The spring clean continues, since today looks like a day for staying in, rather than going out.
Happy Easter to those who note it.
Happy Excuse For A Long Weekend to the rest.
Well, with the inevitability caused by her age and infirmity, The Queen Mother has died. After Princess Margaret's death last month, I'd have to say that this is not shaping up to be a great Golden Jubilee Year for Her Maj.
I hope no one was planning on watching anything specific on TV tonight - I think I'm off to the video shop.
I can't help thinking that Radio 4's much-touted effort to make itself more relevant to people who wouldn't traditionally be seen as part of its audience is stumbling slightly. This morning, the travel programme Excess Baggage ran a programme, quite sensibly timed for a holiday weekend, on 'Travelling With Children'. The problem I perceived with their approach is that of the three women they had on as contributers, one was the partner of a foreign correspondent, who talked about living with their children in the Balkans for five years, and one of the others, (and I swear I'm not making this up) had taken her two children, Tallulah and Xanthi (!!!!) off touring around Europe for eighteen months, which trip was partially made possible because her husband, who ran an art gallery, was bored at work. This same woman, by the way, also noted entirely blithely that her children had terrible trouble readjusting to life back home after the trip, because they had nothing in common with their contemporaries, which potentially quite damaging situation she presented with not a hint of regret at all.
Perhaps I live in too mundane a world, but I certainly don't know anyone even remotely capable of giving up work for a year and a half and roaming around Europe. What planet are the Radio 4 producers living on these days?
My original plan for this long weekend was to do some fairly major bathroom DIY - build a partition on which I can install the power shower, install the power shower, tile right round the bath and basin area , put some shelves in, change the light fitting, fix a new mirror - you get the picture. Sadly, none of that is coming to pass, due to various of the materials I need not being available, and there being no point in doing part of the job not knowing when I'll get the chance to do the rest.
So the alternative plan, depending on whether the weather stays so nice that I don't feel like staying in, is a fairly major spring clean of the flat. Forgive me if that turns out so ungripping that I don't record all of its excitement here....
Not a good week for the movie business: Billy Wilder died today.
I've been reading online obituaries, and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a bit emotional. The man was a giant among film makers - look at his credits: He wrote and/or directed some of the finest Hollywood films *ever*; the first person to win three Oscars for the same film (The Apartment), back in the days when the Oscars meant something; he wrote and directed Double Indemnity and Dietriech in Witness For The Prosecution; wrote and directed the simply wonderful The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes; and whether you agree with the survey that proclaimed it the funniest film ever or not, you'd surely have to rate pretty highly Some Like It Hot, which he also wrote and directed.
It's a cliché, but I think it's safe to say that we will not see his like again.
How visible are you?
Online, that is. I've been having a discussion over email about the impact we make on the web. Generally, do a search on my name, and this site will appear relatively high (except that Google isn't spotting me so much these days in one of those odd Google-glitches that comes along every now and then - try it on AllTheWeb and there I am), but equally, there are a few other places that I exist that will also show - companies, odd sites I've contributed to, odd organisations I've belonged to. The point being that my existence is recorded online in a wider context than just because I maintain my own site.
But at a suggestion in this discussion, I've tried searching on some other people I know, and have known, and the thing that truly stands out is that among the people I knew quite well at school and college, it's difficult to find as much as a single reference to them. The notable exception is Simon, who's an academic, and has been published, each of which would probably do it alone, but together just about guarantee it - plus he's got a pretty unique double-barelled surname. And yes, I know that the women might have married and changed their names, so it's hardly a scientific survey, but even so - I find it interesting, given how much basically offline data is now held online.
Am I the only one for whose past acquaintances this is true? Surely not.
I haven't watched E.R. on a regular basis for a couple of years, at least, but I left a tape running last week and recorded an episode from the middle of the eighth season, and I have to ask, has anyone else noticed that Maura Tierney is a complete *star*? Laura Innes' role has clearly also been beefed up over the last few seasons, and she's certainly risen to it (as well as directing some episodes and writing and directing odd West Wings), but Tierney owns every scene she's in.
The Oscar-analysis continues, with this entertaining piece in Salon pulling at some of the more obvious loose threads, though I disagree with a couple of the targets, the overall theme is spot on.
[Via Graham]
Ho hum. So BBC ONE is replacing the globe in its station idents with films of people dancing in various locations around the UK. Personally, I can't see what the fuss is about - apart from the fact that they've managed to reinvent the globe several times over the years, and I think it'll be harder to do so with the idea of people dancing, it seems like a creative, interesting solution. Apart from anything, given that the BBC is setting itself up as a global broadcaster through BBC World, it seems much more appropriate for World to use the globe, and ONE, which is a specifically British channel, to use something that reflects the UK.
But all the usual twaddle about wasting licence payers' money is being spouted by people who seem incapable of registering that by the time the cost has been spread over all of the times the films will be broadcast, they'll probably end up better value than adding in yet another episode a week of Eastenders, or getting caught up in a bidding war for yet another sporting fixture. And as for it being "political correctness gone mad" - why? Is it because one of the idents dares to show people in wheelchairs? Oh well, now I understand - heaven forbid we let anyone see disabled people actually having a good time....
By the way - if you ever get the chace to go to the location of one of the new idents - The Minack Open Air Theatre in Cornwall - go - it really is a spectacular setting.