Sunday shorts: Pulsing Pulsing

A 95 second B-side (to Making Plans for Nigel) about blood by the wonderful XTC... and maybe a hint of future direction too?

The unlikeliest of rabbit holes

In replying to Rol's latest Hot 100 post, I stumbled across Terry Christian's YouTube channel. Yes, you heard me. Terry Christian has a YouTube channel. As far as I can see, it consists solely of band performances from 90s late-night music show The Word and, if the quality is anything to go by, most of them are ripped from poor quality VHS recordings. But it's a real Internet rabbit hole, and once you disappear down there you might be gone for hours...

Easy to dismiss The Word now, with its laddism, neon/lairy backdrops and token dancers, but I used to like it. Even easier to forget how, back in those pre-web days, you had to rely on programmes like this to hear live music and discover new bands.

Anyway, here's a selection from the rabbit hole to whet your appetite...

Sunday shorts: Doll

Proving that bigger isn't always better, here's 83 seconds of Foo Fighters that open The Colour and the Shape. Of course, they then revert to type with track two, Monkey Wrench.

Think this might have fitted nicely into the Blue Friday theme too.

About John Barr

I've been thinking a lot about Jonbar points, specifically how I came to be here, at this point, in this state. I've also been thinking about how, if I could go back in time and tell the 15 year old me what I've done with (or rather, let happen to) my life... well, he wouldn't kick my arse, because the 15 year old me wasn't like that, but I can't help but think he would be disappointed... which, of course, is far worse.

I'm not sure it's such a good idea to dwell on Jonbar points. Don't try it.

Street View stupidity

The good thing about Google Maps Street View is that it lets you fritter away your time doing stupid things, like checking out the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see how many people run up the steps. As you might imagine, there are lots and lots and lots and lots of examples. If you have more patience than me, there are even some shots of people with their arms aloft, like their inspiration, above.

You may also enjoy the Philadelphia shooting locations documentary Rocky Jumped a Park Bench. Or maybe that's just me.

Sunday shorts: Fell In Love With A Girl

Any excuse for this wonderful Lego-ful video, soundtracked by what, for me, is one of Jack and Meg's finest moments. Here's 115 seconds of White Stripes.

Phased retirement

I composed this post in its entirety in my head on the way to work this morning. This written version is unlikely to be as good, so apologies for that. But here goes anyway.

Some eight years ago, when next to nobody read this, I wrote at length about lazy blog posts, identifying half a dozen blogging tropes that I perceived to be slack at best: things like bandwagoneering, embedding YouTube videos with nothing new to accompany them, old chestnuts, whimsy, that sort of thing. Back then, I typically posted less than once a week. These days, I'm posting two to three times a week, but many (most?) of these posts are of the type that I previously lambasted. And it's not that I'm lazy, it's more that I've become trapped, I think, in the post/check-pageviews cycle, whilst also being time-poor. I don't have the time to write something good, or original, or new, yet I don't want to drop the baton, so I've just started churning stuff out on autopilot. Oh, the dilemma...

So. I have a few Sundays Shorts posts scheduled, and a Blue Friday for some time next month. I have the next ten Counter posts scheduled too, but they're only one a year and are for me only, no-one else. I will, at least, finish the Nineteen in '19 series because a challenge is a challenge, after all. But beyond that...? Well, I'm time-poor and should be writing fiction... so why am I spaffing what little writing time I have up the wall, churning out lazy blog posts?

Or could it be that I've just run out of words? The standard line, when facing a crisis of blogging confidence like this, is to say that the mojo has been lost, and that it will come back. But maybe it's more than that - maybe it's gone for good.

Either way, something has to change, so this might be the start of what my current employer calls a phased retirement. Let's celebrate that with an appropriate live performance from the Pope of Mope, back when people still liked him.

About escape

Yes, another "on this day in history" post... or another post in which I look desperately to the past in the hope that it will prompt me to write something. Anyway... on this day in 1962, three prisoners escaped from the supposedly escape-proof Alcatraz, using a spoon, papier-mâché heads and a makeshift raft. Yes, it was the escape that was later dramatised by Don Siegel in the film Escape From Alcatraz.

For me, it's a good if uneven film. I do like this scene though, in which new inmate Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) is introduced to the Warden (Patrick McGoohan), not least because it highlight's the latter's brilliance in this type of role. I do wonder whether he had a hand double for the closing shots though...

Nineteen in '19: Thin Air

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading nineteen books in 2019. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

10/19: Thin Air by Michelle Paver

The blurb: The Himalayas, 1935.

Kangchenjunga. The sacred mountain. Biggest killer of them all.

Five Englishmen set out to conquer it. But courage can only take them so far. And the higher they climb, the darker it gets.

The review: make no mistake, Thin Air is, as the front cover proclaims, a ghost story. But there's a broad spectrum of such tales, with obvious jump scares and physical horror at one end, and unsettling, psychological horror at the other. Paver's book is definitely at the latter end of this scale, with genuine chills rooted in the psychological. Like her previous (tremendous) book, Dark Matter, there are lots of reasons for creeping unease, sprinkled liberally throughout Thin Air: the unknown, unnatural and uncanny; isolation; physical and environmental extremes; sleep and sensory deprivation; the juxtaposition of the rational - our protagonist, Stephen, is a doctor, grounded in logic and process - and the irrational - we feel Stephen's disbelief and disquiet as he comes to realise that maybe not everything in life is ordered and explicable; and more, so much more.

Also of note is the skill with which Paver uses setting as a character - Kangchenjunga, the untrodden peak, is the third highest mountain in the world, and stands apart from surrounding peaks in the range. It looms over this tale from start to finish, a malevolent, brooding presence, unseen but intimated in the early chapters, but revealed, increasingly, as the story progresses. I find the whole "setting as character" thing fascinating; the physical aspects are more obvious, with the mountain's rocky presence, glaciers and crevasses increasingly dominating our hero as time go by. But beyond the physical, the mountain is given an actual character, both from fictionalised accounts of previous summit attempts, local superstitions and reverence, bordering on fear, from the expedition's Sherpa guides. This is brilliantly done, in my view. That time in the future when I finally get around to doing my creative writing PhD on the use of place as character - I'll be using this as one of my examples.

There is also a nice sub-plot about sibling rivalry here too - Stephen's older brother (and charmed-life-leading golden boy) Kits also features. Again, Paver treads a delicate line here, illustrating the tensions between the siblings well, from our narrator's perspective, and keeping it plausible without making Kits explicitly unlikeable - no mean feat.

Finally, a lot of research has gone into this book - not just about the mountain and surrounding area, but of mountaineering in the first third of the twentieth century. Like all research, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Thin Air feels entirely credible throughout.

The bottom line: if old-school ghost stories and/or unsettling, psychological horror are your thing, you will love Thin Air. I certainly did, and expect it to stay with me for some time.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★★

Sunday shorts: Norgaard

Monday long song has been a theme on lots of blogs for some time. Swiss Adam at the reliably excellent Bagging Area is one regular long-songer. The Swede at Unthought of Though, Somehow is another. I've even done it myself, now and then.

So here's the obvious flip-side: Sunday shorts. Or excellent tunes that clock in at 2 minutes or less... not every week, but now and again. I'll kick things off, shall I? Bloody love this, 98 seconds of catchy, uplifting brilliance from The Vaccines. Good video too.