Kafka in his Pockets

Today's crap joke: "Did you hear Cian O Connor's horse tested positive for grass?". This is up there with "How do you kill a circus?" (go for the juggler), the difference between a Snickers and a Marathon (Paula Radcliffe can finish a Snickers) and Paula Radcliffe being the first English woman to go to Greece and not go all the way.

Thank you Marian Grealis.

Marian dragged a bunch of us along to see Stones in his Pockets in the LIT Millenium theatre last night. The play (which has been extremely successful) is set among the extras for a movie being shot in a small town in Kerry. The gimmick is that there are no props, no costume changes and only 2 (male) actors, playing 14 different characters (2 of which are women). This takes advantage of the fact that it is rare in a play for more than 2 characters to be talking to each other at any given time. Still, with only accents and body language to disambiguate the characters, the actors did an incredible job. With scenes set on a busy movie set or in a funeral home, with characters coming and going all over the place and three-way conversations happening - the whole thing is seamless. With clever use of subtle music and lighting cues, they even manage to drop in scenes from the movie they're filming.

The play is billed as a comedy, but with a suicide at the centre (hence the title), it covers some pretty serious terrain. Since it's Irish, these are the typical big-dreams/small-town stuff, but it's done fairly well. In fact, they make explicit at one point that this is supposed to be a universal thing. Sorta like the Fight Club idea that we are not all beautiful unique snowflakes, we can't all be rockstars or filmstars - and at some point everyone has to grow up and accept they will never be famous/rich/beautiful/powerful. They didn't hammer on this too much though.

At least there weren't any nuns, abusive priests or unwed mothers (which must be a first for Irish theatre). I thought the ending was a little bit sudden and weak...nothing really gets resolved. But then, I guess that's the point of the play.

The comedy part of it is ok too. They take on some obvious targets (Oirishness, self-obsessed filmstars, rural gormlessness vs. urban sophistication...and vice versa), but they have reasonably wide range.

The part that puzzles me, is would I have liked it as much if it had been done with props and a full cast? I can count the number of plays I've seen in the last decade on the fingers of one hand (and I wouldn't need the thumb) - so it's hard to make an objective judgement about the quality of the acting/writing and all that stuff. I give it about 2 years before RTE ruins it by making a lavish 3-part mini-series out of it.

Oh, and today's cool link is this one. The Sims2 meet Kafka. It's too long, but it is funny. The social bunny stuff is just plain surreal.

And last thing, Cron, if you're reading this before you leave on your epic journey, I may have exaggerated slightly when I said there would be a bed available for you here. What I meant to say of course was sofa. Slip of the tongue, sorry.

[edit] Apparently you have a bed after all. Jeff is going to California for a couple of weeks and you get your old room back.

Tales from the Empire...

...the barbarians lay waste to suburbia...(well, ok...Krispin's front lawn. But it sounds more dramatic this way).

I like Mrs. Leydon's reason for leaving the sign as it is: "it shows how desperate the local Bush supporters are."

In a stupid sort of way, it reminds me of the Northern Irish habit of spray painting politcial slogans and murals onto the sides of houses. Not that the USA is anywhere near as divided as that (yet!), and I say stupid because it appears that the Bush supporters in question lack even the artistic ability to use black spray paint to obscure white text on a sign.

The Coolness of Gmail

After GmailFS, a gmail filesystem for Linux, comes Gmail Drive, a windows shell extension that supports drag and drop for files.

Oh, the coolness of it all.

It'll be interesting to see if Google allows these things to live, since they're not going to make them any money.

Thwup, Thwup, Thwup, Phzzzzz, Bang!

...the last sounds my monitor made before dying. A smell of burning plastic and a sad little column of smoke accompanied it on its way to the monitorial Valhalla (a skip somewhere in the college, I have a feeling I can't just throw it in the bin at home).

This is a fitting end for this monitor, given its origins (dust to dust, skip to skip). But it was a nice (19") monitor and I'll be sad to see it go.

More interestingly, given that this happened two days ago, has been my reaction to its loss. My room seems strangely quiet without the constant humming of computer fans. I tried to sit and watch some TV last night, but my heart simply wasn't in it. I was overcome with the urge to type something (anything). I yearned to check my email. Eventually, I wound up sitting at my desk, playing guitar and listening to music (on my CD player rather than the PC...which is the first time in ages). I tabbed out some of the new Frames album by hand, which also felt strange.

I'm trying to sort out a new monitor today. But the temporary loss of computer facilities has been unnerving. I might try leaving it off in the evenings in future unless I really, really have work to do. It'll be interesting to see what I do with all that extra time.

Scattered updates

Nothing that warrants a full post to itself, so a few things gathered together.

Music:
BellX1 in Trinity Rooms last Thursday. TR is a surprisingly decent venue. BellX1 rocked, although I'm not sure about their new material (sounds like they're going for a Franz Ferdinand vibe...definitely not a good thing. I just don't understand this obsession everyone has with FF.). Even more surprising than the venue was the support act, Life After Modelling. A support act with charisma, decent tunes and a soundcheck. Say it ain't so!

The Frames in UCH a few weeks ago. Meh. I realise this may be shocking to those who know me, but I do possess some objectivity when it comes to the Frames. And this was a distinctly underwhelming gig. The first half of the set was predominantly new songs, which didn't really go across all that well...with the crowd talking through most of it. Hardly surprising, since they hadn't gotten the album yet, and catchy it ain't. About halfway through, the band kicked into Setlist mode and played familiar stuff. The crowd of mainly 18 year old girls went nuts, and clapped and cheered every note played (literally) and head movement Glen made. They wouldn't shut up, cheering and clapping through stuff like What Happens... and Star Star. The drummer was clearly getting pissed off as this continued through every single song. The band played for 65 minutes (having showed up late), a far cry from the glory days. They also didn't try and engage the crowd, playing song after song with barely a word. Not that anyone wants a return to the dog stories of old, but a bit of charm or levity wouldn't have gone amiss. The Frames on a bad day are still worth seeing...but, meh.

New Redneck Manifesto album. Incredible. Cron, you want?

Josh Ritter's albums (Golden Age and Hello Starling) are seriously growing on me. Cohen, Dylan, Neil Young and Ryan Adams all mixed up without sounding horribly derivative. I actually prefer Golden Age (probably cos I've had it longer) despite the fact that Hello Starling got all the rave reviews. It's definitely music that grows on you.

New Strokes album. Same old, same old. New Green Day album. Great if you like that sort of thing (and I do). Blink182 obsession ongoing, which is slightly disturbing. New Sigur Ros album (() - is the title) is interesting.

Movies:
Michael Cooke (fellow IDC-er) has the Herzog/Kinski boxset. Lucky bastard. Went out to his place today and watched Voyzcek and My Best Fiend. Voyzcek is another strange mood piece. It reminds me a lot of Nosferatu, slowly building to a fairly obvious conclusion. Kinski plays a man who is exploited by everyone around him...slowly losing it. The entire film is yet another descent into madness (like Aguirre), although interestingly, judging by the way Kinski is presented in the documentary My Best Fiend, he was holding back his own madness for most of the movie. I sometimes suspected that his infamous rants and erratic behaviour were an act that he used to create mystique. But no. The guy was practically certifiable, and thoroughly unpleasant to work with. Herzog, I'm less sure of. There's something slightly unsettling about the way he seeks out actors with fairly glaring mental problems and then exploits them in the name of "art". Herzog seems quite sane, but then again...he did plot to kill Kinski on a number of occasions (not that I blame him).

Books:
Why is it when I'm busy at work/thesis that books seek me out and demand to be read. The System of the World, the final part of Neal Stephenson's epic Baroque trilogy is being released shortly. I've already gotten 2200 pages into this, so the finale had better be worth it. Apparently, according to early reviews, the ending is standard Stephenson...ie, there is none. The book just stops. Ah well.

Oonagh has just torn through Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon and is highly impressed. I'm toying with the idea of offering her Quicksilver...but I fear for her sanity.

We've also got a beautiful hardback copy of Jonathan Strange and Dr. Morrell, which has gotten rave reviews and shocked everyone by not making the Booker shortlist. It's unusual for something that is essentially a fantasy novel to get such acclaim, but apparently it's a very unusual book. Oonagh is currently hacking her way through it's 1000 plus pages and likes it so far.

I keep flirting with the idea of picking up Umberto Eco's Baudolino...but sanity keeps intervening.

I remind myself that I simply won't have time to read any of these books, since we have a project deliverable in 5 weeks (in Naples, wheeee!) and I'm trying to get a draft of my thesis out by Xmas, with a few months to follow for corrections and rewrites. But it's nice to dream.

What else? Well, Shane's birthday is coming up in two weeks, and he's coming to Limerick to celebrate. The Divine Comedy are playing in Dolan's that Friday night. There are unsubstantiated rumours that Cron is planning a visitation in the same period. Are the rumours true?

Oh, Ticktockman has been reclaimed by Brendan. Which sucks. We'll miss you, Ticktockman. I expect to hear of Brendan and Dave's house burning to the ground any day now.

Shane has been fitted with a new Gmail account and has been invited to this blog as a contributor. We await his acceptance with bated breath.