Yes, the patron Saint to rule them all is celebrated today and, er, nobody gives a damn. At least very few Englishmen do these days though there has been talk of forcing a celebration on the country, try and get some patriotism going.

The astute amongst you will notice that the picture in this post is not that of St. George but, rather, Paul Weller, of The Jam and The Style Council fame. Whilst many revere Paul McCartney as the hero English song-writer, I’d rather listen to anything written by Mr. Weller, who I think is tragically overlooked by those looking to celebrate the English singer-songwriter.

Being a disco child I wasn’t a huge fan of The Jam until the early 80’s when Paul was already heading towards the more soulful tunes that characterised the Style Council. Beat Surrender is one of my favourite songs ever, and now that I’m older I find I enjoy the early The Jam songs much more. And Introducing the Style Council is some vinyl (or MP3 collection if you must) that everyone should own and enjoy.

Except it’s Thursday and I’m too sick to make my own puppet theater this week. Yesterday was the Brit Awards, the UK’s premier pop music award show (and since UK pop is the world’s best, make that the world’s premier pop music award show) and I’ve spent some time digging out clips from YouTube. I am sure these will all soon be deleted due to their undeniable copyright infringement so get them while you can.

I love this one: The Klaxxons and Rhinna do “Umbrella”, cool lasers too.

Mark Ronson won Best Male award or something, despite the fact that he doesn’t do his own stuff:

And in case you didn’t get enough Amy, here she is solo. I love her to death but when she sings live it’s like she sings her own random timing and the band has to be adept at changing tempo to match her. And in both this performance, and the one above, she seems obsessed with the length of her skirt.

Finally, you might be saying “what about Kylie?”. Yeah, she won International artist and performed but frankly she looked horrid and it’s a terrible song (if you can call it that) so I’d rather we just moved along….

at your annual Company meeting, two employees are chosen to sing a karaoke We’re Not Gonna Take It and Dee Snider comes out from nowhere and takes the stage with them.

Now I didn’t know the guy was still alive!

And seeing him all glam’ed out, I’m still not sure.

I’ve decided to while away my boring weeknights by learning to play an instrument. In school I played the cornet for a short while, I think I could play Oh When The Saints by the end of it, but that’s about it for my musical career. So, the question is - what to play? So far I have it narrowed down to the following:

1. flamenco guitar - I love flamenco music so it would be cool to be able to play it
2. banjo - there is some great banjo music and today I heard jazz banjo which was uncanningly awesome, and there is something about the banjo that appeals to my sense of wanting to do something a little different
3. mandolin - they’re small, sound good and are supposed to be amongst the easiest of the stringed instruments, and my wife really likes it
4. saxophone - I really wanted a sax when I was a kid and I still do, but the type I want to play is very expensive, tough to learn and just seems impractical.

So I’m going to think about it for a while, but not too long or I will end up doing nothing: I know me somewhat. Maybe we’ll see mandolin.guapacha.com in the near future??

Go to this link at BestBuy.com and order 4 $15 iTunes gift cards, and only pay for three of them. Better still, shipping is free and (in CA at least) no tax to pay!

Too bad I don’t know anyone who just bought a new iPod and has a birthday coming up.