LXXXIV: WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)

Just to note, get there early for the pre-film short, Presto (Doug Sweetland, 2008), about a hungry rabbit disobeying a stage magician and stay for the end credits for a history of art and computer animation.

( The next could be spoilers )
Totals: 84 (Cinema: 32; DVD: 47; TV: 5)

Roman Elvis:



Plus William Napier on Hadrian in the Daily Fascist: Emperor of the first holocaust: How the death of his male lover left Hadrian a tyrant

And the Hate Mail on how Guardian (and New Statesman) readers regard a state funeral for Thatcher (scroll down for comments from Grauniad readers and reasoned response...

I've just submitted a book proposal that has been 99% done since this time last year. The final 1% took all year. (My middle name is prevarication.) Still, I caught two bleeding obvious omissions which no one who looked at the draft did.

The series editor is on leave. Bah.

I want to go ahead with this project in some form anyway, even if in twelve or more articles. Details to follow.



I dreamt another novel last night. Actually it was a graphic novel and seemed to be variation on my travel from a to b dream. I also dreamt making copious notes. Alas, however.


On the other hand a week or so back I dreamt a soiree involving rozk, kayxh, lamentables and abrinsky, followed by a visit to UoK's Templeman Library. As I stood at the desk, being refused entry, abrinsky turned up with his SWAT team. You knew abrinsky had a SWAT team, obviously.


* This probably isn't the plural of anti-climax. Nor is anti-climi.

I'd noticed various mentions by Charlie Brooker over the years of The Wire as the best tv show in the world .... evah, but didn't look closer becaufase it was on cable and I wasn't likely to catch it. Neither Channel 4 nor BBC picked it up, which is just as well because C4 would have shunted it off into the wee small hours (I assume they've decided not to bother with the remaining seasons of NYPD Blue) and BBC2 would have shown nightly episodes and then the remaining ones at random intervals (cf Seinfeld, which I think managed to see the later four seasons of despite their best attempts to avoid this, Larry Sanders, due South, Monk, Curb Your Enthusiasm...). It's almost as if they have shares in box set manufacturers.

All I really knew was that it was an HBO series, so adult themes, swearing and sex. HBO had also produced The Sopranos, a similarly crime-based multi-threaded narrative where the audience sympathies can lie on the wrong side of the law and where production values aspire to the feature film, at least in terms of mise en scene. Whereas The Sopranos seemed to win every award going, The Wire has gone largely unrecognised. Then someone gave me the first three seasons, and I was hooked - with a regular cast of thirty or more characters, and the West Wing like presumption that explanation is not necessary, it's as well to keep it all in short term memory. I should have kept notes.

The first season covered the establishment of a special unit trying to bring down the drug dealing king pin on an estate in Baltimore, using wiretaps and other surveillance equipment. The powers that be are not happy with this - in part because it shows up their incompetence and they want fast results (better 100 soldiers arrested than one general). And there is also the story told from the point of view of the drug dealers, plus Bubbles a homeless snitch and Omar an assassin of dealers. It's a complex, dense series, and in fact thirteen episodes is enough rather than the usual US run of 22/23.

The second season avoided simply repeating the first - whilst there was still action on the drugs front, the main focus was on the dockers' union and a people smuggling racket. As the "main character" (Jimmy McNulty, played by Brit Dominic West) was busted down to boat patrol, this helped the narrative along. The third season returned to drugs, but focused on beginning to follow the money (donations by the king pins to politicians) and an experiment of zero tolerance in some areas whilst legalising drugs in another - Hamsterdam. Inevitably the powers that be cannot tolerate either. The season also introduced Tommy Carcetti (Aiden Gillen, Stuart Jones from Queer as Folk and several West End Mamet productions) as an ambitious city councillor.

We've been talking at work about doing something on the series, and I realised that I hadn't actually seen ( Season Four )

Season five is out in mid-August. Torrents have already demonstrated themselves to be a waste of time (crashed at 98% of one episode), so... Clicky clicky.

( XXXIII: John Peel, Doctor Who: The Chase )

( XXXIV: Ian Rankin, Black and Blue (1997) )

A belatedly birthday drink with N. who endured yet another journey from hell thanks to a) the traditional old woman who can't use ticket offices and b) cancellations at Ashford.

Three pints at the Doves and a few games of pool most of which I won (or he lost), then headed into town via City Arms which we walked out of before being served as it felt odd. Unfortunately, the first decent pub is the far end of the high street, the Hobgoblin, but we had a quick drink at Casey's on the way. By then we had a plan: to make it to ten, and we had a good ninety minutes to make it in. The Carpenters was dead, so we made quick work of number six, and the Tales was relatively quiet so we got to seven easily. Then to the Bell&, and things get a little blurry. There were certainly two rounds, and drank N's Guinness in his absence. I think #11 may have been free as I couldn't find any money.

Home, via the kebab shop for N. I can't remember how we crossed the ring road. Did we use the bridge or risk death? I don't remember going to bed - but did hang my keys on the keys hook, which is a good sign. I didn't turn the light out. N found the duvet - or maybe I showed him where it was, but the futon stayed as a sofa.

Today, dehydrated, and tired. A mystery: N was wet down his left side. Looks like he spilt a bottle of water, but a little went a long way. It has been carefully sniffed and has been determined as water. At about one thirty we went into town for a huge all-day breakfast (I demurred a little at the chips, but with sausage, fried eggs, bacon and black pudding it is too late to be claiming healthiness). I bought some cheese from the market on the way home and a 99 on the high street. A bath, to finish reading Black and Blue, watched an episode of Homicide: Life on the Stree (final episode of season two or three, depending how you count) and an episode of The Wire season four to avoid being spoilered. In fact I've time to watch another before bed at midnight.


Hoping my body has recovered for Monday.

My adventures in Thanet (specifically an out of town shopping centre) has led to a picture being used (without specific permission being given, though that may be due to copyright status) in the Thanet Star - http://thanetstar.com/article/thanet-s-reaction-to-westwood-cross

( LXXXII: Amadeus (swell consopio) (Tacita Dean, 2008) )
( LXXXIII: The Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander MacKendrick, 1957) )

Totals: 83 (Cinema: 31; DVD: 47; TV: 5)

I tried to go to this with an open mind. I'm aware how art can revitalise an area - but usually it's through artists finding a place that is dirt cheap, creating a buzz, and then the trendies move in, pushing up property prices (see Butler's Wharf, Hoxton). I'm not sure buying an area and sticking artists there works, no matter how philanthropic. Too much like producing art to order.

Folkestone could do with regeneration - although this was clearly a grey day:



After burning myself in Sandwich and Deal on Monday, on Tuesday I got hold of another Explorer ticket and headed south. Time for some art ( courtesy of Roger de Courcey )

( Lost Property )

( Nathan Coley )

( Richard Wentworth )

( Robert Kusmirowski )

Saturday night at the movies... not good. ( LXXX: Changement d'adresse (Change of Address, Emmanuel Mouret, 2006) )

I should have allowed myself to be swayed by the publicity: This year's Atonement. But no, I had to go and see it. Sigh. There may be spoilers under the cut. But not as spoiling as actors, director and writer.

( LXXXI: The Edge of Love (John Maybury, 2008) )

Totals: 81 (Cinema: 30; DVD: 47; TV: 4)

I left my memory stick at home since, well, the talk was on Blackboard and the n drive so a stick looks too much trying to back up the back-up of your back-up.


I figured without the powers that be having decided to update the computer infrastructure overnight and them not being finished in the building where I'm giving my talk. No net access. So no Blackboard. And no n drive.

Thankfully J had her memory stick with the talk on it, and I had at least printed out the script.


I have this sense of if I'd stayed in bed the world would not be any less advanced than it is now.

On Monday night I wrote a novel. Or dreamt it.

Fortunately I wrote it all down.




Oh.


That bit was a dream as well.

Isn't it? I'd recognise that leer from Anaconda anywhere...

The first couple I wondered if I'd seen already.

( LXXIV: The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass, 2004) )

( LXXV: Reign of Fire (Rob Bowman, 2002) )

Hey, there's a twist! But I won't discuss it:
( LXXVI: Hancock (Peter Berg, 2008) )

I feel like I've been watching this for months - and finally it is done...
( LXXVII: Fanny och Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982) )

Totals: 77 (Cinema: 28; DVD: 45; TV: 4)

The Fantasy and Psychoanalyis chapter has reached the end of its first draft; the referencing is incomplete and i need to add a couple of facts, so anothe 500 words to go in at worst. There is an example I'd like to supplement or replace, but I need to get hold of a copy.

3,958 / 4,000 (99.0%)

I'll need to lose about four hundred words by tidying up. Sigh. It's too big!

A poem - more here: http://www.speakeasy.org/~rubel/disch/ and http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/443.html,

The Art of Dying

Mallarmé drowning
Chatterton coughing up his lungs
Auden frozen in a cottage
Byron expiring at Missolonghi
and Hart Crane visiting Missolonghi and dying there too

The little boot of Sylvia Plath wedged in its fatal stirrup
Tasso poisoned
Crabbe poisoned
T.S. Eliot raving for months in a Genoa hospital before he died
Pope disappearing like a barge in a twilight of drugs

The execution of Marianne Moore
Pablo Neruda spattered against the Mississippi
Hofmannsthal's electrocution
The quiet painless death of Robert Lowell
Alvarez bashing his bicycle into an oak

The Brownings lost at sea
The premature burial of Thomas Gray
The baffling murder of Stephen Vincent Benét
Stevenson dying of dysentery
and Catullus of a broken heart

-- Tom Disch