NeilH style list of cuts :)
Sep. 15th, 2003 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaThings wot I have done this weekend:
I pottered down to see F for Fake at the National Film Theatre. It's a film that's been on my see-one-day list since reading Robert Anton Wilson's comments on it in one of the Cosmic Trigger books. Unfortunately, I've mostly forgotten what his comments were, must re-read 'em.
It's rather a fine film, being Orson Welles' take on the Clifford Irving - Howard Hughes - Elmyr rumours, myths and legends. (Knowledge of these is assumed, and if you haven't got a basic outline you'll flounder a bit, I think. I was rather more vague than ideal). The whole film deals with issues of forgery, fakery and trickery in various clever ways. Despite its presentation of the facts documentary-style, the audience is never allowed to forget for a momeny that they should be doubting and questioning everything they are told.
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metame would use the word "meta" when describing it. And certainly, a lot of it does have that one-step-removed quality which can be used to very good effect. Much of it is deliberately "clever", but just for once I didn't mind that. See it if you get the chance.
Afterwards, I wandered along to look at David Blaine hanging about in his box above the Thames. I'm not really sure what's going on there. There's a thriving local economy of hot-things-in-buns, cold-things-in-cans, and assorted tat, and there was a big crowd of people.
I'd gone along simply because I was approximately in the area, and it seemed a shame not to, if there were defining cultural moments to be partaken of. But, having gone "oh yes, it's a bloke in a box", I wasn't sure what to do next. Beyond intermittent desultory waving, there wasn't anything to see, really. And too many security guards to allow the throwing of small missiles :)
Good luck to the man in his rather bizarre ambition, but I wouldn't bother going to observe. I'm just waiting til one of Banksy's tags appears on the glass box...
Saturday night I was going to go and see Skelliga, I really was. I went to Old Burlington Street and everything. Admittedly, having munged up the reading of their web page, I was looking for a venue by the wrong name. But even so, we only found one venue-looking place (not the name I was looking for or the right one, posh-looking, we got scowled at by the bouncer), and one pub (wrong name and closed). After a couple of passes up and down the road, we said "sod it" and went for a meal instead.
We wound up at a Japanese restaurant called Chisou, somewhere in the bowels of quite-near-Regent-Street. Nice food, though a little on the expensive side, and slightly confusing... I'm used to the idea that Japanese restaurants dump all your food down in front of you at once, as it comes, and you kind of sort it out. Here, each dish arrived individually (fortunately, we were planning to share them anyway, or it would have all gone rather wrong). Any suggestions,condign, as to what the points of etiquette here are ?
Good food, though. If mildly terrifying. In a fit of adventurousness, I ordered wheat balls with octopus and bonito flakes. I have no idea what bonito flakes might be, beyond them being very, very thin flakes of, er, bonito presumably. Thin enough to be seriously affected by convection from hot food, anyway... so the net result was skewers of inch-diameter balls covered in long, waving tentacles. I don't think I've ever eaten anything that looked quite so... alive.
The great thing about Japanese food, of course, is that you can eat a large meal, and not feel like you've got a stomach full of bricks afterwards. So despite being well fed, trundling along to Strange Fruit wasn't a particularly daunting prospect. SF is a club night at upstairs-at-the-Garage in Islington, and describes its music as "off-kilter indie, post-rock and eclectica".
We arrived just in time to hear the last band... Believe it or not, they were called Zombina and the Skeletones, and despite the name, didn't suck. They've wrested this year's Band I've Gone to See Knowing Nothing About and Liked crown away from The Moonies, and were absolutely great from the moment we walked in a few songs into their set. I'd witter vaguely about them being a bit Ramones, and a bit jangly and even a bit Pixies, but ChrisC tells me the phrase I'm looking for is "like the Primitives". I dunno, I only know one Primitives' song.
They're bouncy, they do a good line in song titles (Can't Break A Dead Girl's Heart, anyone?), and they're capable of breaking competently into four-person harmony when they feel that way out. There are mp3s on the website, but they don't really do the band justice - if they crop up near you, though, go see 'em.
I liked Strange Fruit. It's a long time since I went to a club which wasn't (in some way) a goth club, and I'd kind of forgotten that there's quite a lot of struggling indie-kid in me as well. They aren't joking with their off-kilter - though I'm told that the DJs I heard were some of the more mainstream contributors. So I danced to the Pixies, and le Tigre, and Guns 'n Roses, and St Etienne and all stages in between and a bunch more stuff I didn't know at all.
As part of this season's outbreak of matrimony, a university friend of mine was getting married yesterday. Cathy's on a hig-traffic-low-content mailing list which I'm also on, and for months she's been updating us on wedding preparations/problems/particulars. So it was great to see all her plans come together and make for a really lovely day.
And we arrived safely, despite the fact that some of my friends appear to be channeling Luke Reinhardt, and some of our navigational decision-making was done by tossing a coin...
<raises glass>To Cathy and Ashley.
And to celebrate the new week...
I don't normally take third-party nominations for Designated Hero of the Week, since it seems to me that people would be better off nominating their own DHWs. However, just for once this weekcuthbertcross gets an Honourable Mention at the behest of bateleur. He and lathany had gone off to look after the battered chrestomancy in casualty, and, as Bateleur wrote:
I nominatecuthbertcross for turning up at our
house yesterday after a day at work to look after the twins given 10 minutes
notice. We were gone for 5 hours (Central Middlesex A&E was pretty crowded)
and from the moment Dawn walked out the door, Ryan cried and then Bea cried
'cos Ryan was crying. And Ryan chose that evening to spill his milk
everywhere. And she was entirely lovely about the whole thing.
So everyone buy Cuthbertcross a pint. She deserves it.
However, my DHW is actually ChrisC, for friendship above and beyond the call of duty.
I pottered down to see F for Fake at the National Film Theatre. It's a film that's been on my see-one-day list since reading Robert Anton Wilson's comments on it in one of the Cosmic Trigger books. Unfortunately, I've mostly forgotten what his comments were, must re-read 'em.
It's rather a fine film, being Orson Welles' take on the Clifford Irving - Howard Hughes - Elmyr rumours, myths and legends. (Knowledge of these is assumed, and if you haven't got a basic outline you'll flounder a bit, I think. I was rather more vague than ideal). The whole film deals with issues of forgery, fakery and trickery in various clever ways. Despite its presentation of the facts documentary-style, the audience is never allowed to forget for a momeny that they should be doubting and questioning everything they are told.
metame would use the word "meta" when describing it. And certainly, a lot of it does have that one-step-removed quality which can be used to very good effect. Much of it is deliberately "clever", but just for once I didn't mind that. See it if you get the chance.Afterwards, I wandered along to look at David Blaine hanging about in his box above the Thames. I'm not really sure what's going on there. There's a thriving local economy of hot-things-in-buns, cold-things-in-cans, and assorted tat, and there was a big crowd of people.
I'd gone along simply because I was approximately in the area, and it seemed a shame not to, if there were defining cultural moments to be partaken of. But, having gone "oh yes, it's a bloke in a box", I wasn't sure what to do next. Beyond intermittent desultory waving, there wasn't anything to see, really. And too many security guards to allow the throwing of small missiles :)
Good luck to the man in his rather bizarre ambition, but I wouldn't bother going to observe. I'm just waiting til one of Banksy's tags appears on the glass box...
Saturday night I was going to go and see Skelliga, I really was. I went to Old Burlington Street and everything. Admittedly, having munged up the reading of their web page, I was looking for a venue by the wrong name. But even so, we only found one venue-looking place (not the name I was looking for or the right one, posh-looking, we got scowled at by the bouncer), and one pub (wrong name and closed). After a couple of passes up and down the road, we said "sod it" and went for a meal instead.
We wound up at a Japanese restaurant called Chisou, somewhere in the bowels of quite-near-Regent-Street. Nice food, though a little on the expensive side, and slightly confusing... I'm used to the idea that Japanese restaurants dump all your food down in front of you at once, as it comes, and you kind of sort it out. Here, each dish arrived individually (fortunately, we were planning to share them anyway, or it would have all gone rather wrong). Any suggestions,
condign, as to what the points of etiquette here are ?Good food, though. If mildly terrifying. In a fit of adventurousness, I ordered wheat balls with octopus and bonito flakes. I have no idea what bonito flakes might be, beyond them being very, very thin flakes of, er, bonito presumably. Thin enough to be seriously affected by convection from hot food, anyway... so the net result was skewers of inch-diameter balls covered in long, waving tentacles. I don't think I've ever eaten anything that looked quite so... alive.
The great thing about Japanese food, of course, is that you can eat a large meal, and not feel like you've got a stomach full of bricks afterwards. So despite being well fed, trundling along to Strange Fruit wasn't a particularly daunting prospect. SF is a club night at upstairs-at-the-Garage in Islington, and describes its music as "off-kilter indie, post-rock and eclectica".
We arrived just in time to hear the last band... Believe it or not, they were called Zombina and the Skeletones, and despite the name, didn't suck. They've wrested this year's Band I've Gone to See Knowing Nothing About and Liked crown away from The Moonies, and were absolutely great from the moment we walked in a few songs into their set. I'd witter vaguely about them being a bit Ramones, and a bit jangly and even a bit Pixies, but ChrisC tells me the phrase I'm looking for is "like the Primitives". I dunno, I only know one Primitives' song.
They're bouncy, they do a good line in song titles (Can't Break A Dead Girl's Heart, anyone?), and they're capable of breaking competently into four-person harmony when they feel that way out. There are mp3s on the website, but they don't really do the band justice - if they crop up near you, though, go see 'em.
I liked Strange Fruit. It's a long time since I went to a club which wasn't (in some way) a goth club, and I'd kind of forgotten that there's quite a lot of struggling indie-kid in me as well. They aren't joking with their off-kilter - though I'm told that the DJs I heard were some of the more mainstream contributors. So I danced to the Pixies, and le Tigre, and Guns 'n Roses, and St Etienne and all stages in between and a bunch more stuff I didn't know at all.
As part of this season's outbreak of matrimony, a university friend of mine was getting married yesterday. Cathy's on a hig-traffic-low-content mailing list which I'm also on, and for months she's been updating us on wedding preparations/problems/particulars. So it was great to see all her plans come together and make for a really lovely day.
And we arrived safely, despite the fact that some of my friends appear to be channeling Luke Reinhardt, and some of our navigational decision-making was done by tossing a coin...
<raises glass>To Cathy and Ashley.
And to celebrate the new week...
I don't normally take third-party nominations for Designated Hero of the Week, since it seems to me that people would be better off nominating their own DHWs. However, just for once this week
cuthbertcross gets an Honourable Mention at the behest of bateleur. He and lathany had gone off to look after the battered chrestomancy in casualty, and, as Bateleur wrote: I nominate
cuthbertcross for turning up at ourhouse yesterday after a day at work to look after the twins given 10 minutes
notice. We were gone for 5 hours (Central Middlesex A&E was pretty crowded)
and from the moment Dawn walked out the door, Ryan cried and then Bea cried
'cos Ryan was crying. And Ryan chose that evening to spill his milk
everywhere. And she was entirely lovely about the whole thing.
So everyone buy Cuthbertcross a pint. She deserves it.
However, my DHW is actually ChrisC, for friendship above and beyond the call of duty.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 01:37 pm (UTC)1) Bonito is a fish, isn't it?
2) How many people associate "strange fruit" as meaning "peculiar" + "the product of labour or enquiry", and how many associate it with the poem/song? Because I'm quite strongly the latter, so I think that calling a nightclub "strange fruit" is tasteless beyond words.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 01:43 pm (UTC)Isn't scromboid a great word ? I have no idea what it means, and I'm sure looking it up would disappoin.
2 - In context, I'd automatically assumed the former. Certainly I've been hearing people talking about the club for a while now, and it only occurred to me this weekend that the same phrase occurs in the song.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 02:02 pm (UTC)between the smaller mackerels and the larger tunas
Doesn't narrow things down much, does it?
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 02:38 pm (UTC)Scromboid: The symmetrical shape caused by 8 strapping men shoving their heads up each others' arses with the intent of kicking a ball backwards.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 03:05 pm (UTC)(Incidentally, haven't forgotten to mail you about accommodation, haven't heard back yet...)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 06:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 08:23 am (UTC)Careful it is.