"Ewan McGregor looked after me."

Life The Guardian's pulled together some of my favourite people to talk about their career firsts. For some reason I'd entirely blanked on Trainspotting being Kelly MacDonald's first film:

"Ewan McGregor looked after me. We had that quite intimate scene to do together. At every stage of the audition process, they'd told me there was a sex scene in the film. "Would you be OK with that?" "Yeah, of course!" But it didn't compute. It was only on the day of shooting that scene that I suddenly thought, "Oh shit, I've got to do this thing." I didn't want it to be a really gruelling, awful day, so I thought if I went for it 100% then I wouldn't have to keep doing it. But I was so naive that that was the day I got my mum and my brother to visit the set. How nuts is that?"

Perhaps in that case, when this happened, she was as nervous as I was.

The Opinion Engine 2.0:32/31:Despite the fact that bloggers claim to prefer anonymity, all blogs are intrinsically narcissistic - discuss.

Question asked by Franchesca Puehler.

About Before heading off into the psychoanalytical second half, it’s important to address the initial premise of the question, why bloggers claim to prefer anonymity. From my own experience, when this blog was very young, when even close friends didn’t even know what a blog was and my readership was practically zero, I felt much freer in my ability to write about myself.

That’s eroded over time as more people read the blog, especially people I know and although at first I attempted to misdirect and dissemble, now I simply send links to everything on my twitter feed and Facebook (both narcissistic media too) and try not get too personal It’s just simpler, if much harder.

Total anonymity is different, of course, because it increases the potential freedom even further because not even Google will make the connection (assuming you’re not using your Google account to post to Blogger).

Then you really do have the ability to say how you really feel and if you’re writing on a controversial topic still enjoy watching the feedback, perhaps even join in via a sock puppet.

In that case, anonymity is seductive.

This isn’t something I’ve ever done, but the few anonymous bloggers who’ve either outed themselves or been revealed against their will, have talked about the onrush of freedom it provides.

Which is the paradox.

You're much more open when you’re talking to no one, but blogging only becomes validated when it has a readership. Anonymous bloggers can retain a readership but a readership who don’t know who they are. We’re all narcissistic but in a sense it’s a narcissism which kills the very thing which fuels it.

It has been suggested to me that I should begin an anonymous blog if I really wanted to return to the past style, but my life is unfortunately far less interesting now and I enjoy the challenge of offering you something to look for between the lines, even if most of the time it is just white space.

But on reflection narcissism does provide a useful guide for when it’s about time to stop blogging, in other words if any of the following (seen at the Wikipedia and quoted from this citation) become true:

Positive: Narcissists think they are better than others.

Inflated: Narcissists' views tend to be contrary to reality. In measures that compare self-report to objective measures, narcissists' self-views tend to be greatly exaggerated.

Agentic: Narcissists’ views tend to be most exaggerated in the agentic domain, relative to the communion domain.

Special: Narcissists perceive themselves to be unique and special people.

Selfish: Research upon narcissists’ behaviour in resource dilemmas supports the case for narcissists as being selfish.

Oriented toward success: Narcissists are oriented towards success by being, for example, approach oriented.

Because arguably, now that I think about it, blogs are always at their most boring when they’re embracing these tendencies. Interesting.

Best give up now then.

"I always saw us having galleries in Liverpool, London, LA or wherever"

Art The Ceri Hand Gallery is soon to be moving from its base in Liverpool to the capital and Hand herself has given a useful interview to Double Negative:

"TDN: Why are you leaving? How are you feeling about it?

CH: I am in the middle of the experience, so it’s changing daily! On the whole, making the decision was the hardest thing. Now I have, I feel quite upbeat and matter of fact about it. We never had it planned… I always saw us having galleries in Liverpool, London, LA or wherever we thought best for our artists. However, we simply don’t have the resources currently to keep exporting our artists work to London and run our programme in Liverpooltoo. We aim to do ambitious shows, usually with big builds, so we didn’t want to scrimp on quality or do less in Liverpool, but we had to do something to increase visibility and sales for our artists, quickly.

It's easy for some us to forget that many of these independent venues are also businesses and have to go where the work can be sold. She mentions that the market has flattened somewhat here abouts which is certainly a concern.

the British Animation British Animation Awards screenings at FACT.

Plug! I've had an email from FACT Liverpool:

"Hi Stuart,

Just wanted to let you know about the British Animation British Animation Awards screenings at FACT. They take place on the 23, 24, and 25 Jan with a different programme of shorts being shown on each. They have always been really popular in the past and the audience is invited to rate each short on a scale of one to five.  I have attached the Press Release and here are a few links to some of the shorts."

Thanks. Excellent. Find below links to the videos and the fuller press release:

He probably had Virginia Madsen in mind when I was writing this.

Life  Putting Christmas decorations away the other day, I stumbled upon a bag of papers which had been bunged on a shelf during a clear out and completely forgotten about.  They're a mess of old GCSE and A-Level essays and scripts and other bits and bobs and I thought I'd embarrass myself or at least give myself a dose of perspective and post them up here in the coming weeks.

And so to the seventeen year old version of me in the first year of his A-Levels.  He's a lunchtime prefect in charge of the school computer room and has been studying John Donne for three months.  Both of these facts are the only way to account for the following attempt at metaphysical poetry using some kind of weird computer metaphor. He probably had Virginia Madsen in mind when he was writing this. 

Notice the dot-matrix printing.  If ink-jet had been invented then, the school certainly couldn't afford it.  He must have typed it in using 1st Word Plus running on one of the school's many Acorn Archimedes machines though goodness knows how he managed it without being spotted by one of kids in there playing the Lander demo.  Until he banned them for playing games.

ELECTRIC DREAMS

As I deliver mail around our offices

So your computer pulses, telling its circuits what to do.

And as your fingers caress the keyboard

I wonder if one day I'll do the same to you.

The emerald words upon the screen which

Contrast against the bold azure within your eyes

Are as hidden from me as the

Thoughts you hold within your mind.

The smile you gave me as I passed

Is stored within my memory for all time.

And the warmth of coffee upon my leg

Is like the verve I feel within my heart.

Your voice is all I can hear

As the carriage liaises with the page,

And so the tape spools through the cartridge,

Your words flow into my mind.

As a socket gives your computer the power to process

So your touch has made me electric.

And as we dance I feel more than your caress

I feel your love as well.

The register opens as you have

Opened your heart to me.

And as I am given just my change

I hope I will not take more than I should receive.

The touch of your lips against mine

Is like a turtle without a shell.
And so a hacker violates a network

Am I violating you?

Our language now is faster

Than that between any terminals,

Our thoughts being a database

Of all we need to know.

Stuart Burns L6A1.

[The first four lines of the final stanza are just awful though to be fair to him, he probably wasn't aware of the implications.  He'd led a very sheltered life, what with going to an all boys school.  Either that or he'd been reading the Donne a bit too well.  This Turtle would have been the source of the imagery.  See what I mean?]

"Romney is kind-of okay, in his Stepford Husband way"

Politics Elizabeth Wurtzel on Mitt Romney:

"I'm not sure why it occurs to no one that the GOP electorate might actually plain and simple like Mitt Romney. In fact, I hate the Republican party, I probably complain about Ronald Reagan in therapy more than I do about either of my parents, but I think Romney is kind-of okay, in his Stepford Husband way. I like Mitt Romney because, forgive me, he is what he is. Romney is simply this guy who is a last bastion of something old-fashioned and good in some ways: he has had a world-class education -- of which he should be very proud -- he's been civil and decent, he's been bipartisan and tolerant, and he's been spinning like an unhinged weathervane for so long he probably does it just for kicks -- which makes him exactly like a politician. Yep, that's what he is."

Don't worry, all of his faults are also in there too but if you do hate the Republicans and you're watching a race like this you do ultimately do have to deal with a single question.  If god forbid Obama loses, which of these jokers would be the least horrific president.  It's awful to admit, but Romney fits the bill.  Unfortunately.

The Oxford Paragraphs: Mark Twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Books With just a vague memory of the film adaptation starring Bing Crosby, some notion of the influences it has had on Doctor Who, and the cover illustration as a guide, I approached A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court expecting a typically structured but entertaining story of a man out of time and although Twain/Clemens’s tale begins in that mode, it quickly tips over into a far darker meandering satire on Western imperialism and industrialisation. The protagonist Hank Martin is a loathsome figure and even though the story’s told from his POV, I slowly became more and more protective of the Arthurian characters who barely seem to deserve the treatment the Yankee gives them. But that’s Twain/Clemens’s point I think; how the modern versions of us, apparently so sophisticated, are desperate to sap the magic from the world, be it in nature or man itself. A difficult read but a transportative one.  This is psychogeographical literature.

The Titlebar Archive: Sherlock

About  I was once rather more proactive about selecting the title bars for this blog (click here to carry out some real blog archaeology and see some older examples in a different format.  Look at those typos).  I've decided to do something similar this year.  A new illustration each week of whatever cultural event I've enjoyed or found most interesting with a post like this one at the end to explain myself.  Firstly, Sherlock and an attempt to find a shot of him thinking, though on reflection I think this is the moment from the tail end of the first series when he deliberately tears up in order to extract some information from a witness.

My first thought after watching the opening episode of the second series was "Why isn't Doctor Who this clever?" then quickly felt a bit guilty since Moffat's reimagining of the key sci-fi franchise often is that clever, what with the jacket continuity error that wasn't last year and the messy timeline of River Song.  His style is looser, more comfortable when writing for older viewers, perhaps even less straight jacketed by what's gone before because Sherlock's a page one reinvention rather than a continuation with all the baggage.

Almost within seconds of the episode finishing Twitter was filled with adoration but in the following hours and days some feminist criticism nearly overshadowed the achievement, largely centred around the treatment of The Woman or Irene Adler, turned, they saw, from the one woman who bested Holmes to someone not just bested by him but also unable to cope with her mission without the help of Moriarty,  I've decided to hold off my opinion until all three have been broadcast.  Almost.

Moffat for his part, has as ever has come out fighting with an interview to Wales on Sunday in which comes across as being deeply hurt by the accusations which have been flying around:

“I think it’s one thing to criticise a programme and another thing to invent motives out of amateur psychology for the writer and then accuse him of having those feelings,” he said.

“I think that was beyond the pale and strayed from criticism to a defamation act.

“I’m certainly not a sexist, a misogynist and it was wrong.

“It’s not true and in terms of the character Sherlock Holmes, it is interesting. He has been referred to as being a bit misogynist.

“He’s not; the fact is one of the lovely threads of the original Sherlock Holmes is whatever he says, he cannot abide anyone being cruel to women – he actually becomes incensed and full of rage.”

That's demonstrated in the episode with his protective attitude to Mrs Hudson. None of the commentary I've seen has noticed the fact that in defending his not a housekeeper, Sherlock threw her attacker out of the window several times and that it also became apparent that some of her understandable tears were a classic piece of misdirection on her part in order to hide something important making her a very strong female character indeed.

The Oxford Paragraphs: Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

Books One of the benefits of finally reading a book of which I’ve seen numerous screen versions is in increasing my understanding of the art of the adaptation which in Austen’s case requires much more than transcribing quotes and turning prose into stage directions. Although there is some conversation, most of the action in Pride and Prejudice occurs in reported speech leading to much invented dialogue, the screenwriter also having to make sense of rapid scene changes, days often passing in a matter of words. It’s a charming book, rightly loved, but a slow read. The writer often pastiches other contemporary novelistic styles making some sections oddly incomprehensible to my untrained eyes, which are also replaying versions of scenes from those adaptations and forever comparing them to their literary origin.  My favourite character after Lizzy is still her father, an inspiring symbol of tolerance searching for peace within the domestic chaos of his surroundings.

the Sugababes are back together

Music Well look at that. As Popjustice explains, the Sugababes are back together, or One Touch as they'll inevitably be called since "Sugababes" are still Occupying their real name.

This is very much a band back together approach with their original songwriters and management involved and everything.  PJ indicates it's all going very well. Just having them in the same room is progress. If the harmonies are still there as well, this could be quite something.

Fingers crossed this is all going to be done right and well judged and won't take the All Saints approach of going after the market who doesn't know who they are rather than those of us who do.

I think this madman situation deserves some stools:



Scream, indeed.

Update! 9/1/2012  Well then.  Now I don't know what to think.  Other than that the PopJustice story has a mass of detail in it which isn't really be shot down in this tweet in which she certainly doesn't say directly "Original Sugababes lineup not reuniting" as the headline to the linked The Guardian story says.  As ever, we'll see.

Update!  22/1/2012  This give every indication it is actually on with a leaked lyric synopsis (which I haven't read - spoliers etc) and talk of Siobhan giving up her job to concentrate on it.  To be honest that link's worth visiting for the comments, which make the visitors to the Guardian's boards look like well adjusted, compassionate human beings.

Update!  26/1/2012   Emeli Sande Confirms Song With Original Sugababes according to Mtv.  Keisha continues to deny it on Twitter. 

"Goddammit, when is somebody going to go on the record in this story?" -- Ben Bradley, All The President's Men.


I'll continue to update this post until there's something really concrete, like an actual song or photo of them together now or some such.

the "Sugababes" have split up

Music When Simon asked me earlier if I'd heard the Sugababes news, the last of inverted commas suggested all our hopes had been realised.

What he actually meant was that it looks like the "Sugababes" have split up.

Heidi, whose signed up for some Dancing on Ice denies it, but since she's signed up for Dancing on Ice and has also indicated there are no projects forthcoming and since the last single was released a freebie, I think we can safely assume the project is finally over.

Unless they're being given the shove so that H, M & S can make a welcome return.  Yes, perhaps that's it.

Now I'm off to play with my Kindle.

Updated!  Simon's been back in touch to say he didn't mean that at all.  We were at crossed purposes.  What he was referring to was this teasing tweet from Keisha:

Hanging out in the studio with @professorgreen and two lovely ladies with bags of talent :-p lol

Green's retweeted this so she's not delusional.  Mutya hasn't updated her feed for over a year.  Siobhan's too clever to be on Twitter.  No confirmation that they're these two ladies.  Could just as well be backing singers.  But you never know.  Hmm.

Now I'm going back to playing with my Kindle.

"the shape of March Of The Penguins, Miracle on 34th Street and Aladdin"

TV TV Cream continues the old Off The Telly tradition of annual logs of fare on Christmas Day with some focus on Downton Abbey, a show which I'm still yet to indulge in. Yes, I know. I'll try and catch up this year:

"The rest of the day on ITV1 was fairly solid. As usual much of the daytime as devoted to films, though at least there were some different titles to the familiar fare in the shape of March Of The Penguins, Miracle on 34th Street and Aladdin, although Happy Feet found itself in the post-Queen slot for the second time in three years. The monarch’s message this year, incidentally, was the first to produced by Sky News and this, presumably, explains why it earned a screening on Sky1 for the first time in a while."

The Queen was one of the few programmes we watched live on Christmas Day, with its odd moments when the monarch was shown in profile whilst still speaking directly into a different camera like a confused breakfast television presenter. That was about it for me apart from the news channel early on and Doctor Who. I spent a surprising (for me) amount of time reading the surprisingly cynical supporting text in my King James Bible with my new blu-ray copy of Inception filling in the rest of the evening.

"space exploration is often seen as a waste of money with no real benefits"

Science Inspired by the Republic of the Moon exhibition at FACT Liverpool, C. James Fagan writing for Liverpool's new culture blog The Double Negative ponders why we've lost the drive to return to our nearest celestial neighbour:

"There’s no real political drive; space exploration is often seen as a waste of money with no real benefits (though it’s much cheaper than a war). Perhaps there’s something darker in the human psyche holding us back. As much as we need to expand to explore and evolve, we need to avoid dangers to survive. The effects of this contradiction, the comedown from the Space Race as it where, are explored by J.G Ballard in his short story collection ‘Memories of the Space Age’, where rocket pads lay empty, inhabited by people filled with a desperate nostalgia, collecting Astronaut bones as fetishistic totems and generally contemplating the ‘moral and biological rightness of space exploration.’"

After reading this I had to fall back on my usual therapy space travel therapy, the opening credits to Enterprise.  Here's the version from the later series with the country beat and when they'd given up all attempts to pretend it wasn't Star Trek by missing that bit out of the title:



I always imagine in the Roddenberryverse the Space Shuttle Enterprise actually flew.

"brown paper towels down into my armpits to soak up the salty sludge"

TV Amber Benson explains the horror of the pitching process in modern US network television:

"Now I have to admit that the pitch process scares the crap out of me...I get nervous, start sweating profusely from every sweat gland on my body - I once sweat so badly I had to go to the bathroom and stuff scratchy, brown paper towels down into my armpits to soak up the salty sludge - and, finally, just before I go in and start talking, my stomach begins to cramp like a son-of-a-bitch.

"So all of the above makes me predispositioned not to enjoy the whole thing anyway...but it's more than just the fight or flight body responses that make me dislike the pitch process.

"What bugs me is the fact that everyone just wants a goddamned procedural...a body of the week to keep them satisfied and, frankly, they don't care how they get it."

A couple of commenters suggest she should try her hand in the UK and they're right. Her work would fit perfectly on BBC Three or E4 along with Being Human or Misfits. The problem for her is she probably wants to work in the US and there just don't seem to be the opportunities.

wondering if I'd like to be sent some samples

Plug! Just before Christmas, the day we put our Christmas tree up actually, I received an email from a PR person working for a new drinks company, Jeremiah Weed, wondering if I'd like to be sent some samples.  Not really being a drinker but also not averse to free stuff from people who want to send me free stuff I agreed.

Since I can't really offer a review of the alcohol since I've nothing to compare it to (though I will update this post when I've had an opinion from someone), I thought it best just to tell you about the free stuff which came packed in a box with the above address label.  Here's what I found inside:

"This little piggy went wee weee wee wee all the way to the bank."

The Duchess of Cornwall with actress Elizabeth McGovern during the ICAP Charity Day, a photo by The British Monarchy on Flickr.

it's still exciting to see my name quoted

About Around The Globe is Shakepeare's Globe's Magazine and in the latest issue writer Tom Brown (of So Long, Shakespeare) is kind enough to mention the @shakespearelogs twitter feed in an article about the controversy surrounding the release of Anonymous. I hope they and he won't mind me posting the relevant paragraph below:



Seems only fair to add, though, that the feed is only as good as the content, as the bloggers who are included and listed at my Hamlet blog, augmented with the contents of a Google News search.  But it's still exciting to see my name quoted in one of my favourite magazines.

"Brian" and "Cherski"

TV Claire Danes had something new to say about My So-Called Life in this New York Magazine interview:

"My So-Called Life has had such a long afterlife. Did that make you think more seriously about the next TV project you did?
You know, I love the show and I'm still very close with Winnie who wrote it and the two Devons who were in it. It was a momentous event for me, and so I don't feel dogged by it and I'm incredibly flattered that it continues to resonate. I loved Saved By the Bell, but it wasn’t like that; it was a very special show. I’m not remotely embarrassed by it. I got a little bit annoyed when people were saying that, you know, Carrie Mathison is just Angela Chase grown up. That is preposterous."

"Angela" is still great friends with "Brian" and "Cherski" as well as the writer.  How has the reunion film not been made yet?  Also the Bell comparison is amazing.  Not Dawson's Creek?  Really?

"Ugly"

Art Ugly Renaissance Babies. A tumblr [via].