Smart-Aleck Blog.

After two weeks without an entry, the inclination to waste time and typing on this blog has returned, inspired by the recent arrival of two packages, a certain amount of television-induced infuriation (futile) and an upcoming week of moderate prospective excitement.

To the infuriation first. I couldn't sleep last night; the searing heat and humidity carried itself over from the afternoon and placed me in an uncomfortable stupor someway between sweating and sleeping. I must have drunk my volume in phosphoric tap water between 12am and 4am, mopped my brow maybe twenty times, chased the cool night breeze around my apartment in search of some mild evaporation. All of which meant that, during the early hours of the morning, I lay outstretched upon the cool surface of the laminate flooring watching television that can ordinarily only be enjoyed whilst indulging an ironic self-knowingness, the kind that allows one to enjoy movies like Point Break or Over the Top away from (greater) derision and ridicule and likewise has kept Jilly Cooper in jodphurs for the best part of twenty years. Anyway, amidst the tripe of live "big brother" feeds, interactive "gaming" tv and celebrity poker came a programme of greater promise: a rerun of this week's Culture Show, BBC4's flagship show previewing the latest developments in Britain's (apparently monolithic)arts' world.

Was I ever wrong. From beginning to end, the whole enterprise was as self-indulgent as it was preposterous, as pretensious as it was exclusive. It's presenter, one Verity Sharp - bbc producer, violinist, cellist, radio host - spent the majority of her links posing inarticulately like a sixteen-year-old hopeful at Carnaby Street on a Saturday afternoon whilst talking with an almost contrapuntal ineptitude and swagger. As she did, her head moved switched from one side to the other as though avoiding very-slow-invisible-bullets one of which must sooner or later escape her detection. Although I did not think it possible, Sharp proves that there is, indeed, a broadcaster whose overall demeanour is more annoying than Melvin Bragg.

The rest of the show was little but a gross emulation of such, comprising a number of features with little but pomposity to link them with each other. One focussed on Laura Solon, Perrier winner in Edinburgh, a "character" comedien(ne) whose limited success (as the story informed) is a covert endorsement of her lithe sophistication and ability. Rather, as the clips would suggest, Solon is short on actual jokes, and fits neatly into that category of female middle class actresses whose acts are little more than an amalgam of crude impersonations of lower class or regional characters witlessly performed for their equally "smug" audiences. Accordingly, Solon cited Victoria Wood as her inspiration, one can only hope she becomes as irrelevant soon as Wood is now.

A third segment, "Brit Art" featured two art critics debating the relative virtues of contemporary british art whilst inevitably "agreeing to disagree" about the featured selection of work, quite obviously for the sake of preconceived "debate", or the impression thereof. One a man and the other a woman, one a "lefty" and the other a "righty", one a traditionalist and the other a renegade, the oppositions were endless, and served only to relegate the featured art to the level of conjecture's plaything. Intercut with alternating shots of the critics talking about the other (one in the foreground, the other twenty-feet behind, almost as though the opportunity to get on camera could not be resisted) it was all in bad taste, and like watching an arty remake of The Odd Couple

Polemic over, the coming week holds greater promise; During the week, both The Lady from Shanghai and Melville's Le Samourai found their way into my post-box, and will follow funny games in being watched sometime in the week, most probably at 8pm tuesday and 12.00 am sunday, exactly when the culture show rears it's ugly head.