A 22-year old medical student has been arrested for attempting to sit his sister’s junior college science paper. Dasart Suresh put on a wig and traditional dress to pass himself off as his younger sister, claiming he got the idea ’from a movie’. He managed to enter the examination hall and take the first part of the test before a supervisor noticed that his face did not match the photograph on his sister’s admission ticket; he had a beard, 12-year old Ravathi did not. Dasart now faces charges of forgery and impersonation.
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Police are investigating claims that a porn film was shot in a hall of residence, after the janitor reported seeing camera crews and naked women, who told him they were “working on a film project”. Blurred CCTV footage has been discovered showing a male actor in a beaver costume and a group of eight female students on the pool table in the communal lounge. The Indiana Student Association has made a statement condemning the X-rated exploits, though claiming afterwards that they ”would like to see the footage, if anyone has a copy”.
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Gunn-Britt Marklund was checking her bank balance over the internet to see whether her loan had come through, when she discovered a clerical error which had made her into the country’s richest person overnight. “I sat down and stood up and sat down again,” she said. Her balance was £5.4 billion. However, after calling the bank, the surplus funds were removed the next day – though they would have earnt her £1 million in interest in 24 hours, enough to pay her accommodation fees for over 30 years.
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This week visual arts in Oxford was nowhere near boiling-point. The new exhibitions in the Ashmolean such as Spectacular Impressions and An Englishman’s Travels in Egypt, despite their promising titles, were more lukewarm than usual. The former, showcasing prints from the 15th to 17th centuries by artists such as Mantegna, Durer, Rembrandt and Van Dyck, was definitely enlightening. Every one of the images on display has been recognised internationally as to be of the highest quality, and each could probably inspire an exhibition in itself. However, to the untrained and uninformed eye, they were impressive more in terms of technical skill than emotive power. Similarly, the Englishman’s Travels in Europe though interesting in its revival of the story of Edward Lane, a renowned Arabic scholar and fine draughtsman, invited only a passing glance.
In the same way, Ornamentation: drawings for the decorative arts, running in the Christ Church Gallery from 30 April to 30 July, seemed to me to be pleasant but entirely insipid, drawing on the College’s existing collection of graphic art and featuring particularly prominently the designs of Giulio Romano. Apart from a slight physical resemblance to Punch cartoons, the collection was unremarkable, offering plenty of faint drawings of ornamental vases, curlicues and seals.
In comparison to these, the permanent collection of paintings in Christ Church seems much more impressive. Needless to say, the 300 odd Old Master paintings and almost 2 000 drawings are definitely overwhelming in their grandeur and scope. I particularly enjoyed the detailed work in paintings such as The Devil, where a certain Abba Moses the Indian (i.e from Ethiopia) is painted a lurid shade of green, with sagging breasts, a beard, tails, winds and bird feet in one of the Nine Scenes from the Lives of the Hermits (Tuscan Schoolc.1440- 1450). Other gems include the Fragment from a Lamentation by Hugo van der Goes (the tears on the Virgin’s face glisten with tangible emotion), and Filippino Lippi’s The Wounded Centaur, which beautifully depicts the dangers of playing with love.
These, of course, are just a few examples of the wealth of delights provided by this small gallery, mentioned in every tourist guide, but under-utilised by the members of the University to whom, after all, admission is free (on presentation of a Bod card). In fact, I would recommend any bored visual arts buff to go spend an afternoon at Christ Church. More often than not, the permanent collection of the  college shows more dynamism and promise than newer arrivals to the city.
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It came as some surprise to Evelyn to learn this week that a stalwart of good manners and solid behaviour, Union Treasurer Huw ‘Hugsy’ Lloyd (Hertford) was embroiled in an unusual affair at the weekend. He went off on his annual jaunt to Badminton and ended up at Mark Tomlinson’s party. All seemed to be going swimmingly well, until a dispute arose concerning the previous afternoon’s affairs. A fight with Sam Brodie (Trinity) ended up with them quite literally swimming. After much madness in the pool they wandered around clad only in their boxer shorts looking for others to dunk. The unintoxicated few had made themselves scarce, and so Hugsy decided to push a car in, unfortunately he chose the wrong car: Prince Harry’s heavies removed Hugsy and drove him home. Motoring mishaps do not end there. Evelyn would like to suggest that Ed Tomlinson (Caligula) is never again put behind the wheel. One can forgive Eddie T for speeding the OUCA minibus on the way to Ascot and being caught by police cameras. After all, the vehicle was full of loons including the mad vicar. But it was a most unbecoming pratfall for Tomlinson to crash the Union minibus while delivery the slight Termcard. To make matters worse, the poor chap was interrupted when pleasuring one of the seccies in the Secretary’s office at the end of President’s Drinks. Send guesses to the usual address. Commiserations to VP-Barry, who surprisingly lost the local council seat in Epsom he was running for, despite the campaigning ‘help’ from minions Lomax and Bennett. Evelyn was most amused to hear that one publican canvassed by Bennett said that he was voting for Sullivan “because he looks more likely to get rid of the blacks”.
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I’m on the town every night. If you see me, wave. I’ll be at the back, fast-forwarding through a cheap imported Mexican video showing people with moustaches buggering a donkey. I want to find out if the donkey gets to smoke a cigarette at the end.
I’m heading to Mike’s birthday party in Cowley. Mike’s a really great guy, a lovely, lovely guy, a good mate. I don’t like him, so all I’ve bought him for his birthday is a copy of National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1 I got from the newsagent on the way up. Mike will like this, because he will think it is “ironic”. The thing that’s ironic is that despite Mike being a really great guy, a lovely, lovely guy and a good mate, I’m only coming to this godawful party to steal as much of his booze as I can get away with, and possibly his girlfriend.
The party is a disaster. There is nothing to drink but some really scary looking gin that comes in a bottle with a white label saying ‘GIN’ in enormous black letters and ‘Made in London’ in much smaller black letters. There are no mixers because Mike forgot to get any from Tescos before it closed, and no-one else cares because they just want to get absurdly caned and talk about their miserable wankoff non-careers in student drama. Mike’s friends are working on a new version of Waiting for Godot at the Balliol Pilch Theatre. In their production, all the actors will stand on one leg and speak with crap, slightly racist fake Irish bog accents. They wrongly believe that this makes them interesting.
I wander down the hallway and bump into Greg. Greg went to a minor public school on the southeast coast that got closed down a few years ago, after the villagers invaded and began worshipping the statue of the school’s most famous old boy (Rick Astley) as a god. It was like The Wicker Man, except with less wicker and more nylon.
I’d like to ignore Greg or pretend I don’t know who he is, but I can’t, because he’s naked and shouting something at me about Teddy Hall. I realise with some pleasure that he has a rather small and thin penis, and sell him a gram of crushed up Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes that I pretend is coke for £100.
There’s a call on my mobile. It’s Paul, a guy from college who likes to talk about the fact that he drinks Real Ale. He wants to meet up with me for a pint (of Real Ale) and a sad-bloke discussion about the break-up of his relationship. Normally I would avoid this, but Paul has an extraordinarily silly voice that suggests he comes from a weird regional hell-hole. If this “girlfriend” turns out to be his sister, I’m willing to listen. I say goodnight to Mike, but he’s too high to notice I’ve gone.
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In Martin Amis’ autobiography Experience, Dad Kingsley (for it is he) memorably describes Terminator 2 as a “flawless masterpiece.” With accolades like that from one of the last century’s great writers of inoffensive fiction and curmudgeonly poetry, this summer’s third and final part has a lot to live up to.
And Terminator isn’t the only big-name trilogy to shudder to a climax this year. Two more installments of The Matrix, the Wachowski Brother’s moron and geek-friendly primer on the Western metaphysical canon (with big beat and big guns), are expected in the Autumn, and the final part of the Lord Of The Rings is due in time for Christmas (and next year’s Best Picture Oscar).
But is Part Three all its cracked up to be? Schoolhouse Rock, a children’s program broadcast in the US in the 1970s told us “three is a magic number” – a meme later promulgated by De La Soul and BBC Three, and Jack White, lead singer of The White Stripes seems to agree.
In spite of having two members, Jack thinks of the band as a three-piece: vocals, drums and guitar. When asked about the possibility of adding a bass player in a recent interview he was bewildered. “That would break up the thing of vocals, guitar and drums. Somebody else would bring this fourth component. If you’re going to have four components, you might as well have twenty, y’know.” It seems the symmetry of the trilogy appeals to saviours of Rock and Roll and film directors alike.
But does a third installment or component necessarily guarantee success? In an attempt to answer this question – and work out whether Terminator 3 will be any good – I examined some of pop culture’s many Part Threes.
Naturally my first thought was to consider past track listings of the venerable “Now! That’s What I Call Music” compilations. After a telephone conversation with a bemused assistant at the British Library failed to establish who appeared on the early Now! records, I struck upon a copy of volume 3 in gramophone format on eBay.
Released in 1984, the compilation is mainly forgettable songs from best-forgotten artists: Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, Alison Moyet, OMD, and many more. The odd song almost makes it £2 well spent (The Thompson Twins, The Style Council and Special AKA), but the mere presence of Phil Collins left me in a dumb rage.
Album three is often tricky for bands. For every OK Computer there’s a Be Here Now. If the first two albums were successful there can be opportunity to experiment, but also a pressure to continue a winning formula. And fatally, there can be a lack of ideas. “Your first couple of records are based on your twenty-odd years of experience. The third record is all the experience you’ve had in between record one and record two. But that experience is basically just touring,” explains David Byrne of Talking Heads in his recent book about the band.
It is received wisdom that the Godfather, Rocky and Police Academy series went rapidly downhill after their second installments, which must count against threes.
Even more worrying for the trilogy are the Star Wars films. The portentous original plan was to make three trilogies and so far we’ve been subjected to all three of the middle trilogy (1977 – 1983) and, more recently, two of the first. The middle trilogy is watchable enough rot, but the recent films are joyless, plotless screeds on macroeconomics and industrial relations. Quitting while ahead obviously never crossed George Lucas’ mind.
In the cinema at least, trilogies seem to provoke appalling directorial hubris that writers of fiction are more able to resist. Perhaps the prospect of a lucrative DVD box set offered by filming any old shit for part three is too much to resist.
The Lord of the Rings films turns this on its head; they are tightly scripted, zippy reinterpretations of a bloated, forensic epic. But audience reaction to the final installment could be similar to CS Lewis’s apocryphal response to a Tolkien reading in the Eagle and Child: “not more f**king elves!”
Monty Python’s comedy was often an echo of Tolkien’s strategy of bludgeoning his readers into caring about a fictional world through sheer length. In an attempt to justify their more interminable sketches, they were wont to insist that jokes were funny the first and third times you told them. I attempted to prove this by telling my brother a Tommy Cooper joke three times (I slept like a log last night. I woke up in a fireplace!), but he insisted it got less funny. Stick that, Cleese!
Outside music and cinema, there are plenty of triumvirates and trilogies to add to the cases for the prosecution and defence of Part Three. For example, Prince Harry, third in line to the throne, is great fun. He’s like Robbie Williams in that he deserves to be clumsily kneecapped, but life is made infinitely more enjoyable by reading about him in articles in the Daily Mail about the collapse of society brought on by the permissive 1960s. Meanwhile, Charles and William are just regular idiots. The royal three wins.
So, sometimes Part Three is a good omen, but usually it’s bad. By all means be first in line for Terminator 3, but don’t get your hopes up.
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It was a moonless night in early September in the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil. I had spent the last two days on crowded but friendly overnight buses and earth road connections from the sprawling, rapidly post-modernising metropolis of São Paulo, the pulsing economic heart of South America, to the tiny, isolated village of Rosário da Limeira. It was like travelling from Canary Wharf to Senegal without leaving the same country. On one hand are the Microsoft towers, CCTV-guarded apartment blocks and marble and glass investment bank headquarters; on the other, butterflies, hummingbirds and ox-carts between lianas and hanging orchids, mud and timber buildings raised on stilts to avoid the seasonal flood waters.
The Iracambi Atlantic Rainforest Research and Conservation Centre, when I finally reached it, was in a dramatic mountain range known as the Serra da Mantiquera which divides the coast of Brazil from the plains of the interior. There were twenty-two researchers when I arrived, from many countries around the world: the US, Canada, Germany, France, UK, Singapore; each with a specific interest. There were biologists studying the patterns of the bats, zoologists recording species diversity, geographers mapping the area with GPS and a camera crew making a nature programme. We all quickly got to know each other and everybody joined in working on nature trails, the medicinal plant nursery and taking care of the Centre deep in the forest.
It was an incredible sensation to wake up at 6am to the dawn chorus, to look out to see butterflies and iridescent parakeets just outside the window in the misty early morning light, or to climb up the nearest peak to watch the hanging mist clear from the valleys below. The early European navigators arriving in South America, believed they had reached the Earthly Paradise. When Columbus saw the turbulent waters of the Orinoco he thought this must be one of the four great biblical rivers that descended from Eden and from this early association came the legends of El Dorado. Later Francisco de Orellana, the first European to descend the Amazon, described great cities with gleaming gold rooftops and large temples, however since the buildings were principally made of wood they decayed rapidly in the intense heat and humidity of the tropical forest environment. Many of the tribal groups were affected early on by European diseases and did not survive beyond the Seventeenth Century but their legacy is present in the easy-going Brazilian approach to life, the sense of humour, their appreciation of water, streams and waterfalls.
As September wore on, the electricity in the air intensified, the rainy season was approaching and the rumbling in the air caused horses to bolt nervously in the open plains below the mountains. The subsistence farmers became agitated, as the rains were apparently late this year and all of their lives depended on a good ripe harvest. Then the rains came. The release was total; until that point the day had been long and slow, the pressure in the air had left us all half asleep but now suddenly it exploded, washing down the mountains, flooding the valleys and reducing slopes to silty mud. There was a waterfall with a rounded rock pool, where we would go swimming after working in the villages and on the nature trails. Theodore Roosevelt saw something similar whilst travelling in Brazil in 1914. “The river, after throwing itself over the rock wall, rushes off in long curves at the bottom of a thickly wooded ravine, the white water churning among the black boulders. There is a perpetual rainbow at the foot of the falls. The masses of green water that are hurling themselves over the brink dissolve into shifting, foaming columns of snowy lace.” The French researchers told me the river water was so refreshing after a day in the tropical heat that it didn’t matter that there were Piranhas brushing softly against your leg, as long as you weren’t bleeding!
The Research Centre was perched right up at the head of a valley at 1500m altitude, surrounded by a state park filled with shrieking Howler Monkeys, chattering Green Parakeets and majestic Blue Macaws, Armadillos, Coatis (related to the Skunk) and prowling Jaguars. I heard the big cats in the forest at night and on one occasion, a small one had been shot outside the village. The men in the village all carried pistols, for defence against the jaguars, wild pigs (javalí) and above all each other. It seemed that the people in the village had over the past fifty years deliberately distanced themselves from the forest, regarding it as a place of danger, even though they were the ones carrying the guns. I was given the task of working with local Community Groups on Environmental Education so one of the first things we realised was the need to bring people back into the forest.
This is reputedly the area of highest biodiversity on the planet and the teeming insect and bird life testifies to the presence of all kinds of rare and endemic organisms. However, to the people who saw it every day the forest was seen as an unproductive, threatening space; they were recent settlers and wanted to clear the slopes for coffee production, which led only to rapid degradation and intense erosion of the bright red soils.
Ultimately there is only so much to be done by outsiders, it is the residents who can truly change the environment. They are increasingly taking on the role of guardians of their own natural heritage. Brazil is a country with such huge natural resources (70% of the energy needs are met by clean hydroelectric power) that it is important that the people protect their own resources. As awareness grows steadily it could stand as a fresh society, highly conscious and newly environmentally aware. This combined with the powerful music and the heavenly beaches means that the myths of paradise might prove to be true…
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Most of the really great pubs in Oxford are something of a hike from the centre of town, but The Grapes is a gem right on your front door. Situated next to the Wig and Pen, it provides a nice alternative to those of us who don’t want to spend an evening wishing we were dead. You would be hard pushed to find two pubs so close together that are so different. The Grapes is tiny, so if you arrive during the lunchtime luvvie rush or after the score of regulars, then you’ll be hard pushed to get a seat, though with its pleasant 60s soundtrack and a moderately priced booze, you’ll want to spend some time here. To appreciate its unique charm try to get there at three and stumble out at half-past six. The walls are decorated with posters from events at the nearby theatres, and Daniel O’Donnell and the Chippendales seem to have a stake. The barmaid is beautiful, but we fear she is betrothed to the genuinely funny barman (sample comment directed to the Boy Texas: “would you like a haircut with your pint?”). We can still dream. The wonderful thing about this pub is looking outside to see the centre of Oxford in full swing, while you are sat in a sliver of George Street where time seems to stand still. The only interruption is the front door swinging open to catch a split second of passing conversation. We paused to consider the bewildering late afternoon light as we slumped out into what we had thought was the middle of the night. “That barmaid’s well fit,” mused Pat. “I know,” agreed Texas. “I really, really know.”
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