thalassa thalassa

The life so short, the craft so long to learn

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:41:47 GMT

My hotel room is like the inside of a Della Robbia relief: exactly the same shade of blue. Though no Della Robbia relief comes with an en suite bathroom...

In San Marco I was looking at the statue of Savonarola and found myself face to face with the graves of Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola. How strange that the same church should contain the bones of saint Antoninus, decaying relics worshipped at a shrine, and the discreet Roman inscriptions hiding behind the statue of Savonarola which mark the resting-place of men who were so active in revolving the world away from this kind of cult towards what Pico calls in clarion tones the nature and dignity of man.

Though there was someone else looking for Pico's grave: 'era magnifico', he remarked to his companion.

Surrounded by churches, the Accademia on the other hand seems a pointless exercise in stripping art of its context and giving it a man-centred focus. In countries where you can't look at this art in situ, the galleries are crucial, but when you can stroll into any church and be overwhelmed not by the development of a new composition but an all-encompassing experience, the exercise in celebrating the colossal which is the placing of the original David statue in the centre of a large gallery is somewhat redundant. He looks much better where he was meant to be, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.

Finally to the Badia Fiorentina, a church which really does seem a bastion of spirituality, heavy with prayer like Notre Dame but not weighted down by it with Notre Dame's gloom, and then a farewell to the tiny medieval streets of Dante, a farewell to the sun setting over the Arno, casting a delicate pink miasma over the distant hills, a farewell to the Piazza della Signoria, to the chocolate box confectionary of the Duomo... never have I less wanted to leave a place: from here to Edinburgh is not a journey home.

Hyperion to a satyr

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:52:45 GMT

Today I finally found the Renaissance. Walking into the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi is like walking into the Hypnerotomachia. Walls inscribed with fragments of fake classical memorials in forgotten languages, all the work of Michelozzo allegedly. An attempt to recreate the architecture of a Roman villa in the heart of the city, in an attempt to recreate the thoughts of the ancient world, to re-enter that civilisation and bring it to life over an evening stroll between the orange trees.

To contemplate the dignity of man surrounded by cool marble statues, and at the summit of the eye's horizon, to look at the audacity of Donatello's David and feel that they were really living at the beginning of a new age of human potential.

And to turn from that to the chapel, where the world in its natural state, present and eternal past and future are embodied in glorious inescapable enclosed technicolour...

So what do you do after that? I went to an exhibition on couture fashion which I found a hell of lot more difficult to understand than the allegorical references of the Renaissance.

And I haven't even mentioned the Uffizi...

Before I forget: the glories of a sunset over the Ponte Vecchio, the hidden sun suffusing the clouds with colour no artist in this palace could recapture... spending a half-hour with Botticelli almost alone and uninterrupted... walking in solitude down the dark corridor waiting for the statues to spring to life around me ... Andrea del Sarto's so warm paintings overturning Browning's judgement.... remembering why I thought Ghirlandaio was wet and weedy and at the same time finding his Magi the celebration of the Renaissance as the triumphant fusion of the old classical world and the new life of Christianity... seeing in Botticelli the visionary and yet the man enraptured with the beautiful teenagers whose faces can be seen in his angels and madonnas, the poet of female desire for the unattainable male...

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:37:53 GMT

Santa Maria Novella: Giotto's crucifix hanging suspended over you: stand directly under it, and look up, and there the body of Christ hangs over you almost dripping its blood protectively over you. In a city of crucifixes embracing every aspect of Christ from emaciated suffering to supernormal humanity to pathos to pardoning deity, this is a massive figure enacting redemptive sacrifice over your head.

The revelation: Ghirlandaio. Whom I have always dismissed as utterly wet and weedy, the Fotherington Thomas of the Renaissance. But his frescoes seen not in photograph-sized images but in more than lifesize scale before your eyes teem with vivacious human beings going about their daily life, only with heightened colours. In Santa Maria Novella, in Santa Trinità, you could walk into his walls and enter his Florence - or rather, for his own contemporaries, see in your own city that pedant Poliziano, that powerful Lorenzo subservient to the reality of St Francis' spirituality.

Filippino Lippi: perspective and realism, capturing in art what you really see with the eye, words bandied around about every Renaissance artist. But his trompe l'oeil in - yet again - Santa Maria Novella is the most convincing fraud I've ever seen. Impossible not to credit that there is some 3D there, but no.

Ucello: I've always found him mysterious, but again in more than lifesize frescoes what emerges is a great fear - a fear of death, a fear of men in armour with spears attacking the unarmed, a fear of devastation decimating the land. Not a consoling vision for the cloister of Santa Maria Novella.

The Baptistery: the theory is that modernists had nowhere to go with conventional art, so to be radical they had to be destructive. What rubbish. The fresco in the Baptistery is the most overwhelmingly commanding piece of art, and yet faced with it Ghiberti and Brunelleschi were inspired not to despair or destruction but to negativity.

And finally my own Donatello. Dazzling, dazzling, dazzling. From the deliciously and vital youth of the cantorie to the futurist severity of St Mark to the near abstraction of the Magdalena. How can one man have run the course of the entire history of art in one scupture?

Aretine

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:53:40 GMT

What Arezzo needs is a little more homage to Petrarch and a little less homage to Vasari. At least no-one let him loose on the Pieve de S. Maria.

But after a day there, I can see Piero della Francesca frescoes when I close my eyes, the way you see the little figures in a computer game for hours after playing it.

Frescoes are vastly preferable. And let's not forget the ceiling of the Duomo, not in any guidebook, with the creation of the world and the wrestling Jacob by Guillaume de Marcillat.

Ognissanti

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:51:16 GMT

Today the perfect day to go to the Boboli gardens and the Palazzo Pitti. Except, it being a public holiday and all, of course they close the only large open space in the centre of Florence. But there was some kind of free festival of local produce including free wine. So let's not complain too much. So I walked up along to San Leonardo - you could be anywhere, in the middle of the Tuscan countryside, with no indication whatsovever that there is a city down in the valley below. Perfect autumn day, the stony pavement strewn with olives.

Then to Orsanmichele, where a free concert was in process, sitting on stone and taking in the decorations. Even if it was supposed to be a show-off place for the medieval guilds, it has a nice friendly air to it, a practical accommodating decoration, not awe-inspiring but uplifting. Then eating chestnuts in the backstreets all the way along to the open air marketplace where locals were standing in the street drinking chocolate.

Hopefully more art tomorrow, when things will actually be open...

Glimpsing the Duomo around corners...

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:37:32 GMT

... it crops up from the most unexpected angles... I'm approaching it sideways, tracking Bruneschelli's life of dome-building through Santa Croce, the little Rotunda in the rather grubby piazza named after him, San Lorenzo... finally some day I'll make it inside.

And I'm totally in love with Donatello. After the two of them together, with a little bit of Lucia della Robbia, what was left for the people who had anything to do with the public buildings of Florence to do? Why did they bother? Why waste your time, Michelangelo, with those stupid little games with swags and straight lines and arches, when these other people are concerned with space and light and quietness?

My brain is crowded with reflections on all these churches - the great empty spaces full of people looking at art and trying to nudge them pitifully towards something more than art. Santa Croce: the Franciscans versus the inevitable pressure to show off, the people who tried to have a council to bring the churches together and ended up stimulating secular humanism. San Lorenzo: the Medici who chose Bruneschelli and Donatello and Lippi to throw in that little annunciation (teenage Mary: 'Dude, I'm totally not pregnant...') got a much better deal than the Medici who commissioned Michelangelo. Who is much more interesting unfinished with the feet still climbing out of the rock and the face of the Christ child a vague suggestion than heroically allegorising inferior princelings.

This city has a Bacchus obsession

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:10:45 GMT

Maybe the Renaissance wasn't the rediscovery of classical architecture at all. Maybe it was the rediscovery of the joys of going out, getting drunk, casting off the shackles of morality and generally having a good time. No wonder they needed Savonarola.

Because this city is obsessed with Bacchus. Everyone sculpted him. Well, him and David, about whom, in Renaissance Florence, there seems to have hung a certain ambiguity of gender. Of course Donatello feminises him, but even Michelangelo is at it.

So. Did I mention that my appartment is in a street with a C18th sign carved into a wall saying that prostitutes need to stop hanging about or they will be whipped. There don't seem to be any here any more, so it seems to have worked.

Today, the first day, the class finished early so I hurried to the Bargello. Oh no! It's a Monday, so surely it'll be shut. Oh yes! It's the 5th Monday of the month so it's open. Surely the best 4 euros I'll ever spend. Being in Florence and not really liking Michelangelo that much is like being in America and not really liking hamburgers. But my lovely Donatello, even with the David in the middle of restoration and hence having a nice lie-down while beautiful white-coated assistants lovingly tended him like manicurists, was sublime. St George is now my ideal man. I've never seen a figure manage to be so heroic without being overbearing before.

And what to say about those panels for the Baptistry doors? To stand looking at them, and see exactly what every Art History panel 101 says about the difference between the two styles... and yet to form one's own opinion. Yes, Bruneschelli is so much more dynamic than Ghilberti - and yet... there's something about the angel so daringly leaping out of the background in Ghilberti's picture that I think the judges perhaps did not make the wrong decision.

Florence journal

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 09:34:32 GMT

So I've been in this city for less than 24 hours and it is blowing my mind.

Even flying in to the airport was magical - first glimpse of the mountains bathed in that magical light which makes the jagged peaks effortlessly flow into hazy outlines and then into the infinite layers of cloudy horizon.

And then the city itself: a taxi ride past the Duomo into the city centre. I arrived about two hours too early to get the keys of my appartment, and attracted by what looked like frescoes on a wall, wandered past tiny trattorias and bars into the Piazza Santa Croce. And there, before me, the perfect black and white geometric facade of a pre-Renaissance church. A statue of Dante - what an omen. A tiny group of traditional musicians busking. People sitting at an open-air cafe (on a sunny November afternoon). A big open medieval irregular square, with on one side a large palazzo covered with C17th frescoes. What a hardship to idle away a Sunday afternoon waiting there.

Then a quick stroll to the river, past the Museo Horne, to catch a first glimpse of the view up to the Church of San Minatore.

Then back to collect the keys and climb the stairs to the tiny appartment straight out of a movie - plain white walls, high furniture, tiled kitchen. The cracks in the walls of the ceiling make me feel happier about the cracks in the wall of my flat which have appeared recently because they are babies in comparison to this. Thankfully there is also hot water and all the electrics appear to be working...

Then out for my first experience of shopping Italian style. All these centuries of civilisation and no fresh milk, only the UHT style. Just like France.

Then a stroll round the city. The easy thing would be the guided tour on a summer afternoon, jostling with other tourists. There is something magical about exploring such a city in the dark evening, at a time when all the shops are still open and the citizens are out for their passegiatura. To just be walking down the streets and stumble upon the Piazza dei Signori, to find the David without even knowing that you are looking for it, so that instead of an object endowed with status, it is just another sculpture, a little timid even beside the Hercules statue, a little simple and embarrassed to be caught in front of that grand building the Palazzo Vecchio. Even the passage through the middle of the Uffizi, every geometric design on the wall so perfectly proprortioned and perspectived, is beautiful. Then to the Ponte Vecchio, uncrowded with the shops shut, and back through the medieval city to pay homage to the Casa di Dante. To look for and not find the Chiesa di Dante, and then lost down a side street to discover it, for a wonder open at this hour in preparation for a concert, dark as it must then have been. In such European cities where churches for centuries agglutinated decoration, the few survivals relatively free from ornament are jewel-like in their simplicity. This is another such.

The tomb of Beatrice was covered with letters people have written to her. One said 'pray for us' which I find strange. Only Dante crowned her as a saint. Opposite her tomb is one of a 13th-century Theresa who founded an order of hospitallers. Her tomb by comparison attracts no attention. The woman who was the object of Dante's attention, who served as his inspiration, is revered. The woman who in those days went out and did something to help others, who organised and used her own capacity, is forgotten.

And then to crown the day, to the gelateria Vivoli, which lives up to all the praise of the guidebooks. I can see that I am going to have to budget 1 euro 60 per day for this.

The appartment has one window through which the cypresses and church on the hills can be glimpsed, and in the background that light which is captured in so many paintings and always seemed imaginary until now.

Fantasy house

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:44:01 GMT

I would almost move here.

Your home is a

Magnate's Manor

Your kitchen is someplace you never go, because you "have people for that." There's a Chocolatessen, which is rapidly becoming your favorite room of the house. Having one is also becoming a trend among your wealthy neighbors. Your master bedroom is the size of a small barn, with carpet thick enough to reach your ankles. Your study has hardback editions of every classic ever written, plus a special edition of Rich Dad, Poor Dad with the parts you ghost-authored highlighted. One of your garages holds your collection of ferraris, and is measured in acreage.

Your home also includes a guest wing and private quarters for your servants. Outside is your hedge maze and gardens, meticulously tended by a team of world-class botanists.

Below is a snippet of the blueprints:

Find YOUR Dream House!

Though would it have guaranteed sunsets from one window? And a view of the beach from another? If not, I might have to stay where I am.

Currently watching Rory Bremner who is letting rip with a sketch about how funny the internet is. People don't use their real identities, you know. And they have friends that they've never actually met. Oh for the love of mike. Next week: why we must return to quill pen and parchment for real proper communication. Feh.

For some reason it makes me feel as though I'm living in the Middle Ages

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:25:20 GMT

Thankfully I don't live anywhere near this. Or on the ground floor. But what could survive a mini-ice age, very small earthquakes, a couple of civil wars, papal interdicts, a reformation, an industrial revolution and the invention of the combustion engine doesn't really have a problem with a bit of flood water.

Love this picture. Makes me want to write fantasy novels about England being submerged and returning to a medieval lifestyle, only with the internet.

(this is Tewksbury Abbey by the way. Nearly 1000 years old.)

The world is full of heroes

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:20:34 GMT

I was watching the BBC news report about Glasgow airport yesterday: one of the airport staff they spoke to was talking about how the jeep crashed into the terminal, and they saw the policeman go towards it, and the men come out of the jeep and attack the policeman. So, you've got what's obviously some kind of terrorist activity involving what look like suicide bomber types. 'And then,' he said, quite as if this was what anyone would do, 'I went to help the policeman.'

ETA: His name is John Smeaton and he is a Baggage Handler. Who would have thought it? You can see the totally amazing interview here. I have to say this from Wikipedia made me laugh: "Asked by ITV News what his message to terrorists was, he said "Glasgow doesn't accept this. That's just Glasgow; we'll set about ye."

This is why I love Glasgow so much more than Edinburgh...

The Albion is sailing back on course again

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:28:37 GMT

Peter picks the ball up again.

As said elsewhere, it's so nice to be able to listen to Libertines music again without any angst for the first time since June 2004. And it's really damn good. Even if now I don't think that they are necessarily going to think about more playing or writing together - and heaven knows Carl is doing fine by himself, let's not talk about Babyshambles - it's nice to have the good old days back without having to be all bitter about everything that was lost.

Music when the lights go on

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:46:50 GMT

I'm listening - for the first time in ages - to Legs XI (Libertines demo from 1999). Why oh why is there no time machine whereby we could all go back in time and just fix things that got broken somehow?

Also: according to the 'analyze your music style' tool which comes with my new mp3 player, the music I've just loaded onto it breaks down as:
31% passionate
24% cheerful
43% sweet
2% quiet

They must be counting Motown and classical as sweet, that's the only way I can account for it.

The bracket is still up

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:48:06 GMT

In a pub (for the first time for months actually) which was playing decent 'this-just-in' indie music, and then suddenly this very gentle and yet profoundly alive music came on, and it took me a few seconds to place it as Up The Bracket, as lovely and unique as ever. Thank heavens the music still has it. I wish Pete still did. Or that some day it would be possible to listen to it without that nagging toothache 'but what if...'.

American politics

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:20:07 GMT

All The President's Men caught my eye on the classic movie channel the other night. This truly is one of the best films. Is it the plot? Is it the knowing it actually happened? Is it the performances? Is it the editing, the camerawork, the direction? Maybe it's the script?

I think it's just the perfect balance and the cool way in which the camera regards these characters whom Redford and Hoffman play as the epitome of heroic, whether you prefer Redford/Woodward radiating earnest integrity or Hoffman/Bernstein's intense pursuit of the truth. Do you think Bernstein is too pushy, or do you too recoil in shock when Woodward says he's a Republican? Do they both go too far when they ask a girl to sleep with a guy so she can get a crucial piece of information from her? Are their lives really in danger, or is it irrational paranoia?

And then of course there are the elements that are simply movie classics: the hard-boiled editor whose only concern is for the paper and the truth (The Front Page); the reporter whose painstaking pursuit of the case uncovers the real story (Call Northside 777, with Redford channelling Jimmy Stewart); all the people who won't go on the record because of their lesser or greater fear or corruption... All transposed to the harsh lights and faded colour of the early 1970s.

And of course the luminous intensity that you get from both the leading actors. There is a scene where they sit on a sofa trying to persuade a woman to talk to them, and you can feel them using every inch of their charisma to get her to open up, every trick they use to make the camera love them being channelled into their roles and turned on this helpless woman, in a fusion of their real star quality and the characters they are playing. It's not just Woodward and Bernstein who turn on the charm, it's Redford and Hoffman, and what lowly staffer or bit-part actress could possibly resist?

Bring it on down

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:43:01 GMT

Watching the Brits: Britpop redux. Take That shining like the little stars they are. I really wish the camera had been on Gary's face when they won best single. What fool cut Oasis off at the end? Liam is still the only man in the world who can make cleaning his glasses look spectacularly cool. And Ricky Wilson has shaved off the facefuzz and gone blondish again, well done Ricky though I haven't forgiven you for renouncing the blazers of 2005 as though you don't realise that's precisely why we loved you. However to balance this out in the great karmic universe of rock, John Frusciante, the only man in the world who looks really good with Charles II hair, has cut his all off. Guys, guys, you're messing with me...

Damn this song is sexy

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:40:58 GMT

Why why why have I spent so long without listening to Suede in general and The Drowners in particular? There was a time that I couldn't go more than forty-eight hours without playing this song. And then Saturday Night to finish with, even though it's Sunday night, and then I will go to bed.

For the Studio 60 fans

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 22:49:07 GMT

Or rather, for the Studio 60 unfans who spend their lives bitching about this show on Television Without Pity for obscure reasons best known to themselves.

Anyway, I thought you would like to know that Otis Lee Crenshaw got there first:

Otis Lee Crenshaw - Women Call It Stalking
The best moment in your life or any man's life is when that women walks into room full of people and stares across that sea of faces into yours and says, "He's the one". Most the time it's happened to me has been in a police lineup, but what the fuck.

Feel free to dance

I'm only six foot one against this chart on the wall
But when she's identifying me I grow ten feet tall
There's only five guys here so if she singles me out
Kinda makes me special, makes me fell proud
Well she can put her finger on me, the rest of her too
Any kind of attention from that women would do

But women call it stalking
Women call it stalking
It's just selective walking, but women with their tendency to exaggerate
Gonna hug her, gonna mug her, gonna see her some more
Hey judge read the charge just a little bit slower

She said she'll see me in court, well I can't wait
She calls it a trial but I call it a date
When the judge throws the book I'll pretend it's a bouquet
Cause I'm gonna marry that women some day
You can tell a woman that you love her face to face
Or you can do it from a phone call that can't be traced

Women like dinner, women like lunch
Women like roses that come in a bunch
Women like flowers and hedges and trees
Unless you're standing behind one then they call the police
When I see her, they'll be tears down my face
It might be love and it might be mace

But women call it stalking (stalking)
Women call it stalking (stalking)
Just the kind of attention (attention)
That gets you right back in prison (right back in prison)
Gonna hug her, gonna mug her, gonna see her some more
Hey judge read the charge just a little bit slower

(from here)

Bartlett for America

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:14:21 GMT

Watch: Suddenly got my West Wing mojo back last week. Damn I miss that show. Even if they did end it as perfectly as possible, the thought of no more new West Wing is still a distressing one. Though I suppose now I can go back and watch the episodes I never wanted to see first time around (the horrible ones where the Scooby Gang at the White House fall out amongst themselves and the grim lighting makes everything worse) now I know there's a happy ending.

Read: On a poetry kick at the moment. More specifically a Louis MacNeice kick. Some of his poetry is just too trying-to-be-intelligent, some of it is too rooted in the slightly detached left-wing university poetry of the grey mid-century. Some of it has that 'reach inside your mind and put it into words' quality, and some of it is just plain great poetry. As for instance.

Entirely
By Louis MacNeice

If we could get the hang of it entirely
It would take too long;
All we know is the splash of words in passing
And falling twigs of song,
And when we try to eavesdrop on the great
Presences it is rarely
That by a stroke of luck we can appropriate
Even a phrase entirely.

If we could find our happiness entirely
In somebody else’s arms
We should not fear the spears of the spring nor the city’s
Yammering fire alarms
But, as it is, the spears each year go through
Our flesh and almost hourly
Bell or siren banishes the blue
Eyes of Love entirely.

And if the world were black or white entirely
And all the charts were plain
Instead of a mad weir of tigerish waters,
A prism of delight and pain,
We might be surer where we wished to go
Or again we might be merely
Bored but in the brute reality there is no
Road that is right entirely.

Read and appreciate with every fibre of your being.

Modernism only works if you have lots of money

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:39:30 GMT

Read: Cashel Byron's Profession. George Bernard Shaw was one of my earliest 'must read anything I can find by' authors, but it's been years since I've read any. This is the fabulous story of how the rich, intelligent, independent Lydia falls for Cashel, a magnificent physical specimen with a tough exterior and soft heart. She thinks he has a 'profession', in other words, a proper job, unlike the society wimps who surround her, but he really is a 'professor' of the art of boxing. Why hasn't this been snapped up for a Hollywood remake? I'm picturing Kirsten Dunst as sharp but beautiful Lydia and Heath Ledger as dumb but gentlemanly Cashel.

Watched: back to back, and on paper there's no competition. In the right corner, we have downmarket ITV prime time current affairs programme Anne Widdicombe v. the hoodies", in the left corner we have the cultural haven of BBC Four and a classy programme about a classic of modern architecture". It's a no-brainer. And yet, and yet, and yet... to see in such immediate juxtaposition the grimy council estates designed by modernist architects concerned more with making a statement than providing people with public spaces that feel safe and encourage community, and the same style of architecture where money can ensure the high quality finishes and where the austere building is not forced on the inhabitants but is a deliberate lifestyle choice, reflecting the persona of the architect himself... It must be nice to design these buildings and then retreat to your own remote country estate: do such architects never think that other people do not have that luxury?

New Year resolution: ReadWatchListen

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 19:40:31 GMT

My plan for 2007: last year, I kept a list of everything I read. No comments, just a list. This year, I want to move on to the next step: journaling significant things I've read or seen or heard. Not the complete list, but writing down thoughts stimulated by what I read.

So, to begin:

Read: Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room

I wanted to feel that my first book of the year was something worth reading, a book that would give me something back again. Virginia Woolf is easy to read - not easy to understand, but her sentences flow so beautifully. You can read for this alone, or you can take her visions and be inspired by them. She makes every bead on the chain of her prose tremble with beauty, and then suddenly shake into dazzling significance.

Watched: This Life +10. This programme was such a must-see for me ten years ago. Also a shared experience with so many friends - our last-episode party at the end of series 2 is still a fond memory. So I had to watch this - the same old mixture of utterly annoying plot developments (in particular, I've always found the Egg/Milly relationship utterly unrealistic), utterly annoying scenes (oh for heaven's sake, we've all realised that documentary filmmaker and Egg have a bit of a thing going on), dramatic brilliance (Miles suddenly cantering up with a stunning woman), and this-is-how-our-lives-really-are-ness (the best ever 'this is how friends argue about politics' and 'how 30-something women really feel about having/not having chidren' moments). So yes, with my usual caveats, I loved it. Especially, let's be honest, Miles' hair.

Watched: Green Wing special. I fell so massively out of love with this programme after the last episode of series 2. And again, not flawless. But this episode was the perfect ending: it had to end completely surrealistically. And not depressing, either. So I'll buy the DVD, but only so that I can watch it and skip the far too many Statham/Joanna scenes.

Defining quotes from Big Brother

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 10:31:20 GMT

I despair of the modern generation, I really do. These are all real quotations. I'm not making this up.

Sam: 'I'm living every girl's dream - saucy photos for lads' mags, champagne, long holidays - it's what every girl wants.'

Derek: 'Now I know how Nelson Mandela felt after 28 years of imprisonment.'

You know you're in bizarro world when the words of wisdom come from Kinga: 'I don't feel like a celebrity - I feel like an ordinary person everyone recognizes because they've been on Big Brother.'

Brideshead is back!

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:55:22 GMT

UK Drama, 8pm nightly from Tuesdays. Teddy bears at the ready. :)

In other news: my brother and I are having a rare moment of shared enthusiasms. Denny Crane!

The Who: The Movie

Fri, 27 May 2005 13:20:22 GMT

This is definitely on my wants list. A DVD with rare footage, plusthe whole of the Coliseum 1969 concert. What more could anyone ask for? (Well, a time machine to go back to the recording of the Who's Smothers Brothers show would be nice. But apart from that...)

Best random Beatle news story of the year

Wed, 25 May 2005 13:35:41 GMT

I'm glad to see that Ringo's opinion is more important on today's great social issues than that of the Conservative Party:

Mr Prescott's plans to demolish 400,000 homes in the North and Midlands of England has proved controversial.
Ex-Beatle Ringo Starr is worried his former home in a Victorian terrace in Toxteth, Liverpool is due to be knocked down - he says such houses should be refurbished.
His fears were backed by Conservative shadow local government secretary Caroline Spelman.
"Mr Prescott is happy to raze thousands of these homes to the ground, destroying the character of our northern towns and cities," she said.

Full story here.