Cocktails and Records

Our local council has been embroiled in a long-running farrago regarding the local cinema. Walthamstow’s EMD cinema was once a much-loved Granada cinema, complete with 30s décor and Christie organ. In addition to the screens, the cinema was built with top-notch staging so in the 50s and 60s the likes of Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, The Beatles, The Kinks and The Stones played there. In recent years though, the cinema has fallen into decline and now it lies unused in a fairly miserable state.

However, those trusty friends of the large historic building, Christian evangelicals (in this case the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, UCKG) have come to the rescue. Like Finsbury Park Astoria, they have bought the building and plan to transform it into a place of worship.

There has been much public outcry and local campaigning against this decision. Waltham Forest is the only London borough not to have a cinema, people have a genuine fondness for the traditional Grade II* listed cinema and there is very little trust in our local council anyway, particularly its attitude towards regeneration, the arts and heritage. None of this is helped by the fact that there are rumours that various cinema operators have proposed viable plans for refurbishing the EMD and running it as a profitable venue again, but have been rejected by the council. It is all a long, sorrowful story of mistrust between the local authority, the church and cinema campaigners.

So far so typical, sadly enough. This week though, two quotes from local councillors have really made me wonder what world I’m living in.

Councillor Matt Davis: ‘Do you not think the council needs to manage people’s expectations on the EMD, and make it clear that people can get Mick Jagger out and bunches of kids protesting but it won’t make a difference?’

Councillor Terry Wheeler: ‘[a new church will be] more attractive, to particularly young people, than a modified cinema.’

What is happening when public protests (even if they include Mick Jagger) are dismissed so out of hand? And more to the point, what kind of world is it where the council can even think about claiming that a church will more appealing to young people than a cinema?

I’m so out of touch with young people though these days that I wouldn’t have a clue. Maybe he is right. Maybe religion is more appealing to the ‘yoof’ than movies. This can’t possibly be true, can it?

Amongst the usual ads for pizza delivery services, cab companies and bargains from Lidl, we received the following flyer through the letter box this evening:

Do you ever have the feeling that everything is going wrong in your life?

Don’t hesitate to call the most acclaimed medium. God gifted and well known for his competence and efficiency. For immediate help in looking for love, family reunions, un-betwitchment, love between man and woman, to make yourself loved by someone, relationships, sexual problems, courtcases, strange illnesses, bad luck, bad spells and black magic. Stop unwanted relationships and bad dreams. Enhance your career prospects and make your business a centre for customer attraction. No matter the problem, the solution is in sight once you consult.

100% guarantee. You will get results in 6 days.

So don’t suffer in silence, call today for an appointment.

Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.

The Times is providing much grist to my (newly spontaneous) mill this week. Why, just this morning I’ve learnt that hell is yet to be subject to sexual discrimination laws.

According to a new report from the Vatican, women and men will be treated differently in hell: men’s souls will be pelted with fire and brimstone, while women’s souls are more likely to be broken on a wheel. Since I’ve been informed by many kind people over the years that I am indeed going to hell, I can only look forward to finding out for myself whether this is true.

And men and women are also likely to sin in different ways:

Monsignor Wojciech Giertych, personal theologian to Pope Benedict XVI and the papal household, said there was “no sexual equality” when it came to sin. “Men and women sin in different ways,” he wrote in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. Pride ranks only at No 5 for men, who are likely to have indulged in so much lust and gluttony that they are too slothful to feel angry, proud, envious or avaricious. Women are not averse to lust, but are primarily occupied with pride, envy and anger. Sloth does not set in until after gluttony and avarice.

So there you go. If you’re a man, I expect that you’ll be too exhausted from all that lusting and stuffing your face to respond with any defensive pride to this post. If you’re a female reader, well, I’ll hear from you when you’re over your jealousy and anger management issues…

I start off most work mornings with a cup a coffee and a sprint around the homepages of The Guardian or The Times. This morning this article – All Aboard the Atheist Bus – caught my eye.

Now putting aside whether you think a priority for atheists should be handing over £11,000 to the cash-strapped advertising industry for the sake of annoying the religious people of London for four weeks, it is interesting that this article has pride of place on The Guardian’s homepage. In fact, it is interesting to note that The Guardian regularly has quite a few articles or Comment is Free blogs on religion vs atheism – at least one a month it seems, if not more. Most of these have comments enabled and attract an obscene amount of them (863 on the Atheist bus post as I write – who are these people?!).

Does The Guardian have some kind of duty to their readership to raise religious issues? Or is this simply a guaranteed way to get those mouseclicks and increased advertising revenue? From the tiresome predictability of most of these articles and their comments, I suspect that religion really does sell.

Next week on Cocktails and Records
Readers recommend songs about why God might / might not exist and if he does how he feels about The Wire, the credit crunch, Sarah Palin, the new Bond film and the current England team line-up. Oh, and porn.

It’s easy to laugh at the trendy vicar stereotype, but this trendy vicar of St. Mary’s in ‘chic’ upper-middle class Islington in North London certainly knows the local audience. Where else would you find a traditional church with not just a branded name (in a hip lower case sans-serif font to boot), but a catchy strapline as well?

It is grim up in North London.

Whilst sitting outside eating my sandwiches this lunchtime, I started thinking that I should make a personal commitment to never eating crappy supermarket cheese ever again. This inevitably led to me thinking about other ethical decisions I could also make if I had any moral fibre/will power whatsoever.

What I would really like to do is to swear that I will never step foot in another Odeon, Vue or similar chain cinema in my life. We saw the new Harry Potter movie a few weeks back and whilst the movie was good, it certainly had its work cut out to lift the misery of seeing it at Islington Vue. What a completely soul destroying dump that place is – hidden, almost embarrassed like in a shopping centre, a machine selling you tickets rather than a person, harsh strip lighting illuminating heavy duty flooring, all roads leading to the overpriced crappy junk food.

It’s hard to believe that once upon a time movie theatres were built as fantastic temples to escapism where the whole experience of going out was special and exciting. Somewhile ago we went to see Sunset Boulevard at Finsbury Park Astoria (ironically once an Odeon, now an evangelical church run by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) and even the hideous rows of bibles and religious scaremongering paraphernalia in the foyer couldn’t detract from the excitement and thrill engendered by the building. Now most cinemas don’t even try to pretend that screening films is anything more than a way of fleecing as much cash out of you as possible.

Sadly, I’ve got to hand it to religion on this one – they understand the importance of good design and how architecture can raise your spirits and change your perceptions – in a way that the real palaces of our dreams do not.