posted
I'm sold on it. I'll go with my mate if I have to, but it will do Mr Samm good to be exposed to something outside of his usual shoot-em up thrillers.
-------------------- A day without laughter is a day wasted. In memory of Alastair Posts: 1936
| IP: Logged
posted
It's the first day of my six week break today. The sun is coming out in fits, which is handy, but I haven't switched off yet so I am at the computer doing lesson plans and materials for September, a nice, high pile of marking nestling besides me; maybe ten days worth. I HATE marking with a hatred beyond expression. I promised Mr Sam I would do the shopping for the next six weeks and I pretty much hate that too.
Nonetheless, to be at home, pleasing myself *titter* instead of nose against the grindstone with groups of 30 small and often irritatingly insistent little people passing before my knackered eyes at 50 minutes intervals to be entertained is such a lovely feeling. Aaah!
I went into that former Virgin record shop at the weekend and bought £90 worth of cheap music and books; mostly books. Pap almost to a text, but I'll read anything now, just because I can. I have the luxury of time to do it. Just finished Stephen Fry's rather scatological autobiography. Not a great writer but vaguely amusing. I don't like him as much as I did after reading it though. His honesty; his self-flagellation, passing off as regret, seemed rather smug and not at all attractive.
-------------------- A day without laughter is a day wasted. In memory of Alastair Posts: 1936
| IP: Logged
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
How does this paean to your spare time equate with your grumblings that it's a hard life being a teacher, you think that we get the summer off, no, we have it hard, we're nose to the grindstone the entire time blah blah blah?
-------------------- i'm expressing my inner anguish through the majesty of song Posts: 4243
| IP: Logged
I am a poor suffering soul, broken in mind and body, but I like to hide it under a canopy of good cheer and apparent joy at six weeks off.
Especially as the sun is bursting through my window and gently cooking my back with its rays whilst the mirrored pieces in my mobile flash myriad sparkling lights around the room and suddenly, it feels like summer.
I feel sorry for myself, I really do.
-------------------- A day without laughter is a day wasted. In memory of Alastair Posts: 1936
| IP: Logged
posted
It's all good. mrs. ralph is still pregnant...finally starting to show a bit. We are (as always) struggling to come up with a name for the baby.
Posts: 7436
| IP: Logged
posted
That's it. You can't see me. I tried to call for help on Life; you cannot hear me. It is too late. I am lost forever. Herbs may be in two different time continuum, but I am down a black hole and can no longer post normally. I am lost to to life (and Media Junkies)as I know it. Now the only tmo left to me is the pitiful remnant of an edited post and already I can see I am further and further away from the warmth and life of tmo as it goes on without me. I... I am lost in space. *weep*
[ 21.07.2008, 07:07: Message edited by: sam ]
-------------------- A day without laughter is a day wasted. In memory of Alastair Posts: 1936
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Zygote: Yes, I'm just jealous that he's in a band and is younger than me. I can't help the way I feel.
Take to the virtual world. You can be younger and play in your own band.
It's okay, sam. I'm not jealous of him at all now. He's just been showing off his new mug, which says on it: I Love Spreadsheets.
Posts: 1696
| IP: Logged
This virtual world thing fascinates me though. There was a story in the Metro last week about a musician in New York who has got a following and can now play gigs for real after setting up a band in a virtual world. I did notice however he was fatter and older in real than in virtual and it made me laugh.
-------------------- A day without laughter is a day wasted. In memory of Alastair Posts: 1936
| IP: Logged
posted
I reckon* that my annoying work colleague will follow the same route, but with the same emo hairstyle. *cackle*
Anyway. I thought that American Gangster was thoroughly enjoyable. The DVD that I've been handed today is Control. Looks like my cup of tea at first glance. Anyone else seen it?
posted
I'm halfway through Hangover Square, which I believe is something of a TMO favourite. I can't quite believe how good it is, and how utterly heartbreaking. I can hardly bear to pick it up each night, but so want George to win, even though he's quite evidently doomed.
Patrick Hamilton is brilliant. Such 'small' stories, but so much of human existence encapsulated in each one. 20,000 Streets Under the Sky is another work of genius.
Posts: 4537
| IP: Logged
posted
I thought 20,000 Streets Under the Sky repeated itself a great deal - like he was just feeding the same piece of information to the reader over and over again. It was weird because it started off as almost subtle - kind of showing you the relationship with the prostitute, the guy's thoughts about it and letting the reader infer the total road-crash that it is. But by about 200 pages in the riff has been hammered home a couple dozen times per page and the beauty of it has been completely destroyed. I wouldn't call it a work of genius, or even a Great Novel. Hangover Square is fantastic though - it seems to achieve far more than 20,000 Streets Under the Sky in far less time.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+
At the moment I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow, which has suprised me by being incredibly invigorating and not at all the miserable slog I feared it might be. As a thicko, I don't normally get on with Big Books, tending to lose my way, forget who's connected to whom drift into a daydream for 100 pages and then declare it to be repetitious or unsubtle without ever really getting to grips with it. But! Gravity's Rainbow keeps making sense to me, and at 550 pages in I don't feel like I'm fighting a losing battle.
A friend of mine told me he gave up on it after the first 100 pages, and there is a metaphysical element to the book, so it keeps slipping between the real and the imaginary and will occasionally propel the narrative back in time, to follow a vignette inspired by some detail one of the main characters noticed. So the main story doesn't exactly push forward at a cracking pace, but maybe because I'd just come out to 20,000 Streets with its intense focus I found myself really enjoying the continuous diversions and discussions. I'm still about 350 pages from the nend, so I'm loathe to try and pin down what the book might be saying on its main themes of perception, interpretation and our role in sort of... creating our own reality, but it doesn't really seem that obtuse. In fact what amazes me most about this 900 page monster that was declared 'unreadable' by the Pulitzer judges is just how accessible it is.
posted
Now isn't that strange. I'm getting much more of a feeling of repetition with HG than I did with 20,000 etc. Ooh, her story, and how she fell in with a bad crowd, etc... so spare yet so doomed. I keep lending it to colleagues, and getting cross when it comes back increasingly dog-eared.
Posts: 4537
| IP: Logged
posted
I'll be honest - I ditched 20 etc towards the end of the first book in favour of Gravity's Rainbow. I didn't fancy taking the Hamilton book on honeymoon because I didn't feel I was getting anything out of it, and I thought a two week holiday was a good chance to make a serious dent in a book that I would otherwise never have started. So I didn't get to the bit about Jenny falling in with the bad crowd.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
posted
Gnnn... that's where you went wrong. The second two parts of the trilogy are better than the first. You see the same story from other points of view. MUST TRY HARDER.
Posts: 4537
| IP: Logged
posted
Yeah, I understand how it's laid out, but given that it was orginally published as three novels, I didn't feel like I'd lose anything by bailing after the first, reading something else, and then coming back to it. Regardless, I can't see how a trilogy that includes the wearing, flawed The Midnight Bell section could be a work of genius.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
posted
Anyway, people only wet their knickers over Patrick Hamilton because he makes hanging round in bars getting wankered seem like some poetic adventure into your own achingly lonely soul.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
posted
I read Lemons Never Lie by Donald E. Westlake the other day. It's a really inconsequential little heist tale. The sort of story that might be an aside in a bigger plot, but it's just such a breeze to read and so effortlessly compelling, and just so evidently the work of a master MASTER storyteller that it really filled me with joy. Thoroughly recommended.
posted
Yes, Control does indeed portray Curtis as a dick. My girlfriend remarked, about halfway through, that she would love to "hang the bastard" herself, which I thought a little harsh. I attempted to alter her opinion by blaming 'manic depression stemming from his epilepsy' on his attitude towards everybody, but this just resulted in her rolling her eyes and, shortly after, going to bed.
Posts: 1696
| IP: Logged
posted
People only like Joy Division because they feel sorry for epileptics. It's political correctness gone mad. Shrewd bands should get a starey-eyed spaz for a frontman, then they're guaranteed success.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Anyway, people only wet their knickers over Patrick Hamilton because he makes hanging round in bars getting wankered seem like some poetic adventure into your own achingly lonely soul.
Suffering now from that self-doubt induced by conversing with Thorn, I'm unsure whether to answer:
a) But hanging round in bars getting wankered is some poetic adventure into your own achingly lonely soul or b) No he doesn't. He exposes it for the shallow self-absorption it really is. or c) Well, I like it so you're wrong.
posted
i went to see wall- e last night. i have nothing to say about it that hasnt been said by mr definitive over there, so instead i will tell you all something that i heard over the weekend, which made me very very happy. apparently in soho somewhere there is a secret exclusive private members' club- no, no, not that kind of private members' club. this is much better than that. they will only let you in if you are dressed as a robot. there are no other entry criteria. if you find this place and ring the doorbell and you are dressed as a robot, the little peephole thing will slide shut and the door will open wide enough to let you in, and you go downstairs into a cellar which is not a cellar but a HIGH- TECH REPLICATION OF A STARSHIP CONTROL PANEL, with, like, quality street wrappers on the walls to replicate leds. and everyone else there is dressed as a robot. i dont really know what else happens there, probably they sit around and drink cocktails with dry ice coming out of the top and talk about blakes seven, but in a very hip- sexy- london- private members sort of a way. theres probably some kind of robot burlesque where a sexy metal chick comes out and wiggles her sexy metal bum to a kraftwerk soundtrack or something. i dont know. i havent been.
of course the problem with this, if it even exists- and its possible it doesnt, that it has been made up to reiterate london's general supremacy as world's best city ever to wide- eyed arrivistes and yokels- is that its not going to stay secret and exclusive for very long, being as how all you have to do to find it is hang around soho on a saturday night looking for people dressed as robots, and follow them.
this is the point at which someone pipes up and says 'yeah, old news, yokelface. been there, done that. robot club was kinda exciting for five minutes back in '06, but it was such a fleeting moment, we didnt even think to mention it.'
-------------------- A day without laughter is a day wasted. In memory of Alastair Posts: 1936
| IP: Logged
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
Rather good, actually. Once you get over the initial Heath Ledger chill, he totally owns the part, and brings some excellent touches at key points. Mind you, so does Christian Bale. Maggie Gyllenhaal is a vast improvement in the Rachel role compared to Katie Holmes, and I always love to see Gary Oldman.
9/10
-------------------- i'm expressing my inner anguish through the majesty of song Posts: 4243
| IP: Logged
posted
Good. I like Batman. The comic books are very gothic and I've never minded the films, even the ones which were not so loved by critics or fans. In fact I liked the first, very dark one quite a bit. Another film to drag Mr Sam to.
-------------------- A day without laughter is a day wasted. In memory of Alastair Posts: 1936
| IP: Logged
posted
Exactly what kind of films does Mr Sam like? You'd think that between the melancholy beauty of Wall-E and the action-packed drama of The Dark Knight, there'd be something that would appeal to him.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I'll go with my mate if I have to, but it will do Mr Samm good to be exposed to something outside of his usual shoot-em up thrillers.
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic