Last February, I was in Plymouth with my daughter and two of her friends. They - 12 and 13-year-olds - were on a shopping trip and tentatively assaying the whacky world of cosmetics and fashion, so I made myself scarce.
Wandering around, I was struck by the number of shops which were closing so on my mobile phone I took a number of photos. Later I strung them together, dug out a relevant cliche (one buried in the FDR quote towards the end of the film) and set it to an appropriate piece of music, Easy St Louis Toodle-oo by Duke Ellington and performed by Steely Dan.
Unfortunately, their version is still in copyright and YouTube (to which I had uploaded it) wouldn't let me use it. So I choose another piece of music instead, but the film lost all impact.
Then I realised I also had the original Duke Ellington version on iTunes, so I have reworked the film with that version (if anything better than the Steely Dan, which incidentally rather disappoints me in that Fagen and Becker copy the original almost note for note in that rather anal way they have made their own).
Here it is.
By comparison the compromise, the version with Debussy, is tame and anondyne.
I find it quite interesting how the sound can utterly change the character of the piece. The first (although I might be wrong of course, and we all love the smell of our own farts) is cynical, resigned, almost aggressive, wherease the second, anodyne version, is sentimental and conventional. Yet the images are identical.
If you like it, you might also like Thelonius Watches Paint Dry
and Significance (Or An Evening With Rob)
which is, however, nine minutes long so have a little patience.
Finally, one of my favourites (which speaks for itself):
Saturday 22 August 2009
Saturday 4 July 2009
Taking a break from work — boy is it hard.
Every week, I drive up to London from home in North Cornwall or drive to Exeter and take the train to London, work for four days, then come home again. Then I get three days at home. Sounds a reasonable routine except that I rarely if ever take a holiday and as a result, I get more and more knackered. Well, I am taking a week off work, so from last Thursday I have officially been on holiday. And boy is it difficult.
The trouble is that none of use can simply switch off. Over these past few days, I have found that whenever I lie on my bed to read or go and sit in the garden just to enjoy listening to the birds and smelling the fresh air, within minutes, I feel I should get up and do something. But I don't have to do anything. So I calm myself down, explain to myself that I am now on holiday and that doing nothing is the whole point of it all, until barely two, three minutes later the urge returns: do something.
Most of you will be familiar with this, and most of you will know, as I do, that day by day, as we relax more, that urge to engage in activity for the sake of it, generally a symptom of how unrelaxed we are, diminishes, so that after a week we can begin to relax properly. However, by then I shall be due back at work.
Solution? I am taking another two weeks off work at the end of September. And I shall not stay at home.
The trouble is that none of use can simply switch off. Over these past few days, I have found that whenever I lie on my bed to read or go and sit in the garden just to enjoy listening to the birds and smelling the fresh air, within minutes, I feel I should get up and do something. But I don't have to do anything. So I calm myself down, explain to myself that I am now on holiday and that doing nothing is the whole point of it all, until barely two, three minutes later the urge returns: do something.
Most of you will be familiar with this, and most of you will know, as I do, that day by day, as we relax more, that urge to engage in activity for the sake of it, generally a symptom of how unrelaxed we are, diminishes, so that after a week we can begin to relax properly. However, by then I shall be due back at work.
Solution? I am taking another two weeks off work at the end of September. And I shall not stay at home.
Thursday 11 June 2009
What should this picture be called? Suggestions, please, on a postcard to the usual address
In another context, I mentioned to someone that I wrote this blog, and I realised I have been neglecting it, so I thought I might pay it a little more attention (blogs get lonely). The trouble is that for one reason or another, I haven't really got the times to balls on about nothing for the next 20 minutes - tasks in hand include having to have a bath in a few minutes, radio programme I want to listen to, cup of tea waiting to be made - just how busy can chap be?
So to kept you all sweet (all?) here is a piccy to be getting on with. I like it 1) because shadows are cast and 2) I always find pictures of gates and doors evocative.
Pretentious? Moi?
Here it is.
So to kept you all sweet (all?) here is a piccy to be getting on with. I like it 1) because shadows are cast and 2) I always find pictures of gates and doors evocative.
Pretentious? Moi?
Here it is.
Thursday 28 May 2009
The Curse of The New
Is it my age or is it the fact that for the past 35 years I have worked in an industry in which cynicism it the norm. I don't know. I am keenly aware that as we grow older — as we all grow older — we become less and less amenable to change of any kind and rather dislike any alteration in the fabric of life which makes it less like what we have been accustomed to for the past 30/40 years.
Take TV. Like all youngsters, I watched a lot of TV. But in those days in Britain we had just two channels to choose from, BBC and ITV (of which BBC was regarded as the upmarket, responsible channel and ITV — known as 'commercial television — was regarded as downmarket and slightly irresponsible. Then, in 1964, along came BBC2 (a day late, as it happens, but that is another story). BBC2 was going to be Auntie's cultural flagship, with loads of 'serious' plays, classical music and intellectual discussion. It fulfilled this role admirably for many years and until 1982 when Channel 4 was launched we only had three channels.
The point I am making is that less TV was available but I watched far more, although I shall not make the usual mistake of claiming that every last minute broadcast was head and shoulders about what is on offer today. It wasn't. We had dross in those days, too, although I'm sure someone somewhere is fully prepared to argue that it was dross of a far higher quality than we are served up with today. Now there seem to be thousands and thousands of TV channels and I watch next to nothing. I have no interest in all the so-called 'reality' shows, or in the talent shows, and some of the programme ideas strike as downright loopy: coming up next week is a series detailing what happens when the lower deck staff start running their supermarket. Can't wait, I really can't. Or ten fat people decide to lose weight. and we are invited to join them 'on their journey' the share the success and failure, the laughter and the tears. I could sit here and try to come up with the most ridiculous idea imaginable, only to discover it was screened last Thursday on some channel or other to almost universal acclaim.
The fault, I'm sure, us most certainly mine.
Then there is the vacuous nonsense everyone keeps coming out with. Was there always such double-speak. Probably, buy I am only beginning to notice it now because I have entered the grumpy years. (And incidentally, one TV show which was a runaway success of these past few years was called 'Grumpy Old Men' and, yes, consisted of loads of elderly celebs sounding off about what ticked them off.)
One of my favourite pieces of spoken garbage, of which a lot is official, was the Labour Government's claim a few years ago that one of its targets in education was to ensure that 'every pupil, irrespective of background, is above average in its achievements'. If that doesn't immediately strike you as being complete bollocks, think about it. Hint: consider what the notion of 'average' is.
Every new venture is proudly announced as being 'innovative', 'exciting', 'groundbreaking' and 'a bold departure' which 'redefines' whatever activity it is being launched as. All I can see is that many people have been paid very good money simply to 'redefine' bollocks.
You get the drift. Yet who is at fault here? Am I being to much of a curmudgeonly stick in the mud to join in the spirit? I like to think not, but then I would, wouldn't I?
I once saw a small ball being marketed as being especially useful as a toy because it 'help to encourage and develop eye-hand co-ordination'. Well, goodness me. What vast strides forward are being made in toy technology. Oh, and toys must these days be 'educational'. That youngsters might actually simply enjoy them for themselves is irrelevant. I feel I ought to go an lie down for an hour or two.
Take TV. Like all youngsters, I watched a lot of TV. But in those days in Britain we had just two channels to choose from, BBC and ITV (of which BBC was regarded as the upmarket, responsible channel and ITV — known as 'commercial television — was regarded as downmarket and slightly irresponsible. Then, in 1964, along came BBC2 (a day late, as it happens, but that is another story). BBC2 was going to be Auntie's cultural flagship, with loads of 'serious' plays, classical music and intellectual discussion. It fulfilled this role admirably for many years and until 1982 when Channel 4 was launched we only had three channels.
The point I am making is that less TV was available but I watched far more, although I shall not make the usual mistake of claiming that every last minute broadcast was head and shoulders about what is on offer today. It wasn't. We had dross in those days, too, although I'm sure someone somewhere is fully prepared to argue that it was dross of a far higher quality than we are served up with today. Now there seem to be thousands and thousands of TV channels and I watch next to nothing. I have no interest in all the so-called 'reality' shows, or in the talent shows, and some of the programme ideas strike as downright loopy: coming up next week is a series detailing what happens when the lower deck staff start running their supermarket. Can't wait, I really can't. Or ten fat people decide to lose weight. and we are invited to join them 'on their journey' the share the success and failure, the laughter and the tears. I could sit here and try to come up with the most ridiculous idea imaginable, only to discover it was screened last Thursday on some channel or other to almost universal acclaim.
The fault, I'm sure, us most certainly mine.
Then there is the vacuous nonsense everyone keeps coming out with. Was there always such double-speak. Probably, buy I am only beginning to notice it now because I have entered the grumpy years. (And incidentally, one TV show which was a runaway success of these past few years was called 'Grumpy Old Men' and, yes, consisted of loads of elderly celebs sounding off about what ticked them off.)
One of my favourite pieces of spoken garbage, of which a lot is official, was the Labour Government's claim a few years ago that one of its targets in education was to ensure that 'every pupil, irrespective of background, is above average in its achievements'. If that doesn't immediately strike you as being complete bollocks, think about it. Hint: consider what the notion of 'average' is.
Every new venture is proudly announced as being 'innovative', 'exciting', 'groundbreaking' and 'a bold departure' which 'redefines' whatever activity it is being launched as. All I can see is that many people have been paid very good money simply to 'redefine' bollocks.
You get the drift. Yet who is at fault here? Am I being to much of a curmudgeonly stick in the mud to join in the spirit? I like to think not, but then I would, wouldn't I?
I once saw a small ball being marketed as being especially useful as a toy because it 'help to encourage and develop eye-hand co-ordination'. Well, goodness me. What vast strides forward are being made in toy technology. Oh, and toys must these days be 'educational'. That youngsters might actually simply enjoy them for themselves is irrelevant. I feel I ought to go an lie down for an hour or two.
Monday 25 May 2009
Dreaming of losing my teeth — very unwelcome I'm a-Freud
I had an odd dream last night: all my teeth started falling out one by one. A girl at work said it was a sex dream, a dream expressing the fear that you are no longer sexually attractive. Perhaps. I must admit that I haven't consciously considered whether or not I am still sexually attractive. We're all a little vain, but I don't think about myself and my looks very often at all.
I do know that at my age jumping into bed with a woman without just a little time - a little flirting time - would be something close to a disaster. I haven't had sex in almost ten years, and although I know quite a few of the tunes, I would need a little time to tune up.
The other trouble is that, for example, the women I fancy at work are all at least 20 years younger than me, and not in a million years would they consider me as a potential sexual partner. There is one writer, a raddled old piece who most certainly looks older than she is because she looks about 90 but cannot yet be 90, who for a few days kept making cow eyes at me when she first joined, but that rapidly ended when she realised that in her I simply was not interested. I shan't give you her name, but she spent, or better, misspent a large number of years in the 70s and 80s as a showbiz correspondent out in California and looks as though she crammed about 100 years worth of partying into 20 years. She has not aged well.
Anyway, as I was saying the sweeties I am interested in (and I am sure it has never occurred to them that I might be) wouldn't look at me in a million years. Hence, I should imagine, my dream about losing my teeth.
I do know that at my age jumping into bed with a woman without just a little time - a little flirting time - would be something close to a disaster. I haven't had sex in almost ten years, and although I know quite a few of the tunes, I would need a little time to tune up.
The other trouble is that, for example, the women I fancy at work are all at least 20 years younger than me, and not in a million years would they consider me as a potential sexual partner. There is one writer, a raddled old piece who most certainly looks older than she is because she looks about 90 but cannot yet be 90, who for a few days kept making cow eyes at me when she first joined, but that rapidly ended when she realised that in her I simply was not interested. I shan't give you her name, but she spent, or better, misspent a large number of years in the 70s and 80s as a showbiz correspondent out in California and looks as though she crammed about 100 years worth of partying into 20 years. She has not aged well.
Anyway, as I was saying the sweeties I am interested in (and I am sure it has never occurred to them that I might be) wouldn't look at me in a million years. Hence, I should imagine, my dream about losing my teeth.
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