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Mar. 16th, 2015 10:46 am
That was the weekend
I was somewhat ambivalent about my annual visit to the Irish-American Heritage Center on Saturday and then, when I felt a twinge of gout, I decided the last thing I needed was to drink a lot of beer. So I gave it a miss and tried to get some things done at home instead. Things like making Irish soda bread and reading a murder mystery set in Galway. This was supposed to culminate in me writing an entry about my doings complete in Irish, but I just ran out of steam before that happened.
Partly it's because I decided to catch up on my NetFlix viewing so I could send the discs back and get me something Irishy for tomorrow. I've had Royal Flash and Coup de torchon at home since before![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu's surgery. I thought the former would be a delightful romp that we could enjoy sometime when we really needed a break from it all, but neither he nor my mother ever had any desire to watch it. It's amusing enough, but one can kinda see why it was never picked up as "a series like James Bond", as the producers were hoping for. For me the most outstanding thing it had going for it was Oliver Reed as Bismarck; every time he came on screen, my eyes would lock on him until I sorta forgot there was movie going on in the background. Alan Bates was great fun, and the early cameo from St Bob was simply gravy.
Coup de torchon is an odder duck in almost every way. It's based on a novel by Jim Thompson about a bumbling small-town sheriff with a hidden sadistic streak, but in order to keep the racial elements Tavernier had to translate the action to French West Africa. Clearly, the budget was small, which contributes to the vagueness of the setting. The principles are in period costume, but the extras just seem to be wearing their ordinary garb as if that hadn't changed at all in fifty years. There are old cars and advertisements around, but this is a colonial backwater so that's all inconclusive. As a result, I wasn't sure what decade we were in and what "the war" was that was being talked about until Germany gets mentioned three-quarters of the way through.
From the plot summary, I had pictured something rather different: a punching bag who gets pushed too far and finally snaps, à la Joe or Falling Down. But even after he starts killing, he preserves his inoffensive veneer, dropping it strategically to terrorise individuals or win their complicity while everyone else continues to take him for a fool. The results of that are even more disturbing. Overall, a good study of the corrosive effects of being a low-level enforcer in a corrupt system (and as timely now in the age of Ferguson as ever).
Ken Bruen's The guards covers some of the same ground but in a less serious way. Soon as the book arrived and I saw home much dialogue there was, I knew it would be a quick read, which is why I decided to take a break from my other reading and tackle it Saturday evening. I ended up reading the whole novel in less than three hours with only a couple breaks, which is the first time I can remember doing that in simply ages. It's the first in a series and I may stick with it to see how Bruen deals with the instability of having a murderous alcoholic as an ongoing protagonist.
As usual, Sunday was chores day. It was also the warmest day of the year so far (save today) and I decided to take advantage of it by strolling over to the former Safeminick's on Ridge. A friend of ours had related to us how it'd bought by one of the Hispanic minichains which didn't seem to know what to do with all the space. There solution seems to have been to fill it with every kind of crazy ethnic goods they can find. So it's the kind of place which has five brands of sugar wafers, only one of which is American and it's not Nabisco, while at the same time carrying only one brand of hummus. But if you want one-stop shopping for frozen idli, canned ackee, grass jelly drink, and Belarusian "wellness mayonnaise", then this is your store.
Unfortunately, I misunderstood the Old Man when he gave me a list of ingredients for dinner. Since he'd started cooking again the previous week, I thought we was offering to fix it himself when it turns out he was only "making suggestions" on what he could "help me out" with. This sparked an ugly fight at quarter to six when I discovered he was expecting me to do all the actual cooking. I'm so anxious to return to our old routine, I keep forgetting that it's something we should be renegotiating constantly in light ofmonshu's recovery rather than making any assumptions about. His making quiche tonight as a peace offering. Maybe that can be a stepping stone to getting this all worked out.
Partly it's because I decided to catch up on my NetFlix viewing so I could send the discs back and get me something Irishy for tomorrow. I've had Royal Flash and Coup de torchon at home since before
monshu's surgery. I thought the former would be a delightful romp that we could enjoy sometime when we really needed a break from it all, but neither he nor my mother ever had any desire to watch it. It's amusing enough, but one can kinda see why it was never picked up as "a series like James Bond", as the producers were hoping for. For me the most outstanding thing it had going for it was Oliver Reed as Bismarck; every time he came on screen, my eyes would lock on him until I sorta forgot there was movie going on in the background. Alan Bates was great fun, and the early cameo from St Bob was simply gravy.Coup de torchon is an odder duck in almost every way. It's based on a novel by Jim Thompson about a bumbling small-town sheriff with a hidden sadistic streak, but in order to keep the racial elements Tavernier had to translate the action to French West Africa. Clearly, the budget was small, which contributes to the vagueness of the setting. The principles are in period costume, but the extras just seem to be wearing their ordinary garb as if that hadn't changed at all in fifty years. There are old cars and advertisements around, but this is a colonial backwater so that's all inconclusive. As a result, I wasn't sure what decade we were in and what "the war" was that was being talked about until Germany gets mentioned three-quarters of the way through.
From the plot summary, I had pictured something rather different: a punching bag who gets pushed too far and finally snaps, à la Joe or Falling Down. But even after he starts killing, he preserves his inoffensive veneer, dropping it strategically to terrorise individuals or win their complicity while everyone else continues to take him for a fool. The results of that are even more disturbing. Overall, a good study of the corrosive effects of being a low-level enforcer in a corrupt system (and as timely now in the age of Ferguson as ever).
Ken Bruen's The guards covers some of the same ground but in a less serious way. Soon as the book arrived and I saw home much dialogue there was, I knew it would be a quick read, which is why I decided to take a break from my other reading and tackle it Saturday evening. I ended up reading the whole novel in less than three hours with only a couple breaks, which is the first time I can remember doing that in simply ages. It's the first in a series and I may stick with it to see how Bruen deals with the instability of having a murderous alcoholic as an ongoing protagonist.
As usual, Sunday was chores day. It was also the warmest day of the year so far (save today) and I decided to take advantage of it by strolling over to the former Safeminick's on Ridge. A friend of ours had related to us how it'd bought by one of the Hispanic minichains which didn't seem to know what to do with all the space. There solution seems to have been to fill it with every kind of crazy ethnic goods they can find. So it's the kind of place which has five brands of sugar wafers, only one of which is American and it's not Nabisco, while at the same time carrying only one brand of hummus. But if you want one-stop shopping for frozen idli, canned ackee, grass jelly drink, and Belarusian "wellness mayonnaise", then this is your store.
Unfortunately, I misunderstood the Old Man when he gave me a list of ingredients for dinner. Since he'd started cooking again the previous week, I thought we was offering to fix it himself when it turns out he was only "making suggestions" on what he could "help me out" with. This sparked an ugly fight at quarter to six when I discovered he was expecting me to do all the actual cooking. I'm so anxious to return to our old routine, I keep forgetting that it's something we should be renegotiating constantly in light of
monshu's recovery rather than making any assumptions about. His making quiche tonight as a peace offering. Maybe that can be a stepping stone to getting this all worked out.