Garnant

I found some Pantone pots for sale yesterday and bought a medium one in 14-6324 Peapod. Peapod was one of the colours for spring 2011, not the best spring ever, pollen-wise, but still better than 2010. Let’s try hard to improve further in 2012 and minimize allergy.

Pantone leading colour for 2012 is 17-1463 Tangerine Tango, a colour I am completely unfamiliar with, I believe I never wore it once in my life, maybe I should try and it will be an exorcism against the pollen.

Guess who’s the lucky girl who’s just got herself tickets for Cale in Turin as well as in Milan?
Car has been serviced last month, tyres are almost new, the snow is melting, hitting the road in March.

Well, I guess I could safely say this is last piece of the puzzle.

What was the last film you saw, and name some of your favourite movies?
Inception. Extraodinary, breathtaking mindmaze of a thriller. Badlands, Elephant, The Shining, Let the Right One In, Zoolander, Withnail and I, Brief Encounter, I am Love, Michael Clayton, The Prophet, the Bourne trilogy and anything from Michael Winterbottom and Steve Soderbergh, Kubrick and Hitchcock.

Withnail and I.

At the end of the gig, John Cale always says that. He means it. Not necessarily that he will see you soon in the same venue or city, but that of course you will be traveling to follow him, parcel post special delivery if necessary.

03/12 C-minecultuurcentrum, Genk, Belgium
03/13 Les Docks, Lausanne, Switzerla
03/15 Magazzini Generali, Milan, Italy
03/16 Orion Club, Ciampino, Italy
03/17 Hiroshima Mon Amour Club, Turin, Italy
03/20 Sala Apolo, Barcelona, Spain
03/21 Sala BBK, Bilbao, Spain
03/23 Auditorio Casa de Cultura, Aviles, Spain
03/24 La Coruña Palacio de Congresos,
03/24 Coruña, Spain
03/25 Sala Joy Eslava, Madrid, Spain
03/27 Teatro de Malaga, Malaga, Spain

05/03 Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival,
05/03 Belfast, Northern Ireland
05/04 The Button Factory, Dublin, Ireland
05/13 Paradiso, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
05/25 Royal Festival Hall, London, UK

Over the past few months a lot of people have come to me to complain about Franzen’s Freedom involving birds.
Ok, you don’t like birds. Birds are uncool. They’re so boring you can’t even finish Freedom.

Now even Francesco Piccolo is complaining on the Corriere about Franzen’s being a birdwatcher in the mountains (apparently also mountains are uncool). At the beginning the birdwatching thing just made Piccolo suspicious, but then Franzen declared his dislike for ebooks, so now Piccolo is sure, Franzen is a neo-retrò, just like an octogenarian aunt, the local so called left-wing intellectuals, and in general everyone who enjoyed The Artist. They are all living in the past, they are reactionaries rejecting the progress.
Of course the article was widely applauded, which is consistent with the number of people who keep coming to me to complain about the birds in Freedom.

Now, as far as I know there exists a distinct difference between conservationists and reactionaries, but I don’t want to sound pernickety. I myself took a lot of time to finish Freedom. I also realise I may be overreacting about a portion of Piccolo’s article which was just meant to be witty (supposedly), but I have little to say about the rest of said article.

Anyway, will you just leave the birds alone, please? It’s not like they’re not going to attack you from the sky while you sit in the open air with your precious Kindle or Nook, you know.

Io sono Li (Li and the Poet) is an interesting little film I happened to see, about Chinese immigration in Italy. It’s set near Venice and dialogues are part in Chinese, part in Venetian dialect, equally subtitled for the Italian audience. That was good because my (in)competence of Mandarin equals that of Venetian dialect, in fact I could just understand ni hao (hi in Mandarin) and sghei (money in Venetian).

Marco Paolini, my favourite stage actor in Italy, was involved in the production of the film through Jolefilm, and also plays a supporting character. Festivals and awards here.

I love it when I discover elements of consistency in collective imagination, especially when I can relate to them on a personal level.

As you may have noticed I’ve been on quite a Cumberbatch trip lately, and this has also involved, among other things, watching BBC Hawking and reading a couple of related interviews, and look what I’ve discovered:

What roles would you most like to play still?
A young Nick Drake (the folk musician) – on film or telly. Play-wise, Oswald from Ghosts, Hamlet obviously. And why not Constantine (from The Seagull) as well.

Nick Drake. Nick Drake! He even felt he needed to specify who he was, for the uncultivated reader, and that the medium would not matter really. I love this. I’m speechless.

By the way, Cumberbach/Hawking flirting with the blonde girl at the pub about relative time (min. 14 – min. 0) reminded me of one of my physics teachers back in high school. No, not the young aggressive annoying lady, not the disgusting middle-aged sex addict who would never speak a word about physics, not the dull brunette who was only and forever interested in wave motion and but could not spell waves correctly, no, I mean the young guy with the sweet smile  and the perpetual chalk stains on the blazer. He didn’t like to sit at the desk, what he did like to do was scribbling madly on the chalkboard, and then he would lean on it and speak to the class, and sometimes he would call someone at the chalkboard to complete the scribbling while he still leaned on it (he would shift a little to give you some space) and continued to speak, and sometimes he started to ignore the rest of the class to speak to you and to you only. That’s exactly how I was taught about relative time, only year at high school I understood anything about physics actually, and that’s why I decided to read Brief History of Time in the first place.

Now, I don’t know how these BBC Hawking people knew about the only year in high school I understood physics, but I’m happy it earned Cumberbatch a BAFTA nomination as well a Golden Nymph.

I hear the upcoming Lego LOTR release is going to include an Helm’s Deep set. This is good. I wonder if there will also be a mini-set available, with just the door to Helm’s Deep and Aragorn, to build my favourite scene. Maybe they could add Brego, Legolas and the Evenstar.

Now that I’ve re-watched all the BBC Sherlock episodes, twice, and re-read a number of stories from my old Penguin books, I am ready for some factual analysis, following the emotional stuff.

Truth is, I’ve always had a penchant for studies in male friendship. It’s what Conan Doyle’s stories are about, it’s what Withnail and I is about, along with Big Wednesday and Star Trek TOS and many other obsessions of mine. Of course I have a couple of theories about why I’m fascinated by studies in male friendship, but I have to say they are not in the least interesting.

What’s interesting maybe, is how I’ve come to terms with loving stories that consistently fail the Bechdel test, over the years. I’ve had a very strict upbringing. Girls were supposed to dress, act, speak, think even, according to a predefined social standard. If they didn’t comply, they were not girls. They were nothing. Of course I quickly found a way out of it, not exactly through rebellion, but through indifference instead. I just didn’t care being considered not a girl, nothing, whatever. I kept going my own way, it wasn’t that difficult to be honest, it’s also been lots of fun, and often rewarding.

As a consequence, I tend not to pay much attention to gender portrayal in media. Of course I know it can be unfair and potentially harmful, I’m especially against gender targeted toys, but I’ve never felt personally affected by it, actually I tend to think it does not even apply to me.

All that said, I may not be the right person to write this, but enough is enough. The beheading in Scandal in Belgravia is hideous.

I’m ok with BBC Sherlock failing the Bechdel test, not a surprise to be honest, Moffat always fails it. I also understand that turning Irene Adler into a woman betrayed by her own feelings was kind of necessary to counterpart Sherlock’s humiliation in front of Mycroft, and to build the emotional climax leading to imminent Reichenbach tragedy. But Irene Adler turned into a damsel in distress! That’s outrageous! I feel sorry for both of them. In Scandal in Bohemia Holmes is fascinated and intrigued by Irene because she is able to outwit him. He forgets cocaine, he laughs, he even has dinner with Watson, actually eating something. While Irene wins, and she leaves the country with her own resources. It’s a pleasure to read.

Yet after all, I forgive you Moffat and everyone, because in the season finale you’ve delivered, let me tell you, a masterpiece. One complete with friendship, love, London and the swirling coat.

Please meet Minako Abe

and Shinya Sakurai.

Shinya Sakurai currently lives in Italy and has also designed this adorable bird box.