Film
I made this video for Mystery Church in Joplin, Missouri. I shot and edited the video, using a Panasonic HMC150 video camera and Final Cut Pro.
Photography
The following photographs were taken using both digital and film SLR cameras, between 2008 and 2012.
A new year (yup, another post based on this not even that new anymore year…) means new awesome stuff to watch on TV. I’mma hit you with a few series’ that are on their way back really soon:
Game of Thrones
Why am I looking forward to Game of Thrones? Well…
A – No more Lord of the Rings and I need something nerdy to distract me from that sadness.
B – Dragon lady who kicks all the ass.
C – All the tribes are going to war…going to war…
Alright, they might not technically be “tribes”… and are they going to war? Pop culture reference over accuracy I suppose. Game of Thrones is a great example of a series that gave and gave and wowed and gave and then cut me off, with no word of return. I’d been played a fool…
I didn’t realise Channel 4′s legendary news anchor Jon Snow once served in the Night’s Watch. Should be interesting to see how he makes the leap from this to journalism.
Archer
A cartoon that makes fun of how much of a total douche bag James Bond actually is. What more do you need? It’s a bit like this song…
The Walking Dead
You’ll have to wait until October (half my John Brown LIFE away… gosh…) for season three of zombies and bleakness. Although season 2 hasn’t even finished yet and if you hold your breath waiting for the next episode then your face might not turn blue and you might not pass out.
I’m struck by the themes of endurance that feature in zombie stories. These reflect how there is no way of avoiding drudgery in life; there will always be something to gnaw at us because life is not perfect. You might think this is bleak but look on the bright side: at least you can say that nothing is literally gnawing at you, like a zombie might well do on your brain.
Mad Men
I read yesterday (…before my finger slipped off the pulse and I failed to post about all this until today…) that Mad Men is FINALLY returning. Mad Men, proof that being beautiful and wearing amazing suits means you can be debauched and absolutely get away with it. I know that Don Draper would wine and dine me, steal my innocence and dropkick me straight to curb without batting an eyelid over those dreamy eyes of his, but I still think he is an incredible being. Anyway, who am I trying to kid? As if he would go for me! I doubt he digs beards. Or men. Or maybe that’s the sort of thing that these new episodes of Mad Men will hold? It is, after all, one of the only shows with a writing team so good that they could pull off such a mental sounding twist to the story.
Post soundtrack
Posted in Writing
Tagged archer, game of thrones, mad men, series, the walking dead, TV
Technically, I can say I have read quite a few books.
With reading comes a pressure that wipes away the benefit of reading. Reading quickly becomes a race to the end of a book, the prize at the finish line being another book added to the pile. What an impressive pile! Oh the pride and joy one feels when pointing towards a stack of books, whose spines tell of the attention they’ve been paid.
Every time I sit down to read a book there is a strong chance that I’ll stop reading so that I can flick through the remaining pages and see how much of a chunk of book I’ve got to battle through. I become preoccupied with this to the point of not remembering anything about what I’ve read. Really, I should have just said “read”. The achievement of reading eclipses the very act of reading.
I find it hard to treat reading as Forrest Gump treated going for a run. That man just felt like running. As with much of what he did, there was purity to this. As he ran he paid serious attention to the views around him (you know, like that wonderful lake that reminded him of Jenny… just ignore the fact that road kill would have probably reminded him of Jenny…). Forrest, as he ran, Forrest, ran, did not think about the distance that remained.
Well done for reading this, I cannot promise that I would have actually done the same.
Post soundtrack:
Watch out! This next one isn’t for the faint hearts…
Posted in Writing
Tagged forrest gump, grizzly bear, habit, literature, reading, the creator, tyler, yonkers
To keep up with the tradition with ending and old year and greeting a new year with a list, I’ve gone and done a list.
Music
I saw these live in 2011. Braggy, brag, brag.
Film
I started 2011 ambitiously. I was determined to get to the cinema more often and watch more new releases. I did really well, seeing and enjoying The Social Network, Black Swan and True Grit. Then it all fell apart because of a combination of doing an MA (who knew that doing something like that would keep a guy so occupied?) and not feeling inspired by what the cinema had to offer.
I did see a 3D film about ancient cave paintings, so really there was no need to bother with keeping track of what else was new in film land.
The Room also tore me apart, Lisa.
TV
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (no, I will not shorten it to “Sunny”) and Trailer Park Boys brought me televisual joy this year, but Boardwalk Empire clinched the telly top spot with perfect moments like this:
Michael Kenneth Williams is on his way to actor heaven.
Books
I’ll use the old “finishing my MA” excuse again, shall I? Ironically getting educated prevented me from reading. Now that I’ve graduated I am finally able to read things that I actually want to read.
I did manage to read the first Walking Dead compendium before school was out, which, funnily enough, was a sort of new year’s resolution that I made at the end of last year after seeing the first season of the TV series. I’m not often one for reading books that TV shows and films are based on, but this was a comic book so it could be argued that it hardly counts as reading. As I read/looked at pictures, I was struck by how the cast of characters were fast becoming more depraved and horrific than the zombies. As harrowing of a read as it is, I am looking forward to the next anthology of the never ending zombie story.
Ahem. Yeah. Not for the faint of heart.
“Journeys are the midwives of thought”
The above is a quote from Alain de Botton from The Art of Travel, a book that I managed to squeeze in just before the end of the year. Quite a lot of food for thought.
Biggest achievement
Did I mention I finished my MA? I made it my bitch.
“Caring and Jesus’ birth” – 4 and a half year old Ella-Maria on what Christmas is all about.
Of all the explanations given about the true meaning of Christmas, my niece Ella’s comes closest to summing up my thoughts on the matter. Sure, I’m a proud and tiny bit biased uncle but even outside of that I think she nailed it.
Jesus may not have been born on 25th December. At least that’s what I’ve heard. The revelation of this information doesn’t rock my faith in who He is at all. What is important is that attention is paid to His birth. Not that this should be limited to one day a year, I reckon its a good idea to think about Jesus regularly each day. I just know how self-absorbed I can get, so making the effort to find the time in my oh so busy schedule to dedicate a day per year to Jesus’ birthday (whether we’re actually all getting the date all wrong or not) is vital to me. I appreciate Christmas for allowing me to do that.
Christmas is about caring, who knew a 4-year-old could be so deep? Christmas is about caring for your nearest and dearest; its generally a reminder to care whenever you have the opportunity. I think we have more opportunities than we think to care, and more capacity to do so than we give ourselves credit for.
Also, think about it, the following would not have been created if it wasn’t for Christmas’ link to the birth of Jesus.
Who in their right mind would want such beauty removed from the world? Not me.
Now that I’m done frolicking in The Alps and exploring the haunts of my ancestors (and getting nostalgic all the while), there isn’t a whole lot else to do other than watch (downloaded from the internet) television. Especially in London, right? Right.
The second season of The Walking Dead starts with an episode that illustrates well what I enjoy about a television series. On the surface, nothing much really happens. At least nothing really happens when compared to the TV I remember watching as a boy, or even other TV that exists today. Well, of course things happen but they are of a different nature to the things that happen elsewhere in television land. I remember days at school when my friends and I would have conversations about the previous night’s television that would begin with “Did you see the bit where….?” and be followed by several instances of “Oh, and what about that bit when….?”, all of which would be joined by coos of appreciation. Alright, maybe we didn’t “coo”. My memories of those days are hazy, but I’m pretty sure we kept the pigeon mimicking to a minimum but you get my point.
The kind of television I watch these days is the sort about which it seems harder to have such conversations; the conversations that are the verbal version of a neat bullet-pointed list. It is harder to encapsulate in a series of excited sentences the events of the episode of The Walking Dead that I watched tonight, for instance. If I tried, it would go a little something like this…
“Remember all the bits where things almost happened?! And did you see how verbose the conversations were? What about the subtle character developments that each passing second seemed to bring? And what about the whole episode, in which you felt like something was about to happen and the suspense and intensity was like the slow plunging of a knife?! And then the moments that trickled by with slow moving activity, drawing you just as slowly to the edge of your seat? How about those moments?? Good Lord, those moments… they made you writhe in agony and anticipation of a thousand imagined action packed climaxes, didn’t they?”
If I had tried to say the above things to my schoolboy self he would have died of boredom and found a way to resurrect himself (he was a bright kid) and find an episode of Mr Bean or Only Fools and Horses to watch. Probably the episode where Del Boy falls through the bar. More fool my schoolboy self, for he would have missed out on talking to me (0r being talked at by me) about the final scene of season 2, episode 1 of The Walking Dead. Stupid boy.
Posted in Writing
Tagged del boy, mr bean, only fools and horses, school, schoolboy, stewart lee, story, television, the walking dead, TV, zombies
If the Swiss Alps hold natural beauty (there’s that word again) then the city of Bern in Switzerland is an outstanding example of beauty that men made when they threw an assortment of buildings together. The same short circuiting occurs when you see the wealth of architectural wonders contained in Bern.
However, it is as though Bern threw some curve balls around it’s streets and hoped that nobody would notice. The first of these is the bear pit that once housed a little gang of bears (real, actual, live, living bears) that people have been able to watch and throw food at since 1513. They have recently been moved to a hillside with far more space and a riverside view of the city, a fact that I’m sure all bear rights activists feel contributes to their cause. Way to straighten out that crease, Bern. Another point to mention is that one of the bears is called Bjork. I like to think that it is friends with the Icelandic weirdo with the fantastic voice.
How would you feel if you found a statue of a man eating babies in your town? The people of Bern seem not to notice it. I picture a scene where, back in the 1500s, someone dared someone else to erect a statue of a man eating a bag of babies in the town centre of the capital city of Switzerland. “Go on” said the darer, “Nobody will notice how weird this looks in 300 years…”. The shroud of mystery that surrounds the statue is made even thicker by how nobody really knows what the statue even means. Some say it was a warning to Bern’s Jewish community (…to not eat children or you’ll look as maniacal as this dude?! I’ll never understand anti-Semites…), but apparently the most commonly believed back story to the statue is the one about how it was made to scare all the Bernese children into behaving. Imagine growing up believing that, if you misbehaved, you’ll end up in some demented dudes baby snack pack.
I’m not saying that this statue is an entirely bad thing. I can’t think of any other towns in the world where you can turn to a friend and say “How about we grab a coffee and go and visit the bears, we can stop by at the statue of the man eating the babies on the way…”.
I love Switzerland and I’m proud to call it a home away from home.
Posted in Writing
Tagged baby, baby eating, bears, bern, bjork, capital, city, kindlifresser, swiss, switzerland, tourism, town, weird
