Aka Monday 18th July - Sunday 31st July 2022
This fortnight was a bit of a mixed bag, the first half was spent working from home and trying to cope with the 40+ Heatwave and the second was spent on leave trying to recover from the excess heat. Yeah…Monday and Tuesday were really bad, just no escape from the heat, just crushing down on you. But, at least I was working from home and could dress appropriately and use/wear cold flannels to try to cool down. And even after the 40+ heat had dissipated we were still in the high 20s/early 30s and it took most of the rest of the week to get back to “normal” summer temps. And once the heat was back to more normal levels I was on leave, got my hair cut, caught up (a bit) with my reading, music listening and TV/film watching, which included the ‘The Bob’s Burger’s Movie’:
…which was great, as good as a normal episode of the ‘Bob’s Burgers’, but more epic, more dramatic, properly ramped up so this story does deserve being a movie. Our characters are pushed to their limits, playing off some that has been on the show, so there are high stakes at stake. Being movie length there’s room for the storylines to breathe and grow. And the animation is great, it hits the shows aesthetic but makes it cinematic. Such a great, fun and uplifting movie. I also watched ‘The Black Phone’:
…which is based on a short story by Joe Hill, about a child abductor and killer operating in the ‘70s, and a sister trying to find her brother. It looks great and has a great cast, but it feels a little slight, not padded exactly, but a little drawn out maybe? Maybe there’s a tad to much scene setting, showing the kids normal life of school and home which doesn’t create a sense of foreboding and dread and worry? It’s an enjoyable film, but you feels that there could be a bit more. And I watched ‘The Grey Man’:
…which has some great action scenes and a great cast and it’s obviously that a lot of work as gone into the film, but it feels very by the numbers, like they’ve watched loads of great action flicks and taking the best bits and stuck them together. Like, let’s take a bit of the Jason Bourne films, that plane scene from Tom Cruise’s ‘The Mummy’ and some more from the ‘Mission Impossible’ films and 'John Wick', etc. So it feels before like a greatest hits compilation than an unique piece of work. I also picked up ‘Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness’ and ‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ on DVD:
…both of which I’ve already seen, and enjoyed, but (a) the comic collector in me want’s a complete collection of the MCU films/DVDs, and (b) I want to see the deleted scenes that come with ‘The Unbearable Weight…’ DVD.
I picked up some great comics this fortnight:
…including the limited edition ’Old Dog’ ashcan, which includes the short story from 'Image!' #1 along with some background info for the series proper. I then got the latest ‘Mojo’:
…and it was a bit of a mixed bag for me this month. I primarily got it for the cover CD and because Dr John was mentioned on the front cover. The rest of the bands and singers mentioned on the cover – Bruce Springsteen, Blondie, Dexy’s, Joan Jett, Procol Harum and Burning Spear – I’m not bothered about, I’m not supper into. This month’s big article is on Bruce Springsteen, who I’ve never gotten in, always found a bit dry/nothing special, but the cover CD is collection of songs that he and the E Street Band have covered live and it’s a damn solid CD. It’s worth getting the magazine just for it. Highlights being Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels ‘Devil With A Blue Dress On & Good Golly Miss Molly’, John Lee Hooker’s ‘Boom Boom’, Richard Berry and The Pharaohs ‘Have Love Will Travel’, Bo Diddley’s ‘Mona’, The Contours ‘Do You Love Me’, Chuck Berry’s ‘Bye Bye Johnny’ and Moon Mullican’s ‘Seven Nights To Rock’. There’s also a nice article on early Elvis and the photos taken by Alfred Wertheimer, and a short, three quarter page article on Dr John and his forthcoming country album. Although I felt a bit cheated, if the artist is mentioned on the cover you’d at least expect a couple of pages on them inside! And the latest ‘Uncut’:
…which covers Blondie, Kate Bush, The Kinks, Bowie, with the main feature on Wilco. But I picked it up for Cosey Fanni Tutti and Steve Hillage and the cover CD. The CD is an alternative version of Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ and it’s great and it’s inspired me to get the actual ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’:
…and a digital copy of Jeff Tweedy’s (Wilco’s frontman) solo album, 'Together At Last’, as a couple of it’s songs were on the alternative ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’. I had dismissed Wilco as hipster’s and generic alt/indie rock, but I was really impressed by the alternative ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ to explore more (maybe it’s an age thing and my inner indie kid has less sway!). And the “proper” ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ feels more traditional, less out-there, it’s still pretty damn good and I think I’ll be adding more Wilco albums to my collection. So, this month ‘Uncut’ has beaten ‘Mojo’ in the battle of the two rock n’ roll music magazines! I also picked up some meagre Lotto winnings:
Most annoyingly, especially in the heat, on Tuesday 26th July I accepted an offer on a book I had for sale on ebay and because I wouldn’t be near a post office for the next few days I posted it out on Tuesday afternoon. And that evening I got an email asking if they can withdraw their offer, which is annoying, but okay, I’ll be nice. So, I said okay, let’s cancel that order, but I’ve already posted it to you, so you’ll have to post it back to me and now (10th August), a fortnight later, I haven’t had a reply to that email or the book back, so now (10th August) I’ve got to go chase them and maybe get ebay involved! Some people are just dicks! More pleasurably I got a few CDs this fortnight, starting with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s ‘We’re All In Love’ single:
…which I got for the b-side ‘Abstract Dragon’ (which I could only find as part of a digital reissue of the album and this track was only available of you brought the whole album, and it was cheaper to get a second-hand copy of the single) and ‘Abstract Dragon’ is a nice 12 minute track that goes from your trad rock ‘n’ roll to something more chilled and folky. I also got the ‘Elvis’ film soundtrack:
…I’ve heard that the director Baz Luhrmann likes to make his soundtracks special and from the tracklisting it’s clear that attention has been made to the songs, to take well-known songs and make them new again, so should ne an interesting listen. I also got The Chemical Brothers ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ 25th Anniversary edition:
…which has a five extra previously unreleased tracks, which I’m sure will be a good listen, but it makes me wonder why there’s so few extras/bells n’ whistles, compared to the lavish anniversary edition of the ‘Surrender’ album, would be interesting to know the behind the scenes reasoning for these differences. But I’m sure I’ll enjoy the extra tracks and I already know that ‘Dig…’ is a great album…and I did this fortnight’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a poor start as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21). And I’m not sure I can blame the heat for this poor start, yes we should have gotten ‘sixpence’ from ‘pre-decimal British coin, 40 to the pound’ and ‘attempt’ from ‘shot’, but we didn’t know that a ‘hopper’ is a ‘tapered container for loose bilk material such as grain’ or that ‘agog’ can mean ‘highly excited’. Hopefully it’s just a case of the little grey cells dusting off the weekendness…
…and things get even worse with Tuesday’s crossword! We had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (six out of 23), which I do put down to the near 40C heat. It really did wipe us out and there was no way the little grey cells could cope ☹. But we did learn that ‘curdle’ means to ‘turn from liquid to solid’, that a ‘Lycee’ is a ‘French state secondary school’, that ‘Bordeaux’ is a ‘port city on the Garonne in south-west France, a major wine capital’ (which we should have guessed at) and that ‘amity’ means ‘cordial relations’…
…and the disgraceful performance contains with Wednesday’s crossword, as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 23)! Again I think it’s the heat effecting the poor little grey cells, as we missed a couple of easy ones, like ‘common market’ from ‘free trade area with no tariffs’, but we did learn that ‘prosit’ is a ‘German toast’, that ‘Assam’ is a ‘black tea from north-east India’ and that ‘Tyrol’ is an ‘Austrian state, capital Innsbruck’…hopefully as the heat calms down we can get back to our normal crossword performance…
…the dire performance starts a very small improvement with Thursday’s crossword as we only had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 25) (and yes sixth is an improvement!!!). Again, we missed some easy ones, like ‘turbine’ from ‘rotary engine’ and ‘spry’ from ‘active (for one’s age?)’, but we did learn that a ‘chapeau’ is a ‘Parisian hat’, let’s hope this small improvement continues…
…and it does!!! We didn’t have to cheat on any of the 21 clues for Friday’s crossword, a clean sweep!!! It seems we’re on a week of high highs and low lows, what will tomorrow bring…
…Saturday’s crossword doesn’t go as well as yesterday nor as worse as the preceding days, we’re back to a usual score of cheating on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). We should have gotten ‘plumage’ from ‘feathers’, but we did learn that ‘cedilla’ is a mark written under the letter c, especially in French, to show that it is pronounced like an s rather than a k and that ‘Pueblo’ is a ‘Native American village in the south-western United States’. Hopefully we’ll be back on track for next week’s crossword…
…and next Monday’s crossword went pretty badly, even worse than last week ☹ We had to cheat on nearly a third of the clues (five out of 18). I’m not sure why it went this badly, the heat isn’t overbearing, we’re off work so there’s none of that stress/pressure on our crosswording time. But we had been out for a bit of a walk and it did knacker us out a bit and we had a very minor anxiety attack or a prelude to an attack, which we were able to sail out, but it did leave us a little…on edge. So maybe that’s why we didn’t do well? Either way we learnt that ‘Pygmies’ are an ‘ethnic group in Equatorial Africa’, that if you are ‘unable to continue batting’ you can ‘retired hurt’ from a cricket match, and 76 trombones led the big parade. Hopefully this is just an outlier event and we’ll be back to crosswording excellence tomorrow…
…and we brilliantly bounce back with Tuesday’s crossword as we didn’t have to cheat on any of the nineteen clues! A clean sweep, after yesterday’s dire performance! I think we were helped by a break during doing the crossword (I had to pop out to get some shopping and to drop off a parcel at the Post Office) when there they just two clues left, which I wasn’t sure I would get, but a little time away and when I came back the answers were obvious and were just there! It has been a weird fortnight or so where it’s been feast or famine, either doing really well or doing terribly…
…and Wednesday’s crossword keeps up the bounce as we only had t cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). Being on leave must be having a positive effect on the little grey cells…plus we don’t have to rush the grid, we can take a bit of extra time to dwell and consider what the answers may be. And we learnt that ‘Taiwan’ is a ‘republic of China’ and, somewhat on the nose, we failed to realise that ‘manifest’ was the answer to ‘obvious’!!! Fingers crossed that we keep up this standard for the rest of the week…
…and there’s not much to say about Thursday’s crossword, just that the little grey cells aced! Knocked it out of the park! Smashed it! We didn’t need to cheat on any of the 23 clues, sailing through in what felt like record time…
...and there’s not much to say about Friday’s crossword either, as it’s another clean sweep! The little grey cells are motoring on top form! Although with a little help from the anagrams, without them we wouldn’t have gotten a clean sweep…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on a pretty damn fine note. It wasn’t a clean sweep like the last couple of days, but we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). We only stumbled on not knowing that the triangular 22-storey, steel-framed structure on New York’s Fifth Avenue is called the Flatiron Building and not getting ‘tragic’ from ‘like Hamlet or Othello?’. But, aside from Monday, this was a pretty sweet crossword week and hopefully it’ll continue on for the next weeks…
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