30 September 2003
Fun note: Phone numbers
Call Apollo cinemas on 01229 433048 for a brilliant pre-recorded message.
At university we were always calling Tom Cobleigh Plc and asking to be put on hold to hear the song about Tom Cobleigh and his exotic farmyard animals. The company has been taken over now, so I guess it no longer works: 020 8686 8923.
Call Apollo cinemas on 01229 433048 for a brilliant pre-recorded message.
At university we were always calling Tom Cobleigh Plc and asking to be put on hold to hear the song about Tom Cobleigh and his exotic farmyard animals. The company has been taken over now, so I guess it no longer works: 020 8686 8923.
Life note: Detox
Following over a fortnight of alcoholic excess, starting well before Brazil and culminating in rather too much beer, wine, gin and brandy at Fergal and Deepa's house on Saturday night, I declared myself in a state of emergency detox - meaning: no processed, artificial, fatty or sugared foods and no alcohol or caffeine, for one entire week.
The first half is fine - I don't much care for processed foods. But no alcohol for an entrire week? Yeah, right - I guess sometimes it's the thought that counts!
Last night - Detox: Day One - was the first test. Dan invited us all to The George Inn on Borough High Street, where the sweet scent of real ales mingled with the delicious vapour from Abi's gin and tonic. As I sipped my third cloying cola, even the stale stench of beer stains on the floor began to appeal. I found it hard to find something to enjoy drinking - cola has caffeine, so that's out. Orange juice is okay, but I drink it too quickly. They don't serve milk. Ginger beer makes me sneeze. By the end of the evening I found my detox tipple - lime with tonic makes a drink so bitter and unpleasant that you cannot gulp it all down, keeping you in tandem with your friends, and is low in sugar and chemicals so you don't get a headache.
I cannot seriously see this as a legitimate way to live my life, but as Dan pointed out, the greatest argument in favour of the detox is that I'm already having trouble avoiding alcohol, and it's only day one
Following over a fortnight of alcoholic excess, starting well before Brazil and culminating in rather too much beer, wine, gin and brandy at Fergal and Deepa's house on Saturday night, I declared myself in a state of emergency detox - meaning: no processed, artificial, fatty or sugared foods and no alcohol or caffeine, for one entire week.
The first half is fine - I don't much care for processed foods. But no alcohol for an entrire week? Yeah, right - I guess sometimes it's the thought that counts!
Last night - Detox: Day One - was the first test. Dan invited us all to The George Inn on Borough High Street, where the sweet scent of real ales mingled with the delicious vapour from Abi's gin and tonic. As I sipped my third cloying cola, even the stale stench of beer stains on the floor began to appeal. I found it hard to find something to enjoy drinking - cola has caffeine, so that's out. Orange juice is okay, but I drink it too quickly. They don't serve milk. Ginger beer makes me sneeze. By the end of the evening I found my detox tipple - lime with tonic makes a drink so bitter and unpleasant that you cannot gulp it all down, keeping you in tandem with your friends, and is low in sugar and chemicals so you don't get a headache.
I cannot seriously see this as a legitimate way to live my life, but as Dan pointed out, the greatest argument in favour of the detox is that I'm already having trouble avoiding alcohol, and it's only day one
29 September 2003
Life note: Coffee
Costa Coffee made an offer I couldn't refuse yesterday: buy a 'massimo' coffee for two quid and get a muffin for free. It transpired a massimo comes in a bowl big enough to drown a baby in, and my body was still counting the cost at four the next morning as I lay sleeplessly in bed and watched the minutes tick by.
Oh my, I shall not drink caffeine ever again.
Costa Coffee made an offer I couldn't refuse yesterday: buy a 'massimo' coffee for two quid and get a muffin for free. It transpired a massimo comes in a bowl big enough to drown a baby in, and my body was still counting the cost at four the next morning as I lay sleeplessly in bed and watched the minutes tick by.
Oh my, I shall not drink caffeine ever again.
Movie review: Stitch! The Movie
Lilo & Stitch was one of the strongest animated features I have ever seen - intelligent, comical and devoid of musical numbers, it had everything a Disney movie should have. You'd think Walt has all the money he needs now - especially since he's been dead since 1966 - but sadly it seems to be his policy to bring out low-budget sequels, cobbled together for instant video release, to cash in on the successes of better conceived movies. And so, 'Stitch! The Movie' was born, and turned out to be nothing more than a series of awkward sketches, weak repeat-until-funny gags, and (perhaps more importantly for Disney) a full-length lead-in to the new childrens' tv series 'The Adventures of Lilo & Stitch', already in production.
For me, at least, the adventures of Lilo & Stitch still end with the Grand Councilwoman of the United Galactic Federation returning to her spaceship, leaving Stitch, Pleakley and Jumba to live the rest of their lives in Hawaii. Don't spoil the dream, Walt!
Lilo & Stitch was one of the strongest animated features I have ever seen - intelligent, comical and devoid of musical numbers, it had everything a Disney movie should have. You'd think Walt has all the money he needs now - especially since he's been dead since 1966 - but sadly it seems to be his policy to bring out low-budget sequels, cobbled together for instant video release, to cash in on the successes of better conceived movies. And so, 'Stitch! The Movie' was born, and turned out to be nothing more than a series of awkward sketches, weak repeat-until-funny gags, and (perhaps more importantly for Disney) a full-length lead-in to the new childrens' tv series 'The Adventures of Lilo & Stitch', already in production.
For me, at least, the adventures of Lilo & Stitch still end with the Grand Councilwoman of the United Galactic Federation returning to her spaceship, leaving Stitch, Pleakley and Jumba to live the rest of their lives in Hawaii. Don't spoil the dream, Walt!
Set report: The Lighthouse
I had planned to spend Saturday morning, and most of the afternoon, snuggled up in bed and pretending the rest of the world did not exist. Unfortunately, the rest of the world did exist, and it was texting me to go to Kilburn and be in a movie. I don't often get asked to be in movies, so I dutifuly dragged myself out of bed and caught the tube north. A friend of a friend was making a movie called 'The Lighthouse' and desperately needed 'background artistes' ('extras') to fill in some gaps. Although I was initially excited to hear I would be playing a zombie, it turned out we were the boring type of zombie - the type that just sits around in bars chatting.
It was hard to work out the full plot from just the scene I saw being filmed: it would seem there is a very pretty barman who talks to a pretty girl, who talks to a less pretty man, who holds the bottom of a more pretty girl. At one point, the first pretty girl drops some photographs; prior to this, the less pretty man had shaken hands with the very pretty barman. There was also a bit with a briefcase.
The director's mother explained that she didn't know the full plot, but had gathered that there was a big cloud over London, which explained the need for a Lighthouse. The producer explained to me that the whole thing was set in a post-apocalyptic future which was by turns both ultra-modern and technologically medieval, although he seemed hazy on the presence of zombies in the pub, and was unable to explain where the cloud had come from.
My scene went very well - I had to molest the director's mother and then - when the pretty girl walked by - we all had to crowd around her menacingly. All told, it took around five hours to get this much done. I'm glad I didn't stay in bed but - lacking any form of patience - I'm even more glad I'm not in the film industry full time.
I had planned to spend Saturday morning, and most of the afternoon, snuggled up in bed and pretending the rest of the world did not exist. Unfortunately, the rest of the world did exist, and it was texting me to go to Kilburn and be in a movie. I don't often get asked to be in movies, so I dutifuly dragged myself out of bed and caught the tube north. A friend of a friend was making a movie called 'The Lighthouse' and desperately needed 'background artistes' ('extras') to fill in some gaps. Although I was initially excited to hear I would be playing a zombie, it turned out we were the boring type of zombie - the type that just sits around in bars chatting.
It was hard to work out the full plot from just the scene I saw being filmed: it would seem there is a very pretty barman who talks to a pretty girl, who talks to a less pretty man, who holds the bottom of a more pretty girl. At one point, the first pretty girl drops some photographs; prior to this, the less pretty man had shaken hands with the very pretty barman. There was also a bit with a briefcase.
The director's mother explained that she didn't know the full plot, but had gathered that there was a big cloud over London, which explained the need for a Lighthouse. The producer explained to me that the whole thing was set in a post-apocalyptic future which was by turns both ultra-modern and technologically medieval, although he seemed hazy on the presence of zombies in the pub, and was unable to explain where the cloud had come from.
My scene went very well - I had to molest the director's mother and then - when the pretty girl walked by - we all had to crowd around her menacingly. All told, it took around five hours to get this much done. I'm glad I didn't stay in bed but - lacking any form of patience - I'm even more glad I'm not in the film industry full time.
Vacation report: Rio de Janeiro
Okay, so: a full fun filled report of my holiday in Brazil will appear in this slot soon - once the thick fog of cachaca has lifted from my mind and I can remember what on earth I was doing over there for so long.
Update (23/10/2003): No, really. A full fun filled report will appear here real soon.
Update (13/05/2004): Okay, I don't how I did it, but I finally got round to writing up the holiday. Just reading it through for spelling errors makes me long to go back again, however you will probably find it unnecessarily detailed. But guess what? I don't care. I'm going to drink some water now.
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Friday 12 September
Ollivia and I started our holiday with a huge amount of waiting. First we waited for two hours at Heathrow, pootling around pretending to be interested in what the Duty Free shop had to offer. Next we waited for three hours in Madrid, where we cunningly avoided pootling around Duty Free - since it was shut - and played two-player Ex-Libris instead (a game with very different rules to normal Ex-Libris, and possibly even more owl clits) Finally, just as we were beginning to enjoy Madrid, we flew to Brazil. This meant waiting around for ten and a half hours in a very cramped seat, and we soon found that Iberia Airlines utterly sucks - the entertainment in this ten and a half hour flight comprised a single movie on a television at the front end of the cabin, and a solitary glass of wine.
Saturday 13 September
After a brief snooze on the plane, I woke to watch the sun rise over the Amazonian rain forest. Pretty. By 7am we arrived in Brazil. Zack turned up a fashionable twenty minutes late, we all politely shook hands, and he drove us up into the mountains. It being 7am, and Olivia and I having been denied sleep for the past sixteen hours of travel, the logical first step was to buy a big box of beer. We perched on a wall overlooking the city and worked our way through the beer whilst Zack pointed out the major landmarks. He warned us that he'd broken up with his girlfriend, Emilia, the night before, and she'd tried to break his nose, which struck me as a problem since we were supposed to be staying in her flat. Still, when we got there she seemed wholly oblivious to the previous night's events, and so we sat around drinking beer and listening to old records.
For lunch, we bought extra beer (fighting off the beggars) and headed into the posh part of town to see two old women called Dan and Dexter. Zack used to go out with Dan's daughter, and she was leaving for the interior the next day, so naturally she wanted two strange English tourists to come round to her sister's house for lunch. We ate huge amounts of chicken and pretended to understand what the two women were saying, until eventually we fell alseep on the sofa and didn't awaken until Emilia arrived in her car to take us home. Olivia had a nap whilst Zack and I chatted. We had been frightened Zack would have grown up and become more serious, but fortunately he was just like that bit at the end of A.I. when the aliens recreate the robot's mother for one day only: here was Zack, walking and talking exactly like he always used to be, but within ten days he would be gone again.
In the evening we drove down to Santa Teresa with Emilia and Du. Brazilians are hopeless with food, but more than make up for it with their drink, so we avoided the bland soup and dry bread in favour of the much nicer cachaca - a sort of rum you take with crushed lime, sugar and ice. I stumbled home ready for my bed, and got a dirty piece of foam matting on the floor.
Sunday 14 September
With jet lag in our favour, we woke up at 6 in the morning and dragged Zack out of bed. We had planned to go to the beach, but huge dark clouds were pouring off the mountains so we figured it was a bad idea. Emilia's apartment is perched high in the mountains, with a paranamic view of Botafoga beach and the Sugar Loaf mountain (and, really, the resemblence to a loaf of sugar is quite striking), however on this morning the sky was so thick with clouds the loaf was barely visible. Unable to go to the beach, and with all this knowledge about the weather, our irrational new plan was to go even higher into the mountains and "enjoy the view". We soon came to understand what an act of insanity this was as we wound higher and higher into the mountains. The fog got thicker and thicker until it was no longer possible for me to see where I was driving. Eventually we came across something called the Emperor's Table, which Zack was very excited about, although it was an utterly unremarkable object which is deservedly missing from the guide books. We stood on it for a while and admired the absolute whiteness of the fog - where Zack assured us there was normally a spectacular view - and then found ourselves so utterly sopping wet we just went running down the hill in the rain instead.
Wet to the bone and beginning to chill, we headed to a Mexican "All You Can Eat For Twenty Reals" (around £4) restaurant, and devoured plate after plate of nachos, followed by mountains of tortillas, guacamole and chilli. We even splashed out on an enormous jug of fresh strawberry margarhita (about £6). The meal lasted forever, and Zack, Olivia and I entertained Emilia with tales of the time we plotted to steal the Vila Europa sign, the time we tore off toilet seats in Dublin, and the time he vomitted up the stairs. Happy days.
In the evening we went to a small cafe near the Jockey Club and ate pizza - squirting on ketchup, as is the Brazilian tradition - and drinking endless pots of cachaca. This was followed by an utterly miserable nightclub. It turns out that Brazilians don't do fun nightclubs - i.e. the type with silly music and even sillier dancing. Their nightclubs have a single steady beat, and the people on the dance floor just sway inconsolably. Zack spent the evening either kissing Emilia or chatting up young Brazilian men. I ended up chatting to a 21 year old economics student called Marcello. Our gift for languages was poor - I just about grasped his grandfather had moved here from Portugal in 1928, though couldn't work out why the fuck he might be telling me this - however at the end he gave me his phone number, a quick snog, and a wave goodbye. Not for the first time, I concluded I liked being in Rio.
Monday 15 September
Monday was the first day with good weather, so we packed up our beachwear and headed down to Ipanema. The sea is ferocious there, with waves twice my height crashing down at the water's edge, so we had much fun paddling and trying to stay alive. Come lunchtime Olivia was ill and had to go home to bed, so Zack and I tucked into a hearty meal of pumpkin, rice and beans and took a leisurely walk down Ipanema beach. We stopped and sat on a pile of rocks to watch the sun set and the surfers fighting against the waves, and then headed into Copacabana.
At my insistence we went home to Santa Teresa on the tram. This is one of the oldest trams in the world and is completely ramshackle. We were lucky to get seats, but those who didn't make it had to perch on the running boards and cling to the sides. This arrangement was inconvenient when the tram squeezes past cars, and the passenger on the outside had to run up the bonnet, across the roof and down the boot; however it was outright terrifying when the tram crossed a viaduct, and the people were suspended over a sheer drop on either side
By the time we got home, we were all shattered again, so we dialled in a pizza, drank a few beers, and went to bed.
Tuesday 16 September
With the weather fine yet again, and Olivia's illness all cleared up, we headed down to Ipanema beach. Olivia and Zack went off to drown whilst I guarded our things and read a splendid book. After a brief interlude of doing other beachlike things - building castles, burying Zack, bat and ball - we caught the attention of a cocktail waiter. Why beaches in Britain don't have cocktail waiters I have no idea. We decided to be healthy and have just one caipi each, but we all got different flavours, and liked each other's so much that we couldn't help being even more healthy by all ordering a couple more each. By this stage we were completely gone, and I have no idea how much more we drank. Cachaca on the beach is not like its domesticated form in the restaurants: it comes raw and strong, in huge plastic glasses, and can come flavoured with cashew-fruit or strawberry, as well as the usual lime. Off our heads on grog we were the focal point of the beach salesmen - we bought cashew nuts and a hand bag, and turned away sunglasses, towels, cheese on a stick, prawns and numerous other offerings. Ipanema is a regular Picadilly Circus.
The weather turned around four o'clock, and the familiar black clouds came marching over the mountains. We gathered our things together and found we didn't have enough money to pay for our drinks. It wasn't much - perhaps four quid overall - however it was four quid we didn't have. I rushed off in my swim shorts to find a bank, but none would accept my card, and I returned to find Zack, Olivia and the beachman all standing on an otherwise empty beach, the sky swirling and black, the wind howling off the sea. The solution was to leave me hostage in a kiosk whilst Zack and Olivia went to find money - a dark and depressing time that seemed to last forever.
Finally able to leave the beach, I only discovered how drunk I had become when I slipped and fell to the floor, and lay in a puddle laughing to myself. We went to a "per kilo" restaurant (like pick 'n' mix, only with food) where the spoons were - mysteriously - electrified. The staff would not listen when we explained that there must be a loose wire, since they wore boots so thick they had no problems with it. Olivia was likewise oblivious until I taught her the special trick - take off your sandals and you get the full electric kick. She didn't seem terribly grateful for her education.
We had planned to have a quick meal and head home, however it continued to pour with rain, so we ordered more beer and stayed until we were even more drunk than "way, way too drunk". Once the rain ran out we headed home, stopping only to buy what I thought was wine, but turned out to be alcoholic hell and liquid guilt. We took a taxi home and fed the best part of a bottle of wine to the driver.
Drunk out of our skulls, we sat in Alessandro's room and listened to Via Con Me by Paolo Conte on permanent loop. Olivia crashed asleep, and Zack and I became indiscreet, until Emilia caught us both, beat the shit out of Zack, and I fell asleep feeling like I lived in some bad Spanish soap opera.
Wednesday 17 September
I woke up so hungover I could barely move, desperately craving pumpkin. Certain events the previous night meant I wasn't too keen to see Emilia in the near future, and so once I knew the coast was clear I dragged Olivia out for a walk to find some lunch whilst Zack had a special talk. It transpired Emilia was angry I was avoiding her, and she told Zack I would have apologised if I was a "real man". As it happens, I'm one part real man, one part apathetic fool, and three parts coward. Naturally, then, I fled the house as soon as possible, and Olivia and I found ourselves walking along the tram tracks from Santa Teresa, down into the town to find something to eat.
The streets in Santa Teresa are not the best to walk along. The slim slip of pavement that appears every five hundred metres is instantly put out of action by cars parked fully across them, and those not yet dominated by cars are sufficiently splattered in dog shit and open bags of trash to make you think twice about walking on them. The roads, meanwhile, are dominated by combi-vans, roaring trams and speeding cars, with the odd broken pipe creating puddles to get drenched by. Still, with my raging hangover, it was nice to get exercise and fresh air.
I desperately wanted to eat in Santa Teresa since, two years before, Seamus and I had found the best sushi restaurant in the world there. I'd been fantasising about it for twenty-four months, however when we got there it was all closed up. We settled for a creperie, that turned out not to sell any crepes at all. The waiter explained that the extensive menu was effectively meaningless since they only served one dish. This I dutifully ordered - and received a giant platter of greasy meat and vegetables, hidden under a lettuce leaf, a big bowl of rice and a sort of ground-rice sludge. I ate some of the vegetables - so hungover I could barely chew - and hid the rest back under the lettuce leaf.
Zack turned up and explained that Emilia was only furious with herself - thankfully, her ongoing therapy had blurred the real issues and she genuinely thought she was in the wrong - and so gladly none of our posessions had been thrown into the street. Zack took us down the mountain, past the roots of Rio and the Spanish steps, to a Japanese restaurant in Lapa. I thought I'd finally get the food I'd been craving, but somehow we ended up with fried beans and big Brazilian fishcakes. Those whacky Japanese!
From there we caught a taxi to the red beach and played briefly on the beach and rocks before climbing through a roughshod jungle path up the shorter of the Sugar Loaf peaks. The top of this peak was very quiet and had astonishing views. We walked to the base of the actual Sugar Loaf, which soared above us, and then spent some time sunbathing on the rock, waving to the cable cars which went over us. We ate ice cream, drank water, tucked into Fandangos, and then caught the cable car ourselves. Thanks to time wasted eating Fandangos we missed the sunset entirely, and got up just in time to see the clouds coming in, and feel the chill. When we left, the staff followed us too, so I guess we were up there quite late.
So far the holiday had felt too structured and Barnesian - breakfast in the apartment, driving everywhere in a car, eating only in smart restaurants. I missed the spontaneity of my last time in Rio - wandering out to Suco Mania for breakfast, using the underground to get around, and eating in squalid mafia restaurants. To dispel this I made us all go to the run-down area where Zack had lived the first time. We ate pasta in the mall and went to see Pirates of the Caribbean, and were so taken with the idea of pirates we decided to go to an old pirate town south of Rio the very next morning. I reasoned this would get me out of Emilia's way, too, so I thought it a brilliant plan.
Thursday 18 September
Hoping to escape the apartment and hole myself up in some pirate town for the remainder of the holidy, I was disappointed to realise that a meeting with Emilia was inevitable. My body was awash with equal amounts of raw fear and sheer guilt - guilt like I'd never known before. Fortunately, I just needed to say I was sorry, and she needed to say she was hurt, and we hugged, and we were friends again. Bingo. I'll make a cad of me yet.
Our first appointment of the day, after a quick suco, was to go as far south as possible on the tube, tie Olivia to a piece of wood and throw her off a cliff. I was too frightened to do it too, but when I saw her hanglider smoothly float off into the air and disappear behind a cloud, I realised this was probably a far safer way of getting down the mountain than clinging to the back of a homemade, open-top jeep that bounced wildly around the dirt track road.
We did a few time filling exercises - posting postcards, visiting Sandpiper, earing sushi, buying a case of beer, crisps and chocolate. Finally, after many hours of waiting, we discovered we were critically late for our bus to Parathy, and had to rush across the city in a panic. We only just made the bus, and slipped off into the night like the pirates we'd soon be.
We arrived in Parathy just before midnight, and found it to me a very different town to Rio - laid out in a grid pattern, the houses were grand and colonial and the roads themselves made from giant cobblestones the size of a dog. We checked into a crazy hotel full of moneys and dogs, and got a huge attic room to ourselves with a minstrel's gallery, three beds, a hammock, balcony and built-in monkeys. After eating lots of pasta and the now routine caipirhinia in a closed Italian restaurant (run, of course, my Mexicans), we all rolled back home to bed.
Friday 19 September
At breakfast we hand fed bread and fruit to five or six little lemur monkeys who hopped around the trees in the garden. We tucked into some special eggs and coffee, then wandered down to the harbour to choose a boat for the day. Once we had selected and paid up, twelve or so twentysomething tourists also turned up to use our boat. They explained they were spending the next month travelling across South America, and given we had just three days left this was very depressing. We drowned our sorrows with caipis, relaxed on the dexk with our books, stopping for the odd swim, to look at some golden potto monkeys, or to build sandcastles on isolated beaches. It was a good lazy day.
In the evening we went to an Italian restaurant and ate a huge amount of Italian food, for virtually no money. We made friends with a little beggar boy, and when he saw us settling the 124 reals (eight quid each) bill his eyes widened and mouth fell open in shock - he said he'd never seen so much money. This made us all feel very bad about the exchange rate, so we bought some of his filthy home made chocolates, and then went off to spend yet more of Brazil's monopoly money.
We ended up playing pool in a hotel bar - the room was so small it was impossible to use the cues, but our senses were already dulled by cachaca so we did what we could, aided with a vivacious man called Kevin. Jet lag still our enemy, Olivia and I headed off to bed, whilst Zack and Kevin went to find a beach party.
Saturday 20 September
We spent Saturday on the beach at Parathy. We all drank strawberry juice, ate cashew nuts and lazed by the sea. Olivia and Zack kept forcing me to read Zack's book to them, so I copied my grandad's trick and included several new characters, including an impromptu visit from the pie 'n' peas man. The lead character also died unexpectedly halfway through the first chapter.
Zack invented a splendid game called James Town, which lasted us back to the bus and the journey home. After a quick Mexican meal we headed home to change for a night on the town, but as soon as I saw the bed I realised I was going nowhere, and instead had sweet sweet sleep.
Sunday 21 September
It being our last full day in Rio, Olivia and I were keen to get up and out fast. Unfortunately, Zack and Emilia had a better idea - to bicker for an hour about where and what to eat, and then take us to a food bar where the ordering system was so complex Olivia and I simply had to give up and accept whatever Zack arranged for us. We ended up with greasy dough balls stuffed with ham. To top this off we bought beer, nuts and chocolate and headed off into the local park, which sat at the base of Corcovado - one of the tallest mountains around Rio, atop which sits Mr Jesus Christ.
Emilia stayed behind whilst the rest of us struggled up the mountain through the undergrowth - clinging to roots and branches, hopping over waterfalls and struggling across narrow walls, stopping every so often for a beer or slug of water. It got steeper and steeper and more and more muddy the higher we went, and the undergrowth grew denser and denser until it almost felt like dusk. We finally re-emerged a quarter mile from the top on a tramline, and sat on top of a shed to absord the view. The Christ itself is not as much fun as clambering through jungle and seeing monkeys, but it was relaxing to lie down in its shadow and stare up at its empty, gormless face.
We got a little caught up in drinking beer and writing postcards, and before we knew it it was getting quite late. Being so close to the equator, Rio is plunged into night at 6pm everyday. Getting down the mountain was a real race, and halfway down dusk hit, and a lot of our work was done by feel. We finally emerged at the bottom in the blackness of light, a little grateful to be back in civilisation, and Emilia drove us home to shower and change.
It being our last night, we dressed up all our finery and headed into the Lapa, the trannie district, for a "traditional portuguese meal". I'm guessing the portuguese are five or six times larger than a normal man as each dish we ordered was big enough to feed an ox: big slabs of chicken coated in cheese and ham; huge barrel of chips; a vast barrel of Greek rice; beef with a sacks worth of onions, and some of the strongest caipirihnas in the world. Despite this, perhaps because of the days exertions, we devoured it all greedily, and then caught a taxi to Copacabana, where we sat by a kiosk on the beach and drank three caipirihnas each. Zack then tried to get us to go to Le Boy, but I was by now too drunk and tired, and Olivia wasn't much up for it either. We ended up in an Irish pub, which was monstrous, and then we just taxied home and slept slept slept.
Monday 22 September
Our last day in Brazil. We packed up, gave Emilia a thankyou skirt, loaded up the car and drove into town. We stopped off in Copacabana for traditional pursuits like sucos, chicken-bread and C&A . In C&A we had splendid fun dressing up in the worst clothing we could find, although no one touched the rather unpleasant under-eight girls' underwear, which had vastly inappropriate slogans on like "Come and get it!" and "Tasty!". We stopped for one last walk along the beach and, in a fit of nostalgia, bought whatever the vendors tried to sell us - sunglasses, towels, sandcastles, coconuts: everything.
Again, we'd spent so much time passing the time that we ended up frantically late - compounded by the fact we'd temporarily lost the car. I drove a high speed to the airport, wished Zack a swift goodbye, lost another corkscrew at security, bought bottles of cachaca, and boarded the plane with seconds to spare.
... Monday bled seamlessly into Tuesday. I completely failed to fall alseep, and became very ratty in a three hour stop-over at Madrid. By the time we reached London the post-holiday blues had well and truly set in, and I completely felt I didn't belong in London, and the misery and greyness swallowed me. Ain't holidays great?!
Okay, so: a full fun filled report of my holiday in Brazil will appear in this slot soon - once the thick fog of cachaca has lifted from my mind and I can remember what on earth I was doing over there for so long.
Update (23/10/2003): No, really. A full fun filled report will appear here real soon.
Update (13/05/2004): Okay, I don't how I did it, but I finally got round to writing up the holiday. Just reading it through for spelling errors makes me long to go back again, however you will probably find it unnecessarily detailed. But guess what? I don't care. I'm going to drink some water now.
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Friday 12 September
Ollivia and I started our holiday with a huge amount of waiting. First we waited for two hours at Heathrow, pootling around pretending to be interested in what the Duty Free shop had to offer. Next we waited for three hours in Madrid, where we cunningly avoided pootling around Duty Free - since it was shut - and played two-player Ex-Libris instead (a game with very different rules to normal Ex-Libris, and possibly even more owl clits) Finally, just as we were beginning to enjoy Madrid, we flew to Brazil. This meant waiting around for ten and a half hours in a very cramped seat, and we soon found that Iberia Airlines utterly sucks - the entertainment in this ten and a half hour flight comprised a single movie on a television at the front end of the cabin, and a solitary glass of wine.
Saturday 13 September
After a brief snooze on the plane, I woke to watch the sun rise over the Amazonian rain forest. Pretty. By 7am we arrived in Brazil. Zack turned up a fashionable twenty minutes late, we all politely shook hands, and he drove us up into the mountains. It being 7am, and Olivia and I having been denied sleep for the past sixteen hours of travel, the logical first step was to buy a big box of beer. We perched on a wall overlooking the city and worked our way through the beer whilst Zack pointed out the major landmarks. He warned us that he'd broken up with his girlfriend, Emilia, the night before, and she'd tried to break his nose, which struck me as a problem since we were supposed to be staying in her flat. Still, when we got there she seemed wholly oblivious to the previous night's events, and so we sat around drinking beer and listening to old records.
For lunch, we bought extra beer (fighting off the beggars) and headed into the posh part of town to see two old women called Dan and Dexter. Zack used to go out with Dan's daughter, and she was leaving for the interior the next day, so naturally she wanted two strange English tourists to come round to her sister's house for lunch. We ate huge amounts of chicken and pretended to understand what the two women were saying, until eventually we fell alseep on the sofa and didn't awaken until Emilia arrived in her car to take us home. Olivia had a nap whilst Zack and I chatted. We had been frightened Zack would have grown up and become more serious, but fortunately he was just like that bit at the end of A.I. when the aliens recreate the robot's mother for one day only: here was Zack, walking and talking exactly like he always used to be, but within ten days he would be gone again.
In the evening we drove down to Santa Teresa with Emilia and Du. Brazilians are hopeless with food, but more than make up for it with their drink, so we avoided the bland soup and dry bread in favour of the much nicer cachaca - a sort of rum you take with crushed lime, sugar and ice. I stumbled home ready for my bed, and got a dirty piece of foam matting on the floor.
Sunday 14 September
With jet lag in our favour, we woke up at 6 in the morning and dragged Zack out of bed. We had planned to go to the beach, but huge dark clouds were pouring off the mountains so we figured it was a bad idea. Emilia's apartment is perched high in the mountains, with a paranamic view of Botafoga beach and the Sugar Loaf mountain (and, really, the resemblence to a loaf of sugar is quite striking), however on this morning the sky was so thick with clouds the loaf was barely visible. Unable to go to the beach, and with all this knowledge about the weather, our irrational new plan was to go even higher into the mountains and "enjoy the view". We soon came to understand what an act of insanity this was as we wound higher and higher into the mountains. The fog got thicker and thicker until it was no longer possible for me to see where I was driving. Eventually we came across something called the Emperor's Table, which Zack was very excited about, although it was an utterly unremarkable object which is deservedly missing from the guide books. We stood on it for a while and admired the absolute whiteness of the fog - where Zack assured us there was normally a spectacular view - and then found ourselves so utterly sopping wet we just went running down the hill in the rain instead.
Wet to the bone and beginning to chill, we headed to a Mexican "All You Can Eat For Twenty Reals" (around £4) restaurant, and devoured plate after plate of nachos, followed by mountains of tortillas, guacamole and chilli. We even splashed out on an enormous jug of fresh strawberry margarhita (about £6). The meal lasted forever, and Zack, Olivia and I entertained Emilia with tales of the time we plotted to steal the Vila Europa sign, the time we tore off toilet seats in Dublin, and the time he vomitted up the stairs. Happy days.
In the evening we went to a small cafe near the Jockey Club and ate pizza - squirting on ketchup, as is the Brazilian tradition - and drinking endless pots of cachaca. This was followed by an utterly miserable nightclub. It turns out that Brazilians don't do fun nightclubs - i.e. the type with silly music and even sillier dancing. Their nightclubs have a single steady beat, and the people on the dance floor just sway inconsolably. Zack spent the evening either kissing Emilia or chatting up young Brazilian men. I ended up chatting to a 21 year old economics student called Marcello. Our gift for languages was poor - I just about grasped his grandfather had moved here from Portugal in 1928, though couldn't work out why the fuck he might be telling me this - however at the end he gave me his phone number, a quick snog, and a wave goodbye. Not for the first time, I concluded I liked being in Rio.
Monday 15 September
Monday was the first day with good weather, so we packed up our beachwear and headed down to Ipanema. The sea is ferocious there, with waves twice my height crashing down at the water's edge, so we had much fun paddling and trying to stay alive. Come lunchtime Olivia was ill and had to go home to bed, so Zack and I tucked into a hearty meal of pumpkin, rice and beans and took a leisurely walk down Ipanema beach. We stopped and sat on a pile of rocks to watch the sun set and the surfers fighting against the waves, and then headed into Copacabana.
At my insistence we went home to Santa Teresa on the tram. This is one of the oldest trams in the world and is completely ramshackle. We were lucky to get seats, but those who didn't make it had to perch on the running boards and cling to the sides. This arrangement was inconvenient when the tram squeezes past cars, and the passenger on the outside had to run up the bonnet, across the roof and down the boot; however it was outright terrifying when the tram crossed a viaduct, and the people were suspended over a sheer drop on either side
By the time we got home, we were all shattered again, so we dialled in a pizza, drank a few beers, and went to bed.
Tuesday 16 September
With the weather fine yet again, and Olivia's illness all cleared up, we headed down to Ipanema beach. Olivia and Zack went off to drown whilst I guarded our things and read a splendid book. After a brief interlude of doing other beachlike things - building castles, burying Zack, bat and ball - we caught the attention of a cocktail waiter. Why beaches in Britain don't have cocktail waiters I have no idea. We decided to be healthy and have just one caipi each, but we all got different flavours, and liked each other's so much that we couldn't help being even more healthy by all ordering a couple more each. By this stage we were completely gone, and I have no idea how much more we drank. Cachaca on the beach is not like its domesticated form in the restaurants: it comes raw and strong, in huge plastic glasses, and can come flavoured with cashew-fruit or strawberry, as well as the usual lime. Off our heads on grog we were the focal point of the beach salesmen - we bought cashew nuts and a hand bag, and turned away sunglasses, towels, cheese on a stick, prawns and numerous other offerings. Ipanema is a regular Picadilly Circus.
The weather turned around four o'clock, and the familiar black clouds came marching over the mountains. We gathered our things together and found we didn't have enough money to pay for our drinks. It wasn't much - perhaps four quid overall - however it was four quid we didn't have. I rushed off in my swim shorts to find a bank, but none would accept my card, and I returned to find Zack, Olivia and the beachman all standing on an otherwise empty beach, the sky swirling and black, the wind howling off the sea. The solution was to leave me hostage in a kiosk whilst Zack and Olivia went to find money - a dark and depressing time that seemed to last forever.
Finally able to leave the beach, I only discovered how drunk I had become when I slipped and fell to the floor, and lay in a puddle laughing to myself. We went to a "per kilo" restaurant (like pick 'n' mix, only with food) where the spoons were - mysteriously - electrified. The staff would not listen when we explained that there must be a loose wire, since they wore boots so thick they had no problems with it. Olivia was likewise oblivious until I taught her the special trick - take off your sandals and you get the full electric kick. She didn't seem terribly grateful for her education.
We had planned to have a quick meal and head home, however it continued to pour with rain, so we ordered more beer and stayed until we were even more drunk than "way, way too drunk". Once the rain ran out we headed home, stopping only to buy what I thought was wine, but turned out to be alcoholic hell and liquid guilt. We took a taxi home and fed the best part of a bottle of wine to the driver.
Drunk out of our skulls, we sat in Alessandro's room and listened to Via Con Me by Paolo Conte on permanent loop. Olivia crashed asleep, and Zack and I became indiscreet, until Emilia caught us both, beat the shit out of Zack, and I fell asleep feeling like I lived in some bad Spanish soap opera.
Wednesday 17 September
I woke up so hungover I could barely move, desperately craving pumpkin. Certain events the previous night meant I wasn't too keen to see Emilia in the near future, and so once I knew the coast was clear I dragged Olivia out for a walk to find some lunch whilst Zack had a special talk. It transpired Emilia was angry I was avoiding her, and she told Zack I would have apologised if I was a "real man". As it happens, I'm one part real man, one part apathetic fool, and three parts coward. Naturally, then, I fled the house as soon as possible, and Olivia and I found ourselves walking along the tram tracks from Santa Teresa, down into the town to find something to eat.
The streets in Santa Teresa are not the best to walk along. The slim slip of pavement that appears every five hundred metres is instantly put out of action by cars parked fully across them, and those not yet dominated by cars are sufficiently splattered in dog shit and open bags of trash to make you think twice about walking on them. The roads, meanwhile, are dominated by combi-vans, roaring trams and speeding cars, with the odd broken pipe creating puddles to get drenched by. Still, with my raging hangover, it was nice to get exercise and fresh air.
I desperately wanted to eat in Santa Teresa since, two years before, Seamus and I had found the best sushi restaurant in the world there. I'd been fantasising about it for twenty-four months, however when we got there it was all closed up. We settled for a creperie, that turned out not to sell any crepes at all. The waiter explained that the extensive menu was effectively meaningless since they only served one dish. This I dutifully ordered - and received a giant platter of greasy meat and vegetables, hidden under a lettuce leaf, a big bowl of rice and a sort of ground-rice sludge. I ate some of the vegetables - so hungover I could barely chew - and hid the rest back under the lettuce leaf.
Zack turned up and explained that Emilia was only furious with herself - thankfully, her ongoing therapy had blurred the real issues and she genuinely thought she was in the wrong - and so gladly none of our posessions had been thrown into the street. Zack took us down the mountain, past the roots of Rio and the Spanish steps, to a Japanese restaurant in Lapa. I thought I'd finally get the food I'd been craving, but somehow we ended up with fried beans and big Brazilian fishcakes. Those whacky Japanese!
From there we caught a taxi to the red beach and played briefly on the beach and rocks before climbing through a roughshod jungle path up the shorter of the Sugar Loaf peaks. The top of this peak was very quiet and had astonishing views. We walked to the base of the actual Sugar Loaf, which soared above us, and then spent some time sunbathing on the rock, waving to the cable cars which went over us. We ate ice cream, drank water, tucked into Fandangos, and then caught the cable car ourselves. Thanks to time wasted eating Fandangos we missed the sunset entirely, and got up just in time to see the clouds coming in, and feel the chill. When we left, the staff followed us too, so I guess we were up there quite late.
So far the holiday had felt too structured and Barnesian - breakfast in the apartment, driving everywhere in a car, eating only in smart restaurants. I missed the spontaneity of my last time in Rio - wandering out to Suco Mania for breakfast, using the underground to get around, and eating in squalid mafia restaurants. To dispel this I made us all go to the run-down area where Zack had lived the first time. We ate pasta in the mall and went to see Pirates of the Caribbean, and were so taken with the idea of pirates we decided to go to an old pirate town south of Rio the very next morning. I reasoned this would get me out of Emilia's way, too, so I thought it a brilliant plan.
Thursday 18 September
Hoping to escape the apartment and hole myself up in some pirate town for the remainder of the holidy, I was disappointed to realise that a meeting with Emilia was inevitable. My body was awash with equal amounts of raw fear and sheer guilt - guilt like I'd never known before. Fortunately, I just needed to say I was sorry, and she needed to say she was hurt, and we hugged, and we were friends again. Bingo. I'll make a cad of me yet.
Our first appointment of the day, after a quick suco, was to go as far south as possible on the tube, tie Olivia to a piece of wood and throw her off a cliff. I was too frightened to do it too, but when I saw her hanglider smoothly float off into the air and disappear behind a cloud, I realised this was probably a far safer way of getting down the mountain than clinging to the back of a homemade, open-top jeep that bounced wildly around the dirt track road.
We did a few time filling exercises - posting postcards, visiting Sandpiper, earing sushi, buying a case of beer, crisps and chocolate. Finally, after many hours of waiting, we discovered we were critically late for our bus to Parathy, and had to rush across the city in a panic. We only just made the bus, and slipped off into the night like the pirates we'd soon be.
We arrived in Parathy just before midnight, and found it to me a very different town to Rio - laid out in a grid pattern, the houses were grand and colonial and the roads themselves made from giant cobblestones the size of a dog. We checked into a crazy hotel full of moneys and dogs, and got a huge attic room to ourselves with a minstrel's gallery, three beds, a hammock, balcony and built-in monkeys. After eating lots of pasta and the now routine caipirhinia in a closed Italian restaurant (run, of course, my Mexicans), we all rolled back home to bed.
Friday 19 September
At breakfast we hand fed bread and fruit to five or six little lemur monkeys who hopped around the trees in the garden. We tucked into some special eggs and coffee, then wandered down to the harbour to choose a boat for the day. Once we had selected and paid up, twelve or so twentysomething tourists also turned up to use our boat. They explained they were spending the next month travelling across South America, and given we had just three days left this was very depressing. We drowned our sorrows with caipis, relaxed on the dexk with our books, stopping for the odd swim, to look at some golden potto monkeys, or to build sandcastles on isolated beaches. It was a good lazy day.
In the evening we went to an Italian restaurant and ate a huge amount of Italian food, for virtually no money. We made friends with a little beggar boy, and when he saw us settling the 124 reals (eight quid each) bill his eyes widened and mouth fell open in shock - he said he'd never seen so much money. This made us all feel very bad about the exchange rate, so we bought some of his filthy home made chocolates, and then went off to spend yet more of Brazil's monopoly money.
We ended up playing pool in a hotel bar - the room was so small it was impossible to use the cues, but our senses were already dulled by cachaca so we did what we could, aided with a vivacious man called Kevin. Jet lag still our enemy, Olivia and I headed off to bed, whilst Zack and Kevin went to find a beach party.
Saturday 20 September
We spent Saturday on the beach at Parathy. We all drank strawberry juice, ate cashew nuts and lazed by the sea. Olivia and Zack kept forcing me to read Zack's book to them, so I copied my grandad's trick and included several new characters, including an impromptu visit from the pie 'n' peas man. The lead character also died unexpectedly halfway through the first chapter.
Zack invented a splendid game called James Town, which lasted us back to the bus and the journey home. After a quick Mexican meal we headed home to change for a night on the town, but as soon as I saw the bed I realised I was going nowhere, and instead had sweet sweet sleep.
Sunday 21 September
It being our last full day in Rio, Olivia and I were keen to get up and out fast. Unfortunately, Zack and Emilia had a better idea - to bicker for an hour about where and what to eat, and then take us to a food bar where the ordering system was so complex Olivia and I simply had to give up and accept whatever Zack arranged for us. We ended up with greasy dough balls stuffed with ham. To top this off we bought beer, nuts and chocolate and headed off into the local park, which sat at the base of Corcovado - one of the tallest mountains around Rio, atop which sits Mr Jesus Christ.
Emilia stayed behind whilst the rest of us struggled up the mountain through the undergrowth - clinging to roots and branches, hopping over waterfalls and struggling across narrow walls, stopping every so often for a beer or slug of water. It got steeper and steeper and more and more muddy the higher we went, and the undergrowth grew denser and denser until it almost felt like dusk. We finally re-emerged a quarter mile from the top on a tramline, and sat on top of a shed to absord the view. The Christ itself is not as much fun as clambering through jungle and seeing monkeys, but it was relaxing to lie down in its shadow and stare up at its empty, gormless face.
We got a little caught up in drinking beer and writing postcards, and before we knew it it was getting quite late. Being so close to the equator, Rio is plunged into night at 6pm everyday. Getting down the mountain was a real race, and halfway down dusk hit, and a lot of our work was done by feel. We finally emerged at the bottom in the blackness of light, a little grateful to be back in civilisation, and Emilia drove us home to shower and change.
It being our last night, we dressed up all our finery and headed into the Lapa, the trannie district, for a "traditional portuguese meal". I'm guessing the portuguese are five or six times larger than a normal man as each dish we ordered was big enough to feed an ox: big slabs of chicken coated in cheese and ham; huge barrel of chips; a vast barrel of Greek rice; beef with a sacks worth of onions, and some of the strongest caipirihnas in the world. Despite this, perhaps because of the days exertions, we devoured it all greedily, and then caught a taxi to Copacabana, where we sat by a kiosk on the beach and drank three caipirihnas each. Zack then tried to get us to go to Le Boy, but I was by now too drunk and tired, and Olivia wasn't much up for it either. We ended up in an Irish pub, which was monstrous, and then we just taxied home and slept slept slept.
Monday 22 September
Our last day in Brazil. We packed up, gave Emilia a thankyou skirt, loaded up the car and drove into town. We stopped off in Copacabana for traditional pursuits like sucos, chicken-bread and C&A . In C&A we had splendid fun dressing up in the worst clothing we could find, although no one touched the rather unpleasant under-eight girls' underwear, which had vastly inappropriate slogans on like "Come and get it!" and "Tasty!". We stopped for one last walk along the beach and, in a fit of nostalgia, bought whatever the vendors tried to sell us - sunglasses, towels, sandcastles, coconuts: everything.
Again, we'd spent so much time passing the time that we ended up frantically late - compounded by the fact we'd temporarily lost the car. I drove a high speed to the airport, wished Zack a swift goodbye, lost another corkscrew at security, bought bottles of cachaca, and boarded the plane with seconds to spare.
... Monday bled seamlessly into Tuesday. I completely failed to fall alseep, and became very ratty in a three hour stop-over at Madrid. By the time we reached London the post-holiday blues had well and truly set in, and I completely felt I didn't belong in London, and the misery and greyness swallowed me. Ain't holidays great?!
26 September 2003
Movie review: Spirited Away
The Financial Times gave this movie six stars out of a possible five. I didn't like it that much, but the surreal storyline certainly appealed - a young girl's parents turn into pigs, so she works in the local bath house, where she cleans a river god, falls in love with a dragon, and helps a baby find his place in life by turning him in to a rat. There's also a bit about a frog's greed for gold, which is surely a moral for us all.
Although beautifully drawn, the actual animation was quite poor, seeming to miss every other frame, and every so often we wandered into computer-generated territory, which blended with the art work as well as gold and shit. Recommended.
Movie review: The Italian Job
There must be better ways to watch a film than sitting five rows back from a sixteen inch television, and better reasons to watch a film than that being the only entertainment on a ten and a half hour airflight. However, I blame other factors for my failure to enjoy this movie: bland characters, forced comedy, stale storyline and predictable plot. Not even the presence of Seth Green and Ed Norton (admittedly compromised by rotten facial hair) seemed to make this pap worth watching.
Movie review: Valentin
So this little boy lives in Argentina with his grandmother, and wants to be a spaceman. Nice. And his mother has abandoned him, so he wants to find a new woman to marry his dad. Nice. And so it turns out the dad is some violent, anti-semitic freak who beat his wife up so bad her face swelled up like a baboon's ass for five years. Not so nice. A quirky, charming movie that'll have you laughing from the beginning, and shrieking with sorrow by the end.
The Financial Times gave this movie six stars out of a possible five. I didn't like it that much, but the surreal storyline certainly appealed - a young girl's parents turn into pigs, so she works in the local bath house, where she cleans a river god, falls in love with a dragon, and helps a baby find his place in life by turning him in to a rat. There's also a bit about a frog's greed for gold, which is surely a moral for us all.
Although beautifully drawn, the actual animation was quite poor, seeming to miss every other frame, and every so often we wandered into computer-generated territory, which blended with the art work as well as gold and shit. Recommended.
Movie review: The Italian Job
There must be better ways to watch a film than sitting five rows back from a sixteen inch television, and better reasons to watch a film than that being the only entertainment on a ten and a half hour airflight. However, I blame other factors for my failure to enjoy this movie: bland characters, forced comedy, stale storyline and predictable plot. Not even the presence of Seth Green and Ed Norton (admittedly compromised by rotten facial hair) seemed to make this pap worth watching.
Movie review: Valentin
So this little boy lives in Argentina with his grandmother, and wants to be a spaceman. Nice. And his mother has abandoned him, so he wants to find a new woman to marry his dad. Nice. And so it turns out the dad is some violent, anti-semitic freak who beat his wife up so bad her face swelled up like a baboon's ass for five years. Not so nice. A quirky, charming movie that'll have you laughing from the beginning, and shrieking with sorrow by the end.
11 September 2003
Observation: Career paths
After several years working in the same building, I can make the following disturbing conclusion: there is someone, somewhere, that I probably pass in the corridor every day, who - if asked by a bank manager what his job is - will be forced to come up with a euphamism for "every three days, I wipe the pubic hairs off the disinfectant blocks in the the urinals at work, and then arrange them symetrically around the drain".
Suddenly raising the minimum wage doesn't seem such a bad idea.
After several years working in the same building, I can make the following disturbing conclusion: there is someone, somewhere, that I probably pass in the corridor every day, who - if asked by a bank manager what his job is - will be forced to come up with a euphamism for "every three days, I wipe the pubic hairs off the disinfectant blocks in the the urinals at work, and then arrange them symetrically around the drain".
Suddenly raising the minimum wage doesn't seem such a bad idea.
Book review: The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time
A gentle book about a dog forked to death, and a young autistic boy's investigation of the murder. The hero's ability to let horribly tragic events to just pass him by makes his world appear much more safe and comfortable than our own, but his tendancy to become upset by the most trivial of things also adds unexpected obstacles (three yellow cars in a row, for example). The overall effect is soothing and humorous - although, I haven't finished it yet, so it could well end with giant mechanised arachnid DoomDrones being released from beneath Mrs Shears' house at number 41, which would be somewhat in contrast with the style of the first half of the book. Despite this, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
A gentle book about a dog forked to death, and a young autistic boy's investigation of the murder. The hero's ability to let horribly tragic events to just pass him by makes his world appear much more safe and comfortable than our own, but his tendancy to become upset by the most trivial of things also adds unexpected obstacles (three yellow cars in a row, for example). The overall effect is soothing and humorous - although, I haven't finished it yet, so it could well end with giant mechanised arachnid DoomDrones being released from beneath Mrs Shears' house at number 41, which would be somewhat in contrast with the style of the first half of the book. Despite this, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Album review: Schism: Don't Try This At Home!
The problem with buying an album on the stength of one song title is that the rest of the songs are not called Hey Dude, I fucked your mom last night. Still, Schism shows promise. Although I don't think they'll go far, I think they'll get however far they can by bouncing the whole way there, screaming obscenities.
The problem with buying an album on the stength of one song title is that the rest of the songs are not called Hey Dude, I fucked your mom last night. Still, Schism shows promise. Although I don't think they'll go far, I think they'll get however far they can by bouncing the whole way there, screaming obscenities.
10 September 2003
Book review: The Order of the Phoenix
I have just read the close of JK Rowling's fifth Harry Potter book. After 700 pages I was left wondering if Rowling had forgotten to include the plot - at the end of the last book the world was on the brink of falling into the hands of an evil Dark Lord, Harry's friend was lying dead in his arms, and all manner of darkness was congregating around the key characters. In book 5, however, the Death Eaters don't appear until more than three quarters of the way through, and arch-nemesis Lord Voldemort only pops his head round the door right at the end to ask "Am I on yet?" Before Dumbledore blasts him away with a resounding "No!".
Instead, we get lots more of Harry being angry, Harry being anxious, and lots and lots of Harry being a precocious little brat. Just like his father.
I have just read the close of JK Rowling's fifth Harry Potter book. After 700 pages I was left wondering if Rowling had forgotten to include the plot - at the end of the last book the world was on the brink of falling into the hands of an evil Dark Lord, Harry's friend was lying dead in his arms, and all manner of darkness was congregating around the key characters. In book 5, however, the Death Eaters don't appear until more than three quarters of the way through, and arch-nemesis Lord Voldemort only pops his head round the door right at the end to ask "Am I on yet?" Before Dumbledore blasts him away with a resounding "No!".
Instead, we get lots more of Harry being angry, Harry being anxious, and lots and lots of Harry being a precocious little brat. Just like his father.
Life note: Pub
Sometimes you don't plan a thing, and yet everyone meets up by chance, and a fine time is had by all. Other times, you invite everyone well in advance, you choose your favourite pub, and you even select a restaurant to go afterwards, and then the whole thing falls apart.
And so it was the latter last night: I was too full of cold to drink, Seamus was too hungover to interact, Lani was so deprived of sleep she could barely function at all, and Arkansas and Abi found it beyond their skills to keep the whole thing together. So we disbanded the evening after an hour, and I went home to a heap of dirty laundry that somehow had to be clean and folded in time to pack for Brazil tomorrow.
Sometimes you don't plan a thing, and yet everyone meets up by chance, and a fine time is had by all. Other times, you invite everyone well in advance, you choose your favourite pub, and you even select a restaurant to go afterwards, and then the whole thing falls apart.
And so it was the latter last night: I was too full of cold to drink, Seamus was too hungover to interact, Lani was so deprived of sleep she could barely function at all, and Arkansas and Abi found it beyond their skills to keep the whole thing together. So we disbanded the evening after an hour, and I went home to a heap of dirty laundry that somehow had to be clean and folded in time to pack for Brazil tomorrow.
05 September 2003
Life note: Diary
My main motivation for keeping a diary is that, when I am grey and old, Madame Rutter-Demonteforte will be able to tuck me up in bed, wipe the drool from my sagging lips, and read to me about the happy days of misspent youth, back when the sun always shined, money flowed like water, and the evil WebBrain had not yet infiltrated the internet and driven the few surviving humans to scrape a miserable life beneath the surface of the planet.
However, since moving to "Blogger", this diary is proving to be just a series of bitter book and film reviews. Not like my old diary at all (on mono). Since this diary is so new, and my new audience is not yet familiar with the usual characters, it's proving hard to crowbar in the What Happened In My Life anecdotes - e.g. why would total strangers be interested in hearing how sad it is to have lost Spimcoot (lost to France, thank goodness, not Heaven)? Likewise, would you actually care what I thought of Abi's new gentleman caller? Or that I've just been invited to Luke's wedding in New York next year?
No, you wouldn't care a jot. I can tell this will be a tough gig.
But not as tough as battling with WebBrain.
My main motivation for keeping a diary is that, when I am grey and old, Madame Rutter-Demonteforte will be able to tuck me up in bed, wipe the drool from my sagging lips, and read to me about the happy days of misspent youth, back when the sun always shined, money flowed like water, and the evil WebBrain had not yet infiltrated the internet and driven the few surviving humans to scrape a miserable life beneath the surface of the planet.
However, since moving to "Blogger", this diary is proving to be just a series of bitter book and film reviews. Not like my old diary at all (on mono). Since this diary is so new, and my new audience is not yet familiar with the usual characters, it's proving hard to crowbar in the What Happened In My Life anecdotes - e.g. why would total strangers be interested in hearing how sad it is to have lost Spimcoot (lost to France, thank goodness, not Heaven)? Likewise, would you actually care what I thought of Abi's new gentleman caller? Or that I've just been invited to Luke's wedding in New York next year?
No, you wouldn't care a jot. I can tell this will be a tough gig.
But not as tough as battling with WebBrain.
Movie review: Terminator 3
Last night we were all sitting in a bar and Seamus asked us what the last good film we had seen was. We all thought for a good long while. It sure as hell wasn't Terminator 3, which we'd all just watched peter out twenty minutes earlier.
Last night we were all sitting in a bar and Seamus asked us what the last good film we had seen was. We all thought for a good long while. It sure as hell wasn't Terminator 3, which we'd all just watched peter out twenty minutes earlier.
04 September 2003
Rant: JK Rowling v. Chuck Palahniuk
The arrival of a new book by JK Rowling is heralded more than six months before the publication date: the papers conduct count-downs, people camp outside the bookshops, Amazon commandeers a special warehouse and recruits a fleet of vans, and otherwise intelligent people sit hunched over in pubs, whispering the plot to each other in excited tones, and then foregoing the pleasure of an extra pint so they can nip back to bed for a couple more chapters.
Yet when Chuck Palahniuk brings out a new book the first I hear about it is seeing a mousey little woman absent-mindedly reading a copy at London Bridge. When I rush to the bookshop myself to buy a copy, I hunt the shelves frantically and find nothing, and finally have to ask the shop assistant, who goes into the dark basement and returns at last with the three copies they have for sale, but not yet bothered to display.
I'm not a snob when it comes to Harry Potter - they're very entertaining books (although their exponential growth in thickness is becoming alarming) - however Palahniuk demonstrates more imagination and originality in a single paragraph of his work than Rowling could summon up in an entire book.
So anyway, the message is this: Palahniuk has a new book out, called Diary, and it's ten quid. Buy it.
The arrival of a new book by JK Rowling is heralded more than six months before the publication date: the papers conduct count-downs, people camp outside the bookshops, Amazon commandeers a special warehouse and recruits a fleet of vans, and otherwise intelligent people sit hunched over in pubs, whispering the plot to each other in excited tones, and then foregoing the pleasure of an extra pint so they can nip back to bed for a couple more chapters.
Yet when Chuck Palahniuk brings out a new book the first I hear about it is seeing a mousey little woman absent-mindedly reading a copy at London Bridge. When I rush to the bookshop myself to buy a copy, I hunt the shelves frantically and find nothing, and finally have to ask the shop assistant, who goes into the dark basement and returns at last with the three copies they have for sale, but not yet bothered to display.
I'm not a snob when it comes to Harry Potter - they're very entertaining books (although their exponential growth in thickness is becoming alarming) - however Palahniuk demonstrates more imagination and originality in a single paragraph of his work than Rowling could summon up in an entire book.
So anyway, the message is this: Palahniuk has a new book out, called Diary, and it's ten quid. Buy it.
03 September 2003
Movie review: Jeepers Creepers 2
Most movie reviews are carefully structured. You might begin, say, with a quirky introduction, explaining the context of the film and perhaps tying it in to other films released that week, or to current news stories. You would then move on to a short explanation of the plot, offering tantalising glimpses of the twists without giving any actual spoilers. You might then conclude with how you felt about the movie, the questions it provoked and the answers it provided.
However, in the structureless, purposeless, inane spirit of the movie in question, here is my review of Jeepers Creepers 2: Do Not Go And See This Movie. Not Even If You Have Nothing Else To Do. Not Even If It Is Only 2.99. Keep Away. In The Name Of Jesus Christ, Keep Away.
Most movie reviews are carefully structured. You might begin, say, with a quirky introduction, explaining the context of the film and perhaps tying it in to other films released that week, or to current news stories. You would then move on to a short explanation of the plot, offering tantalising glimpses of the twists without giving any actual spoilers. You might then conclude with how you felt about the movie, the questions it provoked and the answers it provided.
However, in the structureless, purposeless, inane spirit of the movie in question, here is my review of Jeepers Creepers 2: Do Not Go And See This Movie. Not Even If You Have Nothing Else To Do. Not Even If It Is Only 2.99. Keep Away. In The Name Of Jesus Christ, Keep Away.
