Author: carlosfandango
My favourite biscuits are custard creams
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Jay Z
The main reason it’s annoying when someone is talking loudly on the
phone on a train is that the conversation is one-sided and your brain
can’t ignore the oddity of it not making sense.
with a silly voice completing the conversation. The trick would be to
make it a credible but utterly ludicrous exchange.
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A day off and Lord’s
I have the day off, and it’s a beautiful summer’s day. I have a book, some food and I’m at Lord’s for a county game.
It’s heavenly, and it’s nearly empty. I’d estimate 300 people in the ‘crowd’. I’m not complaining as such – being able to spread out, and do the crossword with nothing other than the chuntering of a few be-tweeded old buffers is what John Major intended. But it’s crazy that a four-day game starts on a Wednesday when only the retired and the holidaying can attend. No-one would think to schedule professional football games when most people are working, so why does county cricket seem wilfully difficult? It must be hard to shift ‘tradition’ even when it’s serving little purpose, but surely they could play these games starting Friday 3pm – especially when we have a long bank holiday weekend coming up. I’m caught between enjoying this most English of serenities and worrying it can’t possibly survive many more years.
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Canned laughter
There's an interview with Graham Linehan with this reference to people's misunderstandings of "canned laughter".
Graham Linehan would like to make one thing really clear, Father Ted was filmed in front of a studio audience. It might look as thought it’s all done in a draughty house on a remote Irish island, but in fact it’s a studio set. Linehan is irked by the persistence of the idea that the sitcom has canned laughter on it.
“I get asked it all the time,” he says, his Dublin accent tinged with faint exasperation. “It’s like the moon landings or something.”
I know this to be true as one day in the mid 90s, I was working at Guinness and picked up the phone to a man asking me if I was aware of a programme called Father Ted. Seems odd now, but at the time, it wasn't that well known. However, I had plenty of Irish friends and they had been raving about it for a year or two already.
It turned out that the voice was the late, much-missed, Dermot Morgan* (Ted himself), and he wondered whether there was any chance of a barrel of Guinness for the end of show wrap party. I was more than happy to help and he invited me and a friend down to the filming on the South Bank.
The episode we saw was Flight Into Terror which btw includes a couple of covert appearances from Linehan as a priest and Pauline McLynn (usually Mrs Doyle) as a nun.
It was a great evening and I can testify that the laughter is very real and absolutely from the audience. However, my main memory is how welcommed we were made to feel. The beer had been delivered, so no-one had any particular reason to be nice to us, but Dermot took time to look out for us, get us in the green room and share a bundle of gags with us. What a genuinely lovely fella.
* Dermot was a well known comedian in Ireland and apparently used to introduce himself with "Hello, my name's Dermot Morgan – that's big M, small organ."
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This supersedes Pacman
Best video game ever
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Enjoyed drawing this one
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Dissing Gordon Banks
I went to an exhibition a few years ago called Fifa 100, celebrating the greatest 100 footballers of all time. There were fabulous photographic portraits of each player, showcasing them in full, beautiful flow.
Except for Gordon Banks, whose picture was so ordinary and domestic that I had to buy the mug.
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Flame on
I hope people predisposed to be cynical about the Olympics drop their guard and open themselves up to enjoying a true community event. Only sport enables nations to come together in peace and celebration.
I was lucky enough to be at Sydney 2000 and the sights of the torch burning high in the sky and the Olympic rings on the Harbour Bridge were spine-tingling.
M.E.S. was shambolic and shamanic, hazing his way through any number of garagey, hypnotic songs. Highlights were White Lightning, Cab it Up! and Psychik Dancehall.
“Is anybody there!?”
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Brilliant Lego mural at Hamley’s
How we get trapped in the constrained thinking of existing ideas.
From the brilliant “Po – beyond Yes and No” by Edward de Bono
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Bank holiday watching
I have stumbled into an annual tradition of watching the timeless (ho
ho) Back to the Future every year on one of the bank holidays in May.
I have a few days off at home shortly and not sure what to do. Any ideas for what I should do – art exhibitions on right now, good films out at the moment, ideas for day trips etc.
Last time I had this opportunity, I went to Bletchley Park https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j13qon94w7zifc5/u7Z3lEeM0x (I could do a better photo job if I did that again)
Anyway – suggestions much appreciated!
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Did you have any of these phones?
When Nokia was king.
I got that one on the left in April 1995. Ruinously heavy.
Terrible quality, and retro gaming nerdery required too. If you’ve no
idea or don’t care, you can feel good about yourself.
In that brilliant talk on creativity by John Cleese, he mentions how creative people are almost defined by how long they’re prepared to suffer with an unsolved problem, as being stumped is a integral part of the process.
This article in the Guardian takes a related tack and is well worth a read. I loved this insight about left/right hemispheres:
The process began with an intense mental search as the left hemisphere started looking for answers in all the obvious places… This left-brain thought process, however, quickly got tiring – it took only a few seconds before the subject said he’d reached an impasse and couldn’t think of the right word. But these negative feelings are actually an essential part of the process because they signal that it’s time to try a new search strategy. Instead of relying on the literal associations of the left hemisphere, the brain needs to shift activity to the other side, to explore a more unexpected set of associations.
Goosebumps