Art One night in 'The Krazy House' in the darkened night and distant past, Chris and I hitched on the idea of writing on all of the money we would spend. It last for one crisp five pound note which went back into circulation with a Douglas Adams quote written on it. I'm kind of sad we didn't keep it up. Especially when some else has and is blessing people.
Film Speaking of film reviews, this missive at The Collective on 'Catch Me If You Can' (which might seem a bit familiar) has prompted some comment from one of their regulars:
"Overrated. Look around. Watch TV. Read the papers. Read reviews on this site. Where is Leonardo being overrated and by who? Everywhere you look people fall over them-selves to point out how overrated this young actor is. Even in reviews where he receives praise it is almost always prefixed by criticism. A reviewer who wants to say Leo’s done a good job, feels the need to point out that they know he’s really not that good. So I ask again who is doing the overrating? How are they being heard above the roar of the crowd that calls him overrated?"My rebultle is on there and the conversation will no doubt continue. And there was I thinking that I couldn't inspire passion in anyone anymore.
Site News I'm sure you dread these but I thought I'd let you in on some of things I'm going to experiment with here over the coming weeks and months. You see I've had three ideas for new weblogs.
The first was going to be all about Shakespeare. Then I realised that was a massive undertaking, so I narrowed things somewhat and went for the big one and decided upon Hamlet instead. Its four hours long and there is scope.
The second was simply a list of everything I'm consuming media wise. I'd love to review everything but there simply isn't the time so I thought I'd offer some honourable mentions with a few words to saw yes or no by way of recommendation.
The third was a quote blog; to explain, about ten years ago and for a few years I cobbled together a book of lyrics, poetry, quotes and writing -- things I was interested in. It was supposed to be a record of who I was at a time without having to be too personal about it. It's certainly that and I was going to post the material I would own up to as a weblog. But to cover all three I would need to be keeping four weblogs at a time; I don't have the time or stamina for that and the only thing that would suffer would be this already beleagered main site so instead I'm going to incorporate them in here.
So expect lots of stuff about a Danish prince, quotes and media recommendations mixed in with the film reviews, Buffynalia and everything else. I hope you like chaos...
The first was going to be all about Shakespeare. Then I realised that was a massive undertaking, so I narrowed things somewhat and went for the big one and decided upon Hamlet instead. Its four hours long and there is scope.
The second was simply a list of everything I'm consuming media wise. I'd love to review everything but there simply isn't the time so I thought I'd offer some honourable mentions with a few words to saw yes or no by way of recommendation.
The third was a quote blog; to explain, about ten years ago and for a few years I cobbled together a book of lyrics, poetry, quotes and writing -- things I was interested in. It was supposed to be a record of who I was at a time without having to be too personal about it. It's certainly that and I was going to post the material I would own up to as a weblog. But to cover all three I would need to be keeping four weblogs at a time; I don't have the time or stamina for that and the only thing that would suffer would be this already beleagered main site so instead I'm going to incorporate them in here.
So expect lots of stuff about a Danish prince, quotes and media recommendations mixed in with the film reviews, Buffynalia and everything else. I hope you like chaos...
Liverpool Life This was swiped from under my nose by a greedy world looking for quirky stories -- and from my own turf as well. Last September. a concert was held at Paddy's Wigwam (or to give the official title the Metropolitan Cathedral) in which the audience were exposed to inaudible sounds (of the kind which are skimmed away for MP3 files), their reactions recorded:
"Ciarán O'Keeffe, a researcher on the project who has since taken up a lecturing post at Liverpool Hope University's Psychology department, said: "When the infrasound was switched on, people experienced different emotional responses to it.A kind of scientific you had to be there then. [via Vodkabird and everyone else]
"The feelings that the listeners recorded at the time are in line with anecdotal evidence of experiences in places that have infrasound."
Evening My wierd work rota this week has meant that I've been waking at six in the morning to start work at Eight o'clock. It isn't anything new really, I followed this pattern when I worked in Manchester for a full six months. Then I still wouldn't get home until six. Now I'm in by half-four.
For some reason I feel more refreshed at that time of day than two hours later having had as many hours extra sleep. Even now as I glance at my clock and see that realistically I've only got an hour and a half of my waking time left (which I'm devoting to you lucky people) I still don't feel that tired. So just to see, I'm going to carry on getting up early next week when I return to a 9:30 start. I'll keep you posted. Literally.
For some reason I feel more refreshed at that time of day than two hours later having had as many hours extra sleep. Even now as I glance at my clock and see that realistically I've only got an hour and a half of my waking time left (which I'm devoting to you lucky people) I still don't feel that tired. So just to see, I'm going to carry on getting up early next week when I return to a 9:30 start. I'll keep you posted. Literally.
Blogging Blooggler goes mainstream. Comment column from The Guardian which covers all of the fear and ecstacy found on Metafilter, Slashdot and elsewhere over the weekend. And you thought the marches on Saturday were going to be the news of the weekend...
TV The new series of 24 began on Sunday night and the first two episodes were a treat. I won’t talk about the second for people without BBC 3, but the first offered more than one gobsmacking moment, Jack Bauer already on the edge from the off. If a line like “I’m gonna need a hacksaw…” has appeared in a movie we would be quoting it for days after the screening. Here it was lost slightly in the gratuitous information overload which spewed from the screen. It looks to be every bit as exciting and infuriating as the previous series (although luckily no one will get amnesia this time because it’s already been done). Pardon me for a moment while go slightly mad and cram in all the feelings I got after watching the first episode.
Why all the women outside CTU and the Presidential bunker blondes? What’s with all the beards? Who are all the people in said bunker and why haven’t they bothered to explain what the shady old bloke and the right hand woman actually do? What is Ensign Ro Laren doing there? And Darla from Roseanne, whose seems to playing Willow from the first season of Buffy? Where have I seen Nina’s replacement at CTU before? How worrying is it that they only know about the bomb going off on the day the bomb is going off? What’s with that wedding? Why does Kim Bauer now feel like she’d be happier in an episode of ‘Dawson’s Creek’? What happened to Stephen Hopkins on the credits? Has Kiefer Sutherland put some weight on?
The real ‘treat’ of the night was Pure24, the discussion programme which’ll be appearing after the BBC3 episode every week for the next 23 in which a bunch of people sit around in a set which stolen from Channel 4 News discussing the programme. Apart from being the pointless half hour of televisions since ‘Big Brother’s Little Brother’ it sort proved by itself why this kind of thing doesn’t happen too often. Actually it was strangely entertaining in a ‘Late Review’ kind of way. The real star of the show was Charlie “TVGoHome” Booker (who writes about 24 regularly in his ‘Screen Burn’ column for ‘The Guardian’) being an absolute star, quick off the mark and probably making his screen break; the presenter reminded me too much of Sophie “Ace!” Aldred and didn’t look like she’d watched the first series trying to be terribly excited but being no Claudia Winkleman; an invited audience of fans dwarfed my a man in a massive afro; bizarre phone call from Bob Mortimore who seemed have failed to grasp the way the programme will be shown (he seemed to think episode three will be turning up on BBC2 next week); even more weird call from a guy who decided that the now headless corpse was just tranquilised, leading to smirks from all around, WE’VE SEEN HIS HEAD!
Why all the women outside CTU and the Presidential bunker blondes? What’s with all the beards? Who are all the people in said bunker and why haven’t they bothered to explain what the shady old bloke and the right hand woman actually do? What is Ensign Ro Laren doing there? And Darla from Roseanne, whose seems to playing Willow from the first season of Buffy? Where have I seen Nina’s replacement at CTU before? How worrying is it that they only know about the bomb going off on the day the bomb is going off? What’s with that wedding? Why does Kim Bauer now feel like she’d be happier in an episode of ‘Dawson’s Creek’? What happened to Stephen Hopkins on the credits? Has Kiefer Sutherland put some weight on?
The real ‘treat’ of the night was Pure24, the discussion programme which’ll be appearing after the BBC3 episode every week for the next 23 in which a bunch of people sit around in a set which stolen from Channel 4 News discussing the programme. Apart from being the pointless half hour of televisions since ‘Big Brother’s Little Brother’ it sort proved by itself why this kind of thing doesn’t happen too often. Actually it was strangely entertaining in a ‘Late Review’ kind of way. The real star of the show was Charlie “TVGoHome” Booker (who writes about 24 regularly in his ‘Screen Burn’ column for ‘The Guardian’) being an absolute star, quick off the mark and probably making his screen break; the presenter reminded me too much of Sophie “Ace!” Aldred and didn’t look like she’d watched the first series trying to be terribly excited but being no Claudia Winkleman; an invited audience of fans dwarfed my a man in a massive afro; bizarre phone call from Bob Mortimore who seemed have failed to grasp the way the programme will be shown (he seemed to think episode three will be turning up on BBC2 next week); even more weird call from a guy who decided that the now headless corpse was just tranquilised, leading to smirks from all around, WE’VE SEEN HIS HEAD!
Life Now I know how the astro-monkeys felt during the nineteen-sixties. At 8 o’clock this morning I was sitting in a cubicle with a pair of sound proof headphones strapped to my head pressing a button each time I heard an exceedingly faint sound.
I was having my ears tested as part of my newish job.
Without access to anything other than the sound of your own heart beat, breathing and the pulse ramming through your brain, you find yourself concentrating really hard, as though being unable to hear anything would mean that you’re failing some test. And the sounds I was supposed to be hearing were so faint I couldn’t tell if they were from the headphones or my imagination. I’m convinced that some of them were.
This was followed by a spell looking through a viewer which seemed to be modeled on Spock’s scanner from the Starship Enterprise. My eyesight has always been an issue for me – I’ve always dreaded the idea of getting glasses which was why this was the first test I’ve had in ten years. My heart was thumping as I squinted to see the letters through the early morning blare, guessed the number of circles; the numbers in the blobs and whether I could see the lights flashing in my peripheral vision.
My hearing is normal. My eyesight is fine. Thank God.
I was having my ears tested as part of my newish job.
Without access to anything other than the sound of your own heart beat, breathing and the pulse ramming through your brain, you find yourself concentrating really hard, as though being unable to hear anything would mean that you’re failing some test. And the sounds I was supposed to be hearing were so faint I couldn’t tell if they were from the headphones or my imagination. I’m convinced that some of them were.
This was followed by a spell looking through a viewer which seemed to be modeled on Spock’s scanner from the Starship Enterprise. My eyesight has always been an issue for me – I’ve always dreaded the idea of getting glasses which was why this was the first test I’ve had in ten years. My heart was thumping as I squinted to see the letters through the early morning blare, guessed the number of circles; the numbers in the blobs and whether I could see the lights flashing in my peripheral vision.
My hearing is normal. My eyesight is fine. Thank God.
Blog! Caro's weblog has been really, really good of late. Go and read her words instead while I get my head around writing here again ...
TV The real first family is a Danny Baker pleasing look at how 'The Simpsons' has creeped into Amercian society. It's a decent piece of writing from the LA Times, slightly undermined by a lack of research from the writer:
"The actor who tours the country performing "Hamlet" as "MacHomer" in the voices of 50 "Simpsons" characters. ("Is this a dagger which I see before me, or a pizza? Mmmm, pizzaaa.")Wrong tragedy, mate ...
Alternate I've just watched the first in the series of animated shorts which have been produced as taster for the new movies. Those can be found here and they're a treat. Although some part of me is deeply interested in the other Animatrix:
"Marney Morris has adapted her popular class at Stanford into a fun interactive one day course in various cities around the US. In a small group setting, Marney will be sharing the theory of 'engagement design'- a system, based on fundamental user behavior, that moves your user through an 'engagement process' to achieve your goals."I bet Warner Brothers were really pleased when they found that dotcom.
News I want to post about the anti-war protest. I want to be able to say something profound, like other webloggers bringing in all kinds of useful links and describing constructively why a war would be a bad thing. But so many other people are saying so many other more interesting and profound opinions out there that my critical mass would be wasted. So instead I’ll just repeat the mantra … ‘Say no to war’. [related, related, related, related]
Film Disney releases a sequel to 'The Jungle Book'. The reviews have been mixed ...
" At last it has produced a big-screen, animated sequel, "The Jungle Book 2," a work of such charm and imagination it should enchant, as the old circus phrase goes, "children of all ages." .... Mowgli's subsequent adventures are told with much wit and humor, and knockout musical numbers give the film a terrific lift ... Director Steve Trenbirth and a vast animation team have honored the classic Disney style of simply and attractively rendered human and animal characters with superbly illustrated backgrounds, in this instance a lush, leafy jungle replete with ancient ruins and a humble rural village nearby."You're wrong ... no you're wrong ...
-- Kevin Thomas, LA Times
"The Jungle Book 2" is so thin and unsatisfying it seems like a made-for-DVD version, not a theatrical release ... There's none of the complexity here, in story or style, we expect in this new golden age of animation. It's a throwback in which cute animals of no depth or nuance play with the hero or threaten him in not very scary ways."
-- Roger Ebert, Syndicated.
TV The new breed of television. Bit late, but on Saturday, The Guardian ran this piece about the vanguard of television, the standard bearers. It isn't very well formatted on the web and doesn't include the starting photographs but there are some odments (Big Brother One's Melanie Hill!?!). Most interesting for me was that Stephen Poliakoff's best TV ever was the first series of "Doctor Who" (I suspect he means the William Hartnell stories) and that the controller of BBC3 lists his best ever as simply Doctor Who. It's coming back, I tell you, it's coming back ... just a matter of time ...
Sport After last night, Football365 offering an amusing rebuff ... 10 things we're still better at than the Aussies:
"CultureReading the match report some of Sven-Goran Eriksson tactics seemed like those of a bored ten year old trying things out on 'Football Manager'.
Britain: Sgt Pepper by The Beatles, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, The Haywain by John Constable.
Australia: Suddenly by Angry Anderson, Crocodile Dundee 3 by Paul Hogan, Do You Know What It Is Yet? Number 1009 by Rolf Harris.
Lunchtime Just for a change I'm at Liverpool Central Library using their internet facilities. It's a packed little area full of students. It's quite and clean and the access is pretty fast (although annoyingly the right click on the mouse has been disabled so I can't open links in a new page as is my habit). Ironically this section used be filled racks containing magazines and journals from through out the world on a range of subjects. I'd sometimes come here to read about the kinds of things I wouldn't look at ordinarily. Then I went on-line and found myself able to do that from the comfort of my own tip, and it looks like the library has done the same.
Theatre Goodbye then to Guardian columnist Michael Simpkins who over the past year or so has entertained us with his stories of being out of workish actor. He's giving it up due to an extended stay in the stage musical 'Mamma Mia' ...
Music A passionate discussion broke out in my World Music class last night. It began when Simone, the tutor explained how she had got an archive recording from her collection and played it in comparison with a track from a new cd which was supposed to be identical and it sound ever so slightly, subtly different. There were a few shocked faces in the class. She advised that we had to be care when by World Music because we might not be getting the original music, but a version which has been altered to fit the musical tastes of the west.
I stepped up and brought forward an old argument I've had with a friend, Richard, who for while was a classical music nut. He was grousing about classical music compilations and how they ruined the intent of the original composer. My point of view about that and the World Music was that it doesn't matter if the music was changed to fit a market because it meant that a new audience is being gathered anyway and you're introducing a beginner to something new. That it was OK for someone to pick up a CD of Ladysmith Black Mambaso which has been released to coincide with some baked beans commercials and football tournement becuase there is the slightest chance they might go and seek out other African sounds. And even if they don't, from a business point of view it's feeding the record companies so that they can support the less accessable stuff.
I was shouted down. A lot. The concensous seemed to be that if you change the sound, you are eroding the intent and in the end ruining that thing which made the music unique in the first place.
As always, of course, I see it both ways ...
I stepped up and brought forward an old argument I've had with a friend, Richard, who for while was a classical music nut. He was grousing about classical music compilations and how they ruined the intent of the original composer. My point of view about that and the World Music was that it doesn't matter if the music was changed to fit a market because it meant that a new audience is being gathered anyway and you're introducing a beginner to something new. That it was OK for someone to pick up a CD of Ladysmith Black Mambaso which has been released to coincide with some baked beans commercials and football tournement becuase there is the slightest chance they might go and seek out other African sounds. And even if they don't, from a business point of view it's feeding the record companies so that they can support the less accessable stuff.
I was shouted down. A lot. The concensous seemed to be that if you change the sound, you are eroding the intent and in the end ruining that thing which made the music unique in the first place.
As always, of course, I see it both ways ...
Blog! The Photobloggies shortlist is out. Go vote, and if you don't like some of the choices you can probably blame me ...
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