Turns out I'm staying in TriBeCa the week before their big film festival, meaning that the area is buzzing with expectation, with lots of activity evident as people prepare for a week of premieres and parties. I'm annoyed I won't be here - it looks really exciting. For those of you who like looking at these things from afar, rather than from just around the corner, here's the programme. Why not imagine the films you'd see if you were here? That's what I'm doing.
I went out for a few drinks today, starting out in Greenwich Village before wandering West to the banks of the Hudson. I've still got some rather lovely shots of Boston to post, so I should really do those first - but I can't resist publishing tonight's photos. The first shot is the very first glimpse I had of the sunset, reflected in a glass doorway as I turned a corner towards the water. The second is the sun setting over Hoboken. Both were sighted as the cool wind both woke and sobered me up, to a soundtrack consisting of the marvellous first album by Blue Roses; a record I suspect I shall forever associate with the West Village and the Hudson River.
Given that I'm a Brit, it shouldn't be a surprise that I find it rather heartwarming that I encounter so many Anglophiles abroad. I'm in a pub in Greenwich Village (I in turn feel a bit too self consciously British to just call it The Village - I'm still in formal mode) and a guy sat beside me is explaining his enthusiasm for all things English. As we talk, the waitress comes over and takes his order. He very deliberately makes sure he's getting cheddar on his cheeseburger, and muses over what he'll have to drink.
"I tell you what", he says. "The Newcastle looks pretty good right now". He nods to the waitress. "Yeah, I'll take a Newcastle".
I know that he isn't actually wrong. When I order a San Miguel in Brighton I don't ask for a 'San Miguel Continental Lager', so there's no reason he should have to ask for a Newcastle Brown Ale.
To my right are two guys much more comfortable in their American skin. Granted, they both order Stella, but they both belch proudly after their first gulp. One cries "Yeah baby. Let's get this party started!". They start talking about bitches.
I start to drink up.
Thought I'd add a rather late voice of support to the apparent consensus that Woody Allen's most recent film, Vicky Christina Barcelona, is a significant return to form and a rather good film. I watched it on the flight over to Boston and really enjoyed it, all the more because it seemed to have very little of the clunkiness of his 'British' films, and because, although the film's setting in Spain is hardly essential to the plot, it makes for some beautiful shots and ingenious casting - particularly Javier Bardem and Penolope Cruz, who give magnificent performances.
The film, like most of Allen's oeuvre, is concerned with the transitory, illusory - and yet essential - nature of love and relationships. Vicky and Christina, played by Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johannson respectively, spend a summer in Spain and fall under the spell of Bardem, who is a magnetic, fascinating artist painted initially as a womaniser but later sketched out into an appealing, sophisticated character. Christina, fascinated by Bardem and determined not to restricted by bourgeois or conventional expectations, embarks upon an impulsive but successful relationship with her lover and, later, his ex-wife, played with careering, reckless glee by Penelope Cruz. (Johannson, disappointingly, is below-par throughout).
Vicky, by contract - whose fascination with Bardem is tempered by her desire for a conventional marriage - is the real emotional centre of the film. For all the plaudits Cruz and Bardem have earned for their performances, it is Rebecca Hall's beautiful, precise portrayal of Vicky's cautious, agonised involvement which resonates. And which proves that Woody Allen is still capable of writing proper, grown up parts, and funny, worthwhile films.
Of course VCB is not up with his best, but it was the first one of his films I've seen in many years which left me feeling fully satisfied. Really hope it's a good omen for his future projects.
I've already used this blog at length to extol the virtues of the quite stupendous Wave Pictures, who I think are making the best records in the world at the moment. That's not going to stop any time soon.
Perhaps I'm summoning up memories of a fictitious Willy Wonkafied youth here, but I have a probably-false memory of buying chocolate bars and eating them one corner, one segment at a time when I was a child, unwilling to gorge on the whole thing in one go, savouring every mouthful.
That's how I feel about the new Wave Pictures album, which I'm rationing out as a kind of penance for my having illegally downloaded it (I'll buy a copy when it comes out) and as a kind of tease - because I'm frightened that it'll be so good that I won't need another record again this year. So I've only listened to the first three or four songs so far, getting to know them back to front, chewing delightedly on every detail and nuance.
The first track, 'If You Leave It Alone', is transparently one of the best things that Dave Tattersall and co have ever done, but repeated obsessive listens are driving me bit crazed and reaching blindly for superlatives. Like a lot of their stuff, it's achingly simple - little more than a beat, a bass line and a beautiful, tender vocal, but the genius is in the melody and, particularly, the lyric - which, from behind Tattersall's usual oblique wordplay, reveals an absolutely beautiful insight into his song-writing process, which is deliberately straight-forward, unforced, natural.
Once a song is written, it's written, and is just left to sit until it is needed. And like wine, or meat left to hang, it becomes richer and better with age.
Here's the key verse. I can't tell you how beautiful I think it is.
"Now I'm full up with lessons learned
and the days that I made just to throw them away.
Now I'm closing all the curtains, I'm switching off the phone,
now I took down all your cameras and I opened the fridge...
and hung from the hinges with the eggs and garlic,
the cheese and tomatoes, the milk and the beer,
the strings and the bridges of a brand new year;
The first tear was a note and the note made a song,
and I hung the song from the hinges of the door,
then I carried on just the same as before.
And nothing got different, and nothing got changed,
but a new tune gets sweeter and simpler with age
if you leave it alone".
Not much more I can add to that. That for me is reason enough to love the Wave Pictures, unconditionally, forever.
Regular readers of Assistant Blog will know that this site is nothing without regular, obsessive updates on the cultural whereabouts of Damon Albarn; so here's this week's helping.
This looks magnificent; the latest project from pop's most versatile musician is 'It Felt Like A Kiss', a collaboration with Adam Curtis (who created the BBC's magnificent 'The Power of Nightmares' series) and the Kronos Quartet. The website of the Manchester Festival, where the performance debuts this July, describes the project thus:
"Imagine walking into a disused building. You find yourself inside a film.
It is a ghost story where unexpected forces, veiled by the American Dream, come
out from the dark to haunt you…
It Felt Like a Kiss tells the story of America’s rise to power in the
golden age of pop, and the unforeseen consequences it had on the world and in
our minds. Beginning in 1959, the show spotlights the dreams and desires that
America inspired during the ’60s, when the world began to embrace the country
and its culture as never before. But as this daring production unfolds across
five floors, blending music with documentary and the disorientating whirl of a
fairground ghost train, the audience is forced to face the dark forces that were
veiled by the American dream – a dream that ultimately returns to haunt us
all."
Awesome. More details here.
This is an unbearably lovely story. Jan Griffith and her family - who took the wonderful decision to name their pet dog Sophie Tucker (I'm very much in favour of people giving animals human names, especially if they include a surname) - lost their animal after it fell overboard into choppy waters off Queensland, and were forced to include that their pet had drowned. Now, four months later, they have been reunited with it after it was discovered alive and well, living off its own wits on a pretty much uninhabited island, the equally charmingly named St. Bees Island.
Now back with her family, Sophie Tucker has quickly readjusted to the comforts of home, but her owner has a new-found respect for her, it seems. These last lines of the article just kill me.
"She surprised us all. She was a house dog and look what she's done, she's swum over five nautical miles, she's managed to live off the land all on her own," Griffiths said.Absolutely.
"We wish she could talk, we truly do."
It's too easy to assume that when you go away the weather will be wonderful, and getting it wrong - especially when you're on holiday - can be really hard to get over. A few years ago I went to Cyprus on holiday and the weather was just so much cooler than I'd expected, the sun up less, the water colder than anticipated. It was a real downer, and I had to concentrate on forgetting the disappointment in order to enjoy myself (which I eventually did, but it took a while).
Work trips tend to be a bit less make or break, because at least half of the time you're stuck in a dreary conference centre or an office, so the bad weather - like I experienced in Portugal last year - should only be an irritant. It still takes practice to be so reasonable, however, and I've lost track of business trips where I've had to gee myself up after the initial disappointment of poor weather.
Boston is hardly the Bahamas, of course, and I knew I'd be arriving in late Spring, but the weather has recently really improved in the UK, so I was a bit underwhelmed by the torrential rain which greeted me on Friday and the blustery wind which blew me from pillar to post yesterday. I'd looked forward to visiting the Boston Public Gardens, having heard them described as the epicentre of the city. So when I found them yesterday, desolate and bleak, I quickly moved on and explored Downtown instead.
Here's what the gardens looked like yesterday.
And here they were this afternoon. It's no understatement to say that they simply burst into life overnight.
Changing time-zones does weird things to Facebook - it appears I am now writing on people's walls in the future. Odd.
Had a cracking breakfast at Trident Booksellers Cafe in Boston this morning. It's a lovely, crowded independent bookshop in the Back Bay district. The cafe occupies more than half the space, and had developed by eleven o'clock today a decent queue, which is always a good sign. Luckily because I was on my own I managed to jump it and grab a seat at the bar, where I grabbed a menu and logged on to the free wi-fi with my phone. I'd actually bought a guide to Boston just before-hand, but taking it out and reading it at the counter seemed somehow appallingly touristy, so I grabbed a paper instead and sat reading and sipping the sharpest Lemonade I'd ever ordered in my life.
I've had enough breakfasts in America to be unsurprised when something the size of a European main course turns up, but I was still pleased to see my order was comfortably obscene. I had plumped for their South-Western breakfast burrito, which consisted of a huge serving of scrambled eggs, tomato, a liberal serving of jalepeno pepper, as well as refried beans, tortilla chips, onions & cheddar cheese, all crammed into a flour tortilla with a side of salsa and a slice of orange. It was immense. I decided to take my time and, taking regular breaths, devoured the whole thing over about forty minutes. It was delicious, and about as much as I normally eat in a day.
And now. Now I'm going out for lunch.
Saw this incredible dog sat in a doorway on Newbury Street - what an amazing animal. People were queuing up to take photographs. He just sat imperiously, surveying the activity on the street. After a while he tired of us, and shuffled back inside.
Well, I've just had easily the most surreal flight of my life. It was enjoyable in a funny way, but distinctly odd and unbelievably loud. The Virgin Atlantic flight I took from London to Boston - expecting a nice, snoozy jaunt - was populated with no less than a hundred and ninety schoolkids, which is every bit as stimulating (noise level = constant) as it is improbable.
Towards the end of the journey - when the kids were seemingly at their most restless - an air hostess came over and gave me a sympathetic smile, which I returned, reasoning that neither of us are getting paid well enough for this. We talked for a bit, and she confirmed that such a high percentage of children on a flight is well out of the ordinary.
I got my first sense of the sheer volume of kids when I arrived at the departure gate at Heathrow, and saw a queue of about forty adolescents standing in line in front of me. I reasoned that I'd walk round the block and come back once they'd gone through passport control. Five minutes later, however, the queue was twice as long and even more youthful. I quickly surmised that, through some cruel trick of fate, several school parties were booked onto the same flight, and watched a small, stoic set of teachers trying in vain to manage the chaos as parties began to intermingle, their curiosity sparked.
It didn't take long to realise, once I boarded the plane, that I'd need to move. I was sat in the middle of a row of four seats, with my three companions a set of youths who made it swiftly clear that they were intent on punching each other and yelling for the entire journey. I negotiated a move to a quieter seat, condemning a pissed-off looking teacher into my place, and found myself sat with a nice-enough pair of boys instead, who I was pleased to overhear telling their peers (who had probably been planning to put chewing gum in my hair, or something) that I was "a nice bloke".
Despite their good nature, they were ridiculously hyperactive and patently unable to sit still for more than half an hour at a time, meaning I had to keep getting up to allow them to slouch past me in search of entertainment or refreshment. A little girl sitting behind us gave me a sparkly smile each time I had to rise, and I recognised for a moment that eagerness to please that marks out the perpetual teacher's pet. The boys, in rare moments of stillness, struggled ineptly with their landing cards, so I helped them out, despairing at their unwillingness to work out the answers to simple questions.
We got the forms sorted in the end, but along the way they made some terrific mistakes. One declared that his country of residence (or 'resistance' as he pronounced it) was 'American', and the other first claimed he lived in the city of 'England' and then that his six-digit date of birth was simply '1996'. They peppered the process with cries of 'Sir! Sir!', sometimes directed at their teacher, and other times, amusingly, at me.
Throughout the ordeal the teachers and cabin staff were the model of restraint. The kids, with a few exceptions, were mostly lovely.
And no, I have NEVER BEEN SO PLEASED to finally land at my destination.
Reminded of the extent to which kids are insulated from the problems of the world. Queuing to get on the plane I'm stuck behind a bunch of teenaged school-children. One spots that someone has grafittied 'Fuck The Bankers' on a poster in the aisle.
They look at it, amused and confused.
'RANDOM!', they all chorus, with no clue as to why someone might write such a thing.
Coming through customs at Heathrow airport I watch, interested, as a party of five pensioners decant their pill boxes and medicine bottles into the security-provided polythene bags that others are filling with toothpaste and cosmetics. Each, by the time they are done, is carrying a full bag - their drugs are packaged uniformly in white and red, red white and blue. The English taking their necessities abroad.
Behind them shuffles a man, only slightly younger, his immaturity denoted by the chestnut colour of his hair. He is marsupial by appearence, small and friendly.
"Where are you off to", he asks one of the ladies, and claps his hands when she replies that their destination is Egypt. "Me too", he declares.
As we pick up our baggage at the other end of the machine, he spots my laptop and claps again, smiling.
"Got your laptop!", he cries. "Good, good. Never be without it. Not these days".
I smile and admit I am travelling for business purposes, so I have little choice.
He gives me the warmest smile I can recall, and tells me to enjoy myself regardless.
I depart feeling cheered.
Articles about the Royal family are rather more the preserve of the Daily Mail than the Guardian, but there's a genuinely fascinating article in the paper today, in which Patrick Barkham looks at the two young Princes and attempts a serious study of their respective characters and prospects. When I was younger I was a fervent anti-Royalist, to the extent that I affected to loathe them, using their privilege and position as excuses to wish them ill. I didn't feel the slightest sense of loss when Diana died.
I'm still not a royalist by any means - I'd go for a republic in a heartbeat; but I have to admit that I now reserve my loathing for the institution, rather than the people within it. I suspect they live sad, lonely lives to be honest, and probably do a reasonable (even good) job of coping with the duties along the way.
Barkham's article is fascinating and well worth a read. It ends thus:
"William is nice but I can't help hearing him ask, 'Do I have to do it?'" [Judy]
Wade [, a royal reporter of 30 years] says. "You're a prisoner, not just of
the palace but the Foreign Office - telling you where you can and can't go. You
walk round all day talking to awestruck people who can't string two sentences
together. It's a terrible life. That's why William and Harry don't want to do
it. They want to put it off for as long as possible."
In the last couple of weeks I've read an absolute mountain of sniping articles about Horne and Corden (the stars of BBC3's Gavin and Stacey, who have recently launched a very poorly-received sketch show), and I find myself getting quite annoyed by the relentless critism. I don't doubt for a moment that their new show is poor (most TV sketch shows and sitcoms are) but there's something off-putting in the way that TV reviewers have gone for them so aggressively. I'd much rather read a review of a programme that the critic rates, so that I might find something new to watch - especially in the days of iPlayer when catching up on last night's TV is a realistic possibility for an evening's entertainment.
Everyone seems to have back-dated their criticism, too, deciding that Gavin and Stacey was over-rated, too; that it was sentimental, cloying, unfunny. It certainly was a gentle comedy, a million miles from, say, Stewart Lee, but I thought it was beautifully judged - charming and good-natured, witty, silly and believable by turn. I know I am a renowned wimp, but it regularly used to make me cry, too. It may well be fashionable to decry such family fodder - but I don't like the trend.
Over at the Guardian, Mark Lawson is wondering how the pair will revive their nosediving careers. It's a ridiculous article. Cordon is perhaps a bit full of himself, but he's funny and a talented writer, and Matthew Horne is a promising actor. They'll never be conventional comics, perhaps - but writing off their careers at this very early stage is plain daft.
Just seen that the new Wave Pictures album has leaked. Argh. There are very very few bands whom I love so unreservedly that I feel I need to wait for the release proper before hearing their new record. Probably none, actually - the pull is too great. But the Wave Pics are right up at the top of the list. What do I do, readers? Download or wait?
My finger is poised on the download button.
I helped Dan and Vic move house at the weekend. As I mentioned previously, I feel quite settled in my current flat, and I certainly don't crave for the ultra stressful moving process again - but seeing the blank slate of their new flat made me feel a bit envious. I'm sure that if it were me moving I'd be intimidated by the amount of work needed to turn it into a home, but from the outside looking in it seems like a nice project; the slow unfolding of possessions into their new homes, or conversely the careful folding of a plain piece of paper into a complex origami pattern.
Reading this, if they do, Dan and Vic will doubtless feel a kind of numb rage, indignant at my implying that moving is fun when they know all too well the flip side of the coin. But there is something rather magical about the transformation. On Saturday myself, Ant, Vic and Dan spent several hours in the morning moving stuff into what seemed at the time like a fairly inhospitable environment - it hadn't been cleaned fully and each large white room seemed like an invitation to lots of hard work, and a million miles from a home. By the time, many hours later, we'd transported everything in, it seemed less like a home still and more like a warehouse or a distribution centre; tons of boxes everywhere and large rooms suddenly feeling overstocked and claustrophobic.
Yet when I returned the next day it was strange and extraordinary to see the progress, the way that Dan and Vic were steadily imposing themselves upon the rooms, which were in turn coiling and stretching and responding to the demands of their new inhabitants. Vic - who works like a dervish when duty calls - had pulled off a particular miracle, transforming in the space of a day her room until it was warm, soft and hospitable - and the mirror of the room she'd moved out of just 36 hours earlier. Dan's progress was slower but just as interesting to watch - his priorities are apparently more straightforward. Bed. Stereo. Computer.
I've not been round in a few days now but I'm looking forward to my next visit. I'm not trying to make out they have had the time to do all that much, but I find it interesting and exciting watching them imprint their personalities and position their belongings in their new home. And a part of me - the part that is ignoring all the work and stress and cost - is a bit jealous.
Time to move some furniture around, perhaps.
Last night I nearly dozed off on the train home, half-conscious of the music playing through my iPod, and half-aware that the train was slowly moving away from a marvellous, satsuma sky to the West - as lovely and as vivid an orange as I could imagine. At one point my eyes opened to a real treat - a flare of light along the platform at Fishersgate. Managed to point my phone at it before we moved off. Lovely.
No Stone Roses reunion. Here's John Squire's latest artwork.
Some things are best left alone. Remember them this way:
Just watched the first episode of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, which aired on BBC2 last night. It’s a sign of how poor a lot of television comedy is that, although I knew already that Lee was my favourite stand-up, I was genuinely taken aback by the gulf of glass between him and pretty much everyone else I’ve seen telling jokes on TV in the last five or six years. One thirty minute episode devoted to books, which took in wonderful linguistic jokes, high-brow cultural references, a sustained, pitiless attack on Chris Moyles and an energy and curiosity absent in most of his peers. Best of all was a long, rambling skit on "rap singers" which was, I think, the most satisfyingly slow-paced and uncompromising joke I've seen on the BBC; not because it was awfully funny (it wasn't), but because Lee insisted on telling it his way and not dumbing down for television. The whole show was a masterclass in intelligence.
So happy there are five more episodes to come. Bringing Stewart Lee back to terrestrial television is probably the best decision that the comedy folk at the BBC have made in recent history. Make sure you catch up with it on iPlayer.
I had an avocado bathroom-suite for a couple of years; I hated it - clean it looked dirty, and dirty it looked horrendous. I am always slightly in awe of the person who goes for an avocado colour scheme though; he or she is someone not easily dissuaded.
Has it ever occurred to you, in all seriousness, that your house is about to explode? It has occurred to me.
Ever since a spate of drilling on the other side of kitchen wall, a few months back, resulted in my kitchen cabinet crashing to the floor in the middle of the night, I have been wary of DIY-related sounds from adjourning flats. Last night I was just putting on my coat and clambering down the stairs to my front door, about to head out and into town for the pub quiz, when I heard a very loud power-drilling noise emanating from somewhere within my flat. Irritated and curious, I nipped back upstairs to locate the origin of the sound, and was thoroughly befuddled to find it at its loudest in my bathroom – which is not adjoined to any neighbouring rooms. I couldn’t work it out. Either someone was drilling up through the floorboards, or down from the roof.
It was really loud. I did another circuit of the flat. Back in the bathroom, I listened hard to the noise. It sounded a touch too loud to be a power drill – it was a real, rattling, whirring hum, insistent and sinister, like an enormous, malevolent mosquito. Where was it coming from? I walked over to the sink, where the noise was loudest. Was it my water pipes? I leant over and placed my hand on one of the taps, and felt it vibrating menacingly. I began to feel quite concerned, and dashed back into the living room to look at the boiler. It seemed absolutely fine, but I turned it off just in case.
I returned to the bathroom. The whole sink appeared to be shaking, as if it might uproot itself and start stamping across the room. I didn’t know what to do.
It’ll stop of its own accord, I told myself – I’ll just head out. I put my coat back on and walked down the stairs. I stood at the door. What the hell was that noise?
It was at that point that I realised that my flat was going to blow up. I ran back up the stairs and looked at the sink. Listened to the noise. And then I reached down and picked up my electric shaver. The second it was removed from its contact with the tap, the drilling noise quietened, the sink stopped shaking. Moreover, the curious vibrating appeared now to be focused upon my hand. I pressed the off button, and the noise stopped completely.
It is deeply troubling that I am capable of being thoroughly outwitted by an electrical appliance.
Can I just draw your attention, readers, to how bloody brilliant this website is:
http://www.grahamcoxon.co.uk/
Turn up your computer's volume. Click on the eye. Ace.
Bit early for a post-mortem on Red Riding, but... wow - massively intense and frightening, and it seemed both seriously artistic and bitingly realistic simultaneously, which is surely a hard thing to achieve. Some of the camera work was sublime, especially the framing and use of focus - but most significant was the depth of Peace's plotting and the brilliance of the adaptation. Acting not far behind.
Going to bed seems like a mad thing to do now. I need to find something soothing on Radio 4 before I can contemplate sleep.
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