TCR

This won’t be for everyone (warning: occasional naughty language), but if you find that it’s for you, then well done: you have great taste in music and social commentary. I say that, because obviously, I have great taste in music and social commentary and I just cannot get enough of this track (pun intended) from Nottingham-based band Sleaford Mods.

‘TCR’ stands for “Total Control Racing” and is named after a Scalextric-style toy racing car game popular in the 1980s. Talking about the song, vocalist Jason Williamson said: “The idea behind the ‘TCR’ video was to show and use the actual 1980s toy racing kit in its original environment, which would have most probably been the living room floor for most kids at that time.”

And yes, that’s exactly where my brother and I used to play it, although our carpet was a nasty brown, not a nasty patterned affair.

Also, we had a lorry version with a white articulated truck and a shiny golden oil tanker. But the memories are still there. And the meaning behind the lyrics ring true as well. Sadly.

I thought it married perfectly to the idea of life’s (at times) rotating dross. The narration/vocal over the song is just that, an account of a bloke reacting to what he feels is a routine-laden existence by ‘escaping’ for the night to the pub, only to realise this is also a limited experience, and in turn all options kind of merge into a circular experience of never ending repetition that he tries to navigate.

Having finally given up on 5fm (sorry, Rob), I’m enjoying all the airplay that this is getting on BBC 6 Music, which is being streamed into the lab from the UK on a daily basis now.

My list of other good music to catch up on is growing by the day as well. I’ve missed out on a lot thanks to Hlaudi’s stupid policies.

But that’s another post for another day.

Depressing physics…

It’s not just South Africa. Everything slowly descends into chaos.

Seriously. Whenever atoms are in any given structure or arrangement, they are displaying unnatural organisation. The universe doesn’t like that and it fights back by reducing everything slowly and surely into chaos.
That’s not such a difficult thing to consider when you’re thinking about a radioactive isotope, but then someone goes and makes this (equally valid) observation:

Depressingly, it’s all true.

Snoopy is rapidly disintegrating and so am I.
And before you start feeling all superior, so are you.

Big Daddy

Reminded of this wrestling legend of my childhood by a misunderstood tweet from Zamalisa Mdoda, I looked up Big Daddy’s wikipedia page and relived some memories of Wakefield Town Hall on a Saturday lunchtime.

Shirley Crabtree, Jr, better known as Big Daddy (14 November 1930 – 2 December 1997) was a British professional wrestler famous for his record-breaking 64 inch chest. Known for wearing his various Big Daddy leotards, Crabtree’s original one was emblazoned with just a large “D” and was fashioned by his wife Eunice from their chintz sofa.

The wrestling would be on World of Sport on ITV (via Yorkshire TV) from about 12:30 til 1:15, much to the displeasure of my parents. It would be hard to choose between that and Football Focus and I seem to remember that the footy usually won out during the season.

As you can probablytell from the sofa thing above, this was entirely more amateur than the WWF, WCW, WWE and WTF nonsense that is so popular these days. This was altogether less glamorous, although Big Daddy was one of the first big (no pun intended) showmen, this clip from a posh do down South at Wembley Arena:

Big Daddy died in 1997 and Pierre Perrone’s obituary – which I promise I have only just read after writing all of the above – completely backs up all that I have just said:

With wrestling now banished to the satellite ghetto of Sky and Eurosport, it’s hard to remember a time when the sport was very much a part of the terrestrial schedules. Yet in the late Seventies and early Eighties, the wrestler Big Daddy became a star on ITV’s World of Sport. Before ram-raiding and computer games, many a British child spent a not so wholesome Saturday afternoon egging on the leotard-clad Big Daddy as he ditched his glittering cape and top hat before taking on such rivals as Giant Haystacks and Mick McManus.

Not something I expected to think about or to post today, but a very welcome memory of my younger days.