Paperjam

Usually I don't shave in the morning (if at all) due to concerns I have about the quality of my levels of concentration and basic motor functions after dragging myself out of bed. However as I got up late this morning and had an extra long, steamy hangover-reducing shower I thought I would have a go at it.

For the last 6 months or so I have sported what could laughingly be described as a goatee beard, in that there was a conscious decision to shave bits of my face and leave others, rather than the previous regime which involved shaving no more than once a week and more/less resembling a tramp depending on when you met me.

So this morning I whacked the shaving gel on and started to shave, while absent mindedly thinking about going to the cinema later. Suddenly I realised that I had gone a bit too far in from one side and lopped off the section of hair that connects the moustache to the chin bit. Thinking fast I tried to even things up on the other side, not a good idea - you end up looking like some kind of morris dancing nonce.

Panic started to set in as I then next considered going for some sort of Frank Zappa arrangement ('tache with little bit on chin) - but that made me look like some kind of crap musketeer. The bit on the chin had to go, so I was left with just a dodgy looking moustache. "Bollocks" I exclaimed loudly.

After what must have been about three seconds (where I actually considered going out in public looking like a driving instructor who reads too many of those novels about the SAS) I set to work removing the 'tache. Quite hard work actually, took a few goes with the Gillette to get it all off, like a stubborn patch of weeds.

Surveying the scene I was not impressed, there was some sort of pale, surprised-looking bloke staring back at me from the mirror. Amazing the difference a bit of half-arsed stubble can make.The effect of removing it is like taking a picture off a wall, the outline being left where it has blocked out the light.

Even though I get a lot of grief for being a scruffy unshaven bastard most of the time I imagine I am in for even more now until it grows back a bit. Might go to a joke shop and buy a false beard.

Heard this the other week on the nightmare that is Roundtable and loved it straight away. In fact I loved it as soon as I heard the title, before the music had even started I had a big grin all over my face. The song itself is a thing of beauty, on the one hand it is fey scottish indie music in the mould of Belle and Sebastian, meanwhile it is also a great pop song with a belting chorus featuring what I think was described by some muso on 6 Music as "dissonant chords".

Anyway, I got it today and have played far too often this evening already, which could mean that like a fifteen year-old with easy access to cider for the first time, I'll be sick of it soon. However fate has stepped in and helpfully broken my computer meaning that I can't put the song on my ipod and completely play it to death. Hooray (sort of).

This also means that I can't watch the video at Camera Obscura's web site either. They look about as happy about it as I do.

Imagine that one day Rupert Murdoch wakes up and decides to buy Leyton Orient, then he perusades Zinedine Zidane to go and play for them. Does't seem very likely does it? Well in the 1970s, business, media mogul and sports nut Steve Ross decided to buy into the North American Soccer League by investing in the New York franchise. At the time soccer (as they insist on calling it) had a public profile somewhere between bear baiting and dwarf tossing in the grand scheme of American sports.

The New York Cosmos (as in short for cosmopolitans) were a rag tag bunch including a giant striker with comedy hair and a keeper with a penchant for getting his cock out in ladies magazines, they played on a shitty pitch covered in broken glass in front of a crowd of about 200. Then they broke the bank to sign Pele.

This film explains how this kickstarted a total revolution, within a couple of years the team also included Beckenbuaer, Carlos Alberto and Georgio Chinaglia and were playing in Giants Stadium in front of 70,000.

We are treated to the sights and sounds of some truly great footballers taking the complete piss out of a bunch of half arsed amateurs, Pele nutmegging a series of clueless defenders is especially good. Matt Dillon narrates, while a series of candid and conflicting interviews paints the picture of the irresistable rise and eventual fall of the Cosmos and indeed the whole structure of soccer in America.

Chief architect of this is the rather unpleasant Chinaglia, who looks like Tony Soprano, sounds welsh and has the ego to match his phenominal goal scoring record. Brutally unapologetic, he is the sort of person that you would never want to meet, but he is terrific value as an interviewee.

Aside from the cracking soundtrack, priceless archive material and superb editing, the cost of admission is almost entirely justified for the moment where Pele completely clatters the preening cock that is Rodney Marsh, could have done with a few slo-mo replays there.

Having heard Mark Kermode slay the film (and Tom Hanks' hair) a week or two ago, my parents telling me that weren't going to watch it because of the terrible reviews, and also not being able to get past the first thirty pages of the book because the prose style annoyed me so much, I was fully expecting a big steaming, 149 minute long turd of a film.

So, incredibly, it was actually better than I thought. But... there are so many things wrong with it.

It's not giving anything away to say that a murder happens in the first reel, inside the Louvre. The film cuts between the murder and Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) giving a lecture on signs to a packed theatre, which suggests that the two events are happening at the same time.

Captain Fache (played by a reasonably bored looking Jean Reno) and the rest of the Paris police then assume that Langdon dunnit by some scribblings left by the dead man, despite the fact that 500 people could verify his whereabouts at the time of the murder. We find out later on that Fache is not exactly 100% honest copper material, but even so, this wound me up.

Also, the script... the script...

> Langdon / Hanks : ...all the letters are mixed up > > Neveu / Tautou : (looks thoughtful) Ah. An anagram

... right, thanks for that explanation.

Audrey Tautou looks fabulous throughout, but I'd better shut up about her if I want to reach my second wedding anniversary. Both her and Hanks are incredibly wooden throughout, possibly due to the script - although Ian McKellen manages to make a decent fist of his conspiracy theory-obsessed scholar.

Super-scary Paul Bettany mopes about a lot in his monk's robes, slapping himself about a bit with a cat o'nine tails and talking in something ancient on a mobile phone. When he disposes of a nun, he pulls the same menacing "oh you've really upset me" face as in Gangster No.1, which made me grin as I remembered. I amused myself for the next couple of scenes by having a go myself (widen eyes, turn head to one side, and breathe in deeply - there, you got it).

The ropey scripting and the wooden acting could be halfway forgivable if there was some tension built up, but my knuckles remained their usual yellowy-pink throughout, even during the Smart car backwards chase scene.

And when it ended there was an enormous sense of - oh, was that it? Is that all that everyone is so excited about?