Or, some foundational literature
Published at 10:16 pm on November 18th, 2021
Filed under: Artistic.
If you read this blog regularly, or, indeed, at all, you might notice that up above, underneath the name, there’s a strapline. You might have even noticed that, by the magic of JavaScript, it changes to something different each time you load the page. Try it, refresh the page now, you’ll see it change into something else.
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Keyword noise: literature, books, Helen Cresswell, The Bagthorpe Saga, comedy, farce.
On death, and its absurdity
Published at 9:22 pm on September 24th, 2020
Filed under: Dear Diary, The Family.
Almost a year ago, give or take a week or two, my dad died. I wrote, a few days later, about the experience, or at least part of it. Starting from being woken in the middle of the night by a phone call from the hospital, and ending with myself and The Mother walking out of the hospital, wondering what would happen next. I scribbled it down a few days later, after I had had a couple of days to process it, but whilst it was still relatively fresh in my head. The intention, naturally was to write more about the experience of being newly-bereaved, the dullness of the bureaucracy, of everyone else’s reactions to you, the hushed voices and awkward moments. Of course, none of that ever got written. Nothing even about his funeral. Much of it has now faded. I was thinking, though, now that I’ve relaunched this blog once more, maybe I should go back, go back over those few weeks last October, and try to remember exactly what it did feel like.
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Keyword noise: death, funerals, comedy, humour, The Mother, coffins, undertakers, Ovo.
In which we have a jaunt off to Birmingham to see Flight Of The Conchords
Published at 7:54 pm on May 11th, 2010
Filed under: Media Addict.
Off to Birmingham yesterday, to see Flight of the Conchords at the National Indoor Arena, the great hulking ostrich egg sat in a nest of redeveloped Birmingham canalside next to a clutch of restaurant chains. Despite their radio series and their sitcom, I still think that FotC have the feel of a cult hit to them, one of those acts* who nobody apart from us has heard about. It’s slightly surprising, then, to find that they can head out on an arena tour which – in the UK, at least – seemed to sell out within a morning. I wonder if the other thousands of people in the audience all entered to the same thought: “what, there really are other people who have heard of them?”
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Keyword noise: BBC, Birmingham, Bret McKenzie, comedy, Eugene Mirman, Flight Of The Conchords, gig, Jemaine Clement, live, live comedy, live music, music, National Indoor Arena, show, television.
We sat down last night to watch one of the Christmas present DVDs: Arrested Development Season 3. It got me thinking, after yesterday’s post, about pseudo-archaeological documentaries.
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Keyword noise: archaeology, Arrested Development, Atlantis, comedy, conspiracy theory, Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, documentary, fake history, fake mythology, Freemasonry, Graham Hancock, history, Illuminati, Knights Templar, mythology, narration, Nostradamus, occult, Priory of Sion, pseudoarchaeology, Ron Howard, television, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
In which we go and see The Mighty Boosh
Published at 10:18 am on December 8th, 2008
Filed under: Media Addict.
A long day on Friday: a day out to Manchester, to see The Mighty Boosh Live. When the tickets for the tour went on sale, of course, we had to buy them straight away before they sold out; and back then, over a year ago, we had no idea that we’d have moved to an entirely different part of the country within a few months. So, back up to Manchester, to the MEN Arena.
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Keyword noise: comedy, gig, live comedy, Manchester, MEN Arena, Mighty Boosh, television, theatre.
In which we become scared of fields
Published at 12:45 pm on October 24th, 2007
Filed under: Media Addict.
“That’s two hours of my life that I’ll never get back,” said one of the women in front of us, as we left the cinema* I thought she was being slightly unfair. The film had only been 87 minutes long, after all.
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Keyword noise: Black Sheep, comedy, film, horror, movie, mutant, New Zealand, review, sheep, zombies.
In which we wonder what the filmmakers were thinking
Published at 6:32 pm on August 5th, 2007
Filed under: Media Addict.
Every time I’ve been to the cinema recently, I’ve had to sit through a trailer for newly-released film *Evan Almighty*. And it makes me slightly uneasy. Because – if you’re lucky enough to have managed to avoid the thing – it’s a lighthearted family comedy based on the story of Noah And The Flood, from Genesis. God comes down to Earth, visits an innocent politician, and tells him to build an ark because he’s decided to do the whole flood thing again.
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Keyword noise: Biblical, Christianity, comedy, Evan Almighty, film, god, Judaism, Noah, politicians, religion, unfunny.
In which I make you groan
Published at 7:33 am on April 17th, 2007
Filed under: Dear Diary.
In which we stay to the end of the credits
Published at 9:43 pm on May 18th, 2006
Filed under: Media Addict.
In which things are true to life
Published at 2:46 pm on February 3rd, 2006
Filed under: Geekery, Media Addict.
New Channel 4 comedy series *The IT Crowd* starts tonight; being a big geek, of course, I had to watch it. And, overall, it’s rather good.
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Keyword noise: Channel 4, comedy, computing, Great Wave At Kanagawa, Hokusai, IT, review, television, The IT Crowd.
In which we briefly scoot over things that deserve more space
Published at 12:41 pm on December 2nd, 2005
Filed under: Linkery.