tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9658122878899845602024-03-28T00:01:51.726-07:00Leigh Spence - dancing with the gatekeepers since 2016Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.comBlogger441125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-41517675115086543792024-03-24T00:42:00.000-07:002024-03-24T00:42:10.042-07:00AND NOTHING TO GET HUNG ABOUT [441]<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5IfXX8sYUUtO93WRxVz674Eqe4LghxoPpsjWijZ7q2XvzzBvwSet8fhwMPgb0Oeb_JMcMmaHyxoL6qgr1ckAXuqYlWnGZUrEcCUf_6X6tAhf_NGrWg8aJKzcmpgbU6JIKFtVYkCCcCEAjdQGIBVjF8ti0a_uNdV6mmwuAXdMY6xrheu7rAOlwp8pNKmY/s706/LJS%20441%20DVD%20with%20Border.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="595" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5IfXX8sYUUtO93WRxVz674Eqe4LghxoPpsjWijZ7q2XvzzBvwSet8fhwMPgb0Oeb_JMcMmaHyxoL6qgr1ckAXuqYlWnGZUrEcCUf_6X6tAhf_NGrWg8aJKzcmpgbU6JIKFtVYkCCcCEAjdQGIBVjF8ti0a_uNdV6mmwuAXdMY6xrheu7rAOlwp8pNKmY/w338-h400/LJS%20441%20DVD%20with%20Border.jpg" width="338" /></a></div><br />I found myself rediscovering the sitcom “Seinfeld” recently, an incredibly easy thing to do following a multi-year, multi-national deal with Netflix keeping it constantly on demand, but the high-definition widescreen transfer made from the original Super 16 film is far away from when the show was little known in the UK, when it was found only late at night on TV, and later in DVD box sets.<o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Created by Jerry Seinfeld and long-time friend Larry David from conversations about the small things in life that make a stand-up routine, creating a rich and relatable seam for stories usually avoided by other sitcoms to that point, “Seinfeld” is a sharply written cultural institution in the United States, and perhaps the greatest live-action sitcom ever made there, the existence of “The Simpsons” providing that necessary qualifier. Set in the Upper West Side of New York, to the left of Central Park, Jerry Seinfeld plays a less-famous version of himself, a central point around which most events happen; Jason Alexander plays George Costanza, a Larry David analogue played as a ball of insecurities; Julia Louis-Dreyfus is Elaine Benes, Jerry’s smart and hot-tempered ex-girlfriend who successfully became a regular friend; and Michael Richards plays Kramer, Jerry’s unpredictable “hipster doofus” neighbour. I feel most people might already be aware of the set-up of “Seinfeld” by now, but I once had to explain the show to people who had never heard of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The outlandish plots and characters the show often used in pursuit of the biggest laugh is testament to my belief that saying something is based on a true story means nothing, despite the real-life experiences of the show’s writers making their way into episodes. I also find it an easier watch than the later shows that mine their humour from uncomfortable situations, like “The Office” and Larry David’s own “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, almost like the multi-camera filming and studio audience laughter is providing a safe distance to laugh at some of the more excruciating situations, ones that coined euphemisms like “shrinkage”, “sponge-worthy”, “master of my domain” and “...not that there’s anything wrong with that”.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">What I have been watching the most recently have been the outtakes and bloopers, meticulously preserved on the DVDs and displaying both how much fun the actors and production staff had making the show, and how much Jerry Seinfeld really was playing himself on it. The show recently also spawned its own YouTube channel showing highlights, making me go back to watch the full episodes, while wishing they would release these remastered episodes on Blu-ray.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">However, “Seinfeld” was probably best described as a “cult hit” in the UK during the BBC’s original broadcast of the show. It first showed up on BBC Two in 1993, on Thursdays at 9pm, on the back of the show’s huge success during its fourth season that contained famous episodes like “The Contest”, “The Bubble Boy” and “The Junior Mint”, as well as the season-long story where Jerry and George pitch a sitcom version of their own lives, a line of dialogue giving rise to the false observation that “Seinfeld” is a show about nothing at all.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">However, the BBC began their broadcasts of “Seinfeld” from the start, when it was initially slower, more low-key, with fewer, longer scenes, with executives at NBC giving the show time to find itself. Infamously, the original 1989 pilot was followed with a 1990 season of only four episodes, using the budget intended for a Bob Hope special, introducing Elaine as a mandated female character, and a second season of thirteen episodes where Michael Richards started playing Kramer as the smartest man in the room, rather than the dumbest. After the first ten episodes, the BBC Two broadcasts moved to Saturdays around 10pm, slipping closer to midnight by the time the fourth season’s denser, multi-layered and often coincidental and absurdist episodes were finally shown in the UK, by which time it took over from “Cheers” as America’s favourite sitcom. The BBC should have started with the fourth season first.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">My exposure to “Seinfeld” began in about 1998 with its seventh season of episodes like “The Soup Nazi”, “The Sponge”, “The Gum” and “The Invitations”, where George’s fiancée Susan dies through licking the gum on old envelopes. Relegated to cult status, the show was often used on BBC Two as filler during Parliamentary recess, and reviews of the day’s proceedings were not broadcast. Having only read text summaries of episodes online, and with my having been interested in how sitcoms were written, it had already been impressed on me that “Seinfeld” was a show that needed to be watched – I also found it to be a better show than “Friends”. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Now able to track the BBC’s airing of the show, and through its subsequent reappearance in panel discussions and as a specialist subject on “Mastermind”, you end up realising that the biggest audience Jerry Seinfeld personally had in the UK must have been when he appeared on “Des O’Connor Tonight” in 1981, two years before his debut on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson”, where he worked his stand-up routines about cars and left-handedness into the conversation, and when he later appeared on “Jasper Carrott – Stand Up America” in 1987, recorded in Los Angeles.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The final broadcast of “Seinfeld” on the BBC was in October 2001, three years after it ended its run in America, but before the DVD box sets began to appear. I never kept the VHS recordings I inevitably had to make to see a show past my bedtime, but the memory of it stayed with me long enough to be rekindled on home video. I’m just glad that more people have heard of it now, an odd thing to say about such a famous show.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-2022786277334558512024-03-17T01:03:00.000-07:002024-03-17T01:03:09.808-07:00YOU ARE EVERYTHING, AND EVERYTHING IS YOU [440]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdURJloelo8HMX4IvQOn2LooSbPXoWvMOL9in0HsVnbkLOX58ri8N0LBuuTL2R0oD-BySyxpOdpOndeuRKUMoowhtEy5kSneyZ7_-g-THeGYLAD3G4IAwdFPCfJ2LWU8RYvA3b3fn9-DatljjET_YM6n8R4d0d3mqYwk-SobXioG9v4RokJKH74NmWqY0/s3144/LJS%20440%20Entrance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3144" data-original-width="3020" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdURJloelo8HMX4IvQOn2LooSbPXoWvMOL9in0HsVnbkLOX58ri8N0LBuuTL2R0oD-BySyxpOdpOndeuRKUMoowhtEy5kSneyZ7_-g-THeGYLAD3G4IAwdFPCfJ2LWU8RYvA3b3fn9-DatljjET_YM6n8R4d0d3mqYwk-SobXioG9v4RokJKH74NmWqY0/w384-h400/LJS%20440%20Entrance.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><br />The Pitt Rivers Museum is the most overwhelming I have experienced to date. Holding around seven hundred thousand objects, most of which are on display, it is a museum of archaeology, anthropology and ethnology: devoted to the study of humanity through its objects, it is the closest I have encountered to a museum of “everything”. It naturally also becomes a museum of museum displays, charting how the acknowledgement and understanding of our past has developed.<p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Publicly accessed via a single arched doorway at the back of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, despite being of a similar scale, the Pitt Rivers is a grotto of glass cases, more specifically a gigantic room with a hive of cabinets spread through the ground floor, with two mezzanines looking over it. Deciding to start at the top, the lift opened at a display of handguns and rifles, itself facing a wall of rudimentary clubs – spears and harpoons were at the other end of the walkway.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ1gvhz9y2pd7cRitUzIVsDo67oY3-L4rZgkoN49F-z8BppLgohG_gwe_3ftlxNnrXI9KoG5ZKb2F8KDXQfRjqqV5LFqg-qlsiBsvotNvbvtkbydGrqiAtTa_HSoHeu6mVNn32qHLXCLsiyP9OiMLAfDQ65AaeSCBclmUdnHqgwQLdhutqqBM47nUskd8/s4032/LJS%20440%20Cards.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ1gvhz9y2pd7cRitUzIVsDo67oY3-L4rZgkoN49F-z8BppLgohG_gwe_3ftlxNnrXI9KoG5ZKb2F8KDXQfRjqqV5LFqg-qlsiBsvotNvbvtkbydGrqiAtTa_HSoHeu6mVNn32qHLXCLsiyP9OiMLAfDQ65AaeSCBclmUdnHqgwQLdhutqqBM47nUskd8/w400-h300/LJS%20440%20Cards.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Among the pictures I took while at the museum were a helmet made from the skin of a porcupine fish; packs of various playing cards, displaying the link to the original tarot cards; American Indian headdresses; “a string of Chinese cash”; sword sheaths; boomerangs; Samurai armour; a box of the original table tennis game for which the name “Ping Pong” was trademarked; and various wooden shields, including four painted with depictions of the comic book hero The Phantom.<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Armed with the knowledge of what a Colt .45 looks like, you get a hang of how the museum is organised ethnologically by type of object, aiding comparisons between cultures, rather than simply by time – it feels more like browsing an encyclopaedia, or searching Wikipedia, than reading a history book. Augustus Pitt Rivers, the retired Army officer and archaeologist whose collection formed the basis of the museum, to which others’ expeditions and donations have since contributed, was among the first to insist upon all discovered artefacts being methodically catalogued and preserved for study, rather than just looking for treasure. At the same time, having such a repository for examples of many types of objects that matched when I have bought examples of physical media, like a laser disc or a Sony U-Matic tape, so I could experience them by touch – reading about something is often not enough.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDewioLeccFfh-Sry-UeEwuvExlF-HF2u1aasLwRnD48rRDswD4tT_fgwMs2rnUQk4Uc5otieHGF26uZwvkYQ05k35oXCMHRMkLgzHx_Y2oR81NYAbPjQ-zIEXvnMn8YTaznb0nfXAIoFk7yds1L9StBrcEMA4VfApEeoIUWGHjaz42d_VFOIS7dRAHTU/s4032/LJS%20440%20Harpoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDewioLeccFfh-Sry-UeEwuvExlF-HF2u1aasLwRnD48rRDswD4tT_fgwMs2rnUQk4Uc5otieHGF26uZwvkYQ05k35oXCMHRMkLgzHx_Y2oR81NYAbPjQ-zIEXvnMn8YTaznb0nfXAIoFk7yds1L9StBrcEMA4VfApEeoIUWGHjaz42d_VFOIS7dRAHTU/w400-h300/LJS%20440%20Harpoon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />This record-taking developed over time: an ivory harpoon head has its origin and catalogue number written directly on it: “W. Eskimo / P.R. Coll / 1884.20.30”, although a caption under it also specifies its North American origin and leaf-shaped stone blade along with correcting itself to “Inuit” – sometimes the catalogue details is all we know about the item. Knotted tags of handwritten text, and tiny captions of densely-packed text in Times New Roman, eventually gives way to numbered pointers to clearer captions to the side in larger sans-serif fonts like Helvetica and Gill Sans. <p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">With the density of objects on show, it was inevitable that, unless I sat down for a while, I would start looking past them, or through them, to the construction of their displays – if they had not removed their display of shrunken heads during the pandemic-enforced closure in 2020, part of the efforts in decoloniality that further enhance the understanding of the museum’s objects, I doubt I would have noticed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">My main takeaway from the Pitt Rivers Museum was that I don’t know of anywhere else like it – all that is missing are objects from the present day. There is a feeling of clutter, which was also felt sixty years ago: a proposed new building, designed by Pier Luigi Nervi, would have arranged its categories circularly around a glass dome, spreading outwards through time. It looked not unlike the future pavilions at Disney’s Epcot Center, but fundraising efforts petered out by 1970. A new building, with more space to think about the objects, should be considered again, or at least build its own entrance from outside. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHWXJ9lkKEDvKGYzIMmfvn4s3afy4MuzkCE7cHRw6zT99IYMD-mIADSj77erf4mkwLBpoPnredPOf8L_SEsebRTe30zJUBlmHrFXTCOHoetCq_ORPIGAS4TyhbWYxE2BQ8JEJfVuvll3_6wWdf8B3C40MQXSUPXfF28goqe8fwY_M_akoh2GKzBq9VC8w/s4032/LJS%20440%20Chinese%20Cash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHWXJ9lkKEDvKGYzIMmfvn4s3afy4MuzkCE7cHRw6zT99IYMD-mIADSj77erf4mkwLBpoPnredPOf8L_SEsebRTe30zJUBlmHrFXTCOHoetCq_ORPIGAS4TyhbWYxE2BQ8JEJfVuvll3_6wWdf8B3C40MQXSUPXfF28goqe8fwY_M_akoh2GKzBq9VC8w/w300-h400/LJS%20440%20Chinese%20Cash.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span><p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-58518360946445652272024-03-10T00:58:00.000-08:002024-03-10T01:04:34.633-08:00I COULD WRITE A BOOK [439]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9svLQ4X8WyxuQYu87nKED0Qq5hD26HGfbR0pa1Q1o79av6L_pGTp0-tYwYrw6FzHc8b6fXhJdlgwJdd4_VPGsgX69CUZlbs8T5OmzGRrjBB_PILq71CB3QqP3IfDEEX8yyOswZ8vemJ0u-lEm_id9oQr7mCJ9eG3qtX66n-5Gt6OSJ5_PXg_q2Hi0JP0/s3014/LJS%20439%20Ozymandias.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3014" data-original-width="2995" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9svLQ4X8WyxuQYu87nKED0Qq5hD26HGfbR0pa1Q1o79av6L_pGTp0-tYwYrw6FzHc8b6fXhJdlgwJdd4_VPGsgX69CUZlbs8T5OmzGRrjBB_PILq71CB3QqP3IfDEEX8yyOswZ8vemJ0u-lEm_id9oQr7mCJ9eG3qtX66n-5Gt6OSJ5_PXg_q2Hi0JP0/w398-h400/LJS%20439%20Ozymandias.jpg" width="398" /></a></div><div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Having planned a trip to Oxford for a few days, the perfect exhibition for me was announced: hosted by the Bodleian Library, “Write, Cut, Rewrite”, at their main Weston Library in Broad Street until 5th January 2025, displays various examples of the creative process that led to the major works being sold in the Blackwell’s bookshop next door, from John Le Carré’s cut-up typed pages of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” to Mary Shelley’s copperplate script of “Frankenstein”, and from Franz Kafka’s overwriting of the third-person with “K” in “The Castle” to Ian Fleming’s scribbled-out false start of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The comparatively brief nature of these articles means I don’t have a set creative process for creating them – a few notes on my phone or in a book, a notion of an idea, or simply being faced with a blank screen and a deadline. With admission being free, I visited the exhibition twice, looking for pointers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I first noticed the spaces these writers gave themselves to exercise: a painting made by the poet Alice Oswald in a notebook gives way to the words she is looking for; Percy Bysshe Shelley drawing a landscape and a cartoon of a man’s face on one side of a double-page spread, then “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings” on the other side; Raymond Chandler’s list of similes, like “No more personality than a paper cup” and “As soothing as a piano salesman”, a line put through them once a place was found for them; and Samuel Beckett’s filling of a page of dialogue for a play with doodles of weird-looking people, and a tune written in 6/8 time on a wobbly musical stave. It is important to keep the mind working on putting absolutely anything on the page, no matter its worth at that moment, rather than waiting to form what you think the right words should be.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">It was heartening to see how messy big-name writers can be, or can become, amid forming their work. It was not surprising to see the exercise book containing Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, a highly-ordered set of numbered statements on the relationship between language and reality, is written neatly in pencil, the only levity being a hand-written “Schluss!” (“End!”) on the typed version, the author stopping himself from adding to it. An example of “The Watsons”, by Jane Austen, showed thick lines driven through discarded passages in a novel that was itself unfinished. It was also good to see the scribbles and ripped-out pages in one of the Moleskine books used by Bruce Chatwin, simultaneously undercutting and reinforcing the romantic story of “capturing reality in movement” that the Moleskine company, inspired by Chatwin, uses to sell their books today.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Any creative writing I try is usually in longhand on paper. Use of a word processor is almost the final step before anyone sees it, with any printout eventually attracting penwork to correct or re-order what already looked complete, something the typescript of “Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy” proved, with different-coloured paper, passages cut up and staples, different coloured pens used, and so on. Eventually, you do have to say “Schluss!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Finally, there was only one person who I could see had used a ballpoint pen, and that was Ian Fleming. Everyone else used water-based ink and, unlike me, who only had the Bic four-colour pen in their rucksack for a few days, did not experience the extra little bit of effort in forcing oil-based ink onto a page – if the ideas are flowing, you don’t want to feel that in your hand too much.</span></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-42953708094322220422024-03-03T00:18:00.000-08:002024-03-03T00:18:22.515-08:00FELIX KEPT ON WALKING [438]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh04DwI9bTb5Py9-vHPRSfjFJIMr2hoTgNzff4tl2f8fCGqS3mBdHTDiNy1Aj6SEkuQORXteWnzIsGNiRaW8_xqpKIQzK8h5Ga8T8m9BGd3KJmWL1z7UV3SPQvbQwa1tRmmR67mQYifaKfRWr2cemhfOhKMWJbJlfEKHwES8PWxVBhbi5XZ2dCeuK0s3y0/s983/LJS%20438%20Felix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="858" data-original-width="983" height="349" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh04DwI9bTb5Py9-vHPRSfjFJIMr2hoTgNzff4tl2f8fCGqS3mBdHTDiNy1Aj6SEkuQORXteWnzIsGNiRaW8_xqpKIQzK8h5Ga8T8m9BGd3KJmWL1z7UV3SPQvbQwa1tRmmR67mQYifaKfRWr2cemhfOhKMWJbJlfEKHwES8PWxVBhbi5XZ2dCeuK0s3y0/w400-h349/LJS%20438%20Felix.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Original and current versions of Felix the Cat and "Felix the cat"</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Felix the Cat is an animated cartoon character that first appeared in the cartoon “Feline Follies” in 1919. Like a hand-drawn Charlie Chaplin, but with a tail that magically transformed into anything needed in the moment, Felix’s surreal cartoons were a big hit in the 1920s, making him a mascot to celebrities and sports teams, and entering homes in toy form. Losing out to Mickey Mouse by the end of the decade, Felix continued in newspaper comics strips and on television, now carrying a magic bag that changed shape as required. Having not starred in a major film or series in over twenty years, Felix survives as intellectual property owned by DreamWorks Animation since 2014, his image licensed for merchandise in a manner not unlike that of another character not seen on screen in years, Betty Boop.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">“Felix the cat” has been the mascot of Felix cat food since 1989. Originally a manufacturer of dry cat biscuits in Biggleswade, Felix Catfood Ltd was bought by the Quaker Oats Company in 1970, and a relaunched product range included wet food in tins. A new advertisement campaign launched in 1989, including television for the first time, which featured a realistically-drawn black-and-white cat, named for the product and behaving as mischievously as any regular cat. This campaign continues to the present day, surviving the brand’s change in ownership to Spillers, the former makers of Kattomeat, and to Nestlé Purina Healthcare.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Searching “Felix the Cat” on Amazon.co.uk brings up “Felix” ahead of Felix, and while that is an indicator of which one has consistently made more product in the last thirty-five years, it still annoys me – I never got used to one of the UK’s Brexit negotiators being named David Frost, when they were not the same David Frost that interviewed Richard Nixon and presented “Through the Keyhole”.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">There is precedence in the UK, also involving cat food and a cartoon cat, of something arriving with the same name, but it resulted in a name change to avoid confusion: Spillers already had a cat food named “Top Cat”, meaning the Hanna-Barbera series was renamed “Boss Cat” on television from 1962. This cat food is no longer produced, so there is no longer any confusion. Later in the 1960s, Marvel Comics were able to introduce their own superhero named “Captain Marvel” in the absence of the original Fawcett Comics character, now largely known as “Shazam” due to new owner DC Comics being legally unable to use their original name to title their books.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">With DreamWorks’ copyright for Felix the Cat extending to “prerecorded goods” and “musical instruments, namely, guitars” with licensing of that image from there, there is the space for two Felix-es to exist, and because they exist in industries separate from each other, there should be no issue, apart from my own cognitive dissonance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">What I do find amusing is that, while DreamWorks’ copyright covers the later version of Felix the Cat, with a rounder head, larger eyes, no whiskers, longer legs and shorter body than the 1920s version – this also means that, like the “Steamboat Willie” Mickey Mouse, the original Felix the Cat is in the public domain – the cat food “Felix” that continues to appear in animated ads on television was recently redrawn with larger eyes, a more human-like smile and, like the original Felix, their own song “It’s Great to Be a Cat”, sung by Robbie Williams. However, this will remain contained within the space of an ad break, and away from the original Felix.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-85381557073684212312024-02-24T23:45:00.000-08:002024-02-24T23:49:34.244-08:00JOHNNY, REMEMBER ME [437]<p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzpigpN_SaqDFzvqU4N5SwQeeM-4wSYLyBQrMuviDj3BBj0nw9kkRDmiKtWIrOqVUnZbefMiafhch6Zk2ls3pgv2yVkKvDxSY45l7Z81tB6PpTpIorFyMNbxKMC7Ub7sx5vRrrHbRM_EpbwV3V5rRzdbwxWn0a18PgE3O3HlFWMV2vH8ol1b9U_48gXI/s904/LJS%20437%20Blu%20Ray.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="723" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzpigpN_SaqDFzvqU4N5SwQeeM-4wSYLyBQrMuviDj3BBj0nw9kkRDmiKtWIrOqVUnZbefMiafhch6Zk2ls3pgv2yVkKvDxSY45l7Z81tB6PpTpIorFyMNbxKMC7Ub7sx5vRrrHbRM_EpbwV3V5rRzdbwxWn0a18PgE3O3HlFWMV2vH8ol1b9U_48gXI/w320-h400/LJS%20437%20Blu%20Ray.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">There is no point in listing how the 1995 film “Johnny Mnemonic” incorrectly predicts the world of 2021 – CRT television screens, Concorde remaining in flight, 320 GB storage capacity being a large number – as not all science fiction is speculative fiction, although I was amused by Johnny (Keanu Reeves) explaining that the encryption code for the information downloaded to his mind should be sent by<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><u>fax</u><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">to its destination. My focus should be on it story, which is good, but I don’t think it is told well:</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">“Second decade of the 21</span><sup>st</sup><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> century. Corporations rule. The world is threatened by a new plague... its cause and cure unknown. The corporations are opposed by LoTeks, a resistance movement risen from the streets...The corporations defend themselves. They hire the Yakuza... But the LoTeks wait in their strongholds, in the old city cores, like rats in the walls of the world. The most valuable information must sometimes be entrusted to mnemonic couriers, elite agents who smuggle data in wet-wired brain implants.”</span></span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">A sure-way to turn my attention off from a film is by starting with a text crawl setting the scene. The most egregious example I personally came across was “Broken Blossoms” a 1919 film written and directed by D.W. Griffith that, while a silent film, betrays the visual talent of someone known as the progenitor of much of the language of film we use to this day, the copious inter-title cards reading like chapters from a book, chapters I am required to read.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">With “Blade Runner” having influenced the cyberpunk genre over a decade before the release of “Johnny Mnemonic” (1995), adapted by “Neuromancer” author William Gibson from his own short story, audiences would be familiar enough with this dystopian, corporation-run, neon-drenched world of rainy nights for it to be taken as written, but without needing to write it – everything else can be given its portrayal when we reach that stage in the plot.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">There are more characters in this film than Gibson’s story, but it feels like this is to move Johnny, the central character but also the MacGuffin whose brain holds what everyone needs, around the film – more than once is it made clear that only his head is needed, and the intentionally robotic acting of Reeves doesn’t make him endearing, like his mention that he had to delete his childhood memories to have more, well, drive space, is to make him a tragic figure.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">The film was originally to have been a lower-budgeted production in the vein of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville”, a science-fiction film noir story set amongst contemporary Paris that <a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2018/12/just-start-that-brand-new-story-142.html">I have talked about previously</a>. The casting of Keanu Reeves, hot from the success of “Speed”, as Johnny gave it a higher profile, production budget and expectation, making it the blockbuster film it was never intended to be. Director Robert Longo since re-edited and released a version in black and white, bringing closer to his original intention, but the story could still be adapted again.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">“Johnny Mnemonic” today seems to exist as the bridge between “Blade Runner” and “The Matrix” – indeed, the Wachowski sisters told the “New Yorker” magazine in 2012 that they used the film to sell their story, perhaps as shorthand for the cyberpunk genre that Sony, releasing the film through TriStar, hoped to capitalise on. For one thing, “The Matrix” had daylight at times...</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-67322497113279834882024-02-18T00:52:00.000-08:002024-02-18T00:52:17.107-08:00IF YOU’RE ALRIGHT, YOU CAN’T GO WRONG [436]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSScDoyKuzBjUm672ytdyMrUz5c0ndadA7MpM_YPqcTIGFHifPxOjOkm_JhcF_iuYZbGc4fXP2fA8kpaq_AZPINirG8AKFxSPbdNRyvxTiO6UQI1CRma2QCxFS1X3Gg6u1nQxr9llsHJsYlhaoAF3Hlz0DyOp9sfXpp_Y0jZCiVpwjrVGDP3ELNmhDLc/s894/LJS%20436%20Alright.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="888" data-original-width="894" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSScDoyKuzBjUm672ytdyMrUz5c0ndadA7MpM_YPqcTIGFHifPxOjOkm_JhcF_iuYZbGc4fXP2fA8kpaq_AZPINirG8AKFxSPbdNRyvxTiO6UQI1CRma2QCxFS1X3Gg6u1nQxr9llsHJsYlhaoAF3Hlz0DyOp9sfXpp_Y0jZCiVpwjrVGDP3ELNmhDLc/w400-h398/LJS%20436%20Alright.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"I'm Alright", a novelty song that charted at number 40 in 1982</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The outpouring of grief at the sudden death of Steve Wright on Monday 12th February speaks both to the intimate connection between the radio DJ and his audience, and to his professionalism. I shouldn’t have been surprised at my upset over the loss of such an engaging, friendly and funny personality, when that was all I knew of him.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Media coverage of Wright’s death, coloured by a narrative that he “died of a broken heart” at the ending of his Radio 2 afternoon show by the BBC in 2022, later dispelled by his own brother, collides with his own lack of sentimentality about his career, having only taken over “Pick of the Pops” four months ago, with further projects to come.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Usually a straightforward and nostalgic chart rundown, Steve Wright turned “Pick of the Pops” into a Steve Wright show: engaging chat, meticulously researched facts, and massive current-sounding jingles firing off all over the place, the energy kept high throughout. He did cut off a few songs too early, but name a DJ that hasn’t done the same.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">What makes a Steve Wright show can be tracked through an abundance of radio recordings, and listings in the “Radio Times”. Starting his professional broadcasting career at the launch of Radio 210 in Reading in 1976, presenting evening and weekend shows, he was interviewing Marc Bolan and his wife Gloria Jones within its opening fortnight. Wright’s confident and cheeky radio personality is already evident, with only the jingles and content telling you what year it is, despite having to give way to AA Roadwatch telling the audience that the car parks in Bracknell are filling up fast. He also displays the “gift of the gab” required <a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2017/04/hey-mr-dj-put-record-on.html">at a time when there were still restrictions on playing records on UK radio</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">After three years, a six-month stint at Radio Luxembourg had Wright reading the news bulletins during his own evening show – the peppering of news headlines, weather, showbiz stories and “Strange But True” features through an average Wright show, over and above the news already on BBC Radios 1 and 2, would be read in the same way, more conversational than authoritative, keeping the audience both engaged and informed – “infotainment” is an apt description for any of Wright’s shows.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Headhunted by the BBC, Wright’s first two years on Radio 1 were essentially a bootcamp - if you weren’t a top-class national broadcaster by the end of this, no-one will be. His first Radio 1 show was on 5</span><sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> January 1980, presenting Saturday evenings for three months. One month later, Wright presented “Top of the Pops” for the first time without a screen test. After covering the flagship breakfast show during April, and after taking May off, Sunday mornings became Wright’s main show in June - this month also had him present his first Radio 1 Roadshow from that year’s Lawnmower Grand Prix in Holt, Wiltshire. From June to August, he also presented a Saturday lunchtime hour titled “The Amazing Facts and Figures Show”: a “Radio Times” listing in July had Wright saying that “collecting useless but often fascinating bits of information has always been a thing of mine, and it’s surprising what you find out.” The “Strange But True” and “Factoids” features and spin-off books make perfect sense now, especially the one that stuck in my mind: if you unfurl a human brain, you can cover an ironing board with it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Wright moved to Saturday mornings at the end of August while both frequently covering other presenters’ shows during the week, while acting as film reviewer for fellow host Andy Peebles. This continued until October 1981, when what became known as “Steve Wright in the Afternoon” began, although he continued reviewing films on other shows for the station. The lightly satirical characters like Mr Angry, Damien the social worker and local radio DJ Dave Doubledecks would start to appear, the meticulous preparations for each show becoming more apparent, inviting comparisons with Kenny Everett.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">All this happened before you get to what people start with when they talk about Steve Wright: the “zoo radio” format, with lots of co-presenters, lots of features, big interviews replacing character sketches, lots of clapping and lots of “love the show, Steve!” from listeners’ messages. Hearing him speak on his Radio 1 show from May 1983 about spending a week in Los Angeles and New York, mostly listening to the radio and watching CNN and MTV, explains why his shows for the BBC right up to 2024 retained an energy not present on other British radio shows – it had to be imported. Scott Shannon innovated the “morning zoo” breakfast show on WRBQ-FM in Tampa, Florida, taking it to WHTZ in New York – Shannon did not continue with the zoo format upon leaving WHTZ in 1989, but the station continues to run a similar format at breakfast time today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The major innovation Wright had upon the zoo format was to run it in a continent where, if people weren’t experiencing a lull in their day at 2pm, they were taking a nap. It was a second wind for its audience as much as an entertaining listen, augmented by bespoke jingles sourced from New York production houses. Ironically, when Wright moved to the Radio 1 breakfast show in 1994, carrying the existing format didn’t work, and his Radio 1 career ended the following year – perhaps it was a bit full-on for British audiences at that time of day. After a short break in television and at Talk Radio UK, Wright joined Radio 2 in 1996 for two weekend shows, resuming an updated afternoon show in 1999 that, while toned down a little, remained an outlier to how the rest of the station sounded.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I am not ready to talk about Steve Wright in the past tense, and listening to so much of his work from across his career only made me wonder what he could have done next. His public modesty about his own career is admirable, and while he never really got personal on air, you were always left with the impression that he was a thoroughly sincere and hard-working man, such as when he spoke to Simon Garfield for his book about BBC Radio 1, “The Nation’s Favourite”:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">“Part of the success of the afternoon programme wasn’t the fact that we were postmodern and smart, it was that we were reliable and friendly. You could switch on wherever you were and be amused and have a friend. That sounds terribly pretentious, but it’s true: it’s comforting, it’s something nice, it’s upbeat, we tried only to reflect the good, the funny and the interesting... It's just a jobbing broadcaster doing a gig. When you do a show you can't think of the exact numbers of people tuning in and how it compares with the last figures - such thoughts are impostors. What people remember is the time you got them through their depression, or the time you helped them with their exams... Everything else is unimportant. At the end of the day it's just entertainment. Nobody has a disease.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-84239161254254409102024-02-11T01:00:00.000-08:002024-02-11T01:00:43.862-08:00ONE PILL MAKES YOU LARGER [435]<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhFY_nWa9uzS9I4EtqEAH7GTsqLFO4xcrekI9pF087kBjA5pwkoH-0AskltasHRc5fVOlXT3MjARna4cW_q4DuFxv_YKvcUK06-e6v5HcKutFgjRlf6S07pJe0x55d2LsQH_3qNpWySJY8D8d1opANIXBsLMkCdeB7QDNPYq19eF5xzgr7cI7vgWhakWg/s6077/LJS%20435%20VHS%20Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4650" data-original-width="6077" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhFY_nWa9uzS9I4EtqEAH7GTsqLFO4xcrekI9pF087kBjA5pwkoH-0AskltasHRc5fVOlXT3MjARna4cW_q4DuFxv_YKvcUK06-e6v5HcKutFgjRlf6S07pJe0x55d2LsQH_3qNpWySJY8D8d1opANIXBsLMkCdeB7QDNPYq19eF5xzgr7cI7vgWhakWg/w400-h306/LJS%20435%20VHS%20Cover.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The Wachowski sisters’ film “The Matrix”, the wildly successful and thoughtful cyberpunk science fiction action blockbuster, was released in March 1999, long enough ago for my first copy of the film to be on VHS, bought from no less than Blockbuster Video. It was the widescreen release, reducing the picture resolution to only about a hundred lines – it was “letterboxed” as in like watching it through next door’s letterbox. No wonder I swapped it for a DVD at the first opportunity, and later a Blu-ray boxset of what had become a trilogy. <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I like “The Matrix” for the same reason <a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2022/03/and-i-said-what-about-breakfast-at.html">I say that Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” is my favourite film</a>: it has everything in it. It is visually vibrant and innovative, densely plotted, filled with action, and it stays with you after the end, withstanding repeated viewings. It was like the nature of what a blockbuster film could be had changed, something which didn’t bear fruit much beyond its own three sequels. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The comparative box office failure of 2021’s fourth instalment, “The Matrix Resurrections”, may have put pay to the chances of the original film’s twenty-fifth anniversary being officially recognised, but it remains important to me. The anniversary cannot be marked by the US Library of Congress adding it to the National Film Registry for future preservation, because that already happened in 2012, when it was inducted alongside “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, “Dirty Harry” and “A Christmas Story”. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Cyberpunk was a subculture still current in 1999, but also nearly twenty years old, and the combination in “The Matrix” of technology, music and fashion, with added martial arts and gunfire, may have redefined that term in the mainstream, the nature of “the matrix” as a simulation and distraction of the real world of the film prepared its audience for when the World Wide Web would become exactly that. The Wachowski sisters’ innovation of “bullet time”, freezing action to move around it before continuing, has been copied endlessly, as has the “digital rain” of phosphorous green code and text on a black background, itself inspired by the 1995 anime “Ghost in the Shell”.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Much was made at the time of the use of postmodernist philosophy in the story of “The Matrix”, either to put the film above the action-fare characterised as mindless, or to say that it was too complicated for audiences to understand. The Wachowskis issued copies of postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s 1981 book “Simulacra & Simulation” to the cast and crew. Baudrillard himself said the film had nothing to do with this work, which was more about the breakdown of distinctions between reality and simulation until the latter takes precedence, but then again, it is also about the implosion of meaning in the media... well, at least that sentence appears in my copy of his book.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I will admit I had problems following “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions” when they were in cinemas, but the epic nature of the story allowed you to get lost in it. Having already been used to the layering of references and meaning in “The Simpsons”, to be uncovered as your knowledge increased, I thought “The Matrix” will be the same. Only in August 2020, when Lilly Wachowski said that she and Lana had written and directed a trilogy with implicit transgender themes, my thoughts were, in order, (a) I wish they said that at the time, (b) how did I miss that, (c) 1999 may have been too early to say explicitly, and (d) that makes the films so much easier to understand, what with Keanu Reeves’ character Neo being alerted to their true nature, as well as that of the world around them, along with the villain Agent Smith only referring to Neo by the name the Matrix gave them –this would also apply to Trinity, Morpheus and so on.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2022/01/this-time-well-get-it-right-325.html">When I saw “The Matrix Resurrections”</a>, I took issue with criticisms of its internal commentary, and replaying of scenes from the original film: “To make a new ‘Matrix’ film is to comment on what has happened to our representation of the world in the last eighteen years, because that is the only acceptable way to do it.” It is my favourite film of the now-tetralogy, just as my favourite film of the “Back to the Future” trilogy is the second one.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">We are now at a point where cyberpunk may now be understood as a historical period in popular culture, just as the dystopian worlds depicted in its literature and films resemble reality greater than they ever did. With “the matrix” now being misappropriated for personal gain by whoever Andrew Tate thinks he is, and “taking the red pill” being used as by right-wing groups as a term for “freeing” themselves from what they believe is a simulation of the world created by liberal ideology, a celebration of “The Matrix”, and what it really is about, couldn’t be timelier.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I now need to square how a previous film that also starred Keanu Reeves, the critically derided “Johnny Mnemonic”, came to influence “The Matrix”.<o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-67073002930186385232024-02-04T00:43:00.000-08:002024-02-04T00:43:35.481-08:00DON’T EVER CHANGE, NEVER CHANGE [434]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqwZTxptCefM02dmGTbkxG6hXWp06uDu00dWmAxG5VjB7p6iz2gdfOTzuwCqklY2AakVvYfZxYXNtRTomvUaoGC9r_eaCzlKXRRCk6b9fUFDsgJxUN-6hPXHL0HJIWEK2RmujB69indsMHX1X6b6R1DRB6r1w02ZmCRmZDWHLwBGFSCRlggxwIKTfxkxc/s1500/LJS%20434%20Penny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqwZTxptCefM02dmGTbkxG6hXWp06uDu00dWmAxG5VjB7p6iz2gdfOTzuwCqklY2AakVvYfZxYXNtRTomvUaoGC9r_eaCzlKXRRCk6b9fUFDsgJxUN-6hPXHL0HJIWEK2RmujB69indsMHX1X6b6R1DRB6r1w02ZmCRmZDWHLwBGFSCRlggxwIKTfxkxc/w400-h400/LJS%20434%20Penny.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The Isle of Man is part of the British Isles, but not part of the UK. It is a self-governing Crown Dependency, but the UK government is responsible for its defence and representing its interests abroad. The British monarch is the Isle of Man’s head of state, and their head appears on their currency, the value of the Manx pound being tied to the British Pound.<p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The Isle of Man government has said it will no longer produce their own 1p and 2p coins, as they cost more to produce than their face value. Businesses on the island have been asked to start rounding prices to the nearest 5p, in preparation for shortages of the lower value coins in the coming years.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">This is old news to many people. Six countries that have the Euro as their currency have not used one- and two-cent coins since 2013, something I hardly noticed when I visited the Republic of Ireland in 2016. The policy there is also to round up the final amount to pay to the nearest five cents, a policy introduced in Sweden in 1972 when they began a similar process with the krona – the öre still exists as one hundredth of a krona, but the one-krona coin has been the smallest unit of physical currency since 2010.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The last item I bought for a penny was a few years ago, a second-hand book obtained through Amazon, although the cost of postage must have made up for any shortfall. I remember being able to buy penny sweets individually, but that was in the 1990s.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzlusbhpHUnerAeZq0IkQtxwORSo63fEgy-HybOJky8349yhnj3BqIpxeonJlLh2wx0CThf37dEj_99GwWm5VaiZgl4LLs4ZK4m_94Tf1st3cF0o-ychdGIMnuYKfSV_ny1aN4ojseToElml4NMAk9WFsxI9nchyphenhyphenFT4BRLgv2vfL9Fu4oLOCoCZLV9nXk/s3024/LJS%20434%20Half%20Penny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzlusbhpHUnerAeZq0IkQtxwORSo63fEgy-HybOJky8349yhnj3BqIpxeonJlLh2wx0CThf37dEj_99GwWm5VaiZgl4LLs4ZK4m_94Tf1st3cF0o-ychdGIMnuYKfSV_ny1aN4ojseToElml4NMAk9WFsxI9nchyphenhyphenFT4BRLgv2vfL9Fu4oLOCoCZLV9nXk/w400-h400/LJS%20434%20Half%20Penny.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The time is now ticking on the practicality of the British penny, despite the protestations of coin collectors. My own coin collection exists mainly to have examples of old coins, like the old pre-decimal farthing, one quarter of a penny when 240 pennies made a pound, itself withdrawn in 1960. I also own three unopened rolls of decimal half-penny coins, withdrawn in 1984 when dividing a pound into more than a hundred units became useless. Few coin-operated payment machines in the UK now accept coins under 10p in value – by the way, one Swedish krona happens to be worth between seven and eight pence. I usually only carry coins in an emergency, anticipating if a car park is only accepting cash, or if a card payment machine in a shop is broken, otherwise only paying in coins to get rid of the weight received as change from using banknotes. I would be fine with the “shilling” being the lowest value British coin, as the five pence coin is smaller in size than a penny.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Coins don’t wear away that fast, so coin collectors will be fine for some time to come – this group is the reason I rarely see a fifty pence coin in my change, as they are usually issued these days as special editions. A new set of standard, “definitive” coins will be introduced by the Royal Mint, with a dormouse and red squirrel on the 1p and 2p respectively, so they will remain for some time yet. The penny could eventually become a commemorative coin, having been pure silver until the switch to copper in 1796, before bronze and copper-coated steel followed – this will allow the usually-commemorative crown coin, valued at £5, to finally replace the £5 note.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-40858597605132851072024-01-28T00:11:00.000-08:002024-01-28T00:11:13.055-08:00LIKE A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM [433]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMYiqaqf-qBr8gQPOuw5kWPNWq7RZR2YjPUZ6EIJ6V2YIZZ2mukolR3jOvvbioE6GmbIuIdifpEYykDaCR3qRcP9o4omXqVMEdBVYHfs9Th3SwZARl28zPaZvbr19rZ2ClUX9ID1TuC_ETDhyqarTiDEVebSG5iQ_fj2Tb2MWKn8Xl0szz_TUh4G-spT4/s1179/LJS%20433%20Cybernetics%20AI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1174" data-original-width="1179" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMYiqaqf-qBr8gQPOuw5kWPNWq7RZR2YjPUZ6EIJ6V2YIZZ2mukolR3jOvvbioE6GmbIuIdifpEYykDaCR3qRcP9o4omXqVMEdBVYHfs9Th3SwZARl28zPaZvbr19rZ2ClUX9ID1TuC_ETDhyqarTiDEVebSG5iQ_fj2Tb2MWKn8Xl0szz_TUh4G-spT4/w400-h399/LJS%20433%20Cybernetics%20AI.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AI image generated via Dall-E 3: "cybernetics, but without using human form"</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I have built a long enough list of words I have needed to look up to clarify their meaning, I could start my own dictionary – “proscribe”, “sententious”, “speechify”, “extant” and “disdain” have been my most recent additions. I like to be sure, and I want to be clear, so I need to use the right word if I can.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">“Cybernetics” is one of those words for which I felt I should know the meaning, but the breadth of the subject made it hard to grasp in one go, when what I would like is a working definition that may form the basis of further discussion. Therefore, the grasping has become the discussion.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">When I previously defined cybernetics here as “</span><a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2024/01/stumble-you-might-fall-431.html" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">the science of control systems, communications and technology</a><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">”, I was still under the impression that the term was mostly to do with technology, the prefix “cyber-” having been popularised in the 1980s by the cyberpunk movement of culture and literature. The use of “cyberspace” to describe online space also dates from then, but the word dates from the 1960s, “Atelier Cyberspace” having been the name of a husband-and-wife artistic group from Denmark producing installations about the management of physical space.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">“Cybernetics”, both the word and the discipline, dates to 1948 and the publication of the book “Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine” by Norbert Weiner, following a Greek word meaning “steersman”, but more usually translated as “governor”. This title is similar to definitions I found for “cybernetics” used by the Oxford English Dictionary at OED.com, and via the macOS Dictionary app, which used the Oxford Dictionary of English. Merriam-Webster is more detailed: “the science of communication and control theory that is concerned especially with the comparative study of automatic control systems (such as the nervous system and brain and mechanical-electrical communication systems).” This definition reads like it was written before technology captured the meaning of the first two syllables, examinations into artificial intelligence as part of cybernetics having begun further into the 1950s.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The most straightforward and useful definition of cybernetics I have found is in the book “Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape” by the artistic and philosophical collective Acid Horizon, published in 2023 by Repeater Books: “Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary science of control and communication. One can use cybernetics as a science to build social machines of control, and one can use cybernetics to analyse the machinations of production that attempt to direct and govern social reality.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">After positing that we have arrived at the “vision of ecstasy and anxiety all at once” promised by cyberpunk, the book explores how we can escape the management and control inherent in this “Cybercene”, by way of a manual produced by a fictional institute concerned with studying how systems organise, recognise and compartmentalise ourselves. The idea of this book is exciting, and it is my reason for making cybernetics that will come up here in future: it is “having a moment”. Deciding what kind of world you want to have starts with how the world acts with you, or on you.</span></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-70742280200739817742024-01-21T08:58:00.000-08:002024-01-21T08:58:42.450-08:00DO YOU WANNA KNOW HOW IT FEELS? [432]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHPPCFtcP5KSqwHFrurQfkvOklbxMqscFJc_ceKhiU4hyQEFXZQskGKYltOunzYboG54LXM2Rpj1wtuRrIrTlmZ30C6ONFwchWVmPRKCplp3pnQe7ldDnTPFoM9Qp33mJk0Wa-2Pz-JKvdSyWAvjJdkGyOcv5v_NBuYoOCNeiowFrWuS8BQT8zmZkfndY/s1154/LJS%20432%20Hounds%20of%20Love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1128" data-original-width="1154" height="391" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHPPCFtcP5KSqwHFrurQfkvOklbxMqscFJc_ceKhiU4hyQEFXZQskGKYltOunzYboG54LXM2Rpj1wtuRrIrTlmZ30C6ONFwchWVmPRKCplp3pnQe7ldDnTPFoM9Qp33mJk0Wa-2Pz-JKvdSyWAvjJdkGyOcv5v_NBuYoOCNeiowFrWuS8BQT8zmZkfndY/w400-h391/LJS%20432%20Hounds%20of%20Love.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />My musical listening journey has created a list of artists and bands for whom I don’t have a physical copy of any of their music, an omission to remedy someday: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, the Spice Girls and so on. Some works demand better than the lossy compressions of MP3 or streaming.<p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Kate Bush is a different matter. Upon realising I had none of her albums, I felt embarrassed by this admission - how can I have all of David Bowie’s studio albums, but nothing by Kate Bush? I practically ran to the nearest HMV to stock up: “Hounds of Love”, “The Red Shoes”, “Never For Ever”, “The Kick Inside” and “The Sensual World”, one each of what the store had in stock.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">My CD collection felt complete in that moment, and seemingly remains so until I decide I really need something by Pink Floyd, for Kate Bush always feels like a special occasion, whenever I hear a song by her, and no matter how often I hear those songs.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">From the ethereal nature of early hits like “Wuthering Heights”, “Them Heavy People” and “Wow”, to the spiky characters of “The Dreaming” album, and the triumph of both sides of “Hounds of Love”, Kate Bush’s output became better as more creative freedom was afforded to her, and her increasingly experimental albums, made in her own time, at home through technological advances and portability, like the Fairlight CMI album first used on “Babushka”, have allowed this experimentation and freedom to become mainstream.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">My favourite Kate Bush album is 1985’s “Hounds of Love”, and my favourite song of her songs is “Running Up that Hill (A Deal with God)”, from the commercial-led side A of that album – the perceived failure of 1982’s “The Dreaming”, which still reached number 3 in the charts despite singles not charting, led to a compromise that put more avant-garde material onto side B, while also becoming Bush’s first album recorded entirely at home, in her own time, at her own pace.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">“Running Up That Hill” reached number 1 in the UK singles chart for three weeks in June 2022, having been used as a plot device in the Netflix TV drama “Stranger Things”. Having a song that talks about exchanging sexes to achieve a greater understanding to have come back from 1985 to become more relevant and celebrated than ever intended, is perhaps one of the best things that could have happened in pop music, and it was entirely deserved – it was like us, as the audience, had caught up with the song at last.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Kate Bush’s last album of new material was 2011’s “50 Words for Snow”, a chamber-pop-jazz-ambient album based around a single theme, with no track shorter than seven minutes in length. There is a natural expectation for any future release, but I currently like to think that she thought long enough to make music her way, having achieved a position where she can make music entirely for herself, any clash this makes with the image of a publicly accessible rock star is her audience’s problem alone.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-38310088604961461302024-01-14T00:37:00.000-08:002024-01-14T00:37:59.935-08:00STUMBLE YOU MIGHT FALL [431]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiVCp7F-f6J7kBJ4xRrkJeZLuCJxNufZd1tJUvsejxhZubTlOWOXdGavtMQIMDWM5Qr8XVqjOu1AhZdN3Kv6-iDFZ6rzx818r_SxwzdQGm8gCJPuzaCGN1GCIYz80d0I60tNTx1NtrLuPRqJdZJKnCdcHVPxDn4H-pYOEILaXtAFiaAGBnnn2n8cNCH_w/s1179/LJS%20431%20BT%20Tower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1179" data-original-width="1179" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiVCp7F-f6J7kBJ4xRrkJeZLuCJxNufZd1tJUvsejxhZubTlOWOXdGavtMQIMDWM5Qr8XVqjOu1AhZdN3Kv6-iDFZ6rzx818r_SxwzdQGm8gCJPuzaCGN1GCIYz80d0I60tNTx1NtrLuPRqJdZJKnCdcHVPxDn4H-pYOEILaXtAFiaAGBnnn2n8cNCH_w/w400-h400/LJS%20431%20BT%20Tower.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The BT Tower, seen from St Paul's Cathedral</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Leaving home for work as usual, I opened the BBC Sounds app on my phone to play BBC Radio 6 Music. Chris Hawkins has a brilliant weekly feature about people’s names heard unintentionally during songs, and as the time for it approached, the app would not load. Sometimes it takes a while, but realising this was taking longer than usual, I opened my web browser to stream the station via the BBC’s website. This also failed to load, along with any other website I tried.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Arriving at my bus stop, unable to check why my phone had no internet signal, I hoped the bus company’s app will let me catch the bus. Restarting my phone did not re-establish any connection. Fortunately, I was able to carry on my journey, as whatever codes needed for the app to work today must have downloaded previously.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Unaccustomed to travelling in silence, and with my MP3 player at home, I was resigned to listening to music saved to my phone before the near-unlimited choice of a music streaming app made purchases rare. I compromised with the Muzak Corporation’s “Stimulus Progression 5” background music album, various songs by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and the reworked version of David Bowie’s 1987 “Never Let Me Down” album released in 2018, an interesting exercise that could still have been left alone. Listening to the sublime original “Rawlinson End” piece by Vivian Stanshall, I thought of looking up more information about it, then had to sit there realising I could not – I couldn’t leave my bus to work to stop at a library.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Finally logging into my work computer confirmed that Vodafone, my mobile network, had an outage of their 4G and 5G internet networks, but not phone calls and text messages – Vodafone introduced text messages to the world, so maintaining its use must be a point of pride. I thought the internet came back just before starting work at 9am, but this was after going to an area of the building with poor reception (the staff toilets) caused my phone to search out the still operating 3G network instead. This network will be phased out by Vodafone during 2024 to bolster 4G and 5G reception, a good idea in the circumstances, but GPRS (General Packet Radio Services), introduced in 2001 and still used for calls and messages, will remain.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Cybernetics is a subject I plan to discuss in greater detail in coming weeks, but nothing serves to focus your mind on the science of control systems, communications and technology than being temporarily kicked out of such a control system. As much as I would like to think I could live without the internet, I have surely arrived at the point where any period of disconnection will cause frustration. Its initial usefulness became a welcome extension of myself, and it may be time to properly make sense of that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Everything was back to my new normal by 11am, and I listened to Chris Hawkins’ radio feature during lunchtime.</span></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-58077477003474824582024-01-06T23:12:00.000-08:002024-01-06T23:13:10.905-08:00I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE [430]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT9HyliQN3HxRPcP-YubBlDoYsuPMjjJRmiU0LscrU7MfMhApWTBLBu3dx5PAU8Em_rR_PPjPvsCnokO7sJA5GSx5JZ13_gX4E7gDOiEEla9bI4VTB-UGYCS7JMrPMqeY_IDvH5JNMHSiBh8yh-roWofLVECaSXLsHyyHYHY7Wiy-9pWfSBmEwzpidJ8A/s1280/LJS%20430%20South%20Park.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT9HyliQN3HxRPcP-YubBlDoYsuPMjjJRmiU0LscrU7MfMhApWTBLBu3dx5PAU8Em_rR_PPjPvsCnokO7sJA5GSx5JZ13_gX4E7gDOiEEla9bI4VTB-UGYCS7JMrPMqeY_IDvH5JNMHSiBh8yh-roWofLVECaSXLsHyyHYHY7Wiy-9pWfSBmEwzpidJ8A/w400-h225/LJS%20430%20South%20Park.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The famous "South Park" disclaimer</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Would saying “this article is based on a true story” make you more likely to read it?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Is this because you are assured of reading something true to life, inspired by real events, or because it will shed light on a wider truth? Or did I use it as a marketing tool, knowing it would work?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The truth is that I wrote “this article is based on a true story” on a Post-It note with no idea of what I meant by writing it, or of what I would do with it. This sums up my feelings about this phrase: by itself, it means nothing, but it is used to ascribe worth to other things.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Two examples of stories “based on a true story”, when they are not, are Joel & Ethan Coen’s 1996 film “Fargo”, which infamously begins with a message saying it is a true story, but in reality is a fictional story based around a real murder; and “Saturday Night Fever”, a film based on a “New York” magazine article of which its writer, Nik Cohn, revealed twenty years later was a fictional story, but inspired by people he met. “Based on a true story” perhaps sounds more “official” than “inspired by true events”, because that could feasibly be used to describe the inspiration for any and all stories.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.mtv.com/news/aooica/rewind-what-part-of-based-on-dont-you-understand">An article on MTV’s website from 2005</a> quotes Joel Cohen from a “Time Out” magazine interview, which I have been unable to find online, saying “if an audience believes that something's based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they might otherwise not accept.” The MTV article, by Karl Heitmueller, talks about the veracity of “The Amityville Horror” series of films, real-life atrocities being the reliable sponge base for many horror film cakes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBXDRBsaGMN9ZXICKrWW8dfdOMCiO0wZodO-jL5BqbX-63TZbjMQiCC159LJvvTLiHKod1o4rlc-8P6XkAeOry29CReusChUS4hwUVDhzZTfk4JXzoX7YoC2OmYtoLEyDcRdUQOwFKsXOHMPT4aGxKWBM-UgEKA94xz-j5uLVaIKcMTappX00Cpx3l35c/s510/LJS%20430%20Spector.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="510" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBXDRBsaGMN9ZXICKrWW8dfdOMCiO0wZodO-jL5BqbX-63TZbjMQiCC159LJvvTLiHKod1o4rlc-8P6XkAeOry29CReusChUS4hwUVDhzZTfk4JXzoX7YoC2OmYtoLEyDcRdUQOwFKsXOHMPT4aGxKWBM-UgEKA94xz-j5uLVaIKcMTappX00Cpx3l35c/w400-h255/LJS%20430%20Spector.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Disclaimer for the HBO film "Phil Spector" (2013)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />For me, verisimilitude has more importance. The average Batman comic book story could be completely fantastical, from the villains to the technology deployed and the way Gotham City is portrayed, but there are elements of truth or realism that make the more outlandish elements plausible. I think this is why, in terms of the fictional stories I read or watch, I can get along with “Blade Runner” more than “Lord of the Rings” – the former, especially through its city setting, has a more immediately familiar verisimilitude to me from real life, while the rich world-building of the latter, well, builds its own plausibility, rewarding the audience’s attention.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I don’t find myself watching a straight drama very often – that is, one not tinged by a genre, like science fiction. One was “Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War”, a 2012 Australian two-part mini-series about the commercial professional cricket tournament set up for a media mogul’s television network. The two characters that drew me the most into the story were TV executive Gavin Warner, who bore the pressure of making this outlandish idea work, and Packer’s personal assistant Rose, both reflecting and deflecting her employer’s monstrous personality. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">At the end of the second episode, I saw the cast explicitly listed them as “fictional character[s]”. At the time, I felt a little like I had wasted my time in watching scenes that did not happen, but I recognised this artistic license was needed for the story to work as a drama – a talking heads-style documentary, or even a docudrama, could give you the facts efficiently, but making an emotional connection requires a different approach. I did like the fact that the credits were honest - the creation of a fictional assassin in the 1932 MGM film "Rasputin and the Empress", and the defamation trial that followed, prompted the adoption of the famous disclaimer “The events and characters depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”<o:p></o:p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">In 2023, “Based on a True Story” was used to name a TV comedy series about an estate agent with a “true crime”-themed podcast, also named “Based on a True Story”. The success of this series may determine future (over-)usage of the phrase.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-11168249778278735362023-12-31T00:10:00.000-08:002023-12-31T00:18:45.691-08:00WE WANT FUN AND YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT [429]<p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnNTmpqhy3Qnbxcenj9Qzhaneq3_2y1saanAs81UOio6uffpbaeoIn1a4_JQXI6FMr1SjSlqoB4FQR0DjxdPMbhdRoOHpJN_NlbFfjwoT8Y_mttEi3UXSJvrZ6G_cN9yakkyFLyf19LbDBfQ9I1DtmqzPJMPYWGp4uaoPfG9gF0MOX2_fF6a9XsYAboHY/s2127/LJS%20429%201.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2127" data-original-width="2127" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnNTmpqhy3Qnbxcenj9Qzhaneq3_2y1saanAs81UOio6uffpbaeoIn1a4_JQXI6FMr1SjSlqoB4FQR0DjxdPMbhdRoOHpJN_NlbFfjwoT8Y_mttEi3UXSJvrZ6G_cN9yakkyFLyf19LbDBfQ9I1DtmqzPJMPYWGp4uaoPfG9gF0MOX2_fF6a9XsYAboHY/w400-h400/LJS%20429%201.heic" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I may be restating this for myself, but I use the phrase “dancing with the gatekeepers” because I dreamed that I recorded an album titled “Leigh Spence is Dancing with the Gatekeepers”, singing “all they have are words” over and over again. <a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2016/05/ready-to-shape-scheme-of-things.html">My first article in 2016</a> defined “dancing with the gatekeepers” as “taking delight in the challenges life gives you, and having fun with those that think they have all the answers.”<br /><br />I love that I wrote “have fun with”, rather than “make fun of”. Understanding Donald Trump’s assault on language, and on the general concept of “understanding”, in previous articles here was a more fun use of my time than simply insulting the man, despite having also called him “<a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2020/11/spank-pank-who-try-to-drive-you-nuts-268.html">a man that makes gold look cheap, while looking and sounding like a drag queen version of his younger self</a>”. All I have are words, and all he has are words, but Trump’s words are becoming more incendiary, and with his current run for President being described as an “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/22/trump-revenge-game-plan-alarm">openly authoritarian campaign</a>”, those words can no longer be ignored, as much as I wish I could.<br /><br />That has been the lesson of 2023 for me. I have ignored talking about anything remotely related to politics because it is not fun. Government infighting, culture wars, literal wars, ideological struggles, squabbles over the words used to identify ourselves, describing everything as “woke” – a word I haven’t discussed because it sounds more like a dog bark than a dog whistle, an easier word to throw than “political correctness” – and whether artificial intelligence could make everything meaningless anyway. Nothing works, nothing lasts, and nothing matters.<br /><br />But all we have are words. That is the first lesson of 2024.<br /><br />If words are incendiary, words can defuse them. <br /><br />If words are cheap, then there’s enough to go around.<br /><br />If words are meaningless, give them meaning, and avoid boiling the nature of meaning down to “because I said so”.<br /><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Ongoing wars, impending elections and competing agendas mean there is a lot at stake in 2024, and I can only be resilient amidst this precarity by remembering this world is also mine. If I ever record that album, I will sing “all they have are words” only then to say “all we have are words”. We are all in this together, so try to make fun with one another. <br /><br />For me, the meaning of “dancing with the gatekeepers” remains the same – I think I just needed the reminder to have fun.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-44721729307995281652023-12-24T00:56:00.000-08:002023-12-24T00:56:09.141-08:00I’LL BE THERE, FOLLOWING YOU AROUND [428]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt5CLLrtctjGcc9RV0qQiQKFS0NZG7R47F5qxx8UDlF0Ang0HWJpwOWi4cdpfwnLA2JhTs8SyEB1PEyGP1cdMpZ3YM9JaSRe1yQjBqZhsKjOwGJhZBsiRXZrYM5sm3bJbaR03Z8tPor9XN9ERZh8yBPmHmiAtZtguaNd8o3NidfTzpLIGxZGcH5bLp3TM/s730/LJS%20428%20Cane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="730" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt5CLLrtctjGcc9RV0qQiQKFS0NZG7R47F5qxx8UDlF0Ang0HWJpwOWi4cdpfwnLA2JhTs8SyEB1PEyGP1cdMpZ3YM9JaSRe1yQjBqZhsKjOwGJhZBsiRXZrYM5sm3bJbaR03Z8tPor9XN9ERZh8yBPmHmiAtZtguaNd8o3NidfTzpLIGxZGcH5bLp3TM/w400-h311/LJS%20428%20Cane.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />We open on Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise asleep in bed like Laurel & Hardy as Father Christmas comes down the chimney with a sack to steal the silverware. After the opening titles feature Morecambe’s trademark slaps of Wise’s cheeks between appearances of the show’s guests, their personal popularity is measured in sizes of commemorative tankards. Later, they will appear as bell-ringing monks, using candlesticks to pull pints of beer, and as turkeys ready for the yuletide chop, before dancing with actress Glenda Jackson like they were Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers – the increasing size of Morecambe’s cane is done so deftly that the audience doesn’t notice the first time it’s done, but they do the others. They then spar with a very real-life authority, a conductor of a symphony orchestra who turns out to be as funny as they are.<p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I have always liked Morecambe & Wise – for my generation, they are the link between Laurel & Hardy and Reeves & Mortimer, all comedy double acts that were perfectly surreal, perfectly timed, and perfectly tuned. There is a line in the above episode, which was their Christmas special of 1971, where upon seeing the first tankard, Wise says “Great Scott”, to which Morecambe replies “He’s not in there is he? He’s everywhere else!” I don’t care that makes no sense, but the energy of the delivery made me laugh. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I personally think this special may be the greatest hour of television ever made in the UK, but saying that is very subjective indeed, <a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2022/05/make-me-happy-through-years-344.html">having also said it in May 2022</a>. I used this Carlsbergian statement then to justify the extreme lengths made to save a 1968 episode of the show by using laser cutting and X-rays on a fused film reel. With the BBC run of “The Morecambe & Wise Show” from 1968 to 1977 being a milestone in both the comedy history of the UK, and of its cultural history, its Christmas specials often bringing literally half the population together, the effort to save one lost episode was rewarded.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">With compilations of Morecambe & Wise sketches being prevalent on British television through the decades, along with memories of individual sketches, the power of the 1971 Christmas special lies in seeing how many of the duo’s classic sketches are from this one show, just as when you realise the episodes of “Fawlty Towers” about the fire alarm and the Germans are the same episode. This special has the “Grieg’s Piano Concerto by Grieg” with Andr</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">é Previn/Preview/Privet, Glenda Jackson's dance routine, and Shirley Bassey singing “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” as her stuck shoe is replaced by a hobnail boot. The final sketch, Wise’s “play what I wrote” was “Robin Hood” featuring Francis Matthews, known to audiences as the radio voice of Paul Temple, and the TV voice of Captain Scarlet.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The 1971 Christmas special also saw the coalescing of the various changes made to “The Morecambe & Wise Show”. The first BBC series was much like the previous 1960s for ITV, staged sketches written by Sid Green & Dick Hills, with Ernie Wise very much the straight man to Eric Morecambe’s unpredictable and zany persona, successful in a few appearances in the United States on “The Ed Sullivan Show” but did not travel further. Eddie Braben was brought in by the BBC to write subsequent series, changing Wise’s persona to be a self-important writer and Morecambe’s close friend, as sketches and routines brought classical Hollywood spectacle and production values. Dance routines were choreographed by Ernest Maxin, producer of later episodes, and music was arranged for orchestra and conducted by Peter Knight, who later did the same for The Carpenters’ version of the song “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPJIgQN0H5KDk071mCGjb1_QU8U1RRIVKVDA0OHpFKQXiQJZdK4Viedr2Gbg3XmxJzae1wWcoyKPTijEz_rIayoA6RsDYsPhZieUJ1Fd-f_lZ3EUJtW6lusKAPpKY9cJQX32NXF6Ma86xtZjCp_7aOlKu2V9ibQ4TrZQ1p0QjrlALTUfIWJv0XNyUwMsg/s710/LJS%20428%20Previn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="710" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPJIgQN0H5KDk071mCGjb1_QU8U1RRIVKVDA0OHpFKQXiQJZdK4Viedr2Gbg3XmxJzae1wWcoyKPTijEz_rIayoA6RsDYsPhZieUJ1Fd-f_lZ3EUJtW6lusKAPpKY9cJQX32NXF6Ma86xtZjCp_7aOlKu2V9ibQ4TrZQ1p0QjrlALTUfIWJv0XNyUwMsg/w400-h291/LJS%20428%20Previn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />“The Morecambe & Wise Show” would become the show to appear on if you were famous. BBC faces like Michael Parkinson, Frank Bough, Patrick Moore of “The Sky at Night” and newsreader Robert Dougall appear in the 1971 special were making other programmes elsewhere in BBC Television Centre, but Glenda Jackson’s appearance followed that of actors Peter Cushing and Edward Woodward. The 1973 Christmas special boasted Vanessa Redgrave and The New Seekers in the studio, and Yehudi Menuhin, Rudolf Nureyev and Laurence Olivier appearing in filmed insert jokes about why they couldn’t appear in person.<p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">“The Morecambe & Wise Show” became the Rolls-Royce, or Lincoln Continental, of UK TV shows: parodies of “Opportunity Knocks” and “Mastermind” had their real hosts Hughie Green and Magnus Magnusson respectively appear, instead of Morecambe or Wise impersonating them, and their spin on routines from “South Pacific”, “Singin’ in the Rain” and other classical Hollywood musicals were eagerly awaited.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">But the epitome of these was Eddie Braben’s own favourite sketch from those he wrote for Eric & Ernie, from the 1971 Christmas special and featuring A</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">ndré Previn, then</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, being much more naturally funny than expected: “Thank you for that tremendous introduction, that doesn’t come out of my fee, doesn’t it?” Having been “tricked” into thinking he would conduct Yehudi Menuhin instead of Eric Morecambe, it shouldn’t have been surprising that an accomplished musician and conductor would have had good timing, saying “I’ll get my baton, it’s in Chicago” - Morecambe then seemingly breaks character, saying “Pow! He’s in. I like him.” With a full orchestra and Steinway piano, the piece reworks an earlier 1963 sketch with Previn taking the place of Ernie Wise as the exasperated conductor of a smaller band, Wise now acting as Morecambe’s support and mediator against a very real authority, making the grabbing of Previn’s lapels, and Morecambe’s line “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order, I’ll give you that”, followed by the slap on Previn’s cheek, all the funnier. Seeing Morecambe’s own applause at the end of the sketch, you can see he is genuinely happy that the sketch has gone so well.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I didn’t need an excuse to write about Morecambe & Wise, or one of their Christmas specials, but people will keep returning to it, or discovering it anew, so we will continue to talk about it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-55122558054724929112023-12-17T00:25:00.000-08:002023-12-17T00:26:29.121-08:00HIGHWAY TO THE DANGER ZONE [427]<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie1gJaV_jDY5eU5D3lKDbv4PRnjD7qlAY31mmWyf6zFUjKKzEAKH4jUJiuYxeTG1d40Vsj4vDfmEjGmqvfKQzsma76ufI4rXlViE4d-LCdvEUVih4sN8ONrp37hIW-3aQtM-ftWjbnlioAdazTda1J_1WU2f8rWqiUiI8XUQIAG-x2DMP6mNBENxAP97I/s781/LJS%20427%20Book%20Cover.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="781" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie1gJaV_jDY5eU5D3lKDbv4PRnjD7qlAY31mmWyf6zFUjKKzEAKH4jUJiuYxeTG1d40Vsj4vDfmEjGmqvfKQzsma76ufI4rXlViE4d-LCdvEUVih4sN8ONrp37hIW-3aQtM-ftWjbnlioAdazTda1J_1WU2f8rWqiUiI8XUQIAG-x2DMP6mNBENxAP97I/w400-h333/LJS%20427%20Book%20Cover.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Cover of "The Art of Archer" book (2016)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><br />September 2016 was the month my viewing habits changed: I bought a streaming device for my TV, and I began subscribing to Netflix. Initially an easier way to get YouTube onto a bigger screen, streaming made taking up Netflix inevitable, but for me, it was not for their own shows like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black”, or for their Blockbuster Video-replacing back catalogue of recent films - it was because it was the only place in the UK to see the animated comedy series “Archer”. With the show now ending on its American home of FXX on 17</span><span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup><span> </span><span>December 2023, a date also marking the thirty-fourth anniversary of “The Simpsons”, a show that will outlast us all, I have reason to reconsider continuing my Netflix subscription.</span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span>First appearing in 2009, “Archer” is a retro-styled secret agent adventure series crossed with workplace comedy. Sterling Archer, an agent whose intuition is enhanced by womanising and alcohol, is an agent at ISIS, an agency owned and run by his similarly hard-nosed mother Malory. The ensemble originally had rigidly defined roles: Lana Kane, the by-the-book lead agent; Ray Gillette, the gay bomb expert with a transplanted hand; Cyril Figgis, the downtrodden head of accounts; Cheryl (or is Carol this episode?) </span><span>Tunt</span><span>, the secretary too rich and neurotic for this reality; Pam Poovey, the boisterous head of HR; and Algernop Krieger, the skilled engineer who built his holographic girlfriend. All have become agents over the show’s fourteen seasons, embroiled in plots and heists that have stretched and fleshed out these characters across different realities and time periods, particularly during three seasons that took place while Sterling was in a coma. It may wear the skin of a James Bond film, but it has the heart of “The A-Team.”</span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">What attracted me to “Archer” is what animation has afforded it. The retro aesthetic deliberately fudges the time period in which it is set, living in the world of both Sean Connery’s Bond and “Get Smart”, while not being restrained by technology of the time – something exists to help get out of any scrape. That said, there is the satisfaction of recognising the Apple Lisa computers on ISIS agents’ desks, or their building’s establishing shot having a Renault 12 driving past. The humour is very quick and often about language: characters warning each other over “phrasing”, exclamations like “yup”, “boop” and “sploosh”, and even outright saying “I swear to God I had something for this”. But every viewer of “Archer” knows the phrase most often repeated: “You want ants? Because this is how you get ants.” For stories where is victory is often achieved just in time, the pacing and comedic timing of each twenty-minute episode could not be achieved in live-action.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I originally saw “Archer” on Channel 5 in the UK, or one of their extra channels, but after the first four seasons, the show became available on Netflix only, feeling like when “The X-Files” or “Friends” previously disappeared to satellite television about fifteen years earlier. This move to streaming also stopped UK DVDs of the show in their tracks – this is another case of me wanting a copy of a show that is uninhibited by digital rights management. Maintaining access to the show requires maintaining a subscription to a service I rarely watched for anything else. Can The Criterion Collection start releasing TV shows as well please?</span></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-15781880580476068582023-12-10T04:32:00.000-08:002023-12-10T04:32:31.388-08:00I’M DESIGNED FOR LIFE [426]<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwA2r3yflqwOuhphl0BcPpEhO3T_KyakJ40Z4TRGPHycpSj3l0VOaVo6B7b7sRrn4ht71W4cn9G1E2rxP6jMwE0-DaFDhUQOn5ZPRhSI6Cf-ta8rrifxYDnLe3Ed5Fd6ucYk7NzbL54cFv712Ym3Hh0CHg6-rDCUuKxYxNHmr75O4SLPOuEAYZIcLNVK4/s4032/LJS%20426%20Clock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwA2r3yflqwOuhphl0BcPpEhO3T_KyakJ40Z4TRGPHycpSj3l0VOaVo6B7b7sRrn4ht71W4cn9G1E2rxP6jMwE0-DaFDhUQOn5ZPRhSI6Cf-ta8rrifxYDnLe3Ed5Fd6ucYk7NzbL54cFv712Ym3Hh0CHg6-rDCUuKxYxNHmr75O4SLPOuEAYZIcLNVK4/w400-h300/LJS%20426%20Clock.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />I spent quite a long time deciding whether to buy a Braun wall clock, and perhaps that was entirely appropriate. Despite its present focus on grooming and hair removal, the Braun brand is synonymous with the tactile, functional design aesthetic fostered under Dieter Rams, who joined the company in 1955 and was its head of design from 1961 until 1997. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The iconic designs of Braun radios, clocks, hi-fi systems and cigarette lighters may initially feel like a technological equivalent of Ikea furniture – in the 1960s, Rams also designed the Vitsœ modular furniture and shelving system that remains on sale to this day – but they came at the point where these items ceased looking like furniture, becoming desirable entirely on their own merits. Braun has made its name in design as much as Philips in the Netherlands made theirs in innovation.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">That is how I feel with my Braun BNC006MSF clock, an evolution of the ABW30 clock designed by Rams forty years earlier. Its face is clear and legible without being plain: the ring of numbers and markings is raising from the centre of the clock face, the resulting ridge being met by the hour hand while also casting a slight shadow to emphasise the different lengths and thicknesses of the hour and minute hands. With this model being radio-controlled, the addition of a two-digit digital display can show the date or act as a “second hand”, having previously decided that having the right time involves removing yourself from setting it [https://www.leighspence.net/2019/03/cause-you-ride-on-time-ride-on-time-153.html]. I have essentially bought into a design classic, taking pride of place behind my television.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">But as much as the “brAun” logo is displayed, itself a design dating back to 1935, the clock itself is built under licence by the Hong Kong-based clock manufacturers Zeon. Braun audio systems and speakers returned in 2019 via the British radio company Pure, while Braun food processors are from De’Longhi of Italy. Having been bought by the Gillette razor company in 1984, itself becoming a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble in 2005, Braun today makes only haircare products themselves, the rest of the company acting as an agent for its own intellectual property and design history. Ironically, the consumer arm of Philips is now in much the same position, and it is them I usually think of first if “hair removal” comes to mind.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Does any of this matter? Evidently not, as far as my clock is concerned. It is exactly what I wanted, it is officially a Braun clock, and is identifiably a Dieter Rams design. I may not be able to afford one of their original Atelier hi-fi systems, but if new systems from elsewhere have a similarly clean design, it is clear where they took their lead. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhNCD9QN3ZSdOg3a2aRHhQjzFUvugmS_S9eY1VUNGAeBwrwHZgb6yrEhQCKKFPKVPHhXB-rIAld8B5ROgElTV6CQXT-Nq0YlyQ3LG-z53-h4hKROTG8V3UVQXasjQfkE0sBypePbcc4NVf2WuVCiaD3b9H-Ckz5c7JyXcTXPYUPSsC5BofuFP3cRRYDYg/s1026/LJS%20426%20Hi-Fi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1026" data-original-width="906" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhNCD9QN3ZSdOg3a2aRHhQjzFUvugmS_S9eY1VUNGAeBwrwHZgb6yrEhQCKKFPKVPHhXB-rIAld8B5ROgElTV6CQXT-Nq0YlyQ3LG-z53-h4hKROTG8V3UVQXasjQfkE0sBypePbcc4NVf2WuVCiaD3b9H-Ckz5c7JyXcTXPYUPSsC5BofuFP3cRRYDYg/w354-h400/LJS%20426%20Hi-Fi.jpg" width="354" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Braun Atelier hi-fi system, from Braun product catalogue</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-84753112831708780032023-12-03T01:27:00.000-08:002023-12-03T01:28:47.905-08:00NOTHING COMPARES 2 U [425]<p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHEjgLQkm3PRBOBXzL4rs_SsPKBkPU29BZmju4PeUOESDioWnkJrJIPR2ZCmrv-TiO4N5kPI6jCsNkx_UfjwWcq8lkIvJp24gbqmJgQHDYimgmja1wx7iJdGxFcsYaALvlIuw7Bu1DgKkXSAH4VSeqUZzYMM1S3XWQXG9OKC2QUwtMXVPWEg_rT65SKQ/s1280/LJS%20425%20U.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHEjgLQkm3PRBOBXzL4rs_SsPKBkPU29BZmju4PeUOESDioWnkJrJIPR2ZCmrv-TiO4N5kPI6jCsNkx_UfjwWcq8lkIvJp24gbqmJgQHDYimgmja1wx7iJdGxFcsYaALvlIuw7Bu1DgKkXSAH4VSeqUZzYMM1S3XWQXG9OKC2QUwtMXVPWEg_rT65SKQ/w400-h225/LJS%20425%20U.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">UKTV promotional image</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">“U” will be the name of a UK TV streaming platform from Summer 2024 replacing, well, UKTV Play. UKTV, owned by BBC Studios, runs channels whose own names were once thought bizarre, like Dave (predominantly comedy and factual shows), Yesterday (history), Alibi (detective dramas) and Eden (nature documentaries).<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span><p></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">But like their general entertainment channel “W”, formerly named “Watch”, the name “U” is about simplifying the name of the service while making it more distinctive. David Stevens, the Executive Strategy Director at Wolff Olins, the brand consultants that helped create the rebrand, said “the entertainment market is so awash with confusing and bizarrely named offers, so we wanted to strip back, reduce the noise and present this family of brands in a clear, crisp, singular way... We're excited about creating a bold brand that will stand out but won't get in the way.”</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">I can see what they are doing: ITV have done well by renaming their streaming service “ITVX” instead of “ITV+”, but it remains clear that, like the BBC iPlayer, it is an addition to their existing channels. Channel 4 renamed theirs to “Channel 4”, levelling it out, but UKTV are making it as clear as possible that “U” is the main service going forward: their regular, linear TV channels will be remade U&Dave, U&Yesterday and so on, even U&W. This is far away from the decision to name a channel “Dave” in 2007 because “everyone knows someone called Dave”, a frivolous brand decision in 2007, but more memorable than its previous name of UKTV G2. </span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">It will be months before I will see if this plan works, as renaming something as a single letter hasn’t worked well as of late. Twitter, renamed “X” in July 2023, is still referred to as “Twitter”, “X/Twitter” or “X, formerly Twitter”, mostly through convenience, but also because “X” is often also a mark of absence, or a placeholder until something better comes along – “X” has always been the name of these articles until I find a suitable title.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">This thought also applies when single letters being used as codenames for people, a practice in British intelligence copied by the James Bond novels and films, collides with real-life uses of a letter as a person’s name to add distance to their previous identity: V, as the writer of “The Vagina Monologues” is known, is usually referred to in print as “V, formerly Eve Ensler”, just as everybody became used to saying “the artist formerly known as Prince”.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">However, going back to more frivolous uses of one character, “3” was once the name of a British mobile phone company associating itself with the new 3G signal technology as it launched, but now lumbered with the association of old technology as these signals are faded back out.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">The web address that UKTV may want to acquire for their rebrand is u.tv – formerly used by Ulster Television, known on screen as UTV, it currently redirects to parent company ITV’s website.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-54199079368754146432023-11-26T00:41:00.000-08:002023-11-26T00:41:25.947-08:00BY MAKING GROOVY MOVIES [424]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfqcYSm4ekUfvLsfD0UoI__1t4wmCq3R5X7gJ6MU-jaysVbMhX4wZ9PLazvJirhmYdxbcF0QthyphenhyphenKMIeAItUFdGn8MCPfXJX4Wm6zkjle5rLA5dyDFyrmEweE8UwEkhu2DJZZDhqZ0oAqd73H1yYihCyz50-9d3-qVpMVK_Z80GdzTOaD5UZwI0D8hAa-c/s710/LJS%20424%20Camera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="710" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfqcYSm4ekUfvLsfD0UoI__1t4wmCq3R5X7gJ6MU-jaysVbMhX4wZ9PLazvJirhmYdxbcF0QthyphenhyphenKMIeAItUFdGn8MCPfXJX4Wm6zkjle5rLA5dyDFyrmEweE8UwEkhu2DJZZDhqZ0oAqd73H1yYihCyz50-9d3-qVpMVK_Z80GdzTOaD5UZwI0D8hAa-c/w400-h266/LJS%20424%20Camera.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />On Thursday 23<sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">rd</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">November, I received an extremely unexpected e-mail:</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">“Beginning December 4, 2023, limited quantities of the KODAK Super 8 Camera will be available to U.S. customers. Availability outside the U.S. will be announced at a later date. If you are interested in purchasing a camera once it is available in your country, you must sign up on Kodak's NEW camera reservation list by November 28, 2023, opting in to communications from third-party retailers authorized by Kodak. By</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> <span style="caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847);">completing the new form</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> by the deadline, you will maintain your position from the previous list.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The Kodak Super 8 Camera was originally announced in 2016, at which point I joined the reservation list. In the absence of further announcements in the following years, I seriously considered whether Kodak was serious: like Polaroid, RCA, and Blaupunkt, the Kodak name has been licensed for everything from cheap AA batteries to tablet computers and blockchain mining, its original business of making camera film now the preserve of professional and “prosumer” especially, especially if a roll of 35mm still camera film can cost nearly £10.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Still, I was intrigued by the possibilities of shooting motion pictures on Super 8 film, using Kodak film cartridges, with a camera that included innovations from camcorders like an LCD screen for a viewfinder, and the ability to record sound onto an SD card placed into the camera. Once developed, the film would be returned to you with a link to download a video film in 4K resolution. I was excited by the possibilities of what I could make – the two-and-a-bit minute run time of a cartridge would be a fun challenge. Kodak announced this camera with a projected price of between $400 and $750 – seeing as the next nearest camera available is the Arri 416, a 16mm industrial film camera with a 2023 price tag of £78,000 (but available to rent), the Kodak Super 8 Camera would have fostered its own industry of filmmakers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The price of the camera has increased after seven years, but not with inflation: Kodak will now be charging a horrifying $5,495 for a camera that does not appear to have been developed since 2016, having retained the originally announced design. This will be purely for professional use only, demanding professional prices, completely severing me from the possibility of buying one for myself – even the new registration film assumes you are working in the film industry, with a space to write in “other” occupations and intended uses. In 2023, the presence of a replaceable battery should have been enough of a sign this will be a professional product, even if charging it by micro USB appears to be a holdover from 2016. It feels like what could have been a mass-produced camera will now be assembled by hand like a Swiss watch.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">For most, the Kodak Super 8 camera’s place in film history has been taken by the Apple iPhone, because its camera has been constantly developed to approach a professional results while being as simple or as advanced to use as its user requires. For the next level up, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, with a DSLR form factor producing 6K pictures approximate to Super 35 film, a cinematic motion picture standard, costs half what Kodak are charging for their camera, even if you have to buy the lenses separately. You can apply the film grain in post-production...</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-91559112135719116762023-11-19T00:22:00.000-08:002023-11-19T00:24:12.828-08:00DOWN ON OUR WORDS [423]<p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq0ckhNFYdqBnm48ig9NkMA8fY50zK0adXm3zxkzLkK1VtkpixSwRXjz3PsWasbydXQiUvGW4v3Aeu7JbnR2llf4BXAD28qXwmHrbVl5HDk835aD1NwXVKWbYMBOtvEh_1b4HWD_ulNHOpI7ThAwJlB6IJwNe447qMvCD-vi3nksS5Ccg-mDo_vzE63Tc/s1000/LJS%20423%20Bag.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq0ckhNFYdqBnm48ig9NkMA8fY50zK0adXm3zxkzLkK1VtkpixSwRXjz3PsWasbydXQiUvGW4v3Aeu7JbnR2llf4BXAD28qXwmHrbVl5HDk835aD1NwXVKWbYMBOtvEh_1b4HWD_ulNHOpI7ThAwJlB6IJwNe447qMvCD-vi3nksS5Ccg-mDo_vzE63Tc/w400-h400/LJS%20423%20Bag.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: arial; text-align: left;"><br /></span></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The story of the Co-Op grocery chain’s “ambient sausage roll” has lived at the back of my head for at least a decade, as a go-to example of a non-sequitur: “ambient” is an odd description for a foodstuff, even if the context is explained. All I know of the story is that sausage rolls were sold with this label, and later withdrawn as someone admitted the word was used without confirming its meaning first.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Coming from the land of bubble and squeak<sup>1</sup>, Stargazy Pie<sup>2</sup> and the Bedfordshire Clanger<sup>3</sup>, “ambient” is hardly a strange enough word to cause offence, but in January 2010, it apparently did. Using the few news articles I found of it online from the following month, I put together the following statement that was issued by something named the Plain English Campaign: “We’ve had quite a few people call to say they’ve seen these ‘ambient sausage rolls’ on sale at the Co-op. It’s caused much amusement. I know it’s supposed to be ‘all at the Co-op’ but what on earth is an ambient sausage roll’?”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This was followed up by a spokesman from the Co-Op: “The use of the word 'ambient' on the label of this product was an administrative error - labels for in-store bakery items are printed in store and the word 'ambient' was incorrectly printed on the label. This is now being rectified but thank you for drawing this to our attention and apologies for any confusion this may have caused.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">“The Daily Telegraph” apparently had an editorial comment at the time calling it a “small victory for plain English”, but I am not willing to pay to read what more they said on the matter. I would still like to think of it as a mistake that can be interpreted as a bit of fun.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The Plain English Campaign is a group focussed on eradicating legal and medical jargon, gobbledygook and clichés, so naming food doesn’t appear to fall under their purview - their website makes no mention of their earlier comment. Interestingly, the incident exposed a different use of the word “ambient” by the food industry to mean “displaying at room temperature”, suitable for the surroundings, instead of evoking the creation of a relaxing atmosphere – a 2017 article in “The Grocer” magazine was headed “Country Choice launches 12-hour ambient life sausage roll”.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">If this mistake had taken place in 2023, I am pretty sure the Co-Op’s social media accounts would have made hay while the sun shined, with a range of “ambient” products remaining on sale far longer. I just prefer it when having fun with language isn’t discouraged.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><sup><br /></sup></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><sup>1</sup> A fried dish of mixed cabbage and cooked potato.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><sup><br /></sup></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><sup>2</sup> Pilchard, egg and potato tie, served with a pastry crust that has the pilchard heads sticking out, preferably upwards. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><sup><br /></sup></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><sup>3</sup> A pastry tube, not unlike a sausage roll, filled with meat, potato and onions, not unlike a pasty.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-24750408202165161292023-11-12T00:32:00.000-08:002023-11-12T00:37:26.127-08:00THAT’S THE WAY THE MONEY GOES [422]<p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYQZO4lV_q_tAiNwUTmV8A1lAm90u-9ktiLdLEhqiC933XUVg0Wkj1mNLbaBZh6ZQhkEt1VAtaDWK6yms04Cs2lFf3AljTPhEv_fzKd92zWGvf7YD7b1LAlWS14W86Pk7YZa7VSyma8iNhDhyTiQAcY0MHsmg-Dm66eWPS8S16KQm0uK9SmOPBmj6cT_0/s4032/LJS%20422%20Start.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYQZO4lV_q_tAiNwUTmV8A1lAm90u-9ktiLdLEhqiC933XUVg0Wkj1mNLbaBZh6ZQhkEt1VAtaDWK6yms04Cs2lFf3AljTPhEv_fzKd92zWGvf7YD7b1LAlWS14W86Pk7YZa7VSyma8iNhDhyTiQAcY0MHsmg-Dm66eWPS8S16KQm0uK9SmOPBmj6cT_0/w400-h300/LJS%20422%20Start.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">A last one.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />I decided to write about Caramac, “The Caramel Flavour Bar”, the demise of which has been announced by its manufacturer Nestl<span face="Calibri, sans-serif">é, because some headlines kept referring to it as a chocolate bar. Its recipe used treacle instead of cocoa, its lack of egg or gelatine making it vegetarian, and instead of the whole milk used by Cadbury’s in Dairy Milk bars, Caramac used skimmed milk.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">I am also using the past tense because the news led to the near-complete disappearance of Caramac by people acting upon nostalgia in the shops, when declining sales in the present day prompted</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Nestlé’s decision, efficiently clearing shelves for other products they wish to sell. The simultaneous withdrawal of the Animal Bar, a chocolate bar aimed at children with pictures of animals on them, and the closure of a factory near Newcastle, were reported less often.</span></span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVcxCtwkcYB62cvswhXsNh1BL0vpfOilJDTlGSQ1WXONxl5Kz9frgacjEew0H25ah4-1mXeL2vKCEj4wSslBNXfQPNj9a_k4N6SCQ8sndqwVBqHEOi4mCMI3T6F5CZuclzSi_kwC7yj0t-V971UBA0ykT-26rzENYiKJ3afN-SitXnYE2EbUhJAPvSRp4/s4032/LJS%20422%20Middle.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVcxCtwkcYB62cvswhXsNh1BL0vpfOilJDTlGSQ1WXONxl5Kz9frgacjEew0H25ah4-1mXeL2vKCEj4wSslBNXfQPNj9a_k4N6SCQ8sndqwVBqHEOi4mCMI3T6F5CZuclzSi_kwC7yj0t-V971UBA0ykT-26rzENYiKJ3afN-SitXnYE2EbUhJAPvSRp4/w400-h300/LJS%20422%20Middle.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Unlike <a href="https://www.leighspence.net/2023/02/the-totally-tropical-taste-384.html">Coca-Cola’s rebranding of Lilt as a Fanta flavour</a>, decried in the pages of “The Spectator” and incorrectly reported as the drink being withdrawn,<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> this really is the end of a product, unless you buy the ingredients and make it yourself. My family has already been deprived by KP of their Brannigans crisps, my private joke being that their potent beef and mustard flavour, not reused on any of their brands, was decommissioned and put beyond use. Like Caramac, I only found Brannigans in discount stores and the occasional newsagent ahead of their withdrawal – perhaps I should have seen it coming, so fans of KP’s Roysters T-bone flavour crisps should stock up, to keep sales up, as petitions speak less loudly than cash.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Caramac was introduced in 1959 by Mackintosh’s, a maker of toffee that involved caramel in all its most famous brands, such as Quality Street, Rolo and Toffee Crisp. Merging in 1969 with Rowntree’s, manufacturers of Kit Kat, Smarties, Aero, After Eight, Black Magic, Polo mints, Fruit Pastilles, Fruit Gums, Yorkie and Lion bars, Nestl</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">é took over the combined Rowntree Mackintosh in 1988 – chocolate products were branded under</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Nestlé, with Rowntree’s retained for the rest. I found all these products in my local supermarket, still being too established and commonplace for nostalgia to have taken form, except for how much larger tins of Quality Street used to be.</span></span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Nestlé themselves invented white chocolate with the Milkybar in 1936, and the caramel-infused Milkybar Gold variant is perhaps more sustainable for them than the separate brand of Caramac. However, like Caramac, the Australian and New Zealand versions of Milkybar don’t use cocoa butter, so adding treacle to those may get them back where they started. Any desire of mine for Caramac to be brought back wouldn’t be worth the effort, and if I did want a confectionery to be brought back, it would be Rowntree’s Cabana, a chocolate bar containing caramel, cherries and coconut – I’ve never had one, but I like the sound of it.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg69UtcfZkjhZspAUp1RpF-jCnbjg2VovhH36vBF99E-rWOJeBplZCZ2F91zPvdvvbyXnyqhuHY6Tjliq6iT2-20IQ6aN0k8k591LEceLP7jk3YdIc2isVHo2dhwY7CKyzUf9MmuvHYG-NRCs7ZgsR1-lyjIrWymtz8LycUmiURF__kwldQFu7TEdo93_8/s4032/LJS%20422%20End.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg69UtcfZkjhZspAUp1RpF-jCnbjg2VovhH36vBF99E-rWOJeBplZCZ2F91zPvdvvbyXnyqhuHY6Tjliq6iT2-20IQ6aN0k8k591LEceLP7jk3YdIc2isVHo2dhwY7CKyzUf9MmuvHYG-NRCs7ZgsR1-lyjIrWymtz8LycUmiURF__kwldQFu7TEdo93_8/w400-h300/LJS%20422%20End.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-19072453682407723352023-11-04T23:47:00.005-07:002023-11-04T23:47:53.994-07:00KEEP ON LIFTING ME HIGHER AND HIGHER [421]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig4x68IH-US-y23KcFNmv-vOw43YwwVjLt86s1T31Ww_elH6OvWpMyfEJxEO2h_ogm72bvCULsnGf6pR2N56ngIJxWxuKEw_v1Alk6UX7ltYuF3Yybi7YAMIH9lo9maF35k3iECq5BUEQIdBNOABscR5Zhb17eLcMPDM7aOHHyL16-5vmQC10Kg4gdbpY/s1440/LJS%20421%20Landmarks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="1440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig4x68IH-US-y23KcFNmv-vOw43YwwVjLt86s1T31Ww_elH6OvWpMyfEJxEO2h_ogm72bvCULsnGf6pR2N56ngIJxWxuKEw_v1Alk6UX7ltYuF3Yybi7YAMIH9lo9maF35k3iECq5BUEQIdBNOABscR5Zhb17eLcMPDM7aOHHyL16-5vmQC10Kg4gdbpY/w400-h320/LJS%20421%20Landmarks.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I have now realised that I have a head for heights. This took some time to acknowledge because, while I have not (yet) needed to know my way around a grappling hook, I am fine at heights that others would happily avoid.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In the last week, I have reached the top of the dome at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, known as the Golden Gallery, with my iPhone registering the 528 steps as twenty-five flights of stairs. In February 2020, I climbed a similarly spiralled staircase to reach the top of the clock tower at Southampton Civic Centre, and back in 2015, I walked up and over the O2, formerly the Millennium Dome, which required the use of a harness.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Perhaps it was the lengthy gaps in times between these three events, and taking the stairs is not like climbing a hill – the suspended walkway at the “Up at the O2” attraction uses the same Teflon-coated glass fibre fabric used on the structure itself, which felt like walking on a taut trampoline. The top of the St Paul’s dome is higher than the combined height of the other two structures, but taking a transatlantic flight is higher than all of them, and I’ve so far done six of those without any problems.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">However, I have realised a low accompanied every high – I had reason to be annoyed every time. I consider myself to be patient, but my walking pace is slightly faster than average, and if I am physically behind a line of people, I will want to get ahead if I can. Walking up the clock tower and through St. Paul’s, I hoped that people might step aside at the occasional spaces and ledges that existed along the way, as I continued on – the same was true for the way down. Walking up and over the O2 was different, our being attached to a guide rope being useful on windier days but also locking the line into a set order – it did not help that I personally thought the rope wasn’t needed on the way down. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Worst of all, the Golden Gallery at St. Paul’s is not made for crowds of tourists, with only a couple of feet between stone corners and the guide rails preventing you from rolling down the landmark dome – I said “I am unable to get past” to the people in front of me, at which point I found that English was not their first language. It was not a good time to start feeling constrained by the lack of space, but the adrenaline helped me get down faster than nerves could have done.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Perhaps focussing on the negative when you are doing something outlandish isn’t idea, but it removes any thoughts about that outlandishness – getting the wrong airline food will do that.</p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-10515261099794019452023-10-29T01:05:00.004-07:002023-10-29T01:05:49.235-07:00WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE TRANSYLVANIA TWIST? [420]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGVsTn7LIB_b5Ho1qJzCWMXLAlPQHZ_diTYlwLHCpEVcltp97KyKJeAmZzA_MG1NJ0Iz1W_Ted4OOtKFNSpiNOXIF2ukfY7KSIfjk2KmWqubxFxdCAqb6k-P7_LgJsgT_PiYbhLv6dWfiC6qZjvdQ8qoGL9M05g6inEI21tQx1ECDVE4UiKbJzXd-VZU/s1441/LJS%20420%20Williams.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1079" data-original-width="1441" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGVsTn7LIB_b5Ho1qJzCWMXLAlPQHZ_diTYlwLHCpEVcltp97KyKJeAmZzA_MG1NJ0Iz1W_Ted4OOtKFNSpiNOXIF2ukfY7KSIfjk2KmWqubxFxdCAqb6k-P7_LgJsgT_PiYbhLv6dWfiC6qZjvdQ8qoGL9M05g6inEI21tQx1ECDVE4UiKbJzXd-VZU/w400-h300/LJS%20420%20Williams.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br />“Dracula, Frankenstein – and Friends!” was a 1977 season in which BBC Two broadcast the classic series of horror films made by Universal Pictures in the 1930s and 40s. Starting with Bela Lugosi in “Dracula” and Boris Karloff in “Frankenstein”, they ran in double bills on Saturday nights, handy for people who invested in the first home video recorders. These films had appeared on various ITV regions in the previous decade, but this season appears to be their first showing on the BBC, following appearances of the later Hammer horror films like “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” with Christopher Lee.<p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Interestingly, “Dracula, Frankenstein – and Friends!” was broadcast from the seemingly unseasonable month of July, through to September, ahead of the BBC's own "Count Dracula", one of the most faithful adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel. This time is bookended by the premiere of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” in the United States (on 25th May) and in the UK (on 27</span><sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> December). Much like Nirvana reshaped the rock music mainstream with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 1991, “Star Wars” seemed to wash away the “monster madness” that cemented the imagery of Universal’s characters in general popular entertainment for children as much as for adults. From then, science fiction fantasy would be dominant in popular culture, except at Halloween, and whenever an individual work, like “Hotel Transylvania”, can break through.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I am fortunate to live surrounded by Gothic imagery: skulls, candlesticks, heads from marble statues, ivy and (fake) deer’s heads. Our land line phone is shaped as a chrome skull. A previous video of mine confirms we have bats circling our back garden. Of course, the gothic literary and arts tradition on which both Universal and Hammer drew for its film series – in both cases a niche and specialty for each studio, before the idea of film franchises took hold – is centuries old, but it is a tradition not limited to a certain time of the year.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Decades of familiarity of Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula and the flat-headed Frankenstein’s monster made the Universal monsters, and legally distinguishable variations of thereof, into family fare such as the coincidentally concurrent “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters” of 1964-66, and of Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” of 1960, of which the later album is best described as non-essential, even if you will hear the “Transylvania Twist”. Add into this the preponderance of monster imagery in food aimed at children, such as Smith's Crisps’ original Horror Bags, followed by Monster Munch, Wall’s Dracula ice lolly, and Count Chocula breakfast cereal, and it was clear how embedded in the culture this imagery truly was.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Of course, it is still pervasive, but only in the run-up to Halloween, which in the United States appears to be from July, in the run-up to when Halloween begins the period known as “the Holidays”. The UK is catching up, Guy Fawkes Night having become meaningless over the decades, and however much Halloween is an appropriation of Celtic, British and Christian tradition imposed as American mass culture, I approved of its imposition. The more we see of it, the more its imagery becomes part of the mainstream again.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-66848866963554047222023-10-22T00:03:00.002-07:002023-10-22T00:03:33.729-07:00EAT THAT UP IT’S GOOD FOR YOU [419]<p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXokxqJVYb6gKSRDGNmCO_sp-xb91DzIP5zKYEbJO5urhpaIUPlk3uufxZBbsl4GLaJlDFzEraU1UUdUvQTo2EEGdoYIPIpzDaon11iJRJODHcSIocS3pWAKjSmPSVL6QjmU5UUp0hKk_GDPlyrJ3Gl5dAnsT93Gj9_cMkTKsixkugspuA6sTxjw0KEFc/s640/LJS%20419%20Roast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXokxqJVYb6gKSRDGNmCO_sp-xb91DzIP5zKYEbJO5urhpaIUPlk3uufxZBbsl4GLaJlDFzEraU1UUdUvQTo2EEGdoYIPIpzDaon11iJRJODHcSIocS3pWAKjSmPSVL6QjmU5UUp0hKk_GDPlyrJ3Gl5dAnsT93Gj9_cMkTKsixkugspuA6sTxjw0KEFc/w400-h400/LJS%20419%20Roast.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: arial;">I know I can facetiously ask the question “does this excite you?” about the British Sunday roast because, when I have asked the question of someone, it usually does. It is a lynchpin of some families’ weekends, or the treat you saved yourself for through the previous week. If the thought of the meat cooking in its own juices don’t make you salivate, the vegetables will have, especially if I have planted that thought there. I can see it being some people’s last meal, if they are engaging in that thought experiment.</span></span><p></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Knowing I use song lyrics for titles here, I was amazed by the sheer amount of song playlists available as a background to hosting a Sunday roast, emphasising it bringing together families each week – I only didn’t make that connection immediately because not every family gathers to have a roast.<o:p></o:p></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">If the purported beginnings of the Sunday roast are from a joint of meat, potatoes and vegetables slowly cooking in the same tray while you are meant to be at worship, returning to a meal ready to eat and swimming in its own gravy, I can see that observance remaining while church attendances decline. Adapted through successive centuries – your own choice of mains and veg will be different from the next person - and spread across the English-speaking world, the Sunday roast is now as quintessentially British as the chicken tikka masala. For me, the ideal Sunday roast is chicken, or even a nut roast, with potatoes, cauliflower and/or broccoli, peas, onions, a small Yorkshire pudding – not one approaching the size of the plate – and mustard, but not gravy. If I find myself at a carvery, that is what I will pick.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">However, is “a carvery” a Sunday roast? They often have the same ingredients, and The carvery is like a fast-food buffet restaurant made from the constituent parts of a Sunday roast, almost like a grown-up version of a school canteen, with its origins being comparatively recent: the first two examples opened up in Tottenham Court Road and the Strand, both in London, in branches of Lyons Corner Houses, better known as a range of tea rooms run by the manufacturers of biscuits, bread and Battenburg cake. This coincides with the beginnings of Berni Inn, the first major steakhouse chain in the UK, with later competitors being Beefeater (from 1974), and Toby Carvery (initially Toby Pub & Carvery, from 1985). This line may have been what made me think that old English steak- and chophouses may have some crossover with the Sunday roast, when they really only cook the same meats.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">It might be difficult to separate the Sunday roast from the British pub-restaurant as we know it today, unless you’re me, and the last time you went to one, you had prawn and chilli linguine – I didn’t fancy anything too heavy that day.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-30764255003122021302023-10-15T00:10:00.004-07:002023-10-15T00:10:47.036-07:00DID WE FLY TO THE MOON TO SOON? [418]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAPbuc79l-P-jhg_zk9DW-mRjNzWjUHqMb6prmC8Tt1HNSiY2IKRfAQ8fVYvr3lzDp2kmDZvKqqjwvE5aTcRvUU9mAR0A7Ch4mGle1kQ7rrn77SXWX2UbIi8CH0uK0G4n5Y0hPktjk3jF0wVFO0mudVDzlNwLCQ7ZVI9tuZMgEdDLtYC448RRjnshISiA/s600/LJS%20418%20The%20Movie%20Channel.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAPbuc79l-P-jhg_zk9DW-mRjNzWjUHqMb6prmC8Tt1HNSiY2IKRfAQ8fVYvr3lzDp2kmDZvKqqjwvE5aTcRvUU9mAR0A7Ch4mGle1kQ7rrn77SXWX2UbIi8CH0uK0G4n5Y0hPktjk3jF0wVFO0mudVDzlNwLCQ7ZVI9tuZMgEdDLtYC448RRjnshISiA/w400-h300/LJS%20418%20The%20Movie%20Channel.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br />For about seven months in 1990, British TV audiences had to choose between two satellite TV companies if they wanted to receive more channels, if cable was not available in their area. One company haemorrhaged hundreds of millions of pounds to put their satellites in place to provide a high-quality service in on par with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. The other provider rented space on someone else’s satellite to provide cheap and cheerful shows and films, but were losing nearly as much money despite having a year’s head start.<p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Rupert Murdoch’s News International was on the starting line first, having purchased “Satellite Television”, also known as Super Station Europe, which had launched as Europe’s first TV satellite channel in 1982 by using space on an exploratory communications satellite. Renamed to Sky Channel in 1984, other new stations like Music Box, The Children’s Channel, Lifestyle and Screensport launched alongside it, broadcasted by UK cable TV companies that were recently allowed to start broadcasting as many channels as they like, including new ones from themselves. In 1984, cable television was still only available in few areas of the UK, mainly those that experienced receiving regular programmes over the air, and satellite television was the reserve of hobbyists able to accommodate dishes of up to two metres in diameter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Five satellite TV frequencies were allocated to every country following an international telecommunications conference back in 1977. In the UK, the BBC were never able to make use of the two frequencies assigned to them, mostly because they would be expected to shoulder the cost of building and launching the satellite themselves, and attempts to build a consortium of companies to spread the cost also fell through. The remaining three frequencies were auctioned as a franchise in 1986, the winner gaining all five frequencies when the BBC gave up on theirs – what would become BBC World News, BBC Prime and so on were the result of building across cable services in Europe, starting in Denmark.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The company that won the franchise, British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB), planned to launch with an entertainment channel named Galaxy, incorporating a children’s strand named ZigZag; Now, the UK’s first 24-hour news channel with content provided by ITN; and Screen, a channel showing recent films for an extra fee, with dedicated sports and music channels added later. Among BSB’s owners was owned by ITV companies Granada and Anglia, ITN and the Virgin Group - the presence of the fashion chain Next among later investors was not unusual in the late 1980s, as Lifestyle and Screensport were owned by the bookstore and stationers WHSmith at this point. Programmes would come from independent providers set up by people who previously worked for the BBC among others, and some sports rights were shared with the BBC including Wimbledon, where Sue Barker got her start as a presenter. The planned launch date for Britain’s first satellite TV company would be September 1989.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR517VivWlJYt6zzWdDfg2fBs8YbcQ4-sPDGcvYt2BsaySo1chYUXo9I5lmkoxvntqiSWysD2W_iJiOPZw7zi_k8g0s-xCXdkN92XryjLZwndLRpTCas1VJ6D68HbFgIu3Gzk_uMD0A8PC-r59xOAGtEI_7UCSoUN71uDEjFv5-oKyYpeEHx1BMIuqgss/s472/LJS%20418%20Galaxy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="472" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR517VivWlJYt6zzWdDfg2fBs8YbcQ4-sPDGcvYt2BsaySo1chYUXo9I5lmkoxvntqiSWysD2W_iJiOPZw7zi_k8g0s-xCXdkN92XryjLZwndLRpTCas1VJ6D68HbFgIu3Gzk_uMD0A8PC-r59xOAGtEI_7UCSoUN71uDEjFv5-oKyYpeEHx1BMIuqgss/w400-h304/LJS%20418%20Galaxy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p>...then Rupert Murdoch announced, in June 1988, that Sky Television would launch inside a year, providing a revamped Sky Channel, later renamed Sky One, along with their own news, sports and movie channels, by using space rented on a satellite launched by the government and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, named Astra. Like Radio Luxembourg, whose English service provided pop music in the evenings and on Sundays since the 1930s, when the BBC traditionally did not, Sky Television would be broadcast outside of British territory and regulation, and free to broadcast whatever it wanted, which was initially game shows, American and Australian imported shows, older films, and tractor pulling on Eurosport.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">It is easy to draw a series of diametric opposites between BSB and Sky, so here they are. BSB were based in a marble-clad building named after their satellites, Marcopolo House, in central London; Sky was based in a business park in Osterley, near Heathrow Airport. BSB were saddled with the building and development costs of both their satellites, and of the D-MAC broadcast system that would provide a robust high-definition signal back to earth; the satellite Sky were renting from only reached its set position four days before the channels launched, and the hope was that its higher-power signal, using existing PAL technology, would reach the ground to the smaller dishes being made by Amstrad. ITN left the BSB consortium when an agreement could not be reached over the Now channel, which was turned into a lifestyle, current affairs and arts channel not unlike BBC Two at the time, with cursory news updates provided by another firm; Sky News innovated from the start, and acted as a fig leaf of respectability for Murdoch’s endeavour. Once running, Now provided the arts programmes Sky initially promised, along with a European Disney Channel, but didn’t launch. BSB spent tens of millions of pounds to secure films for The Movie Channel; Sky Movies had a free pick of 20</span><sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> Century Fox, Murdoch owning that as well. BSB had to cancel millions of pounds in advertising when the technology was not ready for the intended launch date, to be spent again for its eventual launch in March 1990, and even then the first month was only on cable; Sky’s parent company advertised the channels in its newspapers The Sun, the news of the World, Today, The Times and The Sunday Times, and ads on S</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">ky were often for those papers, in a feedback loop outside of British jurisdiction.</span></p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsJI-6dGBCPLBIkW0d5h9CdJRndHaASp3XjJhZb0WIP9qX_jaay6ej4q3kyWeiIHPckSIOPLsL_rjTmgMCzWBtUUInBGbtjcHyuuUUBhN80Va4GSgj1aTnSra7jvPDOToaIyeygCPXFA5s0S7WHyuOPdePk_-4_WZ4f3Q_CFUqZbZy6eMnXwo0P2F33M0/s300/LJS%20418%20Sky%20News.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="219" data-original-width="300" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsJI-6dGBCPLBIkW0d5h9CdJRndHaASp3XjJhZb0WIP9qX_jaay6ej4q3kyWeiIHPckSIOPLsL_rjTmgMCzWBtUUInBGbtjcHyuuUUBhN80Va4GSgj1aTnSra7jvPDOToaIyeygCPXFA5s0S7WHyuOPdePk_-4_WZ4f3Q_CFUqZbZy6eMnXwo0P2F33M0/w400-h292/LJS%20418%20Sky%20News.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Penny Smith and Alistair Yates present Sky News's first bulletin<br /><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">As reported in Peter Chippindale and Susanne Frank’s 1991 book about this time, “Dished!”, only 14 percent of households in 1990 were even interested in installing satellite television in their homes, and of them, only thirty percent were thinking of having it installed that year, and that is before you get to the choice of provider. Both BSB and Sky were spending millions of pounds over the odds every week just to get the infrastructure there, down to giving away the equipment for free, and cutting spending on programmes led to BSB essentially repeating Now’s entire output for ten weeks, as who had watched it the first time? The eventual merger to form British Sky Broadcasting on 2</span><sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">nd</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> November 1990 was inevitable: Sky’s customers benefitted from BSB’s entertainment, films and sports programmes, and BSB’s customers received free Sky equipment, with the Marcopolo satellites and D-MAC technology lasting into the 2000s in Europe.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">What remains of this time? The households that had BSB had their video recorders ready to tape a “Doctor Who Weekend” held on the Galaxy channel, which aired classic BBC shows like “Dad’s Army” and “The Goodies” in a manner not unlike the later UK Gold channel. Comedy programmes included an interesting stand-up and sketch show “I Love Keith Allen”, and the satirical nightly news summary “Up Yer News!”. “31 West”, a chat show named after the position of the Marcopolo satellites, presages “The One Show”, Jools Holland presented music show “The Happening”, not unlike the BBC’s later “Later... with Jools Holland”, and the infamous comedy pilot “Heil Honey, I’m Home!”, a parody of 1950s American domestic sitcoms starring Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, is also a thing. Meanwhile, Sky put its faith in big names, with current affairs, interview and game shows presented by Frank Bough, Derek Jameson, Tony Blackburn, Keith Chegwyn and, once the merger with BSB took place, Selina Scott and Sir Robin Day. Most notably, the show that arguably put Sky into more homes than all of them began on 2</span><sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">nd</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> September 1990: “The Simpsons”.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Ultimately, having a choice of satellite TV provider benefitted no-one, as the market was too small to have a choice, but once the dust settled, satellite television became a viable option. I use it at home, ironically to receive a more robust signal for the BBC and Channel 4, just like cable subscribers once did.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPOf6SEB9Hqgrzk1IXSjmxY1Uex4O8ejFWvuEx4_xUEGJLgwWwD3VDDdvIERDqfWRb6R8ly5KC5RxrejAQp7O7ewQ8J1q5Yvp-hdBhHUPGdffCNihWNSSiBVr5zTjkZ9b4XkjEhQ_pqDYObbr2_rM7JR5T8-3aLdHzikJW5SDt2Hw_i1j3zKu7MNQCeH4/s250/LJS%20418%20Sky%20Movie%20Channel.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="250" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPOf6SEB9Hqgrzk1IXSjmxY1Uex4O8ejFWvuEx4_xUEGJLgwWwD3VDDdvIERDqfWRb6R8ly5KC5RxrejAQp7O7ewQ8J1q5Yvp-hdBhHUPGdffCNihWNSSiBVr5zTjkZ9b4XkjEhQ_pqDYObbr2_rM7JR5T8-3aLdHzikJW5SDt2Hw_i1j3zKu7MNQCeH4/w400-h301/LJS%20418%20Sky%20Movie%20Channel.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-965812287889984560.post-54902313378025270872023-10-08T00:43:00.004-07:002023-10-08T00:43:34.901-07:00EVERY SINGLE ONE’S GOT A STORY TO TELL [417]<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUOizIjEoxwMi-UwXBpS97_zD6hwVENSqiyjEXNzgPIFgGx8f2NmA4Cvjth5M3Dm0pSwnpHFqaiafN93k9Fui57KUxuUmCbIaCT8w3jmEXznlMEX629WByQ4oUGSwKGUmBC057jj0NAHAcC9kzV7umYpy-PoikezLZpQ6BeScniUsmg0Jyp4-5zPwPzWk/s960/LJS%20417%20Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="691" data-original-width="960" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUOizIjEoxwMi-UwXBpS97_zD6hwVENSqiyjEXNzgPIFgGx8f2NmA4Cvjth5M3Dm0pSwnpHFqaiafN93k9Fui57KUxuUmCbIaCT8w3jmEXznlMEX629WByQ4oUGSwKGUmBC057jj0NAHAcC9kzV7umYpy-PoikezLZpQ6BeScniUsmg0Jyp4-5zPwPzWk/w400-h288/LJS%20417%20Poster.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />I haven’t been to a cinema in over a year. Apparently, my last trip to one was on Sunday 25<sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">September 2022 to watch “Moonage Daydream”, Brett Morgen’s documentary-collage about David Bowie. Any further thoughts of a visit were dismissed because screens were blocked by multiple showings of blockbuster franchises with long running times, or that films I wanted to see were screening at times that were personally inconvenient – I have only just seen Wes Anderson’s latest film “Asteroid City” following its release on Blu-ray.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">On Saturday 7</span><sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> October 2023, I returned to my local cinema, a Vue, which turned out to be in the middle of a refit, which was encouraging for its future in light of the last few years as other cinema chains, particularly Cineworld, still struggle following the (obligatory mention of the) pandemic. However, the cinema’s new recliner seats are slightly irritating: their new recliner seats are either too comfortable when fully deployed, or else sitting back in your chair forces your legs up anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I was there to watch “Dumb Money”, a ripped-from-the-headlines comedy about the general Reddit-reading public’s mass buying of shares in the video game store Game Stop in 2021, in competition with hedge fund managers that were effectively betting on its demise. In the film, a character talks about their father losing their job and pension when their life-long employment in a grocery store is ended by a leveraged buyout that siphoned the worth of the business to the point of bankruptcy. Vue is owned by two Canadian pension funds, and it is in their pensioners’ interests that I returned. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">It was nice to see a mid-budget comedy-leaning film, aimed more at adults rather than children or families, in a cinema, although it is debatable as to whether $30 million is still “mid-budget” when a blockbuster can cost eight, nine, ten times as much. The mid-budget film can become a series on a streaming service more easily than a low -budget project or a blockbuster, and the story “Dumb Money” could easily have been told in a series of instalments, like the chapters in the book on which it is based, “The Antisocial Network”. While some reviews of the film have criticised the leaving out of detail in when or how certain events have happened, I preferred seeing the story in a 104-minute sweep than in a six- or eight-part series bogged down by explanation – if I need more detail, I will read the book.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I also liked that, in Paul Dano, we had a leading actor whose career had been built up by Hollywood without being in service to a franchise, his role as The Riddler in “The Batman” having been written with him in mind. Without advocating the building up of an old-style studio system to nurture actors of the stature in the Classical Hollywood era, more such casting should be encouraged: Alfred Hitchcock cast Cary Grant three times in his films, and James Stewart five times, because doing so saves twenty minutes of explaining who the character is, and while Dano is playing a real person, he effortlessly portrays their precarity throughout the film’s story of his financial situation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">In the wake of the success in “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” in bringing audiences back to cinemas following the Covid-19 pandemic, the release of “Dumb Money” was made more widespread in the United Stated than originally intended. MGM, initially involved with the film before moving on, is maintaining theatrical releases despite its being bought by Amazon in 2022, including through its subsidiaries Orion and American International Pictures. Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”, made for Apple’s streaming service, is receiving a full theatrical release first through Paramount Pictures. Taylor Swift’s upcoming concert film has already received $100 million in pre-release ticket sales, although that might also be because seeing the film in a cinema is cheaper than attending one of her concerts in person. The outlook feels good.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">But what did I think of “Dumb Money”? It tells a finely wrought human story out of a very knotty financial event, and explains itself very well. Most importantly, it got me out of the house.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Leigh Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18373200443414593362noreply@blogger.com0