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If I tried to act my age I wouldn't be me
Mar. 19th, 2007 07:44 pmAs it nears the end of its first series, Skins is moving increasingly from its pleasing teen fluff beginning to a land of dark neon and twisted mindgames; obviously, I'm loving it. Also, having met Tony's mentalist sister Effie, I'm now totally over Cassie.
Primeval went out on a different sort of high with its first time-travel story proper (as with most Doctor Who, previous episodes had used time travel to put the story's components in place, rather than actually telling stories about time travel). But as brilliant as it was to see Claudia Sound of Thundered, or realise who the camp was, for me the finest moment was Cutter shooting the super-evolved bat-thing from the future. What made the scene was that he didn't say "we're not dead yet", because he didn't need to; it was all in the eyes, a territorial triumphalism far older than language.
We had been warned in advance that the local Tesco would be spending this week closed for refurbishment (presumably it's just not sexy enough for Stroud Green Road anymore), but it seems a bit harsh that on its last day open it was almost entirely bereft of so many staples - the shelves normally devoted to bread, milk and fruit wouldn't have been out of place under communism. How are we meant to provision for the closure like that?
I remain deeply disappointed in myself over my performance at Quasar (although at least our team still won) but I managed to wash some of the salt out of the wound at the thoroughly enjoyable Guided Missile night. I liked the Duloks' shouty girl pop and Silvery's moments of sounding like Sparks, but bloody Hell they have short songs; in comparison, the Low Edges were practically prog, and I think they managed 13 songs in their brief set. Excellent as ever, obviously.
There's something at once reassuring and terrifying in learning that even Susan Sontag, towards the end, "spoke with leaden sadness of time wasted" - because it's a reminder that none of us, no matter how thoroughly we try to live life to the full, can ever escape the shadow of that great affront, mortality.
Likewise, knowing that even Susan Sontag felt "It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I measure my own work and according to which I fall lamentably short" is at once a sanction for, and a corrective to, the sensation that with so many things one wants to read, it's a bit of a waste of everyone's time to write - because what if she'd let that stop her?
Then again, all this was learned in a piece by her son introducing one of her last essays, in which we were reminded that even Susan Sontag could be grotesquely wrong at times. Her generalised attacks on television might apply to daytime pap, but if she lets that stand for the whole then she's forgetting Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is rubbish. She should have watched more HBO, and seen TV in a flourish of creativity comparable to Renaissance London theatre, happening right now.
Primeval went out on a different sort of high with its first time-travel story proper (as with most Doctor Who, previous episodes had used time travel to put the story's components in place, rather than actually telling stories about time travel). But as brilliant as it was to see Claudia Sound of Thundered, or realise who the camp was, for me the finest moment was Cutter shooting the super-evolved bat-thing from the future. What made the scene was that he didn't say "we're not dead yet", because he didn't need to; it was all in the eyes, a territorial triumphalism far older than language.
We had been warned in advance that the local Tesco would be spending this week closed for refurbishment (presumably it's just not sexy enough for Stroud Green Road anymore), but it seems a bit harsh that on its last day open it was almost entirely bereft of so many staples - the shelves normally devoted to bread, milk and fruit wouldn't have been out of place under communism. How are we meant to provision for the closure like that?
I remain deeply disappointed in myself over my performance at Quasar (although at least our team still won) but I managed to wash some of the salt out of the wound at the thoroughly enjoyable Guided Missile night. I liked the Duloks' shouty girl pop and Silvery's moments of sounding like Sparks, but bloody Hell they have short songs; in comparison, the Low Edges were practically prog, and I think they managed 13 songs in their brief set. Excellent as ever, obviously.
There's something at once reassuring and terrifying in learning that even Susan Sontag, towards the end, "spoke with leaden sadness of time wasted" - because it's a reminder that none of us, no matter how thoroughly we try to live life to the full, can ever escape the shadow of that great affront, mortality.
Likewise, knowing that even Susan Sontag felt "It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I measure my own work and according to which I fall lamentably short" is at once a sanction for, and a corrective to, the sensation that with so many things one wants to read, it's a bit of a waste of everyone's time to write - because what if she'd let that stop her?
Then again, all this was learned in a piece by her son introducing one of her last essays, in which we were reminded that even Susan Sontag could be grotesquely wrong at times. Her generalised attacks on television might apply to daytime pap, but if she lets that stand for the whole then she's forgetting Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is rubbish. She should have watched more HBO, and seen TV in a flourish of creativity comparable to Renaissance London theatre, happening right now.
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