When I was working in Barbican for a short while this summer, the bus I took to work always passed a Banksy piece I had yet to spot before. I swore a vow on nothing in particular that I'd come back and record it. Today, not wanting to go too far but not wanting to sit at home all day, I did. This is a most actual story. It's located roughly here, not far down from from Angel Islington.As you can see, it's had it's share of damage since going up and I'm not entirely sure that pink paint is "canon". Plus some douchebag has slapped his myspace web address on there. I'm all for the impermanence of street art and all but man...a myspace web address? Just down and to the left a bit was another one of Banksy's pieces...well I think it is. I mean, the ape is his but the bush stencil and the tag for "CARTRAIN" suggest that maybe somebody was aping him? Oh ho ho...Then just to the right of the Banksy piece was this thing, which I rather appreciated if only for it's roots in American pulp fiction covers. I have to wonder if, thanks to Banksy's huge success, his pieces have become like a magnet for other street artists to work on and around in hopes of getting a piece of that. I wouldn't suggest this right away except that the only graffiti I saw in a four block radius was strictly on or beside the Banksy piece and nowhere else. It might also be a preservation issue, since Banksy's works have earned a kind of quasi-immunity to being cleaned up, thanks again to his fame and a not entirely mistaken belief that his works can make neighborhoods more desirable. Augmenting this line of thought even further, two weeks back I noticed in the National Gallery bookstore a guide-map to (supposedly) all of Banksy's works in London.
I didn't even consider buying it. I'll keep the finding of his works in my "unexpected fun" category, rather than make it another checklist to work through. It'd feel too much like using cheat codes in a video game.
What I was looking at when I had the great first listen to In Rainbows last Friday.
I'm never quite sure if I should feel guilty for enjoying a conversation with someone who has had serious mental problems and obviously still suffers, but not so much that they are a danger to themselves or others. This is particularly a thing when I am mostly providing a listening pair of ears to a guy who just needs to work off some steam over all the anxieties he has about shitty bus drivers, who is sure are all satanists that want to ruin Christmas and that the petrol companies must be furious that such individuals are using their petrol to drive buses so poorly. This was, of course, the case today as I settled down in the little park in Hammersmith where I like to spend my lunch hours.
He had a Union Jack took on and when he sat beside me, he assured me that nothing was in his old shopping bag but "food, good food, nice food". I smiled and told him it was alright by me. I was enjoying yet another listen of In Rainbows, with my head lolling back on the bench as I sat and watched the leaves fall from the higher branches. A few minutes passed and he politely asked me what I thought of bus drivers. I pulled out my earphones and turned off my iPod as I started to answer, but was swiftly cut off. I suppose I found myself on the outskirts of annoyance but not for more than a moment as I quickly realized that he must have a hard time getting people to listen to him or take him seriously. The poor guy had ancient jeans on, a hand rolled cigarette that was clearly prized, a second-hand looking blue winter jacket, a graying beard that blended into the hair which poked out from under his took and framed a pair of vivid but not frightening eyes and...an earnestness in his voice.
As some asshole in an American Apparel track sweater, a scarf from M&S, Ben Sherman shoes, pants from a boutique in Camden and a beard still full of color...well I felt the least I could do was hear him out. Besides, as much as the minds of these individuals are hampered by their conditions...sometimes they also seem to be untethered in ways. I'm probably guilty of romanticizing here, but the guy did have a kind of charm and friendly nature to him as he informed me of all sorts of dangers and "well known facts" about London. The bus drivers I mentioned were one and the title of this post was another. Authority figures of all shapes and sizes were always very paternal in his view and it was interesting to imagine oil executives, police and politicians being very disappointed in people the way your parents might be very disappointed in you for cheating on a test at school.
In the end I'd like to think I wasn't being patronizing. I listened far more than I spoke, a novelty as anyone who knows me can attest, and when I smiled I wasn't smiling at "the big retard"...I was smiling because I kind of admired the inventiveness with which he'd constructed his view of the world and how this supposedly "damaged" man repeatedly surprised and intentionally amused me (he had a knack for playing on words I'd be a fool not to appreciate) more than any of the other people I'd spoken to all day. I overstayed my break a bit to hear him longer, then bid him a friendly farewell. I actually kind of hope I get to see him one or two times more. By the by, for Ottawa readers or those who've once lived there, I thought I'd mention that the Xpress is having an online poll for the best places in Ottawa for this, that and the other thing. It's downtown centric for the most part, not that that bothers me, but I did rather enjoy voting for the Carp Farmer's Market.
Given that this post over at Paleo-Future ties into a)something I've been thinking about on and off for the past year as well as b)one of the scripts I'm working on, I thought I'd link to it.
Last night I wished I'd had my camera on me. Popping out of Picadilly Circus tube station and wandering along through the west side of Soho - parallel to Regent street - at the twilight hour was something special. Not to mention the pleasant feeling of being amongst piles of milling commuters when you yourself are in no big rush. Coming through Carnaby street I saw the commuters steadily being replaced with people in the mood for a night on the towne.
The pub chosen for the first meeting was a real charmer that apparently is part of a small chain who only sell drinks brewed by the company - you can't buy a Heineken or a Magnors here...not even a coke. There is still a decent selection and as a result of keeping it all in-house the prices are noticeably better than most any other establishment in central London. The chain is called "St. Thomas''" I think, but I'll check again later.
I'd get into details about the people who showed (it didn't end up being just me and the guy organizing it, thank the lard) but that would be going against my personal rule against making everyone I know paranoid I'll write up everything they do in my company. Suffice to say, they seem decent and a nice enough evening was had to guarantee I'll be back next week. It was interesting to sit and talk with a group of strangers and immediately know you had something very specific passion in common, something you don't just like but which drives you and influences almost every decision you make. Trite but true.
I've been quieter than usual, I know...strange eh?
All the usual culprits are there but I'm also trying to get my writing notes in reasonable order for the first meeting of the scriptwriters group I've joined. We're meeting tomorrow night in a pub in Soho. I'm hoping it's a good crowd that aren't paralytic when it comes to talking about their writing or various opportunities in the city. It's definitely the kind of thing that will only be really beneficial if a certain level of trust can be created. If that happens then I reckon it will be very helpful to me if only because few things galvanize my writing quite like running through what I have with someone sitting across from me.
Meanwhile, though England is a seething mass of slang and has a somewhat notorious reputation for coin related slang from the pre-metric days (ha'pence, tuppence, shillings etc etc)....I just realized today I have not once heard any slang for coins while I've been over here. The closest is to hear a five or ten pound note referred to as "fivers" and "tenners" respectively - which isn't too crazy. Everything else is simply a ten pence coin, a pound coin and so on. What's up with that?
Also, airline food and VCR clocks and jokes about tired stand-up schtick.
Meanwhile, I'm sure most of you already know but for those who don't or maybe read about it a while back and forgot....the new Radiohead album is available to download both legally and free from their website. If Bjork is my favorite solo act than Radiohead has to be my favorite band, and while Beck sometimes jostles with Bjork for her position in my mental rankings...no other band ever threatens Radiohead. That being said, I try to stay highly objective about their work and frankly I found their last album to be kind of underwhelming given what incredible songs they'd put out before.
I also find that the very act of recommending something, anything, has become highly diluted thanks to the sheer proliferation of reviews covering everything which one all but trips over in their daily life. Think about how many times you've tried to recommend a movie to someone in recent years and how much you've had to qualify what you're about to say before you do - or how many times you've had the person half-roll their eyes while saying "I'll put it on The List".
SO
When I listened to In Rainbows for the first time, this Thursday past, I lay back on a park bench during my lunch hour and positioned myself so all I saw were my feet, trees, bushes, flowers and an old brick hut with a conical roof. I listened from start to finish with no interruptions and it felt like the band had somehow broke into my deepest memory vaults and carefully sampled pieces of all the sounds and songs I'd heard during my most primordial, formative moments from the womb up until my laying down in the park and plugging in my earphones.
I haven't felt like this while listening to an album since late 2001 when it happened almost back to back with Bjork's Vespertine (August) and Stereolab's Sound Dust (which came out earlier, but it was introduced to me in November that year). This is not hyperbole designed to overcome that problem with reviews and recommendations I mentioned. This is how the record made me feel.
And I gotta say, those who maybe get fed up with Radiohead's well expressed "dreary" side should download this because even the last track - to do with a videotape one leaves to be viewed after their death - fills you not with any kind of grief but instead an optimistic appreciation of how all things have their nobility, grace and charm.
So there you go, I've given this my best shot. Now I am spent, weak, sweating into the cheap carpet while leaving myself vulnerable to some foul degenerate sneaking up, twisting my arm into my lower back and making comical imitations of my cries for help to the staring crowd of strangers.
I shall now slink back again into my nook and leave the music reviews to better men than myself.
But luckily he has plenty of pictures left from last weekend.You know, it's hard to ever get too soft on the Royal Family what with their cradle-to-grave , unearned wealth and all...but maybe I get a little sympathetic to why a bit of the old class snobbery might take root when you look out the windows of your palace at the monument to the most highly regarded monarch in the nations history only to see ignorant bastards (both local and imported) crawling all over it like howler monkeys. I'm certainly not a royalist nor an anglophile, so I think it must be from a simple appreciation of fine craftsmanship and manners that I get so pissed off when I see shit like these kids fishing through the water for coins people have tossed in. Not pictured: Some Persian guy pretending to masturbate one of the statues and a Mancunian remarking on the great set of tits on another.A street artist I've seen several times outside of the......National Gallery. I had a quick peek in there, finally, but they are obviously not as cool with photographs as a museum and so there isn't really anything I can show. It's definitely worth another, longer visit sometime and when I do I'll see what I can gather to put up here.Ye oldeScientologists over on Tottenham Court road. Which reminds me, I know these guys take the prize by far, but has anyone ever really taken a close look at Mormons? I've been reading a lot of books from the Victorian era lately and The Church of Latter Day Saints has cropped up in several of them. It's interesting to see how they were viewed, reviled and laughed at in much the same way the Scientologists have been getting it in recent years. I suppose Mitt Romney has got me thinking about them again too.This is a portion of a monument along The Mall, opposite the ICA, which was made to honor British Artillerymen who lost their lives during a conflict in South Africa from around 1905 (sorry, it's been a week since I read the plaques or I'd be more specific). There are just so many beautiful monuments to the dead in this city......like this one, which is in the same general vicinity. Kind of a miniature Nelson's Column, this is dedicated to Frederick, Duke of York.The storyteller in me would like to think that his grave lay at the base, with this doorway leading in. But I don't think it is.
Addendum: THIS kind of worries me. It almost goes without saying that healthcare will factor into my deciding what country to be living in at the end of my two year look-see in the UK.
...is more than just a good song by Thom Yorke.I saw this fella in St. James Park last Saturday and luckily I had my camera with me. I've never seen one of these in my life and, frankly, wasn't entirely sure if they really existed as anything more than a song lyric.So yes, I grew up in the country but not a countryside with black swans. I have seen nature outside of a zoo, I assure you!
Shucks howdy but I just had a tease. An hour ago I got a call from someone working on a production that needed a script supervisor ASAP. That is to say, someone able to work mon-thurs this week for nothing but expenses. But I'd have to quit my publishing job cold turkey in order to do it. Between my parents and a good friend there was a lot of waffling over what to do, weighing financial stability against why I came to this country in the first place. But in the end I got some wise advice to find out more about the damn production before making my decision.
In my exuberance, this had never even occurred to me. Always consult others before making big decisions folks, if only to help cover your blind spots! After a bit more careful reading of the materials I was sent it turned out to be a student short. Well, bless them krazy kids but taking a big leap like I'd have to simply isn't worth it if I'm going to land in a small puddle (and break my legs, to complete the metaphor). I gave them by best wishes and turned them down. Still though, damn, maybe I should be giving unpaid work with actual production companies a more serious look again. I'd pretty much rubbed them out as a possibility, feeling I couldn't afford it. but given how quickly I've been able to find temp data entry work (and some of the pay figures I was being offered just before taking this publishing job in Hammersmith)...well, I think I'll be looking back at it again.
Komix Meanwhile, I've been looking over what I'm getting down for the comic and I like it but once again there shall be no update! This is because I'm fast realizing that I cannot escape the siren call of continuity and if I am to be having a story that develops then I need to maybe not just be making it up as I go along - as I've been doing thus far! Theoretically I could post the couple of comics I've got done and catch up today, but then it would only take one more violently loud house party or whatever to push me back into a cycle of catch-ups. I've found this painful enough to read, so I think I'm going to take advantage of the sunny side of not having a big audience and abide from updating though NOT working on the comic until I have a good buffer. Then I shall pseudo re-launch with gusto, a safety barrier and less pressure to crank it out which will - as my stupid habits seem to dictate - result in more being cranked out. That being said, I may have a fun drawing of yours truly up later today.
After the things I'm NOT doing, here is something I did/saw So yes, I went to the ICA and caught that Extreme Environmental Guerrillas exhibit. It was much more of a fanciful, artistic endeavor than a matter of hard science but that's okay!
That's okay.
It should come as little surprise to those who know me that in my more frustrated moments I've often wondered if the only way we're going to avoid the "turn it around in less than ten years or we literally become a dying planet" thing is for some kind of literal eco-fascist regime or regimes to spring up. The guerrillas exhibit contained elements of just that. Take a gander at the manifesto of this fictional group.Now it's important to remember that this is not a serious proposal but an art project by a very talented looking lady named MichikoNitta (whose nicely designed portfolio site can be seen here, with the Guerrillas project at the top of the right-hand side bar). Communication, food and death were the main subsections of the project/installation/what-have-you. Regardless of how plausible it is, I rather like the idea of hi-jacking the digital information tags to be found on thousands of animals around the world for a rudimentary communication relay network which would tie into the different species migratory patterns in an attempt to avoid the CO2 heavy traditional postal service (for letters, anyways) and the terrifying, ultra-disposable bullshit of mobile phones.
The art was also certainly ahead of the science when it came to the matter of food. The general idea being that we need to breed small, tasty animals which can be reared in our (in this case, the English) immediate neighborhood. This would not only get rid of the large carbon footprint of shipping in food from the countryside (and other countries) but would be using herds of animals which don't have as heavy an impact on their location as, say, cows. The pigeon/quail hybrid was a oddly amusing.And the inevitable rat hybrid (the Rattit - part rabbit).Now, as might be expected, the most extreme portion of the project comes under the final sub-section of death. I didn't get the best photo due to someone being in the way, but here is a shot of the Logan's Run style earring which is the centerpiece of the death section.In a nutshell, the proper EEG member would be fitted with one of these earrings at age twenty. Inside are a set of rings which prevent a needle containing one part muscle relaxant and one part lethal drug from injecting into the wearer. The inner ring rotates slowly and eventually, at age forty, the needle is allowed through to kill the wearer. Simply put, the less days we spend on this Earth, the less we consume of it. Remember, this is an art installation and not really a serious proposal. My first thought was of how the bloody things would probably go through some Beta problems and wind up offing a bunch of people in twenty minutes instead of twenty years. But it does set up the attention grabbing tagline "What would you do if you knew you only had forty years?".
After this there was a very enjoyable film titled "The Great Flood of London" (by Ellen Page) whose potential yo warn was somewhat undercut by the fanciful aesthetics (note the return of Zeppelins).
Another part of the installation, by a different person all together, featured a functional rainwater capacitor system made entirely from recycled water bottles. It's aimed at the suburban garden in an attempt to help make the currently unsustainable suburbs something we might be able to keep past the next fifty years without making terrible sacrifices. Sadly the designer, Elliot Frazer Payne, doesn't seem to have a website.Finally we come to something that I rather liked, a serious attempt at blending solar power and fashion. The website (and pdf) explains it much better than I can so I'll simply say that if I saw them for sale in a store, I would certainly pick some up (maybe holding out for a more masculine equivalent).
Writing and drawing are getting done but I still need some breathing space from the computer. I have a fully drawn comic and scripts for the next two, so I should be catching up soon.
Tomorrow I'm going to check out this exhibit and if I'm allowed to take pictures than I shall.
There should be a way to use Photoshop without using your forearms.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Writin' writin' drawin' writin' switchin' the second update to "during the working week" (hey, it works for Templar - which I recommend by and by, though you'll want to start from the beginning) so I can afford things like being interviewed or attending the weekly scriptwriters meet that starts the week after next. Will it be full of chumps or champs? I guess I'll find out on the 23rd.
Meanwhile, check out this guy. A New Yorker who tries to live (along with his wife and child) at as close to zero ecological impact as possible. If this was in a field in the middle of nowhere it'd be kind of interesting, but in New York? Makes me wonder what I could pull off...and gets me thinking about affordable solar panels.
DOUBLE Meanwhile: Hello friends of Sara! The interview was good fun, even if I did ramble off on some of the worst diatribes. I'm still trying to remember how I got from talking about Facebook etc to coining the phrase "Schrodinger's Penis". At one point I was asked "Will this be blogged about?".
Tomorrow night I'm looking forward to what should be an interesting interview. Someone I recently met is coming by to film me as interview fodder for her documentary on Internet community websites and Internet identities in general. Considering what a raging cynic I've been about this until....well pretty much until I came to England and felt that I actually had a decent reason to start a blog, I think I should be able to provide some usable content. It almost goes without saying that I'm cleaning up my apartment, lest filthy bachelor ways be exposed to a viewing audience.
In my own film antics, about two weeks from now Myspace Man* will be free from his professional obligations and we're going to meet to plan out shooting schedules. Though he and I might try and do a one-day shoot thing for a warm-up before the post-apocalyptic short, I'm generally done when it comes to writing stuff in relation to working with him. So now I'm fondling the loose threads of some of my scripts to see which one I want to run with. A short is something I could shop around to another collaborator and thus get more of my stuff out "there" faster...but it's been over a year since I finished my last feature length script and I really want to take a hack at another, especially since I have a detailed treatment for one.
I've even been looking back past my script notebooks and into old Wordperfect files holding my high school short stories. Thanks to mum sending me a photocopy of it, I can even amuse myself by looking back to the very first story I ever "penned". The quotation marks are there because I dictated it to mum while at the age of five during my first March break. Maybe you'll find it precocious, maybe mundane but here she blows. --------------- The Wars of China and Canada End Written and illustrated (Sadly the drawings didn't photocopy well at all) by Oliver Brackenbury Age 5
It all started under the Earths crust. There was a savage war between China and Canada. The sun rose into outer space and so did the moon and it was all dark all around the world. Then China created the monsters from the water mines under the Earths crust and they created the dark monsters from the darkness of the world. Canada created two powerful, glowing pink men and then they created the sun men from the sun and they were burning all around themselves. Then the wars went on. Many got killed and came alive again because they were creatures that never die. After awhile the battle ended. Then China and Canada shared their food. They learned how to be friends.
Then one day Canada sprayed chemicals on their plants to keep bugs away but Canada made a serious mistake. The chemicals created very bad pink men. Then China did the same thing and created bad purple men. The bad creatures they had created had a war once more. The Earth exploded and people were floating around the galaxy from their dead world. Then God created Earth once more with gases and other things. He said "Go back to your world and have no more wars - have Peace!"
But the Canadian people got mixed up and went to China accidentally and the Chinese went to Canada accidentally. They all tried to take places back to their own places but they had to save money for their tickets. In the end they all got home to their own country.
The End
---------------
I would have to say my favorite part is when everybody has to save up for their tickets. Truly this is a moral of fiscal responsibility. Oh and one thing I can tell from the photocopied drawings is that the Canadian monsters all had big teeth and must have been based on jelly finger puppets I used to have (Thanks, Internet!). The Chinese monsters seem to be basically bald humans who look very pleased with themselves. God is nowhere to be seen.
But then, isn't that always the way?
*For those of you recently tuning in, "Myspace Man" is my nom de plume for a fellow that I am collaborating on film projects with at the moment. Three guesses which ugly, poorly designed social networking website I met him on.
I have discovered this by being kept up most of the night by it. Thank you, pseudo-anonymous house party that the police finally busted up at five am.
Thus I have spent the day feeling rumbled, properly. But if I don't post a First World Problems comic then, by gum, I shall post something.
Meanwhile, here is an Ottawa/Oliver centric crossword that my friend Cathy sent over as part of a birthday gift a while back. I scanned it in before I did it and just now remembered that I had done so! This is a most factual account. Addendum: Hey, if it's good enough for Chris Onstad then it's good enough for me.
Wow, sorry guys but I've kind of hit a total computer use burnout. This can partially be blamed on excessive email and chat correspondence. One side effect of moving here is that I now have a whole lot of penpals and sometimes the planets align so that a lot of them write me all in the same couple of days.
Until I return proper like, enjoy the website for the video I last posted "Nature, Red in Tooth & Claw". There you can see two more videos (and another new one by the tenth) as well as the really fun fake biography of the narrator.
On my way down from Tottenham court road I passed through St. Martin in the fields (the church is undergoing serious reconstruction, so I didn't bother with any pictures - though one day I shall). I was almost annoyed that I'd just managed to miss an exhibit on contemporary Canadian design, I would have liked to see how the embassy would be portraying us to the outside world...to take the stance of the other vis a vis Canada. the Meanwhile, here's a couple more of the Canadian Embassy...See the flag nearest? I feel like such fool, I had to actually think to remember that it was for Nunavut. Just a second, but a second too long I should think! Eventually I ambled away and came across these burning braziers. But the only clue I could find as to what their adjoining building was for or who owned it was this flag. Ten internet points to whoever might tell me what it represents!I then passed the Texan embassy and nearly shat myself before I realized it was a restaurant.
Dropping south, past the ICA along the MALL and into St. James Park, I came across this monument to all the fallen London police officers.The book is updated each year with not only names but descriptions of the officers. It was nice, in a way, to see that the lists for the past few years were not terribly long ones.Tomorrow there just might be a new comic, if you cross your legs and pray the requisite amount of times.
...than when the conversation behind you, on the bus, paints the outline of a short script for you. I had that joy yesterday on the way up through Camden from Tottenham Court Road.
Well, if you are a writer then this is a sweet thing!
Also, for the first time in at least a decade, Whoopi Goldberg has not only come to my attention but greatly amused me as she tackles a co-host on The View...
"Little Ben", not a product of Island Dwarfism, is to be found near Victoria Station.
So time has flown, as it will, and I'm now halfway through the two year probationary period I've placed London on. Well, it won't technically be the one year anniversary of my arriving in London until Monday night but I'll be out that evening and blah blah seize the moment when you can.After a painfully sore foot keeping me in pseudo-house arrest last weekend, I was damned if I was going to stay around Islington today. With no specific game plan in mind, I grabbed a bus down to The City and went on a ramble which helped connect a lot of the dots which I've been highlighting here. I can honestly say that I can now give directions with confidence when it comes to The City and that I don't really need my London A-Z for that area anymore. If I had three hours and felt like wearing my feet into stumps, I could actually navigate from my doorstep to the Thames. My journey today started with a rough plan which placed me at that 177 year old cane and umbrella store I found near the British Museum.
After ogling some decently priced, superior umbrellas for the discerning gentleman (one of which I may come back and buy to replace the stupid, cheap thing I bought from a pharmacy) I think I was just about to inquire about the sword canes when I looked out the window. The fall sun hit the leaves and the architecture just right enough to produce that weird sensation which I've fallen prey to a few times before (at least one of which I've mentioned here). My eyes got a little wider, my imagination starts firing on all cylinders and any plan I may have had gets wiped out with a ruthless efficiency. One barely trembling foot steps in front of the other and off I go, a slight running of excess saliva along my lower lip. After my experience in Soho the other night, I must say I'm pleased this can still happen. Retracing my steps, I know I went to Soho Square, enjoyed the peace it offers and wrote a short while before heading down Charing Cross road and Leicester Square. From there I found myself at St. Martins just before Trafalgar square - where I more took pictures of features which I've neglected in the past. I'll post most of them later in the week, for now I'll stick to the ones which I feel are most relevant today.So yes, do I want to come back? Sometimes! In fact, it wasn't more than a week ago I was seriously looking at coming over for the holidays...and staying. But while I was going around today, after the initial tourist-ettes passed, I guess all the thoughts I've been turning over for weeks now have finally coalesced into something better resembling a decision. I'm not coming back for good, this December. I don't yet know if I want to stay for good, but I know I want to stay longer. Fifteen months just isn't enough. Not when there's so much to do - I've just signed up for the ICA and by gum that place alone has enough to keep me fascinated. Plus the very physical reaction that sights like the southern promenade of St. James Park can trigger in me is something I'm not ready to say goodbye to yet.Addendum: Oh man oh geez I wish I had had some million dollar camera which could have captured the way I saw this last sight. The picture just doesn't do it justice, so I've included the others I took in the hopes that maybe they'll help. I'm not being hyperbolic for effect here, something really moved me about this. It not only touched upon my appreciation for beauty but trigged some kind of nexus point between a dense multitude of treasured memories from as many moments and places in my life. If I'd been standing in a regular lane I'm not sure how long I would have ignored the cars behind me, but probably long enough for someone to get out of the car to move me.Anyways, I better sign off now before I start prattling on like some coke head squirrel going on about his favorite car.
To all my North American readers, though residents of other nations may have run into this phenomenon too, I'd like to ask you to bring yourself back to three iconic images which you see again and again on bedroom walls of those between the ages of 14-29 and in especially high concentration in "counterculture" poster shops as well as dorm rooms.
Coming here I kind of remembered that there had been such a film, but only thanks to the shit-awful American remake from 2000 starring Sylvester Stallone, his then dying career. But when I started exploring film circles, book shops, poster shops, theater bars and the like I noticed one image kept coming up again and again. Generally in black and white, sometimes in color, this is the most highly reproduced image from the film. From everything I'd read and all the evidence of the staying power this film has had in the popular culture of England, I'd say this is one of the essential English gangster films. You can read a synopsis and get a bunch of trivia at the site I linked to (or good old Wikipedia, of course). Maybe even IMDB, but why would you want to hurt your eyes on such an ugly website? (I mean really, is it just me or is it about as aesthetically pleasing as a Dee-Lites' video?).
What I'll tell you is my own reaction to the film, which I decided to pick up a couple months back when I'd noticed this very image stenciled on a wall near Leicester square (didn't have my camera at the time and, sadly, it had been obliterated by the time I came that way again). Like a lot of films older than about twenty years, the pacing can feel slow at times. But it's the steady building of an incredible momentum that carries you through the last third of the movie with an intensity that's impossible to ignore. It raises questions in you, early on, that you have to have answered. Best of all, it warrants repeat viewings and not just for film nerds who want to study it.
I'd seen Alfie not long before Get Carter and what struck me was how similar Alfie and Carter were and how these similarities highlighted the contrasts. Both characters are very sure of themselves and quick to assert control over any situation they find themselves in. Both cast a hard exterior and yet obviously are very sensitive to a few, highly specific facets of life. The differences lay, of course, in how they enact these characteristics and the fates their behavior brings them too.
I strongly recommend watching the two films back to back, which shouldn't be hard as any video store that carries classic Caine will have both. Anyways, enough of that then!
------------ Meanwhile, I'm blatantly stealing this clip from Posterchild's site. Just to warn you, it does feature scenes of (albeit animated) torture.
He put it up because of the stencil technique employed. I'm putting it up because I found it to be a suitably gripping piece of film work and an interesting angle on a well worked subject, an angle which I feel runs parallel to Adam Curtis' take on similar matters.
1) Some news about an area of London I know which only serves to reinforce my intense opposition to the terribly problematic notion of cultural relativism. (Little reminder, when the English use the term "Asian" they generally mean people from between Turkey to the Indian Sub-continent, using "East Asian" or "Pacific Asian" to denote what we Canadians usually think of when simply saying "Asian").
2) I was walking to the Tottenham court tube station after having a drink with a friend in Soho when a thought occurred to me. "There is some novelty in walking through this neighborhood in the evening, but not as much as there used to be. On the other hand, it's somewhat personally flattering to think that I'm becoming less of a tourist/immigrant and more of a native".
Only a lil' one, I know, but still it is a comic! I learned a lot while creating a reference page for Charlotte and salvaging/partially redrawing the disaster I aborted this past Wednesday. But it all took precious time! Still, I'll be much better prepared this coming Wednesday.
Blogger is acting WEIRD about uploading images. When I moved my small archive of twelve strips to the new address I had to put them on Photobucket and link to them as I kept getting that damn problem. But then, when I was done the new comic I tried regular uploading from my hard drive and wam bam spickidey spam....it worked?
Meanwhile, it's been a quiet weekend thanks to an incredibly sore right foot that has kept me from wanting to walk too far. This is what I get for having feet one size larger than what 99% of shoe stores in England carry, thus necessitating my getting my parents to send me a new pair of dress shoes from good ol' PayMore ShoeMoreShoe. While wating for them, I guess I've basically been walking on soles so thin as to not count under the Geneva conventions and thus here we are.
I did see Superbad though and I'd give it a hearty recommendation, even over Knocked Up. It just held together better, albeit probably because it had a simpler premise, and the overall theme of friends helping each other through tough transitions was executed in such a way that it was impossible not to see all sorts of funny and/or heartwarming similarities in my own life while watching. It doesn't desperately need the big screen though, so waiting for rental might not be a bad idea.
When I was working in Barbican for a short while this summer, the bus I took to work always passed a Banksy piece I had yet to spot before. I swore a vow on nothing in particular that I'd come back and record it. Today, not wanting to go too far but not wanting to sit at home all day, I did.
This is a most actual story.
It's located roughly here, not far down from from Angel Islington.
As you can see, it's had it's share of damage since going up and I'm not entirely sure that pink paint is "canon". Plus some douchebag has slapped his myspace web address on there. I'm all for the impermanence of street art and all but man...a myspace web address?
Just down and to the left a bit was another one of Banksy's pieces...well I think it is. I mean, the ape is his but the bush stencil and the tag for "CARTRAIN" suggest that maybe somebody was aping him? Oh ho ho...
Then just to the right of the Banksy piece was this thing, which I rather appreciated if only for it's roots in American pulp fiction covers. I have to wonder if, thanks to Banksy's huge success, his pieces have become like a magnet for other street artists to work on and around in hopes of getting a piece of that. I wouldn't suggest this right away except that the only graffiti I saw in a four block radius was strictly on or beside the Banksy piece and nowhere else. It might also be a preservation issue, since Banksy's works have earned a kind of quasi-immunity to being cleaned up, thanks again to his fame and a not entirely mistaken belief that his works can make neighborhoods more desirable. Augmenting this line of thought even further, two weeks back I noticed in the National Gallery bookstore a guide-map to (supposedly) all of Banksy's works in London.
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