Troubled Soul
The man who started it all heads for the finish line.
by Martha Bayles 08/01/2005
Feel Good A Memoir of a Life of Soul by James Brown and Marc Eliot New American Library, 266 pp., $24.95 James Brown The Godfather of Soul by James Brown and Bruce Tucker Thunder's Mouth Press, 384 pp., $14.95 "I TOOK A TRIP to Rome during one of my down periods a few years ago, and had the good fortune to be greeted by the pope." Reading about this encounter, one naturally wonders what the Hardest Working Man in Show Business and the Hardest Working Man in Religion had to say to each other. "The pontiff shook my hand three times," Brown continues, "and I told him I had been thinking about leaving the music business, and to my surprise, he advised against it. I asked him why. He said, 'Because, sir, you can get things done.'" Was the Holy Father a soul man in the James Brown sense? Or was this standard papal advice to visitors long in the tooth? You won't find out the answer from I Feel Good, a carelessly written celebrity biography that barely skims the surface of Brown's fascinating life. For an in-depth look, read Brown's first autobiography, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul (first published in 1986, reprinted in 2003), coauthored with Bruce Tucker. In Tucker, Brown had a real writer to work with. In Eliot, he has someone best described as no Plutarch. Eliot has written bios of Cary Grant, the Eagles, Erin Brockovich, Walt Disney, Donna Summer, Roy Clark, Vicki Lawrence, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs, Burt Reynolds, Barry White, and Kato Kaelin--more than is good for him, probably, and certainly more than is good for Brown. The clear purpose of I Feel Good is to repair a very tarnished image. Brown has had a bad 20 years. Between 1988 and 1991, he served part of a six-year prison term for assault, failure to stop for an officer, resisting arrest, and illegal possession of a pistol and drugs. In 1998 he was arrested after a car chase and sentenced to a 90-day drug rehab. In 2003 he was pardoned by the state of South Carolina, but that didn't stop him from getting in trouble again. In January 2004, he was arrested for allegedly shoving his wife, Tomi Rae, to the floor of their bedroom. But I Feel Good gives only a garbled account of these misadventures, laced with braggadocio and racial paranoia. Again, readers who would rather focus on Brown's accomplishments are advised to read Tucker. Not only does Tucker's book include old-fashioned aids like an index and discography (both maddeningly absent from Eliot), it also brings out the complexity of a man who, despite his recent decline, is an American icon. Rough yet refined, boastful yet humble, Brown is an extraordinary talent who also happens to be blessed (cursed?) with a sharp intelligence that cuts through the B.S. as cleanly as his incredible voice cuts through the air. The true fan will say, "Skip the books and listen to the music." Good advice, since no amount of description can capture the essence of James Brown. But given the state of popular music these days, listening is not a simple proposition. To a large degree, what one hears will depend on one's background, age, and cultural outlook.
Feel Good A Memoir of a Life of Soul by James Brown and Marc Eliot New American Library, 266 pp., $24.95 James Brown The Godfather of Soul by James Brown and Bruce Tucker Thunder's Mouth Press, 384 pp., $14.95 "I TOOK A TRIP to Rome during one of my down periods a few years ago, and had the good fortune to be greeted by the pope." Reading about this encounter, one naturally wonders what the Hardest Working Man in Show Business and the Hardest Working Man in Religion had to say to each other. "The pontiff shook my hand three times," Brown continues, "and I told him I had been thinking about leaving the music business, and to my surprise, he advised against it. I asked him why. He said, 'Because, sir, you can get things done.'" Was the Holy Father a soul man in the James Brown sense? Or was this standard papal advice to visitors long in the tooth? You won't find out the answer from I Feel Good, a carelessly written celebrity biography that barely skims the surface of Brown's fascinating life. For an in-depth look, read Brown's first autobiography, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul (first published in 1986, reprinted in 2003), coauthored with Bruce Tucker. In Tucker, Brown had a real writer to work with. In Eliot, he has someone best described as no Plutarch. Eliot has written bios of Cary Grant, the Eagles, Erin Brockovich, Walt Disney, Donna Summer, Roy Clark, Vicki Lawrence, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs, Burt Reynolds, Barry White, and Kato Kaelin--more than is good for him, probably, and certainly more than is good for Brown. The clear purpose of I Feel Good is to repair a very tarnished image. Brown has had a bad 20 years. Between 1988 and 1991, he served part of a six-year prison term for assault, failure to stop for an officer, resisting arrest, and illegal possession of a pistol and drugs. In 1998 he was arrested after a car chase and sentenced to a 90-day drug rehab. In 2003 he was pardoned by the state of South Carolina, but that didn't stop him from getting in trouble again. In January 2004, he was arrested for allegedly shoving his wife, Tomi Rae, to the floor of their bedroom. But I Feel Good gives only a garbled account of these misadventures, laced with braggadocio and racial paranoia. Again, readers who would rather focus on Brown's accomplishments are advised to read Tucker. Not only does Tucker's book include old-fashioned aids like an index and discography (both maddeningly absent from Eliot), it also brings out the complexity of a man who, despite his recent decline, is an American icon. Rough yet refined, boastful yet humble, Brown is an extraordinary talent who also happens to be blessed (cursed?) with a sharp intelligence that cuts through the B.S. as cleanly as his incredible voice cuts through the air. The true fan will say, "Skip the books and listen to the music." Good advice, since no amount of description can capture the essence of James Brown. But given the state of popular music these days, listening is not a simple proposition. To a large degree, what one hears will depend on one's background, age, and cultural outlook.
ADVERTISEMENT
Richard Hammond with wife Mindy shows his love of fast cars..uts sweems the crash will not stop him
Richard Hammond with his Top Gear Mates... Jeremy Clarkson and James May Jeremy Clarkson Quotes http://www.jeremyclarkson.co.uk/jc-top-gear-quotes/
Quotes from the top man himself, brace yourself for total non "pc complience" as Jeremy lets wrip with some of the best quotes collated from Top Gear, his column in The Sun and various other sources You can just tell he really likes Jade Goody really......
1. And when you rely on a sat nav, you don’t notice that the sun is in the wrong place in the sky. You stop using your inbuilt compass, your innate sense of which way is up. And don’t argue with any of this. Everyone can navigate by instinct, and if you can’t there’s something wrong with you and you should be in prison. The only people who can’t navigate instinctively are women and anyone trying to find Malpensa airport in Milan.
2. We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. 3. Speed has never killed anyone, suddenly becoming stationary... That's what gets you.
4. I've seen better looking gangrenous wounds than this. (Clarkson on the Porsche Cayenne)
5. (Referring to the Porsche Cayenne) 0-60 takes 5 and a half seconds...and about 17 gallons of fuel....
6. Now we've been told in this new series, we've got to feature more green cars. So here's one. It's really the greenest car we could find, really. (A bright green Lamborghini Murcielago)
7. Now we get quite a few complaints that we don't feature enough affordable cars on the show, so we're kicking off tonight with the cheapest Ferrari of them all. (a Ferrari F430)
8. (At start of Top Gear Nov. 2005 season, after a teaser featuring dozens of supercars) welcome to Greenpeace!
9. A turbo, exhaust gasses go into the turbocharger and spin it, with a supercharger, air goes in,witchcraft happens and you go faster.
10. This is the latest S Class. Now available with a very economical: Twin-turbo, Six litre... I don't mean economical do I? That's the wrong word... 11. I do apologise, we have wasted your evening, there are no good Korean or Malaysian cars.
12. You know? That's the nineteenth caravan we've destroyed on this programme in 12 months. 13. If I had to nitpick, and obviously I do.
14. At this point the Germans are propably rolling around on the floor laughing, So: "Ze tommies have made ein car out of spit und kleenex, zhey will be crushed." (Testing the MG SV prototype)
15. Owning a TVR in the past was like owning a bear, I mean it was great, until it pulled your head off, which it would. One day, it would pull your head off.
16. In the olden days I always got the impression that TVR built a car, put it on sale, and then found out how it handled. Usually when one of their customers wrote to the factory complaining about how dead he was.
17. Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert, all that before they nicked all the oil in the world
18. That means, a Range Rover, doing 10,000 miles a year, produces less pollution a day than a cow farting(While discussing about "Methane as a global warming agent")
19. The only reason anyone bought the old Land Rover Discovery was because they couldn't afford a Range Rover.
20. As a result, it weighs 2.7 tonnnes - and that makes it heavier than a Rolls-Royce Phantom. It's so heavy, that if you were to load it up with stuff, and then hitch up a trailor to the back; technically, you need an LGV licence.
21. It's really as useful, as a snooze button on a smoke alarm. (Regarding the adjustable suspension in the Bentley Continental GT)
22. (Top Gear Bloopers) I've just realised something, it's late...and I'm drunk!
23. (Top Gear Bloopers) Who has decided to do Nazi Route Marching?
24. (Top Gear Bloopers)(Car Alarm Goes Off) Would you like to come to Top Gear again? Morons.
25. (On the Audi R8) Driving most supercars is like trying to manhandle a cow up a back staircase, but this is like smearing honey onto Keira Knightley.
26. I'd like to consider Ferrari as a scaled down version of God.
27. I'd like to consider Ferrari as a scaled down version of God.
28. (On the Alfa Romeo Brera) Think of it as Angelina Jolie. You've heard she's mad and eats nothing but wallpaper paste. But you would, wouldn't you?
29. (On the Brera again, talking about a version with a slow 0-60mph time and a big price tag) It's like Cameron Diaz. You know she's a vegetarian, you know she's a commited eco-mentalist... would you say no? That car is like Cameron Diaz, with wheels.
30. The Caterham may only have 250 bhp, but you have to remember that it weighs about the same.....as a j-cloth.
Top Gear star tells of 288mph crash
TV presenter Richard Hammond has told of his terrifying ordeal in the aftermath of the 288mph jet car crash that nearly killed him. The Top Gear presenter spoke of how the crash caused a brain injury which saw him regress to a childlike state and left him in excruciating pain. Hammond, 36, crashed his Vampire car at Elvington airfield, York, while filming for the show on September 20. But in an interview in the Daily Mirror newspaper, he tells of how 33 days later he is ready to go home and is on course to make a 100% recovery - without having undergone surgery. He said: "At first, they said I'd be in hospital for 15 months. Yet here I am ready to go home after five weeks. I'm so bloody lucky. I can't believe it." Surgeons at Leeds General Infirmary had considered drilling a "bore hole" into Hammond's head to drain the blood from his brain to relieve the swelling, but the operation was not deemed necessary. Seeing his family in hospital after the crash also caused him great anguish, while also being a source of great comfort. He described his wife Mindy, 36, as "a rock", adding that she had kept calm despite all the pressures of the situation. It was seeing his daughters Izzy, six, and Willow, three, that caused him the most heartache. The BBC confirmed that Hammond signed a two-year contract before his accident. The deal was reported in Broadcast magazine in September, but a spokeswoman could not say exactly when Hammond signed the contract. The spokeswoman said: "We don't comment on the amounts of individual contracts. I can confirm that Richard Hammond signed a two-year exclusive contract with the BBC. The contract pre-dates the accident.
31. We start tonight with the highlight of my childhood. It's the Ladybird Book of Motorcars from 1963, and as you would imagine it's full of rubbish really. Just endless boring grey shapes, until you get to page 40, where you find the Maserati 3500 GT. Now this for me, when I was little, was like kind of Jordan and Cameron Diaz. In a bath together. With a Lightning jet fighter. And lots of jelly.
32. If this car was a breakfast. It would be cornflakes on toast.
33.(On the Mercedes CLS55 AMG)It sounds like Barry White eating wasps.
34. Aston Martin DB9... that's not really a racing car, that's just pornography.
35. (Ariel Atom) This is driving Nirvana! You can forget anything you've ever driven, anything. There is no car, nothing on four wheels, that is as fast as this.
36. The most hard core BMW ever made. (M3 CSL)
37. (about the Ferrari F40) And what I love is that when you're on the over-run, and you take your foot of the throttle, listen!... there are these huge bounces... just dumps great wads of unburnt fuel into the exhaust... FOR FUN!
38. (test driving a Turbo Bentley through a cloud of rubber smoke) It's like Blenheim Palace on wheels!
39. (Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster) I would rather be in this than in Keira Knightley.
40.(On the BMW X3) If you are clinically insane, by which I mean you wake up in the morning, and you think you are an onion, this is your car.
41. What Overfinch did with the old Range Rover was replace the 4.6 Litre Engine with a 5.7 Litre V8 from a Corvette. And thats fine in a car which weighs nearly 2 tonnes...If your name is BP Esso McShell.
42.Telling people at a dinner party you drive a Nissan Almera is like telling them you've got the ebola virus and you're about to sneeze.
43.The old DB7, that was just...a Jag in Drag...it was an XJS in a party frock. This (the Aston-Martin DB9) is completely different...
44. No, no, no. There's no such thing as cheap and cheerful. It's cheap and nasty & expensive and cheerful. (referring to Proton Savvy)
45. I'd rather go to work on my hands and knees than drive there in a Ford Galaxy; Whoever designed the Ford Galaxy upholstery had a cauliflower fixation; I would rather have a vasectomy than buy a Ford Galaxy.
46. You do not just avoid the Suzuki Wagon R. You avoid it like you would avoid unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite.
47. (about the Ford GT40) Was this the greatest hypercar of them all? Well, that's a question I've never really been able to answer, because the GT40 is 40 inches tall... and I'm not.
48. Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It's like making a hard core adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You'd just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke's sweaty face.
49. (On cars at a Max Power show) Most of these cars will do 0-60 once....and then they'll blow up.
50. What did the Morris Marina compete against?... walking?... the bus?
51. Deciding which one is worse (the Austin Allegro or Morris Marina), is like deciding which leg you'd rather have amputated.
52. (about the Ford Escort) It's powered by engines so rough, even Moulinex wouldn't use them.
53. Whenever I'm suffering from Insomnia, I just look at a picture of a Toyota Camry and I'm straight off.
54. Usually, a Range Rover would be beaten away from the lights by a diesel powered wheelbarrow.
55. (about the Renault Clio V6) I think the problem is that it's French... It's a surrender monkey.
56. It costs Volkswagen 200 pounds to buy a set of four fuel injectors for the Golf diesel. Kia could propably make a couple of cars for that.
57.This is for every time I've caught you dawdling at junctions, this is for every time I've caught you doing 4 miles per hour in a motorway. This is PAYBACK TIME!! (Clarkson shouting at a Volvo 340 seconds before it is put through a crusher)
58. This is a Renault Espace, probably the best of the people carriers. Not that that's much to shout about. That's like saying 'Oh good, I've got syphilis, the best of the sexually transmitted diseases!'
59. This pram's turning circle is tighter than Thrifty McThrift's Book of Belt-Tightening for Boys!
60. (about the Chevrolet Corvette Z06) In many ways then this car is like herpes. Great fun catching it but not so much fun live with every day.
61. (on the McLaren F1 in his movie, Most Outrageous) I respect it enormously, in the same way I respected my old head master. But we never became friends.
62. a Buick LeSabre) It was rubbish when it was new, it was built by idiots, and it's rubbish now.
63. a Audi RS4 Convertible) The only person who looked good in a 4-seated convertible was Adolf Hitler
64. the evolution of the Golf GTI between MkI and MkIV) I voted for this as the greatest car of the 20th century. Over the years, however, the Golf GTI got bigger, and fatter, and slower. Think of it as Elvis Presley. It started off all athletic and full of vigour, and wound up on the lavatory, an enormous, dribbling hulk.
65. (About James May) ...Why are you on this program?
66. (About Lethal Bizzle) It's acts like that which killed Top of The Pops in the first place, they kept booking acts like.. what's his name? Jizzy tissue.
67. (To Lewis Hamilton at the NTA Awards) ...And if you see Fernando Alonso again, tell him his eyebrows are too big...
68. (A cyclist riding past in Oxford) The thing is, around here - Oi! Did you see that? I was damn nearly knocked over by a cyclist!
69.(About the Chinese) Chinese people have no souls. From his column in 'The Sun' newspaper
70. (About Drummers) Drummers are a bit like house flies. They're born, they make a noise, then they die. From his column in 'The Sun' newspaper
LONDON (Reuters) - British people rank bottom in energy efficiency versus France, Germany, Italy and Spain, according to a count of average energy wasting actions per week by a UK research group, the Energy Saving Trust, on Monday. Climate change looms ever bigger in the public eye as scientists detail ever stronger evidence of rising temperatures and its effects such as Arctic ice melt. But But it seems the general public are struggling to change everyday habits, the independent group found from a survey of 5,000 Europeans. "The UK is at the bottom of the energy efficiency league compared to (the) other European countries," said Philip Sellwood, chief executive. The wasteful habit the British found it hardest to kick was leaving appliances on standby -- which applied to 71 percent of respondents. Other guilty secrets included boiling more water than needed, leaving electrical chargers plugged in, forgetting to turn lights off and using the car for short journeys. According to the research, Britain was worst out of the five countries at an average 32 energy wasting actions per week, more than double most efficient Germany, at just 14.
Top Gear presenter Richard Hammondwith wife Mindy. He admits he's still affected by the crash
Richard Hammond admits: 'I thought I was better after high speed crash - but I'm not'
Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond with wife Mindy. He admits he's still affected by the crash
Eighteen months after the high-speed crash which almost killed him, Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond has revealed that he still suffers from emotional problems and memory loss.
The father-of-two nicknamed "Hamster" told how he struggled "mortally with depression" and still speaks regularly to a psychiatrist following the incident when he flipped a jet-powered drag-racing car at 288mph.
He said he believes his brain needs to "rewire" itself as it recovers from the life-threatening head injuries he sustained as he was filmed attempting to break the British land speed record.
Hammond, 38, damaged the part of his brain which controls spatial awareness, and admitted that he now finds it difficult to park a car.
He said that returning to the BBC2 show only four months after the crash had been "much too early".
"I thought I was better when I went back to work but now I don't remember going back. I was really having a bloody hard time. I had to evolve new strategies for coping.
"I damaged all the complicated bits of the brain to do with processing and emotional control. I was prey to every single emotion that swept over me and I couldn't deal with it. I had to relearn things from scratch.
"I'll still have a week when I'm freaking out about something and I'll realise it's because I'm encountering a new emotional state and I have to evolve a strategy to cope.
"When I did a 24-hour race for Top Gear in September I was scared and nervous. It was making me argumentative, angry, thinking I wasn't good enough for the job, feeling awful."
He added: "It's been a bloody long journey and it's still going. It's when I consider how far I've come since I was in hospital that I realise there was a lot more to fix than I thought.
"I spent a year recovering and I'm still on the mend. All the swelling has gone down, it's as mended as it's likely to be, it seems to be more a case of rewiring itself.
"I'm a hell of a lot more fixed than I was but every time something happens, if I make an odd decision (which can happen), you realise how broken you were.
"My memory is a lot better but the other day I forgot the pin numbers to all my cards."
Scroll down for more...
The beginning: The tyre, front left, blows out
Lucky escape: The dragster leaves the track and begins to cartwheel, kicking up a cloud of smoke and earth as the front wheels fly off
Hammond was airlifted to hospital in September 2006 after his Vampire jet-powered dragster spun out of control when a tyre burst during a daredevil stunt at Elvington airfield, near York.
On the penultimate run before the crash he touched 314mph, 14mph above the British land speed record, but it does not count officially because monitoring procedures were not followed.
After five weeks he was allowed to go home to his wife Mindy and their two daughters, Isabella, seven, and Willow, four.
Scroll down for more...
Recovery: Richard Hammond was in hospital for five weeks
Hammond told the Sunday Times that despite the crash he still loves presenting Top Gear, which starts a new series in the summer. He said there was a lot of banter between himself and co-hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May.
"But we're all best friends and we love each other dearly. Don't tell Clarkson I said that - he'll punch me next time he sees me."
i'm a dad in my forties with two daughters. i've worked as a photographer, journalist and, recently, tv columnist. currently a member of the growing workforce awaiting new employment opportunities. church-going catholic.
I DON'T WANT TO SHIFT THE BLAME, but I'd have had this up earlier if not for a strep throat scare that turned me into primary daytime caregiver the last two days. Who am I kidding - this wasn't easy to write; it's been so long since I've been allowed to mount a full-throated defense of male prerogatives, even silly ones, that producing the words below required a kind of emotional Roto-rooting. Plus I had to watch a whole bunch of YouTube videos - for research purposes, of course.
IF I CAN THANK MY FORMER JOB for anything, it's the introduction to Top Gear, which has become one of my absolute favorite shows. It's ubiquitous on BBC Canada up on the higher ranges of premium cable here, although only two new shows get aired and repeated many times a week, and since that's nowhere near enough, I've taken to the the legal swamps of bittorent sites to feed my addiction.
I was converted to the show when I was sent to England on a Disney junket, and put up in a massive former country house-turned-five-star-resort. My room was easily as big as any apartment I lived in previous to our current home, and featured a flat panel TV that I was channel surfing when I came across a Top Gear segment that remains justifiably famous.
It was from a few seasons back, and featured host Jeremy Clarkson in a Lotus Exige trying to keep an Apache attack helicopter from getting a missile lock on him. It sums up the show's Y chromosome appeal - ridiculously fast, Hot Wheels-like supercar, nasty awesome military technology, and ridiculous challenges that probably begin with "I bet you can't ..."
Like so many great things, Top Gear is one thing pretending to be another, like James Bond films (spy films where no one cares about beating the Soviets/Eurotrash megalomaniac as much as celebrating male brazenness) or barbequing (cooking that's less about the food and more about escaping the kitchen/matriarchal space.) Like so many other explicitly male cultural pursuits these days, its real intentions have to hide behind bluster and cliche, to cloak themselves in a protective coating of ironic distance.
So yes - the average episode of Top Gear will feature a shiny new auto being taken through its paces on a test track or road test, and the trio of presenters discussing auto news, setting out on some auto-centred challenge, or hosting a celebrity who gets to tear around the show's own track in a dull little four-door car. The presenters will rhapsodize over the precise number of Vs or litres in its engine, and make a point of talking about how quickly it goes from "naught to 60," and pointedly omit talking about fuel economy. But if you think Top Gear is about cars, you're sadly mistaken.
I'm proof - I adore the show, fill my PVR with episodes, scour the internet for downloads. I even own a couple of spin-off DVDs, but I don't have a driver's license. I don't know how to drive, and can only guess what they mean when they talk about "floppy panel gear boxes" and "understeer," and I don't think I'm necessarily alone among the show's fans, though I'll accept that I'm a minority.
But as Clarkson would probably say, excusing the many small but annoying flaws in a new Aston Martin, it really doesn't matter. The three men at centre stage are, ultimately, more the subject than any turbocharged, polycarbonate-bodied supercar or thrumming product of a German production line, and function as a microcosm of the male psyche at play - an everymale in three persons, so to speak.
I'm not the only enthusiastic follower of the show - Slate recently published an appreciation of Top Gear that rather typically couched its admiration for the show in a hairshirt dismissal of American machismo. I don't have much time for this sort of thing, which sounds too much like some henpecked husband trying to squirm free of the hook after his wife has made a joke at his expense while he's on his way out in an attempt to escape a girl's night in, but it has to be said that an American version of Top Gear, starring Adam Carolla, has apparently been permanently shelved by NBC. According to Clarkson during a recent trip to Australia, the network cancelled the show after test audiences "just didn't get it."
Let's start with Clarkson, the man whose appeal was almost singlehandedly responsible for the relaunch of the show at the turn of the decade, and who is the undisputed public face of Top Gear. He's a career hack - journalist to North Americans - though the English use the term with pride. He's also a proudly old school hack, nursing grudges and battling with other public figures, such as the newspaper editor/reality TV judge Piers Morgan, who he threw a glass of water at during the final Concorde flight, then punched in the face at an awards dinner.
He's been called a racist, sexist and homophobe, and an "übermale" by Dame Helen Mirren, an honour that most men would covet. Two years ago he got into a scuffle with a bunch of "hoodies" - the English equivalent of a wigga - outside his daughter's birthday party, hauling one of them into the air by his eponymous sweatshirt, and his comments about various cars and their manufacturers have made him the target of protest from Hyundai, Vauxhall and the Malaysian government.
He's a very public opponent of speed cameras and the nanny state trends in British culture and politics, has openly supported the Tory party, and recently called British prime minister Gordon Brown a "one-eyed Scottish idiot," a remark that was considered scandalous even though at least two-thirds of it are demonstrably true. He's been the subject of campaigns urging the BBC to fire him, and petitions demanding that he run for a seat in Parliament, or even 10 Downing Street.
He's usually at the front of the jokey public pissing matches between the show's presenters and other British alpha males such as Simon Cowell and Gordon Ramsay; on a segment of Ramsay's food and chat show The F Word, the chef called him a "multimillionaire gobshite." His success is underlined by his residence on the Isle of Man, where he's sheltered from paying capital gains taxes, though a part of me still wonders that anyone in my profession makes enough for such a lifestyle.
Clarkson and his co-hosts have been described as sniggering schoolboys, not unfairly - much of the banter on the show consists of put-downs, and they rarely miss an opportunity to pull a prank on each other. Reinforcing this dynamic seems to be the role held up by Richard Hammond, who's been with the show since its Clarkson-led reboot in 2002.
He's the best-looking of the three, and the youngest, but Clarkson and James May, who joined the show in the second season, treat him like a younger brother or, more accurately, an underclassman, mostly because he's so conspicuously short. Even his nickname - "the Hamster" - smacks of public school though he makes up for the constant ragging with an irrepressibility, and a willingness to get under May's skin, in particular.
Hammond has been described as resembling a member of a vintage British mod rock band - the Small Faces comes to mind - and Clarkson in particular constantly taunts him for having his teeth whitened, a charge he denies, not that it matters. He's the fittest of the three, and the one who came closest to dying when a jet car he was testing for the show crashed in 2006. He suffered a serious brain injury and was away from the show for a year and a half. Upon his return, he begged May and Clarkson never to mention the accident again, which meant they'd never cease finding opportunities to bring it up.
The constant ragging is the most telling symptom of Top Gear's male essence. Even the best of male friends constantly love to test each other, mostly for pure amusement, but also as a way of keeping each other honest, and as a running check on taking yourself too seriously. If Jackass, say, is the Ultimate Fighting version of this male social sport, then Top Gear is its Wimbledon.
James May is my own particular favorite of Top Gear's Three Musketeers. He's younger than Clarkson, though his demeanor makes him appear like the wonkish older brother, forever embarassed by his colleagues, and consequently the reliable subject of their taunting. Pedantic and given to fits of obsessive compulsive neatness, he has an obsession with the details of engineering that may even exceed that of Clarkson (who has made promoting the legacy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel a personal crusade.) Thanks to his principled unwillingness to drive like he's auditioning for The Transporter, Clarkson and Hammond have dubbed him Captain Slow.
As Gordon Ramsay's guest on The F Word - where the chef called him a "shaggy tramp" - May was challenged to choke down a trio of gruesome delicacies, like bull's penis and fermented shark, all washed down with strong liquor. He did it without blinking, though Ramsay gagged on the shark. Later on, facing off against Ramsay over their fish pie recipes, he swigged white wine while knocking together a primitive dish, then won the challenge, much to Ramsay's angry disbelief.
If Hammond is Steve Marriott, then May is a sound engineer on Pink Floyd's mid-period classics. He has a degree in music, and once attempted to score theTop Gear theme ("Jessica" by the Allman Brothers) with the sounds of revving engines, a farcical task that was presented as a manifestation of May's OCD. In one episode of a recent Top Gear season, Hammond and Clarkson put May's grand piano behind the trailer of a lorry he was supposed to start on an uphill incline; after knocking a leg off (and replacing it with a stack of pornography,) they watched in glee as he rolled backward and totalled the instrument.
All three men have hosted shows on topics like military history and engineering, which emphasizes their eagerly-asserted images of themselves as little boys at heart, bodging together Meccano monstrosities in rooms hung with Airfix model planes and shelves groaning with books on making invisible ink and bottle rockets.
While women do make appearances on the show, they're usually treated with wary respect. Clarkson has frequently proclaimed a crush on the actress Kristin Scott Thomas, but when she appeared as a guest on season nine in the "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car" segment, May and Hammond heckled Clarkson from the audience while he tried to suppress his horror of her devotion to the G-Wiz, a pint-sized electric runabout that Clarkson had called a "stupid little car," and contrived to lose in a drag race against a table.
For many men, it was like a staged re-enactment of those blind dates that go so horribly wrong, as no amount of comeliness and charm can overcome the horror as your date talks about her stringent vegetarianism, her devotion to Greenpeace, and her hatred of videogames, record collecting and Chuck Norris films.
At the risk of hyperbole, Top Gear is a vision of a male utopia, a last, best place where men can still set the agenda and indulge their obsessions without worrying about their dignity, pocketbook, carbon footprint or the reactions of their in-laws. It is, alas, a place where few of us will ever live, as James May admitted in a defense of the show he wrote for the Daily Telegraph.
"I was a bit of a waster at your age," May wrote, addressing the show's young fans, "and I've only survived by having a job where I'm required to remain at the age of 10. But only three people at a time are ever going to be that lucky." Too true, and too sad.
USA News Weekly Trivia Bullets
A chameleon’s tongue is twice the length of its body Pierce Bronsnan started his career at the circus as a fire eater The average person walks the equivalent of twice around the world in a lifetime The earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust. A person swallows approximately 295 times while eating dinner Someone on Earth reports seeing a UFO every three minutes You are more likely to get attacked by a cow than a shark A blue whale’s aorta ( the main blood vessel) is large enough for a human to crawl Through.
What is….
“Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death” Harold Wilson “ Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”….Dorothy Bernard “Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”… Eddie Rickenbacker
Take Note:
“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who ever tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it”.. Oprah Winfrey
Smiling uses 17 facial muscles, improves your immune system and reduces the amount of stress hormones released into your body. On top of that, people will always relate quicker to a person who is smiling than one who is not! I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”…. Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
Who invented the Safety Pin
In 1849 engineer Walter Hunt was trying to figure out a way he would be able to afford to pay of his £15 debt. Whilst pondering this problem hw was twisting a piece of wire, when suddenly he realised he had just invested the first safety pin.! He had his new invention patented on 10th April 1849 but decided it wasn’t a very good invention so sold his patent soon after for £400. Throughout his life Hunt also invented numerous everyday items including a knife sharpener and ice ploughs, however apart from the safety pin, Hunt’s most notable invention was in 1834 qhwn he invented the first ever eye pointed needle sewing machine. Hunt abandoned this invention though as he believed it would result in unemployment, which led to Elias Howe patenting a reinvented version of the machine in 1846.
Trivia
1. Do identical twins have the same finger print? 2. One year is a dogs life is equal to how many human years? 3. Do Strawberries or Oranges contain more Vitamin C? 4. How many years did it take to build the Taj Mahal? 5. What is Barbie’s full name? 6. How many bones are there in the human head?
What they have to say:
C.S. Lewis. “Aim at heaven and you will get Earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get nothing.” Goldie Horn: “I have witnessed the softening of the hardest of hearts by a simple smile.” William Blake: “Truth that’s told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent.” Mark Twain: “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” Vlade Divac: “We all get heavier as we get older because there’s a lot more information in our heads.” Brad Pitt: “Being married means I can break wind and eat ice cream in bed.”
Happy Birthday: 2nd October: Graham Greene and Sting 3rd October: Gwen Stefani and Tommy Lee 4th October: Louis X and Alicia Silverstone 5th October: Bob Geldof and Kate Winslet 6th October: George Westinghouse 7th October: Simon Cowell and Rachael McAdams 8th October: Chevy Chase and Sigourney Weaver Feeling Seedy?
Scientists from the Millenium Seed Bank have managed to successfully resurrect three 200 year old seeds found in a Dutch merchants notebooks in the National Archives. The seeds were originally brought to Britain in the time of George III from South Africa. “They had been kept under poor conditions.” Said Matt Daws, a seed ecologist with the Millennium Seed Bank. “They’d been in a ship for a year, certainly for months, coming back from the Cape, then they’d been kept in the Tower of London for a number of years; only in the last 10 years have they been in controlled conditions. So I didn’t expect any of them to germinate,” he told the BBC News website, “ and the three that did really are tough seeds.” Recently scientists in the US successfully germinated lotus seeds which had been carbon-dated as 500 years old, and an Israeli Team claims to have been successful in growing a date palm from a 2,000 year old seed.
Tough Times
A homeless man in Florada jumped from a 50ft bridge into a river after a $20 bank note blew out of his hand. “Mark Giorgio, 47, of Palmetto, leapt into the mile-wide Manatee River and swan 100 yards to reclaim his money, reports the Herald Tribune. He was fished from the river and taken to shore by a passing Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission boat. “I got my money back, hell yeah.” A soaking wet Giorgio said as paramedics checked his pulse. : Twenty bucks is a lot of money when you’re broke.” Giorgio said he lost the bill – worth about 10 pounds and.50 pence while counting as he walked across the bridge. He suffered a couple of cuts and refused medical treatment after his jump.
Jazz Bar P Mills
Important Media Sanctury For Independent Media The
Sanctuary for Independent Media is a telecommunications production
facility dedicated to community media arts, located in an historic
former church at 3361 6th Avenue in North Troy, NY. The Sanctuary hosts
screening, production and performance facilities, training in media
production and a meeting space for artists, activists and independent
media makers of all kinds.
Jazz Bar P Mills The Triumph of Truth
Who Is Watching The
Watchers? http://usaweekend news.com/TriumphOf Truth BookStolen.html
The original manuscripts
for the first 8 Volumes of 400-500 pages each
were stolen by the
Queensland Police and
other copies destroyed
by the Western Australian
Crown Law Department
from the WA Batye Library to cover up serious criminal, immoral, and illegal acts by judges, magistrates, lawyers, barristers, politicians, senior police, court officers, the WA Public Trustee , billionaire
Len Buckeridge etc....
The Ninth Volume being writtenin the
USA due
for release soon...
