Archive for the ‘raves’ Category

Posted on January 26, 2010 - by MG

Up In The Air (I’ve Been There)

Up In The Air (I’ve Been There)

Originally uploaded by mgharris

There’s a lovely Clooney movie out just now, "Up In The Air" which features a key scene in Detroit Airport (also the airport destination of the latest Al Qaeda nutso, the Underpants Bomber.) Now who’da thought that an airport that I had never visited in years of travelling, at least 5 times to the USA, would suddenly become so ubiquitous, months after I happen to spend several happy hours there?

The simple answer is probably that it’s the major hub for American Airlines, who feature prominently in the Clooney film.

Is "Up In The Air" good? For a movie that purports to be a romcom it’s being taken quite seriously. But that is only because it isn’t actually a romcom. There is one important convention to romcoms, you might even say it’s the defining characteristic and it isn’t followed in this movie. Then again, "Annie Hall" ends with the lovers apart too.

It’s a good comedy drama though. With a rather nice, poignant twist at the end.

I took this photo in Detroit Airport, next to the jumping fountain. In the movie Clooney and his young co-star stand in almost exactly the same place, also with a sunset.

Meanwhile, "Zero Moment" is effectively published early, with online promotions starting this week at Waterstone’s and swapitshop.com

I spent today writing my 2010 author talk. First school event on Wednesday. Krispy Kreme party for the Joshua Facebook group on Friday. Big launch party next Tuesday. Much excitement and cake, then down to editing Dark Parallel.

Wednesday 27th also sees Joshua’s first outing in Polish!
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on December 23, 2009 - by MG

The last few minutes of Curb Your Enthusiasm season 7

For fellow Curb Your Enthusiasm fans in the UK. Did your Skyplus fail to record the last few minutes? I happened to be watching it live and noticed that it wasn’t recording any longer.
Here’s what happened.
Larry walks off the set of the Seinfeld reunion show because he’s so appalled to see Cheryl flirting with Jason Alexander. Standing in the parking lot next to a car with tinted windows, he speaks to Jeff on his mobile and points out that since he only agreed to do the reunion as a ploy to get Cheryl back, why should he stay?
He storms off…while the camera lingers on the car. Could it be that a certain someone overheard LD’s admission?
Back in his apartment, Larry is watching the show premiere on TV. We see the final version of several scenes we saw rehearsed…scenes without Amanda, the character played by Cheryl. Larry watches, bemused. Then there’s a knock at the door. It’s Cheryl, carrying two coffees from Mocha Joe’s. Larry is delighted to see her and invites her in to watch the show, which he’s paused live.
As they both watch, Amanda appears on screen. But it’s not Cheryl playing her! Amazed, Larry listens as Cheryl admits that she resigned from the show when he left. It just wasn’t the same. Full of barely credulous hope, Larry watches the rest of the show with Cheryl. They’ve gone with the original ending in which George and Amanda get back together at the end.
Cheryl tells him it was the right ending. “They belong together,” she murmurs to Larry. He leans in and asks, “Do they?” Cheryl nods and they kiss.
But!
Yeah.
Larry!
He’s finally kissing Cheryl, but opens his eyes to peer at a new coffee ring on the wooden coffee table. He stops the smooching to point it out. Cheryl admits, sheepishly, that she can be careless with coffee cups. Larry mentions the coffee ring at Julia’s and Cheryl confesses that she might be responsible. She seems to want to get back to the kissing and touching reunion they’d just initiated.
Yet, Larry won’t let it lie. He agrees with Cheryl’s assertion that it ‘really doesn’t matter’ but then adds ominously, “Having said that…could you call Julia and tell her that it was you who damaged her table?”
Cheryl does that perfect expression of bemused, long-suffering irritation that ten years of marriage to Larry has helped her to perfect. “I’m not going to do that,” she says. Larry balks at her reaction.
And that’s that. They’re already back to squabbling, at least Larry is already back to his fussy, rude and intransigent self.
Because with or without Cheryl at his side, that’s who he is.

Posted on December 22, 2009 - by MG

Carols and Christmas snow

Yes indeed, Christmas begun in earnest for me last night with the annual Physics Department Carol service about which I have previously blogged. The music included one of my favourites, Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium, and the Coventry Carol, which the sopranos sat out on, deferring the top part to the altos.

During the mince pie and wine party afterwards I managed to possibly find a new trumpet teacher for Little Daughter (whose previous teacher Rob Stevens of the local jazz outfit The Mad Hatters, sadly and unexpectedly died recently). And to discover why the writer and presenter of the brilliant BBC TV series The History Of Christianity looked so familiar…turns out that he too has sung in the choir for years! My pal Becs and I had a nice chat with Diarmaid McCulloch about the show, which if you haven’t watched it and you have an interest in history, watch it now on iplayer! Or wait for the BBC2 rerun.

Apparently Diarmaid’s book on Christianity has sold as many copies as ICE SHOCK! Wow! And that’s hardback at £35, thank-you-very-much, unlike my books’ bargain price entertainment of £6.99.

I emerged into snow, for the first time in 20 years. Like in Dickens! A quick change at home into suitably elegant attire and down to St Hilda’s College for our IT company’s Christmas party. A really lovely evening, and nice to see the boys in black tie. Especially our co-founder Mark who only owns one suit!

Charlie from Inlight and I chatted over the merits of various Disney rides. I mentioned to him that I wrote the first ever review of Space Mountain in Disneyland Paris.

I may have had some wine. I can’t exactly remember…

Posted on November 23, 2009 - by MG

A Night in the British Museum

Those lucky Young Friends of the British Museum get the bonus treat of being allowed to attend up to 4 sleeppvers a year. Last weekend was a special Moctezuma-themed event, featuring storytelling about the Mexican Day of the Dead, warrior head-dress making, Mexican folklore from Mexicolore…and then some Mayan hieroglyph deciphering with me.

Meanwhile publicist Alex from Scholastic and I enjoyed being set free in the British Museum at night. We saw some strange stuff up in the Mesopotamian gallery, near the remains of the Temple of Ninhursag… but I won’t say any more.

What a great wheeze though! Picnic and sleep amongst one of the greatest (perhaps THE greatest) collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts outside of Cairo. All this an education too.

Thanks to Claire Johnstone from the British Museum for inviting me, to Sky and Alex for helping with all four events, and to the very kind Simon Martin of Penn Museum for giving us his translation of the inscription.

Posted on November 11, 2009 - by MG

The world loves a catastrophe - 2012 movie hysteria

If this is how stoked people can get in 2009 about a 2012 movie, what will happen in 2012?

Will we be totally over it? Can it get more hysterical?

Believe me, we’re all quite hot under the collar now. Articles are appearing from NASA, National Geographic, the BBC, the Telegraph, etc etc…and that is in addition to the squillions of twitter comments, articles on blog, Webzines and forums all over the Internetz.

(I know because we track references to 2012 on themgharris.com and because I set up a Twitterfeed based on a search for ‘mayan’ AND ‘2012′.)

The world is going to end! The world isn’t going to end!

Which could it be?

The 2012 movie crew are getting flak from some quarters for stirring the fear. Well, if they’d taken an Al Gore-style approach to a doom-laden catastrophe-scenario and produced a documentary with Science Data And Evryfin, like ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, I’d be angry too. That would be lame and silly at best, dangerous and irresponsible at worst.

But - unlike a few wingnuts who’ve inhaled too much sherbert - they didn’t. They made a daft-as-a-brush-and-twice-as-fun megablockbuster, a disaster movie in which clearly at some point they’ve thought, ‘Screw it. Let’s blow everything up.’

It isn’t Bergman, that’s for sure. But you could probably tell that from the poster.

If you want to see some of these frankly hilarious wingnut films, check out the video section of mayan2012kids.com. Mainly these films are sitting on YouTube not harming anyone. I have to say that if you lose sleep over what you see ranted about on YouTube then you deserve it. Although some of the clips are from the History Channel. Naughty, smack you, History Channel!

The very best article I’ve read so far comes from Rod Liddle, a columnist for The Spectator (The UK’s equivalent of The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine with intellectual, political-right leanings.) His column this week discusses 2012 hysteria as part of a general passion of hand-wringers for apocalypse, now. If it isn’t that society is going to hell in a hand-basket, it’s that we’re all doomed because of global warming global cooling climate change, ancient prophecies of catastrophe or even the mysterious disappearance of honeybees. Don’t worry though. It wouldn’t matter if all the bees died.

Well if you’ve ever had to listen to a passionate Warmist over dinner, you may have had the thought ’they’re having so much fun. What a spoilsport I’d be to ruin it with actual scientific evidence and rational thought.’

You would be a rotten spoilsport. As Rod Liddle writes, “The bee holocaust myth is just another example of our strange yearning for catastrophe.”

We need to believe in catastrophe, like we need ghost stories, monsters and the paranormal. Doesn’t make it any more real.

Again, I’m with Liddle on the climate change thing. As Rod Liddle puts it, ‘My own view of climate change — or global warming as it used to be called, before the evangelists changed tack when they realised everything wasn’t getting warmer — is absolutely open. I am a little sceptical of man-made climate change because, for me, the raw statistics do not quite add up, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. And I also reckon that most of the stuff urged upon us in order to address climate change makes sense for other environmental reasons anyway.’

All the same, it’s eerie to watch insane notion, like 2012 doom, being taken seriously enough that big news organisations feel the need to refute it.

Hey guys, you are intruding on MY territory - the world of make-believe!

It makes me wonder how seriously anyone should take them on issues like climate change. Or politics.

Because the truth is, some clever publicists have hooked into the irrational fears of the public, into a segment of people who have by now swallowed so much Warmist garbage that choking down a bit more unscientific or New Age daftness will be very easy. They’ve made a viral marketing campaign so successful that it’s tricked all those serious news agencies into publicizing the movie.

It couldn’t have been done though, if people weren’t already primed.

If my turn ever comes to speak to the media about 2012, you know what line I’m taking. And you know what, if you listen to what Emmerich et al are actually saying in interviews, it’s the same thing. 2012 simply represents a generalised fear of the end - a fear that is pretty old.

Remember St John and the Book of Revelations?