Facebook features

You have to hand it to them, Facebook are pretty good in letting people create new ideas that keep facebookers from getting bored. The newest application I've added to my profile is the Southpark Character Creator. Unfortunately, it's pretty limited in what you can change about the head, so the version of me I created looks nothing like me, but I think it's cool nonetheless:

I also made one of Ian, which looks a little bit like him:


I think I might make Michael Jackson next . . .

Reviews and stuff

How come it's de rigour to record one's album in the USA at the moment? New York, Chicago, . . . they're all at it. It's not like there aren't recording facilities in the British Isles. And surely it's nothing to do with inspiration - because the album should already be written, to a large extent, before the band even gets to the studio.

Anyway.

I saw Control - the Ian Curtis biopic - yesterday evening, and found it to be superficial and disappointing. It really made sense to me that it had been directed by a rock photographer (Anton Corbijn), because there was no depth to the film at all. There was no sense of the tragic in the film at all, and no over-arching narrative either: it seemed to be a series of unrelated events, rather than a story. If there were some themes there, then I didn't find them, and Heather said that she spotted loads of anachronisms in it too: a modern No Smoking sign and a modern litter bin.

There were so many directions that someone could have taken this film, but it did nothing. A music film should have you coming out of the theatre wanting to go home and write songs, but all that was in my head as I walked out was, "Ian Curtis: what a prick." I don't think I should've been thinking, "When's he going to bloody hang himself? I wish he'd get on with it."

All four of us felt this way, which is absolutely contrary to all the reviews, but there you go.

I've also just invested in two new albums: Gulag Orkestar by Beirut (who I'm going to see in Leeds next month) and Fur and Gold by Bat for Lashes.

I already knew and liked some Beirut songs, and while Zach Condon's voice grates on me after an album's worth of songs, there's enough changes in tempo and style to keep you interested. He seems interested in innovation, rather than being quirky for the sake of it, which isn't how Natasha Khan from Bat for Lashes strikes me. Ian had told me that he thought I'd find it very derivative of Bjork and P J Harvey, and he was completely right. Her whispered Standard English voice on EVERY song quickly drove me mad, and I don't think anything she's done struck me as new or interesting. Then again, I haven't bought either Volta by Bjork or White Chalk by PJ Harvey, so perhaps I'm just not into dark, meandering (tuneless?) female vocals at the moment.

What I am looking forward to buying, however, is the new Radiohead album. Like the geek that I am, I will probably part with the £40 required to get the proper boxed edition with all the extras, rather than paying the 49p minimum for a download. I know a lot of less ardent (or less moneyed) fans are annoyed about the lack of a middle-way, but the reason Radiohead are doing this release is to avoid having to wait another few months until their fans can hear the album. A "normal" CD will be out sometime next year, having gone through the usual procedure.

Can't wait.

Oh.my.god.

This is both the funniest and most terrifying advert I've ever ever seen:

http://www.shockabsorber.co.uk/bounceometer/shock.html

Sundays

I hate them.

Sundays are like a strange suspension of time . . .

If only the TV was a little better, it might ease the pain.

Instead I seem to be spending far too much time watching music videos on YouTube.

A Wee Round-Up

Another series of Strictly Come Dancing, another collection of unrecognisable "celebrities" who only inspire outbursts of, "But who the hell is that?" I have to confess that I've been completely addicted to Strictly in the past, but only because I could actually root for someone I already admired - I still think it's a travesty that Colin Jackson didn't win the series before last: that splits-in-the-air move was legendary.

So, let's look at the line-up . . . the only contestants I recognise are Alesha from Mis-teeq, John Barnes, Kelly Brook, Letitia "Sharon" Dean and Willie Thorne. Hardly an A-list cast. Rubbish! At least the judges are worth watching.

Anyway, I don't think I'm alone in saying I'm already suffering from Election Fatigue, and the election isn't even bleedin' happening this year! The Tories did a pretty good job of applying the pressure and now GB really does look like a bottler. In my opinion, he should have gone with it: in these situations, the likelihood of there being a better time is negligible. The economic crash has to happen some time, and the longer Brown leaves it, the more he's pushing his look.

Back to the personal. I spent an hour or so at the NHS walk-in centre this morning. For the second morning in a row I was struck down with an agonising pain in my lower abdomen. Bizarrely it goes away after the ibuprofen kicks in and doesn't return, but the 20 minutes of pain has me writhing around in agony. So Ian drove me to the hospital.

I gave a urine sample, and they ruled out any urinary tract infection or anything like that (they can test for those things in 3 minutes - crazy); I had my bowels listened to, and anything wrong with them was ruled out too; so the only thing it could be is something to do with my uterus. Hilariously, the nurse was looking up potential things by googling "lower abdominal pain", and none of the possibilities are particularly serious, so there you are. I have orders to see my GP if the problem persists, but yet again, I seem to have a mystery illness.

I'm off to bake some brownies.

Ill and stuff

I've been off school, and slept till about 2.30pm. I have such problems determining whether I'm too ill to go to school or not, even when it's really obvious. But then, with school, there's so much guilt attached to being off, because other people have to bear the brunt. I also have no one's contact details from my department, so even though I'd prepared some cover tasks for my classes, I have no idea what to do with them.

Anyway, I started browsing on the internet, and this actually made me laugh. It was on the imdb entry for Chris Farley:

'Innovator of "anti-slapstick" comedy style; ie. man walks into doorframe, curses and screams in pain for long period of time.'

lame lame lame

I've been tired and ill, hence my lack of blogging. My head feels like it's on a spring - I'm disorientated and dizzy most of the time. Which isn't a great way to be feeling when you're stood in front of a class. Unfortunately, my week gets harder and harder, with fewer and fewer free periods, culminating in the most horrific moment of the week: double period with Year 9, last thing on Friday. Nice.

School's ok apart from that and my department is really nice and supportive, but I don't feel like I've gelled there . . . but it could be so much worse. And it's nice not to be waking up hoping I'm too ill to go in (which was the case at my last placement school).

I think I need a nap.

The makers of X Factor are absolutely despicable. They parade crazily delusioned people - even do mini-features on them - not so we can laugh at their singing, but so we can laugh at how fat, ugly, badly dressed or low-class they are. They just had on a whole family of obese people who'd pushed their hideous daughter to compete. Obviously she couldn't sing, but that wasn't what it was about. It focused on how her facial features were stuck in the middle of a huge expanse of flesh. It was a freak show.

Awful.

Is it just me, or is Taylor Dawkins of the Foo Fighters going for a distinctly "Kurt" vibe here? I say 'vibe', however, when I obviously really mean 'complete rip-off'.

This is a promo shot for his new band, and it seems more than slightly odd that he'd want to trade off the fame of his bandmate's dead former bandmate.

Anonymity and that

As a young teacher, I've been pretty careful to make all my internet profiles private: I know how easy it is to find people with just a crafty internet search. So for a month or so I've been reading and commenting on a blog by an "anonymous" screenwriter, but have easily worked out who he is because of information he's disclosed! I wonder if he's aware . . .

Anonymity's nice sometimes though. Last weekend me and Ian were at a friend's party in Manchester and I knew relatively few people there, but I really liked that. Sometimes Sheffield feels so small and incestuous, and I'm not even a socialite or scenester. Recently I've been yearning for a place that feels larger and more alive . . . But at least my students don't live in the same city as me, so there's something to be said for commuting to Chesterfield every day. Imagine having to keep the mask on outside of school hours - hell!

However, it has been going quite well so far. The only group I've had trouble with has been a Year 9 class, set five out of eight. They're not thick or anything; they just don't much like working.

I don't either, but I have to do some now . . . and switch on the heating (is anyone else freezing?)

PS. An American senator is suing God to make a point about litigation. How droll.

Pavarotti RIP

I felt very sad about Pavarotti's death, but I just glimpsed some footage of his funeral on TV, and seeing eight to ten men REALLY struggling with his coffin did amuse me slightly. Lesley Garratt got it right when she said, "he was a giant of a man in every respect", or words to that effect. Nevertheless, his version of Nessun Dorma will continue to bring a tear to my eye.





It's that weird expression on his face after he's finished that amazing long slur. He looks completely bewildered and emotionally exhausted. Amazing stuff.

Miscellaneous

I can't be bothered to dwell on my first school week yet - perhaps I'll do that tomorrow once I start on my prep for the forthcoming week.

I'm feeling quite satisfied after me and Ian planted a load of daffodil bulbs about the place, and tidied the garden up a bit - using the push mower, digging out some dandelions and pulling up some of the widespread herb robert. Then a gorgeous big kitten came into the garden, and I feel extremely guilty for playing with her: I love the birds and I don't want to encourage a cat to come back, especially one without a collar and bell. Speaking of which, there was a repeat last night of Bill Oddie's top ten birds. I felt annoyed that the blackbird wasn't on the list, because their songs are the best of the garden birds, and they also have a lot of character. You've got to like a bird that runs rather than hops.

Gorilla = Phil Collins weirdness

Piglet Massacre

Adam told me about this http://www.thestar.co.uk/news?articleid=3107771 at Megan's party on Saturday, and I was in disbelief. An entire litter of thirteen day-old piglets at Heeley City Farm were killed and mutilated: one was decapitated and another was cut clean in half. Others were cut up and their body parts were strewn all around the farmyard.

It's bewildering that even the sickest person could behave in that way: little piglets are the cutest mammals there are.

Some local businesses have donated large sums of money to help security at the farm, but they need to raise another £5000 in order to install a fence - send your tenner (cheque, of course) to Heeley City Farm, Richards Road, Sheffield, S2 3DT.

It's a shame they have to go to such measures, but I have to say that the last time I took a wander around Graves Animal Park, I was surprised at how accessible all the animals were once the park had shut for the evening.

Anyway, I'm trying to cheer up by watching a docu-drama on Blackbeard. Bizarre.

Dandy Dan RIP

We randomly caught the end of Bugsy Malone on Film Four yesterday evening, and we thought that the kid who played Dandy Dan (centre, above) - real name Martin Lev - looked familiar. So we looked him up on imdb and it turned out that he committed suicide in 1992, aged 33. His death may have had something to do with the fact that he suffered from M.E., but there's very little information about him online. My future viewings of Bugsy Malone will always be twinged with sadness.

hooray for bats

Amazingly, there are far fewer moths in Sheffield than in Newcastle.

I hate moths.

Spiders, I can deal with, but moths - no no no.

Love Bjork

YouTube has changed music so incredibly. But better than being a way to access new material, it's an archivist's dream. Hence I stumbled across this little performance of Unravel by Bjork. Amazing.



PS. If anyone has bought Volta, can they give me the lowdown? I'm a bit skint at the moment . . .

Waterstones: for fuck's sake!

Who is that favourite children's author of Norwegian ancestry who wrote such classics as 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and 'Matilda'? Yes, the legendary Roald Dahl. And can you get all of his books from Sheffield city centre's only Waterstones? No. What the fuck is going on? You can't get a copy of Revolting Rhymes and you can't buy The Witches.

I feel betrayed.

Radiohead UN-medley

This from Radiohead's blog, Dead Air Space, is ace. Nigel Godrich keeps the splices of reel that get edited out of songs and sticks them all together on a reel. You can hear what it sounds like on the blog under 13 June. Interesting that Godrich doesn't record digitally - or maybe they record the masters onto tape to achieve the final sound . . .

The recording techniques of producers and engineers to get certain sounds is sometimes really fascinating. I was thinking this because I was on the Foals myspace (quite liking their song 'Mathletics' which, despite the title, is only in 8/8 time - nothing math-y at all) and saw this picture of them in the studio:


And like the geek that I am, I was interested to see how the snare's been softened by a shirt and there's a great big blanket over the front of the kick. You can totally hear the effect on the kick, but I'm not so sure about the snare . . .

I love the producer's role in recording. There's a DVD with the version of London Calling I have, and there's so many hilarious shots of Guy Stevens crawling under the piano and clinging onto Mick Jones' leg etc. It's a hard won thing, the right sound . . .