I’ve been tagged!!

Two exclamation marks are all too necessary to convey my delight, nay, my euphoria at being tagged by Top Bird of Wee Birdy to do this “four things” meme.  Can you tell I just want to be loved?

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1. Four places I go to over and over:
- Trinity College Dublin (unavoidable really)
- The Secret Book and Record Shop, Wicklow Street
- Cornucopia, also Wicklow Street
- Marlay Park, below

2. Four people who email me regularly:
- My course administrator
- The president of the SU
- Reed Recruitment, who are still doing their utmost to find me a job six months after I subscribed, and five months after I unsubscribed, from their newsletter
- These Charming Men

3. Four places I would rather be right now:
- Barcelona
- Copenhagen
- Berlin
- With the boyfriend

4. Four of my favourite places to eat:
- Cornucopia (why else would I go there over and over?)
- Jo’Burger, Rathmines Road
- The IFI café, Eustace Street
- Somewhere in the Temple Bar Food Market (why am I being coy?  I obviously mean Crepes in the City) 

5. Four TV shows I watch over and over:
- The Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes adventures
- Blackadder
- QI
- Bleak House

6. Four people I’m tagging:
- Eat a Vegan
- Pádraig Ó Méalóid
- Slightly Foxed
- Homebug

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Thanks Top Bird!

Too, too exciting

Brace yourselves: Bust is hosting a Craftacular on this side of the pond.  Not in my country (it’s in London), but they’re slowly getting nearer to me.

Duke Special vs The Divine Comedy at Vicar St

A musical duel between Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy and Duke Special on piano as part of the Small Places Tour for Amnesty International couldn’t fail to be good fun; it turned out to be fantastic.

After a ramshackle and, in places, cowboy effort from Dave Couse as support, Duke Special and Hannon took to the stage, each to his own grand piano which had been set facing the other, reminiscent of nothing so much as Daffy and Donald Duck in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?  Indeed, this comparison was no inappropriate one for the evening to follow, each good-humouredly trying to outdo the other while bantering very entertainingly - the Divine Comedy’s “Bath” was in honour of Duke’s hair; Duke dedicated his new song to Hannon, its title being “I Thought This Day Would Never Come (and Now It Won’t Go Away)”.

It has long been said on the Divine Comedy’s forum that Hannon is doing himself a disservice by smoking; personally, I’ve always put this down to fans trying to mother him too much and could never hear the supposed damage he has been doing – not so last night.  Hannon’s voice, though in good form, was not what it could be, most glaringly on a song such “When The Lights Go Out All Over Europe”: Hannon has both years and his habits against him now and this song just wasn’t sung with the ease he used to be able to manage (or at least, in its original key).  However, such problems are still only a very slight impediment; of far greater import is the fact that he clearly doesn’t do a tap of piano practice the live-long day, and so expends far greater concentration on working out just what the next chord might be, mid-performance, than he ought.  Had he practised more, had he simply used a chord sheet, I think his performance, very good though it was, could have been magnificent.  After making a shameful hash of “Festive Road” he told the crowd it wasn’t about accuracy, it was about feeling.  Though the mistakes were funny for the most part, they were just too prevalent throughout to be dismissed or left uncriticised.  To my mind, the expression of feeling is painfully hampered when the performer has to try out four different chords before he hits on the right one.

When they split the work between them on a song such as “Our Mutual Friend” or their captivating version of “What Becomes Of The Broken-Hearted?”, they set each other off beautifully, with Duke taking the lion’s share of the piano part, leaving Hannon to sing the song without having to think about the piano too much – this worked extremely well, frequently showing the songs to best effect by having them in simple, entirely piano-based arrangements.  And so I don’t appear too hard on Hannon, while Duke has a good voice, other songs, such as his rendition of the Divine Comedy’s “Mastermind” and his segments of “Wanda, Darling of the Jockey Club”, showed up the extent to which Hannon’s voice is so much more polished.  The songs performed together were mostly much better, more fun, in some way more involving, than the ones performed solo, with the probable highlight of the show being a barnstorming “You’re So Vain”, with Duke and Hannon on piano and Hannon’s “second” for the evening, Thomas Walsh of Pugwash, on guitar. 

More than anything else, their differing showmanship styles made this collaboration such fun to watch; their sparring had such appeal because of these differing but complementary approaches combined with a similar sense of fun, as well as the evidently warm friendship between the two.  Though the audience were, I think it’s safe to say, more a Divine Comedy audience than a Duke Special one, they were noticeably more inclined to sing along to Duke Special’s less wordy, more anthemic songs, and tended to keep quiet and just listen to what Hannon was singing when it was his turn.  This was most apparent when Duke actively encouraged people to sing along and clearly loved it when they did, such as in his Victorian drinking-song, where Hannon, such as on “National Express”, just tolerated it.  Indeed, he didn’t tolerate it during “Songs of Love”, when the audience anticipated him slightly too early in the last line and he , mock-offendedly, shouted, “Hey!  This is my show.”  Each acted as a very effective check to the other, Hannon not letting Duke get too carried away but Duke embracing a bit of audience involvement all the same.  I don’t mean to say Hannon was in any way a killjoy: he was every bit as willing as Duke to follow out an audience demand for them to arm-wrestle and each was only too eager to don a mask for “Everybody Wants To Be A Cat”.  In all, despite my reservations about Hannon and his abuse of his talents, it was a superb gig, full of wit, ingenuity and joy, and at least one audience member left the venue on cloud nine.

See the comments below for the set list.

Burn After Reading

I got to see a preview this week of the Coen Brothers’ latest, Burn After Reading.  I am a great admirer of the Coens and am always pleased to hear they have a new film coming out, especially one not starring Catherine Beta Blocker or inspired by an Ealing classic. 

The story kicks off with the staff of a gym discovering a CD in the ladies’ locker room; on it is the memoir of a disgruntled ex-CIA analyst (John Malkovich).  Two of these gym workers (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) decide to milk their discovery for all it’s worth, with everything rapidly spiralling out of their control as a result.

Brad Pitt is by far and away the best thing about this film.  He is clearly having a ball playing Chad Feldheimer, a likeably vapid personal trainer who is immediately in over his head, and he is frequently hilarious, though my favourite moment was the scene in which he tries to extort a reward from Malkovich.  When he goes off-screen, the film loses its way somewhat, and very definitely takes a turn for the flabby toward the last half-hour, when it could, with tighter editing, have come together a bit more resoundingly.  George Clooney plays married man who preys on women via online dating sites; I expect Clooney, especially in a Coen brothers’ film, to be the heart and soul of the piece, and it would be a great reversal if he could be a villain, but he never quite makes the character convincingly nasty, just blinkered and opportunistic.  It fits the film that there is no one big bad wolf, but that everyone’s stupidity accumulates to a certain point, but it makes Clooney, at least, a much less interesting presence on-screen than he usually is.

There is great fun to be had in almost all the performances of the ensemble cast - Tilda Swinton as Malkovich’s cold wife, McDormand as a woman driven by her desire for cosmetic surgery, Malkovich as a man unhinged by his unemployment – but despite being, for the most part, charmingly silly and having some great moments, in all it feels tremendously inconsequential.

Hedda Gabler at the Gate

During the week I went to see Brian Friel’s new version of Hedda Gabler at the Gate.  As a text I had read for my course last year and greatly enjoyed, my interest was naturally increased for this production.  One bone of contention was the strange decision to have some characters speak in an Irish accent and others in an English one; while there was method in this move, highlighting Hedda’s high-born isolation from her slightly lower-class (or at least poorer) new husband and his family, and creating a link between her and the urbane Judge Brack, I felt it was poorly realised in all.  He has also, along with the accents, crowbarred in a variety of ould Oirishisms for the housekeeper-cum-maid, Bertha, which are wholly out of keeping with the mood and setting of the piece, and a class gap could have been easily and much less jarringly created without their addition.  This need of Irish writer to inject some Irishness into their translations (or “re-imaginings”) of foreign texts seems to be worryingly pervasive; Frank McGuinness’ current version of Oedipus apparently has some flaws of this type and Heaney is always trying to do this, from the jarring lapses in his Burial at Thebes to the strange beast that is his Beowulf.  Why do these writers seem to think that Oirishisms are appropriate or welcome in settings as diverse as Norway, Ancient Greece and Denmark?  Is this  patriotism, finding our dialects peculiarly able to transfer and relate easily to these far-flung situations, or is it just self-congratulatory narcissism about what a great little country we are altogether?

Be prepared for the length of the play.  When reading it, I didn’t feel it to be especially long, but this production clocked in at nearly three hours of heavy-going material.  Although, in this translation, I didn’t really feel it to be heavy enough: Friel has added in a great deal more lightness and humour – particularly Irish humour – at least in the early stages, than I remember having been there in the more faithful translation I read.  The performances are uniformly good, with Peter Hanly’s George Tesman and Andrew Woodall’s Judge Brack standing out in my memory.  The set and, in particular, the staging of the ending are what sold the play for me.  The set is full of windows and doors and curtains continually being opened and closed and people wandering in from unexpected places, all contributing to the atmosphere Hedda experiences of the claustrophobia of her highly conventional life.  I won’t spoil the ending, but for those of you who are familiar with it, in this production the set does not have a well-concealed room, visible only by a door at the back of the stage, but a very revealing glass partition.

Quite an industrious day

After my college homework (decoding an excerpt from Bede in Old English and reading Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules) I finally finished off my scarf this morning.  It is made from the cotton yarn I bought on my jaunt to the Blackrock This is Knit.  It measures about 5″ x 80″ and, though only done in a knit two purl two rib, it managed to take me a number of weeks to complete, so I’m happy to get it finished at last.  I’m also pleased with it as it’s knit up into a soft, not too stretchy fabric.  Below is my attempt to photograph it interestingly (it is hard to make a rectangle of knitting look too dynamic on a kitchen table).

Today I also did some cooking.  Yesterday I pored over a friend’s copy of the new Cornucopia cookbook.  At nearly €40, I don’t think I’ll be buying it any time soon, though I’m fully prepared to steal it off her for further investigation at some point as it’s very comprehensive and well-presented.  If nothing else, it inspired me to spend some time on cooking savoury things today - usually when I give any time to cooking, it is to making sweets of some kind.  After getting in some supplies at the market in Marlay Park, I made some tomato pasta sauce, which formed an integral part of my lunch today and, because I made a quantity, will do me for another few meals in the week.  It is pretty basic stuff – about two onions diced and sautéed, a can of chopped toms thrown over the top and let bubble away for as long as you like, plentiful amounts of basil and oregano and the job’s a good ‘un.

Finally today I made some carrot and coriander soup.  I make it with about two to three diced onions and as many carrots as I’m prepared to peel and slice – today it was about nine small to medium ones.  I sauté the lot for about twenty minutes and then pour over a strong stock to cover (I like the Just Bouillon stock cubes, and particularly the beef ones).  Let this simmer away until everything is soft and then combine.  Just at the end I fire in as much ground coriander as a human body can take.

My mind is turning to Christmas projects.  There is a multitude of small people in my family for whom I’d like to make something, as well as an unreasonable hanger-on who wants a jumper for some reason, so my plan now is to do a little research.  I hope it’s just sensible rather than insane to be thinking seriously about Christmas things at this time of year.

I opened my bag this morning on the Luas to find …

… one of my brand-new Brittany wooden knitting needles snapped in half.  Wah!

Much knitting

Today Shayne (Eat a Vegan) and I went to the Curved St Café for the fortnightly knitting group held there. 

We had much fun discussing the Innocent fund-raising campaign for Age Action, the Big Knit, and the arrival of the new branch of This is Knit in the Powerscourt Centre, a development I knew was on the cards but didn’t realise would be open so soon.  I was also reminded that the flawed beast that is the Knitting and Stitching Show is soon to arrive – it opens on 30th October this year, news which makes me feel like my mother, as it really doesn’t feel like it’s time for it to be here again already.  Shayne and I both hope to go to the knitting group again soon.

After the knitting session, we beat a fevered path to the Powerscourt Centre to check out the new This is Knit shop, where we met Lisa, one of the owners.  Here I picked Lisa’s brains about knitting for men (we agreed they’re a trial) and she very kindly promised to keep some beautiful Brittany knitting needles for me till next week.  I’m utterly thrilled that there is finally a very good knitting shop in the centre of town; it is small enough, but carries everything you want for a new project and is certainly more convenient than the schlep out to Blackrock or the Walkinstown Roundabout every time you need something.

A Matter of Life and Death

Last night I saw Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death at the IFI.  I would consider myself something of a film fan – not the very serious kind with a subscription to Sight and Sound and a fondness for Fassbinder, but I’ve put in many long years of reading Empire (before it went off the boil) and Kermode listening, which I suppose must count for something - but despite hearing a lot about this film in passing I’d never seen it.  It’s the story of a WWII airman (David Niven) who ought to have died at an appointed time and did not; when the otherworldly authorities realise their error, he is given a chance to argue his case for life.

I loved every minute of this: the decision to film the earthly scenes in glorious Technicolor and the afterlife in monochrome – a conceit that sounded cheesy on paper but works perfectly on screen; the performances (particularly of Roger Livesey); a devastating plot twist; the fantastic image of an escalator from Earth to the next world; and a magnificent, perfect cadence of an ending.  Please don’t take my word for it; I went with four friends, none of whom knew a thing about the film, but all of whom came out of the cinema having thoroughly enjoyed it.