'daddy cool'

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Boney M - Daddy Cool 1976

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ra ra rasputin!

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boney m-rasputin music video of boney m's "rasputin"

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my year:

January- February: Finish thesis for degree, finish new research

March:turning 21: big birthday party 

April-June: revision 

June: terrifying exams

June:summer balls

July:Provance, France

July: New York, New York , and Martha's Vineyard

August:Hydra Island, Greece

August:Provance, France 

September-November:New York, New York 

December:Paris, France

December-January:Tokyo, Japan 

Shopping in Tokyo

This is a link to all the architectural wonders that build designer shopping in Japan's capital. Hot stuff. 

'On The Town'

On The Town, Stanley Donen, (1949). 

'Judex'

Judex, Georges Franju, (1963). 

'The Man from Laramie'

The Man from Laramie, Anthony Mann, (1955). 

'The Man with the Movie Camera'

The Man with the Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, (1929).

'Sunrise'

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, F.W.Murnau, (1927). 

Ah! England.

Now I'm back in the UK, this blog will take  a different (geographical) lilt. 

"I close the iron door on you!"

a still from one of the final scenes in '20th Century', which captures the style of the film perfectly: 

'We must rescue the word pedestrian!'

'Potsdamer Platz' by Kirchner, 1914. 

 I have been walking considerable distances almost every day in New York, which leads me to think how wonderful wondering around a city can be, but  also confused because I can't seem to find an accurate way to describe the activity. My transformation has been from someone who frequently uses a car to pretty much exclusively a pedestrian. No sooner do I type that word it seems technically accurate but remains lacking. Somehow 'pedestrian' is a misrepresentation of the pleasure in the activity. Why has 'pedestrian' come to to be synonymous with the mundane - it's a great activity. Since when did the noun for a person travelling on foot become such a dirty word. 

By contrast, the flanur, who technically does exactly the same thing,  conjours images of walter benjamin stravaging around, parisian gentlemen...

very different images -  it's an outrage!

the respective wikipedia entries are pretty good at establishing the differences

as are the google image search results

urban dictionary suggestion for pedestrian: 'common place, everyone doing it, conformity', but there isn't an urban dictionary entry for flaneur. 

By and large it appears in a 'boys only' context, or suggested activity. I think this is quite unfair. Walter Benjamin wannabies arn't the only people who wander the urban jungle in a medative state, entranced by their environment. Yet the only women known to wonder the streets in our culture are prostitutes. Why is this so! 

"She came at me in sections..."

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Band Wagon - Dancing In The Dark Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire

NYC Art Shop Suggestions

Lee's Art Supply
 (This is a really old art store that has everything. Things are
 spread over many floors so don't be shy about asking people to help you.)
220 W 57th St # 2
 New York, NY 10019
 (212) 247-0110

New York Central Art Supply
 (This is a tiny art supply store that many serious New York artist
 use. It's overcrowded and squished. Upstairs they have an interesting
paper department.)
62 3rd Ave
New York, NY 10003
(212) 473-7705

Utrecht Art Supply
(This is a cheaper place that caters mainly to young art
students. )
111 4th Ave # 1
New York, NY 10003
(212) 777-5353

Kate's Paperie
(This is not really a classic art supply store but has paper, journals, desk accessories, photo albums, frames, ribbon,
giftwrap, and planners, and pens -  some kitsch, some nice.
Here are three locations:

Midtown
140 West 57th Street

(between 6th and 7th Avenues)
New York, NY 10019
212.459.0700

Hours : Mon-Fri. 10:00AM - 8:00PM, Sat. 10:00AM - 7:00PM
Sun. 11:00AM to 6:00PM

Soho
72 Spring Street
(between Crosby and Lafayette Streets)
New York, NY 10012

212.941.9816
Hours : Mon-Sat. 10:00AM to 8:00PM, Sun. 11:00AM to 7:00PM

West Village
8 West 13th Street

(between 5th and 6th Avenues)
New York, NY 10011
 212.633.0570 Hours : Mon-Fri. 10:00AM to 7:30PM, Sat. : 10:00PM to  6:00PM Sun. : 12:00PM to 6:00PM

Serge Gainsbourg - New York USA (1964)

Serge Gainsbourg - New York USA (1964) Album: Gainsbourg Percussions J'ai vu New York New York USA J'ai vu New York New York USA Je n'avais rien vu d'au Je n'avais rien vu d'auss...

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small cafes in NYC

Point Knitting Cafe

37a Bedford Street, NY, NY 10014 (Greenwich Village)

The Grey Dog's Coffee

90 University Place at 12th street

The Pink Teacup

42 Grove Street, NY, NY, 10014

tentative draft of places to eat in NYC

*The Spotted Pig: 314 W IIth St, at Greenwich St, 10014, (212) 620-0393, right by the Soho House and does seriously yummy meaty things

Cafe Grumpy: 224 West 20th Street, (between 7th and 8th Ave), 10011, (212) 255.5511 good for coffee and right by all the chelsea art galleries

*La Esquina: 106 Kenmare St, 10012, (646) 613-1700 very cheep 24hr Mexican diner, good margaritas and burritoes, 

Cafe Gitane: 242 Mott St, 10012, (212) 334-9552 NoHo hipsters, retro, delicious 

Gimme! Coffee: 228 Mott St, 10012, (212) 226-4011 a place to refuel in NoHo

*Bubby's Pie Co: 120 Hudson St, (212) 219-0666 incredible pie, serious brunch, not too many screaming babies, opposite the Tribecca Issey Miyaki store, the interior of which was designed by Frank Gehry

Sarabeth's Kitchen: 423 Amsterdam Ave, at 80th St., 10024, (212) 496-6280 really good brunch right by 72nd street, wholesome American fine food

Il Cantinori: 32 E 10th St., 10003, (212) 673-6044 smart but unfloral italian, really good, fave haunt of Patch W and Sara Marks

Cheapo Korean that prob doesn't have a name, which is just by the Empire State Building, at 33rd and 5th. right by my work, fresh tasty and seriously cheep 

E.A.T: 1064 Madison Ave., 10128, (212) 772-0022 upper east side deli, superb sandwiches, near The Whitney, The Gug, The Met etc. so good for post\pre museum nourishment 

Freemans: End of Freemans Alley, off of Rivington St., bt. the Bowery and Chrystie, 10002, (212) 420-0012 hip and low key, looks like Get Stuffed inside, and serves all American grub

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Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Cheim & Read in Chelsea, 547 West 25th Street, 10001, (212) 242-7727

Good street of galleries in Chelsea (where Mar's gallery and the super stylish Comme des Garcons and Balenciaga shops are: around W26th Street, bt. 6th and 7th Ave., 

Japan: January: Flights Booked!

Scandal, 1989

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This clip is taken from Scandal, the 1989 film on the Profumo affair. Oddly enough, it made me think of home! Click on it to watch it play. I'm now terribly pleased I've worked out how to post videos directly onto this site. 

if I dreamed of the New Yorker as a piece of furniture, this is exactly what it would look like:

this is the New Yorker 'bench' at BookExpo America 2008. Location? LA. Of course.

"Bushenfreude" - what a word!

"Democrats who were big beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts were suffering from a weird mix of confusion, annoyance, exhilaration, and anger. They were enjoying their extra income while loathing its source - a Republican in the While house and Republican-controlled Congress."

Daniel Gross, "Bushenfreude Revisited", Slate Magazine, Friday, August 6, 2004. 

The urbandictionary.com cites this as a phenomenon specific to POY's, (that's Pissed Off Yuppies). 

Oh no!

The publishing industry's ever escalating failure  is one problem Obama can't fix. Selling books, maybe even reading in general seems to be headed for a big disaster. Such news comes as even more of a shock since "American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual." (Nicholas D. Kristof, 'Obama and the War on Brains', The New York Times, Sunday, November 9, 2008.) But the president elect, just like the UK's Jordan, or America's Comic giants. It's celebrity, celebrity women's fiction, celebrity confessions, celebrity advice or ...bust as far as I can work out for the adult book market. You're on a 2 billion doller contract with Random House, or you're using the faculty photocopier to send out slush pile submissions. There is a nice and dismal Gawker article "Publishers Hope Americas Tire of Blogs, Among Other Christmas Wishes", which sums up the mood. 

Obama on the first dog for his daughters

In his acceptance speech, Obama mentioned he'd get his daughters the puppy he'd promised them if he got elected. Naturally the press went bizurk. In this video clip, Obama goes into the specifics: he'd like the dog to be "a mutt, like me". It's a whitty quib against the mad reporter who asked him about what sort of puppie he'd get for his daughters in Obama's first press confrence (I think) as President-elect. 

Quotation from Newsweek's special spill the beans edition

"I remember going home that night, and my boyfriend saying, 'What is that purple bruise on your back?' I had bruises on my back from people pushing and shoving, trying to get to [Obama]...I remember grabbing women's hands because they were trying to pull his shirt from his pants. I couldn't believe it."

- Eureka Gilkey, on of Obama's aids, about a speech in 2004, featured in this week's Newsweek. 

Dizzy Rascal for PM

Here is a wonderful video of Dizzy and Paxman is terrific wishful thinking. It also shows raises the problem of whether an European Obama is possible, or if back home is still more conservative than we'd like to think. 

telly really does rule the world

"I would like to say one thing to John McCain." 

"Listen, Senator: you don't show up for me, America doesn't show up for you."

David Letterman, on The Late Show, November 6th, 2008. 

"Obama victory renders hipster 'movement' obsolete"

is the title of a stupid article on the streetbonersandtvcarnage blog. Loosely connected with renegades from Vice magazine, or something. Although it's fairly obnoxious, it does have an amusing poke at the (my) cynicism generation in America, and where on earth they're going to go from this [historic] point. 

'It Still Felt Good the Morning After'

- was the title of a hilarious New York Times cartoon published a few days afterwards. The morning after certainly had an overpowering atmosphere. Manhattan was very quiet 'with hungover bliss'. There wasn't a newspaper left in the city by 9am when I prowled the streets to find one. Obama makes dreams come true and has single handedly rescued the printed newspaper industry. Everyone was very proud of themselves. Of one another. "Yes we did" rather than "Yes we can" was on lips all over the city. The odd phrase echos grammar quirks more akin to the Republicans. But who cares. Obama is an unabashed intellectual, and the majority of the country will be slightly 'worse for wear' in the best possible way, so if that's the buzz that stumbles onto our lips - so be it, and thank you young America that no one has to muster the strength to face a headline that screams "You betcha: gosh darnit". 

where I was on the 'historic' evening

So my election night started off uptown. Supper was tense. We were all a tad nervous. Once the chicken had been swept away, out came the moldy old halloween candy, and on when the news. The table was a swarm of chocolate wrappers, clearly our stress was getting ahead of itself. This was going to be (so we thought) a long night. Lots of anxious channel hopping fueled by cheep sugar followed. Then I went downtown on the subway. The real actual hard results were coming through: things were looking up! Philadelphia was 'won', by the time I got to Rivington Street. The journey down was perhaps the quietest I've ever seen the subway. Even, or especially late at night it's always packed. New York had momentarily turned into a veritable ghost town.  Suspended in a terrible limbo. Well at The Building, they'd worked their way through all the prosecco, and were onto the pink champaign. Hysterical, joyous exhaustion: the results were still looking good. But we can't relax now! Oh god I was nervous this morning. I know, here pass me your glass. Let's keep looking. Wait switch the channel, this guy is garbling his stats. Oh I so want to here what Fox is trying to say about it! Let's go to a bar. Sure. Meet my wonderful friend, he's just returned from a trip back to England. So what are we drinking. I was thinking along the lines of a Long Island Ice Tea? Oh. Yes. Tall glasses all round. Good Luck ev- wait is that McCain? It is. Oh my. The concession speech. It's over. That was it! Not even 12 yet! The bar errupts. It's full of weeping 20somethings, as are all the streets, we go outside to yell lounder. Every block seems to have errupted in jubulation. Random people grinning and patting you on the back. On the subway back to the apartment, random people were simply saying "Obama oh-eight" over and over again. We weren't random people on the subway ,we were a band of communards facing a new frontier! 

better late than never: hooo-ray!

'Cathedral of commerce'

I read this article in the New York Times this morning about how construction in slowing down:'End Seen to New York Building Boom'. I think this will demonstrate the economic turn of events most dramatically in the long term, because the city scape that is home to Wall Street won't up and re-invent itself, in 'The American Way' which people have come to expect. Instead, things will slow down, and perhaps in a few more years the city will look even older than it does already. I think that will change our visual experience of the city, and in turn its symbolic function as an icon of western capitalism to the rest of the world. 

Frank Winfield Woolworth, head of the self-named chain shop, called his famous Gothic style skyscraper, the Woolworth Building  a 'Cathedral of commerce'. In the light of this apt quotation perhaps New York is more akin to the fall of Babylon rather than 19th c. Paris! If that is the case then Joe Friedman's epithet for New York's famous brand of tall buildings 'temples to Mammon' springs to mind. It remains an apt comment considering such temples and their priests, the banks, have been pretty humiliated by this crisis. In turn, their power, as reflected in the architecture, seems to be receding. 

Unfortunately it will be schools, and city infastructure that is the most hard hit by this recent turn of events. It's sad to think that monumental public buildings will be a thing of the past. Of course we will mourn the passing of new corporate 'cathedrals to capitalism', but one gets the feeling that now is neither their time nor place. It seems that Grand Central Station will become all the more bizarre, as a relic from a time of national affluence in conjunction with a serious faith in the public sector. 

'That One'

This website called ThatOne08 is another addition to the wordplay parade that is stomping right across the USA election campaign. If I wasn't so tired I think I'd like to hold forth on McCain's creepy reference to Barak Obama. I can't recall anyone, even somebody trying to be really rude, call another person  'that one'. 

Do you W or Dubya -

Ok . A kind of follow on from the Palin 'Verbage' track of thought. I was reading the Vanity Fair Online daily gossip - it pointed me to this ABC blog about how Sarah's statements about the 'Troopershed' scandal are straightforward lies. One of the comments at the bottom talks about the letter 'W' in relation to the Republican party. Well this is pretty funny as 'W' has become synonymous with the George W. Bush administration because 'W' is what differenciates George's name from his father, former President Bush. " The letter has become such a popular symbol it's now a word in its own right. The urban dictionary (irritatingly on the button for linguistic development) has an entry for 'dubya' which is meant to be the phonetic spelling of 'W' pronounced in a Texan (the state of Bush) accent. This is what entry 7 of the urban dictionary defines 'dubya' as  - 'If the 23rd letter of the alphabet is "dubya", you might be a redneck.'

The iconic statement of 'W' during the Bush presidency was even endorsed by the election campaign back in '04. Again I'm going to accompany this with an image from the New York Historical Society. This is a campaign hankie. And as you can see, it only uses 'W'. Spelling out the man's full name is no longer deemed necessary. He is simply 'W', or 'dubya'. So I suppose 'W' is positive and 'dubya' is negative. This is reinforced by the context of use: DubyaSpeak.com  for example is a website that claims 'We record the damage'. 

It is ironic that 'talking proper' is historically considered a bastilion of conservative values,  but is now what the republicans use to critique 'overly intellectual' democrats. George W. Bush, like Sarah Palin is reinventing American semantics. Their distinct lexiographic style only reinforces how the political weight of phraseology plays such a big part in this election. But what I'm saying is nothing new. Roman Jacobson's theory of communicative functions famously applied to 'I like Ike'. It's the best example of why 'Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics' remains a jolly worthwhile read. 

Word

 
I just finished reading James Wood's article in the New Yorker on Sarah Palin's semantics. In 'Verbage' Wood discusses the anti-intellectualism that underpins the Republican ticket. Moreover their 'war on words' has reached a climax with their nonsensical VP candidate Pain. She can certainly be labeled as linguistic maverick with her deliberate flouting of conventional grammatical codes, in both vocabulary and phraseology. I suppose this means she's truly a radical breaking free of linguistic norms in order to deliver to all those Joe Sixpacks out there a more honest and direct way of communicating. Sort of like Tupac with marginalized black men in the 90s. Her use of language should be subject to analysis for years to come, as a nuanced product of a certain type of 'all and only' American culture. 

This photograph is another gem from the New York Historical Society. It depicts loads of badges from previous American elections. 

Authentic Bicycle Thieves

Charles Burnett described the story of Bicycle Thieves as "diabolically simple". I think you'd be hard pressed to elaborate on "Man gets bike. Man looses bike. Will man ever find bike again." Simplicity is what make this film so ethically complex and dramatically heartbreaking, although it explicit about neither. The images we see are just a guy and his son trying to find a bike. 

It the viewer who connect these images with radical social commentary. We are plunged into a moral grey zone, in much the same way as a Graham Green novel, where we identify the criminal a victim, the right as wrong, and the bad as necessary: our moral absolutes fail to stand the test. The workers in this film are forced to the thieving trade because they live in a state that fails to provide for the poor. In order to survive they have to renounce social duty for individual gain. 

Again, it is the simplicity of this film which makes it such a sophisticated interrogation of post-war Italy. The documentary style (although highly manufactured) is what Godfrey Cheshire describes as an 'ethical stance' which 'continues to represent a struggle for authenticity'. Here is where I think the film becomes involved with contemporary America. The entire nation is gasping for any last grain of authenticity they can believe in politics. McCain's slogan 'The Original Maverick', implies the Republican ticket provide some kind of root source, a primary, unfettered, unfiltered character, to it's voters. 

Obama's campaign is centred around 'change', which is the clearest demand of 'Bicycle Thieves'. After watching that film it's impossible to think that the status quo of its characters should be permitted to continue. The Democratic ticket's compact slogan – one verb 'to change', seems in complete alignment with the socialist principals of Italian neorealist emerging from fascist rule with a fractured cultural identity and complicit guilt in the atrocities committed by the Nazis, being unearthed at the time the film was made in 1948. 

Yet the Obama slogan is still extraordinarily vague. It doesn't pin down precisely what is going to change, in the way that the Republican ticket identifies 'original' expressly with 'Maverick'. This American election seems more like political theatre than ever before. Yet we seem to be sliding further and further away from the 'total cinema' of the neorealist social conscious message for change, to a vague and non-committal rallying cry. It's function is to rouse rather than deliver. 

Angry In Brooklyn

Thursday morning I went to Brooklyn. On  on 3rd Street I took this photograph. The hand painted slogan reads: 'NO MORE CORPORATE BULLSHIT!FUK WALL ST. !' Although it seems a little trite writing it out in compute text, the scale of this graffiti is so big that its statement completely dominated the skyline. It was in a trendy part of Brooklyn, but on a derelict site. Without Manhattan sky scrapers to blot out the phrase, it really screamed out. The tone of the work was particularly jarring because the day I visited this part of town happened to be incredibly beautiful 9.11 weather. 

'My Lost City'

A fairly old article (2003) by Luc Sante in the New York Review of Books is spot on about the city's extraordinary buildings and why they haunt the imagination. The depiction of New York as an elderly metropolis connects with Wall Street's crumbling (demolished) fiscal might. Every day the press is full of photographs that depict 'the suits' in abject despair. Their expressions seem to portray Sante's meditations word for word.  

New York is neither the Wonder City nor a half-populated ruin but a vulnerable, overcrowded, anxious, half-deluded, all-too-human town, shaken by a cataclysm nobody could have foreseen.

(the photograph is from the 'front page' of the New Yorker website on October 8, 2008 in conjunction with an article entitled 'The Rationality of Panic' by Steve Coll.)

19th C. Paris - NYC: Pictorial Evidence

NYC = 19th c. Paris. (version 2.0)

Well if this Radar article about 'Hipster Hookers' doesn't confirm that 21st century New York is actually 18th century Paris, in disguise, then I don't know what will. Sure, the article is under charges of fraud (which frankly seems absurd when put in context next to magazines such as The National Enquirer, or even The Guardian Weekend at its low points). I don't think that questions of authenticity detracts from the general tone, perhaps it even adds to it. If I get it together, I should whip out some Cousin Bette quotes or a touch of Zola to reiterate what I'm talking about. Even Joe Friedman talkes about it in terms of architecture. Most notably on the Upper West Side, but also in the Rockerfeller interiors now spread around the state, although 'The Moorish Room' is now in the Brooklyn Museum. 

I find this tv clip quite creepy. It's obviously staged. That somehow makes it's commentary on the current financial climate all the more chilling. The clip seems more like a poorly performed show, then a news commentary...I don't know if that's an intentional irony or just a mistake.  

A better article is this one I found in 'Profile' magazine, (which is a little bit like Monocle, only slightly less fanciful - more American, as opposed to 'citizen of the world'). I prefer the style for one. Though perhaps a comparison between the two is a little unfair!

Hell's Kitchen and Other Stories

Last night I met up with Gabriella - a friend from Pembroke, who is also in New York. What's so hilarious\bizarre about seeing her out here, up to pretty much the same thing as I am (job-hopeful quasi-paid internship, rent free apartment, fresh from university bug eyes) is that at college we were constantly mistaken for one another. It went far beyond a joke: to the point where strangers were arresting me for ten minuet conversations at The Turf about this and that. She explained it was the same with her. Her apartment is in this abandoned Wherehouse in Queens really near the metro stop 40th St and Lowery . By wherehouse, I mean the place has dumper trucks outside and the first two floors are art storage. But on the thired is her apartment: with a giant rooftop that faces out towards Manhatten. Inside the cecilngs are the same as those in school - that's what I mean by wherehouse-y! Well, one thing lead to another and we ended going back to the city and going to the Beatrice Inn. I had no idea about the reputation of the place: but it was certainly a lovely bar with illicit dancing in the back. Only in retrospect do I recall the big fuss of back patting the door guy, and knowing nods. 

Oh and the photographs are of this rather wonderful film still shop, which I discovered on a stroll through Hell's Kitchen earlier that day. The window that wasn't filled with collages of old movie posters and little dolls was stacked with a messy pile of dusty boxes. I don't believe it has been open in a while. But it's right by the Film Centre, which oddly doesn't use it's front entrance anymore. You'd have thought with a foyer as good as theirs that there would have been a movement to keep it as the 'front door'. 

The Chanin Building

New York Historic Society

- and I thought I was a horder: in this museum, some one has thoughtfully collected about a hundred 'food sticks' covering the period 1932 until about 1965! Below was my fave piece of crockery. It's from the 1930s. The middle espresso cup is really the point of showing this picture. I don't know if you can see it, but it depicts a lady with long plats whacking a fallen man with a broom. For some inexplicable reason, an umbrella lies at the man's side. I don't know if this is part of a story that involves all the pieces here, but I think it's a very peculiar piece of domestic crockery. 

The museum as a whole was really nice. It had an exhibition of Victor Prevost's photographs of early New York. (Though unfortunately they did not show the original prints - only reproductions.) And it had details from the New York Great Exhibition, which looked so eery and antiquated for a show intended to display the vanguard of victorian modernity. 

The man selling postcards in the shop was fantastic.  I asked him if they had any postcards of the Prevost exhibit, and if you could go have a look at the Society's archives. Very  bored, and very skinny  with golden spectacles, he launched into a dramatic monologue: it turns out he collects antique men's clothing. He just added the top hat of Frederick Vanterbuilt's little brother, Jacob. Thrilled to the very core, he'd then used the Historic Society archives to find a photograph of Jacob, in said hat. So - he knew the collection, and said it was a really worthwhile to set aside an afternoon to peruse the photographs. Much of what they'd rescued had apparently been gained by mistake. Then , to disclose some 'exclusive' gossip, the society had recently been in a big fight with the New York Transit Museum. Their images of the MTA and its construction were rescued from a skip. He said they'd recently had the cheek to ask for them back, but, with much eye rolling, he said with a mild southern drawl: 'Wheel, you can imagine what we said!' Finger waggling and raised eyebrows aided the delivery of the next statement: 'Hell no. You may borrow them. And that is all!'

Saturday morning

In typical Ba-esque fashion, I have set myself up with a desk as opposed to addressing the washing. I have hovered, but the work surfaces need tending to. Today I woke up with a terrible hangover, having been plied with Sancerre by my godmother, Hannah, the night before. In the morning I found myself propped up on my bed by one of the larger cushions, which has a baby blue starched linen cover.  I don't care much for the pattern, but its texture in terms of the linen count is more than satisfactory. 

Feeling at a considerable distance from 'on form', I padded over to the kitchen in my slippers and dressing gown. Ignoring the coffee cups and biscuit platters, I smile at the porridge saucepan. Fond images of Saturdays at 139b flit across my mind, where, in the same dressing gown and slippers (I would rise early, but wouldn't dress until late), Lucian would greet me with a cry of despair: ' Oh Sister Aimee, when I wake up with a hangover, and I'm greeted by your leftover porridge skins. I'm attempting to start the afternoon, and  can't help but think that looks almost as awful as I feel.' Then Adelia would rush in and say: 'I moost ave ze couffee: Aimee, if you wish, would you car fo soume avec ze whipped cream. Zis is the oonly way I can ahddress St Augusteeen. I ope it weeel aide you wiz the Maaarrrrlow. Oh whare did I leeve ze electronic whisk.'  Then we'd set about making the most awful mess in our attempt to woosh up some kind of revision treat. Things would escalate into brunch. Felix would be called to come over and cook eggs, and we'd make Lucian cycle off to get some fresh posh bread. So rather than hurry to clean up the mess, I let the washing up  sit there as a memory prop. 

Turning to the fridge door, I fumble for orange juice, but my hand grasps at the Lemonade. Swigging from the container, in addition to a barrage of sweet, salty and sour tastes, fully revive my poorly head. I refocus and look out of the kitchen window. To my intense shock New York seems to have disappeared. I rush back to the bedroom: the view is indeed empty. As it is in the bathroom, reflected a thousand times in the tall wall mirrors. I return to the living room and sit on the couch. The room is situated on the corner of the building, so as I gaze in front of me, out of the corner of my eye is also the presence of a window on the right-hand wall, facing in a different direction. Yet out of each of the three windows I can see, not one of them has anything at all to show. For the first time I feel giddy at being so high up on the 29th floor. Suspended in the clouds, my little bubble of proportions faces out onto nothing. New York has really gone. In the left hand window you can see a portion of the bathroom wall, as it jutts out a little further. I like this because the brickwork acts as a kind of proportion stick against the expansive view of the city. Yet here, the terracotta edges don't brush against a crisp blue sky, or the carpeted green of Central Park. Nor do they dwarf the neon red 'CNN' sign, atop one of the distant skyscrapers. It brushes against a white expanse.  Perhaps this is what it feels like to be in a giant film set, with the blue screen surrounding you. Or more like a giant apple mac advert. Any second now an enormous silhouette will come crashing through the window, clutching a Mac Book air, some cute folk song blasting in the background. 

I think sitting inside a skyscraper is so dramatic because it's where you experience this perfect collision between the natural and the urban world. You're in the air, yet also in one of the most urbanised structures humans have yet come up with. I don't know why the sky doesn't get such a focus as the rest of the 'natural world.'  Perhaps this is because it's so very difficult to capture an image of it. Now I experience alot of thinking about the natural world through telly shows: like David Atts show on the sea. Yet even the sky seems to out do the deep blue, in its evasion of successful photography. In the 1830s photographers would have to capture the sky separately to the foreground image, if they wanted to include it in their final 'image'. Some even used the same sky in several photographs, because it was so hard to capture one that reflects how really good looking the sky is. So sometimes you would have a scene, most often in urban towns, where the principal subject was a street lamp, metro sign, or a bridge. The sky in such cases was considered relatively unimportant, was not photographed by itself and later collaged back into the image of the city. Instead it was left as the camera 'saw' it: blank. I think this is most like what the fog resembles to me now. Perhaps this is why I think the sky-as-subject is still the property of painting. I think it's in 'Good Night Mr Tom', when Tom recalls his dead wife saying that if she could only paint one thing, then it would be the sky, because it's never the same thing twice, but always in perpetual motion. John Constable's (nearing living relative: Barbara Windsor) 'cloud studies' has some pretty exciting sky, if you can call Constable exciting! 

So, yet, now the sky isn't there, and I'm so shocked by it's absence, I'm wondering why the sky isn't such a Big Thing that we think about.  It's perpetual motion should be something that draws us towards captivating it's ever changing composure. 'Le Plaisir' is all about characters in 'perpetual motion': showing how pleasure can be innocent, refreshing and funny, yet equally or perhaps simultainiously ugly, cruel and pathetic. Like the sky, 'plaisir' is neither wholly one thing or another, but a little of both. 

What A View!

Tyndall Report

The Tyndall Report: I've become an active member! having been a number cruncher for godfather Andrew when there was a computer software melt down last night. 1:30 am. Very His Girl Friday.

'Le Plaisir', Max Ophuls, (1952).

'There is no joy in happiness', is the closing phrase of Max Ophuls's 'Le Plaisir'.  It is the parting words of a story which while sad, promises a marriage. This sugar lump cliche is served up as a cold comfort, by the time the story has come to its end. Such simply phrased, cruelly delivered pearls typify the atmosphere of this film. It is a world of illicit joy, pathetic failure, and uncomfortable delight brought to you by a narrator who prefers the dark to guide us through these Guy de Maupassant stories because it provides both intimacy and anonymity. Such a paradox typifies the voyeuristic pleasure in watching the three episodes of the film. Peeping through the window pains, back doors and open shutters, each segment is exquisitely told, with plenty of french lace, and ominous shadows. You are danced through the stories at a whurlwind pace,  yet can't leave the ball without feeling more than a slight chill at the company you've seen. The characters are portrayed as  over-ripe fruit: poised between a nutritious delicacy and fecund rubbish. There is nothing in here that a mature child couldn't understand, yet the love-play between pleasure, innocence and death has an eloquence which I find unmatched.

" Excuse me. I am eating a pear."

New York Times Magazine phone service is a vortex of thinking answerphones. It's proof in the pudding we're not nearly as close to 1984 as some would like to think: the beast just doesn't work. You have to leave a voice message detailing the name of the person you are trying to call. Rediculous. Just like calling up the cinema service and shouting 'Petersfield, Hampshire' down the phone line, and the voice keeps reading: 'I heard Lecister Square. Let me connect you.' *fume*. 

Eventually I get through to the arts editorial dept. I give my schpeel about a manuscript teaser the agency would like to see published before they release the whole book. The man on the other end inturrupts the last quatriane of my monologue with a "muugh. phew!" [very long pause] "Excuse me. I am eating a pear. *Long sigh* Ohh Kayy. Let's rewind that." I re-explain, then, because it's the end of the day, I start nattering on about how it's good to finally speak to an actual voice, as I'd been lost on the automated phone service for what felt like forever. His reply: "Oh my god you were only lost for ten minuets. Is that ALL? usually it's about TEN years." So luckily he's in a good humor, and as gatekeeper to the editors I need that can only be a good thing. "Well. Lets see...in arts  you've got the Daily Arts section, the seprate Daily Review,  supplement, the Weekend Magazine which is out on Sunday, the Review Section for the magaine, the Culture Daily section within the main newspaper, and the Friday Magazine plus the review section within that...which one were you thinking of?"

"um. ah."

"III would say go for the Magazine?(the weekend one that is)"

"Lovely"

So. Let me try and find someone nice for you to talk to there.[pause for dramatic effect]. Let me se- oh here's a number. This is for the associate managing director. Let me give you the details. Now don't think for a moment you're going to escape the voicemail: you are going to have to stay lost in the machine. I'm sorry.It's awful, I know". It was such a completely different world from

''Hello.''

''Hi, yeah, I um, I was wondering if this is the right number for -''

''No. Ma'am.''

''Ha...Oh. Well, could you possibly put me throu-''

 *Hang up*

- that it stuck in my mind. For once there was a personality down the end of the telephone. Not only that, but said human was in a good humor. Incredible.

The small town gag: screwball vs. Palin

It was a stroke of broadcasting genius to have  G.W.Bush 'bail out' speech of yesterday followed by a showing of 'The Great McGinty ' (1940). Preston Sturges screwball cum political satire is a fantastic election themed flick.  I remember watching it during my revision and it did not disappoint upon second viewing. In the opening scene, where he's a bartender in Mexico, McGinty says 'I was the governor of a state, baby'. Hannah came in with the quip 'Just like Sara Palin' which couldn't have been more spot on. Watch the scene from 'McGinty', and then read this quotation from Palin's vice-president nomination speech, because the vibe is so unwittingly similar: 

"I have had the privilege of living most of my live in a small town. I was just your average hocky mum, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better. When I ran for city council I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown." 

 Sometimes, the face of a corrupt and morally bankrupt organization is an anyone who hasn't got a clear (or any real) clue as to 'what-is-going-on'. 

It's a brilliant film, and doesn't seem like an awkward first attempt, despite the fact that it was Sturges's first big motion picture. Yesterday my parcel of Max Ophuls DVDs arrived, which has only lead to my endless longing to spend the day in bed watching them. Dad Amazon Primed them over, after I'd made an unsubtle hint with a 'New Yorker' review of them, which was so nice of him. The covers are exquisite. As Ophuls was Sturges favorite director I feel the segway is far neater then I could ever have contrived. 'What to watch in Manhattan' is another must do list.