Doctor Who and the Critical Backlash

I'm now back in the UK, and all too aware that I didn't write much live from the States. My excuses are that a) I'll deal with such things later, this being more of an occasional column than realtime e-gawpfest, and b) time moves much more quickly in Northern California than it does in Britain, so much so that I feel I've returned even before I departed. So in lieu of American adventures and thoughts (which will be forthcoming, have no doubt), I invite you to browse an equally informative website about what is increasingly becoming my US home, Woodland CA:

http://insidewoodland.com/

In the meantime, let's discuss British stuff, and in particular Doctor Who. I hadn't seen any of the new series until "Gridlock," the third episode. Unfortunately, it didn't make me feel particularly bereaved to have missed the first two instalments, nor did it make me excited about the 'pleasures' to come. This is not something I say (or rather, write) easily, being a Who enthusiast well before it was cool. I never went so far as to attend a convention, but I do have a fantastic range of Target novelisations in a box downstairs, most of which I bought in Mevagissey, a Cornish fishing village which in the late eighties boasted not one but two remaindered bookshops, an unnaturally high fishing-village-to-remaindered-bookshop ratio. This was back in the days when remaindered bookshops sold things one might want to buy, rather than cheap stationery and synthesizer albums. I presume this historical shift indicates an increased restraint in the publishing industry, now that editors have learnt the bitter lessons of printing half a million copies of The Twin Dilemma (incidentally, if any Who minded rare book dealers are reading, I also bought a copy of The Sontaran Experiment, the contents of which turned out to be The Armageddon Factor. Does this make me rich?). Even at the age of eleven, I was already enough of a Victorianist to realise that Ghost Light was conceptually flawed in its treatment of Darwinian theory, and also that it just wasn't a very good story. So, when I heard that Who was making a sustained return to the screen (and I don't mean the 1996 telemovie, in which the Doctor did a lot of wandering around San Francisco with an attractive woman - how could I have known that, eleven years later, I too would be a doctor doing a lot of wandering around San Francisco with an attractive woman?) I had that strange combination of excitement and "don't mess it up."

Two years on from the revival, and the gloss of excitement has worn off to reveal... not very much. Firstly, there's David Tennant. Hearing Tennant was going to take over from Christopher Eccleston was good, since I'd liked him in Blackpool in 2004, and even more so in a touring production of Comedians (where, in a before-he-was-famous style, he was lost in the billing behind Ron Moody and Martin Freeman). Ah, I thought, Tennant will do just fine, and in any case, anybody can play the Doctor. To be proved wrong on both counts, however, is not just disappointing but embarrassing. Eccleston may have seemed eccentric casting to some (and even he seemed surprised by it well into the first series), but he was convincing and could carry the weaker moments. Tennant can't - in fact, quite often he is the weaker moments. Shouting isn't an alternative to authority.

Secondly, there's Russell T. Davies, whose reputation as one of our best television writers is baffling. I can't think of any Davies script or project that hasn't included some major flaw. 1991's Dark Season was passable, but being two stories shoehorned into one series gave it the appearance of being broken-backed. Two years later, Century Falls made hardly any sense at all. I'll admit I didn't see any of Queer as Folk or Bob and Rose, although I know some people were vaguely offended by the latter's intimation that "hey, maybe gay men can like women as well! Wouldn't that be whacky??" The Second Coming in 2003 was interesting, but like so much of Davies' work, unravelled itself in yet another conclusion that made no sense and was based in the most embarrassing kind of atheism, one that refutes religion not on ontological but ethical grounds, where lack of belief in god stems not from the fact that he doesn't exist, but that he's fairly useless to humanity and so not worth bothering with. It's the kind of dogmatism that gives writers like Terry Eagleton the opportunity to make such nonsensical remarks (in his After Theory) that atheism is really just inverted religion. (While we're on the subject of religion, it's intriguing to see the extent to which the Daleks have been reshaped. In the seventies, they were Nazis; now they're religious fundamentalists, with gods, cults, and marytrs). My main problem with Davies, however, is that he can't tell a self-contained story, since much of his creative idiom is in soap opera, a genre concerned less with narrative than with providing imaginary friends for the undemanding (in a year which gave us Life on Mars and a new series of Peep Show, in a Radio Times interview Davies chose Hollyoaks as the televisual highlight). Doctor Who is the opposite of Coronation Street - in fact, that's the precise reason it was cancelled in the 1980s. It also means that this revival is oddly parochial, revisiting the same people and places in a similar attempt to create some kind of fictional community. Star Trek is science fiction about community; Who is essentially "Anchorite in Space", a weird bloke in a box.

Thirdly, and I'll leave it here for now, nu-Who is just a bit too glossy. I've always wondered why, in terms of scenery, it's acceptable to guffaw "It's just a quarry in Surrey!" but not "It's just the inside of a computer!" At least the quarry exists, and since I know they haven't actually gone to the moon, I don't see why realising that should be so unpalatable. But one of the distinguishing marks of classic Who was the challenge of creating universes and narratives on comparatively limited resources. It was the televisual equivalent of the literary group Oulipo, trying to create under severe restrictions (as in George Perec's novel La Disparition, without using the letter 'e') which would in turn create something intriguing. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it had startling consequences (such as Warrior's Gate, for instance). Nu-Who has no such restrictions, being able to CGI almost anything into existence and so eliminating any of the material challenges that only good writing and a theatrically imaginative approach can meet. Instead of grimy corridors, we have glossy sheen (remember the station in The Impossible Planet? For a desolate outpost in the very pit of hell, it seemed awfully shiny and well-lit). The rejigging of the theme music is a perfect example. The Who theme gained its considerable fame through sounding like nothing else, yet at the same time having been produced by two or three people and a lot of ingenuity (again, creative restriction). It sounded weird and perfectly matched the content of the show. Today, we have the National Anthem of the State of Doctor Who, something that sounds exactly like something else - an orchestra on Earth. I'm fairly sure more demented fans than me actually stand up for it now, which is not the point - it should leave us shaken, not stirred.

Neo-Victorians at 36,000 feet

A week into my latest California trip, and there have been none of the anticipated Curb Your Enthusiasm high-jinks I mentioned a few weeks ago. So instead, I’m going to talk about books and (stage) magic, and hope that maybe I'll get into a bizarre confrontation in the next eight days or so.

I was pleased to see that The Prestige was one of the film choices offered on the plane. Somehow I didn’t find the time to see this at the cinema, which can only mean that I’ll never find the time to visit the cinema again, since if any film was meant to appeal to me it was surely this one, with its inspired blend of the late Victorians, stage magic, and David Bowie. It perhaps didn’t help that I’d been put off by lukewarm reviews from friends, or maybe I was afraid that something combined of so many delicious ingredients could all too easily turn out to be a horrible mess, like finding a fillet steak stuffed in the middle of a chocolate fudge gateaux. Finding this film on the plane was also something of a pleasant coincidence, since on my last US tour (literally a tour this time, taking in the airports of Washington Dulles, Philadelphia, Chicago O’Hare, Oklahoma City, Los Angeles LAX, San Francisco, and Sacramento (where I learnt that customer service at NorthWest Airlines follows a formal structure of a) theft, b) hiding, c) lying, d) suggesting that I am lying, and e) indifference)) in December, I had been reading Christopher Priest’s novel upon which the film is based. I had started reading it in Heathrow Terminal 3 (the site of last weeks’ entry, doughnut fans), and got about a hundred pages into it before boarding. Incidentally, when boarding the plane, I decided I’d had enough of historical conjuring for the moment and stopped reading, in order to watch The Illusionist instead, a film with similar conjuring themes but which deserves some sort of award for the most frenetic final two minutes of narrative (a bit like the end of The Usual Suspects but instead of just being able to walk normally after all, Kevin Spacey also gets out a sack containing the heads of every character to have appeared in the film, including that of the detective who’s just been interviewing him). The Illusionist is a good film, but an oddly muted one since nothing about it seems particularly original, from its plot twists to casting Rufus Sewell as the bad guy. Once I’d watched it, I wanted to get back to Priest’s novel, which seemed to be developing into something quite different. Unfortunately, an annoying thing like the MLA convention got in the way of finishing it as quickly as I would have liked, and there are probably more atmospheric places to read the final pages than the foyer at the Philadelphia Sheraton. Nonetheless, it is a superb piece of storytelling which I recommend to anybody who’s bothered to read this far.

Achtung! Spoilers ahead!

(Well, maybe not really, but I once knew somebody who, while watching films he already knew the end of, would make various comments throughout which while seeming to him cryptic and veiled hints, were to the rest of us glaring premonitions of what was to come. So during Planet of the Apes we would get “Oh yes, they’re so very far away from Earth,” or perhaps “It’s hardly as if they’ve got the Statue of Liberty around the corner.” It was the social equivalent of the bit in B. S. Johnson’s Albert Angelo where a few pages have a hole cut through them so you can see what’s going to happen before you actually get there (Albert Angelo is another highly recommended novel, and easily found in your local Waterstone’s as the first part of Johnson’s Omnibus). So, if you don’t even want to receive obvious hints or perhaps semi-spoilers, I should go somewhere else for now.)

To what may prove the dismay of some of my friends, I also liked the film a lot, and I think this divergence of opinion has something to do with narrative expectation. I suspect The Prestige will become known as a ‘twist’ film, the kind of movie judged solely against its ability to conceal the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow’s head was really a ghost, or something similar. Having already read the novel, however, the film would have to be something more than already knowing all the secrets. And, you know, I think that it was. My friends complained that the film’s twist was too obvious, that there were far too many clues. Admittedly, there are parts which are handled clumsily; Christopher Nolan should surely have known better than to have heavily made up and virtually mute characters appear momentarily on screen, but otherwise get mentioned a lot. But that doesn't seem to matter somehow, because the film's main twist is in many ways so obvious that it almost doesn't qualify as a surprise - and yet, when it comes, it still has a surprising quality. It also helps that the story is sufficiently strong that, given sufficient production values and quality of acting (which are both evident here), it can withstand most of the more common indignities of adaptation. There are changes both significant and subtle here; the modern day strand of the novel has been dropped to good effect, while a slightly more low key alteration in the plot (regarding the effects of Tesla's invention) makes the whole thing even more sinister than Priest's already satisfyingly macabre original. The attempt to delve into the history of magic is laudable - the inclusion of Chung Ling Soo is a nice touch and for those us familiar with the field, a nice foregrounding of later events - although it does trip the film up at times (one character mentions the 'sawing a lady in half' trick about twenty years before it first appeared). If there is a failing, and one which I think may account for some of the more lukewarm reviews (rather than the 'twist' or otherwise which most people seem to have focused on), it's that the film is not quite so good as the original novel in sliding from one genre to another, when the sleights of hand turn into science fiction. There is time and scope in the novel to make the change gradual and persuasive; the film also does it well, but I suspect many may be unconvinced by the switch.

So, The Prestige (in either format) is highly recommended. And certainly more so than Deja Vu, one of the other film choices. This is one of those conceptual thrillers Hollywood is so fond of nowadays, but unfortunately let down by the fact that its concept is a crock. An absolute crock.

Live from Heathrow

"I like a man who stays put": Roy Batty, Blade Runner

Those of you who have been paying attention will know that yesterday I was speaking at the "Science Fiction and the Canon" conference in Cambridge. More about that soon, but for now there are more immediately appropriate things to talk about.

This particular doughnut comes to you from Heathrow Terminal 3, bare hours before the US leg of the tour (as I insist on calling it) begins. The queue for the security gate is the longest I've seen here, streaming all the way out of departures and no doubt well past the most disappointing Garfunkel's in London (chocolate cake can have many flavours, but surely onion isn't one of them). The queue is so big that people with more than two hours to wait before their flight are being asked not to join it. It's strangely heartening to see, especially since certain quarters of the media are treating long-haul airline passengers with the warmth and welcome usually reserved for paedophiles. I'm not a climate change denier (seeing George Monbiot take apart David Bellamy on the news a few years ago was a delight), but at the same time I'm intrigued by some of the subtexts of environmentalism. Whereas it once seemed a heterogeneous bunch of concerns, now it seems (in the popular media at least) concerned with the monolithic threat of CO2 emissions. Yet political stances always have their own ideological emissions, and the stuff coming out of environmentalism's exhaust is a weird kind of New Parochialism. So, while no doubt the Independent would frown on my transatlantic flight today, I don't really have a choice - I can't cycle to Northern California. But then, surely I have a choice of whether to go or not? Why should I? How far did the food in my kitchen travel? Why take 'unnecessary' journeys?

In the last few years, we've been introduced to two theoretical concepts: "food miles" and the "carbon footprint," both of which explicitly or implicitly attack the idea of not staying put. "Carbon footprint" in particular is as manipulative as anything Roland Barthes analysed in his Mythologies, with its central thesis that bourgeois myth operates by making the political or cultural seem natural and given. "Carbon footprint" seems to be the perfect example of culture masquerading as nature, with the added implication that it would be best if one left as few footprints as possible, of any kind. Travel, they used to say, broadens the mind; now, it's antisocial behaviour. I also wonder if there's a connection between the still quite recent democratisation of air travel and the middle-class media now deeming it unfashionable. This might explain the intriguing links recent writers of fiction have made between anarchism and the rejection of mobility. Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club features a memorable sequence on the disorienting experience of air travel, the procession of airports which all look alike. J. G. Ballard's Millennium People is closer still; dealing with an affluent anarchist set, the novel begins with an attack on Heathrow.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. I certainly don't want anyone to think I'm Jeremy Clarkson (as my friend Gareth Edwards has pointed out, the real life Alan Partridge). I don't drive, I use public transport, and agree that inefficient transport should be made as unattractive as possible where there are viable alternatives (why, really, would you need to fly within the UK?). And maybe my theoretical posturing, my 'New Parochialism,' is only going to get me in the Neophiles column of Private Eye. After all, the New Parochialism isn't so new after all. Developments in transportation have always been viewed with suspicion. Some of the crazier religious Victorians thought that building the London Underground would awaken Satanic forces; as my forthcoming (that is, forthcoming in the academic sense) cultural history will show, the Underground network has regularly been portrayed as a pathological space of danger, fear, and monsters. The bombers of July 7th 2005 drew on exactly these tropes, consciously or otherwise, just as the World Trade Center attacks borrowed the aesthetics of the action film, and grimly punned on the American emergency services phone number. And the anti-travellers of Fight Club and Millennium People have their ancestors in Xavier de Maistre's eighteenth century work A Voyage around my Room, and the Victorian French decadent Des Esseintes in Huysman's A Rebours (setting off for England, Des Esseintes gets no further than thinking about what being in England would be like). What goes around, comes around - so perhaps you'd be better staying at home.

The Cast of "Casualty" doing an Abba Medley

The BBC charity telethon is here again, reminding me of Alexei Sayle’s comment that Comic Relief was established by the people of the Third World to aid the struggling comedians of the UK. While in no way disputing the fine intentions of the campaign, or denying the need for such aid, I find it difficult to become moved by Comic Relief as a charitable event. It presents too much of a queasy mix of self-conscious irony (the reflex of the comedic personalities involved) and leaden earnestness (the very serious and real necessity for such campaigns), resulting in a smugness that becomes gradually unbearable.

The problem lies in Comic Relief’s central faith in the idea of comedy as progressive force, embodied in the feeble play on words of the title. The power of comedy to effect any kind of social or cultural change is much vaunted, but rarely demonstrated. British news media seems to have never heard of Chris Morris; The Simpsons, frequently cooed over for its ‘subversive’ content, was in fact always fairly safe, even more so now that its slide into self-indulgence and retreads of itself is now fully established (as Homer might say, "Mmm… law of diminishing returns"). South Park showed what subversive content really was, although its recent lurch towards the political right has made it somewhat resistant to the progressive politics usually associated with comedy (although in a way, this is taking comedic subversion to a new level). So Comic Relief’s faith in the power of laughter to heal the world seems, ironically, somewhat po-faced. It doesn’t help that the comedy routines are often somewhat self-satisfied in their references to "what we’re all here for tonight." A good example happened a few years ago when Comic Relief night featured an ‘episode’ of Only Fools And Horses, the first to appear since the series’ conclusion in 1996 (but before the ill-advised return to the series a few years later – only fools flog dead horses). The episode ran as normal until the final few minutes, when David Jason turned to camera and said that they didn’t know how to end the sketch, but then again it didn’t really matter because the real point was the charity. But this just struck me as poor writing. Did the charitable subtext need to be pointed out so clumsily? Did it need to be pointed out at all? Did the performers need to make it so clear that they were doing this for a good cause? Other fundraisers such as Band Aid were largely free of this kind of self-satisfaction because, in terms of the event, the appeal was almost incidental. People paid to see a rock show, and that money just happened to be used for a particular charity. Somehow, Comic Relief never seems content to let itself simply be a comedy show that uses its material to raise money.

It sounds as if I’m complaining that my thoughtless enjoyment of funnies is being compromised by boring old reminders of material want and the need for change. But compare Comic Relief with the BBC’s other charity, Children in Need, an equally valid cause but without the same sense of self-satisfaction. This is partially because the appeal isn’t inherently tied to a certain sector of the entertainment industry, so it doesn’t (on the whole) seem to act as a promotional opportunity or as the Comedians’ Union Showboat Bonanza. It’s also refreshingly free of the kind of "I’m cool and funny in real life, but tonight I’m letting my aloofness drop for the common good" self-satisfaction. It’s also striking that while Children in Need doesn’t have any kind of visual prize for donation, Comic Relief depends on the Red Nose as both fundraiser and promotional device. It’s all right if you’re not a professional comedian, you can at least have the temporary semblance of one. Just leave the actual jokes to the professionals – in the right hands they can save lives.

The charity telethon as a genre, however, is facing new challenges. Whereas shows like Children in Need used to give people the chance to see celebrities in different and usually embarrassing contexts, that kind of programming appears every night. The idea behind a twenty minute section on Children in Need ten years ago now gets hosted by Ant’n’Dec and shown sixty weeks a year on ITV2. You’re never further than eight hours away from the cast of Casualty doing an Abba medley. Resultantly, the charity shows are resorting to singers promoting their new album, or trailers for the current West End shows, which in turn gives rise to a new kind of self-promotion. Whether this is better than the old kind of self-promotion, we’ll have to see. Nevertheless, I’ll no doubt be hurling coins into a bucket on Friday, and it would be nice if you’d join me (ah, it does feel quite good after all).

Tour Dates

I promised the twin worlds of Victoriana and Academia, so I’d better pay up before this e-journal degenerates into hilarious accounts of weekend shopping (although I’m going to California towards the end of the month, prime territory for Curb Your Enthusiasm style misadventure). So the first instalment – which, incidentally, grows week by week into a partwork you and your family will treasure – is a sneak preview of material to be included in my next academic appearance, speaking at the Science Fiction and the Canon conference at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, on 24th March. Why not bag yourself a seat at the conference website here?:

http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/faculties/alss/deps/english_media/conference.html

So, "Dick/ens: Bleak House and the Dystopia of Blade Runner." I was so tempted to call this paper "‘It’s too bad she won’t live: but then again, who does?’: Esther Summerson as Replicant," but that wouldn’t have quite suited what I’m actually going to be talking about. What I am arguing will have to remain a mystery save for those who stump up to attend the conference. Although a tiny clue is that another rejected title was "Like Tears in Rain." In the end, I went for Dick/ens because it’s a beautiful half pun (or hun) and has superfluous typography in the title. Incidentally, at this year’s MLA convention, Joseph Valente gave a paper on academic titles discussing such flagrant use of punctuation. That particular panel was the most notorious of this year’s event, thanks to Paul Morrison’s infamous "Is the Rectum a Text?" I happened to be sitting behind a journalist at the time, so if you read of this panel in the American press (no doubt as an example of the theoretical decadence of the MLA), I was actually there. It’s something to tell the grandchildren.

Anyway, my trailer for the Cambridge conference constitutes an illustration from Punch in 1850 (I'm momentarily at a loss for a more specific reference than that, but it's on the way). The illustration reveals the extent of advertising in mid-nineteenth-century London, something I think a lot of people are apt to see as a modern, or even postmodern development (I see Microsoft Word dislikes the word postmodern, which is surprising since ‘Help’ seems to have been constructed by Jacques Derrida). Although the sensory overload (in the fashionable phrase) of street advertising really got going towards the end of the nineteenth century, here it's clearly already on the way. Like the most intriguing images, there are so many questions. Why are all the Ns reversed on the advertising cart except for those in "Van Dieman's Land" (that is, Tasmania, indicating a mid-Victorian liking for Antipodean flavoured sensationalism)? What's going on with the surprised looking man on the left (who, I must admit, looks like he's performing some sort of levitation trick - oh yes, magic is something else that's going to crop up a lot here as well)? Are those peaches in the girl's basket, and is there any psychoanalytic mileage in her fruity bounty, as well as what seems to be at least a police caution? As for my favourite part, I'm stuck between the two men advertising mixed somethings, and the poster on the far left. There's something amusing about the sudden leap from modern visual entertainment technologies to the more enduring aesthetic of the freakshow. I wonder if it would have had a similar effect to a poster today promising IMAX... Nintendo Wii... The Bearded Lady. Nonetheless, I hope that DIORAMA PANORAMA CYCLORAMA DWARF! will soon become a popular drinking game at the MLA convention.

It does say tour dates at the top; you can see me live at Cambridge on 24th March, before I head off to California on the 25th… and my next public appearance will be at the Daphne du Maurier International Centenary Conference, Fowey, 10th-11th May. Get your seats booked at:

http://www.sall.ex.ac.uk/conferences/daphne-du-maurier-cent-conf.html

This is being organised in association with the annual Daphne du Maurier Festival of Arts and Literature, which means that in one sense I’m on the same bill as Jethro Tull. More of them later.

Why Darwin's Doughnuts?

I should probably begin by explaining the title of this… actually, I’ll start by complaining about the word blog. I just don’t like it. It sounds like it belongs to the messier end of medical statistics (as something that might be measured, and not in a pretty way). It may be the reason why I’ve waited so long before having one of these things myself, until I realised there was no reason why my half-arsed news shouldn’t be publicised as well. But I still don’t like the word. So instead, if you’ll excuse the pretension… an e-journal. You like?

Right. Following that escaped footnote, we can begin again. I should probably begin by explaining the title of this e-journal, which requires a bit more personal information. I am a researcher, occasional lecturer, and fairly new PhD, in English, specifically in the field of Victorian Studies, which explains the Darwin bit. In keeping with the title, there will probably be some Victorian stuff on here. Maybe some reports on academic conferences, maybe some miniature book reviews. But usually just comments on whatever I’m reading and funny pictures. Oh, and bonus rants whenever I hear in the media that old joke about Victorian sexuality, i.e. they didn’t have any. Piano feet will be on flagrant display throughout.

Thus, one half of the title. I wish the other half constituted a fantastic expose of Charles’ dining habits, but it doesn’t. Instead, this splendidly alliterative title nicely sums up my equal interests in Victorian culture and too much sugar. I suppose on another level, it signals my investment in an evolutionary paradigm for explaining the universe. Dawkins’ Doughnuts might have been another title, but that comes a little too close to Dunkin’ Donuts (against which I have nothing; this year’s MLA convention in Philadelphia was held conveniently near to one of their shops). And it loses the Victorian context a little, as well. And the history of the doughnut as a model for scientific theory is a fascinating one… for now, however, I adopt it as having another symbolic potential. For (and stay with me here) is not the Darwinian model of the universe itself a doughnut, or depending on your perspective, a certain kind of doughnut? Some people find it delicious with a central core of jam (here standing in for reason, evidence, or ‘truth’ if you want to go that far). Others with slightly different tastes find it circular and with a hole at its centre (the sprinkles often found on these donuts are standing in for the devil’s work of misinformation, dinosaurs and the like). Now, whether I’m in an extended metaphor or not, I tend to prefer jam doughnuts. And I don’t really see cakes as theological indicators. Usually.

Finally, I’m getting in on intellectual fashion. Jay Clayton, in the marvellously titled Charles Dickens in Cyberspace (Oxford UP, 2003) points to a "Darwin Boom of the turn of the millennium" evident in titles of novels and non-fiction books which have all made Charlie the possessor of a wide range of stuff. This includes a Dangerous Idea, a Black Box, an Orchestra, a Shooter, a Spectre, a Radio, some Worms, and a Ghost (Clayton 170). And doughnuts seem as good as anything on this list. Admittedly, the turn of the millennium is itself on the turn, but at least the title sums up my general lateness in doing one of these things. And wait – isn’t it a bit parodic too? Cool.

One more disclaimer. If you’ve got this far, I really wouldn’t expect what follows to be the intellectual carnival I’ve so tiresomely suggested above. It might just turn out to be the television review column I’ve always wanted, or complaints about airports, or stuff about progressive rock (the most unfairly maligned of musical genres). But you can always search for the titillating bits. That’s what the internet is for, after all.