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Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 12:39 pm
When we interviewed '80s guitar legend Marty McFly two years ago, a technical error meant that the recording of one of the most interesting parts of the interview was lost. Fortunately, we have now been able to recover it.

The subeditor responsible has been fired.

PV: You played support on Wyld Stallyns' epoch-making Most Excellent tour. Why do you think the tour was so successful?

MMcF: Well, I'd have to put that down to Stallyns' drum-heavy, guitar-driven sound, not to mention the incredible attention to logistical detail displayed by their road crew. That Napoleon guy - what a professional.

PV: ...

MMcF: Nah, just messing with you - I know what you mean. I never expected to see peace in the Middle East in my lifetime, and to have been a part of it, even a small part - I still can't believe it, years later.

PV: How do you think that two Californian rockers succeeded where so many trained negotiators and professional politicians had failed?

MMcF: I honestly don't know. But you've gotta realise that Bill and Ted's laid-back West Coast vibe isn't all there is to them - underneath the surface, they're two of the most driven people I've met. On the tour, they were everywhere, all the time - I don't know when they managed to sleep. They hid it pretty well, but occasionally you'd catch this look of burning intensity, like they were on a literal mission from God, or they'd been told that only they could save the world.

PV: It's not every rock tour that includes a hectic schedule of meetings with regional and world leaders.

MMcF: Yeah. At first I thought I'd signed on for an ordinary tour, but then about a week into the tour Niccolo, their Italian manager, said "Hey guys, the Prime Minister says he'd like to meet you," and then the political stuff just kept building and building. After a while, it was like we were a travelling political campaign that happened to play gigs every night. But I'll tell you something else, though - the Stallyns approached every gig with total dedication, no matter who they'd met that day or who they were meeting the day after.

PV: Apart from the big headline events and meetings - we've all seen the historic photos of the Preston-Logan Accord being signed on stage at the final gig of the tour -

MMcF: Hell of an encore.

PV: You can say that again! But aside from the headline events, was there a lot of backstage negotiation associated with the tour?

MMcF: I was kinda out of the loop on a lot of that stuff, but yeah, Niccolo was always out meeting someone or other. Sneaky guy - I don't think he ever asked me to do something that I didn't end up doing one way or another. Definitely someone you want on your side, though. And there was a lot of apparently-casual stuff, too. The sheer universal appeal of Stallyns' music opened a lot of doors - when everyone wants to meet you just to get your autograph, you can talk music for a while and then slip in a question about 1967 borders or the Marsh Arabs. Or at least you can if you're Bill and Ted. If, say, Bono had tried it then everyone would have been very polite and then shown him the door as quickly as possible, but somehow those two got people to open up.

PV: Did you ever sit in on any of these meetings?

MMcF: One or two, yeah. Bill and Ted were just incredible. They'd show up looking like they'd just fallen out of bed, call people "Mr President, dude" in their California surfer drawl, lull all the politicos into a false sense of security, and then stun everybody with their incredible grasp of historical and political details. It was like they'd physically been present at every significant battle or negotiation in the region's history, and knew all the key historical players personally. I consider myself a history buff, as you know, but Bill and Ted were on a whole other level.

PV: What was it like touring with the Stallyns on a more personal level?

MMcF: Well, most of the guys in Weather Experiment have been touring with me since the late '80s, and we're pretty close. We've been through a lot together, which definitely helped when we found ourselves at the centre of a major historical event. But we're friends and colleagues. Wyld Stallyns feel like a family. Not just the two couples - and Bill and Ted always, always call their wives "the princesses" - but the whole band: the dancers, Station the keyboardist, the Swedish bassist, the lot.

PV: Does Station ever take that suit off?

MMcF: Not that I ever saw. Man, he must have been hot out in the desert.

PV: And is Death as creepy as everyone says?

MMcF: Pretty much. Great guy, but there's just something about him... [shudders]. Plays a mean game of Twister, though.

Weather Experiment's new single, "1.21: a high-speed tribute to John Cage", is released on Warp Records on August 17th. Wyld Stallyns' next movie is currently in development.
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Monday, January 25th, 2010 08:51 pm
So, Avatar: as you've probably heard by now, it's very, very pretty, has little to recommend it by way of script, plotting or characterisation (to quote chromatic scthewriter: the solution to flat characters is not 3D, it's better writing), and it has a really stupid ending.

Other than that, I quite enjoyed it. The fight scenes are good. But I'm going to air some minor grievances anyway, because these things have been bugging me.

First off: when Jake Sully arrives, the scientists are all "ooh, he's a Marine, he's going to be such a thicko, why did they bother". Er, no. He's the identical twin of the scientist originally slated for the mission, which means he shares his genome and upbringing: hence, there's a very good chance that he's highly intelligent. Secondly, he's had extensive experience of jungle warfare in Venezuela¹, and thus should be at home working and surviving for long periods of time in a jungle environment (in a rather different ecosystem, obviously, but there must be some transferable skills, especially given how much Pandoran jungle looks like Earth jungle). Thirdly, he's a reconnaissance specialist, which means he's been trained in close, careful observation. Put all this together, and you have the makings of a first-rate field assistant, which is not something to be sniffed at. Yes, scientists can be dismissive of expertise from outside their field. But they're not stupid, and they'd certainly think of the identical-twin thing.

Secondly: is Colonel the most evil rank, or what? At least as far as the movie biz is concerned. A re-watching of Akira suggests that yes, it is. Relatedly, Col. Miles Quaritch is another entry for my ongoing list of "evil characters called Miles in fiction".

Thirdly, the ending. Oh God, the ending. There were at least two ways they could have recovered the situation: Spoilers herein )

Anyway, I'd like to end on a more serious note. The displacement and genocide of tribal peoples is not safely confined to the past or the cinema; it's still going on now, and it's much more brutal than Cameron dared to show. If your planet is affected by the issues raised in this feature film, please consider donating to Survival International³.

¹ Even though he later appears completely unable to move tactically in a jungle environment. Never mind, there are bigger plot holes out there.
² Did you notice him? Giovanni Ribisi, AKA Phoebe's idiot brother Frank from Friends. If you ever get the chance to catch him in the Kieszlowski-written film Heaven, do take it.
³ Hat-tip to James "Two Doctors" Mackenzie for the link.
pozorvlak: (kittin)
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 09:37 pm
Beware of the Train recently caught up with 80s guitar legend Marty McFly, and talked to him about life, love, his upcoming new album, and his mysterious fascination with the Old West.

Read more... )
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Friday, June 6th, 2008 11:51 pm
I went to see this last Friday with [livejournal.com profile] wormwood_pearl and our flatmate Alan. WP had never seen any Indiana Jones films before, Alan had seen Temple of Doom and Last Crusade but (shamefully) not Raiders of the Lost Ark, and as for me... well, I wouldn't describe myself as an expert, but I've seen them all multiple times and knew enough to predict the match cut after the Paramount logo.

I'm making a note here: huge success. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

I disagree with xkcd that the perfect action movie should be 30 seconds of exposition followed by a 90-minute fight scene (but if anyone wants to make such a movie, I'm totally there). You need periods of tension, even of silence: as with so many other things, you need light and shade. The true test of an action movie should be the following: if you're watching it at home, and someone comes in to talk to you, there should be no point in the movie where you don't want to say "Shhh, this is a good bit!"1. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the canonical such film, and Last Crusade is close behind it: hell, even Temple of Doom has its share of good bits, it's just the bloody screaming female sidekick who lets it down. Crystal Skull passes the "good bit" test handily2.

Which leaves me a bit mystified, because the film's attracted so many negative reviews, and I honestly can't see what they're complaining about. I'm not a fan of Shia LeBoeuf, but he was OK, and even managed to be funny on a couple of occasions. Far less irritating than most comedy sidekicks. Karen Allen was fine. Cate Blanchett wasn't up to the level of the Gestapo officer from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but she was a pretty decent villain. John Hurt was John Hurt. The von Daniken stuff didn't bother me, really - no sillier than the religious themes from the earlier movies, and (as Zompist points out - contains spoilers) aliens were to the fifties what religious mysticism was to the thirties. The bit with the fridge was impressively stupid, but I almost immediately forgot about it (until reminded about it a couple of days ago) in the sheer rush of stuff that happened subsequently.

All in all, if you want a realistic portrayal of the life of an archaeologist, with a totally consistent and realistic plotline, look elsewhere. If you want a high-octane action movie, with a plot that sort of makes sense at the time provided you don't stop to think about it, fabulous lost cities and mystical hocus-pocus (which is to say, an Indiana Jones film), then go and watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Not quite as good as Raiders, on a par with Last Crusade, scads better than Temple of Doom. A worthy addition to the canon.

1 This was a running joke in an Alan Ayckbourn play, anyone know which one?
2 By the way, the film that scores highest on the "good bit" test is the Tony Jaa masterpiece Ong-bak: worth it for the tuk-tuk chase alone.
pozorvlak: (gasmask)
Monday, October 29th, 2007 11:05 am
I've finally finished reading The Turquoise Mountain, Brian Blessed's account of his first attempt on Everest, and of the filming of the documentary Galahad of Everest. It's taken me ages because in the early stages I skipped about a lot, and it's hard to get excited about reading a bit of the book that you've read before - the time I've taken to read it should not be treated as a poor review! He didn't reach the summit, but he did reach about 25,400 feet (7,750m), before having to turn back due to weather, bureaucratic interference and lack of supplies (the BBC expedition were being supported by the international Peace Climb, who started stripping their tents and gear off the mountain when the BBC were still climbing).

By the way, the name "Brian Blessed" will be immediately familiar to all the Brits, and probably completely unknown to everyone else. He's a much-loved Shakespearean actor, with a huge booming voice and the frame and beard to match, famous to my parents' generation for his role in Z-cars, and to mine for his roles in Flash Gordon, The Black Adder and so on. He's the guy who gets rather anachronistically lynched by the Ku Klux Klan at the beginning of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. In real life, he's obsessed with Everest, and particularly with the expedition of Mallory and Irvine.

Some things that struck me:
  • One of the unexpected difficulties of climbing Everest is the heat: even at the North Col, at over 7,000m, they were experiencing temperatures of 40C during the day (at sunset, it apparently drops to -20C in around half an hour).
  • Losing weight on an Everest trip is a given, and losing 20-30lb is not unusual. Brian Blessed, who usually weighs about 16st/220lb/100kg, and dropped to about 14 in the course of his training, was down to nearer 10st/140lb/65kg on his return!
  • You have to be awesomely fit. Blessed claims to have been running "10-14 miles a day, with the odd marathon thrown in for good measure". Even allowing for a bit of dramatic exaggeration (he is an actor), that's pretty impressive.
  • Getting ready to go in the morning at altitude takes ages - ice needs to be melted and boiled for tea, tricky high-altitude gear needs to be put on with fingers made clumsy by cold, and the altitude makes your brain slow and befuddled. On their final day of climbing, it took them nearly five hours to make a start. "Nice to know it's not just me", I thought. But I have a question for the physicist-mountaineers out there: why does water take longer to boil at altitude? Water boils at a lower temperature, so it should be quicker. Is it that it needs to be melted from ice first? Or is it that there's less oxygen around for combustion? If the latter, it should be possible to solve it - the problem of creating high temperatures using chemical reactions at high altitude and with minimal danger and weight penalty has received substantial attention, but I can't find anything about this by Googling. Am I missing something?
  • Shortly before he has to turn back, Blessed sees a hallucination (or vision, if you will) of all the members of the twenties expeditions, sitting on the snow in their shorts, smiling and waving at him. I rather like the idea of the ghosts of all the early mountaineers living together on Everest, able to enjoy the beauty of the mountains but not to be touched by the conditions.

At the less glamorous end of the mountain-activities scale, I climbed my 67th Munro, Chno Dearg, on Saturday. You've seen Trainspotting? The bit where Tommy takes them all for a walk, and they hate it so much they decide to go back onto heroin? That's where we were. Corrour is literally a railway station and a pub (which is now, mirabile dictu, open during the day - the previous owners, having failed utterly to get this whole "capitalism" thing, used to open up only after the last train of the day had left. Unsurprisingly, it's now under new management). It's impossible to reach Corrour by road - even 4x4s have to be brought in by rail. On a good day, it's rather lovely, and I had a great day there last May climbing the two hills on the West side of Loch Treig. Saturday was not a good day. It was rainy, wet, cold and miserable all day. A series of navigation errors (hey, you try following a compass bearing for any significant distance through a sloping bog in the mist) meant we took much longer to reach the summit than expected and came down in the wrong valley, then had to force the pace (with all three of us suffering some form of leg trouble) to get back to the station before the last train came at 1830.

Fortunately, as we staggered onto the platform at 1825, we were met by a large group celebrating the fact that two of their number had bagged their final Munro, who took one look at us and thrust a bottle of whisky into our hands :-)
pozorvlak: (polar bear)
Friday, October 5th, 2007 11:58 am
My flatmates and I went to see the new Quentin Tarantino film, Death Proof, last night. In this off-beat thriller, Tarantino turns his trademark blend of hip dialogue and beautifully-shot ultraviolence to the world of pure mathematics. Kurt Russell stars as an embittered former number theorist who plots revenge on the profession that wronged him by concocting a proof of Goldbach's Conjecture that causes cerebral overload and death in any mathematician that tries to read it. Watch out for the exploding blackboard that slices the heads off the front row of students in the lecture theatre, and see if you can spot all the references to the 1971 projective-geometry classic Vanishing Point! Also stars Fields Medallist Zoë Bell as herself.

Five stellated pentagons.
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Thursday, May 31st, 2007 10:13 pm
One of the things my new flatmate ([livejournal.com profile] whodo_voodoo, for those of you keeping track) brought with him is a television. I'm a bit dubious, as my ability to work is low enough as it is, but it did mean that I was finally able to catch an episode of Hustle, the "complicated confidence trick" series starring Robert Vaughn. I love crime capers even more than I love kung fu movies, so it was deeply frustrating to me that there was a new one going out on telly every week and I was missing it. Anyway, I struck particularly lucky with this episode: halfway through, an actual guy with a katana came in and got all kenjutsu on the gang's asses. Result, quite frankly.

Crime! Katanas! Maths! Spoilers! )

Whoever said probability was easy?
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Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 10:37 am
Hot Fuzz is the best thing the Spaced team have done yet. Far better, IMHBCO, than the frankly disappointing Shaun of the Dead. Go see. Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once!

In case you've missed the publicity, Simon Pegg plays Sgt Nicholas Angel, a tough, hard-hitting supercop from London. An expert in firearms, special tactics, high-speed driving, and community relations, he's reassigned to the sleepy village of Sandford for making everyone else's arrest records look bad. There, the by-the-book, politically-correct, married-to-the-force Angel is partnered with PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), a drunken slob with a love of high-octane cop movies. Angel settles uneasily into a life of policing church fetes, but is Sandford really as sleepy as it seems? Trailer here (also highly recommended)

In other news, I am going to try to give up alcohol, caffeine and chips for Lent. Previous experience suggests that caffeine's going to be the big one: much of yesterday was spent in a haze of tiredness and headaches, and I think I'm due for about a week of this (though I didn't get much sleep on Tuesday night, so maybe the rest of the week will be better), followed by five weeks of dying for a cup of tea. I have yet to find a hot drink with the right qualities - all the alternatives lack, well, body.
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Thursday, February 1st, 2007 12:20 am
I've just been watching the film of Pride and Prejudice (the one with Kiera thrice-Knightley as Lizzie), and had rather a shock when I realised that Mr Bingley was being played by someone I went to school with! I think he may even have been in my English class when I read the book for GCSE...

It's surprisingly weird watching him on screen - partly not having seen him for years, but mostly seeing someone I know in an actual film. Not at all like watching a friend on stage.

Anyway, he's a nice chap, so it's good to see he's doing well...
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Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 02:38 pm
Following a conversation with [livejournal.com profile] steerpikelet last night, I think it's time I blogged about Annapurna. It's a massif in the Himalayas, the highest peak of which was the first 8000m mountain to be climbed, by a group of French mountaineers led by Maurice Herzog in 1950. It's also the title of Herzog's memoir of the expedition, which I'm currently re-reading. I first heard of Annapurna a few months ago when I saw the book in the window of the Oxfam bookshop (my financial nemesis). I bought it, and read it in March (I was reading it in Switzerland when I met [livejournal.com profile] michiexile).

The story's as simply told as it's incredible )

But they climbed the mountain, and they all got down, mostly in one piece - an achievement all the more impressive when you discover that Annapurna is the deadliest of all the 8000-metre mountains, with fully 40% of those who tried to climb it dying in the attempt.

Herzog, who lost all of his toes and most of his fingers (he dictated the book from hospital), was made a national hero on his return, and was awarded the Legion d'Honneur and later became Mayor of Chamonix. But the national spin machine wrote the others out of the tale almost completely. More sinisterly, Herzog apparently made the others sign a five-year gag order, preventing them from writing about the expedition. Lachenal died in a skiing accident five years later, shortly before the ban expired.

As [livejournal.com profile] steerpikelet and I agreed, it would make a great film. I'd like to see it in French, actually: for some reason, it would feel wrong to see British or American actors playing these roles. And the languages used are significant: the Frenchmen spoke French to each other, the Sherpas spoke Gurkhali, and the coolies spoke Hindi, but the common language was English.

Now I want to read the other books about Annapurna: Lachenal's Carnets de Vertige (though I'm not sure if my French is up to it), Lionel Terray's Conquistadors of the Useless, and David Roberts' book True Summit, which claims to reveal the true story of the expedition. And, while I'm at it, Annapurna: A Woman's Place, an account of the 1978 all-female US expedition.
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Friday, September 15th, 2006 07:34 pm
Remember the guy who claimed to have solved my problem, using a technique that I'd tried and found not to work? Well, my supervisor and I are now basically convinced that he's made exactly the same mistake as I did. Hurrah!

Sucks to be him, or at least it will when I tell him.

This means that there is actually a point in my carrying on with my current (more complicated) approach. And my supervisor reckons that I can put the proof of his wrongness in my thesis! Yay for extra pages.

Right, I'm going to go home, buy beer, eat the remains of the sag dahl, and watch Ran.
pozorvlak: (gasmask)
Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 04:34 pm
... was brilliant. Go and see it. Apart from a couple of departures1, it was very close to the book - the dialogue was (as far as I can tell) pretty much lifted entirely from the text. It really caught the feel of the story, with its ambiguity, its paranoia, and its ruminations on identity and perception - the first film of a Dick book to take the philosophy seriously. The rotoscoping was a great idea, particularly the way it allowed them to have bits of scenery moving around randomly - very psychedelic. The aphid sequence at the beginning was brilliant - in the book it's just a bit weird and unsettling, but in the film it's hands-in-mouth awful. And the "list of the fallen" at the end had me close to tears.

For those of you not in the know, Keanu plays Robert Arctor, an undercover drugs squad detective trying to uncover the supply of Substance D ("Slow Death"). But in order to infiltrate the drug subculture, he has to become a drug user, and eventually becomes an addict. Worse, the drug gangs have so heavily infiltrated the police that even his superiors can't know his cover identity, so he must report on himself as if he were a criminal. The Substance D breaks down the connection between the two halves of his brain, causeing hallucinations and cognitive impairment, and makes him forget who he is - is he a narc posing as an addict, or an addict posing as a narc? And who is this "Bob Arctor" guy on the scanners, and where's he getting all that money from?

In other news, [livejournal.com profile] mrpjantarctica has changed the look of his site, and I've finally found a computer that can play his (excellent) videos of life in Antarctica. Go and watch them!

[And speaking of Antarctica, here's some drily funny advice for contractors at McMurdo base.
In the constellation of complaints, food and mail are the brightest stars. There is little you can say about either subject that has not already been whined, moaned, or groaned about already. In the interest of craftsmanship, it is best to remember that if you are going to complain, then you should do so in a way that entertains those around you, because no one really feels sorry for you anyway.
]

1 A couple of characters are elided, some plot points of mostly minor significance are changed somewhat, and there's a reference to "our troops fighting in foreign lands to stop the drug supply".
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Monday, September 4th, 2006 04:42 pm
This year I saw 14 shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. This is slightly below my average, but not enough to explain my general sense that this year (once the ultra-stressed rehearsal period was over) was less frantic than previous years. That was probably because we had a nicer time-slot - no hurry to roust people out of bed to get everyone to the theatre in time, and we usually managed to get back to the flat for a relaxing cooked dinner before heading out to see a show.

Anyway, here's what I saw:

A list of shows, with some comments )
So, a pretty good selection on the whole. Maybe I'm getting better at spotting good things. Or maybe I just got lucky. Or maybe my critical faculties are insufficiently discriminating.

Tonight I'm going to see A Scanner Darkly, which I've wanted to see for ages. Yay! *bounces*
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Monday, July 17th, 2006 11:43 pm
Best. Swordfight. EVAR.

I'd read interviews with the cast, in which they'd said that they had the best swordfight ever committed to celluloid. "Oh yeah?" I thought. "Better than the one in Princess Bride? Better than the swordfights in Zatoichi? Better than the teahouse scene in Crouching Tiger? Better than the scene in the bar in Kill Bill Volume 1?"

I can reveal that it is, indeed, better than all of those. Go and see it. Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once. It's OK, I'll wait for you.

But don't get the idea that it's just one great set-piece in an otherwise bad film. The film is GREAT. Really good fun. Maybe not quite as good as the first one, but hell, I was sorely tempted to hang around for half an hour and go back and see the next showing. I haven't felt like that about a film since, well, Pirates of the Caribbean 1. (Or maybe Ocean's Eleven, when I actually did do that).

And the third film will apparently have Chow Yun-Fat in it. I can't wait...

*bounce bounce bounce*
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Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 02:49 pm
You are all hereby instructed to go and see V for Vendetta, which I went to see last night on the spur of the moment with [livejournal.com profile] wormwood_pearl. Given the usual standard of adaptations of Alan Moore comics I was expecting a disappointment, but it's actually really good. Not perfectly faithful to the book, of course - they've simplified the plot a fair bit, changed a few plot twists and symbols and added others, altered the backstory to be consistent with real-world events since the comic was written, and removed or changed a few characters. But after getting over my initial reaction of "that's not how it happened!" I found that I actually liked a lot of the changes. In particular, I like what they've done to Gordon, and I love the ending. And the domino rally. Wonderfully visual. And most of my favourite bits of dialogue are still in the film, albeit not always in the same places.

I was amused and a bit saddened to see "Based on the graphic novel illustrated by David Lloyd" in the credits - hopefully Alan Moore will relent a bit after this, and get more involved in films of his books. I'm sure he could use the money. But then, if his views on integrity are even half as strong as they were when he wrote V, he probably won't.

Now, you know your duty. Go to it. England prevails.

[Update: according to Wikipedia, Alan Moore had seen the script, and said it had "plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties." Oh well...]
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Thursday, February 9th, 2006 01:45 pm
You know all those X vs Predator comics? You know how (with the possible exception of the original Alien vs Predator) they're all exactly the same? I think the Predator ought to test himself against a real opponent, one who could offer more of a challenge than mere musculature. That's right, I'm talking about Jeeves vs Predator.
...
"I find in cases like these it is necessary to consider the psychology of the individual, sir. It has been my experience that a passion for the hunting field experienced as a youth is often much diminished on entering into a state of marriage."
The old bean swum somewhat, but I grasped the point.
"You mean like my Aunt Dahlia? A fixture with the Quorn and Pytchley in her younger days, but put aside childish things when she married Uncle Tom?"
"Precisely, sir. The only difficulty lay in finding a suitable choice of mate."
"Egad, Jeeves! You don't mean - "
"If you would care to look at this morning's Times, sir..."
I grabbed for the periodical. It took me a while to spot the relevant piece, but there it was:
Engagements: The engagement is announced between Miss Honoria Glossop, only daughter of Sir Roderick and Lady Glossop, and Honoured Y'ghloushgdk of the Yautja, Duke of the Outer Planets, Commander of the Betelgeusian Fleet, etc, etc.
"Good Lord, Jeeves! Honoria Glossop's engaged to the Predator?"
"Precisely, sir. Given his extensive connections among the Yautja aristocracy, there was little difficulty in persuading Sir Roderick and Lady Glossop to give their consent to the match. If I might be permitted the expression, sir, they are not so much losing a daughter as gaining a horribly beweaponed homicidal alien killing machine."
"Sounds like he'll fit right in at Glossop family get-togethers. But what's this about aristocratic connections, Jeeves?"
"I was eventually able to translate the book we recovered from His Grace's spacecraft, sir. It was not, as you supposed, a flight manual, but rather the Yautja version of Debrett's. His Grace's entry ran to fully eleven pages, sir."
"Good Lord. And what does the Pred - His Grace think of all this?"
"I believe His Grace had little say in the matter, sir; as you have had cause to observe, Miss Glossop has a somewhat forceful personality."
I sighed. It was a wrench, but dash it, the fellow had just saved half of London from grisly annihilation.
"Jeeves?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Those vermillion silk shirts of mine. You really don't like them?"
"No, sir."
"Very well. You may dispose of them. Burn them, give them to the deserving poor, do with them as you wish."
"Thank you, sir. I have already taken the liberty of tearing them up to provide bandages for the wounded."

Needless to say, there's already a Wodehouse slashfic community on LJ, by the name of [livejournal.com profile] indeedsir. I may write the whole thing and post it. Or not. Yes, I think not.
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Monday, February 6th, 2006 07:35 pm
I saw the movie of Jarhead a few days ago. It wiz braw. They'd changed a few things from the book, combining a few characters and incidents. Sometimes this had a big effect: for instance, in the book Staff Sgt. Siek is a late arrival and not a sniper, and is distrusted by the platoon because of his ignorance of sniping and disdain for their expertise, whereas in the film he's the one who trained them, and he commands considerable respect. And I don't remember Troy being such a calm voice of reason in the book. The film also lost the complex flashback structure of the book, and with it the majority of the stuff about Swofford's life before and after the war. But in general, yeah, it was really good, and you should all go and see it.

Message ends.
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Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 06:21 pm
A while ago I saw the film Empire Records, at the insistence of more people than I care to remember. I wasn't terribly impressed, and found myself wondering how such a film came to be made. The following scene came to mind:

INT: The office of Jeffrey D. Kirschtorte III, Senior President at Megabucks Film Studios Inc. The room is huge and imposing, with a ceiling so high it has its own weather system, and a carpet so deep-pile that you can twist your ankle on it. In one corner a fountain of vintage champagne tinkles: in another, this year's Misses April and November pillow-fight listlessly on one of the many sofas. KIRSCHTORTE sits at his desk, which is made entirely of piled $100-bills, and regards his subordinate SIMMONS.

KIRSCHTORTE: OK, Simmons, give me numbers.

SIMMONS [who changed his name from Simonowski in the hope of swifter promotion, but is thinking of changing it back: the Polish-Jew market
segment is big this year]: Bad news I'm afraid, sir. Our net profits were down for the fifth quarter running. We've slipped below France and
Italy as a world economy.

KIRSCHTORTE: Below Italy? Now that's just embarrassing.

SIMMONS: I'm afraid so, sir. The good news is [riffles papers] we're still ahead of Thailand, Singapore and Austria.

KIRSCHTORTE: Thailand!

SIMMONS: Well, if you will keep authorizing Tom Cruise vehicles...

KIRSCHTORTE: Shut up, Simmons.

[KIRSCHTORTE leans back and lights a footlong Cuban cigar with a Google share certificate.]

KIRSCHTORTE: I tell you, Simmons, this industry's going to hell. We used to make serious money in the old days. Back when the Brat Pack were going. We'd just get 'em all together, film some heartwarming dreck, and watch the cash come in. Those were the days.

SIMMONS: Maybe, sir... we could make those days come back?

KIRSCHTORTE: What the hell are you talking about, Simmons? The Brat Pack have gone, burned out or whatever.

SIMMONS: Yes, sir, but we could always make... a NEW Brat Pack!

KIRSCHTORTE: Stop talking crap, Simmons. You can't manufacture talent like Molly Ringwald's!

SIMMONS: Indeed not, sir. But we don't have to. All we need to do is reach into our "young hopefuls" files, find a half-dozen hot-looking twentysomethings, write some anti-corporate, anti-capitalist teensploitation movie, then market it as if it's subversive and underground. That way, the disaffected stoner Gen X market demographic will think they've discovered it themselves, and it'll propel the stars into some serious profitability.

KIRSCHTORTE: Wait a minute - did you say "anti-capitalist"?

SIMMONS: That's right, sir. Anti-capitalism is very big right now in our key market segments.

KIRSCHTORTE: But that's ridiculous! Corporate capitalism is what made America what it is today!

SIMMONS: Exactly, sir. May I make a further suggestion?

KIRSCHTORTE: Keep talking.

SIMMONS: If we set the movie in a record store, we could give it a veneer of underground sophistication, AND make big money from the soundtrack album. Since we're partnered with Sony, we can include music from their catalogue without worrying about licensing fees.

KIRSCHTORTE: Brilliant! That would get Kobayashi-san off my back, too, with his goddamn "synergies".

SIMMONS: Of course, we don't want to use any bands that are too well-known. We want the bands to be nicely obscure, so that kids will think the music is underground and cool and want to buy the album. I've prepared a draft list of bands for your approval. [hands list over]

KIRSCHTORTE: [looking at list] Coyote Shivers? Gin Blossoms? Toad the Wet Sprocket? Are you seriously telling me that bands with these names exist?

SIMMONS: Not yet, sir, but my cousin plays bass and has a large collection of wigs.

KIRSCHTORTE: OK, Simmons, you've convinced me. Now, who could we get to star in this movie?

[He reaches for the nearest file, which is of course Z.]

KIRSCHTORTE: Renee Zell... however the hell you say it. Never heard of her. She'll do.

[He continues to look at files]

KIRSCHTORTE: No, no, no... definitely not, no, no, yes, no, hmmm, must ask that one to dinner, no, yes, no, no, yes... that'll do. But I think it needs to be more rock'n'roll. How about we cast Pamela Anderson? She used to be married to a rocker, she's underground.

SIMMONS: [shudders] I, uh,... think she's contracted to another studio, sir. But we do have Steve Tyler's daughter on our books. Aerosmith are
pretty rock'n'roll.

KIRSCHTORTE: Simmons, you're a genius, and if this thing fails, it'll have your name all over it.

SIMMONS: And if it succeeds, sir?

KIRSCHTORTE: [grins] Then I'll claim all the credit for myself.


When I came to put this in an email, my sigmonster came up with the following:

Are you OK? Can you play bass?
-- unknown driver, upon hitting Jamie Zawinski with his car door.

Smartarse random number generator.
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