I met Iggy Pop in a brainbending encounter in 1977. I was meeting friends at The Rainbow in Finsbury Park to see Iggy Pop plus The Adverts, and I was early, so I went into the pub next door (the George Robey, gone now) for a pint.

I went into the snug, where there was only room for a couple of people at the bar, and stood next to someone who was waiting to be served. When I glanced round at him, it was Iggy Pop.

It's something of a cliche to say that you were surprised when meeting someone famous to see that they were shorter than you imagined, but that was, nonetheless, my first thought.

I said: 'Aren't you Iggy Pop?'

He said he was, and I asked him what he was doing here when he was meant to be doing a concert in 40 minutes (or whatever it was). He, unsurprisingly, said he wanted a drink, and I asked him if I could buy him one. He said yes, I asked him what he wanted, and he asked what I was having. I said Guinness, and he said he'd never had Guinness before, but he'd like to try one. I bought it, he said he liked it, we drank our pints, he downed his and he left.

I used to drink rather quickly in those days, but he was quicker.

I can't remember much of what else was said, something about how Guinness was available in the US but somehow he'd never tried it, but it's occurred to me since that he was perhaps after a quiet drink on his own before he had to perform, and I may have spoilt the moment for him. But you'd think the pub next door - and it was literally next door - to the venue would be an odd choice if you wanted a quiet drink on your own.

I thought of this while enjoying the counterintuitive version of This Magic Moment on the soundtrack of Lost Highway, which I’d not heard before and intended to post here. It’s actually Lou Reed, I now see, but I don’t see that minor detail needs to stand in the way of telling a good Guinness drinking with a major bass/baritone US punk icon from the 70s story.

Listen here

There is a scientific theory that our universe is a computer simulation, and lots of conspiracy theorists treat The Matrix as a documentary.

Reality TV is a genre of popular entertainment, which unlike a documentary, presents a wildly overblown, tacky, pumped up caricature of human interaction, with a cast of exhibitionists, deluded half-wits, dupes and desperately sad cases hand-picked and manipulated to gratify a shamefully cruel voyeuristic tendency in its audience.

Trump is the most powerful man in the world - again. He didn't get there by finally reaching the pinnacle of a successful career in party politics, or by success in any other area which would have previously counted.

Ahead of his winning presidencies, the only thing Trump succeeded at was reality TV. He failed in everything else he did, including, ultimately, property development and being rich - if he had simply put the money his father originally gave him in safe stocks and bonds, he would have had more money than he actually did.

Trump runs his life, and the USA, as if he’s starring in his own reality TV show.
In addition to being unable to, or choosing not to, distinguish between observable reality and reality TV, Trump acts as a self-declared follower of Norman Vincent Peale
and by extension, Goddard’s Law.
Goddard’s Law (of assumption) states that thinking about something will make it happen, named after a religious nutcase called Neville Goddard. Peale’s self-help/business cult of 'positive thinking’ promotes the idea that if you have positive thoughts they will come true and you will succeed and be rich, and people who tell you otherwise are trying to stop you succeeding. This is where Trump's idea of false news comes from, and his violent antipathy to anyone who tries to tell him anything he doesn’t like.

Why did Trump decide to run for president in the first place? It came from his ‘birther’ social media campaign against Barack Obama, with Trump's first major political speech being at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in 2011.
At CPAC in 2017:
'Trump said he "loved" giving that speech. According to him, the speech "gave me an idea" to get into politics in a serious way.
Trump told the story,
"I walked the stage on CPAC -- I'll never forget it, really. I had very little notes and even less preparation. So when you have practically no notes and no preparation and you leave and everyone was thrilled, I said, 'I think I like this business.’"
So there you have it. From Trump's own mouth: He ran for president because he liked he could get praise with no preparation.’
Elite Daily, 24.2.17

With the restraints on his impulses that were exercised by responsible people the first time around removed by the installation of sycophants and zealots, whatever thoughts Trump now posits really do come true; he is ruler of an empire of which Karl Rove famously said ‘when we act, we create our own reality’, and we are living not in a computer simulation or a version of The Matrix, but in Trump’s reality TV show.

The Persuaders!

 'The Persuaders!' (which had perhaps the best theme music ever) was 'Snobbar som Jobbar' in Sweden (pronounced Snobbarr som Yobbarr) which translates as Snobs with Jobs - a bafflingly perverse plurality, given the series' central theme contrasting Moore's posh-voiced Brit snob, singular, with Curtis' 'by my own boot straps from the streets of New York' character.

Other notable losses in titular translation include '007 Dies Twice' (You Only Live Twice, Japan), 'I'm Drunk and You're a Prostitute' (Leaving Las Vegas, Japan), and, of course 'Meetings and Failures in Meetings' (Lost in Translation, Portugal).

Die Zwei!/Amicalement Votre/De Versieders!/Kaygisizlar

Full Disclosure

 Motorcycle: 1962 Triumph 3TA with 5TA 490cc cast iron barrels and aluminium head, 12v conversion with twin coils, Kirkby Rowbotham electronic ignition distributor kit and Cibié quartz halogen headlight

Watch: 1945 British Army issue Timor ‘Dirty Dozen’ WWW (Watch, Wrist, Waterproof)

Suit: model’s own (like everything else)

Shot using 1938 Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 521/16 120, Tessar 3.5/7.5 cm lens, Compur-Rapid shutter

Location: 18 Canonbury Place, London N1

Date: 1986

Northern Lights

 Looking northeast from our building at sunset last night. Followed later by a more low key but equally spectacular glimpse of the Northern Lights.

photo: Tjøstheim Constantin Korsvold Nikolay

After hearing a G2 class solar flare event was on its way, I was checking the northern skies at 1 am. They were clear, except for a peculiar dead black meniscus with a sharply defined geometric margin above the northern horizon. The edge was just as smooth and exact through binoculars. 

At five past one, fingers of vivid green light with golden margins suddenly appeared, one at a time and intermittently, springing into view from below the horizon, growing upwards beyond the meniscus and wavering before dying down again. It was so affecting, despite being exactly what I was actually looking for, that 'an involuntary cry of wonder was forced from my lips'.

Two minutes later, it was gone.

I have made frequent visits to these latitudes in Sweden over the past 30 years, and many (but less) to the vicinity of the Arctic Circle, always hoping to see the aurora, but always, whenever there was activity, it was obscured by cloud, or latterly, the glare from the floodlights of the out of town shopping outlets around the world's northernmost IKEA. The last time I saw the aurora was in Whitehaven in 1974, which was a much more extended and powerful display. The solar cycle was at its lowest last year, and it's just started building towards another peak in 2025, so there are more displays in lower latitudes to come

Capitalised Communicable Conditions

 Things you could get, in the past: The Screaming Abdabs, The Heebie Jeebies, The Willies, The Collywobbles (although strictly speaking, The Willies were something someone gave you, rather than something you'd got).

The Bristled Cadaver

John Osborne, writing of George Devine, theatrical manager & director: "After the nightly satisfaction of outfacing The Chairs audience, there was the beginning of his adventure with Samuel Beckett. If Ionesco's discordant willfulness intrigued him, Beckett's temperament inspired him with almost apostolic awe. Even the peremptory sourness of Brecht couldn't match the incomparably bleached bone of Beckett and his liturgical 'toneless voice'.

Uncle Sam had the monstrous good fortune of actually looking like one of his own plays, a graven icon of his own texts. The bristled cadaver and mountain-peak stare were the ultimate purifier that deified all endeavour, pity or hope.

 If the head of a Balzac or Ionesco or a dozen other sybaritically fleshed-out masters had been put onto the Irishman's torso, the response to the purity of that 'toneless voice' might not have been so immediate.                                                                               Furthermore, for George, he had the impeccable credentials of French cultural hauteur." 

Almost a Gentleman, An Autobiography Volume II, Faber and Faber, London, 1991