alexsarll: (bernard)
[personal profile] alexsarll
I don't think last night's vile weather can have helped the turn-out for Fosca's last hurrah; as I quited to a couple of the band, "You can spend your whole life trying to be popular but, at the end of the day, the size of the crowd at your funeral will be largely dictated by the weather." Not that Fosca did ever try that hard to be popular; they only mattered to those to whom they mattered, and it was better that way. I'm not entirely convinced that they're a band that need three guitars - indeed, I'm not entirely convinced that any band does - but it was still good to hear the old favourites one more time, and the two new tracks a first and last time - including an intriguing new 2 Tone direction on one. I'll miss them; I've got too few bands left to go see these days.
A less loving farewell earlier in the day: went to see what was to be seen at Woolworths. A shop I often found very useful in my Cambridge days, but which for years now has always reeked of desperation - and doubly so now. I was expecting to come away with some tat by way of a memento, but no...the reductions weren't all that, and even had they been...Donna Noble and variant Ood toys. Transformers you've never heard of. Films you already own in those ill-conceived boxes with other films which might share a genre but which you genuinely hope never to see. And that was the good stuff. My MP3 player, aptly, was playing We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank.

Bad Santa is one of those films which hasn't learned from the advance I've previously mentioned in American comedies, the one where plot is now pretty much optional. In so far as the film is Billy Bob Thornton in a Santa suit, swearing, cussing, fornicating and so forth - brilliant. But then they have to go and spoil it by bolting on a bloody 'character arc'. Do Not Want.

I had always thought that, while Noam Chomsky is a disgusting joke as a political philosopher, it sounded as though he was a pretty good linguist before he got seduced by the charms of pronouncing beyond his expertise; it's a situation I'd seen plenty of times in literary theory, where someone who's OK on their own turf wanders into literature and starts embarrassing themselves, yet is somehow welcomed because their external authority feels like some kind of validation. Anyway, turns out he's also a rubbish linguist, because an Amazon tribe called the Piraha have a language which violates many of his supposed universals. Of course, he'll probably just claim they're an imperialist plot to discredit him.

Date: 2008-12-14 02:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] darkmarcpi.livejournal.com
The weather was my excuse (and Anwen's). We were both dressed up and ready for Fosca but a look outside and the thought of two buses there versus Girls Aloud's TV special swung things in the latter's favour.

I hope Bad Santa is repeated over the Xmas period as I forgot to record it.

Date: 2008-12-14 04:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com
Don't forget Beyonce. Beyonce and Girls Aloud in a warm dry place where I can sit on a sofa and eat chocolate is pretty much always going to win out over going out in the cold and wet when I'd only just got in from the cold and wet.

Date: 2008-12-15 07:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
Unlikely, I would have thought, but if it is it will likely be on one of Five's digital channels which I always forget I have.

Similarly, I failed to spot the Girls Aloud thing and will now be obliged to scan the ITV2 listings.

Date: 2008-12-22 06:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] verlaine.livejournal.com
Fosca bizarrely soundtracked my American adventures in 2005, keeping me sane on the walk to and from a meaningless office job on a trading estate miles outside Seattle. It was a very lonely time of my life, I suppose, and having an English fop singing stuff into my ears that would have completely baffled everyone for a dozen miles around helped me think there was still hope.

Oh, I miss London. It's all very well out here but not the same somehow. It wouldn't be the same if I ever came back, either, though.

Date: 2008-12-22 12:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about Cambridge.

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