I.M. - Beck quote unquote

The leader of the Free World has been elected. Actually, as I write, the leader of the Free World is about to be elected, since the Pretender is still sulking in his tent waiting to concede. In fact, by the time I finish this sentence, he might have actually conceded, such is the speed with which news is brought to us, though I have my internet down so I'm deprived of one source. Sky News is burbling in the corner, though.

What did you think, I was getting my news from the Maltese channels, or something? I don't think so: Smash, as usual, is bothering God, Super One has someone telling us about computers (as in trying to sell us computers), Net TV is selling groceries and PBS has the rolling repetition that gives you small bits of news, generally about what Doctor Alfred Sant said about what Dr Austin Gatt said about what Doctor Alfred Sant said.

Small pause while the Democratic vice-presidential candidate has a small public whine - normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Oh well, they're going to fight for every vote. Bully for them.

But what a pity the whole thing is. The American people have had to choose (on our behalf as well) between someone who can't eat a pretzel and breathe at the same time (not to mention ride a bike) and someone whose main claim to fame seems to be that he can imitate Postman Pat while telling us war stories in which he, coincidentally, took the Tom Hanks role.

At least he hasn't claimed to have invented the internet, which is some small consolation.

Another small consolation, perhaps, is that now that the Americans, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen who is going to live on Pennsylvania Avenue for four more years (shades of ir-raba' rebha Gawd'elp us) perhaps the whinging and moaning about Bush not knowing the difference between Iraq and Al Qaeda and between weapons of mass destruction and words of mass deception and between imports and exports will stop.

I mean to say, who cares, now? The people have spoken which means God has spoken, so that's all there is to it.

The voters of the United States feel that George W. Bush is better equipped to steer them, and us, into the future than the other bloke, what's 'is name. So quickly does a failed candidate fade into insignificance (unless his name is Sant, Doctor Alfred of that ilk and he's failed three times or so) that for a moment John Kerry's name escaped me.

As it did so for many voters, after all.

As I write, the picture keeps changing marginally, of course, though the fact remains that Ohio (of all places) is going to be the pivot around which the election will turn. A bit like Grimsby being the be-all and end-all of a British election, that, though even in Grimsby (with all due respect to that estimable place) perhaps Blair would spare us the sight of a peculiar boxing promoter decked out in flags and badges from taking the stage to announce his victory.

Which is what I was greeted with at five this morning, for the sake of all that's glorious and now there's the Terminator telling Californians that they've gone even further right than heretofore.

Such is political life when the public decides an election on what is spun over the media.

Brindiamo

I'm not too sure of the ins and outs of the investment in the Brindisi which went a bit askew, though it seems that Doctor Alfred Sant, as to the manner born, is spinning the story for all he's worth.

According to Dr Austin Gatt, the minister under whose wing the investment falls, the whole thing started when Doctor Alfred Sant was PM. It's amazing how much the dear fellow managed to do in those few short months before he tied his party's colours to the mast of a yacht marina.

It is well known that the price of an investment may go up as well as down and that the past is not a guarantee of the future so I'm not about to point fingers at Doctor Alfred Sant and say that the investment seems to have been, just possibly, one of his less than brilliant ideas. After all, I'm morally convinced that Doctor Alfred Sant would be the first to admit that he's human and fallible, even if the breathless exponents on Super One try to give him an aura of genius every time they intone the words "Doctor Alfred Sant".

But if it is true that the lad had a finger in that particular Italian pie, and no dishonour to him if he did, where does he get off trying to ram the pie into the government's face? It's as if he had been a management consultant in a failed manufacturing venture, say, and is now blaming its new shareholders for being in a losing situation. Not that anyone expects every venture to be founded on iron-clad footings and everyone of mettle makes mistakes, including someone with a brain the size of Doctor Alfred Sant's, but you don't expect people in such a position to use the failure to their own advantage.

Cheap laughs

Last season, the theatre was the place towards which to head if you wanted some intelligent amusement. Thought provoking stuff was there to be had by anyone who had the price of an entrance ticket and all in all, it was a good season.

This season, sadly, the denominator towards which the impresarios are making their pitch is not the highest. I have to go further and float the idea that the people who choose what work works if placed before the punters seem to have taken on board the notion that cheap laughs are the way to pack them in.

That's as may be, but if they do that, then they can't expect people like your 'umble scribe (horribly hackneyed phrase, that, a bit like many of the ones we're hearing echoing from the boards) to leap up in awe and wonderment to applaud the cast when they come out for their bow.

I was at Kissing Sid James and I was at Habeas Corpus over the last month and while the latter elicited a couple (as in two) of smiles, the former left me cold. I wasn't at Present Laughter, though Dr Paul Xuereb was and he wasn't much moved, either.

The thing is, I, and many, many others, don't much appreciate the Carry On genre of script writing and the Benny Hill method of acting any more. Simply having people on stage chucking double entendres at me, with naughty gestures thrown in just in case I had missed that some sexy references were being made, doesn't make for good theatre, you see. Scripts like those require split-second timing and - preferably - judicious pruning.

When Alan Bennet cobbled together Habeas Corpus, it might have been necessary to have the characters stand there spouting soliloquies for all the world as if Shakespeare had been reincarnated into a 1960s wordsmith. For a modern audience, which is the only sort of audience of which I want to form part, the play could have stopped at the point when the obnoxious Sir Thingy Shorter let slip that he had been a locum in Liverpool.

Instead the thing dragged on for a further 20 minutes or so, just in case the dimmest member of the audience (and there seemed to be some less than luminous characters in the stalls from the amount of explaining that was going on in the seats around me) had missed the point.

It's not as if the actors can't carry off less pedestrian stuff, after all. Kevin Drake and his various colleagues are more than able to reach high but when they are lumbered with scripts that blatantly play to the chortling but non-discriminating masses, they're unfairly hobbled and they look like cart-horses rather than thoroughbreds they can aspire to be.

Blessed relief

Just to relieve the tedium that stretched out on the brain-food front, it became that time of the year again, the time of the year when Judge Vanni Bonello puts out another volume of the plums he pulls out of history's pie.

His account of Bishop Caruana's machinations, the incredibly deft footwork this clerical gentleman (if I might use the word in his regard) showed in switching his allegiance from St John to Bonaparte to the Tsar to George, to say nothing of points in between, is an example of a debunking that stands head and shoulders above the anodyne histories that others produce from time to time.

As always, you should nip out and get yourself a copy, if only to ensure that you keep your collection up to date, being as there are already a number of volumes that can't be had for love or money.

And Judge Bonello's writings about the past will only whet your appetite for when he is tempted by the blandishments of his many fans to write his own history, not so much a history of Vanni Bonello but a history of Malta as he helped to write it.

While on the subject of books, if you want to enjoy a good browse, trot along to St Patrick's in Sliema between the 19th and the 28th and load yourself up with some.

Finally, it is acknowledged that "JC" also got it right when he attributed "Run away, run away" to that inestimable work of cinematic entertainment, Monty Python & the Holy Grail.

bocca@waldonet.net.mt