10 Books…With Context - The Princess Bride

Still in no particular order, it’s time to take a look at another book that I can easily pick up and read more than once (and, again, it’s one that I have read more than once).

The Princess Bride
By William Goldman
First Published:- 1973

“Ah”, I can hear some of you saying, “I thought this was just a film. Didn't realise it was a book, too.” Yes, this is one of those rare occasions where the book and the film are both great, in very subtly different ways.

What’s It About?
Noted author William Goldman provides his translated abridgement (with commentary) of the Florinese classic, S. Morgenstern’s The Princess Bride - a tale of fencing, fighting, torture, poison, true love, hate, revenge, giants, hunters, bad men, good men, beautifulest ladies, snakes, spiders, beasts, chases, escapes, lies, truth, passion and miracles.

Background
William Goldman is one of those rare people who successfully balanced a career as an author and as a screenwriter, penning such films as Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Not only that but he was also very successful at adapting books into film, including his own works such as The Princess Bride and Marathon Man alongside other well-known films like The Stepford Wives, All The President’s Men and Misery (to my mind, one of the best Stephen King adaptations there is). He also wrote two fascinating books about his time as a screenwriter - Adventures In The Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell? - both of which are great reads for anyone interested in what goes on behind the scenes.

Why’s It Good?
For those of you who know and love the film version, everything you love about that is in there and then a little bit more. The film’s conceit of the story being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson is here represented by Goldman’s “translation” of the original text and commentary on what he left out and why. The characters as you know and love them are in there (even Peter Cook’s speech impediment is in the original novel) but with the added benefit of some others being more fleshed out. In addition to that, you get some sequences that never made it to the film, such as Westley’s travails through the Maze Of Death.
For those of you that haven’t seen the film, it’s a wonderfully smart and funny fairy story that is both an affectionate homage to them as well as a being a complete piss-take. It’s a book that’s truly a delight to read and just writing this has made me want to pick it up and read it for what may be the fourth or fifth time (who’s counting?). If you’ve seen the film but haven’t read the book, do yourself a favour and pick it up. If you haven’t seen the film either, watch the film first - you’ll probably want to pick up the book afterwards anyway.

Wrapped In Plastic: A Twin Peaks Rewatch - Part 8

This was the turning point for the original run of Twin Peaks. Despite David Lynch’s desire to leave things hanging, the network were insistent that they couldn’t just leave Laura’s murder unsolved and so we get to the point in the show where some closure had to be reached

S02E08 AKA Drive With A Dead Girl
In Which:- Laura’s killer plays a game of cat and mouse with Truman and Cooper

- Before we get to the main meat of the episode, let’s pick up on something that I’ve glossed over in the last few episodes which is hard to ignore now that, in the opening titles, Piper Laurie is credited as both Tojamura and Catherine Martell. In a way, it’s no more weird than the other extreme soap opera pastiche moments of the series - a character believed to be dead returning to the series in disguise as a man. Except here, we have a white woman in disguise as a Japanese man. Given the media furore around high profile instances of white people playing people of colour (Scarlett Johansson in Ghost In the Shell being one recent example), it’s difficult to know what to make of this now. To be fair to the show, they have done their best to not be stereotypical in their portrayal - it feels like an honest attempt to disguise her. I’m not sure you’d get a storyline like this now, though.
- The bulk of this episode is Leland pootling around in his car, living his BOB-infected life which we, the audience, know about but Coop and Harry have yet to discover. It makes for some nicely tense moments, especially when they stop him with Maddy;s body in the trunk of his car.
- There’s a moment where Truman reaches his limit for the mystic mumbo jumbo and Cooper takes it with good grace - it’s a nice illustration of their relationship.
- Ray Wise is on great form again as “evil Leland”, singing and menacing Cooper with a golf club.

Cliffhanger:- Maddy’s body is discovered by the police, wrapped in plastic...


S02E09 AKA Arbitrary Law
In Which:- Laura’s Killer is finally caught

- So this is it - seventeen episodes in and we finally have the conclusion to the “Who killed Laura Palmer?’ storyline; something that viewers clamoured for and then found that they didn't want once they had it.
- Mrs Tremond and her grandson, the creepy next door neighbours of Harold Smith, weren’t who they appeared to be as they aren’t to be found at the house when Coop and Donna visit (indeed never have been). They’ll crop up again in the film... 
- Cooper’s realisation of the killer is completely in keeping with the series - he gathers some people together, has a mystical flashback to the dream with Laura and then The Giant gives him back his ring. Textbook FBI procedure in Peaks.
- The whole capture of Leland and his subsequent demise is a masterclass from Ray Wise. He’s been on absolutely brilliant form these last three episodes, alternating between menacing and sympathetic, and it’s a definite high to go out on.

The Owls:- Flies out of white light at the end of the ep.
Iconic Peaks Moments:- Laura whispering her killer to Coop; Leland’s demise
Cliffhanger:- A creepy tracking shot through the woods (presumably BOB’s fleeing spirit) before an owl flies out of a bright white light into the camera.

Over To You - The Frog Who Went Funky

It’s time once again to let someone else nudge the direction of this blog, although probably not in the way that they were expecting (and almost certainly not in the way I was expecting when I started out. Today’s effort comes courtesy of Phil and you can see what the prompts were at the end of the post...


The Frog Who Went Funky

Editor’s Note:- As most of you probably don’t recall, I am, amongst other things, the curator of the Greater Kirkian Archive; that body of work which includes the various scribbling, daubings and witterings of my ancestor Squire Kirk The Elder (a curated selection of his writings can be found somewhere over here). In these recent lockdown times, I’ve had occasion to revisit some of the less catalogued boxes of the collection and came across this particular piece which hasn’t seen the light of day before. Presented here then (unedited as always) is a hitherto undiscovered tale of the Squire’s past.


The day had started as many a day was wont to do - with your humble narrator safe within the embrace of his usual seat within the Actonian Gentleman’s Club; cigar in one hand and refreshing alcoholic libation in the other. There may be a finer way to start the day but, until I happen upon it, this will more than suffice. My smoke and booze fueled indolence was not to last, however, as the grim spectre of Andrews the decrepit footman loomed into view .

“Mmuuhhhuurr mnnnuhhurr hmmurr nmmuurr?” mumbled the Grim Reaper’s representative on Earth. Fortunately, I speak a little codger and took this to mean that there was a visitor to see me. With the gentlest of cuffs round the ear, I bade him convey my guest to me.

My heart sank as the portly figure of none other than Arbuthnot “Fatty” Furlough hoved its way into view. It was a rare occasion that a visit from Furlough brought news of a pleaing variety and I suspected this was not to be one of those occasions.

As he drew nearer, I could already sense that something was amiss. The other members of the club seemed to be drawing away from him and, as his approach came within nostril range, I began to sense a distinctly unwelcome olfactory presence making itself known. I would not have expected this from Furlough - he was a man fastidious in his appearance and cleanliness and not one given to niffs of a nasty nature.

As he sat opposite me and the pungent whiff began to make the eyes water a little, I could sense that the assault upon the nostrils was not being caused by Furlough himself but by the small box that he had cupped within his surprisingly delicate hands. I smoothed my facial topiary and fixed him with a look.

“Furlough, old chap,” said I, “this really isn’t the done thing, you know. Coming into a gentleman’s club and trailing the most dreadful funk in with you. What’s all this about?”

Furlough furrowed his forlorn features and fixed me with a fearful flash of the eyes. “Hugest of apologies, old thing,” said he, “but I didn't know where else to turn. It’s been a rum old day and no mistake and I thought to myself, “Furlough, old bean, when things get rum, who’s the likeliest coe that you know who always finds himself in a rum do?” And only the one name sprung to mind.

I can tell you that I should have affronted at such a suggestion but, as the pathways of my life often lead me to the odd and the uncanny, I couldn’t really say much.

“Go on, Fa- uh, Furlough, old fruit, let me know what the trouble is.”

Pausing only to motion to Andrews and avail himself of a snifter, Furlough ploughed on. “It all started this morning. I had ventured south of the river at the insistence of a good chum of mine. He had been the previous week to the latest excitement to grace the the area - a certain Professor Pandaemonium’s Curiosity Of Phantasmagorical Wonderment, which proclaimed that ‘Deptford had never seen the likes of such a spectacle’. Hardly a ringing endorsement, I agree but he seemed much taken with it and I could not dissuade him.”

Furlough paused for a quick whetting of the whistle. “There were the usual sights you would expect at such a carnival - siamese triplets, the Bearded Man, the Incredible Smoking Woman - but my eye was drawn but a small stall tucked away behind the main attractions, selling oddities, trinkets and gewgaws; a pair of binoculars, jewel encrusted canes, holy relics, that sort of thing. You know me, old thing, I’m a man of discerning taste, not one for cut price fripperies, so I wasn’t to be distracted by the stuff on show for the riff raff.”

Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. Furlough was well known for being easily parted from his money.

“After some initial reluctance, the wizened old stallholder could clearly see that I was a man of business and went to the special stock out the back, returning with this.”

Furlough opened the box. The noisome funk immediately increased. Inside, looking tired and forlorn, was a small and dull-coloured frog. Conscious of the glares of the other members, Furlough quickly shut the lid.

“The Great Wazoonian Money Frog. Guaranteed to bring you fortune and good luck. Of course, he tried to change his mind and keep it from me but I managed to bargain him up to a good price. What he did not tell me - and did not become apparent until I was some distance away - is just how much of a stench the little blighter puts out.”

This time I groaned audibly. “I hate to break it to you but that’s not a Money Frog, old sock.”

Furlough’s face crumpled. “It’s not?”

“Afraid not, chum. What you have there is the Little Whampton Clinging Stink Frog. Very hard to get rid of. Notoriously so. Once they’ve marked you with their scent. That’s usually your lot.”

Furlough’s bottom lip quivered. “Oh dear.”

I sighed. I’d been looking forward to a nice quiet in the club but it appeared that was not to be.

“Look, I can help you but it’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have to trust me. We’re going to a carriage, some string, a fresh vial of bat’s urine, the details of a good cobbler...and a priest plus a fresh pair of garters.”

Furlough looked perplexed but knew better than to question your humble narrator. At a reasonable frog-funk avoiding distance, we made our way from the club. How we removed the curse from old Furlough (a story involving mistaken identity, a police chase through darkened streets, a very irate bat and one count of blasphemy) is a tale for another time…

Editor’s Note:- Sadly, so far no other fragment has been found to date which contains the concluding part of the Squire’s tale.


The Prompt
Here is what I had to work with courtesy of Phil:-
Story title - The Frog Who Went Funky
Character name - Fatty Furlough
Object - A pair of binoculars
Line of dialogue - “Deptford had never seen the likes of such a spectacle”

10 Books…With Context - The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

I see these things copy-and-paste jobbies pop up on Facebook all the time - “10 day challenge: post 10 [books / films / albums / photos of your kid that they’ll hate seeing in years to come] without context and nominate fifteen other people every day, fourteen of who will completely ignore it (but you all know there’s that one person who will do it).” Now, I realise that these are largely data mining attempts designed to help expose potential passwords but that's not the bit I have a problem with (there’s a whole blog here; if someone’s going to mine my data, good luck to ‘em sifting through all this gubbins). No, it’s the “no context” thing. Now, it may just be because I’m the written equivalent of gobby (fingery? Nope, changed my mind, moving away from that one) but I want to give a bit of context on these things. So, without being prompted by anyone (and to provide a lighter antidote to current events which have largely left me wanting to scream obscenities), here are ten books that I really like in no particular order but with a bit of context as to why.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
By Douglas Adams
First Published:- 12 October 1979 (UK)

Alright, I say “in no particular order” but this was really the first one that popped into my head as it is my “go to” book. I didn't think I’d have one, didn't think I’d be able to narrow it down to just the one but this is it. It’s the book that I’m always in the mood to read and it’s the book that always lightens said mood.

What’s It About?
Average human Arthur Dent wakes to find that his house is about to be demolished to make way for a new bypass. More unsettling is the news delivered by longtime friend Ford Prefect that he’s not from Guildford after all but is from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and that the house is the least of his worries:- the Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. And that’s just the start of Arthur's day….

Background
Technically, this book is a novelisation. Adams wrote Hitchhiker's as a radio series for Radio 4 and this book adapts (roughly) the first four episodes. He’d go on to write four more books in the series (very slowly; Adams was notoriously bad at meeting deadlines, liking having written but disliking the actual process of writing itself), a TV series, theatre version, album version, computer game and the initial drafts for the film version which was produce after his untimely death at the age of 49 in 2001.

Why’s It Good?
Because it’s that rare beast that is hard to get right - it’s comedy science fiction that is both genuinely science fiction-y and genuinely funny. Adams has a love of language and the absurdity of everyday life that are served well by the outlandish absurdities of science fiction (he’s got some form in the mixing the two having served as script editor to Tom Baker’s Doctor Who at a point where Baker had been in the role for some time and was looking to up the humor quotient). Also, it has some cracking lines in it, most of which have seeped into the mulch of my everyday speech.

There’s your first entry on the list. I’ll do ten as that seems to be the standard number for these sort of challenges. Come back again for another one of these (probably with some other stuff mixed in inbetween in the meantime)...

My copy, bought in about 1988 for the princely sum of £2.50

Over To You - Bam!

So a little while back, I put out a call for story prompts as a way to keep the old grey matter ticking over (you can find the last set here, here, here, here, here and here). I often find it a lot easier to come up with stories if someone gives me a little nudge to work with first ("Where do you get your ideas from?" "Other people..."). I enjoyed doing it and it did help me feel like I had something creative to work towards so I put out the call again and a selection of lovely people very kindly gave me things to do again. As a reminder (and for those of you who didn't see this before or couldn’t be arsed to click the links above), here’s what I asked people to provide:-

- Story title
- A character name
- An object
- A line of dialogue

Using the above, I will attempt to craft a (probably very) short story to be posted here on this very blog (and not necessarily in the order they were suggested!). The first attempt is courtesy of a prompt from Jodie - I’ll reveal the requirements at the end…


Bam!

Angel Delight stared at the screen. Still empty. Just the one word typed there in Verdana (one of her two favoured fonts, along with Calibri). 

“Bam!”

The exclamation mark was important. Marketing was all about impact so the exclamation mark had to stay. The word was good. That wasn’t the problem. It was everything else that followed it that was the tricky bit.

Angel looked at the clock. 2:46 p.m. One hour and twenty four minutes to not only come up with something but also massage it into a winning presentation. Normally this was where she thrived. Give her the pressure of a deadline and she could pull the goods out of the bag at the last minute. She remembered that one time at university where she’d started an essay with four hours to go before the 9 a.m. deadline, delivered it with minutes to spare and still got a first for it (much to the disgust of most of her friends).

Of course, she hadn’t been Angel Delight back then. Just plain old Mary Matthews with a major in Communications and a minor in Psychology. That dream team combination that guaranteed you dynamite employment straight out of graduation. Then came the day that Mary Matthews (following a twelve hour bender in the student union bar followed by another four hours sinking cheap bottles of beer at student night in Glitzy’s (the local nightclub) which lead on to an indeterminate amount of time in parts unknown) fell in with the art crowd and Mary Matthews was no more. The day and night had taken on the hazy aspect of legend in her mind. The words “snogging competition” lurked in there ominously. The sound of mass breakage loomed large in her memory. There’d been something about climbing in or out of a window at one point. She awoke the next morning to find that, legally, she was now Angel Delight (with the remains of both a kebab and a chicken burger forming a trail from the front door to her bed). Once the initial horror had faded, Mary-now-Angel saw this as an opportunity. They said that going to university was a chance to reinvent yourself. Well, what better way than to literally change who you were. 

There’d been some fraught conversations with her parents, with the words “betrayal” (from her mother) and “disown” (from her father) left hanging in the air. The “disown” part had never fully materialised but the “betrayal” part definitely still seemed to be lingering. Still, Angel had no regrets. Mary Matthews, Communications major, would be unlikely to be an executive at one of the funkiest marketing agencies in the country. Angel Delight, on the other hand…

Angel snapped back out of her reverie and looked at the screen. 3:18 p.m. Still blank. She stared at the humorous message on her now slightly chipped coffee cup. No help there either. It also didn't help that the product itself was so vague. All she could get out of the client was that it was a “lifestyle app”. Suitably vague and meaningless. She’d sat through a two hour pitch session with them and was half convinced that they didn't even know what it was either.

“Still struggling away that whole ‘Bam!’ thing, Angel?”

Angel looked up to see the smirking face of Alan Rossiter, the nearest thing to competition that she had here. At best of times, she struggled not to want to punch him in his insufferably smug face and this was not the best of times.

“Don’t judge me, Alan!”, she snarled in such a tone as to wipe the smirk off his face and leave him scuttling for the kitchen accompanied by a barely audible mumble of an excuse. Angel sighed. She was probably going to pay for that one later but she couldn’t worry about that now.

Think, think, think. You need to pull this out of the bag. “Lifestyle” adverts are always so bland and anodyne and toothless. This product was “Bam!” It needed something bold and in your face and out of the box and disruptive and… Angel had run out of buzzwords by this point but she had an inkling. She knew where she was going. She thought back to that day, that day when Mary departed and Angel arrived and she knew what she had to do. She closed her eyes and dredged. She brought up things from that day that she never thought were even in there and, as she cast herself back to that transformative moment, her fingers began to fly across the keyboard. This was it. This was the one. This was so far outside the box that they wouldn't even know that there had been a box to begin with. Oh yes, this was the one.

-------------

It was just over ninety minutes later that Angel Delight found herself clearing out her desk under the watchful eye of Hester the security guard. Maybe, she reflected, the box was there for a reason. Maybe you should still be somewhere in the vicinity of the box so that people know that you’re outside of it. Maybe she shouldn't have stood on the table at one point and mimed urinating over the clients. That might have been a step too far. And maybe it was time for Mary Matthews to make her comeback and show the world just what she, Mary, was capable of.

That said, she’d always quite liked the name Swifty Frisko....


The Prompt
Here is what I had to work with courtesy of Jodie:-
Title - Bam!
Character - Angel Delight
Object - Coffee cup
Line of dialogue - “Don’t judge me, Alan!”

Life In Lockdown - Impotent Fury

I promise not to make too much of a habit of this - no one wants to come to a place of distraction for extended bouts of vitriol - but sometimes, in extraordinary circumstances when anger rises to a level when it’s hard to find an outlet for it, you need to put pen to paper[1]. I think the title of this blog probably sums up what a number of people in the UK are feeling at the moment - a sense of fury and injustice at people who are ostensibly intended to act in our best interests and yet repeatedly highlight their own contempt and disinterest for those they believe are beneath them and yet, paradoxically, are the very people they need to keep them in their positions of power.

Let’s take a look at the elements in play at the moment, shall we?

- Government advice, in part authored by Boris Johnson and his chief aide (AKA Keith Harris to his Orville) Dominic Cummings, which specified that those with coronavirus symptoms should, under no circumstances, leave the house.[2]
- Instances of government officials/advisers breaking these guidelines and resigning as a result of it. [3] [4]
- A story about Boris Johnson’s chief aide breaking lockdown restrictions while suffering from coronavirus symptoms. [5]
- A round of very similarly worded tweets of support from Tory Mps (almost as if they working off a draft by a top aide to the PM, for example) [6] [7] [8] [9]
- A follow up story about a second breaking of lockdown, making the previous day’s support tweets look pretty untenable. [10] [11]
- A Daily Briefing featuring the Prime Minister (his third appearance since 12th April) in order to gaslight the country. [12]

Let’s summarise what’s underlying a lot of this:-

Arrogance
It’s long been clear that the abiding sense of entitlement held by our largely Eton-educated Prime Ministers has given them a sense of being better than the rest of the population and that they are not to be held accountable to the same standards. This has escalated to a new degree with Johnson, a man who is all entitlement and got to his current position by repeatedly lying. (Small side note - it is remarkable that I can call our current Prime Minister a liar and it not be grounds for libel given that, amongst many other examples, he has been sacked for lying and I can back it up with links that say as much. [13] [14])

The sad thing is that history has shown him repeatedly that he can lie with impunity and not suffer the consequences as he turns up the “posh buffon” act, throws in a few learned quotes from his misspent education (by his own admission, he “didn’t do enough work” at university [15]) and, by and large, gets what he wants.

Contempt
There’s a clear contempt for the British public as a whole here. His statement today that Dominic Cummings acted “responsibly’ and with “integrity” in breaking the guidelines [16] shows that he believes that it is his divine right to brazenly lie and expect to get away with it. It’s a contempt for anyone other than himself that he shares in common with Cummings who famously suggested that we let the old die [17], something that has happened anyway with their neglectful policy around care homes (and, given Cummings’ quote, it would be unsurprising if this turned out to be a deliberate move.

Boredom With The Whole Thing
What is also clear is that they are bored with the whole process. Johnson only deigns to appear in a daily briefing when he absolutely has to (as I said earlier, this is only his third appearance in the last six weeks) and does his best to not answer questions (see link 12 again) while sticking to the same script repeatedly in a attempt to avoid any sort of real scrutiny.

All this leads to a feeling of fury in a government with a “do as I tell you, don’t do as I do” bolstered by a sense that there is no accountability for their actions. Cummings has done more than other advisers have resigned over but, due to our blundering after dinner speaker turned Prime Minister’s utter reliance on Cummings to stop him from completely devolving into a Trumpian-style gibbering simpleton, he skirts through unscathed, scandal skimming off him like the Teflon-coated Mekon that he is. Whether this remains the case is hard to see but, for the moment, we are left with rage and, with lockdown still in place (undermined and untenable as it feels at the moment) nowhere suitable to direct it. 




[1] Yes, I appreciate that’s a pretty archaic image but “put fingers to keyboard” is nowhere as pleasing.
[2] Article 
[3] Article
[4] Article 
[5] Article 
[6] Tweet 
[7] Tweet 
[8] Tweet 
[9] Tweet 
[10] Article 
[11] Article 
[12] Article 
[13] Article 
[14] Article 
[15] Article 
[16] Article 
[17] Article 

So You Want To Get Into… More Board Games

Despite the fact that a number of people seem to think that this whole lockdown is over and everything’s back to normal, it’s not and it isn’t and we’ve probably still got more time entertaining ourselves in the house ahead of us. In that case, it’s a good time to invest in some board games to while away those long summer nights…

Two Players
Given that some of you might not have enough people in the house for more than a two player game, there are a number that are pretty much ideal for two (although quite a few of the others I recommended last time including Exploding Kittens and Tsuro work well with just two as well).

Hive is a chess-like strategy style game in which you move different insect pieces (each with their own rules for moving, much like in chess) in order to surround your opponent’s queen bee. It’s pretty simple to learn and one that is quite tricky to master in terms of strategy. I like it but am very bad at it.
Pixit is a fun two player in which you throw dice which have patterns of black and white blocks like pixels and have to be the first to use those shapes to match the shape on a chosen card. First person to finish calls a halt to the building, the person with the most dice matching wins. It’s a nice fun quick one.
Patchwork is one of those games that sounds incredibly tedious as you describe it but is actually a lot of fun. Basically, you compete to get different shaped patches of cloth in order to fill up your quilt - points earned at the end for spaces filled and lost for empty spaces. Yes, a game about building a quilt sounds dull as dishwater but, trust me, it’s enjoyable.

More Card-Based Games
Fluxx comes in many varieties (you can get Star Trek, Monty Python, Batman and many other versions) but the core set up is always the same. You start with two rules - pick a card, play a card - but for there on the game can start changing. You can lay down Goals which is how you win the game (but other people can lay down a new one the next turn so it might not help you) and you can lay down New Rules, changing the basics of the game, potentially making it more complex as you go along. (Side note - it was designed by two former NASA scientists.)
Chrononauts is a game in which the cards are laid down to form the board so it makes for a quite a handy travel game. In it, you play time agents trying to create a certain number of paradoxes or gather certain artifacts before the other player. The board is composed of cards representing different events in history which can be flipped to show something different. The fun comes from trying to create a number of flipped and non-flipped years whilst competing against other players who may need the opposite to you.

Cooperative Games
Not all board games need be competitive though. There are a large number of games out there in which you play together as a team in order to beat the board. Usually the jeopardy comes from the fact that, if one of you dies, the game is over so there’s a vested interest in making sure you work together. One of the most famous of all is called Pandemic but a) I’ve not played that one yet and b) not sure that’s a distraction at the moment...

Forbidden Island/Desert/Sky - Three games with the same basic mechanic - you have to work together to discover components in order to escape before the island floods / sandstorm covers everything / floating platform crashes. There’s some nice variation in each game to make it worthwhile playing the different version but they’re a good introduction to the world of cooperative games.
Burgle Bros takes a little bit of setting up but is great fun. You play the part of thieves attempting to crack the safe on each floor of a three storey building before escaping, all the while avoiding the prowling security guards. It’s a really nicely designed game - it fits in a compact box but takes up a whole tabletop once properly set out.

There you go, a few more non-Trivial Pursuit based options to vary up the family game night (in between Zoom quizzes and streaming theatre)...

WatchSeeLookView - Daniel Kitson Live(ish)

The live video stream has naturally enough seen a massive upswing in these socially distant times, given that theatres and comedy venues are no longer open and there is no other outlet for the show to go on. Over the last couple of months, a number of comedians have taken to live streaming their shows but I’ve not yet taken part in any. It’s been Daniel Kitson that has prompted me to join in.

It’s an interesting model for his show. He’s only streaming it for a week, he’s doing across three time zones (London, New York and Melbourne but basically you could book any of them; I got tickets for the Melbourne show at 12:00 today) and there are a limited number of tickets on sale. This gives it the fell of being a unique event with a limited capacity, the intention being to make it feel as close as possible to being in an environment watching something with only a couple of hundred people while we’re all in lockdown (not in an attempt to be elitist or contrary but to recreate that “going to a small club” feeling if possible).

The show itself is one from 2011 that he’s only just got around to editing. For those who aren’t familiar with Kitson, he’s very much regarded as the comedian’s comedian and eschews television appearances in favour of live shows only. There are very few recordings of his previous shows available (he sells a number of audio copies of some previous shows through his site and has one show available for rent through Vimeo) so even an old Kitson show is new to most people. His work alternates between more stand-up based and shows which are more of storytelling experience (albeit very funny ones). I went to him live twice last year (and wrote about one of those shows previously) and am always up for seeing more.

Kitson bookended the show with a live-streamed intro and goodbye and this gave it an appropriately intimate sense. You could see that a number of other people were watching via a counter in the top corner but, given that we all live on video calls for much of our days now, the intro creates the feeling that you’re on call directly with him. The show itself, The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church, is one of the story-telling based shows and showcases all the things that are key to the appeal of Kitson - a strong sense of crafting that goes into the story, a use of language that is both funny and immensely pleasing and moments of ramshackle distraction and improvisation that prove that even when he’s rambling and riffing, he’s still very funny.

Overall, I’d say this experiment in streaming worked really well in trying to combine both worlds. Longer form comedy needs that audience interaction (especially someone like Kitson who reacts and responds to what’s happening in the audience) so combining a live intro with a pre-recorded show is a good way of trying to bridge gap in the current “new normal” (yeah, I’m as sick of that phrase as everyone else but it does the trick).

The shows for this week are sold out but he’s planning on releasing the video of the show at a later date. When he does, I’d recommend giving it a watch; after all, he’s a comedian that you’re not going to come across if you’re not looking for him.

Life In Lockdown - Things I Miss

Let’s get the obvious stuff covered - girlfriend, family, friends and the pub; that all goes without saying (also sitting in one of my three usual spots in the darkened main screening room of the BFI is clearly sa given). We’ve all got the big obvious things that we miss but here are some things that surprised me on the “Oh Yeah, They Were A Thing Before We All Retreated Into The Womb-Like Safety Of Our Homes” list.

Commuting Time
Not commuting. No, no, no, don’t get me wrong here. I’ve made it fairly clear on here the general misery and rage that the average commute provokes in me. Squeezing myself onto packed trains or standing in the cold and rain watching The Creeping Delay That Never Arrives - those are not things that I miss. I do miss that split between the time of day that is mine and the time that belongs to work. A chance to listen to podcasts and music and a chance to lose myself in a book. I’m managing at last to do a bit of reading but my listening has dropped down to virtually nothing. I’m looking forward to strolling around outside with my headphones and listening to comedians talking toot again.

Aircon
OK, yes, this has only become an additional in the last week or so but it is hot as balls in the bedroom/office. Admittedly, the aircon in the office was a hotly contested issue - for everyone who found it just right, there were those who wrongly and stupidly thought it was too cold (idiots). Still, it would be most welcome now - the fan just doesn’t really cut the mustard and, given that a majority of my day is largely video call based now, sitting around in my pants isn’t (yet) an option.

Browsing
Popping into a bookshop and just having a look to see what’s out. Reading the descriptions. Maybe flicking through the first few pages to see if it’s any good. Yes, there is always a danger of purchasing but the outcome of that is owning a new book so it’s a pretty good danger.

The Monthly BFI Booklet
I know that the BFI already got a shout out at the top of this post but it struck me the other day that I really look forward to the upcoming month’s programme dropping through the doorstep and planning out which events I’m going to frantically trying to get tickets for (Spaced and Inside No. 9 sold out in minutes to members so it’s definitely a race!). It’s the anticipation - of not knowing what’s coming up then of getting the tickets then of waiting for the event. I guess that applies to everything, not just the BFI.

I’d like to say that, when things do go back to some semblance of the way they were before (maintaining my optimism on that), I’ll appreciate all these little things more. The reality is, though, that this will likely become a distant memory. You know what? If it means getting these things back, I’m fine with that.

Wrapped In Plastic: A Twin Peaks Rewatch - Part 7

We’ve reached probably the toughest episode to watch in the original run…
(As always, if you haven’t watched it, well, you’re going to get some in depth discussion of pretty spoilery stuff so best look away now if you want to be surprised.)

S02E06 AKA Demons
In Which:- Gordon Cole arrives with news about Coop’s former partner and the one-armed has some revelations about BOB...

- Picking up on the cliffhanger from last time, even though he swoops in to rescue them, James seems like a wet paper bag full of wet blankets. The whole Harold Smith thing seems pretty callous - Donna basically tortures a shut-in and gives him a breakdown.
- Some more foreshadowing for later - discussion of Coop’s former partner Windom Earle who will drive the plot in the second half of the season.
- There are a number of different character plots going on here and, even though we’re a few episodes away from wrapping up the murder mystery that started the whole show, it doesn’t feel like we’re moving there particularly quickly…
- ...until the end of the episode when the one-armed reveals himself as Mike (complete with disturbing Lynchian noises) and reveals that BOB is an inhabiting spirit (seen only by the gifted or the damned - Laura being both presumably) so could be within any of the key suspects. The mystery of whodunnit is still anyone’s game at this point.

First Appearance:- Gordon Cole in person (David Lynch on shouting form)
Cliffhanger:- The one-armed man reveals that BOB is currently in the Great Northern.

S02E07 AKA Lonely Souls
In Which:- Laura’s killer is revealed

- This is the last episode that David Lynch will direct until the last eps of the season but it certainly needed his touch.
- There’s a fakeout here which I have to admit I fell for as I was convinced the first time I watched it that Ben Horne was the murderer too. Which makes the reveal of Laura’s true killer as her father all the more shocking. In hindsight, the clues to him being a man unhinged have definitely been there throughout the second season - his physical transformation, the singing and crying, the story about seeing BOB as a child (surely he’d be much older now?) - but the reveal is still a wrench (and done in a very creepy and understated way).
- The scene in which Leland murders Maddy has to be one of the most brutal things ever to be shown on network television. Nowadays we’re used to seeing cinematic levels of violence on television thanks to premium cable shows but this was not the sort of thing you saw on mainstream TV in the early 90s. It’s not so much the violence of it (although it is violent) but the unsettling and disturbing way in which it’s shot; another trademark of Lynch. Lynch’s use of sound and visuals often combine in ways that are unnerving on a level that is difficult to articulate and Leland’s brutal murder of Maddy, intercut with images of BOB, is right up there with his most disturbing work.
- There’s too much Julee Cruise in this episode. She was clearly a protege of Lynch’s but I’d had enough of her singing by the time she’s even plastered all over the end credits.

Iconic Peaks Moments:- The brutal sequence with Maddy and Leland intercut with Coop and The Giant at the Roadhouse is pure Twin Peaks.
Cliffhanger:- Coop watching the performance at the Road House as we fade into a view of the red curtains at the Lodge.

So You Want To Get Into… Board Games

Despite the distinct lack of clarity for our current… let’s call them “government” for lack of a better word, the one thing that is clear is that we’re still going to be spending time indoors for a while yet (unless you go out but don’t out, going to work only if can unless you’re told you have to but not using any public transport but only if your name is Geoff and Mercury is ascendant). Given that insidey-ness is still the order of the day, let’s have a look at some of the ways that you can pass the time without staring at a screen for hours on end (once you’ve finished staring at the screen to read this, of course). I’ve posted bits and bobs about board games before but let’s give you a bit of an overview to some of the ones out there that’ll give you a bit of a break from the usual monotony of Monopoly.

Good Entry Games
An entry game should be simple to learn, good fun and replayable. You don’t want to be daunted by too many rules. These are also all very family friendly
Exploding Kittens is a great example - the aim of the game is to avoid picking the Exploding Kitten card off the pile and try to make your opponents pick it up. You can get a few expansions now for that one too to add a few more levels of deviousness once you’ve got a few games under your belt. (You can also get a NSFW version so be careful which one you buy if you’re planning on family game night…)
Tsuro is nicely simple too - you lay tiles on the board to make paths with the aim being to stay on board as long as possible - the last person still on the board is the winner. Really quick and easy and a nice little warm up game.
Gloom is also a nicely fun one. You have a family and your aim is to make them as miserable as possible before killing them off while attempting to make your opponents’ families happy. This one encourages an element of storytelling - not essential but makes it nicely fun. This one is, of course, always popular with kids as it’s weird and a bit morbid.

Next Level Up
If you want to move away from the card games and on to the board games, these are all worth exploring.
Ticket To Ride is a board game in which you compete against each other to claim train routes and build up points. It’s another one that’s relatively simple to learn but you can start to add complexity by going for Ticket To Ride Europe which has a couple of extra rules or adding in the expansion maps which each have their own variations on the base game.
Takenoko involves moving a panda and a gardener to either eat or grow crops in order to fulfil objectives - whoever gets to nine completed objectives first wins the game. It’s a nice combination of strategy and randomness. It’s one of those games that seems initially a little confusing as you try to pick up the rules but is actually pretty straightforward once you get into playing it.
King Of New York (or King Of Tokyo - basically the same game) is a combination of Godzilla-style monster-smashing and Yahtzee in that you roll combinations of dice to help you gain power, smash the city and destroy your opponents. As with most modern board games, you can also get a few expansions for this to add more characters and extra rules.

Party Time
All of the above are suitable for two players but if you want something a bit more party/quiz-based (and there are still a number of you in the house together) then there are also a number of other alternatives to give you a bit of a break from the usual round of Trivial Pursuit. Big Potato Games are pretty good at creating a few simple but fun games that fit into this bracket.
Colour Brain involves questions for which the answers are always one or more colours - you play the coloured cards in your hand in order to answer the question. There’s also a sneaky extra mechanic that lets you steal colours from your opponents hand in order to try and disadvantage them.
Mister Lister’s Quiz Shootout divides you up into teams and gives you a topic, going back and forth between the teams to shout out answers. Whoever gets the most wins the card and whoever gets a full set of the different boozes pictured on the back of the cards wins. Nice and simple and good fun.
Cards Against Humanity…. look, we’ve all played that. It’s wrong, it’s twisted and it’ll reveal hidden offensive sides to your nearest and dearest tha were hitherto unsuspected. So you’ve all already played that, haven’t you?

There are loads more I could list so i reckon this one will warrant a sequel at some point. This’ll keep you going for now though (something else to help until the pubs reopen again anyway).

Life In Lockdown - A Journey: Behind The Scenes

Ah, who doesn’t love a director's commentary? Lifting the lid on the magic of film and revealing all the dirty little secrets beneath. What do you mean, “struggling for content to fill a daily blog now that I haven’t left the house for coming up on nine weeks?” How absolutely dare you. Anyway. Here’s a small behind the scenes glimpse into how I made yesterday’s brief filmy diversion.

Beginnings
I’ve been posting silly pictures (mostly for my own amusement more than anything else) charting the ongoing progress of life under lockdown over on Facebook basically since this whole thing began. It was on my run around the garden last Friday that I suddenly felt that I should convert them into a single live action piece. As often happens with short film ideas, they’re prompted while listening to music and are pretty much fully formed in a short space of time. (I mean, I helped that I already had a load of posts to basically steal; if you can, always recycle something that you know works…).

Preparation & Shooting
It might only be short and pretty throwaway but you still need to plan these things out. So I sat and wrote a list of the individual scenes which I then broke down into specific shots I needed. Despite the differing hairs lengths, almost the whole thing was shot in one morning (and over about a half hour period). Any scenes with me looking scruffy and unshaven were shot first; I then had a shave to shoot the beginning and end scenes with the last scene of that batch of filming being me going for a run as I shot those at the start of my actual run. The only scenes not shot in this block were me eating and drinking which was shot the night before, after the family Zoom quiz (as I had food and drink to hand), and the Tiger King shot which was filmed on the Sat night prior to a Tiger King themed Zoom quiz with friends (I have been doing a lot of Zoom quiz mastering over the last few weeks; it’s everyone’s new lockdown hobby). Combined with some of the existing photos I’d posted, that was filming done.

There were a couple of bits that I considered but didn't add in the end - a montage of everyday items now unused, unearthed as part of an archeological exploration; dressing up smart for Formal Friday. I wanted it to be pretty snappy - as close to two minutes as possible. Get in, be silly, get out quick.

Editing
Back in the dim and distant past when I last properly used editing programmes, you had to get your tape and transfer the footage onto the computer first (yeah, I know, steady on, Grandad). Nowadays, if I didn't like a voice over (the word “morning” was recorded separately, obviously), I’d record it again on the phone and, by the time the Photos app had synced, I could drag and drop it straight into iMovie. No wonder everyone makes so many videos now, it’s bloody easy. 

There are also plenty of sources for copyright free music. I used Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/) who has rather splendidly created around 2,000 or so pieces of copyright free for people to use. The only stipulation here under the Creative Commons Licence is that you make sure you credit him. Seems more than bloody fair to me.

Et Voila
And that was it really. Shot in about thirty minutes, edited in around an hour (including sourcing music) and exported and uploaded to YouTube. Does this mean I’ll be making something else? Give it another 13 years and inspiration might strike again...

The Formal Friday image which never made it to the filmed version

Life In Lockdown - A Journey

OK, yesterday was super serious - today couldn't be any more throwaway. Many, many years ago, I used to have delusions of filmmaking. If there's one thing that you can really blame the coronavirus for, it's provoking those delusions once again. Here is a post that is short on words but equally short on actual content so best of both worlds there.

Enjoy (he says optimistically)...

Life In Lockdown - Lack Of Clarity

Normally, this blog is a load of old toot about pop culture stuff because, let’s face it, that’s my main area of knowledge. I am going to take a brief moment for a serious rant as, having spent the best part of nine weeks inside and now being faced with a load of rambling and inconsistent sloganeering, I’m feeling ranty today.

Let me preface this with the following - this is a global crisis and there are no easy answers. There are tough decisions to be made and balancing the impact of closing down the country in order to minimise spread of the virus while protecting the vulnerable and our (criminally underfunded for years) health system alongside the impacts to health created by isolation, people not seeking treatment for other conditions, financial stress and unemployment is not a choice I envy anyone having to make. However, if you have campaigned ruthlessly and mercilessly to get yourself to the position where you have to make those decisions, then you have to make them. You also still have to abide by public scrutiny. Now is not the time to give the government a free pass so “we all need to pull together” or because (even more infuriatingly) “they’re doing the best they can”. 

Avoiding The Tough Stuff
If Boris Johnson really was doing the best that he could, surely he would have attended more Cobra meetings at the start of the crisis (1), attended the eight conference calls with EU heads of state to discuss a concerted EU approach (2) and not spent two weeks off worrying about his divorce (3). Combined with his general propensity to avoid being seen doing the duties of Prime Minister as much as possible (and what greater emblem of that approach is there than the point where he hid in a fridge on the election campaign trail in order to avoid being questioned), this does not paint the picture of a man doing the best he can. However, he’s more than keen to be compared favourably to his personal hero Churchill which brings me on to the next point.

War Rhetoric
There’s a strong need in this country to equate everything back to the Second World War which is frankly baffling to anyone outside of the UK. Any opportunity is taken to invoke “Blitz spirit” as a shorthand for “just put up with this because people had to put up with things in the war”. The difficulty with this rhetoric is that we’re not at war. Phrases like “stay alert” are meaningless when applied to an invisible virus. We don’t need pluck and common sense; we need crystal clarity in the communications that we receive from those in charge. We also need clarity on how the virus is progressing.

Test, Test, Test
The repeated call we’re seeing from other countries across the world is that, in order to be able to work out how the virus is progressing, you need to be able to test for and trace its progress. The UK has singularly failed in this regard and so it becomes almost impossible to say how and when we can safely start to reopen the country as we have no real way of tracking the virus’ progress. Instead, we get the usual tactic of “number salad” in which the government keeps throwing out figures which change not only in terms of the total itself but also in terms of the metric. Case in point - the daily testing figure. Set at 250,000 per day on 25th March (4), revised to 100,000 per day which they pledged to hit by the end of April (5) and then only achieved by counting numbers sent out in the post as a test completed (6). What’s worrying is that they pick a number to sound impressive and then fail to achieve even that. Even more so though is the obsession on having an arbitrary target to hit as a measure of success so that they can then put that on a poster listed “Our Achievements”.
The other side to this approach is to simply drop a measurement when it no longer shows what they want it to as they have done in the last week with the comparison charts showing number of Covid-related deaths in our own country compared to the rest of the world.(7) I understand the argument that those numbers are hard to compare based on different measures - if that is the case then they shouldn't have been used in the first place.

The "Peter Principle" In Action
The "Peter Principle" (for those who don’t know) is a management concept that states that people tend to rise to the level of their own incompetence. As it stands, we currently have an entire cabinet full of people who adhere to that principle. This is what happens when the Tory party throws its support behind a figure who has got himself elected on a single standpoint (“get Brexit done”) and who then staffs his cabinet with sycophantic cronies rather than people who are actually competent at their job. To give an example, Dominic Raab was questioned on Monday by R4 Today reporter Mishal Husain about the latest announcement and asked some very specific questions to help clarify things (8). He failed to answer them so spectacularly that he had to be corrected later that day (9).

Not My Fault
What all of this adds up to is a government that is not capable of making or unwilling to make these tough decisions so have been preparing themselves to lay the blame squarely at the public’s feet. If the virus now spikes again, it’ll be because we didn't follow the new rules, because we didn't use “common sense” (one of the many repeated phrases currently being deployed) and not because of a failure to provide much needed detail on the government’s part.

What we need at the moment is clarity of communication, coherent rules and a government that has the conviction to take action. What we’ve currently got is confusion and a government that leaks its plans to the papers in order to judge public response so that it can maybe change its mind once there’s an outcry. It's this approach that leaves us with situations where you can't visit your family but you can now go to a house viewing (10). Leadership is the thing that is sorely lacking here (as opposed to a desperation to be in power at all costs) and we’re going to have to hope that as many of us as possible can come out of the other side of it with as little damage as possible.

OK, rant over. I'll probably talk about cartoons or something tomorrow.


(1) Not necessarily compulsory for him but would have shown that he was taking the situation seriously 'Did the government really ‘brush aside’ coronavirus fears in January?' Article
(2)  “Between February 13 and March 30, Britain missed a total of eight conference calls or meetings about the coronavirus between EU heads of state or health ministers - meetings that Britain was still entitled to join. Although Britain did later make an arrangement to attend lower-level meetings of officials, it had missed a deadline to participate in a common purchase scheme for ventilators, to which it was invited.” 'Special Report: Johnson listened to his scientists about coronavirus - but they were slow to sound the alarm' Article 
(3) 'Boris Johnson agrees divorce settlement with Marina Wheeler' Article 
(4) 'Britain’s coronavirus testing scandal: a timeline of mixed messages' Article 
(5) 'Coronavirus: Matt Hancock sets aim of 100,000 tests a day by end of April' Article 
(6) 'Has the government really hit 100,000 tests a day, and what happens next?' Article 
(7) 'Coronavirus: Keir Starmer says government suddenly dropped global comparisons as UK ‘hit unenviable place’ ' Article
(8) 'Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab outlines govt plans to begin lifting England's lockdown.'  Article 
(9) 'Dominic Raab adds to confusion over changes to UK lockdown rules' Article 1 'Dominic Raab contradicts government's own advice on returning to work' Article 2
(10) 'Coronavirus: Estate agents given green light to reopen after lockdown grinds sector to a halt' Article