Andy's Glasses

My mate Nathan knows more about movies than anyone else I know. I’m not talking about naming the third Tarantino (Jackie Brown) or who played a one-line walk-on part in The Graduate (Richard Dreyfuss), cos everyone knows dat shit. Nathan knows EVERYTHING. Who the first grip’s second assistant in Gone with the Wind was married to before the sex change. Where the plane at the end of Casablanca was bought, and from whom. Where the Marx Brothers had their barmitzvahs, and who catered. Everything.

And he hates the Everyman Cinemas. Hates them. “Coffee shops with a movie screen” he scathingly accuses. And he’s a judge, so he knows about accusations. So he won’t go to the Everyman. He is the ultimate movie-snob, refusing even to go to where most movie snobs (that’d be me, then) find sanctuary and comfort from the multiplex masses of popcorn munchers.

So I wonder what he’d make of the Picturehouse, Crouch End?

I went there last night and it is fantastic. Saw ‘Joy’ which was pretty good, but the whole experience was just fab.

It only opened in November so that explained why I’d never heard of it before. They’ve kind’a kept it quiet. Not the cleverest marketing tool. Yet it was busy. And its got 5 screens. The one we sat in had 21 seats. Really comfortable, individually reclining seats with lots of room. And the clearest screen I’ve ever peered at for 2 hours.

But there’s a coffee shop on the ground floor. Oh dear. And if that won’t have Nathan scampering off to the NFT on the South Bank, then the restaurant on the first floor probably would.

The place is minimalist heaven, bare brick walls, open scaffolding in orange, like a giant Meccano set, and it is just fab. Two full bars, you can eat, drink and slurp to your heart’s content, BEFORE the movie.

And its cheaper than the Everyman. Go there now.

Though how can you when Liverpool kick off against Man United in just a couple hours? And then Stoke, my team for the day, play the Arse at 4. And all after Spurs fairly wonderful-ish win yesterday????

Joy is a joy. But Jennifer Lawrence is something way beyond that. In most of the movie she’s scruffy, unpolished, almost ‘au natural’ but with clothes on. Primark clothes. And yet she simply mesmerises. Her presence, and her wonderful voice, simply possess you. Ok, they possess me. Whatever ‘star quality’ may be, J-Law simply has it in vast abundance.

Happy snowy sunday (my tennis courts at 10 this morning, when I went to check them out).

A xxxx

You kind of accept the world as it is. Things change and generally, you just go with the flow. You don’t shout that someone’s of a certain race or creed in public, you rarely call someone a ‘poof’, and never if he is a ‘poof’, and you don’t call women bitches. Even if they are or can be at times. Never. Not on my watch. Not in 2016.

Because we’re into the ‘post-feminist’ era. Meaning its already happened, equality is rife (like influenza and terrorism) and within about 200 to 300 years there may even be equal pay in the City. Well, not everyone can move at the same pace.

But we accept feminism as a good thing. Equal rights for all. Even (however reluctantly) women.

So I thought.

Then on Monday night I watched a really cool guy on the BBC going round finding anti-feminists. Not just people (like the vast majority) who go with the flow, who don’t care one way or another, who maintain their chauvinism but keep it quiet; down the pub; between the boys. No, these are outspoken anti-feminists. They hate feminism. They think its gone to far. The feel that men are now downtrodden and given less rights. Or they are just rapists (according to the true feminist line).

But he found anti-feminists. People who not only hate feminism but stand at Hyde Park Corner to announce that to the world. And also, obviously, hook up on anonymous web sites using anonymous names which really shows their level of commitment. Feeling that feminism has ‘gone too far’. Interesting things like: there is in every European community ministers responsible for women’s rights. There are laws protecting women’s rights. Yet no equivalents for men.

Then the other day, Emma Watson, who retired as Hermoine the witch (not ‘bitch’ but the jury’s out on that one) to become the UN ambassador for women, tweeted after the death of her mate and former Hogwarts teacher, Alan Rickman, her sorrow at his death. And posted Rickman’s quote about men being feminists.

And anti-fems immediately attacked her for ‘pushing her own agenda’ and ‘using his death’ and such tosh.

I really think anti-feminism is the way forward, but behaviour like that against a good looking woman could really set their cause back decades.

Happy knuckle-dragging

A xxxx

Now this is funny. In a rather ‘odd’, even macabre way. But we all look for patterns in life. Particularly in tragedy. I don’t know why, they’re not particularly comforting, but we do. Its the human condition. One of them, anyway.

So Amy Winehouse died at 27. As did; Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Kobaine, Janis Joplin, Bryan Jones and a host of others. We look for ‘reasons’. What happens at 27 that doesn’t at 26 or 28 or 32? No idea. Just a coincidence? Or a pattern. None of them died of old age, nor illness in the normal sense of a terminal illness.

Then this very week, the ultimate Hero, David Bowie dies at 69. And yesterday the wonderful (didn’t know him at all, never met him, but the ‘wonderful’ really describes his stage personae and the image conveyed therein) Alan Rickman also died. Aged… 69!!! Snape is no more.

Maybe God has culls. Of famous people (no-one counts the millions of other deaths that inevitably occur every year, however tragic each and every one may be in his/her own household). Kind’a ‘thinning out the herd’ of rock musicians, artists, actors, due to over-supply which may cause problems in the food chain. And that’s different from when politicians die because of problems on the gravy-train.

Alan Rickman. One of our favourite actors. So suave. So smooth. So definitively British in every way. Even when playing an American villain, or a French courtier, he did it in English. Plummy English. Unapologetically so. And funny. So deliciously, wryly funny.

And so back to Bowie. Another fabulously English man. Born in Brixton. He never really left. Other than in every real sense of the word ‘left’. Yet he too was a definitive Brit. He always sang in ‘English’. Which may sound like, er, obvious. But its not. Most British singers sing in American. From Robert Plant to Mary Hopkin. American is the language of rock, almost the language of song. But not Bowie. He stuck with his proper pronunciation throughout his career. Ground Control to Major Tom. In English.

Even the wonderful Adele sings in English. Most of the time. But for her that is an accent of choice. And different from her natural tongue, which is cor-blimey, strike-a-light, Cockney scumstress. And if you doubt that, please check out this fantastic link to the goddess of the modern ballad singing and chatting in the car with James Cordon. It is not only brilliant but is in such ‘proper’ English that it required subtitles so Americans could follow it.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/scottybryan/james-corden-adele#.qdmzZ04B84

Happy Friday

A xxxx

What day was it yesterday? Must have been a Saturday because there was a full fixture list playing. But if it was Saturday why was I working? And because of that, Spurs lost. Because I didn’t have the time to agonise, analyse and consider all the possible implications and ramifications and potential consequences of the matches. Things that are very important for my team’s success. I failed them.

And they failed me.

HOW CAN YA FUCKING LOSE TO LEICESTER CITY????? It was all set up. We softened them up on Sunday in the Cup and had them just where we needed them (??) We just had to have lots of possession; we did that; we needed loads of strikes on goal; we did that; and we needed to score loads of goals. Hmmmmm. Didn’t happen. Couldn’t score even one.

We went round to friends for dinner. Left home at 8.15 and the Spurs match was 0-0. Whereas over at Anfield, Liverpool were 1-0 up against the Arse. So far so good. Chelsea were 1-0 up against West Brom.

We had drinks, nibbled some nibbles, and I fretted. We sat down and had some soup. Very nice soup, in fact, but that wasn’t the point and it didn’t stop me fretting. Mark’s phone was on the table. I kept staring at it. Trying to act normal. Trying to ignore it and the secrets it held. Trying to act cool.

FOR GOD’S SAKE GET THE SCORES UP!!!! I said in mid-soup-spoonage, thrusting his phone in his face. And Liverpool were 2-2 with Arsenal and Spurs still 0-0.

I was enjoying some other food some minutes later but couldn’t concentrate on my eating. Was trying to keep cool, “oh, so Florence was in Australia, how lovely for her, blah, blah, blah”, “terrible thing about the Cuban missile crisis…” (Cuban Missile Crisis??? what the f-? try to concentrate!), “have you seen the new Pochettino… sorry, Tarantino movie yet?”

Grabbed the phone, Leicester had just scored. Arsenal were 3-2 up, the fucking world was ending right there on that stupid little screen. Man City were 0-0 which would have been good except we were 0-1 which was not good. Not good at all. Very bad.

At least Liverpool pulled one back at the end. As did West Brom at Chelsea. But not us. Not Spurs. Not my team.

The fruit salad was fab, but tasted like wood in my mouth. The world went dark. The rains started. Even God was pissed off.

I love football.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I love a good strike. No, really, its one of my favourite things. Dummett’s last minute strike last night against Manchester United was a thing of beauty, a thing of glory, a thing of wonder. Especially as it kept United well below Spurs in the table. And added yet more misery to the Old Trafforders already horrible season. Though at least they managed 2 first half goals. Which is 2 more than in the first halves of their last 10 games combined.

But this isn’t about striking. Its about striking. Workers’ rights. Trade unions. Militants and protests. More money, less hours, more rights and the new one: ‘work/life balance’. Ooooh, that’s very post-milenial. Very Zen. Very zeitgeist.

We have two strikes currently on display. I can offer you the junior doctors, or I can throw in the Tube workers. Buy one get one free. January sale on withdrawing labour.

And whilst I have absolutely no sympathy for the tube workers, or rather, for their obnoxious and toxic leaders and think they should sack every single tube worker who carries a union card and just start again, I’m fully in favour of the action by the hospital Docs.

This is not just because I’m an every day tube commuter but not normally a hospital patient, but that may have something to do with it. Nor is it because doctors are good people and tube workers aren’t. Its not even because I agree with the reasons for the hospital strikes (which I really do) and completely disagree with those for the tube strike (which I do).

Its because the Doctors, as well as having a very good point to make, striked (struck? stricked??) for the first time in 40 years yesterday. Oddly, ‘to save the NHS’. Oddly because Jeremy Hunt, the health tosser, sorry, health minister, has refused the demands from the doctors ‘to save the NHS’.

The fact the doctors are having this rarest of strikes outlines the severity of their problems. They don’t ‘lay down tools’ for no good reason.

Whereas we have a tube strike about once a month. During ‘strike season’, which runs from January 1st to December 31st every year. They strike for more pay. They strike for less hours. They strike because Boris announced a 24-hour tube service. They strike because a driver was sacked; for being drunk three times whilst driving a train. They strike when a worker was dismissed for being ‘on sick leave’ for 3 months whilst being filmed on the golf course and at the gym every day. They earn shit-loads of money, work about 6 hours a week so now its all about ‘work/life balance’. Which for them is tipped rather heavily in the ‘life’ side.

However… I can’t understand why reasonable people can’t resolve their differences without resorting to a withdrawal of labour. The Tube union leaders simply are not reasonable people. They’re barely people at all, in fact. But the doctors are reasonable. And not money-motivated. Not as juniors anyway. Therefore Jeremy Hunt must be unreasonable. Its just logic.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’m really not a technophobe. I hate most of it, granted, won’t use Facebook, never had a twitter, resist downloading apps until I’m physically forced to at gunpoint and generally view ‘change’ as a bad thing. Not ‘changes’; that was a great song by Bowie… ahhhhhhh. But change; bad thing.

So why do I need a car that drives itself? And can I still ask that question whilst really appreciating the incredible significance of what such a creation represents?

Because a car that drives itself is really the pinnacle of artificial intelligence. Not like my own version in which I pretend to know lots of shit about everything but really learned most of it from a Cornflakes packet or Wikipedia. No, proper AI.

They have ‘robots’. Mainly in China and Japan. They’re obsessed with them. And they sweep the floor and walk up stairs, which is all well and good but its not exactly R2D2, is it? High tech, lots of programmed responses, its not AI. That starts when independent interaction takes place and the ability to respond independently to changing environments. Learning as it goes along. The wonderful gap between an ipad and the Terminator scenario when the computers take over the whole world and blow it up. AI is the ‘happy medium’. Computers that can act independently but don’t control weapons or have ideas above themselves.

Tesla have made a car that drives itself. Better than Google’s. Better than everyone’s. Because that what Elon Musk does. He invents amazing things that work not just better than everyone else’s but are 20 years ahead of what anyone else has even thought of.

You ‘summon’ the car with a remote. And it comes out of the garage and finds you. Bit of a problem if you don’t have an electric door on the garage, but these are technical details. You will, in time, be able to summon the car across great distances. Like from New York to San Francisco. The car will leave, charge itself up along the way at various points and arrive in California with no speeding tickets, no hitch-hikers, just the car. Maybe wash itself, I don’t know.

Ok, it might be easier, certainly quicker, to just, rent a car. But this is about potential.

Apparently on you-tube there are loads of videos of the test drives of this new car. And they’re funny. Changing lanes for no reason. Bit of a swerve here and there, probably because the guy in the next car was getting an email and it upset the Tesla’s electronic wizardry. I’m not saying the car’s perfect. Apparently its ‘not very good with small obstructions’. I need more information about that, lots more information. Like, what is a ‘small obstruction’? A cat? A lamppost?? A child???

But its early days.

One last question. What do I do whilst the car is driving itself? What is my purpose in life? Why am I here if I’m no longer needed? Would I sit in the back and pretend I have an invisible chauffeur? Or let the car drive but sit there panicking in the driver’s seat in case something goes wrong?

Is having a car that drives itself like having a dog that shits for itself? Deep philosophical questions.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

David Bowie is dead. And this is not like ‘Ziggy Stardust is dead’ or ‘Aladdin Sane is dead’, this is for real and permanent and forever.

Yet when celebrities die, its different from when, like, Uncle Morty dies. You don’t know them. You don’t speak to them. You’ve never met them, other than perhaps some fleeting glimpse over a million heads at the Hammersmith Odeon. So you ‘know’ these people through their work, be they singers, artists or actors. And their work lives on. Forever. Uncle Morty had a factory making knock-off Burberry handbags, so his work lives on for a little while, generally about 3 months til the strap breaks because the leather’s not real.

Yet I was really shocked this morning when I heard about Bowie. Because although I never met him, he was part of my life. Perhaps an even bigger part than Uncle Morty because he provided the soundtrack for my youth. A big part of it. Something he shares with Ozzie Osbourne, John Lennon, David Byrne and Shawaddywaddy.

I saw Bowie in 1972 at Romford Odeon. He was Ziggy Stardust. I went in plain clothes. In disguise. But I came out as Ziggy Stardust having been truly blown away as no concert since ever blew me quite that far away.

It was almost RIP for Spurs’ FA cup aspirations yesterday, with a last minute penalty by the one and only Harry Kane saving our blushes. Was it really a penalty? Ball, hand, that’s penalty to me. No point overthinking it.

But what about Oxford United? 2nd division rubbish beating premiership (strugglers) Swansea. Me mate Welsh Judith won’t be happy, that’s for sure, but that’s the magic of the FA cup.

And its not just magic. Its survival. Clubs like Oxford will have an annual turnover less than Wayne Rooney’s wages. They dream of just simply reaching the 3rd round of the cup and they pray that they meet a ‘big team’ because then the money they receive will keep them afloat for another year. To reach the 4th round will ensure their survival for a decade. I hope they get Man United. And beat them.

Happy Monday. Gotta go to work some time, I s’pose.

A xxxx

Wow!

That’s all you can say about Star Wars, part 14, The Empire… becomes empirical? Eats people?? Does something dastardly against furry creatures??? Whatever they call it, the latest Star Wars movie is simply brilliant. I loved it. I lived it. I hadn’t been in an x-fighter jet since 1973 but, like riding a bike (I fall off a lot), it just came back to me as The Force surged through my veins, my bones, my very entity.

The gel, Ray, is more than a little Keira Knighly in appearance, and like her lookalike, she’s not much of an actress, having no expression in between sunshine smile and frowning grimace. But who cares. She’s not there to act, just to run around in front of explosions. Which she does really well. Everyone else in the movie is great. And its funny. Its wry. It has the quick wit of the original and half the cast of that too.

Princess Leia returns, with a re-built Carrie Fisher looking not quite as in control of her facial movements, nor her girth, as she was 40 years ago. Quel surprise. Harrison Ford was a slower, quieter Hans Solo and only went on one run, and not for very far and he didn’t exactly do it like Mo Farrah. But he tried.

Its inevitably very action-packed and exciting. In fact its bloody wonderful. Illogical, nonsensical, but you’re not there to look that deep. Its a feelgood movie with a happy ending. Not in that way. Yet it also leaves everything open for part 2 of the next trilogy. Or part 8 of the series. Or when the Empire does something else.

Who cares what they do, long as they do it that well.

Off to another (frikkin) airport soon. Home in time for tennis tomorrow.

Happy… yeah, right

A xxxx

So as the honeymoon begins for Johnny and Tali today, the honeymoon for the weather here in Israel changes. Yesterday it was Mediterranean spring, today its Midwest Hurricane. Wet, dark and really really windy. But heh, we never expected summer here; not in Jan, and other than yesterday morning, we didn’t get it.

Thus we’re going to see Star Wars movie tonight, down the road in Ramat Hasharon. As ya do.

The wedding was fab. It took place on a kibbutz. Which are vast, sprawling places of industry and commerce that work as a collective. Its an old socialist ideal that worked pretty well in the 40s and 50s when everyone who hated fascism was a socialist or communist, and the state here subsidised the kibbutzim to keep them viable. By the 60s and the cold war most socialist ideals had evaporated into one kind of American dream or other so the kibbutzim either turned a real profit or dissolved.

The one last night has, among its other enterprises, entered the world of ‘party venue’. So you drive into the kibbutz (always on massive, thousands of acres, plots) and you go off-road down an unpaved driveway for about a mile into the fucking wilderness (like Moses in a rental Peugeot) and darkness and then, ka-boom, there’s a massive (you could have probably up to about 1000 people seated at tables in there, I reckon) purpose built hall. And it is magnificent and beautiful and opens on three sides to the lovely countryside and just wow!

There were only (its only ‘only’ if I’m not paying) about 250 people there and that was just comfortable and great. The only potential problem was that, in deference to the groom’s veganism, this was a strictly vegan wedding. Oh. Hmmm. How d’ya like yer lettuce leaves, fried or boiled? Two asparagus tips and a vat of sodding tofu. Great.

Yet, to my and every other carnivore’s great surprise and pleasure, the food was absolutely brilliant. So brilliant that I’ve decided not to eat meat until tonight. As a show of solidarity.

Today, going down in the lift we were talking to a ‘cable guy’. Israeli, unsurprisingly. ‘Oh, you’re going for a walk’, he said. ‘Do you have a gun?’ Do I fucking need one?? To walk??? He pulled up his t-shirt to show us the automatic holstered on his hip. Yeah, you may need one. The reality of life in this otherwise laid-back, chilled-out, cafe-societied foody heaven by the seaside.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So we flew once more. Arrived at Ben Gurion airport, ran out, grabbed the car (in reality this took an incredibly impatient and frustrating 40 minutes, for a car pre-booked and arranged) drove into Tel Aviv (20 minutes on a good night) and arrived at the restaurant for the ‘pre-wedding; friends-from-over-somewheres dinner’ just an hour late. Do not pass ‘go’, do not collect 200 sheckels, do not shower, shave nor change. Then we had to park. By which time it was another half an hour. But who cares? We’d arrived. And they hadn’t served the main course yet. I’d packed a doggy bag just in case. A great night. And fortunately not a very late night. As we still had to drive elsewhere to bed down. Tonight is the wedding. Ahhhhhh.

Meanwhile, what’s happening back home? Its all a disaster. Jeremy Corbyn is turning into a true communist leader. Everyone who disagrees with him is taken to the river and ice-picked in the ear before being dumped in, laden down with bricks. Three more of his ministers were sacked this week. Ok, not murdered in any literal sense, but Jeremy ‘the great listener’ has become Jeremy ‘the great listener of people who say exactly what he likes to hear’. Like Stalin. So say what you like in praise of the IRA or Hezbollah, accuse ‘the West’ of being the problem responsible for terrorist attacks in Paris, but say anything outside the left-wing, anti-tory, nuclear disarmament line and, in the words of Alan Sugar: you’re DEAD.

But there’s good news on the horizon. The result of Saudi Arabia and Iran falling foul of each other is that oil prices have dropped yet further. I’m hoping for all out war then we might get to gas up for under a quid a litre. Surely that’s worth a total nuclear bloodbath, no??

And its a quite ridiculous situation out there, or perhaps ‘over here’ in the middle east. As Iran has upset the Saudis in response to the Kingdom killing Iran’s favourite Imam. Although when you’re ‘executing’ 47 people in one go, they may have just pulled the wrong beard out of the crowd. Who knows. So diplomatic relations have been severed between the two nations. The biggest Sunni country in the region, Saudi, and the biggest Shia anywhere, Iran. And as the Saudis are now almost seen (as they should be) as baddies, its time that the nation who are (other than North Korea) the second most oppressive and barbaric on the planet, should not be viewed as ‘our ally’ because they buy a few of our bombs. They invented Wahabism, the satanic version of Islam upon which every jihadi group is based. The extreme version of sharia. Women don’t drive, vote, study there, gays are executed, though taxes are low, if you’re looking for a sound financially beneficial move.

So Iran have become almost ‘the good guys’ in this.

And that’s when you KNOW that the world is in big trouble.

Off to a wedding, happy days and mazzletovs

A xxxx