Terrifyingly, these are the people who you want to run the government rather than the people who do

I mention this only because I’ve been getting into The West Wing – all seven series of it – and it’s been an interesting ride. It seems to start off almost as if the original pitch meeting was “it’s like Friends, but in the White House and with fewer laughs” only for it to develop into a Runyonesque political commentary. So there’s the spunky, irritating John Hughes chick who’s a little bit kooky, but somehow endearing and lovable (not lovable or interesting enough to make it to Season 2 though); the President who initially comes off like a cartoon Dubya Bush, but ends up redefining American politics, getting things done and achieving stellar approval points; the various policy makers who amazingly also manage to get things done and who seem to shed their initial personality quirks (like inadvertently sleeping with hookers for instance) as the seasons progress and somehow manage to make the country better; the ‘comedy couple’ who initially start as a parody of husband and wife and end up representing the humanity of the series; and the Press Secretary, who starts off all spin and flippancy, but ends up Chief of Staff, thereby defining the show’s move from spin parody to political seriousness.  By the end of Series 7 you’re left with a profound sense of the importance and gravitas of American politics. So much so that the entire final season, way the best of the bunch, is devoted to the campaign to replace the President. And it’s so enthralling, that you’re happy that one entire episode is a televised debate between the two candidates and that two are devoted to the election day itself.

But the moment that cracked it for me, the moment I saw through the glass and into the disturbing, reality blurring space beyond, was when characters from The Wire began to bleed through into individual or multiple episodes. Cedric Daniels, in a moment of pre-Wire policing, is a detective who is supervising a death scene. His wife (or possibly ex-wife by then) Marla is apparently moonlighting as the principal of an elementary school (could this explain her frigid relationship with Cedric during the early series of The Wire?). Assistant State’s Attorney Rhonda Pearlman obviously cut her teeth working for the Republicans up on the Hill, doing deals to secure appropriate legislation and judicial appointments prior to banging McNulty and then Cedric Daniels. Maurice Levy puts in a pre-corrupt lawyer appearance as a harassed White House adviser (obviously showing that eventually the profits of crime do entice individuals away from the honest legal system). Not even the Barksdales are immune from a little moonlighting from the running of their drugs empire. In case anyone was concerned about Brianna’s exact role in the Barksdale’s ever-expanding criminal empire and what she spent her time doing, it’s clear that she spends most of her non-crime minutes organising secret polling for political parties – the political equivalent of  highly deniable black ops missions.  I was relieved that the likes of McNulty, Bunk, Snoop and Omar didn’t make appearances otherwise I really would have been confused (or the plot of The West Wing would have taken a seriously violent turn).

It’s not that the appearance of characters from one series in another is that disturbing, after all Marcie from Alias and Commander Adama from Battlestar Galactica also make appearances (and we don’t really think it is Commander Adama), it’s just that you could believe that the rarefied world of Washingtonian politics and the crack-fuelled underbelly of Balitmorian law enforcement could collide in just such a surreal way. After all, if Major ‘Bunny’ Colvin can almost get a job running the security at Johns Hopkins (before incinerating his career prospects by attempting to legalise drugs) and President Bartlett’s daughter Ellie can study there, it’s not a great leap of faith to imagine that the two narratives could somehow link and intertwine.

I even went back and saw some live events! And not just bullshit cello/turntable catastrophies. Seasick Steve in Manchester was great, the most superbly refrained standup audience I’ve ever been in with the exception of the devastatingly drunk lurching Chav Family, who found the experience so horrifying they had to stumble to freedom halfway through. But Daedelus at the ICA in July was awesome. Superb ninja shape cutting dancing and excellent music.

My own music is still in a very basic shape, but it’s slowly coming along.

Downpipe single cover

So what was I listening to and what did I like in 2009. One useful side effect of digitising my entire music listening experience is that it can all be measured. Unfortunately, none of the various measuring elements link to all my devices, which is a pain. Anyway, of all of them, the iTunes list is probably the most comprehensive. According to this, my top tracks for 2009 are:

• Blue Skies (Rabbit In The Moon) – BT feat Tori Amos
• Downpipe – Mark Knight & D Ramirez vs Underworld
• Theme From Long Good Friday – Francis Monkman
• Surf Solar – Fuck Buttons
• Gaia (Kaiser Souzai Remix) – Kaiser Souzai
• Come Into My World (Fischerspooner Mix) – Kylie
• Behind The Wheel – Susperia
• Hazy/Crazy – Da Hool
• Heaven Up Here – Echo & The Bunnymen
• Shattered In Aspect – Faith & The Muse

All of which gives a somewhat skewed view of 2009. However, if you look at just the music that was released in 2009 (or was new to me in 2009), a slightly different picture emerges.

• Downpipe – Mark Knight and D Ramirez vs Underworld
• Tarot Sport (album) – Fuck Buttons
• Temporary Pleasure (album) – Simian Mobile Disco
• The Resistance (album) – Muse
• Moon Soundtrack (album) – Clint Mansell
• My Way (album) – Ian Brown
• Tonight (album) – Franz Ferdinand
• It’s Not Me, It’s Doctor Rosen Rosen (album) – Lily Allen
• Runaway – Ladytron
• Hands (album) – Little Boots

Rams led the Braun design team for 40 years and developed a powerful philosophical approach to design which is summed up in his ten principles of design.

Early portable tape machine (requires several strong people to carry)

• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design makes a product understandable.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is long-lasting.
• Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
• Good design is environmentally friendly.
• Good design is as little design as possible.

The range of items the Braun team applied these principles to was enormous, from toasters and cigarette lighters to tape machines, home film cameras, music systems and shavers. And the exhibition shows off many of them and you can see the realisation of the principles in the spartan design as well as the design vocabulary of the buttons and shapes that have become utterly iconic. It’s impressive how few of today’s products even begin to meet Rams’ principles.

And you can also see the effect Rams’ principles have had on modern industrial designers, not least Apple’s Johnathan Ive, whose commentaries on his designs echo Rams’ early experiences as a carpenter and artisan. In particular, how the design for the iPod epitomises much of what Rams was doing and thinking, much more so than the perforated aluminium Mac towers. It’s just a shame that, while they’ve got a new MacBook and iPod, they haven’t actually got any kind of quote from Ive himself.

Once we all dreamt of having hi-fi systems like this (with a record player and tape machine)

Overall, it’s a nice exhibition and the exposure to Rams’ principles is inspiring, but I would have liked to have more commentary on the development of the principles and when and how Rams came up with them. I’d also like to have had more of a direct link to current products that echo these principles, the one case of stuff they have is hardly enough to suggest a long-term legacy. Otherwise you’re left with a bit of a feeling that this is an exhibition about the past (and the past of Braun in particular), rather than one about a powerful design philosophy that is as relevant today as it ever was.

Movies and TV

Last year’s best movie was French (the awesome OSS117), so there was no chance of that happening again. Instead we went off on a sci-fi vibe, I guess some kind of instinctive reaction to the economic implosion and the apparent death of vision and dreaming made flesh in the doom and gloom of the real world. It seems to me that sci-fi is doing what it always did best, providing clear visions of the future based on the prevailing philosophies and moods of the present. As a result we’re seeing futures that, if not echoing the total dystopia seen in the 1970s, at least mirror some of the concerns of today. And at a time when no one, politicians, broadcasters, entertainers, media etc seem capable of presenting us with an even palatable vision of life in the next decade, it’s no surprise that sci-fi is coming back in a big way. What is surprising is that it’s coming at us from so many different angles – not just movies, but books, TV series, comics etc – and that this is the most comprehensive channel for discussion or thought about where we’re heading.

So … Best movies and TV

1. Star Trek Never thought I’d be so impressed by a movie that didn’t feature the Gone or those crazy starfish things that flew at Kirk before sucking his brain out, but this was brilliant. The Fleet isn’t quite the Peace Corps in space it used to be, but it’s not the fascist theocracy of Starship Troopers either and in a year when movies like 2012 just showed how vacuous ‘effects event’ movies can be, it was great to see something that was really about story and plot. The best thing about it was that when it was over, you just wanted to get back on and go for another adventure with those guys.
2. Moon Almost the exact opposite, a smallish budget movie with tiny cast centered round a clone on the moon, but really all about identity, dreams and freedom. Moon was like Alien, but with less budget and no scary monsters (unless you count Kevin Spacey in ‘HAL’ mode). Killer soundtrack too.
3. Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles Series 1 starts off in that sketchy space that exists between Terminator 2 and 3, then catapults the Connors into an alternate timestream. By Series 2 it has its own mythology and features so many people zapping back and forth in time that it’s amazing that no one here has noticed. And yet again, while being superficially a sci-fi series it is actually about family relationships and multiple quests for identity, not least from the various Terminators at large in and around the LA area.
4. Misfits I pretty much loathed Heroes. It seemed as plastic as it could be, the equivalent of those comic books like The Avengers, which exist solely to allow those fanboy fights that shouldn’t happen in a regular book (like Ironman’s dirty dozen v all the bad mutants in the world). Misfits, on the other hand, was genius. In keeping with the comic legend, a bunch of people are given superpowers. Only they’re young urban adolescent chav scum. And they don’t immediately set out to save the world. Fucktastic.
5. GI Joe OK, so if we are going to go all CGI and spastic special effects on ourselves, then it might as well be in the hands of Junior Michael Bey Boy, Stephen Sommers. Sure it’s stupid, stupid, stupid and it does feature the usual Sommers plots of mad professor type doing bad things and having to be restrained, but it’s waaaaay funnier than Transformers.
6. Spooks While I was initially blown away (in every sense) with Spooks dedication to incinerating almost all of its key cast members, I’m not sure Season 8 was up to snuff as it were. Sure we lose pretty much the whole team over the course of the series, and there was a vaguely satisfying overall plot (not as good as the Russian plot of series 7), but there was still the sense of one too many ‘terrorist of the week’ episodes. Also because everything moves so fast in spookworld, we really don’t see the effect of individual’s actions on them in much detail. Still glad to have got rid of Ross Myers. She sucked.
7. Crank Fully in the Misfits camp, Crank is about turning everything up to about 15 (out of 10). It’s about The Stath with no inhibitions and the mind of a muckraker driven to doing anything to keep himself alive. At once both snot-snortingly hilarious and wince-inducingly cringeworthy, this is a movie that really affects you.  And at 88 minutes, it just flies by.

Meanwhile in the shit pit …

1. Watchmen Was it really only this year that this was released? It seems like so long ago. Bum-numbingly terrible and another example of how comics are not simply storyboards for movies. Maybe, like Lord of the Rings, it works better for people who’ve never actually read the books. Although it  wasn’t as bad as Wolverine The Backstory.
2. 2012 Yawn. Another day, another disaster movie from Roland Emmerich. And like all his other movies, all the best bits are in the trailer, with the added benefit of having the tedious exposition and dreary ‘human interest’ storyline removed. How far can this guy fall after Independence Day?