2014 — 29 March: Saturday
It can take me a while1 to persuade people to do something they don't think they want to do. But I occasionally succeed. Today's minor victory, revealed in an overnight email, is to have somebody finally cave, and watch something at my suggestion — the adaptation of Tony Kushner's amazing play that went on to become the HBO mini-series "Angels in America", directed by Mike Nichols. Personally, I think everyone could benefit from watching it, starting with some of the fine, upstanding, morally-superior beings in a church hierarchy or two and the UK coalition "government", but, heh, that's just me.
On a whim...
... I've just fired up my Copernic desktop search engine to find out what else, if anything, I have of Kushner lurking on my system. All I've turned up is a great quote of his referring to the influence of Howard Cruse's pioneering gay comic strip "Wendel" in a Last Gasp newsletter a couple of years ago. Talking of this (excellent) strip, he said "Wendel unfolds with the narrative complexity, nuance, detail, and honesty of a great satirical novel." My 2001 edition (it thus now transpires) isn't quite as complete...
... as I would have hoped as it predates "The Complete Wendel" that Kushner was reviewing by more than a decade. And my edition lacks the introduction in the newer one by Alison Bechdel, dagnabbit. Kushner forgot to add how screamingly funny it all is. I've been a follower since the 1989 Wendel Comix #1, picked up on one of my regular trawls of the book and comix shops of London. By the way, "Stuck Rubber Baby" is an amazing piece of work, too.
We've decided...
... to 'carpe' another (not too bad-looking) 'diem' and go for another earlyish walk; our last one this winter, in fact. That will be three in six days, which is going it some for us pensioners. These boots were made for walking, and all that. Besides, it's cheaper (and probably healthier) than almost any other entertainment option open to us until the guvmint manages to find a way of taxing it.
I ended up...
... going out for the walk after starting this article, and before finishing it. Fascinating stuff, with which I can fully sympathise. He also writes amusingly well (here) about a photographer I admire.
Wasn't it...
... dilute enough? Just askin'. (Link.)
I was delighted...
... to see that Mr Postie is still doing his bit to banish any risk of boredom here in Technology Towers by continuing to leave small piles of goodies out for me on my front step to greet me on my return. And I was further tickled to see that the graphic designers of these first two pieces of cover art had been working along amazingly parallel lines in their playful use of shadows despite the vastly disparate topics of the two films:
Since (this) man cannot live by film alone, I also picked up...
... the second of my two "suck it and see" books by Franco Moretti, the final chunk of "Borgen", and a second CD by the Rutles that I hadn't even known existed until I heard the amiable chitchat between Neil Innes and Marc Riley earlier in the week on BBC 6Music.
The only other piece of snailmail contained Uncle ERNIE's complete capitulation. He will now use my address rather than dear Mama's when sending me her £1,000,000 cheques from now on :-)