Councillor Maurice Ahern was canvassing for the local elections in June and came around our road on Saturday. He and his team were all looking a bit sheepish, seemingly only knocking on the doors of houses that looked like nobody was in.
And they put this leaflet through the door:
But mainly at election time.
Here’s a story from the Guardian about a fairly ordinary speculative libel case against Sacha Baron-Cohen and Channel 4. What’s interesting is not the case, but the method Channel 4 used to defend themselves.
Jim and I saw this guy randomly in the Mezz in Dublin a few years ago and he rocked, in as much as singer-songwriters can.
Now he’s doing a YouTube thingy from New Zealand.
This painstakingly crafted isometric portrait of Lower-to-Mid Manhattan is pretty amazing. It turns out such a stylised representation actually gives you a much clearer sense of the shape of each building and of the area as a whole - when you’re in the middle of it you can get this sense of an almost endless forest of towers but large swathes are ‘only’ medium-rise. Also, having been brought up on isometric ‘God-games’ like Civilization and SimCity my immediate instinct when presented with this kind of picture is to look for areas to demolish and replace with vast monuments to my greatness. Nice knowing you, Lower East Side! I’m starting to understand how Robert Moses might have felt …
It’s made by the same Chinese company that did similar maps for Hong Kong, Shanghai and others. I’m curious as to whether there is some automated way of creating these maps or whether they’ve got hundreds of pixel-artists slaving away in some graphic-design sweatshop.
Also known as Jay’s new blog. Our friend Francie is also blogging, brilliantly.
After a morning’s work, I journeyed to the cinema and saw The Boat That Rocked, which I had expected to be a bit disappointing, but it was on at the right time, and there may, I thought, be some diverting aspects. How wrong I was.
“Disappointment” does not do justice to the level of offence caused by this shambling wreck of a film. There are three identifiable story-like substances contained within this film. One sees a ministerial agency attempting to close down sea-borne pirate radio. The second sees a young man come of age after being sent to the ship by his motherm and later starts to wonder about his parentage. The third involves several of the DJs aboard ship generally doing stuff.
Contains “spoilers”, but then, I don’t think you can spoil rotten meat.
Giving the film its due, there is some nice production, decent sets, generally alright lighting and a period-specific use of wide-angle lenses that at least gives the film some stylistic authenticity. That authenticity is as far as it goes. The dialogue is anachronistic. The era of free love has turned into a safe-sex ship. Honestly, DJs, drinking and running amok at sea, and when a woman shows up after weeks of floating about alone, they refuse without a condom.
This is all forgivable, we shouldn’t expect authenticity from light entertainment. What we should expect is, in no particular order: jokes that make you laugh, dramatic tension of some kind, a story structured in any way, good performances, and such like.
The three main storylines do not inform one another and are so shambolically slapped together as to make drama impossible to achieve, the jokes uniformly fall flat (what few there are), and the acting is poor across the board (sad though it makes me to say it of our fellow alumn). Bill Nighy stick-insects his way around the film, half vampire, half Edwardian dandy. His achingly bad fist-pump at the end of the film is like a final insult to your intelligence and your mother. If you were to describe the plot in a sentence it would be “things sort of happen”. The pirates vs. government story is terribly contrived, as is the repeated joke of Mr. Twatt. You heard me, Mr. Twatt, again and again mileage is made of it, and they are long, tough, barefoot-over-hot-coals miles.
Indeed, Twatt could in the final reel could make a connection with the crew of the boat, providing a conclusion to that story and a redemption for that character. Instead, they opt for the not quite, but almost, deus ex machina, and Twatt just disappears from the film, Magic. Indeed, throughout the film the two groups on either side of the protagonal divide only brush against one another once, but the encounter is meaning, and purpose, free.
I’ll skip over the second “story”, cause it’s shit.
The third story, and that upon which the film hinges isn’t a story. It’s just a group of people hanging about, getting into scrapes that aren’t very scrapey (think diseased sheep), mostly having a bit of a laugh. The lows don’t mean much to the characters, including a sham marriage, sexual betrayal, serrupticious attempted rape, public embarrassment, and bodily injury. None of these things seem to matter. It’s just a group having a generally good time and playing some music. If this was my life, I’d look upon it with fondness, but it’s not. It’s someone else’s life, and they’re telling you the story in the pub about the time something almost happened to them, and you’re bored and looking at other people across the bar fiddling with the rim of your glass.
I have become rambling and incoherent with the mental strain of thinking about this film. It’s the kind of cinematic experience that leaves you questioning humanity. I’d best stop here before I need anti-depressants.
Still, some decent music.
Duff McKagan of Guns’n'Roses has some cool dating tips, from the obvious to the insane:
NEVER say someone else’s name in the throes of lovemaking. If you mistakenly call out your old girlfriend’s name, make some shit up, and QUICK!
Ok that was easy. Anything else?
The three A’s: Attention, Affection, and Appreciation. … Here are two examples, one good and one bad:
Bad: “Hey you, you are HOT! [Attention.] Give me a hug! [Affection.] That felt good! [Appreciation.]”
Good: “Are you wearing new lip gloss? Let me kiss you! I like it!”
Actually, both of these would work, and neither of them are stellar, but you get the idea.
