You'd think I'd be ashamed, but you'd be wrong!
It bothers me when people will only admit to enjoying certain things, things that are perceived as uncool, in an 'ironic', 'guilty pleasures' sort of way. Me, if I like something, I'll shout it from the rooftops. So today I took myself to see High School Musical 3, and then went up to Wembley to see Queen.
I will admit, I do have somewhat mixed feelings about the former. The performances and the choreography were fine, but they seemed to forget to include a story, and the songs themselves -- on first hearing -- didn't seem to measure up to those in the first two films. But maybe it'll grow on me when it comes out on DVD.
As for the concert, well, we all know that Paul Rodgers is a cock, always has been, always will be. But even he didn't quite manage to screw up moments like 'Radio Ga Ga', 'Bohemian Rhapsody', or 'We Are The Champions'. Hey, this is my childhood that we're talking about, and such things tend to stay with a person! There are few things that could actually make me wish that I was older than I am, but I cannot help but reflect on the fact that, if only I could have had just a couple more years behind me, I might well have seen both Queen and The Smiths, and would definitely have seen Pixies and Frank Zappa, and then I really would have some tales to tell my implausible grandchildren.
But, in any case, Rodgers was mercifully kept to the wings for large parts of the show. And when the rest of them came out into the audience, and played '39 -- surely the best song ever written about the Special Theory of Relativity -- with two acoustic guitars, an upright bass, an accordion, a tambourine and a bass drum, well, it was simply divine.
Talking of which, I'm currently reading Jean Meslier's Mémoire. Now there's an interesting book! Meslier was a village curate, somewhere or other in France in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century, and he seems to have led a completely unremarkable life, working normally in the church. Only then, when he died in 1729, they discovered a manuscript he'd been working on for many years, wherein he espoused and argued for both atheism and communism! Several decades before d'Holbach, and more than a century before Marx!
"Religion supports as wicked a political government as there could be and, for its part, the political government supports as vain and false a religion as there could be. [...] Ah! my dear friends, if you well knew the vanity and the foolishness of the errors in which you are kept under the pretext of religion, and if you knew how unjustly and how disgracefully the authority is abused which has been usurped over you, under the pretext of governing you, you would certainly have nothing but contempt for everything that you have been made to adore and respect, and you would have only hatred and indignation for all of those who have abused you and who govern you so badly and treat you so disgracefully. This reminds me of a wish that was once made by a man who had neither knowledge nor education, but who, according to appearances, did not lack the good sense to judge soundly of all the detestable abuses and all the detestable tyrannies that I am here criticising. It appeared, through his wish and through his way of expressing his thoughts, that he saw far enough and sufficiently penetrated into this detestable mystery of iniquity of which I have just spoken, since he well recognised its authors and its fomenters. He hoped that all the great men of the world, and all of the nobility, should be hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests. [...] So unite yourselves, people, if you are wise. Everyone unite, if you have the heart, to deliver yourselves from all of your shared misery."
I'm just waiting for him to declare that religion is the opium of the masses, and that you have nothing to lose but your chains!
I will admit, I do have somewhat mixed feelings about the former. The performances and the choreography were fine, but they seemed to forget to include a story, and the songs themselves -- on first hearing -- didn't seem to measure up to those in the first two films. But maybe it'll grow on me when it comes out on DVD.
As for the concert, well, we all know that Paul Rodgers is a cock, always has been, always will be. But even he didn't quite manage to screw up moments like 'Radio Ga Ga', 'Bohemian Rhapsody', or 'We Are The Champions'. Hey, this is my childhood that we're talking about, and such things tend to stay with a person! There are few things that could actually make me wish that I was older than I am, but I cannot help but reflect on the fact that, if only I could have had just a couple more years behind me, I might well have seen both Queen and The Smiths, and would definitely have seen Pixies and Frank Zappa, and then I really would have some tales to tell my implausible grandchildren.
But, in any case, Rodgers was mercifully kept to the wings for large parts of the show. And when the rest of them came out into the audience, and played '39 -- surely the best song ever written about the Special Theory of Relativity -- with two acoustic guitars, an upright bass, an accordion, a tambourine and a bass drum, well, it was simply divine.
Talking of which, I'm currently reading Jean Meslier's Mémoire. Now there's an interesting book! Meslier was a village curate, somewhere or other in France in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century, and he seems to have led a completely unremarkable life, working normally in the church. Only then, when he died in 1729, they discovered a manuscript he'd been working on for many years, wherein he espoused and argued for both atheism and communism! Several decades before d'Holbach, and more than a century before Marx!
"Religion supports as wicked a political government as there could be and, for its part, the political government supports as vain and false a religion as there could be. [...] Ah! my dear friends, if you well knew the vanity and the foolishness of the errors in which you are kept under the pretext of religion, and if you knew how unjustly and how disgracefully the authority is abused which has been usurped over you, under the pretext of governing you, you would certainly have nothing but contempt for everything that you have been made to adore and respect, and you would have only hatred and indignation for all of those who have abused you and who govern you so badly and treat you so disgracefully. This reminds me of a wish that was once made by a man who had neither knowledge nor education, but who, according to appearances, did not lack the good sense to judge soundly of all the detestable abuses and all the detestable tyrannies that I am here criticising. It appeared, through his wish and through his way of expressing his thoughts, that he saw far enough and sufficiently penetrated into this detestable mystery of iniquity of which I have just spoken, since he well recognised its authors and its fomenters. He hoped that all the great men of the world, and all of the nobility, should be hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests. [...] So unite yourselves, people, if you are wise. Everyone unite, if you have the heart, to deliver yourselves from all of your shared misery."
I'm just waiting for him to declare that religion is the opium of the masses, and that you have nothing to lose but your chains!