charlie always naughty

Sad to say, Charlie has this thing about the fence around the 'flood control' area in the park, she can get under the fence so she will. She is responsive enough to not do it a few times, when told not to, and then she gets tired of doing what she's told and gets in. Then it is a wonderful lark. Drives me mad. Then she finds a way to get out. 

schtick it to em

Mia was prompted yesterday to check out whether Robert Downey Jr was dead by a former VCA classmate’s art project that claims to memorialize him posthumously. I noticed from her investigations (there is a website called something like ‘Dead or not dead?’ which she looked him up on) that he was born 16 days before me. If I hadn’t been overdue, we might well have shared a birthday, unless he was also overdue – I’ll check up on 'Overdue or not overdue?' later. Anyway, I thought next time someone accused me of being, or in some way implied that I was, old, I could say ‘Well I’m younger than Robert Downey Jr, and he’s a junior.’ Then I thought, god that sounds exactly like the kind of line an old man would have up his sleeve (it was sort of calculated in my mind to be hokey that way, but I guess that could go pearshaped too i.e. just end up really hokey). Not only would the old man have that up his sleeve, he would repeatedly use it, until one day he would possibly half-realise that he had used it more than once on the same person and kind of proved their point.

If it had been spontaneous, it would work but I’m not an actor and I can’t make things work calculatedly.

Here’s another schtick bit which I might as well put in here because I’ll never get a chance to use it. It’s a joke about history and reimaginings of history with hindsight. I imagined, in the walk to work, penning a parody Victorian epic (I often think about doing this, actually, and who knows – sometimes I do get things done). Anyway in this parody I imagine two people lost in the desert in the 19^th century, and one says, ‘If only they’d hurry up and invent the telephone… and then, the mobile phone!’ and the other one says, ‘Yeah, but even when they do, it’ll be years later before they get coverage out here.’

Wow, I’m glad I wrote that down, because it is truly so unfunny it’s more of a joke to call it a joke, than it is to regard it in itself as a joke.

Usually schticks should come in threes but I can’t think of a third. 

woke up at 4

I don't understand it. This morning and yesterday morning I woke up at 4. Yesterday it was 4 on the dot. Today it was 3:57, which is even more annoying. I hope it's not telepathic empathy with someone close to me (for instance, hitherto unsuspected twin) who is being woken up for his-her medicine in a hospital in Shigatse (yes, my hitherto unsuspected twin is probably of indeterminate gender). I hope the 4 am wakeups are not related to attempts by Robin Gibb to alert me to the fact that my cynical and uncaring attitude to celebrity deaths has become a trending topic in heaven. I suppose 4 is better than 3 (?) but it's bad either way. I think about the last thing I thought when I went to sleep last night was, 'I'm going to wake up too early', which is self-thwarting isn't it.

Hey, at least you and I got to talk.

gets my goat

So yes in my younger years I helped other people make some good records, nothing to be ashamed of. What we never thought of in those days for some reason was the possibility of being constantly hijacked by huge all-consuming trash sorters who would gather up your old muck and pretend it is part of some enormous mosaic of the history of popular music. I was so annoyed by this appropriation of something I played a part in, which I am not unproud of, that I wrote to them and told them to take it down. Their response was that they are not actually offering it for free download. My response was that in that case they should not pretend they are (and they should not attach a bogus pirated blurb above). Their response is yet to come. I am slowly coming to accept that the internet is never going to let you forget anything you ever did, but it does irritate the hell out of me still that the internet allows people to take things you own and use them to paint a false picture. Alright, that has always been possible, but it's the ubiquity of it that aggravates my passions. I will try not to think about it and then one day my feelings will rise to the surface and I will stab an innocent shop clerk.

atlantic city 1925

A couple of pictures taken by Saxil Tuxen in 1925 when he visited Atlantic City. Of course I am reproducing them here because of recent viewings of Boardwalk Empire and the wonderfully reconstructed boardwalk in that show. I don't know if the bottom one is backwards or not, any ideas?

i've got to grow a pair...

of empathies. So many deaths in the last week of people who have in some way impacted on my life. To say Adam Yauch impacted on my life would be a stretch, but still, he's my age and was from all reports a great guy (cancer). Maurice Sendak - what can I say. In the Night Kitchen was the soundtrack to my childhood (yes, I know that is a stupid thing to say, it just came out). I enjoyed that book, and others of his, very much when I was a child and since. Now I discover Edith Bliss is dead after two years of cancer, and of course I wouldn't wish that on anybody. She sang a very bad song called 'Heart of Stone' and was a reporter on Simon Townshend's Wonder World, a show I was a little too old for.

It seems mean spirited to say I don't care, and to a degree that would be untrue. But how much can you care about the death of someone you didn't know at all? I think this is one more example of the lack we have in the English language. Here is the formula: Person X did some work, at some stage in their life (probably a brief stage) which I liked/enjoyed/admired/admire/know of. Now Person X is dead. I still have the work they did, or could access it easily if I wished to. (As is the case in most instances when a celebrity dies) I haven't taken much notice of what they did in the last few decades i.e. from my point of view as a consumer, they no longer have extensive importance. Yet I am saddened by their passing.

It seems to me (1) to be wrong to be sad someone dies when all you really knew of them was their output. It seems selfish, in fact, to express grief on that basis. Moreso (2) when you are only interested in a small portion of their output, and moremoreso (3) when the real reason you are interested in their output is because of something it reminds you about yourself and your life. If they were creative and you continually follow their creative work, then to be sad because you won't get more of that, is valid, though it's pretty extreme to see that as a cause for grief. I mean I assume Mayo Thompson will die before me and I enjoyed his most recent record at least as much, probably more, than the records he was putting out when I was born. I will feel a bit annoyed when the source of great records I love dries up. I will be sorry he's gone, because I like him. He really was the soundtrack to, if not my childhood, then my later teen years. But I don't get this grief business. And tributes! And 'vale' and stuff. I mean come on.

Maybe I have a problem. You tell me.

Edith, you didn't deserve to die at such a young age, and everyone says you were a very nice person. But this is a terrible song:



This is real music:



Here's a tip: play the two of them simultaneously. 

woke up at 3

Some people really suffer from insomnia. I don't, really but I do sometimes wake up at annoying times, such as at 3 am. This morning it was a combination of noisy wind (outside) and too many cats on the bed, they pin you down and get you very hot, it's most uncomfortable.
I was told a few years ago that if you wake up in the middle of the night you should break the cycle by getting up and having a glass of water or something. That makes sense. I went and visited Barry, who is always in the mood for a visit and very similar to a glass of water, and then I wrote this, which isn't helping though it is stunningly boring, but that's not always enough to get me to sleep, and now I'm not sure what to do. My alarm's set to wake me up in 2 hours and 16 minutes anyway...

nothin'

Nothin' happenin', I am just sick of seein' that thing about the watermelon at the bottom of the blog, and so I thought I'd push it through. Here's a picture of, um...

some minor jealous deity.