Curb Your Enthusiasm

My brother, who lives in China, has just returned for his annual 10 days in the UK. This time, as part of his aid package from the Orient, in amongst the knock-off dvds is an absolute gem, the 5^th series of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I often wonder what exactly it was that I did when I lived in Sydney. Yes the Olympics were on when I was there, although inexplicably I didn’t go to any events. The opening night was fantastic as I remember. I had a job in a bank in the middle of Sydney – St.Georges Square – and it was a dull job which earnt me money, and I lived in a house with 9 others, two dogs and lots of cockroaches, but it only cost me $60AUS per week, which is nothing. I wasn’t short of cash. I made some good friends too, an Irish girl and a Glaswegian guy, and now that I really think about it, I smoked an inordinate amount of weed. I went to the odd bar too, and the odd beach. I went to Manly, and Maroubra and Byron but Sydney beaches were weird affairs. The sea was dangerous with really big surf which is crap for swimming and the sand was packed with lots of people which all in all is a far cry from Thailand. Back to the subject, so I smoked loads of hydro which our next door neighbour usefully grew and sold to us. And when we all came in from work, Seinfeld would be on tv, and we’d all watch it, and it was one of the funniest tv shows I had seen. I used to watch Sex and the City too but I can’t remember why.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is absolutely brilliant. It follows Larry Sanders, who wrote Seinfeld, go about his daily life in LA, and it plays out in a pseudo reality-tv fashion. Poor Larry has such a terrible time. In a Woody Allenesque manner he goes through life getting angry over the most insignificant things, whilst being surrounded by gruesome people, and while having the worst luck in the world. And its not like the people that upset him so are even that bad. They seem to me to be entirely normal in a Californian kind of way. Its just he sees something and it upsets him, and he’s not entirely rational and then circumstances are rarely in his favour. So in two days I’m 10 episodes in. That’s how good it is.

No.3, the Psychopath and top billing

Its ok, I'm mad

From Russia with Jaws

I watched Jaws on tv at the weekend. Amazingly I watched it on itv and there were hardly any advert breaks – I counted only one in the last hour. That’s beside the point. Its huge fun that film, but one of those films I wish I had seen at the cinema first time round, rather than on tv. It must have been pretty scary stuff. The thing is, is that like Star Wars it the supporting cast that I like the most. After years of Star Wars I suddenly realised that R2D2 is the best character. And in Jaws, its not Brody (Scheider) the police chief or the shark (“Bruce” – apparently named after Spielberg’s lawyer), or even Hooper (Dreyfuss) but it is Quint (Robert Shaw) that steals the show for me. ‘From Russia With Love’ was on on Sunday night and there he is again as the hitman out to kill Bond. This time he’s a younger fitter assassin with that Ayran look that Spectre (or was it Smersh?) were so fond of. The picture shows him next to No.3 (!) Rosa Klebb, she with the venomous spike in her shoe who is dealt with by the until then completely useless but stunning Russian honeytrap. Bond’s line: “I think she’s had her kicks…”. Shaw’s character has a name in this film but it doesn’t really matter who he is, other than being the ruthless silent psychopath who kills anyone that crosses him. Shaw’s undoing is not unlike that of David McCallum’s in The Great Escape. His use of language betrays him – Shaw’s expression of calling Bond ‘old man’ is, even in 1963, an outmoded expression.

Skip forward twelve years takes us to 1975 and Jaws. Shaw has certainly lost his looks, but the murderous look is still in his eyes. He looks half dead too, which could be due to make-up and the rigours of filming on and in the sea with a shark that became known as ‘The Great White Turd’ due to its inability to do anything other than sink. Quint (Shaw) only turns up in the latter half of the film, when Brody charters him to go out and hunt down the Great White which has been so successfully savaging Amity Island. One of the most celebrated scenes of the film is when the hapless hunting party are comparing scars, and Hooper points out a scar on Quint’s upper arm. Quint than recounts this horrific tale of the sinking of his ship the USS Indianapolis at the end of WW2 and then being in the water for 3 days with 1100 men being viciously attacked by sharks, and at the end only 300 being rescued. Its already been well established in the film that Shaw is the old seadog, Brody as the landlubber and Hooper as a rich college kit with lots of toys but no sea-sense. What this scene does is provide an insight into the gleam of madness in Quint’s eyes. I’m sure that if I had read Moby Dick and would be able to draw some kind of comparison with Ahab. But I haven’t so I can’t. What I can say is that Quint makes this film for me. He’s unhinged for sure, but he knows what he’s doing, which now I think about it could be applied to both Hooper and Brody too. So then Jaws in 4 words: Killer Shark, Mad People.

Worry

I’ve been lucky in life, not having very many worries. Some people go through life wracked by worry as some are natural worriers and some are naturally unlucky. The expression that you make your own luck can not be applied to all people as there are some less fortunates who are prone to poor luck. I wonder if they worry? Or maybe they are fatalistic or perhaps cynical enough to realise that their poor run of luck is life’s way of having a laugh at them, and that they in turn can derive some kind of black humour from it. I would hope that they would be able to laugh at their continuous runs of misfortune.

So one goes through life without worries, then some really serious worries come along and you realise how meaningless and trivial your everyday concerns are. I find that just as themes and film have plot runs so too does life. Films may well be predetermined in a way that life is not, but there are plots that run through both, and in life these plots are opened up, I find, in a series of revelations and slow dawnings. Not unlike a film then, except luckily life lasts longer then films. An example of this is ageing. I’m 32 and I had a mini-revelation last night that I’m nearly mid-way through my life. This revelation came as a response to my thoughts on mortality. Life, as with everything has its peaks and troughs, and you can be going along quite smoothly then all of a sudden a spanner of particular evilness is thrown in the works, and what is most alarming is that this spanner seemingly appears from nowhere, although on reflection there are always little insidious sign of the approaching nightmare. I have two uncles on my father’s side of the family, and one of them is days away from death. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer about a month ago after suffering kidney failure and was given 8 weeks to live. It turns out that he hasn’t been well fro some time. You see, he was quite distant from the family having cut himself off about ten years ago. There’s no need to go into details as families are funny things, and though I don’t feel devastated I feel some guilt at having not gone and visited. His hospital is in Sherbourne which is about an 8 hour return trip from London. I was going to go and visit him with my brother when he comes over from China but it seems he won’t live that long.

That’s a weird thing, that someone won’t live that long. That this time in two months he’ll be gone forever. He’s had his troubles in life and I know now that not only is he philosophical about the turn of events, but that he is now apologising to those that he has hurt during his life. But though he cut himself off from the family, the family have been to see him, and are still with him now. It is just terribly sad and my father, who stood by him and supported him is terribly upset by it all, more so than even he thought he would be.

I’d got my head around this element of mortality. That a swift sudden death is a better way to go than a lingering painful decline from cancer. I’d made my peace with this concept, and so it was that I emailed my brother yesterday with the sad news that this uncle was now on a push-button administered morphine drip and that this is the final stage of palliative care.

Then came the second piece of devastating news and the stimulus to the very long collection of words. One of my cousins rang last night and told my father that his second brother had collapsed at the weekend and was now semi-conscious in hospital with a ‘growth’ around his pitiuary gland. This gland is at the top of the spinal column where it connects with the brain and is about the size of a pea. What this growth is, we don’t know but anything happening in the body that causes a collapse is not a good thing. The test results are due back today.

And so I come back to worry again. I find that it comes in waves. Here I am sitting at my desk at work, not having done any work at all as I can’t seem to concentrate at all. You may wonder how it is that I am still able to write, but it is like having an entirely one-sided conversation. Still, it is making me feel marginally better by distracting me. This worry comes in waves. One minute I’m completely ok and working on something or doing whatever it is that I normally do and the next is like that dreadful feeling of butterflies before an exam or almost like the waves of panic that I get in the underground sometimes. I then have to sit back and look elsewhere as I can not concentrate. Twice this morning I’ve felt like making my excuses and going home for the day. This morning I was asked to swap desks for the day and I felt close to tears at this. And I have it now. I feel something rising at the back of my throat and I find myself staring into space. I’m not looking at anything and I’m trying not to think of anything. I know what this feeling is. It is dread. It is akin to that fear of some of the teachers at school, or of bullies. It’s the fear of the unknown.

I’m going to go for a long walk at lunch and see how I feel after that. I’m expecting a phone call from my father about the news. The longer that I don’t get that call the more I’m drawn into the conflict of ‘no news is good news’ versus ‘there’s been no news, this is bad news’. And somewhere in the middle is the quiet voice of moderation but it is losing its battle right now.

I thought that writing would make me feel better – it usually does – but its made no difference.

Work out your carbon footprint!

The government have just set up a flash-happy website with an almost cuddly carbon calculator to help you increase your ever burgeoning guilt over destroying the environment with every breath. Pedantically speaking it should be the C02 Footprint as we don't actually have a problem with too much graphite or soot.

I was pleasantly surprised that my footprint is small at some tonnes (or whatever) and that my annual travel in a plane completely outweighed all the benefits of recycling et al. There aren't any outright hints on what a carbon footprint is, and how it matters and indeed if it really matters at all.

I like tests though and this is a wonderful inclusive pc test where nobody is right and nobody is wrong, and it has pretty colours and never once shows you the consequence of producing too much carbon (dioxide).

The Best Website in the World

Holy Moly is, with Facebook, how I get through the working day keeping hold of my sanity. They do a mailout on Friday afternoons without the pictures.

A Really good album

I bought this at the same time as that Calvin Harris pap. Its a great album. Calvin could learn something about how to make music by listening to this. The Guardian said that it was the Chemical Brothers' best album since Surrender. Surrender was a good album and I'm only on the second listening of this one but its really enjoyable.

A pretty moderate album...

I bought this the other day from Virgin thus earning myself a stamp (see below). He didn't create disco. What he did do was take a catchy hook and repeat it for 4 minutes without introducing any new sounds. Its a bit like the really moderate tracks on Daft Punk's first album which start off really well then never go anywhere and turn out a bit dull. I bought this off the back of seeing him (on tv) at Glastonbury, and on reflection his 'Acceptable in the 80s' song wasn't particularly inspirational but I thought I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.
Its not a particularly good album.

R.I.P. Fopp

I’m genuinely saddened by the closure of Fopp as it was my favourite music shop. I work near the Tottenham Court Road ‘Flagship’ shop and every day there is a little gaggle of people furtively trying the doors or just gazing forlornly into the darkened ‘pantheon of the £5 punt’. Where will I buy my £1 books? Where will I go to spend £20 on five or six completely random CDs? Is there no justice in the world? HMV I would gladly see closed. Not only is it the B&Q of music retail right down to the warehouse setting it is also too expensive. Worst of all they have no loyalty scheme. Fopp induced loyalty because of not only the price, but also the range, the marvellous décor, the music, the whole ambience. They had no loyalty scheme apart from having a great shop. HMV have no loyalty scheme and have a shite shop and deserve to go buy bust. Problem is that if HMV do go bust they’ll drag Waterstones down with them.

Virgin have a loyalty card where for every tenner you spend you get a little stamp, and for every ten stamps ‘earned’ you get a tenner off your next purchase. Economically it makes no sense as invariably things are priced 50p below the tenner threshold and you end up spending more just to get an extra stamp. But I keep going back for more.

And for the last word from Fopp:

'It is with great regret that we announce the closure of Fopp.

Our store chain is profitable, well regarded and loved by our loyal customers and staff. However we have failed to gain the necessary support from major stakeholders, suppliers and their credit insurers to generate sufficient working capital to run our expanding business.

We would like to thank staff and customers for their support over the past 25 years.'