other people, too

The Dark Knight (Slight Return)

Thanks to my partner Clare for alerting me to the following twisted gem:

MMIX

So here we are, at the start of a bright new year; and here I am, thumping the keyboard like a sausage-fingered caveman, trying to hammer out my first blog post of 2009. It's also my first blog post in almost a month, but who's keeping track of these things, anyhow?

Something odd has recently occurred to me. Actually, it's occurred to me at regular intervals over the last eight or nine years, but now's as good a time as any to share it with others. That's probably not the best thing to do when something odd occurs to you, especially in the wee small hours of the morning, but at least this way I get to find out whether it's occurred to others, too. It may even may have occurred to you, in which case we could always pool our resources, split the counselling fees or form a Facebook group.

Anyhow, the oddity that's occurred to me is this: if, like me, your calendar of choice is the Gregorian calendar then you'll probably agree that we're fast approaching the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. Sure, depending on how much of a stickler or a party-pooper you were ten years' ago, you may have argued over whether the 21st Century kicked off in the year 2000 or 2001. You'll probably now agree, however, that we're fast approaching the Kubrick decade's closing overs and final furlongs. Isn't it odd, then - in this Year of Our Lord two thousand and nine - we've yet to agree on what this decade is actually called?

It was all so straightforward in the 20th Century. There was the Nineties, and before that, the Eighties. Prior to that we had the Seventies, Sixties, Fifties and so on. They were parcels of time, each conjuring up a specific cocktail of imagery and music and history and style. They were arbitrary labels, based on a highly capricious measurement of time that was steeped in Medieval folklore and riddled with sweeping inaccuracies and generalisations.

But at least they had names.

And these weren't names that were applied after the event. It wasn't like the way the French Revolution that became known as the French Revolution long after the Storming of the Bastille. People thought of the Nineties as the Nineties during the Nineties, and it was the same for all the other 20th Century decades. At the end of the 90s, for instance, certain musical fads could be described by media pundits as "early-90s" just as, at the end of the 80s, shoulder pads and designer stubble could be described by the fashionistas and those-what-give-a-shit as "very mid-80s."

So far as I can tell, however, we haven't settled on a name for this decade we're living in right now. I've heard a few attempts, mind you. "The Noughties" pops up now and then, but to me that sounds a bit too FHM for my tastes. "The Zeroes" is another one I've heard on occasion, but that not only contains unfortunate pessimistic conotations, but it also sounds like it should be an indie band (and a quick Google search confirms my suspicions...). For the most part, though, journalists, pundits and proper ordinary people seem to skirt around this issue like its a big temporal elephant in the room.

But I don't this to turn into one of those rants by middle aged bloggers who moan about what's wrong with things without offering any alternatives. At least not with this post. In the interests of bringing something to the table and opening up a debate on the subject here's my suggestion for a name tag for this decade: "The Norts". It's catchy, and it's free of the aforementiontioned connotations and the fact it will resonate with fans of the character Rogue Trooper from the great British comic 2000ad is an added bonus.

Of course, these labels are all based on the Gregorian calendar, which has always been my calendar of choice (from my experience, most people don't realise there's more than one calendar to choose from). If your calendar of choice isn't the Gregorian calendar then it probably isn't the first decade of the 20th Century for you. According to the nifty calendar converter I found here, today - 3rd January, 2009 - is:

7 Teveth 5769 according to the Hebrew Calendar
6 Muharram 1430 according to the Islamic Calendar
15 Kankin or 12.19.15.17.12 according to the Mayan calendar
Duodi, 12 Nivôse 217 according to the French Republican Calendar

And my favourite:

Pungenday, Chaos 3, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3174 according to the Discordian calendar.

Maybe I should think about switching brands.

Jodorowsky's Nuts

It seems as though the legendary - and, yes, I do mean legendary - Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has a new film in the pipeline. It's a "metaphysical spaghetti western of gangsters", it's called King Shot, it's produced by David Lynch and, true to form, it already sounds buggier-than-batshit.

Jodo says:

"I think that gangsters are the most metaphysical characters. Take a look at the presidents, they are all gangsters."

Then later he says:

"The front elevation of the casino is an Egyptian church. For the Egyptians, the beetle was the symbol of the creator who transports the world in his ball of excrement. That is why I say that this is a film of the metaphysics of the gangsters."

Alejandro Jodorowsky was the first and only famous person I ever interviewed. You can see why I've never bothered interviewing anyone else. What's the point?

Jodorowsky isn't the most prolific of directors: when it comes to output he makes Woody Allen seem like Stanley Kubrick. He has, after all, only directed seven films during his fifty - yes, fifty - year filmmaking career, and his last pic was back in 1990. For Jodorowsky fanatics like me, then, King Shot is something of a Big Deal.

Still, I've heard so many rumours over the years about Jodorowsky film projects that never actually materialised (coughcough 'Sons of El Topo' coughcough) that I'm reluctant to get too excited. If its alright with you, I'll file King Shot in my Beleieve-it-when-I-see-it file until I actually, um, see it.

I used to say the same thing about Watchmen, of course.

AWOL

In case you're wondering why I haven't posted on here for a while, let me take this opportunity to reassure you that I'm not dead.

Clare, Lily & I are currently moving house. It all happened rather quickly, and seeing as the new place is currently sans phoneline I haven't had many online opportunities to pontificate in public.

Don't worry: it won't last.