And today's number is ...

17 as in ...

17 years since I bought my red Ford Transit van for 17,000 pounds.  Today it clocked up 170,000 miles.

Doo doo, dee dee, doo doo dee dee.  Beyond the Twilight Zone eh? 

Here's to the next 170,000!!!

Born To Run

From Bruce Springsteen's web site:

Clarence Clemons photographed by Danny Glinch

It is with overwhelming sadness that we inform our friends and fans that at 7:00 tonight, Saturday, June 18, our beloved friend and bandmate, Clarence Clemons passed away. The cause was complications from his stroke of last Sunday, June 12th.

Bruce Springsteen said of Clarence: Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ...

Man in a rubber suit ... 2

Rule number one of monster movies in the 21st Century: to present one monster that's obviously a man in a rubber suit may be unfortunate; two begins to look like carelessness.

Rule number two: casting Brandon Routh as the reluctant hero of a monster movie is NOT post-modern, NOT ironic, NOT witty, NOT clever.

Rule number three: zombie jokes ought to be funny... even one would have helped.

Rule number four: the twist near the end ought to be curving at least a little rather than be so straight and transparent as to be see through from the first death.  (Actually, that might be rule number one because without a decent screenplay the rest is simply nit-picking).

Rule number five: work out who your target audience is meant to be.  Fans of the comic book will hate this movie.  Word of mouth from the rest of the world will kill it deader than its poorly realised cast of characters.

Sorry but DD:DoN is dire. (A colon will do it every time!)

Aaaaarrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Need one say more?

Emerging Artists Exhibit

From the end of Semester show of the glass studio at Sydney College of the Arts ...

Spike

Nadine

Erica

Katie Ann

End of Semester

I submitted my final assignment of the Semester.  Hip hip hooray.  It was an essay on citizenship as part of my study of American Foundations.  The text began:

This essay considers the proposition that ideas of the citizen and citizenship originated in the American context as deliberately loosely defined concepts.  As a consequence they have been debated, revised and contested throughout the history of the United States.  The lack of precision in the founding texts of  Revolutionary America reflects the 18^th Century liberal idealism upon which myths of American nation identity were subsequently built.  But the history of contestation and revision of citizenship demonstrates the reality that for “at least two-thirds of American history, the majority of the domestic adult population was … ineligible for full citizenship” because of “latent … racial, ethnic and gender restrictions.”

Ho hum. We hold these truths to be self-evident: term is done; no prizes this year!

.

The i.tune of J Alfred Prufrock

I watched a short clip at Guardian Online Books about a new iPad app from Faber on T S Eliot's The Waste Land.  I was super-impressed.  This app, on its own, makes me want an iPad.  I added the joke below to the comments section.  Silly but I enjoyed myself.

Let us go then, you and I,
To the Apple store and buy, buy, buy
Like an addict stupefied by news`from Faber;
Let us go, like certain half - demented geeks,
Who mutter on for weeks
Through restless nights of world wide web soft sells
Of awesome Apps of which the Guardian tells:
Geeks who need no facile argument
Of insidious intent
To lead me to an overwhelming question ...
I need not ask "What is it?'
I'm hot to trot and make my visit.

forgive me TSE and poetry lovers everywhere ... overcome with pleasure.

The app looks wonderful. What a debt we owe to those excellent folk at Faber (and not for this fascinating product alone).

Must have, must have, must have said the green eyed monster.

Oh Magnificent Seven

Is it true? Do we all want to be cowboys
riding as one of the magnificent?

Seven years old and surrounded by toys
we built improbable futures, spent
too much time, too little effort
and insufficient energy on hopeless
schemes of the make-believe sort
we never thought led up life's endless
path of dreams or sped away from
one lost chance to any interrupted
opportunity to add a little to the sum
of ill-conceived imaginings, disrupted

by the world in which our real lives lurk;
dad says: bed straight after homework.

Listening to Desert Island Discs again.  Alfie Boe's third selection was the theme tune from the Magnificent Seven.  I was at least ten when I saw the movie but I have to practise my craft (I can call it poetic licence).  Clearly, a man clutching at straws will find inspiration anywhere he can.
.

And today's word is ...

... essay

 

Found here

a. A short literary composition on a single subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author.

b. Something resembling such a composition: a photojournalistic essay.

2. A testing or trial of the value or nature of a thing: an essay of the students' capabilities.

3. An initial attempt or endeavor, especially a tentative attempt.

From ethnographic artifact to work of art...

Not finished yet.

Lazy Day

It's a quiet sort of do-nothing Saturday for me.  Spike has an essay to write so we're going nowhere.  I surf the web, of course, which means reading The Guardian online and listening to the Simon Mayo / Mark Kermode film review podcast on BBC Radio Five.  Steven Fry was their studio guest.  I was surprised to learn of his interest in and involvement with a re-make of The Dambusters movie along with Peter Jackson and David Frost (who owns the rights to the book).  All of which just goes to show that with the Internet one can learn more than just one something new every day.

Later, while Spike fretted about Aboriginal Art History, I lost time watching the re-make of The Karate Kid with Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan.  It's a preposterous fantasy but surprisingly engaging, even moving in a couple of places.  The story is silliness on a stick but Jaden and Jackie turn in effective, engaging performances.  Their relationship works well, it has an emotional truth within the confines of the wholly implausible world of the fiction. I can think of lots of movies on which I've squandered time and good money - yesterday's Pirates 4 is a very recent example.  Who'd have thought it?  The Karate Kid.  Not as bad as you might think.  May even quite good.  Not Citizen Kane, of course, but given what it is, really not bad at all.

Pirates 4

Simply awful.  Boring beyond belief.

Please stop!

She rescues him right back ...

I do worry about myself at times....

Here I am: fifty-four, grumpy old Scottish Presbyterian guy with a brain the size of a planet, an ego the size of Brazil and an (as yet) unrealised plan to bring about the end of Captalism.  So what am I doing watching Pretty Woman on video for pity's sake?  I despair of myself at times!!  But what can I say.  It's fun.  And I'm tragic!!

Last night's poem ... new toy