I am excited about this. Properly properly excited.
I turned on the telly when I got in this evening, and guess what I found? Flight of the Conchords. Some of the Glee cast. In THE SAME EPISODE of The Simpsons. I am pretty sure that I have died and gone to TV heaven.
For the un-initiated, Flight of the Conchords are a musical comedy double act who come from New Zealand, make a TV show set in New York and are just about the best thing sinced sliced bananas. In fact, I'm astounded that I haven't done a FOTC themed SNMC club before now. *
In The Simpsons they play two camp counsellors who work at a Performing Arts summer camp attended by Lisa. You know what the weird thing is? I spent today with a friend who I first met when we were both working as counsellors in an American summer camp. And you know what's even weirder? I was wearing (and am still wearing*) my favourite t-shirt, which looks like this:
Do you know who those people are? Do you? DO YOU? Only FLIGHT OF THE BLIMMING CONCHORDS, that's who!!!
Any-hoo, here they are:
Also exciting: according to the credits, that is Stephen actual Hawking singing. I really really hope the credits aren't lying.
* So astounded, in fact, that I'm almost starting to think that perhaps I have, and I've just forgotten that I did it. If anyone has a better memory for these things than me, or just more of an inclination to trawl through old posts and check, then knock yourself out. And please let me know.)
**Possibly not any more, by the time you are reading this. I do take it off to wash it, sometimes.
In making a passing reference to Only Connect the other day, I completely forgot to take into account the fact that it's tucked away on BBC4 and hardly anyone I ask, if I ask, has ever seen it. The most recent series has just finished, but if you're quick and you live in the UK you might catch some episodes on the iPlayer. If you're slow or you live somehere else, you lose. Sorry.
It's a quiz show where the aim is to spot the links between four fairly obscure items. In the first round the teams get points for picking the connection, while in the second the objects are presented in order and the teams have to guess what will be fourth in the sequence. Next comes a 'connecting wall' where they have to unjumble four mixed up groups, as per the walls you can play online here, and then finally there's this weird round where all of the vowels are taken out of a word or phrase, the remaining letters are randomly grouped together and they have to work out the phrase. So if the category was "names of blogs" the clue might be WHD STHT and the answer would be..... well, you've probably worked it out by now. I do quite like this round but I never quite understand what it's doing in the show, because it has nothing to do with making connections. Annoyingly, it's nearly always where the game is won or lost, too.
Coming up with questions is, as pointed out in this interview with one of the question-setters, harder than you might think. Here's my attempt: can you spot the connection between these four picture clues?
Sad news indeed. Tom Bosley - Howard Cunningham in Happy Days, and Father Dowling in the Father Dowling mysteries - died today. He was 83 years old, and died of natural causes so there is nothing unusual or out of the ordinary about his passing. Even so, it still makes me feel incredibly sad.
I loved Happy Days as a kid; my Mum, my brother and I used to watch it on Friday nights - the one weeeknight we were allowed to watch TV - and for a long time that familiar theme song marked the start of the weekend for me. I vividly remember laughing along with the canned studio audience, desperately hoping Joannie and Chachi would get together, and being more than a little scared of the Fonz.
The thing I liked the most, in hindsight, was the innocence of it all. Until I was far older than I care to admit, I was firmly convinced that "sit on it" was just about the worst thing you could say to anyone. EVER. At the centre of this moral safe-ground was Tom Bosley, as the gruff but loving Mr C; patriach, devoted husband and father and wearer of terrible cardigans. He was also, you may remember, the Grand Poobah of the mysterious Leopard Lodge, a Freemasons spoof which confused me endlessly at the time. (A fez? Why is he wearing a leopardskin fez? And what the hell is a poobah?)
Tom Bosley was one of only three actors to appear in all 255 episodes of Happy Days; along with Marion Ross, his on-screen wife and Henry "The Fonz" Winkler. Something I didn't know was that he was also a Broadway veteran, winning a Tony award in 1959 for his role in the musical Fiorello.
The show always felt timeless; the characters and actors immortal. Although it is over twenty years since I've watched an episode, I still get a shock when I see clips of Henry Winkler looking like the middle-aged man he now is; and there is still a tiny part of me which refuses to believe that it's little Richie Cunningham directing those Hollywood blockbusters.
But of course, no one is immortal. Life moves on, and today feels like the end of an era. Celebrity deaths are a strange thing. I had no idea how much of an impact Tom Bosley had had on me until I he had gone. Here are a couple of clips; one of Mr C at his finest, and the other of those iconic opening titles.
(On the phone, cigarette in hand) "David, I want you to have my jet fueled and stocked and be ready to take off for St Thomas first thing in the morning. Goodnight" ( Puts phone down, turns to camera, and sighs. ) "Good night. But it's not a good night. It's about as rotten a night I've ever known."
"I love him, Daddy. I hope that kind of honesty doesn't offend you."
"You look like a very lonely lady. Can I buy you a drink?" "I have a drink"
"How about it. Dinner tonight?"* "And then maybe, bed?" "Maybe"
(Woman walks away from the bar and then turns back)
"Bartender...." (removes wedding ring and drops it into a cocktail glass) "...your tip"
*Same guy, by the way. He is nothing if not persistent.
1. Best line (in my opinion) in the LOST finale, which if you haven't watched it but plan to won't spoil anything, came from Miles:
"I don't believe in a lot of things. But I believe in duct tape."
2. The Inuktitut word Katujjiqatigiittiarnirlu means "simplicity" (from @qikipedia on Twitter)
3. Today's birthdays: Queen Victoria, the woman who invented scavenger-hunts*, Bob Dylan, Kristen Scott-Thomas, Tommy Chong of "Cheech and" fame, actor-rapper Big Tyme** and the Brooklyn Bridge. Also on this date, Bartok's opera "Bluebeard's Castle" premiered in Budapest. According to the article I am looking at, "It was controversial, not only because the music was hard on the ears, but also because the Bartok version of the Bluebeard story made Bluebeard, a serial killer, out to be an idealist who was misunderstood".
Aren't we all misunderstood idealists at heart?
*Elsa Maxwell, who sounds like quite a character. She was born in a box at the opera (is it just me, or can this be said about a disproportionately large number of people? Winston Churchill is the other one I thought I could think of off the top of my head, but a) I've just double checked and he wasn't and b) I'm sure I used to know about more. I am going to have to investigate this further.) There's an interesting article about her here. My favourite parts:
Not unmindful of science (she once devoted most of a column to the fact that she has never had to blow her nose)
and
Author-Actress Maxwell commutes frequently between her Waldorf apartment and Hollywood, where she lives with Evalyn Walsh McLean and the Hope diamond
** I didn't even have a favourite rapper name before today, but now Big Tyme is definitely it. His real name is Jerod.
Sorry for my extended leave of absence. I have some great excuses if you want to hear them. No? Well, fair enough. Basically I've been pretty busy. Not to mention a bit distracted by all of the politics that, er, hasn't been going on. Anyway, I've just realised that last time I was round these parts it was Thursday, and now it's Tuesday. I've really got no idea how that happened. (I mean, it's not as if I was locked down at Westminster in high stakes negotations all weekend or anything). I will try to do better.
Brief highlights of the last few days:
1. I spent Friday afternoon at the BBC, taking part in a workshop to test out ideas for the new series of Dave Gorman's Genius. (As a slight aside, and by way of explanation of what's coming in the next paragraph, there are some people who get quite pernickety about words like 'genius' being used as adjectives. Properly, properly pernickety. They have facebook groups and everything. Personally I think they're idiots (language is constantly evolving, and that's what makes it fun, and who cares if you want to adjectivise the odd noun, or nounify the odd adjective? (I'm also quite a fan of verbifying, as you may have noticed.)) But I figure it's not going to cost me anything to keep the pernickets (who will no doubt be irritated by that name, too) happy. So I will try.)
Back to Genius [noun: proper]. If you don't know the show, which started on radio and then moved to telly last year, the basic concept is that members of the public pitch an idea which they think is genius [adj] to a guest judge, who is, in the eyes of the programme's producers at least, a genius [noun]. The judge-who-is-a-genius [noun] then gets to decide whether each idea is, in fact, genius [adj] or not. The guest judges I remember from the last series are Catherine Tate, Johnny Vegas and Germaine Greer, so the definition of genius [noun] which the producers are working from seems to be "someone who is funny. Or, is Germaine Greer."
They are tweaking the format for the next series and wanted to try some ideas out with a group of people, so I went along. It was a great afternoon. Dave Gorman was very funny, and he gave us all a copy of his book, which was an added bonus. (Haven't started reading it yet, but loved some of his other ones, so my hopes are high.) We were asked not to say too much about the possible changes, but what I can do is tell you some of the genius [adj] ideas some people brought to the table. There were some crackers:
A bird feeder which electrocutes seagulls. Only seagulls. Which raised the obvious
question: what exactly did the inventor have against seagulls? I suspect a traumatic
fish-and-chips-related incident during her childhood, but I'm no psychologist.
To solve gun crime, make it legal to own any gun, but only if it is pink (removes their
machismo image and makes them less desirable. Except, presumably to Paris
Hilton. And only, as Dave Gorman pointed out, to people who are unfamilar with the
concept of paint.)
Magnetic socks, which won't get seperated in the wash. This one went down quite
well until someone pointed out that washing machines are made out of, er, quite a lot
of metal. Which the socks will probably get stuck to, instead of to each other.
A few people brought along prototypes of their ideas: the girl who brought along a
dream recorder (strap it to your head, attach probes and play back your dreams the
following morning so you remember them) pointed out that it was just a
representation of what her invention might look like, not an actual working model.
I'm glad she warned us, if not a little disappointed. There was also a guy who used a
toilet roll holder to make a dispensing system for artificial cheese (as an alternative to
those individually wrapped cheese slices you can get) which he thought would a) help
the environment and b) reduce waste by letting you choose exactly how much cheese
you needed to fit your sandwich, or roll, or whatever. He gave us a demonstration
and this is a direct quote: "Yes, that is real cheese. I spent most of last night
sellotaping it together".
It should be a good series. This is the bit of the last series which everyone
remembers the most, but no one can remember whether the idea was genius[adj] or
not.
2. I saw Abandoman on Saturday night. What do you mean you've never heard of Abandoman? They're Ireland's seventh biggest hip hop act for goodness sake! Apparently Ireland only has nine hip hop acts, so not enough for a top 10, and of the two acts they beat to the coveted 7th spot, one was Jedward. But don't hold that against then. Also, I should probably say that this is all stuff which Rapping Rob, head Abando-man, told us on stage, so he could have been making it up. I say that not because I'm calling Rapping Rob a liar, but because Rapping Rob made up lots of great stuff on stage, including an impressive improvised musical about two of the audience members. It's not everyone who can spin a romantic tale in three acts about a turtle-loving environementalist and a carpenter who meet in McDonalds completely off the top of their head. Let alone make it rhyme. For that reason alone, if you ever have a chance to see Abandoman live (Edinburgh festival would be a good bet, I'm guessing, and they are definitely on the bill at Lattitude) I would grab it with both hands. Abandoman ROCK.
3. Watching the Sopranos - it took me a couple of episodes to get into, but I get what all the fuss was about now. I'm half way through the first series and the thought that there are so many more still to come fills me with great excitement. Tony Soprano's therapist is my new hero.
4. I'm STILL waiting for Jules Renard. You can follow labels for previous posts on this if you don't know who he is and if you want to know more. (This one not so much a higlight, more a moan. Why am I moaning to you , and not to Amazon, who were meant to bring me Jules over a week ago? No reason, except that I've already tried moaning to Amazon and they've told me to wait a few more days).
5. Working. Actual, being paid for it, having to turn up somewhere on time, working. I spent yesterday back in my old office, and am there again for a couple of days later this week. I expect the novelty will wear off eventually, but so far I'm loving it. Was great to be back, and to be doing something useful, and to see everyone again.
6. Sunday lunch. One of my favourite places in the world is Artisan and Vine wine bar in Clapham, which is nowhere near where I live, but which I will happily trek half way across London, even on a Sunday when the tubes are all up the creek, to get to. I got home from lunch at 9pm - it's that kind of place. They have some amazing wines; my current favourite is this Carmenere: one sip and in my head I'm curled up in a leather armchair in front of a roaring fire, with a blanket and a good book. It's magic stuff.
7. My creative writing class: it was poetry this week, and we ended up writing two poems during the lesson, which was quite hard but good fun. The first one had to be about an emotion; choices were depression, anger, frustration, resentment, grief or sadness so everyone was thoroughly down in the dumps by the time we'd all read them out. I toyed with posting mine here but it feels a bit naff, at this stage, to be posting 'a pome what I wrote' on my blog. Maybe one day.
I'm off to France for a weekend of champagne tasting and have a camion-load of things to get done before I leave bright and early tomorrow morning.
If the Amazon gods are smiling on me, I'll be reading Jules Renard while I'm away. Otherwise, I'll be taking the second Stieg Larsson, which I'm looking forward to reading (having finally made it through the difficult first few chapters of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and going on to like it a lot, just like everyone said I would), but which doesn't quite match the surrounds quite as well. At the time of writing, today's post hasn't arrived, so there is still hope. Amazon gods, I'm counting on you.
If, unlike me, you're in the UK for the weekend and are stuck for entertainment, do try and catch Five Daughters, which is on the iPlayer until Tuesday. In fact, even if your weekend is going to be quite the whirlwind of social activity, I'd strongly suggest trying to find three spare hours to squeeze this in.
The subject matter isn't exactly frothy: it's a drama dealing with the murders of five Ipswich women in 2006, who you may remember hitting the headlines back then for the fact that they were all sex workers. Their stories are told with incredible sensitivity and humanity; I saw the first two installments last night and am saving the last one for when I get back. Really, if you get the chance, watch it. It is insanely good.
Have a lovely-bubbly Bank Holiday. See you on Tuesday, or thereabouts.
(UPDATE: I am no longer speaking to the Amazon gods. Post has just arrived but sadly Jules has not. It would seem more than a little churlish to moan about this for too long, and I wouldn't mention it at all, except for the fact that for the last half an hour or so, ever since I spotted the postman down the road I have been running up and down four flights of stairs every five minutes to check. At least I didn't run up the road to meet him, which was my first inclination.)
