Christmas Eve, and I’m having a gentle, quiet and pleasant day. Having purchased a new Apple keyboard – one of the flatter, squarer variety, it’s now a little easier on my fingers to type, plus I’ve just done 1,000 words of fiction. I don’t even mind that they weren’t necessarily exceptional words. They weren’t there an hour ago, and that’s what’s important. I’ll probably aim for an update at some point in the next couple of days, but I’m doing okay right now – this isn’t the Christmas I expected to have six months ago, but I’m thinking good thoughts, and looking forward to good food and watching some cool stuff, both televisual and filmic. Life is treating me okay right now, and I just wanted to wish everybody out there a very happy christmas. See you on the other side of the Christmas divide…
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Twilight Christmas
I realised today that, thanks to more storage issues, I don’t have my DVD copy of 1984 BBC adaptation of The Box of Delights with me. It’s something I’ve watched just about every Christmas for the last few years, and it doesn’t really work if you watch it at any other time of the year (As a tangent – it’s also an unutterably strange story, where the first couple of episodes are genuinely spooky stuff, revolving around magic, sinister wolves and the pagan history that’s lurking just behind the quiet facade of England, and then it suddenly turns into a decidedly camp Buchan-for-kids romp all about nasty gangsters abducting clergymen, only really remembering its weirdness in the last episode (just before the ‘It was all a dream’ ending. It’s also one of those series where it’s only when you watch it as a grown up that you realise that Robert Stephens’ OTT turn as Abner Brown is so flagrantly, spectacularly gay that there are barely words to describe it…)
Anyhow, I found myself adrift for Christmas viewing, but the Internet is coming to my rescue in a variety of ways – including finding this, the Christmas 1960 episode of classic anthology series The Twilight Zone. It’s not one of the show’s out-and-out corkers, and it’s also one of the happier tales from a show that was more than ready to look in some very dark places, which also means that there’s lots of sentiment and a few moments which could certainly be described as twee and dated – but it’s also charming, touching, and with enough of writer Rod Serling’s sense of intelligence and social conscience to it that it still exerts a pull. So, for your seasonal viewing, here’s the full episode – ‘The Night of the Meek’. Enjoy…
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Absolutism
Okay- I’d told myself I wasn’t going to do it again. The DC Absolute Editions are both a delight and a pain for me – a delight because they’re gorgeous, slipcased hardcover editions of comics which, when they’re chosen right (Watchmen, DC: The New Frontier) are things of beauty, a pain because they’re both bloody expensive and incredibly large and heavy (meaning most of mine are currently in storage thanks to my present lack of room). I gave in a few weeks ago and treated myself to the 2nd of the Absolute Sandman editions – it’s a gorgeous book, and I got it for a relatively decent price – and aside from knowing that at some point, I’d have to pick up Volume 4 of the series, that was it for Absolute Editions. They are, after all, luxury items, and there is a small part of me that really doesn’t want to amass too much stuff – especially if, after everything, I’m just going to have to pack it away in boxes again and not actually get to see it or enjoy it.
And then, they go and schedule an Absolute Edition of V for Vendetta. . One of my very favourite Alan Moore comics – it may not be as well-crafted as Watchmen, but it had a much greater emotional impact on me, and it’s one of the few comics I always wanted to have in a big, nice edition, especially since my copy is now rather battered and aged.
The swines. Well, at least I’ve got until August to save up…
(While I’d love them to go the whole hog and actually present the thing with the dividing full-page pieces of art between the chapters – the form it took during its DC comic run, which is where I originally read it – I suspect it’ll simply be an over-size printing of the previous plush hardback. Doesn’t stop me wishing, though. Also doesn’t stop me being vexxed that the upcoming hardback version of Moore’s seminal run on Swamp Thing means the chance of it getting the absolute treatment for the forseeable future is pretty much zero. Hey ho…)
Monday Morning (Here Again…)
I’m about to speed off into town again (this time to purchase a roasting tin), and I’m also attempting to get my head together. My brain is still in something of a fog after the absurd exertions of last week – while I’d love to be all action, all writing, all the time, there are simply points where my brain just waves the white flag and I have to go with it. I am, at least, being able to catch up with lots of the television I’ve missed (both British and American), and there are a couple of major missions I’ve set myself that I’m chipping away at over the next couple of weeks. On top of this, I will hopefully be doing another TV Eye update on the stuff I have seen – particularly the conceptual car-crash that is Season 3 of Heroes. I’m not certain exactly how Christmassy I am feeling right now – but then, it’s an odd and unusual time for me. I’m just going to have to wander into this new world, and see where it takes me…
Public Service Announcement
Just to let you know – on Facebook, I’ve linked up with the ‘NetworkedBlogs’ application, which syndicates this blog onto the news feeds there – or, at least, it would if could get over 15 readers (I’m currently at 13). So, if you’re on Facebook, do please go to http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/crawling_from_the_wreckage/ and click on the very welcoming ‘Join this network’ button – you’ll be doing me a favour, and get to access my oddball burblings from an all new location…
Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard
A quiet weekend – one I’ve been decidedly grateful for. My experience of the run-up to Christmas has, for various reasons, evolved into an operation on an almost industrial scale that naturally expands to fill whatever space is available – I finally got everything done on Friday, and after a frantic time in the dimension-warping labyrinth that is the Arndale Centre I got everything sent off – 20 minutes before the end of that postal day. Okay, I could conceivably have sorted it on Saturday, but I really didn’t want to cut it that fine, and considering I was running on only four hours sleep, it’s an understandable impulse. I did have fun sorting it all, however, and I’m hoping that what I’ve done goes down well – but while there’s the little voice at the back of my head that does want to get a positive reaction, most of me knows that this is about the giving, and that it was important to me to do Christmas right this year. Just because it’s my first Christmas for a while where I’m actually on my own, it doesn’t mean I can’t still do things right, and have a good time in the bargain.
Shopping today – stocking up for the next three weeks, plus some official Christmas treats – and while I have indulged myself a little, I don’t have a mountain of chocolate to work through, and I think that’s probably a good thing. I’m going to have a relaxing time, catch up on some TV watching, and enjoy myself. There’s also been some DIY happening – after last weekend’s epic effort from Anna to finish her laminate floor, we’re now onto finishing the new wardrobe in my room, and have been encountering Ikea’s interesting attitude to providing screws that actually fit in the holes you’re supposed to fit them into. A slightly busted screwdriver didn’t help, so Anna has high-tailed it to B+Q, and will soon be returning to put the finishing touches on the piece, and I’ll finally have somewhere decent to hang my clothes and store more stuff.
It’s an odd feeling to have gotten to the point where I don’t have much to do, and can legitmately take a breath – everything in the writing and publishing world has essentially shut down for the next couple of weeks, and aside from an outstanding review (of the deliriously nutty Korean film The Good The Bad The Weird), I don’t have any major work to do. I’m also basically sorted for my monthly wages until March 23rd 2009, so I can genuinely pause here – I’ve got to kick myself into gear once 2009 commences, but right now, I can simply be.
I’m also doing better in myself. Last weekend was very, very hard, and I did feel somewhat stuck in a frame of mind that didn’t seem likely to shift – but then, I woke up on Monday morning, and suddenly everything seemed a little easier to deal with. Since then, I’ve had my ups and downs, but I’m still feeling balanced, and better, and certain that however traumatic the last year has been, I’ve made the right choice, and I’m heading in a direction that I actually want to go. Sure, I’d rather be doing it in company – but if these are the cards I’ve been dealt. I can complain, and I can moan, and I can be miserable – or I can remember that none of that is going to change the past, and concentrate on making a better future.
And however many gloomy predictions there may be for 2009 – and there are plenty of voices shouting “Doom!” – I’m going to do my best to have an excellent year, get my life back on track, and have some serious fun into the bargain.
That’s my plan. And I think it’ll do me for a while.
Flashback: Jingle All The Way…
It’s been a rough time for me, recently. This weekend’s been quite difficult – lots of DIY related upheavals, and some of my darkest moments for quite a few weeks. I could blog about that, about how hard life feels at the moment – but I’m not going to.
Instead, it’s time for a brief look back at a happier time, and one of the most genuinely fun afternoons I can remember spending. My friend Tris and I were always talking about working together to break into the Media, and while it never happenned (One important life lesson – if you talk about doing something more than actually doing it, it’s fairly likely that it won’t happen) we did have one brief moment of glorious collaboration. We’d done plenty of stuff separately and together- he’d helped out on legendary video project The Alchemist, while I’d co-starred in the even more legendary fan film spoof The New Airwolf: The Next Generation (the first chapter of which has notched up over 90,000 hits on Youtube, a fact that never fails to stun me…), but the only point where we truly collaborated and created something together that was neither mine nor his but by both of us – it happenned one afternoon in 1999, and involved creating truly crazed jingles for an audition tape to aid Tris’ aim of breaking into radio. Tris’ radio career never took off (in the same way as my filmmaking career hit what could politely be described as ‘a few snags’), but he did get plenty of experience, including a run on Hospital Radio where the following jingle did get some airtime. It’s only about a minute long, it was written with the track ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ by Barry Adamson as a backing, it rhymes ‘cool’ with ‘strawberry fool’ (as well as suggesting a different use for furniture polish Mr Sheen) and it never fails to makes me smile. So, if you’ve ever wanted to find out what it’d be like to hear me both singing and (believe it or not) rapping – now’s your chance… (Although if you have, consider me officially scared…)
TV EYE: Flashback – Doctor Who: Season 3 (2007)
Okay, I realise that this isn’t much of a flashback, but thanks to the recent repeats and the joys of BBC iPlayer, I was able to catch up with most of the recent repeat of New Who S1 (I missed a couple of episodes, and deliberately didn’t put myself through the Slitheen two-parter). Rather bizarrely, they seemed to sail past season two (a fact I wasn’t too sad about – despite the fabulousness of Girl in the Fireplace, I think on the whole it’s the least interesting and succesful of all four New Who seasons) and go straight for Season 3, and while there was the temptation to only watch the episodes I’d really enjoyed, I eventually decided to bite the bullet and give the whole thing a second try, managing an episode a day over the next three weeks (the repeats were only on weekdays).
And the result? I’m still largely impressed by what I saw, although it is also a case of that effect you get when there’s an album that you really enjoy, and then you go back and listen to it again and realise that it’s actually those three classic tracks that make it as exceptional as you remember. S3 is impossible to talk about without taking into account the frankly amazing one-two-three punches of Human Nature, The Family of Blood and Blink – outside of that famed trio, however, there’s still enough that I liked to make S3 the point where I could actually allow myself to genuinely enjoy New Who, rather than throw my hands up in horror at what I was seeing.
A quick run-down of my reactions to the episodes:
Nighthawks at the Diner
Friday night. Alone again. I haven’t blogged much for a while, mainly because I’ve been busy – two major chunks of proofreading that kept me occupied for a while, as well as proving that the concept of proofreading while getting writing done isn’t completely impossible. There have been deadlines, and reviews to do, and book reports to write, and I’m in a situation where wage-wise, I’m at least relatively sorted until the last week of March 2009, which isn’t a bad situation to be in. But, melancholy has been rearing it’s ugly head again. It doesn’t help that there’s a bit of DIY-related uproar here, with Anna currently installing a laminate floor in the frontroom (a new fireplace has already been delivered and fitted), with the result that because the work isn’t finished, the only usable room in the lower floor of the house is the (rather small) kitchen. Also, because of my recent purchase of a new computer, I’m on an ultra-strict budget right now which means that my possibilities are, at the moment, pretty limited. I’ve got a certain amount of christmas preparation still to do, and plenty to occupy myself with…
Some more personal and not particularly happy Friday night thoughts behind the cut…
TV EYE: Flashback – Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric (1989)
This has been circling in my head for a month – and now it’s time to get my thoughts on this Who story from the final year of Classic Who’s 26-year run down in some sort of order. So, here they are, in a rather huge and slightly rambling exploration of Who’s latter days, and what they do (and don’t) mean to me. Fear the spoilers…
Saxon Bullock 