It’s 4.42am whenI start typing this. Just awakened from crazy kaleidoscopic maelstrom of dreams! Votz it all abite, Ulfric!?
Some of the dream stuff is simple and clear: wanting family – parents specifically – to come to one’s aid in difficult times. But the ‘nuclear family’ as it once was went up in a toxic mushroom cloud decades ago. And the radioactive fallout is still blighting life!
Anyway, now that conscious modes have shifted, it’s a quick trip doon the wooden hill, and across the plane of Liv Ingroom, to pee, and to wonder where Chester, our cat is. Hope he’s ok?
After weeks of drought and many days of crazy heatwave, the weather app – and various intrusive newsfeeds – are warning of heavy rain, thunder, and poss’ flash floods. With the ground baked solid, rain water might just run off… crazy times!
Note the baked dry ‘grass’ (!?) path.
I wonder if, re the precipitation, would it be wise, and a potential contraceptive precaution, or solution, to take a fork to the garden?
Teresa wants us to get Chester a neck tag. And it might be wise (if that horse hasn’t already bolted?). Has he also got fleas? Found a solitary flea yesterday, in the home.
Crazy dreams earlier! Fading fast. Got the fans back on. Need them on almost constantly! It’s still soo goddamn hot, close and muggy!
This weird, weird part of the night biz’, puts me in mind to read the recently acquired Why We Sleep (or, sometimes more to the point, why we don’t sleep!). Must read!
Must start reading this!
Teresa’s back to work today. And she’s going to have to travel by bus, as she can’t afford the train indeed, despite me being stony broke, I’ve had to loan her money for travel (a normal monthly occurrence!). That means more time on pubic transport.
We really ought to nationalise so much of our infrastructure; transport, utilities. Capitalism just ain’t working! Except for the billionaires.
Teresa’s doing like I did… off for a middle of the night pee! She just got back into bed, and… Boom!!! Her alarm just went! It’s now 5.10 am. That’s a bit bloody early!!!
Myeah… Not great, to be honest. The Bond Franchise is, like so many these days, flogging a donkey carcass that died a long time ago.
What this means is that it’s kind of lost, and all that remains is a collection of accessories: exotic locations, action sequences, the movie stars employed for it, and labyrinthine plots that are ultimately the most disappointing element of the whole collapsed soufflé.
I don’t buy Craig as Bond. At all. I like that he’s ruggedly odd-looking. But, aside from looking pretty good, he has zero charisma. The best Bonds – Connery and Moore – literally exuded charisma like sweat.
Like so much modern cinema, it becomes a series of set-piece action scenes that are impressive on the technical and adrenaline fronts, but utterly bereft of emotional involvement. I simply don’t care about anyone, as nobody seems either remotely real, nor even pleasingly cartoonishly intriguing.
Matera, Italy. Fab location!
So ultimately I simply don’t care about the story, or the ‘characters’, and all that’s left is the hi-octane stuff. And that’s just not enough, is it?
And now I’m coming to the biggest problem of all. This is a gutless, neutered version of a vision of masculinity that was born in another era, and whose charm lay very much in lots of assumptions that simply don’t get past the guardians of PC who make this sort of ‘by committee’ pap.
I guess this conclusion also shows up my demographic? If you’ve ever read any of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, you’ll know that the movies with Connery and Moore, whilst different (esp. with Moore’s more comic take), do capture the preposterously presumptuous macho visions of Bond’s creator, whose creation is sick with self-love.
I don’t need to be a privately educated scion of a self-appointed aristocracy, or have that Tory sense of self-righteousness and entitlement that Bond and the ‘establishment’ he serves have, and represent, nor approve of the multilayered series of assumptions that underpin the whole ‘Cold War’ worldview in which most of the old stories unfolded, to enjoy the real ‘vintage’ Bond. In fact the daftness of it all is part of its period charm.
Rami Malek as Lyutsifer (!) Safin. Ugly is evil!
Ironically, for all the limply emasculated Bond-age, and the ‘empowered’ females, of whatever ethnicity, some of the most toxic and unattractive ideas of modern culture (present in the ‘real’ Bond, as well), esp’ around casual, even comical, violence, do pass the moral filters that rob this version of Bond of any balls.
I kind of want to say that the only actor who comes off even half decently (or should that be indecently?) – and that’s only speaking relatively – as he isn’t given much to work with, is Rami Malik. Who does, almost, make a Bond villain worthy of the original lineage. But even that claim is, in reality, too weak. Look at how Bond eventually offs him. Turns out Lyutsifer is a pathetically easy push-over!
And Cristoph Waltz, who I liked in Inglorious Basterds and The Hateful Eight, is really pretty lame here, as Ernst Stavros Blofeldt. And pretty much all the other characters, from M and Q to Moneypenny, and the many supporting characters, are just blank cyphers.
I like long films if they’re good. But this is way too long. And both very dull and very disappointing. But, truth be be told, it’s exactly what I expected. In fact, the best – or at least the most attractive – character in the movie is the Italian town of Matera, also recently featured in James May’s Our Man In Italy.
More Masayoshi Takanaka, this time 1977’s wonderfully titled An Insatiable High.
I’m trying to buy these albums in the UK, but they’re largely ludicrously expensive (over £20 per album, and then some, with added shipping costs!). So in the meantime, YouTube is my saviour.
I’ve only listened to track one so far, but I loved that. So I’m hoping I’ll enjoy the whole thing. We shall see, I guess? I’m still totally sold on Rainbow Goblins, which I’m part way through my third listen to at present!
Partly recorded in Brazil, Takanaka’s fourth album has lots of names I don’t recognise, and a few I do: Abe Laboriel, James Gadson, Jeff Porcaro, Greg Phillinganes and Paulinho da Costa amongst others.
Not listened to this one much yet. Just had a quick skip through to get a flavour. Very Brasilian… but I’ll return to it properly in few coarse!
A beautiful cover that really does convey the magic within.
I’ve always loved discovering new music. New to me, that is. I don’t care how old it is. And often I find I like older stuff better than contemporary stuff anyway.
Well, today is a blessed day, that way, as I’ve just stumbled upon the amazing 1981 album Rainbow Goblins, by Japanese guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka.
Masayoshi Takanaka, a new hero of mine!
I only found out about it today. And after listening to a few tracks on YouTube, I decided I had to buy the CD. I’ve ordered a copy via Amazon, and it was a bit pricey for a skint skinflint like me, (Jap import, over £20!). But it’s totally stolen my heart.
The vid’ that took me over the Rainbow.
Indeed, from the little else of Takanaka’s stuff I’ve heard since discovering this, I think I’ll be buying more of his music. But I’ll get to that later. For now I just want to testify to how much I dig this incredible album.
Apparently the album is a concept double album – very prog! – based upon a Children’s’s story, about seven ‘rainbow goblins’. The story, by an Italian (poss a Count!?), Ul de Rico, is where the cover art comes from. I’ve ordered a copy of that as well!
Katsu ‘Katz’ Hoshi.
I have to give an honourable mention to arranger Katsu Hoshi, for the strings, and – presumably? – the incredible orchestral Prologue, which sets up this dreamy album perfectly. Is the album credit, in the name ‘Katz’ Hoshi, a sly reference to Steely Dan’s Gary Katz, perhaps?
There’s even an English language spoken narration, by a chap called Roy Garner. For a Brit it’s particularly nice to hear an English narration from beyond these shores that isn’t an American or transatlantic accent. I feel right at home in rainbow goblin land!
This is my kind of place!
The music has a childish and delightfully goofy innocence at times. But as it’s all played by top notch sessionistas and jazz fusion musos, it also has a beautiful late 1970s – think Creed Taylor’s CTI, but filtered through a Japanese Teletubbies filter! – sophistication.
Man, I totally dig it! The music itself runs an appropriately broad and colourful gamut, from the orchestral opening, to the twinkling ambience of Rising Arch, or the hard jazz funk of Seven Goblins or Plumed Bird to the rockier edge of Thunderstorm, or the totally out there fusion of tracks like Rainbow Paradise, which morphs through several genres, and yet defies any single categorisation, this album is quite a trip!
Regarding the last category – ‘all over the map’ – after the nutty ‘goberins, goberins, goberins, goberins…’ vocal intro of Seven Goblins, The Sunset Valley is almost like the kind of music and melodies you might imagine hearing piped into a Japanese shopping mall in the ‘80s! Elsewhere there’s a bit of reggae (Just Chuckle), some Latin vibes… and the whole lot is sprinkled with disco fairy dust, from occasional grooves to the vocoder’d vocals.
As I’ve remarked already… simply astonishing!
Some of Takanaka’s ‘70s recordings feature US players, like Abe Laboriel, Harvey Mason and even the Tower of Power horns. But this amazing album is, I believe, an entirely Japanese affair. And these Kitty cats sure can play!
What a truly sublime and astonishing recording. I’ve definitely found a new love. Oh, and the album artwork is perfect! And how cute is that Kitty record label logo!? I can see that I need to dive deep down the J-Jazz-Fusion wormhole!
An Insatiable High, 1977
FURTHER EXPLORATIONS!?
Takanaka produced a ‘prequel’ White Goblin album, many years later. Might that be any good? I have no idea! But having listened to some stuff from his earlier albums, I’m pretty sure that I’ll really dig them, so his Seychelles, Brazilian Skies, and the sublimely titled AnInsatiable High all beckon, as does his 1979 compilation album All Of Me.
Takanaka’s 1976 debut, Seychelles.All Of Me, 1979.
Watching a video on YouTube, with Dr Rangan Chatterjee and Matthew Walker about caffeine and it’s effects on sleep.
Caffeine is, as they discuss, a psychoactive drug, and a stimulant. According to Walker caffeine is the second highest traded commodity after oil! I’ve heard it said before that coffee is the drug of capitalism/consumerism. If Walker’s claim is true, nothing could better illustrate the link between this drug and our self-medicating slave-driver culture.
‘Caffeine is a sleep disruptor, there’s no question about that,’ says Chatterjee. Two answers these guys give are de-caff, or, better still, no coffee, or caffeine – tea, inc. green tea, also contains caffeine – after midday. The third and more radical option is to go tee-total, and simply cut caffeine out altogether.
Just ordered a copy of this.
According to the very little skimming of Google I’ve just done on Walker, in light of this YouTube vid and re buying his book, he’s ‘in love’ with sleep. So am I! But I imagine his love for and knowledge about sleep are far healthier than mine!
One reason I love sleep is that it’s an escape from the constant and oppressive demands of waking life. And I suspect that both this basic fact about my love of sleep, not to mention my actual sleep habits themselves, are not as healthy as they ought to be.
Anyway, a very interesting and informative podcast style YouTube video, well worth watching. And I’m looking forward to reading Walker’s book.
There has been change, even if not discernibly so!
I didn’t take any more sleeper pics. Or rather, more accurately, I did. But they don’t show the progress I made. I basically levelled the sleepers better, and raised the soul with the spaces. Esp’ along the edge that’s going to be the footpath, along Ruben and Anne’s side (the left as you look away from the houses!).
I’m trying to maintain the FODMAP diet. And I’m convinced that my tummy is less distended than formerly. I’m not sure I’ve lost much if any weight. I just think I’m carrying a little less gas around in my guts! Sometimes it’s hard to be motivated over food choices. That’s when any diet is at greatest risk.
Today’s lunch. Sausage omelette (!?) and salad.
Today I made a three-egg omelette, with two Heck sausages (high meat content, no gluten containing cereals or dairy content!), fried in olive oil and chopped up. The orange cubes are Red Leicester cheese. I’m glad I can still have cheese, as I love it. I just have to keep portions small.
The salad was a leftover from yesterdays dinner. And speaking of leftovers, our dinner tonight was the remains of Satay #2, with the addition of rice, edamame beans and water chestnuts, some Thai red curry sauce and gluten free soy-sauce, all drizzled with lime juice.
Both lunch and dinner were, thankfully, delicious, nutritious, and FODMAP friendly.
I’ve even started to add some little bits of exercise into my daily routines. I’ve started doing timed squats. The idea is to work up to 30 days of 30 mins (in smaller bite sized chunks) squatting on flat feet. And I want to add some free hanging in to the mix as well…
I’m trying to cultivate other good habits. For example I’m doing a Stick Control ‘Summer Challenge’: trying to do at least a page a day of Stone’s ancient but venerable tome. Hopefully by summer’s end I’ll have finished the whole book?
This photo was just shared on Facebook. I love it. Don wasn’t always that photogenic, in my opinion. Interesting to look at, perhaps. But often in a slightly fucked way.
This 1967 portrait by Guy Webster captures the Cap’n looking ice cool, in a be-suited yet beatnik vein. It’s a look that’s aged a lot better than has the acid-casualty freak apparel of the musically terrific Trout/Decals era.
I have a mini-military hobby blog, which I’ve more or less stopped doing. Not a plan! Just an evolution. That one actually had readers. Not many. But some.
Now I’m focused more on this here blog. And I wonder, should I (can I?) bring the other blog – AQOS, or A Question Of Scale – over to sebpalmer.com?
Actually I also had another one, on a musical axis. That’s still out there on ye inter web. But I’ve not posted to that one in even longer than I’ve not posted to the wargaming and modelling one.
And then there are the why bother?/who cares? aspects. But, for the time being at least, I find blogging a sort of therapeutic form of modern journal.
I’d like it if others read it, or found things interesting. But that’s not essential. It fulfils a purpose for me by merely existing. A kind of online notebook for me, as well as some sort of reassurance that I actually exist!
I’ve never been much of an extrovert or performer, to be honest. So in a way I’m quite happy ‘performing’ to the void!
I have to confess I binge watched this entire mini-series last night. Not a terrifically wise decision, given I started watching it at about 9-10pm! I’m guessing it must have been about 5am when it finished?
I was hankering for some enjoyable adrenal-gland stimulation, that could be administered lying down. And in that respect, this new show – premiered July 1st – ticked the box.
Author and former SEAL, Jack Carr.
The story is based on a book of the same name by former Navy SEAL turned author, Jack Carr. Rather surprisingly, whilst the TV show has a Wikipedia page, Carr himself does not.
I’m not going to delve too deep into Carr’s real life or military career, nor am I going to synopsise the entire TV series. This is just going to be a fairly basic review/reaction to having just watched the entire show.
The fetishisation of macho violence is total.
I’m giving it three stars, for now. Why? Well, it was entertaining and compelling enough that I stayed up most the night to watch it. But it is also rather troubling – very worrying, frankly – in how it relates to the current rise in neo-Fascist aspects of contemporary American Conservatism, US gun culture and modern ideas of masculinity.
Jaws so square they could chisel granite.
What it highlights for me is the incredibly dangerous intersections of whole constellations of myths and reality in the psyche of the modern American right.
To highlight what I’m talking about, let’s just very lightly unpick one aspect of the story… the private contractors hired to provide security for various characters, large numbers of whom wind up as just so much cannon fodder.
This idea is quite well parodied in one of the Austin Powers movies; at one level these functionaries are really just guys doing a job, feeding their families. But here they’re no more than meat for the grinder of ‘righteous’ hatred!
Fails his family…
The attempt to have Reece as both a loving family man, as well as a war hardened super ninja, is, ultimately, as another reviewer I read elsewhere (I can’t recall where) says, really quite boneheaded.
Offing countless mercenaries to get to his targets, some of whom (the latter esp’) he brutally tortures – he’s more successful as a killer and a sadist than as a family man – just doesn’t square well with ‘nice ordinary guy’. Dude’s a freakin’ psycho!
… but excels as sadistic executioner.
Jack Carr loves his weapons, especially his guns, as you might imagine a Navy SEAL would. He hunts big game at home (mountain lion recently, I read somewhere). And he’s hunted humans too, as a sniper, whilst serving overseas.
He goes to gun shows, and gives interviews to people like Soldier of Fortune and The Federalist. The former essentially being ‘Mercernaries Monthly’, the latter a Conservative media organ that has shamelessly spouted anti-vax bollocks, and declared support for Trump’s blatant lies around the whole ‘stolen election’ fraud.
‘Lock and load’ is one thing. ‘Pray and spray’!?
In his SOF interview (read that here) he describes the story, accurately enough, as ‘a story of revenge without constraint.’ His hero Reece goes on the warpath, Stateside, to kill those – on his ‘terminal list’ – who he holds responsible for the deaths of his entire squad (mostly overseas), and his wife and daughter, once back home.
In the same SOF piece Carr expands: Reece kills ‘those involved using the tactics and techniques used by the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, so at another level it’s about someone abandoning the rule of law and becoming the terrorist and insurgent he’d been fighting … it’s about a veteran of the War on Terror bringing that war home.’
That sounds quite interesting as an idea. There is a chickens coming home to roost side to the ‘war on terror’ that America seems to fundamentally fail to grasp. But that potentially interesting thread is poorly served here, in the end.
The suits and their spooks, always corrupt.
The plot is further complicated by other strands in the story. I’ll refrain from spoilers. Despite these attempts to be confusingly interesting, however, the over familiar ’conspiracy from within’ trope is rather convoluted, and, frankly, veers towards the silly. But it just about serves its purpose, as a plot driver. Don’t examine anything too closely though. It bears very little scrutiny!
Ultimately this one of those recurring and popular fantasies of older right wing males: über machismo uncorked. And ultimately it’s pretty revolting. The ending being particularly dumb and horrid.
But the untethered ego of the hero survives! So… all is well, is it? Really? If I was Carr’s wife, I’d be pretty worried about his priorities and general mental health.
Black, red,white? Wasn’t there a little Austrian chap that liked this combo’?
Returning to the neo-fascist threads, these are on display everywhere, from the unctuous tattooed bodybuilder villain, to the rites of the US military itself, to Reece, part hillbilly demon, part sensitive beautiful powerful man!
There’s a toxic self-regard at the heart of this macho male military culture, in which everything and everybody else is merely an ancillary appendage to the hero’s ego. Not at all attractive, to me at any rate!
Most real world villains prob’ spend less time in gyms and salons.*
In the end it’s all just a rehash of everything from Clint Eastwood to James Bond to Rambo. The lone hero, against pretty much the entire world. Mean, moody. A hardass mo’fo’, who’ll slit you from gullet to gizzard just as readily as buy you a brew.
Clearly made with a huge budget, and pretty decently acted, albeit in a world of cartoonish simplification, I did enjoy ‘the ride’. But as a film that might have anything to leave the viewer with, after the adrenaline subsides? Pretty bleak!
Reece hangs with his bro’.
* I’m sure real-life super vain super villains like Trump spend plenty of time and money on their appearance. They just clearly do so far less successfully than some of the specimens Hollywood style casting agents clearly prefer.
