Where I work, I don’t tend to go out at lunchtime, preferring to relax in air-conditioned comfort instead of sweating through the City fug. But people tend to assume that if you are at your desk, you should be working, so it’s necessary to adopt an elaborate set of rituals to convince people that this is actually your break that is being disturbed, and would they please go away and find someone else to do it. Icons used in the process may, for example, include an open pack of sandwiches,  to indicate that You Are Not Available. Another possibility is some form of reading material: a newspaper, book or magazine, obviously not work-related. The ideal publication would, I suppose, be ‘Doggie Love’ but failing this (I like my job. No, actually I don’t. But the pay-packet is curiously appealing), the next most viable is one of the plethora of ‘male interest’ magazines now on the shelves. In the interests of research, I stacked up on a pile of these, thereby turning my desk into the office reading room. When I eventually prised them from the hands of my colleagues, I was able to read and review ’em…

Arena #59 – “The original men’s magazine”, it calls itself. S’funny then how it’s managed fewer issues than most of the competition. Maybe it refers to their writing? Not going by the relentlessly Anglophile footie piece (tenuously linked to the European football championships), a feature of every magazine surveyed. Ah, I guess what it means is the term “New Lad” was first used here in ’91. Zzzz. Gets the Best Pictures award for a gross portrayal of the effects of a land-mine (another reason not to want to live in Bosnia, should you be considering it) and some striking pictures of Demi Moore as a bloke. The articles lack the same punch, though there’s occasionally a well-written paragraph which salvages things by hitting the nail squarely on the head. Slightly interesting, and certainly makes an attempt at intelligence, even if it sometimes ends up so wide of the mark you wish they hadn’t bothered.

• Highlight: the I-Spy guide to anti-personnel mines.
• Lowlight: Sean O’Hagan’s whining, complete with excessive use of the word “ironic”, or rather “”ironic””, complaining that “New Lad” doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean. So what? Is he going to hand back the money he’s made from pontificating on the topic?

Esquire Vol.6 No.5 – For quality writing, this one is probably the winner, with a huge range of pieces on everything from Nelson Mandela to jungle survival and corruption in the Yemenese British embassy. This variety is the stand-out feature, there seems no editorial philosophy, though this does mean it feels like “Reader’s Digest” occasionally and it does come over as being dry, like a hard-copy version of Radio 4. Subdued babe-count makes it a safe bet to leave around at home. One interesting sidelight is the lack of any real review material; while most of the others delight in telling you what they think about the latest book, film, CD or whatever.  Esquire avoids this, demonstrating either a commendable desire to avoid freebie whoring, or a complete lack of personality. It says something about Esquire thatI’m not sure which is true. Like a bottle of Evian, it’s good, but ultimately bland and tasteless.

• Highlight: a piece on dominatrixes, in which for once the reporter doesn’t make his excuses and leave. And regrets it.
• Lowlight: four pages of Tarantino’s latest screenplay. Oh, joy.

FHM #77 – Hadn’t realised this one has been around for over six years, but even after so long, there appears to be a ferocious internal struggle for control happening. Half the magazine is terribly earnest – there are two female columnists and readers’ problems include tooth discolouration and shaving rash (the free gift is a sample tube of face lotion) – yet the picture editor is clearly trying to compete with Sports Illustrated, given the number of bikini shots. Nary a nipple in sight, but undeniably chauvinist, this side of the magazine reached a glorious high in October ’95, with their “100 Sexiest Women” supplement, which my girlfriend rapidly reduced to confetti. [It therefore joined the ‘Tokyo Decadence’ laser-disk, two posters of Nastassja Kinski — eyes gouged out — and an issue of Cameron Scholes’ She magazine, all of which have met similar fates. A higher compliment is hard to imagine.] However, overall, the useable content of the mag is too diluted to be of regular interest.  Browse carefully.

• Highlight: “Annoy that customs officer: strap your midriff with six sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. Imagine how pleased the man at the Blue Exit will be when you reveal the novel way in which you chose, quite legally, to transport a packed lunch”.
• Lowlight: an article where women discuss what they don’t like about their men — the correct response being, of course, “Who cares?”.

GQ #84 – The thickest of ’em all, thanks to paper carved from mahogany slabs, and a massive triumph of style over content. More ads than anywhere else, including a 20-page property supplement of Belgravia flats and country estates (anyone got £2.75m?), and lacking a single article of any interest.  Not one. An interview with Burt Bacharach? Nein, danke. They did get rapped by their publishers a while ago for getting too sexy, and certainly this issue lives up to it’s ‘Gay Quarterly’ nickname by having few babes, beyond four pages of “Nicole” from the Renault adverts in a push-up bra. Had a free gift: a teeny paperback of short stories which I lost inside 24 hours. I’m not heartbroken. The target audience for this issue appears to be millionaire homosexuals with no sense of humour.

• Highlight: Er…a page on sporting alternatives to the European championships?
• Lowlight: Most of it. Particularly dire “single lad’s diary” was neither plausible nor amusing.

Loaded #26 – This is the upstart which blew the Y-fronts off the competition, pioneering the New Lab spirit of beers, steers and leers.  It still remains the most politically incorrect of all the mags, with more actual breasts than any of its competitors. It’s all a bit relentlessly drunken though, an attitude which pales eventually and you yearn for a slightly more intelligent approach to life. There is more to New Laddism than alcohol induced vomiting, and boasting about it after.  Half the articles seem to be “We went to Sydney/South Africa/a Scottish island, and drank till we puked”. Perhaps the closest in spirit to TC, and mercifully free of articles on skin care, though still with too much fashion i.e. any. In terms of volume, the pick of the bunch, you’re looking at three lunch-hours minimum to get through it all.

• Highlight: the ongoing comic adaptation of ‘Get Carter’, done in true 70’s fashion. “Your eyes are still the same, Eric. Piss ‘oles in the snow.” Anyone remember ‘Hook Jaw’?
• Lowlight: A pointless article on Demi Moore illustrated by blurry screen shots from a David Letterman appearance. Arena did it much better.

Maxim #14 – New kid on the block, barely a year old, and nearly missed from this survey since the July issue turned up before I got round to buying the June one (a tip of the TC hat to Pascale at work, who supplied the missing link). A slim creature, at a mere 160 pages, yet it fights back with a lot of good, solid content. The interest in health is worrying – the only mag to give more space to it than to clothes. Yet here there is a nicely ironic approach which helps defuse the tedium: the main fashion item is a selection of Greek statues in shorts. Sleaze factor moderate: gratuitous swimwear and women talking about masturbation – the former with lots of pictures, the latter regrettably without. Steers a difficult path with some skill, managing on the whole to be intelligent and entertaining and on this month’s showing, the best read.

• Highlight: Probably the blackline racing piece, about the real speed kings, but lots of good stuff.
• Lowlight: A well-intentioned but pointless article on sexual harassment.

Conclusions: So, after £15.30 and 1140 pages, what have we learned? I know more about overpriced clothes than before. I am aware that the European Football Championships are on, featuring England and a load of foreigners. I own a Danni Minogue poster, some facial scrub and enough scratch-and-sniff after-shave ads to stock a Turkish whorehouse for years. And ‘Fargo’ is a good movie, apparently (actually, didn’t like it much myself). I detect hints of a New Lad backlash, which is odd, given the whole thing is pretty much a backlash anyway. Some questions remain, such as why Arena has a large ‘E’ on the spine. But what was perhaps surprising was the differences rather than the similarities; while undoubtedly male, each had a personality and could be matched to, say, movie stars. The following chart does this, in order of TC appeal, shows the pages each gives to various areas, and provides other useful statistics:

	Pages	Ads	Fashion	Health	Useful	Babes	Price	Cover Star	Personality
1. Maxim	160	49	6	11	94	17	2.50	Elle McPherson	Pierce Brosnan
2. Loaded	236	103	11	1*	121	47	2.40	Chris Tarrant	Charlie Sheen
3. FHM	180	73	30	12	65	28	2.50	Gena Lee Nolin	Tom Cruise
4. Esquire	194	78	15	3	98	11	2.70	Salma Hayek	Dustin Hoffman
5. Arena	172	35	23	8	108	14	2.50	Demi Moore	Kevin Costner
6. GQ	198	118	27	11	42	10	2.70	Andy Garcia	Richard Gere

My overwhelming feeling is relief. I’ve stared into the drunken, impeccably well-coutured face of New Laddism, and will not be taking out a subscription. While they all had their merits, the last thing I’m in need of is a magazine to tell me what to wear, watch and do. That’s what girlfriends are for, isn’t it?

Empire is one of the few publications I regularly buy. But this once-decent magazine has collapsed into a self-parody, which each month takes less time to read. Gradually, Empire has less and less to do with films. Each issue seems to have a new irrelevant section, reviewing CDs, computer games, or god help us, beer. Is this freebie whoring at its most pathetic? If I want to read about music, I’ll buy ‘Q’.

The editor must take the blame for this dysfunctional deviance, happy to commission and publish tedious, opinion-based lists of “100 best”, letting his writers stuff their views down our throats. Pieces such as “100 best opening sequences” grind film into snippets for multiplex idiots with no attention span. Almost inevitably containing the complete works of Tarantino i.e. both movies, Empire (The Mag That Believes The Hype) and Quentin (The Man That Believes The Hype) jerk each other off with tiresome regularity. He says what a great magazine Empire is; they reciprocate, using some feeble excuse to tell him what a great film-maker he is. The January 1996 issue (“100 Greatest Films Ever Made”) does both: “Empire readers salute their favourite movies”. Note the logic: “favourite” = “greatest”. No actual film criticism here in Empire, populism rules. The “Greatest Film Ever” is, surprise, surprise, ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ is #3. If these people picked the England football team, Tarantino would be captain, striker and manager. Then there’s the quote from him, completing the circle-jerk: “I’m thrilled that ‘Pulp Fiction’ has been voted the best film ever by Empire readers”. Yeah, me too.

However, it tells us about the reader to whose tendencies they pander. The sole concessions to world cinema were five foreign-language movies in the top 100 — and I suspect most who voted for ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ didn’t know it was Italian. These handful damningly highlight the readers’ ridiculously Anglocentric view. But how should they know otherwise? When Empire sent a reporter to Japan to write about ‘Ghost in the Shell’, he demonstrated his ignorance by interviewing a ‘Byuichi Tezuka’. Bad news, guys; Tezuka died years ago. Do they perhaps mean Byuichi Terasawa? Seeing such slipshod journalism in an area I know a bit about, gives me no confidence in their accuracy elsewhere. Screw facts, let’s have another list.

Such as “Top 100 Sexiest Movie Stars of All Time” — or rather, “Top 100 Sexiest Hollywood Movie Stars Now”. Bar token Eurobabes like Beatrice Dalle, that list again spurned everyone off the London-LA axis, illustrating the obsession with current hip (it’s amazing QT wasn’t #1), and regardless of the fact that cinema just had its’ centenary. Have the 90’s seen an exponential beauty surge? Suggesting Johnny Depp has more anything than Marilyn is ludicrous, even allowing for personal taste. Needless to say, being neither from Hollywood nor currently fashionable, Kinski didn’t merit a place. Harvey Keitel did. But he helped Tarantino get his big break, which must make him very sexy in Empire‘s eyes.

It’s relentlessly predictable: January rolls around and there will be a review of the past year; February, they will look forward to the next one, and six months later, there will be a summer preview. Plus (yawn!) inevitable reports from Cannes and the Oscars. Perpetually pushing the Hollywood publicity wagon, you can usually guess who’ll get the cover. The only mild interest is when megahype movies open simultaneously: Judge Dredd or Batman Forever?  Zzzzzz…

A further example of their editorial courage happened when the Empire editor had the last interview with Hugh Grant before his evening out. This could have provided an important insight into Grant’s mental state but their chat mysteriously only appeared when Grant’s movie, ‘Nine Months’, needed the hype. Things like this give the impression Empire has its tongue jammed right up the bum of the marketeers, and runs scared from doing or saying anything that would upset or annoy them, for fear of (shock!) not getting any more interviews.

Frankly, this’d be no loss: their technique is so blandly non-confrontational you might as well read the press releases. “How much is a pint of milk?” may be a ‘joke’ question but is no worse than many they ask. These ‘profiles’ have been occupying increasing space but if all else fails, they reprint a transcript of a press conference. This scores high for lazy journalism, as does the ‘classic scene’ feature: an easy way to fill a page by copying dialogue from a script.

There are occasional flashes of honesty and wit: publicising Tarantino’s theft of ‘Reservoir Dogs’ from ‘City on Fire’, a sharply aggressive demolition job on the plot of ‘Waterworld’, though these hardly repay the acres of publicity both got. Some writers do know what they’re talking about, with Kim Newman an especial aberration in this department, but this makes things worse, showing what Empire could aspire to. Few of the rest display any individual personality or approach, churning out nothing but homogenised pap. Anything slightly more challenging than the latest studio product is ignored or treated with feeble attempts at sarcasm.

The very first issue I bought had as its cover stars two relatively unknown actors, starring in a quirky low-budget film, with a no-name director, from a minor studio. Those young newcomers were Christian Slater and Winona Ryder; the film was ‘Heathers’. If that film was to be released today, the chances of it making the cover would be very, very slim indeed.

Empire is the leader in its field, undeniably, but that’s only because of the lack of competition. Take Premiere, a hodge-potch of elderly reprints from its American parent, held back until the film’s British release. Beating that should be at best a light thrill, like taking your grandmother on in a bout of full-contact karate. I’ve little doubt that there is a market for a film magazine that would provide intelligent criticism, without toppling into the self-indulgent masturbation too often found in Sight and Sound. I’m 100% certain that I’d buy such a publication. And I’m just as sure that Empire isn’t it.

Warning: gentle readers, irony & sarcasm can be hazardous in inexperienced (or American) hands. This piece was written by a trained professional. [Yeah, right…]

‘Satan’s Angels Exposed’ by Salem Kirban,
AMG Publishing, pp.292, £4.90

This issue’s helping of loonie fundamentalist Xtian nonsense, comes to us courtesy of Salem Kirban. With that name, he clearly is not going to be a rock musician – the title ‘Witchfinder General’ must surely also be his. However, wild speculation and religious fundamentalism is not the only string to his bow. As well as ‘How to Be Sure Of Crowns In Heaven’ and ‘Questions Frequently Asked Me On Prophecy’ (I imagine number one is “shouldn’t that be about prophecy?”), Mr.K is the author of a wide range of books. These include two novels, ‘666’ and the sequel, ‘1000’ — worthy of an entire article in themselves for their straight-line, literal interpretation of rapture, Armageddon and the rest of Revelations – and, oddly, a series of health-care volumes including ‘How To Keep Healthy and Happy By Fasting’, and the delightfully titled ‘Unlocking Your Bowels’.

‘Satan’s Angels Exposed’ was written in 1980 as part of a trilogy, together with ‘Satan’s Mark Exposed’ and ‘Satan’s Music Exposed’. The style of the pages is interesting; the right-hand side is full text, the left dedicated to cryptic paragraph headings, like “The Sinister Seduction of Gradualism”, “Towards A New World Order” and “Originated With John Ruskin”, to take two  pages at random. BLOCK CAPITALS, bold print, and underlining are the order of the day, and Kirban also tends to use imaginative line-breaks to convert quotes from other sources into something resembling blank verse, i.e.

“In the realm of banking
the name of Rothschild
is still one to conjure with.
One of the great ceremonies
of the financial world
occurs on each trading day in London
when five men gather in the same room
to set the opening price of gold
on the world market.
Of these five expert money managers,
one is representative of the
house of Rothschild
and the room where they meet
is in the Rothschild bank”

Got a kinda nice rhythm to it, hasn’t it?

The best conspiracies force together wildly disparate elements into a global paranoia where everything can be explained with a wave of dogma. In Salem’s world all of them are true. Masons, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, the Fabian Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and the Common Market(!) are given equal weight in Kirban’s world-view. They’re all plotting America’s — and hence  freedom’s and Christianity’s — downfall. And who’s behind it all, the conspirator behind the conspiracies? Satan! Who else? Hence a cover blurb which states (in yellow) “That popular religious telecast you are watching may be subtly manipulated by the Illuminati!” and (in pink) “Those contemporary ‘Christian’ records you listen to may be produced by non-believers who are controlled by Satan’s angels!“. Phew. Lucky I only watch trash and listen to industrial technogoth.

Each page has a heading such as “Sinister Plans for Future Control”, designed like a tabloid paragraph header to suck you in. Then he hits you with a blast of rhetorical questions: “Is there a conspiracy? Are the Bilderbergers part of it? Or are they merely another group of would-be do-gooders used and manipulated by other unseen forces?” (that’s a sample from a run of seven consecutive sentences which end in question marks).

Salem starts by giving us some tips on how to spot a Satanic influenced organization. Number one is “Do they have a love for money?”. Well, I guess that’s it – every company in the FTSE 100 is a front for Satan. He then goes on a quick tour through the major religions of the world, pointing out how they stray from God’s word (er, that’s the Bible) though the greatest vitriol is reserved for Humanism which is even (gasp!) compared to Communism.

I am very sceptical about his criticisms. For example, when discussing the Druids, he says they “….celebrated a number of feast days. At dawn on the 25th of December, the birth of the Sun God was celebrated, The Druids had a Madonna, or Virgin Mother, with a child in her arms; and their Sun God was resurrected at the time of year at which we celebrate Easter. It is amazing how Satan becomes the great imitator.” Damn clever of those pagans to work out Jesus’s birthday and sneak in there several hundred years beforehand – December 25th wasn’t fixed as Christmas Day until a papal decree in the 4th century AD, and even Kirban admits the Druids date back to the second century BC. Sorry, who was the great imitator?

After this bigot’s guide to the world religion, ol’ Salem gets down to the core of his conspiracy. Though ‘core’ is more solid than it ever gets, a rambling concotion of innuendo, rumour and downright paranoia. I’d have said that there was more hard evidence for aliens controlling the US government (TC12) than there is for Satan doing so. The basic theory is, “If you’re not for us, you’re against us” and since there have been any number of groups which couldn’t quite see the relevance of Christianity to hard economics, Kirban assumes they’re satanic.

More dodgy history follows: “At that time, they [the Russians] drew their own satellites together into a Warsaw Treaty Organization in 1955, emulating the European economic community“…which was actually founded two years later! This sums up the book – basically, it’s a load of rubbish, but at least it is wonderfully large-scale, ultra-paranoid rubbish which proves if you’re going to see conspiracies, it helps to have all facts surgically removed first.

Since the book appeared, events have overtaken Kirban. Take this passage about the EEC: “The Bible tells us that in the last days, an alliance of ten nations, from out of what was once the Roman Empire, will control the economic and political life of the world…It is possible that one of these ten nations may drop out of the Common Market, thus making it possible for the United States to become eventually the final 10th nation!“

The marginal plausibility of this, to put it mildly, must have been badly shaken when Spain and Portugal became the eleventh and twelfth members, and has surely evaporated as EC numbers head towards twenty. However, maybe it just proves that we’re not yet in the last days, which is itself somewhat comforting. Guess we’ve just about got time for another pint, then…

Waco: The Big Lie 1+2 (Linda Thompson)
– £15, 2 hrs, Nexus Magazine, 01342 322854

On this tape are two documentaries which detail the alleged cover-up over the incidents surrounding the deaths of David Koresh and his followers at their ranch in Texas last year. According to attorney Linda Thompson, what happened was highly illegal, and totally disregarded the human rights of the victims. No-one has ever been brought to justice for the events, the official investigation clearing all those responsible.

The thrust of the accusations is two-fold: firstly, the initial charges levelled against the cult were unfounded, and secondly, that the deaths of the Branch Davidians were not accidents, but murder. The first of these would seem to have some bearing in fact: the allegations came from the infamous Cult Awareness Network, who habitually level the same charges of child abuse, sexual promiscuity and brainwashing, at any group who come into their sights. The purpose of the original raid was to search for an alleged machine-gun, but the evidence for this also seems to be weak and tenuous at best. On the other hand, it was staggering to discover that the cult had purchased over 200 guns from a single shop. Under these circumstances, it is easy to see why the BATF went in, if not with guns blazing, then with guns certainly ready to blaze.

The second phase is even less fuzzier. It relies heavily on video evidence of non-pristine quality, and as this tape is a couple of generations down, you’ll need a good TV and eagle-eyes to make out some of the supposed points. The most startling piece of evidence is footage of what looks like a tank with a flame-thrower at the front, seen operating shortly before the fire started which razed the compound. However, even this is inconclusive, there have been suggestions it is just sunlight flaring off metal. Possibly more convincing is gunshot analysis which strongly suggests the BATF agents killed through “friendly fire” rather than Davidian action. Again, it isn’t surprising they were just a bit twitchy — and once nerves set in, loosing off rounds at anything that moves is easy to do, as anyone who’s played ‘Doom’ will agree.

The general impression it made on me was that, yes, there may be a cover-up, but I remain unconvinced it is anything more than an understandable desire, to avoid being blamed for what looks suspiciously like another government cock-up. While it is startling that the BATF agents killed had all been bodyguards to Bill Clinton, this does not yet a conspiracy make, though I’ll be watching for developments. Let’s face it, if the intention was really to deliver Koresh’s Armageddon all along, the Pentagon could have done it from a long way off, and in spades.

‘Behold a Pale Horse’ by Milton William Cooper,
Light Technology Publishing, pp 500, £16.99

Never judge a book by its cover, so the saying goes, but in this case the psychedelic awfulness of the William Blake-like artwork on the front is a fairly good indicator of the state of mind to be found inside. This isn’t to say that it’s dull — the book is a grandiose piece of entertainment — just that if you want anything remotely connected with reality, try Enid Blyton. Or, jeez, try a cornflake packet, you’ll learn more about what’s going on in the world.

In small doses, this book almost clings onto the far edge of sanity. It is just plausible that aliens operate in collusion with the American government. It’s conceivable that the UN are plotting to set up a single world government. It could be that JFK was shot by his driver, because he demanded that the CIA stop its drug-running operations. But when you take these conspiracies, and many more, and claim that they’re all true, it’s stretching credulity just a teeny bit. In many ways, this is worse than Kirban’s book — at least he had an over-riding force, even if it was Lucifer. Here, Cooper’s theories simply end up contradicting each other: in one the UN is limited to being a patsy of the Trilateral Commission (or is it the Bilderberg Group? Or the Council on Foreign Relations? I forget…), in the next, they themselves are the cabal out to overthrow the Constitution of the United States (starting with the right to bear assault weaponry, apparently).

There are a host of factual errors ranging from the trivial (The Hague in Switzerland?) to the monumental: it’s hard to credit anyone accepts The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, even as neo-fact. On the (marginal) plus side he reprints the document, which I’d never seen in its entirety before. Replacing “Jews” with “Illuminati”, as Cooper recommends, doesn’t help much.

This book was read over a week’s holiday in Greece, and that just about sums it up. File with Jeffrey Archer and all the other purveyors of paperback nonsense, fit only for beach browsing.

For the past few years, as readers know, I’ve been engaged in a sparring duel with the monolithic sensibilities of HM Customs & Excise. They keep opening parcels I’m sent from overseas, and I keep writing sarcastic articles about them. However, the balance in this relationship of Mutually Assured Distrust was shaken last October, when I returned from Scotland to find the letter opposite waiting for me.

I knew what it was immediately — it had to happen eventually, I suppose – ­but was surprised at how calm I felt. There was a time when such a letter would have had me frantically shipping half my possessions to a lock-up garage in Lewisham, but those days of paranoia are long past. I knew I was safe because of the word “knowingly” — as in, “knowingly concerned in importing prohibited items”. This time, for once, I was absolutely innocent, simply because I hadn’t expected ‘Funeral Party’, the magazine in question, to pose any significant threat on the Customs and Excise front. Let’s be honest, I am not so stupid as have severely dodgy material sent to me — at least, not in my own name, to my home address.

I’d first come across ‘Funeral Party’ on the Internet, where one of the editors had posted an ad (above) in the cult movies newsgroup. It sounded interesting, so I wrote, offering to trade some TCs for a copy. This was accepted, and it was dispatched by sea mail, to cut back on postage costs. The weeks casually drifted past, and I all but forgot about it — sea mail being what it is, I wasn’t holding my breath. However, the next thing to turn up was the letter from Customs, saying they weren’t going to let me have it at all.

The most aggravating thing was the total lack of information, beyond that ‘Funeral Party’ was “considered to be indecent or obscene”. Now, this might be sufficient for a copy of ‘Debbie Does Dallas’, but in this case scarcely counts as adequate data on which to judge whether or not to mount a court case. A swift re-read of the ad threw up a few possibilities: Peter Sotos and H.R.Giger were perhaps names familiar to the Customs boys. But this was all speculation, I wrote back requesting more detailed information, in order to make a decision. On the off-chance, I also requested a copy of the guidelines used to determine whether material is indecent. Two weeks passed, with nothing save notice that my letter had been forwarded to Headquarters, who’d made the original decision. Then, the reply came back:

“The magazine contains a cartoon on pages 100 and 101 which includes a graphic and explicit depiction of the buggery of a mutilated body. Although the depiction is in cartoon form, such images are still considered to be obscene. In addition, the magazine contains other questionable pictures at pages 19, 25, 39, 98 and 105. To varying degrees, all of these images depict the tying of people in unnatural positions or sexual acts where actual penetration is shown. Taken together, these depictions are considered to justify seizure of the magazine as obscene and therefore a prohibited import under s42 of the Customs Consolidation Act 1876.”

My first reaction was to take them to court. Very obviously, they had taken the material completely out of context: only seven of the 100+ pages were even “questionable”, and two of those were a cartoon! I got back to the publisher, Shade Rape, and asked him for his opinion:

“100 and 101 – This is so pathetic. From a very well-known Spanish comic book artist named Miguel Angel Martin. He does children’s strips and strips for the daily paper in Madrid.  He also likes to do these bizarre violence and disease stories that are drawn in extremely simple shapes (but distinctly his style). There is one panel where this is occurring and you only see one line to suggest the male character’s penis. Two round lines suggest a butt. 

19 – A still from a Richard Kern movie, I forget which one. The still, in this instance, is used for a flyer promoting a film screening in Seattle. The date and address of the show are printed on the flyer, and also includes right on the image, set diagonally, “Warning!  Guaranteed Politically Incorrect.”  These flyers were just pasted on lampposts.  This is so dumb.

25 – A still from Jim VanBebber’s ‘The Last Days of John Martin.’ I knew very little about printing when we ran this book and I ended up setting the photos a little too dark, for me at least (no one else sees what I mean). A couple people have commented on this image. The film is legally available here through Film Threat Video on a tape which also contains Jim’s more recent short feature ‘My Sweet Satan,’ and a very early one he produced and Mike King, his cinematographer, directed called ‘Doper,’ about, you guessed it, potheads.

39 – A Chas. Balun video box cover. This is on display in video stores. It’s a fucking drawing.

98 – Now, this one is weird.  Dame Darcy did this drawing.  She has a comic book called ‘Meat Cake.’  The girl in this drawing is lying dead in a pool of blood with flowers coming out of her mouth, chest and vagina.  I just don’t get it.  Darcy’s also put out records and sells handmade dolls to a store here, Danse Macabre, and to Courtney Love.

105 – A Timothy Patrick Butler illustration.

Ya know Jim, it’s really funny writing this because as I put the book together I really felt that it was very tame.  I actually thought about a commercial audience.  Reading what I’ve been writing, this seems like the book we’ve all been looking for! It’s much like Shock Xpress but more varied.  Lot o’ film but also art, comics, performance, etc.”

We clearly had a difference of opinion here, but without a copy of ‘Funeral Party’ to look at myself, I was left high and dry — how could I now prepare an adequate defence without being able to see the magazine? I came very close to getting it: one major mail-order outlet had bought copies when visiting the States, but their copies had already been sold. In the end, with Christmas looming, the four weeks Customs allowed for an appeal slid gently past. Presumably, ‘Funeral Party’ went into the incinerator, alongside ‘Teenie Pissie #27’ or whatever.

However, neither I nor the publisher were quite finished. At the start of March, through alternative lines of supply, a copy of the magazine finally made its way into my hands. Civilisation has not collapsed. Life has gone on. And Customs’ action has completely backfired, because the seizure has guaranteed that more people see it. If they hadn’t bothered, it would probably only have been myself and Lino; instead, I’ve already shown it to people at work, canvassing their opinions. Even among the relatively staid people I work with, most thought it “strange”, but no-one found it obscene, and so far, nobody has become a serial killer.

Additionally, scattered throughout this article are a selection of the “questionable” and “obscene” images, so you can make up your own mind. According to Customs, this should corrupt at least some of you. Please write in if you feel notably more depraved as a result of viewing these illustrations. Bear in mind that they were spread out through a 112-page book, rather than shown in the ‘concentrated’ form here.

Personally, I was  disappointed: not with ‘Funeral Party’ itself (well-produced, resembling a perfect-bound issue of ‘Divinity’ or ‘Headpress’, with many interesting interviews and articles). No, the letdown was the “graphic and explicit depiction of the buggery of a mutilated body“. It’s shown on the left. I’m baffled as to how they are so sure it’s buggery, but am prepared to bow to C&E’s apparent experience in this area. However, it requires a major redefinition of “graphic” and “explicit” to make them fit this particular cartoon. The standards applied by Customs seem to me to be those of a Puritan era. Personally, I see more obscene things on the nightly news.]

With regard to the rest of the “questionable” illustrations — which, as Shade points out include a video sleeve, an event flyer, and a photo from a film set — it’s clear that Customs haven’t a clue. About the only one I might be inclined to accept is the truly bizarre illustration at the top of the next page, though at less than three inches square, it is scarcely obvious, and the surreal and fantastical nature leave it in the same realms as H.R.Giger.

Overall, had I known back in November just how “obscene” the magazine was i.e. not very, I might well have gone to court, and think I would have had a fair chance of winning, though in terms of time and effort, it’s been a lot easier just to bypass them.

So what lessons are to be learned. Firstly, don’t believe a word Customs say — but you should know that already! Next, don’t send stuff sea-mail, it seems to increase the chance of examination. Presumably Customs think that they can delay a surface package by a week without anyone noticing, while doing the same to an air-mail package would be obvious. Better still, use a courier. If the package is moderately heavy, the cost isn’t much more than posting it, and delivery takes about two days, leaving Customs with almost no chance to interfere.

Let’s also take a look at what Customs say they are looking for, in their answer to the “bonus question” in my letter to them. It starts thus: “there are no guidelines available to the public on what constitutes indecent or obscene material“. That’s a lot of help. This does tie in with what happened when a friend tried to import a laser-disc, but had it stopped by Customs, who said it was on their banned list. When he asked for a copy of this, he was told it wasn’t a physical list, just that certain film titles were illegal as far as they were concerned. At least this silence makes it easy to plead ignorance; it must be all but impossible for anyone here to knowingly import  obscene material in, when no-one will  explain what obscene means.                  

However, the letter does go on:

“A useful ‘rule of thumb’ for importers is that if a depiction of a sexual act is sufficiently explicit that it is clearly actually taking place (eg. if penetration can actually be seen during intercourse) then it is likely that a court would consider it to be obscene. This applies to drawn as well as photographic material. Depictions of people bound (especially if gags are also used) are taken very seriously by the courts, particularly if the victim is a woman, with courts prepared to condemn comparatively ‘tame’ material of this kind. I trust that this has clarified the position”.

I suspect the last sentence may be a rare display of irony, since to my mind, the explanation just confused things even more! The drawing they claimed was obscene doesn’t actually qualify by their own “rule of thumb”, since it’s impossible to tell from the image in question whether anything is “actually” taking place. This is leaving aside the little matter of whether anything can be said to “actually” happen when it’s not “actually” real, just lines on paper.

Interesting to note that the above comments fail completely to mention violent material. It appears that you can import anything you want as long as no-one has sex or is tied up. I think I shall keep the letter to hand, so that when they come to batter my door down after I try and import, say, ‘Blood Feast’, I’ll just smile, say “No bondage or sex”, and they’ll go away again. Why do I suspect this might not be how it would work in practice?

My cynicism about Customs and Excise grows stronger every time I have to deal with them. It’s impossible to work out who they think they are protecting, and from what. In these days of global communication and travel, they’re rapidly becoming an anachronism, a bunch of King Canutes floundering helplessly against an incoming tide of cheap booze, electronic smut, and American horror magazines. It was with great delight that I read about Knockabout Comics, who recently went into battle with C&E after they seized a shipment of comics. It turned out Knockabout had actually previously printed the same comics in this country with no problems. Ker-ching! Six thousand pounds costs against the boys in (navy) blue. This goes to show that it can be done, if Customs’ cynical exaggeration and narrow-mindedness don’t succeed in getting you to back down. Next time, I might not be so easily cowed…

The place: a bus heading to Athens Charter Airport. The time: 01:15. Next to us, a New Man struggles to change child #3’s nappy as the bus rolls along, clearly desperately trying not to lose his cool with his wife and children #1 & #2. His speech has that strange stress-induced pattern where sentences.  Break. Up in funny.  Places.  Meanwhile, at the back, a bunch of Essex Girls and Essex Men are singing lustily. This upsets New Man’s extremely sleepy daughter #2, who starts to sob. In a probably mistaken attempt at pacification, the Essex mob switch to lullabies, albeit still at 120 dB. New Man stalks to the back of the bus, screams for them to shut up (please).  Essex Man leaps to his feet and threatens to punch New Man’s glasses into his face. Occasionally, there are defining moments when you gain an insight into the inner workings of the universe. As these two low points on humanity’s scatter-chart glared at each other, I suddenly realised that the nuclear annihilation of mankind might not be an entirely bad thing.

I had qualms about Greece as a destination for the 1995 TC holiday.  To me, the country had been snoozing on it’s laurels for a couple of millennia: the major contribution to world culture since the Romans took over was usually to be found in a pitta bread with salad. It also seemed an act of sheer insanity to leave London in the middle of the hottest summer since whenever-the-last-one-was, in order to go somewhere hotter. My counter-suggestions of Iceland, the Falkland Isles, or any one of Jupiter’s outer satellites were received with, ah, frosty responses.

But I have to say, it was a very pleasant holiday — heat is much more tolerable when you’re wearing shorts and a T-shirt, rather than a shirt and tie — even if the trash factor was inevitably kept low by my inability to read Greek. I can’t begin to fathom how even the Greeks manage, since the language looks like someone has been pulling mathematical equations out of a Scrabble bag (“well, I don’t know what it means, but I think I can solve it”). It becomes a little hard to track down video shops, comic stores, or any of the other, previously essential, holiday shopping venues when every sign looks like a prescription written by a dyslexic Dr. Jekyll on one of his bad days.

Instead, there was a lot of generic Wandering Around. Athens itself is a major-league sprawl of a city, which seems to be undergoing a perpetual program of carefully scheduled urban decay: the best-looking buildings are the ruins, and the streets are so narrow that gridlock is the rule, rather than the exception. Add in the smog, and lots of tourists who should stay the hell out of the way, and Londoners will feel entirely at home, although the beggars in Greece put our lot to shame by their sheer persistence. I was especially impressed by the boy with no feet, displaying his stumps for all to see. As far as commitment goes, it certainly beats a bit of cardboard with “hungery and hmlss, pls help” scrawled on it in blue Biro.

down to Greece…

Great mysteries of life: why did the Greeks only bother to put temples at the top of things? Perhaps it just seems like that: maybe they’re the only ones to have survived, because the Persians et al couldn’t be bothered to climb up and loot them. Witness the Parthenon, a complex of temples set right at the summit of a hill. This contains not only the Acropolis, but also the first example of corporate sponsorship, the temple of Athena Nike (not to be confused with Athena Reebok, or Athena Converse All Stars). A couple of hints: being cheapskates, we went on a Sunday when it’s free. Unfortunately, so does everyone else. Also, take decent shoes — maybe some Nikes? — as millions of tourists, looters and holiday program presenters have ensured that the steps resemble polished ice. I ended up clambering down one section in bare feet. Perhaps the best tip of all is that it looks a lot better from the bottom, nicely floodlit, seen from a comfy seat outside a taverna through a full glass.

Athens’ history is also reflected in a plethora of museums, which all specialise in broken pottery. Future archaeologists will thank us in this department, discarded burger cartons take a lot less piecing together than a Grecian urn. The first dozen pots are cool; the second mildly interesting; from the third on, your brain will start to go a bit numb. More interesting are the  artefacts which help show that the Greeks were pretty much like us, such as the slab detailing library opening hours.

Unless you’re very interested in this sort of thing, a couple of days in Athens is probably enough. It’s worth seeing, but life is far more pleasant on one of the islands that litter the Aegean Sea like, er, littery, island things. Our one was called Aegina, selected by a careful process that may be summed up as “where’s the cheapest?”. We flew with a company called PriceRight, whose symbol was a circle – appropriate, as they cut every corner possible. So we took night flights and went to the charter airport (think ‘Alcatraz’, with less creature comforts): you could probably get a few more quid off the price of a holiday if you hold a current pilot’s licence. The two hours after arriving were spent in the lounge of a hotel in Athens red-light district waiting for the first ferry to Aegina, because it was the least expensive option. Sadly I was simply too shattered to appreciate the experience.

However, Aegina had everything we needed within walking distance: restaurants, supermarkets and even it’s own ruined temple. For my money, this was rather more pleasant than the Parthenon — not only no trainer commercials, but fewer people around. Still at the top of a bloody great hill though. We heard a rumour one evening that a certain hotel was full of people in costume, intending to use the temple to perform some kind of sacred rite. No investigation was carried out: I was on holiday after all, and also, we be not from round these here parts. I’ve seen ‘The Wicker Man’.

Ritual sacrifice aside, it was a superb place, totally dedicated to tourists’ needs, to the extent that from October to April, the town is closed; everyone shuts up shop and moves out. Unless you’re actually going to the island, specific recommendations are a tad futile — though I’d suggest a visit to the “Genesis” night-club, if only for the barman’s pyromaniac tendencies. At odd moments of boredom, he poured spirits down the length of the bar and set them alight, turning it into a river of fire. Try this one at home, kids, but get Mummy to help you open the bottles.

From the food point of view, I can’t praise the place highly enough: we ate out in a different restaurant every night, barely paid more than a tenner each for three courses including drink, and had no complaints at all. It was amazing to see how despite a wide variety of restaurant styles, prices were almost uniform – the power of competition, I guess. Most exotic thing tried: swordfish steak; kinda like fish-flavoured pork, weird but nice – made something of a change to be eating a carnivore. Naturally, I also sampled the local kebab, called a ‘Gyros’ after the device they rotate on (never let it be said that reading TC is anything but an educational experience), and noticed several subtle differences from the Tulse Hill variety:

• a) It came with mayonnaise rather than chilli sauce,
• b) You could have chips wrapped up inside the pitta.
• c) It was smaller
• d) It was recognisable meat, far chunkier than the well-processed flesh seen back home.

We tried a few other islands — Poros, Hydra, Spetsis — and the main thing that struck me was how similar they were. The same shops selling the same souvenirs; the same restaurants offering the same menus; and maybe even the same horses offering buggy rides round the town. I’m sure they’re all very pleasant and have subtly different personalities, but to the casual eye (hell, being on holiday, my entire body was casual) they’re hard to tell apart, save the landscape, which comes in two flavours: ‘flat’ or ‘hilly’. Seen one, seen ’em all. 

To sum Greece up: brilliant place for a holiday, but unlike previous destinations i.e. the South of France and California, I don’t think I’d actually want to live there. With air-conditioning the exception rather than the rule, I’d simply melt; our rep gleefully told us of a heatwave where so many people died they had to requisition the local meat-packers as a temporary morgue. That, I think I can do without – quite put me off my kebab…

on holiday!

We finally reached the airport: our flight was delayed for two and a half hours; the wine wore off and the hangover kicked in; it was hot, crowded and people were slitting each others’ throats for somewhere to sit. D-day was about to be re-enacted between groups of German and British tourists (“Two World Wars and one World Cup, doodah, doodah”). But then a miracle happened. We went to get an snack from the concession stand. Two, small, boring icecreams came to four quid, but I realised the guy serving us was actually embarrassed to charge this much. “Hey”, I said, “it’s not your fault, you don’t set the prices”, and he gave me my change. Stepping away, I realised I had too much money; looking back, I saw him grinning broadly and giving a big thumbs-up.  He’d deliberately only charged us for one ice-cream. Let me emphasis the importance of this event: here was an airport worker, not only unhappy with the casual extortion and outrageous prices, but one willing to stiff his employer in order to give fellow man a break. A wave of warmth swept through me, crossing international borders. There was hope for humanity after all, we do have a common link, maybe we can live together in peace and under… Bing-bong. Passengers on Flight NB826 please note, your flight has been delayed for another two hours. Bing-bong. Aw, hell. Still, it was nice while it lasted…