23 April 2004
Book review: Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Dan told me he hated this book when he lent it to me. I think it splendid, and one of the best books about war I've ever read (although this is a small category, comprising only The Origins of the Second World War by AJP Taylor, The Nuer by E E Evans-Pritchard and Rommel? Gunner Who? by Spike Millegan).
Vonnegut's World War 2 is not populated by dashing heroes who perform shocking acts of heroism, but by baffled adolescents armed with faulty guns who have no idea what they're doing. The Germans are not wicked, sadistic swine but yet more baffled adolescents armed with faulty guns and little clue about what to do. The hero wanders lost through hostile territory and - if I recall correctly - doesn't even fire his weapon. I also liked a plot device in which the character does not experience his life in chronological order, but instead leaps from one moment in his life to another: in one scene he is travelling to Poland in a cattle truck, the next it is his wedding night. This puts the war into context - the mundanity of it all is much more transparent, whilst the horror of specific events (the bombing of Dresden) haunts the rest of his life.
There's also a bit about being abducted by aliens and having sex with a supermodel in an alien zoo, but I sort of skipped those bits.
Dan told me he hated this book when he lent it to me. I think it splendid, and one of the best books about war I've ever read (although this is a small category, comprising only The Origins of the Second World War by AJP Taylor, The Nuer by E E Evans-Pritchard and Rommel? Gunner Who? by Spike Millegan).
Vonnegut's World War 2 is not populated by dashing heroes who perform shocking acts of heroism, but by baffled adolescents armed with faulty guns who have no idea what they're doing. The Germans are not wicked, sadistic swine but yet more baffled adolescents armed with faulty guns and little clue about what to do. The hero wanders lost through hostile territory and - if I recall correctly - doesn't even fire his weapon. I also liked a plot device in which the character does not experience his life in chronological order, but instead leaps from one moment in his life to another: in one scene he is travelling to Poland in a cattle truck, the next it is his wedding night. This puts the war into context - the mundanity of it all is much more transparent, whilst the horror of specific events (the bombing of Dresden) haunts the rest of his life.
There's also a bit about being abducted by aliens and having sex with a supermodel in an alien zoo, but I sort of skipped those bits.
Movie review: Kill Bill - Volume 2
Warning: this review contains spoilers, though they won't spoil the movie as much as Tarantino has.
I was really looking forward to this movie. Volume 1 was a glorious mix of memorable characters, stunning soundtrack, fast plot, sudden anime cartoons and - best of all - endless amounts of utterly ridiculus kung-fu. Nothing mentally challenging, more mentally challenged. I was expecting the same kind of colourful guff from Volume 2, however this movie is utterly different. The longest piece of dialogue in V1 was about five seconds, and the longest fight scene was about half an hour; in V2 the timings are reveresed, and all the fights are solved within seconds using the mystical techniques of Pai Mei.
It's probably something to do with the way the films were originally made as one - no doubt it all makes structural sense to have all the action at the start, and then move onto character development and resolution at the end - but to put all the action in one movie and all the plot in another is truly no use to me at all. Especially when Tarantino is evidently not very good at plot.
Also, when we meet Bill we find he's an amusing and lovable guy, and you don't want Uma to kill him. And, right at the end, as Uma sprawls around on the bathroom floor sobbing her little face off, I rather got the impression she felt the same way.
Warning: this review contains spoilers, though they won't spoil the movie as much as Tarantino has.
I was really looking forward to this movie. Volume 1 was a glorious mix of memorable characters, stunning soundtrack, fast plot, sudden anime cartoons and - best of all - endless amounts of utterly ridiculus kung-fu. Nothing mentally challenging, more mentally challenged. I was expecting the same kind of colourful guff from Volume 2, however this movie is utterly different. The longest piece of dialogue in V1 was about five seconds, and the longest fight scene was about half an hour; in V2 the timings are reveresed, and all the fights are solved within seconds using the mystical techniques of Pai Mei.
It's probably something to do with the way the films were originally made as one - no doubt it all makes structural sense to have all the action at the start, and then move onto character development and resolution at the end - but to put all the action in one movie and all the plot in another is truly no use to me at all. Especially when Tarantino is evidently not very good at plot.
Also, when we meet Bill we find he's an amusing and lovable guy, and you don't want Uma to kill him. And, right at the end, as Uma sprawls around on the bathroom floor sobbing her little face off, I rather got the impression she felt the same way.
Holding note: Absurd
So one day I may come back and put in here all the fun things I've done this past month - being vommitted on, going to the School Disco, seeing the Mountain Goats, finding the most civilised way of watching the Oxbridge boat race, rolling eggs down Giant's Bum, rupturing a gazeebo and so forth - however it's begining to look frankly unlikely, and so I'm just going to get on with the new news.
So one day I may come back and put in here all the fun things I've done this past month - being vommitted on, going to the School Disco, seeing the Mountain Goats, finding the most civilised way of watching the Oxbridge boat race, rolling eggs down Giant's Bum, rupturing a gazeebo and so forth - however it's begining to look frankly unlikely, and so I'm just going to get on with the new news.
07 April 2004
Vacation report: Snowboarding in Valmorel
About a month ago now I went on holiday to Valmorel, in the French Alps, to learn if I like snowboarding. This is the pleasing result:
Saturday 6 March 2004: Ferg, Deepa, Melissa and I flew to Lyon, whereupon we took a bus up into the mountains to Valmorel. I had somehow got it into my head the journey would take about five hours and we'd arrive in time for a spot of tea and perhaps some finger biscuits, however thanks to a series of delays and traffic jams we didn't arrive until well after 11pm. This was utterly miserable, and I only had my book about Auschwitz to lighten the mood. As the hours in our unventilated coach dragged their heels, and my hunger began to devour me within, it became increasingly easy to identify with the sorry-faced jews who had been shipped across Europe in the cattle trucks. Still, I think we got it better as we ended up in the Alps, snowboarding, rather than flying up a chimney.
We went to the first bar we found for dinner, and ordered pizza, chips and salad. The pizzas comprised the entire EU cheese mountain melted onto a single communion wafer. Italy may have been just two mountain ranges to the south, but the pizza was lightyears away.
Sunday 7 March 2004: I woke fresh and early on the Sunday morning, still unconvinced I'd enjoy snowboarding - I gazed up at the sheer mountain drops around the resort and couldn't believe I'd ever be able to zip down those steep icey slopes on nothing more than a glorified tea tray. Still, I obediently wrapped up warm and hired a board and some boots and trekked up into the mountains to try it out.
In between munching on baguette our rep had arranged for Melissa and I to be trained by a sinister Frenchman called Matthieu. I suspect Matthieu was not a natural teacher as he made utterly no sense - a key piece of information seemed to be that we should go down the hill like a "lazy boy", however his accent was so thick that I thought I was meant to be acting like a Thai transsexual, whilst Melissa thought she was supposed to be a piece of Victorian furniture. The first half hour did thus not go so well. Melissa was also not sufficiently relaxed, which was a problem Matthieu tried to solve by shrieking "RELAX, MELISSA!!" at her in increasingly violent tones. Still, by the end of the two hour session I could go down the hill on both sides and just about execute a turn without breaking my neck. What's more, I discovered snowboarding is an infinite amount of fun.
After two solid hours of exercise, we went to the pub to rehydrate on beer, and then kept on rehydrating on beer whilst Deepa had her arm examined. Whilst getting dressed in the morning, Deepa had poo-pooed the idea of me wearing the wrist-guards I'd diligently brought with me. Within an hour of boarding, we discovered that evening, she had fractured her wrist. I wore the wrist guards the rest of the holiday.
Monday 8 March 2004: I was thrilled to find I adored snowboarding, but very upset to discover I was too ill to go out. I'd spent the entire night in a public toilet vommitting, throwing up perhaps every hour and a half, each time going further and further back through what I'd eaten over the past forty eight hours, until I peered down to see Saturday's breakfast brimming in the bowl.
This was not good. I tried lying in bed groaning, and then managed to eat a banana, and then groaned some more, and then tried some yop and some cornflakes, and then I napped all afternoon, and colour finally returned to my cheeks. Melissa cooked a glorious veggie pasta thing, so we spent the evening eating and chatting, and by the end of the day I was back on top form.
Tuesday 9 March 2004: Tuesday was effectively the first day I went out boarding, if you don't count my lesson, and yet the holiday was already half over. Melissa, Ferg and I headed up into the mountains, taking a rickety ski lift right to the top of the mountain. The ride was spectacular, but I have a real issue with heights and so my time was divided equally between gasping at the glory of god's creation, gasping at the deep gaping ravines beneath us, and shouting at Melissa to stop doing the chicken dance, which was making the chairlift swing precariously. I bet those things fall off all the time.
In our first run down the mountain, Melissa damaged her cocyx, and so she was dispatched to spend the rest of the day with Deepa. All these injuries didn't seem to effect my own eagerness to fly down the mountain, though, and so Ferg spent the afternoon teaching me to turn quickly and in a stable manner. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me how to use ski lifts, and so I entertained no small number of observers with my "leap off the chairlift and career into the nearest drift" policy. At the end of the day we boarded the whole way home, taking a green run that turned blue and at times seems to verge on the red. Although much of this run was just like in SSX Tricky, in that it comprised narrow little roads curling round the mountain, with a cliff wall at one side and a steep drop at the other, I was much less eager in real life to go flying off the edge to see if it formed a short cut. We invented Dog Boarding, drank a restorative beer, and tucked into a splendid curry Deepa had rustled together with one hand.
Wednesday 10 March 2004: We woke up nice and early, as planned, but ached so much all over it was impossible to motivate ourselves to get out of bed, so we lounged around instead. When we finally started getting dressed our acheing limbs moved so slowly and clumsily that I got some idea what it will be like in fifty years time in the old folks home: shuffling around the room, unable to bend down or lift things. The only difference was that we were on the verge of throwing ourselves down a mountain.
Given how sore we all are, we just did a couple of runs before boarding home for some mulled wine. We took a new route which utterly horrified me, as we'd only been trained to go down hill, and yet on this route you needed to go along the hill - if you kept going down and you'd plummet into a ravine.
In the evening, in a moment of blind optimism, we went to the local nightclub - our legs had by this stage completely seized up, so we were barely able to get down the stairs, never mind manage to dance. This was not an issue as we were the only people in the nightclub, apart from a barman who was obsessed with Atomic Kitten. We listened to their entire discography, and went home.
Thursday 11 March 2004: We woke up early, and wasted much of the time tucking into baguette, ham, pate, eggy bread and tomatoes. In fact, we ate so much that we needed a good nap before leaving the flat.
Melissa's cocyx was now so bad that she couldn't walk, although it wasn't until we were at the bottom of the ski lift that she conceded that this meant she also couldn't go boarding. She returned to the flat, whilst Ferg and I set out on an epic adventure across the valley - although not quite as epic as it could have been, as I was studiously avoiding drag lifts following a series of experiments (witnessed by thousands of onlookers) which proved I cannot do draglifts. We took a series of ski lifts across the mountains until we were 2,153 metres high, and then spent the rest of the day boarding home. A highlight was a bar half way down the hill, where we tucked into a giant lunch and sat in deckchairs to sunbathe - in our thermal jackets, padded gloves, hats and UV-cream.
Our evening involved eating the same as at breakfast, only pushed into a potato, and drinking stupid amounts of wine. Melissa told about a thousand anecdotes, which appeared to prove that she had experienced just about every disease and accident. By nine we were back in bed.
Friday 12 March 2004: This was our last day of boarding, so it didn't really matter if we broke our legs, and Melissa could afford to damage her cocyx beyond repair. We went up into the deepest darkest mountains and took a similar route to the day before, although we stupidly missed the lovely bar. I felt I was doing pretty well, but still the ski lifts defeated me - we met a very sweet child from Devon on one ski lift, and sure enough when we all came off the kid sailed serenely to safety whilst the three of us collided in a giant heap of intertwined legs, to great applause from a nearby ski-school.
For dinner we tried a recipe Fergal saw on television, presumably when he was too drunk to remember clearly what the recipe was: he put a box of camembert in the oven, smeared with wine and garlic. When it came out it tasted like camembert. I guess that's good.
Saturday 13 March 2004: The Saturday was spent getting home. I was anticipating another Auschwitz-style journey, so was delighted to experience nothing worse than Colditz. The plane was delayed so we got to do crosswords, drink coffee and try out a snowboarding arcade game, which was just dumb compared with what we'd done in real life.
About a month ago now I went on holiday to Valmorel, in the French Alps, to learn if I like snowboarding. This is the pleasing result:
Saturday 6 March 2004: Ferg, Deepa, Melissa and I flew to Lyon, whereupon we took a bus up into the mountains to Valmorel. I had somehow got it into my head the journey would take about five hours and we'd arrive in time for a spot of tea and perhaps some finger biscuits, however thanks to a series of delays and traffic jams we didn't arrive until well after 11pm. This was utterly miserable, and I only had my book about Auschwitz to lighten the mood. As the hours in our unventilated coach dragged their heels, and my hunger began to devour me within, it became increasingly easy to identify with the sorry-faced jews who had been shipped across Europe in the cattle trucks. Still, I think we got it better as we ended up in the Alps, snowboarding, rather than flying up a chimney.
We went to the first bar we found for dinner, and ordered pizza, chips and salad. The pizzas comprised the entire EU cheese mountain melted onto a single communion wafer. Italy may have been just two mountain ranges to the south, but the pizza was lightyears away.
Sunday 7 March 2004: I woke fresh and early on the Sunday morning, still unconvinced I'd enjoy snowboarding - I gazed up at the sheer mountain drops around the resort and couldn't believe I'd ever be able to zip down those steep icey slopes on nothing more than a glorified tea tray. Still, I obediently wrapped up warm and hired a board and some boots and trekked up into the mountains to try it out.
In between munching on baguette our rep had arranged for Melissa and I to be trained by a sinister Frenchman called Matthieu. I suspect Matthieu was not a natural teacher as he made utterly no sense - a key piece of information seemed to be that we should go down the hill like a "lazy boy", however his accent was so thick that I thought I was meant to be acting like a Thai transsexual, whilst Melissa thought she was supposed to be a piece of Victorian furniture. The first half hour did thus not go so well. Melissa was also not sufficiently relaxed, which was a problem Matthieu tried to solve by shrieking "RELAX, MELISSA!!" at her in increasingly violent tones. Still, by the end of the two hour session I could go down the hill on both sides and just about execute a turn without breaking my neck. What's more, I discovered snowboarding is an infinite amount of fun.
After two solid hours of exercise, we went to the pub to rehydrate on beer, and then kept on rehydrating on beer whilst Deepa had her arm examined. Whilst getting dressed in the morning, Deepa had poo-pooed the idea of me wearing the wrist-guards I'd diligently brought with me. Within an hour of boarding, we discovered that evening, she had fractured her wrist. I wore the wrist guards the rest of the holiday.
Monday 8 March 2004: I was thrilled to find I adored snowboarding, but very upset to discover I was too ill to go out. I'd spent the entire night in a public toilet vommitting, throwing up perhaps every hour and a half, each time going further and further back through what I'd eaten over the past forty eight hours, until I peered down to see Saturday's breakfast brimming in the bowl.
This was not good. I tried lying in bed groaning, and then managed to eat a banana, and then groaned some more, and then tried some yop and some cornflakes, and then I napped all afternoon, and colour finally returned to my cheeks. Melissa cooked a glorious veggie pasta thing, so we spent the evening eating and chatting, and by the end of the day I was back on top form.
Tuesday 9 March 2004: Tuesday was effectively the first day I went out boarding, if you don't count my lesson, and yet the holiday was already half over. Melissa, Ferg and I headed up into the mountains, taking a rickety ski lift right to the top of the mountain. The ride was spectacular, but I have a real issue with heights and so my time was divided equally between gasping at the glory of god's creation, gasping at the deep gaping ravines beneath us, and shouting at Melissa to stop doing the chicken dance, which was making the chairlift swing precariously. I bet those things fall off all the time.
In our first run down the mountain, Melissa damaged her cocyx, and so she was dispatched to spend the rest of the day with Deepa. All these injuries didn't seem to effect my own eagerness to fly down the mountain, though, and so Ferg spent the afternoon teaching me to turn quickly and in a stable manner. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me how to use ski lifts, and so I entertained no small number of observers with my "leap off the chairlift and career into the nearest drift" policy. At the end of the day we boarded the whole way home, taking a green run that turned blue and at times seems to verge on the red. Although much of this run was just like in SSX Tricky, in that it comprised narrow little roads curling round the mountain, with a cliff wall at one side and a steep drop at the other, I was much less eager in real life to go flying off the edge to see if it formed a short cut. We invented Dog Boarding, drank a restorative beer, and tucked into a splendid curry Deepa had rustled together with one hand.
Wednesday 10 March 2004: We woke up nice and early, as planned, but ached so much all over it was impossible to motivate ourselves to get out of bed, so we lounged around instead. When we finally started getting dressed our acheing limbs moved so slowly and clumsily that I got some idea what it will be like in fifty years time in the old folks home: shuffling around the room, unable to bend down or lift things. The only difference was that we were on the verge of throwing ourselves down a mountain.
Given how sore we all are, we just did a couple of runs before boarding home for some mulled wine. We took a new route which utterly horrified me, as we'd only been trained to go down hill, and yet on this route you needed to go along the hill - if you kept going down and you'd plummet into a ravine.
In the evening, in a moment of blind optimism, we went to the local nightclub - our legs had by this stage completely seized up, so we were barely able to get down the stairs, never mind manage to dance. This was not an issue as we were the only people in the nightclub, apart from a barman who was obsessed with Atomic Kitten. We listened to their entire discography, and went home.
Thursday 11 March 2004: We woke up early, and wasted much of the time tucking into baguette, ham, pate, eggy bread and tomatoes. In fact, we ate so much that we needed a good nap before leaving the flat.
Melissa's cocyx was now so bad that she couldn't walk, although it wasn't until we were at the bottom of the ski lift that she conceded that this meant she also couldn't go boarding. She returned to the flat, whilst Ferg and I set out on an epic adventure across the valley - although not quite as epic as it could have been, as I was studiously avoiding drag lifts following a series of experiments (witnessed by thousands of onlookers) which proved I cannot do draglifts. We took a series of ski lifts across the mountains until we were 2,153 metres high, and then spent the rest of the day boarding home. A highlight was a bar half way down the hill, where we tucked into a giant lunch and sat in deckchairs to sunbathe - in our thermal jackets, padded gloves, hats and UV-cream.
Our evening involved eating the same as at breakfast, only pushed into a potato, and drinking stupid amounts of wine. Melissa told about a thousand anecdotes, which appeared to prove that she had experienced just about every disease and accident. By nine we were back in bed.
Friday 12 March 2004: This was our last day of boarding, so it didn't really matter if we broke our legs, and Melissa could afford to damage her cocyx beyond repair. We went up into the deepest darkest mountains and took a similar route to the day before, although we stupidly missed the lovely bar. I felt I was doing pretty well, but still the ski lifts defeated me - we met a very sweet child from Devon on one ski lift, and sure enough when we all came off the kid sailed serenely to safety whilst the three of us collided in a giant heap of intertwined legs, to great applause from a nearby ski-school.
For dinner we tried a recipe Fergal saw on television, presumably when he was too drunk to remember clearly what the recipe was: he put a box of camembert in the oven, smeared with wine and garlic. When it came out it tasted like camembert. I guess that's good.
Saturday 13 March 2004: The Saturday was spent getting home. I was anticipating another Auschwitz-style journey, so was delighted to experience nothing worse than Colditz. The plane was delayed so we got to do crosswords, drink coffee and try out a snowboarding arcade game, which was just dumb compared with what we'd done in real life.
