Commuter Life Having travelled home by taxi again tonight, I can attest that Seethru are correct about something yet again: "Does the driver have absolutely no idea where he's going even though you're heading for a well-known local street? Do you eventually, in a fit of pique, wrench the A-to-Z from his lap and direct him there yourself?" Liverpool City Centre to home is a belt down one long street -- so why do one if three cabby's think it's a license to take me hither and thither. If I want a Magical Mystery Tour I'll take the bus...

Quiz Contrary to my own belief my glass is half full: "You try to look on the bright side, and optimism is a skill you've cultivated to help you weather life's rough spots." I really should get around to re-naming this website...

Tite bar It's a Sloth of course...

Kids Scriptwriters looking for an ending to the inevitable bio-pic of Kofi Annan (starring Morgan Freeman) will breath a sigh of relief with the news that he's appeared on Sesame Street: "Annan stepped in when puppet character Elmo and his friends argued over who would get to sing the alphabet song. In the end he persuaded them all to join in." Future plans include an intervention in the on-going war between the Autobots and the Decepticons, and the ratification of The Button Moon Treaty.

Opera I never seen Opera live, so I've often wondered how the words are translated. Now I know: "It was the final act of La Bohème at Washington Opera. Mimì, failing rapidly, clutched Rodolfo's arm and pleaded, "You won't leave me?" A laptop pressed into last-minute service to deliver the text translations flashed this unexpected rejoinder: "Your battery is failing and your screen has been dimmed to conserve power." The audience roared, and a poignant moment in opera was upstaged. For better or worse, text translations -- projected above the proscenium or transmitted electronically to display screens on the seatbacks of chairs -- have altered the way we experience opera." [via Arts Journal Daily]

Journalism The Spectator surveys the British print media reaction to George Harrison's death: "Was this coverage excessive? A shade so, I would say. Some readers under 30 — who don’t know when the ‘summer of love’ was and don’t recall the anti-American riots in Grosvenor Square — may have been a bit bewildered. Some of the older ones may have wondered whether George Harrison was such a towering figure. Popular papers naturally devote a great deal of space to popular heroes, and doubtless they know their markets much better than I do, but their coverage did seem rather overdone."

Plog! One of the arts of writing a weblog is choosing an eyecatching title. The story of 'feeling listless' is a long and arduous one. So when I glanced upon 'The Joy of Soup', I assumed it would be another personal journal, perhaps from someone in a very foggy part of the world. Well, no. It actually is a weblog about soup. In each post, the writer offers a recipe, the genius part being that they have tried it out and presents the expert opinions of some their friends. There is also writing connected with the various cookbooks that the soups are sourced from. I'm suddenly feelinghungry...

Film Weekly, articles appear in newspapers and magazines grumbling that although a great number of films are made in Britain each year, plenty with much to recommend them, the American owned cinema chains have a stranglehold on the marketplace, making the distribution of films an expensive and often loss-making exericise. Lack of visibility, leading little or no word of mouth, onward to no success. In China the opposite is true. Here, the domestic film industry accounts for almost the entire box office, with only ten Hollywood film released each year. The China's entry into the World Trade Organisation means that is set to double, sending shockwaves throughout the industry, especially amongst distributors, presumably eyeing the situation here. The most staggering aspect of this article from The Shanghai Star is the revelation that China does not have a film rating system: "The Crimson River", a French thriller, is showing in Shanghai Film Art Centre at the moment. A mother brought her child to the cinema but had to go out before the film was over. "My child was terrified," she told the staff at the centre. "We had to take care of the child for over half an hour so that the mother could go back to the cinema and finish the film,"

Non-biography Writing this weblog can be exceedingly frustrating at times. I want to tell you about my life. I want to fill you in on all the gossip of all the people I know, what they're doing, the intrigue, the mystery, the pratfalls. The people I don't like. The people I love. I want to describe in detail all of my hopes and fears, the inner dreams, and those things which get under my skin. Sometimes I just want to get on-line and give what-for to the world. But then I think about who might be reading. James Blish once said that the first thing which has to be uppermost in the mind before you write anything is 'Who does it hurt?' and I think when I sit here night after almost night trying to entertain you I need to bare that in mind. One of the tricks in life is to keep those friends who are important close to you and keep your enemies at arms length. So I think, for now, I'll stick to telling you about train journeys and the incidentals, the internal intellectualism not the external emotion.

Blog! Ann Elizabeth made me laugh tonight. A proper laugh. A belly laugh. It seems she's been attracting the wrong sort of attention from pensioners. Actually I'm frequently touched by her work -- she's an absolutely amazing photographer. If I was to make that film, I'd want this to be my opening shot...

Book Currently reading and heartily recommending 'The Victorian Internet' by Tom Standage, which is a history of the telegraph. This isn't as loosely connected as it would first appear. Rather like 'Longitude' this is an important story told with some passion. The first scene of the book is fabulously cinematic -- the moment of the discovery that electricity passes instantaneously from here to there:

"On an April day in 1746 at the grand convent of the Carthusians in Paris, about 200 monks arranged themselves in a long, snaking line. Each monk held one end of a 25-foot iron wire in each hand, connecting him to his neighbour on either side. Together, the monks and their connecting wires formed a line over a mile long.
"Once the line was complete, the Abbe Jean-Antoine Nollet, a noted French scientist, took a primitve electrical battery and, without warning, connected it to the line of monks -- giving all of them a powerful electric shock."

Bastard. The rest of the book is filled with such annecdotes turning what could have been quite a dry subject into something real and gripping. Believe me, there were hackers even in the early nineteenth century....

Rings Tinkagrrl reports that the first review is up -- it's from 'Newsweek', that august film tome. It's a good review which bodes well for the trilogy's wider appeal from fas of Tolkein and the genre -- more punters, more likely the next two won't go straight to DVD. Looking forward now to Kim Newman and the SFX crowd's reviews....

Film Review Wonder Boys. Posted here: "I failed A-Level English. It took two years, round the clock study and a deep-seated understanding of the books at hand not to succeed in the endeavour. I wasn't disappointed at the time because I was still going to University on my B in Fine Art and D in General Studies. It wasn't until three years after college as I sat watching a production of Hamlet and understanding every word of it I decided I should have done better. I reconciled that I couldn't have done better at the time and I've moved on. Watching ‘Wonder Boys', the memories of the study experience came flooding back to me."

People There were only two actors who could have played Gandalf in the new Rings movies. If it wasn't Sir Ian McKellen it was going to be John Hurt. I couldn't quite out why this was the case -- luckily Fametracker is here again with the answer -- it's because they are exactly the same: "Like a lot of British actors who came of age in the '70s, he now gives off that mellow, manicured, urbane vibe that is somehow pansexual and asexual all at once; like, you can barely imagine him even having genitals now, but at the same time it's not much of a stretch to think of him having this profligate, genteelly slutty youth -- 'Velvet Goldmine' by way of 'Maurice'."

Architecture Pleased to note that the suggested memorial for The World Trade Centre mentioned here previously is looking increasingly likely. These shards of light will reported be so powerful they'll be visible in Space...

Blog! Vodkabird's Vikki sacrificed a quiet life to stand her ground against the tyranny of others when she visited The National Gallery of Scotland today. I can attest there isn't anything worse than self-righteous people sticking their noses in. One of the Commuter Life posts I never brought you happened during that time when buses home were more infrequent. An entire bus stop full of people looked on in horror when a woman appeared with many children, squinted at the timetable and told them that no buses would be stopping their anymore -- and then proceeded also to tell it to all of the dispirate other people not in her initial earshot. The bus stop emptied, some got in taxis, others walked to another stop on the other side of town .... I stood my ground ... one of a few ... who were happy when that bus arrived not three minutes later ... unlike Vikki I didn't say anything. You go girl ....

Life I been having trouble with my default settings -- I'm not entirely satisfied with them. My default film is 'Star Wars' -- I'll look at my entire video collections (which is a cineaste version of that record collection in 'High Fidelity') wondering what to watch -- the entire history of film-making on offer and before too long the little orange writing is disappearing off into the distance. This isn't so bad -- my previous default films were 'Adventure in Babysitting' and 'St. Elmo's Fire'. I'm just wondering if I should just be getting out 'The Matrix' or that shiny DVD I have of 'American Beauty'. But you'll see my point better probably if you look at the list.

Television: Friends
CD: 'No Angel' Dido
Coffee: Black
Newspaper: The Guardian
Magazine: SFX
Website: Metafilter
Booze: Budweiser
Book: (email and I'll tell you)
Greeting: Hey you

Perhaps my problem is that these have been my defaults for too long. I need to break out. So rather like a Blue Peter presenter asking for names for the new Tortoise they've adopted I'm looking for suggestions. Since I can't change the big things in life, I want to nudge the little things. So what would you change? If you've been reading for a few weeks you'll know what I like, so why not suggest something to me I ought be trying. Drink, music, food, book, whatever. And anything you suggest I'll have go and post the results here. I can't say I'm going to like it, but I'll try anything once and I'm in the mood for an adventure...