2010 — 31 December: Friday
As the last, tattered remnants1 heave into view, I can sup my morning cup to some twinkly harpsichord by Couperin that I didn't recognise. It's 08:31, dry, grey, dull, and there's a batch of supplies I need to get into the fridge before the day is much older.
Tomorrow is the annual lads' outing to a works dinner (down in Verwood) and the first walk of the new year is already tentatively set for Sunday. Unless the weather throws anything major in the wobbly line. And the lad Cameron says 2011 will be "difficult", heh?
But there's a cuppa on the horizon over with Roger and Eileen when the sun is dipping under the yardarm later, today. I hope he has a mince pie left. He tells me the "FT" tells him that the total compensation limit per bank (I assume) is being raised from whatever it is to £85,000 — a factoid that leaves me curiously unaffected, though it's of some theoretical interest when I don dear Mama's hat (of Power of Attorney) I suppose.
Inflation is rising
As a kid, I'd have leapt out to retrieve a ten bob note...
See what I mean about the Grauniad's relentless dumbing-down?
It's becoming (wait for it, wait for it) a site for sore eyes.
Into every lap...
... a little joy must fall, from time to time. Having switched away from Shostakovich's rather grim opera "The Nose" to the far more accessible soundtrack to that excellent 2000 film "Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai", Mr Postie has just made my day. How? By dropping off the next invoice for dear Mama's care home? No, by dropping off this top-drawer 120 minutes of mind-boggling fascination:
Terry Zwigoff's magnificent "Crumb"
Christa and I watched this in the Harbour Lights cinema back in 1995, and my first copy was a LaserDisc (of course). I yield to very few in my admiration of Robert Crumb's talent. A tiny subset of my videos remains in its original packaging rather than being rehoused in my anonymous (but space-saving) CaseLogic folders. This joins that subset.
I have high hopes, too, of this item. It's an HBO mini-series based on the David McCullough book that my friend Carol gave me in March 2002:
My tum is suggesting I should do something about lunch. It is, after all, 13:09. [Pause] My son has just wished me a happy new year and pointed this XKCD strip out to me. Ouch :-)
He's back
Given that we're past the solstice, how come it's so dark out there so early? Mind you, it is 17:55 — dunno how that happens. Got a cuppa, and will have to think about my next few bites, I guess.
Nearer the end of the year
I've just finished watching not two, but three, hours of "Crumb" — the Blu-ray (being a typically thorough 'Criterion' edition) has a whole bunch of unused footage and rough cut material. I then looked back through some of my emails to Carol, who brought me at least one of my Crumb books over from the US on one of her several trips here on more mundane IBM business...
What else? Well the powers that
be in this benighted land (Customs & Excise) have decided, once again,
that the comix genius Robert Crumb is "obscene" — to be more
precise, one individual Customs officer2 has reached that conclusion,
re-opening a long-running battle3 between our fledgling comix
distribution system and the Forces of Evil. We are already the
most-heavily censored land in Europe, with the possible exception of
Eire (and Malta, if it counted). But 'comix' are deemed only suitable
for kiddies, and must therefore be carefully vetted. This despite the
modest success the Zwigoff film "Crumb" enjoyed in our
cinemas last year.
Grrr!
I applaud the good taste of your "movie and maybe book" club and will be fascinated to hear your report of American Splendor. I am eagerly anticipating its release on DVD, of course! It was the film Crumb, followed by Ghost World six years later, that paved the way for this third look inside the head of these obsessive (generally male) personalities and their world view. Terry Zwigoff's two films get my full recommendation though they are not necessarily for the faint-hearted. And the splendid Robert Crumb himself actually assisted Harvey Pekar with the artwork for the original issues of American Splendor, though many other fine artists have now been drawn into the act over the years.
I should, it occurs to me, re-load both American Splendor and Ghost World into my DVD player in the near future. The late Harvey Pekar appears (briefly) for real in the film, alongside Paul Giamatti (who went on to portray John Adams).