Friday morning was hell. I woke up to get ready for a photo shoot in Glasgow’s East End (Shettleston actually, my home town) as I had written an article for the Sunday Herald on the forth coming by-election. Whilst washing my hair, I heard Ashley being very sick. I hate it when my child is sick, even though she is 22 years old, it strikes fear and pain in me to see her unwell.
Ashley finally feels better and I somehow start vomiting instead. Now this is too busy a day for me to be throwing up, I have to do a photo session then get on an aeroplane to Cardiff, so I get stressed more and puke up more.
Husband holds my hair back as throw up more bile into the loo. The make up I had carefully applied for the photo’s was now either being sweated or smeared down my face. That’s when the photographer called me from his car to let me know he was downstairs waiting. We had time issues; I had to get the pics done before 11am so that I could get to the airport in time for the flight. Subsequently I had no time to make myself look presentable.
I managed to pat some foundation powder on my scaly white face and run downstairs. We drove to Shettleston, I felt cold, sick and creeped out by old streets. I saw where my mammy lived, where I went to school and the photographer decided to get me out onto the street for the picture.
“Can you twirl round that lamppost?” he shouted, behind the huge lens of his camera.
“No, I will vomit again; can we do pictures that don’t involve me swinging, twirling or doing anything that will induce sickness?” I groaned.
I vomited again. The man waited for me to wipe my mouth, I smiled and he clicked on his camera.
I finally got home in time to see Ashley looking better from her puking session (what the hell is wrong with us?) and caught the flight to Cardiff.
The hotel is nice and I checked in with time to get ready for my comedy show at Jongleurs. I stood at the window and stared out. At that precise moment a big white beady eyed gull landed right on my window sill, pecked the window and stared at me.
I flinched. It stared. I poked at the window, it nodded its head. I clapped my hands hoping it would hear me through the glass, it stared more and refused to budge.
“There is a big scary gull staring at me and wont get off my window ledge” I hissed to husband on the phone. I don’t know why I was whisperings, the gull just stared at me, occasionally cocking its head at me and pushing one back beady eye further up to the glass.
“Maybe it’s your mum coming back to see you from the dead, you had a worrying day and this is her way of comforting you” he said.
“My dead mammy is a fucking seagull in Cardiff?” I screeched at him “Couldn’t she come back as an eternal butterfly or something beautiful and romantic? Not a big beady eyed gull”
“Well people don’t choose what they come back as” he added. Now he was annoying me. I had banged a shoe at the window to get rid of the gull and that means I have tired to attack my long dead mum who happens to have become a seagull, my day was already tough enough.
The gull stared at me.
“Are you my dead mammy” I shouted through the window. The gull stared and bobbed its head. “It’s saying YES” I shouted to husband.
“See, I told you it was your mum” he laughed.
The gull flew off the ledge and I laughed as well. Just like my mum, it got bored with me talking.
So The Sunday Herald will carry an article and a photo of me tomorrow, good news all round. Am off to stalk the streets of Cardiff to see if I can spot my mammy flying over the rooftops and throw her some bread, she may be hungry.
)
As a pretty big DC Comics geek, so I went to see The Dark Knight on opening day. I've been eagerly awaiting the film since Batman Begins and it just felt forever for the film to finally make it to the movie theaters. What made it worst, was I picked up the Batman Bluray and saw the first six minutes of the film, which made waiting for the movie even more unbearable!
So after watching it, I definitely wasn't disappointed. I thought maybe at the end, there was an over usage of sweeping orchestral music that seems to overpower the dialogues spoken. Maybe even Christian Bale's Batman voice is sometime over dramatic and the Gotham mafia is a joke, the movie is still pretty awesome.
By the way, I'm actually kind of surprise that with all the violence in the film, it was still Rated PG-13. I guess the rating board have laxed over the years, but if this movie was released in the 80s, it would've been slap with an R.
I'm sure all the critics will tell you what a wonderful villain Heath Ledger's Joker was. He was pretty frightening in the role, and I'm kind of sad that this will be his last role. In some ways, I hope they don't bring back the Joker in future films, especially if future actors won't be able to carry on the craziness of what Ledger brought.
Anyway, before I let spoilers slip, I'll just keep this short and sweet. Here are some Batman music.
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A couple of comments: I've previously mentioned Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman before, so check those out. The "Batman TV Theme" was redone, possibly in the late 60s by an outfit called The Dynamic Batmen. I've always loved this surf theme song, but it doesn't seem to suit the seriousness of what Batman should be. It is a fun song and I guess reflect the feel-good theme of the Adam West show.
Prince's "Batdance (Vicki Vale remix)" and had heavy sampling from the 1989 Batman movie. It is, as they say, funky, I didn't think belong in the "grim" and "gothic" Tim Burton film. However, Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Face to Face" fit quite well in the sequel Batman Returns. What a great single! Rounding out is R Kelly's "Gotham City", from the disaster that is known as Batman & Robin.
Links: thedarkknight.warnerbros.com
hans-zimmer.com
oingoboingo.com
With a noise like the last half inch of milkshake, Sherbert slurps off my boob, grunts happily and lies back on my lap to gaze at me in wonder, a small dribble of milk running down into his chins.
"Look at him looking at you!" clucks my mother, "He loves his mummy!"
"Nah," says my brother, "He's just wondering why that boob's got a head."
Not Stephen. Not Steven. Just Steve. For blokes of a certain age this name is perfectly fine. But for a baby?
I was walking to work, noting with particular pleasure the flowers' change of colors: their efforts were numerous and charming. The thick, Crayola hues had now become varied and delicate: translucent pearl glowing with pink, cool magenta sighing into harvest yellow. High summer is a time for subtleties; it carries a hint of what is to come in the autumn, the year's season of change.
The sidewalks are very bad where I live; they resemble granite plates shifting within the restless, seismic earth. So it behooves me to watch my feet carefully. This particular morning, I was staring down a particularly ugly patch of ravaged sidewalk, when I saw a lovely thing lying there. Singular and unexpected, it was a calling card from its owner, a debonair visitor.
I believe it was a hawk's feather. Now goodness knows, there is food aplenty here for an enterprising raptor: dogs, cats, birds, rats - filthy diplomats of the big city - but I have never seen one. But I know that they are fine creatures, with rows of feathers muscling through the air currents, noble profiles, eyes that glitter with an opal's fire, senses that read the patterns of the sky like a book and beaks that sweep into a curve that ends in death.
It might have been circling the neighborhood, taking stock of the potential groceries; it might have perched on a telephone pole, an enviable silhouette, an errant breeze lifting a feather or two. Maybe that's how I got my souvenir.
Possibly it was unimpressed with what it saw, and returned to the dry hills inland. It might have flown north, where the fires had turned the forests black and raw, waiting for the small animals to burst into the open, out of their burning homes. Nature is opportunistic and cruel.
I continued walking, waiting for someone to stop me and remark what a handsome feather I was holding. But such whimsical observations were not forthcoming. Sometimes I felt the wind brush through the patterned barbs and wondered if perhaps my arm felt a little lighter? I fancied that it wasn't necessary to swing my arm back and forth - that it was instead resting on a cushion of air. If I looked down again, I wondered, would it just be upon city-ignored sidewalks or upon the tops of houses?
I hope the hawk doesn't regret leaving this feather. Its calling card is all I have from a visitor I wish I'd seen. I never saw it, a distant black cross blessing the innocuous summer horizon; I never heard the cry that made a pledge of pursuit and pain. I never watched the small, perfect structure, its base coated with down, its body strong yet at the same time a byword for weightlessness, swivel through the still air to land on the sidewalk that marked my route to work.
So I will promise to look into the sky, in order to keep our rendezvous - till we meet again.
I mean, who on Earth would? Apart from the most sycophantic party wonk hoping it'll get them ahead somehow.
- Relax
- Sleep
- Rest
- Read
- Write
- Exercise
- More sleep
- Eat
- Clean
My goal is to have a clean, clutter-free environment by the end of next week. A lofty goal from where I sit.
I got a small mention in the mainstream press. Yee-hah! Quite small, but I'll take it.
It's an article about art on Post-it notes in the Seattle PI online.
They found me through this post on C-Monster, one of my favourite art blogs. If you wanna know what's going down in the art world, add C-Monster to your RSS pronto.
If you are in the Victoria area tonight, be sure to make it to the opening of Abracadabra, an art show and book launch. It features over 30 artists (including me), mostly from the area. The full colour book is really well put together, and centers around the theme of magic and metaphysics.
Show info:
Opening Friday July 18 - 7pm (with music by Dubtet)
Open for viewing July 19-21 10am - 6pm
Closing Monday July 21 - 7pm (featuring a magic show by the Great Giffoni & musical guests)
Admission Opening & Closing Nights: $7/ $20 with book
Daily Viewing Free Admission
Where: The Sunset Room, 1810 Store St. (behind Value Village)
Get the full details here.
(I'll post photos from inside the book soon.)
