Rev Stan's other stuff

Life QotW: Religion's Role in My Life

What role does religion play in your life? How has it changed over the years?

None, I'm an atheist. I was forced out of bed every Sunday to go to Sunday School and church by my parents until my Dad fell out with the vicar and he decided we weren't going to church any more. I hated normal school and felt that spending pretty much a quarter of my precious weekend at church was a waste.

Culture QotW: Retro-Appeal

What fashion trend do you wish would come back into style?

Isn't most of what is on the High Street regurgitated designs from the last 100 years?

Children

How can people so small make so much noise?

Hurrah for holidays

I'm off to Scotland for a weeks holiday today. I've packed sun block and midgey repellent. I think I know which one I'm actually going to use.

The Dark Knight

Christain Bale and Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight

Some reviewers have professed a preference for Christian Bale's acting in the latest Batman film over Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker and for this I can think of only two explanations.
Either they are referring to the fact that the Joker's character only really stretches its legs in the final third of the film or they want to get their review talked about.
Bale is a fine actor but there is only so much you can do dressed in rubber with your eyes blacked out, a stiff jaw and growly voice.
The Dark Knight is an exciting film. A little too long, indeed I'd subtley found my sandals and put them back on thinking it in its final furlong when there was a good half an hour more to go. But that isn't necessarily a negative as there are more twists and turns in the plot than the bat mobile makes in a chase scene which keeps you glued to your seat.
For this second instalment the Goth has very much been taken out of Gotham City and it is only really Batman, his gadgets and The Joker which remind you that it is based on a comic book.
There are cool smile-on-the-face moments aplenty in fact some moments are so cool if you touched them your skin would stick. The Batmobike* for starters. I overheard a couple discussing the film on the way out of the cinema and the girl commented that she thought the story weak but held together with some great set pieces. And I can see her point but don't necessarily agree. There is a good, clever story there it's just a little flabby to start with.

The ever so cool Batmobike

Maggie Gyllenhaal walks all over Katie-married-to-Tom-Cruise's version of Rachael in Batman Begins. It was an inspired decision getting in a new actress particular one with Gyllenhaal genes because I think the audience would have been baying for Rachael to be blown up if she was still being played by KMTTC.
Ultimately you walk away from the cinema thinking of The Joker. He does steal the show somewhat but then Ledger's given some of the best lines in the film to work with ("I like the simple things in life. I like dynamite, gasoline and bombs."). And then there's the make up rather than a mask.
Whether he is deserving of an Oscar though I'm not sure. Ledger and director Chris Nolan together have certainly carved out a Joker to surpass Jack Nicholson's and created a character that will probably adorn the walls of Hollywood legends.

*I'm trade marking that if no one else has already thought of it.

And you thought your name was embarrassing

A judge in New Zealand has made a 9-year old girl a ward of court so she can change her name. The girl was apparently too embarrassed to tell people her real name and I can't think why, I mean Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii has a certain ring to it. 

And no I'm not joking her parents did really name her that. But what is more shocking is the list of names that Kiwi officials have blocked parents from using:

Yeah Detroit; Stallion Twisty Poi; Keenan Got Lucy; Sex Fruit; Fat Boy; Cinderella Beauty Blossom; Fish and Chips (twins)

And if that wasn't bad enough here are some of the names that have actually been ALLOWED:

Violence; Number 16 Bus Shelter; Midnight Chardonnay; Benson and Hedges (twins)

The latter is particularly classy and just goes to show that you probably shouldn't joke with parents expecting twins about calling them things like gin and tonic. (Thank goodness my friends Jenny and Spike are sane and didn't take any of mine and Mosh's suggestions for their boys names seriously, although I still think Moet and Chandon would have given them a regal air.)

Full story on the Beeb is here.

Vox Hunt: Recent Purchase

Show us the last thing you bought.

Holiday reading

...because in a couple of weeks I'm going to see a new play that is inspired by it.

Music discrimination

Have just discovered that the company I work for has blocked all the BBC's live music players on the web so I can no longer listen to BBC 6 music while I work. (Or Radio 4 news programmes which is kind of important as a journalist.)

Classic FM isn't blocked though, what are they trying to say?  

And what is next banning iPod's at your desk?

Dark Knight voyeurs and Oscars

Joker2

I think it is absolutely disgusting that people are rushing to see the Dark Knight because of some morbid fascination with seeing Heath Ledger's last completed role before he died, rather than the film itself. You wouldn't catch me hot-footing it to the Clappy Picture House when it opens on Thurs. Ahem.
But all this talk of an Oscar, really. Regardless of how good Ledger is as the Joker, the cynic in me suggests that people wouldn't even be considering him as a contender if he were alive today. History suggests that the Oscar judging panel tend to overlook most films with a fantasy element, unless it is a kiddie-flick let alone something that based on a comic strip.
And if Ledger does get such an accolade I think it will be a bit of a shame. In Brokeback Mountain, he not only proved he could act with a stunning performance but did it with a bold and brave choice of character, something a lot of Hollywood actors could learn from, and for that he should have been honoured with a statuette.
On the other hand, I'm inclined to think, and basing this on not having actually seen Dark Knight yet, that if such a genre of film is considered for an Oscar it would be a great step forward for the Academy.

Swede inspiration

'Amy Winehouse', originally uploaded by Rev Stan.

I think the sculptor* has perfectly captured Amy Winehouse's inner...vegetable.

More veggie sculpture in my Lambeth Country Show collection and at Flickr

* Turns out, in a small world sort of way, that the sculptor is none other than the West End Whingers

Makes ya wanna buy one don't it?

Makes ya wanna buy one don't it?, originally uploaded by Rev Stan.

Heavy metal loving monk records second album

This is for Mosh and because I thinks it's brilliant (thanks to Dan for pointing it out)

Achievement of sorts

Thanks to Mosh for pointing this out (although goodness knows why he did it 'busy' freelancer that he is) but if you Google 'bats in bras' my post of a few days ago is the third item in the list. If my mother understood what the internet is she might be proud. 

Is Beardy Man* famous?

I ask because I was at a Nissan press 'do' with Mosh last night at the Tate Modern and he was the entertainment. Also on the bill were a troop of street dancers doing incredible things with skipping ropes and the sort of stuff that, when I was growing up, gangs of teenage boys would try to do on a pieces of cardboard in Somerfield's car park.
It made me feel old (I'm not sure whether that's the reaction Nissan was hoping for, I presume I'm supposed to find the young and hip approach to branding aspirational).
Anyway it was a complete contrast to the press do I took Mosh to where the industry I write about chose the Royal Academy Summer exhibition, champagne and er, well the art was the entertainment.

*Apparently he is twice UK beat box champion and here's a clip from when he was on a BBC talent show:

Vox Hunt: Vive la France!

In honor of Bastille Day, show us something French.

Tipping over

The front page of The Independent today is taken up with an expose of unscrupulous restaurants which pay their waiting staff below the legal minimum wage and use customers' tips to top up the salaries.
Among those named and shamed are the likes of Pizza Express, Cafe Rouge, Strada, Cafe Uno and Chez Gerard.
I could go into a socialist-tinged rant about big corporates exploiting their workforce but Alan, my company union rep, would have a field day and I have a reputation to uphold.
Instead I'll just add this 'discovery' to the list of reasons why I don't dine at shit chain restaurants.

Bored of the gloom: bring on the bats in bras*

OK enough of the doom and gloom in the press, and this coming from a journalist. I already feel like I've been writing about it forever and reading about it for nearly as long. And the really depressing thing is we are probably only just getting started on the downturn. The last real recession lasted just over two years in the early 90s and we ain't officially in recession - yet.

So in order to lift the spirits I'm officially starting the campaign for more stories like this one about a girl finding a baby bat in her bra and dogs riding motorbikes which I previously posted about.

*If anyone has a story about bats wearing bras then that would really do the job.

I need to learn to ride a motorcycle...

...and then get a dog.

Theatre dahhling

Have been meaning to write up my thoughts on Polly Stenham's That Face which I saw a couple of weeks back but I've been lazy. And I'm glad I was, because it means I can kill two birds with one stone and comment on last nights The Chalk Garden by Enid Bagnold too.
Both are about families and it is interesting to see certain parallels even though there is more than 50 years between their creation.

That Face

Stenham is the West End's hot new talented playwright. She penned That Face aged only 19 and after a successful debut at the Royal Court Theatre  it transferred to the West End.
She's got more writing talent in her little finger than I'll ever have producing such a rounded, well structured and well observed piece at such a tender age but if she is half as talented as this implies then I'm more excited about what is to come.
That Face is the story of a posh middle-class family, fractured by divorce and going into free fall. The mother is a drunken, vallium-popping recluse played with just the right amount of stagger and neurosis by Lindsey Duncan. Her son is trying desperately to straighten her out having dropped out of university to keep an eye on her but has in his immaturity becomes dependent on her neediness.
And the teenage daughter played by Skin's Hannah Murray has just gone a bit wild without the steadying parental influence and at the start of the play is in the process of getting kicked out of her posh school by drugging and torturing a younger pupil as part of a initiation ceremony.
It skips along at a merry pace exposing some foibles and failings in modern western society as kids try to clean up the mother before Dad arrives to cart her off to a clinic. Duncan's is not the only sterling performance in fact the only weakness was Murray who had a tone of voice that  just grated after a while and played the neglected spoilt teenager in the stiff-armed gesturing way that seems to have come straight out of drama school.
The ending came all to quick which was a sign of how enjoyable the whole thing was and the same can be said for the Chalk Garden at the Donmar.

Margaret Tyzack in The Chalk Garden

It's the third play I've seen at the tiny theatre and interesting to see the stage fully dressed as the interior of a well-to-do country house from the 1950's. (The last play I saw there survived on four chairs and a newspaper.)
Bagnold, who is probably most famous for writing National Velvet, based the idea on her own experience. Once again a dysfunctional family is the central theme this time an eccentric Grandmother who, disapproving of her daughters remarriage has taken her teenage granddaughter in. It is a posh household with an aging, bedridden butler living unseen upstairs but always at the end of the phone voicing opinions, a paranoid man servant who was imprisoned as a consciencious objector during the war and the new Governess who is just quietly strange compared to everyone else.
Naturally the granddaughter is intelligent but completely wild and over indulged. In the story, the Governess has a secret to hide but her presence does more than make the family want to unravel her mystery, it also unearths a few painful truths about their own relationships.
It was refreshing to see a play that had a predominantly maturer cast led by the wickedly funny Margaret Tyzack who plays the Grandmother and Penelope Wilton who plays the Governess. I feel I'm doing a great disservice to Wilton when the one role she's had which I always remember is Sean's mum in Sean of the Dead. She is certainly an actress of far more depth and scope than that performance betrays.
Felicity Jones at 24 plays the 16 daughter and is one of those actresses who'll be pulling off characters 10-15 years her junior for much of her career. I was impressed by her in ITV's Northanger Abbey and had to google her when I got home just to check she really is in her 20's. Having those extra years of experience certainly helped in her performance compared with Murray in That Face but there was still a bit of the stiff-armed, precociousness going on.
The Chalk Garden is clever and brilliantly funny with some great one-liners. Several audience members felt moved enough to utter a very British middle class 'bravo' during the final applause and if I wasn't an oik and under 50, I'd have said 'bravo' too.

Vox Hunt: Red, White and Blue

In honor of Independence Day, show us something patriotic.

Well that's what red white and blue means to me

I'm sorry but could you repeat that?

Was called today at work by an agency doing some research for the housing association through which I bought my flat. Which is all fine, they are pretty crap at doing the stuff you want them to do, like repairing the lock on the front door to the block, so it was good to get the opportunity to give some feedback.
The woman starts asking the boggo questions about whether I'm satisfied with this, that and the other and then it gets to the bits about me, which surveys always seem to ask.
And bam, this totally baffling question comes:

"We have you down as female, would you say this is accurate?"

Now I have got a bit of a cold at the moment but I don't exactly sound like Marge Simpson and I have a quite a girly (real) name which the woman knew, and used, when I picked up the phone. The interviewer didn't even falter when I guffawed loudly and pointed out the bizarreness of the question.
Perhaps she's been doing market research too long and has become totally immune to what she is actually asking because I can't think of any other reason for being able to ask that question of me without having had her brain removed and replaced with a micro-chip

Where there's a will...

...there is usually a load of money grabbing family members. Saw this story on the BBC today about a multi-billionairess Leona Helmsley who expressed a desire to leave her money to dog charities.

She left a $12m (£6m) inheritance to her pet dog, Trouble, explicitly leaving out two of her grandchildren.

Shock horror!

The piece paints Ms Helmsley as a mean person but so what? It's her money and she's entitled to do what the hell she likes with it.

I find it really distasteful when families manouevre and circle like vultures over potential legacies. Even more so when people assume they are entitled to something and count on getting that money.

Good for her I say and I hope the whole lot goes to the doggies.

Fuel protests

OK so I don't own a car, so I'm probably not the best person to comment on the fuel price protests but hey this is my blog an I'll comment on it if I want to.
The BBC ran a story today about the hauliers who decided to protest about the rising cost in diesel pointing out that a weeks fuel is now running at around £1,000. The lorry drivers all met at pre-arranged spots and drove in convoy towards central London, no doubt causing 'travel chaos'.
Now none of that particularly bothers me. We live in a free(ish) country where it is our right to voice an opinion, so fair enough, it's a good way of bringing the issue to everyone's attention.
What did amuse me, though, was the fact that hauliers "had driven from as far as Cornwall" to join the protest. So how much did that cost in fuel? Surely it would have been more economical to have all come up to London on the bus and then taken to the streets. I know, I know I'm being flippant but hey I'm not protesting about how much fuel costs.

New arrival

Did I mention how much I luuurve Mac's? Within 30 minutes of walking through the door of my flat with new MacBook I was checking emails having transfered everything over from my iBook.

Say hello, wave goodbye

Am loving the wider screen and the magnetic power cable. And it is really fast...