That Day So I'm 29 and I don't feel any different than I did when I'm 28. People ask if you feel different. Well I feel irritated that you keep asking me the same question -- I didn't have that before. Alright so perhaps I'm a bit more cynical.
Actually it was a fairly normal day. For me. Out of nowhere and without any prompting my parents gave me 'The Very Best of Cat Stevens', which struck me as really quite odd because I've never shown any leanings in that direction. But I like music so I like Cat Stevens and it's really, really good. And Father and Son hasn't been ruined at all by certain awful cover versions.
Went to Cheshire Oaks, bought some shoes, bought a shirt. For some reason the latest style in shirt seems to resemble Marks & Spencer's pyjama tops from the 1970s, so I didn't buy one of those. One of the joys of The Oaks was that it would carry end of line clothing at very cheap prices. Now some designer clothes shops have moved in and the prices only seem a bit cheaper than in the high street. Bought a couple of Christmas presents, although I'm all at sea this year in terms of that.
I did manage to pick up an All Saints single from 1995 before the Appleton sisters joined. It's the original version of the 'Let's Get Started' track from the first album, but rawer and strangely, vocally it's just as strong as the later version. Odd that. Not sure if we need the four versions which are on this single though.
Went for a meal in the evening at some restaurant in the middle of nowhere (well, Prescot Road). Honey roasted steak the taste of which is still hanging about the back of my mouth, which oddly isn't a bad thing. My mother is on first name terms with the waitress. Shocking how helpful that can be.
We've got the yearly circus in the field near our tower block again. It's a massive white tent this time, with coloured light back projected onto the inside. Looks spectacular at night. Went to bed with blue light dancing across my ceiling.
Menagerie
Garfield as a live action film, featuring a CG cat and Jennifer Love Hewitt. As if that wasn't bad enough, Judge Reinhold will not be playing Jon Arbuckle, the part he was born to play. It's some other guy. [via imdb]
If only the BBC's biography pages were as satirical as this: "Drew is a zero-time Emmy Award winner. In fact, he's never even been nominated. He has, however, shattered both the single-season (912) and career (3,617) records for pieces of Hate Mail Received (HMR) at 9NEWS." [via lost remote]
Turin, the Milton Keynes of 18th century Italy. Although with less car parks.
When reading a novel requires more commitment than some people put into their marriages. The kind of book which requires the reader to see how small the writing is. This one features a play and diagrams, and unlike Glamour magazine it won't fit in your bag.
Please Don't Feed The Pidgeons. For once the typo isn't my fault.
Richard Herring is going to run the London Marathon. Moon. Stick. You make up the catchphrase.
Garfield as a live action film, featuring a CG cat and Jennifer Love Hewitt. As if that wasn't bad enough, Judge Reinhold will not be playing Jon Arbuckle, the part he was born to play. It's some other guy. [via imdb]
If only the BBC's biography pages were as satirical as this: "Drew is a zero-time Emmy Award winner. In fact, he's never even been nominated. He has, however, shattered both the single-season (912) and career (3,617) records for pieces of Hate Mail Received (HMR) at 9NEWS." [via lost remote]
Turin, the Milton Keynes of 18th century Italy. Although with less car parks.
When reading a novel requires more commitment than some people put into their marriages. The kind of book which requires the reader to see how small the writing is. This one features a play and diagrams, and unlike Glamour magazine it won't fit in your bag.
Please Don't Feed The Pidgeons. For once the typo isn't my fault.
Richard Herring is going to run the London Marathon. Moon. Stick. You make up the catchphrase.
ten years since I was a fresher there
Life Yesterday I spent the day in Leeds visiting the three houses I lived in while I was at Leeds Metropolitan University studying Information Studies. It's ten years since I was a fresher there and I wanted to acknowledge something which has had more of an effect on who I am than anything else. I kept thinking about two words on the train yesterday morning. Pilgrimage and tourism. They're both self explanatory, but I think the latter was more relevant. Rather like someone visiting Thomas Hardy country I was visiting Stuart Ian Burns country - visiting landmarks in the same way, a trip into my own life of interest to only one person. Me.
I began university living in halls on Beckett Park. Think Dead Poets Society. Think Georgian red brick building in the middle of the countryside. Think self-enclosed campus where you could spend a whole week and never leave, everything to hand. I was in Macauley Hall, and I probably had much the same experiences as anyone else. Fell for the wrong people, said the wrong words at the wrong time, did all the wrong things. Good times. I knew that the place had stopped being a student hall two years after I left. The university lacked offices, administration and classrooms and they would be cheaper to run anyway. So now it was the Faculty of International Studies.
I was nervous as I walked up the hill towards the campus. Some of this came from a fear of being caught trespassing. There weren't any security gates and theoretically any member of the public could walk in. But I kept having visions of someone asking for I.D. and when none was forthcoming being frog marched off the premises.
But I relaxed slightly as I approached the hall. The building hadn't totally changed. The muddy brick on the walls had been sandblasted at some point and now had a slight artificially modern look. The ad-hoc gravel car park had been replaced with tarmac. I stood outside and glanced up at the window were my room had been. One wall had a bookshelf with folders on. I stepped up to the back entrance, pressed a green button and the doors opened for me. In front was a sign asking all visitors to report to reception. I walked past this and up the stairwell. Concrete had been replaced by royal blue carpet throughout. All of the walls had gone from the dark yellow I remember to a dark sky blue. I entered my floor and was disconcerted to find that there were far less doorways than before. The building had been a hospital originally, and the student rooms created from a partitioning of a ward. The walls that I'd known had been taken out and recreated for the new usage, so my room door no longer existed. No number 26 any longer. But I stood in front anyway and looked at the panoramic picture of Singapore which hung in its place.
I remembered sitting in the doorway of the room reading, with lunch sometimes. I'd once seen a advertisement in which a girl had sat on a windowsill drinking a Coke watching the world go by and it had been my version of that. Sometimes it had meant I was like Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) trying to comprehend the main action as it passed me by. I remembered the time there had been an electricity blackout one night and the few of us who had been left in the building had sat in the hallway gathered around some candles talking and waiting for the lights to go back on. I remembered the series of signs some of us had for our door which directed visitors to whoever's room we were actually in at the time.
I was a bit of a traveller in the hall. After the initial week when everyone was friends with everyone else, various groups of people drifted together based on mutual interests. I wasn't exclusive. I was still friends with a lot of different people and I loved that. If I'd been less safe with my finances and even less kooky in my choice of beverage (tee total fresher - such a waste) I probably could have been out with different sets of people on lots of different nights. I remember being well liked by some of the people some of the time. I'd help some international students with their English; I'd help others with their relationships. In terms of connecting with people it happened more here than at any time since. Given the chance I can work really well in groups.
I strolled around the rest of the campus taking in the differences and similarities. The student union had changed. It was more - idiosyncratic. Far more rooms and bars and shops and cafes. The little bank which had been so handy while I was there had gone, replaced with counseling rooms serving the mind rather than the pocket. I thought about having lunch in the main cafeteria but didn't want to push my luck so I bought a couple of bottles of water in the shop instead. There were more computers in the main campus library and they seemed faster than the old machines I'd used all those years ago to look at the old Empire Magazine website. Like the union, the same departments and sections were there, they'd just been moved about. The ongoing improvement programme which had begun while I was there was still in place, with incomplete corridors and scaffolding. Some projects are probably never meant to be finished. There is a bus stop outside the library now and a regular service into the city centre. I winced as I remember the number of times I'd walked the long walk up the hill to my room with bags of shopping.
The walk I made to the next house was the same route I would have taken from lectures to my house at the end of the day. It meant I could visit Headingley 'centre'. When I'd gotten off the bus earlier I'd been amazed at how Raj Putts, the Kebab shop I'd visited at 3 in the morning once for a salad pitta was still there. The rest of the town was mix of the old and new. More charity shops. The local Safeway had gone from having uniform shopping isles to a more adhock feel similar to a service station. The KFC was just the same. But then I entered unknown territory as I found a Subway and a Starbucks, and a fabulously relaxed Oxfam bookshop all couches and coffee tables.
Then I got lost. Or rather I forgot were 69 Richmond Avenue was. Somewhere along the line I'd developed the idea that it wasn't directly off the main road, took the wrong turn and ended up walking manically through the back streets looking around furtively for something, anything familiar. Then I remembered that ironically I'd done exactly the same thing the first time. I stopped, asked someone for directions and ten minutes later I was standing front of the second house on the tour.
It hadn't changed at all. An old Victorian terraces house perched precariously on a cliff-steep hill, three floors in crimson red brick. It shouldn't have developed. That would require the landlords to care about properties it rented out to students. But I hadn't been quite so prepared for how close it was. My barn-sized room had been on the bottom floor and there had been a small hole in the corner of one of the bay windows. It was still there. The landlords had done nothing to repair the house and that seemed right somehow.
I didn't get on with my housemates, or rather they didn't like me. Three southern girls who thought they were royalty, one northern girl who aspired to be royalty, and me who couldn't care less. They'd seemed perfectly nice when I'd been to see the house with them. But when I visited the place during the summer to do some work as a cleaner at Headingley Cricket Ground during one of the tests something wasn't right. On the first night, although they were all there and they knew I was coming, when I dropped my bags in my room and went to warm myself in the kitchen, none of them came down to say hello. I shouted up a greeting, but I could just hear them talking. A bit later one of them came down to get some milk. I think she said hello but she didn't say much else.
A friend invited himself over for some of the cricket cleaning coin. When we returned on the last night of work my new housemates were waiting for us (having ignored our presence for the previous four days). This plastic shelving thing in the bathroom had collapsed and evidently they thought we'd done it. They demanded to know why we hadn't cleaned it up and what we were going to do. When I denied anything had happened they just deafened themselves through all of my questions as to why they had been ignoring me until eventually I swore at them. They swore back and so the pattern emerged for the rest of my time in that house.
I was essentially living in a bedsit with four other people. But it didn't ever feel like home. Not in the way my room in halls had. I was like a lodger in my own house, an interloper. A stranger to my own housemates. I'd leave my room and suddenly their uninteresting conversations would stop. I would go into the kitchen and they would leave - and not subtly - once, they literally got up and left. They had the upstairs rooms and like mice I'd hear them creeping about. Whenever I saw them around campus, even if it was a corridor in the library without anyone else about, they would pretend they didn't know me. I wasn't welcome in their lives and they were being pathological about it.
At some point I started to avoid them, just so that I didn't have to deal with the fact that they were avoiding me. I'd wake up at 6:50 in the morning before any of them so that I could go to the bathroom and get my breakfast. Then go back to bed for an hour before I got dressed and went to college. Then I stopped cooking meals at home and started eating out all of the time. Go to a friend's house directly after college, until some days I'd leave the house at 8 in the morning and wouldn't get home until 1 am that night. This way, I think, I might have gone through a three week period without seeing any of my housemates.
Suited me fine and I'm sure they were chuffed; and because of the situation I stopped being a stay home kind of person. I got to know my next door neighbours for a while (a house full of girls, ironically) and spent a lot of time in the weird chemistry of another friend's flat and I mostly had a great year. And at least the bills were always paid on time.
As I leaned on the wall and worked my way through the raspberry muffin I'd bought at Starbucks, looking this house, I began to understand why I'd taken this trip. Even after all these years when I remembered some of things which had happened in that house I think I'd built them up to be more important that they actually were. I looked at the concrete stairs up to the front door and thought about a Friday night early on that year when I hadn't made any friends in the area yet, didn't have anyone to go out with and had just sat there drinking a cup of tea, lonely as sin. But that was just one night.
I hadn't ever walked from this house to the next. I knew roughly how they related geographically so I just plodded in that general direction. By now I was talking to my friend Chris on the phone and I was paying more attention to him than where I was going and whether that was a help I'm not sure but miraculously I stumbled upon the final house.
38 Harold Walk. I looked at this place almost without any emotion. Another terraced house, this time on the end. Dirty red brick. Rust stains on the wall from drainpipes. This was slightly different to the house I'd left seven years ago. One of the downstairs windows has metal bars across it. This had been the most vulnerable place in the house and I was pleased that this landlord had finally taken steps.
It had been entirely different to the previous year. My housemates were perfectly rational human beings and I got on with most of them very well. It helped that there was another man about the house as well as three other girls, so I had somewhere to go when the periods started. We all had our own lives but we also went out together. I cared about them and like them a lot. I bonded particularly with one of the girls who was half-Tai. She was charming and funny and we went places together and she eventually fell for a Frenchman. One of the happiest times was when my housemates took me out for a meal on my twenty-first birthday, being plied with white cider before hand and asking one of my companions if the restauranr was supposed to be spinning around.
But the house was perpetually a tip and the bills were never paid on time. And somewhere along the line the bonds between the housemates which had been so strong towards the start of the year started to drift apart. Ironically, in comparison to my time in the previous house, everyone else started going elsewhere a lot more, sleeping overnight at boyfriends or girlfriends places instead. Somewhere along the line I followed (going out a lot more I mean). But I was still able to talk to them individually even if they couldn't talk to each other. I don't really remember the end of that year. I remember passing on my address to the guy because he had his name on the bills and I wanted him to get in touch with what I owed. I'm sure I must have said goodbye to the rest of them, but I can't see the details.
I wasn't at Harold Walk for very long yesterday. The area seemed rougher than I remembered and I wanted to go quite quickly. I headed up to the cafes of Hyde Park Corner and walked into the city centre. To some extent it all felt anti-climactic. In my head I suppose I thought I'd been recreating the scene in Mike Leigh's Career Girls when they met their old housemate sitting on the step. Had I imagined seeing my Tai friend in the area trying to recreate the one time she'd been happy. Or that I'd feel some kind of closure, the violins playing as I drifted off into the distance?
Neither happened. I went into town and met a friend who I'd worked for in my student job at the time and we went for a meal. We talked about old times and the future. And since she was one of the few people who had been a constant outside of any of the houses, been a real support at times when it had all gone to crap, it seemed right she should be there at the end of this day of nostalgia. She reminded me that my time at University wasn't about the houses or the homes. It was about the people who had been there with me.
[Acknowledgements to Mike Leigh and Vicki who made a similar journey earlier in the year and inspired me to do the same]
I began university living in halls on Beckett Park. Think Dead Poets Society. Think Georgian red brick building in the middle of the countryside. Think self-enclosed campus where you could spend a whole week and never leave, everything to hand. I was in Macauley Hall, and I probably had much the same experiences as anyone else. Fell for the wrong people, said the wrong words at the wrong time, did all the wrong things. Good times. I knew that the place had stopped being a student hall two years after I left. The university lacked offices, administration and classrooms and they would be cheaper to run anyway. So now it was the Faculty of International Studies.
I was nervous as I walked up the hill towards the campus. Some of this came from a fear of being caught trespassing. There weren't any security gates and theoretically any member of the public could walk in. But I kept having visions of someone asking for I.D. and when none was forthcoming being frog marched off the premises.
But I relaxed slightly as I approached the hall. The building hadn't totally changed. The muddy brick on the walls had been sandblasted at some point and now had a slight artificially modern look. The ad-hoc gravel car park had been replaced with tarmac. I stood outside and glanced up at the window were my room had been. One wall had a bookshelf with folders on. I stepped up to the back entrance, pressed a green button and the doors opened for me. In front was a sign asking all visitors to report to reception. I walked past this and up the stairwell. Concrete had been replaced by royal blue carpet throughout. All of the walls had gone from the dark yellow I remember to a dark sky blue. I entered my floor and was disconcerted to find that there were far less doorways than before. The building had been a hospital originally, and the student rooms created from a partitioning of a ward. The walls that I'd known had been taken out and recreated for the new usage, so my room door no longer existed. No number 26 any longer. But I stood in front anyway and looked at the panoramic picture of Singapore which hung in its place.
I remembered sitting in the doorway of the room reading, with lunch sometimes. I'd once seen a advertisement in which a girl had sat on a windowsill drinking a Coke watching the world go by and it had been my version of that. Sometimes it had meant I was like Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) trying to comprehend the main action as it passed me by. I remembered the time there had been an electricity blackout one night and the few of us who had been left in the building had sat in the hallway gathered around some candles talking and waiting for the lights to go back on. I remembered the series of signs some of us had for our door which directed visitors to whoever's room we were actually in at the time.
I was a bit of a traveller in the hall. After the initial week when everyone was friends with everyone else, various groups of people drifted together based on mutual interests. I wasn't exclusive. I was still friends with a lot of different people and I loved that. If I'd been less safe with my finances and even less kooky in my choice of beverage (tee total fresher - such a waste) I probably could have been out with different sets of people on lots of different nights. I remember being well liked by some of the people some of the time. I'd help some international students with their English; I'd help others with their relationships. In terms of connecting with people it happened more here than at any time since. Given the chance I can work really well in groups.
I strolled around the rest of the campus taking in the differences and similarities. The student union had changed. It was more - idiosyncratic. Far more rooms and bars and shops and cafes. The little bank which had been so handy while I was there had gone, replaced with counseling rooms serving the mind rather than the pocket. I thought about having lunch in the main cafeteria but didn't want to push my luck so I bought a couple of bottles of water in the shop instead. There were more computers in the main campus library and they seemed faster than the old machines I'd used all those years ago to look at the old Empire Magazine website. Like the union, the same departments and sections were there, they'd just been moved about. The ongoing improvement programme which had begun while I was there was still in place, with incomplete corridors and scaffolding. Some projects are probably never meant to be finished. There is a bus stop outside the library now and a regular service into the city centre. I winced as I remember the number of times I'd walked the long walk up the hill to my room with bags of shopping.
The walk I made to the next house was the same route I would have taken from lectures to my house at the end of the day. It meant I could visit Headingley 'centre'. When I'd gotten off the bus earlier I'd been amazed at how Raj Putts, the Kebab shop I'd visited at 3 in the morning once for a salad pitta was still there. The rest of the town was mix of the old and new. More charity shops. The local Safeway had gone from having uniform shopping isles to a more adhock feel similar to a service station. The KFC was just the same. But then I entered unknown territory as I found a Subway and a Starbucks, and a fabulously relaxed Oxfam bookshop all couches and coffee tables.
Then I got lost. Or rather I forgot were 69 Richmond Avenue was. Somewhere along the line I'd developed the idea that it wasn't directly off the main road, took the wrong turn and ended up walking manically through the back streets looking around furtively for something, anything familiar. Then I remembered that ironically I'd done exactly the same thing the first time. I stopped, asked someone for directions and ten minutes later I was standing front of the second house on the tour.
It hadn't changed at all. An old Victorian terraces house perched precariously on a cliff-steep hill, three floors in crimson red brick. It shouldn't have developed. That would require the landlords to care about properties it rented out to students. But I hadn't been quite so prepared for how close it was. My barn-sized room had been on the bottom floor and there had been a small hole in the corner of one of the bay windows. It was still there. The landlords had done nothing to repair the house and that seemed right somehow.
I didn't get on with my housemates, or rather they didn't like me. Three southern girls who thought they were royalty, one northern girl who aspired to be royalty, and me who couldn't care less. They'd seemed perfectly nice when I'd been to see the house with them. But when I visited the place during the summer to do some work as a cleaner at Headingley Cricket Ground during one of the tests something wasn't right. On the first night, although they were all there and they knew I was coming, when I dropped my bags in my room and went to warm myself in the kitchen, none of them came down to say hello. I shouted up a greeting, but I could just hear them talking. A bit later one of them came down to get some milk. I think she said hello but she didn't say much else.
A friend invited himself over for some of the cricket cleaning coin. When we returned on the last night of work my new housemates were waiting for us (having ignored our presence for the previous four days). This plastic shelving thing in the bathroom had collapsed and evidently they thought we'd done it. They demanded to know why we hadn't cleaned it up and what we were going to do. When I denied anything had happened they just deafened themselves through all of my questions as to why they had been ignoring me until eventually I swore at them. They swore back and so the pattern emerged for the rest of my time in that house.
I was essentially living in a bedsit with four other people. But it didn't ever feel like home. Not in the way my room in halls had. I was like a lodger in my own house, an interloper. A stranger to my own housemates. I'd leave my room and suddenly their uninteresting conversations would stop. I would go into the kitchen and they would leave - and not subtly - once, they literally got up and left. They had the upstairs rooms and like mice I'd hear them creeping about. Whenever I saw them around campus, even if it was a corridor in the library without anyone else about, they would pretend they didn't know me. I wasn't welcome in their lives and they were being pathological about it.
At some point I started to avoid them, just so that I didn't have to deal with the fact that they were avoiding me. I'd wake up at 6:50 in the morning before any of them so that I could go to the bathroom and get my breakfast. Then go back to bed for an hour before I got dressed and went to college. Then I stopped cooking meals at home and started eating out all of the time. Go to a friend's house directly after college, until some days I'd leave the house at 8 in the morning and wouldn't get home until 1 am that night. This way, I think, I might have gone through a three week period without seeing any of my housemates.
Suited me fine and I'm sure they were chuffed; and because of the situation I stopped being a stay home kind of person. I got to know my next door neighbours for a while (a house full of girls, ironically) and spent a lot of time in the weird chemistry of another friend's flat and I mostly had a great year. And at least the bills were always paid on time.
As I leaned on the wall and worked my way through the raspberry muffin I'd bought at Starbucks, looking this house, I began to understand why I'd taken this trip. Even after all these years when I remembered some of things which had happened in that house I think I'd built them up to be more important that they actually were. I looked at the concrete stairs up to the front door and thought about a Friday night early on that year when I hadn't made any friends in the area yet, didn't have anyone to go out with and had just sat there drinking a cup of tea, lonely as sin. But that was just one night.
I hadn't ever walked from this house to the next. I knew roughly how they related geographically so I just plodded in that general direction. By now I was talking to my friend Chris on the phone and I was paying more attention to him than where I was going and whether that was a help I'm not sure but miraculously I stumbled upon the final house.
38 Harold Walk. I looked at this place almost without any emotion. Another terraced house, this time on the end. Dirty red brick. Rust stains on the wall from drainpipes. This was slightly different to the house I'd left seven years ago. One of the downstairs windows has metal bars across it. This had been the most vulnerable place in the house and I was pleased that this landlord had finally taken steps.
It had been entirely different to the previous year. My housemates were perfectly rational human beings and I got on with most of them very well. It helped that there was another man about the house as well as three other girls, so I had somewhere to go when the periods started. We all had our own lives but we also went out together. I cared about them and like them a lot. I bonded particularly with one of the girls who was half-Tai. She was charming and funny and we went places together and she eventually fell for a Frenchman. One of the happiest times was when my housemates took me out for a meal on my twenty-first birthday, being plied with white cider before hand and asking one of my companions if the restauranr was supposed to be spinning around.
But the house was perpetually a tip and the bills were never paid on time. And somewhere along the line the bonds between the housemates which had been so strong towards the start of the year started to drift apart. Ironically, in comparison to my time in the previous house, everyone else started going elsewhere a lot more, sleeping overnight at boyfriends or girlfriends places instead. Somewhere along the line I followed (going out a lot more I mean). But I was still able to talk to them individually even if they couldn't talk to each other. I don't really remember the end of that year. I remember passing on my address to the guy because he had his name on the bills and I wanted him to get in touch with what I owed. I'm sure I must have said goodbye to the rest of them, but I can't see the details.
I wasn't at Harold Walk for very long yesterday. The area seemed rougher than I remembered and I wanted to go quite quickly. I headed up to the cafes of Hyde Park Corner and walked into the city centre. To some extent it all felt anti-climactic. In my head I suppose I thought I'd been recreating the scene in Mike Leigh's Career Girls when they met their old housemate sitting on the step. Had I imagined seeing my Tai friend in the area trying to recreate the one time she'd been happy. Or that I'd feel some kind of closure, the violins playing as I drifted off into the distance?
Neither happened. I went into town and met a friend who I'd worked for in my student job at the time and we went for a meal. We talked about old times and the future. And since she was one of the few people who had been a constant outside of any of the houses, been a real support at times when it had all gone to crap, it seemed right she should be there at the end of this day of nostalgia. She reminded me that my time at University wasn't about the houses or the homes. It was about the people who had been there with me.
[Acknowledgements to Mike Leigh and Vicki who made a similar journey earlier in the year and inspired me to do the same]
Life My feet hurt. Having remembered to pack my camera I find it isn't working (so my descriptive skills are going to be tested to the limit when I get back. But this has been very, very theraputic so far. Everyone should visit their student town again if they can. You'll be surprised how many ghosts you can lay to rest.
Life Now that it is ten years since I started university, I'm going to 'celebrate' by visiting Leeds over the next couple of days to see if anything has really changed. Which reminds me to pack my camera and some film. When I rang to book a room, the clerk remarked that I have the same name as the proprieter of the hotel. For some reason this fills me with forboding. It is going to be an interesting trip.
Film This piece from The Wave Magazine is a primer for people in the Bay Area of San Francisco to help them decide what to do on my birthday. Which is pretty pointless if you're out of the area. But I'm more interested in the sidebar which lists five scary Halloween films. Number 2 is The Karate Kid....
"... a horrifying tale about a boy who gets forced into slave labour by an evil martial arts guru. Despite having the most clever costume at the party (or, perhaps, because of it), Ralph Macchio gets his shower curtain-covered ass handed to him in a scene that will scare the high holy crap out of every kid with a single mom.It's a while since a film actually scared me. Or rather disturbed me rather than make me jump -- a slightly different effect. I tend to be horrified by images. At University I saw a photograph in a Life Magazine portfolio entitled 'The Odyssey of Pain', which consisted of a young man strapped to a wooden chair, as two old men used electrodes to administer an electrical current to various parts of his body to see where the pain would go, the word odyssey suggesting that this was some voyage of discover the chap was on. The look on his face as the fear pulsed through a face which was trying to show utter placidity haunts me. Just be glad that I couldn't find a copy on-line.
TV The TV CREAM Guide to Television Presenters - from the pages of Creamguide!. Enough said really. Just click in and enjoy. Love the orangy colour scheme.
Games "Everything written here was actually said by these kids. Really. The only change we made was to remove the more gratuitous usages of the word 'gay'." I read a story the other day about how a bunch of eight year olds turned up a signing for a Doctor Who merchandising whatnot and there were a couple of Daleks in attendence. Apparently the once scurges of the universe were harranged by the kids for five minutes, the nicest of comments being: "You're rubbish." This is of course the saddest thing in the world.
Or it was because this article is sadder. Electronic Gaming Monthly asked a group of teenies to experience the awe and mystery of a series of classic computer games in their original format to see if they still had that magical effect they had on all of us growing up. Here is Tim's review of Space Invaders:
Actually, this article is somewhat skewed because they've thrown in some games which are possibly genuinely 'gay'. Suspect movie license ET on the Atari 2600 is in there. And I never really understood the Pong attraction. I suspect the reaction was based on a similar emotional level to the audience who ran out of that cinema when they were shown a short silent movie of a train coming towards them, but ran back in again to see it over and over. It was something interactive, on a tv screen people could play together.
I think the last comment says more about how kids don't fully appreciate the passage of time, and is also a commentary of how technology has moved on. Kirk says, "I'm sure
everyone who made this game is dead by now." [via B3ta]
Or it was because this article is sadder. Electronic Gaming Monthly asked a group of teenies to experience the awe and mystery of a series of classic computer games in their original format to see if they still had that magical effect they had on all of us growing up. Here is Tim's review of Space Invaders:
"This is nothing compared to Grand Theft Auto III, because you can't steal a taxi cab, pick up somebody, then drive into the ocean with him."Which is true of course. And, well, yes, technology has moved on. But pardon me for being a gaming luddite but I tend to find the vast majority of new games deeply unsatisfying for the simple reason that they tend to be so massively complicated. In trying to replicate a so-called real world situation or feeling they seem to lack that sense of achievement when you've actually beaten something.
Actually, this article is somewhat skewed because they've thrown in some games which are possibly genuinely 'gay'. Suspect movie license ET on the Atari 2600 is in there. And I never really understood the Pong attraction. I suspect the reaction was based on a similar emotional level to the audience who ran out of that cinema when they were shown a short silent movie of a train coming towards them, but ran back in again to see it over and over. It was something interactive, on a tv screen people could play together.
I think the last comment says more about how kids don't fully appreciate the passage of time, and is also a commentary of how technology has moved on. Kirk says, "I'm sure
everyone who made this game is dead by now." [via B3ta]
Life Nothing odder than leaving work at 10pm. Odder still that it's my last day before my annual birthday week off (you mean people out there choose to work on their birthday?). With work over I feel relaxed, weight lifted off the shoulders. I think the issue most of us have with work is how if we aren't careful it restricts our freedom. We get up at the same time every morning, so that we can get the same mode of transport into work at the same time. Then leave work so that we can eat tea at the usual time and go to bed at such and such an hour so that we can get enough sleep to we aren't tired the following morning for the inevitable repeat. For me at least, holidays (or vacations) are about changing the routine. Getting up when you like, doing what you want, when you want. And to be able to do that on my birthday is bliss.
TV Memorable TV themes is a short but interesting rumination. Blissfully it mentions W. Snuffy Walden who along with Mike Post writes the best in the business. I haven't seen thirtysomething in years but I know Walden's tie-in CD inside out. What's your favourite TV theme?
Life Somewhere along the line I decided I could write literature (actually about six months after the English classes I talked about the other day -- thanks for all your kind words -- as I said to Vicky I had meant that post to be a light hearted look back at my English classes -- a humourous examination of my failures. Whether it was because it was late, or I'd been working until ten that night (and all week) it all got a bit dark. I really don't dwell on it though. It only ever comes up when I'm updating my CV and try to justify having only one A-Level).
It was only a short phase of about three years and I grew out of it. But the following was one of the products. It did actually happens, as you'd expect, mostly as it's described, although I spoke to the graduate and didn't actually indulge in the mind-reading which appears to take place in here. I can't remember what 'rubbish' was playing, but I'm sure it was probably The Prodigy. I really hated them....
-----> He sweated everywhere. Jeans, T-shirt, Jacket all wet with the salty liquid, soggy with no clear way of drying himself out in this atmosphere, humid and steamy. The bench at the edge of the makeshift dance floor was low and uncomfortable. His knees were in front him, higher than his waist, his hands resting on them, his feet tapping in time with the drum-ridden rubbish that was being played, rubbish which had been in the music chart at sometime. Although not a drink had passed his lips all night, he couldn't think straight. He was tired, excited and jealous all at the same time.
Next to him, a guy in thick rimmed spectacles was comparing tongue length with a half- burned blonde. His eyes were closed, as though he didn't want to realise that she was only kissing him between sips of lager and puffs of a half burnt cigarette, both of which she held with the hand that wasn't making the lonely dance under the T-Shirt of her 'stand' for the evening. It was a compelling sight. The other side, a woman a few years older than him, in a large, floppy maroon hat, seemed as bored as he was as she glanced at her watch. It was close to midnight. This was her celebration after graduation, but the friend she had come with had disappeared into the crowd with an ex- boyfriend. He thought better of striking up a conversation - the idea of screaming some half-hearted questions about courses over the loudspeaker which hovered above them, wasn't very appealing. He continued to sit and sweat.
Cigarette smoke wafted through the air, mixing with the fibres of his clothing. He thought of the launderette visit which would follow on the Monday, and the owner, who sat strangely, in the shadows, making dribbling noises occasionally. Unknown to him, the graduate had also been there once and a faulty machine had eaten her favourite leggings. Which why she was wearing odd ones tonight - pink and black, green and yellow, they clashed desperately, but worked - somehow.
She got up and disappeared into the dancing mass, as did the tonsil twins, still joined at the mouth. He waited hopefully for some Rock. He could Mosh very well, but anything would be better than this hell on vinyl which was making his heart beat irregularly. He crossed his legs, closed his eyes and placed his head on the wall of the stage. He was going to ride this out.
When he opened them, time seemed to have stopped, all movement being held stationary, apart from one thing. Just in front of, glazed in blue light, danced an apparition. Her body seemed to become the source of the music, not just ebbing and flowing with it. Nothing about her was that different from her fellow dancers. She was quite short - shoulder length brown hair. A stripy-blue tank top extenuated a ... generous figure. Though he was all too aware of her, she was only aware of the music - her feet sliding her across the dance floor, until the world she lived in eclipsed a party light.
It felt uncomfortable and excited. He knew he was staring, but his eyes would not leave her. What was she thinking? What memories were hidden under the hair which was hovering above and rapidly covering her whole face. He ran his fingers through the strands on his head and she repeated the action.
The drums ended, the synthesizers died. Time began again. The small pocket of reality she occupied that he had invaded disappeared. She smiled at some at some friends at the other side of the hall and disappeared into the crowd. He smiled broadly and stood up to rejoin his friends, who were crashing into each other drunkenly on the other side of the hall. He tried to join in, but it was only half-heartedly. The reality he had just experienced, which he had not asked for was infinitely better than the reality had chosen. <------
It was only a short phase of about three years and I grew out of it. But the following was one of the products. It did actually happens, as you'd expect, mostly as it's described, although I spoke to the graduate and didn't actually indulge in the mind-reading which appears to take place in here. I can't remember what 'rubbish' was playing, but I'm sure it was probably The Prodigy. I really hated them....
-----> He sweated everywhere. Jeans, T-shirt, Jacket all wet with the salty liquid, soggy with no clear way of drying himself out in this atmosphere, humid and steamy. The bench at the edge of the makeshift dance floor was low and uncomfortable. His knees were in front him, higher than his waist, his hands resting on them, his feet tapping in time with the drum-ridden rubbish that was being played, rubbish which had been in the music chart at sometime. Although not a drink had passed his lips all night, he couldn't think straight. He was tired, excited and jealous all at the same time.
Next to him, a guy in thick rimmed spectacles was comparing tongue length with a half- burned blonde. His eyes were closed, as though he didn't want to realise that she was only kissing him between sips of lager and puffs of a half burnt cigarette, both of which she held with the hand that wasn't making the lonely dance under the T-Shirt of her 'stand' for the evening. It was a compelling sight. The other side, a woman a few years older than him, in a large, floppy maroon hat, seemed as bored as he was as she glanced at her watch. It was close to midnight. This was her celebration after graduation, but the friend she had come with had disappeared into the crowd with an ex- boyfriend. He thought better of striking up a conversation - the idea of screaming some half-hearted questions about courses over the loudspeaker which hovered above them, wasn't very appealing. He continued to sit and sweat.
Cigarette smoke wafted through the air, mixing with the fibres of his clothing. He thought of the launderette visit which would follow on the Monday, and the owner, who sat strangely, in the shadows, making dribbling noises occasionally. Unknown to him, the graduate had also been there once and a faulty machine had eaten her favourite leggings. Which why she was wearing odd ones tonight - pink and black, green and yellow, they clashed desperately, but worked - somehow.
She got up and disappeared into the dancing mass, as did the tonsil twins, still joined at the mouth. He waited hopefully for some Rock. He could Mosh very well, but anything would be better than this hell on vinyl which was making his heart beat irregularly. He crossed his legs, closed his eyes and placed his head on the wall of the stage. He was going to ride this out.
When he opened them, time seemed to have stopped, all movement being held stationary, apart from one thing. Just in front of, glazed in blue light, danced an apparition. Her body seemed to become the source of the music, not just ebbing and flowing with it. Nothing about her was that different from her fellow dancers. She was quite short - shoulder length brown hair. A stripy-blue tank top extenuated a ... generous figure. Though he was all too aware of her, she was only aware of the music - her feet sliding her across the dance floor, until the world she lived in eclipsed a party light.
It felt uncomfortable and excited. He knew he was staring, but his eyes would not leave her. What was she thinking? What memories were hidden under the hair which was hovering above and rapidly covering her whole face. He ran his fingers through the strands on his head and she repeated the action.
The drums ended, the synthesizers died. Time began again. The small pocket of reality she occupied that he had invaded disappeared. She smiled at some at some friends at the other side of the hall and disappeared into the crowd. He smiled broadly and stood up to rejoin his friends, who were crashing into each other drunkenly on the other side of the hall. He tried to join in, but it was only half-heartedly. The reality he had just experienced, which he had not asked for was infinitely better than the reality had chosen. <------
Music Earth revolves around the sun. Mutya and Keisha of The Sugababes aren't getting on with Heidi ... even though they stress they are. Hopefully Heidi have to go all the way to Japan like Siobhan Donaghy did when it all comes tumbling down. It's the sound of history repeating.
Life I failed my English Literature A-Level which meant I got into university on a wing and a prayer. Unlike other pupils in other parts of the country, two years worth of work rested on a couple of three hour exams in which I couldn't take the set texts in. Now I'm not saying that was any excuse not for getting a grade, but it did make it a bit tricky.
In the recent move and subsequent life laundry, all kinds of artifacts have appeared, and that includes the essays I slogged away at over the two years of study which led up to the drivel I evidently spewed out on those fateful mornings in June 1993. I thought I was quite good at them towards the end, and it's true there are some good teachers comments. But most are just a catalogue of my failures, as usual. For your edification I present them here. To gain extra marks see how many reflect the weblog as well.
But here is the paradox. I loved the books themselves. I still do. I can still remember sections of them and have copies on my shelf. Milton's description (in Paradise Lost of the fall of man (and woman) is one of the most erotic scenes I've ever read. I'll also not forget the scene in Othello when Iago talks The Moor into believing something which flimsy evidence would easily prove to be false.
I wasn't that academic. At no point in my school career did we have a general class which taught essay writing. The idea was that we would gain the skill through practice. But the size of some of the classes meant that some of us didn't get the attention we needed until very late in the day. Although in some cases (but not all) the teaching tended to be very dry -- in one teacher's classes I would utterly blank out every week. The only times I could pay attention was during the moments when we would read the thing out loud, and I got to act out scenes with some girl I had a crush on.
So it was actually touch and go as to whether I'd even complete my A-Levels at all. And this was a good school and on the other hand I was a prefect. I was caught in what could quite comfortably described as a Rushmore Syndrome, and I was Max.
But I did buck my ideas up, and in my last year at school the essays really did get better. I began to type them on an old electric typewriter (which built in Tipp-Ex corrector) and glancing through them now they flow much better. Maybe if the final mark had beens based on coursework as well as exams (as is now the case) I might have fought my way up to a D or even a C.
I'm dredging all this up now, because The Big Read list is out and looking at it I feel like I've wasted my life reading wise. I've read precisely one book on the list and it's a novelisation of a radio series. When I was reading tie-in novels I could have been absorbing good narratives, increasing my vocabulary and improving my writing style. Time then to make up lost time and The Big Read list seems to offer the perfect structure (skipping Archer of course).
Ideas in the comments box, please, for where I should begin...
In the recent move and subsequent life laundry, all kinds of artifacts have appeared, and that includes the essays I slogged away at over the two years of study which led up to the drivel I evidently spewed out on those fateful mornings in June 1993. I thought I was quite good at them towards the end, and it's true there are some good teachers comments. But most are just a catalogue of my failures, as usual. For your edification I present them here. To gain extra marks see how many reflect the weblog as well.
"Doesn't answer the question...Looking through it's fairly obvious which essays I took time over and which I didn't. Frankly if was given some of the garbage I handed in then to mark now I would have given it and automatic D as well.
Get a dictionary and use it!
Weak effort
Some good points but not really rigorous enough
Your handwriting is 'orrible!
Passable -- grasps some of the main ideas . Style is quiet well realised. Don't make idiotic spelling mistakes.
Some good points - but:
(1) Very hard to read
(2) Too much storytelling
(3) Too many general comments
A reasonable survey - though some ideas seem misunderstood, you discuss a wide range of ideas
Too often difficult to follow your train of thought. Concentrate on clear expression.
Contrast of styles
Some valid points, but also some waffle. You must read widely to improve your essay style.
Some misunderstandings and some clumsy passages, but this is a workman like attempt. You need not follow the chronological order of the book.
Do try and stick to the point using a plaid (unreadable word) style
Some fairly serious misunderstandings - make sure you fully grasp the meaning of the poem. Don't make idiotic, basic spelling mistakes.
Barely begins to answer the question
Sketchy, unfocused
Some promising comments
Style improving - watch for careless errors
Hints at some understanding, but mainly shallow and wrongheaded.
Lacking a final coherence but clear in outline
Far too short and generalised. You must go into greater detail.
Weak on the poems
Weak on text
And finally -- the only F I got in a sea of Es and Ds:
This is a thoroughly feedle attention in class. See me at the end.
But here is the paradox. I loved the books themselves. I still do. I can still remember sections of them and have copies on my shelf. Milton's description (in Paradise Lost of the fall of man (and woman) is one of the most erotic scenes I've ever read. I'll also not forget the scene in Othello when Iago talks The Moor into believing something which flimsy evidence would easily prove to be false.
I wasn't that academic. At no point in my school career did we have a general class which taught essay writing. The idea was that we would gain the skill through practice. But the size of some of the classes meant that some of us didn't get the attention we needed until very late in the day. Although in some cases (but not all) the teaching tended to be very dry -- in one teacher's classes I would utterly blank out every week. The only times I could pay attention was during the moments when we would read the thing out loud, and I got to act out scenes with some girl I had a crush on.
So it was actually touch and go as to whether I'd even complete my A-Levels at all. And this was a good school and on the other hand I was a prefect. I was caught in what could quite comfortably described as a Rushmore Syndrome, and I was Max.
But I did buck my ideas up, and in my last year at school the essays really did get better. I began to type them on an old electric typewriter (which built in Tipp-Ex corrector) and glancing through them now they flow much better. Maybe if the final mark had beens based on coursework as well as exams (as is now the case) I might have fought my way up to a D or even a C.
I'm dredging all this up now, because The Big Read list is out and looking at it I feel like I've wasted my life reading wise. I've read precisely one book on the list and it's a novelisation of a radio series. When I was reading tie-in novels I could have been absorbing good narratives, increasing my vocabulary and improving my writing style. Time then to make up lost time and The Big Read list seems to offer the perfect structure (skipping Archer of course).
Ideas in the comments box, please, for where I should begin...
Managerie
Alchemists of Sound
A documentary about the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, composers of music for Doctor Who, Blakes Seven and The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy amongst others. TV show on the BBC4 next week for anyone interested. Interesting interview here of the modern embodiment Mark Ayres.
Verisign redirection to return
After the stink it caused last time? Isn't this another example of a company using insider technology to monopolise a thriving market and reduce consumer choice?
Prince of Persia Flash Version
Never played this (using a Commodore 64 when it was originally released and the eventual conversion was a staggeringly poor). Feels like a 2D Tomb Raider. Warning -- it's a pop-up -- hold down shift key if you're a Google Toolbar user. Downloads very quickly though.
Indiana Jones Boxset IGN Review
Probably the most comprehensive review around. Extraordinarily technical in places. Looking forward to this ...
Me @ The Collective
Crikey -- my review of The Internet @ McDonalds has been highlighted on The Collectives Near You page. Best go in and correct the spelling of Wunderkind -- that'll teach me to use words when I don't know what they mean.
Alchemists of Sound
A documentary about the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, composers of music for Doctor Who, Blakes Seven and The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy amongst others. TV show on the BBC4 next week for anyone interested. Interesting interview here of the modern embodiment Mark Ayres.
Verisign redirection to return
After the stink it caused last time? Isn't this another example of a company using insider technology to monopolise a thriving market and reduce consumer choice?
Prince of Persia Flash Version
Never played this (using a Commodore 64 when it was originally released and the eventual conversion was a staggeringly poor). Feels like a 2D Tomb Raider. Warning -- it's a pop-up -- hold down shift key if you're a Google Toolbar user. Downloads very quickly though.
Indiana Jones Boxset IGN Review
Probably the most comprehensive review around. Extraordinarily technical in places. Looking forward to this ...
Me @ The Collective
Crikey -- my review of The Internet @ McDonalds has been highlighted on The Collectives Near You page. Best go in and correct the spelling of Wunderkind -- that'll teach me to use words when I don't know what they mean.
Life At ten past six this evening I was standing in a bar taking a group photograph of twenty Chinese business people.
For the first time in a while I'd gone to the FACT centre for a film double bill. After glancing through the choices for the six o'clock showings, I decided that instead of the dialogue free French animation and the gritty New York drama on offer I would attend a seminar about the interaction between Detective Fiction and Fine Art. Which is another story. Anyway the thing doesn't start until 6:30 so I decide to get a coffee in the Mezzanine bar.
FACT has a massive entrance hall and it's filled with the sound of Chinese music, although it's slightly westernized. Or rather they're using the instruments they have to play the theme from The Visit, that documentary series with Desmond Morris. As I approach the main stairwell I realize that it's heaving in the bar area. But I decide to go anyway. I was determined in fact (pardon the pun).
When I get up there, it's filled with Chinese people, all in suites and power dress, attending what I later find out is a party to mark the start of a Chinese Film Festival. There is a channel through to the bar, so I approach order a cappuccino and wait while the barperson spills the froth all over her trousers and the floor. The only couch available has a very low coffee table next to it, but I sit down anyway, to soak in the admittedly pleasant music and read my magazine and wait.
I've been there about ten minutes and it occurs to me that all the throng seem to be doing is taking pictures of each other. Just each other. Not of themselves within the fabulous architecture which surrounds them. Each to his own I think though. Until I get a tap on the shoulder.
"Can you take our photo?"
She's cute and I'm a dork, so I agree, thinking it'll be her and a friend. So I stand and readily take her camera asking the usual question: "Just press the button?"
Then I look up and realize that people are massing at the bar and they're all looking towards me and the camera. It's a group photo. The cute girl looks at me apologetically, "There is a very important visitor…" Because time is pressing, I illogically take this as a perfectly reasonable explaination.
I look through the digitalviewscreenfinderwhatever on the back and they aren't all fitting in. I look down. Two more cameras have appeared on the couch in front of me. The cute girl is still smiling at me.
So I start making hand gestures trying to get people to bunch together.
"I can't fit you all in." I say loudly.
The other problem is that whenever they're all ready someone appears from the side to shake hands with one of them, turns around, notices me, then decides to join the photo. Which means everyone has to re-arrange themselves.
Eventually, five minutes later. They're ready. I can't help myself.
"Say cheese!" I shout.
Twenty very important looking Chinese business people including the very important visitor say: "Cheese!"
Click. I think it was straight.
I pick up the next camera, hoping to rattle them off. But the digitalviewscreenfinderwhatever on the back of this one is off. I hold the camera up. "Erm… I can't see through the .. um. …"
"Just press the button." One of them shouts.
"I can't. The thingy…"
The owner of camera steps forward to show me … and the group start moving about and chatting. "It's in sleep mode." He says. I nod as though this is also perfectly normal. And now I'm back were I started, gesturing.
"Are you ready?" I shout.
They all turn around and look at me.
"Ok." I say.
Click.
I grab the next camera as quick as I can. It's a traditional camera with a proper view finder. I look through. I can only see two heads. Dilemma. Do I take it anyway and hope that someone emails one of the first two almost identical digital pictures to them? No. Like it matters, I step backwards far enough so that they all fit in again. By now there are thirty people and they're stacked on top of one another like the team photos which appeared in Panini Football Sticker Albums.
Click.
The group disburses and I hand back the cameras. I sit down, and finish my coffee. Then I look up and notice the group are starting to get back together again. Out of the corner of my eye I notice the cute girl looking over at me again.
I get up. I walk out of the bar ...
For the first time in a while I'd gone to the FACT centre for a film double bill. After glancing through the choices for the six o'clock showings, I decided that instead of the dialogue free French animation and the gritty New York drama on offer I would attend a seminar about the interaction between Detective Fiction and Fine Art. Which is another story. Anyway the thing doesn't start until 6:30 so I decide to get a coffee in the Mezzanine bar.
FACT has a massive entrance hall and it's filled with the sound of Chinese music, although it's slightly westernized. Or rather they're using the instruments they have to play the theme from The Visit, that documentary series with Desmond Morris. As I approach the main stairwell I realize that it's heaving in the bar area. But I decide to go anyway. I was determined in fact (pardon the pun).
When I get up there, it's filled with Chinese people, all in suites and power dress, attending what I later find out is a party to mark the start of a Chinese Film Festival. There is a channel through to the bar, so I approach order a cappuccino and wait while the barperson spills the froth all over her trousers and the floor. The only couch available has a very low coffee table next to it, but I sit down anyway, to soak in the admittedly pleasant music and read my magazine and wait.
I've been there about ten minutes and it occurs to me that all the throng seem to be doing is taking pictures of each other. Just each other. Not of themselves within the fabulous architecture which surrounds them. Each to his own I think though. Until I get a tap on the shoulder.
"Can you take our photo?"
She's cute and I'm a dork, so I agree, thinking it'll be her and a friend. So I stand and readily take her camera asking the usual question: "Just press the button?"
Then I look up and realize that people are massing at the bar and they're all looking towards me and the camera. It's a group photo. The cute girl looks at me apologetically, "There is a very important visitor…" Because time is pressing, I illogically take this as a perfectly reasonable explaination.
I look through the digitalviewscreenfinderwhatever on the back and they aren't all fitting in. I look down. Two more cameras have appeared on the couch in front of me. The cute girl is still smiling at me.
So I start making hand gestures trying to get people to bunch together.
"I can't fit you all in." I say loudly.
The other problem is that whenever they're all ready someone appears from the side to shake hands with one of them, turns around, notices me, then decides to join the photo. Which means everyone has to re-arrange themselves.
Eventually, five minutes later. They're ready. I can't help myself.
"Say cheese!" I shout.
Twenty very important looking Chinese business people including the very important visitor say: "Cheese!"
Click. I think it was straight.
I pick up the next camera, hoping to rattle them off. But the digitalviewscreenfinderwhatever on the back of this one is off. I hold the camera up. "Erm… I can't see through the .. um. …"
"Just press the button." One of them shouts.
"I can't. The thingy…"
The owner of camera steps forward to show me … and the group start moving about and chatting. "It's in sleep mode." He says. I nod as though this is also perfectly normal. And now I'm back were I started, gesturing.
"Are you ready?" I shout.
They all turn around and look at me.
"Ok." I say.
Click.
I grab the next camera as quick as I can. It's a traditional camera with a proper view finder. I look through. I can only see two heads. Dilemma. Do I take it anyway and hope that someone emails one of the first two almost identical digital pictures to them? No. Like it matters, I step backwards far enough so that they all fit in again. By now there are thirty people and they're stacked on top of one another like the team photos which appeared in Panini Football Sticker Albums.
Click.
The group disburses and I hand back the cameras. I sit down, and finish my coffee. Then I look up and notice the group are starting to get back together again. Out of the corner of my eye I notice the cute girl looking over at me again.
I get up. I walk out of the bar ...
Linked! is a new catagory for people who have been kind enough to send a link my way. So hello Porfessor Wayne Berninger of the English Department, Long Island University, Brooklyn. Someone is reading my weblog in places that Scorcese, Allen and Lee have made films. Intriguing. The link is here.
Music The Onion A.V. Club interviews Randy Newman Here he talks about looking back at his old songs in retrospect:
"Well, you know, I was surprised at the consistency. Whether good or bad, there were no real jumps in quality or drop-offs that I could tell when I listened to it. Born Again is kind of an odd album, but they're not bad songs. I was surprised. There were things I wrote for the last record that could have been on 12 Songs. Maybe the last album is a little better. Things held up pretty well. There was nothing completely ridiculous."Nothing about the songs he wrote for Finding Nemo which weren't used. Hopefully they will eventually surface (pun intended).
Technology Just one dermatological layer away from becoming a cyborg:
"The female mannequin at iRobot?s headquarters in Burlington, MA, is fairly typical: tall and thin, with perfect features and fingernails painted claret red. But instead of designer clothes, she?s modeling combat fatigues and a camouflage vest with a 500-megahertz computer system embedded in it. An eyepiece is mounted over one eye, and she holds a joystick to control the accompanying PackBot, a small, tanklike robot recently deployed in military missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Reminds me somewhat of the 2000AD Magazine character Rogue Trooper.
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