'His most ambitious project is to re-record Pulp's "Common People" with a gospel choir and Bill Clinton on saxophone'

Hrobny!

HOB NYC RINK
BIN CRY HONK

AND

BYRON CHINK

Oh, and you can diss his liking "I'm Like a Bird" too.

For my views on Mr Hornby, paraphrase David Thomson's entry on Roberto Benigni in the New Biographical Dictionary of Film, substituting 31 Songs for Life Is Beautiful.

(note: I don't care either way about Hornby, I only came here because this is the best thread title of all time and should be done IMMEDIATELY)

It would also include responding to posts from others in a civil manner.

Also Julia Roberts is totally geeky wtf!!!

It seems more than churlish to attack an author for picking easy targets, and writing about what he knows. It seems even more churlish (ie more than more tahn churlish) to have a go if somone has been successful doing it and does not appear to want to change.

"How to be good" was unbearable crap. Why would anybody envy the career trajectory of someone who has managed to only get worse with every novel?

1. Nick Hornby has a talent for writing about football and his own life but not about music. 31 Songs is one of the stupidest, most destructive books about music I have ever read which, if you actually bothered to read it, would reveal itself to you as a profoundly anti-music tirade dressed up in the cloak of benignity.

2. The "you're just jealous" argument is the tiredest, dreariest argument against anyone criticising anyone else. In terms of "rich and famous and you're not" that doesn't particularly apply to me anymore, in case you hadn't noticed developments elsewhere, if you want to play that particular game. If money and fame are what count in your world. I'll soon be on a level footing with him - mostly because I prefer to concentrate my energies on writing books of my own and forging a career for myself, rather than sneering at everyone else on a message board who didn't happen to pass a couple of words with Mr Hornby in Rock On in Kentish Town Road on a wet Saturday afternoon in 1991.

3. I don't doubt that Mr Hornby is a perfectly nice, sociable and amiable fellow and I am sure we could enjoy a pint or two. That doesn't, however, in itself make him a good writer.

4. I have repeatedly said all of this to my colleague Chris Roberts, who attended the same Cambridge college in the same year as Hornby, and also knows Hornby well, and he does not appear to have any problems with my difference of opinion. Nor does his ex-wife, who has emailed me on several occasions about my Hornby comments in CoM and with whom I have had perfectly friendly discussions. You are the only person who seems to have objections to people criticising him.

5. Grow up.

Meine name ist Pulp Cement....

In terms of "rich and famous and you're not" that doesn't particularly apply to me anymore, in case you hadn't noticed ..

I was with you up to here. Big tut. slap on hand.

xpost with everybody...

sorry, that is SUCH an outrageous post.!!

I shut up now.

"Rabbit ears motherfucker!"

Julia Roberts is awesome, she's totally like the biggest dork in the world and she has a really annoying laugh, like me, so I must support her. Not necessarily films like Mary Reilly though, that's enough to make me wanna die.

PS my work email is not working to anyone who was so interested in that on this thread.

I was going to shuttup, wasn't I?

Oh, wait! Is that the kind of facetious and personal remark you were talking about on the Teasing thread? Coz I am actually joking there.

Your comment was unclear, I thought you were talking about "talking about FAPs" and hence my joke.

FAP-ing is something you have to be in the right mood for. Some people are unlikely to enjoy FAPs at all, ever. Marcello has a history of not enjoying them, so it's probably better for him that he doesn't go. Sometimes I go and have a good time, sometimes not. If you're not getting something out of it, then it's better avoid them.

(sorry to vent there, hope it didn't derail the thread too much further) [cue TOMBOT's ire]

::ducks!::

what about the all-girl FAP?

I think Horny is hated for some of the same reasons Paul Johnson, Tom Wolfe or Roger Scruton are hated: he fails upwards. He's an obvious meddler in worlds he doesn't understand enough, yet he soldiers on from subject to subject, pontificating about things he has no insight in, still finding sizable audiences for his works no matter what crap he puts out, fostering an uncriticalness only seems to encourage him to be even lazier and more lunk-headed.

Mike, I disagree with you for what it's worth, but you're probably right.

It's interesting though that with Fever Pitch I've heard a lot more people saying they identified with it whereas with High Fidelity I've heard a lot more people talk about how other people had identified them in it.

For what it is worth, I was insanely jealous when I read High Fidelity, because I was writing something very similar at the time and it has, to some smallish degrees, completely put me off writing like that (mine was DJ as record obsessive rather than record store but plot wasn't a million miles away).

Abt Boy OK
Fever Pitch - mmmmmm
HiFid - poor

(typed pooe just then, maybe shouldnt have corrected...)

Big, broad, maybe dumb question: can people really be jealous of those who are merely right-place/right-time rather than gifted or talented? "I am jealous of you not so much for what you've done but because of some stupid random circumstance you had no control over."

I was actually trying to detach the subject from Hornby a little, because that was an aspect of jealousy I couldn't get my head around. Yeah, Hornby is talented, if you will.

There is nothing simple about being in the right place at the right time. That is the problem. I am sure Hornby did not expect his massive success, he was knocking out journalism which suddenly clicked. Did it click because people were suddenly writing about it in a particular way? Possibly. But if we talk about Fever Pitch then it coincides with post Sky reclaiming of football from the hooligan (commit but nice Hornbores) or the middle classes who like to read books about things they like to be interested in. Followed up by music which hits just as Britpop is big, coincidence - yes - fortuitous - certainly. That About A Boy did not coincide with amassive interest in the plight of single Mums no longer mattered.

This is proof postive of celebrity gone mad. Fact is, love or hate the guy, Hornby could have spent his time better than trying to breathe further life into a walking caricature.

Yes, the book's coming out in the US as well, at the same time (i.e. Sept '04).

Re. FAPs: yes I have the same problem as Kate does. My HSA equivalent(i.e. Gail) certainly isn't averse to going down t'pub, but - well, you'd never get her coming to an FAP, it's just so not her scene. So these days we tend to socialise with G's improv mates, which I find a much more comfortable situation.

The only disadvantage of not going to FAPs is that I miss out on folk like Ned coming over - if there had been a bit more time, I would very much have liked to have met up with him in a non-FAP context, but we were out of town that weekend anyway. Also it means that I don't see as much as I would like of those ILxors I do consider friends, like Kate, Suzy, etc. - maybe we should arrange for a non-ILx meet-up sometime after the hols, 'cos I feel guilty about not being in touch more often. That certainly also includes Mark S, even though I know he's as book-writing busy as I am at the moment.

:-) It would have been a pleasure, sir, but as you say the timing was off. There will be other instances, doubtless.

Although it may sound like an odd coupling, the two have actually collaborated before, once on Ben’s solo album, Fear Of Pop, Volume 1, and when Ben repaid the favor by appearing in some of Shatner’s popular Priceline.com commercials. Earlier this year, when Shout! Factory executives Richard and Garson Foos approached Shatner with the idea of recording a new album, the actor casually mentioned that his friend Ben had been trying to get him to do the same thing. Everybody agreed and everybody signed on, and Shatner began writing. “These are thoughts and experiences of mine that very few people have heard before,” Shatner explains. “I wanted to share them with my loved ones.”

Shatner’s performances are stunning. His rendition of “Trying” is downright heartbreaking, as he depicts an absent father’s desperate attempt at building a relationship with his daughter long after it’s too late. His own droll way with prose makes a splash on “Common People,” in what could be an ode to a certain girl with a famous last name. And the album’s title track is a playful romp -- a spaghetti western score with Shatner embracing the lyrics, “Has Been.”

Remarks Folds on the Has Been recording experience, “If I thought that there were heaps of artists who were willing to be as honest, vulnerable, creative and as trusting with their producer as William Shatner has been with me, I’d just be a producer.”

Not only did Shatner’s lyrics surpass everyone’s expectations, but friends and fans were more than willing to be a part of the recordings. Folds brought in Aimee Mann, Brad Paisley (who wrote a song specifically for Shatner), and Grammy winners Joe Jackson and Henry Rollins to contribute vocals, while Adrian Belew adds guitars and the U.K. ambient duo Lemon Jelly weighs in on “Together.” Nearly the entire album was recorded at Folds’ Nashville studio, with Matt Chamberlain on drums (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple), Sebastian Steinberg on bass (Soul Coughing), Jon Auer on guitars (The Posies), Folds on piano and bass, and with Folds’ longtime engineers John Painter and Joe Costa manning the controls.

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Click here for the Common Shatner.

(A theater near here is showing The Wrath of Khan in some bizarre one-off thing tomorrow night. Of course I'm going.)