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Saturday, November 1st, 2003
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11:31p
I feel guilty, I still haven't made a proper start on that essay. (And in order to combat that problem I'm sitting here updating my journal. Logic? Er, not so much.)
Good day though, all in all. I really could sit here and waste my life in perfect happiness - or that's how it feels now. Having done something like it in Durham, it becomes less fun! Anyway - fun, yes...
Friday's lecture was pretty good, mainly because I could switch off a bit and watch the other people get exposed to the vagaries of Epicurean theories about the gods. And, just to make me feel a bit better, I don't think they quite got it either! But last week's was better, solely because Prof. Levene, as his 'Recommendation of the Week' (which is something he always does, the week before last it was The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, they're always related to the topic of the lecture) showed a bit of Time Bandits, on of the all-time greatest surreal comedies. Ok, main attraction is David Warner in his Evil Genius outfit, but still! Unfortunately, the Prof showed the bit immediately after David is defeated:( But it was still brilliant (I am the Supreme Being, you know, I'm not completely dim)
I also bought two CDs, and another one today: the newest Buffy soundtrack album, which rocks. It's got Angie Hart's 'Blue', Cibo Matto's 'Sugar Water', Aimee Mann's 'Pavlov's Bell' and 'Black Cat Bone' which is the song that plays when Willow has her pseudo acid-trip in season 6 (when she floats on the ceiling). It's just fab! And in a continuing Cibo Matto theme, I had to get Stereo Type A because it was just sitting there, unloved, in HMV and I knew bloody well it wouldn't be there the next time I looked! So I now have 'Spoon'! And today my mum got me Johnny Cash's last album, The Man Comes Around. I wanted it mainly for 'Hurt', whch they played the video for on TOTP2 when he died. And it affected me pretty deeply. It's got a beautiful guitar lead-in, and the lyrics are just - woah. (I hurt myself today/To see if I still feel/I focus on the pain/The only thing that's real...What have I become/My sweetest friend/Everyone I know/Goes away in the end) I don't care whether he's talking about God or not. That he was sincere in his faith and clearly loved his god is kinda touching. I don't know why I find it less objectionable in him than in anyone else really, perhaps it is the sincerity, and the lightness of it too. There's a song called 'Dead Man's Rope' on Sting's latest album, where the guy eventually gets round to singing 'I've been walking away from Jesus' love', and though it's actually a pretty good song, I can't bring myself to use it in a compilation tape because of that. Perhaps that's to do with a reversal of what I expect from Sting (as a lapsed Catholic) and as the man who also sang Oh my God you take the biscuit/Treating me this way/Expecting me to treat you well/No matter what you say/How can I turn the other cheek/It's black and bruised and torn/I've been waiting since the day that I was born.
Anyway, after that really rather long digression! I've made half of my compilation tape, it rocks, yay me;)
My mum and I also went to see George Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty today, as we didn't go last week. It was pretty good actually, as you'd expect from a Coen brothers movie. George just has this exquisite comic timing that no-one but the Coens and the various people who wrote ER scripts for him seem to want to exploit. He can do slapstick and dialogue comedy and he's just wonderful at it (besides being rather handsome;)) It's a pity that Catherine Zeta-Jones' comedic timing sucks, but hey. I just don't care for that woman at all, she just strikes me as an unpleasant person. I did notice something that, if I'm right, is even funnier in the movie. I reckon that the Coens have made little subtle visual pisstakes of George's big romantic scenes in three other (non-Coen) movies. 1) The lift scene in Solaris where Chris and Rheya do their big flirt, touching hands and smiling to themselves, becomes George trying to chat up Catherine and getting his hand bitten by her poodle, which he's been stroking, for his trouble. 2) The scene in Ocean's Eleven where Julia Roberts comes down the stairs of the casino to the admiring glances of (ok, not George) Matt Damon and Brad Pitt becomes Catherine Zeta-Jones coming down the stairs of the casino (plus poodle) to the admiring glances of George and his crony. 3) The famous bar scene in Out of Sight where George and Jennifer Lopez have a 'time-out' over a stiff glass of whatever spirit it is. As J-Lo's character reaches for her drink, George catches her hand and strokes it. A similar thing happens in Cruelty with a glass of champagne. So I though that was neat, and was kinda proud of spotting it. I suppose it's logical, as the movie itself is a sort of pisstake on conventional romcoms with two completely unromantic leads and a lot of pre-nuptual agreements!
So yeah, a culturally rich weekend;)
current mood:  lethargic
current music: I Can't Take My Eyes Off You::Melaine Doane (1 comment |comment on this)
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