Sarah and I are still going through the pile of DVDs and selling them on Amazon. Amazon Marketplace doesn't fetishise feedback in the same way as eBay, but it does feature and some buyers do leave comments. I do sometimes wonder why people say that they consider the service "excellent" but only give three points out of five. The other problem is delivery times for international customers, where Royal Mail is only the first link in the chain and not always the weakest.
In fact, other countries' postal services are much like phoning Dial-A-Stereotype:
GERMANY: Scarily efficient
PORTUGAL: anything but
FRANCE: well, you know, that depends, doesn't it?
Anyway, time for another Lazy Youtube Embed. Anyone who knows me will wonder why it's taken me so long to discover this lot, given how many Andy buttons they press:
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Saturday morning at the movies, who cares what picture we see?
Glasgow City Council run a free film for children every Saturday morning at a couple of participating cinemas - the Glasgow Film Theatre and the Parkhead branch of Cineworld. Very often the film in question is an old classic or something that has recently come off distribution (recent ones have been Up, Coraline, Fantastic
Mr Fox and Where the Wild Things Are). Staying in the east, and with a baby in tow, I use the car so that makes it Parkhead.
This morning was left open in the schedules as a surprise - it turned out to be "CJ7", an amiable enough comedy from China. The minute the staff told people it was in Cantonese the queue halved in size, with phrases like "ach, rubbish" being thrown about. Good job it wasn't in black and white or there would have been a bloody riot.
Unless people have really young children - for whom the film wouldn't have been suitable anyway - I never understood this problem. Film's a very visual medium. It's MEANT to be. Subtitles didn't stop people watching Avatar or Passion of the Christ, did they?
The most chilling bit in all this, when the house lights went back on at the end, was the ethnic mix in the room. The people who turned their nose up at foreign muck were largely white, while those open-minded enough to at least give it a go largely weren't. Sometimes I need the east end of Glasgow like I need a hole in my head.
Mr Fox and Where the Wild Things Are). Staying in the east, and with a baby in tow, I use the car so that makes it Parkhead.
This morning was left open in the schedules as a surprise - it turned out to be "CJ7", an amiable enough comedy from China. The minute the staff told people it was in Cantonese the queue halved in size, with phrases like "ach, rubbish" being thrown about. Good job it wasn't in black and white or there would have been a bloody riot.
Unless people have really young children - for whom the film wouldn't have been suitable anyway - I never understood this problem. Film's a very visual medium. It's MEANT to be. Subtitles didn't stop people watching Avatar or Passion of the Christ, did they?
The most chilling bit in all this, when the house lights went back on at the end, was the ethnic mix in the room. The people who turned their nose up at foreign muck were largely white, while those open-minded enough to at least give it a go largely weren't. Sometimes I need the east end of Glasgow like I need a hole in my head.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
The John Lennon Effect
For months now, my younger sister has been selling off my late father's DVD collection with me - I set up the sales on Amazon or eBay and she does the to-ing and fro-ing. It's a big collection and it's taking time, so we've seen something happen several times. It happened again this weekend.
The John Lennon effect.
My wife told me while eating our tea last night that Jean Simmons had died. After I checked that she meant the actress and not the bloke above on the left - easy mistake to make and all that - the penny dropped. A copy of Olivier's Hamlet, where she plays Ophelia, had been on sale for weeks, but it sold that very afternoon. I shifted a Pretty In Pink within 24 hours of John Hughes dying. Polanski films did well after the long arm of the law finally caught up with the dirty old bugger.
I name it after the ex-Beatle, because of the way I remember the UK singles chart filling up with Lennon's solo singles after he was killed. If it happened just once I'd shrug my shoulders and say "it's just coincidence", but there's a pattern. Do you go out and buy a film or an album, just because the people involved are in the news? I can't say I've ever done that.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Slayed
Much like many other people, I celebrate the birth of a noted anti-materialist religious teacher by going out to shopping centres and spending ludicrous piles of money. But this year has been subtly different.
No "Merry Christmas Everyone" (or is it "Xmas") by Slade.
It's not just that. Whether Parkhead Forge, Glasgow Fort or Coatbridge Faraday, many of the usual suspects have been conspicuously absent from the tannoy. Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime"? Mud's "Lonely This Christmas"? Even the only record that Wizzard ever, ever made has been put on the back burner.
Has there been an RATM style rebellion by chainstore employees, fed up to the back teeth of the same half dozen Christmas songs being played on a loop from mid-October onwards?
No "Merry Christmas Everyone" (or is it "Xmas") by Slade.
It's not just that. Whether Parkhead Forge, Glasgow Fort or Coatbridge Faraday, many of the usual suspects have been conspicuously absent from the tannoy. Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime"? Mud's "Lonely This Christmas"? Even the only record that Wizzard ever, ever made has been put on the back burner.
Has there been an RATM style rebellion by chainstore employees, fed up to the back teeth of the same half dozen Christmas songs being played on a loop from mid-October onwards?
Monday, 16 November 2009
The Waters of Mars
Just a quick one to say I really enjoyed yesterday's episode. Best one since Midnight, and even Murray Gold's music couldn't mess this one up. And like Midnight, it dares to take Tennant's Doctor and slap him hard for being a twat. I'm not letting the girls watch it without me in the room, though.
What's next (cartoon episode aside)? Even if John Simm didn't very nearly knock my pint over after an Echo and the Bunnymen concert a few years ago, I'd still find his take on the Master a bit "Dr Evil". And Russell T Davies episodes can be risky, especially at Christmas. Time will tell....
What's next (cartoon episode aside)? Even if John Simm didn't very nearly knock my pint over after an Echo and the Bunnymen concert a few years ago, I'd still find his take on the Master a bit "Dr Evil". And Russell T Davies episodes can be risky, especially at Christmas. Time will tell....
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Shouting Schlager Schlager Schlager
I was watching BBc4's Krautrock documentary last night - when you have a baby in the house, iPlayer is a boon - and something struck me. If we're meant to be grown-ups, shouldn't we stop sneering at other peoples' tastes like the bullying cool kids in the school playground?
The easy target for this programme was Schlager - mid-tempo, jolly, apolitical, vaguely oompah mainstream German pop music from the late 60s. Tee hee hee, how very dad-like and not down with the kids, who truly know the score. The sort of thing Eurotrash sniggered at frequently.
Now look at this UK chart from 1968 - more or less the one played on Radio 2 last Saturday afternoon. Leapy Lee, Engelbert Humperdinck - basically Schlager but sung in English. Not only is island-race smugness misplaced, but maybe we should now accept that our parents bought records too.
This aside, I'm still glad that someone actually makes television programmes on these subjects and shows them at 9 in the evening (or at your leisure if you're an iPlayer user). Sometimes interviewing people in their second language can backfire; it can make people seem inarticulate or, at the other end of the spectrum, cliché machines (Renate out of Amon Düül saying that she "used her voice as an instrument" as if we've never heard that said before). Go on BBC4, you know your audience can do subtitles.
Also... Wolfgang Flür again, after being on Synth Britannia last week. He used to play drums (or hit an electric tea tray with knitting needles, if you're a purist) for Kraftwerk. I know Florian Schneider's buggered off, but does Ralf Hütter not give television interviews?
The easy target for this programme was Schlager - mid-tempo, jolly, apolitical, vaguely oompah mainstream German pop music from the late 60s. Tee hee hee, how very dad-like and not down with the kids, who truly know the score. The sort of thing Eurotrash sniggered at frequently.
Now look at this UK chart from 1968 - more or less the one played on Radio 2 last Saturday afternoon. Leapy Lee, Engelbert Humperdinck - basically Schlager but sung in English. Not only is island-race smugness misplaced, but maybe we should now accept that our parents bought records too.
This aside, I'm still glad that someone actually makes television programmes on these subjects and shows them at 9 in the evening (or at your leisure if you're an iPlayer user). Sometimes interviewing people in their second language can backfire; it can make people seem inarticulate or, at the other end of the spectrum, cliché machines (Renate out of Amon Düül saying that she "used her voice as an instrument" as if we've never heard that said before). Go on BBC4, you know your audience can do subtitles.
Also... Wolfgang Flür again, after being on Synth Britannia last week. He used to play drums (or hit an electric tea tray with knitting needles, if you're a purist) for Kraftwerk. I know Florian Schneider's buggered off, but does Ralf Hütter not give television interviews?
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
You Never Give Me Your Money
In the last week, the Beatles have had media worship normally reserved for U bloody 2 or someone. They’re still one of my favourite groups (The Beatles, that is) but it’s not just because a programme maker fancied doing a documentary – in our calculated modern world, there must be a reason. Which is…
...that all the recordings released during their career are re-released today.
Let’s get The Money out of the way first. It took several years after CDs were launched before The Beatles’ catalogue became available. The accompanying fanfare – happily timed with it being “Twenty Years Ago Today” since Sgt. Pepper first came out – was a big deal. (Pity it couldn’t have been Revolver as birthday boy instead, but there you go).
Now we are told that all this Was Not Good Enough so they have to release them all again. So we pay for them all again. There are plenty of brilliant musicians from that era who never made much – if anything - from their work. But that doesn’t include Paul and Ringo.
Next up is that the 1987 discs Not Being Good Enough is missing the point. This was music that your auntie played on her Dansette while putting her mazzy on. It’s neither a call to prayer nor a hi-fi demonstration record, it’s FUN. If it is to be made available in a new format, it still has to be sold in the album packages, which brings me to…
...control freakery. The Beatles - often credited with inventing the album (they didn’t) - will argue that you should listen to the songs in their chosen order. Poo to that one – do you have any LPs where you think one side is better than the other so you play it more often? I could go on all day with an argument of why albums will never be as important as singles anyway, especially with the Beatles, but I’ll leave that to some other time.
Ever since Anthology, I’ve had a creeping feeling that the surviving members want history written according to their own image. It’s like when a designer jeans label throws a hissy fit when a supermarket procures legitimate stock from abroad and sells it cheaply back here. I don’t know if Lennon would have gone along with Stalinist revision, but he would have had to agree with what Yoko told him to do anyway. If The Beatles are bigger than Jesus (and like it or not, the statistics show that they’re close) then they should have Christianity’s contradicting accounts, gospels that don’t quite mesh with each other, and urban legend.
To stay in the spirit of this, here’s one of those cartoons that Paul and Ringo would like us to think Never Existed:
...that all the recordings released during their career are re-released today.
Let’s get The Money out of the way first. It took several years after CDs were launched before The Beatles’ catalogue became available. The accompanying fanfare – happily timed with it being “Twenty Years Ago Today” since Sgt. Pepper first came out – was a big deal. (Pity it couldn’t have been Revolver as birthday boy instead, but there you go).
Now we are told that all this Was Not Good Enough so they have to release them all again. So we pay for them all again. There are plenty of brilliant musicians from that era who never made much – if anything - from their work. But that doesn’t include Paul and Ringo.
Next up is that the 1987 discs Not Being Good Enough is missing the point. This was music that your auntie played on her Dansette while putting her mazzy on. It’s neither a call to prayer nor a hi-fi demonstration record, it’s FUN. If it is to be made available in a new format, it still has to be sold in the album packages, which brings me to…
...control freakery. The Beatles - often credited with inventing the album (they didn’t) - will argue that you should listen to the songs in their chosen order. Poo to that one – do you have any LPs where you think one side is better than the other so you play it more often? I could go on all day with an argument of why albums will never be as important as singles anyway, especially with the Beatles, but I’ll leave that to some other time.
Ever since Anthology, I’ve had a creeping feeling that the surviving members want history written according to their own image. It’s like when a designer jeans label throws a hissy fit when a supermarket procures legitimate stock from abroad and sells it cheaply back here. I don’t know if Lennon would have gone along with Stalinist revision, but he would have had to agree with what Yoko told him to do anyway. If The Beatles are bigger than Jesus (and like it or not, the statistics show that they’re close) then they should have Christianity’s contradicting accounts, gospels that don’t quite mesh with each other, and urban legend.
To stay in the spirit of this, here’s one of those cartoons that Paul and Ringo would like us to think Never Existed:
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