Pseud's Corner
• L - R
• La Forza del Destino
According to issue 012's 'Player Profile', this is Neil Doherty's favourite Verdi opera. However, even the most gullible are likely to treat this particular snippet with the deepest scepticism.
The subtitle of the list of the teams we love to hate in issue 023's 'Who Do You Loathe?' is a pun on the obscure, yet surprisingly psychedelic 1982 Undertones single 'The Love Parade'.
Referred to in both the published and film script versions of 'Spice, Angels and Devils', as the pun Man U Mission. By rights I shouldn't know anything about this, but I fell asleep on the sofa during 'South Park' one Friday, and when I woke up these sad pretentious ƒ*¢#£®$ were on 'Ibiza Uncovered'.
• Morecambe and Wise
Yes, the occasional 'what I wrote' constructions what you may have encountered in the magazine are all deliberate nods to Ern's ill written plays in the old Morecambe and Wise sketches, and not, what you may have thought, evidence of our own illiteracy.
• Macbeth
For such a learned and erudite organ, there have been surprisingly few Shakespearean references in Give 'Em Beans! over the years. In fact, there are probably not many more than the three below which all refer to just the one play, 'Macbeth'. For your delight and edification they are...
- In issue 012 Marvin the Paranoid Android suggested that Shakespeare's famous line 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing' anticipated the style and content of the vast majority of music videos by about four hundred years.
- The play 'The Tragedy of Alan MacShearer' in issue 019 is a reworking of the Macbeth story.
- In issue 018, Referee McFuddle comments on the superstition that surrounds the play in the theatre world, which dictates that calling it by name gives rise to bad luck, or worse. Thus, in theatrical circles, it should only ever be referred to as the 'Scottish Play.' Joe suggests that with the run of bad luck that followed directly after Barrow's famous 1990 FA Trophy Final triumph, we take a leaf out of their book and know it henceforward as the 'Scottish Cup Final.'
• MacGyver
Bart Simpson's aunts Selma and Patti's favourite programme is, coincidentally, also Glyn Aestivating's favourite television detective in 'AFC Worrab and the Missing Millions' in Lucky Thirteen.
• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation
This quote in issue 019 from Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden' expressed both our surprise and relief that the popularity of Fantasy Football proved his observation still held true, even among readers of the Daily Telegraph and viewers of BBC2.
An alternate title for the Dada Darling (qv), one of the types of fanzine identified in our 'Good Fanzine Guide' in issue 023, this alludes to the 1971 Black Sabbath album 'Master of Reality'.
• Not so much a (Barrow AFC) fanzine, more a way of annoying the wife
These words above the masthead of issue 025 paraphrase the title of the 1960s BBC satirical show 'Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life'.
Another tiresome Frank Zappa reference. Referred to in the film script version of 'Spice, Angels and Devils' as from his 1970 album 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh', it originally appeared as an instrumental on 'Lumpy Gravy' in 1967. Versions of the tune can also be heard on the collections 'Roxy and Elsewhere' and 'Make a Jazz Noise Here'. But before you rush out and buy all these albums, beware. This is probably about the catchiest tune ever written. I first heard it about 22 years ago and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since.
A short lived series on the exploits of (perhaps that should read 'exploitation of') Rugby League fans in London for Cup Final weekend, which began in issue 023 and continued fitfully thereafter, was named after this track on the 1977 Stranglers album, 'No More Heroes'.
• A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving's 1989 classic of modern American literature gained a unique place in Barrow AFC history when former chairman Bill McCullough found a copy on the train on his way to a course in Football Administration at Third Lanark, and immediately offered it a place on the board in a vain attempt to add some 'class' to that once maligned institution. But then, it's far more likely that this only occurred in the fevered imaginings of the current writer in issue 022's 'Hotline Transcripts'.
• Private Eye
Notwithstanding our slagging off Ian Hislop above, there are a multitude of references from Private Eye magazine, many of which have become so generally accepted as to be almost unnoticeable as such. Anyone who attempts any kind of satire these days owes the magazine a huge debt. A comprehensive list of our borrowings from Private Eye, all of which originated long before Hislop's time as editor, follows...
- The phrase 'The gauntlet remains unpicked up' appeared in 'The First non-League Fanzine War' in issue 008, is for some reason one I remembered from a very old copy of Private Eye, though there's no way I could recall what article, or even what year it was printed!
- Their ubiquitous 'continued page 94' popped up in one of the items in issue 020's 'Hampster's Hot Gossip', our short-lived spoof gossip column.
- The idea of placing speech balloons from the mouths of people on photographs is another Private Eye innovation from many years ago, and we aren't the first magazine, nor will we be the last to have borrowed this particular device.
- The phrase 'Shome Mishtake Shurely' is another Eye-ism that has entered popular usage, and is one that we have not been averse to using on more than one occasion.
- The writer of our 'Lines on the Retirement of Colin Cowperthwaite' in issue 011 did so in the style of EJ Thribb (age 17). EJ has provided many similar pieces to Private Eye over the years.
- And of course, 'Pseud's Corner', the title of this very section originated in Private Eye where it continues to expose the inflated, the sham and the pretentious to this day.
• Pro and Contra
This is a good one. 'Pro and Contra' is the title given to a short piece in issue 016 which put both sides of the argument over Richard Dinnis' removal as Barrow manager, and is a direct reference to Book 5 of 'The Brothers Karamazov' by Fyodor Dostoevsky, in which matters of almost equal gravity (such as the existence or otherwise of God) are discussed.
As an aside, the pro-Dinnis writer accuses his detractors of living in 'cloud cuckoo land', a common enough phrase, but one which originates from Aristophanes' play 'The Birds'. Not many people know that. Not many more do now.
• Rupert Pupkin
A reference to the 'hero' of Martin Scorsese's overlooked 1984 movie, 'The King of Comedy', appears in issue 015's instalment of 'The Utterly Bewildering Adventures of Barry Cresswell, Barrow's Greatest Fan Who Really Shouldn't be Out on his Own, Never Mind Let Loose in a Parallel Universe Next Door to This One.' The sad comedian who accosts Barry at Forton service station thus wrecking his desperate attempts to get a lift to Barrow in the middle of the night, reminds Barry, both artistically and sartorially, of Robert de Niro's ghastly creation in the film, a sort of 'Taxi Driver' without the violence, and the equal of this and any of Scorsese's better known later classics.
• Thomas Pynchon
The credits for issue 018 consist almost entirely of references to novels by this famously reclusive American author, viz:
- 'The Whole Sick Crew' are Rachel Owlglass group of friends and associates in his 1963 novel 'V'.
- 'The Firm' is how operatives of the Special Operations Executive refer to their employer in 'Gravity's Rainbow' (1973) and it is unlikely that anyone who has read this novel will have to be reminded exactly what comprise 'Pudding-like humiliations and submissions'.
- 'Miles, Dean, Serge and Leonard (The Paranoids)', and the 'Tristero Postal Network of San Narcisco, California' are from 'The Crying of Lot 49' (1965). 'Don't Ever Antagonise The Horn' is the motto of the Tristero system.
Since then, Pynchon has published 'Mason and Dixon', another weighty contender for the title of the Great American Novel. And guess what, there are quite a few references to towns with non-League football clubs in it. For example, Jeremiah Dixon hails from Bishop Auckland, and Lancaster, Gravesend and Gloucester are also mentioned. They may only be passing references, but given the critical industry that has grown up around Pynchon, how long before we see a critique on 'Non-League Football as a Metaphor for the Theme of Exclusion in Mason and Dixon'? (I'll start right away. Online Ed.)
• The Redbridge of Carnage
This title of an issue 008 piece on the multiple takeovers perpetrated by the club that was to become Redbridge Forest was a particularly forced pun, even by our standards, on 'The Red Badge of Courage', Stephen Crane's famous novel of the American Civil War.
• Return of the Son of the Great Give 'Em Beans! Readers Poll
This title, from issue 016, implies that this was the third such poll we had run. In fact it was only the second, but it was just too good an opportunity to pass up another tiresome Frank Zappa reference. In fact, anything you see anywhere titled 'Return of the Son of Something or Other' is almost certainly a reference to the track 'Return of the Son of Monster Magnet' which documents 'what freaks sound like when you turn them loose in the recording studio at one o'clock in the morning with $500 worth of rented percussion equipment' on side four of 'Freak Out!'
Depending on which film guide you read, the title of Vittoria de Sica's 1948 classic of Italian realist cinema is either 'Bicycle Thieves' or 'The Bicycle Thief.' Thus, those fanzines we identified as stealing all their 'snap, crackle and pop' from other zines in issue 023's 'Good Fanzine Guide' were condemned to be known as 'Ricicle Thieves'. Contrived, or what?
• Clive Robertson
The world's least objective newsreader, not to be confused with 1950/60's American actor Cliff Robertson. Clive is something of a cult in his native Australia, however strange it may seem to ascribe that term to a mere presenter of the news. However, the present writer was enough of a fan to include the question 'What do you think of Clive Robertson?' in his interview with Kenny Gordon in issue 015. Kenny replied that he wished he still hadn't heard of him, which gives you some idea of the extreme reactions that Robbo generates. Yes, you either love him or loathe him. If by some strange diversion across the web, any Aussies are reading this, we'd love to know if Clive is still on the air over there.
