Hugo Young, RIP
Guardian columnist Hugo Young has died, aged 64.
Always provocative, always passionate, I may occasionally have disagreed with him, but it was only very occasionally.
I've linked to his columns on a number of occasions. Sad that I won't be doing so again.
Holiday
Did I mention I'm off for a week's holiday on Sunday? If not, I am. I can't wait. Stress levels are rising all the time, and I *need* to chill and do nothing for a week. I'm in the mood for some beach time, some great food and drink, and pleasant company, all of which are very much on the agenda.
Five days and counting.
Referrer Madness
Okay, you know I don't dwell much on this stuff, but I've suddenly noticed that some really odd referrers have started showing up in the logs for this place. Is anyone else finding anything similar?
So far this month, I'm getting quite a lot of traffic from all of the following, and none seem to offer any clear indication of why this should be the case:
http://schoolfinder.monstertrak.ca/
http://www.xsorbit2.com/users/glbtxfan/index.cgi - which is a forum for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered X-Fans that I didn't know existed, so it's actually quite useful that it came up....
http://development.ux.com/~steven/ which is a site belonging to a pro-gun Catholic as far as I can see, so definitely not in my usual cachement area.
And possibly oddest of them all:
http://www.moevenpick-braunschweig.com
Avast There!
So, weeks later, Alison and I finally got to see Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl this afternoon. Not a bad romp all told, though there's a swordfight early on that seems to go on forever. Jonny Depp is as bonkers as he's ever been in anything, and Orlando Bloom remains as pretty as ever. (Actually that's very unfair - he's really good in this, as is most of the cast.) The screenplay lets it all down a bit, as it's rather too full of coincidence, and no one seems to be very much phased by the fact that there's a crew of skeletons wandering around, but I guess if you suspend your disbelief, it's a diverting enough way of passing acouple of hours.
Seasonal
An interesting change has clearly occurred in thelast week or so, probably tied to the schools having gone back.
When Alison and I turned up to play tennis this morning, there was none of the usual jockeying for a court/people hanging around looking annoyed at anyone who started a new game/calls of "how long have you been on that court?" - there was us and one other pairing for most of the time we were playing. The tennis season, it seems, is over.
However, the teeny football season has clearly started - dozens of small boys were charging up and down the pitches in the park accompanied by the shouts, cheers, encouragements and occasional ridicule of all the football dads and more than a few football mums. These latter were right there at the upper volume end of the shouting and ridiculing range.
Somewhat off-putting, actually.
Oh My Word
Non-comics-readers tune out now.
20 or so years ago, potentially the biggest-ever crossover between the Marvel and DC comics 'universes' was proposed: Avengers/Justice League of America. Eager fanboys like yours truly slavered over the very thought of it, even though not particularly big DC fans.
Politics got in the way; relations between 'The Big Two' soured, and it began to look like it would never happen. But now it has.
A couple of weeks ago, issue one went on sale, written by recent Avengers writer Kurt Busiek and pencilled by legendary artist George Perez. It's almost certainly going to end up being the biggest-selling US comic of the year, and while some have criticised the plot for being of the old-school "heroes have to find a series of powerful objects to avert disaster"-style, I'm in the camp that thinks this is Busiek's homage to an era that inspired this kind of crossover. I think it's great.
But it gets better, and here's the thing I'm "Oh My Word"-ing about: I just found a sneak peak of Perez's uncoloured art for the cover of issue three. I assume that this is every *single* character who's ever been a member of either team.
Bloody Hell.
Bloody Hell – I Was Forgetting!
Not sure how I'd failed to do so already, but anyway:
Congratulations to Dave and Octavia on their engagement.
Woo-Hoo! Party frocks, here we come.
Tube Announcements
Am I the only one getting increasingly pissed-off by the latest style of announcements that London Underfround have embarked upon?
On those increasingly rare occasions when things are going well, I've started to hear "We are pleased to announce that there is a good service running on the Jubilee Line at the moment".
It makes me want to kill someone. I mean, apart from the fact that it's so unbearably smug - (is the service really so infrequently working to a decent standard that you feel you have to draw attention to it when it does? Apparently so) - it's also meaningless. "A good service"? Good by whose standards? There's practically never a time when I'm not jammed into an overcrowded train that lurks at stations or in tunnels for no adequately-explained reason, even when the service is 'good'. Isn't good rather a subjective concept? Wouldn't announcing an 'on-schedule' service, for example, be a rage smug-sounding, rage-inducing thing to do?
At the other end of the scale, by the way, there's a platform announcer I sometimes encounter in the mornings whose latest approach, as the movement of air indicates a train coming to the platform, is "As the wind blows, your train approaches." Which at least brings a human element to the proceedings.
Blown Away
There's an episode of Absolutely Fabulous in which Edina and Patsy go into hospital, and the first thing they do is ask for the wine list. Last night, I was in a private hospital for the first time ever, and while waiting, leafed through the 'Information For Patients' folder.
The very first page, before even a "Welcome" message, was the wine list.
Blew me away.