Eclectic Trains

A picture isn't needed here. Newman was one of three actors that captured "cool" when I was growing up in the 1970s; Robert Redford and Steve McQueen were the other two, but Newman was my favourite. The faraway eyes and rebel streak made him very compelling to watch. I must have seen "Cool Hand Luke" a dozen times. I was three years old when it was released in 1967, but the movie seem to play back-to-back on television in the late 70s and I never got sick of the hard-boiled egg eating challenge. Newman just cut it as a wilful, independent spirit. His "Mendacity, mendacity" speech, where he railed against his father in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958), was another memorable film moment. The film caught the inter-generational tensions of the late 50s and 60s and still resonates with family life today.

Quotes attributed to Newman are worth a read: Paul Newman: In his own words. All poker players know this one (below) but might be surprised it is one of Newman's.

"If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you!"

It's only Thursday and this week we have experienced the Lehman Brothers collapse, the AIG shore-up and the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB. Lehman Brothers workers left Canary Wharf on Monday with their desks emptied into cardboard boxes. It's been a whirlwind of a week.

But developments on a far smaller scale have been distracting me. I've have been monitoring the credit crunch and it's micro effect on the local economy for some months and small things keep on catching my eye. I walk past a pie and mash shop on the Bethnal Green Road most days on my way to work and in July there was a small, apologetic note in the window that read something like this: "With regret the price of pie and mash will have to go up to £2 on Monday because our suppliers have increased their prices". I meant to snap it with my mobile's camera but I was a bit self-conscious. (The owners might have thought I was from a rival PnM shop or just an arty-type studying East London anthropology and eating habits). The note's honesty struck me. Here was a food outlet that knew its clientele. Wholesale food price hikes were unavoidably being passed onto the punter but with a graceful, and regretful, warning.

Meanwhile just up the road - in fact on the Roman Road - a cash machine that dispenses £5 notes was allegedly being installed. I haven't checked it out yet, but the local free newspaper ran the story and described the decision to install the machines as a response to the gloomier economic conditions and the need for people to access smaller amounts of cash. It seems slightly mad when you think about it. Why bother? And yet, when you start to look at your own spending habits - or saving habits - a cash machine that gives you the fiver option seems like a good idea...

"...I just need a bag of chips (£1.70) and a sausage (£1), I'm covered on the drink front - 2 cans of London Pride in the fridge at home. What's this? A cash machine that only dispenses fivers? Just the ticket. I'll have £2.30 change to buy a loaf tomorrow, make some sandwiches for lunch and skipp the caff..."

Who needs excess cash when the aim of the frugal game is to underspend on your monthly budget and have some shrapnel at the end of the month? Let's have cash machines that dispense pounds and pence! Let's march arm in arm down the street and demand a CASHFLOW REVOLUTION! Yeah!

I've been sitting at the computer grindstone over the last few evenings, battling with blogs and the technology that lies behind them and drawn a blank. PHP? It's not for me. I can barely get my head round entry level HTML. Anyway...

...I let Last.fm - what a wonderfully simple hyperlink, by the way - drive me on, as I play with coding that is going to eventually raise up its head and spit me in the eye. This magical radio station supplies a fantastic range of music to the ears of unrevenged, low-level, techy nerds such as myself (see my previous entry Rediscovering Music with Last.fm). I know I am being hard on myself but when you come to the realisation 21 years after you discovered computers and signed-up for a COBOL programming course (which you sensibly abondoned), that you ain't got what it takes, then it's time to take stock. Just as well I'm a Producer-Director-Writer in the creative world of Video Production and all this computer stuff is just a hobby. (Hobby? Obsession, more like). Where was I? Ah yes, music...

...Well, in a way I blame Last.fm for driving me on in my hopeless pursuit. Can I sue an internet radio station for keeping me focussed on the unconquerable tasks in front of me? Probably not. So there I was trying to get my head round how to customise a template in Wordpress by jigging with it's CSS, when through my headphones comes the sounds of the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Yes! I can get this code to do my bidding, I think (re-energised by the "jazz piano" tagged music). I'll hack it and crack it and blow its house in! I'm sitting up straight in my seat, leaning over my computer with authority, trying not to bang the keys in a smart-arsey, syncopated way to the intricate rhythms of the music, because it is, after all, 2am in the morning and I might wake the kids up. The track is called "Eighty-Eight Days in My Veins" and to date it has only been played 301 times on Last.fm (20:52 08/09/2008). What a discovery! The piano and double bass melody took me on a journey, a trip dare I say, where I was slaying PHP coding snakes and dragons all around me...

..the need for sleep eventually kicked in. The taste of defeat still slushes around my palette but my ears have received all the benefits of great tagging and my brain is slowly working out the potential benefits of getting out more.

Epilogue

What a shock to read in Friday's Guardian, an inspiring article by Jamie Cullum about the band's leader, Esbjörn Svensson, who died in a scuba-diving accident in June. This is a band I would have turned off the computer for and driven miles to see. If you hurry you can download MP3s of "Tide of Trepidation" and "The Well-Wisher" for free.

Slogan of the day:

Don't let great contemporary jazz piano music trick you into thinking that you have slewn the coding demons that are really only sleeping when you should be.

05 Sept 2008 - Jamie Cullum's article - Farewell to a maverick.

16 June 2008 - John Fordham's article - Jazz pianist Esbjörn Svensson killed in scuba accident.

Some good photos of EST live by Manuel Cristaldi on Flickr - Esbjörn Svensson Trio photos.

I think I might like the work of David Hare but unfortunately I have seen very little of it. I saw "Skylight" in the 90s with Michael Gambon and Lia Williams at the National Theatre which I really enjoyed at the time. I stumbled across a trailer the other night for "My Zinc Bed" and decided to stop everything and watch it with my better half. What a disappointment. I am a fan of all three actors: Jonathan Pryce, Paddy Considine and Uma Thurman, but their talents were lost in a "tv play" that just felt forced and quite undramatic. Anyway, I never planned to write a review, or anything so formal, but isn't it nice when you find an articulate reviewer who says everything you want to say and more? Lucy Mangan's review in today's Guardian did just that. I leave you with two intelligent quotes that re-raise some very pertinent questions about the nature of good tv drama.

I can't work out if it is a depressing testament to the debasing effects of the junk-television diet we habitually follow that the heightened language of My Zinc Bed - unashamedly writerly writing - felt like an affectation and distraction, or if it is simply a sign that the intimate medium of television does indeed require a less mannered form of language, lest it overwhelm rather than serve the piece.

...Even an ideas play needs drama as well as discussion.

This great review, which also takes a swipe at BBC policy towards commissioning drama, can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/28/television.television1

Thank you Lucy.

Qualified, Postive Stuff
Not even the sight of an over the hill musical hero of mine blasting out a rock classic with the Magnum-smooth vocals of last year's X Factor winner could destroy the good vibes emanating from Bejing's Bird Nest Stadium. Jimmy, we all know you want to get that reticent lead singer pal of yours back on the road, but did you have to go this far? But hey-ho, if the choice was between Jimmy or Brain May playing "We Will Rock You" (which some Team GB Art Director's brainstorming session must have thrown up, surely) then we were truly saved.

All right, some Negative Stuff (I'm holding myself back)
I think we have to probably face up to the fact Britain is seriously creatively challenged if Lewis, Page, Beckham and a Routemaster bus is all that we could come up with. I read with amusement that the lyrics to "Whole Lotta Love" had to be altered to tone them down for the closing ceremony. "I'm gonna give you every inch of my love" did not make sense for a female singer to sing, Leona Lewis advised. How quaint and subtlety put. Lewis's suggestion of swapping "inch" for "bit" was agreed by the "band" and so we have been all saved our blushes. [Led Zeppelin classic 'too racy' for Olympics].

Back on track, more Positive Stuff
Creatively challenged we may be, but I think our sporting heroes have been truly inspiring. The work has been put in and rewards were reaped. Rebecca Adlington's gold double in the swimming were the cream of the Brit crop for me. She swam as fast as Johnny Tarzan Weissmuller... wow! And she now has her own Wiki [Rebecca's Wiki]. And she's from Mansfield, Notts (a place I know). We've got an Italian coach for the English football squad and several Australian coaches in Team GB, let's get an international art director for the opening and closing ceremony. Who have we got anyway? Has it been decided? It's Tracy Emin isn't it? Sorry, I was getting negative again...

Very Positive Stuff
My defining memory from the Games was Usain Bolt's 200m record smash. The track side moving camera shot picked up Bolt on the home straight. It was filmic television at its best. Bolt was in sharp profile in the foreground and the Bird's Nest crowd on the other side of the stadium was one big, blurry shallow focus smudge. This was the moment. He had to get it! He had to beat Michael Johnson's record, who had just said in the BBC commentary box that he expected Bolt to run 19:50, i.e. not break Johnson's 12 year record of 19:32. Bolt had his eye on the prize - and, allegedly, on the "electronic timeboard" throughout the race - and Johnson escaped with only a speck of egg on his face. (If anyone could send me a link to that profile shot of Bolt I would be very grateful).

And finally...
The shots of street celebrations in Kingston when Bolt picked up his third gold and made a defining contribution to the 4x100 relay team were just sublime. The camera moved through and over an ecstatic crowd who knew that victory was theirs. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7573482.stm].

You know when you find a website that just takes your breath away... well Last.fm has done that for me. It's a music social networking web 2.0 site thingamyjig. It's basically a music website that allows you to listen to vast amounts of music for free*. The clever "scrobbling" software behind the scenes tracks your tastes and suggests to you other music you might like. As Last.fm exlains itself:

"Millions of songs are scrobbled every day. This data helps Last.fm to organise and recommend music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides."

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have managed to discover music that I just hadn't heard before. "Unlimited free, legal music!" you say in complete surprise. Can this be true? No, not exactly. In the process of playing certain tracks to death, I discovered that Last.fm will try and restrict the frequency of access to tracks by only letting you hear 30 second excerpts. Why? *Because they want you to subscribe to the service (£1.50 per month) or buy the track. Okay, so there is an business model beneath the surface but what the heck it's still brilliant! Personally, I think it blows iTunes out of the water.

I went to a gig in 1992 at the Jazz Cafe. Abdullah Ibrahim was playing with a 4-piece band. I thought he was amazing and one particlar track just mesmerized me. After the gig I tried to find the track, but to no avail. I bought a few albums but he is very prolific and the internet didn't exist then. I even resorted to singing the flute melody to staff on the jazz floor of London's Virgin Megastore. They were sympathetic, and highly bemused, but couldn't help. Last.fm helped me discover this track in a matter of minutes. My quest has ended but really it has only just begun. In case you would like to hear this tune here is a link below. It's called "The Mountain" and I believe it is the title track of an eponymous album and with it's oriental themes, should have been the BBC's ident music for the Olympics (or perhaps not, some gem stones are best left undisturbed).

www.last.fm/music/Abdullah+Ibrahim/_/The+Mountain

I have eclectic music tastes as my moniker suggests. I have a penchant for classic rock and was lucky to go and see Led Zeppelin in December 2007 at the O2. Please read my blog entry on the Zep gig if you fancy: eclectictrains.blogspot.com/2008/01/zep-at-o2-belated-tribute.html

But that ain't half the story. I love jazz, blues, Beethoven, Bach, Stravinsky, Mozart, Mahler and am still listening to "London Calling" by The Clash.

I've been meaning to sign up to Last.fm for a while. The company is based near my work - www.xube.co.uk - in the East End of London, I believe, so I feel a kind of parochial pride in it's success. What a great idea!

electictrains @ Last.fm

During our working lives we are often confronted with new jargon. Sometimes we are expected to use it even if we know it's temporary adoption will make fools of us all. In Michael McGrath's beautifully conceived short film, a competition between middle-ranking managers to 'push the envelope' with their usage of new business jargon is taken to hilarious extremes. Please enjoy the unity of great cinematography, a classic score and "I Dream of Genie" sound effects. The directing and script aren't bad either.

This film is at least 4 years old and Mike is a close friend who I've been cajoling to put his films out on the web. Thanks for giving in Mike.

Oh my goodness! It's the 30th June and no blog-posting to speak of, or write of, in June. My promise to myself - so you really don't need to know this - was to post at least one blog a month and I'm barely hitting that target. It's positively Stalinist in it's 5 year planishness, if you get my drift...

...So here is a posting with lots more promised in July when my life slows down. I'm just work busy (a good thing, I suppose), forget hectic social life excuse - that's for 20 year olds!

However, I did manage to steal a family holiday in late May (half-term break) in the only country I will ever have the chance of learning the language of - France. Brittany, to be precise. And I have to report that all we seemed to meet were universally friendly French people which is certainly not how the alleged curmudgeons are perceived from this side of the English Channel. Now you might argue, cynically, that these Frenchies were only being friendly because they were taking my money e.g. the main people I had to try out my "O" Level French on were indeed: waitresses, supermarket checkout staff and the gites owner. You suspect that under their breath you can hear them mutter: "Here comes the stupid English family holidaying in France when the Euro is so strong and we've just put up our food and fuel prices to catch up with les Brits...mutter... mutter...". I know what you are thinking, but no. I like 'em. I like their roads, their food and wine, their countryside and their wildcat strikes when they have just about had enough of anything that is fromaging them off.

And do you know what? secretly, oh so secretly, I think they like us...

...In Dinard near to where we stayed, just across the bay from St Malo, they hold a British Film Festival every October... More about this in my next posting (I promise).

But if you can't wait here is a link: http://www.festivaldufilm-dinard.com/index-en.php

...there's even a statue of Hitchcock in the town...

CCTV to monitor Hampstead Heath

Hampstead Heath is going to have CCTV cameras to act as a deterrent, the BBC story ran today. We already have them in our parks in East London. My photo set on Flickr (see link below) will hopefully highlight the sordid lengths that the authorities will go to make CCTV cameras just a tad more palatable to us all. How about corrupting the concept of public art (with input from local children) by commissioning a sculpture that is really just a housing for 2 large CCTV cameras? How sick is that?

The more I look at the sculpture - and I do a lot because it is on my way to work - the more angry I get. Personally, I think the debate that we seem to have lost over 15 years ago needs to be rejuvenated. Let's start with a slogan, how about: "Take the cameras down". And here is the argument: liberty takes precedence over crime prevention. We might even find that if we take our liberty more seriously, crime prevention will become less of a problem. (More on that idea another time. I need to understand what I'm thinking!).


4 million cameras? 3% crime prevention success rate? CCTV isn't working. They have invaded our public space and effectively removed it. Fun happens in places where we know we are not being watched and that leaves us in our homes - alone.

Rowenna Rowling, a Hampstead Heath regular, said on BBC London TV News this morning: "You come here to get away from it all, the crowds, noise, CCTV cameras and everything. It [CCTV] would be a terrible, terrible mistake."

I agree with Rowenna. Make London parks free of CCTV and give us back our public space.

My Flickr set of the Weaver's Fields Public CCTV Sculpture

BBC News Article

View Larger Map

15/04/2008 [13:04] I took a beautiful train journey in stunning spring sunshine from Swindon to Cheltenham, today. I passed a long village that clung to a mild ravine where villagers waved at my passing train and children played without adults in open play areas. (They were probably hiding behind trees and conspiring in my fantasy). The next stop was Stroud and I think the village I passed was Briscombe (at least that was a name I gleaned from a pub sign). [19:18 - Googlemapped it on my return journey: it's Brimscombe].

The sight of south-westerly facing cottages all hewn from Cotswold stone and reflecting this magnificent light took my breath away. My spreadsheeted schedule for an up and coming video shoot in Cheltenham could distract me no longer.

The city versus country debate, which I often joke about with my friends, came to mind. Country folk still to this day complain about the speed and general hustle and bustle of London and we City folk say we would die of boredom in the country. There is certainly posturing on both sides. Very few people want self-enforced isolation and vice-versa, none of us enjoy feeling cramped and caged in.

I love both but play the partisan city dweller with some conviction. I grew up in the country and left home when I was 19 to see what England's city could offer me. There was no plan but Nottingham, Brighton (still a town when I lived there), Manchester and finally London have not put me off.

For now the countryside is a visit, an adventure playground, a brief visit to my past and a magical place.

Back to that spreadsheet...

[19:27] I arrived in a sun-drenched Cheltenham and left in a puddle (but not right up to my muddle. That was Gloucester wasn't it?). However, in between a productive recce and a meeting at HQ, I was informed of the full impact of last year's floods. Workers had to work from home whilst electrical went down whilst noisy, smelly diesel generators made life miserable for the colleagues who had to stay with the ship (probably the IT support desk).

The journey home from Cheltenham was in some ways even more evocative than my trip up. The train's tannoy system was on the blink and the ticket collector's mild-to-thick sub-continental announcements were greeted with hoots of laughter from the kids in the carriage. We adults didn't join in for fear of misinterpretation (all right I chuckled). "The train will shortly be stopping at FARToud..." (read Stroud).

The waving adults and playing children were now all inside and my new favourite ravine (might be just a valley) offered a different side. The valley floor had a steam - I apologise now if you are a small river - that cut a path between small collections of still water that might be ponds but felt slightly less manicured than your usual village pond. The moist, still evening just hung in the air. I was being asked to go and explore but 60 MPH of steel and glass weren't going let that happen. I hopelessly snapped with my superlowres BlackBerry camera. Gave that up.

[20:12] The light has gone. I am not on a plane where I could turn my reading light off. The efficient fluorescents stop me from looking into the dark density of the countryside. But the Brimscombe enticement is behind me and the moment has passed.

Back to the Goldberg Variations...

[20:35] It's raining in London. Where's my umbrella? Back on the bench at Cheltenham Spa railway station - that's where! 3 umbrellas down in 2008. That'll be 9 by December at this rate. Would it be too much to ask for umbrella manufacturers to make me and unbreakable and lossless umbrella.

------------------ {This simple dotted line is "proof" of blog-posting from a BlackBerry}

"Part 2 will follow shortly"...

...Ah the promises you make to yourself and your readership (non-existent as we speak). Let this be a warning against the dangers of promising blog serialisation.

I can't blame back-to-back, nightly viewing of Series One of "The Wire". That obsession could only explain a lack of blog productivity in February. And, no I haven't watched it twice, I have lent my copy to London-based Wire Virgins. (When is it correct to use italics? by the way, as I am odeeing on them tonight). I am awaiting a free peak of Series Two and Three from some from Nottingham Wire Heads who cruelly promised they were going to let me take Series Two away with me on Sunday but have since changed their minds because they want to watch the whole series with the subtitles on. If that isn't an example of Subtitle Completism, I don't know what is...

No March, has got washed up with nasty weather; counting the days until Spring truly arrives (I think it has now); bitty work projects; trips to Nottingham and a very special 80th birthday party. Who needs to blog?

Clearly, I think I do.

I shall be returning to "The Wire" but I will leave you with the article by Charlie Brooker that sparked an interest (in a friend), who in turn showed me a clip of the series on YouTube, who then went and accidentally bought me a copy using my Amazon account (don't ask) - whilst managing to also purchase a second copy for himself. Talk about crosswires!

But here is the fiendish link anyway: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/features/story/0,,2246952,00.html

I have never owned a boxed set before. I am the last person on this planet to discover their simple, collectible, repeat-watchable beauty. And lo and behold, since I have now lost my boxed set virginity, it seems that everyone in the world is devouring "The Wire" on DVD. I feel part of a new movement... it's like "The Sopranos" all over again and yet it is not because that was such a live watching experience - now I can pause, rewind... you know, control stuff.

I have some CCTV thoughts to share but they will have to come when they are ready. Series Two and Three are being hand delivered in 11 days, 18 hours, 4 minutes and 59 seconds time.

I'm being pursued by a theme. This theme haunts my peripheral vision and nags at the fringes of my imagination. Surveillance. CCTV. Big Brother.

Why now? 'Where have you been for the last 15 years?' some might say. Sure, I've been perplexed and angered by the rapid rise of Surveillance UK for a long time but the full democratic toll of a wired Britain has just begun to grate on me that little bit harder.

It started with a walk through the park near my office in Bethnal Green late last year and has ended up with a walk down Whitehall on Tuesday (26/02/08) of this week. In between there has been the bugged Labour MP, the wonderful HBO TV series 'The Wire' in box set DVD form and the less convincing series 'The Last Enemy' from the BBC. Not to mention a continuous stream of comment and analysis from journalists who cry that "it has gone too far".

It certainly has.

And then, just as I thought I had escaped the BIG THEME, along came
the DVD of 'The Lives of Others'. Devastating. A damning take on the lack freedom in the former GDR and a severe warning about the future of Surveillance UK.

Part 2 will follow shortly.

A very pixellated photo of Led Zeppelin taken on my mobile at the O2 on 10/12/07.

I've been meaning to scribble down a few musings about Led Zeppelin at the O2 and a recent tribute to the venue in the free rag, The London Paper, has jolted me into action. I picked up the paper yesterday on the tube and read guest contributor, Louise Claridge's article "Why the O2 arena rocks my world". I enjoyed her celebration of a great venue in East London so much I felt compelled to add my experience of returning from December 10th's Led Zeppelin reunion concert. Hopefully you will find her article here: http://www.thelondonpaper.com/cs/Satellite/london/talk/article/1157150430729?packedargs=suffix%3DArticleController

Oh how sad, it says I wrote my contribution at 1:18 this morning but I know for a fact that I hit my pillow at 12:30!

Guest_Eclectic Trains says: Great article. I saw Led Zeppelin before Xmas and got home in a jiffy. Couldn't contain the smug smile on my face as the majority of fans headed West whilst I was a mere 4 stops from Upton Park (home). Bring on the rise of the mighty East London! It's been a long time... Tuesday 29 January 2008 01:18 Mark as offensive (what's that about?)

I wasn't a Led Zeppelin fan the first time round. "Stairway to Heaven" was enough to put me off. In 1976, aged 12, I had just graduated to Pink Floyd and Punk came along. The albums "Dark Side of the Moon" and "Animals" had to be hidden as The Clash, Pistols etc... went to the front of my LP box. Punk was pithy, angry, urban and cool and rock was what local biker gangs listened too. They were tough but they weren't cool. But like a lot of people whose music tastes were shaped in the 1970s you signed up to the revolution but also, over time, began to appreciate the evolution. What I mean is the raw energy to be fun in "Pretty Vacant" by The Sex Pistols could also be found in "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin. In fact the first drummer we had in our teenage punk band, was a orange-dyed haired, proto-Rotten look-a-like called "John the Punk" who used to entertain us with the opening drum break from "Rock and Roll" just to get an ironic laugh out of us. Once we managed to shut him up, Downstream, our band, went on to pen little Oxfordshire punk classics called "Punk Rock Superstar (what a hypocrite you are)", "Harlequin Man", "Apocalyptics" and "(Living in these) Financial Times". Oh those were the days...

Anyway my simple point is that Led Zeppelin have attracted wave after wave of new fans since their real demise in the late 1970s because they have a distinct and awesome sound. I think a housemate in Nottingham lent me the tape of "Houses of the Holy" in 1986. I didn't listen to it straight away, but a few years later I found it again, played it and started to get hooked (thanks Grant - I've still got your tape!). I'm no mystic. The mystic lyrics of "Kashmir" make me smile but they don't transport me. The relentless power of the music blew me away on the night and their performance of that song will stay with me for a long time. I enjoy the groove, from hard rock to funky riffs to spacey experimentation. Very rarely do lyrics catch my imagination. But on the night of the gig, whilst I was waiting to meet my brother, who had luckily, and legitimately, been sold 2 guest list tickets, I was moved to text him with some trivial and banal Led Zep (LZ) lyrics that were blasting through my iPod headphones as I emerged with fellow LZ fans up the North Greenwich escalators to the O2 Mecca. Here is my text:

------ SMS ------

To: +44**********
Sent: 10 Dec 2007 18:58
Subject: "Night Flight" by LZ
"Night Flight" by LZ

"I received a message from my brother
'Cross the water,
He sat laughing as he wrote 'The End's in sight'.
So I said goodbye to all my friends
And packed my hopes inside a matchbox
Cos I know it's time to fly...
Ohhh yeah come on meet me in the morning,
Meet me in the middle of the night..."

Nuff said. I'm here!
------------------

Pop Music is about capturing a musical moment. When it works special songs can coincide with moments in your life. I think I probably reverted to an over-excited teenager just for one night and Led Zeppelin at the O2 are to blame for that.

I got in late from work the other night and my better half was enjoying the aftermath of the finale of "Heroes" [H]. If you haven't come across it then it's Marvel Comics for the Noughties with good measures of "The X Files", "Twin Peaks" and anything aimed at the 16-35 market (if such a market exists). If you haven't come across it then you are probably so insulated from TV fads then you will find this particular posting quite dull. (It should be noted here that both my better half and myself are older than this mythical target market but that's another story with it's own set of concerns). Anyway she watches "Heroes" and I don't and anyway (once more) I don't particularly want to write about H (okay I've seen a few episodes).

Digression completed. She was enjoying the fluffy, celeb-packed commentary programme after the show where everybody and anybody is stuck in front of a camera to say why they are H addicts. And guess who is a H addict? Ricky Gervais [RG] and from the moment his cheeky, podgy, elf-like visage appeared on the TV screen, my partner in crime began to huff and puff with quite understandable statements like: "Is there any programme that Ricky bloody Gervais doesn't appear on?" (That was the toned version).

Now, I have a lot of sympathy with this view. RG does get around a bit it has to be said. Loved "The Office" and chuckled along with "Extras". The "Flaminals" books are for kids but I think they are a bit weak. He has done a few average cameos and I loved the Podcasts/Vodcasts with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington (before you had to pay for them). I don't think he is the world's most natural stand-up - he is certainly not in the Peter Kay league - but I giggled away to the "Politics" DVD (I haven't seen him live yet). So on the balance of things I would say I am a fan. Is he over-exposed? Yes. Does he fawn rather too much in front of his idols? Yes, but it is part of his comic silliness. I have only seen one episode of his documentary series about living comedians (yes, you guessed it where RG gets to interview them) and that was with Gary Shandling (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LljWm8umGIE). They are far more engaging than Dawn French's interviews but let's not go there. Was he embarrassing at the Diana Tribute concert? Yes. Did he have to do "the dance"? I think he most probably did and in a strange way sealed the complete absurdity of the occasion...

...Where am I going with this? I don't know. I'm heading off the RG backlash before it has actually happened. I suppose I feel a certain kinship with him. He is my age(ish), he loves comedy, his is not afraid to be silly (I've tried to kick the habit but I can't) and is enjoying life. But he is famous, rich, annoying and didn't make it until he was well into his 30s.

Sweet as.

3 months ago I thought "No to Blog" and "No to Facebook". 2 months ago I said "Probably to Blog, but definitely no to FB". A withering critique of anyone aged 30+ and using FB by Shane Watson in some lifestyley section of "The Grandad" actually propelled me into publicly announcing to my friends and work colleagues: "No way am I going to join this infantile trend. I've got real friends. I don't need to collect virtual ones. And I've got a private life. What could there possibly be to share?"...

...Okay, you've guessed it, I signed up to both and one good friend, who laughed at me when I mentioned blogging and "facing", has also signed up to FB! She said it was for research purposes. Funny that because I used the same excuse. Someone I knew was developing applications for FB (and making some money, don't ask me how) and I wanted to see what he was creating but to do that I had to join. There's the rub. Once you have joined you are at least partially committed. Who wants to be a mere question mark? Load up your photo, have a poke and away you go.

Incredibly distracting? Yes. Contributing to the expansion of human knowledge through seamless digital communication? The jury's out.

What I find strangely reassuring is that the only people who have asked me to be friends (and vice versa) are people I know in the real world. So what is the point? Fun, I suppose.

Bring it on...

I am fascintated by the power of the internet as a way of communicating. I love the way that information shoots across global networks. Serious news, for sure, but the really silly stuff too. YouTube has been a constant source of entertainment over the last year and a half. Can you remember your first faddy, YT moment? I can. It was that video clip that did the rounds called "Evolution of Dance" of the chap dancing to a 'Stars on 45' type mix of classic pop from yesteryear. It is still hilarious in a weird kind of ploddy, geeky way and I heard the other day it is the most watched video on YT - 61,780,947 views and rising.

It was great to be asked by Meteorite, a direct marketing company, to produce a web viral for their client Argos. It came online on Friday (19th October 2007). Meteorite (http://www.meteorite.co.uk/) had this idea to create a giant cookie jar which would be filled by 5 storeman with tons of Argos stuff. The public are invited to guess how many items are in the jar and also get a chance to see the film of how we filled it. Intrigued? This is what the Xube team (http://www.xube.co.uk/) came up with:

1. The YouTube version - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpybk5tL5QM

2. The Argos version - http://www.giantjar.co.uk/
Click on "Behind the scenes" button on the top menu bar and then click on "The Making of".

3. Another version - http://visit4info.com/details.cfm?adid=51293
This is a site for the advertising industry where you can see the viral as a "Full Screen Version".

Making the film was great fun. It was all filmed in one day. My colleague and I, director Jeremy Henderson, knew we had to fill the jar by 5pm at the very latest. This was a tight deadline with so many items. I thought we were going to get through the whole day without any breakages and then I went snapped a fishing rod into my arm whilst trying to reposition it behind the giant plasma screen. Could have been nasty but it was only a scratch as they say in the movies.

Go on enter the competition! A prize of £10,000 worth of Argos goods - who can say fairer than that. I certainly won't give away how many items there are in the jar (but there are more than 10).

The Soho House people have set up in East London. They’ve got a five-storey block on Ebor Street [E1] and have called it Shoreditch House. I believe it has an infinity pool on its rooftop terrace. The manager of The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane [E1] tells me all units are full...

http://www.uel.ac.uk/risingeast/currentissue/journalism/woolfenden.htm