Norway, Jose.
As stag dos go, this one could easily be described as having taken a proper stab at the idea.
Though introducing sharp objects to this particular weekend might have tipped the balance of our actual survival.
Julian has, of course, already had a stag do. The one I arranged in London. The one where I enjoyed myself enormously by dressing up in tweed and hoping for boyish larks tipping Bobbies' helmets off with my brolly and that kind of thing, while wondering innocently why everyone else in said stag do was looking at me expectantly by 1.00am with very clear 'And...?' expressions on their faces. Like they were expecting something else or something. Like a nice meal and a few spirited hijinks with voddy glasses didn't constitute the full stagging monty or something. The stag do where I did an uncomfortably good impression of Will from The Inbetweeners, in fact.
Yes, well apparently these larks weren't quite enough. Not for an international chap like Jules.
I can picture us talking about it now. As light dawned, I had said, crestfallen: "I'm sorry, old thing, I don't think we have time for a whole Grand Tour of southern Europe and the Latin peninsular."
To which he had replied: "Get on the plane, doofus."
---
He hadn't, obviously. It was a made up scene. Plus, I've never once heard Julian say the word 'doofus'. And anyway, the second gig was always planned because there was always a second Best Man.
A man who had, I understood all too well as the date loomed, a secluded house in the wooded, wild countryside of Norway.
---
Angela had once recently said to me with an unnerving amount of gravitas: "I'm relying on you to keep Julian alive in Norway." As well she might have done it seems, for she has met Anders and been to Norway and seen what happens there.
In the event, however, Anders himself wasn't the primary protagonist Story Creator. All great stag dos – in fact, all great memoirs – need at least one good Story Creator. Someone so unpredictable, energetic, creative and oblivious to appropriate times of day for being sense-spankingly pissed that Things Simply Happen.
Yeah.
Enter John-Magner, stage left. Wheelying quadbike. Wearing permed wig. And Russian General's hat. Waving beer can like World Cup. Doing big thumbs up.
---
I can offer some advice when it comes to the safe operation of a quadbike for the very first time: have a fair bit to drink first. Everything subsequently happens in slo-mo; gives you more time to think.
You might want to check with your own GP first, however.
As you may know, I'm not a big drinker. That is, I reach for the red grape fairly often in social circumstances these days, but only a toddler's tinkle of it is needed for my child-like constitution to start warping my vision warmly. I am, it must be said, a very cheap date.
So it was hardly a surprise that, having as we did about a thousand cans of beer piled on the deck, by the time John-Magner was enthusiastically talking me through the controls of his 50cc toy, I was comfortably soft around the wits.
I should explain that Anders' fairly beautifully-restored pine-panelled house sits on the edge of a stunning, wide valley of woodland and is surrounded by a useful amount of land for the primary use of buggering about. But take an extra mental beat to consider the topology there – the edge of a valley. Slopes. And rocks. And trees – which also means terrain-ambiguizing grass.
As I flew through the warm evening air, I was thanking the Lord in soothingly detached fashion for my weirdly natural ability for Driving Stuff – still there, it seems, when sober – without which I knew I'd have been bucked over a boulder at 50kph at the touch of the throttle that night. That, coupled with a lot of very dumb luck.
Naturally, John-Magner had a second quadbike down on his farm. Appearing with it not long after we'd eaten the evening's multifarious barbequed meat, he pointed out casually: "Iss bedder. Smaller. Bigger engine. Brakes fakked."
Chasing eachother around the hillside in a hastily-prescribed relay course was then the work of mere moments, as you'd expect. One of us throwing a bike too enthusiastically into the steep run around the bottom of the house and flipping it against a rock and splitting a head open was the work of not many more moments.
Given that Anders grew up riding quadbikes around the stupidly unpredictable landscapes of Norway, he must have been a bit peeved that it had been him. But, as a local friend turned up a short while later to give him a lift to an equally amused local doctor to sew up the hole behind his ear, we concluded quickly that the best thing we could do was finish the nice Bordeaux and really see what the bikes could do.
Yes, I didn't know the course at first. Yes, I thought I stood a good chance of getting four well-treaded wheels to climb the wall back onto the gravel track. Still do. But yes, thankfully small quadbikes aren't really so hard to push off when they fall backwards on top of you. Not if you use both feet. And have plenty of time to think.
As Jules and I chased each other in muddy circles around the top field, I then remembered that we really could keep doing this all night if we wanted – Norway knows no night at this time of year.
---
In the event, by half midnight, when Anders still hadn't returned, John Magner said: "I know a pardy. D'you wanna pardy? I call a texi, yeah?"
We looked at eachother. I casually dusted some crumbs of earth from the sleeve of my smart cream suit shirt, ignoring the grass stains across my back.
"Sure" we all said.
---
The pardy had ended some time ago, as we stood with a crate of beer in the town square, a 20-minute, bass-bin-propelled Mercedez drive later. By the time we made it back to Anders after an hour-or-more's essentially pointless but entertaining round trip, we were ready for whisky.
John-Magner said: "Let's go into Lillehammer. There'll be some other pardies." We actually contemplated it at 2.00am, but eventually retired to cards for an hour or so.
I had survived Day One.
---
Day Two dawned in different ways for us all. For Julian, it was with a playful amount of hangover and John-Magner appearing from a night in the barn with the words: "Hair of de dog, men – whisky." For me it was with a blind stagger to the shower, followed by a deafening banging on the bathroom door and JM's enthusiastic voice shouting: "Beer, men! Start de day wiv a beer. I heff it out here for you, men." For Sebastian, slumbering still, it was with said Norwegian force of nature shaking him awake and pushing a beer can into his vision; "You need BEER, men!"
Now, I don't want you to think that the group was intoxicated all weekend. Contrary to myth, most of us are essentially sensible chaps of a certain age – young enough to still wheely a quadbike, but old enough to avoid hangovers. But after JM had disappeared and Seb and I had been enjoying a highly civilised conversation about music and theatre or somesuch, out in the lazy sunshine on the deck, I did find myself wondering if I should give into the enthusiastic pressure to steady the nerves with something – as JM reappeared with an ominous rumble, eventually bursting into the balmy peace with the full roar of his 150hp, large-framed, John Deere tractor.
I can't say what we all found ourselves doing next, naturally. I leave the picture with you. But it was a step up from quadbiking. Hypothetically, you understand.
Which left us with a dilemma by lunchtime: where to take things from there?
Which, in turn, presented the only obvious conclusion. Bob-sleighing.
---
Like so many former Olympic sites, the bob complex near Lillehammer looks a little sad out of season. Without the snow, it had the faint air of Mrs Havisham's home, a faded memory of former glories.
None the less, as the five of us, plus Lush the enthusiastic, short-haired pointer, arrived at the run, we still felt the effect of the safety signs, doing their best to put you off going any further.
"No one with spinal problems or heart conditions can ride" said Linda, Norway's only female bob sleigh driver. "In the corners we pull about three gs or so" she added calmly.
We stood there and blinked. But the point, I should point out, was this: It was a stag do. And Linda was Norway's only female bob sleigh driver. There was a combination of reasons why there would be no way any of us would be backing out.
I should say simply, by way of avoiding dragging it out, that they wouldn't let us employ John-Magner's hearty suggestion that we drive their van down the bob sleigh run. They simply put us in a little cage on little wheels with little Linda and before we could consider the possibilities of this, pushed us off a very smooth cliff.
I did wonder if my little arms would simply snap half way down. I really wasn't sure what their braking and/or breaking tollerances were.
Yet, after a few faintly horrific seconds of rocket spine compression, neck jerking and barely holding on, we rolled to a halt.
"You boys should come back when there's ice" Linda said flatly as we peeled ourselves off eachother and crawled back to the car.
---
I thought we might go shooting. There was also talk – serious talk, it seemed – of dynamite. There was also talk of other things even more creative and unwise. But as the afternoon waxed into the humid evening, we walked around the rocky tree line for a while and then went back to cook moose burgers. We then, despite the colourful ideas, essentially just played cards, drank affordably nice wine, moved onto Anders' very expensively nice congnac and cigars, played cards until about 2.00, when we turned in. Light still in the sky.
John-Magner had turned in – that is, climbed onto the sofa with a blanket – at about 8.00. We left him sleeping there like a baby.
I had survived Day Two. But who knew how.
---
I shall conclude it there. We laughed a lot and enjoyed both the grape and the grain and overall I think Julian had a blast. We learned all kinds of things about driving, hunting and first aid and left with some profound gratitude to Anders for his calm generosity.
I also wanted to thank John-Magner for being the Story Creator. There was, under the unnerving lack of inhibitions, someone there that some instinct in me – some essential genetic survival aerial – had told me I could trust. I certainly don't know anyone else who would still know what they were doing under similar circumstances. But those Norwegian guys are tough as Vikings. And JM seems especially loved for it.
Traveling back on the train through the incomparable countryside of lake and wood, I was grateful for japes together. The random madness of it.
Yet I couldn't help feeling a good deal of relief at the idea of getting back to the studio and back to work, doing something where I at least knew my arse from my elbow. Not to mention the idea of seeing much-loved chums without being expected to drink my body weight in meths and perform vehicle circus tricks.
No way, mate. On yer bike.
----
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Julian's reasonably pointless, impractically timed, but in-the-event rather fun second stag do.
Julian's reasonably pointless,
impractically timed, but in-the-event
rather fun second stag do.
Gorgeous Norwegian valley – check.
Alchohol – check.
Quadbikes – check.
One of us in hospital before the first evening's out – check.
Don't ask. We're all fine.
This is surreal. And wasting time. But bonkers fun.
Wish Caz was here.
You should see Norway in the sunshine, by the way. And it doesn't go down at this time of year; it's gone 11.00pm. We could do this all night.
impractically timed, but in-the-event
rather fun second stag do.
Gorgeous Norwegian valley – check.
Alchohol – check.
Quadbikes – check.
One of us in hospital before the first evening's out – check.
Don't ask. We're all fine.
This is surreal. And wasting time. But bonkers fun.
Wish Caz was here.
You should see Norway in the sunshine, by the way. And it doesn't go down at this time of year; it's gone 11.00pm. We could do this all night.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Momo:Typo's Top Five Rules of Creative.
Momo:Typo's
Top Five Rules of Creative.
Found myself leaving this sage advice on Gellan's wall this morning, following his Facebook status about doing a very important photoshoot today.
That is, I left point one as sage advice, and when this was so earnestly received by his creative team, I felt it might be useful for everyone to have these essential five core principles of Momo's brand communications to hand, to guide them into the fearsome blank page.
Feel free to select as appropriate at any given creative crisis point.
When engaging in design work or advertising communications, always frame your approach around these five key rules, to guarantee strategic effectiveness:
1: Don't muff it up.
2: Make it dead good.
3: Make the depth of field still narrower (..to photographers).
4: HEADLINES MUST HAVE PUNS.
5: Try adding an arrow.
And remember, don't forget to finger pistol often. They'll think you're being ironic, but you'll know you're just being cool.
..I mean, who knew that Momo had a formula?
>Cuh<
Top Five Rules of Creative.
Found myself leaving this sage advice on Gellan's wall this morning, following his Facebook status about doing a very important photoshoot today.
That is, I left point one as sage advice, and when this was so earnestly received by his creative team, I felt it might be useful for everyone to have these essential five core principles of Momo's brand communications to hand, to guide them into the fearsome blank page.
Feel free to select as appropriate at any given creative crisis point.
When engaging in design work or advertising communications, always frame your approach around these five key rules, to guarantee strategic effectiveness:
1: Don't muff it up.
2: Make it dead good.
3: Make the depth of field still narrower (..to photographers).
4: HEADLINES MUST HAVE PUNS.
5: Try adding an arrow.
And remember, don't forget to finger pistol often. They'll think you're being ironic, but you'll know you're just being cool.
..I mean, who knew that Momo had a formula?
>Cuh<
Monday, June 22, 2009
Momo:Ricoh.
Momo:Ricoh.
I'm no photographer.
So I wouldn't want to push myself forward in this particular creative area.
>DEADPAN PAUSE<
..But this 20' print behind me, next to the similarly large portrait of me, is a humble snap from my latest collection of monochrome observances of the Middle East.
I am but a refractor of light.
Momo:Ricoh Gulf Art Guff on Facebook.
I'm no photographer.
So I wouldn't want to push myself forward in this particular creative area.
>DEADPAN PAUSE<
..But this 20' print behind me, next to the similarly large portrait of me, is a humble snap from my latest collection of monochrome observances of the Middle East.
I am but a refractor of light.
Momo:Ricoh Gulf Art Guff on Facebook.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Possibility overload.
Possibility overload.
So technology has never given the average Joe more opportunities, right? We're living in an unprecedented time of user-driven, user-generated content.
And are you excited about it yet?
---
Sitting around everyone's favourite kitchen table this evening, Mark and Sarah's, we wished good chums Jon and Lyn a heart-felt bon voyage as they continue to pack to leave UK shores for Canadian ones. It's been years of on/off drama for them, before the visas finally came through last week and they knew their new chapter was finally opening across the Atlantic.
Saying goodbye, I knew none of us felt the full pang of parting, however – because of Facebook. And Skype. And blogs. We're in eachother's daily community more than ever, thanks to these people-connecting online apps. It's revolutionary. And it's human-minded tech. ..If you can see past the dog-awful, geek-up design of most of them, that is.
It connects folk, that's my point – bringing the miles together so we can all bore eachother stupid with buh-uh-LUDDY quizzes.
It's no substitute for having Jon and Lyn just over the road. I might be able to make my avatar take them over a little brick-edged wok of curry in Yoville, but it won't be the same as dashing through the rain with it to their flat, just outside the studio window.
But the tech still keeps us in eachother's lives. And this is something I'm very grateful for.
---
Tech connects us like never before, in fact. So they tell us.
My business knows this well, I should testify. How could Momo:typo have existed in a modest home studio without iStockphoto? Or just e-mail?
But all this burgeoning community media brings with it the pressure to seize emerging opportunities. And I don't know about you, but I'm as able to seize emerging opportunities for innovative business solutions as I am able to say things like that to clients without wanting to punch myself clean in the face. The truth is, all this gabble about Talk Tech appeals to another very human instinct. The instinct to quickly feel hopelessly left out. And generally inadequate.
Social media is a mad faddy dash to feel involved.
Great. It's picking football teams all over again.
---
I've often thought that, as much as I like the pleasure of using Macs, for example – stroking them, hugging them, telling them I love them and other perfectly normal, right and proper expressions of gratitude to lovely design – I can't really get excited about technology for its own sake.
I dig the daydreams of Tomorrow's World for sure, and I want to live in space in the future – don't get me wrong.
But please. Don't drool too much over the tech – drool over what it can help you DO.
---
The soul-destroyingly dull-sounding EOS 5D Mk II. It has me a little worked up tonight.
Why?
Find a picture of one, and you won't be enlightened. It looks like a camera. Just another pretty boring-looking SLR digital camera. And not a cheap holiday toy – some £2000's-worth of SLR digital camera. A professional's plaything.
So why the passing excitement? Because this thing takes HD video. Through those gorgeous Cannon lenses. For less than half the price of a video camera that can use any kind of half-way decent lens.
It makes home videos look like ads.
I won't bore you with talk of F-stops and depth of field. Partly because photography still feels like a bit of a black art to me – despite years of photography lessons at art school. But I know what I want to achieve – and it's idley cool, smart-ass, slick-shiny pictures of stuff. And this ruddy Cannon upstart can do it on a whim.
Now, trust me when I pause to say that if there's one sure-fire way to kill a worthy creative idea, it's to ignore the delivery. The style. The vital thing you can sense instinctively from about the time you develop language until you draw inevitably nearer to adulthood, at which point it becomes ever fainter and more alien to you – cool. I'm talking about Cool.
On the evening of the premier, there ain't no use whining about the budget restraints of your film – like some architect, while we all stare at the dogs' dinner you built and got paid for and that we now all have to live with on our high street. No. It takes a viewer marginally longer – sometimes a LOT longer – to work out that a film or a pop video is actually crap – a badly-directed bad idea – when it's shot on really expensive gear, than to spot a terrific bit of visual creative hidden in a rubbish bit of production.
Appropriate style gets you through the front door. It's body language. It's brand, baby.
And if I'm going to do any dead-groovy pop videos for Momo:tempo – with no hint of irony – ...man do I want them to distract you from the basic lack of ideas with some dead cool styling.
---
But I'm wondering more generally at the moment, can a techy dimwit like me – that is, a moderately capable modern creative, with not enough time or inclination to become a true social media bore – can even someone not grown in a Twitter In-vitro Tank with synthetic parts turn an unknown brand into a well known one? In, say, just one year? Using all the tech that's out there to create an audience out of thin air? All by themselves?
It will depend, like everything in the end, on your idea. What are you wanting people to buy into? The smartest online strategy in the world won't disguise a bit of pseudo-eighties synth pop keyboard music that no-one would want to be seen dead listening to. If you see what I mean.
Still, if you can get people to buy into a brand out of pity... it might still have legs, people.
---
It sort of sounds like a specific challenge. I love the connecting with people bit of tech today. But I think I hate the collective Twitterati. Not the good people individually having fun with something new and significant – but the uber-Twit, the Twitgeist, that barks at us all from the background noise of everything to get on board before train leaves, doofus. Next stop, the future, Twitketeers! Hoowah!
Because the possibilities are endless, I find all these worthy possibilities collectively daunting.
But still. There's no membership. There's officially no Ins or Outs to the brave new world of socal media. We are, technically, all invited. So could even a very human-shaped person like me make effective sense of it? Find a real use for it? ..Other than just pleasuring my self-expression all alone in the blogosphere?
Hmmm.
...More to the point, can I be ARSED?
So technology has never given the average Joe more opportunities, right? We're living in an unprecedented time of user-driven, user-generated content.
And are you excited about it yet?
---
Sitting around everyone's favourite kitchen table this evening, Mark and Sarah's, we wished good chums Jon and Lyn a heart-felt bon voyage as they continue to pack to leave UK shores for Canadian ones. It's been years of on/off drama for them, before the visas finally came through last week and they knew their new chapter was finally opening across the Atlantic.
Saying goodbye, I knew none of us felt the full pang of parting, however – because of Facebook. And Skype. And blogs. We're in eachother's daily community more than ever, thanks to these people-connecting online apps. It's revolutionary. And it's human-minded tech. ..If you can see past the dog-awful, geek-up design of most of them, that is.
It connects folk, that's my point – bringing the miles together so we can all bore eachother stupid with buh-uh-LUDDY quizzes.
It's no substitute for having Jon and Lyn just over the road. I might be able to make my avatar take them over a little brick-edged wok of curry in Yoville, but it won't be the same as dashing through the rain with it to their flat, just outside the studio window.
But the tech still keeps us in eachother's lives. And this is something I'm very grateful for.
---
Tech connects us like never before, in fact. So they tell us.
My business knows this well, I should testify. How could Momo:typo have existed in a modest home studio without iStockphoto? Or just e-mail?
But all this burgeoning community media brings with it the pressure to seize emerging opportunities. And I don't know about you, but I'm as able to seize emerging opportunities for innovative business solutions as I am able to say things like that to clients without wanting to punch myself clean in the face. The truth is, all this gabble about Talk Tech appeals to another very human instinct. The instinct to quickly feel hopelessly left out. And generally inadequate.
Social media is a mad faddy dash to feel involved.
Great. It's picking football teams all over again.
---
I've often thought that, as much as I like the pleasure of using Macs, for example – stroking them, hugging them, telling them I love them and other perfectly normal, right and proper expressions of gratitude to lovely design – I can't really get excited about technology for its own sake.
I dig the daydreams of Tomorrow's World for sure, and I want to live in space in the future – don't get me wrong.
But please. Don't drool too much over the tech – drool over what it can help you DO.
---
The soul-destroyingly dull-sounding EOS 5D Mk II. It has me a little worked up tonight.
Why?
Find a picture of one, and you won't be enlightened. It looks like a camera. Just another pretty boring-looking SLR digital camera. And not a cheap holiday toy – some £2000's-worth of SLR digital camera. A professional's plaything.
So why the passing excitement? Because this thing takes HD video. Through those gorgeous Cannon lenses. For less than half the price of a video camera that can use any kind of half-way decent lens.
It makes home videos look like ads.
I won't bore you with talk of F-stops and depth of field. Partly because photography still feels like a bit of a black art to me – despite years of photography lessons at art school. But I know what I want to achieve – and it's idley cool, smart-ass, slick-shiny pictures of stuff. And this ruddy Cannon upstart can do it on a whim.
Now, trust me when I pause to say that if there's one sure-fire way to kill a worthy creative idea, it's to ignore the delivery. The style. The vital thing you can sense instinctively from about the time you develop language until you draw inevitably nearer to adulthood, at which point it becomes ever fainter and more alien to you – cool. I'm talking about Cool.
On the evening of the premier, there ain't no use whining about the budget restraints of your film – like some architect, while we all stare at the dogs' dinner you built and got paid for and that we now all have to live with on our high street. No. It takes a viewer marginally longer – sometimes a LOT longer – to work out that a film or a pop video is actually crap – a badly-directed bad idea – when it's shot on really expensive gear, than to spot a terrific bit of visual creative hidden in a rubbish bit of production.
Appropriate style gets you through the front door. It's body language. It's brand, baby.
And if I'm going to do any dead-groovy pop videos for Momo:tempo – with no hint of irony – ...man do I want them to distract you from the basic lack of ideas with some dead cool styling.
---
But I'm wondering more generally at the moment, can a techy dimwit like me – that is, a moderately capable modern creative, with not enough time or inclination to become a true social media bore – can even someone not grown in a Twitter In-vitro Tank with synthetic parts turn an unknown brand into a well known one? In, say, just one year? Using all the tech that's out there to create an audience out of thin air? All by themselves?
It will depend, like everything in the end, on your idea. What are you wanting people to buy into? The smartest online strategy in the world won't disguise a bit of pseudo-eighties synth pop keyboard music that no-one would want to be seen dead listening to. If you see what I mean.
Still, if you can get people to buy into a brand out of pity... it might still have legs, people.
---
It sort of sounds like a specific challenge. I love the connecting with people bit of tech today. But I think I hate the collective Twitterati. Not the good people individually having fun with something new and significant – but the uber-Twit, the Twitgeist, that barks at us all from the background noise of everything to get on board before train leaves, doofus. Next stop, the future, Twitketeers! Hoowah!
Because the possibilities are endless, I find all these worthy possibilities collectively daunting.
But still. There's no membership. There's officially no Ins or Outs to the brave new world of socal media. We are, technically, all invited. So could even a very human-shaped person like me make effective sense of it? Find a real use for it? ..Other than just pleasuring my self-expression all alone in the blogosphere?
Hmmm.
...More to the point, can I be ARSED?
Monday, June 15, 2009
The One Upman Shop.
The One Upman Shop.
You did sort of imagine this would be how you'd work every day. You know, in that bright future you forsaw would have you legitimately, professionally based at home – sunshine on the keys, wood pigeons coo-rooing, breeze rooshing the trees.
Yes.
>BREATHES IN DEEPLY THROUGH THE NOSE WITH FLINTY CONVICTION<
..Ruddy hot, bright and noisy out here, isn't it?
The weefee's only conviction this far from the house is that it exists somewhere. Somewhere much nearer the house, evidently. I can see it's there, but I could probably draw the BBC News homepage in felt tip pens quicker than it loads. Including the scrolling live feeds.
So I'm doing this on Blogspot's load page but will have to go back upstairs to actually publish the discovery, mooted on Twitter just now, that perhaps I can't in fact finally enjoy the psychological one-upmanship of working in the garden over lunch.
But really, why did I think I should? I can't see the keys, builders are machine-gunning concrete all the way to the centre of the earth somewhere in the street, and a sunbathing neighbour is trying to have a comfortingly banal private conversation on the phone mere feet from me beyond the sound-reinforced security boundary of a slat fence.
Just think how easily I could live broadcast this to the entire world, and that fence would mean she'd never even know I'd made her private revelations global. If anyone at all actually read my blog, of course.
I've got money spiders climbing around the flush keyboard, my hair's having a particularly whispy day in this irritatingly balmy breeze, and I've only just realised half of what I've typed is demented. What, for example, is a 'one-upmanshop'? Somewhere I'd like to open an account, I think.
Oh this blasted gorgeous sunny day without the gloomy pressures of an office!
I'm going in.
Leaving the neighbour to her own home-based profesionalism. Film reviews and gossip columning, apparently. Same as every other creative freelancer.
---
Now, from in here – relocated to the lounge bay, avoiding the studio as part of this mobile social media experiement – perhaps I could imagine that the vouchers from The One Upman Shop have been cashed in after all.
I can see it's sunny and beautiful out there. But I can also see what the beggary I'm typing. I can, as well as this, listen to Jobim, to help nature create a more convincing summer atmosphere. Plus, I don't need to wear my sunnies, so I can use them as a pretty fetching alice band to keep foppish whispy flops out of my eyes during very important social media comment blogging work.
All that and the kettle is much much nearer. Although I'm putting off caving in to casual caffeine today, as I think encroaching middle age – still so very far off, I'd like you to bear in mind – is telling my body to go to bed at sensible hours and not just say yes every time someone offers it a glass of something made from very heavy Shiraz grapes.
---
I bazzed up to the capital on Saturday tea time to see Ben and Marnie for the first time since we completed Sophie in the souk. Wrap party at producer Jennifer's. Except, it was only by late evening I began to slowly come into focus on the whole wrap party status of the soiré, due largely to the absence of anyone even vaguely connected to the production of the programme.
"Ah" I think a distant secondary internal voice must have mumbled eventually, as someone poured me another little top up of heavily fermented Shiraz grape juice drink, "this is just a party."
Adding a few minutes later: "Huh."
But, hey. Meeting people is meeting people – old gags become new gags, however the new audience got invited. I was happy to meet them, happy to shoot my entire bolt of impressive sounding interest in world affairs, and happy to not have to demonstrate how little I could back up this heavily implied but heavily vague clever knowledge at a second social get together. Plus, I wouldn't want the nice Persian Brit I lectured about the Iranian elections to have to nod politely for another evening.
---
It was good to see Benny boy. Seems everyone likes the show. Kids in particular, I hear. They get the hidden subtexts, obviously.
Ben's created a real editorial integrity to the production. A clear bit of brand work, really. We'll have to see what the Travel Channel really makes of it.
But in some delightfully north London dinner party lines that I seemed to slip into effortlessly that night – but which were undoubtedly bought from the Basics range at The One Upman Shop – the subject of the show did allow me to say things like: "Oh I've always found Moroccans to be charming people. You really must go." And: "So I asked myself what the defining character of truly Moroccan music was, as opposed to other North African and pan-oriental influences..."
Nob. Got a few laughs though.
---
Also, of course, I made sure I used the belt up and down the M3 to audition new edits of the album. Car journeys are useful cocoons for this kind of creative analysis.
And after all, The golden age of exploration is, I should say, just two weeks from its studio deadline now.
Breakthrough moment before I left was getting the first final running order of it all crammed onto an eighty-minute CD. This was basically momentous, as it was the first time I could hear how it would work. ..Or rather, IF it would work.
And?
..How the f*** should I know? I'm writing this tripe – I love it. Never been right before though, have I?
It works, I should say. That is, it seems to fit together, on its own terms. And with a couple of sessions and some additional editing tweeks, it'll be done. Actually done. Spot of singing, couple of cello parts to record, few more horn spots. And done.
..Then what the sweet arsing fate I'm supposed to actually DO with it, I don't know.
Try and get it listed at The One Upman Shop, obviously.
You did sort of imagine this would be how you'd work every day. You know, in that bright future you forsaw would have you legitimately, professionally based at home – sunshine on the keys, wood pigeons coo-rooing, breeze rooshing the trees.
Yes.
>BREATHES IN DEEPLY THROUGH THE NOSE WITH FLINTY CONVICTION<
..Ruddy hot, bright and noisy out here, isn't it?
The weefee's only conviction this far from the house is that it exists somewhere. Somewhere much nearer the house, evidently. I can see it's there, but I could probably draw the BBC News homepage in felt tip pens quicker than it loads. Including the scrolling live feeds.
So I'm doing this on Blogspot's load page but will have to go back upstairs to actually publish the discovery, mooted on Twitter just now, that perhaps I can't in fact finally enjoy the psychological one-upmanship of working in the garden over lunch.
But really, why did I think I should? I can't see the keys, builders are machine-gunning concrete all the way to the centre of the earth somewhere in the street, and a sunbathing neighbour is trying to have a comfortingly banal private conversation on the phone mere feet from me beyond the sound-reinforced security boundary of a slat fence.
Just think how easily I could live broadcast this to the entire world, and that fence would mean she'd never even know I'd made her private revelations global. If anyone at all actually read my blog, of course.
I've got money spiders climbing around the flush keyboard, my hair's having a particularly whispy day in this irritatingly balmy breeze, and I've only just realised half of what I've typed is demented. What, for example, is a 'one-upmanshop'? Somewhere I'd like to open an account, I think.
Oh this blasted gorgeous sunny day without the gloomy pressures of an office!
I'm going in.
Leaving the neighbour to her own home-based profesionalism. Film reviews and gossip columning, apparently. Same as every other creative freelancer.
---
Now, from in here – relocated to the lounge bay, avoiding the studio as part of this mobile social media experiement – perhaps I could imagine that the vouchers from The One Upman Shop have been cashed in after all.
I can see it's sunny and beautiful out there. But I can also see what the beggary I'm typing. I can, as well as this, listen to Jobim, to help nature create a more convincing summer atmosphere. Plus, I don't need to wear my sunnies, so I can use them as a pretty fetching alice band to keep foppish whispy flops out of my eyes during very important social media comment blogging work.
All that and the kettle is much much nearer. Although I'm putting off caving in to casual caffeine today, as I think encroaching middle age – still so very far off, I'd like you to bear in mind – is telling my body to go to bed at sensible hours and not just say yes every time someone offers it a glass of something made from very heavy Shiraz grapes.
---
I bazzed up to the capital on Saturday tea time to see Ben and Marnie for the first time since we completed Sophie in the souk. Wrap party at producer Jennifer's. Except, it was only by late evening I began to slowly come into focus on the whole wrap party status of the soiré, due largely to the absence of anyone even vaguely connected to the production of the programme.
"Ah" I think a distant secondary internal voice must have mumbled eventually, as someone poured me another little top up of heavily fermented Shiraz grape juice drink, "this is just a party."
Adding a few minutes later: "Huh."
But, hey. Meeting people is meeting people – old gags become new gags, however the new audience got invited. I was happy to meet them, happy to shoot my entire bolt of impressive sounding interest in world affairs, and happy to not have to demonstrate how little I could back up this heavily implied but heavily vague clever knowledge at a second social get together. Plus, I wouldn't want the nice Persian Brit I lectured about the Iranian elections to have to nod politely for another evening.
---
It was good to see Benny boy. Seems everyone likes the show. Kids in particular, I hear. They get the hidden subtexts, obviously.
Ben's created a real editorial integrity to the production. A clear bit of brand work, really. We'll have to see what the Travel Channel really makes of it.
But in some delightfully north London dinner party lines that I seemed to slip into effortlessly that night – but which were undoubtedly bought from the Basics range at The One Upman Shop – the subject of the show did allow me to say things like: "Oh I've always found Moroccans to be charming people. You really must go." And: "So I asked myself what the defining character of truly Moroccan music was, as opposed to other North African and pan-oriental influences..."
Nob. Got a few laughs though.
---
Also, of course, I made sure I used the belt up and down the M3 to audition new edits of the album. Car journeys are useful cocoons for this kind of creative analysis.
And after all, The golden age of exploration is, I should say, just two weeks from its studio deadline now.
Breakthrough moment before I left was getting the first final running order of it all crammed onto an eighty-minute CD. This was basically momentous, as it was the first time I could hear how it would work. ..Or rather, IF it would work.
And?
..How the f*** should I know? I'm writing this tripe – I love it. Never been right before though, have I?
It works, I should say. That is, it seems to fit together, on its own terms. And with a couple of sessions and some additional editing tweeks, it'll be done. Actually done. Spot of singing, couple of cello parts to record, few more horn spots. And done.
..Then what the sweet arsing fate I'm supposed to actually DO with it, I don't know.
Try and get it listed at The One Upman Shop, obviously.
Monday, June 08, 2009
On the job.
On the job.
In the words of Adrian Chiles, next spring seems like an awful long wait.
Not for Yasmina, of course – she's arrived. She has a new job and a whole new identity.
But for the rest of us? Somehow, I'm sure we as a proud nation will push on and pull together and muddle through until the next series of The apprentice is aired. I'm going to miss Srallan, though – he'll be Lawdallen by next year.
One thing that lastnight's finale demonstrated along the way was borne out by the boss himself on the after-show – brand is what people buy. Yasmina's Coco Electric was basically cute; the chocolates themselves you can get right with an extra couple of days. But who'd know Kate's Choc D'amour were extra scrummy from their pregnancy test type box?
I think Coco Electric should be a club night too, by the way.
The idea of something – the instinctive, emotional response, however small – is what we all reach for on the shelf. That's a brand; what people feel about a product, or a thing. Or you.
And so I can't help feeling, where might this be more relevant to this morning's news than in the jolly world of politics?
---
The world IS politics, of course. How people interact with eachother, how they get along, work together around differences, work around competing outlooks. Everything is politics – how we navigate eachother determines how 'successful' we are. Which I put in quotes there to let you decide what the word means.
So personal 'brand' is pretty vital, huh?
Right. In response, however, I'm personally just thinking of printing up more Momo tees – they're cute. Do yourself a favour – do yourself a logo, I say. Though I'm now thinking of adding a pink lightning spark to mine.
The professional party politician can't do that, however.
..No, I mean they can't – have you seen the design of their leaflets? Shocking.
Which is interesting. The very people who usually feel drawn to step up to public office are usually not creatives. Yet the subtle nuances of expression and emotional awareness are everything to a politician's success.
Ah.
---
BNP.
Thoughts?
'New suit, same old Nazis' was one amusing ad headline for them this week. They say we've got them wrong – they're not racists, they're standing against the systemic racism of the The Liberal Elite, directed against the Indiginous White Population Of Britain.
Which might just be a plea to keep things simple; the English are already German-Nordic-French with a twist of Italian. Invading bastards. We should really give the country back to the Welsh and the Cornish, of course. But we certainly can't incorporate any more ethnic identity into our great collective mongrel brand any more.
Last thing we want to do, for example, is become a massively sea-faring and trading nation, extending our influence and enlarging our outlook to a truly global scale, bringing back prosperity and people alike to our meagre shores and... ah.
I, ah.
But here's the thing to remember with your brand, if you just joined the class – it ain't yours. It's almost like art – you make the marks and the perciever of your work makes the connections. It's in their head. So they can make whatever connections they damn-well please.
So what should be done when people percieve their country to be against them? When their connection with Britain feels increasingly like a disconnection?
It comes down, as I think everything on the political news does today, to leadership. Right now, people are percieving no proper leadership in the UK.
Uh-oh.
---
Well, I say 'uh-oh' to create a dramatic pause, but it's all part of the natural ups and downs of professional political life. Things go stale and we want something fresh.
But, like a teacher in an unruly classroom, the minute the little tykes can smell fear – you're dead.
Once kids – or let's call us voters – get it into their heads that you don't know your arse from your elbow when it comes to authority or direction, your brand is a bad one. You've got to do something to correct their impression of your authority.
Rolling tanks into the shires and squares of this fair isle would be a way to look tough, of course.
It's the I'll Bloody Show You Who's Strong, Yeah tactic of choice for many world leaders. And these guys have often been great with creating brand – cute posters, nice uniforms, consistent brand collateral. Beatings for deviating from the brand book. My kind of marketing department.
We don't kind of do that here. Not really the UK's style. We fawn and bitch, depending on the weather. Which might make the UK sound a bit, well, gay. But I'm all for it – the catfights can sound pretty nasty and will involve a lot of meladrama, but no-one's blood will actually get spilt on the chiffon/leather/ermin and it will be mere moments before someone says: 'BORED. WHO TURNED OFF THE DISCO?' and we're all cheering and fugging again.
I realise this reduction of a particular sexual identity to a kind of colourful character part in the story of our community is not helpful. But's let's face it, the colourful ones are always our favourite ones in the film. The white/straight/thin heroes we cast in the central roles are so dull. And England can, after all, be pretty gay. I blame our butch Viking heritage. In fact, I thank it.
England: Putting the pink spark back into British politics.
---
My distracted point, pulling it back, is that leadership is the most vital brand we create – and Gordon's lost it.
Doesn't matter that we still think he's a massive politico-financial brain – he seems like a man driven by blind vanity, rather than simple dedication. If he'd been content to serve his country in Number 11, instead of CONSTANTLY pushing to be Tony Blair, we might be remembering him as an economic titan and hero of all our prosperity. Instead, his free markets became rather too free and unregulated as he turned is piercing eye on the house further up the road in Downing Street.
People didn't turn in droves to the BNP last week. The European elections showed that much of the continent mis-trusts the idea of lefty bananacrats, same as us. And here in the UK, people are fed up with the culture of Westminster, giving it up as a lost cause, I think – 33% turn-out, or something? People just didn't vote.
It's not just that, though. People still haven't a strong enough idea of what the hell the European parliament does, for one thing. Where has been the ad campaigns and information on that? Nationally, internationally or locally? We went into our booths at the top of our road and more or less closed our eyes and stuck the pencil in.
But also, it's the fact that Brown is the opposite of Tony Blair, who was a gifted communicator. His skills and his words are always lost behind his gruff personality. Which would have been endearing and respectably honest, had he not insisted so forcefully on being the voice of the UK.
As PM, Brown is in the wrong job. He's creating the wrong brand for Labour and for the UK. He's just not up to the particular job of articulating the fundamentals of leadership – where we're going, how we'll get there and who we are.
And crucially, our idea of who we are is perhaps the most potent force in politics.
In the words of Adrian Chiles, next spring seems like an awful long wait.
Not for Yasmina, of course – she's arrived. She has a new job and a whole new identity.
But for the rest of us? Somehow, I'm sure we as a proud nation will push on and pull together and muddle through until the next series of The apprentice is aired. I'm going to miss Srallan, though – he'll be Lawdallen by next year.
One thing that lastnight's finale demonstrated along the way was borne out by the boss himself on the after-show – brand is what people buy. Yasmina's Coco Electric was basically cute; the chocolates themselves you can get right with an extra couple of days. But who'd know Kate's Choc D'amour were extra scrummy from their pregnancy test type box?
I think Coco Electric should be a club night too, by the way.
The idea of something – the instinctive, emotional response, however small – is what we all reach for on the shelf. That's a brand; what people feel about a product, or a thing. Or you.
And so I can't help feeling, where might this be more relevant to this morning's news than in the jolly world of politics?
---
The world IS politics, of course. How people interact with eachother, how they get along, work together around differences, work around competing outlooks. Everything is politics – how we navigate eachother determines how 'successful' we are. Which I put in quotes there to let you decide what the word means.
So personal 'brand' is pretty vital, huh?
Right. In response, however, I'm personally just thinking of printing up more Momo tees – they're cute. Do yourself a favour – do yourself a logo, I say. Though I'm now thinking of adding a pink lightning spark to mine.
The professional party politician can't do that, however.
..No, I mean they can't – have you seen the design of their leaflets? Shocking.
Which is interesting. The very people who usually feel drawn to step up to public office are usually not creatives. Yet the subtle nuances of expression and emotional awareness are everything to a politician's success.
Ah.
---
BNP.
Thoughts?
'New suit, same old Nazis' was one amusing ad headline for them this week. They say we've got them wrong – they're not racists, they're standing against the systemic racism of the The Liberal Elite, directed against the Indiginous White Population Of Britain.
Which might just be a plea to keep things simple; the English are already German-Nordic-French with a twist of Italian. Invading bastards. We should really give the country back to the Welsh and the Cornish, of course. But we certainly can't incorporate any more ethnic identity into our great collective mongrel brand any more.
Last thing we want to do, for example, is become a massively sea-faring and trading nation, extending our influence and enlarging our outlook to a truly global scale, bringing back prosperity and people alike to our meagre shores and... ah.
I, ah.
But here's the thing to remember with your brand, if you just joined the class – it ain't yours. It's almost like art – you make the marks and the perciever of your work makes the connections. It's in their head. So they can make whatever connections they damn-well please.
So what should be done when people percieve their country to be against them? When their connection with Britain feels increasingly like a disconnection?
It comes down, as I think everything on the political news does today, to leadership. Right now, people are percieving no proper leadership in the UK.
Uh-oh.
---
Well, I say 'uh-oh' to create a dramatic pause, but it's all part of the natural ups and downs of professional political life. Things go stale and we want something fresh.
But, like a teacher in an unruly classroom, the minute the little tykes can smell fear – you're dead.
Once kids – or let's call us voters – get it into their heads that you don't know your arse from your elbow when it comes to authority or direction, your brand is a bad one. You've got to do something to correct their impression of your authority.
Rolling tanks into the shires and squares of this fair isle would be a way to look tough, of course.
It's the I'll Bloody Show You Who's Strong, Yeah tactic of choice for many world leaders. And these guys have often been great with creating brand – cute posters, nice uniforms, consistent brand collateral. Beatings for deviating from the brand book. My kind of marketing department.
We don't kind of do that here. Not really the UK's style. We fawn and bitch, depending on the weather. Which might make the UK sound a bit, well, gay. But I'm all for it – the catfights can sound pretty nasty and will involve a lot of meladrama, but no-one's blood will actually get spilt on the chiffon/leather/ermin and it will be mere moments before someone says: 'BORED. WHO TURNED OFF THE DISCO?' and we're all cheering and fugging again.
I realise this reduction of a particular sexual identity to a kind of colourful character part in the story of our community is not helpful. But's let's face it, the colourful ones are always our favourite ones in the film. The white/straight/thin heroes we cast in the central roles are so dull. And England can, after all, be pretty gay. I blame our butch Viking heritage. In fact, I thank it.
England: Putting the pink spark back into British politics.
---
My distracted point, pulling it back, is that leadership is the most vital brand we create – and Gordon's lost it.
Doesn't matter that we still think he's a massive politico-financial brain – he seems like a man driven by blind vanity, rather than simple dedication. If he'd been content to serve his country in Number 11, instead of CONSTANTLY pushing to be Tony Blair, we might be remembering him as an economic titan and hero of all our prosperity. Instead, his free markets became rather too free and unregulated as he turned is piercing eye on the house further up the road in Downing Street.
People didn't turn in droves to the BNP last week. The European elections showed that much of the continent mis-trusts the idea of lefty bananacrats, same as us. And here in the UK, people are fed up with the culture of Westminster, giving it up as a lost cause, I think – 33% turn-out, or something? People just didn't vote.
It's not just that, though. People still haven't a strong enough idea of what the hell the European parliament does, for one thing. Where has been the ad campaigns and information on that? Nationally, internationally or locally? We went into our booths at the top of our road and more or less closed our eyes and stuck the pencil in.
But also, it's the fact that Brown is the opposite of Tony Blair, who was a gifted communicator. His skills and his words are always lost behind his gruff personality. Which would have been endearing and respectably honest, had he not insisted so forcefully on being the voice of the UK.
As PM, Brown is in the wrong job. He's creating the wrong brand for Labour and for the UK. He's just not up to the particular job of articulating the fundamentals of leadership – where we're going, how we'll get there and who we are.
And crucially, our idea of who we are is perhaps the most potent force in politics.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Orders from the frontier.
Orders from the frontier.
Back. Back in Bomo.
And after a couple of days in the verdant bends and bumps of Cornwall, back in the sunshine; I think I have as much colour from various people's back gardens over this last weekend, as I do from the sunbaked Middle East.
Summer is evidently here. I can feel it with the studio window open. The question is, as I go through my emails and post and phone messages, what will the summer bring?
---
We've managed to see some of the gang since getting back, with afternoon teas and barbecues and the like. Melly and Bobs were down and I made him go through my photos from the Ricoh and tell me how to use it better. But, uncharacteristically, I also suggested we do some work in our own garden, and set-to yesterday, clearing the front driveway of brambles.
I must have sunstroke.
Interestingly though, back from hols and evidently raring to go, I'm wondering where to put all that rare stuff.
After wrapping up so many things before leaving, I've returned to an unusually blank canvas for Momo. Various projects on the go, of course – and I have yet to discover whether there are various disasters on the go, hidden from view – but my agenda is open. Perhaps more open than it's been in years.
Still, it's not nine in the morning, yet.
The main thing on Momo's agenda is, of course, the bleedin' album. And knocking on a few doors on the back of Sophie. The point is, I guess, I may have something I've been hankering for for a long time: some space to direct the business. Chase some work I actually want to do.
But the frontier is a weird place. You have to have a pretty sure idea of your direction when carving roads into virgin land; it's much easier to be told where to go.
I may yet be, before the day's out.
Back. Back in Bomo.
And after a couple of days in the verdant bends and bumps of Cornwall, back in the sunshine; I think I have as much colour from various people's back gardens over this last weekend, as I do from the sunbaked Middle East.
Summer is evidently here. I can feel it with the studio window open. The question is, as I go through my emails and post and phone messages, what will the summer bring?
---
We've managed to see some of the gang since getting back, with afternoon teas and barbecues and the like. Melly and Bobs were down and I made him go through my photos from the Ricoh and tell me how to use it better. But, uncharacteristically, I also suggested we do some work in our own garden, and set-to yesterday, clearing the front driveway of brambles.
I must have sunstroke.
Interestingly though, back from hols and evidently raring to go, I'm wondering where to put all that rare stuff.
After wrapping up so many things before leaving, I've returned to an unusually blank canvas for Momo. Various projects on the go, of course – and I have yet to discover whether there are various disasters on the go, hidden from view – but my agenda is open. Perhaps more open than it's been in years.
Still, it's not nine in the morning, yet.
The main thing on Momo's agenda is, of course, the bleedin' album. And knocking on a few doors on the back of Sophie. The point is, I guess, I may have something I've been hankering for for a long time: some space to direct the business. Chase some work I actually want to do.
But the frontier is a weird place. You have to have a pretty sure idea of your direction when carving roads into virgin land; it's much easier to be told where to go.
I may yet be, before the day's out.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sinbad and the Muscateers.
Sinbad and the Muscateers.
Ever read Treasure Island?
If you like a good yarr-n, this is the buccaneer of them – Bobby Louis Stevenson's efficient masterpiece of pirate duplicity and buried dubloons. It's fab.
Of course, the date palms I must confess to have been lazing under while reading it are half a world away from young Jim Hawkins' Carrabean adventure. More than half, if you're counting cultures and centuries. But it's still a ripping good tale for a holiday read, I must say.
Not that we've been on holiday, you understand. We've been fortifying friends in foreign climes with the hearty encouragement of contact with home. A kind of solemn missionary trip if you will. Until this evening after dinner anyway, when we fly back to the UK and I have to give up the mango guzzling and daytime snoozing and casual afternoon G&Ts.
>takes a clinkly sip<
---
Now, if you like lands of adventure and swashbuckling tales of history, let's face it – you really ought to be at least intrigued by the Middle East. It is, in a way, one enormous, exotic yarn – repleat with fables and heros and ancient peoples and lost treasures and the kinds of utterly serious human struggles we might only be able to comprehend in colourful, posterised, simplified storytelling.
From the Atlantic coast to the silk routes into China, all the great civilisations of formative history played out their evolving naratives somewhere here. And their various intertwining plots spider across the world political map today.
The little island of Bahrain is certainly a real crossroads of many routes and a crucible of many stories. People find themselves here for all manner of reasons, like so many islands. But it can feel a little unreal, like an airport lounge.
The mix of ex-patriate business life – with the comings and goings of G&T-clinking westerners posted to the regional arms of big financial businesses – and local Islamic life – where Bahrainis and Saudis retain an apparently unchanging and graphically different social outlook – is the macro juxtaposition here and it makes for a lot of fuzzy logic. Things work, even though they sound like they shouldn't, and even though they may not work with planned efficiency.
But both of these worlds can independently seem suspended somehow, accademic, against the realities of heat and work and place.
A mosque tract can read as smartly optimistic and ordered, as neat and tidy, as a business brochure. Both paint a positive picture of humans in a can-do world, placed into their rightful setting where everything makes sense and we all operate in predictably purposeful ways.
And in the Gulf in particular – where international business is really seated for the Arab world – the glossy stock imagery that these two outlooks market with seem to come very smoothly together.
---
It does work. The human level wins out and makes things work; Saudis stream over the Causeway to watch movies in the cinemas and to go to bars, and westerners learn a bit of respect and perhaps glimpse another way of life beyond the office. And everyone gets to trade.
It's all largely thanks to the largely friendly, easy-going approach of the Bahrainis – the sons and daughters of traders and pearl divers.
Yet, the country that's struck me as the most realistically positive on this trip to the GCC is one that sounds the most evocative – the land of Sinbad himself, Oman.
---
I won't give the details of the Chedi Hotel in Muscat. Suffice to say, it is the most decadent stay I've ever found myself having and the most creative deal I think Julian could posibly have blagged for us to get away with enjoying. I was sure they began to suspect we shouldn't have been there by day three.
It's a luxury oasis that is as unrealistic a cocoon from ordinary life as you could wish for on a break. And, like all international resorts, almost totally unreflective of it's geographical location. Could have been anywhere.
But it wasn't anywhere. It was in Muscat. And the glimpse we got of the city, walking through the spicy, aromatic heat of the forty-two-degree evening waterfront or cruising along the sweeping efficiency of its mountain roads out of town, we found ourselves talking to elegant, friendly people who seemed charged with identity and purpose, even in the humid blast of southern Arabia.
It's largely thanks to Sultan Qaboos ibn Sa'id, a dashing figure in his youth who took over the country the year I was born and immediately rebranded Oman to a more open and perhaps poetic sense of identity; building roads, instigating greater trade and tourism, inculcating real pride in his people. He reigns still. And Omanis seem to act like real sons of Sinbad – dashing, in their crisp, tailored, white thobes and neat, patterned, circular kuma hats. Muslims, but with a sense of some extra adventure about them.
We joked about the possible collective noun for people living in Muscat; sea port stretching along the coast against the mountains, overlooking the vital straights into the rest of the Gulf. And they really are known as Muscateers.
I can only say this as I finish my lazy gin and tonic and prepare to leave: if Oman isn't currently on your map, mark it on there now. From my flying visit I feel sure it is a land of many buried treasures.
Ever read Treasure Island?
If you like a good yarr-n, this is the buccaneer of them – Bobby Louis Stevenson's efficient masterpiece of pirate duplicity and buried dubloons. It's fab.
Of course, the date palms I must confess to have been lazing under while reading it are half a world away from young Jim Hawkins' Carrabean adventure. More than half, if you're counting cultures and centuries. But it's still a ripping good tale for a holiday read, I must say.
Not that we've been on holiday, you understand. We've been fortifying friends in foreign climes with the hearty encouragement of contact with home. A kind of solemn missionary trip if you will. Until this evening after dinner anyway, when we fly back to the UK and I have to give up the mango guzzling and daytime snoozing and casual afternoon G&Ts.
>takes a clinkly sip<
---
Now, if you like lands of adventure and swashbuckling tales of history, let's face it – you really ought to be at least intrigued by the Middle East. It is, in a way, one enormous, exotic yarn – repleat with fables and heros and ancient peoples and lost treasures and the kinds of utterly serious human struggles we might only be able to comprehend in colourful, posterised, simplified storytelling.
From the Atlantic coast to the silk routes into China, all the great civilisations of formative history played out their evolving naratives somewhere here. And their various intertwining plots spider across the world political map today.
The little island of Bahrain is certainly a real crossroads of many routes and a crucible of many stories. People find themselves here for all manner of reasons, like so many islands. But it can feel a little unreal, like an airport lounge.
The mix of ex-patriate business life – with the comings and goings of G&T-clinking westerners posted to the regional arms of big financial businesses – and local Islamic life – where Bahrainis and Saudis retain an apparently unchanging and graphically different social outlook – is the macro juxtaposition here and it makes for a lot of fuzzy logic. Things work, even though they sound like they shouldn't, and even though they may not work with planned efficiency.
But both of these worlds can independently seem suspended somehow, accademic, against the realities of heat and work and place.
A mosque tract can read as smartly optimistic and ordered, as neat and tidy, as a business brochure. Both paint a positive picture of humans in a can-do world, placed into their rightful setting where everything makes sense and we all operate in predictably purposeful ways.
And in the Gulf in particular – where international business is really seated for the Arab world – the glossy stock imagery that these two outlooks market with seem to come very smoothly together.
---
It does work. The human level wins out and makes things work; Saudis stream over the Causeway to watch movies in the cinemas and to go to bars, and westerners learn a bit of respect and perhaps glimpse another way of life beyond the office. And everyone gets to trade.
It's all largely thanks to the largely friendly, easy-going approach of the Bahrainis – the sons and daughters of traders and pearl divers.
Yet, the country that's struck me as the most realistically positive on this trip to the GCC is one that sounds the most evocative – the land of Sinbad himself, Oman.
---
I won't give the details of the Chedi Hotel in Muscat. Suffice to say, it is the most decadent stay I've ever found myself having and the most creative deal I think Julian could posibly have blagged for us to get away with enjoying. I was sure they began to suspect we shouldn't have been there by day three.
It's a luxury oasis that is as unrealistic a cocoon from ordinary life as you could wish for on a break. And, like all international resorts, almost totally unreflective of it's geographical location. Could have been anywhere.
But it wasn't anywhere. It was in Muscat. And the glimpse we got of the city, walking through the spicy, aromatic heat of the forty-two-degree evening waterfront or cruising along the sweeping efficiency of its mountain roads out of town, we found ourselves talking to elegant, friendly people who seemed charged with identity and purpose, even in the humid blast of southern Arabia.
It's largely thanks to Sultan Qaboos ibn Sa'id, a dashing figure in his youth who took over the country the year I was born and immediately rebranded Oman to a more open and perhaps poetic sense of identity; building roads, instigating greater trade and tourism, inculcating real pride in his people. He reigns still. And Omanis seem to act like real sons of Sinbad – dashing, in their crisp, tailored, white thobes and neat, patterned, circular kuma hats. Muslims, but with a sense of some extra adventure about them.
We joked about the possible collective noun for people living in Muscat; sea port stretching along the coast against the mountains, overlooking the vital straights into the rest of the Gulf. And they really are known as Muscateers.
I can only say this as I finish my lazy gin and tonic and prepare to leave: if Oman isn't currently on your map, mark it on there now. From my flying visit I feel sure it is a land of many buried treasures.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Archepedalo.
Archepedalo.
If there's one thing we can attest to, it's that Bahrain is not for the pedestrian.
This isn't news. Most emerging cities in the Middle East are built on a very twentieth century principle, and for a blindingly obvious and unassailable reason – the car and oil. Duh.
To underscore it, I'll say simply that when I filled up our modestly-powered runabout just before we left our windy-wet shores, it cost me fifty quid. Julian mentioned casually as we were cruising through the shifting shining panorama of Manama yesterday that he'd just filled his umpteen-litre gas guzzler for less than a tenner.
So pavements lead nowhere, buses are a kind of parked billboard system and people in coffee shops in the more exclusive island developments have no concept of where to find a number for a taxi here.
---
We do this everywhere we go. We wander instinctively and end up always at some point in some nameless back road with locals leaning in doorways casually eyeing the purposeful and conspicuously English-looking couple striding confidently towards the iron smelting plant/canal/industrial car park. But we feel we've seen the real wherever as a result. The unromantic, boring, foot-wearing, passing-pity-inducing real wherever.
But, there's nothing like treading out the real footprint of a place. Which I do largely mean. Now that I've made it back and had a shower.
Given that our trip out here is more of a visit to chums than a dreamy holiday, we're pretty happy to wander between places with no real itinerary. Although it's a bitter irony to Jules that he's landed a lot of all-hours appointments with work the very moment his chums arrive to see him, having had rather more space to be sociable up until now.
Still, work is work and Bahrain is intriguing, whoever we're with.
Plus his 'work' is directing photo shoots of F16s, Gazelle helicopters and the King's eye-wateringly luxurious personal 747s, so I'm not sure his feelings are single-mindedly missing our company. Jammy swine.
---
What we can also attest to after today is that Dilmun was a trading nation for some three thousand years, its paraditical identity surviving the influence of pushy investors no less significant than the Assyrians, the Babsters and the Messy-potamers, until self promotion monster Alex 'the just great, y'know' rebranded them to Tylos, about three hundred years before Christ. And he didn't even go there. Those Greek egotists. Bet he'd had his teeth done.
Anyway, modern Bahrain owes a very great deal to the black gold discovered only eighty-odd years ago here. And to the shadow of the great Arab homeland looming behind it. But despite the now-physical connection to a giant desert land with no cinemas or alchohol, thousands of weekend visitors from Saudi stream over the causway because of its decidedly laid-back approach to its Islamic identity.
As a result, the country has become a centre of international business in the region and some 40% of Bahrain's population is ex-patriate. So bars and cinemas and Innocent smoothies in local supermarkets are all a normal part of life here. Just like the motor car. Plus the American fifth fleet is based here, so Blackhawks shuttle to and fro along the shimmering coast every day. No idea what they cost to run. Perhaps cheap enough for anyone to rent one.
But the cheapest way to get around would have to be one of the most practical too, and one suggested in an unintentional malapropal moment by Caroline.
"Bahrain is an archepedalo, isn't it?" she said, when we arrived.
"That's right, " I nodded knowingly, "everyone wisely shuttles between the islands by self-powered pleasure boats."
Having found ourselves whisked off to the water's edge outside Julian's flat, the night we arrived, bobbing around in the middle of the glass-flat lagoon being assailed by flying fish a mere hour after landing in the balmy darkness, I can attest to the sense of adopting padalos or kayaks as a means of getting around here.
It took us a brisk 25mins to cross to the neighbouring island for a Costa Americano this morning, striding through the seering heat and brickdust of a building site residence; it took us a casual five minutes to cross the water to it at drifting speed that first night.
Not sure anyone would listen to us, however. Think if we approached the security men on the gates at Tila island with kayaks and said: "You chaps should really TRY these babies..." they would look no less incredulous than when we asked them if they could point us to the nearest public transport.
My feet hurt.
If there's one thing we can attest to, it's that Bahrain is not for the pedestrian.
This isn't news. Most emerging cities in the Middle East are built on a very twentieth century principle, and for a blindingly obvious and unassailable reason – the car and oil. Duh.
To underscore it, I'll say simply that when I filled up our modestly-powered runabout just before we left our windy-wet shores, it cost me fifty quid. Julian mentioned casually as we were cruising through the shifting shining panorama of Manama yesterday that he'd just filled his umpteen-litre gas guzzler for less than a tenner.
So pavements lead nowhere, buses are a kind of parked billboard system and people in coffee shops in the more exclusive island developments have no concept of where to find a number for a taxi here.
---
We do this everywhere we go. We wander instinctively and end up always at some point in some nameless back road with locals leaning in doorways casually eyeing the purposeful and conspicuously English-looking couple striding confidently towards the iron smelting plant/canal/industrial car park. But we feel we've seen the real wherever as a result. The unromantic, boring, foot-wearing, passing-pity-inducing real wherever.
But, there's nothing like treading out the real footprint of a place. Which I do largely mean. Now that I've made it back and had a shower.
Given that our trip out here is more of a visit to chums than a dreamy holiday, we're pretty happy to wander between places with no real itinerary. Although it's a bitter irony to Jules that he's landed a lot of all-hours appointments with work the very moment his chums arrive to see him, having had rather more space to be sociable up until now.
Still, work is work and Bahrain is intriguing, whoever we're with.
Plus his 'work' is directing photo shoots of F16s, Gazelle helicopters and the King's eye-wateringly luxurious personal 747s, so I'm not sure his feelings are single-mindedly missing our company. Jammy swine.
---
What we can also attest to after today is that Dilmun was a trading nation for some three thousand years, its paraditical identity surviving the influence of pushy investors no less significant than the Assyrians, the Babsters and the Messy-potamers, until self promotion monster Alex 'the just great, y'know' rebranded them to Tylos, about three hundred years before Christ. And he didn't even go there. Those Greek egotists. Bet he'd had his teeth done.
Anyway, modern Bahrain owes a very great deal to the black gold discovered only eighty-odd years ago here. And to the shadow of the great Arab homeland looming behind it. But despite the now-physical connection to a giant desert land with no cinemas or alchohol, thousands of weekend visitors from Saudi stream over the causway because of its decidedly laid-back approach to its Islamic identity.
As a result, the country has become a centre of international business in the region and some 40% of Bahrain's population is ex-patriate. So bars and cinemas and Innocent smoothies in local supermarkets are all a normal part of life here. Just like the motor car. Plus the American fifth fleet is based here, so Blackhawks shuttle to and fro along the shimmering coast every day. No idea what they cost to run. Perhaps cheap enough for anyone to rent one.
But the cheapest way to get around would have to be one of the most practical too, and one suggested in an unintentional malapropal moment by Caroline.
"Bahrain is an archepedalo, isn't it?" she said, when we arrived.
"That's right, " I nodded knowingly, "everyone wisely shuttles between the islands by self-powered pleasure boats."
Having found ourselves whisked off to the water's edge outside Julian's flat, the night we arrived, bobbing around in the middle of the glass-flat lagoon being assailed by flying fish a mere hour after landing in the balmy darkness, I can attest to the sense of adopting padalos or kayaks as a means of getting around here.
It took us a brisk 25mins to cross to the neighbouring island for a Costa Americano this morning, striding through the seering heat and brickdust of a building site residence; it took us a casual five minutes to cross the water to it at drifting speed that first night.
Not sure anyone would listen to us, however. Think if we approached the security men on the gates at Tila island with kayaks and said: "You chaps should really TRY these babies..." they would look no less incredulous than when we asked them if they could point us to the nearest public transport.
My feet hurt.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Arse and soul.
Arse and soul.
If you spend any of your time mucking about with matters creative, even as a self-confessed amateur, enthusiast or garden shed hobbyist, you will sooner or later be tempted by the demon of derision.
Taste is a matter of taste. But if you consider yourself to have it, you will also be very aware of who doesn't.
As you develop any kind of confidence at your craft – by week three of your pottery class, for example – you will begin to feel an instinct to voice the odd confident remark. The remarks of judgement. Things like: "That pot's crap, Dave. What were you thinking, you idiot. Looks like a child did it." And so forth. You've been there.
And so have I. I have to rein in this veritable beast of momentary certainty every day. I can't helping looking at, well, everything, and trying not to despair that I wasn't consulted. It's such a burden being a creative sometimes, it is.
Of course, it's one thing to rediscover disbelief and incredulity at the Eurovision song contest each year, or to wonder how no-one in this week's losing Apprentice team couldn't see how risibly poor the layout of their posters was. The maddening propensity of local British business to reach for the typeface Brush Script when designing a shop front is something that gives me indegestion and migrane from grinding my teeth… but most people are largely unaffected by these things. Beyond the scope of their respective creative jobs, these items are largely – dare I say it? – cosmetic.
But if there's one thing that to me rather matters, one creative medium we should all be pressuring our councils and our friends who are developers and our blummen' MPs more about, if I had to sacrifice my Lyn Truss Mega-Wedge-Tip Emergency Apostrophe Maker for one truly worthy creative critical cause... it's archetecture. Buildings. Your very environment.
For, the canvas of the archetect is the rest of your chuffing life, mate.
We have to LIVE with the epic lack of wellbeing created by most of the business compromises dotting our high street. Walk past them, around them, under them – dear Lord, into them – every day of our lives. Their massive brooding presence creates just that – presence in our outlook. Casting shadows or light. Making our journey to here and there easy or hard, uplifting or depressing.
Buildings won't go away. You're not allowed to just blow them up. I've asked.
And so it is in this high-minded spirit of condecending frustration, utterly un-schooled or qualified but bloody right, obviously, that I share this link with you. I am not proud that this will take you to a page of the Daily Mail. I will attempt to apologise for this another time. But look at the pictures and weep. If your soul can stand it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1180949/From-bargain-bin-store-bingo-hall-sad-fate-Odeon-popcorn-palaces.html
The vein in my head is throbbing again, dear.
I think it means that another tiny but important part of me has died.
If you spend any of your time mucking about with matters creative, even as a self-confessed amateur, enthusiast or garden shed hobbyist, you will sooner or later be tempted by the demon of derision.
Taste is a matter of taste. But if you consider yourself to have it, you will also be very aware of who doesn't.
As you develop any kind of confidence at your craft – by week three of your pottery class, for example – you will begin to feel an instinct to voice the odd confident remark. The remarks of judgement. Things like: "That pot's crap, Dave. What were you thinking, you idiot. Looks like a child did it." And so forth. You've been there.
And so have I. I have to rein in this veritable beast of momentary certainty every day. I can't helping looking at, well, everything, and trying not to despair that I wasn't consulted. It's such a burden being a creative sometimes, it is.
Of course, it's one thing to rediscover disbelief and incredulity at the Eurovision song contest each year, or to wonder how no-one in this week's losing Apprentice team couldn't see how risibly poor the layout of their posters was. The maddening propensity of local British business to reach for the typeface Brush Script when designing a shop front is something that gives me indegestion and migrane from grinding my teeth… but most people are largely unaffected by these things. Beyond the scope of their respective creative jobs, these items are largely – dare I say it? – cosmetic.
But if there's one thing that to me rather matters, one creative medium we should all be pressuring our councils and our friends who are developers and our blummen' MPs more about, if I had to sacrifice my Lyn Truss Mega-Wedge-Tip Emergency Apostrophe Maker for one truly worthy creative critical cause... it's archetecture. Buildings. Your very environment.
For, the canvas of the archetect is the rest of your chuffing life, mate.
We have to LIVE with the epic lack of wellbeing created by most of the business compromises dotting our high street. Walk past them, around them, under them – dear Lord, into them – every day of our lives. Their massive brooding presence creates just that – presence in our outlook. Casting shadows or light. Making our journey to here and there easy or hard, uplifting or depressing.
Buildings won't go away. You're not allowed to just blow them up. I've asked.
And so it is in this high-minded spirit of condecending frustration, utterly un-schooled or qualified but bloody right, obviously, that I share this link with you. I am not proud that this will take you to a page of the Daily Mail. I will attempt to apologise for this another time. But look at the pictures and weep. If your soul can stand it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1180949/From-bargain-bin-store-bingo-hall-sad-fate-Odeon-popcorn-palaces.html
The vein in my head is throbbing again, dear.
I think it means that another tiny but important part of me has died.
Friday, May 08, 2009
No jokes. Seriously good.
No jokes. Seriously good.
So, I won't labour the point. All you need to know is... it was worth the wait. The long wait. It was very much worth it.
At one point, half way through, I thought to myself: "Cripes, it's actually even better than I hoped it could be."
Really. Ish.
Ish?
Well, the impact in the cinema is a mighty wallop.Most pleasingly, Mr Abrams makes a point of frequently teaching you his new language for Star Trek – that it is a new one. The way he'll scrape a camera along a spaceship or zoom in on some battered shuttle skid or a let the kitchen spot lights all over the bridge of the Enterprise bleed atmospherically all over the lens – he's saying very pointedly: "This is visceral, mate, innit?"
Lots of nice touches everywhere. Lots of details to bring it to life and to nod to classic Trek. Lots of entertaining amusing things and entertaining exploding things and a whole heck of a lot of trying to make it feel more like Star Wars. And no one lets down the cast. Even Scotty's accent.
I cheered at Bones. He was the star of the characters for me. But Spock's wig didn't detract in the end and Kirk is completely likeable as a lead; not annoyingly pretty. Though he is.
Of course, the end is usually a let down from the beginning. It all got a little too neatly wrapped up and Getting The Gang Together – almost too hasty an edit, to ensure it was punchy. And they did a clever amount of stuff in two hours. But it really could have been an extra ten or even twenty minutes long and left a couple more thoughtful emotional transitions in it. In the cold light of day, forced to criticise it, I'd say that. Simply because it was so chuffing GOOD. It's own bench mark was very high.
Of course, it's still Star Trek. It's brilliant fun. But does the Star Trek world still make sense now? Not 100% sure. ..But, like, who cares?
The way they literally 're-boot' things is jolly clever for all the writers, but it might grate with fans once they calm down. But it makes sense.
And my final actual criticism – perhaps my only one – is the score. Very Saturday morning picture show. And as romantic as that description sounds, the music is simply unsubtle. Not nearly as subtle as the film. It lacks emotional nuance – and there are no beautiful set themes. It's bordering on the poor, in the context of this outstanding film.
James Horner's work for the second two Trek movies, back in the day, is the very best of cinematic space music – vast, but intimate. Poised. Downright moving in places, without being obvious or hokey.
I feel a heel saying it, but Michael Giacchino's score is emotionally flat. Which is a great shame, as his work on Lost is classy stuff – stylistically distinctive and a perfect fit for the show. This did all the competent orchestral stuff but was wallpaper. Sorry, Mike – JJ might have over-directed you there.
The piece of music they used on the third outstanding trailer was less intricate than Horner's work but as an emotional motif that simply built up, it was great – but it didn't seem to appear in the film. It was very direct emotionally and would have been a good take-home musical connection.
But for example, when we saw the Enterprise for the first time, there was no romance, no mystery, no otherworldlyness, no... wonder. Just wallop. Just Ooh Isn't It Dramatic This Big Spaceship stuff. Music I've forgotten.
So, a gripe. But only because the film sets such a high standard.
Can't wait to go see it again, obviously.
So, I won't labour the point. All you need to know is... it was worth the wait. The long wait. It was very much worth it.
At one point, half way through, I thought to myself: "Cripes, it's actually even better than I hoped it could be."
Really. Ish.
Ish?
Well, the impact in the cinema is a mighty wallop.Most pleasingly, Mr Abrams makes a point of frequently teaching you his new language for Star Trek – that it is a new one. The way he'll scrape a camera along a spaceship or zoom in on some battered shuttle skid or a let the kitchen spot lights all over the bridge of the Enterprise bleed atmospherically all over the lens – he's saying very pointedly: "This is visceral, mate, innit?"
Lots of nice touches everywhere. Lots of details to bring it to life and to nod to classic Trek. Lots of entertaining amusing things and entertaining exploding things and a whole heck of a lot of trying to make it feel more like Star Wars. And no one lets down the cast. Even Scotty's accent.
I cheered at Bones. He was the star of the characters for me. But Spock's wig didn't detract in the end and Kirk is completely likeable as a lead; not annoyingly pretty. Though he is.
Of course, the end is usually a let down from the beginning. It all got a little too neatly wrapped up and Getting The Gang Together – almost too hasty an edit, to ensure it was punchy. And they did a clever amount of stuff in two hours. But it really could have been an extra ten or even twenty minutes long and left a couple more thoughtful emotional transitions in it. In the cold light of day, forced to criticise it, I'd say that. Simply because it was so chuffing GOOD. It's own bench mark was very high.
Of course, it's still Star Trek. It's brilliant fun. But does the Star Trek world still make sense now? Not 100% sure. ..But, like, who cares?
The way they literally 're-boot' things is jolly clever for all the writers, but it might grate with fans once they calm down. But it makes sense.
And my final actual criticism – perhaps my only one – is the score. Very Saturday morning picture show. And as romantic as that description sounds, the music is simply unsubtle. Not nearly as subtle as the film. It lacks emotional nuance – and there are no beautiful set themes. It's bordering on the poor, in the context of this outstanding film.
James Horner's work for the second two Trek movies, back in the day, is the very best of cinematic space music – vast, but intimate. Poised. Downright moving in places, without being obvious or hokey.
I feel a heel saying it, but Michael Giacchino's score is emotionally flat. Which is a great shame, as his work on Lost is classy stuff – stylistically distinctive and a perfect fit for the show. This did all the competent orchestral stuff but was wallpaper. Sorry, Mike – JJ might have over-directed you there.
The piece of music they used on the third outstanding trailer was less intricate than Horner's work but as an emotional motif that simply built up, it was great – but it didn't seem to appear in the film. It was very direct emotionally and would have been a good take-home musical connection.
But for example, when we saw the Enterprise for the first time, there was no romance, no mystery, no otherworldlyness, no... wonder. Just wallop. Just Ooh Isn't It Dramatic This Big Spaceship stuff. Music I've forgotten.
So, a gripe. But only because the film sets such a high standard.
Can't wait to go see it again, obviously.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Space and time.
Space and time.
So here's a genuine question. Why does time slow down when you exercise?
I don't just mean, why does an hour in the gym seem like a lifetime? I mean, why does your – or at least my – perception of time literally, well, slow down?
Know how I know?
Because I know that iPods don't run down amusingly like old Walkmans.
It's something I've actually noticed many times after doing a circuits class; you get to the car, purple and dizzy, trying not to clutch your chest or fall over before you close the door, the track on the CD picks up where it left off and... it's playing slower. Except, it can't be – it's a CD. Isn't it?
Lastnight, this phenomewhatsit struck home as I limped home from a run. Mad, flab-chap that I am. The tunes on the iPod were beginning to run so much slower in tempo I could almost drive a bus between the BPM. ..BUT IT'S A CHUFFING iPOD!
How much gravity am I displacing when I try to move my bulk? Am I bending Mr Einstein's continuum that much with a bit of tummy chub?
---
Of course, if I'm going to get all exercised about the space/time wotnot today, it's for a good reason. For today is... T-day.
Trek day.
..STARTREKDAY!
At last. And I should be more excited than my capitals and exclaimation mark imply I am. And I am, obviously; I'm expecting the world from this flick. But when I shook the To Do list earlier in the week, lots of annoying little bits fell out all over the desk. And I'm trying to clear them up before going boldly out.
..Oh dear. You see, that's how it starts. One little Trek slip; one little reference to some part of this brand's gigantic cannon of cultural references. And before you know it – you're falling back on some of the most tiresome jokes in newspaper review history. Shan't be doing that.
Not until tomorrow, when I write my review, anyway – when we shall see if the franchise re-boot really is set to stun.
I.. I need a sit down.
So here's a genuine question. Why does time slow down when you exercise?
I don't just mean, why does an hour in the gym seem like a lifetime? I mean, why does your – or at least my – perception of time literally, well, slow down?
Know how I know?
Because I know that iPods don't run down amusingly like old Walkmans.
It's something I've actually noticed many times after doing a circuits class; you get to the car, purple and dizzy, trying not to clutch your chest or fall over before you close the door, the track on the CD picks up where it left off and... it's playing slower. Except, it can't be – it's a CD. Isn't it?
Lastnight, this phenomewhatsit struck home as I limped home from a run. Mad, flab-chap that I am. The tunes on the iPod were beginning to run so much slower in tempo I could almost drive a bus between the BPM. ..BUT IT'S A CHUFFING iPOD!
How much gravity am I displacing when I try to move my bulk? Am I bending Mr Einstein's continuum that much with a bit of tummy chub?
---
Of course, if I'm going to get all exercised about the space/time wotnot today, it's for a good reason. For today is... T-day.
Trek day.
..STARTREKDAY!
At last. And I should be more excited than my capitals and exclaimation mark imply I am. And I am, obviously; I'm expecting the world from this flick. But when I shook the To Do list earlier in the week, lots of annoying little bits fell out all over the desk. And I'm trying to clear them up before going boldly out.
..Oh dear. You see, that's how it starts. One little Trek slip; one little reference to some part of this brand's gigantic cannon of cultural references. And before you know it – you're falling back on some of the most tiresome jokes in newspaper review history. Shan't be doing that.
Not until tomorrow, when I write my review, anyway – when we shall see if the franchise re-boot really is set to stun.
I.. I need a sit down.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Souk du jour.
Souk du jour.
Well, I may be sitting here listening to some marvelously noodley Bach harpsichord concertos, but as this short working week begins I should probably be listening to something Moroccan – for our quirky little TV show, Sophie in the souk, is now being trailed by the Travel Channel and is confirmed as being aired on Monday nights at 9pm, from the 18th May.
And to celebrate, you can visit the Momo:tempo website and hear a whole selection of tunes from the score.
That's right – NEW MUSIC FROM MOMO! You might want to sit down.
http://www.momotempo.co.uk
And, I noted too, a reasonably prime-time slot for the show. I've not spoken with Ben yet, but the Travel Channel people apparently love it. Huge props to Ben for making something with such a strong identity for such a stunt budget – it's been great fun to be a little part of.
On the Promo pages over there, there's a little news item about it all which includes a link to the TC's site where you can check out some trails and info.
---
Of course, there's a reality check for the almost single handful of you who care. Yeah. I know.
Sorry.
As a result of all these durbeck pop larks and shimmy-shingling, I've not been working on The Golden Age for, well, ages.
I KNOW I KNOW already. I'm back on it this week. Promise. In fact, we're working to a deadline of the end of June for it. Really. Schedule's in front of me.
In the mean time, if you're new to Momo:tempo, there is a new mix of Momo:radio on the Demo pages over there, which is a jolly little introduction to what it/we/I does/do, and there's also the promotional tunes from the album currently on the Electro pages. Oh it's all such good fun – go see for yourself.
..Go on, don't just be polite. Pop the kettle on, make some fresh mint tea, turn up your computer speakers, get your bendir out and join in the Yey-Heys.
Shoukran et merci.
Well, I may be sitting here listening to some marvelously noodley Bach harpsichord concertos, but as this short working week begins I should probably be listening to something Moroccan – for our quirky little TV show, Sophie in the souk, is now being trailed by the Travel Channel and is confirmed as being aired on Monday nights at 9pm, from the 18th May.
And to celebrate, you can visit the Momo:tempo website and hear a whole selection of tunes from the score.
That's right – NEW MUSIC FROM MOMO! You might want to sit down.
http://www.momotempo.co.uk
And, I noted too, a reasonably prime-time slot for the show. I've not spoken with Ben yet, but the Travel Channel people apparently love it. Huge props to Ben for making something with such a strong identity for such a stunt budget – it's been great fun to be a little part of.
On the Promo pages over there, there's a little news item about it all which includes a link to the TC's site where you can check out some trails and info.
---
Of course, there's a reality check for the almost single handful of you who care. Yeah. I know.
Sorry.
As a result of all these durbeck pop larks and shimmy-shingling, I've not been working on The Golden Age for, well, ages.
I KNOW I KNOW already. I'm back on it this week. Promise. In fact, we're working to a deadline of the end of June for it. Really. Schedule's in front of me.
In the mean time, if you're new to Momo:tempo, there is a new mix of Momo:radio on the Demo pages over there, which is a jolly little introduction to what it/we/I does/do, and there's also the promotional tunes from the album currently on the Electro pages. Oh it's all such good fun – go see for yourself.
..Go on, don't just be polite. Pop the kettle on, make some fresh mint tea, turn up your computer speakers, get your bendir out and join in the Yey-Heys.
Shoukran et merci.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Viva Aviva.
Viva Aviva.
So Insurance giant Aviva – from historic cathedral city of Norwich – has been accused of slightly squandering M£80 on it’s rebrand campaign.
Now, money thrown at branding is always an easy rant; it’s sometimes just a less personalised version of the old essay: Why Build A Gallery For All This Art Crap When There Are Kiddies Dying. People matter, stuff doesn’t. Especially just decorative stuff.
Sounds true, as a statement. But we’ll talk about wellbeing and the exploration of the human soul and reasons to get out of bed in the first place, as well as effective financial administration in humanitarian crises another time.
But branding stuff is, after all, really about reaching people – so that the people doing the reaching get to take a pay cheque home to their families. So any criticism of a rebrand should be entirely judged on its effectiveness at reaching people. More than that – connecting with people. It's not about the logo, it's about the lingo.
Well, whatever. And maybe the jury’s out on that for Aviva – though their ads are surely getting seen. What people think Aviva means to them is another thing. >YAAAAWWWWNN< probably.
My point is the chuffing idea. If you're going to spend squillions on something – at least make sure it makes SENSE.
"Would this have happened to Walter Willis?"
Yes, Bruce, you berk.
You might not have wanted them calling you Wally, but even then – you're Bruce. Walter. Whatever – you. You're cool and balding and look great in a sweaty vest. Who CARES about the name? You're either any good or you're not.
Two words: Englebert Humpadink. It's as if he's proving a point – by changing his name TO something freakishly stupid.
Bit of a Vauxhall Aviva, if you ask me.
So Insurance giant Aviva – from historic cathedral city of Norwich – has been accused of slightly squandering M£80 on it’s rebrand campaign.
Now, money thrown at branding is always an easy rant; it’s sometimes just a less personalised version of the old essay: Why Build A Gallery For All This Art Crap When There Are Kiddies Dying. People matter, stuff doesn’t. Especially just decorative stuff.
Sounds true, as a statement. But we’ll talk about wellbeing and the exploration of the human soul and reasons to get out of bed in the first place, as well as effective financial administration in humanitarian crises another time.
But branding stuff is, after all, really about reaching people – so that the people doing the reaching get to take a pay cheque home to their families. So any criticism of a rebrand should be entirely judged on its effectiveness at reaching people. More than that – connecting with people. It's not about the logo, it's about the lingo.
Well, whatever. And maybe the jury’s out on that for Aviva – though their ads are surely getting seen. What people think Aviva means to them is another thing. >YAAAAWWWWNN< probably.
My point is the chuffing idea. If you're going to spend squillions on something – at least make sure it makes SENSE.
"Would this have happened to Walter Willis?"
Yes, Bruce, you berk.
You might not have wanted them calling you Wally, but even then – you're Bruce. Walter. Whatever – you. You're cool and balding and look great in a sweaty vest. Who CARES about the name? You're either any good or you're not.
Two words: Englebert Humpadink. It's as if he's proving a point – by changing his name TO something freakishly stupid.
Bit of a Vauxhall Aviva, if you ask me.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tweed and Twit.
Tweed and Twit.
I seem to have been caught up. Not in revelry, or in some religious ecstasy, but with work 'n' stuff, I guess. For whatever disappointing reason, anyway, I haven't put pen to blog in a couple of weeks. But I've moved on as a person in that time. For a couple of reasons.
I could say it's musically, as I have discovered Donald Byrd and George Duke, who are each adding to Momo's faux-70s working atmosphere very nicely. But it's not that. It's in two key respects that I have developed socially of late – and I'm not sure which of them is really a step backwards.
---
Firstly, I spent my first weekend in tweed.
Now, itchy and hot it may be. Apparently ill-suited to go karting it is. But this robust material of chap choice does sort of, well, help one's countenance.
It's not simply that it feels a little like it might be stab proof. If not a complete country house alternative to kevlar, it does give one a feeling of security around the vitals, if wearing the full three-piece. It also just, well, helps you stand up straight. The kind of help I really need.
---
The stag do in London for Jules went off fine. I was robbed of at least a silver trophy on the karting track, smug tweeds under my jump suit and helmet not withstanding; after winning two heats, I was on the grand prix grid in third out of eleven and had comfortably taken second place by the second lap and was chasing Mike Lander for tea and medals when I was scurrilously black flagged. Pulled over for... a flapping chin strap. Mention it not. I finished one from last.
My winning find in Clobber on Friday – the work of a mere forty minutes from leaving the workload to returning to it – was a much enjoyed element of the chappish shenanigans, though I must say that Jules also wore his blazer and panama for most of the day and Mr Parker's country jacket and cap were surpassed only by his nifty hip flask of snifters.
Of course, it says something of your age when what you really fancy doing of a Saturday night in London, on a hearty fellow's pre-ennuptualment rollocking, is knocking a bobby's helmet off as a jape, in the hope of ending up in Marylebone clink for the night. Either that or taking to the roof tops for a spot of light-fingered cat burglary for diamonds.
It says, of course, you're not cut out for the real world.
Which, sitting there in a bar in Brick Lane at one in the morning in a tweed suit and still toying with my brolly, just didn't seem to matter.
Jules pulled an essentially great gang of chaps around him that night, that's the point, and it was good to see them each. ..But it was even gooder to come home thinking: now I know tweed.
---
Secondly, however, and possibly to my detriment, I have signed on to Twitter.
Why? Why why WHY?
I fear I may become as wired to it as every other of its converts – if I can work out how to come up with different status updates and items of news about my largely not at all interesting ordinary life for the blog, MySpace, Facebook and the big Twit.
Oh. That and actually service my clients. Of. Course.
I'm on simply as 'Momotempo' anyway. Twit me if you fancy.
Though, perhaps there's a third way that I have moved on at last, in the last two weeks. For – news to follow imminently – I've actually gone and finished a music project.
I seem to have been caught up. Not in revelry, or in some religious ecstasy, but with work 'n' stuff, I guess. For whatever disappointing reason, anyway, I haven't put pen to blog in a couple of weeks. But I've moved on as a person in that time. For a couple of reasons.
I could say it's musically, as I have discovered Donald Byrd and George Duke, who are each adding to Momo's faux-70s working atmosphere very nicely. But it's not that. It's in two key respects that I have developed socially of late – and I'm not sure which of them is really a step backwards.
---
Firstly, I spent my first weekend in tweed.
Now, itchy and hot it may be. Apparently ill-suited to go karting it is. But this robust material of chap choice does sort of, well, help one's countenance.
It's not simply that it feels a little like it might be stab proof. If not a complete country house alternative to kevlar, it does give one a feeling of security around the vitals, if wearing the full three-piece. It also just, well, helps you stand up straight. The kind of help I really need.
---
The stag do in London for Jules went off fine. I was robbed of at least a silver trophy on the karting track, smug tweeds under my jump suit and helmet not withstanding; after winning two heats, I was on the grand prix grid in third out of eleven and had comfortably taken second place by the second lap and was chasing Mike Lander for tea and medals when I was scurrilously black flagged. Pulled over for... a flapping chin strap. Mention it not. I finished one from last.
My winning find in Clobber on Friday – the work of a mere forty minutes from leaving the workload to returning to it – was a much enjoyed element of the chappish shenanigans, though I must say that Jules also wore his blazer and panama for most of the day and Mr Parker's country jacket and cap were surpassed only by his nifty hip flask of snifters.
Of course, it says something of your age when what you really fancy doing of a Saturday night in London, on a hearty fellow's pre-ennuptualment rollocking, is knocking a bobby's helmet off as a jape, in the hope of ending up in Marylebone clink for the night. Either that or taking to the roof tops for a spot of light-fingered cat burglary for diamonds.
It says, of course, you're not cut out for the real world.
Which, sitting there in a bar in Brick Lane at one in the morning in a tweed suit and still toying with my brolly, just didn't seem to matter.
Jules pulled an essentially great gang of chaps around him that night, that's the point, and it was good to see them each. ..But it was even gooder to come home thinking: now I know tweed.
---
Secondly, however, and possibly to my detriment, I have signed on to Twitter.
Why? Why why WHY?
I fear I may become as wired to it as every other of its converts – if I can work out how to come up with different status updates and items of news about my largely not at all interesting ordinary life for the blog, MySpace, Facebook and the big Twit.
Oh. That and actually service my clients. Of. Course.
I'm on simply as 'Momotempo' anyway. Twit me if you fancy.
Though, perhaps there's a third way that I have moved on at last, in the last two weeks. For – news to follow imminently – I've actually gone and finished a music project.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
"Infectious, gay music".
"Infectious, gay music".
I've bought an odd collection of musical items this week.
I'd say that the ones to have given me the most instant gratification would have to be those which I came home with this afternoon, after a few hours lazily trawling the charity shops between Southbourne and Boscombe.
It's hard to imagine why anyone in the western world would bother putting a price tag of "20p" on anything in 2009. It's also hard to understand how some classic charity shop bargains of yesteryear can still be found, in this nouvelle-student, post-ironic world. But they can. For, browsing the modest LP section of Help The Aged's Boscombe shop, I found the Torero Band's Tijuana Sound of Brass, from 1968, and its remarkably suitable bedfellow A swingin' safari by Bert Kaempfert and his orchestra, from 1963.
The title track to the latter is, it turns out, every lazy bank ad's soundtrack of choice – the one that goes: 'duh-duh DUP duh-duh DUP, duh-duh DUP duh-duh DUP, duh-duh DUP duh-duh DUP, duh-duh duh-duh dah' on two penny whistles. Oh, you know the one. It's Mr Kaempfert, anyway – who knew?
And the very pre-Avengers lady on the cover, clicking her fingers and doing a toe point while dressed in pith helmet and khaki shorts, with a couple of lank leopard skins, a rotten djembi and an old ficus from someone's living room sort of all placed around her in an otherwise conspicuously un-dressed white photographer's studio, is a period delight. Certainly very Kaempf.
Meanwhile, the ignominious Toreros may patently not be Herb Alpert's more legendary outfit of Not Ironic, Mexican horn grinners, but on this playful long player they're delivering some of the same classic numbers I'd been pining for for years, such as Spanish Flea.
I'd been pining for these, in fact, since I first discovered the arduous side of graphic design. Working the final weeks towards my degree show in '93, I well recall how someone found a copy of Mr Alpert's greatest hits in an equivolent of Help The Aged in Leicester at the time and brought it in to cheer a stressed, overworked studio of students – only, also taking the trouble to deliver it with the added creative inspiration of recording the old LP at the record speed of a seven-inch.
My subsequent memory of hearing this essentially Pinky & Perky-ed version of what is already undeniably some of the campest lift music in the world – under the susceptible emotional conditions of workload nervous meltdown, of course – is among my fondest in life.
People were coughing up organs with laughter. Bless me – I can still see myself, lying there on the floor, turning blue for lack of oxygen and all but filling my trousers with the convulsions.
To have found almost the equivalent today, for 20p, was a gem. And, at my age, normal speed seemed pleasure enough somehow.
The sleave notes describe the Tijuana sounds celebrated in these recordings as: "the newest, freshest, gayest Latin tribute to popular music", ramming home its point in the next par by emphasising it was "infectious, gay music which reflects the land of sunshine and wild scenery".
No one would wish to argue a single moment with that.
---
Earlier in the week, I came home from an arduous daytime forray to the far side of Poole and back with three distinctly differently-sized and shaped boxes. A big, square, heavy one; a little, flat, light one, and a medium-sized triangular one.
When I'd arrived at Absolute Music Solutions that afternoon, I'd thought that I should come clean and play the Dim Momo Doofus card fairly strongly, as I later put it on Facebook. Not a sausage of knowledge did I have about any of my utterly random collection of requirements, as I smiled good-naturedly at the polite music expert behind the sweeping showroom desk.
But, none the less, I left their good patronage some thirty minutes later with some new monitor speakers, a looping DJ widget of some kind, and the ugliest, "most offensively cheap" guitar they could sell me, as specifically requested. "Parts of it look like they're from discarded 70s prosthetic limbs" I had said flatly, as I and the store chap had stared down at the offending implement. "You did ask" he then pointed out simply, and I handed over my credit card.
---
I'm just so very bad at getting around to some things. The boring things. The boring but essential things – like having speakers in my studio of aspirationally-professional musical creative that are at least almost as good as the cheap set in my invisibly grease-draped kitchen. Or having at least a basic way to chime out some bad chords on one of the most fundamental instruments in modern music.
Or being able to at least see the floor of my aspirationally-professional workspace for boxes, leads, job bags, drums, things that clack, things that shingle, CDs, proofs, old magazines and random clothing.
This last point I plan to work on before the long Easter weekend is out. Really. On the other points I now have no excuse.
Still, since when was I interested in taking music that seriously?
I've bought an odd collection of musical items this week.
I'd say that the ones to have given me the most instant gratification would have to be those which I came home with this afternoon, after a few hours lazily trawling the charity shops between Southbourne and Boscombe.
It's hard to imagine why anyone in the western world would bother putting a price tag of "20p" on anything in 2009. It's also hard to understand how some classic charity shop bargains of yesteryear can still be found, in this nouvelle-student, post-ironic world. But they can. For, browsing the modest LP section of Help The Aged's Boscombe shop, I found the Torero Band's Tijuana Sound of Brass, from 1968, and its remarkably suitable bedfellow A swingin' safari by Bert Kaempfert and his orchestra, from 1963.
The title track to the latter is, it turns out, every lazy bank ad's soundtrack of choice – the one that goes: 'duh-duh DUP duh-duh DUP, duh-duh DUP duh-duh DUP, duh-duh DUP duh-duh DUP, duh-duh duh-duh dah' on two penny whistles. Oh, you know the one. It's Mr Kaempfert, anyway – who knew?
And the very pre-Avengers lady on the cover, clicking her fingers and doing a toe point while dressed in pith helmet and khaki shorts, with a couple of lank leopard skins, a rotten djembi and an old ficus from someone's living room sort of all placed around her in an otherwise conspicuously un-dressed white photographer's studio, is a period delight. Certainly very Kaempf.
Meanwhile, the ignominious Toreros may patently not be Herb Alpert's more legendary outfit of Not Ironic, Mexican horn grinners, but on this playful long player they're delivering some of the same classic numbers I'd been pining for for years, such as Spanish Flea.
I'd been pining for these, in fact, since I first discovered the arduous side of graphic design. Working the final weeks towards my degree show in '93, I well recall how someone found a copy of Mr Alpert's greatest hits in an equivolent of Help The Aged in Leicester at the time and brought it in to cheer a stressed, overworked studio of students – only, also taking the trouble to deliver it with the added creative inspiration of recording the old LP at the record speed of a seven-inch.
My subsequent memory of hearing this essentially Pinky & Perky-ed version of what is already undeniably some of the campest lift music in the world – under the susceptible emotional conditions of workload nervous meltdown, of course – is among my fondest in life.
People were coughing up organs with laughter. Bless me – I can still see myself, lying there on the floor, turning blue for lack of oxygen and all but filling my trousers with the convulsions.
To have found almost the equivalent today, for 20p, was a gem. And, at my age, normal speed seemed pleasure enough somehow.
The sleave notes describe the Tijuana sounds celebrated in these recordings as: "the newest, freshest, gayest Latin tribute to popular music", ramming home its point in the next par by emphasising it was "infectious, gay music which reflects the land of sunshine and wild scenery".
No one would wish to argue a single moment with that.
---
Earlier in the week, I came home from an arduous daytime forray to the far side of Poole and back with three distinctly differently-sized and shaped boxes. A big, square, heavy one; a little, flat, light one, and a medium-sized triangular one.
When I'd arrived at Absolute Music Solutions that afternoon, I'd thought that I should come clean and play the Dim Momo Doofus card fairly strongly, as I later put it on Facebook. Not a sausage of knowledge did I have about any of my utterly random collection of requirements, as I smiled good-naturedly at the polite music expert behind the sweeping showroom desk.
But, none the less, I left their good patronage some thirty minutes later with some new monitor speakers, a looping DJ widget of some kind, and the ugliest, "most offensively cheap" guitar they could sell me, as specifically requested. "Parts of it look like they're from discarded 70s prosthetic limbs" I had said flatly, as I and the store chap had stared down at the offending implement. "You did ask" he then pointed out simply, and I handed over my credit card.
---
I'm just so very bad at getting around to some things. The boring things. The boring but essential things – like having speakers in my studio of aspirationally-professional musical creative that are at least almost as good as the cheap set in my invisibly grease-draped kitchen. Or having at least a basic way to chime out some bad chords on one of the most fundamental instruments in modern music.
Or being able to at least see the floor of my aspirationally-professional workspace for boxes, leads, job bags, drums, things that clack, things that shingle, CDs, proofs, old magazines and random clothing.
This last point I plan to work on before the long Easter weekend is out. Really. On the other points I now have no excuse.
Still, since when was I interested in taking music that seriously?
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Monkeying.
Monkeying.
I don't know about you, but I've never really had a thing about primates.
Those hairy, goofy guys. I can only say that, having finally visited Dorset family attraction, Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre, for the first time at the weekend, I was disappointed on a number of counts. Not once did we see lemurs, chimps, baboons or gibbons:
1: making tea.
2: moving pianos.
3: serving on the turnstiles.
4: jamming.
Now, call me old-fashioned. But I think Tara, Ryan, Caroline and I were all disappointed when we asked one of the keeper ladies "where they set up the drums" only to be told that "this is an ape rescue centre. We don't encourage our monkeys to form jazz bands".
Obviously the delightful niece and nephew suffered the kind of disappointment grown disproportionately fast by a 45-minute drive with a hyping uncle, but still. No swing? In a monkey house? C'maaan, lady.
We did however learn a couple of things I had no idea about, including:
1: Orangutans are found only in Borneo and Sumatra. That's it.
2: long-tailed Lemurs are found only in Madagascar.
3: loads of the really cool monkeys and apes are stupidly close to extinction.
4: uncle Tim looks like a lot of them.
Obviously had some idea about point 4, but my overall point is that Monkey World is a great day out with kids. Or it is if the sun shines all day and you have two such basically gorgeous young people with you as we did. If I ever actually get to pretend to be a parent for real, I'm not doing it unless I get a couple of little monkeys like them. And that's that.
So anyway, in the words of Michael Jackson: "Mama se, mama sa, moo marmoset".
---
Previous weekend saw a bit of monkeying around too. Year two of our Eight Men Rolling Manfully Around The Solent weekend and we had a grand time, yawing and jarring our way up and down the coast of the Isle of Wight in the very good ship Mawimbi. Thanks in huge part to the good skip, King. Steve once again put together a good crew of easy guys to hang off a sheet with.
Young Chris, the only cast replacement, turned out to have a sager head and more practical hands than most of the rest of us and even managed to scale the 46-footer's imposing mast, just to amuse us all. He didn't hang off the top spreaders by his knuckles exactly, but he did sit perched up there for an hour as we cruised around Cowes.
I cooked a hack's galley meal on the Friday night and managed not to tank the ship into anything during manful moments behind the wheel.
In fact, the boat and the sailing weather and the ambience in harbour were all so good, we expended more energy bickering about cheese and music choices than anything else.
Of course, while carving your award winning local soft blue, from the late night speciality deli, I personally think you can't go wrong with a nice bit of swing.
I don't know about you, but I've never really had a thing about primates.
Those hairy, goofy guys. I can only say that, having finally visited Dorset family attraction, Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre, for the first time at the weekend, I was disappointed on a number of counts. Not once did we see lemurs, chimps, baboons or gibbons:
1: making tea.
2: moving pianos.
3: serving on the turnstiles.
4: jamming.
Now, call me old-fashioned. But I think Tara, Ryan, Caroline and I were all disappointed when we asked one of the keeper ladies "where they set up the drums" only to be told that "this is an ape rescue centre. We don't encourage our monkeys to form jazz bands".
Obviously the delightful niece and nephew suffered the kind of disappointment grown disproportionately fast by a 45-minute drive with a hyping uncle, but still. No swing? In a monkey house? C'maaan, lady.
We did however learn a couple of things I had no idea about, including:
1: Orangutans are found only in Borneo and Sumatra. That's it.
2: long-tailed Lemurs are found only in Madagascar.
3: loads of the really cool monkeys and apes are stupidly close to extinction.
4: uncle Tim looks like a lot of them.
Obviously had some idea about point 4, but my overall point is that Monkey World is a great day out with kids. Or it is if the sun shines all day and you have two such basically gorgeous young people with you as we did. If I ever actually get to pretend to be a parent for real, I'm not doing it unless I get a couple of little monkeys like them. And that's that.
So anyway, in the words of Michael Jackson: "Mama se, mama sa, moo marmoset".
---
Previous weekend saw a bit of monkeying around too. Year two of our Eight Men Rolling Manfully Around The Solent weekend and we had a grand time, yawing and jarring our way up and down the coast of the Isle of Wight in the very good ship Mawimbi. Thanks in huge part to the good skip, King. Steve once again put together a good crew of easy guys to hang off a sheet with.
Young Chris, the only cast replacement, turned out to have a sager head and more practical hands than most of the rest of us and even managed to scale the 46-footer's imposing mast, just to amuse us all. He didn't hang off the top spreaders by his knuckles exactly, but he did sit perched up there for an hour as we cruised around Cowes.
I cooked a hack's galley meal on the Friday night and managed not to tank the ship into anything during manful moments behind the wheel.
In fact, the boat and the sailing weather and the ambience in harbour were all so good, we expended more energy bickering about cheese and music choices than anything else.
Of course, while carving your award winning local soft blue, from the late night speciality deli, I personally think you can't go wrong with a nice bit of swing.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Galactica.
Galactica.
So, it's over. The greatest TV experience of science fiction in history. Finished. Story told. ..What do we do with Tuesday nights now?
I saw a friend's status update the morning after the final episode of Battlestar Galactica had aired in the US, at the weekend, and it said he thought it was ''all a bit... meh."
Oh dear.
This meant I was secretly set for a bit of a disappointment lastnight, as Laura and Chris joined us for the ceremonially last getting together for our favourite show. But this can, I find, sometimes enhance your discovery of a film or program. Low expectations – good life lesson, kids.
For, in the end, lastnight's episode essentially rocked. But gently.
They did all the right things, really. Well, almost. Two things that disappointed for me were the limp disappearance of one of the most dynamic characters in the dynamic ensemble, Starbuck – "Right, so bye then." >pop!< – and the end of the eponymous heroine, Galactica herself.
I reeeally wanted dramatic closure. I wanted to choke up manfully as we watched an unwarranted amount of CG man hours pull apart the old girl's every nut and rivet – because to me it would have been warranted. Symbol of hope and safety and fighting chance, Galactica was ending her life and service. Off into the sunset wasn't good enough – I wanted a phoenix end with surging score and way too much screen time.
..Although, on that score (as it were) they did deliver. I'd always hoped, since pretty much the beginning, that in the last ever episode someone would have the courage to deliver the original colonial theme. It's just a great theme. And thankfully, after what amounts to probably the greatest musical build up in screen story-telling history, Bear McCreary finally got permission to surge in with Stu Phillips' stirring motif. As the fleet broke orbit around Earth for the last time and in came the tune, I cheered. Annoyingly.
Hooray for great tunes. Well done, Bear – you did the right thing. Though you have a silly name.
---
Interestingly though, the young composer has said that LA is a great place to find musicians who play odd things. By which I assume he means unusual instruments, rather than Daft Punk on the tuba, or something. Though I'm sure you could get that too.
My point is that Bournemouth is not a great place to find musicians who play odd things. I could really have done with finding an oud player for Sophie at least. Or even better, a vocalist. But, as much as I'm having to fake it, I should say that the pieces coming together for Ben's little show are cute and groovy. But still more to write and arrange before next week when he delivers the first of it.
So, it's over. The greatest TV experience of science fiction in history. Finished. Story told. ..What do we do with Tuesday nights now?
I saw a friend's status update the morning after the final episode of Battlestar Galactica had aired in the US, at the weekend, and it said he thought it was ''all a bit... meh."
Oh dear.
This meant I was secretly set for a bit of a disappointment lastnight, as Laura and Chris joined us for the ceremonially last getting together for our favourite show. But this can, I find, sometimes enhance your discovery of a film or program. Low expectations – good life lesson, kids.
For, in the end, lastnight's episode essentially rocked. But gently.
They did all the right things, really. Well, almost. Two things that disappointed for me were the limp disappearance of one of the most dynamic characters in the dynamic ensemble, Starbuck – "Right, so bye then." >pop!< – and the end of the eponymous heroine, Galactica herself.
I reeeally wanted dramatic closure. I wanted to choke up manfully as we watched an unwarranted amount of CG man hours pull apart the old girl's every nut and rivet – because to me it would have been warranted. Symbol of hope and safety and fighting chance, Galactica was ending her life and service. Off into the sunset wasn't good enough – I wanted a phoenix end with surging score and way too much screen time.
..Although, on that score (as it were) they did deliver. I'd always hoped, since pretty much the beginning, that in the last ever episode someone would have the courage to deliver the original colonial theme. It's just a great theme. And thankfully, after what amounts to probably the greatest musical build up in screen story-telling history, Bear McCreary finally got permission to surge in with Stu Phillips' stirring motif. As the fleet broke orbit around Earth for the last time and in came the tune, I cheered. Annoyingly.
Hooray for great tunes. Well done, Bear – you did the right thing. Though you have a silly name.
---
Interestingly though, the young composer has said that LA is a great place to find musicians who play odd things. By which I assume he means unusual instruments, rather than Daft Punk on the tuba, or something. Though I'm sure you could get that too.
My point is that Bournemouth is not a great place to find musicians who play odd things. I could really have done with finding an oud player for Sophie at least. Or even better, a vocalist. But, as much as I'm having to fake it, I should say that the pieces coming together for Ben's little show are cute and groovy. But still more to write and arrange before next week when he delivers the first of it.
Short weeks like this often seem to attract more deadlines than normal weeks, I've noticed. Pulling my hair a little leading up to time away on the boat – during which I'll probably be thinking about all the music I'm not doing leaning over in the middle of the Solent.
Still, I had to pay homage to the most impressive thing on TV. Ron Moore did the right thing with Galactica's last episode, apparently writing on a white board in a production meeting: 'it's the characters, stupid'. It was the right thing to do to amble around and say goodbye and tie up loose ends for these people – they deserved it.
I would say, however, that there was so much to practically get through, it was hard to pack a real wallop of an emotional punch. Too many places to apportion your emotion, really. So there were no tears as we said goodbye, though a good number of emotive moments – especially President Roswell's thankyou to the doctor – just a feeling of satisfaction.
Well rounded, damned interesting story. Seemless cast of powerful performances. Writing that pushed TV drama hard, but with compelling integrity. And production values that were frequently bloody amazing.
How do such things come into existence? How can TV get things so right occasionally? It's a little miracle of creativity.
But that is the key – commitment to creative integrity. When suits trust the creatives and creatives trust their instincts, you get a smash hit.
So say we all.
(..Unless the creatives turn out to be crap. But don't spoil the noble mood. Shh.)
Friday, March 20, 2009
Equinox(e).
Equinox(e).
It's still my favourite Jean Michel Jarre album, I feel.
Zoolook – that's the one, obviously. The creative one. The one I'll say I'm taking with me on Desert Island Disks, largely because of Ethnicolor. And because it's sort of the original inspiration behind me making music at all.
But I slipped on the ol' iPod headphones the other night, alone on the sofa, and found myself dialling up this old 1978 electronic record, Equinoxe, and just enjoyed it as an old, old friend. Beyond critical faculties.
I mention it only because today is the spring equinox. Day as long as night. A tipping point into summer, perhaps.
We've had a joyous week of consistent, high, sunny skies and still the houses beyond the studio window are bathed in warm evening glow at nearly half five on this Friday evening. Felt the sunshine for much of it too, though not all. But, y'know, some things are done as the week ends, other things are at least progressed, and a mezze platter with friends is waiting for me in town right now. So life is sunny overall, I know.
Plus, more importantly, I'm falling in love with a new tune I've produced for Sophie. Over twenty years, there's been more than just French space music or Kraut techno pop influencing my writing, but I still feel as energised by finishing a new tune as ever I did back in the days I was recording in a shed on a four track.
Expect to hear a giant mix of Trailblender online sometime soon.
I am a tart. But it's spring, so it's good to get frisky in some way.
It's still my favourite Jean Michel Jarre album, I feel.
Zoolook – that's the one, obviously. The creative one. The one I'll say I'm taking with me on Desert Island Disks, largely because of Ethnicolor. And because it's sort of the original inspiration behind me making music at all.
But I slipped on the ol' iPod headphones the other night, alone on the sofa, and found myself dialling up this old 1978 electronic record, Equinoxe, and just enjoyed it as an old, old friend. Beyond critical faculties.
I mention it only because today is the spring equinox. Day as long as night. A tipping point into summer, perhaps.
We've had a joyous week of consistent, high, sunny skies and still the houses beyond the studio window are bathed in warm evening glow at nearly half five on this Friday evening. Felt the sunshine for much of it too, though not all. But, y'know, some things are done as the week ends, other things are at least progressed, and a mezze platter with friends is waiting for me in town right now. So life is sunny overall, I know.
Plus, more importantly, I'm falling in love with a new tune I've produced for Sophie. Over twenty years, there's been more than just French space music or Kraut techno pop influencing my writing, but I still feel as energised by finishing a new tune as ever I did back in the days I was recording in a shed on a four track.
Expect to hear a giant mix of Trailblender online sometime soon.
I am a tart. But it's spring, so it's good to get frisky in some way.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Saturday night, Sunday morning.
Saturday night, Sunday morning.
They're not meant to go together. Not when Sunday morning becomes the time to do exercise.
I'm a fan of the Littledown Centre. As much as people defect over the road to The Village for its Starbucks coffee and its swimming pool you can actually swim in, I think the Littledown flies the flag for municipal sports facilities pretty well.
You're already thinking I'm taking the pee, right? The same pee it takes five hundred gallons of chlorine to sterilise the idea of in the minds of swimmers in the main pool, right?
Well, no. I speak as someone evidently unschooled, skilled or motivated in matters sporting, of course; Laurent Garnier's The man with the red face is not my favourite workout track for nothing. But this council-run sports centre has created a nice enough vibe to keep me coming back. If only because they need my money a little too much to throw me out of the classes as a hazard.
Sunday was its 20th anniversary. To celebrate, they'd apparently decided to have a day of '1989'-style activities and prices and Adrian announced at the end of Thursday's circuits class that he was holding a special version of one on Sunday morning.
For some freakish reason, I decided to go.
To the sports centre.
On a Sunday morning.
Me.
The guy so not cut-out for sporting prowess that his only emergency asset in the gymn – his personality – is emergency over-ridden by blood flow and some autonomic safety reaction when engaging in exercise. All I have in there is Funny. Only it stops working after five minutes of running, leaving me floundering like a flipped turtle in my panting exchanges with Actually Fit people as they spring past. Cheeky smiles become villainous leers, amusing quips become spittle-repeated weirdo remarks to strangers, and boyish confidence becomes stooping, sweating, staggering, purple-faced vulnerability.
Me.
---
It was a gorgeous morning as I pulled on my shorts and irreconcilably-deformed sports shirt. And it felt odd as hell doing so.
Pulling up to the swooping shape of the Littledown, I felt a hint of the same kind of trepidation I felt going to a pre-term summer sports week, before I started big school. Everyone laughed at my Super Saints sports bag, I recall. Thankfully, I knew so little about football even then, it didn't scar me.
Who else would turn up to this? And why couldn't I think of a place to get a sweat band?
But, as I approached the windows overlooking the main hall, I found myself grinning. Adventure play today, kids.
The middle station included some spongy stairs and crash mats, a spongy hole-in-the-wall and some crash mats, some more crash mats to run along and some beams to leap under and over, without crash mats. Fun, in other words. And a legitimate reason to waste time experimenting with amusing comments in the heat of exercise. Like comedy boot camp.
Adrian was, as I'd have place money on him being, wearing sweatbands. I ruminated as we started the warm-up run that this was the one occasion when I could have legitimately held my stupid floppy hair out of my face without unspoken pity – in fact, with the jump-started pride of a man Evidently Amusing – but I'd missed it.
The thing was. Yeah. That thing.
Working out to eighties music is weird. I couldn't work out whether we were all secretly energised by Eye of the tiger or whether, by the time Living in America was bouncing off the high walls, we were all feeling very uncomfortably like we were doing Robert Webb's now infamous Flashdance routine.
In my head, I could feel the cling of lycra and the inexplicable ankle heat of leg warmers. I could feel myself starting to mince-skip, between stations. By the time There's no stopping us (no stopping) from the original soundtrack to Breakdance II: the electric boogaloo had me side-tapping my head and singing along, its 808 beat marking my jogging steps, I was beginning to just feel dirty.
---
It was a feeling subsumed, I should continue, by fatigue. That adventure playground was no playground. Those spongy stairs weren't for softies. Crash mats? Crash and burn mats, baby.
Obviously all the fittists took it seriously. I however, after one lap of running through what felt like treacle, found myself draped over the high bar like, in my wife's worryingly-immediate words afterwards, "one of the 118 blokes".
I know at one point I opted for the positive alternative of shouting instructions and encouragement to the people still actually using the equipment for exercise. "Come on. Yep – nice one, keep going. Now over the mat. Good – knees up..." You get it.
I think I ended the session on my back, spilling out of either end of the spongy hole-in-the-wall. Cheering in a very can-do fashion, so quietly that no-one could hear.
---
To be fair, some of the Genuinely Fit People almost made to invite me to come to the normal Sunday morning class, sans spongy toys. But I think it will be a while before I do anything reckless with my Sunday mornings again.
I really should have put this to good use and at least been sponsored for Comic Relief.
They're not meant to go together. Not when Sunday morning becomes the time to do exercise.
I'm a fan of the Littledown Centre. As much as people defect over the road to The Village for its Starbucks coffee and its swimming pool you can actually swim in, I think the Littledown flies the flag for municipal sports facilities pretty well.
You're already thinking I'm taking the pee, right? The same pee it takes five hundred gallons of chlorine to sterilise the idea of in the minds of swimmers in the main pool, right?
Well, no. I speak as someone evidently unschooled, skilled or motivated in matters sporting, of course; Laurent Garnier's The man with the red face is not my favourite workout track for nothing. But this council-run sports centre has created a nice enough vibe to keep me coming back. If only because they need my money a little too much to throw me out of the classes as a hazard.
Sunday was its 20th anniversary. To celebrate, they'd apparently decided to have a day of '1989'-style activities and prices and Adrian announced at the end of Thursday's circuits class that he was holding a special version of one on Sunday morning.
For some freakish reason, I decided to go.
To the sports centre.
On a Sunday morning.
Me.
The guy so not cut-out for sporting prowess that his only emergency asset in the gymn – his personality – is emergency over-ridden by blood flow and some autonomic safety reaction when engaging in exercise. All I have in there is Funny. Only it stops working after five minutes of running, leaving me floundering like a flipped turtle in my panting exchanges with Actually Fit people as they spring past. Cheeky smiles become villainous leers, amusing quips become spittle-repeated weirdo remarks to strangers, and boyish confidence becomes stooping, sweating, staggering, purple-faced vulnerability.
Me.
---
It was a gorgeous morning as I pulled on my shorts and irreconcilably-deformed sports shirt. And it felt odd as hell doing so.
Pulling up to the swooping shape of the Littledown, I felt a hint of the same kind of trepidation I felt going to a pre-term summer sports week, before I started big school. Everyone laughed at my Super Saints sports bag, I recall. Thankfully, I knew so little about football even then, it didn't scar me.
Who else would turn up to this? And why couldn't I think of a place to get a sweat band?
But, as I approached the windows overlooking the main hall, I found myself grinning. Adventure play today, kids.
The middle station included some spongy stairs and crash mats, a spongy hole-in-the-wall and some crash mats, some more crash mats to run along and some beams to leap under and over, without crash mats. Fun, in other words. And a legitimate reason to waste time experimenting with amusing comments in the heat of exercise. Like comedy boot camp.
Adrian was, as I'd have place money on him being, wearing sweatbands. I ruminated as we started the warm-up run that this was the one occasion when I could have legitimately held my stupid floppy hair out of my face without unspoken pity – in fact, with the jump-started pride of a man Evidently Amusing – but I'd missed it.
The thing was. Yeah. That thing.
Working out to eighties music is weird. I couldn't work out whether we were all secretly energised by Eye of the tiger or whether, by the time Living in America was bouncing off the high walls, we were all feeling very uncomfortably like we were doing Robert Webb's now infamous Flashdance routine.
In my head, I could feel the cling of lycra and the inexplicable ankle heat of leg warmers. I could feel myself starting to mince-skip, between stations. By the time There's no stopping us (no stopping) from the original soundtrack to Breakdance II: the electric boogaloo had me side-tapping my head and singing along, its 808 beat marking my jogging steps, I was beginning to just feel dirty.
---
It was a feeling subsumed, I should continue, by fatigue. That adventure playground was no playground. Those spongy stairs weren't for softies. Crash mats? Crash and burn mats, baby.
Obviously all the fittists took it seriously. I however, after one lap of running through what felt like treacle, found myself draped over the high bar like, in my wife's worryingly-immediate words afterwards, "one of the 118 blokes".
I know at one point I opted for the positive alternative of shouting instructions and encouragement to the people still actually using the equipment for exercise. "Come on. Yep – nice one, keep going. Now over the mat. Good – knees up..." You get it.
I think I ended the session on my back, spilling out of either end of the spongy hole-in-the-wall. Cheering in a very can-do fashion, so quietly that no-one could hear.
---
To be fair, some of the Genuinely Fit People almost made to invite me to come to the normal Sunday morning class, sans spongy toys. But I think it will be a while before I do anything reckless with my Sunday mornings again.
I really should have put this to good use and at least been sponsored for Comic Relief.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Short.
Short.
I promised myself I'd be wedded to the timecode today. Ben's now sent me three little edits of the show and I'd hoped to be well into the fun bit by the time I was sitting here in a fresh shirt, about to go and watch a bunch of films that actually got finished.
Somehow, unsurprisingly, didn't get that far. I've, like, watched all the clips though.
It is the fun bit, reacting to the pictures and the edit. But I won't be able to get back to it until Sunday now; Mark and I are taking a road trip to Bedford tomorrow.
Tonight, however, we're going as far as Bournemouth pier. After a flurry of emails, the chaps now hosting Future Shorts are showcasing their organisational skills tonight. Mark and I had chatted seriously about taking over the franchise down here, it's so cool. He'd naturally gotten as far as basically convincing the lady from FS in London to give it to us too. But realistically? How would either of us have found the time to organise a miniature film festival?
White Lantern, the prod co who've taken it over are good chums of Mark's however, and however much they've turned in a good deal of enthusiasm for tonight's lavish gala of short films and minor movie production celebs, I can't help suspecting something of this will still end up on his desk in the, well, future.
---
Wednesday I did something I've not made the time to do before. Take a morning off and just go for a walk.
I shouldn't be blogging this, of course. I'm up to my eyes etc. But the point is, I usually am. And when do I go take in the seaside charm I'm always telling my clients it's great to work near?
Near? What difference is near? Unless you're completely at, you're not there at all.
So I slung a little bag over my shoulder and walked. With a decent pile of things to do that were all largely pending someone getting back to me with something crucial to make them finished things, I paused the Skype pipe and pottered off into the crispy sunshine.
I took myself into Tuckton and along the river and up to the Head, naturally. Found a weird and perfect sweet spot on Warren Hill and watched the waves breaking against the beach in the mouth of the solent. Wandered back eventually past Ma's place to find her 'wagging six tails' at the new carpet that had been finally put down that morning. Dad's old room looks stunning. Largely thanks to the efforts of my wife.
Efforts are something she doesn't have right now, though. Still run down enough to be sleeping rather than working today, poor thing.
So, I'm leaving her to Brideshead Revisited – a very long thing she's almost entirely through – while I go out with our bright young things to watch a series of short things.
Sometimes you just need to get a way for a short time on your own. Off to a beach head, or into another world. Helps you get back to all the workish, creative, real world a little more equipped.
---
One thing I did manage to do by the end of the week was revisit something I thought I'd finished but hadn't – Disfunkshun. So much fun, but... what was the piece missing still?
Mucking about with the beats still further, like something I should leave well alone, I hit upon a little detail by accident that suddenly made it fall into place. Just... there it was. Grinning like a loon, I suddenly knew what we were supposed to be doing with the video.
The Hospital mix is now up on the website and the MySpace. Not much different but different.
Short can be sweet. Especially when it's the short little something that finally connects up the very long something that still didn't quite reach.
I promised myself I'd be wedded to the timecode today. Ben's now sent me three little edits of the show and I'd hoped to be well into the fun bit by the time I was sitting here in a fresh shirt, about to go and watch a bunch of films that actually got finished.
Somehow, unsurprisingly, didn't get that far. I've, like, watched all the clips though.
It is the fun bit, reacting to the pictures and the edit. But I won't be able to get back to it until Sunday now; Mark and I are taking a road trip to Bedford tomorrow.
Tonight, however, we're going as far as Bournemouth pier. After a flurry of emails, the chaps now hosting Future Shorts are showcasing their organisational skills tonight. Mark and I had chatted seriously about taking over the franchise down here, it's so cool. He'd naturally gotten as far as basically convincing the lady from FS in London to give it to us too. But realistically? How would either of us have found the time to organise a miniature film festival?
White Lantern, the prod co who've taken it over are good chums of Mark's however, and however much they've turned in a good deal of enthusiasm for tonight's lavish gala of short films and minor movie production celebs, I can't help suspecting something of this will still end up on his desk in the, well, future.
---
Wednesday I did something I've not made the time to do before. Take a morning off and just go for a walk.
I shouldn't be blogging this, of course. I'm up to my eyes etc. But the point is, I usually am. And when do I go take in the seaside charm I'm always telling my clients it's great to work near?
Near? What difference is near? Unless you're completely at, you're not there at all.
So I slung a little bag over my shoulder and walked. With a decent pile of things to do that were all largely pending someone getting back to me with something crucial to make them finished things, I paused the Skype pipe and pottered off into the crispy sunshine.
I took myself into Tuckton and along the river and up to the Head, naturally. Found a weird and perfect sweet spot on Warren Hill and watched the waves breaking against the beach in the mouth of the solent. Wandered back eventually past Ma's place to find her 'wagging six tails' at the new carpet that had been finally put down that morning. Dad's old room looks stunning. Largely thanks to the efforts of my wife.
Efforts are something she doesn't have right now, though. Still run down enough to be sleeping rather than working today, poor thing.
So, I'm leaving her to Brideshead Revisited – a very long thing she's almost entirely through – while I go out with our bright young things to watch a series of short things.
Sometimes you just need to get a way for a short time on your own. Off to a beach head, or into another world. Helps you get back to all the workish, creative, real world a little more equipped.
---
One thing I did manage to do by the end of the week was revisit something I thought I'd finished but hadn't – Disfunkshun. So much fun, but... what was the piece missing still?
Mucking about with the beats still further, like something I should leave well alone, I hit upon a little detail by accident that suddenly made it fall into place. Just... there it was. Grinning like a loon, I suddenly knew what we were supposed to be doing with the video.
The Hospital mix is now up on the website and the MySpace. Not much different but different.
Short can be sweet. Especially when it's the short little something that finally connects up the very long something that still didn't quite reach.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Bankst.
Bankst.
Can you believe it's snowing again? As wet as it is out there, snow is back – and settling. Which is unsettling.
Chillier is the news that the Bank of England is about to announce another interest rate cut, apparently – to 0.5%. It's another attempt to unfreeze the economy, while Gordy tries to warm the UK/US entente cordiale. Or at least get Obama's autograph.
As everyone over-analysed the two leaders' body language this week, I couldn't help thinking that Prime Minister Brown must represent an odd partner in the economic fight – wasn't he at the helm of the UK's influential economy for the precise ten year period that we built the success time bomb? Wasn't he at the head of the drooling mob, stuffing fifties into the M&S y-fronts of various vulgarly gyrating bank bosses, burring: "Devilishly imprudent, you naughty boys"?
To say nothing of his public backing of Blair in the war on Iraq.
A nice ironic daydream I've had is Blair still being PM alongside the Obama administration; though they represent fairly fundamentally different micro-eras in world politics, I can picture them dragging out every press con with charming jokes and little witty winks to one another. Possibly with stiff little declarations of love creeping into the routine...
Tony:
"I meeen, y'know, c'mon, Mr President knows, ah, y'know," >LOOKS UP, DEAD-PAN< "that I love him. >PAUSES< "Asyouknow," >SMIRKS BASHFULLYTO ONE SIDE< "it's always beeen a vury... speshul relationship... and..." >LOOKS UP AGAIN, PRESIDENTIALLY< "I'd like him to take me in his arms and tell me the warrineerack was just a bad dream."
Barry:
>MOUTHS THE WORDS< I Love You Tony.
Well, it's Gordy and Barry doing the stand up. And I think they should let Baz do the jokes.
..Maybe that's the ticket, yknow. While Mr Brown returns home and discusses quantitative easing with the bankers, fretting over where to get more cash from, I think the US should send Obama on a world comedy tour. Really. Can't you see him, perched louchely on a cocktail lounge stool? Knocking them out to rapturous guffaws?
Wouldn't just ease everyone's tensions. I think it would be a licence to print money.
Can you believe it's snowing again? As wet as it is out there, snow is back – and settling. Which is unsettling.
Chillier is the news that the Bank of England is about to announce another interest rate cut, apparently – to 0.5%. It's another attempt to unfreeze the economy, while Gordy tries to warm the UK/US entente cordiale. Or at least get Obama's autograph.
As everyone over-analysed the two leaders' body language this week, I couldn't help thinking that Prime Minister Brown must represent an odd partner in the economic fight – wasn't he at the helm of the UK's influential economy for the precise ten year period that we built the success time bomb? Wasn't he at the head of the drooling mob, stuffing fifties into the M&S y-fronts of various vulgarly gyrating bank bosses, burring: "Devilishly imprudent, you naughty boys"?
To say nothing of his public backing of Blair in the war on Iraq.
A nice ironic daydream I've had is Blair still being PM alongside the Obama administration; though they represent fairly fundamentally different micro-eras in world politics, I can picture them dragging out every press con with charming jokes and little witty winks to one another. Possibly with stiff little declarations of love creeping into the routine...
Tony:
"I meeen, y'know, c'mon, Mr President knows, ah, y'know," >LOOKS UP, DEAD-PAN< "that I love him. >PAUSES< "Asyouknow," >SMIRKS BASHFULLYTO ONE SIDE< "it's always beeen a vury... speshul relationship... and..." >LOOKS UP AGAIN, PRESIDENTIALLY< "I'd like him to take me in his arms and tell me the warrineerack was just a bad dream."
Barry:
>MOUTHS THE WORDS< I Love You Tony.
Well, it's Gordy and Barry doing the stand up. And I think they should let Baz do the jokes.
..Maybe that's the ticket, yknow. While Mr Brown returns home and discusses quantitative easing with the bankers, fretting over where to get more cash from, I think the US should send Obama on a world comedy tour. Really. Can't you see him, perched louchely on a cocktail lounge stool? Knocking them out to rapturous guffaws?
Wouldn't just ease everyone's tensions. I think it would be a licence to print money.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Life.
Life.
It goes on. Things happen, and then more things happen. Or don't.
Doesn't sound like much of a screenplay idea to pitch to God, I'll grant you. Life: stuff keeps, like, happening. But it's obviously more complicated than that.
..Plus we'll fill in a lot of it with CG and snappy editing.
---
So, after a remarkably sociable, productive weekend, Caroline and I are starting the week a little pooped. But, y'know. Okay.
The sun is out again this morning and I've written my first list of things to do. There will undoubtedly be more flamming and thwacking and clacking and shimmy-shingling and wailing to test the remarkable patience of our neighbours, as I get more into the film score, and Caroline seems to have yet more Very Important Meetings to deliver things into, but all of this is helpful momentum for us in what are weird times for many of the people we sat around mugs, glasses and tables with over the last 48 hours. And those we were hoping to with but couldn't.
But, Sunday morning I was reminded of the need to sometimes get away alone and remember what's really important in this fleeting life. Momentum can also be inertia, making it hard to steer the right direction.
So perhaps I'll start this Monday with a walk up to the bakery and the bank in the sunshine. Before all the rythmns of life this week carry me along.
It goes on. Things happen, and then more things happen. Or don't.
Doesn't sound like much of a screenplay idea to pitch to God, I'll grant you. Life: stuff keeps, like, happening. But it's obviously more complicated than that.
..Plus we'll fill in a lot of it with CG and snappy editing.
---
So, after a remarkably sociable, productive weekend, Caroline and I are starting the week a little pooped. But, y'know. Okay.
The sun is out again this morning and I've written my first list of things to do. There will undoubtedly be more flamming and thwacking and clacking and shimmy-shingling and wailing to test the remarkable patience of our neighbours, as I get more into the film score, and Caroline seems to have yet more Very Important Meetings to deliver things into, but all of this is helpful momentum for us in what are weird times for many of the people we sat around mugs, glasses and tables with over the last 48 hours. And those we were hoping to with but couldn't.
But, Sunday morning I was reminded of the need to sometimes get away alone and remember what's really important in this fleeting life. Momentum can also be inertia, making it hard to steer the right direction.
So perhaps I'll start this Monday with a walk up to the bakery and the bank in the sunshine. Before all the rythmns of life this week carry me along.
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