Severe Jam Damage

You probably thought I had forgotten all about this place right? Wrong, I just haven’t had much to say about anything lately. Anyway, here are a few movie reviews…

The Incredible Hulk
I haven’t seen the Ang Lee version so wasn’t able to compare, but the opening shot of Ed Norton was enough to keep me happy. Entertaining without being cheesy, a plot that didn’t insult the audience - a couple of nods to the TV show and some pretty cool Hulk SMASH moments.
but seriously… Ed Norton in the opening scene, in the words of the Kool-Aid jug ‘ohhh yeahhhhh…..’

Wanted
This one annoyed me so much I can’t be bothered on expanding any of the points below:
Morgan Freeman only plays one role now.
McAvoy doesn’t (and shouldn’t) do yanqui accents.
I wonder what kind of roles Angie will get when her tits start going south?
Guns don’t kill people, trains do.
All the best bits are in the trailer.

Gone Baby, Gone
Ben Affleck should stay behind the camera. His strengths are obviously in writing (screenplay) and directing. Much, much better than I expected it to be. Could be an Oscar contender, although its release date in the middle of the year might put the kibosh on its chances if people forget about it before next Feb.

AdULTHOOD
Priscilla has a habit of bringing me to mucky movies. When we went to see ‘Flashbacks of a Fool’ his first comment as we exited the theatre was ‘Damn, I thought there would be more sex in it.’ He’s off the booze at the moment so I guess he has to get his thrills somewhere. I gave him a dead arm for that one, but at least when he suggested AdULTHOOD I had a vague idea of what I was letting myself in for.
I hadn’t seen kidULTHOOD so Pris gave me the short version of the plot as we chomped popcorn waiting for the movie to start. Priscilla is pretty shit at explaining things clearly so I was even more confused when he was finished.
‘There’s these two girls and one of them kills herself and it all takes place over two days. And the boys just spend the time taking coke and one of the girls finds out she is pregnant and then this guy kills the father at the end - and he’s the one that this movie is about.’
It was about this point I became blonde.
‘The father?’
‘No, the other guy.’
‘The dead guy?’
‘NOT the father of the girl’
‘Which girl? the dead one?’
‘No, the girl who is pregnant.’
‘Why would he kill her father?
‘He didn’t.’
‘You said he killed her father.’
‘No he killed the father of her baby.’
‘Which baby?’
‘The babe with the power’
‘What power?’
‘The power of voodoo’
‘Who do?’
‘You do’
‘Do what?’
‘Remind me of the babe’

Set 6 years after kidULTHOOD, AdULTHOOD takes place over a single day. Sam (Noel Clarke - ‘Mickey’ in Dr Who) has just been released from jail having served his time for killing Trife (that’d be the baby’s father) and despite the signs of remorse it doesn’t take long before things take a familiar pattern.
Clarke wrote, directed and stars in the movie - which makes you kind of want to hate him, but the boy has got TALENT and you’ve got to respect that. This is a gritty portrayal of urban London made all the more relevant at a time when kids are dying on the streets for stupid reasons. AdULTHOOD doesn’t glamorise the life, nor does it try to give a reason for it. Some scenes are difficult to watch and the conclusion doesn’t end with a ‘happily ever after’ but it does end, and sometimes thats enough.

This is very cool. The (US) Library of Congress has started a flickr account which currently contains 3000 photos from its archives. Some extremely cool and interesting images here. They’ve left them as common use - so there are no copyright restrictions - and are encouraging people to add their own tags and any identifying information they can. Have spent a while browsing round the pics this morning, the 1940’s in colour set has some breathtaking images. Pic shown was taken in 1940, Pietown, New Mexico.

Pietown sounds very Suessian don’t you think?

LoC flickr

So yes, a few things to clear up. I’m still here, just not here if ya get me.

Besides the normal things like breathing, sleeping, eating and working I’ve been busy with other stuff, some of it net-based, some of it not.

In the ‘real-world’ category I went to London about a month ago for a few days, where I met up with Mr. Birdbath and Miss Rabbit. I’ve also been getting to grips with my new camera (a Nikon D80) and I’ve just bought myself a gorillapod. The weather here has been shite so there have only been a few evenings in beer gardens, but they’ve been bad enough to knock me out for a couple of days afterward.

Online stuff…
I’m still doing the 365 thing on flickr although I’m missing out days here and there more and more often. The Friday flickr fiction which some of you may remember ignoring here on SJD, has now been moved to a dedicated site on ning.com - We are now all over here if you want to continue to read my attempts at flash fiction. I’ve also gotten myself an account at Warren Ellis’ Club of Mars, but I really really don’t know what to put there, so its a bit dead at the moment.

I’m going to post here when I can and when I actually have something to say. Right now I’m up to my uxters completing this project and can’t wait to see the back of it. Only a couple more weeks… hopefully.

Just back from the weekend in Barcelona. I’m in the process of catching up, sorting through photos and trying to decide which bits to blog about. Rather than put everything into one long entry I’ll probably break it up into bits. I have about another 300 photos to go through from the digital and 7 rolls that I’m dropping into Gunns at lunchtime for processing.
Short version of the weekend is:
1. I need a new liver
2. El Raval is cooler than it appears.
3. I need a new liver
4. Las Ramblas is an expensive hole.
5. You will never escape the Placa del Pi.

More to follow…

Call myself a blogger huh?
I know, I know, it’s been desperately quiet around here lately. Problem is I haven’t been able to come up with a single decent topic to write about.

I’m off to Barcelona later today, flying out this evening for the Easter weekend. Of course it was only AFTER I’d booked that I realised is was Easter. doh!

Anyway I should have a good few stories on my return, bringing the camera and my new lens, here’s hoping the weather holds up. Although I know that won’t stop us having a good time. In the meantime, Happy Easter everyone!

No, not the dude from the bible.
Instead something much more frightening. That’s right kids - FREAKIN’ CLOWNS!
I ended up in the NCH last Friday night with Miz D and The Philosopher to see a comic production - er, I don’t even know if that is the correct word but it’ll do for now.
It had clowns (scary ass ugly clowns) and a choir.
Not really my bag if ya get me. The choir was really good, but I just can’t get over the damn clowns.
The conceit of the piece was that the clowns (Jesus I’m even getting the shivers typing the word) were the cleaning staff who ‘hilariously’ got caught on the stage just before the performance and - unable to leave - then became part of the performance.
I’d have preferred just to listen to the choir who were quite good and had some fabulous soloists. Instead every so often the clowns would come in and muck everything up, throwing popcorn and water on the audience.
Ahh the old reliables. Hil-freakin’-arious.
You’ll be happy to hear it was only a two night run at the NCH - so any readers who suffer from coulrophobia can now walk down Earlsfort Terrace in safety.

Oh yeah, the photo there? That was a song that they made us STAND UP AND SING ALONG. Complete with ‘wacky’ actions.

I’m a broken woman.

The plan was to meet in the Harbourmaster in the IFSC. On a Thursday night. I can hear you laughing already. I was the first there and it took me twenty minutes to order a heineken. Twenty minutes of standing at the bar and trying to catch ANY of the six staff working there. They were so intent on getting the orders out for the people eating food that they ignored the people in the bar. The harbourmaster is a bit of a shithole. And not what I think of as those good types of shitholes. The old man style pubs like keogh’s or neary’s where you can go and have a nice pint and where the barstaff can handle serving more than one person at a time. Harbourmaster is full of officious suits and ten grand specials who bray like donkeys instead of laughing and drink pints of Stella cos they can pretend to be Marlon Brando when ordering. I hate places like that.

The Barfly and Priscilla eventually showed up, neither of them bothered to even try their luck at the bar and we headed directly across to the Speigeltent. For some reason I always thought that ‘Speigel’ meant ‘Play’ but I think I’m getting my German mixed up. Anyway apparently the tent is so called because of the mirrors that line the wall. They had a bar which was open and serving bottles of German beer. I can’t remember what it was called but it was one of those half litre bottles so I looked QUIITE classy sitting there with my massive bottle of beer while around me ladies in feathers and satin sat sipping glasses of red wine. They were also serving Hoegaarden in those huge glasses, Mrs B said there were a few people at the bar who ordered rounds of these and then had to ferry back and forth as they couldn’t get their hands around three at a time.

It was all very Moulin Rouge. Girls with painted faces, feathered fans, cinched waists and stiletto heels, and boys in berets sprinkled through those of us in the audience who hadn’t dressed up. On stage ‘Heidi Hoopla from Sweden’ through herself through hoops literally as she rolled around the stage keeping hula hoops spinning round various parts of her body. A girl whose name I cannot remember did a fan dance. The Compere ‘Dusty Limits’ sang us a filthy version of the Phantoms ‘Music of the Night’ and then something went horribly wrong. No one is quite sure what happened but it was quite obvious there were problems backstage as the compere was stretching out his time on stage while waiting for the next act. ‘The Extraordinnaires’ (sp) came out and did some old style motown music. They were pretty good and got the audience going, up dancing and singing. Dusty Limits introduced the Usherettes who traipsed up on stage in corsets and suspenders at which point Priscilla grinned and said ‘That’s grand, women in underwear, I’m a happy man now.’ After that there were Can-Can dancers and ‘Lord XP’ the only male burlesque in the show. Of course I was at the bar so missed his act, although Mrs. B assures me he tore off his trousers to reveal well, not much of anything at all. As it was the Club’s 3rd birthday the show ended Miss Lily White who was covered in balloons and popped her way across the stage.

It was a good show, something different, funny and entertaining. However while the Spiegleltent was a unique venue I’d like to see them somewhere that they didn’t have to cut the show short. The Orb were playing at 10 o’clock so in addition to whatever had happened backstage you got the feeling that the show had been truncated to fit into just an hour and a half (with a fifteen minute intermission.)

Tassel Club are back in Dublin in December at the Sugar Club, if you are after something different I’d recommend it.

*Photo from www.thetasselclub.com

There have been all sorts of suggestions from friends, relations and virtual strangers as to things I could do on my week off between jobs.
‘Go for a mid-week break somewhere’
‘Go on a sun holiday’
‘Try and snag a ticket for the Electric Picnic.’
‘Take a drive down the countryside with your camera.’

All valid suggestions, except that I was watching the purse strings a little bit as I know how easy it is to spend, spend, spend when you are off work. (More on that later.) As for the suggestions of ‘driving down the countryside’ well if you’ve seen the weather lately you’ll know that was a bit of a no-go area. So crap weather coupled with watching my pennies meant I was on the look out for cheap and\or free things to do this week that didn’t involve trawling up and down Grafton St doing some window shopping. So here’s a bit of a quick list of things I got up to that were free.

The Beach – I’ve already documented my morning walk down on the beach last Monday. If I had been thinking properly I would have brought a lunch and a couple more rolls of film. But soon after I got home the rain came down in buckets so once again my timing was impeccable.

The Gallery of Photography – Took a wander in here on Wednesday to (once again) escape the rain. Currently the exhibition on display is ‘The Fifth Province’ by Tadhg Devlin. This was a selection of images – according to the gallery blurb - representing the Irish Diaspora. To me it looked like a bunch of photos that were taken at the end of a roll to use up the film and then blown up to hang on the wall. There was nothing technically proficient about the shots either as far as I could see. They could have been taken on a disposable camera for all the interest they held for me. In the second gallery upstairs one wall was given over to a selection of what I can only assume was the photographers parents as the same two people showed up again and again in each of the shots. Pictures of the back of people’s heads, of a table that hadn’t been cleaned after dinner, a man trimming hedges, a couple standing on their front doorstep. The kind of photos everyone shoeboxes full of at home, memories of nothing much at all.

The National Photography Archive – I hadn’t been in here before but the Barfly said there was an exhibition of photos from the early 20th century of the southeast (Waterford, Wexford, etc) so as it was still raining when I left the Gallery of Photography I crossed the square and ducked in here for a couple of minutes. The Archive gallery is not very large, comprising mainly the windowed room that is visible as you walk past. There is a small ‘corridor’ on the top level which is more interesting from an architectural point of view, but hardly large enough to be considered a second gallery.

The Dead Zoo – aka the Natural History Museum on Merrion Square. I love the fact that the museums and most of the galleries in Dublin are free to the public. In Toronto a day pass to the ROM ran about 7 or 8 dollars and that was 15 years ago. For something so big that you couldn’t possibly get around it in one day, the Irish museums being free are certainly worth it. I hadn’t been in the museum as I normally don’t bother to walk any further than the National History Museum on Kildare street to go and look at the gold hoards and the ceists. The Natural History Museum contains cabinets full of moth-eaten, mildewing stuffed animals. (erego ‘The Dead Zoo’) As I walked past the displays I could imagine being stuck in that old building at night with all of those glass-eyed animals and feeling fairly scared. As it was the final week before school starts the place was full of glass-eyed parents on a last ditch effort to entertain the kids until they could hand them over to their teachers. I got a bit stuck on the first floor and found myself wandering past glass displays of birds, fish and parasites. It being lunchtime and afraid I’d lose my appetite I spent most of my time in the upstairs galleries peering in at the bears and monkeys.

Shakespeare in the Park – I was on Grafton St. when a young girl in a puffball skirt and adorned with plastic bangles from her wrist to her elbow handed me a flyer advertising the ‘Public Shakespeare Company’ production of ‘Twelfth Night’. It looked fairly fine that afternoon so I headed in to catch the 2pm show. There were about 50 or 60 people draped around the Yeats Memorial in the Green, eating lunch and waiting for the show to start. It was a fairly okay production. A little bit ‘shouty-shouty Shakespeare’ for me. This version was set in 1982 (complete with ‘80s soundtrack) and although it’s already a role reversal comedy the company took it to extremes so that every characters role was reversed. So instead of Duke Orsino we had ‘Duchess Orsina’ and Malvolio became ‘Malvolia.’ It was a good way to spend an hour and a half and even when the rain started halfway through the third act people stayed put and either moved to sit under the trees or sat huddled under umbrellas. If you are at a loose end the production is running in the Green until September 9th daily at 2pm and 5pm.