K.A. Laity's Blog, page 147

BitchBuzz: How to Cope with the Summer Heat

My column this week focuses on the horrible hot and humid weather we're having in a less than serious fashion. Everyone on Twitter will recognise the various stages in composition yesterday (and thanks, Lucy for the penguin comment). The three years, eleven months, six days, twelve hours and fifteen minutes I spent in Houston all come back to me on days like these. I look forward to the cool and cloudy days in western Ireland. And yes, there's a Fall song for this:





How to Cope with the Summer HeatBy K.A. Laity

Because murder's not really an option…probably.In upstate New York, we're in the midst of a heatwave that doesn't seem to be abating anytime soon. Those with air conditioning or central air stay inside and collapse in the flow. Those without, suffer.At this time of year, it seems we have to choose between heat-induced cabin fever and melting into a pool of our own sweaty effluence. Surely there must be other options, you say. Of course there are. Here are a few you might consider:Skinny dip in your neighbour's poolSure, you could ask permission or flatter your neighbour until they grudgingly admit you to the watery paradise, but it's far more fun to wait until they are out and simply drop your glad rags and dive in. Extra points for leaving your trash, empty bottles, used condoms and undesirable clothing behind...

As always, read the rest at BBHQ, the Honest Women's Magazine (as we are now called).



I headed down to have dinner with Robert last night; I'm always grateful for a good meal :-) not to mention leftovers, a load of laundry, fresh-picked blackberries and the first peach of the season. Connor is as bouncy as ever. Hard to get a good picture of him as he's always in motion. But here's one:

NT Live: The Cherry Orchard

"Who cares about Chekhov anyway? A bunch of old women moaning about ducks flying home to Moscow."



 ~ Withnail [Richard E. Grant] in Withnail & I



I am always grateful to the Spectrum 8 for hosting the NT Live performances; I'm also grateful that enough people in the Capital region attend them to make it lucrative. Keep up the good work! I need the lifeline.



After sneaking off for a matinee of Harry Potter in the afternoon (bad girl! You should have been working -- yes, it was fun), I headed back to the theater for the evening's broadcast. Strange to realise that this was in the Olivier Theatre: I was expecting the Lyttelton, where the production of The White Guard had been. Chekhov's been getting a lot more attention lately, so perhaps this is to be expected. The sets by Bunny Christie were as evocative as those for The White Guard and there was a brief behind-the-scenes featurette where she spoke about the design.



There was a fabulous cast (of course) headed by Zoë Wannamaker as Ranyevskaya, Charity Wakefield and Claudie Blakely as her daughters -- each coping with the dissolution of their familiar lives in different ways -- Conleth Hill as the merchant Lopakhin, who probably makes the most changes within the course of the drama and Mark Bonnar as the nascent revolutionary, Trofimov (who's name I cannot hear without thinking of Monty Python).



Everyone was terrific: Tim McMullan and Gerald Kyd provided a light touch of comic relief to break up the wistful sadness of Ranyevskaya and her family. The timing was perfect. The costuming, too, was exquisite --



-- and yet I'm just not won over to Chekhov. Maybe I'm just a Philistine or part of that audience "weaned on cinematic jump-cuts who like their irony on a plate." Or I just don't like Chekhov. I have tried before and still I'm more fond of the Gumby version than any other. At least it's brief. I can understand the impact of Chekhov's realism -- and landy, we've had a huge trend in that direction ever since -- but while I can see how it would be wonderful to act in his plays, I don't much enjoy watching them. I do like dark humour, but maybe just of a different kind (Finnish, not Russian). Or maybe I just need the right production. This one was superbly skillful, so I'm not sure what it would take.

Comedy Classics: The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film

Hectic day ahead, much to do so I leave you some entertainment by way of one of Richard Lester's early films featuring the Goons Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers as well as other luminaries. If you don't know it, you should. If you do know it, isn't it great to see it again?

Readercon: Of Tin Foil Hats

Among the events today was the Tin Foil Hat event, where strange theories were floated as possibilities. As you can see, one intrepid panelist actually produced a tin foil hat, too.



It was a "you had to be there" kind of event. Many theories both bizarre and  plausible were floated. My own consisted of the idea that in not too many years, what with blogs, social media and indie publishing making everyone a writer, there would only be five readers left in the world (two in China, one in Argentina, one in the UK, and the last in a very difficult to locate island in the Pacific). This handful of remaining readers would be lionised consequently, living like ancient kings with all manner of wealth while writers crawled before them, begging for their attention.



Well, it was better than my initial idea: all SF fans are thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle and thin again at the other end...



The urban fansty/paranormal panel went quite well.We had a wide ranging discussion that really engaged the audience, too. Everyone had a great time. I finally got to meet Delia Sherman, who's just as terrific as she seems in print. There were a couple of panels dealing with Joanna Russ' legacy and with memories of her from folks who knew her like Chip Delaney. I sold some books at the Broad Universe table -- and I got a great review for "Vironsusi" today, too.



And before I forget, Happy Birthday, big brother!

Readercon Day One

I suppose this counts as day two now, since we arrived last night, but Thursday night serves as a bit of a warm-up. Nonetheless, I had a panel straight away at 8pm, so we needed to be there relatively early. Normally it's a fairly easy drive but there was a lot of construction along the pike (and one bad shredded tire from a semi that couldn't quite be avoided—eek) and up 91 as we swung north to get Bilokur in Northampton. Mr B joins us fresh from the halls of the Cartoon Art Institute. Long time no see, so it was good catching up.



We had Greek in Cambridge after picking up CD from the T and then headed back to the hotel so I could get ready for "We All Create, We All Consume" which focused on the blurring of the lines between readers and writers and all the issues that have developed from that in the digital age. It seemed to go well enough and we had a good crowd for a first night.

Later in the bar we suffered the entertainment; poor guy, we were not an appreciative audience because we were all there to talk—that's what writers do when they leave their solitude for a con. It was great to have a chance to catch up with Inanna and Morven whom I hadn't seen since last year's Readercon.

Today there are panels and I will probably be checking in at the Broad Universe table; later tonight is the Meet the Pros(e) event where everyone will be. At present chatting with Faye in the lobby. Oh, and here's Bilokur reprising his role as Rasputin in Hellboy.

BitchBuzz: Rebekah Brooks: The Charm Offensive

I'm off to Readercon today, picking up folks along the way, including a certain mad Ukrainian in Northampton if all goes according to plan. I will doubtless post more this weekend as there are sure to be entertaining things to write about, like torturing Todd and dishing with Liz. I can't believe I'm scheduled at the same time as her twice, so I'll be missing the Norwegian metal music talk. Sigh.



My column today takes up an aspect of the Murdoch meltdown; I can't believe Americans aren't getting upset about this. Too complacent? I am mystified -- and outraged. You might want to look into that. But I suppose Fox News triumphed long ago: that's why we find ourselves in the state we're in.

Rebekah Brooks: The Charm OffensiveBy K. A. Laity

If you've been living under a rock, you may have missed the complete shut down of The News of the World and Murdoch's New International's withdrawing their bid for control of BSkyB—and of course the schadenfreudegasm it generated (thanks,John Oliver, for that new term).

The gleeful noise has threatened to drown out everything, especially on Twitter, even pressing issues of a similarly nefarious nature. Even people in the States seem to have glanced up from their obsessive attention tobaseless conspiracy theories and barking madness to recognize that Murdoch and his Fox"News" have had a similarly devastating effect on their lives including the hacking of phones belonging to 9/11 victims...

Read the rest at BBHQ.



My editor removed my lovely Shakespeare quote: "Who is Sylvia? What is she / That all our swains commend her?" Too much? [image error]

Publication: Dracula X

My latest publication is another humorous piece, this time in Defenestration Magazine . It may look a trifle familiar to folks on the Horror in Film and Literature list:

"Review: Dracula X" By Defenestration ⋅ July 13, 2011 ⋅ 

I was a little worried about seeing this as I had not see the first nine installments, but my video store rental clerk (last store in the entire region with actual videocassettes!) assured me that this one stands on its own merits. I didn't check the box to see if this was a foreign film, albeit dubbed into English, but I suspect that might account for some of the oddities. The film starts in media res, with Dracula already attacking an unidentified woman—erm, well when I say "attacking" the vampire is not going for the traditional neck, but rather explicitly biting away in her nether regions instead. Well, she doesn't seem to be feeling any pain. The lighting is particularly bad, perhaps because they seem to be in some kind of cave.  Obviously this is not going to be an entirely faithful adaptation. Perhaps it was meant to be a low budget approximation of the castle...

As always, you can read the rest at Defenestration Magazine . Check out their other posts: there's a lot of good silliness there. Silly suits me lately. I suppose it's part of the stress. I'm off to Readercon tomorrow which I hope will be fun and not just a further cause for stress. There are some things I rather wish I had got done before now, but so it goes. Somehow it will all work out, right?

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Dead Man

I suppose I should have some sympathy for my replacement at Saint Rose for the coming year. She's going to spend the year staring at the Dead Man poster on the back of my office door (not to mention the Mark E. Smith Stop Mithering! picture as well). The thing with the Depp poster is that the gun follows you around the room. When I'm meeting with students, the door is open so you can't see either of those items.



But I know they're there.



In Dead Man , Depp plays William Blake, a mild mannered Cleveland clerk heading out into the wild West for a job opportunity. His surrealistic journey begins on a rough train and gets increasingly bizarre, dangerous and finally lethal. Depp plays Blake like a holy innocent adrift in a muddy world of cutthroats and degenerates, bemused and constantly off-kilter. The star-studded cast keeps surprising you -- one of Robert Mitchum's last roles, and he is simply wonderful in it -- and Blake, who inevitably ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and usually covered in blood, passes through the events uncomprehendingly.





Stop Mithering!
He's rescued (sort of) by a mysterious man called Nobody (played by the amazing Gary Farmer), an exile from his tribe who has traveled through the white man's world and mistakes Depp's character for the poet of the same name, though he notes, "It is strange that you do not remember any of your poetry, William Blake." Blake tries to deny that he is that Blake, but as circumstances lead them into increasingly bizarre adventures, even he begins to wonder. As Nobody says, "You were a poet and a painter, William Blake. But now, you're a killer of white men." The reluctant (and confused) Blake eventually resigns himself to the error, and in the moment captured by the poster, claims his name and asks the man he's about to shoot, "Do you know my poetry?"



It's a truly strange film and not one that will suit many viewers. I'm a sucker for a film with both Johnny Depp and lots of lines from William Blake's poetry, but I know that makes me something of a rara avis. It tanked when it opened despite the illustrious cast and the evocative soundtrack by Neil Young. Perhaps my fave among the cameos is Michael Wincott, who turns in a gut-bustingly funny performance as a chatterbox bounty hunter; his best line, "'Course you can't put much stock in a man who spends the most part of a conversation talkin' to a bear... talkin' to a goddamn bear!" He drives Lance Henriksen's more taciturn bounty hunter around the bend. Look for Iggy Pop in a dress. Hee.



See Todd's blog for the round up of TOFs!

10 Things I Love

Tapped by my Twitter pal, Betty Herbert, here is a random list of 10 things that I unabashedly love. They are not in rank order and this might be a completely different list tomorrow. Anyway, it distracted me for a moment from the packing panic.



1. Peter Cook





2. Mark E Smith





3. Jane Austen





4. Beowulf





5. Cary Grant films





6. Martinis





7. London





8. AbFab





9. My kantele





10. Writing





What are YOUR ten?! Don't think about it; just list them. I challenge you! Come here and leave a comment to tell me when you've answered.

FFB: The Fallen

For the full list of Friday's Forgotten (or neglected or insufficiently trumpeted) Books, see Patti Abbott's blog. If you're in need of reading material, there are always wonderful suggestions.



I remember when Marko asked if I had got The Fallen yet and I said, "Nah, I'm really only interested in MES, don't think I'll be interested." But then my editor Simon at the Spectator sent me a copy of the updated edition and suggested I follow the author Dave Simpson on Twitter and, well, they were right. This is an amazing book about a singular band and the obsession it provokes -- which really is all about Smith. Shot through the main narrative is alsoSimpson's account of the unraveling of his own relationship as his obsession with tracking down the dozens of former Fall members grows. He finally realises he has hit bottom when he finds himself listening to -- and liking -- Phil Collins songs:



What greater slur can a man carry than admitting to listening to Phil Collins?



The tale begins and ends and really never travels too far from the enigmatic frontman (whose autobiographical tome I have also written about for FFB). Many of the Fallen have gone on to success on their own -- Brix Smith is a fashionista, Mark Riley a popular DJ, Julia [Nagle] Adamson head of Invisible Girl Records -- but so many expressed a willingness to return to the fold should the boss ever ask them to do so, despite the acrimony that often accompanied their departure. Smith's philosophy gets likened to a football coach, an intimidating schoolmaster and an experimental psychologist, who thinks, "routine is 'the enemy of music'" and that regular shake-ups help keep the team on their toes (as does fiddling with their instruments and equipment on stage in the midst of a show.



While people like to celebrate groups like the Rolling Stones that have been together since the Pleistocene era (yawn) because they don't want their favourite things to change, Smith has managed a musical sleight of hand by means of constant if unpredictable change. He's famously claimed that even if it's "me and your granny on bongos" it's still the Fall and he's right. A Simpson realises,



...for all the hiring and firing in the group, the person most feeling the pressure of carrying the legend like The Fall is Smith -- because, after all, it's his reputation on the line.



By the end of the book, there's a distorted collage of the genius behind the band. Smith seems to grow and change, to be all things to all people, a "God" to some and "the boss" to others, a trusted friend and an unruly psychopath. But singular -- and indeed genius. The Fall are musical Marmite, but I think anyone who loves the music scene will find this book riveting as it delves into the 70s, 80s, 90s and noughties. It's an amazing tale well told by Simpson. Highly recommended.