Rob, Rambling

Vanity Fair - Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:09:42 +0100

Vanity Fair - Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury:

I’ve been reading quite a bit of long-form journalism recently, and this is one of the better articles, detailing how isolated Palin has become, and how she seems to be campaigning for nothing more than self-promotion right now.

It would’ve been nice to see a few more on-the-record sources, but it’s a sign of how powerful she is and how much fear she puts into even her friends (and ex-friends) that so few are prepared to put their names to their words in print.

It’s crazy to think that she was so close to being a heartbeat away from the presidency of the US.

The girlfriend has an addiction: hardbacks

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:58:34 +0100

The Girlfriend: and getting the new Terry Pratchett tomorrow
The Girlfriend: which would account for £11 of the missing £104 from my bank account
Me: seriously, I need to wean you off hardbacks
The Girlfriend: :(
The Girlfriend: I like being first with the new books
The Girlfriend: you have to wait like another YEAR to get the paperback
Me: delayed gratification is just as good as instant gratification
The Girlfriend: not as far as I am concerned
The Girlfriend: I want instant gratification all the time

"News International agreed to pay Clifford one million pounds in exchange for feeding the paper..."

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:12:16 +0100

“News International agreed to pay Clifford one million pounds in exchange for feeding the paper exclusive stories over the next several years.”

- Probably my favourite line from the NY Times investigation into the British newspaper News Of The World’s phone-hacking scandal.

Max Clifford is a celebrity PR who will be the link between a celebrity and a newspaper when they need to either deny or promote a story. He is notorious for giving a newspaper a particular story/angle if they promise to bury a different damaging story about one of his clients.

A common example is when a newspaper has evidence of a celeb’s drug use. Clifford then negotiates a tearful “coming out” interview with the celeb instead of an outright exposé, which could be more harmful to the celeb’s further career.

The article as a whole isn’t particularly insightful if you’ve been following the story over the last few years, but it’s a very good overview if you haven’t. It really does show how the “dark arts” employed by British newspapers don’t just tread the line between legal and illegal, but trample all over it without a care in the world.

Lauren’s series of posts about the “ice cream of the...

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:52:32 +0100

Lauren’s series of posts about the “ice cream of the future” have reminded me about my first (and so far, only) experience of ice cream in dot form.

It was during my first trip to America, when I was about eight years old. We’d stayed with some friends in West Virginia, and then driven down to Florida to do all of the DisneyWorld parks and so on. During our time in Florida, there happened to be a shuttle launch from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.

We drove out that way, and ended up pulling over to the side of the road to watch the launch, along with everyone else in the area. The shuttle was pretty much just an orange glow at that distance, but it was cool to see it heading up into the heavens, disappearing into the sky as we watched.

Of course, being so close to the space center, we had to go in. Again, along with everyone else in the area. I remember it being stupidly busy, but also absolutely amazing. Hell, I was a space-geek then, and still am now.

The point of this story though, is that that day brought me my first experience of Space Dots, or real astronaut ice-cream, as it was marketed there. I distinctly remember my little sister (around four at the time) thoroughly spilling her ice cream everywhere, and all these tiny ice cream balls rolling around before swiftly melting on the hot concrete. That meant me having to give up some of my ice cream to her, which at that age is just unfair.

Anyways, if you haven’t yet tried space dots, or astronaut ice-cream, I can highly recommend it. I can also highly recommend the Kennedy Space Center, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

(photo via TechRepublic)

Serious business: London Mexican Restaurant List

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:34:00 +0100

Serious business: London Mexican Restaurant List:

Blogged for self-reference, really. Covers everything from proper sit-down restaurants to burrito vans.

For Sale: Tame Baby Chimpanzee

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:12:07 +0100

For Sale: Tame Baby Chimpanzee:

The girlfriend wants one.

Sigh.

You can prove anything with statistics, they say. An apt example is the Edinburgh Festival’s...

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:14:13 +0100

You can prove anything with statistics, they say. An apt example is the Edinburgh Festival’s crowing this week about the highest ticket sales in the event’s history, an astounding 1.95m tickets this summer.

(Unfortunately, this year none of those tickets were mine, as I didn’t have time to get up there, but I’ll be going again next year. I’ve had such a blast over the last couple of years that I’m disappointed not to have had the time this August to have even just a few days in Edinburgh. It’s a crazy place, and just buzzing 24/7.)

Anyways, what the press release and subsequent media coverage failed to point out, is that whilst ticket sales were up by 5%, the average number of tickets sold per performance had dropped off quite dramatically:

In 2009, ticket sales were 1.85m for 32,000ish performances. That works out as 57.8 tickets sold per performance.
In 2010, ticket sales were 1.95m for 40,000ish performances. That works out as 48.8 tickets sold per performance.

That looks like a fall of just over 15% in average attendance per show, which doesn’t exactly strike me as a blinding success.

The sheer growth in terms of the number of performers and shows is what accounts for the growth in ticket sales as a whole, but each individual performance is actually seeing a reduction in ticket sales, which in turn is making it harder for productions to break even.

Of course, the Edinburgh festival organising committee wants to put a positive spin on things, and it’s just a shame that none of the journalists writing about the festival’s ticket sales have done any simple maths to show that all might not be quite as rosy as is claimed…

Sitting in the dentist’s chair earlier, I noticed that she had Classic FM on in the...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:09:34 +0100

Sitting in the dentist’s chair earlier, I noticed that she had Classic FM on in the background, and it made me think that if I were a dentist, I’d be so tempted to drill in time with the music.

Dun dun dun dun dunn, drilldrill, drilldrill and so on.

One of the best things about my job is that I speak to people from all over the world, and get to...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:58:26 +0100

One of the best things about my job is that I speak to people from all over the world, and get to meet them. One of the guys I was out to lunch with today was from Georgia (as in the country, not the US state), and it was really interesting to talk with him about the so many differences in culture and language from us Brits.

What really threw me though, was the couple of times he began a sentence with “I was out bear-hunting this one time…”.

He even told a story of how one of his best mates had to cut open some animal and sleep practically inside it because it turned so cold one of the nights they were out hunting. Like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, seriously!

Interestingly, he said that the Georgian language was pretty much entirely self-standing, and completely different from any other. It is over 2,000 years old, and has a written script that isn’t at all Cyrillic or Latin. I’ve looked it up on Wikipedia this evening, and linguistic historians have not been able to find any connections to other languages in the European or Asian area.

Apparently the closest is Basque, which is odd because the two regions are over 2,000 miles apart. What is even stranger is that the eastern part of Georgia used to be called Iberia, and the Spanish-Portuguese peninsula is the Iberian peninsula. Coincidence, or were there some very well-travelled Georgians in Roman times? I find this kind of thing fascinating.

Anyway, I’m going to make it a goal of mine in life to be able to start a sentence “I was out bear-hunting this one time…”.

The Knife - Heartbeats (Unofficial Animated video) Animated by...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:43:48 +0100

The Knife - Heartbeats (Unofficial Animated video)

Animated by Guy Collins

(via atencio and hipsterdiet)

This is simply fantastic. I love this song, and The Knife have so many good tunes that it’s impossible not to like them. The way these visuals take each element of the song and animate it repeatedly reminds me of Michel Gondry’s take on Chemical Brothers’ Star Guitar, which used aspects of the French countryside to represent each instrument or melody within the song.

When done correctly, like this one is, it looks amazing and adds another layer to the song as you can see when certain instruments come in and drop out at different points. Fantastic stuff.

To be honest, I'm really not.

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:32:55 +0100

The Girlfriend: I was just about to tell you about my shoe dilemna
The Girlfriend: but figured you really wouldn't be interested
The Girlfriend: so you have been spared a shoe diatribe :)
Me: I'm interested in shoe dilemmas
Me: (not really)

My job does have its benefits. Lunches being one of them.

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:41:43 +0100

Me: I've got a lunch, which I didn't know about until an hour ago
The Girlfriend: man you ALWAYS get to have nice food
The Girlfriend: I'm so jealous
The Girlfriend: I'm looking at an egg sandwich which is the height of gourmet dining around here

I got round to watching Salt last night, the spy-action film with Angelina Jolie in the title role....

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:40:00 +0100

I got round to watching Salt last night, the spy-action film with Angelina Jolie in the title role. It filled a gap, and there’ll definitely be a sequel, but it ain’t anything too special.

I don’t know whether this is damning it with false praise, as I thought the Bourne films were over-rated, but when it finished I was left with the impression that it was essentially “The Bourne She-premacy”. It’s almost identical in tone, style, attempts to make the plot needlessly complicated, and a slight feeling of unease that surrounds the main character’s identity.

I thought that the car-based action sequences were among its strong points, and that Angelina Jolie is better than she was allowed to be in terms of developing her character. Hell, Mrs Smith had more depth!

Definitely a popcorn film, and not even a particularly brilliant one at that. Maybe the sequel (guaranteed!) will be better.

Two words: Holy. Moly. Christina Hendricks at the Emmys, via Go...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:23:52 +0100

Two words: Holy. Moly.

Christina Hendricks at the Emmys, via Go Fug Yourself.

Suffice it to say that the ‘Whitney Houston’ at Cino’s on Leather Lane is an...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:40:00 +0100

Suffice it to say that the ‘Whitney Houston’ at Cino’s on Leather Lane is an absolutely fantastic sandwich. Serious munch.

And I’ve no idea why the menu is stuck in the early 90s, with the other specials being:

Robert De Niro
Al Pacino
Prince Naseem
Madonna
And a couple of others which I can’t remember.

Even though it’s only been a 4-day week, I am bushed. Evidently 3-day boozefests are beyond me...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:56:39 +0100

Even though it’s only been a 4-day week, I am bushed. Evidently 3-day boozefests are beyond me nowadays, and I seem to have picked up a cold to boot. Excellent!

Thankfully, I’m off to my parents’ place for some R&R on this 3-day weekend, with the girlfriend heading off on a hen do and me left on my lonesome for a day of sport on the Saturday. There’s nothing like being on the sofa for eight hours, with a laptop on one side and the TV on the other (or, ideally, with both in front of you so you can watch both without having to turn your head. I have previous on this matter).

Then it’s round to a mate’s house for a barbecue on Sunday, come rain or shine, and back to London on Monday. With any luck the girlfriend’s sister will have cleaned our flat whilst she’s staying there in our absence!

I watched Splice last night, and this morning all I can really think about it is a resounding...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:40:01 +0100

I watched Splice last night, and this morning all I can really think about it is a resounding “meh”.

It had its moments, some particularly shocking and nasty, others pretty touching, but it was awkward in that it didn’t really know what it wanted to be. It was torn between an outright sci-fi horror film, and something entirely different exploring what it means to be a parent and a family.

In particular, the ending seems out of kilter with the rest of the film, as if the director thought it needed some added action and gore, but didn’t know where it could fit in elsewhere. It very much felt tacked on, although earlier in the film I found myself willing something similar to happen.

This is because it plods along a little in the middle section, especially if you’d been expecting something more exciting and scary, as the trailer had led me to believe. In fact, the film is more about moral and ethical dilemmas, which I’ll grant is harder to get across in 60 seconds…

Even those moral issues are relatively quickly glossed over, with a “fuck it, let’s do it anyway” attitude present for most of the time. Adrien Brody is pretty good as the more sceptical of the two scientists, with more questions as to the correctness of what it is they’re trying to achieve.

Not a bad film, all told, but one that is undersold by its trailer. Don’t expect violence and scares aplenty, but do expect to see some good ones when they do turn up.

GPOYW - The dressed like an idiot on a stag weekend...

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:58:31 +0100

GPOYW - The dressed like an idiot on a stag weekend edition.

Middle-row, second-right is me.

Blackfriars Station is going to be absolutely immense once...

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:08:06 +0100

Blackfriars Station is going to be absolutely immense once it’s finished (in 2012). Am I alone in thinking that a station stretched across the river looks bloody brilliant?

(Image via Londonist)

With some inopportune planning, I’m missing the first home game of Arsenal’s season...

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:56:08 +0100

With some inopportune planning, I’m missing the first home game of Arsenal’s season tomorrow, by virtue of being up in Newcastle for a mate’s stag do, which will no doubt involve adding to the general level of punishment under which my liver exists.

The plan for the weekend seems pretty open: a whole lot of drinking on Saturday, with some mystery “fun activities” thrown in. I know we’re going to a cricket match on Sunday, but don’t have a clue what the obligatory fancy dress will be, and then Monday is theoretically for recovering. Although our flights aren’t until the evening, so there’s opportunity for a beer or seven in there as well…

Wish me luck!