2013 — 21 April: Sunday
Amazing! Another gloriously sunny morning.1 I shall celebrate with the second half of my grapefruit. And a cuppa, of course.
Yesterday evening's...
... entertainment, in part, was the Parker Posey film "Price Check". An excellent piece that (clearly) some of the IMDB 'reviewers' simply didn't know what to make of. It helps if you've been through some of the life events2 depicted yourself, which rules out a large part of the teenage demographic. It also lacked those three essential ingredients of popular cinematic success, as explained here by the Bob Hoskins character to the Alan Alda character in "Sweet Liberty":
Director: You realize who goes to see movies. Eighty percent of them are
between the ages of 12 and 22. And you know what the kids like?
Author: What?
Director: Well, this may sound silly to you, but kids go completely ape if
you do three things in a picture: defy authority, destroy property,
and take people's clothes off.
It's still a depressingly winning formula, quarter of a century later. Though I personally have no problem with attractive nude youngsters — not too young, of course!
:-)
Now I shall breakfast with Cerys and catch up with "Spider" John Koerner. [Pause] Followed by an excellent pre-lunch examination by Miranda Sawyer of links between music and emotion. The emphasis, so far, has been on spookiness. [Pause] The forensic entomologist was a blast.
As the afternoon...
... winds down, I observe that the extra free time brought by retirement doesn't necessarily correlate with a greater number of tasks expunged from the endless "To Do" list. But then, I think the first item I personally would have to put on that list would be "Create a 'To Do' list".
I suspect it was...
... inevitable, given the way my mind works, that having scanned this delightful "Hot Tuna"...
... from the CD artwork of my Uncanned compilation of music by that fine popular beat combo, I would promptly recall my Fish Police book Hairballs...
... that has been swimming on my shelves since 1987. In his amusing introduction to it, Ellison offers an anecdote about George Alec Effinger, who eschews finny fodder:
[Effinger] says, "The universe put clams and suchlike ookiness in shells you have to have a hammer to open, made them look disgusting, and then planted them at the bottom of the ocean. You think the universe is trying to tell us something?" He also says, "They were all put down there in stuff that makes us drown, and us up here on the land where they suffocate. You think the universe is trying to make a point?"
Oh, dear! BBC Radio 4 has just told me that "In the end" the giant panda's eventual artificial insemination "was something of an anti-climax". I think it's time for my evening meal.