well, so it begins. saturday night we shut up shop and were ready to re-open the new CHAPTER by tuesday. in the gap in between were two days of solid hard work! sunday i got a sort of lie-in (till about 9.30am, which for me is a late start on a sunday!) but we needed it, it was a whole two days of lifting, moving, cleaning, sorting, constructing, chucking out... and not much sitting down. the bloody wonderful lex did a lovely thing and cooked dinner for everyone on the sunday, it was only a bit of chilli or a bagette and chips but it was so appreciated. we all worked so hard those two days getting the place straight for the opening on the tuesday morning that i sat down at home and just fell asleep on the sofa. tuesday morning was inevitably HARD what with a million people asking questions / making approving noises and us lot trying to work out where we'd put everything ("where are the bins? oh yeah, they forgot to buy bins..." etc) but it was a good tired, like when you've done a good job.
on tuesday night i invited a few people down for a drink so i could have a go and see what it was like to actually enjoy the place. i've spent almost two years helping to plan chapter and going in and out of the building site only to then spend time running around setting it up but didn't know what it was like to just sit and enjoy the space and decide if i really liked it or not! thankfully i did. i went with the lovely miss ginny head and beautiful spooner to see the DOTS SHORT FILM BAND play music alongside some local short films, most of which were quite beautiful and lovely. the brilliant ewan morris jones had a film he'd worked on years ago based on a short story by a jorge luis borges that had some wonderful ideas in it and showed off what a great film maker he is. the biggest surprise was what the composers did to ginny's former art in the bar installation "we are not what we seem". the lead composer described what she did and it sounded interesting but i did not feel it worked and of all of them i found it a little disappointing. afterwards i sat and had some food with steen and some drink with casey, ewan and leila, duffy and the lovely rhodri viney, who gave me a cd of his new work which i was very excited to receive. it was a shame that they still haven't got the speaker system in place as it felt odd sat in chapter with no beautiful music playing but a lovely evening and a bloody good way to have a nice relax.
i did sort of get escape (although i dunno whether looking after full cinema's worth of teenagers is really an escape) when i ushered for the national schools film week's screening of SHIFTY. i remember it being advertised to look a bit like a guy richie gangster film but it was more mike leigh than guy richie. it was an authentic day in the life of an east london estate where a muslim drug dealer shifty has his beat. his best mate has come down to visit after a long absence and found him much changed from the "brightest kid in school" he once was. they spend a day avoiding his devout, successful brother; an addict who is ruining his life in the persuit of one more hit; the police; and his future. shifty has spent the past few years descending further into this life and his mate chris seems a little shocked about how he's ended up like this. he makes a few subtle hints that he does not approve but there seems to be some guilt that it maybe his doing that he has ended up like this. i was a bit worried when SHIFTY started as the first few scenes graphically showed people taking hard drugs and with coachloads of teens it gave me an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach that it wasn't going to be appropriate or that i wouldn't know how to deal with questions afterwards but by the end of the film i felt safe that they had gone on a journey with shifty and discovered that this stupid, seedy life is for idiots and fuck ups. it wasn't patronising, it was honest and felt real. the relationship between daniel mays and riz ahmed as chris and shifty truly shone through and they had real chemistry, related to each other in a way that i felt those kids were totally going to get. a really good choice from the film education board.
wednesday was an extended ushering day as i was asked to do the 6pm and 8pm as well as my normal matinee. first up was the new version of DORIAN GRAY. i loved the old version with angela lansbury and this unfortunately, did not manage to top it. as vapid as the character is, the subject should not be treated in such a light manner. it was a glossy remake and i did not think it was possible to make the story of a man who commits every sin imaginable dull, but dull it was. they also managed to make him seem not quite so queer, which seems like almost a feat. the famously gay novel written by oscar wilde which was even used in the prosecution case against him in france, turned into a sort of tame modern beautiful costume drama. they'd changed some of the characters around, pinned down the setting a little too clumsily and stretched the story a little too thin. its a great archetypical tragedy but it felt trapped in its new form. it wasn't unwatchable but it was a big disappointment. at times i longed for francis ford coppola's version of DRACULA as that outlandish camp film seemed a more credible an example of hedonistic victorianism.
next up was 500 DAYS OF SUMMER. i'd been quite looking forward to this, being a big fan of joseph gordon levitt since i realised he'd grown up to be actually quite a nice little actor in greg araki's MYSTERIOUS SKIN. zooey deschanel is in it too, her of the "eyes dewey and wet like a baby seal" (which is one of my all time favourite hyperbolic quotes) and it promised to be an alternative to those gooey sit com romances that tend to be ten a penny these days. ooh for the days of smart rom coms that have never seen the green biro of richard curtis. well, it certainly was not a disappointment. in fact, there seemed to be an almost uncomfortable amount of facts that were very similar to my own life. i'm sure i'm not alone in this, i know many people who have had similar experiences, but it was almost creepy at times. tom (jg levitt) went to university to study architecture and couldn't get a job so ended up working in a boring office job but yearns for escape. a beautiful girl with a lovely smile called summer starts working in his office and when he notices enough small coincidences (they share a sense of the absurd and both like the smiths) he convinces himself that she is THE ONE and falls hopelessly in love. it won't spoil the movie if i tell you that she ends up breaking his heart because we find this out in the first scene. what director marc webb has cleverly done is to zip back and forth over the 500 days she was in his life to give a full vision of the relationship, to examine what went wrong. it gives the impression of what we all do after a break up. we see tom's initial shell shock at being dumped, we see the heady days of tripping around to our own soundtrack in a happy daze, we see him being severely depressed once its all sunk in and we see the first day of meeting summer. although it could get a little tiresome (i'm not sure i entirely believed in his little greek chorus of friends and family and sometimes i wanted to know a bit more about the distant, glacial summer) when it was good it was very very good. there were perfect little scenes such as visits to ikea where they imagined living in the fake rooms and a party that switched to split screen where tom's expectations and the reality played out heartrending and without dialogue. i used to really like romantic films before they started treating women like idiots who obsessed with getting married and wearing the right clothes. hopefully this will encourage people to make more films with a bit more of a bite.
last up was ARMY OF CRIME, which told the tale of the french resistence was a sort of antidote to the more brash, hollywood INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. now, i must first make a confession. as much as i do take a keen interest in history and have watched many "war" documentaries with benny my knowledge of the french resistence is mostly coloured by having been a big fan of ALLO ALLO as a child. as much as i engaged with this wonderful, illuminating film i was secretly hoping for a cameo appearance of the madonna with the big boobies. sorry, very childish. i was listening out for the fake french accent of the police officers, paying keen attention to fat french restaurant owners and wondering where the two RAF officers were stowed in this episode. its sometimes so much easier to deal with difficult things if we make them flippant comedy than if we try to examine real emotions. the difficulty the french find with their history in world war two is legendary and also very understandable. at times this film felt more like THE LIVES OF OTHERS, the french - german alliance where neighbours inform on neighbours and the police are working for the nazis, it was a frightening time to be living in france. many thought that it was better to collaborate and try to preserve france where others more perceptive knew that it was impossible to collaborate, that the nazi ideaology would wipe them out eventually one way or the other. having seen KATYN earlier this year, about the polish nation's problems in a similar vein, this film serves as a poignant accompaniment. again, a true story, it follows the men and women who were on a famous poster put up in france mocking their attemps to turn the tide on the nazi regime, a propaganda attempt to turn the perception of these people from freedom fighters to dangerous criminals. it centred on armenian immigrant missak whose initial reticence at joining a group who are willing to kill slowly disippates due to the circumstances surrounding him. he becomes the heart of the group, a strong presence who knows what evil the nazi army can do (they all but wiped out the armenians) and has the experience of age to guide the young hot headed members of the resistance. the vichy government are leaned on by the nazis to wipe out this force and slowly and inevitably, the net catches all the members, leading to the line up and the famous photograph. it is fittingly human that under such inhuman times the betrayal was so banal and the characters who told on them so unheroic. a question every school child must have asked themselves when they study history is "would i or my family have been involved in this?" and it is important to have films like this to show the very real people who fight back against monsters like the nazis.
to crown off the first weekend in the new CHAPTER we hosted part of the SWN festival and the entire MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES. i was a bit worried that we were hosting two festivals in one weekend, especially since one was named after an old japanese curse but it was all fine. all over chapter there were rooms filled with conferences about art forms today. i listened in on a couple and they all seemed really useful. its one thing to come up with an idea, another thing entirely about how to make money out of it. lots of different aspects of the art world were discussed and it was also nice that people were coming up with ideas and contacting each other and making friends. its what chapter was designed for! brilliant fun and i met so many lovely people. unfortunately it was only listening in and checking things were ok because i was working all the way through, no chance of getting time off when its all hands on deck! i wouldn't miss out on too much swn though. i was really excited about this not only because its a brilliant music festival and i get to see a whole load of bands but also because it would test us out to see how well we can do under the pressure of a billion people in the building. happily, it was all fine. a few oldies who didn't understand why we weren't doing the normal gorgeous menu, but apart from that everyone seemed to love it. i had a brilliant time working upstairs in the theatre. i was ushering and sort door control lady but it was a lot more fun than that. we were holding it in two rooms, the newly monickered "common room" in the west wing and the theatre. on thursday we had the bbc in with adam walton and bethan elfyn with bands like SCIENCE BASTARD and MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS. vern from science bastard decided to launch himself into the crowd mid-song and snog steen but in his place i would have done the same thing. they are bloody entertaining boys. marina and the diamonds were my favourites of the evening after that, having a great pop sound and a really interesting female vocalist. it all went suspiciously well, no disasters and no problems. curious! we had the lovely jenny and rich from that london down to visit and i was sad to be working all weekend but we got to spend some time relaxing on friday afternoon. i took the to the micro makers fayre, part of the MAYLIIT events. there was a man who made bikes that played a tune as the wheels revolved; a lovely lady who had a stall where you could make revolving paintings; badgemakers, knitters and my friend zoe who was getting you to cycle to power a blender that made smoothies. fantastic! we had a look at the EDDO STERN exhibition in the new gallery and we were all blown away by the beauty of the sculptures and laughed at the world of warcraft inspired animations. we popped into town for the SWN BINGO where we were frightened to hear exactly what FOGHAT sounded like in order to recognise them and didn't win but had a lovely time (thank you jonny et al). then i dashed back to chapter but thankfully friday night at swn was just a breeze (if you excuse the pun). it was the PEPPERMINT PATTI night and it was one i was really looking forward to as it was a sort of "greatest hits of patti" night. it also featured a first for patti, the performance by a solo MALE artist, our brilliant theatre programmer JAMES TYSON. i had never heard james perform so i was really curious to see what sort of thing it would be. his songs were beautiful and delicate pieces about love and yearning. gorgeous. in the common room space they i also caughta bit of the beautiful PAPER AEROPLANES, a ethereal folky loveliness floating up the corridor. soon after in the theatre it was the riotous KING ALEXANDER, who were brilliant as always. laura was the artist co-ordinator for swn in chapter so it gave her a good break from stressing about the bands to jump on stage and yell for a bit! EMILY BREEZE was on a while after and i was surprised by h0w much she had changed. when i last saw her. the cracked, edgy performance had a sheen on it that was not quite expecting and i'm not sure if i approve of yet! i'm still mulling it over, its difficult to look at emily breeze and her amazing, sexy performance and try to separate it from the music, she is so charismatic. WETDOG were amazing as always, they get better every time i see them and they are all so lovely. the night was topped off by a great, techinicolour performance by the VICTORIA ENGLISH GENTLEMANS CLUB who decked the stage in bunting and flowers and painted their faces like clowns gone wrong. i really like their angular, biting take on indie pop and i'm glad they're doing well. wish i'd been able to bring frankie down to see them play... but my highlight of the day was dancing with my friends davida's baby alba and martin and mary's baby sonny. the three of us were throwing some shapes in the theatre foyer and for me that was better being in a packed out gig any day. great fun. saturday was an all day swn event and it started right in front of my eyes with swn-mo wrestling in the entrance to chapter. it was great watching kids and hungover adults (including WETDOG) with perma-grins get suited up and bump into each other. there was also the OXJAM record fayre where i spent £20 on a massive bag of records. on a quick break from the box office i went and saw the PAST COLLECTIVE perform a wonderful piece in cinema one. on the screen were various welsh landscapes and the musicans on the stage beneath trying to articulate the memories of that place in their performace. it was really moving and i felt so proud of them. after my shift i hastily trod up to the theatre to take my place again at the final swn night. luckily it was lovely promoters liz and ryan from LOOSE. their gigs always brilliant so it was a treat to be their usher. throughout the night though a problem was looming: BROKEN FAMILY BAND. it was their last ever gig and word had got out. lots of people had bought day tickets just to see them but the swn wristband holders had priority. what if 200 wristband holders came over for the gig and we had to let down 100 day ticket holders with stamps on their hands?! ahghg! we were trying to warn everyone that were buying the day tickets but it didn't seem to put anybody off. as the day wore on and as we were getting closer and closer to the show the theatre foyer was filling up with people who i swear would have elbowed their granny out of the way to ensure a space. i decided to split the room prior gig into wristband holders and ticket holders. when the moment came i made a big announcement to make sure they separated and with some help from old mucker usher clive we managed to get them all in without breaking any laws! when the band started i was so full of adrenalin and relief that i just sat around dancing and didn't go in to watch we packed up shop, set up the merch stall for the band and relaxed for the first time in days. after they finished a very excited 10 year old girl, eyes big as saucers told me how the lead singer had shook her hand! no partying for me that night, i sloped off home with my honourary wristband on that laura had given me and went home for some much needed sleep.
sunday i met my family for lunch as it was my nan's birthday and she liked her chapter soup, thank god! i was stressing about the lack of a sunday lunch (we're starting in november) and then i ushered for CREATION, the new film about charles darwin. it was an unexpectedly sad tale. i was expecting him rushing off the beagle to prod some birds and then fighting off the critics when his book is published but this was the story of what happened in between. he was married to a devout christian and his wife was not happy with his findings. they lost a daughter, who he paints in his visions of her as being highly intelligent and full of curiousity. his daughter's death haunted his thoughts in more than just the fact of her death. her ghost teases him, chastises him for not publishing his book. the film gives the impression that his agonies over his daughters death caused a textbook case of transference, a future echo of another thinker that shattered our perceptions of life, sigmund freud. it was a strange film with some beautiful scenes and very well photographed but did seem to be more in support of freud's theories than an explanation of how darwin came to his.
after this i slid in to cinema two where chris buxton was doing a talk on the MOVIE MAGICIANS OF EARLY CINEMA. this time is my favourite period in film, an exciting time where anything could happen, cinema could have easily been just another circus attraction but instead took over as being the most popular and democratic art form of the 20th century. chris buxton was a wonderfully enthusiastic lecturer and really gave you a feel for how precarious this period was for film. he showed all sorts of gems of early special effects, including some things i'd not seen before but only read about such as DREAMS OF A RAREBIT FIEND, a trippy film by edwin s porter about a man who has too much cheese before bedtime and then dreams he is flying over new york. he artfully demonstrated how it had started as vaudevillian stage craft and gradually became more artful and relied less on what went before and more on what it could be. he showed plenty of melies, including one i'd not seen before of him becoming a whole band by overlapping the film and it was so fantastic to see all those films on the big screen.
after that it was off to the last swn party, DIM SWN, held at gwdihw. it started in the afternoon but i arrived at about 7pm just before MEANZ HEINZ started. they are so great and it was a treat to be able to spend time with jenny and show her this amazing band, that the musicians regard as a silly side project. i think they're in my top 5 cardiff bands! we had a chat with casey, ewan and lovely ben the cameraman for a bit and then settled to watch NIWL. steen had seen them at some other gwdihw event whilst i was working and told me they were great but i wasn't expecting to be just fall so quickly. amazing surf rock that had me dancing away and humming all the way home. it was so nice to just relax, even it was for a couple of hours! dim swn was such a great event, it felt like some sort of village fete, all cosy and full of family. it was a great way to end the festival and a very busy week.
27 Oct 2009
16 Oct 2009
the good book
this week's diary is an extended cat edition. frankie continued to wear the cone and in the end sort of got used to it. he was walking around like a little gangster, the weight of the cone bearing down on his neck a bit. he was leaping around and clearly feeling a bit better and on tuesday i took him back to the vet. she gave him the all clear but as i had a lot to do that day she said to wait till we would be in the house for the rest of the day to take the cone off, so the responsibility fell to steen. poor steen. he took the cone off and frankie flew out of the room, jittered about the place freaking out over his new found freedom and then sat down in front of him and scratched open the room. ugh. when i got back from work that night steen met me at the front door with a panicky look on his face and the cat in his arms, it was the first time frankie had been still enough to be picked up all evening. we took him upstairs and he sat in my lap and we reattached the cone. fleeting freedom, back to square one.
tuesday was a bit of a stressy day for me all 'round, what with the vet visit, working in the evening and a big job interview all with me thick with cold and feeling like i was walking through fog. the interview was for the front of house manager at chapter, a job which is a bit like the duties i do now but more regimented, more power and much more money. i had managed to perk up during the interview, felt confident that i could do the job and answered all the questions with no trouble at all and described for them what i felt the job needed and what i could bring to it. the trouble was by the end of the interview the last question i faultered on: "if we offered you this role would you take it". i stuttered "i believe so" and have never felt so insincere. i was seriously doubting whether i wanted the job at all. the way my life works at the moment might mean i'm scraping the breadline every month but it is stress free and allows me to have a tonne of fun. added to that earlier in the day i was offered the role of looking after the film academy (the new screen school), involving admin hours as well as looking after the kids when they come for their lessons and films. i was completely chuffed about this and really looking forward to starting it and mentioned it in my interview. if i took on this front of house manager job it would mean a lot of stress, loads of troubleshooting and erratic working hours and i really wasn't sure whether i wanted that in my life. by thursday i had got a letter saying i had not been successful but had really impressed them in the interview. a perfect result as far as i am concerned. i'm not very ambitious, i'm not very good at being ambitious and although i try to gee myself up seomtimes i am quite happy how i am. its not officially been announced but if the rumour of who got it is true then i couldn't be happier. i get to keep my life, i get to do the film academy and the "contact a family" shifts too and things will tick over carefully but happily. ace.
wednesday i was ushering for the new nora ephron film JULIE AND JULIA. i remember hearing about the blog, later book a while ago and was interested to see how they would turn a blog into a film, especially a recipe blog. well, nora ephron has completely come up trumps. this film was hugely enjoyable, abley handled the dual narrative of 1940s julia child starting life in paris and discovering a love of food and julie powell a post-9/11 new yorker finding meaning in her life through julia's cook book. the two narratives work well together, reminding us of how different times were then and yet how similar. julia child's husband paul works with pressure from the increasingly paranoid mccarthy breathing down his neck and questioning the list of library books in the embassy library and, although it is not made explicit, it is interesting that julie powell is working for a 9/11 support service in an america where an american's own library take outs were being monitored for any sign of terrorism (or even dissent). it is also comparable how different the two wives look at their daily duties. paul child seems beset with worries about his life has played out, whether he has made a difference and so, conversely does julie. in an early scene we see her having lunch with a bunch of grotesque "friends" who are competitively trying to out do each other in a similar way we used to see men "doing" a liquid lunch and boasting about their sales figures. the film is rich with comparisons for the two ways of life for the women but the main thing that comes through is the love of food and life. julia and paul, on their first day in france stop off to have a meal that makes julia tear up with its richness and beauty and julie takes comfort in the ability to make something beautiful and delicious out of a few simple ingredients. the joy that julia takes in food (and sex) is life affirming. she seems to have lived life to the full and took personal disappointments such as the inability to have children and the constant reposting for paul's job to more obscure locations in her stride. it was refreshing to find a film that focussed on women but was not all about them searching for a man to complete their perfect world. this was a film about women finding themselves and finding their own joy. it also made me very hungry. when i got home from the film i was hoping steen had cooked me one of his wonderful curries and instead we warmed up a pizza. it was one of the biggest small disappointments i have ever experienced! seriously though, with the supportive husbands abound in this film it did turn my thoughts to sweet steen and how bloody ace he is. we both delight in food (hence my expansion over the past two years) and it is a shame he couldn't come and watch it with me but he was there in spirit, taking the place of the wonderful paul child (played by the fabulous stanley tucci) in my head.
wednesday night we dashed out to go to the MEZE FEST, in this case a cacophony of post rock from france, england and america. we turned up at 8pm and were the first there, a bit of worry abound about whether anyone else would come. we got a drink and started to play pool and then a flurry of people, starting with lovely businessman keith, gindrinker graf and ex-truckers ben turned up and we knew it was going to be o k. the bands started a bit later to ensure a bit more of a turn out. first up was SINCABEZA. they took to using the dance floor rather than the main stage so the neck of the bassist's guitar kept almost hitting me in the face. not a bad thing. they were fantastic to watch, mostly instrumental math rock noodling about occasionally broken up with yelps from the bassist that made me think of the amazing PONYTAIL gig at the start of the year. it was great to find out that the lead guitarist was a lovely chap as we chatted to him at length at the merch stall (this expensive bordeaux bands compilation? "not so good"... this 4 band compilation cd? "ah, that: it is free"). next up was SNORKEL. now, i've been going on and on about snorkel as being one of those brilliant finds we made at the last ever VENN festival. they were on in the dank, dark thekla and stormed it bringing an experimental quasi electro jazz music played with real instruments and seemed to have a million people on stage. i was intruiged to find out how they were going to fit them all in the meze. it turns out they limited their band to a guitarist, keyboardist, drummer and of course trombone player. they were ok, a little more ravey than i remember them being but much of their set was hampered by the extreme anger i was feeling for the students who had streamed into the venue on the premise for cheap beer and who had decided to heckle the band through the set. the trombone play is a giant of a man who menacingly looked into the crowd throughout and looked more than a little pissed off. bloody students, don't know they're born! i started to feel very old and grumpy at the sight of all these young 'uns totally ignoring the FREE and brilliant line up of bands in their midst. i went to university in swansea and remember the excitement of RACHEL STAMP playing. no-one played swansea then. i would have ripped someone's arm off at the opportunity of having the kind of line up the meze had. pah. anyway, i had fully vented my anger by the time PUBLICIST came on. i was really excited about this, my friend ol had introduced me to TRANS AM a few years ago and i hungrily devoured their albums. to know that he would be playing such a small venue and be inches away from me (another musician who favours the democratic dancefloor staging) was pretty exciting. i put in my earplugs, watched him set up his drum kit and got ready. his songs were heavy on the urgent, travelling trans am beat, where it feels like you're speeding down a road too fast with no lights on. he added some fantastic vocoder vocals that made it seem like some mental robot was talking through your car radio on the journey. it was great, i was dancing a bit and if i'd been drunk and if this gig had been full of music fans rather than plastic students then i might have been leaping around the room crashing into the hi hat. it was a strange old night but not a bad one. i still say that this MEZE FEST adventure is an ambitious one and one that i hope has paid off for jonny, every night i've been to has been loads of unpretentious fun (and for every one i've been to there have been loads more that steen has attended).
i spent thursday perfecting my housewife look, in order to better understand julia child. not seriously but i did do loads of housework and cooked tea. i was not up for going out again, for all the fun of the meze i have tended to be really bloody tired on that last train! i coerced steen into missing SIC ALPS and instead we stayed in with the cat really happily cwtched up in our laps and seeming almost back to normal and we caught up with THE DAILY SHOW (a teatime ritual. it makes me so happy we get this show over here now) and then i made steen watch TRUE BLOOD. i'd heard about this new hbo show from alan ball, the man responsible for SIX FEET UNDER and since i was a pre-teen goth quite fancied an intelligent drama about vampires. i was a little too old for BUFFY when it came out and i'm far too old for TWILIGHT so hoped i'd found a way to satisfy my urge for blood. steen didn't like it that much but i really enjoyed it. in this version of the present vampires have come out and trying to integrate into human society, this has been enabled by the japanese invention "true blood" a synthetic blood that can be sold at supermarkets. sookie, a virginal telepathe in louisiana comes accross one of such creatures when she saves one from being attacked by local drug dealers determined to drain him of his "v juice" (his blood) that has become quite an attractive new high. the first episode was a little lame in parts, batting you over the head with character traits to make them memorable but by the second episode they all felt a bit more imbedded and real and i really enjoyed it. there was a great little frizzle of chemistry between the lead vampire and little ol' anna and i loved all the vampire politics that kept hitting the news channels. i can see this being something i'm going to have to watch on my own on catch up tv as my dirty little secret.
friday i was working for the DRONES COMEDY CLUB. it was a really good night and it reminded me how brilliant the people are who run nights like this. for £3 you can come and see a bunch of comedians who are trying stuff out, some on stage for the first time, some seasoned pros. last night was hosted by clint edwards and brought on some drones regulars, like dan thomas and frank honeywell (is ted an act? well, he certainly heckles well) and some new faces. it was brilliant as usual. at one point behind the scenes clint took a go on some of dan's snuff. he sneezed and creased all three of us up backstage. later on he explained to the audience what the noise was about and introduced a few members of the audience to the snuff that i turned down (on duty, y'know) but apparently tastes minty. hmmm. well, they all seemed to enjoy it. there was a running joke about a bunch of 16 year old girls (i didn't serve them booze, they were drinking water, despite what clint claimed) and a liberal mp in the audience. clint and dan just manage to work the crowd so everyone's having a great time, it feels fun and all at the same time professional and relaxed like a gig going on in your living room. they are lovely to work with and its always a good night.
saturday it was MACBETH as performed by the increasing un-amateur seeming amateur group EVERYMAN. this was a very well designed and often very well acted version of the play. i've seen quite a few macbeths and know the play almost off by heart (its my favourite shakespeare play) so i was impressed that i was so impressed! a few really good moments, such as a genuinely creepy scene where the macbeth seeks out the witches for a second time and a great use of the stage and set made it a really good version of the play. it was a simple modern dress costumed play with a few pieces that didn't work (a too long coreographed dance scene before the banquet where banquo appears) and a couple of the younger actors still seemed to say the lines like they didn't really know what they meant but these were minor quibbles. for a 3 hour play it went quite quickly and was always engaging.
now, sunday and monday is the new chapter move. exciting and frightening!
tuesday was a bit of a stressy day for me all 'round, what with the vet visit, working in the evening and a big job interview all with me thick with cold and feeling like i was walking through fog. the interview was for the front of house manager at chapter, a job which is a bit like the duties i do now but more regimented, more power and much more money. i had managed to perk up during the interview, felt confident that i could do the job and answered all the questions with no trouble at all and described for them what i felt the job needed and what i could bring to it. the trouble was by the end of the interview the last question i faultered on: "if we offered you this role would you take it". i stuttered "i believe so" and have never felt so insincere. i was seriously doubting whether i wanted the job at all. the way my life works at the moment might mean i'm scraping the breadline every month but it is stress free and allows me to have a tonne of fun. added to that earlier in the day i was offered the role of looking after the film academy (the new screen school), involving admin hours as well as looking after the kids when they come for their lessons and films. i was completely chuffed about this and really looking forward to starting it and mentioned it in my interview. if i took on this front of house manager job it would mean a lot of stress, loads of troubleshooting and erratic working hours and i really wasn't sure whether i wanted that in my life. by thursday i had got a letter saying i had not been successful but had really impressed them in the interview. a perfect result as far as i am concerned. i'm not very ambitious, i'm not very good at being ambitious and although i try to gee myself up seomtimes i am quite happy how i am. its not officially been announced but if the rumour of who got it is true then i couldn't be happier. i get to keep my life, i get to do the film academy and the "contact a family" shifts too and things will tick over carefully but happily. ace.
wednesday i was ushering for the new nora ephron film JULIE AND JULIA. i remember hearing about the blog, later book a while ago and was interested to see how they would turn a blog into a film, especially a recipe blog. well, nora ephron has completely come up trumps. this film was hugely enjoyable, abley handled the dual narrative of 1940s julia child starting life in paris and discovering a love of food and julie powell a post-9/11 new yorker finding meaning in her life through julia's cook book. the two narratives work well together, reminding us of how different times were then and yet how similar. julia child's husband paul works with pressure from the increasingly paranoid mccarthy breathing down his neck and questioning the list of library books in the embassy library and, although it is not made explicit, it is interesting that julie powell is working for a 9/11 support service in an america where an american's own library take outs were being monitored for any sign of terrorism (or even dissent). it is also comparable how different the two wives look at their daily duties. paul child seems beset with worries about his life has played out, whether he has made a difference and so, conversely does julie. in an early scene we see her having lunch with a bunch of grotesque "friends" who are competitively trying to out do each other in a similar way we used to see men "doing" a liquid lunch and boasting about their sales figures. the film is rich with comparisons for the two ways of life for the women but the main thing that comes through is the love of food and life. julia and paul, on their first day in france stop off to have a meal that makes julia tear up with its richness and beauty and julie takes comfort in the ability to make something beautiful and delicious out of a few simple ingredients. the joy that julia takes in food (and sex) is life affirming. she seems to have lived life to the full and took personal disappointments such as the inability to have children and the constant reposting for paul's job to more obscure locations in her stride. it was refreshing to find a film that focussed on women but was not all about them searching for a man to complete their perfect world. this was a film about women finding themselves and finding their own joy. it also made me very hungry. when i got home from the film i was hoping steen had cooked me one of his wonderful curries and instead we warmed up a pizza. it was one of the biggest small disappointments i have ever experienced! seriously though, with the supportive husbands abound in this film it did turn my thoughts to sweet steen and how bloody ace he is. we both delight in food (hence my expansion over the past two years) and it is a shame he couldn't come and watch it with me but he was there in spirit, taking the place of the wonderful paul child (played by the fabulous stanley tucci) in my head.
wednesday night we dashed out to go to the MEZE FEST, in this case a cacophony of post rock from france, england and america. we turned up at 8pm and were the first there, a bit of worry abound about whether anyone else would come. we got a drink and started to play pool and then a flurry of people, starting with lovely businessman keith, gindrinker graf and ex-truckers ben turned up and we knew it was going to be o k. the bands started a bit later to ensure a bit more of a turn out. first up was SINCABEZA. they took to using the dance floor rather than the main stage so the neck of the bassist's guitar kept almost hitting me in the face. not a bad thing. they were fantastic to watch, mostly instrumental math rock noodling about occasionally broken up with yelps from the bassist that made me think of the amazing PONYTAIL gig at the start of the year. it was great to find out that the lead guitarist was a lovely chap as we chatted to him at length at the merch stall (this expensive bordeaux bands compilation? "not so good"... this 4 band compilation cd? "ah, that: it is free"). next up was SNORKEL. now, i've been going on and on about snorkel as being one of those brilliant finds we made at the last ever VENN festival. they were on in the dank, dark thekla and stormed it bringing an experimental quasi electro jazz music played with real instruments and seemed to have a million people on stage. i was intruiged to find out how they were going to fit them all in the meze. it turns out they limited their band to a guitarist, keyboardist, drummer and of course trombone player. they were ok, a little more ravey than i remember them being but much of their set was hampered by the extreme anger i was feeling for the students who had streamed into the venue on the premise for cheap beer and who had decided to heckle the band through the set. the trombone play is a giant of a man who menacingly looked into the crowd throughout and looked more than a little pissed off. bloody students, don't know they're born! i started to feel very old and grumpy at the sight of all these young 'uns totally ignoring the FREE and brilliant line up of bands in their midst. i went to university in swansea and remember the excitement of RACHEL STAMP playing. no-one played swansea then. i would have ripped someone's arm off at the opportunity of having the kind of line up the meze had. pah. anyway, i had fully vented my anger by the time PUBLICIST came on. i was really excited about this, my friend ol had introduced me to TRANS AM a few years ago and i hungrily devoured their albums. to know that he would be playing such a small venue and be inches away from me (another musician who favours the democratic dancefloor staging) was pretty exciting. i put in my earplugs, watched him set up his drum kit and got ready. his songs were heavy on the urgent, travelling trans am beat, where it feels like you're speeding down a road too fast with no lights on. he added some fantastic vocoder vocals that made it seem like some mental robot was talking through your car radio on the journey. it was great, i was dancing a bit and if i'd been drunk and if this gig had been full of music fans rather than plastic students then i might have been leaping around the room crashing into the hi hat. it was a strange old night but not a bad one. i still say that this MEZE FEST adventure is an ambitious one and one that i hope has paid off for jonny, every night i've been to has been loads of unpretentious fun (and for every one i've been to there have been loads more that steen has attended).
i spent thursday perfecting my housewife look, in order to better understand julia child. not seriously but i did do loads of housework and cooked tea. i was not up for going out again, for all the fun of the meze i have tended to be really bloody tired on that last train! i coerced steen into missing SIC ALPS and instead we stayed in with the cat really happily cwtched up in our laps and seeming almost back to normal and we caught up with THE DAILY SHOW (a teatime ritual. it makes me so happy we get this show over here now) and then i made steen watch TRUE BLOOD. i'd heard about this new hbo show from alan ball, the man responsible for SIX FEET UNDER and since i was a pre-teen goth quite fancied an intelligent drama about vampires. i was a little too old for BUFFY when it came out and i'm far too old for TWILIGHT so hoped i'd found a way to satisfy my urge for blood. steen didn't like it that much but i really enjoyed it. in this version of the present vampires have come out and trying to integrate into human society, this has been enabled by the japanese invention "true blood" a synthetic blood that can be sold at supermarkets. sookie, a virginal telepathe in louisiana comes accross one of such creatures when she saves one from being attacked by local drug dealers determined to drain him of his "v juice" (his blood) that has become quite an attractive new high. the first episode was a little lame in parts, batting you over the head with character traits to make them memorable but by the second episode they all felt a bit more imbedded and real and i really enjoyed it. there was a great little frizzle of chemistry between the lead vampire and little ol' anna and i loved all the vampire politics that kept hitting the news channels. i can see this being something i'm going to have to watch on my own on catch up tv as my dirty little secret.
friday i was working for the DRONES COMEDY CLUB. it was a really good night and it reminded me how brilliant the people are who run nights like this. for £3 you can come and see a bunch of comedians who are trying stuff out, some on stage for the first time, some seasoned pros. last night was hosted by clint edwards and brought on some drones regulars, like dan thomas and frank honeywell (is ted an act? well, he certainly heckles well) and some new faces. it was brilliant as usual. at one point behind the scenes clint took a go on some of dan's snuff. he sneezed and creased all three of us up backstage. later on he explained to the audience what the noise was about and introduced a few members of the audience to the snuff that i turned down (on duty, y'know) but apparently tastes minty. hmmm. well, they all seemed to enjoy it. there was a running joke about a bunch of 16 year old girls (i didn't serve them booze, they were drinking water, despite what clint claimed) and a liberal mp in the audience. clint and dan just manage to work the crowd so everyone's having a great time, it feels fun and all at the same time professional and relaxed like a gig going on in your living room. they are lovely to work with and its always a good night.
saturday it was MACBETH as performed by the increasing un-amateur seeming amateur group EVERYMAN. this was a very well designed and often very well acted version of the play. i've seen quite a few macbeths and know the play almost off by heart (its my favourite shakespeare play) so i was impressed that i was so impressed! a few really good moments, such as a genuinely creepy scene where the macbeth seeks out the witches for a second time and a great use of the stage and set made it a really good version of the play. it was a simple modern dress costumed play with a few pieces that didn't work (a too long coreographed dance scene before the banquet where banquo appears) and a couple of the younger actors still seemed to say the lines like they didn't really know what they meant but these were minor quibbles. for a 3 hour play it went quite quickly and was always engaging.
now, sunday and monday is the new chapter move. exciting and frightening!
9 Oct 2009
happy cat, poorly cat, bloody cat, sad cat
this has been a long week of no sleep. our lad frankie has not been well and it has dominated all our thinking time, any time off i've had. ugh. anyway, i'll moan about that a bit later. at the start of the week he was healthy and well and all was good and i took steen to see my friend gerald tyler's new play THERES SOMETHING WRONG WITH ABEL. gerald is a bloody lovely man who just happens to be an amazing performer and writer. i was lucky enough to be asked to usher for his previous play BIG HANDS in its two incarnations and its a joy to watch him work. his plays are thought provoking and beautiful but still retain the ability to have a universal appeal, anyone could enjoy them they are sublime without being pretentious. he works completely with his surroundings, the music in the show is not just a poorly thought out loop but music but in an organic way, it is an integral part of the show and uses a band called LIMBO during the performance like a greek chorus. the set in THERES SOMETHING WRONG WITH ABEL is a garden shed on a patch of lawn and the whole stage is used, nothing in this play is unneccessary. as with BIG HANDS (a beautiful play about a private detective who is given charge of a renegade angel) ABEL had a religious theme. gerald plays a man who at first appears to be a mad old bastard who lives in a shed and talks to himself but after the play is over you are not sure whether he is in fact cain, one of the twin brothers who started humanity and murdered his brother and has been placed in this present as pergatory by god to relive the murderous argument that ended his companions' life. in moments of comic genius and an attempt to contact god more directly he dials his number and finds himself on the end of a frustrating automated message giving him options to "if you are having problems accessing your faith dial 3". then he seems to re-enact his brother's murder, the initiation of evil in the world over and over again, in different ways, like groundhog day. these scenes are darkly comic. he is trying to spend some time day dreaming and is interrupted by a never seen and never heard presence in the shed that makes him vitrolic and he powers up his black and dekker making you sure that the other person hasn't come off so well. but is there really anyone else there at all? after these episodes he leaps up onto the top of his shed and convenes with god. in these moments cain is sad, measured and serene. we hear how cain thinks he has seen other biblical characters like judith on the bus but she seemed to not recognise him, he is always a heartbeat away from pleading with god to end this repetition and confusion. the play was tantilisingly short, leaving me wondering what had happened to cain. is he ok? is he really a biblical character or just a character in his head? it was very funny and fascinating study of madness.
on sunday the first film was ICE AGE 3, that we were showing partly for a kids party. it was a bloody awful experience, too many kids not enough adults and the adults who were there seemed not to care about them or the cinema. ugh. i won't dwell on this but i was very glad that the next film was ADVENTURELAND. i had liked the poster depicting two attractive looking indie kids in 80s ringer t-shirts and wasn't too put off by the fact that it was a new film by the man that did SUPERBAD. i thought it had michael cera in it. it didn't, it had jesse eisenberg in it, who is the kid from the ROGER DODGER movie that i enjoyed years ago and couldn't remember the name of till i imdb'd it a moment ago. in roger dodger he was fittingly irritating in that teenage precocious way, but he was still pretty irritating in adventureland and annoyed me all the way through. after being irritated immediately by jesse eisenberg i was then irritated by the 80s setting which seemed completely needless. why was it set in the 80s? i was hoping for some sort of plot development which meant it was essential to be the summer of '87 but none came. the effect made me wonder if it was just a cash in for the 80s nostalgia racket that leaves modern 10 year olds dressing a bit like i did when i was 10, which leaves me feeling a little like i'm wondering around in a sort of mass fancy dress party every time i'm on queens street. i'm not sure how relevant the 80s were as a setting but because the film was so good though, it put me in mind of those really brilliant 80s john cusack and john hughes teen dramas such as SAY ANYTHING, THE SURE THING, BETTER OFF DEAD, SIXTEEN CANDLES, SOME KINDA WONDERFUL, PRETTY IN PINK. i know i don't need to list them but i love the memories they evoke. as a introverted lass blessed with a tv in her room from a young age (thank you, rich relatives) i poured over these and thought i was the only one watching them till the internet nostalgia boom made me realise how popular they really were. this film stands up with them, which is massively to its credit. james (eisenberg) is a young rich kid who is planning a post-university trip with his pals in europe then told on the eve of the off that his parents can't afford it and he needs to get a job finds himself trudging up to the gates of the adventureland theme park to join a bunch of fellow poor outsiders. for a film set in the 80s these characters are pleasingly devoid of overdressing in every sense, they do not look like fancy dress characters, like the poor sods in THE WEDDING SINGER but seem like real people. james falls for emily, but she seems reluctant to fall for him, as she is otherwise engaged in a sleazy affair. he makes friends with the nerds that litter the park and gains some much needed humility. my irritation abated gradually during the film and by the end i was left with a feeling of what a lovely and quite old fashioned film it seemed, no gross out moments in a teen comedy is quite refreshing.
the next film i had a look at was the sumptious COCO BEFORE CHANEL. it was on my brilliant oldies shift and they bloody loved it. the film stock seemed to be printed on silk, it seemed to have such an expensive sheen. at first it seemed to have a bit too much in common with the previous big expensive french period drama LA VIE EN ROSE, a poor orphan and scenes in a dirty turn of the century bar being a bit too close to the previous story. but coco did not have the little sparrow's common touch. she quickly escaped to be the kept woman of a local landowner and made him fully aware that she did not wish him to ever mention that she once worked in such a place. it is made clear that coco always knew her own mind and although she was clearly using the landowner for status, her upkeep and power her honesty in the matter difficult to judge her poorly on it. audrey tatou is gorgeous to watch, those deep dark eyes of hers always hint at her glowering at those in her path but the film was a little dull. gorgeous but dull, like a lot of fashion.
the rest of the week was taken up with cat-ness. on tuesday afternoon frankie leapt up into my lap (very uncharacteristic, he usually just wants to play fight) and just wanted to be held and stroked. i looked at him and saw he had a little scratch under his chin. no problem, thought i. but then it was bedtime and frankie came up to the pillow and we saw this massive bloody bald patch where he had been scratching. initially i was worried it was fleas again and we gave him a treatment and went to bed with plans to take him to the vet. frankie slept next to me completely still all night, i had my hand over his fur to feel for fleas but there was no twitching. the next morning, having been awake most of the night a bit worried i too him to the vet. i expected him to say "there is nothing the matter with him, ms vaughan. please give me £25 for taking a look at laughing at you" but instead he said he had an abcess and needed an operation. wah! i was a bit upset, he said he could do it straight away and that i could pick him up after 4.30pm. because we'd failed to get insurance (he's only been going outside for a month!) it would cost about £90. ouch. needs must. i went home and paced about the house with a lumpy throat until i went to work for a bit and dashed out phoning the vet to hear he was ok and went to pick him up. the vet said to keep an eye on him but he should be ok now. ace! that night he was still very poorly and again slept next to us silently all night. the next morning he was a bit more awake and as i went to do a big tidy up of the house he played with me and then sat down and scratched at his neck. aaaaghgh! it was gross. big gross pussfilled wound oozing blood. i rushed him back down to the vet and we fitted a plastic cone (which i now know to be called an "elizabethan collar". i want ruffs next time). he hated it and hissed and growled at the nice lady vet. he's going to be very unpopular since he scrammed the one who diagnosed him, leaving blood trickling down his face. we did it eventually and i was putting the blanket back on the carry case in the waiting room when... he pulled the collar right back off. back in the vets' office she and the nurse then put bandages on his feet and the collar back on. he won't be doing that again. he sat there and glared at me. sorry, frank. we got home and he sat in my lap and didn't move. in fact, he didn't move for the next day or so. he looked severely pissed off. we had another night of interrupted sleep as he couldn't walk easily in his new weird bandaged feet we had to get up to put him in the litter tray as he was trying to shit the bed. friday night i was at work so steen had to look after him and when i came back he announced that frankie had managed to take off the bandages. but he did keep the cone on. by saturday evening he was trying to run around and be normal again and since he'd taken the bandages off anyway we took him outside with the harness on. he walks around like a gangster, head heavy with cone and still a little pissed off but learning to live with this new weird element to his body.
thursday night my parents had bought me tickets to see JOAN BAEZ at st davids' hall. as steen had other plans that night i put out a call and found that no-one wanted to go to see joan baez. stupid sods. well, no-one apart from the lovely willy downie who stepped in last minute and braved the vaughans, my mum's hippie dancing (hard to do in your seat) and my dad's anxiety that we will be late for anything. it was a great show. i saw her here a couple of years ago and she was very regal and the show seemed sort of sedate but tonight she seemed to be really having fun. she and her band did a few accapella numbers and it was themed with many appalacian gospel numbers, which happens to be one of my favourite things. she even did a dylan impression in the verse of a cover of one of his songs which shows was a lot more relaxed at this show that previously. her voice is still very strong and her age rather than making it a big nostalgia fest, brings even more pathos to the murder ballads and folk numbers. brilliant.
quite different from joan baez was the fantastic trio of acts at the barfly on saturday night. GINDRINKER were wonderful as always and thanks to their dark themes and the lighting at the newly opened up barfly stage, could have easily been the house band at the black lodge in TWIN PEAKS. there were a lot of people there that night who i never see at gigs and they all loved GINDRINKER, calling them genius and a great and inkeeping addition to the line up. next up was the very funny and slightly frightening FRANK SIDEBOTTOM. i haven't seen frank come up on the "things we liked in the 80s and 90s" programmes and i think he still remains uniquely northern, a lot of people still haven't heard of him. i remember him from kids programme THE 8:15 FROM MANCHESTER on a saturday morning. even then i knew he didn't fit in and that there was a joke somewhere i was too young to get but still found him brilliant and though he was the best thing about telly at the time. i haven't youtubed or googled him or anything since so it was truly a sort of weird forgotten memory from childhood that i saw in the flesh (and the papier mache) that night in barfly. he sung medleys of manchester songs, punk songs, always ending with the catchy ending he employs for showbiz effect (and as he rightly points out, a lot better than a lazy fade out). it is hard to describe what is brilliant about frank, he is like a showbiz entertainer from another time, part childrens entertainer part blue northern comic but never offensive. but there is something unnerving about that head. ending the evening was JOHN COOPER CLARKE. i saw him at the coal exchange a few years ago supporting THE FALL and for a poet he still has that rock star haze about him, he is far more jagger than he is andrew motion. his stuff is funny and true and it feels very much like a stand up gig, some of the jokes are bloody old and creaky but its how he tells them, it seems impossible to tut and not laugh. it was a really nice mix in the audience, a lot of men in their 40s reliving old days and telling me afterwards that they first saw frank / johnny clarke in 1980something a really great night. if we weren't so tired from all this cat worry then we'd be drinking all night with everyone instead we flew off home to sleep and sleep and sleep.
on sunday the first film was ICE AGE 3, that we were showing partly for a kids party. it was a bloody awful experience, too many kids not enough adults and the adults who were there seemed not to care about them or the cinema. ugh. i won't dwell on this but i was very glad that the next film was ADVENTURELAND. i had liked the poster depicting two attractive looking indie kids in 80s ringer t-shirts and wasn't too put off by the fact that it was a new film by the man that did SUPERBAD. i thought it had michael cera in it. it didn't, it had jesse eisenberg in it, who is the kid from the ROGER DODGER movie that i enjoyed years ago and couldn't remember the name of till i imdb'd it a moment ago. in roger dodger he was fittingly irritating in that teenage precocious way, but he was still pretty irritating in adventureland and annoyed me all the way through. after being irritated immediately by jesse eisenberg i was then irritated by the 80s setting which seemed completely needless. why was it set in the 80s? i was hoping for some sort of plot development which meant it was essential to be the summer of '87 but none came. the effect made me wonder if it was just a cash in for the 80s nostalgia racket that leaves modern 10 year olds dressing a bit like i did when i was 10, which leaves me feeling a little like i'm wondering around in a sort of mass fancy dress party every time i'm on queens street. i'm not sure how relevant the 80s were as a setting but because the film was so good though, it put me in mind of those really brilliant 80s john cusack and john hughes teen dramas such as SAY ANYTHING, THE SURE THING, BETTER OFF DEAD, SIXTEEN CANDLES, SOME KINDA WONDERFUL, PRETTY IN PINK. i know i don't need to list them but i love the memories they evoke. as a introverted lass blessed with a tv in her room from a young age (thank you, rich relatives) i poured over these and thought i was the only one watching them till the internet nostalgia boom made me realise how popular they really were. this film stands up with them, which is massively to its credit. james (eisenberg) is a young rich kid who is planning a post-university trip with his pals in europe then told on the eve of the off that his parents can't afford it and he needs to get a job finds himself trudging up to the gates of the adventureland theme park to join a bunch of fellow poor outsiders. for a film set in the 80s these characters are pleasingly devoid of overdressing in every sense, they do not look like fancy dress characters, like the poor sods in THE WEDDING SINGER but seem like real people. james falls for emily, but she seems reluctant to fall for him, as she is otherwise engaged in a sleazy affair. he makes friends with the nerds that litter the park and gains some much needed humility. my irritation abated gradually during the film and by the end i was left with a feeling of what a lovely and quite old fashioned film it seemed, no gross out moments in a teen comedy is quite refreshing.
the next film i had a look at was the sumptious COCO BEFORE CHANEL. it was on my brilliant oldies shift and they bloody loved it. the film stock seemed to be printed on silk, it seemed to have such an expensive sheen. at first it seemed to have a bit too much in common with the previous big expensive french period drama LA VIE EN ROSE, a poor orphan and scenes in a dirty turn of the century bar being a bit too close to the previous story. but coco did not have the little sparrow's common touch. she quickly escaped to be the kept woman of a local landowner and made him fully aware that she did not wish him to ever mention that she once worked in such a place. it is made clear that coco always knew her own mind and although she was clearly using the landowner for status, her upkeep and power her honesty in the matter difficult to judge her poorly on it. audrey tatou is gorgeous to watch, those deep dark eyes of hers always hint at her glowering at those in her path but the film was a little dull. gorgeous but dull, like a lot of fashion.
the rest of the week was taken up with cat-ness. on tuesday afternoon frankie leapt up into my lap (very uncharacteristic, he usually just wants to play fight) and just wanted to be held and stroked. i looked at him and saw he had a little scratch under his chin. no problem, thought i. but then it was bedtime and frankie came up to the pillow and we saw this massive bloody bald patch where he had been scratching. initially i was worried it was fleas again and we gave him a treatment and went to bed with plans to take him to the vet. frankie slept next to me completely still all night, i had my hand over his fur to feel for fleas but there was no twitching. the next morning, having been awake most of the night a bit worried i too him to the vet. i expected him to say "there is nothing the matter with him, ms vaughan. please give me £25 for taking a look at laughing at you" but instead he said he had an abcess and needed an operation. wah! i was a bit upset, he said he could do it straight away and that i could pick him up after 4.30pm. because we'd failed to get insurance (he's only been going outside for a month!) it would cost about £90. ouch. needs must. i went home and paced about the house with a lumpy throat until i went to work for a bit and dashed out phoning the vet to hear he was ok and went to pick him up. the vet said to keep an eye on him but he should be ok now. ace! that night he was still very poorly and again slept next to us silently all night. the next morning he was a bit more awake and as i went to do a big tidy up of the house he played with me and then sat down and scratched at his neck. aaaaghgh! it was gross. big gross pussfilled wound oozing blood. i rushed him back down to the vet and we fitted a plastic cone (which i now know to be called an "elizabethan collar". i want ruffs next time). he hated it and hissed and growled at the nice lady vet. he's going to be very unpopular since he scrammed the one who diagnosed him, leaving blood trickling down his face. we did it eventually and i was putting the blanket back on the carry case in the waiting room when... he pulled the collar right back off. back in the vets' office she and the nurse then put bandages on his feet and the collar back on. he won't be doing that again. he sat there and glared at me. sorry, frank. we got home and he sat in my lap and didn't move. in fact, he didn't move for the next day or so. he looked severely pissed off. we had another night of interrupted sleep as he couldn't walk easily in his new weird bandaged feet we had to get up to put him in the litter tray as he was trying to shit the bed. friday night i was at work so steen had to look after him and when i came back he announced that frankie had managed to take off the bandages. but he did keep the cone on. by saturday evening he was trying to run around and be normal again and since he'd taken the bandages off anyway we took him outside with the harness on. he walks around like a gangster, head heavy with cone and still a little pissed off but learning to live with this new weird element to his body.
thursday night my parents had bought me tickets to see JOAN BAEZ at st davids' hall. as steen had other plans that night i put out a call and found that no-one wanted to go to see joan baez. stupid sods. well, no-one apart from the lovely willy downie who stepped in last minute and braved the vaughans, my mum's hippie dancing (hard to do in your seat) and my dad's anxiety that we will be late for anything. it was a great show. i saw her here a couple of years ago and she was very regal and the show seemed sort of sedate but tonight she seemed to be really having fun. she and her band did a few accapella numbers and it was themed with many appalacian gospel numbers, which happens to be one of my favourite things. she even did a dylan impression in the verse of a cover of one of his songs which shows was a lot more relaxed at this show that previously. her voice is still very strong and her age rather than making it a big nostalgia fest, brings even more pathos to the murder ballads and folk numbers. brilliant.
quite different from joan baez was the fantastic trio of acts at the barfly on saturday night. GINDRINKER were wonderful as always and thanks to their dark themes and the lighting at the newly opened up barfly stage, could have easily been the house band at the black lodge in TWIN PEAKS. there were a lot of people there that night who i never see at gigs and they all loved GINDRINKER, calling them genius and a great and inkeeping addition to the line up. next up was the very funny and slightly frightening FRANK SIDEBOTTOM. i haven't seen frank come up on the "things we liked in the 80s and 90s" programmes and i think he still remains uniquely northern, a lot of people still haven't heard of him. i remember him from kids programme THE 8:15 FROM MANCHESTER on a saturday morning. even then i knew he didn't fit in and that there was a joke somewhere i was too young to get but still found him brilliant and though he was the best thing about telly at the time. i haven't youtubed or googled him or anything since so it was truly a sort of weird forgotten memory from childhood that i saw in the flesh (and the papier mache) that night in barfly. he sung medleys of manchester songs, punk songs, always ending with the catchy ending he employs for showbiz effect (and as he rightly points out, a lot better than a lazy fade out). it is hard to describe what is brilliant about frank, he is like a showbiz entertainer from another time, part childrens entertainer part blue northern comic but never offensive. but there is something unnerving about that head. ending the evening was JOHN COOPER CLARKE. i saw him at the coal exchange a few years ago supporting THE FALL and for a poet he still has that rock star haze about him, he is far more jagger than he is andrew motion. his stuff is funny and true and it feels very much like a stand up gig, some of the jokes are bloody old and creaky but its how he tells them, it seems impossible to tut and not laugh. it was a really nice mix in the audience, a lot of men in their 40s reliving old days and telling me afterwards that they first saw frank / johnny clarke in 1980something a really great night. if we weren't so tired from all this cat worry then we'd be drinking all night with everyone instead we flew off home to sleep and sleep and sleep.
messy meze fest begins
the busyness of the week began with another brilliant LOOSE gig. up first was FORMER UTOPIA, a man with a guitar who sounded like SMOG without it being too obvious and being from london helped with that. we really enjoyed his set and even more so when we got to the merch stall and discovered that he was selling his single for £4 with a bonus 20 (yes, twenty!) track cd. ace! there were not many people there but then most people are idiots, it gives us more space but i did worry about the jollity of the bands that have come here from canada to tour to 6 people. next up was the lo fi CONSTRUCTION DESTRUCTION. they were shy grungey types and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, she was great at singingand drums, he was good on guitar but they kept swapping instruments and so the quality ebbed and flowed. i really liked their songs though, some of them sort of like grungey lo fi indie disco. julie doiron came on stage and although i was not aware of her before she acted like the most comfortable, famous person in the room. she trawled through her melancholic songs with a sort of powerful ease and played for ages and ages, playing for over an hour. her between song banter made me very homesick, she was from the same part of the world as my beloved alison black and i had a chat with them afterwards about the weird and wonderful month i spent seeing in the millennium in the backwoods of nova scotia. i wanted to call miss black up straight away and force her to move in with us.
wednesday my matinee was the new judd apatow movie FUNNY PEOPLE. i think i knew what to expect even if my oldies audience didn't. i'm not sure if people really read the programme notes sometimes. my oldies went in expecting an old fashioned funny movie but this was more like a noughties THE KING OF COMEDY than anything else. calling in a few favours with old room mate adam sandler and trading on his insider knowledge of the business this film was at times quite dark exploration of what it means to be a huge comedy star of stupid movies watching the new generation bite you on the arse. adam sandler's character george simmons was pretty much what adam sandler would have become had he not got domesticated and found some humility. he is lonely and selfish and rich. his doctor tells him he has leukaemia and not much time to live and he keeps it quiet, hiring a new PA ira (the ubiquitous seth rogan) and trying to keep his head down, taking an experimental course of prescription drugs before popping his clogs. he and ira slowly become friends and ira takes it upon himself to try and pull george out of his funk by being a sort of mentor to his mentor, a moral compass and a reminder of the joy of friendship and comerarderie that he has been missing for the last few years. although this sounds predictible, it isn't. apatow manages to make this story, that could have very easily become a gross out joke fest with no soul, believable and moving. he draws it out slowly and carefully. although the film did feel a bit overlong (it clocks in at a "dances with wolves" style 2 and a half hours) he keeps the pace inkeeping. the only time it seemed to lack direction was in the extended subplot with laura, his big ex-love who he may have a chance with again. however, since this allowed for a surprising and very welcome cameo from eric bana as her new husband i forgave him this. ah eric bana, last week you made me weep for your career and pray that one day soon that i would re-watch CHOPPER and pretend you had just died or something and that you never embarrassed yourself so. here he is allowed to be funny and play on that dumb / not so dumb australian charm. he is a funny man, for gods' sake someone put him in a funny movie or at least a drama where he doesn't just have to look around bemused. please? the likelihood of a hollywood exec reading this is decidedly slim but i have to ask. anyway, sorry for the tangent but i really quite enjoyed funny people. it surprised me, as 40 year old virgin did before it. it wasn't stupid, it wasn't cliched, it featured some great cameos from some comedians i'd forgotten all about (another great exploitation of apatow's new hollywood crudentials). after getting a bit sick of seeing apatow's name attached to everything labelled "comedy" in the last couple of years it reminded me that he is the real deal, an interesting and fresh eye in mainstream hollywood films.
the next film i ushered that day was a very different kettle of fish (ha! see what i did there?! ....sorry) the new andrea arnold film FISH TANK, but after the hollywood stylings of funny people this could not have been more different. set in an essex high rise estate we find mia, a skinny hoodie teen looking out of one of the high rise window contemplatively but who from the outset is shown in a number of acts that to be confrontational and dangerous. she is the type of teen the daily mail pants out headlines about every day to scare its readers into submission. we quickly realise that we're stuck with her, she may be unlikeable but she's going to be how we view the world and we are going to have to view hers. this initial recoil from our narrator in the first scene stands us in good stead for the rest of the film as rather than making us comfortable it immediately makes us wary and questioning. this is a tough world. i saw people walk out quite quickly after this first beginning, presumably offended by the language, the violence, the basic brutality of the state of things in mia's life. her family's affectionate terms alone would be enough to shunt the film well past the watershed. the estate is the fish tank in question, its inhabitants swimming around listless and unable to escape. as with her previous film RED ROAD, arnold tries to show the humanity behind the stereotype of the estate being a hive of scum and villainy. thanks to a wonderful performance from newcomer kate jarvis as well as a brilliant supporting cast (none of whom you doubt the authenticity of) we truly discover who mia is. she is a young woman who is not stupid, just trapped and longing to escape. she clings to anyone who offers hope of a different view of life, the traveller teen she meets when she tries to free his family's ailing horse and more dangerously, her mothers' charming new boyfriend connor. the attraction they have for each other is queasily and tragically played out but as sleazy as the attraction is, you never get the impression that connor is a predatory peado, played with great power by michael fassbender he is oozing with sexual energy and seems to be seduced by a different set of rules in an unnatural landscape. from the first outing where he takes them to a wild land and tells mia's incredulous little sister that the fish squirming in his hands is in essence where her fish fingers come from we know he is different from them, he is the wild salmon in this fairground goldfish bowl and when we finally see his house we realise he himself is trapped in a fancier kind of aquarium.
the next day will and i had off together, not that you'd guess since i had to go to a couple of important meetings. we finally reunited to go and see AFTERSCHOOL in the afternoon. this impressive first feature from antonio campo plays upon his previous short film theme of the pervasive impact of the internet in young people's lives. in a posh boarding school in the east coast of america robert is an introverted lad who doesn't really have any friends and not considered cool but not angsty enough to be a counterculture outsider, he is still at that stage where he wants to be cool and fit in. he listlessly watches clips on youtube of fellow teens in school beating up other pupils, doing stunts, the odd porn film. his brain is saturated with these real/unreal images. he joins the afterschool video club to get close to a girl he likes and finds himself again the watcher, able to control the image rather than just passively watching. but we find that he chooses not to control the image, their given assignment is to do establishing shots of the school and the camera statically sits on banal images of a corridor until a shocking event finds its way in front of robert's camera. the film is shot carefully, pulled back and inobtrusive and occasionally willfully badly framed. it feels like you're watching the events, a persistent voyeur in this boy's life. it is a film that sucks you in and makes you a little afraid for the next generation's ease with camera phones, cctv and the knowledge that whatever you do it will probably in some way (whether viewed by some camera somewhere or mentioned on facebook) become public knowledge.
in the evening we headed off for the first day of the glorious MEZE FEST! curated by will's joy collective boss jonny it is a formidable and ambitious project where there is at least 4 bands every night every day of the month (except for mondays) for the whole of october. my head hurts just thinking about it. october is going to be a very busy month for me, with the reopening of chapter and swn / mylit festivals as well as more theatre work coming up (really strong programme this autumn) i am planning to do as much meze-ing as possible but have the foreknowledge that it is not going to ever be enough for my liking. we discoverd happily that newport is only £3.60 away and that the meze is only 2 minutes fromthe station. score! i have vague memories of being here before but very briefly, i'm not sure what its incarnation was in 1997 but that was the last time i reguarly went to newport. we had a quick stop in the merenger pub, a happy old haunt that i had mistakenly thought had closed down (it just had a little refurb and a jukebox ban from new owners sam smiths. booo!) and then ambled over to see the first band of the festival THINKING WITH SAND. i'm not sure about the name but the music was great. dreamy and droney with some great beats from a man who looked like a younger version of those science blokes who used to turn up on open university late at night. we were hanging around with the very lovely mel and graf and matt jarrett who took us under his wing and showed will the hot snack bar, the equivalent of giving charlie bucket the keys to the chocolate factory. his eyes widened. the next band were not my favourite, they were little emo indie kids who had apparently brought in their own lighting to make themselves look moody. all style no substance so i went into the empty hot snack bar to do some writing instead. will found me a bit later and pulled me back in where he'd found newpart, a group of enterprising young art students who are going around gigs getting people to draw something, anything. steen draws a picture of a steak with a rainbow coming out. i draw a bad portrait of him that he drunkenly calls genius. hmmm. next up is STRAY BORDERS who i was very very excited about seeing again. we saw their farewell gig a few months ago supporting rock of travolta and jonny had convinced them to come out of retirement for meze, for which i am duly thankful. they are so good, still sound like the soundtrack to the best bit of a angsty teen movie, that bit where the heroine falls in love and doesn't know what to do with herself. last up were a band that no-one i could find knew anything about but CASPIAN turned out to be really amazing. like sigur ros if they discovered sludge and loud in that way that can just pound you to the ground. i'd thankfully remembered my new earplugs for this gig and was glad of them as my ears were ringing right through to the next day despite them. we travelled back on the train with the mel, graf and the equally lovely businessman keith lerego (whose surname fills me with joy each time i roll it around in my mouth). we shared a much needed taxi back (it was after midnight and my energy was ebbing away with each tick of the clock. it made us very excited for the month of fun that the clever charlotte braddick has named rocktober. bring it, rocktober!
wednesday my matinee was the new judd apatow movie FUNNY PEOPLE. i think i knew what to expect even if my oldies audience didn't. i'm not sure if people really read the programme notes sometimes. my oldies went in expecting an old fashioned funny movie but this was more like a noughties THE KING OF COMEDY than anything else. calling in a few favours with old room mate adam sandler and trading on his insider knowledge of the business this film was at times quite dark exploration of what it means to be a huge comedy star of stupid movies watching the new generation bite you on the arse. adam sandler's character george simmons was pretty much what adam sandler would have become had he not got domesticated and found some humility. he is lonely and selfish and rich. his doctor tells him he has leukaemia and not much time to live and he keeps it quiet, hiring a new PA ira (the ubiquitous seth rogan) and trying to keep his head down, taking an experimental course of prescription drugs before popping his clogs. he and ira slowly become friends and ira takes it upon himself to try and pull george out of his funk by being a sort of mentor to his mentor, a moral compass and a reminder of the joy of friendship and comerarderie that he has been missing for the last few years. although this sounds predictible, it isn't. apatow manages to make this story, that could have very easily become a gross out joke fest with no soul, believable and moving. he draws it out slowly and carefully. although the film did feel a bit overlong (it clocks in at a "dances with wolves" style 2 and a half hours) he keeps the pace inkeeping. the only time it seemed to lack direction was in the extended subplot with laura, his big ex-love who he may have a chance with again. however, since this allowed for a surprising and very welcome cameo from eric bana as her new husband i forgave him this. ah eric bana, last week you made me weep for your career and pray that one day soon that i would re-watch CHOPPER and pretend you had just died or something and that you never embarrassed yourself so. here he is allowed to be funny and play on that dumb / not so dumb australian charm. he is a funny man, for gods' sake someone put him in a funny movie or at least a drama where he doesn't just have to look around bemused. please? the likelihood of a hollywood exec reading this is decidedly slim but i have to ask. anyway, sorry for the tangent but i really quite enjoyed funny people. it surprised me, as 40 year old virgin did before it. it wasn't stupid, it wasn't cliched, it featured some great cameos from some comedians i'd forgotten all about (another great exploitation of apatow's new hollywood crudentials). after getting a bit sick of seeing apatow's name attached to everything labelled "comedy" in the last couple of years it reminded me that he is the real deal, an interesting and fresh eye in mainstream hollywood films.
the next film i ushered that day was a very different kettle of fish (ha! see what i did there?! ....sorry) the new andrea arnold film FISH TANK, but after the hollywood stylings of funny people this could not have been more different. set in an essex high rise estate we find mia, a skinny hoodie teen looking out of one of the high rise window contemplatively but who from the outset is shown in a number of acts that to be confrontational and dangerous. she is the type of teen the daily mail pants out headlines about every day to scare its readers into submission. we quickly realise that we're stuck with her, she may be unlikeable but she's going to be how we view the world and we are going to have to view hers. this initial recoil from our narrator in the first scene stands us in good stead for the rest of the film as rather than making us comfortable it immediately makes us wary and questioning. this is a tough world. i saw people walk out quite quickly after this first beginning, presumably offended by the language, the violence, the basic brutality of the state of things in mia's life. her family's affectionate terms alone would be enough to shunt the film well past the watershed. the estate is the fish tank in question, its inhabitants swimming around listless and unable to escape. as with her previous film RED ROAD, arnold tries to show the humanity behind the stereotype of the estate being a hive of scum and villainy. thanks to a wonderful performance from newcomer kate jarvis as well as a brilliant supporting cast (none of whom you doubt the authenticity of) we truly discover who mia is. she is a young woman who is not stupid, just trapped and longing to escape. she clings to anyone who offers hope of a different view of life, the traveller teen she meets when she tries to free his family's ailing horse and more dangerously, her mothers' charming new boyfriend connor. the attraction they have for each other is queasily and tragically played out but as sleazy as the attraction is, you never get the impression that connor is a predatory peado, played with great power by michael fassbender he is oozing with sexual energy and seems to be seduced by a different set of rules in an unnatural landscape. from the first outing where he takes them to a wild land and tells mia's incredulous little sister that the fish squirming in his hands is in essence where her fish fingers come from we know he is different from them, he is the wild salmon in this fairground goldfish bowl and when we finally see his house we realise he himself is trapped in a fancier kind of aquarium.
the next day will and i had off together, not that you'd guess since i had to go to a couple of important meetings. we finally reunited to go and see AFTERSCHOOL in the afternoon. this impressive first feature from antonio campo plays upon his previous short film theme of the pervasive impact of the internet in young people's lives. in a posh boarding school in the east coast of america robert is an introverted lad who doesn't really have any friends and not considered cool but not angsty enough to be a counterculture outsider, he is still at that stage where he wants to be cool and fit in. he listlessly watches clips on youtube of fellow teens in school beating up other pupils, doing stunts, the odd porn film. his brain is saturated with these real/unreal images. he joins the afterschool video club to get close to a girl he likes and finds himself again the watcher, able to control the image rather than just passively watching. but we find that he chooses not to control the image, their given assignment is to do establishing shots of the school and the camera statically sits on banal images of a corridor until a shocking event finds its way in front of robert's camera. the film is shot carefully, pulled back and inobtrusive and occasionally willfully badly framed. it feels like you're watching the events, a persistent voyeur in this boy's life. it is a film that sucks you in and makes you a little afraid for the next generation's ease with camera phones, cctv and the knowledge that whatever you do it will probably in some way (whether viewed by some camera somewhere or mentioned on facebook) become public knowledge.
in the evening we headed off for the first day of the glorious MEZE FEST! curated by will's joy collective boss jonny it is a formidable and ambitious project where there is at least 4 bands every night every day of the month (except for mondays) for the whole of october. my head hurts just thinking about it. october is going to be a very busy month for me, with the reopening of chapter and swn / mylit festivals as well as more theatre work coming up (really strong programme this autumn) i am planning to do as much meze-ing as possible but have the foreknowledge that it is not going to ever be enough for my liking. we discoverd happily that newport is only £3.60 away and that the meze is only 2 minutes fromthe station. score! i have vague memories of being here before but very briefly, i'm not sure what its incarnation was in 1997 but that was the last time i reguarly went to newport. we had a quick stop in the merenger pub, a happy old haunt that i had mistakenly thought had closed down (it just had a little refurb and a jukebox ban from new owners sam smiths. booo!) and then ambled over to see the first band of the festival THINKING WITH SAND. i'm not sure about the name but the music was great. dreamy and droney with some great beats from a man who looked like a younger version of those science blokes who used to turn up on open university late at night. we were hanging around with the very lovely mel and graf and matt jarrett who took us under his wing and showed will the hot snack bar, the equivalent of giving charlie bucket the keys to the chocolate factory. his eyes widened. the next band were not my favourite, they were little emo indie kids who had apparently brought in their own lighting to make themselves look moody. all style no substance so i went into the empty hot snack bar to do some writing instead. will found me a bit later and pulled me back in where he'd found newpart, a group of enterprising young art students who are going around gigs getting people to draw something, anything. steen draws a picture of a steak with a rainbow coming out. i draw a bad portrait of him that he drunkenly calls genius. hmmm. next up is STRAY BORDERS who i was very very excited about seeing again. we saw their farewell gig a few months ago supporting rock of travolta and jonny had convinced them to come out of retirement for meze, for which i am duly thankful. they are so good, still sound like the soundtrack to the best bit of a angsty teen movie, that bit where the heroine falls in love and doesn't know what to do with herself. last up were a band that no-one i could find knew anything about but CASPIAN turned out to be really amazing. like sigur ros if they discovered sludge and loud in that way that can just pound you to the ground. i'd thankfully remembered my new earplugs for this gig and was glad of them as my ears were ringing right through to the next day despite them. we travelled back on the train with the mel, graf and the equally lovely businessman keith lerego (whose surname fills me with joy each time i roll it around in my mouth). we shared a much needed taxi back (it was after midnight and my energy was ebbing away with each tick of the clock. it made us very excited for the month of fun that the clever charlotte braddick has named rocktober. bring it, rocktober!
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