BLOG

OK, I promised. I’ll deliver.

A great director once said (and I’m paraphrasing here) “All I’ve ever done is re-make the same film over and over.” I can’t remember who the director was, and I can’t look it up because all my film books are back in England. But trust me on this one. He was a director, and he said something similar to the words above.

This stunningly badly-remembered passage can be very appropriately applied to the career arc of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu. His latest film glides into the showroom very much like a mk. II Amores Perros. It’s more refined, shorter, more disciplined, lingers longer and strikes deeper than his much-lauded debut feature.

21 Grams is set in the US. (As an aside, I hope that this doesn’t mean that Hollywood has already devoured the main practitioners behind the Mexican new wave and that Innaritu will follow a similar path to his compatriot Alfonso Cauron, who has so far managed to dodge back and forth between Hollywood and his indigenous cinema with Great Expectations, Y Tu Mama Tambien and the imminent third installment of the Harry Potter series.) It employs a similar disjointed narrative technique to Amores Perros as we skip backwards and forwards through time catching glimpses of the principal three characters’ stories. Early on we see blood, we see the angry and wounded faces of the leads, played by Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, and we wonder what twists of fate could conspire to bring them here. 21 Grams is essentially a puzzle, a puzzle with a strong symmetry and, thankfully, a puzzle that solves itself before our eyes.

Late in the film, Benicio Del Toro’s character, Jack Jordan, is drunkenly staring at a cheap print of a tiger on the wall of his flyblown motel room. It is a brief moment which conjures up the lines:

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

21 Grams is essentially a fatalistic film. The characters are locked into this string of events, and this means that its gaze is dispassionate. Addiction, extreme religion, terminal illness, emotional breakdowns are all observed with the same cool eye. No judgments are cast because the fates of all the films protagonists are set. Is it right that Naomi Watts’ character uses cocaine to escape her pain? Is it right if Benicio Del Toro’s character’s parenting will bring up another man who makes the same mistakes? Is it right that Sean Penn’s character leaves his wife? In 21 Grams there is no right and wrong, only the fearful symmetry of fate.

These people have too much time on their hands. Scroll down to the “Weird Scoreboards” part of the article for walruses and turbots.

Courtney called in sick today so we can go sledging, or sledding, or tobogganing, or whatever you want to call it. Maybe we’ll build a snowman too.

You are Jarvis Cocker from Pulp.
“I think people who think they’re sexy have
got problems.”

What gloomy rock musician are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I am Jarvis from Pulp. It must be all that time I’ve spent with my cheeks exposed.

Lovely little article on the Guardian website. More reasons to despise mainstream TV and tabloid journalism, if you ever needed any.

Two weeks in and already we’re settling into familiar routines. I’ve noticed that Courtney and I only really nag each other about two things (one each), apart from TV. I complain about her eating habits; without me around to cook for her she’d eat nothing but toast and takeaway. On the other hand she is dumbfounded by the way I happily wash my face with hand soap, or whatever’s close to the basin, or just cold water. She tells me that there’s a programme on TV in which gay men do lifestyle make-overs to straight men. One of the first things the gay blokes do (before they redecorate the straight bloke’s house and throw out his clothes) is run into the bathroom and shriek about the lack of facial scrub.

It strikes me that our nagging of each other might reveal the root of the difference between European and American schools of thought. I, being European, think that all problems can be solved with food and a sensible approach to eating. Courtney, being American, thinks that all problems can be solved with the correct soap and a good amount of scrubbing. Guts vs face; Insides vs Exteriors; Digest vs purge. Stop me when you’re bored, or if you think I’m spouting gibberish.

It’s -10 Fahrenheit outside again today. That’s 42 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing. When I finally convert these numbers into Celsius I’ll be horrified, I’m sure.

I just did. It’s -23 degrees Celsius. I knew it felt cold out there.

This snow thing is still a novelty. It stopped snowing in the early hours of the morning and now the light breeze is knocking powdery flurries from the branches of the trees. It’s distractingly pretty, and if it weren’t below freezing outside I’d be wandering around gawping at it all.

Courtney and I saw the excellent 21 Grams at the Little last night. I’ll post some thoughts about it later. I also picked up a job application form. I wonder if they’d be willing to train me up as a projectionist? Ever since seeing Tyler Duerden’s approach to projecting film in Fight Club I’ve quite fancied having a go myself.

I was glad to read today that Norwich fans are still the bunch of good eggs I always knew they were. Hopefully I shouldn’t even need to cross my fingers for tomorrow’s clash against 20th place Bradford.

Other news? There’s a good few inches of snow on the ground, which is still a novelty for me.

Main differences between US and UK supermarkets (that I’ve noticed so far):

1) They sell beer, but not wine or spirits. In some states (Massachusetts) they don’t sell any booze at all.
2) There is a huge aisle in the freezer section specialising in ice cream, frozen yoghurt, etc. but the only frozen meat available is leftover turkeys from Thanksgiving.
3) Single cream and double cream are “Cream” and “Heavy Cream” respectively and are sold in handy measures of either half a pint or four pints.
4) Regular battery chicken eggs are bleached white, just like in Israel.
5) The only bacon on offer is streaky bacon. It’s almost impossible to get hold of back bacon and to do so you have to ask for “Canadian Bacon.”

Bizarrely, in the European cheese fridge I found a combination of Stilton and Double Gloucester (it’s done in layers) called “Stilchester”. Even more bizarrely, it’s made in England.

As a Brit you also have to contend with the fact that certain foods reached America through different routes and will not necessarily have the same names. For example, what I call coriander was brought to the Americas by the Spanish and so everyone here calls it cilantro. Still, a keen eye, a good nose and the readiness to ask silly questions will just about see you through.

Apoologies to everyone for lack of email. I’ve written a whole bunch, but I’m having trouble getting my email program to send mail, even though it recieves perfectly. Go figure.

…that’s me!

It looks like someone else has passed through immigration at JFK recently. The United States’ relations with the rest of the world get stranger and stranger.

I hope this is just selective reporting of a minor incident. Norwich isn’t exactly the most cosmopolitan of cities, but the fans did enthusiastically embrace the “Kick Racism Out of Football” campaign, so I’m a bit surprised that this should happen. Something definitely does need to be done about the “We Shoot Burglars” chant, though. I’ve heard it far too often (about twice in both matches I’ve been to this year) and it’s not the kind of thing a good family club’s supporters should chant.

It’s all to do with psychotic Norfolk farmer, Tony Martin. Here’s the Mirror’s tabloid take on him and here’s the Grauniad’s.

Clearly the man’s a national hero, just like the Krays, Nicholas van Hoogstraten and Jeffrey Archer.

I’ve got a few days (weeks?) of idleness before my Social Security number comes through and I get a job. I’m planning to use them well. I chomped through most of the Filth today, which I have on loan from Kelvin. I read the first few last year and was very impressed (mostly because it has quite a high tits and arse quotient if I’m being truthful) and I’m as impressed and even more confused having read to the end. Grant Morrison has lots to say about abjection and society’s approach to transgressive behaviour and he says it as luridly as possible. Greg Feely is a confirmed bachelor with a comb-over, a ginger cat and a sizeable collection of porn under the mattress. One day he is visited by weird looking people who tell him he’s not Greg Feely at all, but a bizarrely toupeed inter-dimensional binman, Ned Slade, agent of an organisation called the Hand. It is his job to clean up the messier, seedier and downright perverted side of human life. Through the twelve issues he battles against corrupted cell-sized organisms that force humans into perverted sex acts, giant flying sperm which fertilise women to death and a male US president with enormous breast implants and astonishing lapdancing skills. And at the end it seems Greg’s simply been rolling around on his kitchen floor all the time.

There’s some business involving agents of the Hand cleaning up comic books. They enter the two-dimensional space of the books, alter the course of the plots and then re-write the “Continuity Pages” so it seems nothing’s amiss. At times it feels like the same has been done to the Filth. There are little elisions in the books. Tiny chunks go unexplained and at the end you feel like there was something at the edge of your vision all the way through; always there and never properly seen. Kelvin’s missing an issue, so that might explain some of it, but the missing bits really are part of Morrison’s style and scheme. I wonder if the Filth has its own continuity pages sitting somewhere waiting for release?

By hook or by crook I will get to the trashy soiled bottom of this one or my name’s not Ted Mudd and I’m not wearing a lime green toupee over my unwashed comb-over.

Top of the UK Pop Charts: Mad World (from the Donnie Darko soundtrack)

Top of the First Division: Norwich City FC

This bodes well for the new year.

Yesterday I went to Grosvenor Square in London. There’s a beautiful building there: Georgian neo-classical with lots of red brick and white stone. It’s called the Canadian embassy. I didn’t get to see inside it. I had to go to the ugly 60’s building at the other end of the square which is the US embassy.

While I was there a very nice man gave me some advice. He said “When you get a job in America you should wear an undershirt underneath your dress shirt.” Apparently it’s customary to do so and people look at you funny if you don’t. He also put something in my passport called a visa.

I’m leaving this country in twenty-five days. Is America ready to recieve me? Is England ready to lose me? I don’t know, but I’m going anyway.

Apparently the keyword that has brought the most visitors to my site is "toddler&quot. In these Michael Jackson obsessed times, I have to consider the sexual aspect of these searches, and frankly the idea of someone whacking one out over a twenty-two year old picture of me is hilarious.

Today I got the wrong bus back from work, probably something to do with my ridiculously high blood sugar levels. This bus delivered to me three more ill-advised Christmas houses, including the mother of them all. It has lights – still, flashing and animated. It has a Father Christmas on the roof. It has a Christmas tree. It has three enormous inflatables lit with spotlights. I expect on Christmas Day Donner and Blitzen will be flying in the sky above with laser beams on their antlers. Everyone on the bus looked at it as one might look as a UFO. It was astonishing.

Come to think of it, I think it might be legendary. Frog told me someone drove him to see a very similar house last year. Could they be one and the same?

Firstly, a disclaimer: I’m not normally this grotesque. Well, not always. OK, I’m quite often this grotesque but I’m normally very charming about it.

The following is quite an everyday UK office story. In fact, the longer I stay in this office, the more I realise quite how true to life The Office is. Today two things happened in the name of Children in Need. Firstly, King Tubby – the annoying halfwit who sits on my pod and twitters away incessantly – had his head shaved. He knew this was going to happen and yet he still came in with gel on his hair. Needless to say it was painful and he whinged a lot. This is King Tubby’s forte.

Secondly, there was a doughnut eating competition. Seven people entered. Within the space of five doughnuts there were three of us left: Old Punk, Rugby Player and me. Old Punk, despite his slight build, was putting them away pretty quickly. Rugby Player was by now the hotly-tipped winner. I was calmly eating my way along in third place. Everyone was getting pretty whipped up, in that peculiarly smutty British way. My boss told me very sternly “Don’t lick and don’t wipe!” and then she turned red, burst out laughing and spent the next two minutes in embarrassed hysterics.

So, as we came groaning to our doughnut climax the scores stood as follows: Rugby Player was leading with 14 doughnuts in his belly and further one in his hand; Old Punk was second with his thirteenth partially digested; I was third and slowly masticating my way through my twelfth. Old Punk was looking smug, his goatee coaked in sugar and strawberry jam. In fact, he looked too smug, and very quickly the smile was wiped off his face as he started retching. He held it in all the way to the toilets. I think vomiting is grounds for disqualification, but he did damn well considering he turned up to work still drunk.

That meant that it was just Rugby Player and me. He was looking pretty comfortable, but I think it was just psychology. I was regretting having eaten a hearty sausage and black pudding baguette for breakfast and a good four ham sandwiches for lunch. But mostly I was regretting the previous twelve doughnuts. By now I was holding my current doughnut as far away from me as possible. I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t want to smell it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to taste it. I looked at it.

It looked back at me, glistening and greasy. People were shouting at me to carry on. They were pretty frenzied. I looked at it. I stared. I stared at the crusted, sticky sugar and the leaking glistening jam. Rugy Player was sitting next to me waiting for me to catch up. I knew I couldn’t eat another three. I couldn’t even eat this one. What was I going to do?

I stared a few seconds longer. It felt like minutes. I could hear the frenzied voices of my savage workmates, faces daubed with war-paint jam and waving trays of sticky doughnuts at me. And suddenly my path became clear.

With a quick look up at my audience and a triumphant grin I took my fear, my doughy nemesis in hand and shovelled all of its sticky pallid mass into my face. Tucking the excess bits into my cheeks with my fingers I prepared myself for the final internal showdown. This was no longer about me and Rugby Player: this was about me, my gag reflex and the doughnut.

Screams erupted around me. I had delivered the ultimate horror they so eagerly desired. I chewed. I could barely keep my lips together. I chewed again, mashing down the same bits. I wriggled my tongue, trying to move the heavy mass into a better masticatory position. I chewed, struggling now. I gagged, my eyes googled, I held my chest. I chewed again. I gagged again. Rising to my feet I staggered towards the bin. What was this madman about to do?

I gagged once more, and delivering myself from the jaws of nausea, I opened wide my mouth, plucked out the entire soggy doughnut and consigned it to the bin. Turning, I shook hands with the victor knowing that while he may have eaten more, I had provided the thrill and the theatre and the debased grotesque spectacle that everyone had come to see.

If I have to work in an office much longer I will start mutilating myself with a stapler under the desk.

On my bus route home from work tonight I spotted six prematurely festive houses. With a good six weeks still to go I think the most accurate way to gauge the growing Christmas mania will be to record the mushrooming of incandescent vulgarity on the streets of Worcester.

The Legionnaire’s disease appears to be wearing off. I think it may have simply been a cold after all, even if my cough still sounds like a death-rattle.

It looks like Wigan and Millwall are also interested in buying Darren Huckerby, so he’ll probably play against us at some point in the second half of the season and stick a hat-trick past Greeno.

Things people want today:

Kelvin wants curry; having seen the re-released Alien, I want Courtney to wear Sigourney Weaver’s knickers (or copies thereof); Frog wants me to dress up as an alien and take pictures; Courtney wants no part of this, but is always happy to have more knickers; the nation of England wants George Bush to stay at home; and Norwich still want Darren Huckerby.

Dear Diary,

I am sorry I have not written in you for many days now. In Winter I find that staving off the demons of despair cannot be achieved by sitting in an English country garden; for some reason the cold and dark is their element, quite the opposite of what we are led to believe. I have therefore decided to re-christen these doleful beings Moomins. Moomins, you see, are from Finland, where it is very cold indeed, and there they thrive. Furthermore, as a child I remember many sleepless nights bequeathed to me by their insistant and sinister working upon my mind.

So in the Winter I find that the most effective methods of suppressing the Moomins of despair is to remain active and engage myself in dancing, music, merrymaking and cavorting of as many types and variations as possible. It is with this in mind that last Thursday I took a day off from suspended animation to go to Hereford.

If, dear diary, you knew Hereford, you would appreciate the irony of my previous statement. It is a more pleasant town than Worcester, not qualitatively (there is little difference in quality of experience) but quantitatvely: there is less of Hereford than there is of Worcester, and were there less of Worcester it would certainly be as pleasant a place as Hereford. But I digress. The irony of course is that Hereford is currently a plague town.

Legionnaire’s disease has struck and though, dear diary, I have little conception of its wicked workings, I am aware of two things. Firstly, its source on this occasion: allegedly the brewery of Samuel Bulmer, whose ales (brewed under licence) and ciders I have enjoyed for many a year, has issued forth a noxious steam which has contaminated the very air of the town. Secondly, its preferred victims: the elderly. So far the modest outbreak has helped to stave off the terrible consequences of Malthus’ predictions by removing fourteen of them from the surface of the earth. It is confidently predicted that this year the pension queue at the central post office of Hereford will be greatly diminished. I am afraid, dear diary, that their fate may well also be mine.

We (Frog, Naomi and I) arrived in Hereford in good health, found an eating establishment of sound character and appearance, partook of ice-creams in the breezy November afternoon, inspected the Mappa Mundi in the unpretentious cathedral and browsed a shop well-stocked with all manner of rare cinematograph projections. It was a happy day. In the evening we returned to Worcester, as large and lacklustre as ever – the town, that is, not ourselves.

That evening the Frog treated us to the sincere and moving janglings of his rag-tag ensemble, the Economy Prostitutes, and it was a lively show indeed. All things considered, diary, the day was pleasantly used. However, I awoke the next morning with a throat as rough as sandpaper and a needling pain in the sinuses caused by acute blockage which persisted all the way through the weekend. I finish this entry in a state of modest agitiation, wondering whether I linger in the foothills of influenza or of a more sinister debilitation altogether. It seems the Moomins of despair may yet have the last word.

This weekend Norwich’s unbeaten home run (this season’s longest string of home wins) was broken by Watford. And despite the title of the post above this one, I am not really coughing up blood. I am spitting feathers.

Finally, after much persuasion from James and the rest of the world in general, I have bought myself a little minidisc walkman. It’s a neat little thing. Tonight I am recording all my Wilco albums onto one disc. How utterly obscene!

I had a good weekend. Humble Boy at the Malvern Theatre on Friday night started out a little bit drawing-room, but developed into a sweetly affecting reimagining of Hamlet set in a Cotswold garden. Norwich beat Milwall 3-1 on Saturday, and I went to a party dressed as a cowboy. Gran cooked a filling Sunday lunch and the people at the Austrian pub in town are starting to recognise my face. I was definitely below par in the office this morning.

If anyone in Worcester is reading, Frog’s band, Economy Prostitutes, have a gig at the Marr’s Bar (sic) on Thursday night. All proceeds will go toward buying a scooter for a man with no legs in Thailand. Really.

My next post will be a return to the normal aimless ramblings.

As I was trying to get through another day of suspended animation in my air-conditioned, hermetically sealed office, I started browsing the company’s intranet. A number of random clicks found this gem of a discussion. I had no idea civil engineers were quite such fascinating types.

Subject: Blockages caused by re-cycled toilet paper.

Fin Jowls
Try Liken Rainbow at Brunel University. He does
a lot of drainage research in this area.

All names have been anagrammatized to protect the innocent.

In fact, he loves us all. He told us so at least twelve times on Friday night when we saw him – and the rest of the Flaming Lips – treating us to a number of rousing tunes, quirky bits of video art and giant balloons. The best, and indeed only, gig I have seen at Birmingham Academy. Heartfelt thanks to Dave for getting the tickets and James for reminding me when the gig was. It’s lovely when a band cares about their audience.

Talking of love, my feelings for Norwich City FC border on adoration, especially when we play as beautifully as we did yesterday and come away with a 3-1 victory. And Ipswich lost 4-3. The world’s a happy place. After taking him along to a couple of games I may also have converted Frog to the cause. He admires our attacking, open play, our use of the wings and our evident team spirit. He says he’d be happy to accompany my old man to the game in Coventry on Valentine’s day. This beautiful thought will warm the cockles of my heart as I’m jogging around the streets of Rochester, NY, pursued by Courtney wielding a big stick when, if I were back home in Blighty, I could be watching the game too.

This is also the dawning of a new era for Junkopia. I have decided to embrace Blogger, the tool of honest web diarists the world over. I like the fact that it will organise my blog in all sorts of ways and archive all my old posts automatically, because I really can’t be bothered with that kind of housework. I think of it as a hard working Filipino maid with inviting eyes. Well, maybe.