CM doco

Almost no chance you'll see me, but CM, my sometimes employer & remaining fundee of the arts council has a glitzy doco on the community channel...


online here


the tireless bobby friction who hosted this nuttily glitzy night @ the brady centre, right where i teach, all done up with sofas & a makeshift bar... back in december - it seems it was filmed - the doco is on the community channel:


Weds 6th April: 09.00, 15.00, 18.30, 00.30, 04.00
Sat 9th April: 09.00, 15.00, 18.30, 00.30, 04.00
Mon 11th April: 15.00, 18.30
Thurs 14th April: 15.00, 18.30
Sun 17th April: 09.30
Weds 27th April: 09.00, 15.00, 18.30, 00.30, 04.00
Sat 30th April: 09.00, 15.00, 18.30, 00.30, 04.00
Weds 11th May: 09.00, 15.00, 18.30, 00.30, 04.00
Sat 14th May: 09.00, 15.00, 18.30, 00.30, 04.00
Mon 16th May: 15.00, 18.30
Thurs 19th May: 15.00, 18.30
Sun 22nd May: 09.30

The Community Channel can be found on Sky channel 539, Virgin Media 233, Freeview 87 and BT Vision.


i saw a documentary on billy childish in the ritzy possibly - or perhaps the ICA, and the man himself (who me & spski have seen in the boston arms, times gone by) told this story:


there was a documentary about him shown on the BBC & the following day he was walking in the town he lives in... (chatham)... & someone shouted at him from across the street:


OI!.... DOCUMENTARY TWAT!


x

stanfield

3rd season of fringe... and i'm enjoying it so far (just seen the 1st 3)...

of course i'm only watching it because i'm marking at the moment... procrastination is the thief of time to quote spski... he whose tax return i'm helping him with on friday... josiah's tax return is also on my list although she's yet to get back to me... so maybe she'll be dealing with it without me...

... maybe not...

then there's my tax return...

but that is not what i am posting about this evening...

nor am i posting about the slightly difficult time i'm having with my heart...

no... i am posting about the wire - and fringe...

in fact i 1st came to fringe because lance reddick - the hard police boss in the wire (his title changes throughout the seasons, but he's always hard) is playing the hard fringe division boss in fringe... and the one in the wire who let his gun go off accidentally and became a teacher... he showed up as a one off character in fringe, maybe i read about it in the guardian?

so we already know about the link... but now bubbles (junky/police informer in the wire) is a taxi driver in the alternative universe of fringe... who is bound to come back because he's bubbles... & olivia has lost her mind, thinking she's the alternate olivia in the alternate universe... & bubbles is almost guaranteed to turn up helping her remember her real life...

but also... in episode 3 there is a great character (alternate universe) who is on super mind expanding drugs & he is able to kill people by carefully putting ball point pens places, causing a sequence of events that lead to someone dying...

anyway - his name is milo stanfield...

which is almost the same name as the name marlo stanfield, the name of the mob boss in the 2nd season of the wire...

now - the wire is so much better than fringe... & fringe is helped by it's links to the wire, for me... it's still good, fringe, mostly, it does make me miss the wire all over again though...

which reminds me... did i ever get to the end of the sopranos... this time around...? yes - i think i did... also very good... in fact i was i was trying to find a link from fringe to the sopranos, the lead woman - olivia - in fringe - i was thinking that she was meadows insane college roommate in the sopranos - although that memory is getting weaker - and is it really true that that character killed herself? am i thinking of a different program? like heroes perhaps? maybe it's the cheerleaders insane college roommate...

oh - but marking - yes... marking... x

review of FlashForward, True Blood & Generation Kill

in the last week, i've seen the opening episode (or 2) of 3... just 3?... yes, 3 i think...

3 new tv things, all american, 2 on channel 4, one on 5...

Flashforward
True Blood
Generation Kill

flash forward first:

it's the only one of the 3 programs that hasn't already been shown in america...

this is nice...

i watched it on the internet, because demand5 is not yet on virgin V, unlike all the other terrestrials, (4 on demand, BBC i-player, ITV...thing)...

demand5 delivers adverts, at a few points in the show, which you can see as dots in the line at the bottom, also they have adverts before the show starts...

the 2 adverts at the beginning are repeated at least once in the show...

this is shit...

and to think i could be downloading this nonsense and not watching any adverts...

so to the show itself... it's made by the makers of lost... and i remembered this midway through the 2nd episode and i laughed at myself for watching it...

it has a good premise, and the story looks promising, and it good in it's way,

but there were a few too many moments where the cheese got grated a little too much... the main male character, whose wife saw a future in which she was loving another man... keeps giving her a hard time about this... he's dumb therefore... his side-kick / another important male character, spends ages being down on our main characters theories because he didn't see anything in his future and therefore might well be dead...

so already, within the 1st 2 episodes, drama is being inserted with no good reason to insert drama...

in this current world we live in, too often we are expected to sift through flaws in TV shows to find the good that is in them... i don't know if i have the patience for flashforward...

ok True Blood:

which i watched on the TV as it was broadcast, with dinah, after our turkish resaurant/police with large guns event earlier...

HBO made which counts for alot...

great so far, but a little too much "local colour" here and there, something heroes did with it's new orleans characters...

not only from black characters, but mostly from them, larger than life, sassy, performances which distracted a little from the story i found... not that i'm faulting the acting, it's the writing i'm unhappy with,

but not too unhappy, this is a smaller complaint than i had with flashforward and i think it'll be worth sticking with true blood... the magic, the sense of real connection the main woman feels for the vampire... and already a good story...

i loved buffy the vampire slayer and so i was always going to like true blood anyway,

it's quite explicitly rude for TV which is nice... the characters are coming along nicely, no 1 dimensional people as far as i can see, although there's time...

so to Generation Kill...

watched last night on catch-up, on the TV, after a mental few days of not enough sleep, a few pints and some smoking (which is exactly the right idea after a mental fews days on not enough sleep)...

then watched again this afternoon, again on catchup, after a lovely night's rest..

made by the team that made the wire... and just fantastic, no flaws to speak of... (as indeed the wire was flawless)... a huge cast of characters that it's quite hard to follow, and no easy explanatory TV, which is a strength in my world...

i'm curious who wrote it, as in, which character is the writer, it's from a book and it seems likely that the reporter in the story wrote the book... but not for sure...

it shows a side to the tank loving boy audience, lots of hummvees... in formation rolling through the desert... a nod towards the glory of the mechanisms of war... while showing the stupid choices of the military...

just as in the wire there are people in the military world of this show who are willing to do a good job, and there a people who are motivated by other things, greed, power, and for many different reasons do not do a good job...

a great character who wistfully pisses on the desert while talking about the destiny of the white man... a curious mix of racism in a seeming lovable character...

a seemingly true account of what it was like in that unit... with porn magazines, chewing tobacco of some kind, drugs, well almost drugs... homophobia, racism, comradery, stupidity..

hasn't put a foot wrong yet...

so that's what i think x

john berger sleeplessness

yesterday (tuesday) was such a long day on so little sleep that today (wednesday) i was very glad to sleep in and do very little...

i watched the 2nd half of the miniseries battlestar galactica... it had a tiny bit of not very good television in it, but largely it was very good...

the 1st series is arriving fairly soon...

i have high hopes of it...

but before i watched the thing i watched today, i made it over to jai shri krishna for the lunch time special, 12 - 2, i arrived @ 1:58...

whilst there i finished the book i've been reading from A to X by john berger - which was beautiful...

around about 2 they put the radio on in jai shri krishna, i think it's to get rid of the customers so they can close...

i finished the book with the radio on and whilst it was great, i felt i had to reread a bit of it... so i did, around 6ish, lying on the sofa with balthazara curled up beside me,

i'm going to lend the book to dinah's mum, i think she'll be interested in some of it, maybe she'll read the whole thing - although she reads an awful lot -

x

tv mopho church

so i saw last week's mad men on the i-player... great TV still... i found out that joan, the very sexy - all woman - in the office character is played by someone who was in a couple of episodes of firefly... the scifi thing made by the guy that did buffy...

so i youtubed those 2 episodes and watched them too... i'd watched all of firefly a while back when the film came out, some other computer has the video files on it, maybe the one i left in finsbury park...

also good tv, not as good as madmen, but not trying to be, very pleasing none-the-less...

red riding also turned out to be excellent, i watched the last of the 3 episodes on saturday... very grim, very satisfying...

and i still love my mopho, i noticed today that falling off my keyboard @ the gig on sunday did a little damage... the 4th assignable parameter knob is a little hurt, just cosmetic hurt, it still works fine...

i like it... my serial number is 01985... i keep trying to think of what happened in 1985 but i'm not sure anything did, i was 12/13...

played a song from the musical in an assembly this morning - in a primary school... that was cool, also got to play the piano in the church we're in on saturday, a kawai upright, very nice, with heaps of natural reverb... an amazing place... the whole ceiling covered in angels or saints... i'd like to do an improvisation in there one day if i can...

x

good telly

oh what a mad day it's been...

played with G down in camden... jazz/funk... a few hours... nice to gig, gave the hammond organ a good environment to shine in...

then up to tufnell park for my regular sunday night rehearsal... now i'm home...

(obviously)

a little lightheaded...

so telly...

3 things, the 1st of which was a rerun last weekend which i caught on catchup...

the devil's whore...

english civil war... very good tv... the main guy from the wire plays oliver cromwell.. a whole heap of great british actors... that ginger haired man who's in green wing is excellent as honest john lilburn...

the main woman is fantastic i think... good story, characters... just all round good...

now take that ginger haired man... place him in a modern day police drama... and you have the 2nd of my 3 great tv things...

moses jones... written by joe penhal... BBC thing, looking at the african community in london... dramatising the plight of refugees... partly set around borough, the same cab office that was filmed for dirty pretty things...

only 2 episodes in but it's good so far... it's british so it could always fall on it's arse but i'm liking it...

and finally american, not made by HBO but still marvellous:

madmen...

one episode into the 2nd season as we are over in england...

fantastic... no other words, just very glad it's there...

so... not much analysis but there you have my 3 great tv things...

x

gbh andrew harvey dark night

me & dinah, with T & floopy, went over to the muswell hill odeon tonight to see the dark night...

it was very episodic, i was quite taken with it in places, for awhile i was sat there thinking - oh yeah, posthumous oscar - just because he died... la la la...

but heath ledger is very good in it, the joker is by far and away the best character,

it's not good all the way through and jonesy from carnivale was pretty ropey as the DEA,

nothing like as good as the wire - nearing the end of season 4 as i am and it remains fabulous...

or indeed G.B.H. which i haven't seen since the early 90's when it was on the telly, (and which could therefore be nothing like as good as i remember it, but it has a good chance of still being excellent), virgin central are giving me the 1st episode of 7, just like they did with the wire a few months back, and i'm doing exactly the same thing...

thankyou the world for this great telly you give me...

tonight we fell into watching a very interesting but fairly badly made docu about a 14th century or thereabouts arabic traveller, a little spoilt by the presenter but beautifully shot and a great story to tell.. one shot reminded me of the cover to a book i loved back when i was 19/20/21 around the time i saw G.B.H for the 1st time, very happy to have found it still in my possession, i might read it next, having finished the 1st century after beatrice , which i wasn't right for this time around, but which is great,

so much rereading and watching things for the 2nd time... now i've gone past 35, into the downward slope of the 2nd half my life...

the book is called a journey in ladakh by andrew harvey and i probably read about it in the guardian...

oh the london review of books, i must get that back in my life...

the wire

it's all about american tv sometimes...

there's an actor in the 1st series of the wire who i think is the same actor who played a poetic sniper on a roof in the 1st series of kill point that i watched recently...

the wire is the better of the two programs... both of which were given to me by virgin media, although they only gave me the 1st episode of the wire, i'm watching the rest through other means...

it's really good... HBO know what they're up to...

i'm also nearing the end of cities of the red night that i'm reading before lending to john sinclair... i was hoping to finish it on the train home from work tonight but it's not quite all done yet... great writing...

oh and ubuntu, last night in amongst many attempts i got the system to work, internet sharing on our little network...

this morning it didn't work... have to work out what it was that i did right... once it's working i can spend a bit more time in ubuntu, for now, every minute i'm on it dinah can't have the internet and that's no good, but once that side works i can be in it all i like...

x

telly domestic goddess

meeting up with a singer for possible future keyboard work didn't quite pan out tonight and it was just as well, dinah was in the kitchen whipping up the most amazing penny manqué which took a little longer to prepare and then quite a bit longer to recover from, in the sense of being able to function in the world..

penny being the owner and manager of the amazon cafe in the locale of where we used to live... it's where me & dinah used to always go on a sunday... purveyors of fine vegetarian roast dinners and lovely smiles... our penny manqué being dinah's version and it was quite the thing ladies and gentlemen...

then tonight i watched alien vs predator on channel 4 +1 which was really great... i'm so ready for the sequel...

digital tv having arrived you see on friday and our lives all the richer for it...

also a real plan is shaping up for the decorating of the flat, floopy & spski being the major players, it really could happen in the very near future, i've just been living with it unfinished for so long i can't quite get my head around it being decorated, this room has hieroglyphics & how could it be any different?

in other news i have 2 piano students starting this week, the shape of some of my future income x

leeds new telly

so, what with the rec-calculation based on ignoring myself, our 7777th visitor turned out to be... from...

(wait for it)

LEEDS

which i know very little about, only that i once stopped off in leeds on a hitching journey going further north and i found myself doing magic mushrooms with some lovely people and listening to john martyn who i just spelt wrong and searched for in google maps by mistake & found Big John Drive in Martin:


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but enough random frivolity... TV baby TV... i took the plunge and bought a TV from argos which had a sticker on the box saying:

two person indeed but did i need another person?

did i heck, well, just within sight of home it started to slip a bit on the bicycle (strolling beside the bicycle not madly cycling along) and in fact when i got it to the front door i had to ask for dinah's help to get it off the bike and into the flat..

so now we can watch DVD's better quality than my computer gives and we can watch BBC2 pretty well and all the other channels except channel 5 fairly poorly until next friday when virgin media are installing our digital TV ness and then... well that'll be quite something, let me tell you x

short on sleep

i worked last night instead of tonight and by chance my dad is watching the cricket today so me & felicity are meeting him for dinner tonight... i forgot to remind dinah to record heroes for me last night, and i wonder if she did it anyway?...

2 nights ago i slept badly, worked all day yesterday and then gigged in the evening...

i was pretty fragile by the 2nd set but then i played the opening to gymnopedie no.1 (i can only play the opening so far, but then that's the bit everyone knows - dinah knows it as bom ching... bom ching... from the amount of times i've called it that but claims not to actually know what it is...) and i heard a voice behind me say... oh how lovely - i must get a piano... and as i improvised over those 2 chords (with the leaping left hand) the room gradually quietened and i think i'm right in saying i brought a hushed silence to the room (just for a moment)...

not that anyone clapped or anything, that's not what you get in this kind of gig, i've had it once in the 8 gigs i've done there... after my last tune - which generally is april in paris at the moment...

anyway this revived me and i felt a little less like i was being eaten by flesh eating beetles...

i came home and foolishly fell into watching TV with dinah gradually curling up and sleeping on my shoulder, in the middle of the night i saw that the skulls was just over an hour in and i'd been vaguely wanting to see it for a little while, so i found ITV2 + 1, and watched it, and it was pretty good, it's got that guy from CSI in it as a senator...

then immediately after that the larry sanders show was on over on ITV4 so i couldn't not watch it... it was fantastic...

crept into bed around 3:30... was up @ 8 for the dawn project...

so still very short on sleep...

think i'm going to skip over to a mossbros in muswell hill to book my suit for trave & clementine's wedding...

slow but nice day...

princess mononoke

i'm not sure when but about a month ago i started watching princess mononoke on filmfour, but had to stop for some reason... i started watching it knowing that i could'nt watch the whole thing...

i remember being really struck by it... by how a complex story is built up slowly and meticulously... it's animated...

so it was on again tonight and i managed to get the remote to work for once and watched it...

less satisfying than the 1st hour had been - partly because it was broken up over about a month, but still very good... visually pleasing...

..

i'm in a strange place with the words... i've done a couple of experiments with how i wanted the words to fit with the film and it's proving harder than i thought... i'm almost at the point where i'm going to have much fewer words...

x