Oh My God! They're Killing Kenny's!

An Spailpín has to confess mixed feelings about the news that Kenny's Bookshop on High Street in Galway is to close, moving its business to the badlands of the Liosbán Industrial Estate to trade solely in cyberspace through the machinations of that dreaded Internet.

People are inclined to get precious about Kenny's - the Irish Times report this morning about the closure reads like a monody, while Tom Kenny's remarks about still being "passionate about the business" is Morketingspeak at its most pernicious - and this is an over-reaction. An Spailpín has never, to his memory, bought a single book in Kenny's, and he is a man that both buys a lot of books, and is one of those blessed or cursed unfortunates who have never quite got Galway, that Emerald City, quite out of their blood.

From An Spailpín's time loitering without intent in and around Galway's Latin Quarter, I associate two words with Kenny's bookshop, and they are "expensive" and "tourists." When one gets away to the West, when one "does" Galway, one "does" Kenny's as a matter of course. Well, yes, darling, we did visit Kenny's - yes, it is quite marvellous, and so olde worlde, don't you think? Yes, I think so too - one just doesn't see that kind of shop any more, and it's such a pity. It's so like Shakespeare and Company in Paris, near Notre Dame, so chic, so je ne sais quoi. Our youngest boy, Uirlis, was there while he was finding himself touring Europe and he said it was just wonderful, and so on and on and on and on.

No wonder the Kenny's closure was able to squeeze at tear out of Modom and the gals on D'Olier Street.

And yet, at the same time, the demise of Kenny's is a source of sadness, because it's always sad to see any bookstore go, and because we can never quite be sure what will rise in its place. Galway already has plenty of skinny-chinny-whinny-chino bars that will serve you some panini and salad and charge you nine yo-yos for the privilege, and should another develop in the vacuum left by Kenny's the city will soon reach critical mass.

While Kenny's was never the spot to buy the Grapes of Wrath for a buck-fifty, it did set a Certain Tone in the city, and in our vulgar age, there's a lot to be said for that. I'm sure many's the feckless student in leaking Doctor Martens boots and a sopping-wet overcoat wandered about Kenny's cramped spaces and twisty stairwells, looking at the signed photos from John McGahern and Edna O'Brien and Brian Friel and dreamed someday, someday. Having the launch of one's collected "web logs," or "blogs," - half bound in leather and marble paper, in octavo, bring your own booze - on the wilds of the Tuam Road just won't be the same.

The Book Trade

There was a rather depressing interview with Scott Pack, head buyer of Waterstone's bookstores, in last Sunday's Observer. Scott believes it's all about product, just as Ray Kroc did, bless him.

Roisín Bungle, Queen of the Galaxy!

Those of you whose weekends are regularly blighted by the horrors of the Irish Times' Saturday magazine should take a peek at the "web log," or "blog," of one Roisín Bungle, who leads a fabulous life in the amazing city of Dublin the early years of the 21st Century. Fantastic, on-the-money, and surprisingly vicious.

Pucking the Sliothar in Boston, MA.

An Spailpín Fánach made his way into town on Sunday night to soak up the atmosphere after the All-Ireland Hurling Final. While lowering convivial pints of Mulligan's strong black porter your faithful chronicler got talking with a dude who told him a terrific story that gives a marvellous insight into how the Irish are perceived by others. Unfortunately, the porter was so strong that the miserable Spailpín has completely forgotten who his informant was; however, I retain a strong suspicion that it's a man that knows a lot about American novelist Philip Roth. If so, then Goodbye, Columbus, and please forgive me.

The story:
It seems that at some stage during one of the those student summers a group of young men - Corkmen, almost certainly - were abroad in beautiful Boston, Massachusetts, trying to turn a dollar, as many an Irishman had before them and many an Irishman will after them. But it wasn't all work - at the weekend, it wasn't unusual for these young men to spend a happy hour or ten slugging down bottles of Sam Adams' fine Boston beer (or beah, as the locals say) and discussing world events and happenings.

Anyway, this one particular night one of the boys filled himself up to the brim with Sam Adams' fine Boston beah, and made his merry way home, happy and content with life. But not everyone was happy and content with life that night in New England - our innocent Corkman was spied by a local who was most discontented with life, and planned to ease this discontent, this ennui, by mugging and robbing a drunken Corkman. And this is exactly what the local proceeded to do.

As those of you who have been in the United States during the summer months will know, the place gets as hot as the very hob of Hell, and windows are left open at all times, as the only hope of preserving Irish life. And while these windows are left open, all the sounds of the street can float up and in, and the heat-stricken Irish can thus keep up with all the news.

On this particular night, the news wasn't so good. First, the boys in the house heard the sound of a rumpus; nothing particularly unusual in that for that part of town, I believe. However, as the rumpus continued, they noticed that one of the voices involved - the one shouting for help, specifically - had that certain lilt that is not found in Boston, Mass, but in that city that holds the pig's humble crubeen as superior nourishment to the bowl of chowder; that is, the city of Cork.

Suddenly, the penny dropped - "Jaysus lads, Timmy isn't home yet - someone must be bating the shite out of him outside! Come on!"

If it took a while for the initial penny to drop, these young Cork men wasted no further seconds. Stopping only to grab those hurls without which the true Cork man never leaves home, they stormed down the stairs and out the door, roaring into the night, waving the ash above their heads.

The result was immediate and gratifying. Exeunt mugger, pursued by several bears.

All very well and good, but the story, as all good stories should, comes with a coda; the tale has a tail, if you like. Later that week one of that Cork number was on the wrong side of the tracks, taken there by his work, and he heard a ragamuffin describing his week to a ne'er-do-well of his intimate acquaintance. In a moment of the most serendipitous synchronicity, the ragamuffin was the very man involved in the ruckus, and he took a very dim view of it:

"I couldn't believe it man. All these crazy fucking Irish came out of nowhere, waving these big wooden spoons - I never saw anything like it!"

GAA Writers Could Learn from the Warne of Attrition

Marvellous writing by Simon Barnes in this morning's London Times on Shane Warne's imperious day's play for Australia against England on the first day of the final Ashes Test against England at the Surrey Oval. The GAA writers of Ireland could worse than take note - after they had all gone overboard on the supposed wonders of Dublin's draw with Tyrone a month ago, they suddenly realised that they had used up their store of superlatives with still over a month of the summer to go. If Sunday's All-Ireland turns out to be the finest in living memory, which is entirely possible, how the scribes can possibly find the words to top what they've already written earlier in the summer? What word is better than best?

An Spailpín Fánach's considered view is that when these men are writing their pieces there's always a little voice in their heads saying, bizarrely, that they have to somehow defend Gaelic Games; they write on the defensive all the time. It could be they spend too long at home in the winter nodding their heads in stupor at the relentless hyping of the Sky Sports Premiership Propoganda. If so, they ought to haul the cable out of the wall, dash the television set onto the sharpest of the rocks on Dollymount Strand, and escape the Pale straightaway. They've turned shoneen.

Simon Barnes feels no such need to protect cricket from criticism, real or imagined. Barnes is, in fact, sufficiently confident in the game that he starts by drawing a basketball parallel, before going on to expertly outline how Shane Warne has bestrode the cricket world like a peroxide colossus for a decade and a half, and may even be on the verge of his greatest ever feat on English soil. Irish papers, please copy.

Comic Book Movies in a Comic Book World

An Spailpín Fánach yields to no-man in his admiration of 2002's Spider Man and this year's Batman Begins as highlights of the last three years of cinema. Both were tours de force of their genre, made with ultimate effort, commitment and vision by all the cast and crew. Each movie is tinged with flair, élan and genius, from the initial casting of Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst as Peter and Mary Jane, the archetypical boy and girl next door in Spider Man, to Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy and Liam Neeson collectively realising in Batman Begins that really, this ain't going to be a subtle one, and adjusting their performances accordingly.

But while there is nothing wrong or misguided in being impressed by and thrilling to those fine examples of the comic book movie genre, it is a sad fact of our 21st Century that if the highlight of your cultural year is a comic book movie you're not really living the life of a fully rounded adult, are you? Paul of Tarsus told the Corinthians that when he was a child he thought as a child, he spake as a child, he understood as a child; but when he became a man he put away childish things. When An Spailpín Fánach, now going slowly but inevitably grey in hair and whiskers, is queuing up to see the new Batman movie, he has not put away childish things.

While the childish thing might remain the chief delight of An Spailpín Fánach, at least it does still stimulate. We mightn't consider Dr Johnson's well-made table great art as such, but we retain enough of the Doctor's critical apparatus to realise that a movie that pretends to be for grown-ups but is merely pretentious and mind-numbingly boring, such as the recent Assassination of Richard Nixon, is not the sort of table we'll be using in the dining room anytime soon.

Peter Biskind's recent book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls was a both a paean to the American cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the period that we may loosely understand as after The Sound of Music and before Jaws, a period that Biskind considers the golden age of American cinema, and a visceral condemnation of the cinema that came after it, which to Biskind is anathema. Biskind was well answered by Tom Shone's Blockbuster published two years ago, where Shone makes the point that a movie might be terribly worthy and made with great vision, but if nobody can sit through it for two hours without being their minds being numbed to the point of insanity by the sheer boredom and utter confusion of it all, it's probably missing a little as regards its entire aesthetic. The first requirement of any work of art is that the work must stimulate and not bore - can that really be said of The Conversation "by" Coppola, or of McCabe and Mrs Miller, "by" Altman, where the commitment to naturalism is so great that nobody can hear what's being said on the soundtrack? Perhaps when one talks about an artist's vision, we ought to distinguish between those visions inspired by the Muse and those visions inspired by the Marrakesh Express. Stoners are not noted for going the extra yard or completeness of vision.

But despite all of the forgoing, a recent appearance of the venerable US film critic Roger Ebert on NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno made An Spailpín reflect that we may be over-doing it as a culture on the comic-book movie front. Ebert was complaining - rightly - about dumbing down and the infantilisation of movies. Only recently, said Ebert, he was inundated with letters and emails from people complaining that they couldn't bring their eight year old children to see a big summer release. "What about people whose mental age is higher than eight?" thundered Ebert. "Who's making movies for them?" All this met with roars of approval and "you the man!" from the studio audience.

Which is all well and good. Not only is it good for the culture to have adult themes explored at adult depth in the cinema, the studio audience reaction indicates that there is an audience hungry for this sort of thing out there. The only fly in the ointment - or bat in the belfry, if you like - is that the movie Roger wanted as adults only was Batman Begins. And if the kids can't go see the Caped Crusader, they're hardly going to be bowling along to some Bergman retrospective in the Screen on D'Olier Street either. Which means in turn that if the grown-ups are watching kiddy movies, then the movies watched by kiddies will be pitched at a still lower intellectual level again. Which then means that you can forget about reading your Spailpín Fánach anymore, because pretty soon cyberspace will be as empty as it was before the metaphorical apple fell on Tim Berners-Lee's head, and society will have gone back to cave-paintings. And that would not be a good thing.

A Spéirbhean Caillte ag an Spailpín Fánach

Tá deireadh tagtha ar m'aisling gheal. Ní n-éireoidh go deo deo anois cothrom eigin idir an Spailpín Fánach agus a spéirbhean mílis, an amhránaí Meiricéanach Brídeog Ní Ghatha, nó "Britney Spears," chun a sloinne sclábhaíochta a úsáid. Is docha nach bhfuil fios ag Brídeog riamh go raibh spailpíní sa domhain, fiú amhán spailpíní fánacha, ach ní mbíodh ins an spéir os comhar ceann an Spailpín ná an t-aon réalt amhán, agus Brídeog Ní Ghatha ab ea í.

Ach tá an deireadh tagtha, agus ní féidir ceachtar againne athrú a dhéanamh. Dorcoídh mé an choinneal im' fhuinneog, togfaidh mé síos a pictiúirí ó mo bhallaí, stopfaidh mé litreacha a scríobh chuicí, seo é deireadh na ndánta a scríobhfainn in ómós dí. Lasfaidh mé tiné eigean i gcúl an tí i lárdhubh na h-oíche agus cuirfidh mé a ceirníní ann. Ní cheannoídh mé faic phopcheoil as seo amach - ní bheith le cloiseal anois sa bhaile agam ach an Máimín Cajun Band.

Tar eis ocht mbliana fada agus an Spailpín Fánach craite briste i ngrá gheal léi, ón chéad uair riamh ar iarraigh sí air buaileadh uirthi an chéad cheann eile, tá an feall déanta ag Brídeog Ní Gatha. Feall dubh dorcha, feall nárbh fhéidir le fear fanacht leis. Léim anois go bhfuil ainm aici don bhábóg atá á rugadh aici, agus tá sí ag tnúth "London" a chur ar an mbuachaill bocht.

"London," príomhchathair an tImpire a d'fhág a chos fola crua ar bholg na hÉireann le h-ocht gcéad blianta, an tImpire céanna a chur muintir na hÉireann chuig Ifreann no chuig Connachta, an tImpire ar fhág a mhéarloga fola ar fud an domhan, ón Astráil suas go dtí an Afganistáin agus thiar arís chuig ár n-oileán glas gleoite bocht. Nách breá an sloinne "Baile Uí Fhiacháin Federline," má tá ainm bhaile ag taisteal uirthi? Nó "Mainistir Fhear Maí Federline," b'fhéidir.
Ach is cuma. Tá an Spailpín croíbhriste buartha, agus tá deoch mór ag taisteal uaidh. "London" - go bhfoire Dia ar mo Bhrídeog bhocht.