Home Thoughts from Cabra

Clair over at theurbanwoo pointed me in the direction of this last week and it's set me off.. We used to have Home Thoughts at home when I was a nipper. My sisters are responsibe for most of the music I loved as a kid and, as a result, a lot of the music I love as an adult. I don't remember us having many records at home but the ones we did have are stuck in my head forever. Even though I haven't listened to them for years, I still know them all inside and out.. That's albums like Chris De Burgh's Spanish Train, Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell, Dan Fogelberg's The Innocence Age and others. There was a live Glen Campbell record that got a lot of airtime too. I remember a guy called Bertie Higgins who had a song called Key Largo. It used a lot of ropey Bogart and Bacall imagery. Cheesey as the cheese counter in Sheridans but I loved it then and I'm sure if I heard it now I'd still love it! Actually I feel like I've just my sisters a bitof a disservice. It wasn't all MOR rubbish when I was a kid. Thanks to them I was also turned on, at an early age to David Bowie, Simon & Garfunkel, Elvis, Springsteen and lots of other stuff. So, thanks..

I've been watching a lot of those old clips tonight and most of them don't really hold up anymore but Home Thoughts From Abroad is a different beast altogether. Go on - ignore his awkwardness, his anti-stage presence and give it 3 minutes of your time.. It's beautiful.

Oh - I just found Key Largo on youtube. It's absolutely wretched. I'm sure it's not the version I remember from 25 years ago but I can't bring myself to link it. You'll judge me!

Those were the days..

I picked up a great old Dublin guidebook in town the other day. Published in 1972, Essential Dublin promises to tell visitors and locals all they need to know Dublin.. Such as how to survive on a shoestring or how to live it up in pubs, discotheques and sauna baths! Sauna baths?! Anyway, it's a bit of a hoot and interesting to see how much things have changed and how much things haven't changed at all.

In the introductions and throughout the book, there's lots of bleating on about all the new affluence in the city and how the great old buildings are being torn down in the name of progress. Values are being ignored and those wretched young people are spoilt rotten.. Didn't I just read that in the paper today?

The section on the best pubs in the city is interesting.. Here's a list of the best pubs in Dublin in 1972. The Palace Bar, Doheny & Nesbitts, O'Briens on Leeson Street, The Stage's Head and The Long Hall. All still standing today and all still the best pubs in Dublin. The Long Hall is described as "the glittering lights, mirrors, lamps should classify it as kitschy but somehow the whole mixture works, making itone of the most attractive pubs anywhere" It doesn't sound like it's changed a bit in 35 years. I'd imagine the author's heart would've been warmed to see everything around it being pulled down and rebuilt a few years ago while the Longer was left untouched.

Good to see also that in 1972 "no pubs are barred to women though there is an unstated convention that women use the lounge bar if there is one" It doesn't say what women should do if there isn't a lounge. Go home and wait for the 80s, I suppose..

Eye-Eye

Has it really been 3 weeks? Where does the time go? Same place as my hair, as Bill Bryson said.. Anyway, I lost my old glasses 3 weeks ago and only got replacements during the week. I guess I put off getting new ones until I was sure that the old ones weren't coming back. So after staring into a screen all day in the office, I've been avoiding the laptop at home - hence no recent updates.. But - Amazing Grace - I was blind but now can see..

These are the new glasses - a bit 'media bastard' I know, but why fight it, eh?

So, hopefully normal service has been resumed.

Which leads me to this...

Time well spent

It's mostly been a lazy weekend round Connolly Towers. The last few weeks have been a bit hectic between work stuff and house stuff so it's been good to have a bit of down time for a change. I went for a few long walks in the park this weekend in anticipation of my long awaited return to jogging. That'll probably be Tuesday morning so I expect to be limping heavily by Tuesday night. Other than that, I spent yesterday in town (lunch in the Stag's Head - the best value toasty in Dublin) and watched far too much bad tv last night. When I wasn't busy doing nothing I managed to catch a couple of films - 2 Days in Paris and Atonement.

2 Days in Paris, Julie Delpy's exercise in over-achievement (she wrote, stars, directed, produced and wrote the score), is well worth a look. She's a photographer visiting Paris with her American boyfriend en route to New York. Over the course of the 2 days they meet her parents (Delpy's real-life parents, of course), argue, have sex, talk about sex, bump into several of her ex-boyfriends, insult taxi drivers, visit Jim Morrison's grave, go to galleries and parties and, eventually, break up. It works best in the first hour when her boyfriend, Adam Goldberg, has to deal with her suspicious parents, her openly lusty exes, and the rising paranoia that he's just another boyfriend who'll be replaced and forgotten at a moment's notice. As he says himself: "the least romantic day in the history of Paris". Sure, it's treading similar ground to Before Sunset and it owes more than a little to Annie Hall and Manhattan (at various points in the film, Julie Delpy resembles both Woody Allen and Diane Keaton) but it's got buckets of charm, wit and insight. Well, perhaps not buckets of insight. Ultimately, it loses its way a little bit as the film moves into the final third and the relationship becomes more fraught, but there's more than enough in it to justify 90 minutes of anyone's time.

Here's the trailer


Atonement is fantastic. A bit like The Bourne Ultimatum, which I saw last week, there's really not much more I can add to all the great reviews it's been getting. But apart from all the love and tragedy there's a fantastic 5 or 6 minute sequence when James McEvoy gets to Dunkirk that has to be seen to be believed. It's a continuous tracking shot as he walks along the beach surrounded by hundreds of extras brawling, singing and vomiting all around him. I don't know how the director managed it and it was probably digitally assisted but God, it was impressive. As was the whole film. And yes, there were tears at the end!

Bump and rind

This is such a brilliant idea that I'm amazed our own government didn't come up with it first. I suppose they're waiting to see how badly it works in the UK before doing the same thing here at twice the cost.

As I read it, the British government is going to give £120 to every pregnant woman in an attempt to encourage them to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. This is going to cost something like £80 million quid to the taxpayer but there'll be no way of knowing if the money is being spent on carrots or cigarettes. Or apples or cider. Or potatoes or pot....

I don't know much but if there's £80 million quid going spare, couldn't they do something a bit more productive with it? Somebody must have a better suggestion..

A juvenile act?

So, FM104 are bleating because someone at RTE has been interfering with their wikipedia page. Edits such as changing "FM 104 is aimed mainly at 16-35 year olds" to "FM 104 is aimed mainly at 16-17 year olds" have been traced back to RTE's unique IP address. A spokesman for FM104 has demanded that RTE hold a full investigation into the changes and branded the editing as "a juvenile act and a waste of the licence fee". Such a juvenile act that I bet they're kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.

I never listen to FM104. Apart from in taxis and hair salons when I've got no control over what's being broadcast but you'd think that a radio station aimed at 16-34 year olds would manage to have a sense of humour about something like this. It's all just a bit pathetic really. Personally I don't think whoever did it went far enough.

I renewed my tv licence (€158 thanks very much) last week and this has taken the edge off it a little bit. I'd rather RTE employees were wasting time and licence fees doing this sort of thing than churning out rubbish like Charity You're a Star. At least it shows a small bit of cheek and imagination.

Incidentally I was just having a look at the FM104 website. Their morning show, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, has its own blog. They've managed to misspell clock. Who said somethingabout a juvenile act?

Breach

In 2001, a senior FBI agent Robert Hanssen, was arrested for spying. Not any old spying though. Hanssen had been selling US secrets to the Russians for over 20 years and is considered to be the worst spy in history. Orgiven that he got away with is so long, perhaps that should be the best?

Breach, starring Chris Cooper as Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe as Agent Chuck Useless (possibly not his real name) covers the 2 months prior to Hanssen's arrest. Phillippe is plucked from his daring mission spying on foreign men and their pregnant wives (terrorists obviously) and sent to work in a sterile office as Hanssen's assistant. Except he's no ordinary assistant because he's actually there to spy on Hanssen who we're told is a bit of a sexual deviant and may cause embarrassment to the Bureau.. Spycatcher and Hanssen quickly go from being treating each other with suspicion and contempt to going to church and spending Sunday lunch together and then back to suspicion and contempt and back again etc. It must've been an emotional 2 months. Just when he's starting to think that Hansssen is actually an alright guy, our boy learns that not only is Hanssen a deviant, but he's also a spy for the Russians. Considering he's just been eating cake in Hanssen's house and wasn't prepared to believe that his buddy was even a pervert, Spycatcher takes the news well and devotes lots of time to catching the bad guy. Even at the expense of his marriage. Goddammit.

Cooper, as always, is terrific. From Matewan and Lone Star to American Beauty and Adaptation he brings a dignified grace to proceedings. Even though we know he's a spy (the ending is at the start) he manages to fill the role with enough humanity to keep you wondering about his motivations. Phillippe, on the other hand, is a shambles. I've been reading a lot of interviews with him lately about how he's shying away from 'movie star' roles and trying, instead, to do more varied work that'll help to develop his range. He should start by trying to develop more varied expressions. From the emotional scenes with his wife (both tender and tense) to the early getting-to-know-you scenes with Cooper and through to the inevitable face off in the forest, he invests all his scenes with the same blank expression. While Cooper broods and simmers and rages, Phillippe wanders through with the look of a guy who's stepped off the set of a teen movie and can't find his way back.

In the end, the arrest of Hanssen seems so straighforward that you wonder why they needed Agent Chuck at all. Apart from goading Hanssen into making the final drop-off with the Russians (something he wouldn't have had to do if he hadn't been so rubbish at his job in the first place) his character adds absolutely nothing to the investigation. You can't help but wonder why they hadn't just followed and arrested Hanssen years ago.

This is cinema of course and I'm sure it wasn't like that in real life. It couldn't have been. Most of the time I sat there wondering how the filmmakers could have taken such an interesting story and made such a dull film out of it. On the plus side, Laura Linney and Gary Cole are both decent as FBI suity types. Ultimately it's Cooper's film though. He's rarely been better and while Breach is a bit of a fudged attempt to tell an interestign story, it's still well worth a look.

File under 'lazy listening'

I was talking to Steve earlier about The Pigeon Detectives. He's not very impressed with them and I was (sort of) sticking up for them. In the exchange though, I realised that while I listen to their album, Wait For Me, all the time when I'm jogging, on reflection I couldn't actually remember any of their songs or melodies. I think they're the kind of band that sound great when you don't actually listen to them but when you give them your attention they sound a bit derivative and, well, not very good.

That's happening a lot with me lately. I put a new record on when I'm doing the dishes or driving or running and by the time it's done I can't remember any of it. It's not 'chill-out' music so much as it's 'tune-out-completely' music.

Still - for a bunch of lads that look like they haven't seen daylight for years, they've made a great album to jog to.

Show some respect

I used to buy Empire magazine every month but i gave up a few years ago and haven't really missed it. I can't remember why I stopped buying it - around the same time I stopped getting Q too but that was becasue I just didn't care about the bands they were featuring. At some point I got too old for Q and remain waaay too young for Mojo.

Either way, every now and than I pick up a copy of Empire to see what I've been missing. This evening at the supermarket i was flicking through the latest issue (Will Smith on the cover) and in the news section, under the heading: Fall of the Legends (see what they did there?), was a 3 paragraph item about the deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonio in July. Actually, there was a subheading before the copy: RIP Bergo and Mickey. Now I can't claim to be the biggest fan of either of them but don't you think their achievements warrant a bit more than 3 paragraphs and a heading that makes them sound like cartoon characters?

In Empire's defence, they refer you to their website to read a full obituary. I've just been there - aparently Bergman is 'an artist of rare vision and fortitude, his place among cinema's greats is lastingly assured.' Meanwhile, Antonio's 'work often polarised critics but was impossible to ignore or forget. Sure - just don't expect 'The World's Biggest Movie Magazine' to waste much ink or paper on them. Not while they've got an interview with the fat kid from Superbad to publish.

Good work, lads.

Bob's Mint Julep

I'm not much of a cocktail drinker really. I've got the fixings for several things in the house but I don't really bother with them anymore. However I had the opportunity to savour a mint julep recently (which I guess is a little bit like a mojito only using bourbon instead of rum) and it was fantastic. Earlier today when I was driving back from the wedding (see below) I was listening to an old episode of Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. The topic was drinking and at one point in the show Bob gave us his recipe for a Mint Julep. I came home, discovered this brilliant little website and combined the two..

Unfortunately I can't embed the video into the blog but if you go here you should be able to see it..

Happy Ever Afters

My pals Steve and Dara got married yesterday. I don't usually talk direcctly about friends or family on the blog but for them I'll make an exception. It was a marvelous day. The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, the best man was suitably nervous and the father of the bride was sentimental, emotional, and had the room in tears by the end of his speech. Nice people, great food, good music and a beautiful location. All quite wonderful really.

You don't get to find people like Dara or Steve very often. They're funny, loving, encouraging, supportive, and whenever I deserve it, occasionally scolding. I've been blessed by all the friends I have but those two sit right at thetop of the tree. I don't know what I'd do without them.

So, congratulations to the very happy couple. They got there in the end and I couldn't be happier for them..

And I hope Steve doesn't mind me stealing their invitation from his site..