Look Forward to TV

Posted on January 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

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

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To Read Like Forrest Ran

Posted on January 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

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…

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2011

Posted on January 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

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.

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Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

“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.

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When “Nothing” Happens on TV

Posted on November 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

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.

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Eating Babies in Bern with Bears

Posted on October 31, 2011 | 2 Comments

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.

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At the Risk of Sounding Like a Massive Sissy

Posted on October 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

There is a certain point, reached when you encounter a certain level of extreme beauty, where the mind short circuits and a frustration at how words and any pictures taken fail to communicate the exact nature of what you’re seeing sets in.  It’s as though some idiot stacked boxes right in front of the door that you’re trying to open to “take it all in”, so you crack open the door and sit on the boxes and make yourself as comfortable as you can for this meeting of your senses – which are now showing how puny they are – and the astounding spectacle of beauty that parades around mercilessly for all to try their hardest to behold.

Your eyes see it all and your mind and soul leap up and down, yelling about whatever is there, but somehow the sweet spot of adequately expressing anything about whatever it is that’s there in front of you gets all elusive and shy.  Now you have to settle for saying how beautiful it is over and over again in the hope that the millionth mention of the b-word will mean that you have finally properly responded to the beauty.

I’ve been saying “you” this whole time, but really I mean “I”, because this is what tends to happen to me when I find myself facing such awesomeness.  I then cover it all up by making weak jokes about how saying “beauty” and “beautiful” makes me seem like less of a manly man.  And then nobody laughs.  You might always reach the dizzy heights of being able to absorb it all appropriately, or maybe there is no “appropriate level”.  Perhaps we all need to rest in whatever dumbstruck state we arrive at and just enjoy the beauty.  So, please do go to the Swiss Alps and do that…as if you’ll be able to do anything else.

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Kept Awake by Turkish Germans

Posted on October 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

Last night was spent waiting for the final game of the so called “world series” to start.  This meant keeping ourselves occupied until about 2am.   Something in me – some strand of manliness – gave me a thirst for sport.  I’m not even a big baseball fan and I only halfway know the rules, but somehow I needed to watch the game.  This was odd motivation to stay up so late finding things to do in a small German town to pass time and keep us awake before the first pitch was thrown.  We would have had an early and far more boring night if it wasn’t for the ball game so I suppose you could say I’m grateful, thank you sports!

Turkey and the Turkish (or is it Turks? why do I feel like I’ve offended a whole people group by getting their name totally wrong?) were a big part of our time killing activities.  We smoked their hookahs and spent the last part of the night talking to our new best friend Doran in broken German about everything from family to the sickness of gambling (and his profiting from it), to the economic situation in Turkey, Greece and the rest of the Eurozone.  If what he believes is true then Germany will be in as bad of a state as Greece in three short years so watch our Merkel.

Game time came and we managed to stay conscious until maybe the 5th inning, in time to see a home run and a St Louis team that looked like they were going to win.  I was with two Texas fans so the enthusiasm for staying awake rapidly declined and it was left to about a million posts on Facebook to tell us that the Cardinals are the latest best baseball team in the whole wide world.  Go Cards!

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Every Country has a Smell

Posted on October 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

For Pete’s sake why haven’t I moved to Germany yet?  I’ve haven’t even been here for 24 hours and already I’ve had to chastise myself for wasting time living elsewhere, in a place where beer is not cheaper than water.  I am a fool.

Every country has a smell.  Switzerland and Germany smell like they have impeccable personal hygiene.  Someone – probably the Swiss and the Germans – take such good care of them that they smell like the kind of pine fresh scent that existed before advertising took phrases like “pine fresh scent” and rendered them vacuous.  If you’re reading this in London you may not know what sort of freshness I’m talking about, so you should get on over here and catch a whiff.

If that’s not enough to convince you to make a trip here then do you like beer?  I am an equal opportunities beer drinker.  By this I mean that I discriminate very little when it comes to drinking beer.  A lot of this is down to how cheap some beers are and how little money I often have.  Now, this is hardly an issue in Deutschland, where a lovely  pint of bier can be bought for a couple of crisis stricken Euros.

It was nice knowing you London, but your beer is too expensive and you stink.

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Tour Guide on Tour

Posted on October 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

London is mental.  I’ve been to quite a few places in my 28 years and they’re all unique in that no two places are the same.  But that’s a massive statement of the obvious.  It is as though London took the uniqueness it had as an individual city, a quality which all individual places enjoy, and then London went and got carried away.  Not that I’m blaming London for doing this, hats all the way off to it.  Honestly, after living here and spending years figuring the place out and enjoying it, I feel like I have only just chipped away at the tip of the ice berg.  With a blunt spoon.

This has all occurred to me after showing friends around.  I have been showing another friend around and watching her delight and excitement at seeing this place that I am proud to call home.  Her reactions make me even prouder and even more keen to not spend my life kicking about my flat saving money, which is, after all, an activity that can be done in any town in which flats have been built.  Not so unique.

I once sat down and watched Youtube videos with Adam Buxton, it was thoroughly funny and enjoyable.  It made me think about how I really should sit at my laptop watching Youtube more so I can know everything about all the latest, coolest internet things.  However, I’ve got way too much catching up to do if I want that to happen.  It’s not that I don’t think I could achieve this, it’s that I’d rather go somewhere else.  Namely outside.

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