"Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry."
George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)
Monday, June 18, 2007
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About The Blog
Every bar is a memory.
And all the memories huddle together for company, so that in my mind it often seems as though every bar I've ever been in is on the same street, or at least in the same neighbourhood; every great drinking session I fondly recall happened on one night, or over the course of one weekend; and everyone I've ever drunk with fuses into a single person, the idealised Drinking Companion.
Sometimes it seems to me also that the melancholy that infuses so many of these memories had but a single cause, an idealised Lost Love.
Some of these memories I will now try to share with the enormous, faceless, blog-munching world at large.
These, then, are the mental voyages of the boozehound Froog; his many-year mission to seek out new drinks and new places to drink them in, to write The Meaning Of Life on a napkin.... and not lose it on the way home.
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- Froog
- Froog is an escaped lawyer - but there is no need for alarm; he is only a danger to himself, not to the general public. An eternal wanderer, he now lives in an exotic city somewhere in the 'Third World' *, where he is held prisoner by an unfinished novel (or, more precisely, an unstarted novel). He spends a lot of time running, writing, taking photographs, and falling in love with women who fail to appreciate him. He also spends a lot of time in bars. [* OK, I'll come clean: I've been living in Beijing since summer '02.]
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A Tour Of The Archives
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The Unsuitable Role Models
- Dave Allen - legendary Irish comedian
- Chet Baker - sublime jazz singer/trumpeter
- Tallulah Bankhead - vamp and bon viveuse
- Jeffrey Bernard - professional alcoholic, wonderful wit
- Rowley Birkin, QC - drunk raconteur (as played by Paul Whitehouse)
- John 'Bluto' Blutarsky - John Belushi's iconic role in Animal House
- Jimmy Buffett - singer/songwriter, affectionate chronicler of the alcohol-assisted 'good life'
- Charles Bukowski - writer, poet, drinker
- Johnny Cash - 'The Man In Black', legendary music star
- Terry Collier - classic comic stereotype of the 'bad influence' best friend
- Peter Cook - comedy genius
- Tommy Cooper - master of deadpan comedy and artfully 'inept' conjuror
- Ivor Cutler - charmingly eccentric performance poet, singer, and wit
- Fred Dibnah - steeplejack, sage, and right good bloke
- Ernest Dowson - romantic poet, died young from wine and laudanum
- "Fast Eddie" Felson - pool shark supreme
- Jem Finer - banjo player with The Pogues and all-around top man
- Keith Floyd - bibulous TV chef and bon viveur
- Errol Flynn - matinée idol and rake
- Father Jack Hackett - a man with only one thing on his mind!
- Hagar the Horrible - Viking marauder (cartoon character created by Dik Browne)
- John Hyman - a real-life friend: bon viveur and aficionado of the N'Awlins music scene
- Lucas Jackson, "Cool Hand" Luke - self-destructive rebel (as played by Paul Newman)
- The Jester, from 'The Wizard of Id' (cartoon character created by Parker & Hart)
- Philip Larkin - great, gloomy poet
- Tom Lehrer - master of the satirical or blackly comic cabaret song
- Li Bai - celebrated drunken poet of the Tang Dynasty
- Shane MacGowan - bonkers singer/songwriter, of Pogues notoriety
- Dean Martin - ultra-cool lounge singer & masterful stage drunk
- Mithridates VI, iron-livered King of Pontus
- Rab C. Nesbitt - extreme yet oddly endearing Glaswegian drunkard (as played by Gregor Fisher)
- Brian O'Nolan (aka Flann O'Brien, aka Myles na Gopaleen) - Ireland's funniest writer
- John Otway - possibly The Greatest Living Englishman, certainly the best pub entertainer
- Ptilocercus Iowii - the hard-drinking Malaysian tree shrew
- Keith Richards - incomparably ravaged troubadour
- Tom Waits - the greatest singer/songwriter in history
- Auberon Waugh - famously acerbic and witty critic/satirist
3 comments:
I'm not sure I agree with George, unless he is writing about "wise idiots" and "shallow wise men".
I am inclined to agree with you, Earthling.
Beauty cannot but make us regretful at its transience, and its rarity; it reminds us too keenly of the imperfection of the majority of the world.
Oh, but when we are made regretful, do we know which group we belong to? That is the question! Who is to decide or judge if we are idiots or wise men?
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