video

Rupert and family are moving from the wilds of London to the far more civilised Vancouver Island in Canada, which I believe used to be part of the British Empire until they had their membership revoked for being too close to the US. (Geography fact: Vancouver Island has a larger population than Montenegro.)

I’m proud to say that I knew Rupert before he became a big vlogging star and sold out to The Man - he directed our award-winning (ahem) short film “Tracks”, back when we were in short trousers. For a while I was worried that he would drop out of film-making completely, but he came back from a completely unexpected angle - using his mobile phone camera to shoot and edit short films about his life.

Video-blogging can easily turn into navel-gazing, but he managed to avoid this when he started out by posting what were essentially comedy sketches about a movie geek trapped in a dull office job in his dad’s company. The fact that Rupert was in fact a movie geek trapped in a dull office job in his dad’s company only made the sketches funnier. And sadder. But mainly funnier.

Now he’s all growed up - married to Kate, father of Amy, and no longer working in the dull office job - and his vlogs focus on his real life as opposed to his fantasy life. It’s great stuff, mainly because his slightly manic delivery makes for compelling viewing, but he’s also just a great bloke. Witness one of his recent posts, where he laments the annihilation of the local Post Office and interviews his local PO manager Mrs Patel.

The Minute wishes him the best of British in the New World. Please do keep videoblogging - I would join you, except my cellphone is nowhere near as flash as yours.

UPDATE: Fitna has been taken down by Liveleak following threats against its staff. This is a sad day for freedom of speech (even if it’s poorly produced speech) and plays into all the fears that Geert Wilders presumably wanted to raise by making it in the first place. Oh well. You can still watch it on YouTube if you really want to.

Fitna appears to be the modern equivalent of the Theatre of Cruelty, minus the creativity. It’s a fairly rudimentary cut-and-paste job - if I can speak bluntly for a moment, if a video doesn’t feature a fighter jet made of biceps, then it’s going wrong somewhere. However clearly my taste is not shared by the rest of the internet; apparently since it was released the video has been viewed 3291470 times (as I write these very words).

More worryingly, Fitna demonstrates almost no insight into the substantial problems of dealing with immigration in post-war Europe. Yes, I know it’s a polemic; however while it’s fairly clear that Wilders is against terrorist bombing and beheading - radical positions, certainly - beyond that it all gets a little fuzzy. Wilders claims that this is “a call to shake off the creeping tyranny of Islamization” but I have difficulty seeing exactly what the average person is expected to do in this heroic struggle.

If you prefer knowledge to fear, you could spend your time more wisely watching the astonishing video interviews with frontline Taliban fighters carried out by Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. This series of interviews covers a range of topics; it’s pretty much essential for anybody who wants some insight into the mindset of the Taliban, and absolutely fascinating even if you only have a passing interest.

The Taliban are not a good guide to the mindset of Muslims in general; but while we’ve been told that they’re Our New Favourite Enemy, most people have no idea who they really are and what they really believe. As the interviews show, these are uneducated men who come from unrelenting poverty, and their understanding of the world is understandably stunted.

It’s by no means good news, but if we want to understand Our New Favourite Enemy - and to improve people’s lives rather than dismiss their culture - then this is the place to start. Needless to say, the web is having a grand mal episode over Fitna, but almost nothing about the Globe and Mail’s report, the “war on terror” having been reduced to schoolboy videos and endless punditry.

“The Bake wants the Log” - genius.

Look, it’s not my fault if you don’t get it.

… especially when they feature people I know!

After getting in from Dhaka yesterday, I went for dinner yesterday with Natasha and her husband Richard.  Now I haven’t seen Natasha for about 2 and a 1/2 years (since I finished the tsunami contract with WFP, in fact), so it was a bit weird to meet up with her in London.  Even stranger was her new alternative career as a video model for Indonesian rock bands, as you can see in this clip from Padi….

Apparently one of the comments on YouTube says that the model does a really good job of looking lost - Nats pointed out that she had been in London for exactly four days, had no idea where she was, and so looking lost was remarkably easy.

Nice track, anyway.  The Indonesian equivalent of Coldplay, or something.

Ef yuh chobble de Cyberman, im a guh bax yuh!

It looks like this might become a bad habit - posting something to cheer myself up after posting about depressing isht like Iraqi translators.

I saw Kris Delmhorst perform in London at the start of 2003 - before the invasion of Iraq, politics fans! She was on the same bill as Peter Mulvey and Jeffrey Foucault, both of whom are excellent musicians in their own right. They were performing as the Redbird collective (which also includes David Goodrich) but I’d never even heard of Kris before that night.

In the end, her presence gave the gig a balance that it might have lacked otherwise. Where Jeffrey Foucault was charmingly twisted, and Peter Mulvey was offensively talented, Kris Delmhorst was just flat-out wonderful. Each of the three were fantastic, but in very different ways. Like the other two, Kris is a storyteller rather than an entertainer, but her delivery was more natural, her melodies more hummable, her lyrics more accessible.

You should probably buy one of her albums (I’d recommend Five Stories or Songs for a Hurricane) but in case you don’t, here she is in 2006 performing one of my favourite tracks, “Hummingbird”.  See?  I can be sensitive.

People often ask me - Paul, who’s your favourite Japanese hip-hop crew?

Hifana are my favourite Japanese hip-hop crew, of course.

What, are you crazy? They bring the deep sea fishing skills.