This is one of the strangest rock music stories I’ve ever read, and I’m kind of perplexed that I haven’t discovered it before. I like the Clash but they’re not a band I actually know many historical details of, so I had no idea that Joe Strummer actually disappeared for a while in 1982.
This was not the only or even the first such musical disappearing act of that year, with Jaz Coleman from Killing Joke having hilariously relocated to Iceland in February either to escape a nuclear apocalypse or else become Iceland’s top hash dealer, depending on which of his stories you believe…
“Alistair”?
And I wonder if that peculiar incident inspired Strummer’s vanishing. The story goes that Bernie Rhodes, who’d been reinstated as the Clash’s manager, suggested Joe “disappear” for a while cos ticket sales for the upcoming tour were a bit sluggish; Rhodes seemed to think that him going into hiding in the US for a while might work as a publicity stunt. (I don’t know if he did get the idea from Jaz Coleman or not, but the timeline does fit.) Strummer decided to take this idea and carry it out properly… by actually disappearing. Not only did the public not know what had happened to him, neither did the band or Rhodes.
Anyway, he was eventually discovered in Paris after a few weeks and normal business resumed; unfortunately, normal business for the band by this time meant increasing dysfunction and tension, resulting in Topper Headon being ejected from the band owing to his increasing substance abuse a week after Combat Rock came out and the tour finally started… a little rich given the rest of the band’s drug consumption and the fact that Topper had just given them a great big hit in the form of “Rock the Casbah”. The whole story really is quite odd, and Strummer did later regret it; supposedly he wanted Rhodes back as the band’s manager to recapture some of the chaos of their earlier career, and I suppose he got that in this case… it was just that he didn’t realise the one thing the band didn’t need by that time was chaos. Still, at least he learned not to do that again as far as I can tell, unlike Jaz Coleman…
Māori party MPs have departed from the traditional oath of allegiance to King Charles III at the opening of New Zealand’s 54th parliament, sparking a debate about whether the Māori word they used to describe him meant “Charles” or “skin rash”.
As part of the formalities to open parliament, MPs must swear allegiance to New Zealand’s head of state, something Te Pāti Māori, a Māori political party, has long protested against. MPs can say the oath in either English or Te reo Māori.
During Tuesday’s opening of parliament, three MPs from Te Pāti Māori traded “Kīngi Tiāre,” the official reference to the king in the oath if spoken in Māori, for “Kīngi harehare.”
The website Māori Dictionary refers to “Tiāre” as “Charles” and “harehare” as a “skin rash” and “sore” among other skin conditions as well as something “offensive” or “objectionable”. […]
Jack Potaka, a Māori language expert with Te Tari Consultants, confirmed that “hare” can have different meanings in different regions including “skin rash” and “Charles or Charlie” but cautioned that the intended meaning can only be confirmed by the speaker.
“This linguistic diversity underscores the potential for varied interpretations influenced by regional nuances,” Potaka said in an email.
All Te Pāti Māori MPs broke with protocol and swore allegiance to their grandchildren before stepping forward to pledge allegiance to the king.
I actually really like that last idea much more than swearing allegiance to whoever the head of state now is. As for the language issue… well, the new NZ government has raised quite some concern about the status of te reo Māori in their brave new world:
It’s not yet clear what the new government’s position will be on the use of te reo Māori by government departments because it’s not yet been formed.
The three prospective parties – National, ACT and NZ First – have different views on the issue. National’s Chris Luxon has said he wants an “English first” approach for government departments with dual-language names, whereas NZ First’s Winston Peters has promised to erase all Māori names from government departments.
Winston Peters is half-Maori himself, for what it’s worth, which has not stopped him being a right wing prick. As for ACT, I can’t find their specific policy on the language, but I do see that some of the things they want include abolishing parliamentary seats guaranteed for Maori and an evidently substantial rewrite of the Waitangi Treaty, so I don’t suppose they’re too sympathetic to language considerations either. As amusing as this stunt was, I have a feeling this is only going to harden Luxon and Peters against using te reo in parliament at any rate…
YIKES. Honestly, if that Hbomberguy video hadn’t already driven James Somerton off the Internet, this one would’ve ended him on YT; as it stands, this serves neatly as the final nail in the coffin. It comes from a channel called Todd in the Shadows, and Todd Nathanson doesn’t usually do this sort of thing, his channel’s more about music, but he was sufficiently offended by something Somerton posted that he felt the need to make this… and he acknowledges knowing Harris was doing his video about Somerton and that it was something of an inspiration, but the two videos take separate approaches so they’re both worth watching.
Todd’s video is more about the facts than the knocking off of other people’s work, and the sheer amount of things that he’s caught James being verifiably wrong about is just… oy. Why, though, would James lie about something like this that can be, you know, independently verified? (I use the word “lie” because Todd assumes malice rather than incompetence in almost every case here.) Well, he has a Fandom wiki entry that currently reads in part:
He generally has left leaning political views, although has made multiple statements condemning a group he calls “straight white women.” This is likely a masking of misogynism: focusing on their race and sexuality in an attempt to deemphasize the gender aspect, and thus, making it appear acceptable him to make statements that would be hateful and bigoted if these qualities were not brought up. James has also misgendered transgender creators in some of his videos, as well as erasing mentions of the word transgender when covering transgender specific topics. He has also described the queer community at large as “LGB,” a transphobic dogwhistle.
So there’s a certain propensity, as noted by both Harris and Todd and various of their commenters, towards James promoting himself as a champion of the LGBT but arguably only really caring about the G and trying to paint the L, the B, and the T as historically having had an easier time of things than gay men have had. Haven’t seen enough to really confirm that for myself, but that seems to be the broad consensus about how he works as a queer creator.
It still begs the question of why he’s telling these bullshit stories. I can kind of understand him calling The Rocky Horror Picture Show the film that saved 20th Century Fox if he’s trying to push queer art and history (despite it not actually being history, cos RHPS was bugger all of the sort). I don’t even remotely understand his retelling the origins of messrs Gaiman & Pratchett’s Good Omens, which has been told by Gaiman at least (not sure how much Pratchett wrote about the subject), and Somerton’s telling is… kind of entirely different from Gaiman’s, and Gaiman strikes me as the sort of creator who’s actually honest about these things; what’s the point, therefore, of James spinning his bullshit narrative?
I don’t understand a lot of this stuff, and consequently I’ve had great difficulty articulating that lack of understanding, I’ve cut and/or rewritten huge parts of this post while writing it since last night. What is the point? Cos these details are all things James Somerton could’ve verified before stating them as fact, we know cos Todd managed to verify them; James not doing so makes him look kind of grossly incompetent at best. That should be enough to end whatever credibility he had on YT. And what if it was deliberate…? Was he just hoping no one would fact check him? Why did he do it at all?
Having given more thought to the situation, I find myself increasingly perplexed by it, but also oddly sympathetic somehow towards James Somerton. I sense some sort of sad personal flaw that makes him feel like he’s less than he wishes he were—a feeling I know myself better than I’d like, to be honest; I’m sure it’s a thing that drives a lot of people really—but it also made him try to be something in a way that he really shouldn’t have done. So whatever sympathy I might feel really is wasted, cos this shit is something he’s ultimately brought on himself. And there’s still something kind of sad about it.
Oh, and one final irony: The Algorithm suggested one of Somerton’s videos while I was watching Todd’s as something I might like to watch next. I decided against it.
GODFUCKINGDAMN, I’ve long wished that Harris would make videos more often than he does cos they tend to be really interesting, but when he springs a nearly FOUR HOUR extravaganza on us, I can’t accuse him of slacking off. (And the fucking thing’s already had two and a half million views…) Most of this is about one creator in particular, a guy called James Somerton, who was sprung by one of his own fans when she caught him plagiarising her work. I’m not sure that I’ve ever actually watched anything by the latter (I might’ve seen one or two but can’t remember offhand), but I have had him recommended to me by The Algorithm quite a lot and I think I’ve got quite a few of his videos in my YT watchlist. Think I might be removing those now, much like he seems to be removing himself:
Woof. I know Harris tells him “delete your channel” at one point in the video, but I didn’t expect Somerton to actually go to ground quite so hard so soon. And that’s not the only video about him that’s just appeared on YT in the last couple of days; I’m just going to watch the other one now…
So this week’s Doctor Who episode, then. I have one reservation about it, which is that, frankly, I’m not really into colour-blind casting with historical personages like it does here. I mean, we laugh at the idea of John Wayne playing Genghis Khan, as I think we rightly should, but I’m not sure doing it the other way round—in this case, noted white person Isaac Newton being played by Anglo-Indian Nathaniel Curtis—actually serves much purpose. Anyway, I haven’t observed it directly, but I gather Twitter is having the requisite meltdown over it (and the amusing bit where the Doctor expresses his man-crush on him, and I’m sure some people are losing their shit even more over the episode acknowledging the whole “timeless child” thing), and I’m not even bothered by the casting so much as I am the silliness of the scene.
Be all that as it may, the rest of it is damned fine, and for everyone moaning about the sonic screwdriver’s increasing capabilities over the years and especially the previous episode, this was a particular blessing for them cos the Doctor has to cope without it… John Nathan-Turner would’ve been happy about that, if no one else. Much of the hype around the episode was that the BBC were giving away no information about it, for no apparent reason than that they could, and to be honest I’m not really sure the end result merited that (apart from the closing scene with Wilf that we knew was coming at some point anyway, and which was apparently the only thing they were able to get with him).
On its own terms, though, the end result is, as I said, fine; I was never actually the biggest fan of David Tennant as the Doctor back in the day but I found myself most impressed by him here, cos both he and Tate basically have to play most of the episode as a sort of two-hander, where each is playing their normal roles and also these “not-things” taking on their shapes. They both pull this off really well. Kind of sorry they only have one more episode.
SO… where does that leave said one more episode?
With A FUCKING JUKEBOX in the background, apparently! Trailer’s already out for the next episode and this shot of Ncuti Gatwa is already circulating as a result; I’m guessing this is where UNIT is finally going to put in its appearance, and obviously the Toymaker at last, and I have a feeling it might be a bit hectic. Looking forward to it…
I haven’t said anything about Oolong for quite a few days now, unlike the man himself who, well, said quite a lot with just a few words recently:
The funniest thing about this interview was the bit where Elon got the interviewer’s name wrong, of course, but the really important bit was where he uttered the deathless words “go fuck yourself” to those advertisers who’ve lately become sniffy about him after the Media Matters thing a few weeks ago. And then he had the nerve to post this a couple of days later:
I don’t know, are the people running those other platforms personally promoting the antisemitic shit on them like you’re doing?
The idea that if he wants advertisers on his platform maybe he should give them some sort of incentive to give him money rather than telling them to fuck off appears to have escaped him, as it appears to have done with this buffoon:
Lady Ballers looks like a horrible story unto itself, of course, but it’s not really the point here. The point is, these cunts clearly operate on the principle that they necessarily deserve advertising revenue purely by virtue of them simply being themselves? Disney should advertise on Shitter because Oolong is Oolong? No. The onus really is on him to give them a reason to. Instead he did the opposite; if there was anything he said in that debacle that he shouldn’t have said even more than “go fuck yourself”, it was “DON’T ADVERTISE”! That’s not how you do this sort of thing, you complete vacuum. It’s all about the free market for these bloody people until the free market tells them to go fuck themselves in return… and at some point I suspect he’s going to say the same thing to his investors and they’re not going to take that for an answer…
This is one of the strangest rock music stories I’ve ever read, and I’m kind of perplexed that I haven’t discovered it before. I like the Clash but they’re not a band I actually know many historical details of, so I had no idea that Joe Strummer actually disappeared for a while in 1982.
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