alexsarll: (seal)
Alex ([personal profile] alexsarll) wrote2007-07-31 06:41 pm

RUN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE

Looks like tomorrow's the final Fosca show; a shame not only in itself, but because that's a second band this year with whom [livejournal.com profile] hospitalsoup won't be playing a London farewell show. Which said, I can definitely appreciate Dickon's reasons, and if anything the knowledge of an ending makes me look forward to it even more than I already was.

Which reminds me, the final episode of the show I'm at last prepared to call Jekyll was possibly the best of the lot (especially the really-quite-obvious-once-you-realise-it-take on what emotion Mr Hyde represents; I think it was only having Alan Moore's LoEG take on the character in the way that stopped me spotting it sooner). And The Shield, as ever, managed to find a whole new level of Hell to which it could descend. But the Take That Star Stories? I wasn't convinced. I think the mistake was in having Gary Barlow do the voiceover, as against a generic voiceover guy with a pro-Barlow agenda. I can't see how that change alone was enough to kill it for me; perhaps the ensemble had changed too, or they lost a writer? But as if a switch had been thrown, I just wasn't amused anymore.

If puritanism really had no part in the smoking ban, and it was purely a public health issue, I look forward to the imminent ban on the relevant printers in all workplaces.

There are plenty of depressing periods in world history, but the worst are the ones which manage to be incomprehensible as well as miserable. I've just been reading up on the Hellenistic Age; like the Carolingian era, it basically consists of a great emperor's heirs squabbling over his legacy like particularly vicious jackals - and all having the same bloody names while they're about it. So various Philips, Alexanders, Ptolemys and Antigonuses make alliances with one against the other, shift allegiance the first time they see an advantage in it, and generally make one despair for coherence as much as humanity. Things reach a low point - by any definition - when one particularly obese and unpleasant Ptolemy throws over his sister-wife (and brother's widow) Cleopatra for her daughter Cleopatra, this union producing three further Cleopatras, who soon get into the family spirit with a rare enthusiasm for sororicide. This is all a couple of generations before the Cleopatra (VII) with whom we chiefly associate the name, of course - and before we get there we encounter the charmer Mithridates, responsible for the Rwanda-style massacre of 80,000 Romans in Asia, and who managed by practice to render himself so immune to poison that he eventually found himself with difficulties committing suicide. Oh, and did I mention that all those famous slave revolts - you know, Spartacus and company - well, whatever you may have heard, they weren't actually against slavery per se. Hell no, however would society function without slaves? They just didn't feel that they personally ought to be slaves.
Frankly, the whole bloody mess makes Rome feel like an especially restful outing for the Mr Men.

[identity profile] pippaalice.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 06:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Why do you read and watch such depressing stuff? Here have a cowcube!

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 06:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I like Alexander! And (the famous) Cleopatra! And lots of the Seven Wonders of the World come from that period, but I didn't know much else about it! So I was AMBUSHED by depressing history.

[identity profile] pippaalice.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Norty history!

I am bored alex. :(

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 07:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Take the cats to the pub!

[identity profile] pippaalice.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 07:18 pm (UTC)(link)
YEY! Am still awaiting her lordship coming back. I think Ron would like the pub

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 10:36 pm (UTC)(link)
I approve. What would he drink?

[identity profile] pippaalice.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 10:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Ginny came home and then Ron left! Possibly for the pub. He would drink BITTER! Or maybe Scotch on the rocks.

Ginny would drink alchopops or gin.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-08-01 12:32 am (UTC)(link)
Hurrah for gin!

[identity profile] burkesworks.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Fascinating bunch, the Ptolemaic dynasty; if you didn't know they were Helleno-Egyptians, you'd swear blind they came from Burnley looking at the shape of their family tree.

With you re the puritanism by the way, though you'd expect that.

[identity profile] beingjdc.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 08:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Susan Shwartz's "Heirs to Byzantium" trilogy does have them travelling to Wales or thereabouts...

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 10:38 pm (UTC)(link)
They may have many crimes to their account, but I don't think they can be held responsible for gingers.

[identity profile] beingjdc.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 10:44 pm (UTC)(link)
No, gingers are from much further East than that.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-08-01 12:33 am (UTC)(link)
Only if you take East as synonynous with Past, given they're the remnants of the Neanderthals!

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 10:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I suppose the incest in monarchies had long predated them, but they were the first to show any open acknowledgment of the obesity, random violence and general genetic degeneration...
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[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-08-02 06:55 am (UTC)(link)
Come on, man, there are times when it's worth a bit of a struggle!

The Besties...hmmm. They were the one support I was actively planning to catch, but they were a bit too Bis-gone-fey for me.
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[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-08-02 05:51 pm (UTC)(link)
If nothing else, the transport screw-ups are giving us all more of an idea of what it feels like to live in the middle of nowhere.

[identity profile] icecoldinalex.livejournal.com 2007-08-01 09:36 am (UTC)(link)
see, i like dickon, but that 'splitting a band up because it looks like success is approaching' thing infuriates me - he's not the only person i've known to do it, either.
i sometimes wonder how much these people take for granted how it would be to be ignored forever.
dunno, just his time in bands appears to be equal to mine and i've got precisely f*ck all to show for it, in terms of what i hoped for.
It was only tindersticks level i was after, for goodness sake...

moan moan moan.

still, i like his bowing out while it's still worth bowing out on philosophy. good luck to him!

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-08-02 06:54 am (UTC)(link)
I don't think that's quite what he's saying. More, Fosca Mk I were an experiment - and once he saw managers &c approaching, he realised that were he to sign up for it, he'd be locked into that format long-term, which hadn't been the idea, and wasn't really desirable. And if you'd heard Fosca Mk I you really would understand.
After all, it's not as if he fled from success when it (apparently) came calling for Orlando!

[identity profile] sbp.livejournal.com 2007-08-01 10:36 am (UTC)(link)
Boo, Kate is totally part of Fosca.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2007-08-02 06:56 am (UTC)(link)
Though I certainly felt her absence last night, and for my money all their best shows did feature her, at base Fosca has always been Dickon & Co.