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Dr. Strangelivejournal
Jul. 14th, 2008
09:03 am - Follicle Hack.
Did standup again last Tuesday night, this time having another go at Hack Daniels, with a few tweaks to material and character. Not a terrible performance, just a weirdly quiet crowd. I'm pulling out Hack again tonight at the Dux, should be a good night.
Beard gone, hair drastically reduced in length, my head is suddenly lighter. All shorn in aid of a short film I was in at the weekend (and continue to be in on ensuing weekends). Filming in busy public places is an odd experience, cos most people don't realise that a hi-end handicam and a small boom mic does not a professional film crew make, and so they stand around and go "ooh" and can ruin the shot. One trick, we discovered, is to pause for just long enough between takes that the loitering onlookers get bored and move along. Guerrilla filmmaking should be fast, but not conspicuously fast. Also, shouting "Action!" is not a good way to remain inconspicuous.
Films seen: Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, a damn fine character piece, this could have easily ended up being a fairly straightforward, slightly too clever film, but some incredible performances elevate it to another level. Also saw Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story recently; very funny, but on top of that it features some damn excellent original music. They've effective written an entire greatest hits for a fictional character, awesome stuff (that I'm still singing along to in my head).
Jun. 28th, 2008
04:18 pm - The moral of sleepy snow.
Prince Caspian was a lot better than I was expecting; better, possibly, even than the first Narnia film; it certainly was darker and more melancholy, and Eddie Izzard as a swashbuckling mouse doesn't hurt. Still, I was left scratching my head at the end trying to figure out precisely what the moral(s) of the story was.
So, there was some snow a few weeks back. That was nice.
I woke up from a dream this morning, and wondered why my parents didn't use the sleepout of their house as accommodation for boarders, for some extra income. It was only about five minutes later that I realised that they had moved from that house about eight years ago. Sometimes the zone between asleep and awake lingers well into one's supposedly rational day.
Jun. 10th, 2008
12:55 pm - Words that are not made to be written.
Quick question: you want to write that word which is "casual", but the abbreviated form, the form where you remove the "-ual" bit from the end: so, how do you spell it?
Jun. 7th, 2008
12:13 pm - Extra-curricular historical smiley.
The theatre gods were smiley on Thursday night, evidently knowing that I had important work to do, and so arranged it such that my Ghost Walk would be cancelled, hurrah! Interestingly, in about a year and a half of doing the tours, that was my very first ever cancellation of a tour (ie: no one turned up). But yes, it was rather serendipitous, as I had sound assembling duties for The Graduate that required my attention, and the extra couple of hours afforded were (reasonably) well spent towards that end.
My Saturday nights of late have been oddly free of doingness and stuff happening that I have to go to, while evenings such as Monday can easily and quickly get triple-booked. Weekday evenings are of course the times when 'extra-curricular' pursuits are scheduled, and if one is involved with much more than one at a time, as I tend to be, calendars get cluttered. Or at least, calendars would get cluttered if one used a calendar, which I don't.
We saw Court's The History Boys last week, good fun, terrific writing and a mostly strong cast (some were outstanding, many were very good, and all were at least adequate, with the exception of one of the boys, who was downright awful). The approach to history as promulgated by the play's young teacher was especially compelling - quite simply, taking established historical truths and turning them on their heads, in the interests of thinking beyond the prescribed boundaries of received knowledge. Bennett's writing I feel has a lot of truth within it, which is precisely the reason theatre hasn't entirely been trumped by television (yet).
Jun. 1st, 2008
12:36 pm - Mister Jones is not spectacularly there.
The new Indiana Jones movie is good fun, but I must have been expecting something more. Maybe it's just that I haven't seen any of the Indy films for years, so I'd forgotten the tone of the franchise, and was imagining that it was different than this. However, regardless of tone the final third or so of the picture gets very silly, perfunctory, in places obvious, in places confusing. I mean, even if it is on par with the other films in many respects, when your franchise is on hiatus for nineteen years you have to do better than just an okay film to justify bringing it back again. Still, as a guilty pleasure it served well enough.
I'm Not There is a peculiar meander of a film, presumably deliberately modelled on the rambling, free-associative poetic nature of much of Bob Dylan's songwriting. To properly 'get' the film a working knowledge and appreciation of Dylan's work is required, although even that is no guarantee of understanding (I often sensed that there was a reference to something going on, if only I knew what it was). Failing comprehension, you can just let the story fragments and poetry and philosophy wash over you, or just enjoy the performances, which are what most of the talk has been about. Is there anything Cate Blanchett can't do?
(For that matter, what is Australia's trick for breeding so many wonderful actors? That country seems to spawn a disproportionately gloatworthy gaggle of talented film actors. And all the failed actors presumably become Olympic swimmers instead.)
Keeping with the topic of film, since I have nothing better to talk about, is there any more spectacular film that Return of the King? In terms of literal spectacle I mean. That film features so many showstopping moments, about a dozen of the kind of thing that any self-respecting quality ('epic') film might have one of, two if they're lucky. I've undoubtedly seen the Lord of the Rings movies far more times than any other films (at least seven times each in the cinema, to begin with), and for some reason I never tire of them. I wonder how much of this is pure quality of filmmaking, and how much a more personal resonance they have for me. I don't regard them as flawless films, although in many important respects it would be difficult to improve upon the adaptation (it would be much more efficient to itemize my grievances with the treatment than my approvals of it). I guess it's just a happy alignment of objective quality, personal interests and personal circumstances. Everyone needs something that they're into just a little bit too much.
May. 26th, 2008
05:55 pm - Peak MC horror.
So I rejoined TBALC ranks again for two days last weekend, in aid of the 48hours filmmaking effort. We got the horror genre, and I landed myself the plum role of slightly scary, slightly weird Nazi-loving college professor #4. The piece was essentially serious, for a change, and turned out pretty well. Then we trotted along to our heat on Wednesday night, whereat ours and a dozen or so other films were screened at the biggest cinema at Reading. Being not a comedy, and coming after arguably the best comedy film of the heat, the audience reaction was unsurprisingly modest. But more frustrating for me personally, on account of being a sometime actor whose ego needs a regular stroking, was the slight out-of-sync-ness of the soundtrack with the visuals (presumably a result of the transfer to DV-tape - digital video technology is alarmingly brittle), which meant that some of my more idiosyncratically delivered character moments lost their attack. Oh well. Now we're all just hanging around waiting to hear the list of city finalists.
Excellent post about Peak Oil and future options by harlequin here. I got an email forwarded on to me (twice) recently, which is some strangely naive call-to-action to stop purchasing petrol from BP, so as to trigger a price war and bring the price of oil back down again. Which is misguided for a number of reasons. Firstly, nowhere near the number of people required to even attempt such a movement will actually be motivated to do this, at the most optimistic estimates. Secondly, even if BP did suffer a considerable setback, they surely wouldn't enter into a significant price-war to remedy the problem. Despite the official illegality of it, the major oil companies must surely have some backroom relative price-fixing agreement in place to ensure that they will survive. And thirdly, and most importantly, if two dollars per litre or whatever is the price that oil really costs, then we actually shouldn't want it to be artificially brought down. It's only when a problem presents itself in full bloom that society and the market become inspired to confront it seriously. Rallying against high oil prices will only help us to keep our heads in the sand just a little longer.
I MCed Scriptless on Friday to a full house, and one so earlily sold-out that I couldn't even nab a ticket for Andrea. Which was doubly bother-making since it turned out to be surely my best effort at MCing to date. Didn't hurt that I had an excellent cast and a really warm audience either. I just wish that more people I know had been able to see it.
May. 16th, 2008
07:06 am - Keyholes do not unlock jackets.
No matter how expensive one's jacket may be, the pocket lining material is invariably that shitty thin stuff, easily ripped. One item that I regularly toss into my pockets is keys, being heavy pieces of jagged metal, and it is keys that have over time worked a great big hole in my corduroy jacket's left pocket. Determined for my new and rather lovely woollen coat to sidestep a similar fate, I have been wrapping my keybunch in a plastic shopping bag when inside my pocket, for cushioning. This is admittedly a terribly uncouth solution, but it serves a very practical purpose, plus I always have a plastic bag handy if I need one (which I find I do quite a lot of the time).
Atonement is a great film, and quite affecting, as evidenced by the fact that I'm still thinking about it a few days later. It also features a terrific score that at times borders on the quasi-Musical in style, and has about the only filmic representation of Dunkirk that I've ever seen.
It is surprisingly difficult not to look at the ground when walking. But it is an oddly rewarding thing to do, to have one's eye-level horizontal, actually noticing the world for a change. Still, a glance downwards every now and then is useful if you want to avoid embarrassing stumblings on surfaces which have disagreements with the horizontalism.
May. 13th, 2008
08:02 am - Welly belly.
Just to be cheeky, Wellington decided to live up to its largely unfair reputation as a city of rubbish weather and high winds, when we visited this weekend. Still didn't dampen the mood of the trip. Went shopping (girls for wedding-ey things, while I busied myself in assorted bookshops along Lambton Quay (and, scandalously, buying nothing)), went to the odd cafe. Went to an improv comedy show which was in parts entertaining, in parts a bit mediocre, in parts utterly, utterly horrible, irredeemably bad. It was an instructive experience, and frankly made me feel a lot better about myself as an improviser.
Afterwards we trotted up the road to The Southern Cross, a very cool bar that I have vague recollections of going to once or twice in the murky past. Live music was provided by an awesomely bizarre polka/gypsy band, and we hung out in the expansive courtyard area out the back, suitably bustling with revellers but also suitably not-too-loud, so we could still converse happily. It was a bit chilly, and from the bar we got a blanket and a hottie (for the ladies).
The next day was Andrea's birthday, and we went out to lunch with friends, followed by a wander through Te Papa to check out the whales exhibition, which was pretty cool. You know, for a modern-architecture waterfront monolith, our national museum is actually quite a pretty building, in its own severe, eye-watering way. Then a bit more hanging around, then off to gatecrash a 48hours team's meeting (to which I gave some advice, so I wasn't entirely useless).
At the end of the weekend, as always happens, I began remembering all those other people I know who live in Wellington. Oh well, always next time.
May. 9th, 2008
06:00 pm - Letter to drinkey.
Drinks after work today; I wasn't planning to drink, but the non-alcoholic options were too expensive, so I had two wines instead.
We went to Letter To Blanchy, the McPhail and Gadsby show at the Court, last night. Bit underwhelmed with it to be honest. Lots of obvious, tired humour, although a couple of gems crept into the mix. But the mode of comedy in itself wasn't really a problem; it's a style, and it certainly resonated with the largely pension-collecting audience. My bigger complaint was against the manner in which the jokes were persisted with; lame jokes told briefly and in quick succession are quite amusing, but a lame joke told subtly (most of the audience got it), then told less subtly (everyone else got it), then repeated (some of the characters got it), then repeated again (the rest of the characters got it) began to wear quickly thin. Coupled with that were a bunch of scenarios so lucidly telegraphed that it was like watching a collision in slow motion. The plot was for most of its length merely a series of extended sketches riffing on the notion of what a bunch of blokes might get up to if quarantined together in a confined space, although it took on an extra rush of life later in the game when some of the characters began to really express themselves, notably Tom's character's refreshingly sincere, human outburst. So yeah, for all my complaining it was still an okay night's entertainment, with some enjoyable performances, including a surprise appearance by publican Barliman Butterbur of the Prancing Pony.
May. 8th, 2008
07:17 am - Winter strike.
Minus three degrees is much too cold. Walking through town to work at quarter to seven in the morning yesterday went beyond terms such as bracing and invigorating, lingering closer to debilitating and solidifying. Once at work, in a quite agreeable, thermally regulated environment, the thaw could begin, although by the end of the day my poor thighs were still mewling at me.
The distressed body parts were possibly in part blameable against my efforts at Laser Strike on Sunday, as part of Jeff's Iron Dad afternoon. It turns out that not-especially-fit persons who don't stretch and then run around manically for forty minutes should expect some degree of pain to follow them in subsequent days. But it was awfully fun. The equipment has changed since I was last there, with fancy new flashy suit thingies and new guns with extra buttons and settings. Almost too complex for me to be much bothered with, almost.
The day continued with manly drinks at the Dux, followed by the viewing of a manly (or at least boyly) film, Iron Man, featuring that loveable rogue Mister Downey Junior. Cool film, nice, good too.
May. 5th, 2008
07:04 am - Dollops of emergency packing polystyrene balls by the coward Sheriff of Nottingham.
Scriptless on Friday was an interesting affair. For one thing, I always knew that co-MCing would be a challenge (years of Bigger Than Beatling taught me that the double act, especially one that is largely made up on the spot, is not a proposition to be entered into blithely), but I underestimated the preparation required to make it work. Still, Emma and myself stumbled through the evening, attempting to combat lack of preparedness with dollops of emergency charm. In any event the players acquitted themselves admirably, being thrown squarely in the deep end by us and being challenged to perform a bunch of handles, some familiar, some of which were variations on known games and some which we'd just plain made up. Most of our experiments went some way towards working onstage, further strengthening my belief that Scriptless shows should be more adventurous about just Trying Shit Out. After all, everything else onstage is made up, why not the games too?
The evening (and the following morning) was framed by an implausible outburst from the heavens, dumping giant boxes of those tiny polystyrene packing balls onto Christchurch, one of those occasional not-quite-snowing events that we tend to get down here. A day spent inside doing approximately nothing on Saturday was, of course, the correct and best way to appreciate the inclemency.
I did make one concession to the outdoors, which was to venture out in order to see the final performance of the latest Court kids' show Robin Hood and Maid Marian, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Dan's sheriff was pantomime villain par excellence, and the script was delightfully silly and witty, and the whole thing intelligently directed. Probably the best of the kids' shows that I've seen in the past year and a half (of course I couldn't possibly comment about the ones I was in).
Later, we watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford on DVD, a beautiful and extremely deliberately paced film (read: very long, very slow, and not for all tastes), essentially in-depth character studies especially of its title characters, terrifically essayed by Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. Mister Pitt remains a fine and upstanding example of covetable manhood. Affleck has his moments too. Alas, I like girls.
Apr. 30th, 2008
12:07 pm - Li'l Miss Superbrarian.
I discovered yesterday that the words library and literary, when presented in a standard seriffed font, look almost identical to each other. Which is serendipitous, since they are meaning-related but don't (I think) have any especial etymological connection. Such things amuse me.
We saw Eastern Promises, followed by Superbad, on Friday night, a jolly double-bill of quality and somewhat varied entertainment. I had heard good to excellent things about the former, but then I was really underwhelmed by Cronenberg's previously outing A History of Violence, so it was refreshingly better. And Viggo is terrific in it, not his usual weird acting self. Then Superbad, a sweet wee film that understands very well precisely what genre it is operating in, and intelligently plays with this without ever losing sight of its inherent lowbrowedness. It seems that boys like this movie more than girls.
And do come to Scriptless this week to witness the firepower of dual MCing from myself and li'l miss Cusdin. Will be lots of fun.
Apr. 28th, 2008
01:56 pm - Chicabilee.
Riccarton High School had their 50th Jubilee at the weekend, and I and a few other ex-students and/or current staff put together a wee performance which sought to summarise the school's history in a trim fifteen minutes. And despite a profound lack of direction and focus in our last-minute rehearsals, it went off extremely well. The event was a dinner at the big Wigram hangar, quite a venue, I'd never been to Wigram before. Several hundred diners, mostly 40+, so I hardly recognized anyone, there weren't even many teachers there which was a shame (especially since we were parodying a number of them). But I did eventually stumble across a couple of my old school friends. Plus a few more old school friends whom I didn't quite remember, but who certainly remembered me. That was weird, and the ensuing conversation was made even more difficult by the noise of the live band drowning out any possibility of actually understanding what they're talking about, and after a couple of "What was that?"s you just pretend you heard and smile and nod.
I got to use the word portmanteau appropriately in a sentence the other day, which was very satisfying.
We saw Showbiz's Chicago last week: quite a mixed bag. Some numbers were excellent, some were dull and uninspired (eg: the puppet song vs. "All That Jazz"). Most of the performances were at least good, some excellent. It's an odd show. I generally love the music, and the theatrical conceits of its presentation, although the ending is a bit weird, at once both too quick and too drawn out. But maybe that was direction. There were a few other weirdly staged moments, notably the death of the Hungarian girl. Plus it didn't help that we were sitting down in the stalls off to the extreme side. Frankly I always feel they have a nerve selling seats with such limited view for $60, especially when the gods are only a third the price. But then, people keep happily paying for them, so why give up on a good thing?
Apr. 15th, 2008
08:41 am - Little old lady, twelve stories high, made of radiation.
A little old lady came to the door a few weekends ago, clutching copies of the Awake! and Watchtower magazines in hand. Now, sometimes I have bemoaned the lack of evangelists door-knocking at our doorstep, as I often wish I had more opportunities to invite these young and innocent happy-clappies inside for a nice cup of tea and a wee chitchat about the flaws in their religious worldview. But my plan fell down when presented with the kindly old face standing on my welcome mat. It's quite easy to conceive of debating the big issues of life after death, judgement and the end of the world when your opponent is young enough for it all to be merely abstract concepts, but when the prospect of mortality is a very tangible proposition, I just can't bring myself to challenge these comforting and closely held notions. Little old ladies must be the new secret weapon of evangelism for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Genius.
If fashion is cyclic, and if people keep up with fashion for long enough, won't they eventually regard all fashions as cool? But they don't. Which suggests that people tend to forget that they ever thought that some trend was cool in the first place. Which suggests that people are goldfish, both in terms of their memories and in their tendency to move in circles.
I saw Children of Men last night, what a beautiful, wonderful film. Beautifully filmed, with crisp, cold cinematography and astonishingly lengthy tracking shots; that Cuarón chappie has rather a distinctive visual flair. I can imagine a few things about it that might annoy a lot of people, but I often find myself liking films that annoy people.
And finally, some true facts about George Washington.
Apr. 7th, 2008
08:36 pm - Booktease.
I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret recently; what a delightful book. Part words, part pictures, and not difficult to see why it will shortly be developed into a film. Also read Axis, the sequel to Robert Charles Wilson's excellent sci-fi novel Spin, and I was rather underwhelmed. After the richness of ideas of the first book, this one feels like just more of the same, not unlike the way I felt about the Matrix sequels. Which is a pity, because there is so much potential in the world(s) that the writer has created. Quite a tease actually, the story often hinting at things just over the story horizon that sounded far more interesting than the story we're actually following. Some very nice touches, and a first interesting revelations, just not enough of them.
Apr. 6th, 2008
12:24 am - Amdram sickday clip 2.0.
This youtube clip is certainly very educational regarding the way the Chinese view the status of Tibet. The clip is rather overblown in places (but to no greater extent than most American media clips), but still it serves as a solid reminder that you should never pronounce your stance on a topic without properly delving into the full history of the subject matter. None of which is to say that China hasn't done some bad things in Tibet, or to excuse these actions, but, well, there's always another side of the story to consider.
As a consequence of seeing Dudley Benson in concert last weekend (and buying his new CD) I went online to read up about him. And I could find no Wikipedia article on him, so in true Web 2.0 spirit I took the liberty of creating one. And although it's a pretty insubstantial stub of an article so far, I get a muted kind of satisfaction from contributing to the available online knowledge base.
Last week I was a bit poorly, and even took my first sick day with my current employer. The thing that always fascinates me about flu-ey types of sickness is the phases that it goes through, and how these often seem to correlate loosely to days, so that each new day has a unique sickness "theme": sore throat, runny nose, dry cough, snotty nose, phlegmy cough. It tends to work out well because you spend most of the day enjoying not having the previous day's condition anymore, and only towards the end does the current one begin to wear thin on your tolerance.
Saw the Elmwood Players play Fred tonight. A curious play. Extremely long too, though it's difficult to judge how much is in the script and how much in a too-leisurelily measured pace. Strange ending too, muddled and unfocused, failing to deliver on implied promises made by the play in its earlier sections, and the same question of responsibility applies to that also. The show featured a very typically am-dram cast, meaning that it had both the rough, the mediocre and the very good all tidily bundled together under one rolecall. I spent some portion of the play examining the Elmwood Auditorium space itself, more closely than I really ever have before (partly with a mind to imagining it in the context of the forthcoming Macbeth production), and golly it really is a truly weird performance space, and extremely difficult to make work effectively.
I played Scared Scriptless last night, for the first in ages, since last November I think. It was a really fun night, with a terrific bunch of players alongside me, and although perhaps not technically a tour de force of improvisation, much silly fun was had by all.
Mar. 31st, 2008
04:32 pm - French blog = safe cybersex?
Our weekend getaway to Akaroa was delightful and more than a little unexpected. Not quite the quiet excursion we had planned, but that was alright. First of all, Le Race, the annual cycle race from Christchurch to Akaroa, took place on Saturday, cluttering the road, the streets and the Akaroa Green with the two-wheel person-power machines and their riders and entourages. But we negotiated the hoards and successfully found our stay, a quaint little faux-French Cottage, furnished appropriately rustically, but not too far beyond the comforts of the modern world (although the lack of a simple toaster turned out to be rather consterning for a bit).
Then when we wandered back through town, we saw in every shop window posters advertising a Dudley Benson concert that evening, so we bought some tickets and headed along after dinner (and after observing and photographing a rather dramatically beautiful sunset across the water) to St Peter's Anglican Church to the show. Dudley's got family connections in Akaroa, so there were plenty of family and friends present in the wee wooden space. The concert itself was astonishing, featuring Dudley singing and occasionally on piano, plus an 8-person choir and a string quartet and, most surprisingly of all, guest-featuring none other than Richard Nunns himself, a bit of a living legend and authority with regard to traditional Maori instruments.
What's more, a whole cast of familiar faces populated the audience, including a couple of people I hadn't seen for several years and two who I thought were overseas (I can only presume that when people say they are going overseas, what they really mean is that they're going to hide in Akaroa).
Amusingly enough, the concert took place during that Earth Hour lights out carry-on, with stage lights shining on the performers and, more contrarily, the Akaroa lighthouse turned on especially for the evening. I'm a bit suspicious of token events such as Earth Hour anyway, since I reckon they give people a false impression that they're actually effecting change by token gestures such as just switching a few lights off for an hour, and if you make people feel too good about themselves it ultimately encourages further complacency.
Anyway, we did get some time to ourselves during the weekend, enjoying the quaintness and creaky floors of our Frenchie house. On Sunday we paid a visit to the famous 'Giant's House', well worth a visit if you're ever over that way, an astonishing labour of love that can make even those allergic to Maggie Barry think twice about their phobia of gardens. And we returned to the city not quite refreshed but revitalised in other ways. Many people who live in Akaroa don't speak French. However, there is a slightly higher than usual number of French tourists, who assist the illusion of foreignness.
Mar. 28th, 2008
07:08 am - Music rant #1.
There has never been a question of Elvis versus The Beatles. Unless you are talking about record sales or merchandising or number of fans, the debate is a non-starter. Because, musically, they are apples and oranges. And because, well, musically The Beatles are far superior. Take any musician or band since the 1960s, and ask them to name their top ten influences. Pretty much every one will name The Beatles. Maybe one-in-five might name Elvis, if he's lucky. I mean, he was a great entertainer, and when he started out a massively influential innovator in pop music, but by the sixties he was just treading water creatively. It's like comparing some early cinematic auteur, a master of silent film, with say Hitchcock. When sound and then colour came Direktor Elvis took it bad, and ended up as a hired hand helming dodgy B-grade horror movies. Hmm, the analogy is stretching... if Hitchcock had split as the Beatles did, he would have become unrecognisable, and none of his pants would have fit.
Mar. 27th, 2008
07:05 am - The necessity of new toys.
At long last, my not inconsiderable music collection has been complemented with, and complimented by having, a new and decent stereo system. Furthermore, by setting it up all connected to the DVD player and the telly, I've assembled an improvised home theatre system of sorts, it's all very grown-up. The system's a Philips MCD-708, and it was awfully cheap for what it is, and it sounds very nice (but then, anything would after my previous setups), and most importantly it looks very pretty, all black and grey/silver, with glowey blue bits. Next up I have my sights on a new car stereo, one that plays more than twenty percent of aforementioned music collection.
Another purchase made over the long weekend, and one which was slightly more exciting to Andrea, was a lovely new bookshelf, also got at a very reasonable price, on which much (but not quite all) of our DVD collection now lives. It is as equally pretty as the stereo, though in rather different ways, and it rather serendipitously matches almost exactly with the design and wood colour/finish of another piece of furniture in the lounge. Still, the rosewood speakers of the stereo bring the number of different colours and styles of wood in the room to about ten or so.
These purchases were necessities, you understand.
We are saving money, honestly.
Mar. 26th, 2008
06:57 am - Increasingly accurate iterations of abroad simulator.
Increasingly, I find myself watching movies set in exotic locations and really imagining being there in a very tangible way. Largely due to the fact that I have in fact been there. I was watching Breaking and Entering last week, and its portrayal of the King's Cross area of London (pretty much where we used to live) was so vividly real, so immediate. Similarly with Jumper, the scenes in Rome were like some missing home movie from my travel collection. I used to watch these sorts of things and think 'Wow, that's so exotic, imagine actually being there'. And even the places that I am yet to go, even these I find I have a greater capacity for imagining (I believe) fairly accurately what the actual experience of being in these places would be like.
Not that I had to imagine what Akaroa would be like, but I will get a chance to freshen up my memories of the place by going there this weekend (haven't been for many years).
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