Sunday evening feeling #13...

Joan Armatrading - Save Me

The current's uncertain

Like sails of a mill

I spin

Two game players...

Jonathan Ross's reappearance on the airwaves has seen a lot more newsprint wasted on the matter - hardly surprisingly, print media have adopted the high moral ground over their television and radio rivals. Again hardly surprisingly was JR's modus operandi, which was pretty much as was but without any mention of Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter. All of the hacks in the audience for Friday Night With Jonathan Ross - of which there were many - have had a field day reporting how the studio version differed from the edited, broadcast effort, as if the whole process and concept of editing is a dark and dirty secret. Again, a waste of everyone's time and effort. But journalists are notoriously lazy, sensationalist bastards, aren't they?

Russell Brand has, of course, just knuckled down and got on with his life and is only concerned with moving ever onwards. His Guardian columns have continued to elevate football chat above the level of the tired old cliche that generally plagues any commentary on the game. This week's effort was an especially dashing piece and his closing words re money, talent and time left me all goosepimply and choked...

Kaka is well into the ol' Christianity and therefore is attuned to ideas beyond acquisition, and decided that as a footballer his priority must be football. It is a magical thing to be a professional footballer and the gift does not alight for long before departing and leaving bland mortality where once its sheen did linger. The deficit that excellence-departed exposes is almost impossible to grieve. Paul Gascoigne daily does battle with the torturous abyss left by his fleeting talent.

None of us then should be seduced by the transient glow of money and superficial splendour, as for all of us the presence of wonder is all too brief. Burnley for a while were level with Spurs in Wednesday's Carling Cup semi-final, ahead on the away goals rule. All they had to do was hold on through extra time, to reach the final against Manchester United. But the glory proved impermanent, Roman Pavlyuchenko scored and then Jermain Defoe, and the dream was all undone. Like the end of Bagpuss, when the sprightly mice are once more ornaments, the haughty professor a bookend and even Bagpuss, so full of slovenly vitality, becomes again a stuffed cat.

Don't. Waste. A. Second.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/jan/24/russell-brand-robinho-manchester-city

Across the water...

A second recce for the short film that we're shooting on the southbank of the Humber. Without the blanket of fog that dashed our efforts but concealed our surroundings the last time we headed over the Humber Bridge, Scunthorpe looked, well, exactly as I remembered it. It's a depressing place that is desperately clinging to its industry. I shouldn't think our brief shoot will provide the boost that the local economy requires.

My favourite spam subject headings...

Don't be constrained by small size
Shock her with this
Doctors use this too
Quit being flaccid when it counts
Schwarzenegger has been boosting his muscles during 10 years. Want to do it quickly?
Even Obama uses this
Turn your grass snake into a python
Nng?

To boldly go...

Back to the writers. They (the students) did most of the talking demonstrating that, since we last met, they have thoroughly immersed themselves in the dark art of hitting the keys on a keyboard to make letters, sentences and paragraphs. The students are nice people and I wish them well. One (there is always one) of them took the time to tell me all about Star Trek Phase II, which takes William Shatner era Star Trek and remakes it, along with rather nifty models of the Enterprise, guest roles for the likes of George Takei, classic characters and authentic costumes, in a retro stylee that continues the five year mission. Worth a look at this ambitious, slightly pointless but brilliant effort here.

Transfer out...

I have started the thoroughly exciting process of transferring five domain names to a new host. My, I certainly know how to have fun. Prior to today I knew nothing of IPS tags. Now, however, I feel as if I could work my new found knowledge into the next play. Or at the very least bamboozle the staff on the current host's helpline.

I received some quite fantastic correspondence from a student (who shall remain nameless) who failed to turn up to last week's sessions due to transport problems:

I did try to come into hull on friday and caught the 2:30 bus but unfortunately it was delayed by traffic and a train, then more traffic and yet another train at the top of west spring bank. I assure you I will get a much earlier bus on the 30th.

Let's hope the student's writing is as creative as that excuse. In other news, when we were at The Deep at the weekend the sun was in just the right place at the right time to capture Terry Farrell's wonky angled beauty in all its glory. Regard:

All write...

Last week I had the pleasure of giving students at the Hull School of Art & Design some help with scripts for their final major projects. And this week I will be doing it again. It reminded me how much I love being able to say out loud "I'm a playwright" safe in the knowledge that I am a playwright. In February, with a second draft of big play looming and various other bits and pieces needing to be delivered, I will turn my attention back to creative endeavours. Hopefully by then I will have extracted myself from the peculiar shenanigans that have filled the bulk of normal working hours for the last 16 months. The bullshit is wearing very, very thin. In the meantime, here is a picture of Finn getting to know some fish at The Deep yesterday:

Sunday evening feeling #12...

Joan Baez - Diamonds and Rust

Now you're telling me

You're not nostalgic

Then give me another word for it

You who are so good with words

And at keeping things vague

Because I need some of that vagueness now

Lost trawlermen...

For twenty years the Lost Trawlermen's Service has taken place at the lock head at St Andrews Dock and commemorates the lives of the estimated 8,000 Hull trawlermen who perished at sea over the last 100 years. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu threw in a little bit of politics today ("if we all had the spirit of fishermen we would conquer this recession. What would we do? We would conquer it!") and even led an unexpected - but wholly appropriate - round of applause for all those that headed out to sea.

These shoes are made for walking...

A milestone in Finn's life as we dragged him to Clarks for his first pair of 'proper' shoes. Miraculously, Finn allowed the woman in Clarks to measure his feet then, once we'd chosen a pair and they were brought to us, simply let her put the things on his feet. There is no way that putting Finn's shoes on will ever be as simple again. Despite walking up and down the living room and wreaking havoc in all corners of our house, Finn refused to budge once he was shoed up, save for collapsing on the floor in an 'I know they've told you I can walk real, real good but I'm a baby, goddammit!' heap. By the time you read this post I fully expect Finn to have lost at least one of his shoes.

Sunday evening feeling #11...

Bright Eyes - First Day of my Life
And you said “this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy”

A litany of filth...

Ken Levine: "On MASH it was routine that we’d get a memo from S&P [CBS Standards and Practices] saying “cut the casual profanity in half”. Whether we had four “hells” or “damns” or eight, we’d get the same directive. So of course we’d start padding our scripts with double the casual profanity in order to keep the ones we needed."

Which is an approach I use when penning theatre scripts. Most recently, in an effort to shock and, thus, squeeze a few profanities through the net, I introduced some rather outrageous scatology. "We're not keen on that scene," I was told. Rather expectedly. My how I laughed, as I realised that my distraction may have worked because those rude words that littered the script were never mentioned. Although no doubt by the next draft they will be. For once, with this draft, I opted not to throw in any instances of a certain word that begins with C. The shit eating was enough, I thought.

Back on Waterloo Road...

Ah, the adventures of the world's most incident-packed school return. Not only that but the quite brill Holly Kenny, of White Girl fame, has joined the cast. Her character's name is, prepare to laugh out loud, Sambuca Kelly - "named after her mum's favourite drink." Watch out Maxine Barlow, you have some class competition.

I'm hearing voices...

Into town with M to do some vox pops for a rather ridiculous project I'm involved with. It's been a while since I've done such haphazard information gathering. But, as ever, the people that want to talk tend to be the ones you'd least want to have a conversation with: the tracksuited pale of skin, the drunk, the drug addled, and a group of parkourists (free runners)! Then there's some that just won't stop once they've started - in today's case a security guard, a solicitor and a lad that got frog marched out of a shop for "trying to hand my CV in". Better than work, I suppose.

Black Monday...

Strange days in the freelance workplace - redundancies and moves aplenty amongst the staff that surround me although there's plenty to do. The black air has brought some hitherto absent comradeship and camaraderie to the fore, although there's plenty of suspicion in the air too. Feels so like the early 1980s right now that I keep wanting to blame Thatcher...

Sunday evening feeling # 10...

Bernard Butler - Not Alone
While I don't feel so afraid
Maybe this is just some kind of phase
But I don't care about the wind in my face