Days 2733 - 2746

Aka Monday 16th May - Sunday 29th May 2022

Still slightly feeling the ill effects from the last fortnight, but aside from that and the anxiety attack that seemed to last from Thursday 19th May to Saturday 21st May (or maybe it’s more accurate to say series of attacks over those days), it was a pretty quiet fortnight without incidence, but with these beautiful comics:

…and ’Fuck This Place’ #1 was a particular stand-out, chilly and hair-raising, with just enough humour to sweeten that horrific pill…I also got the latest ‘Mojo’:

…which had some great articles on the Velvet Underground, including Lou Reed’s early demos, and Stevie Wonder, which has got me wanting to investigate his back catalogue. And the cover CD had a couple of decent tunes on it…I also got the latest Lego Batman magazine:

…and my copy of the first issue of ’Disco Pogo’, which I’d backed ages again, arrived. Back in the ‘90s and early 2000s, a great magazine focusing on dance music and the surrounding culture, called ‘Jockey Slut’ was published and it was, as just said, great. Informative and jokey and would have great cover 7”/tapes/CDs, but like a lot of print magazines it eventually went under, but now it’s back! As ‘Disco Pogo’. Last year, the team behind ‘Disco Pogo’ and ‘Jockey Slut’, published a tribute magazine on Andrew Weatherall and it promoted a lot reminiscing about ‘Jockey Slut’ (and about Mr Weatherall) which led to a crowd-funding campaign, which led to this:

…and I can’t wait to dig it! Talking about music, these gems (and not so gem-like) of the musical world arrived:

…both ‘And Those Who Were Seen Dancing’ by Tess Parks and ‘Emotional Eternal’ by Melody’s Echo Chamber, occupy that modern indie sound, that merges old fashioned ‘60s rock n’ roll with shoegaze and bits and pieces of drone/noise and/or dance music to various degrees. While ‘Down By The River Thames’ by Liam Gallagher is a pretty sweet live album, which sometimes recaptures that old Oasis magic and impressed me enough to get Liam’s proper new album, ‘C’mon You Know’. I’ve gotten Lia’s two previous solo albums, but the songs never stuck in my head for long, so I wasn’t going to get the new album, but like I said I liked ‘Down By…’ enough to take a chance on the new album. And it was…okay, a decent traditional rock n’ roll album, but again the songs haven’t stuck in my head (I’m writing this on 21st July). ‘Free Satpal Ram’ by Asian Dub Foundation (ADF), was originally released in the late ‘90s to highlight the plight of Satpal Ram, who killed a man in a fight, but his trail and time on prison were tainted by racism and many people felt that he did not receive a fair trial. It’s a fierce single, which I got for (a) the Primal Scream remix and (b) ADF are great band that I need to explore more. I saw them live in ’94 and got a couple of early songs, but money was tight, and I wasn’t able to follow them properly, but now I can!

I also watched a few of films, starting with ‘X’:

…which is a slasher set in the deep South in the ’70s, heavy on the Texas Chainsaw vibes, but unique enough to not be a copy. A group of friends and actors have rented out a remote cabin to shoot a porn flick (one of the reasons for the title ‘X’) and things take a turn for the worse. This is a great film, it nicely sets up the characters, they’re not just paper-thin cut-outs to be slaughtered, they’re actually people, some you like and some you don’t, and the setting is captured in a way that produces a low-level sense of unease, which builds up and blows up into sheer horror. Then I watched ’The 9th Guest’:

…which I got after reading that it was the first film to have the plot of guests invited to a remote/secure location to be bumped off one by one, which is better known from the Agatha Christine classic ‘And Then There Were None’. I really like the first two film adaptions of ‘And Then There…’ (‘And Then There Were None’ and ‘Ten Little Indians’) and I was interested in how closely they (and the novel) followed ‘The 9th Guest’, and while there is a large crossover in the main plot, there are enough differences for them not to be direct copies. A bit like how the Universal adaption of ‘Dracula’ is very different from the Hammer version. The baddie in ‘The 9th Guest’ has a different motive for taking his revenge and then is time limit, with one guest dying every hour, so it feels a little bit more like a ‘Saw’ film! Like I say it’s interesting to watch ‘The 9th Guest’ as a comparison to ‘And Then There Were None’, but it also a great film to watch on its own merits. I also watched the stellar ‘Pig’:

…which stars Nicolas Cage as a former chef, Rob, who has left his old life and Portland behind him, to live a simple life in the forest, earning a crust by hunting and selling truffles. But it all changes when his pig is kidnapped (for its truffle sniffing abilities) and Rob goes back to Portland to get her back. It’s kinda like the first ‘John Wick’ film, but with a chef instead of an ex-assassin, and food related things replacing the gun-play, and a much more focus on Rob’s emotional life or innerness, so it’s much more a character study and the pig, truffles and revenge are kind a secondary to how Rob deals with, and reacts, to the situations he ends up in. And then I watched ‘Jackass Forever’:

…which was an odd watch. First off there’s no Bam and given all the drama that has gone on between Bam and Jeff Tremaine and Johnny Knoxville, which could fill a film on its own, it’s understandable that he’s not in the film, but he was such a big part of previous Jackass films that it leaves a big gap in the film. And it’s a gap that’s hard to describe, as the crew are still do outrageous and dangerous stunts, but there’s just something missing. Second, the crew are so much older that it almost feels bad watching doing the stunts, like how are they going to bounce back from the injuries! Thirdly, it’s weird seeing the new crew members come in, it’s almost like they thought we need younger people to do the more extreme stunts, we can’t endanger the older guys! And finally, the nudity! There feels like there’s much more nudity than ever before, and it’s not gratuitous, it’s just that they’re at the beach/in hot climates and a lot of the stunts seem to involve genitals or the bum! And it only involves the male crew members, which makes a change and it’s kinda enlightened given the different body shapes and lack of any body shaming. 

But aside from these points, it’s the same old Jackass, a close group of people pulling pranks on each other and doing stunts, so which are very funny and some that aren’t. And, as a comfort watch, I re-watched the first three seasons of the TV version of ‘What We Do In The Shadows’, which are still great and funny, with Nadja, played by Natasia Demetriou, and Laszlo, played by Matt Berry, being the standouts for me, how well they act as a married couple, the accents and how they speak and use the language <chef’s kiss>…and I finished reading ‘Snowblind’:

...a fan novel of the early years of R.J. MacReady, the ten years or so before he started working at Outpost 31 in ‘John Carpenter’s The Thing’. Detailing his time as a pilot in ‘Nam and then as a drug smuggler and then as an ex-smuggler trying to escape the mob. Lots of easter eggs for ‘John Carpenter’s The Thing’. And it’s an engaging and enjoyable read, although as a big ‘John Carpenter’s The Thing’ fan it’s hard to impartial (and to not have a few hardcore fan nit-picks!), it's a great combination of neo-noir thriller mixed with ‘Miami Vice’ and ‘Tour Of Duty’ and I would recommend to anyone…and I did the first week’s G2 Crosswords:

…Monday’s crossword starts the week strongly as we only had to cheat on a tenth of the clues (two out of 21). The little grey cells got their rest in over the weekend and powered through the clues. Although we did stumble a little with ‘pot’, none of the slang phrase we knew for cannabis fitted so we assumed that it meant a container, but we’d forgotten about the very old term of ‘hashish’! And we learnt that ‘bravura’ means ‘brilliant display of technical skill’…

…things trend upward with Tuesday’s grid. Only had to cheat on an eleventh of the clues (two out of 23). On ‘medieval poet who wrote and sang verse about courtly love’ we got stuck trying to think of an individual poet and bypassed the generic term ‘troubadour’! A little annoying and we didn’t get ‘waver’ from ‘flicker’, but aside from that a good grid…

…Wednesday’s grid goes even better, as we only had to cheat on one of the 23 clues. We couldn’t get ‘antediluvian’ from ‘very antiquated – invalidate UN (anag)’. We couldn’t get it even with the anagram, kinda embarrassing! But good aside from that…

…Thursday’s grid goes damn well, we only had to cheat on one of the 25 clues, only stumbling when we didn’t get ‘extent’ from ‘degree’. Which was a little surprising as we had a bit of an anxiety attack for a chunk of the evening, which kinda preoccupied us…

…and we’ve still feeling the aftermath of the anxiety attack (or experiencing another one) for Friday’s grid, but it still goes damn well, as we only had to cheat on one of the 21 clues. Maybe the anxiety distracts us from overthinking the clues or the clue solving distracts us from the anxiety? And we learnt that the abbreviation of corporations is ‘Tums’…

…and Saturday’s grid ends the week on high note, as we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). We still feeling the effects of the anxiety attack, but to a lesser extent, hopefully after some rest we’ll feel better and more normal. Back to the crossword, the little grey cells Pacman’d their way through the clues and we learnt that ‘travail’ means ‘laborious effort’ and ‘flurry’ means ‘sudden commotion’…and I did the second week’s G2 Crosswords:

…Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a flying start as we only had to cheat on one of the 18 clues. Although when we first started, we did think that this was going to be a bit of a nightmare and we weren’t going to do very well. But once we got ‘harum-scarum’ the grid fell into place, like ‘magic bullet’ became obvious, and ‘arsonist’ and on and on. Although we did forget that ‘smitten’ means ‘besotted’, which was a bit of a d’oh moment…

…things take a tumble with Tuesday’s grid, as we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (three out of 19). After yesterday’s great start, we just couldn’t get to grips with the grid, we didn’t get that one clue that unlocks the grid. We eventually got most of the answers, but missed the obvious ‘unpopular’ from ‘greatly disliked’, but we did learn that ‘Poplin’ is a ‘ribbed lightweight cotton fabric’ and that a ‘mandarin’ is a ‘reddish-orange loose-skinned citrus fruit’ (along with geography, fruit is one of blindspot, if it’s not an apple or banana we’re a bit in the dark!)…

…things pick up a tad with Wednesday’s grid, only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). The little grey cells are bouncing back and we almost did better, but we assumed that the answer to ‘responding to a stimulus’ was reaction and didn’t bother to check if that fitted with the intersecting answers, if we had checked we’d probably would have realised that the true answer is ‘reactive’, d’oh! But aside from that misstep, we did learn that a ‘Broom’ is a ‘low evergreen heath plant’ and that ‘Aioli’ is a ‘garlic mayo’…

…and we’re maintaining things with Thursday’s grid, again we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). The little grey cells have hit a plateau of a pretty good level, not great, but not terrible. Which kinda reflects our health at the moment, we seemed to go through a patch of being overly ill – Covid, food poisoning and unexpected side effects from medication – but for the last few days, nearly a week, we’ve felt back to our normal level of unwellness! Now it’s just low-level anxiety and occasionally chest pains, it’s nice to be back to normal! We did miss a couple of easy ones – ‘sparse’ from ‘in short supply’ and ‘pathos’ from ‘quality evoking pity’ and were reminded that a ‘Gaucho’ is a ‘Pampas cowboy’…

…and things really pick up with Friday’s grid, as we only had to cheat on one of the 25 clues, the little grey cells were firing on all cylinders. And there were no spikes in anxiety or worries to get in the way (that came later in the day!). We only stumbled on not knowing that an ‘umbra’ is a ‘dark shadow’…

…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on a damn fine note as we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). We got stuck on ‘old saw’, trying to think up alternative names for the tool saw, not knowing that saw can also mean ‘adage’! We also learnt that ‘Pastis’ is an ‘anise-flavoured French aperitif’. Our health is picking and so is our crosswording and the sun is shining what better way to end the week…