More Conversations With Paul
Picked Paul and Joanne up from the dream house and brought them back to mine to get their car unbogged. It was interesting to see the dream house in the cold light of day. I like knowing it’s here. We talked some more pop culture at my house, and I showed Paul some of the Japanese LPs I brought back with me from Japan, including my Ghost In the Shell and Cowboy Bebop vinyl. Then they headed off home with the intention of stopping at Dixons Records in Blackburn on the way through. After they left I got the hankering to do some crate digging too, so I followed them. I was there for about ten minutes when Paul and Joanne came into the shop – they’d had lunch first, and it turned out they parked right behind my car so knew I was there. It was a fun reunion.
Whilst looking through the bins we passed some Elvis (Paul was in town to buy an Elvis boxed set off some guy), which got him telling me about an Elvis Is Alive conspiracy theory he’s attached to. On his phone he showed me a Youtube clip purporting to show this Elvis alive dude. He sounded a bit like Elvis, but he looked like Kenny Rogers. Paul reckons he has the same scars as Elvis had and his story fits in with his disappearance. I told him to get a clue and accept that the real Elvis died on the toilet seat in Gracelands, but he’s still clinging on to his conspiracy.
Anyway, I bought the following: Red CD by King Crimson, The Kinks CD by the Kinks, The Hollies at Abbey Road 1966-70 CD by The Hollies. The Best Red Vs Blue DVD Ever, The Kinks Special Edition EP DVD, Gordon Lightfoot Live in Reno DVD, and Going Public LP by Bruce Johnston. I’ll talk about these when I play them, but should mention I of course already have the first Kinks album (2 copies on vinyl), just not the CD. This is the mono version with extra tracks, but I’ve always wanted a stereo version, but that’s hard to find. Then Paul tried to get me to buy some Harry Belafonte live album that was going for $5. Looked like a good album, a double, and clearly a bargain, but I have not the time or room for it and was not in the head space to get it. He bought a 10cc album, a Frank Sinatra and a couple of others – all vinyl – and his wife dug a dinky Christmas album out of one of the budget crates on the floor. Forgive her, she’s a Christian. All in all, it was a good time and I was sad to see my fellow pop culture-loving friend depart with his wife.
Watched The Kinks DVD, which included clips of Mr Pleasant, Plastic Man, Waterloo Sunset and Muswell Hillbilly. There seems to be only one clip of the Kinks performing Waterloo Sunset on TV and this is it from a German show. What’s nice about this print is it doesn’t have the on screen text that many others I’ve seen do. This is because those others have been taken from a Kinks documentary. The Muswell Hillbilly clip is interesting because it’s live in the studio. I don’t much like this more pure country version of the song (with Ray reprising his I’m Johnny Cash joke). I prefer the Celluloid Heroes single version. But as a Kinks Kompletist, it’s nice to have it. Also watched half of the Red Vs Blue dvd. Silly, and not really my sense of humour, and I’ve never played Halo which it’s based on, but an interesting insight into the uses of machinima.
Finally bought that Evangelion 3.33 bluray in JB. That might prompt another playing of the four films. Finally returned that game called That’s You that I can’t play because of the app that’s out of date. They gave me $2 in return for a game that cost $14. What happened to getting your money back? Well, this was because I returned it over two weeks since I bought it. Them’s the rules. But still…
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Also borrowed big coffee table book Worlds Beyond Time: Scifi of Art of the 1970s by Adam Rowe. A visual feast of great scifi art by many of the best in the field, including Tim Burns, Frank Kelly Freas, Virgil Finlay, Bruce Pennington and more. I love getting lost in the pictures. Had an idea for a story called Find Your Cool. It’s a coming of age thing based on…me! Finding your thing, your destiny, your vocation, the job you’re meant to do that comes out of the core of your being. It finds you too. |
 Finished Last Tango In Cyberspace by Steven Kotler. It was a story about the development of an empathy drug called Sietch Tabr (Dune reference) and the corporate interests trying to develop and control it. An interesting theme, especially with the MC, a guy called Lion Zorn, being what’s called an empathy tracker. The main message of the book seemed to be that we, as a species, are not ready for total empathy – it needs to be developed gradually. The author makes much of our use and abuse of animals as a prime example of where our empathy is at. He makes the interesting point that it may have been our early relationship with wolves (and later, dogs) that started us on the road to empathy. There was some cool writing. I liked the author’s fixation on details and snappy fractured dialogue. Sometimes his characters were a bit too cool for school, but that’s classic cyberpunk. Actually my main concern was the fact Lion Zorn is a Jew, and that name sounds a lot like Zionism. It seems to me the Israeli leadership, for one, could do with an empathy drug right about now. As Lion says at one point: put it in the water supply. |
Played some more Surviving Mars. Have decided to start a game in Creative Mode based completely on Russia. The funding will be Russian, the people will all be Russian, and I’m gonna call it Back In the USSmaRs. I’ve already built a dome and named it Gorky, a writer whose birthday I share a date with. I will name them all after Russian writers. And I’ve summoned the ship that will take my 12 specially selected Cosmonauts from Earth. They’re on their way. Let’s see what those Russkies can do on Mars! |
All pop culture considerations were swamped by the news that my brother in law, Graeme, died today. This was a bit of a shock as he hadn’t been unwell recently. I can’t say he and I were ever close, but we were always on good terms. The last time I saw him, in March on my sister Shirley’s birthday, he mentioned if he could have my old car when I got my new one (he liked old Holdens). I said yes, but couldn’t get in contact with him when I bought the Veloster, so it went to the scrapyard. (Yes, it’s THAT brother in law.) It wouldn’t have mattered since the old car wasn’t worth having at that point. But it would have been good to have had that last conversation between us. He gave me my first job when I was fifteen. It was a soft drink delivery job, and I was the jockey. Good memories, and I got to know him better (more than I probably wanted, actually!). His death continues the September curse with my family. Both my parents died in that month. The thought of this trend continuing is a little bit worrying, but it would be very unusual (and portentious) if it did. The thing is, there are so many others it could’ve been – others I’m much closer to. When my brother Carl gave me the news (over the phone while I was at work), the first thing he said was, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you’. That flitting moment when I ran through the possibilities was chilling, as it always is. He’s the first of my generation to go; and as a brother in law, a bit of an outlier in my affections. It’s still bad, especially for my poor sister Shirley, the wife. But, from my selfish perspective, it will only get worse from here. I can feel death coming for me and mine. So it begins…
After all the drama at my sister’s house, where my brother and I attended, I got home and tried to chill out with a round of Surviving Mars. My Russian colonists have arrived and made their homes in Gorky dome. I can hear the soundtrack to Doctor Zhivago playing in my head as I go about the colony fixing things and getting everything moving. Will this be a glorious page in the history of Russian expansionism, or will it all end in disaster and disgrace? Stay tuned! | Grand Final day. I have a tradition of going to the movies on this day to show my disdain for the game. But there wasn’t anything on I was interested in, so I stayed home and had a nap while my brother and nephew watched proceedings. Watched East of the Mountains. Very minimalist film. The MC hardly speaks for the entire first half. The shenanigans I mentioned earlier were not so much. There was one relatively melodramatic scene involving a dog getting hurt (which almost caused me to bail) but the rest was very slow burn. The main drama is inside Tom Skerritt’s head as he ponders the big question, to be or not to be. |
Watched The Wicker Man, the 1973 original with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee. Not really a scary film, but maybe a creepy film. The horror creeps up on you. I gave it three and a half stars on Letterboxd. Liked it but didn’t love it. A couple of details annoyed me. The film ends (spoiler alert) with a reveal that the people of Summerisle had planned to have Woodward’s cop character come to the island all along, so they could use him as a fitting sacrifice. But Brit Ekland’s character tries to seduce him (in an eye-popping scene where she looks gorgeous and sexy – I’d be seduced!), even though it’s crucial that the sacrifice be a virgin. Unluckily for Woodward (in more ways than one) he doesn’t give in. Then later, Woodward takes it upon himself to knock out the guy who is to play Punch in the May Day festival and takes his costume. Thus, he is conveniently the ‘fool’ who will be sacrificed. Surely none of this could have been ‘planned’ by the townsfolk? A final gripe: the wicker man cage Woodward’s character is placed in is clearly quite flimsy, especially the wicker door. He could easily break out of it. And if you were going to be burned alive in it you’d surely do your darndest to break it down.
Well, no, there’s one more gripe. On the extras there’s a doco called Worshipping the Wicker Man featuring a number of directors praising the film. Zionist torture porn film-maker Eli Roth, whilst meditating on the nature of evil, mentions Al Qaeda as an example, saying, ‘Ideology can be a terrifying thing when it’s applied to someone who’ll do anything for it…to the point that other people dying actually is what they believe their religion wants…there’s nothing more terrifying than that.’ I wonder, Eli, does that apply to Judaism and the Israeli High Command?