He Drinks A Gin Drink..

[liadnan]

.. and then he drinks another gin drink. And then another gin drink. And then another gin drink. And then starts feeling miserable about Everything.

Has anyone ever investigated precisely how it is that Gin does this?

But doesn't have a hangover and spends the next evening on 12 star Metaxa, a wonderful intoxicant that should be more widely appreciated.

In other news, via John and Belle the depressing proof that Bono is still kind of a cock. Depressing because I'd kind of rediscovered (old) U2 recently. Now I'm reminded how exactly he managed to reach quite so far up my nose.

Ah well.

Ian McDonald has a livejournal. And pretty much all of you who might be interested in this already knew this, and had subscribed. Can you explain why, precisely, no one saw fit to tell me?

And there's a new Lindsey Davis. I managed to stick to my moratorium, but my suspicion, that Greece was pretty much the only bit of Vespasian's empire she hadn't touched yet and was therefore the likely new Abroad setting, has proved correct.

Comments

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't know about McDonald's lj, so thanks. :)

[ex-quixotick955.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading the Chicago Tribune article by Gret Kot, and I fail to see how Bono is an ass. I think if a person dislikes someone, it is entirely too easy to take the things that someone has said out of the context those words were said in and make them appear to mean something else entirely. I love U2. That's no secret. But that doesn't mean that I never find fault with them or that I see them as akin to the Second Coming of the Christ. I just don't see (from Mr. Kot's own words) how Bono is an ass.

[liadnan]

It's this bit in particular:

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The musical Antichrist

Recently Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot panned U2 for--to paraphrase lightly--publicly renouncing whatever collective ambitions it might have had to "grow" as a band in any but a commercial sense. Believe it or not, Bono proceeded to accost Kot over the phone, invite him for breakfast, and accuse him of being an enemy of rock music. How many deeply twattish (or twattishly expressed) things can Bono pack into 90 minutes of table talk? Warning: your correspondent may not have the incredible staying power Kot displayed in his set-to with God's gift to Erin.

Some of what is going around as a result of your article is not just unhelpful to our group and our relationship to our audience, but just really problematic for what in the broad sense you might call rock music. [Stop hurting America, Greg! -ed.]

When you suggest we're betraying ourselves by doing TV shows and promotional stuff, to me the Super Bowl was our Ed Sullivan moment. It just came 25 years later. I didn't expect it. But it is one of the moments I'm most proud of in my life.

[The iPod is] the most beautiful object art in music culture since the electric guitar.

We were offered $23 million for just the music to "Where the Streets Have No Name." We thought we could do a lot of good with that money. Give it away. But if a show is a little off, and there's a hole, that's the one song we can guarantee that God will walk through the room as soon as we play it.

That just rubs me up the wrong way. The man has a messiah complex.

But hey, I still buy their stuff.

[knell.livejournal.com]

Amen. Great records, but jeez, drop the messianic complex. And those sort-of-dark-glasses-but-not-really are just dorky.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

I had to read the original article to see some of those quotes in context, but still, urrrgh.

Growing up in a small town in Alaska long before the internet, where Led Zeppelin was considered 'alternative', early U2 and the Police probably saved my ass. But I can't keep up with the sheer annoyance value.

[ex-quixotick955.livejournal.com]

I'm totally not an apologist for U2 nor Bono (though I have no doubt that some people will see me that way); however, you just quoted that person's summary of the original article, and the person who actually wrote the article, Greg Kot, doesn't share this summariser's opinion and neither do I.

Something that I find most unfortunate is that Bono behaves the same way for print interviews as he does for televised interviews, seeming to not realise that a lot gets lost in the translation. He tends to be very tongue-in-cheek, saying over-the-top things, but when you can see his person, you realise that it's meant one way and not another. In print, that totally gets lost. It happens all the time with LJ as well. I'll write something, and people who do not know me (never had a face-to-face conversation with me) will completely construe my words in the opposite direction of the way I meant them whilst people that know me know better and "get it". Not to mention that all of the Irish people in my life are prone to saying the most horrible and insane things without meaning a word of it; if I were to collect all of their words and post them, damn, people would be flying in the Green Berets to rescue me from the abuse. Hell, even *I* have said things that could be misconstrued as my having an ego the size of Godzilla, despite being rather self-deprecating most of the time.

I met Bono and The Edge a while ago (something like six years ago), and I promise you that at that time Bono did not consider himself to be the Christ v. 2.1. It is entirely possible that in six years his personality completely shifted and morphed into The Beast... but I somehow doubt it. He was amazingly gracious and amusing, and he is quite easily one of the most intelligent people I've ever met (the most intelligent being Mr. Hawking, of course, hands down).

I happen to agree with Bono's opinion of the iPod. I have one. In fact, I have the U2 one. I do believe that it has changed the face of personal music. I'm not going to give up my CDs, but I do love that I've basically got my entire collection with me at all times. I also consider it do be a beautiful piece of kit. Most things Apple are quite lovely; I just can't afford to be all Apple at the moment.

As for the comment about the song, I do see what he means. Quite a few songs I used to love are now helplessly associated with stupid commercials I can't stand, and it makes it impossible for me to hear those songs without thinking of those inane products. If that happened to "Where the Streets Have No Name", then I would be terribly disappointed and I *would* consider that selling out. I mean, come on, it's not like U2 doesn't already do an immense amount of work for charity, and it's not like Bono alone does an amazing amount of speaking out against poverty, third world debt, equality, and inequity.

And now I've written more than you've posted, so I'm gonna stop.

[liadnan]

I actually completely failed to notice last night, due to being drunk, that I had pasted in the wrong thing...

I shall try and return to the argument this evening, when I may not have a hangover.

[liadnan]

Oops. This is what happens when you cut and paste while drunk.

The bit I wanted was:
KOT: It sounds like "Pop" didn't work for you because it didn't sell. To my mind, it worked because it was a good, daring album. There's no shame in not selling.

BONO: It didn't communicate the way it was intended to. It was supposed to change the mood of that summer [1997].

Although I do find the We were offered $23 million for just the music to "Where the Streets Have No Name." We thought we could do a lot of good with that money. Give it away. But if a show is a little off, and there's a hole, that's the one song we can guarantee that God will walk through the room as soon as we play it. bit irritating as well.

[nicnac.livejournal.com]

I agree, I think he comes over as an arse too a lot of the time. And the Nobel Peace Prize?? Please!

PS See? Gin is evil.

[ksta.livejournal.com]

yer gin, makes ppl cry. weird, innit.

[liadnan]

Don't stop me thinking it's a wonderful idea every sunny evening though.

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

Has anyone ever investigated precisely how it is that Gin does this?

No, but the gin long drink is the national drink of Finland. It says a lot about the country (and is also one of the only ways I can consume gin, but that's another matter).

There are probably studies available to compare the regional suicide rate with the regional consumption of the long drink. But I can't be arsed to go find them.

[sshi.livejournal.com]

Eurgh to the gin. Actually eurgh to the Metaxa as well, it being the reason I once had to leave a rather good party very early while I was an undergraduate. That'll teach me not to be so skint that I raid the drinks cabinet for bottles of dodgy duty-free to take partying...

[liadnan]

Heretic.

I move from whisky to gin and metaxa as drink of choice when the sun is shining, and since I actually ran out of whisky on Thursday evening (this has not happened in ten years: I always have whisky in the house. And with Friday's weather the message seemed obvious.

Decent metaxa fairly difficult to get hold of in UK/Ireland I think. I think it's much underrated.

[sshi.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Stick to the vodka, me.

The nastiness of the Metaxa experience was probably not helped by the fact that I think it was a bottle that my uncle had picked at random from a duty-free, possibly based on the colour of the label...

[fi.livejournal.com]

It was probably the 3-star variety, which resembles petrol. Although I know people who say it's vastly underrated... They've obviously never tried the stuff.

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

Gin = mothers' ruin. Also interesting that it's the archetypal London drink too. All the world's great gin is made in London (and sold at Heathrow duty free.)

I've been conducting some experiments over here recently and we think that gin is safe to drink in large quantities if imbibed in the form of Pimms.

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

Oops! I was somehow under the impression that I saw your name on his friend list...

[(Anonymous)]

What in the world? Everyone here is drunk on gin. Or stoned. Wait. Maybe that's just me.
-Bunty

[liadnan]

Nonono, at the time I wrote that I was drunk on metaxa. It was the previous evening I was drunk on gin. This is completely different.

[dr-lovely.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I think that the article mostly proves that the person who wrote the article is an ass. I agree, Bono does seem to say some things which irritate people, although I am not usually irritated by them. When your job involves walking out on stage every single night and having 15,000+ people screaming at you for 3 hours I kind of understand if you get rather in love with yourself, cos everyone else seems to be. From what I've heard him say, it can be rather cliched, but usually rather well meaning stuff, like "I hate seeing pictures of people starving in Africa, can we stop that?" There are plenty of other people I think that deserve to be shouted at before one gets to Bono.

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

Interested in Jonathan Strahan's lj (http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=jonathanstrahan)?