John Walker's Electronic House

1) I feel really sorry for Goths on hot, sunny days, but at the same time admire their dedication to layers and sleeves.

2) I’m really pleased that as an adult, I have no idea what High School Musical might be.

As both these shows reach the end of their limited runs this week, and both are currently on the bubble for renewal, it seems only appropriate to reflect on them both and work out why one worked so extraordinarily well, and the other disappointingly didn’t.

Simon asked me why TV was so good at the moment, and the only answer that sprang to mind was a realisation that the idiocy of “the pitch” might be helping shows at this point. Having to present your idea for a new programme to a broadcaster is often horribly hindered by being required to distill a complex and carefully plotted plan down into a soundbite that will catch someone’s attention. However, recently it seems that saying, “X but with Y” is providing enough new twists on safe formulas that imagination is surviving the pitch meeting. So while high-concept programmes like Lost and Heroes might be supposed as opening doors to broader fantasy ideas, instead they seem to be inspiring more subtle manipulations of trusted formats. So there’s these two examples. Eli Stone: X = a courtroom drama where a dedicated, high-powered lawyer defends the little guy, Y = but he’s a prophet, seeing visions that direct his work. New Amsterdam: X = a homicide detective who doesn’t follow orders and always catches the killer, Y = but he’s 450 years old and immortal until he finds his one true love.

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Well what a splendid time.

The day at 826 went very well, with an enormous amount of information given, and a lot of helpful people met. Ideas run apace, and I’m going to go quiet about them in public for a bit as I try to decide the right direction. As for the Pirate Store itself, I have lots of photos and will post about that when I get back.

Saturday was completely mine to do with as I wished. So I wished to do a quick bit of shopping (STILL BUY NOW! EVERYTHING STILL HALF OFF!) and then went to watch the San Francisco Giants play the Cardinals. Again the crazy cheap dollar made this a lot of fun, letting me get a fantastic seat for an amazingly reasonable price. I was sat 11 rows back from 1st base, and surrounded by some great people.

Because baseball fans aren’t barbarians, there’s no division of fans, so Cardinal fans were mixed in with the dominating Giants crowd, and were defiantly loud. In the end they were proved justified in their confidence. Despite going 5-0 up in the bottom of the 6th, the Giants managed to pee the game away through some abysmal pitching, This was doubly a shame, as opening pitcher Cain not only was hitless into the 7th, but also scored his career third home run. It was a doubly-fun underdog game with brand new player, John Bowker, getting a hit in his first Major League at bat, and then scoring a homer the next time he was up. How wonderful to get a standing ovation from such a massive crowd on your first day in the big leagues. It all got ugly as the Cards went 7-5 up, and then the Giants amazingly pulled it back to 7-7 in the bottom of the 9th. Some awful pitching let St. Louis go 8-7 up in the 10th, and the Giants couldn’t pull it back leaving two men stranded.

There – literally no one cares about that, but I told you anyway.

Also nice was chatting with the people around me, especially the superbly sarcastic and embittered Giants fan sat next to me, her mood collapsing along with the bullpen.

Then last night I went into full tourist mode and went to good-old Pier 39, said hello to the sea lions, and ate a proper, traditional American meal of burger and fries. Today, my plan is to visit the SF MOMA, but the reality will probably be sitting in coffee shops, fearful of getting to the airport on time.

Arriving into San Francisco’s beautiful sunny afternoon was an excellent shock to the brain. First of all, it should have been the evening, but it was apparently before 2pm. Secondly, I left an England covered in frost, and I think some snow, and then by the afternoon it was a glorious summer. Splendid.

San Francisco is a peculiarity. It doesn’t fit in California at all, and yet would be completely inappropriate up near Seattle, or over on the East coast. It bears the effects of having the sun shine on it so much of the year, but without this having boiled the place’s brains.

The architecture is the most immediately odd thing. Leaving the airport on the train, and winding north toward the city itself, the houses pour down the hillsides, beginning with luxury mansions, and ending in what look like shanty-towns, if only it weren’t for the property prices. The buildings are strikingly unlike typical suburban America, their flat, open roofs looking like they should more likely appear in a Middle Eastern town. But a Middle Eastern town coloured in by a My Little Pony-enthused eight-year-old with a box of pastel crayons.

It’s hard to tell how much San Francisco is caught up in its own legend of being a cultural capital – how much is calculatedly commercial reinvention of previously poor areas, and how much is the result of opium-addled writers planting themselves and being fruitful. But here you feel like any of the considerable numbers of homeless people lining the streets could break into beat poetry at any moment. Starbucks look like dirty stains in streets filled with independent obscurities, and every street announces an exhibition of some nature is waiting for you.

And there are trams.

Potential polarising sides for the next world war:

1. Right Handers Vs. Left Handers
2. Vegetarians Vs. Omnivores
3. Scrunchers Vs. Folders

Results:

1. Oddly, the Lefties. You’d think sheer force of numbers would win it for the North Paws, but all those so-called products for left-handed people? Scissors, corkscrews, anti-tank missiles? All secret war weapons in disguise. They’re plotting, people.

2. More obvious this time, as the Omnivores win. Not only because the Veggies will all start going pale and begging for a vitamen pill about ten minutes in, but because the right-minded Omnis will bite them with their canines designed for tearing flesh.

3. I think this one’s the most likely. It’s that bubbling undercurrent of hatred that lies beneath every society, every culture, every race, sex, age, class. Those who scrunch the toilet paper. Those who fold the toilet paper. The hate is in place. The difference insummountable. The day will come.

There’s often discussion over which is the better show out of Bravo’s Top Chef, and Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen.

The former takes respectable chefs and puts them through some peculiarly low, er, fashion (to compare with Project Runway) tasks in a friendly environment. Then there’s Hell’s Kitchen’s collection of novelty humans, taking part in enormously complex challenges in the most hostile environment imaginable.

But there’s a simple way to separate the two, and that’s to describe how the fourth season of Hell’s Kitchen began last night:

We get a resume of the previous three seasons, the regular voice-over guy narrating the events as if in a horror movie. This finishes with Ramsey standing in the kitchen, lit in purples and reds, a skull flickering on and off his face, and the voiceover booms,

“AND THE DARK LORD REIGNS AGAIN”

Right, that’s all you need really. But it gets better. The contestents gather and get onto a bus. Joining them, in prosthetic make up, is Ramsey pretending to be a contestant. Why? Because it will frighten them more when they find out.

Top Chef is obviously a nicer show, but you couldn’t trust the winner with a significant restaurant. They learn very little, and there’s rarely a sense of progress. The ones who are good at the start are good at the end. So it’s not surprising that the prizes don’t take any risks – some money, a stall at a show, etc. For the new Hell’s Kitchen the winner will be executive chef at Ramsey’s new “London” in LA. That’s a giant risk, especially with Ramsey’s restaurants having so many problems at the moment. So this will be a process of breaking them down, cracking those that will crack, and building up any who prove strong enough. The difference by the end is remarkable.

Anyway, I only brought you here today to say: He wore prosthetic make up, and they said, “AND THE DARK LORD REIGNS AGAIN”.

My life, if plotted on a graph, would reveal a series of whims. It would indeed be an esoteric graph, capable of displaying such ethereal concepts. Overall, it’s a very clever graph. But that’s not the point. The point is the whims it so clearly reveals.

I’ve whimmed my way through a bunch of ideas, peculiar and different, eventually settling on two key whims: journalism and youth work. I’ve been astonishingly fortunate to have both these tumbled-into worlds work out for me, albeit with youth work on the back-burner (ie. ignored) for the last two or three years.

Point is, when I get a new idea, history says I tend to go ahead with it, and see where I end up. I was tempted to write, “throw myself at it,” there, but that would be a terrible lie. It’s more a lackadaisical stumbling, sourced partly in laziness and partly in arrogance. Is arrogance the right word? Maybe it’s naive confidence. A sort of peculiar assumption that I’ll be able to make something of it, probably. (I’m intrigued by the sense of internal conflict this statement creates, confusing me with an inherent lack of self-esteem somehow combined with an inherent assumption that I’ll be good at something. Boy, blogs really are for the wanky, aren’t they?)

There is a reason for this. I think I’m on the way to my next stumble. I’ve been thinking about this 826 thing, talking about it, and finding myself crying whenever I try to explain it. (That last part: very weird. Also awkward when you’re in a coffee shop, trying to have a conversation). So I figured, using my keen, analytical mind, that I should probably look deeper into it all. I emailed the 826 people to ask if there were any information packs, material, etc, that could help me in giving the matter more thought. They replied telling me that the project’s founders, Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari, are doing a one-day seminar in San Francisco this April.

So, well, I’m going. After approximately half an hour’s thought. This is thanks in part due to the… let’s go with “providence” for now… of being told that I’m owed a bunch of money by Future that I should have been paid in December, and thanks (such big thanks) to my parents being willing to help fund my whimming, even at the age of 30. Flights are booked, hotel is awaiting confirmation, and I’ll be going to SF for three nights (any shorter and the cost of the flights goes from £356 to £1456 – the extra day seemed sensible at that point), to meet the creators of the project I’m increasingly convinced could work in Bath.

I love life in whim form. I mean love. I’m so ludicrously blessed to get away with it, and while it’s meant I’ve never had any financial security, nor perhaps respect from people who wear ties, it means I reflect on the last ten years and don’t feel any significant regrets.

So John, what’s up with you?

How kind of you to ask. I’ll tell you.

Life’s changed a bit of late. And I get a strong feeling it’s going to keep changing really rather a lot. My brain’s been in a bit of a sleepy rut for a couple of years, and appears to be waking up again. Which proves a positive experience.

A rather huge part of this is involving myself in a church for the first time in a long time. An unpleasant time at the church I worked for until nearly three years ago left me pretty bitter, and pretty unforgiving. This in turn led to a peculiar hardening of my faith, which petrified into a primarily intellectual, and fairly redundant rock. With this, my passion faded: passion for almost everything. I’ve always been, and for the foreseeable future will always be, a hefty ranter. But what made such exercised moments worthwhile was the passion behind them, rather than the mindless anger that replaced it. Angry rocks aren’t very good at much. I disappeared up inside my own anxiety, and haven’t been the most enthusiastic friend to many.

I’ve not been completely shit. I’m a decent enough person. But I think even friends who would rather I minced myself headfirst than was involved in Christianity will agree I’ve faded. I guess I’ve learned two aspects of myself: What matters when it’s gone, and what I suck at when I try to do it on my own. So what’s this, this overtly personal post on a public blog? It’s a form of confession. It’s a declaration of intent. It’s a deeply embarrassing thing to write to someone who Googled my name after disagreeing with a review in PC Gamer.

Ok, so two topics.

1) Church

Give me a millennia, and I’ll give you a lecture on everything that’s wrong with church. But tell me to shut up and stop being such a moron and I might listen for long enough to remember everything that’s right about it. However, one lament that I’ve always had, and is probably even valid, would be my frustration at the mediocrity of the teaching. I wish to be challenged, to be charged to think. Not reassured and patronised. I have been phenomenally fortunate and found a church (thanks entirely to Jo) where the teaching is just fantastic. Theological, intelligent, difficult, and set in reality. This is doubled by the remarkably warm and welcoming nature of the place. There ARE decent churches out there. This is my message to the world.

2) The Future

So, I have this first class honours degree. It’s in Youth And Community Work & Applied Theology. I really haven’t done anything with it. I haven’t really known what to do with it. I still don’t know. But I’ve always had one passion, one idea I know with a certainty is a good one, and one I really should get on with. A phenomenon of this country is that we offer nothing for teenagers to do after school. I mean nothing. The immediate face of this problem are the media and parliament’s favourite complaint: “youths”. Hanging around outside our Spars, scaring the elderly with their hoods. But these are the groups that are addressed, and joyously so. Projects, as few and under-funded as they are, exist. People are noticing. But there’s a group that aren’t noticed. The kids who aren’t upsetting the neighbours or nicking the KitKats. To have a heart for these young people is remarkably unapproved of. They’re rich and comfortable and fine! Some are. But they’re also bored out of their brains, living in a cycle of school, homework and school again. These teenagers have powerful minds that we utterly ignore. Others aren’t, and they’re struggling, and we won’t step in to support them until they’ve cross the dangerous lines. I have a passion for these people – PEOPLE – who deserve attention.

Something I’ve always wanted to create is an after-school space for young people to hang out in, with one key phrase to define its tone: “A place where young people feel safe enough to do their homework.” It’s an odd phrase, but for me it’s always defined what I’m after. So every time I read or see anything about Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia project – a San Fransisco based after-school programme for local high school kids where they can do their homework with one-to-one supervision – it calls to me like a beacon. He’s figured it out. He’s created that space.

I think the same is possible here.

Below is a video of a lecture Eggers gave to the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference after he won the TED Prize. It explains 826 from inception to its current state as a project that’s appearing all over the States, and is associated with many similar enterprises. (I’ve been to the one in Chicago, The Boring Store, and took many photographs).

In reply, Hillary Clinton donned blackface and hid her clan cloak.

I LOVE Eli Stone. I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff wrong with it, but it doesn’t make any impact of 42 minutes of just lovely television.

Concept: A lawyer develops an aneurysm and starts seeing visions – visions that turn out to be prophetic. He had been a very successful young attorney, working for a large law firm that deals with big money cases. Stone won on behalf of the corporations, and won well. But the visions directly challenged this position.

Part of the joy of the programme is the nature of the visions. It begins with George Michael performing live in his living room. Then other people start singing Michael songs, with accompanying dances. Then he’s in World War 2, hiding in bunkers. Or at the beach. Or being chased by a dragon. As each vision finishes we see Stone in a compromising position, whether it’s hiding under the table in a board meeting, or dancing in the middle of the firm’s foyer. Unlike nearly every show ever, he doesn’t get away with this. Sam Beckett talked to an invisible Al for nearly a decade without being sectioned. Eli gets more than weird looks – he instead has to fight to keep his job after he’s nearly disbarred.

He has one believing confident – despite openly telling his now-ex-fiance and his brother – which is unfortunately his acupuncturist. In a rather lame plot device, he need only have a needle tapped into his forehead and he travels back into his childhood to recall moments of his father having similar visions (but in his case, accompanied by alcoholism). Pleasingly, the acupuncturist all but admits he’s a fraud, with a fake accent for his other clients, and a seeming surprise that the needles help. He’s also the person who suggests to Eli that he’s likely a prophet, and draws the connections with God’s involvement.

It really isn’t a stand-out show. It doesn’t have a brilliant script, and while the cast are all excellent, it isn’t mindblowing acting. Visually it’s the pastel colours of a daytime hospital drama. But it’s just lovely. Early on Eli is warned that he’s not going to win every case, and he doesn’t. He wins a lot because he’s incredibly good, and rather because he’s being guided by the Almighty, which is something of an advantage. But often when he loses it’s because he realises he’s fighting for the wrong side. It’s cheesy, sure, but dammit, it’s a show about fighting for what’s good and right, and that’s a great thing to watch between episodes of The Wire and Dexter.