Letters, Year Four (July - October 2001)

typing monkey, urban jungle, 02/07/2001
hey, I'm just writing to plea for more monkey web links... pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssse ur site and the linkks bring light 2 the lives of typing monkeys across the nation.

Power 2 the typing monkeys!!! (support the cause)

Er, yeah. Will do. Sure.

Carole Shields, Philadelphia, USA, 03/07/2001
I'm glad you enjoyed your trip. Our next travel destinations are New Zealand and Morocco, but you've made HK sound pretty appealing. I will definitely check out those pop bands.

Pity Old Lag didn't arrive in New York a day sooner. The Mermaid Parade was truly a slice of Americana he shouldn't have missed. Met O.L. at Lips for brunch and female impersonator show. The other guys suffered much abuse but the MC couldn't get to O.L.'s chair. Then we went to ho-hum origami architecture exhibit at American Craft Museum. Too spare for my taste (or lack of).

Have you seen Tracey Emin's show yet? My friend read that she is a kinder, gentler Tracey now that she has stopped the vodka and is in a permanent relationship. Will her work suffer if she's not suffering? Please go to see it for me and give me your view.

Reading Speaking with the Angel. Short stories by Irvine Welsh, Helen Fielding, Roddy Doyle and others, edited by Nick Hornby. Made my 3 hours at the airport enroute to Florida bearable. Welsh shocking again. What's with him and butts? I'd be afraid to meet him. My relationship to his work is similar to gaper delay (traffic slowed from people gaping at car crashes).

Tomorrow is July 4th, Independence day. I think some Actual Hollywood Stars will be present at the fireworks (and Old Lag too). We will be setting off some illegal ones at Paul's Bar-B-Q. Will send one up for you and your pals!

Didn't get to the Tracey Emin show in the end - it only ran for a month, and has now been replaced by a series of Gilbert and George pictures based on gay contact ads. (This is true.) Tracey's show got good reviews on the whole, I seem to recall: there's a wee bit still accessible on the White Cube gallery site here. But wait till you see what she's doing next...

Yes, Welsh is scary. Currently trying to decide if I want to see him at the Edinburgh Book Festival - not to mention the agonising clash between Stephen Berkoff and Hanif Kureishi on the same night. Not booking anything before I scrutinise the Film Festival programme, obviously. Book wise, current favourite is Choke by Chuck 'Fight Club' Palahniuk - good diseased fun of the highest order.

Hope the Lagster behaved himself on 4th of July. Maybe the rest of us will see you soon?

Rob D , In front of a computer of course, where else can I send emails from?, 15/07/2001
G'day Spank. Really enjoyed your narration of the Fleadh - especially since I spent the afternoon in question in a nice warm pub with a cold beer and a good book; I'm sure you had a better time than me however (Ho Ho).

Had a strange experience on Saturday, my first Fringe Theatre event and the cast of the play out-numbered the audience. Started out with 12 audience but three of them turned out to be part of the cast! Great play, iffy performance but check out Fire Raisers at the BAC if you like small audiences and big casts; damning indictment of how the bourgeoisie treat other people regardless of their motives.

'She who must be obeyed' says her life is influenced by the book she's reading at present - if anyone has a copy of American Psycho then keep it a long way away from her, please....

Battersea Arts Centre is one of the few things that stops Sarf Landan from being a culturally sterile wasteland: you all should visit it if you're ever in town. (I'd do a link to their official web site here, but it appears to be buggered right now.)

naomi, Sydney, Australia, 23/07/2001
Hey Spank the Monkey,

I'm busy trawling through your site but while i do that i thought i'd ask you a favour.....it goes like this. Rich Hall's CD with the Gadflys is completely sold out, I've been trying to get my hands on it for two years and finally asked the man himself at this year's Melbourne comfest after seeing his show for the third time and he reported that there were no more.

Would you be able to burn or tape me a copy?

I have two bootlegs of the 2001 comfest show (they vary by a few songs) which I could copy for you as payment or of course the old fashioned money stuff. I live in Sydney. I've been a huge Rich Hall fan since he performed He Almost Looks Like You on Good News Week in 1999, unfortunately I then had to wait two years till i could finally see him this year and i've been missing him since I left Melbourne.

Any chance you could help me?

P.S. I just read your site further and realised you are in the UK, for some strange reason i though you were in Australia. Which makes my ask bigger than i originally realised. None the less i'm still desperate to get my mitts on the CD. I'm happy to send you a travellers check in advance for any costs (although that is going to cost me a fair bit i think with our crappy dollar). Likewise i'm happy to send you my bootlegs as payment before you send me anything as i realise helping out someone in Australia is a fucking huge ask.

Ah, yes, the old 'Australian/australopithecine' confusion. I get that all the time.

You're now the third person to ask me about the Otis CD: see letters dated 01/06 and 12/05 below. The page for my Cheap Sex & Sad Films compilation is apparently the only place on the entire Internet that admits it exists at all. I've passed on the address of Otis' management company to previous enquirers, but I've no idea if they pursued the matter any further. So tell you what: I'll contact Talkback management myself and see if there really aren't any more copies of the CD left on the planet, or if they've got any details of when the new one's out. I'll let you know how I get on. In the meantime, here's a Real Audio file from the BBC to tide you over.

Suzanne Vega Fanclub, Piccadilly Line, 31/07/2001
Greetings Spank

I have just hotfooted it back from Suzanne Vega at the Shepherds Bush Empire. So I thought I would just share a few thoughts with you; especially as no one else will print this stuff.

1) What is the F****** point of support acts. Tonight one had to endure 'Thelma' from Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads screaming at full decibel. Is it to put the audience in a bad mood before the show starts?

2) When you go to a concert on your own, you suddenly notice how many other people are also there on their own. Or does that say something about the average (myself included) Vega fan?

3) £20 to see Suzanne, £75 to see Madonna. Is there any logical explanation to that?

4) Has Mike Visceglia got the best job in the world or what? Not only is he a professional musician, but he gets to play with Suzanne Vega, every night!

5) Can her new album, Songs in Red and Grey, be possibly as good as the songs she previewed from it?

6) Is there a Male equivalent for 'Groupie', and am I getting too old for it?

As usual Spank I require full and frank answers; preferably sometime this year.

Er, yeah. Will do. Sure.

Ken Fayers, London, England, 02/08/2001
In answer to point 3 of the Suzanne Vega Fanclub's latest missive [see letter dated 31/07/2001 - Spank]. Doust thou not know that the reason Suzanne tickets cost £20 and Madonna's £75, is that there is a flat charge of £19.99 for going to a concert, plus a variable fee depending on the number of fans each act has? Naturally all fees are rounded up to the nearest penny.

Great. Now he's going to start bitching at me all over again. Thanks a bunch, Ken.

Seona, I think I'm at my computer but anything is possible...., 03/08/2001
I just thought you might like to know that someone has finally used the links on your page to purchase some book type material. Hope you find your 1.1p very useful!

Of course, as you're the only person apart from me who's ever bought anything via the Monkey Mall's WHSmith link, I know exactly which book it is! But your secret's safe with me.

Carole Shields, Philadelphia, USA, 05/08/2001
Wanted to let you know that your site is still top 'o' my favorites list. I am sad that you didn't take that webmaster job at Time Out as I suggested. The recently designed site is DEVOID of information. Going to NYC Monday and can't find a damn thing to do at night, they are showing what's on last week!

Will soon be proud owner of larger digs, tell Old Lag he can have his own room next time! Regret to say I will miss Edinburgh festival but will look forward to your coverage. Will be in Las Vegas or at the beach depending. Just saw Naked Chef. Is he popular in England or just an import for US market?

Cheers, Lady Caroline

Haven't been to Time Out's site for a while now, I must admit. Time Out New York has its own dedicated site which may be more useful to you.

Jamie Oliver isn't just an import for the US market... but he isn't exactly 'popular' here either. The Hairy Tongue site can probably explain this better than I can. The relentless use of the 'c' word is of course wholly unnecessary and offensive, but it is rather funny. Your next British TV export to look out for: interactive hyperactive fake Japanese TV betting show Banzai.

Philippe Noth, webmaster of La Page du Cyber-Noth, 07/08/2001
Hi Spank,

First I have to congratulate you for your sense of humor...

[Quick interruption to explain here. On April 1st, 1999, the entire site was translated into French for just one day as an April Fool's Day joke. A very silly joke, I admit, but it amused me, so I kept the translated pages in my archive here. Recently I discovered Philippe's site, which documents examples of weird web pages where automated translation software has reduced the original to total gibberish. So if you go here you can find him merrily ripping the piss out of the translated letters page, unaware that it was a cheap gag knocked up in ten minutes using Babelfish. I sent him a letter explaining this, parts of which are quoted here. - Spank]

> The translation was done using Babelfish: and yes, I *do* realise how terrible a translation it is.

That's bad news for me, it means that I should replace the page. As a rule, I do not want to include intentional bloopers. I have come across many pages that were obviously a translation test, a demonstration or a study of translation software. Some were online for plain fun.

I remember having tried to find out whether it was the case with the "Spank the Monkey" page, but since I did not see any explicit mention of it, I assumed it was not.

> Anyway, if you enjoyed the letters page, you may want to look at some of the other archived pages, which I believe are even worse.

You are right, they are even worse :-)

> Thanks again for the link

Since you appreciate the link, I will keep the page, at least for a while. But to be fair with you and with the readers, I will add a little note. Greetings.

No problem at all, Philippe. It's just surprising sometimes what turns up on Google when you look for yourself.

Luce28, Hollyoaks Country, 15/08/2001
Alright! How's my favourite person what sleeps on tables in pubs? ;-)

Looking forward to Edinburgh a great deal actually, have no idea what I'll be doing till I get there though ...

If I don't see you before, see you in the early hours of Monday morning. If you can last that long, I've not seen you up past midnight yet! Heh, heh, heh ... etc ...

Cheeky bugger. I've been up past midnight lots of times, thankyewverymuch. I can provide references and everything.

Suzanne Vega Fanclub, Piccadilly Line, 15/08/2001
Oi Spank

If you have been to the cinema recently (am I kidding), you will have no doubt seen a commercial featuring Sting, flogging some dodgy British car. Anyway it ends with the line: "What do Rock Stars dream of?"

Well click here, and I think you will find out!

Riight. This is presumably the ad where you see Sting drifting off into a reverie in the middle of a gig, imagining he's tear-arsing down the road in a new Rover. Doesn't this imply that Sting's music is so boring, even he can't listen to it without nodding off?

Datta, Not in Edinburgh, 21/08/2001
Re: Oxide Pang [co-director of Bangkok Dangerous, reviewed at Edinburgh - Spank]. The Hong Kong and Bangkok offices of my former employers had employees named, respectively, Chlorophyll Yip and Pygmalion Pak.

So is Oxide Pang called Ox for short?

You'll probably find his name's Carbon Dioxide, and they just call him Oxide for short.

Old Lag, Drinking Vodka & Orange, 21/08/2001
Fact is stranger than fiction. At the recent Great British Beer Festival we pondered if there was a gay sub division of CAMRA (the society for real ale). According to What's Brewing, there is. Lesbian and Gay Real Ale drinkers hold regular socials in Brighton with a selction of real ales. As a collector of unusual URLs you may be interested in WWW.GOLDINGS.DEMON.CO.UK/QUEERALE.

Drinking vodka and orange? Not exactly a manly beverage, is it?

Carole Shields, Philadelphia, USA, 22/08/2001
I am tres sad that I am not avec Spank and le pals in Edinburgh. I hesitated to pull up any of the festival sites, as I would have started to plan my non existent schedule. Perhaps you are going to Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise? (I will be Shopping Dressed in NYC.) Thanks for the updates and laughs.

And by the end of the week she was berating me for not writing reviews fast enough. How quickly they turn.

Rich Hall, London, England, snail mail received 01/09/2001
[re: ongoing quest to find the Otis Lee Crenshaw Melbourne live album - see letter from naomi, 23/07/2001]

Thanks for your letter. There are no more Hi-Fi Gadflys albums. But I am sending you 4 advance copies of an album Universal is releasing in late October. It's better than the Melbourne album anyway. Enjoy.

Your pal, Rich Hall

And yes, this came as a handwritten note inside a Jiffy bag, accompanied by four free copies of the great man's new album, London Not Tennessee. Three of these have been forwarded to naomi, Steven McNeil and Robert Heigh, all of whom have written here recently asking about Otis Lee Crenshaw CDs. I'm keeping the fourth one for myself, and hope to use it to attract women. Thanks once again to Rich Hall, who is officially A God Amongst Men.

Arnald McDerick, The Arse Hole of A Badger, 03/09/2001
do you like the way the sun is lighter than the yellow colour of a banana. this may be becuase of the intense flavour of the banana, this is also like blowing goats everyday in the morning at 5 am. But also wtching the paint of a carrot drip into an endless fart machine maker. But we don't have any plumbing for the situation. Do you like my brown pantalooms that glissen in the moon light. May tens of thousands of toemunching hamsters on motorcycles rape your soul. Say hello to grandma!

Some people will say anything to get quoted on the front page, won't they?

Rob D, Sunny Croydon, 04/09/2001
Gee Spank, I was rilly, rilly, truly amazed when I happened across your touching hover-help;

"I hearby proclaim Rob D's description 'think Leftfield performing Thomas Tallis' to be my single favourite contribution from the Pals this year. Congrats to him."

What with a gruelling week of spending all morning in bed, all afternoon doing events and all night in the pub it's great to see the Pals' sacrifices are appreciated.

I'd like to thank my parents, my producer, my aunt's second cousin, blah, blah, blah.....

I'm always happy to acknowledge the contributions of the Pals, Rob. (Even if I have to bury them in mouseover text so that hardly anybody else knows about them.)

Nick, London, England, 08/09/2001
I was puzzled to see the picture of the empty bar of the Filmhouse in Edinburgh so prominently displayed in the middle of my essential postscript to Edinburgh, when the penny dropped. It was of course taken minutes after Rob D had been asked to leave the bar area for the safety of their customers, but being nice Scottish types they even refunded his pint of heavy, now that is class. Rob D was so mysterious in Edinburgh, the 3 Muses never met him until Tuesday and then never saw him again for the rest of the week, as he was banned from the Filmhouse bar (the natural habitat of the Muses). A man so mysterious we only knew what he was doing by reading his reviews and postscript in Spank's pages, and who has disappeared now we are back in London. Which brings me neatly in a Radio 2 sort of way to what were all those monkey nuts doing under a nearby seat in the Odeon Leicester Square last night, when once again the penny dropped. Spank, I thought you would have been cracking nuts with the Can Can dancers at the gala party for Moulin Rouge the night before and yes, here is my review (groan, or whatever monkeys do);

The first half of the film was a work of staggering genius, then the film changed style in the second half and it all went horribly wrong, so the earlier more successful style was reprised, only to find the wheels had come off the whole stylistic kibosh. The interest of the audience had waned and it was more an exercise in damage control, than any artistic considerations. These are pretty scathing criticisms, but then again Baz Luhrmann likes to walk tightropes and he has had notably success with Romeo & Juliet and Strictly Ballroom: but with Moulin Rouge he came spectacularly crashing down to earth and probably knows this already, because film is a very unforgiving art form, when the juggernaut of big budget film making is in progress.

So where did it go wrong; the whole film was based on very lovingly created pastiches of popular music styles, but where in the first half they were on safe ground (juxtaposing disco classics of the seventies, instead of the arcane music that would have been popular in the heyday of the `Moulin Rouge'), the second half lurched into an Andrew Lloyd Webber style original score, that simply was not strong enough to sustain the same level of interest of the first half. The film lost pace and down came the tightrope walker. The film is still a magnificent failure, there is so much wit and imagination in the first half that you can almost forgive the failings of the second half, and that is not without some wit and amusing visual puns from all manner of other films. The best of the first half finishes with the classic Whitney Houston hit One Day I'll Fly Away, sounds unlikely but you will have to go see how brilliantly this is done: and after the debacle of the Andrew Lloyd Webber style section, he still has the cheek to reprise the motif of One Day I'll Fly Away in true Andrew Lloyd Webber style towards the end of the film, having apparently abandoned that style: you have to love him for that.

Spank, what did you think, or were you too busy munching those nuts. Sorry about the length of the piece again (cue another blurry picture of a bar in Edinburgh), but at least I have cut out the swearing this time (it was mixing with the Muses up north!).

Well, since you asked... Moulin Rouge goes straight into my top ten of the year. And it goes in at roughly the same position as the camp Thai western Tears Of The Black Tiger, which is the best comparison I've been able to come up with so far.

The British critics have been watching TOTBT dance wildly between lurid melodrama and dayglo kitsch, and wonder why we can't make movies like that in the West. Well, we can't, but apparently the Australians can: Moulin Rouge is operating at the same high-pitched taste frequency as TOTBT, one that apparently only a certain proportion of us can hear. The incredibly stylised visuals, the melodramatic twists and turns in the story as it hurtles towards an ending we all expect anyway, the OTT use of music...

...well, Moulin Rouge probably has the edge musically. The songs are beautifully chosen and sequenced: any musical that can include Lamb's Gorecki as one of its numbers, and come up with a suitable context in which it can be sung, can do no wrong in my book. And the visual style is as hyperactive and cut-and-paste as the musical arrangements. To be honest, some of the actors look a little lost in all this chaos, notably MacGregor: it's Kidman who steals the show, with help from Jim Broadbent (who, I like to think, is playing W.S. Gilbert again, having run away from England at the end of Topsy-Turvy and dropped lots of acid in Paris).

The film's wildly overambitious, sure, but I'd rather have movies that try too hard than ones that barely try at all. Too much, after all, has always been my favourite quantity of anything.

Robert Heigh, Ireland, 10/09/2001
[re: letter from Rich Hall dated 01/09/2001]

Got the CD Friday (?!?! Well done the Royal Mail!) It's great, but I only managed to listen to it for the first time today as we have just moved house and the stereo is in bits in many boxes. Do you know if he played I Didn't Come From No Monkeys? That was a hoot when he played here. I see Rich is back here in October for one night as part of a mini comedy festival.

It would be my pleasure to direct some traffic your way. I'll be getting a presence online pretty soon, www.romilo.net probably, and I'll make sure there's linkage there, as well as telling the buddies about STM.

Thanks again.

Slainte.

My pleasure entirely, Rob. Otis' anti-evolution song Monkeys ("If we come from monkeys / How come there's still monkeys?") is obviously a personal favourite, but I don't think he's played it for a while now. Annoyingly, it's probably the only good track on the Melbourne CD that isn't duplicated on the new album.

Loren Siegel, ACLU Public Education Director, 25/09/2001
Dear Webmaster,

To celebrate Banned Books Week, the American Civil Liberties Union has put together an online audio special. Web users can hear legendary beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti discuss the obscenity trial of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, author Tom Robbins read from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and author Michael Chabon read from Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera at http://www.aclu.org/banned2001/

Over time, the ACLU has been involved in countless censorship cases, from the historic Ulysses case, to defending Howl and Tropic of Cancer, to the recent challenges against the Harry Potter series and Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians. Join us in our fight against censorship.

Please take the time to link to our online special at http://www.aclu.org/banned2001/.

Presumably I ended up on the mailing list for this one because of the recent Tom Robbins feature. Anyway, it's a cause that deserves your support, so give them a visit.

Seona, stuck in my room with a sprained ankle and no beer, 29/09/2001
Ok it says the letter page has been updated but I can't see Datta's letter and I want to know what he said. And where's the Cat On A Hot Tin Roof review with Brendan Fraser's big ass?

Datta's letter is definitely there, dated August 21st: given this month's somewhat epic collection of letters, you'll have to scroll down quite a bit now to find it.

Seona's final sentence refers to a recent trip we made with some of the Film Unlimited crew to see the current West End production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. A casual remark I made about its lead being a "big-ass movie star" has been relentlessly quoted out of context ever since. As for the play, Ned Beatty - The Big Man! - is terrific as Big Daddy, Brendan Fraser and Frances O'Connor are okay but nothing special, and Gemma Jones is responsible for what may be the worst American accent in the West End right now. Mind you, that's just my opinion. According to the Daily Express, "Frances O'Connor sprays the furniture with her sexual hunger." Ewwwwwwwww!

Hope your ankle's better soon, or someone at least brings you some beer.

Rob D, Glorious Croydon; the gateway to South London, 04/10/2001
Spank,

This is the last, the absolute last comment I'll make about being ignominiously (had to spell check that one) cast out of Edinburgh bars. In answer to Nick's comment - "Rob D was so mysterious in Edinburgh, the 3 Muses never met him until Tuesday and then never saw him again for the rest of the week, as he was banned from the Filmhouse bar (the natural habitat of the Muses). A man so mysterious we only knew what he was doing by reading his reviews and postscript in Spank's pages, and who has disappeared now we are back in London." - if I'd been a bit more mysterious I might have enjoyed the Filmhouse cafe for a couple of extra nights; next time I'll go to the Festival with a bunch of Millwall supporters and I may get thrown out of fewer bars!

On the subject of ultimate sacrifices, I thought Steven Berkoff's Messiah [playing at the Riverside Studios, London until October 13th - Spank] proved the point that Berkoff ought to try and lay off writing plays for a bit and perhaps concentrate on his love life. I'd like to know which film that 'pimp monster' was in so I can avoid it in future, along with Frankenhooker, Re-animator 2, and all that drug induced shit I so enjoyed when I was a thirty five year old teenager.

AND ANOTHER THING (he ranted) What do you get when you enter 'monkey' in Google and the 'mature content filter' is off?? - eh? I think we should be told!! (he stopped ranting and went to bed.)

Messiah was good in parts, but went on for far too long and sometimes tipped over into self-parody. In particular, there's a lot of those Berkoff 'jokes' that surprise and disrupt like proper jokes do but without actually being funny. Still, worth a look if you can catch it at the Riverside or on its subsequent UK tour. In case you were wondering if Berkoff has completely rejected the profane for the sacred, be advised that the third word in this play is "fuckin'".

I haven't spent enough time on Google's new image search to find out the difference between searching for 'monkey' with the mature filter on and searching for 'monkey' with the mature filter off. Although I suspect in the latter case you'd eventually end up with a few more sites like this. Dirty monkeys!

Comic Book Guy, Springfield, 17/10/2001
I would like to return this quote, unquote ultimate belt. This is the worst website... ever!

People may have been wondering why I haven't updated the letters page for a month and a half. But probably not any more.

Harry The Dog, East End, 17/10/2001
[re: Rob D's letter of 04/10/2001]

I am writing to you in my capacity as deputy Vice Chair of the unofficial Millwall supporters club.

I do feel I need to clear up some ambiguities, regarding your correspondent Rob D. Firstly let me state that we do not allow outsiders to take responsibility for our travel arrangements. Also, we are very unlikely to ever want to travel to Edinburgh, unless we get drawn away to Hibs in the cup, and that would actually have to be the European Cup, as we don't play in the Scottish league and vice versa.

One other point Mr Rob D. The reason we left 'Cold Blow Lane', and moved to the 'New Den', was to get away from the likes of you.

Peace and love.

Chill out, man. Listen to some Suzanne Vega, or something.

chris sinclair, home, 19/10/2001
lick my balls

Present them. [please let them spot the reference, please let them spot the reference...]