Archive for the 'television' Category
Here is a short list of things which are awesome.
1) There Will Be Blood. In fact, it is hugely beyond awesome. I cannot remember the last time I had a cinematic expierence quite like that. I think I want to see it again this weekend.
2) Lost season 4 episode 5. I swear when they do a Desmond episode they almost, almost make quality of The Wire.
3) The new Iron Man trailer. Until now I did not care. I hoped for an acceptable if hokum superhero movie. Now I think it might actually not just be good but be really really good. Don’t break my heart Jon Favreau!
4) Gone Baby, Gone. I like Dennis Lehane a lot, I really like his Kenzie-Gennaro books so I have been wanting to see this movie for sometime. Due to the McCann case, the movie has been held back in Europe…a nice way to encourage piracy huh? Anyway excellent movie, hugely enjoyable and pretty true to the book. I’m not entirely sold on Affleck and Monaghan but at the least they did okay.
5) Leap years. Yay the 29th of February.
6) Sleeping in a bed…goodnight.
I had been planning on doing a little typing this evening. I have been working through some thoughts and noted a few things to type about.
However I have just watched the second last episode of The Wire and now I’m just drained.
I’m somewhat hungover today. Last night was meant to be a quiet drink with a newly arrived V-ster (not that she’d be too happy to read that!) and it turned out to be lots of quiet drinks and another 1.30am finish in Messer Maguires. Oops. Still a good night out, it seemed to be 80’s night or that’s what the DJ was going for and so there was tons of classic Michael Jackson which is always a good thing. No whiskey this week which was perhaps a bonus.
Another taxi ride home and it was looking good but of course once we got to Malahide there was total cloud cover and no sign of the moon at all. So straight to bed somewhat disappointed, I had camera kit already and I was hoping to get something interesting from it. Oh well, I’ll be in Asia for one later in the year, hopefully I’ll get something then.
Other stuff recently, lets see. Had a pretty good day out on Sunday climbing Bray head and wandering for a bit with Trev. Good fun, it’s been a long time since I was out that way. Best I can recall it would have been with the girlfriend at the same in early 1999. A long long time ago. Not much in the way of photos, it was fairly foggy and a bit overclouded so not much at all. Oh well..again.
Another day headed out to Howth for lunch and some photos with my mother, neither were great. The food in the Wheelhouse seems to have taken a turn for the worse and again the weather wasn’t great, not much light, and so not many photos.
Quiet one today as you may have imagined. I have watched two movies, very different but both enjoyable. The first was Ed Wood which I have been wanting to see for a long time but just didn’t get around to it. The cast is, of course, superb and amazingly Sarah Jessica Parker isn’t annoying. That has to be a first! Second up was 28 Days Later which was good fun and again with a decent cast. Good to see Idris Elba doing something a little high profile.
I finished off the second and third seasons of Oz over the past week. It’s not as good viewing the second time around, the flaws with some of the acting really stand out. I’ll work through the fourth season before I go I think.
Speaking of going, I’m going to London next week. Just for two nights. One night is a party for some more leavers and I want to make that. I also need to get some visas in person so I’ll get them sorted. Hurrah. Then just trying to figure out how I fly out. I’m leaving on the 11th late at night from London and I have drinks on the 8th also in London. So I’m trying to figure out whether to stay on the floor in London with my sister for 9/10 or if it’s worth the 30 odd quid it’d cost to get back to Dublin. Will figure that one out soon.
I’m feeling more and more happy with myself with this trip. Having talked with Trev about it in a good bit of detail, one of my cousins who did similar twice in the past 10 years and then a lot of talk of travel with Sarah last night, I’m just a little more prepped in my head. This is of course a good thing, now I just need to get my bags all ready and I’ll be set. Getting there though.
I may, possibly…or perhaps almost certainly have gone over my budget for the year. It’s not that I’d forgotten but I just hadn’t really taken into account that I’ll have some payments to still be making in London while I’m away for things like storage and the contract that’ll still be on my phone. That’s going to add up to a little over 12 months plus and I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that. Still, will all be fine and having thought about it a little I have come to the consideration of fuck it, it’s all going to be worth it!
I’m way behind on emails and indeed other things like that. It’s one of the downsides of not having a job. One of the first things I’d do every morning was to check email and reply back to people or even send a mail. I haven’t done much of that in the past two months or so and I have such a backlog in my inbox that I just need to sit down and get into but really just haven’t been feeling like it.
So lets see. I dunno what else there is. It’s kinda quiet but at the same time not at the moment. I’m sleeping a lot. There have been nights recently where I’ve had 10-12 hours sleep which is nice.
Oh yeah that new Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles show is pretty good. I’ve enjoyed the first few episodes a good deal.
Now I’m going to fill out some visa paperwork and listen to the glory that is the Spree’s first album.
Last week when I was in Forbidden Planet I picked up the new paperback by Jack mcDevitt; Odyssey. He’s a sci-fi writer who I got into while I was in the US. He’s hard to describe, I’d say it’s light sci-fi but that wouldn’t really be fair to his books. He’s very easy reading with decent characterisation and so the books flow very well. The concepts aren’t entirely out there but they kinda are too. I very much like how he’ll often raise concepts or questions and do nothing with them, they are left there to be wondered or thought about.
Anyway I picked up the paperback and sped throughout it. Good fun. I enjoyed it enough that I went out and bought the just published hardback of his next book. I can really only say the same thing, good fun. Probably not worth picking up in hardback but I was so in the mood for it, it was a good investment. So this morning when I finished that, I needed something to read. I had about 6 sci-fi books that I could easily put my hands on but none of them were really about space and that was what I was looking for. I ended up going for a re-reading of Iain M. Banks debut (well with the M anyway); Consider Phlebas. It’s very enjoyable and I’ve spent a good part of today going through it. I sat in the pub for a couple of this evening and without a newspaper I made another couple of hundred pages headway through it. Good stuff. It also means that I have the next book, and indeed the next book lined up. I can simply go through some of the Culture series. That’ll be good.
A little while ago, I mentioned that I was watching Picket Fences again. Well I generally like to watch DVD’s in bed on my laptop. The problem is that disc drives on Macbooks are well lets just say not the best and mine rejects discs on a semi-regular basis. So I got three discs in and the next wouldn’t play. It’s an odd show. It’s not as good as I remember it being but perhaps I’m more jaded by David E. Kelley’s quirks and legal shenanigans now 15 years and several series more later. I suspect it actually was better first time around. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying it and I’ll be off to watch another episode soon.
But anyway when the disc wouldn’t work I moved onto the first season of Rescue Me and well pretty much mainlined that and the second season and now I’m in the first few episodes of the third (Paige Turco!!). It’s an FX show before you think anything so only really half seasons! It’s an odd show, none of the characters are really likeable or at least they are (for the most part) not meant to be. The cast are excellent and it’s good to see Dean Winters with a good gig. Between watching him in this and watching American History X (side notes: a) an excellent movie but I know I’ve mentioned that before, b) is it wrong to be able to date a movie based on when Avery Brooks shaved his head and grew a goatee?), I’ve decided that the next show up for rewatching has to be the excellent Oz.
Other than that well, some CoH. A chunk of work on my second ‘toon over the past few days getting some levels in. Almost ready for RWZ and other fun stuff. Some good badging on my main and some other general bits and pieces.
Not a huge amount more going on. Tomorrow looks to be pub for the evening which should be fun. Not sure what the day’ll bring, perhaps a cinema. Despite varied reviews I’d like to see I am Legend and of course I haven’t yet seen I’m Not There.
Then again, I could just stay at home and try not to spend any money. Perhaps a better plan…
Wow well you lot are keen. I seem to have quadrupled my traffic here in the past week and that’s without even posting anything. Though it does appear that some of you are visiting several times a day. While I’m glad you are so interested, might I suggest you look into a feed reader and head down the RSS route?
- Season 2 of Dexter is miles better than season 1 and I’ve enjoyed it a good deal.
- The other night I read True Grit. It was another one to finish before turning off the light. Good stuff.
- The Golden Compass was dire on almost all fronts. Short of some of the cast, I can’t think of a single redeeming feature and I enjoyed the books.
- My In Rainbows discbox arrived. I own vinyl, I doubt I’ll ever play ‘em. CD 2 needs more listening but the main album has really grown on me in the past week.
- I’m going to Egypt in January.
- I have bought some Bil Bryson books to try and inspire myself…and a number of guide books.
- I gave my sister my ticket for the Manics tonight. I’m somewhat annoyed but I’m just wasn’t feeling up to it today. Annoying.
- I was listening to some Doves earlier today. They started so well, a not bad album with two standout tracks Pounding and in particular There Goes The Fear and then a rather poor second album and I’ve not heard a thing from ‘em since.
- I keep reading how NME was good once, way back in the past, but I have such a hard time believing it.
- I read Chronicle of a Death Foretold the other day and it was okay. I think I’m missing something about Márquez, nothing has really hooked me. I do own and want to read Love In The Time Of Cholera and more so 100 Years of Solitude. I should get to ‘em.
- I seem, oddly for me, to be in a short pieces mood. I bought a collection of mountaineering essays/articles by Jon Krakauer and I’ve been enjoying going through them. I also bought The New Granta Book of the American Short Story which I want to get stuck into sometime soon.
- I’ve also read a number of Asterix books recently and have been very pleasantly surprised to discover they are as much fun as they were when I was younger and that there are even more levels to ‘em than I had realised.
- The postman brought me a lovely small package today and I hugely enjoyed crawling around under the table with a screwdriver putting a nice little memory upgrade into my computer. It’s doing a little better so far. New computer coming soon anyway but till then…
- Yesterday the postman brought me a slightly larger package. I ordered from art from my friend Jill and it’s arrived. It looks even better than I expected. Now I just need to figure out how and where to hang it.
Alright that’s it for now. Sleep time.
It’s Sunday evening and I feel like shit.
On Tuesday night KG, a friend of hers, my sister and I went to Water Rats in Kings Cross to see King Rat. It was always going to be an odd evening, we were there to play wingman/accompany KG’s friend as she took a look at a fella. The band were okay, the music was ok but the lead singer I didn’t think fit very well. Anyway it didn’t work out and we left fairly early on. KG and I went for a quick drink and I decided that I was in the mood for a bit of a walk and that I really wanted to buy the next book in the series I’m reading. So I walked down to Borders on Charing Cross Road (open till 11 6 nights!) and picked it up. It had been a odd day and indeed evening and so I was enjoying the walk but it was a little damp and I think that was when I picked up this cold. It’s been growing since then and really hit me on Saturday. The walk itself was good though, I enjoyed it. The soundtrack for it was Fur and Gold by Bat for Lashes which I’ve very much gotten into recently. Oh and I got my books so that’s good. Scroll down for more on that.
Anyway right so Wednesday was work drinks which was quite good. Lots going on and good to finally have a chance to catch up with some people I hadn’t seen in a while. I had some holidays to use up so I was off Thursday and Friday. This meant a nice lie in the morning after and then a little while assembling some furniture. All good. Then off into town for McKitten’s Suburban Glamour signing and of course drinks afterwards. Lots of people out for the evening but wasn’t really in the right mood and I didn’t stay too late, I suspect I left around 9.30 or so.
More sleeping in on Friday before assembling some more furniture and stocking most of what had been put together before going into town for the night out with KG. We had a nice dinner in Kettners before heading around to the Gielgud theatre where KG had gotten us third row tickets for Macbeth as it was my birthday. The play was amazing. I know that I’ve not seen a massive amount of shows but it was miles above anything I’d ever seen before in every single way. The cast were truly astounding, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Patrick Stewart is such a great actor or to dismiss him for the genre work he’s so famous for but he’s a long time stage and in particular Shakespearean actor. I have seen him on stage before in Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre in which he was excellent but in this he’s truly phenomenal. The rest of the cast by the way are almost without exception fantastic, in particular Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth and Michael Feast as Macduff. Wonderful stuff all around. Of particular note is the scene at the banquet when Macbeth see’s the ghost of Banquo. This is acted out twice for us, once going into the interval and then again straight after. Once the scene is shown from Macbeth’s viewpoint and the second from the others present. It’s a powerful piece of work. Anyway I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s had five star reviews all over the place and I strongly urge you to see it if you have the chance.
I must, must, must get into the habit of seeing more theatre. I have several plays booked over the next few weeks and I need to keep that going. Though I doubt that I will see anything as good as that performance was again.
We’ll skip the part about then getting home and waiting for my sister to get home from her slightly drunken adventures at Disney on Ice and move straight ahead to Saturday morning. It was fairly lazy, I was starting to feel a lot worse by then but It wasn’t so bad because I was pleased to have made it through Friday night without coughing or wheezing the entire time. So after a quick run out for some fresh croissants, I cooked breakfast and then we went out for a walk on Hampstead Heath which was lovely. It was quite a nice day and I was pleased with some of the photos.
Saturday evening, well I was feeling a little better and knowing that Neil, Doug, Alasdair and Jamie were all heading to Derek’s party and that it was pretty much just down the road I figured I’d stop by for a little while. A little while turning out to be from eight thirty until two am. Oops. I was mainly sober for the evening, I wasn’t in the mood for massive amounts of drinking with my cold and stuck to vodka and cokes. Though thinking back, there may have been quite a few of them. I successfully avoided tequila which was good. Odd evening really. Lots of drama going on all over the place it seems, at times I thought it might even end with blows. Luckily it did not though everytime I though the evening was going to be sensibly called a night, someone would always change their mind and go to the bar. So not a bad evening, just odd, exceptionally odd really.
Today I have mainly stacked shelves and vegged. I have emptied all of my book boxes onto shelves and all of my dvd boxes. I look forward to getting time to sort them properly soon. I have also watched a huge amount of stuff! House season 4 is entertaining, it’s nice to see some changes to the status quo and I really like the group of applicants house is fucking with. Heroes is hugely disappointing. I do keep reminding myself that I turned off the second episode of the first season in disgust and only went back because so many people talked of the noticeable increase in quality from the end of episode four. As I recall the first two were terrible, the third was okay and the fourth was pretty bad until the first “holy shit” moment when future Hiro arrives. Then with only a couple of missteps the rest of the season was awesome. I’m really hoping for something like that soon in season two. It’s really odd how season one was at it’s best when Hiro or Peter was on screen and without spoiling at, when neither appear in episode 4 of season 2, it’s quite a relief. I’ll give it a another few and see how it does.
I’m almost up to date with Weeds now too. I have one more left to watch. It’s kinda all over the place. It’s a shadow of it’s season 1 self but it’s still a bit funny and Mary-Louise Parker is always always watchable. So I’ll watch that next with some toast and some hot chocolate. I really should go out to Tesco for some nice hot chocolate but I just don’t feel up to it.
Oh yes I had no idea that volume II of Absolute Sandman is out already. I wasn’t expecting it for another few weeks. I have huge objections to paying £65 for the Titan edition that FP want for it when it’s an entire $62 for the proper edition on Amazon.com. To be fair Amazon.co.uk do have it for £46 but again, the Titan edition. I’m trying to figure out if it’ll get through customs or how much I’d be charged if it doesn’t. Not sure how that works for books. I really want it though, and I want it now, the first one is absolutely beautiful. It’s kinda moot point though, I’m pretty much skint till payday. The deposit for the last flat still hasn’t come back and so I’m down a large chunk of change for longer than I expected. I really really don’t want to go into my overdraft but seen as I’m in need of a quiet enough week till then it should be all okay.
Oh, don’t know if I have mentioned it but I’m going to Dublin at the end of the month. I’ll be around for 4 days seeing family and friends. Not entirely sure which friends, been having an odd relationship with one of them for a while now, something seemed to go odd just before I went to the US and now I’m not getting replies to texts or emails. It could just be busyness, in fact it probably is but I shall make a call this week to see what I can find out and hopefully meet up. That would be good, I’d like to clear that up if needs be.
So I mentioned books above. Last week I was in need of a book for a journey home and I was totally in the mood for sci-fi and *only* for sci-fi. I spent the guts of an hour in Borders on Oxford Street looking for something and nothing caught my fancy. I eventually decided that because of the recent updates to trade covers for Gollancz novels that I’d given Dan Simmon’s Hyperion a try. It had never really caught me before but I was desperate at this stage. And well it was excellent, it was one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in quite a while. So finding out that there were now 4 books that make up the Hyperion Cantos, I have been acquiring them and I’m coming to the end of the third book. Surprisingly there has been no drop off in quality yet and I’m enjoying the hell out of the series. So that’s pretty good.
I guess that’s where I am at the moment. I have no idea now if I’ll go to work tomorrow. Sitting here no, I don’t think I’ll be in but I’m hoping that a long sleep and lots of calpol will help…though it didn’t last night and I feel so much worse now.
Right, some food and some tv. Thanks to all for birthday wishes.
Fuck me. The last episode of season four of The Wire is unquestionably the finest episode of any television show ever produced. It’s unbelievably heartbreaking. I just feel drained from watching it.
‘You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter lets him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says ‘Who’s that?’ St. Peter says, ‘Oh, that’s God. Thinks he’s Denny Crane.”