What's he like?

Twice now, in response to this very question, I've received the response, "He's married."

I realise that, on the James Bond scale, where once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and three times finally becomes enemy action, this comes down to mere coincidence. However, both times it struck me as odd that such an innocuous statement should be greeted with such a guarded response. After all, in both instances we were already talking about the person of whom I asked that question.

The first time was about two and a half years ago, on a sunny beach in France. The year I met the Germans, in fact, and it was with one of those very Germans I was talking as we all walked along the beach. I can't remember the exact reason for the perambulation, possibly a picnic, probably an afternoon swim, but I happened to be chatting with Christoph, who was telling me about a friend of his, with whom, he said, I'd get on well, I suspect because I have an interest in etymology. And so I asked the question. It seemed a reasonable question to ask, and I was expecting a description of the gentleman in question, perhaps citing some of his interests. What I really wasn't expecting was a flat, "He's married." At the time I put this down to some unknown-to-me appearance of desperation, having been on the singles market for a year with no kind of movement. I assumed I must be emanating some kind of set-me-up-with-your-friend vibe, and brushed over the response.

So it was with perplexity bordering on the amazement when I received this response, again, yesterday, when speaking to a student about his father. The discussion was centering around the child's need to circumvent our security/web filtering systems in order to do whatever it is that 12-year old boys want to do. The conversation moved on to whether his father was for or against his attempts, what kind of computers he bought for the child, and then I asked the question. In this instance I was expecting a verbal description of a dad who was kind enough to buy the kid pretty much any kind of gadget he wanted. Again, I surely did NOT expect, "He's married."

WHAT. THE. BLAZES?

Assuring the child that I was, in fact, perfectly happily settled with my wonderful boyfriend, I set to wondering if I'm asking the question with a certain desperation, or if it's a knee-jerk response that men (boys) have to defend their mates (dads) from any perceived, predatory threat.

And here I sit, baffled by these immediate reactions, but with no answer to give. This is one instance where I have no insight, pertaining as it does, to the male psyche, an area of complete bewilderment to those of us from the fairer sex.

Making a Better Film

For all that I'm a little tiny bit of a nerd, possibly going as far as to be mildly eccentric, I've never really been into comic books. You all know from previous posts that I enjoy a bit of Manga, but I've not spent countless hours reading Batman or becoming familiar enough with the back story behind the X-Men that I can accurately critique the films when they arrive. I suspect my delight in Manga is that there is much of it aimed squarely at the females amongst us! In fact, I think what I most love about Manga is that there is at least some aimed at SO many niche areas of society. And I'll say NO more!

So, back to the comic books. My knowledge, therefore, of many all-American comic book hero (or villain, for that matter) relies (almost) entirely on the films I have seen. THIS is why it's no good my brother saying, on hearing my criticism of Daredevil, "But it was very true to the comic!", to which my response was something on the lines of, "But I had no idea what was happening. I've never read the comic." The problem is that these films must be able to stand on their own, because by the very nature of film, it's likely to be more accessible to the average not-geek than a comic book

And so to the films. You know what I've really enjoyed about many of the recent Comic based films? Time. The film maker has taken the time to build the world in which our hero lives, he's taken the time to develop the characters. Look at Kick Ass as we move carefully through the world of a seemingly average high school nerd as we get to know our hero and his friends. We see the forces leading to his donning of the ugly green suit, and we know of the frustrations shaping his intentions. The director has seen fit to allow us this time to sink into our hero's world. I say "seemingly average" because no nerd I've ever met was that fit, and had that few spots.

Iron Man - apart from a (forgive me) kick-ass sound track, the film works well for me because time was taken to build (cough) the Iron Man. The scene in the movie where Tony Stark was trying to fly the new suit - unsuccessfully, as it happened - is genuinely funny. A reminder that not everything works first time round, maybe. The film is story-oriented, for all that the story it has to tell is somewhat fantastic.

And I'm getting used to this. I'm getting accustomed to NOT having a film which is merely a sequence of set pieces where things blow up. For me, the least memorable part of Iron Man is the final ending, where all hell has broken loose, and the two "Iron" men are fighting. Sure, there's a certain satisfaction to some of the scenes of carnage (the beginning, in the mountains, with the Jericho - that is enjoyable), but many of the scenes where you know the outcome ("Yawn! This is where the bad guy gets it...") seem to be stretched out too far. I suppose when you have a virtually indestructible entity in a film, you're going to need an equally indestructible opponent. And then it just comes down to a basic, and usually rather unimaginative, slugging match.

And then we arrive at the inevitable sequel. You can just hear the marketing men at the studios:
"We have to do a sequel - it'll make millions!"
"And we'll put in more action - the kids love that."

And this is where it all falls down for someone of my age. I've seen action in films. I was there when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, starting from the quietest of openings to one of the best action sequences EVER in a movie within the first few minutes. I can honestly say that I'd never seen anything like it! But just because we launched into action almost with the credits, doesn't mean that the story was neglected.

Sometimes I feel that we're being force fed vengeance. The bad guy is SO bad he has to suffer as he dies. You can't kill him quickly, that'd be too good for him. Hmmm - I'm not convinced. He's going to be dead, and usually that's quite good enough for me. Great deaths - Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Major Toht in Raiders of the lost Ark. The Terminatior in The Terminator (crushed, quickly, in a mechanical press), and Emil's death in Robocop. See - quick, but sometimes shocking deaths, which stick with you for much longer. I feel jaded by the insistence on dragging it all out. I'm bored by the way people are melted, squealing in that high-pitch, made so popular by the "dying" ED209 in Robocop. Now there was a superb film!

I'm not saying that there's no place for Revenge in a film - many great films based on some kind of vendetta (not least, V for Vendetta), I'm saying that in trying to find ever more imaginative ways for the bad guy to die, it becomes painful - for me.

And while I shouldn't, I'm going to have a bit of a go at the trend for everything to work out well. I remember my first foray into Eastern Cinema - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. What a beautiful film. What a fabulous story! What's that? The hero DIES?? In fact, for a while we had a joke that you could tell a Chinese film from a Korean film by seeing who died. In Chinese films, very often one of the main heroes will die, as well as many of the bad guys. In Korean films, EVERYBODY dies!

American films - all the bad guys die, the good guys not only don't die, everything works out well, and the guy gets the girl (which was tremendously creepy in Ghost Town with Ricky Gervais). You can tell how important a bad guy someone is by the time and method of death in the film. Offed early - you were SO not important on a scale of 1 to Badass. Offed in the middle of the film? Sorry, trusted, but you were never really going to cut it - really, it's a mercy killing. Offed at the end - Don Corleone was probably your brother.

I suspect my thoughts on this would be considered, by the big studios, the ramblings of a senile old woman, who should clearly be given a box-set of films with that Nice James Stewart, patted on the hand and sent to the mad-aunt chair in the corner. After all - the first film did well, how can the sequel be anything other than truly mind-blowing when we've stuffed SO MUCH more into it?

While I've rambled (no, really?) from the point of Comic Book adaptations, you can see that I have my concerns about the planned Kick-Ass sequel (sadly, not to be titled "Kick-Ass: Revenge of Red Mist"). For me, that film is as close to perfect as I've seen since The Shawshank Redemption - and so I have my fingers firmly crossed in anticipation. In fact with a few exceptions ( Daredevil, Catwoman and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are notably awful), it all falls down on the sequel. Sometimes you get a couple of good films from a franchise (X-Men 1 and 2 were fun, but the third was horrible) before it all veers horribly off the rails (Batman 4? Anyone? Hell, even Batman 3 was ghastly, despite the adorable Nicole Kidman and the not-ugly Val Kilmer). I am hard pressed to think of a series of ANY films which don't get worse as they go along. Oh, hang on - Harry Potter. Patchy, granted, but film 4 was an improvement over film 3, and film 5 (the worst book, IMHO) is the best so far.

Old Dogs and New Tricks

When I was 19, I was working at the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Aldershot. I see no shame in this position - it was supposed to be a fill in for the summer (my first summer job, and I was 18 when I started), but when I failed to get the requisite grades for the Architectural Engineering course at Leeds Uni, in the absence of any other work, I carried on. Well do I remember the day my mother turned up at work with a copy of the local paper, gleeful because she'd found that the Institute of Aviation Medicine was hiring.

"Ooh!" she crowed, "Working for the government! A job for life!"

She called the number for me, requested the application form, and "assisted" me in filling it out. All I had to do was turn up at the interview and blow their socks off - or be less useless than the other candidates.

Thus it was that at the beginning of December 1982 I started my first "proper" job.

I suspect much has changed in working for the government, not least the assertion that it's a job for life. I believe that there is no such thing in England nowadays. But back in the late 70's/early 80's, not only was it an accepted, but also each department had a budget of money and staff. If the department didn't choose to take up either of these budgets and use them to the last penny/person, then it would be removed as unnecessary for the following year. And thus I was hired - the Psychology department had an Assistant Scientific Officer position available, and regardless of whether they had a need for an Assistant Scientific Officer, they had a NEED for an Assistant Scientific Officer. Or me!

And so, on that December morning I started. I sat in the reception office with the lovely reception ladies, and waited to be claimed. And waited.

3 days later I was still there, and so, when an older gentleman approached me to ask if I was interested in computers, I would have answered "YES!" to pretty much any question. Well, following the gentleman was a bit of an exercise in futility, as he had an old PDP-8 which was programmable on the front panel with switches (I believe there was a punched card system, too). And yes, I do know this is how programming started, and I realise I'd have a very exciting addition to my CV if I'd actually been able to learn any of  this, but that's not how the story goes. Just after he'd reluctantly shown me his domain, I was claimed by Graham (and I'm sorry, I forget his surname), who was just testing out the newest Apple II computers, and had a spare!

That's how the story goes. There was a spare office, a spare computer, and a spare copy of "BASIC programming". I found an old, leather, comfy chair, which I dragged into my office and mended with gaffer tape, and shortly after I arrived there, my new colleague also arrived, a fantastic lady called Marilyn.

It turned out I had a bit of a nose for programming, and started writing programs to do things. Of course I started off with the very basic "Hello World" program, and started to expand it using nested loops, ifs, thens, elses and the like. And I loved it.

I was then claimed by one of the Psychology graduates who was doing her Phd., and wanted to run certain experiments. So I wrote the programs to present the experiments, take in the response via a box I built with buttons, analyse the data and print out the results in a format desirable to my psychologist. Obviously this all took some time, but after I'd put together the initial experiment, I started adding on goodies to make it easier to use. Well, easier for me to use! It got to the point where I could lead my victim into the experiment room, explain what was required, press a button on the computer outside in my lab, and have them complete the entire experiment with no further input from me. I learned to knit that summer, too!

Now, while this is a nice trip down memory lane, I'm sure you're beginning to wonder if there isn't actually a point, and whether I'm ever going to get there. Memory Lane is long and rambling, but it goes to the right place.

One of the things I used to do was write little programs to do various tasks. I always felt that I might spend 30 minutes writing a program to do a task which would take me 30 minutes to complete manually, anyway.  I thought that it didn't matter that it would take the same (and sometimes a little more) time as the manual task, because I'd have a program to complete that task should I ever be asked to do it again. Of course my floppy disks were littered with programs I never used more than once, but I never once thought I'd done the wrong thing, because you never know when it'll come in handy.

While I am no longer programming (at all, not even tinkering with macros in Word or Excel), I still stand by my earlier insistence on writing all those little programs. It was a great way to refine my coding abilities, and gave me a desire to play with computers right from the start.

This leads, in its own, winding way, on to my achievement from last night. I know that to many people what I did was pretty mundane. You see, I've never actually edited video before. Well, there was that time I succeeded in taking 9 seconds off the front of the video so that the downloaded subtitles would work, but that, apparently was easy.

It's Remembrance Day here in the UK today, and the school wanted to have a short length of video someone found on Youtube with The Last Post playing over a selection of stills. So far, so good. I use keepvid.com to save videos (there's no internet in the assembly hall) - what could be easier? You mean apart from the one offending still of a soldier sprawled, dead, across a patch of muddy landscape? Yeah, despite the fact that the whole point of Remembrance Day is to remember what happened back during The Great War, The War to End All Wars, you know sometimes referred to as World War I, we can't show a still of a dead soldier.

While I have trouble with this (and I could rant for hours about how adaptable kids are, and how they can be the most blood thirsty little wretches within mankind, that's NOT the point of today's post), I said I wasn't sure about how to edit video, so the music teacher stepped up to the plate. Well, he volunteered the services of one of his mates, who is, apparently, rather good at that sort of thing. But when my memory stick (with, hopefully, the edited video) hadn't returned by the evening before our Assembly, I started to worry, and decided I'd have a go at it myself.

I've always said I can't edit videos, and I've never tried before. I've consoled myself with the thought that I have no art in my soul, and anything resulting would be a soulless shell of a solution. But the requirements here seemed pretty straightforward - replace picture of soldier "having a nap" in the mud with some other image of WWI, as long as said image doesn't have anyone lying down on the job. This, sadly, put paid to my excuses of lacking any kind of artistic talent, so I resolved to push out the other excuse - I don't know how and I can't be bothered. Or is that two excuses? Anyway, after my earlier faux-pas during the week (and no, I'm not blogging that one, it's still too raw), I need to make some kind of amends in the school.

I fired up Movie Maker (on Windows 7 it's Movie Maker Live). It became apparent that it wasn't going to be simply a case of dragging the image over the offending section and smoothing the transitions, so I set to work in earnest. I worked out that you can put a split in a video, and you can drag an image in where the split had been. But the sound stops, and then starts up again after your new image. OK. I need to record the sound, and put that over the whole lot. You have NO idea how long it took me to get Audacity working to record the audio stream from my own PC! Suffice it to say that at least one reboot was required to get that little part working.

So, audio saved as MP3 - what next. Yep, lay that over the video with the new picture in the middle. Oh, the video still has audio, and at the end of the picture, the audio is noticeably out of sync (and we didn't exactly start completely concurrently, either). Er - Oh, apparently you can turn down the audio on the video clip. Great. Both clips - because remember I've split it in two at this point, and removed a section.

Then I felt that the picture I'd chosen (a totally not-death-reminiscent image of some busy soldiers in the trenches - very palatable) was wrong because it wasn't in the same sort of format as the other b&w pictures. And this is the sad, pathetic part (well, one of many!) - I used Paint to put it onto a nice black background so it had a thick, black border. At least by this time I was becoming familiar with Movie Maker, and was able to replace my picture with my new black-bordered picture.

And so I saved it, copied it onto my own memory stick and published it on Youtube! At 36 seconds you'll find the new picture.

I can't think why I've taken so long to start attempting such editing. After all, I've accomplished many things I had no clue about by using the resources of the internet. I've learned a great deal about linux, an operating system I'd never even used until a few years ago. I'm still a noob, but I've been able to become comfortable using it and installing certain things (although Conky still evades me).

I don't want to be one of those old dogs who can't learn anything new! Next time I come across something I don't know how to do, I'm going to launch in with a whoop of excitement.

Shocking

I went to see Michelle Shocked on Saturday night.

Now, I'm a bit of a fan. We're not talking one of those dyed in the wool fans who have her every album, and have actually been to see her before, you understand, just a modest fan who enjoys the single album she owns. The album she, in actual fact, stole from a previous boyfriend, who introduced her to Michelle Shocked.

Now we've established my level of fandom, let's move along to the concert. I have to confess to being a little disappointed. Just a little.

You see, Michelle came on stage over 15 minutes late, to tell us that she wasn't going to be playing straight away, but that her band would be playing for about 20 minutes first. Oh, OK. She then went on to tell us that people had complained about the fact that she tended to be a bit chatty. This didn't bother me, because I quite like an artist to have a little bit of a chat with us between songs - it helps engage the audience. She proceeded to tell us that she was going to carry on with the whole chatty thing, and wasn't going to listen to her detractors (or producers), and she'd carry on with the chattiness, regardless. Well, OK. Then what she said next sort of annoyed me. She said that if she saw anyone recording her gig, she'd come in the audience and deal with the person. She proceeded to ask us to NOT record the gig, and tried to be jokey about it, saying that what happened in Aldershot should stay in Aldershot. She then went off on a rant about how anyone of us who'd ever copied one of her CD's for a friend or downloaded any of her tracks off the internet without paying for it should feel seriously ashamed. I felt this was somewhat ironic, given how she started out.

It's not even, you understand, that I'm against paying for music. I've downloaded, illegally, exactly 5 tracks in my time, of which I've subsequently purchased the album for 3 of them, and the track for one. The 5th - sorry. I just didn't get round to it. If I can get my stuff legally, I'll do it. I've even started to buy MP3 albums from Amazon.co.uk, and download them. I suspect many who know what a tech-head I am will be surprised to find that I've only actually bought 2 MP3 albums (the aforementioned 3 albums were purchased as actual CDs), and both of those since May this year. How can I pin it down to May so easily? 3 words - Eurovision Song Contest! And my copy of Short, Sharp, Shocked is legit, too.

So the band started, introducing themselves as a mandolin player from Ireland, a banjo player from America, and a fiddler from Italy. They were all very good, and the music was upbeat and enjoyable. They'd not been working together for long, and although you could see that, it didn't matter. I think it added a bit of freshness to the performance. They were clearly enjoying not only the playing, but each other's company. The music was a little country. It's possible it might even have been described as bluegrass, but I don't really know my American country music, so I'm not sure about that.

And finally, three quarters of an hour after the supposed start time of the gig, Michelle came on and started playing. It was nice that she was playing alone, because that's how I'd first heard her.

But, oh dear. Now there are many artists who understand what it is that the fans want. You and I, as fans of a band, we know what we want. We want to hear the songs as close to the version on the album as is humanly possible. This is where many tribute bands do so well. When the real bands have either died, split up, given up or just plain don't want to do it any more, the tribute bands play the songs the fans want to hear, in the way the fans want to hear them. Michelle didn't. She started with one of my favourites from the Short, Sharp, Shocked album, When I Grow Up. Which has a lovely, bluesy guitar running through it. Bluesy guitar - check. Singing same as album version - nope! I do get that it must be really boring, artistically to have to sing the same thing, the same way, every damn gig, but I'd enthused my mum into going with me by telling her all about it, and how much she was going to enjoy it. Well, it was OK, but not quite what I'd expected. Thankfully the next song, Memories of East Texas, is a pleasant ballad, and was sung in a way very similar to the album.

But this is where, to my intense dismay, Michelle wanted us to sing. Now here's the deal. I don't sing in public. I just don't. Well, I'll sing if the music is belting out loudly enough to drown me out so that no one, just no one, can hear how badly I hold a tune (and indeed, did just that at the earlier Lady Gaga concert). I have no pretence to being a singer. I'm probably not the worst singer on the face of the planet, but I'm by no means the best. I'll sing on the rare occasions you may persuade me into church, and I'll belt it out, because I have no sympathy there, but at a quiet, intimate gig like this one, there was no way I was going to sing. Mum leaned over sympathetically to say "Don't know the words, eh? We seem to be surrounded by some serious fans!" to which I just replied that I do know the words, I DON'T, however, sing in public. Leave that to those who are more at home there. Still, a good song, and one of the ones I've always enjoyed from the album.

And then came Graffiti Limbo. Now this is a great song, and shows her somewhat political roots. It took me a beat or two to recognise what we were listening to, because she was singing it, again, differently from the album, but actually it was sounding pretty good. That is until the middle of the song. Now, on the Album version she goes on to explain that the song was written for Michael Stewart, a young, black graffiti artist who was arrested while writing graffiti on the New York subway. This is not only fine and good, it's a concise explanation of the song, and detracts nothing from the singing. This time, however, Michelle went off on one. And by one, I mean a number of political rants including one on our own government. Now, as my sister in law once said, "We know Milosevic is a bastard, but he's OUR bastard!", which is pretty much how I feel about our government. While the current coalition may not be the best possible solution, it's actually a deal better than another term of Labour, and anyway, we've had it in place for a very short time - I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt, and let them work on reducing our appalling debt. What I'm not prepared to do is accept an outsider's opinion on our government when she seems to know little about the situation. I have to say that this put a serious downer on my enjoyment for quite some time.

And then we got to the last song of the ones I knew, The L&N don't stop here any more. This is actually quite a depressing song, but it's a good melody, with another lovely blues riff running through it. This was a whole lot more enjoyable, until we were exhorted, once again, to sing, sing, SING! Oh god! Anyway, I really don't know the words to this song, which seemed to go on for EVER! First we were all encouraged to sing, dirge like, the chorus. Then the ladies, then the gentlemen, then all together again. I say dirge like, because it's really not the most upbeat chorus on the face of the planet (pop over to grooveshark and have a listen - I don't know if that link will work). Although the version on the album (and, indeed, the grooveshark version) is actually quite a chipper little number, "we" were singing it way slower than it should be sung, and it sounded like a bunch of school kids greeting their headmaster!

At this point we switched to another album, Arkansas Traveller, which is not an album I know. This not-knowing could well have been a blessing in disguise, as I was unable to say that I didn't like any of these tracks. In fact, apart from her going off in the middle of the tracks, these were a lot more upbeat. She was now singing with the rest of the group, and, again, the melodies were lovely. At the end, for the encore, she played us a new track she hasn't even released yet. Now the song was lovely. However, the attendant, by now annoying, political ranting very nearly ruined it for me, because the song's about Anne Frank. Well, it's about a painting of Anne Frank done by Michelle's partner, and how it hangs in her flat, and is Always There. This was actually the chirpiest song of the whole evening, and I'd have enjoyed it a whole lot more if we hadn't been exhorted, once again, to sing! Oh dear GOD!

I hate to say it, but it was almost a relief that the concert ended there.

Now, as I mentioned, many bands know exactly what to do to make their fans happy. Usually they're on tour to promote a new album, which may or may not have been heard yet, but sure as anything the fans are there because they've enjoyed songs from the band previously. And so the bands will usually play a good mix of their earlier stuff (in the way expected by the fans), along with most of the songs on the new album.

Michelle even made a comment to the effect that one of the people viewing one of her previous gigs had told her she should sing the song as it was on the album, to which she replied, "Well I guess y'all prolly know the song better'n me, so I'll just go ahead and sing it how I want to." I'm not sure this is the statement of a person in complete accord with her fans.

Today, before this computer, sits a shaken fan. I'd say shocked, but you might hate me for the pun!