woody allen broke my ipod

I had a strange dream last night. I was making a movie somewhere, I was involved in the writing of it, and Woody Allen was there. He was the younger Woody Allen not the way he is today. Anyway, I had my iPod with me and he took it in his hand and looked at it.It fell to the floor and broke. I was full of sadness as I picked it up and looked at the cracked white face. Woody said that he would replace it immediately and he called to a young woman who came over holding a notebook and asking what my iPod cost. Woody told her to go out and buy me a new one right this minute. So I ended up really happy as we were working in America and I figured I would now have a brand-new American iPod at the end of it all!

The Denaissance

I loved this piece in the OBSERVER BLOG today , http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observer/

The Denaissance starts here

By Rafael Behr / Science 03:02pm

The blog was very taken with Peter Watson's comment piece in the newspaper yesterday asserting that the late 20th Century and beginning of the 21st have been poor for good new ideas.

We flatter ourselves to think that we live in interesting times, Watson suggests. In fact, we just live in hectic times. Not the same thing at all. He concludes:

The sheer lack of fundamental innovation now may explain the tenacity of traditional religion and why contemporary art seems so flat, banal and repetitive.

Apparently our times compare poorly to, for example, 1050-1250AD or 1750-1950AD -periods of real upheaval and intellectual ferment. It is an interesting thesis and one that deserves to be explored on the blog.

It is, we have decided, time for a new movement. Something to fire the imagination. A new school, like Romanticism or Modernism, that can be applied across the spectrum of human endeavour. But since we are not clever enough to come up with something entirely independent, we thought we might be able to cobble one together with some sticky-backed plastic, a few prefixes and suffixes and a little something from the intellectual dressing up cupboard.

And because it's Monday, and Monday is unofficial list day on the Observer blog, we thing we ought to present our results in that hallowed form. So here are ...

The top 10 new movements not yet invented but sure to rock the world in the 21st Century.

1. Denaissance - The undoing of the Renaissance. People reject all aspirations to emulate the cultural achievements of antiquity, or for that matter 16th Century Europe, and take refuge in blinkered Mediaeval certainty.

2. Neo-Luddism - Combining hostility to technology in the workplace as embodied in the apocryphal figure of Ned Ludd, but retaining it and worshipping it in the sphere of private life. So, for example, it is OK to have a mobile phone, but it is illegal for work to call you on it.

3. Obscurism - The inevitable backlash to our current obsession with celebrity. Complete anonymity will come to be regarded as the supreme moral virtue. Obscurist artists and writers will produce great works, but no-one will know about it.

4. Post-Ageism - Because of demographic changes in society, combined with constant vilification of young people in the media, old age becomes incredibly fashionable. Youth is despised and comes to be seen as physically repulsive. New plastic surgery techniques to artifically wrinkle skin become very popular.

5. Post-Conservatism - Conservatives realise that so much has gradually changed and evolved since they started being conservative that to get back to where they started they will have to become radical revolutionaries.

6. Masculism - Like Feminism, except instead of formulating a coherent analysis of the power structure in society the proponents just make lists of things in society they like and dislike the most.

7. Groucho-Marxism - Class struggle with a sense of humour.

8. Post-itism - A theory proposing that all worthwhile human endeavour is most accurately expressed on little yellow bits of paper with an adhesive strip on the back.

9. Neo-nlightism - A theory proposing that all worthwhile human endeavour is most accurately expressed in lurid coloured bright lights on Broadway. A schismatic movement focuses on Piccadilly Circus.

10. Schmism - A theory proposing that all worthwhile human endeavour is most accurately expressed by repeating key words and inserting 'schm' as the first syllable. For example: 'Shakespeare? schmakespeare!' 'Capitalism? schmapitalism!'

Went to see Edward Albee’s “The Goat” at the Project tonight. At first, and even about almost half way through I didn’t think much of it. I thought it looked like what it was, an old man trying in vain to write something as startling as his “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” But then, almost at a turn - well it was during a speech made by the central played by Bryan Murray, I fell for it. And by the time Susan Fitzgerald , playing the wife, walked on stage carrying the bloodied head of the slain goat , I think that I too saw the goat through the eyes of the man who loved her. There’s been a lot of talk about what this play is saying, some of it from Albee himself, about whether its possible to do tragedy anymore etc. But what I will remember from the drama is that speech where the main character tries to describe the indescribable, what is like to look into the living eyes of another and see love there. How that moment can set you off on a road that may put you beyond the pale. And how impossible it is to explain or to justify the fall that may ensue. And yes, I think we can still do tragedy.

video days

Continuing my big Spring clean up, I tackled the living room yesterday. I unplugged the video recorder and put it into a cupboard. I hardly ever use it nowadays, I always watch DVDs and don’t really record any programmes off the TV anymore. I plan to get a DVD recorder later on this year, but I have reached the point of finally realizing that copying and storing programmes that I may never watch is a huge waste of time.
Still, unplugging the video was a big moment. Like the unplugged fax machine it had a short interesting life. I bought my first video recorder in the 1980s, it was actually stolen from my house – videos were expensive machines back then. We bought tapes and collected programmes like we were going to have them forever, the wonder of being able to go out for the night and have the video recorder tape the programme was the pinnacle of technology. It didn’t matter that you might never watch that taped programme, it was there – that was the thing. It demystified TV in some way and was the beginning of “lean forward” viewing and interactivity with mass media.

Bicycle Mark

I really like this picture of one man and his new computer. I came across it this morning on a blog site I sometimes read. Bicycle Mark describes his site as: “"The exaggerations of a Portuguese-American, radical, activist-journalist, pretend-academic, university employee, podcaster, blog fanatic, living in Amsterdam".” The photo shows him in bed with his brand new PowerMac G4, in love with a new machine. God, I know that feeling. Last January, while visiting LA I bought a Sony Vaio. I have a photo of myself in bed in my hotel room with my Vaio the morning after I bought it. Are we all mad or just evolving into something else?

O Comments

Not one single solitary person has left a comment on my site yet! This is not surprising; my blog is one of a million other blogs out there blogging about in cyberspace like a message in a bottle. Would a message in a bottle stand a better chance of being read? At least for a message in a bottle there is the chance someday of being washed ashore. Cyberspace, like the universe, just keeps expanding no shores in sight. Maybe there is a secret reader out there waiting with baited breath for my next note? After all, I visit many blogs and rarely leave comments. Too lazy, but I also have this feeling that I’m defacing them when I leave a comment. It was the same of course back in the 20th century when I was once a pen and ink letter writer. I used to love getting letters but didn’t look forward at all to sitting down and replying. Should I, dear reader, tell you more interesting and personal things about my life that might provoke you to comment? I could resort to the tricks of the trade to get my blog noticed. But why would I do that? Because we write to be read I suppose. But blogs are different, closely related to private diaries they have that same duality about them. The need to be private and the need to be exposed are two side of the same coin I think.

The Pope

The Pope is dead. Hard to think of his life without thinking about the past 26 years, the prime of my life and how his passing in some way signals the passing of those years. Despite the fact that he was never really a friend of me and my kind, I feel sadness at his passing. I also feel in some way that this is the real end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21^st.

Call Center

Saw this photo in the paper today. A call centre somewhere - India? And do you know what? no one looks sad or miserable in it.

dr who

Dr Who

The new “Dr.Who” began on BBC last night. Written by Russell Davies, he hasn't made the good doctor gay but the sensibilty is there. But then wasn't there always a not so hidden gay streak in all the doctors? Look at Eccleston in a battered leather jacket outside the 1950s police public call box. Like some bit of rough trade outside a public loo in 1950s London? I’m sure a thesis could be written about this! Anyway, the show is good. Good for 48 year olds anyway, I wonder how well it plays for 8 year olds?

silver dream machine

De Lorean

John De Lorean died yesterday. I’m not a car driver yet I have always loved his De Loren car that was manufactured for a short time in Belfast in the early 1980s. Shiny, futuristic and hopeful it was everything that grey blood splattered Belfast was not. The enterprise failed under cloudy Belfast skies and cloudy financial dealings. It was a brief strange stainless steel image that seemed to try and drag the streets of Belfast out of the past if not back to the future all those years ago. And it still looks like a dream of the future. And if I ever did learn to drive a car I would love to drive it.

skyfest

Went up on the roof tonight to take some pictures of the skyfest fireworks . I didn't think it was as good as it was other years, not as spectacular. This tradition really started in the boom years of the Celtic Tiger. It was an affirmation of our newly found self-confidence, it was as if we all stood there and said “ wow look at what we can do” Many of us did just that. And although that sort of thing had its detractors I was not one of them. I was fully behind this surge of desire to affirm ourselves and our place in the world. But I think we have moved on and need something else? That burst of fire in the same spot in the sky has become very predictable. Once you light up the sky in a spectacular fashion once, what can you do to better that? And although fireworks are beautiful they are very short lived. Then again, maybe that's the whole point.

Charm

Kate Kellaway interviewing novelist Alexander McCall Smith (author of the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books), in the Observer today writes, “The books, like their author, have charm. You cannot overstate the power of this - it's the missing ingredient in contemporary fiction.”

Head Cold

I’ve had this bad cold for nearly a week now. In the head, the chest, the bones – all over. I often used to get colds this time of the year and part of me even looked forward to it. But I can’t seem to get much pleasure out of confinement any more. There’s always this feeling that life is moving on and that I need to keep up with it. There is so much stuff going on within us and without these days. And as one gets older the endless days are endless no more. Nevertheless, I tried my best to make my fluey down days memorable. I bought a collection of SEINFELD Dvds – Seasons 1 , 2 and 3, and focused my lethargic brain on them. Still good but I thought it was striking how dated they seem, wasn’t expecting that. The 1990s are fading fast. That stand up humour thing , while often very funny and perceptive, has a clear line that can be traced back to the 1950s. The ghost of Lenny Bruce hovers around all the time. and that's no bad thing but - Is it all a little bit too “straight” now or something? Anyway, the DVD collection is a credit to its producers, lots of extras and a very good one hour documentary that tells how the show began.

falling out of love with paper

I’ve been a reader all my life. From the pulpy comfort of comic books to the addiction/ tyranny of the morning newspaper. Thousands of articles, hundreds of books have gone into my brain through the conventional route of words on the printed page. In the last ten years however, I have been reading more and more on screen. Although I would have always gone along with the notion that words on screen will never fully replace the ease and tactility of the printed page I have only recently woken up to the fact that I am now reading more words on screen than on paper. More importantly, I am only now starting to admit to myself that I think I get as much pleasure out of skimming a newspaper on line as looking through a hard copy. I still wouldn’t read a novel on screen but then again I think I listen to more books (via audible on my ipod) than I read. Most books, if read well, gain by being listened to. I’m listening to “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell at the moment. If I was reading it, I’m not sure I would have stayed the course but the different voices make the varying first person narrations very compelling.

young americans

My first blog. Snowy day. Listening to the song “Oxygen” by Willy Mason. My God only in his early 20s and sounding as if he’s been with us since, oh at least 1960.What did Bowie say about young Americans? Nothing complimentary I think but you have to admit that no one does youth, energy, innocence and enthusiasm better than young Americans.