|
the decapitated guitar: an update
I took my guitar in yesterday, to undergo surgery. The poor thing. It was a wrench to give it up to somebody else; the young guy in the shop almost did a very stupid thing by inserting the broken headstock inside the hole of the body, 'for safe-keeping' - my nerves jangled, let me tell you. I am yet to hear from the repair guy as to how long it might take, or how much it might cost; but I don't want it to come back all scratched and ruined, either. I wait in trepidation. |
|
|
14.8.06 21:23 |
|
|
wine in february
watercolour, paper; painted last night, from a photo of a day winetasting in sonoma county. that's me, my wife, and my best man roshan. it was a sunny and warm february. very provencal. |
|
|
14.8.06 21:31 |
|
|
but no cigar
watercolour; mister mirza, aka rosencrantz or guildenstern, newcastle's finest harrovian (and slow mariovian...), enjoying what he calls a 'cheeky one', back in early 2005, north london; i may meat this up with a dark side background to match the gangster atmosphere, but for now i'm too tired; and so to bed. (entry: 15 August) UPDATE, 17 August:
I finished it; originally I put a dark background in using my lightpen, and Corel Paint, but then I went to the original with real paints and, well, I'm only putting dark brown in, uit's not rocket science. But it makes sense a bit more now I think. Or maybe not. Originally, I drew this picture below, and though it looks a bit more like him in some ways, it makes him look very, um, columbian. "Eeeeh, so, what's up? Boom boom?"
He'll love me for this, of course... |
|
|
15.8.06 08:33 |
|
|
Week Forty-Six: The Dirty Soap Box
Elections are usually held in November in the US, but the campaigning runs almost year-round. Throw the various Primaries into the mix, and it is hard to escape the presence of toothy-grinned candidates and well-polished slogans - but then, we're all supposed to be interested in this democracy, aren't we? I'm sure Joe Lieberman, King George's favourite Democrat, wishes a few fewer people were interested, after a massive turnout of anti-war Americans rejected him in favour of Ned Lamont as the Connecticut candidate (try saying that five times, George). Here in California, this November will see Arnold's job as Governator up for grabs, along with the various Propositions on various issues, and the biased and misleading television advertising is already in full throttle. Kind of. The TV spots began a few months ago, shortly before the vote for the Democratic gubernatorial (yes, peculiar word isn't it) candidate, when Phil Angelides' clever showcasing of his three daughters helped him fend off Steve Westly's far-superior hairstyle. Arnold ('Arnie' sounds so British) didn't need to worry about having an alternative Republican contender, and his adverts ran with the friendly, feel-good but uttelry meaningless slogan, "his heart's in the right place". Shame his hands weren't. Well now the two parties have gone head to head once more, with Arnold's people showing how much Angelides hates the environment and lets the big oil companies do what they want. Seriously, this from the Republicans. "What if Steve Westly was right?" they ask, darkly, telling Democrats that the right person for the job is no longer standing; how that helps Arnold is beyond me. Angelides, on the other hand, really goes for the jugular - showing Arnold as the Terminator, but riding that big motorbike backwards (oh, it's a metaphor for the State going backwards, thanks Phil). And he says he'll take money away from the corporations and put it into schools, that'll learn 'em. Yes, hardly the nasty quality of vitriole you see in Presidential elections (when real money is at stake, and the Republicans really pull out the stops). The spots this time just make me laugh; one of the most laughable is the one that asks voters to vote "No" on Prop 87, which proposes spending $4 billion on reducing oil and gasoline usage by 25%, researching cleaner ways to produce energy, taxing the oil companies and prohibiting them from passing this back to the consumers. The woman in the ad is at the pump, linking 'clean energy' to 'bureacracy' and 'waste of money' and telling people what they least want to hear - that it will cost you more at the pump. Ok, well let me introduce you to Mr Irony here, my dear, because you are standing there with your great big gas-guzzling earth-destroying SUV. Another ad asks us to Vote No on another Prop because it would mean that your tax money would go to - heaven forbid - hospitals. Like it's a bad thing. It's almost as if they want you to vote no for these Props! Their heart really isn't in it, is it? Perhaps they are waiting for the Big Vote for a new (and possibly female) President in '08. That'll give the ad-makers something to sink their teeth into.
|
|
|
16.8.06 06:09 |
|
|
The Decider reads The Outsider
So King George is reading Albert Camus, eh? L'Etranger: that's apparently what he read on holiday this year. The President's reading list (which is usually about as intellectual as the average reading list at a former polytechnic, allegedly) is released every year, possibly to inspire the voters, possibly because he's in the pocket of big publishing houses (I doubt that, by the way, unless it's the ones that publish colouring-in books). It does seem quite strange, given the Lebanese peace deal the US cobbled together with France, that he should choose to read a book about a Frenchman who kills an Arab. Do you think he really read it?
|
|
|
17.8.06 07:24 |
|
|
mange tout, mange tout
watercolour, canson wc paper; with the footy season upon us, here's the most calcio-wise of my amici, though i don't know when the championship manager season begins. Mi dispiace, je veux dire "Football Manager". And Juve are now in Serie B. Anyway, don't get involved or you will get a fish in your bed and a horse's head in your letterbox. Ah, he don't care, italia won the world cup, the only way... |
|
|
18.8.06 02:43 |
|
|
will chocolate and gold = silverware?
You may (or may not, of course) be wondering at the absolutely disgusting new colour scheme I have chosen to temporarily dress my blog with. It is in honour of the start of the Premiership football season, and my own club's quite possibly ill-advised decision to bring out a third kit (pronounced the way the Irish say 'third') in the apparently traditional colours of chocolate and gold. Or 'brown and yellow' to you. Traditional because, many years ago, Spurs had a striped chocolate and gold kit, briefly, for about five minutes, and that might even be wrong given that all the evidence is in black and white. Still... a part of me, though I jest, is really quite pleased, and even considering getting the kit. Spurs really don't push the boat out like this when choosing colours for their away kits. Over the years other teams have had hideous experiments with all sorts of garish and supposedly retro colours (Man United's 'Newton Heath' green and yellow, Everton's salmon pink, and what about the bizarre orange, grey and blue mess that Chelsea wore back in 95?), but Spurs have always stuck to yellow, one of two shades of blue (light and navy), or (about as adventurous as N17 gets) purple. We're a corporate club, we have corporate colours. Well now brown is in there, the colour that was last attempted by Coventry City in the late 70s, with disastrous hilarity, and incredibly it's proving a hit (no typo intended). It has become the best-selling third kit of all time (for us, anyhow). And, hideous though it is with that awful red 'Mansion' logo, I do really want one. Maybe it's because it actually does make me think of chocolate, mmm, lovely chocolate... Our second kit, however, is 'aqua'. Oh dear. That only makes me think of "Come on Barbie, let's go par-dee, ah-ah-ah..." Still, we are looking good on the pitch, and if we can pull off a result at tricksy Bolton, we might just go one better than last year. In fact, Mystic Pete is back, and he tips that we will. Mystic Pete is quite uninspired this year, however; the Premiership has become very predictable again, and it will be Chelsea to win, Man U second, Liverpool third, Spurs fourth, Arse-scum...aha, wouldn't you like to know? I predict they will get busted in an Italian style corruption scandal (involving Rune Hauge's ancester), the new stadium will put them off (as Wembley did when they played their Champions League matches there), forcing them to be relegated (it hapened to never-out-of-serie-a-juventus, after all), sell all of their players to Real Madrid and Chelsea (oh, that's going to happen anyway). No, there are more interesting things to predict for Mystic Pete, such as which manager will be sacked first (I got it right last year), which player will get the first red card (wayne rooney, obviously), which player will receive the most boos (need we say christiano ronaldo?), which manager will criticize the referee the most (yawn, a predictable three way tie between Wenger, Fergie and Mourinho), which Italian club will be docked points next in the ongoing scandal (it was Reggiana yesterday, or was it Reggina, who cares), and of course, which member of the French national team from the World Cup will still be actually playing in France by the time the transfer window shuts? Arsene it's over to you. From 5,000 miles away... "CAAAM AWN YEW SPUH-URRRS!!!" |
|
|
19.8.06 06:03 |
|
|
getting shirty
So the Premiership has kicked off, and who says they don't like footy/soccer in the States? Yesterday I saw so many kids (mostly girls) in 'soccer uniforms', obviously having played some youth match locally. But I also spotted many different people about town wearing various European footy shirts - two Celtic shirts (one home, one away, in different places), a couple of Barcelona tops, Portugal, Juventus, Chelsea, a few Man United shirts, France. They were all probably saying the same thing when seeing me in my Spurs top (or they were saying, what club's that?). It was funny. And so Spurs lost to Bolton - well, we usually do. It would have been nice to kick off with a win, though. Chelsea and Man United have done so, big time. Arse**l, well a late equalizer was the story of their season last year. What about Reading though! I popped into the local soccer shirt shop in Davis (they have a big screen with footy on all day long, oh yeah) and saw some of the action. The new Wigan, perhaps; it's a shame that Arse**l weren't still at the old stadium, because headline writers could have said something about Reading at the Highbury Library. Perhaps it's a good thing they moved. Not that I'd get to see such subeditorial gems anyway - I don't think the Davis Enterprise has quite been swept away with the Premiership just yet. |
|
|
20.8.06 21:11 |
|
|
outside in davis
outdoors plus watercolour, yesterday; "don't just eat noodles this week," my wife said as she set off for hawaii with her mom. "ok," i said. i had soup instead; today i'll have turkey. before that, i went for a bike ride, and did some painting à l’extérieur. Slightly golden leaves blew about in the whisper of a breeze, a taste of the autumn to come in the still baking summer. Though i got a couple of smiles from passers-by, I was becoming a little frustrated at my outside painting; something i have to work on. I went for a hoegaarden, and dreamt lazily about international peace.
|
|
|
20.8.06 23:05 |
|
|
it's like being fifteen again
I'm home alone, so I'm watching my new dvds, and it's like a blast from the past. Firstly, the anniversary box set of the show I watched religiously throughout my teens: Prisoner: Cell Block H. Oh, you wouldn't understand; I used to stay up late every Thursday night to watch Prisoner on the little TV on my bedroom desk. It was a show full of character - violent, hammy, dramatic, shocking, and those famous wobbly walls. Well the DVD set is just a selection of twelve episodes (out of over six hundred) from the archives, including the one in which Joan 'the Freak' Ferguson first enters Wentworth Detention Centre, and the one where Myra Desmond gets shot in the face. However it misses out the most classic period of all, the early days of 'Vinegar Tits' Vera Bennett, the cult lesbian character Franky Doyle, the riot in which Bill Jackson (Meg's hubbie) is stabbed by Chrissie Latham with a pair of scissors, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of Marie Winter. But it doesn't matter; it's Prisoner, dude, that slamming cage door, those mugshots, that sad closing music... Tonight I am going to watch the other dvd, Gregory's Girl. Now this is something else; one of my all-time favourite films, but with an added American extra - it has been dubbed into English. Those who remember the film will remember that it is already in English. However, MGM didn't think that Americans would understand the Scottish accent, and so it has been dubbed over with what sounds very much like English people putting on very bad unrealistic Scottish accents. How on earth that helps or improves things is absolutely incredulous, but there you are. I'm surprised they didn't re-dress the cast in CGI kilts and sporrans so that Americans believe it really is Scotland. Clare Grogan (my ideal woman, when I was a cocky young 'un; I finally met her about six years ago, and she was ok, i s'pose) sounds as though she has been dubbed by a man pretending to be a girl. The results are really really scary, and may give me nightmares. Honestly, making alterations to Gregory's Girl is utterly blasphemous to me. what next, the Special Edition? (But don't even talk to me about the dreadful sequel, two decades too late) I'm surprised they didn't dub Prisoner for Americans, too - I'd love to meet the American who could understand anything Lizzie Birdsworth says. Fortunately, the "original Scottish language" soundtrack is available; yes, according to MGM, Scottish is its own language, and they don't mean Gaelic or Scots. It think I'll brave it. |
|
|
21.8.06 06:33 |
|
[first page] [previous page] [next page]
powered by
20six.co.uk
