It is 10 am Sunday in August. I cannot be immediately precise because the calendar, temperature and other info on the desk top did not appear when I logged on. The computer has been playing up over the past week, shutting everything down and then starting up of its own accord, if left on while I watched TV.
I did not have a good night. I remember the dreams which I broadly understand, full of journeys and situation which did not turn out as they should in normal circumstances. It is in fact 23rd of August as the info became available when later in the day rebooted because the mouse was playing up. Some time ago, over a year and perhaps more than two I bought a wireless mouse but was not wireless organised at the time. I searched found the control unit which I then discovered had inbuilt software after searching for what I believed was a small disk and then changed the batteries and it worked so I can complete writing these notes which cover part of the last three days.
I have watched a lot of TV, and eat more than I should without much exercise, went to bed when tired and had the normal ration of sleep. I have also lost my mobile phone somewhere in the house. I sent a text yesterday morning. I remember checking it once during the day. I have not been out of the house and I feel too physically lazy to go in search at this moment but I am in the mood to write. I also have a vague notion of a theme for today with having commenced watching the 4400, a DVD gift set to mark the 70th birthday, prompted by watching another episode of Torchwood, recognising that the Torchwood time traveller had also appeared in a similar role in several episodes of Dr Who and where a preoccupation with children is of interest, understandable perhaps in view of the target audience, except that it is not the usual theme of Dr Who.
I also watched a strange Spaghetti Arabian on Saturday nights called il segreto del Sahara with Michael York, Ben Kingsley, David Soul and Andy MacDowell.
There was also James Wood as Mayor Rudi Giuliani and Stacey Keach in a Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer. The latter two are out there on their own.
A mobile phone cannot disappear in a house so I will wash and shave and try to find it before getting down to the writing. The idea of where the phone might be came to me while shaving after washing my hair. I was right and it was tucked in under the cover of the settee around the side corner. That has cheered me up a little. Most of yesterday was spent watching sport as I also plan today but first the Mike Hammer, working backwards to paradise, walking backwards reminds Helen Shapiro.
I had seen the Mikey Spillane before but I still got the plot wrong. The child of an actress is kidnapped while protected by Mike Hammer and for most of the film he suspects the child’s father as being implicated, correctly, and then the child’s mother, which was my belief. The child is recovered and the father was implicated because of gambling debt but the mystery focus was on a rogue Vietnam war unit which had originally smuggled Vietnam children into the USA for adoption but later kidnapped children in the USA, with the money used to fund the returning veterans who could not cope with living in the USA again. To enjoy you just have to like Stacey Keach and Mike Hammer for their middle aged angry man act. The story line does not really matter.
I am still not sure what I made the of the Rudy Giuliani story. The film tried to present him in a good light but still managed to reveal that he is a typical American politician, mortgaged to the political bosses and the conflicting interest groups while wrestling with his internal demons as an ordinary male human being.
My main interest as always is how far the film followed his recent image due to the 9/11 horror or provided an account of his life in the round. It attempted to do both through flashbacks to the past and to indicate something of the man behind the political mask through aspects of his private life. Born in 1944, he married after graduating from law school a second cousin Catholic. A fact which he used to gain an annulment having not obtained the required dispensation from the church prior to the marriage. My understanding is that obtaining an annulment depends on who you know and how much to are able to fund the church in different countries and at different times, so I am not in a position on how far that Rudi as an influential lawyer working in the office of the Attorney General in Washington helped his cause to marry the new love, a television personality, in 1982. The relationship lasted a dozen years during which two children were born.
He then became involved with his communications director with the relationship he attempted to keep secret until the story broke in Vanity Fair in 1997. Two years later he became involved with a fourth individual which he kept secret for over a year but then for some extraordinary reason announced the end of his marriage on Television before advising his legal wife of the decision. Understandably his wife was not impressed with his actions and disagreed with his belief that she also wanted the marriage to end.
The debate about how far the behaviour of a politician in his private life should affect his public will remain ongoing and I suspect depends on how the media respond to disclosure and the relationship which the individual has with his local community. Labour lost the by election at Norwich after the sitting member was told he would not be allowed to sit, following a National executive inquisition held in response to media criticism for a few of the Members because of the use of public money as expenses and which to his local community and the rest of us appeared to have been without rhyme or reason given that he did no differently from a significant number of members of the Cabinet and government notably the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The film presented Giuliani has having an exceptionally poor public political popularity rating shortly before the events of 9/11. He then divorced his wife and married the person who had help him overcome treatment for a prostate cancer from which his father had died at the age of 73. He is reported to have become estranged from his children.
What is without question among political interests on both sides of the Atlantic is that Rudy responded to the events of 9/11 in such a way which united the city and which behind the scenes organised the recovery in an exceptionally efficient way. Whereas the American President went to ground acting on advice, Giuliani was on the scene from the outset. He received an honorary knighthood from the Queen of England and Time Magazine named him person of the year. Since leaving the Mayoralty he ran for President last year, dropping out at the beginning of 2008 after having done well in the previous year. He has become a partner in a law firm which immediately changed their name to incorporate his.
I watched the first of the new X Factor competition last night which although allocated a 90 minute peak evening session was full of long advertisement breaks. The new series of TV auditions has been changed in that instead of singing without a backing tape before judges, each artist has a backing tape and sings not just to the judges but to a live audience of several thousand. During the week I heard a short radio contribution from someone who arrived at the 02 arena at 9am, and was given his audition at 11pm. The thousands who attended, an estimated 20000 were shown together on the outside concourse. This is presumably because the programme organisers did not want us to see that in fact while everyone has an audition it was in wooden cubicles before two judges. There is no information on the numbers excluded or on those who are allowed to by pass the first stage because of their proven singing experience and who may even be put through to the third stage of the new public audience auditions.
There was one aspect of the radio caller which also caught my attention in that the impression obtained was the 99.99 percent of those attending were serious competitors which only the occasional fancy dressed individual who could not sing. This could indicate that such individuals are trawled separately from those who in general attend the auditions. It is evident that the programme creating are looking for an unknown they can make into a start, for a dozen outstanding individuals who will creating a series of engaging finals and conduct a commercially successful tour following the final, and for other acts who will entertain the TV public during the audition series. They are interested in individuals having a good popular TV image, a commanding and engaging presence before a large live audience and who can go on to hack it as a recording star. Few have gone to make it longer that a year. Will Young and Leona Lewis are the exceptions although a few have continued to entertain through live appearances.
One aspect which I noted last year is that many of those who are selected for the boot camp are showed briefly without the opportunity for the TV audience to hear them sing. I suspect that the audition series is not edited until after boot camp and the selection of those to be managed by the four judges has been made. Therefore we are shown these individuals in the auditions and it is rare for those highlighted in the audition programmes not make the final selections. To counter this suggestion, this year selected individuals are being shown with their family support which in the instance of a young pop star male singer from South Shields, included his whole family. I shall buy the local papers tomorrow where I expect there will be further information about them.
I described earlier Il Segreto del Sahara as a Spaghetti Arabian because it has the format of the Spaghetti western, a traditional film story with twists, an epic quality, in terms of scenery, cast and film length together with an all start cast. Their full Italian edition is six hours with this TV English language over two. The music signals the emotions in a heavy handed manner. There is nothing subtle. Michael York is an archaeologist seeking a lost city which reminds of Petra in Jordan, in this instance a mountain where there is said to be treasure. The treasure attracts the attention of a vicious Foreign Legionnaire, Lieutenant Ryker(David Soul) who at the end close of finding out the secret but is killed by Michael York in a sword dual. It also attracts the attention of the local bigwig in the walled city who captures York during the film after he has become blind and after failing to reveal that he knows anything about the secret mountain is employed as a medicine man.
York has become blind after getting to the Secret having encountered Ben Kingsley as a local Sheik in control of a community around an Oasis. This is the first surprise because Kingsley plays a Polish Jew married to a Muslim with a daughter brought up in the two faiths and someone who provides the moral philosophy of the film. He had is wife and community are slaughtered by Ryker and other mercenaries even though his wife has revealed the way to the Secret Mountain.
Early in the film York rescues the beautiful Queen guardian of the Secret Mountain (played by Andy McDowell) from the clutches of Ryker, and she rewards his action later when he reaches the mountain and should be put to death. He is however blinded by the light which dominates the secret although the sight is recovered through the tears of the Queen later. Although they have become lovers their destiny does not appear together as she is duty bound to marry the custodian of the Secret, but when he is killed in a fight with Ryker the two are free. York also has a son although I am not clear if this a biological or adopted son, of the circumstances of the relationship. I believe he is brought up by Ben Kingsley’s family.
And now we come to the Secret. This follows on a long tradition of science fiction belief that human progress occurred because of the intervention of superior beings who inhabit distant places in the galaxy. The blinding light is in fact nuclear energy which at the end of the film is able to power the space vehicle back to its origins, however leaving an enlightened York with his Arabian Queen with supernatural powers, and his son, to live a happy ever after human existence.
I also mentioned earlier that by excellent programme planning a Sky Channel featured an episode of Dr Who which included the Time traveller of Torchwood. In the Torchwood the earth, and London in particular was threatened by the younger brother of the Time Traveller who he had to leave but for which he had never been forgiven. In the prior episode of Dr Who the Time Traveller had been involved in the serial which involved children being used.
This bring me to the 4400 and Sky 1 project where the first disk contain the double episode starter pilot and first of the subsequent series. Something unexpected enters the earth atmosphere at great speed slows up and bring 4400 people who have disappeared over the past century to one spot where in the USA where the majority decide to remain. After testing and observation over several months the families successfully petition the USA Supreme Court for their relatives to be released on the community. The pilot concentrates on a Korean War veteran who had a relationship with a white girl for which he was beaten up by his white comrades. He now found a country where inter racial relationships have become common place, but his home has been developed into a road underpass and he finds himself alone. While in quarantine he meets a girl who likes his former love and finds that she is the grand daughter although they are now of the same age. She is married with a baby daughter now a young girl and her husband has had her declared dead so he could remarry someone who the daughter believes to be her mother. These two displaced individuals strike up a relationship after she finds she has been returned diagnosed pregnant by her husband a decade before and no longer wants to have contact with her, One of the men finds his aged wife in a squalid institution and cannot cope when she dies and on finding that he has been bought out in his absence from the business cofounder and in his anger about not been given a position is able to use the anger to in effect blows out the man’s brains at a distance. Later it is discovered that the killed man was defrauding customers on the grand scale and the investigating team suspect that the 4400 have been returned for some purpose.
This appears to the so in the first of series proper in which one the returnees who works in the fish department of the of the local supermarket finds that the park has become over run by drug addicts and criminals and starts a clean up campaign so eh can return to place where he proposed to his wife and enjoyed picnics. He goes out at night to commence the clean up and prevents a girl being gang raped but in a later instance is killed by a knife. This appears to knock on the head the theory about being returned for a purpose until the local residents take it upon themselves to clean up the park.
There are two investigators appointed to try and find out why the 4400 were returned to earth, a mist unlikely scenario in reality and but one of the major flaws arising from the opening episodes. The continuity between the opening and next episode is a young girl who is able to predict aspects of the future and cannot help blurt out the truth despite advice that to do so will make her position difficult. Her parents are long since dead and she is unsuccessfully placed with foster parents who cannot cope with her predictions. She goes to live with the female investigator as an alternative to the girl becoming the subject of intensive and prolonged physical investigation and social observation in confined conditions. One feels she may well pose the answer to question where have the 4400 been and what is the collective as well as individual purpose of their return. I look forward to experiencing the next disk
I did not have a good night. I remember the dreams which I broadly understand, full of journeys and situation which did not turn out as they should in normal circumstances. It is in fact 23rd of August as the info became available when later in the day rebooted because the mouse was playing up. Some time ago, over a year and perhaps more than two I bought a wireless mouse but was not wireless organised at the time. I searched found the control unit which I then discovered had inbuilt software after searching for what I believed was a small disk and then changed the batteries and it worked so I can complete writing these notes which cover part of the last three days.
I have watched a lot of TV, and eat more than I should without much exercise, went to bed when tired and had the normal ration of sleep. I have also lost my mobile phone somewhere in the house. I sent a text yesterday morning. I remember checking it once during the day. I have not been out of the house and I feel too physically lazy to go in search at this moment but I am in the mood to write. I also have a vague notion of a theme for today with having commenced watching the 4400, a DVD gift set to mark the 70th birthday, prompted by watching another episode of Torchwood, recognising that the Torchwood time traveller had also appeared in a similar role in several episodes of Dr Who and where a preoccupation with children is of interest, understandable perhaps in view of the target audience, except that it is not the usual theme of Dr Who.
I also watched a strange Spaghetti Arabian on Saturday nights called il segreto del Sahara with Michael York, Ben Kingsley, David Soul and Andy MacDowell.
There was also James Wood as Mayor Rudi Giuliani and Stacey Keach in a Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer. The latter two are out there on their own.
A mobile phone cannot disappear in a house so I will wash and shave and try to find it before getting down to the writing. The idea of where the phone might be came to me while shaving after washing my hair. I was right and it was tucked in under the cover of the settee around the side corner. That has cheered me up a little. Most of yesterday was spent watching sport as I also plan today but first the Mike Hammer, working backwards to paradise, walking backwards reminds Helen Shapiro.
I had seen the Mikey Spillane before but I still got the plot wrong. The child of an actress is kidnapped while protected by Mike Hammer and for most of the film he suspects the child’s father as being implicated, correctly, and then the child’s mother, which was my belief. The child is recovered and the father was implicated because of gambling debt but the mystery focus was on a rogue Vietnam war unit which had originally smuggled Vietnam children into the USA for adoption but later kidnapped children in the USA, with the money used to fund the returning veterans who could not cope with living in the USA again. To enjoy you just have to like Stacey Keach and Mike Hammer for their middle aged angry man act. The story line does not really matter.
I am still not sure what I made the of the Rudy Giuliani story. The film tried to present him in a good light but still managed to reveal that he is a typical American politician, mortgaged to the political bosses and the conflicting interest groups while wrestling with his internal demons as an ordinary male human being.
My main interest as always is how far the film followed his recent image due to the 9/11 horror or provided an account of his life in the round. It attempted to do both through flashbacks to the past and to indicate something of the man behind the political mask through aspects of his private life. Born in 1944, he married after graduating from law school a second cousin Catholic. A fact which he used to gain an annulment having not obtained the required dispensation from the church prior to the marriage. My understanding is that obtaining an annulment depends on who you know and how much to are able to fund the church in different countries and at different times, so I am not in a position on how far that Rudi as an influential lawyer working in the office of the Attorney General in Washington helped his cause to marry the new love, a television personality, in 1982. The relationship lasted a dozen years during which two children were born.
He then became involved with his communications director with the relationship he attempted to keep secret until the story broke in Vanity Fair in 1997. Two years later he became involved with a fourth individual which he kept secret for over a year but then for some extraordinary reason announced the end of his marriage on Television before advising his legal wife of the decision. Understandably his wife was not impressed with his actions and disagreed with his belief that she also wanted the marriage to end.
The debate about how far the behaviour of a politician in his private life should affect his public will remain ongoing and I suspect depends on how the media respond to disclosure and the relationship which the individual has with his local community. Labour lost the by election at Norwich after the sitting member was told he would not be allowed to sit, following a National executive inquisition held in response to media criticism for a few of the Members because of the use of public money as expenses and which to his local community and the rest of us appeared to have been without rhyme or reason given that he did no differently from a significant number of members of the Cabinet and government notably the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The film presented Giuliani has having an exceptionally poor public political popularity rating shortly before the events of 9/11. He then divorced his wife and married the person who had help him overcome treatment for a prostate cancer from which his father had died at the age of 73. He is reported to have become estranged from his children.
What is without question among political interests on both sides of the Atlantic is that Rudy responded to the events of 9/11 in such a way which united the city and which behind the scenes organised the recovery in an exceptionally efficient way. Whereas the American President went to ground acting on advice, Giuliani was on the scene from the outset. He received an honorary knighthood from the Queen of England and Time Magazine named him person of the year. Since leaving the Mayoralty he ran for President last year, dropping out at the beginning of 2008 after having done well in the previous year. He has become a partner in a law firm which immediately changed their name to incorporate his.
I watched the first of the new X Factor competition last night which although allocated a 90 minute peak evening session was full of long advertisement breaks. The new series of TV auditions has been changed in that instead of singing without a backing tape before judges, each artist has a backing tape and sings not just to the judges but to a live audience of several thousand. During the week I heard a short radio contribution from someone who arrived at the 02 arena at 9am, and was given his audition at 11pm. The thousands who attended, an estimated 20000 were shown together on the outside concourse. This is presumably because the programme organisers did not want us to see that in fact while everyone has an audition it was in wooden cubicles before two judges. There is no information on the numbers excluded or on those who are allowed to by pass the first stage because of their proven singing experience and who may even be put through to the third stage of the new public audience auditions.
There was one aspect of the radio caller which also caught my attention in that the impression obtained was the 99.99 percent of those attending were serious competitors which only the occasional fancy dressed individual who could not sing. This could indicate that such individuals are trawled separately from those who in general attend the auditions. It is evident that the programme creating are looking for an unknown they can make into a start, for a dozen outstanding individuals who will creating a series of engaging finals and conduct a commercially successful tour following the final, and for other acts who will entertain the TV public during the audition series. They are interested in individuals having a good popular TV image, a commanding and engaging presence before a large live audience and who can go on to hack it as a recording star. Few have gone to make it longer that a year. Will Young and Leona Lewis are the exceptions although a few have continued to entertain through live appearances.
One aspect which I noted last year is that many of those who are selected for the boot camp are showed briefly without the opportunity for the TV audience to hear them sing. I suspect that the audition series is not edited until after boot camp and the selection of those to be managed by the four judges has been made. Therefore we are shown these individuals in the auditions and it is rare for those highlighted in the audition programmes not make the final selections. To counter this suggestion, this year selected individuals are being shown with their family support which in the instance of a young pop star male singer from South Shields, included his whole family. I shall buy the local papers tomorrow where I expect there will be further information about them.
I described earlier Il Segreto del Sahara as a Spaghetti Arabian because it has the format of the Spaghetti western, a traditional film story with twists, an epic quality, in terms of scenery, cast and film length together with an all start cast. Their full Italian edition is six hours with this TV English language over two. The music signals the emotions in a heavy handed manner. There is nothing subtle. Michael York is an archaeologist seeking a lost city which reminds of Petra in Jordan, in this instance a mountain where there is said to be treasure. The treasure attracts the attention of a vicious Foreign Legionnaire, Lieutenant Ryker(David Soul) who at the end close of finding out the secret but is killed by Michael York in a sword dual. It also attracts the attention of the local bigwig in the walled city who captures York during the film after he has become blind and after failing to reveal that he knows anything about the secret mountain is employed as a medicine man.
York has become blind after getting to the Secret having encountered Ben Kingsley as a local Sheik in control of a community around an Oasis. This is the first surprise because Kingsley plays a Polish Jew married to a Muslim with a daughter brought up in the two faiths and someone who provides the moral philosophy of the film. He had is wife and community are slaughtered by Ryker and other mercenaries even though his wife has revealed the way to the Secret Mountain.
Early in the film York rescues the beautiful Queen guardian of the Secret Mountain (played by Andy McDowell) from the clutches of Ryker, and she rewards his action later when he reaches the mountain and should be put to death. He is however blinded by the light which dominates the secret although the sight is recovered through the tears of the Queen later. Although they have become lovers their destiny does not appear together as she is duty bound to marry the custodian of the Secret, but when he is killed in a fight with Ryker the two are free. York also has a son although I am not clear if this a biological or adopted son, of the circumstances of the relationship. I believe he is brought up by Ben Kingsley’s family.
And now we come to the Secret. This follows on a long tradition of science fiction belief that human progress occurred because of the intervention of superior beings who inhabit distant places in the galaxy. The blinding light is in fact nuclear energy which at the end of the film is able to power the space vehicle back to its origins, however leaving an enlightened York with his Arabian Queen with supernatural powers, and his son, to live a happy ever after human existence.
I also mentioned earlier that by excellent programme planning a Sky Channel featured an episode of Dr Who which included the Time traveller of Torchwood. In the Torchwood the earth, and London in particular was threatened by the younger brother of the Time Traveller who he had to leave but for which he had never been forgiven. In the prior episode of Dr Who the Time Traveller had been involved in the serial which involved children being used.
This bring me to the 4400 and Sky 1 project where the first disk contain the double episode starter pilot and first of the subsequent series. Something unexpected enters the earth atmosphere at great speed slows up and bring 4400 people who have disappeared over the past century to one spot where in the USA where the majority decide to remain. After testing and observation over several months the families successfully petition the USA Supreme Court for their relatives to be released on the community. The pilot concentrates on a Korean War veteran who had a relationship with a white girl for which he was beaten up by his white comrades. He now found a country where inter racial relationships have become common place, but his home has been developed into a road underpass and he finds himself alone. While in quarantine he meets a girl who likes his former love and finds that she is the grand daughter although they are now of the same age. She is married with a baby daughter now a young girl and her husband has had her declared dead so he could remarry someone who the daughter believes to be her mother. These two displaced individuals strike up a relationship after she finds she has been returned diagnosed pregnant by her husband a decade before and no longer wants to have contact with her, One of the men finds his aged wife in a squalid institution and cannot cope when she dies and on finding that he has been bought out in his absence from the business cofounder and in his anger about not been given a position is able to use the anger to in effect blows out the man’s brains at a distance. Later it is discovered that the killed man was defrauding customers on the grand scale and the investigating team suspect that the 4400 have been returned for some purpose.
This appears to the so in the first of series proper in which one the returnees who works in the fish department of the of the local supermarket finds that the park has become over run by drug addicts and criminals and starts a clean up campaign so eh can return to place where he proposed to his wife and enjoyed picnics. He goes out at night to commence the clean up and prevents a girl being gang raped but in a later instance is killed by a knife. This appears to knock on the head the theory about being returned for a purpose until the local residents take it upon themselves to clean up the park.
There are two investigators appointed to try and find out why the 4400 were returned to earth, a mist unlikely scenario in reality and but one of the major flaws arising from the opening episodes. The continuity between the opening and next episode is a young girl who is able to predict aspects of the future and cannot help blurt out the truth despite advice that to do so will make her position difficult. Her parents are long since dead and she is unsuccessfully placed with foster parents who cannot cope with her predictions. She goes to live with the female investigator as an alternative to the girl becoming the subject of intensive and prolonged physical investigation and social observation in confined conditions. One feels she may well pose the answer to question where have the 4400 been and what is the collective as well as individual purpose of their return. I look forward to experiencing the next disk
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