My Friend December
I’ve been embracing December and everything it has to offer. Practicing living in the moment and not obsessing about the ‘what next/now/where/when/how?’, enjoying the cold, loving the countryside, new friends, old friends, long distance friends, my family, long nights, warm beds, being overtaken by creativity and thinking about l.o.v.e.
♥
Room ♥
I have a picture of this room somewhere in my stored life, it used to be pinned to my bedroom wall. Just near my make up mirror so I could see it every morning. All I remember about the magazine article I tore it from, is that it’s somewhere in upstate New York. Or maybe I made that up because it sure seems to fit. I love it. It’s like someone got into my brain and decorated the perfect room in response to what they found lurking in there.
I miss that room. 2007, hanging with the old grey mouse cat. It feels like a lifetime ago, so much has happened since then. So many rooms, I’m not sure I could even count. Right now my main focus is finding a new one of my very own, with all my things and my own bed. I’m addicted to torturing myself with Apartment Therapy.
It’s almost too much of a need,
Soon. Maybe. Who knows.
♥
TV: UK
One of the most interesting things I found on my trip to the USA recently was the difference between our knowledge of American culture vs their knowledge of ours. It makes perfect sense of course, a huge percentage of our entertainment comes from the US. We’re saturated from a really young age and there has never been quite the same reciprocal arrangement. So what’s interesting is realizing how little the average American knows about us in comparison to how much we know about them and that what they do know comes from a very select few sources. Benny Hill (not been on TV here for a gazillion years dudes), comedy shows which seem to translate well and the occasional crossover movie. Which as we all know is usually some terrible Richard Curtis version of the UK, not one that actually exists. The difference I found in TV especially was a lack of centralized entertainment, everything is cable, networked and even state specific unlike here where we all have (except me) 4 channels which dominate most of our television watching as a nation. There are also less season based TV dramas which makes it harder to pick UK equivalents of the shows in my last post. So leaving out the previous 65 years of classic TV which we don’t need to go into and perpetuate the myth that’s it’s still 1972 here. Word up, it’s really not. I’ve chosen these few shows from the last couple of years which for whatever reason really stood out as being great and being British.
Life On Mars. Ok so it is 1972 in this show, or 1973 to be more precise. There’s also an American version which I haven’t seen and don’t want to see quite frankly. I find it sad that all our best TV has to be remade for an American audience, how will they learn haha? Sure, I would imagine as an American it is fairly hard to follow because of the constant references and accents, you kind of had to be around in 70’s /80’s Britain to get it but you know, I’ve never been to Baltimore and I still love the Wire. This show is about the UK. It’s about the north, it’s about police corruption, it’s about Ford Cortina’s and a man in a coma who has somehow time travelled back to 1973. Or has he?
Being Human. Yet another show being remade in America, I’m actually interested to see how this one will turn out but watching the original is totally necessary. So there’s a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost and they all live together in a house trying to be as ordinary as they can. The vampire and the werewolf work in a hospital together while the ghost, trapped in the house, endlessly makes cups of tea. It’s SO British it’s almost silly. It’s also really, really good. The right amount of comedy vs serious drama, the right amount of supernatural vs mundane, great cast and story. I’m beside myself waiting for season 2 in 2010. You can watch it here and I’m sure there are other free places on the net.
Red Riding. Based on the novels of David Peace these three films were shown on Channel 4 earlier this year but I didn’t get round to watching them until they came out on DVD, not having a TV an all. Dark, dark stories set during a dark time in British history. I heard that it was actually due a big screen release in the USA which surprised me, hearing that Ridley Scott was lined up to make yet another remake for Columbia somehow didn’t. I can’t imagine how they will make this one American, I really hope they don’t. Without a doubt one of the best things I’ve seen made for television in a long, long time. It also cemented Paddy Considine at the number on position in my favorite contemporary Brit actors. He’s ace.
Not quite a drama, not quite a comedy and about as likely to get the American remake treatment as Coronation Street. Shameless. NOTHING more ridiculous on TV, nothing else which actually shows what a huge percentage of this country is really like. Watch it with subtitles.
The Devil’s Whore. Oh hey Dominic West, what’s that? You’re not from really from Baltimore? You’re actually an Eton educated Englishman? Well you’ll always be McNulty to me. However you did a great job of playing Oliver Cromwell in this classy Civil War rompette. Shame you were outshone by John Sim, he of Life On Mars and Michael Fassbender (le swoon). We love making historical television over here, it’s pretty unrelenting to be honest. At least in the USA you only have a limited amount of history (sorry) from which to recycle endless TV ideas. So, it was nice to have a change and go for the old civil war, not exactly a very glamourous period of history.
Skins. Nothing quite like this has ever been on TV before, not here, not there, not anywhere. This is the teenage life we all wanted to have but didn’t. The sex, the drugs, the clothes but couldn’t because we were lame teenagers. It’s fantastical and absurd. You pretend to hate it but actually it’s so well done you get sucked in and can’t help loving it.
♥
Robert Frank
Robert Frank has been one of my favorite photographers since I was about 17 and after Ed van der Elsken probably one of my favorite artists of all time. If anyone needs convincing that photography, especially documentary photography, can be one of the most powerful, long lasting art mediums his book The Americans should seal the deal. I’d love more than anything to be able to get on a plane and have a little reunion with my favorite city and visit this exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alas that isn’t going to happen in time, although I’ve already started a fund for a spring reunion with my favorite East Coast homies. Grand total £60, it’s a start.
I’m feel like if I don’t get somewhere proper to live soon and be able to surround myself with MY stuff I might shrivel away. I need my inspirations, my pictures, my art books, my life, I need it to be creative because that’s the only way I ever feel satisfied.
♥
TV: USA
My television is a museum piece, it will no longer work when I get it out of storage in January but I’ll keep it anyway for sentimental reasons. We had one of those until I was pretty old, then I lived for a long, long time without one at all. Maybe that’s why I won’t be bothering to buy one when I move into a house next year, it’s not something I need or ever really use when there is one. Yet, to me there is nothing more amazing entertainment wise than a superbly executed, well acted, 24 episode long season of fine television. I’m a hardcore escapist and I love movies but aside from the occasional epic, 2 hours isn’t enough to truly love a character, 900 minutes is way better. 5 0r 6 seasons of 900 minutes? Now we’re talking.
The Sopranos. Without the Sopranos there would be no Mad Men, no True Blood, no Breaking Bad, there would be no TV drama renaissance full stop. God only knows what we would all be watching but it would most likely suck. The bar was raised by about a million and TV became something else. Not that there weren’t great shows before 1999 but nothing like this, not that level of acting, the sublime scripts, the subtle character arcs, the pace of the story, the soundtrack and the eventual conclusion, which in true style managed to just work where other shows would fail. Who was your favorite? Mine was always Christopher.
So if you haven’t actually watched the Wire and by that I mean actually watched it not just read about it in every magazine, newspaper, blog going. You really should. I hate bandwagons, hate jumping on them and I managed to avoid this until season 4 was airing in the USA but when I finally succumbed it was like descending into TV heaven. For some reason I ended up watching season 2 first and the going back to watching the first season before carrying on with the rest. Occasionally people tell me they tried season 1 and got bored (insane) so I tell them to go watch 2 first then come back to it, I call it the ‘Charley Way’. Actually I don’t but it works because the second season is fairly detached from the rest of the plot and then you’re hooked. There have been so many eloquent love letters to the Wire written by all kinds of great writers since it ended last year, I don’t need to say anymore. Google them. Omar, who might genuinely be my favorite character in the world, is worth it.
Ok. I don’t even know where to start with this one. I think about it almost every day, I still look in the mirror and get upset that my eyebrows will never be like Sherilyn Fenn, that I will never be like her at all *sob*. My entire aesthetic has been distorted and designed by watching this show, I’m STILL desperate to live in the Pacific Northwest. Hearing the theme tune is like a call to arms for dreaminess, owls are awesome, BOB still terrifies me as much as he did when I was 11 and watched it for the first time on late night TV, Agent Cooper is still my dream man, I don’t even care that it gets ridiculous in season 2. Essentially it’s my favorite show ever and I was going to write something intelligent about why. Fail.
Six Feet Under. There is a point with TV shows, usually around season 3 when they start to get a bit silly (excluding my first 2 selections) and this really happened with SFU. I’m about to go and re-watch it starting from the pilot and I think it’s been long enough for me to forget exactly why that was. Obviously it was never bad enough for me to stop watching or for those characters to stop being so special or for me to not cry for about a day when it ended. Recently I’ve come across a lot of people who have never even seen it, especially since the success of Dexter (I’m afraid Michael C. Hall will always be David in my mind) and True Blood, how is that possible? I’m always happy as larry when I find people who loved it as much as I did. Favorite character? Brenda, of course but Ruth a close second.
♥
So I guess that’s a top 4. I could go on but after that the ordering becomes hazy and I can’t decide whether Northern Exposure comes before or after Arrested Development or if I miss Dead Like Me more than Carnivale. Or if House is my favorite medical drama or whether I have enough guts to say in public that in all honesty Grey’s Anatomy probably is. Or if True Blood is going to be more of a classic than Mad Men or if 30 Rock might just be the best thing that ever happened to me.
ADDICT.
(proud)
♥
November Stuff
So little old me got back from the USA to find myself home LESS once again. I suppose it’s only the second time I’ve officially been in this position but gosh it feels like more. I mean, I’ve lived in 4 places this year already none of which were my own space so it’s getting kind of ridiculous. I’m staying with my cousin and some friends currently, until the next adventure. Maybe soon I’ll stop putting myself in this situation?
It was my birthday, I’m now 29. Nobody has guessed my age as anything over 23 recently (it’s because I’m so immature) so I’m not getting too depressed, I’l save that for next year. Expect epic levels of self indulgence.
♥ I’m having another serious Fleetwood Mac moment, currently it’s Sara from Tusk that’s on repeat.
♥ I’m wearing grey nail polish. It goes well with November.
♥ Norway by Beach House
♥ Soothing walks in the fields wearing my brown Hunter wellies.
♥ Chocolate brown, beige and peach clothing.
♥ Open to romance, for the first time in a long time.
♥ Crushes like I’m 15.
♥ Melatonin dreams.
♥ Acupuncture.
♥ Constant online communication, Google Reader, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook. Am I one of the brainwashed many? Bring it on.
♥ My long distance friends. I ♥ YOU, I miss you. Thank goodness for all of the above.
♥ If you haven’t watched Being Human do it. So impatient for the new series.
♥ Out with the old and dysfunctional in the with the new.
♥ Ryan Adams, again.
Some Heroines
I have no words right now, no ability to make decisions and not much joy. It’s my birthday next week, I haaaaaaaaaaaaate my birthday.
♥
leave a comment