Category: Uncategorized

This article and accompanying Bertoon appeared in today’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday.

If I had to engage in a silly exercise of anthropomorphising months – ascribing human features to months – I believe that September would have much to say about the way she has been treated. It has to be a she, because as horoscopic enthusiasts and dabblers would tell you, for most of the month the star sign to follow is Virgo. Which is not to say that I willingly engage in the logically faulty statement that “all virgins are women” but rather that I am going along with what I believe to be the general first impression of Virgo as normally pictured on the side of horoscopes – a lovely maiden pure. It was either that or have the irritatingly ever-smiling face of Richard Branson who has now become unredeemably associated with the word Virgin. So… back to September. She has been with us for some time now and has brought the gusts of wind, the first challenges to the festival weather and most of all, she has brought remembrances of all sorts. Yes, that’s because every day in September now reads like some form of lotto extraction, although this time it’s not an international form of the Italian “smorfia” (linking dreams to numbers) but a panoply of historic and not-so historic events that are fast clogging up the seventh month of the Roman calendar.

J’accuse cannot comment on the news of the day that comes straight from our place of daytime work and that will surely be the subject of many a discussion. The Times of Malta will definitely not be the last paper to misinterpret the court’s decision but it will be up to other legal brains to set the record straight.

So. Being occupationally incapacitated from indulging in interpetational speculation on the latest outcomes from the CVRIA EVROPEA I will indulge in the less spectacular but equally interesting flaws of perception of the lyrical and musical kind. The two subjects of my analysis will be the seventies band “Stretch” and the nineties master of beats “Gigi D’Agostino”.

A bout of browsing serendipity led me to the good old hit by Gigi called “Bla Bla”. Anyone who savours the musical creation of this Italian born turntable mini-genius will enjoy the flashback to the times when Tattingers was trendy, when shooters came in test-tubes and when Jack Coke was a trendy drink to order when chatting up the birds. This is “Bla Bla” in all it’s simplistic glory:

And the story would end here had I not also found some efforts to transcribe the lyrics to this questionable masterpiece. It seems that all websites dedicate to lyric transcribing render this juicy headbanger of a hit as follows:

A A BEN
WAREM A BEN BEN
WAREM BEN BEN BEN
WAREM A WA TWO BEN BEN
WAREM A BLA A BLA BEN
WAREM A A BEN
WAREM BEN BEN BEN
WAREM A TWO BEN BEN

Lovely. Senseless. And very Italian. Only, Gigi D’Agostino is not stupid. He is a sly, foxy D.J. who spun an old record, took one second of music out of it and produced this beat imbued babe. Gigi has no lyrics because Gigi is no lyrical Pavarotti. His is the business of sampling and remixing and spinning. The art pioneered by the great rappers Beastie Boys is here being demonstrated in its simplest of versions. Sample one phrase from a song – render it unrecognisable and add a beat and people will love it. The “phrase” actually comes from a cool piece by “Stretch” called “Why did you do it” which you can enjoy in the next Youtube clip. The piece you are looking for is in second 0.33… enjoy.

And that, my friends, is how “I’ve been thinking about what you have done to me” becomes “Warem a ben ben”.

Now get back to the Times report on the European Court of Justice’s decision. (titles have been changed since the horrible title that appeared at 10.14 this morning).

Times online breaking news posted this morning.

Title: Blow for Malta as EU heads for bluefin tuna trade ban.

First Comment to be posted beneath article:

E Vella:  Let’s go out of the EU

Mike Bongiorno, TV presenter was as old as the medium that he came to symbolize. The man who is an integral part of the history of television in Italy has passed away today at the age of 85 in the French city of Montecarlo. I owe Mike my reverential love for quizzes ever since I was a toddler and I would be amazed at the persons locked in the glass cabin wearing the headphones answering question after question shot at them by Mike.

Even as Mike’s presence shifted into the era of the vile kitsch of Berlusconi’s Mediaset he still carried the immense history of the early beginnings of television and the recent versions of Mike that we saw in the advertorials will remain a pleasant reminder of the character who will forever be seen shouting “Allegria!”.

Grazie Mike! Da un altro Juventino!

We’re back with the round up that causes minor sensations and draws this blog closer (or farther) to (or from) its continental and intercontinental counterparts. It’s been a long, drawn out, heavy summer that once again threatened to shoot blogs and blogging into oblivion as most people preferred the cool of the sea to the corner of the comment box.  The summer has not exactly been soporific, even in political terms, given the good old border dispute and immigrant landing here and there. Thankfully – barring a beleagured barge or two – eight o’clock news drama was avoided by those enamoured with pyrotechnics and general games of fire. But here we are… back with a bang, cushioned in the Duchy of Bad Weather and ready to aim our pointed keyboard at whatever most tickles our fancy. Let the ticker tape resume its roll…

Whipping the Mores

In Sudan, former UN employee Lubna Hussein battles on in an effort to expose the failure of the Sudanese system to protect her fundamental human rights. The universality of such rights has found another testing point in the heat of the historic city of Kharthoum. You can tell the discomfort of the magistrates judging her case with the eyes of the world turn upon them. The verdict of 40 public lashes was switched to a $200 dollar fine. Yet Hussein is not fighting to have a reduction in penalty. She believes that every woman should have the right to wear loose trousers. So right now Lubna Hussein is in jail for having refused to pay the fine. And the Sudanese legal system is in a quandary.

Destination Johannesburg

Elsewhere in historic Africa, Accra to be exact, scenes of jubilation greeted Ghana’s second consecutive qualification to the World Cup finals. The motor behind the Ghanaian machine is its wonderful trio of midfielders Muntari-Essien-Appiah with the latter surprisingly in the picture notwithstanding the fact that he has been two years without a professional contract. Unfortunately Appiah left a mountain of personal debts wherever he played and will return to countries such as Germany or Italy with great difficulty. Across the Atlantic Brasil trounced an angry Argentinian team by three goals to one in a heated affair in Rosario. The verdeoro became the first South American team to qualify for next year’s edition – and might not be relishing a rematch with the tough Ghanian team who they had knocked out in the previous edition’s quarter finals.

Victory Day

They tell me that in Isla they put up a statue representing Malta during the feast of our Lady of Victories which celebrates a number of events when the divine took sides in battles temporal and aided one side which believed it had God on its side defeat another which had an equal but opposite belief on its side. That Our Lady could prove to be so magnanimous with her devout sons and daughters in 1565 and 1943 is quite a credible feat. One wonders whether she could be equally tempted to intervene for this new batch of proto-christians should push come to shove in this battle with the new “invaders”.

Samoa turns Left

Or rather. Samoa has switched to driving on the left – becoming the first country since the 1970s to perform a major switch. From the BBC:

Samoa has become the first country since the 1970s to change the side of the road on which cars are driven. At 0600 local time (1700 GMT) sirens sounded and drivers were told to move from the right side to the left. Police said that no accidents had been reported in the first hours after the switch in the island nation despite predictions of chaos from critics.

That’s all I have time for right now… a bien tot!

BBC have a news item about the floating turbines I mentioned in this week’s Indy article. Click here to see the BBC media player presentation – do note how Norwegians speaking English tend to sound like the good old Texas Instrument’s Speak & Spell (emulator here).