Ok - I realise that this isn't an accurate portrayal of women drivers but, in an age where men's role in advertising is to be the stooge, the fall-guy or a general doormat in a woman's world, it's nice to remind ourselves that there was a time when gender bias went in the other direction.
I'm not sure when it's originally from - the late 60s maybe?
Saw this fantastic little bit of graffiti written on a For Sale sign on Long Lane the other day. A lessbeen? Is that supposed to be a lesbian? Or is Mary a has-been who never really made it in the first place? I'm assuming the former. Who's teaching these kids? As far as I'm concerned if you know what a lesbian is, you should know how to spell it.
I heard a reporter on Radio 1 last night outlining the main points of the HSE's first Health Status of the Population of Ireland Report which was published yesterday. One of the findings was that there are more people living in the republic than at any time since 1861. As well as the rise in immigration, she explained that 2 of the reasons for this is the increase in people being born and the decrease in people dying.
Let's see: more people being born, less people dying = more people overall.
In my round-up of last year, I talked about going to Dingle in December to see Elbow and Richard Hawley recording the Other Voices tv show. I posted a picture of myself and Helen on the beach in Dingle and said that we were pretending to take album cover shots.
Well Steve in London took it to the next logical step..
Here's Richard Hawley and Shez singing at just about the same spot. They know how to look cool on standing on a beach in December.
And here's some of Elbow and Richard Hawley's performance later that night..
Ok - so I was completely wrong with all those Oscar predictions yesterday (actually i wasn't really - I was betting on the ones I thought might surprise people) but could the results have been any less interesting.. Apart from Sean Penn, I suppose, and even that seemed somewhat inevitable too.
It's a shame that Mickey Rourke's performance in The Wrestler which was staggering for many reasons is now being referred to as a 'losing' one. Sean Penn is excellent in Milk but he's such a part of the establishment that his win just seems to be the safe choice by the Academy. It's funny that people have him down as some kind of loose cannon when, in fact, he always seems to say what's expected and do the right thing.
The contrast is clear when you see Mickey Rourke's speech at the Independent Spirit Awards the other night. One look at this tells us all we really need to know about why he didn't win last night. Clue: there's lots of swearing. It's also very funny.
Just been to paddypower.com to wager a few quid on tonight's Oscars. I haven't gone near online betting since last summer's European Championships and found, to my surprise, that there's 60euro in my account. Not any more - I've just thrown down twenty quid on tonight's results. This year I'm going for a bit of value. The favourites aren't offering any decent odds so I'm hoping that there'll be one or two surprises this year and that perhaps I can cash in on some of them..
Best Film - Benjamin Button. It's long, it's boring, it stars very beautiful people, it covers a huge part of the 20the century and it's American. Surely the Oscars will reward it ahead of Slumdog.. Possibly not but I've got it at 11-2 so let's hope.
Best Director - David Fincher. If the Academy give best film to Slumdog, they won't give the director award for the same film, will they? Probably.. Still 5-1 is pretty tasty.
Best Actor - this is Mickey Rourke's, right? And if not Mickey, then Sean Penn. Fair enough.. Both of them are fantastic in The Wrestler and Milk and Rourke's comeback has truly been astonishing but spare a thought for The Visitor's Richard Jenkins. Last summer when the film was released, most critics said that it would take a fantastic performance from someone to stop Jenkins winning an Oscar. That may well be the case but at 66-1 I'm hoping there's a little twist in the Best Actor tail. If not, give it to Mickey - he's brilliant.
Best Actress - It's got to be Kate, it just has. But at 4-1 Meryl Streep might just come good for me. But no - it's surely going to Kate this time.
Supporting Actress. Marisa Tomei. This is probably the only instance where the person I want to win actually has some handy odds (10-1). It seems that Penelope Cruz has this one sewn up but Marisa Tomei is fantastic in The Wrestler and has been doing great work for a long time now. Go on Oscar - give the girl a nod!
Supporting Actor. Heath Ledger? Seriously, Heath Ledger? I suppose it's appropriate that his performance as a bad Joker should end with a bad joke. He was very talented - brilliant even, but his Joker was a one note performance in a pretty average summer blockbuster. Nobody's going to stop him I suppose, but if the Academy surprises everyone and does the right thing, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michael Shannon are there at very attractive odds.. I'm going for Hoffman at 20-1.
So that's it. According to paddy power, my 20 quid will potentially yield 388euro. That's mostly thanks to Richard Jenkins.. This time tomorrow I could be rich beyond my wildest dreams. Or else I'll be just like I am know - 20quid poorer.
… and absolutely nothing about it will disappoint.
… a formidable team of pure, soaring talent.
… a visual masterpiece
… in all respects it is the finest film made in years.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is opening tomorrow and reviewed here. Perhaps I'm being cynical but I can't believe Brad Pitt himself would agree with the above. Anyone seen it yet?
Everybody wants to make their own Obama poster. And I'm just like everybody else. And you can be just like everybody else too thanks to paste magazine!
Go on - Obamicon yourself!
I only found out recently that Obama smokes. I think he claimed somewhere that he smokes about 8 a day. Which means that he probably smokes about 15. And yet I've never seen a photo of him with a gasper.. Actually I googled it a moment ago and, as far as I can see, there's only 2 images of him smoking. How on earth did he manage to keep that under wraps for so long? Anyway, wouldn't fancy his chances of quitting now.
It's been a little while, hasn't it? November and December just vanished underneath me. One minute we were all laughing about a road sign in Wales and the next I was flying home from Paris and 2 months had passed. But now I'm back, back, back and I won't be going anywhere for a while. That's a Connolly promise. And a Connolly promise is worth.. em.. well essentially it's worthless but let's not dwell on that.
So here, briefly are a few things that I would've blogged about last year if i hadn't been too busy doing them!
Hunger, Steve McQueen's film about the hunger strikes in Belfast in the early 80s. Yes, it's a bit 'arty', there's very little dialogue and it doesn't follow your normal film narrative but don't let that put you off. It's fantastic. Probably the best thing I saw in 2008. Apart from Elegy which couldn't be further removed from what Hunger is all about. But hands-down the best scene in anything last year was surely the 18 minute single-take conversation between Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands and Liam Cunningham as the priest who comes to visit Sands in prison. The longer the scene goes on, and you realise it's all being shot in one take, the more the tension increases. See it for this alone.
Fleet Foxes at Vicar Street. Awful gig. The album is good and there's no questioning their talent but God, I've never seen a band with worse stage presence. Someone (me? probably not) came up with the expression 'negative stage presence' to describe bands like Fleet Foxes. Just endless tune-ups and muttering amongst themselves. And when the lead singer had nothing interesting to say (that'll be all the time) he just talked about Barack Obama and stood back as the room went nuts.. I spent the last 15 minutes in the bar.. Still you can't argue with this:
Of Time and the City, Terrence Davies' lovely documentary about growing up in post-war Liverpool was a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon. And as I was a little tired that day, it was most condusive to a little snoozy-time. I dozed off and didn't miss a thing!
W, Oliver Stone's confusing biopic of George Bush, should have put me to sleep but sadly didn't. What a strange, pointless film. Everyone is great in it but it all added up to not very much in the end. Guess what? Dubya drank a bit in his youth. And how about this - he's not very smart at all! No wait - this'll blow your head off - there were no WMDs in Iraq!! You get my point. The only positive thing I can say about it is that it made old Dubya seem rather likeable. That couldn't have been Oliver's Stone intention, could it?
Quantum of Solace. Oh goodness me.. What a load of boring old drivel..
Whose Line is it anyway? in Vicar Street. Great fun actually. They're coming back in April - you should go if you can.
Finished joint 2nd in a table quiz in Glasnevin. I single-handedly scored 10/10 in the music round. They played snippets of songs and you'd to name the song and singer. And a strange mix it was - Ultravox, Midge Ure (seriously where have you ever heard two Midge Ure songs in the one place?), Radiohead, Everything but the Girl and, most impressive of all, Adrian Gurvitz' timeless classic, em, 'Classic'! Unfortunately the shine was taken off my great achievement by my somewhat exuberant over-reaction to the answers. It turns out that nobody like a know-all! Still second is a significant leap from our mid-table finish last year. The pressure's on already for 2009!
Eli 'Paperboy' Reed in Whelans. I know it's a terrible name and I know that soul music isn't exactly the hot thing for 2008 or 2009 but all things considered it was a fantastic night's entertainment. If you don't know him, Eli is like an updated version of all those great Motown and Stax singers. He tours with a band called the True Loves and he put on a proper show on a damp November night in Whelans. As far from Fleet Foxes as you can possibly get, Eli whipped the crowd into a soul-clapping frenzy and literally wouldn't leave the stage til everyone was shouting for more. A proper showman in the James Brown/Springsteen mould. Have a look at this performance on Jools Holland's show in November. It may not be terribly original but in an age where very little is at least it's exciting, upbeat and even clowns like me can dance to it!
Elbow in Dingle. Now this was a treat. Every year RTE record a series of concerts in Dingle for the Other Voices tv show. It's recorded in a tiny church on the main street and they have 4 or 5 acts on each show. Thanks to a tip-off from Alfer we knew that Elbow and Richard Hawley were going to be on together on Sunday night. And so there we were, sitting in a 100 seater church in the middle of nowhere, as most critic's favourite band of last year sang One Day Like This, to all intents and purposes everyone's favourite song of last year. Earlier Richard Hawley delivered a lovely acoustic set which was preceded and followed by James Morrison (nice but dull and Hugh Cornwall (loud and great). I've managed to go to a lot of gigs this year but seeing Elbow and Richard Hawley singing Hawley's Coles Corner is definitely one for the books. One of many.. And afterwards all the bands, crew, fans and locals all headed over to the hotel across the street and drank until almost daybreak.
After a long night of rock and roll, it was time to run home through the streets of Dingle. Thinking about it now, this is what most of December looked like to me. I'm just coming back into focus now.
Tragic attempts at a moody album cover photo on the beach the following day. There's loads of these. They're all as bad as this one
And then there was Josh Ritter the following week at Vicar Street. Now look, I know Josh Ritter isn't cool and I know people don't care much for his music but I like him.. It shouldn't need justification! He's got a warm, engaging personality , he's got a great band and he was doing this gig with a 24 piece orchestra. And it was darned good. Good songs, a few beers and a nice Christmas buzz about the place. What could go wrong? Other people, that's what.. I've talked before about people talking at gigs. We all know it's not cool, right? What more needs to be said? We were stood beside a bunch of people who were there to hear one song and one song only. The rest of the time they were happy to chat loudly to each other. In fairness one of them was trying to listen to the gig and tried, on many occasions, to shush them but it wasn't to be. And then when he played Kathleen, the song they were there to hear, they just went nuts. Cos get this - one of their friend's names is Kathleen. So it was obviously very important that they should jump up and down and shout along, making vague attempts at what the lyrics might be, until they got to the one word of the song that they felt they could shout out at a great volume. And then they shouted. Oh God, they shouted.. If I was 10 years younger and 2 years singler and a lot braver/stupider I probably would have done something but instead I've kept it all inside until now! That'll show them!
In the end it comes down to this (taken from a pub in London, with thanks to Word blogger Retro Man)
And then all of a sudden it was Christmas and then it was New Year's Day and I was in Paris. You all know what Paris is like. It's fantastic. On this occasion it was cold. Bloody cold! And it snowed. So I bought a hat and some gloves. And took a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Well you have to, don't you?
Some people like to get daily 'word of the day' emails from online dictionary sites. I use one myself (today, Dictionary.com's is jettison, Merriam-Webster's is audacious and the New York Times' is dank) but this week I've been getting far more enjoyment from listening to Dr Brendan O'Shea (from the Irish College of General Practitioners) on Newstalk's Breakfast show. He's been on a couple of times this week already.
Yesterday he was talking about the dangers facing people suffering from the winter flu epidemic. Today he was appealing for people to stay away from Accident and Emergency rooms unless they were in a really bad way. This is because of the vomit bug that's broken out in 7 hospitals across the country. Anyway, yesterday he used the word common-sensical to describe how we wanted people to think about their symptoms. Today his chosen word was persnickety..
This is a gorgeous song by a bunch of chaps called the Leisure Society. I heard about these chaps on Guy Garvey's radio show recently and haven't stopped listening to is since. The lead singer works in a carpet warehouse. I wonder if it's the same place in the video?
Ok - I realise that this isn't an accurate portrayal of women drivers but, in an age where men's role in advertising is to be the stooge, the fall-guy or a general doormat in a woman's world, it's nice to remind ourselves that there was a time when gender bias went in the other direction. 
Saw this fantastic little bit of graffiti written on a For Sale sign on Long Lane the other day. A lessbeen? Is that supposed to be a lesbian? Or is Mary a has-been who never really made it in the first place? I'm assuming the former. Who's teaching these kids? As far as I'm concerned if you know what a lesbian is, you should know how to spell it.
In my round-up of last year, I talked about going to Dingle in December to see Elbow and Richard Hawley recording the Other Voices tv show. I posted a picture of myself and Helen on the beach in Dingle and said that we were pretending to take album cover shots. 
So, a bus crashed into a tree this morning.. Amazing - looks like it came straight off.. Would love to hear the driver's explaination of this one.
