Pop goes camp

Finally, something worth paying the license fee for. That’s right folks last night was the Eurovision song contest, featuring all the national stereotypes and camp you can shake a forest at, let alone a stick.  The joy of Eurovision comes from the fact that you know you are in for a laugh. Maybe not in the scandanavian countries where they take it almost to seriously but for the rest of us sane people, it’s a chance to glory in the joys of bad singing and even worse sets.

Perhaps the most cringeworthy bit is the host and hostess who turn up attempt a few jokes(in English which is probably not the first language)which always lose something in translation and leave at least a third of the crowd/audience looking puzzled. Cringeworthy yes, but also the best bit, forget the singing, this is where the Eurovision must be fully appreciated, imagine the whole continent(and the countries no one else wants) coming together as one but not being able to find a common joke that all 731,00,000 of us can appreciate.

The main spectacle this year (after a natty showing by Circue du soliel) had some good stuff in it, Malta, Ajerbaijan(my choice of winner) and the Turkey all captures the spirit well and really i wouldn’t mind stuff like this being on the radio all the time, i might tune in to some music FM if it was. Beats all these gangsta rappers and body showing teens.  The joy as ever though wa the Finnish dance act that had the lead rapper dressed as an 80′s New York youth with cap peak to the back doing those trendy arm movements that rappers do. Not to be outdone Greece weighed in with a guy( looking like he wanted to sell time shares or be the Aegean John Travolta) who made cheese an art form, he did some jumping some clichéd Europop lyrics and i’m sure at one point there was chest hair.

Mime artists, belly dancers  were all involved, as was an Argentinian circus troupé at the interval. They had an odd idea of putting people in polythene swimming pools and lowering them down over the audience, i’d like to know what it symbolised as i’m sure it must have but i’m flummoxed, mind you if i was going out to millions of people i’d make sure to confuse them as is the spirit of the show. 

A small mention for Dita von Teese (the only burlesque dancer that people know), why she was there i have no idea, she didn’t do much really, apart from that pose that all models from the 1930-1950′s seemed to do. You know the one hands on hips looking back over her shoulder at the camera, in fact she did look like she could have been from back then only she was in colour.  Her hourglass figure warrants a mention predictably, with corset pulled tight she had was, what i believe, is known as the preferred figure that men like on women. Maybe this is true but i wasn’t getting it. There is such a thing as to thin at the waist and indeed such a thing as to well proportioned. I prefer a real woman’s figure and a slightly less 1950′s look. I wonder if younger girls watching realised that the corset was making her thin. Just a thought.

 So to the voting. Again a load of people speaking what is probably not their first language atempting to make jokes (and at one point an attempted one minute silence from Slovenia because they hadn’t been in the competition for two years). The whole charade is depressing yet hilarious, the uncomfortable faces and the to long pauses, the sheer inanity of it all kept me hooked.  There was less chance for political voting this year and that meant we had a chance to win. We came fifth(177 points) and as the winner with a record number of points(387) was Norway, nicely coming full circle on this review. The song of course was cheese, the guy looked liked he’d been practising for a full year in some militant pop camp and so on that evidence deserved to win. I look forward to next years show and hope it is worse and so therefore better than this year.

The Wire or The Shield?

Both!

Luckily, these shows offset each other nicely concentrating on different aspects of right and wrong and the blurring in between. Each is gritty and realistic(to a point) and don’t deserved to measured against each other so i will measure them against each other because it’s my blog and i can do anything i like (like a Bond villain but they are always foiled and so far i have managed to get away with it, mwahahaha!)

The Shield is set in an LA suburb, it’s area of focus is susceptibility to corruption and the moral ambiguity of police work. The best part of the show for me  is the constant questioning of  the  ethics and integrity of the cast with such questions posed as is it acceptable to commit an illegal act to bring a dangerous offender to justice.  The questions can leave much to ponder on or as is more the case instantly forgotten  as more twists and turns are revealed to the storyline. Plotting can be somewhat fanciful and a’ bit’ unbelievable but the sheer grit of the show has it receiving lots of praise and the portrayal of poor neighbour hoods and the class differences are excellently done and make the show instantly accessible especially,  i would suggest, to the male audience. Macho is definitely the word here, a lot of shows now are written to appeal to both sexes equally and have scripts with ‘feelings’ but The Shield is just testosterone fueled, high octane, manliness. dare i say it but Gggrrrrr.

 

The Wire on the other hand is a slower beast to get to grips with.  Firstly the plotting can be somewhat Labyrinthine and it does take a few episodes to work out who everyone actually is and indeed what the heck is going on but after the initial confusion you realise what a fantastic depiction of life it portrays. All of the cast speak colloquially adding to the realism if not your understanding of what’s being said but if you offset that against the realism and sheer depth of research it’s more than a fair trade, it is a noticeably a more uncomfortable watch than the The Shield. Of the two this is the far more rounded show,  yet i found myelf  preferring the pace of the shield.  I guess it just depends on my mood.

Best kids books

My top 20 kids books, in order.  Cue the arguments…

 

1.  Sylvie and Bruno – Lewis Carroll
2.  The Wierdstone of Brisingamen  – Alan Garner
3.  Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
4.  Peter Pan – J.M Barrie
5.  The Hobbit – J.R.R Tolkien
6.  The Riddles of Epsilon – Christine Morton-Shaw
7. Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C.S Lewis
8.  The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick 
9.  Endymion Spring – Matthew Skelton
10. Stig of the Dump - Clive King 
11.  The Secret World of Polly Flint – Helen Cresswell
12.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
13.  The Coral Island -  R.M Ballantyne
14.  The Castle of Adventure – Enid Blyton
15.  The Neverending Story – Michael Ende
16. The voyage of the Arctic Tern – Hugh Montgomery
17. The Iron Man – Ted Hughes
18.  Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
19. A Bear Called Paddington – Michael Bond
20. Each Peach Pear Plum – Janet & Alan Ahlberg

Space music

Knowing little of the technical aspect of musical composition i  have decided to review two classical albums, both have a space theme.

The Planets.

Throughout history, the planets have been observed and linked with various Gods and their attributes so it is hardly suprising that each piece of music takes on the same characteristics( Mars, the bringer of war etc). Each piece of music is clearly defined and has an epic quality to it, haunting and fascinating at the same time, sometimes jaunty sometimes brooding. There is something for everyone in this suite, It could almost pass off as a soundtrack to a movie. There are many recordings of the Planets, i’m basing my review on the ‘HMV Classics’, which are usually in my opinion substandard(hence the cheap price) but this one i actually prefer to others.

 

Music of the spheres.

” The Planets of the 21st century” according to Classic FM. Aside from the title and the orchestra, the epic feel is, for me, even more prevelant than The Planets. Perhaps that’s down to the modern imagination, the real life photos we get of the vastness of space and the SFX that Hollywood creates for sci fi films and TV shows.  Music of the Spheres( Musica Universalis) is an ancient idea pertaining to the the movement of the planets creating a form of ‘music’, not in the traditional sense of the word but as in a mathematical symphony, working together in harmony. Coupling the music with the vocals of Hayley (‘s comet perhaps?)Westenra works better than i imagined it would.

 

Two solid and at times epic compositions, so which one to get? There’s always a sale on these days so get them both when they are cheap. I  know this is a cop out but you’d be missing out by getting just one.

Site of the day#4

http://www.thebricktestament.com/    an oldie but still good

When is a sandwich not a sandwich?

When it is a burrito apparently, as a court in Boston, massachusetts ruled that a sandwich must include (at least) two slices of bread. Things have come a long way since the middle ages when stale bread were used as plates then eaten after(usually by the house hold pet). Later on, (apologies for skipping the whole history of the sandwich but this is just a snack and not a three course meal) in the 19th century the Sandwich was viewed as a food men had when they drank and gambled, i’d like to go into a pub and order a  pint and order a cucumber sandwich(being English and all that).

 The sandwich is noble yet humble.  It’s a wonder that it has become a meal in it’s own right. What do you say to those people who don’t like sandwiches? (and you know who you are) I say woe is me, have you never fallen in love with a humble chip butty, the way the butter soaks through the bread because of the hot chips? Have you never crunched your way through a ridiculously huge sandwich and relaxed safe in the knowledge that although your mouth is full to bursting and you may have to chew for half an hour before you can swallow?  In this current climate can you afford to neglect this culinary delight and put all the sandwich bars out of business? Hear me my friends when i say(and at this point some suitably uplifting and rousing number should be started up by the brass band) whatever you like, throw it on bread and revel in the history, the very essence and perhaps the corner stone of life as we know it, the noble sandwich. It brings us together, it makes us a community, it makes us whole.  Thankyou and goodnight!

The British Sandwich Week starts the 10-16th May.

The Conquest of Mexico….

…was a historical event and also a book i have been reading, handily enough i recommend the book as a way into a fascinating subject. Here be the review.

 Don’t let the huge number of pages(848) put you off, this is a very readable and thoroughly researched account  of the events leading upto the conquest and the inevitability of the action of conquest. But first to the beginning.  Parts 1 and 2 of the book involve the backgrounds of the two civilizations. For the Mexica(Aztecs) the focus is on the subjugation of and subsequent trade with other people in and around the valley of Mexico and also the domestic classes of people and the Gods which they worship. The religious set up is especially fascinating if you like your myths as the stories mentioned in the book rival anything from ancient Greece or Mesopatamia.The Spanish chapter focuses more on the capture of the outlying island of the Caribbean and and the first explorations and meetings with the indigenous peoples of the Yacutan and Totanacs. 

The next six parts of the book are a tragic essay on the ignorance, greed and violence that seems to perforate human society.  The clash of cultures,the sheer naivety( don’t know how r to do an  ‘I’ with two dots over it) from both sides and the show of colonialism on a new continent show an age that has messages that still resonate today but have seemingly not be learnt.Of course hindsight helps to judge this but i digress.

The first two parts were a bit of a challenge to get through but after that it’s an epic read, the sheer amount of facts that are included coupled with the high readability and extremely well researched subject matter make this an authoritative book that anyone with a passing interest(and a bit of time) would do well to read.

Prologue

Okay heres something from way back when, the starting of a story i started three or four years ago. It’s unedited and i haven’t even reread through it so if it’s rubbish you know why. Another reason for not reading it is i might get embarassed if i judge it poor (which is inevitable) and not post it:

Flashing lights were blinding her, screams rent the air amidst the confusion. Pushing her way through thecrowd, a sought after space appeared. She moved swiftly around the corner of a shack. Leaning against the frame she took a breath and looked at the orange band around her wrist.After taking a few slow, deep breaths she took in her sorroundings. Pushing herself off the dusty wooden wall, her eyes became accustomed to the gloom. It was a featureless place that filled her gaze, an alleyway between two rickety buildings. After a while her thoughts ordered themselves. Who am I? The question that had haunted her since she woke. It felt like so long ago but in reality must only have been twenty minutes or so.

The sounds that had receded when she hid here caught her attention again, creeping slowly to the edge of the wall, she cautiously peered round the side of the building, unconsciously holding her breath.

A thundering roar above her head made her instinctively duck, hands to her ears. She felt the tears roll down her face as she heard the screams again. A sense of helplessness set in. The sounds faded, her attention went once again to the background noises , a kind of roaring cacophony of waves smashing on long suffering rocks.

Slowly raising her head, she took up her previous crouching position by the wall, a vague recognition of the sight before her eyes flickered in her memory, though her brain felt inexplicably heavy. Taking it all in the bright colours, the huge metal structures, moving impossibly fast, the smells of food and the happiness, yes thats what she saw happiness on the faces of children and adults alike. For one blissful moment everything made sense, ” a fun fair “, she laughed. Everything seemed alright, a place of happiness and joy, thrills and fond memories.

Only that wasn’t right at least not for her…

Wordtastic

Big words make me feel clever when i say them, make me feel dumb when i hear them and take up an inordinately big amount of space up on my CV. I gave my boss some handy phrases to use in managemnt meetings today(with the promise of a fiver if she managed to get them in) the highlights being:
Epic qualities of Old Testament proportions
unique inevitability of style
Chalét
I think this about sums up my day( that and the fact i haven’t found anything that inspires me to write today).

Site of the day#3

http://worlds-highest-website.com/