I love robbing the English, they're so polite.

My copy of A Fish Called Wanda is just not the best quality, it's sad. Is there a remastered one out there? And I have no special features, just some crappy trailer. I'm really not all that into special features, but this is one of those movies where I absolutely would be.



The audio mix is really crap on this DVD, too. Grr. And it's such a great movie. In case you can't guess, I'm watching it right now...it's been too long. (Not that I can't still quote it verbatim, mind you.)

It does strike me how much harder it gets to make movies like this (caper-esque, but it's so much better than that) as times change and technology gets better...you know, so much easier to prove/disprove various things...but the whole point of a movie like this is fun.



And nostalgia may have me biased but I still don't find it even minutely dated...must be the charismatic acting on everyone's part. Still nothing but great chemistry, witty dialogue, more than enough story going on with fabulous editing and soundtrack both. Very much a classic.

Get ready to become the main character in the story of the worst day of someone's life.

So I learned a fun lesson the other day. The key to my car (and so many these days) is one of those keyless entry numbers where, although there is indeed a key on it, most of it is buttons--arming/disarming, popping the trunk, etc. Well, did you know that you should not dunk your keys in your margarita and expect it to keep working?

D and I stopped off at Gloria's after work and for whatever reason, I decided to move my keys from one spot to another and well, I dropped them right in my drink along the way. And no, when this happened, I had only consumed one. It spent mere seconds in the sugary concoction, yet it would seem sugar, alcohol and electronics just do not mesh. It even spent the night opened up to dry out.

So now I have to lock my car the hard way (oh the humanity). I called VW to ask about replacing it. Wow. So it would be $65 to replace the part, not the end of the world, really. Aha, but then it's another $85-100 to reprogram it. Nice. I said thank you, I think I'll continue to just stick the key in the door to lock it.

So let's all remember: keys are not for margarita dunking.

Other than that, I've kept busy with a little reading. I read one of my dad's recommendations, The Likeness by Tana French. It has a borderline-ridiculous premise and yet it's really well written and pulls it off.



I didn't realize it was a follow-up to a previous detective novel, but it really doesn't matter in order to read this one.

And in an apparently drastic change, I'm now reading Daniel Pinchbeck's disturbingly interesting 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (thanks for the article, dad!). Oh my. I'm not that far into it, and it's far more intriguing than I expected it. I was ready for it to be woo-woo crazy and unintentionally funny. But so far it's really descriptive of other cultures' takes on the passage of time (not really addressing the End of the World just yet), all heavily peppered (almost saturated, really) with Pinchbeck's psychedelic experimentations.

Honey, I want to go through a Bwiti tribe initiation and take iboga. Maybe next year. (Just kidding, mom.)

Either way, I really recommend both. The former for the gripping story, the latter for being...well, interesting just doesn't cut it, let's put it that way.

Duck off

A few years ago, I had a run of bad luck. Well, *I* didn’t, personally, but the people I interviewed did; in the space of a few months, there were two deaths and an emergency heart bypass.

Then, towards the end of last year, I wrote a feature about the Thai tourist industry, quoting a respected hotel manager thus: “So long as they don’t blockade the airport, we’ll be all right.” The day after it went to press... well, you probably saw it on the telly.

In the past fortnight, I’ve submitted two separate food-related stories, each suggesting that forward-thinking restaurateurs should seek to emulate, er, Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck.


Who or what should I write about next, do you reckon?

Ceci n'est pas une langue

Sorry, but I’m still on about words.

Small Boo has given me a rather splendid book about my favourite painter, René Magritte. Not only does it include all the images that have become stale through repetition on postcards and tea-towels, it also devotes a lot of space to some of the less familiar pieces, including paintings from the 1940s, when Magritte experimented with a looser style, some of them strongly influenced by Renoir and Matisse; as well as photographs and bronzes.

Throughout the shifts in style and medium, however, Magritte’s big idea persists: superficially ordinary, even banal subject matter, rendered bizarre and even threatening by juxtaposition and tweaking. A man with an apple for a face; boots becoming feet; a flaming euphonium; a pipe that isn’t.

The only downside is that the accompanying text seems to follow a similar trajectory. It’s comprehensible as English, but not comfortably so; the reader just about understands what’s meant, but every few lines, there’s an eye in your slice of ham. This may be the fault of author Jacques Meuris, but I’m inclined to point the finger at translator Michael Scuffil (the sort of blame game I discussed earlier). Here are a few choice morsels:

“The brush technique with its contrasts and glissandi calls forth immaterial, impalpable impressions.”

“It is moreover an example of his attempts on the moral plane to harmonize the meaning he gave to his work as a painter with that of his life.”

“Magritte was never a friend of symbols in painting, though in poetry perhaps.”

“The total rejection of the gratuitous was one of the constant features of Magritte’s attitude.”

“All that was left for this oeuvre was to topple over into its destiny in 1967.”

During the conversation, an awkward moment occurred.

I know, I suck for letting more than a week go by. I have no idea what the hell I was doing with my time, either.

I finally caught up on movies and TV this weekend. Watched an ungodly amount of 24, so now I can pick up with the new eps Tivo saved for me.

Sunday was mostly movies...I finally watched Frozen River.




Melissa Leo was up for an Oscar. Um. Great performance but I really cannot recall the last movie I saw that was quite this depressing. To be fair, I haven't watched The Changeling yet, so we'll see what it brings.

Also watched The Visitor, whose Richard Jenkins was also up for an Academy Award. Now while it may not have been wholly upbeat, it was still really great. Great music (which was a large part of the plot), great story, I absolutely recommend that one.



It really got me thinking, actually, about movies where music not only features prominently in the film but is almost as amazing as the story itself. No biopics or musicals, but things like The Commitments, Once, Bandits (German), etc. Does anyone have any favorites?

I also polished off the last half of The Starter Wife--it was a miniseries but now it's a regular series, I think?--which was decent. It has some really awkward writing but also some really great lines. It was interesting enough and I was more than happy to watch.

On the other hand, we had Ghost Town. Everyone said it was tripe but that Ricky Gervais transcended the material and made it worth watching. Now you know I love me some Ricky Gervais; infact, he was just on The Daily Show and that was great. But the movie was tedious at best. Thank god I was working on some scans and was distracted--and I still found it awful. PASS.

Very little else to mention. I have some great stuff I've been reading that I'll have to get to later...I also need to polish off Watchmen since it comes out in just a couple of days!

Oh, PAUSE, wait, she still has it! I'm in the corner at the Flying Saucer cause they have an outlet over here it only took me eight years to find, and this dude comes over and asks, "Do you come here often to work on writing with a skirt and pumps?" gesturing to my computer. The way he asked it lead me to believe he was trying to pin me down, like he thought he knew me, but it became apparent he was just making awkward conversation.

Even weirder, he looked WAY too much like my brother-in-law. So wrong. And one side of my nose is stuffed all to hell, my hair is raked back in a greasy ponytail and I could not look any less inviting. I was as polite as humanly possible while he puttered on about weird things coming out of his mouth and how cute I was from the waist up (but then the skirt and pumps apparently made it more...you know, I kinda tuned out, this man really was one of the more awkward ones I've ever run across), but I really just wanted him to go away and he finally did.

On the one hand, I get irritated and think how this never happened when I was single, but on the other, even if I was single, none of these people have ever made me want to sit down and have an actual drink with them.

I pronounce thee

Haven’t had a good CiF rant for what seems like ages:

Maybe I shouldn't have been listening to Woman's Hour in the first place, and then it wouldn't have happened. But that's what I did, and that's how I came to hear presenter Sheila McClennon describe something or someone as "mis-CHIEV-yous"...

More holding-back-the-barbarian-hordes stuff here.

PS: And while we’re being pedantic, this is funny. (Thanks to HH.)

Rah! Rah! Rah!

I can’t think of a single competitive endeavour that hasn’t been shaken by scandal in recent years, be it drugs, match-fixing or Stade Français’s shirts [pictured].

But only University Challenge could be rocked to its foundations by the revelation that a contestant who claimed to be a chemistry student was actually a trainee management consultant.