More from BBC Films – this time it’s a review that I wrote for On the Waterfront. This one I actually don’t mind too much. It’s not phenomenal, but it’s not bad. I’ve got another one to write for Monday morning, so I guess they haven’t realised how bad they are yet.
Joy of joys – now you too can read what must be one of the worst piece of writing I have ever produced. My review of Rasputin is up on the BBC’s film site, and I really don’t like it. I can blame time pressures all I like, but in the end of the day I’m pretty sure it’s just not cutting the mustard. Luckily I have a couple of other reviews to write which should give me an opportunity to redeem myself.
Four pages from Peter Milligan’s new X-force comic book: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4. Comic books are for retards: “Ah. The Death of Sluk. Probably no great loss. He was only really useful at close range, with his creepy face things. And I might be a mutant, but I kind of like the members of my team to look at least half human. Note: Remind Beckah to review her alcohol mix. Gin Genie’s tremors nearly killed all of us.” [Via Barbelith Underground]
The sheer aggravation of coming home at 9pm with two films you have to review in fifteen hours to find that your video has been occupied by a flatmate’s urge to record drama is beyond the telling of it.
Emode tells me I am a detective. “The mysteries of man and nature stretch out before you, just waiting for your inquisitive mind. In your undying quest for the truth, you’re best at finding solutions to complex problems. As a passionate and determined detective, you don’t have time for any assistants. It’s just as well really, since you work best alone, pondering the clues from your library or lab. You thrive on the problem-solving process, you could trouble shoot for Microsoft, and you won’t rest until the questions are answered. The world could use a few more like you.” Once you’ve taken the test, type in tomcoates@yahoo.com into the compare with your friends box to see how similar we are…
My appeal for UCL students to drop me a note has brought a couple of e-mails to my door, one of which slightly alarmed me and made me re-examine my motives for doing so. So I examined them, and frankly they stink, but who gives a fuck, right?
Therapist: “So your attempt to ‘be there’ for the horrors of exam life for random students seems to me to be a substitute for your lack of ability to ‘be there’ for your Ex (a man, I might add, of clearly significantly lacking taste).”
Tom: “Why thank you Mr Therapist, I’m so glad you’ve noticed my finer qualities, and the absence of same in my bitter adversary (hey Peter!). So often these get left unnoticed. I always say that you have to do what you think is best, and I think I’ve stuck by that principle even when my thinking has been clearly butt-fucked by Satan.”
Therapist: “I do, however, think that you should question your motives when it comes to your perpetual baiting of the object of your Ex’s current misguided affections. It seems purely designed to make him angry and irritable.”
Tom: “Ah well, old therapist chum, I’m afraid you have me bang to rights there. But it’s only because someone told me he read my site. Don’t see why he should get all the insights into my mental functioning without a occasional slap…”
Therapist: “I think you should start coming every day, and having two hour sessions. I’m suspecting a certain lack of progress on several key issues here.”
So anyway, hey to Mark Detre – hope the exams go well. And similar thanks for the e-mail to Michelle Quah, who is dangerously honest about her exams on her site.
News: ICANN.org announce details of the .biz and .info registration plans. I will confess to having put myself down for a couple of .info addresses on the offchance that they might come in useful. Not the most moral practice, but never mind…
Warning: this post contains many links to Amazon.
Two very different slices of Americana have been impacting on my life recently. On Monday, on the way into work, I started to read Of Mice and Men for the first time in over twelve years. I was forced to read it at school, and was completely incapable at the time of viewing it as anything but an unbelievably long, tedious chore. This time, the whole reading probably took me about two and a half hours – it’s such a tiny book. But it came like a kick to the head.
The horror with books that I read at school is that – at the time – I didn’t enjoy a single one of them. In fact some of them still haunt my mind as horrors to be tamed. There’s a few lines at the front of Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour that still have the power to make me feel queasy. And yet, I’ve re-read many of these books since school, and found them all to be astonishingly powerful. To Kill A Mockingbird is a case in point. What is it about schools that make the the reading of books such a hellish experience, I wonder?
The other juicy slice of trans-atlantic media-pie that I’ve been gorging myself on is the latest Dandy Warhols album. I bought it a while back and listened to it about ten times before promptly losing it. I have no idea where. It’s been driving me mad for months. I keep ripping apart my bedroom in vain attempts to find it. Eventually last night I gave up and bought it again. And of course, unlike novels from school, it’s not quite as good as my memories would suggest. Ah well.
