Equatorial Migration

Posts here about changing fashions in beer and the young people who follow them get by far the biggest viewer numbers.
In the interests of market research and narrowing down exactly what the attraction is, here's 
some observations about changing fashions/young people without  the beer.

Aptly titled Swedish loons

I've always been a fan of the high waist in trouserwear, from Oxford Bags to Bowie Bags (as advertised along with split knee loons, often in the same ad,  in music papers, and worn by their eponym during his Hunky Dory period), and, although not as personal wear, A-line Bags with a 3-button waistband and 3 inch turn ups, usually worn with a 3 star sweater showing some lower chest, all the way to the logical apotheosis of the full-blown Patrick Moore look.










I've regarded with grave misgivings the apparently ineluctable tide of the ever-lower waistline, at times allied with the ever-lower crotch, in that case revealing more and more of the wearer's choice of brand in underpant (fashion industry singular). 
That particular style seems to be on the wane, although at its height we saw young men voluntarily rendered unidexterous when upright by the need to keep a grip on their pants to stop them falling around their ankles.



The aftermath of that trend is still with us, and has combined with the Norman Wisdom/Pee Wee Herman-style size-too-small fashion in menswear (see: http://robocono.blogspot.no/2014/09/defibrillated-frankensteins-monsters-of.html) to produce an obligatory builder's arse effect in any level of deviation in posture from the fully upright, and displacing the back pockets to the top of the thigh so that the wearer ends up sitting on anything in the pockets.

The effect is of altering the anatomical proportions to give the appearance of having an extremely long body with severely  truncated legs. 
This effect is further enhanced by the wearing of shoulder bags with an absurdly long carrying strap, placing the bag at mid-thigh level;  as wilfully awkward and counter-intuitive as the similarly generationally-divisive practice of swinging the arms from side to side across the front of the body when walking (see: http://robocono.blogspot.no/2014/10/the-light-is-seen.html)

Simon Cowell and Jeremy Clarkson have done their best to stem the tide of the ever-falling waistband by personal example, but I'm pleased to announce a more credible champion of opposition to this craze to simulate a cartoon character body/lower limb ratio. 


I have seen the future, and its name is Leon Bridges.

“At the beginning, people didn’t understand it,” he says of his style, “especially in Fort Worth, Texas. They see a young black man wearing high-waist pants, up to his nipples, and shirt tucked in, and they’re just [his voice ascends to an astonished falsetto] ‘WHA’???????’ But eventually they started to respect it.” - Interview by Michael Hann in The Guardian

Results of Scientific Study Confirm Blogger's Suppositions

Further to my Shocking News posts of 1st and 9th of June:
Bearded, flat hatted and dreadlocked 'hipsters' outnumber traditional CAMRA members by a ratio* of 7 to 15 in this rigorous randomised study** of UK beer drinkers conducted by a major public institution***   recently: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2015/aug/12/great-british-beer-festival-camra-in-pictures

And another thing: why does everyone under the age of 30 say "Can I get..." in a bar, shop or restaurant when they want something, which in an equitable world would be greeted with the response "No you can't, because you don't work here. I have to get it for you."?

* An unconventional ratio involving the use of actual numbers

** of people appearing in close-up in the photographs shown in this on-line article in

*** The Guardian

Plastic Yankness in Labour Leaders

Neil Kinnock signed the death certificate for his chances of being Prime Minister - and the causes of death listed on the certificate were, number one, not being a half-out-of-the-closet Thatcherite who sucked up to Murdoch, two, being bald, three, ginger, and four, Welsh - when he fist pumped and shouted "Well Alright!" on a public stage. 

David Milliband did the same thing when Paxo asked him if he was 'tough enough to be Prime Minister', and he said "Hell yes, I'm tough enough!" on public television. 

A better answer might have been something like: I don't see that 'being tough' is necessarily part of the job, Jeremy - making tough decisions, yes, but not acting like a character in a gangster film.

Blair was a half-out-of-the-closet Thatcherite who sucked up to Murdoch, but he wasn't bald, ginger or Welsh, and he replaced aitches with glottal stops to try and sound like a man of the people (as all English political leaders do now), rather than making an embarrassing attempt to sound like a Yank.

More on 'Shocking News'

Of course, these hysterically over-hopped and violently flavoured beers are designed to be attractive to people who have been weaned on energy drinks and Sunny Delight, and who knock back Jägermeister as if it were an actual drink rather than something for hangovers that smells like pine lavatory cleaner (and probably doesn't taste much different either). 

It's the same with their hearing - the music has to be loud, they're indifferent to sound quality and they all shout, because they've damaged the cells in their inner ears by listening to in-ear bud speakers at max volume from an early age.

AND their sense of smell - the universal popularity of 'fabric conditioners' that smell like they were originally developed at Porton Down, fruit scented (??!!) cleaning products, toilet ducks, blocks and gels mean that they've been surrounded by such an all-pervading haze of 

pungent industrial byproducts, for so long, that the only smells that register are at max volume too. 

Hence the popularity of Lynx-type deodorants that smell like tear gas or urinal blocks, and which actually make your eyes water and your nose smart if your sense of smell works normally.

The Aum Shinrikyo cult's 1995 Tokyo subway atrocity was a grim precedent for the experience of travelling on public transport anywhere today when there's a young man on board. 

Or in a lift. 

Shocking News

As I've said before, I'm going off beer, part of the reason being the popularity of 'craft beer' brewed by 'craft breweries'. I like English bitter brewed by English breweries like Thwaites or Fullers. When it was real ale brewed by micro breweries, like Dent Bitter, it was still ok. Now 'craft beers' are fashionable, everywhere that does decent beer is too full of young people shouting their heads off and taking all the seats, and the beer they're so keen on is undrinkable - fruit beers, and in Scandinavia, Indian Pale Ales and 'American' Pale Ales that are so bitter they're like sucking a lemon, and, in Britain, 'golden' ales that are SBTLSAL, and taste of chrysanthemum or Lynx deodorant.


The brewers compete to produce the most extreme or bizarre flavour they can, egged on by people who award prizes at beer festivals. It's like single malts versus Irish whiskey and bourbon. 
And beer's too strong now. The default setting for beer in the UK and Czechoslovakia used to be 3.5% or just above, whereas now it starts at 5.

Now look at this:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/30/golden-ales-flavour-of-summer

When I was in  a Young's pub recently I saw that the 'sleeve notes' on the pump badge described Young's bitter as 'the original Pale Ale', and in a Greene King pub, my wife tried their 'Indian Pale Ale', which was nothing of the kind - it was what they until recently sold as bitter. The other ales were IPA Gold, which they used to call IPA, and IPA Reserve, a stronger version of what they used to call bitter.
I also note that of the 50 beers advertised in Wetherspoon's house mag for their recent Real Ale Festival, the descriptions of 26 of them feature the words 'pale', 'golden' or 'amber-coloured'.


Where (or more importantly, when) will this madness end?

Record Facts and Statistics

Building on the success of my earlier blog on music-related matters, http://robocono.blogspot.com/2014/09/defibrillated-frankensteins-monsters-of.html, featuring Jedward and Justin Beiber, here are some more

Record Facts* and Statistics**

1.* There are two** 'space' records with excellent starts sorely let down by the pedestrian nature of what follows: 'Telstar' and 'Intergalactic' by The Beastie Boys.

2.* Rap is nearly all rubbish. The best rap records ever made are 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised', and 'Tubthumping' by Chumbawumba , one** of which is the first rap record, and both** of which would stand out as being excellent on their own merits whatever the genre.

Nostradamus of the Airwaves

I confidently anticipate a remake of the popular 1961 Anthony Newley production updated to reflect the current surge of interest in cookery and dining generally, and gourmet organ-based cuisine promoted by top chefs such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fergus Henderson in particular, most probably with a blockbuster West End show and  spin-off TV series. 

My tip for the updated title: "Stop the World I Want to Get Offal".