The new brevity…
First up, apologies to the legions of me-ac followers who have been deprived of their daily dose of word-sparkle through the dismal, ever-darkening month of October. So many potential blogs – including a diligently researched Halloween week – got put on the back-burner as your cack-handed correspondent found himself waylaid by a succession of serious illnesses that would have done for weaker scribes, proving that October is so much more than just a shit album by a bunch of aging Irish dwarves. Thankfully, unlike Reg, I’m still standing – if only on one leg (more soon!) – and me-ac is back-in-effect, though with an important caveat. The days of the regular 500+ word entry are, I’m afraid, at a close (boo!). However, the days of more regular, but rather short, pithy, and hopefully almost daily entries are upon us (hurrah!), starting right here, right now.
We’ll start by looking back on a trio of the good things that happened last month but without too much of the usual flannel…
I fell off my bicycle for the first time in years – taking a sharp corner far too fast (aka doing a Barry Sheene) and skidding on some wet leaves. And despite the bloodied hands and knees (I was, stupidly, wearing shorts) and slight embarrassment, something about the whole experience – specifically that split second when you know pain is imminent and you’re helpless to stop it – was dumbly but deliciously exhilarating (though I wouldn’t try it in a car). Thanks are also due to the passerby who heard my dying howl and walked on by.
I dimly remember hearing some of the hoopla about The Cutting Room when it debuted in 2003, but for whatever reason I’d assumed it was some worthy fictional tract about adolescent self-harm. Assumptions be damned. Having piled through it in a day or two (such are the joys of being bedridden) I can confidently declare Louise Welsh on at least an equal par with Scottish namesake Irvine (although she’s clearly doing it for Glasgow). It’s an impression only confirmed by her equally excellent third, The Bullet Trick, which was similarly devoured double-quick through mealy mouthfuls of bad medicine.
Wes Anderson strikes me as someone I’d rather avoid in, say, a party situation. His hair’s just too self-consciously floppy and askew, his tone too knowingly droll, and for some reason I imagine he’d be sipping mineral water and wearing a roll-neck. Nonetheless I’m indecently fond of both The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou despite some of their slightly contrived tricksiness. Similar feelings were ahoy after seeing his Dahl adaptation, The Fantastic Mr Fox. The script (written with the similarly limp-fringed Noah Baumbach) was strong, the stop-motion animation a simple joy, yet something, somewhere was leaden in its telling and it lacked the edge-of-the-seat urgency in abundance in both Up and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. Or maybe I’m just carping crabbily because we bought tickets late and had to watch amid our intellectual superiors – the four-year-olds in the front row. Bloody kids…
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