Football

Mirthful 2 Comments

I know, you’re probably thinking “Huh?”

Well, despite not really being into sports (a good candidate for understatement of the year if ever I saw one), I end up watching sports accidentally ever so often (or, if I can help it, seldom, but never mind). One such occasion occured last Saturday – we popped in to Three Lions for luch (and a pint) before the show (Ice Age 2, as reported), and realised pretty quickly that we’d either have to watch football og go somewhere else. We opted for the football (I mean, where else is there?). It was, uhm, bear with me, I’ll remember in a mo… I think it was Everton vs. Liverpool. I also think I opted to root for Everton (sorry, Pondus), though that left me in a minority in the audience (actually, I suppose you could say I opted to root for Everton because it left me in a minority). It didn’t really make much difference, as we were going to have to leave at half time to make the cinema on time. We didn’t miss the half time entertainment, though, Will got his head shaved as a result of loosing a bet he’d made that Chelsea wouldn’t win anything at all this season (or something of that order, you can’t expect me to come up with correct team names and events every time, you know). That was fun.

Anyway, on with the musing and the original purpose of this post: With football there is this big hoo-ha about the offside rule and how it’s supposed to be so difficult to understand, especially if you’re a woman. Now, don’t get me wrong, when I do, on occasion, watch football, I can’t necessarily tell whether a player is “offside”, in that I sometimes get quite surprised when the whistle is blown or whatever. This comes – I suspect – of there being a lot of players on the field and me only being half-way interested (and more interested in whether Team A’s right forward is better looking than Team B’s back and whether that means I really should be rooting for Team A). But the rule in itself and the reason the rule exists seems straightforeward enough. For the purpose of discussion I found an explanation here – now, tell me, what’s so terribly complicated? I suppose the phrase “in the opinion of the referee” makes it somewhat more iffy than a simple “unless you’re the goalkeeper you should keep your hands off the ball”, but still. What am I missing?

So much for the ramble, now for a little rant…

I need a new bag. My favourite all-round bag has a zipper that no longer works every time, which is a pain. (In fact, I’m never buying a Bj

Jadda

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i am a major geek

Kosmorama being well (they even made a profit this year, apparently) and truly over I suppose I ought to report back on the rest of the festival for my part. Well, not much to report, I’m afraid. I took Tuesday off as planned, Wednesday I got a text message to say the The Puffy Chair, which I really wanted to see, was postponed until 4 PM, which meant that I could actually make it, though having been in a sloooooow computer course all day with a vague headache I really didn’t feel up to it. However, I was bracing myself when I got another text message to say it had been cancelled. So I went home to feel sorry for myself instead.

Thursday I was back on duty at 4:30 PM, and managed to get assigned to the theatre showing Mad Hot Ballroom which is a sort of feel-good documentary. Hardly great cinematic art, but everyone seemed to leave the theatre with a smile on their face, which is an achievement in itself.

At that point I decided that since we were overstaffed and I wouldn’t be leaving anyone in the lurch by bailing out, I had better get out of there. I’d had a sort of wannabe headache coupled with a wannabe nausea since late afternoon, and curling up at home with a cup of tea and a book seemed like a better plan than staying for a movie I only half wanted to see.

And whaddaya know, Cavite won its category (Schizoid). Ah, well. The jury must have known something I didn’t.

29 again?

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I just realised it’s that time of year (no, not 29 again, 32 this time, thank you very much) so I suppose it’s time for a wishlist:

1. Dinner at Credo (downstairs, with wine)
2. External flash for Canon EOS 300/350D
3. Non-stop (bag, Amarula tube, packing crate, whatever)
4. Map of Vienna and/or Salzburg
5. Scrapbooking stuff
6. (Good) single malt whisky
7. Champagne
8. Hiking/walking shoes, preferably gore-tex
9. Ladies tees from think geek or similar, preferably not in white – edit: Or from here!
10. The new P.D. James novel and the new Jeffrey Archer novel, preferably in paperback (the Archer so-called hardback that I’ve seen feels like a paperback with hard covers and is therefore an abomination verging on blasphemy, I haven’t checked the James, but I don’t really collect her so I’d rather have something that’s easy to bring on the bus).

All filmed out

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Due to some massive self-delusion of the “Yeah, I’ve got lots of free time to spare” kind I volunteered to help out at Kosmorama – Trondheim International Film Festival. It’s a pretty new thing, only in its second year, but, you know, films, right? It’s mostly all good – I’m in the theatre hosting team, which means I stand at the door taking tickets and counting press/industry people. I also have to be present in the theatre during the showing of the film to make sure the machinist gets alerted if there is a problem with the sound or picture. So, yes, I need to see the film. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it… We also get to go to as many shows as we want when we’re not actually “working” ourselves (well, technically there is a limit of 28 shows during the one-week festival, but what with being on duty for three sessions and working full time in my usual job there is no way I could possibly see anywhere near as much). In fact, the only drawbacks I can see are A. uhm, sleep and all that and B. film overload.

I’ve had two stints so far, Sunday “early” (9-4:30) and Monday “late” (4:30-whenever it ends) – Im also on Thursday “late”, and think I’ll go see a film or two tomorrow (Martin’s working tomorrow night, so it’s either a film or two or rattling around in the flat by myself), but I’m having today off. I love movies, but I do have a threshold, and I think I need a break today…

Now to the part I’m sure you’re all waiting for: Which films did I see and what did I think of them?

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
In the original and no sub titles. I love film festivals! I also loved the film. I think it’s probably even better than Ice Age.

Everything is Illuminated
I never got around to reading the book, and I suppose I’m unlikely to now, but the film was great. Better when it was mostly funny than when it was mostly serious, but definitely great.

A State of Mind
A British film crew was given access to follow two North Korean schoolgirls training towards a Mass Games performance. The glimpse into North Korean society is fascinating, as is the whole concept of Mass Games – especially the way it’s tied up to the whole ideology of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il. I was left with very mixed feelings (this is good) as on the one hand I got so wrapped up in the girls and their expectations and exhileration, and their awe at being allowed to perform in honour of their leaders and on the other a part of me is thinking “they’re all brain-washed” for every second sentence uttered. I think it will take a while to digest this one.

Parzania
This one was a bit of a shock, as I’d not read the synopsis properly and although I was expecting the initial idyll to be shattered I wasn’t quite prepared for the thoroughness of the shattering, to put it that way. Bring Kleenex. Also, being supposed to clear the theatre and get it ready for the next show and taking the tickets of the people arriving for the next show with a smile isn’t the best way of following this film. Consider seeing it in your own time… Very good, though.

Pat Garret and Billy the Kid
Brilliant, obviously, though I suppose I ought to have seen a lot more westerns to fully appreciate it, but still, brilliant. This was a newly refurbished version, and getting to see it on the big screen with no subtitles was too good an opportunity to miss (though not everybody thought so, apparently, four of the 30-odd people in the audience left, separately, within the first ten minutes – I thought that very strange, I suppose with a few of the other films at the festival you may realise it’s not the sort of thing you expected at all and decide to leave, but you’d have to be pretty dim to do so with this one, and four dimwitted people is quite a lot for such a small audience).

Cavite
Uhm. No. I’m sorry, but this completely failed to push any buttons with me whatsoever. My main problem was that there was no real lead-up to the “thriller” part – you are thrown into a conversation between a man and a woman (actually, it’s more of a monologue by the woman) about how she intends to have an abortion and he’s obviously not very happy about it (which is understandable, but not terribly engaging without a bit more backstory) and then you see the guy walking around being a security guard (which is supposed to be ironic, I bet), eating some fast food and pointing his flashlight at things. Then flashback to a few days (or is it weeks?) earlier he’s in the airport (more conversations with his (ex)girlfriend over the phone here), apparently on his way to the Phillipines. He arrives in the Phillipines and five minutes into the film Wham! the action begins – his sister and mother have been kidnapped and he is led a not-so-merry dance through Manila and Cavite, all cumulating in… well, now, that would be telling, but I must say, though who can tell what we’d do if pressed, that I don’t think I’d have, but, anyhow, back to the point: I was given no time (or reason) to feel empathy for the guy before being expected to feel tense on his behalf, and so I didn’t. What little backstory we got suggested to me that he was likely to be fundamentally miserable no matter what the kidnappers did, so I really didn’t care. I felt somewhat sorry for his mother and sister in a detached sort of way, but less so for their fictional plight than for the very real plight of the thousands of random “extras” we get a glimpse of in the slums and streets. To top it off there were things I didn’t much care for in the way Cavite was filmed, too (too much fancy camerawork that just annoyed me), but I don’t think that would have bothered me if I had appreciated the plot, so I’m not going to quibble much with that. My advice, though, is pretty clear: Go see something else.

Off to the south

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Not far enough south, though, unfortunately. Message from the husband this morning “Looks like the weather gods have caught on to the fact that you’re coming to Oslo – it’s snowing again” (he’s already in Oslo, teaching his colleagues to drink wine – or something like that). Drat.

Anyway, a weekend in Oslo comprising, among other things, a calvados tasting, Waiting for Godot at the national theatre (though in Norwegian) and dinner with good friends can’t be bad, even with snow.

Some words

Mirthful 3 Comments

I’ve been chastisised for not writing much lately. The problem, dear fictional readers, with real readers, is that they talk back. Some of them even pout at you through msn messenger for not diverting them sufficiently frequently…

So. Some words.

Last weekend there was an article in Dagbladet (I remembered today because a letter to the editor in this weekend’s paper – which I only looked through today due to the fact that we don’t buy papers and my parents do and I visited my mum this afternoon and the paper was lying around so I looked through it – referred to it *phew* sorry about that sentence, hope you’re still breathing) about a bus driver in Oslo who is known as “kj

Could someone please explain

Mirthful

I mean, I see the point of blog-spam, sort of, to the extent that I see the point of spam at all – you have product, you want to sell it, in order to sell it you need to have people visiting your webpage and so you spread the url of your webpage by any means possible. It sort of makes sense.

Then we had the spate of junk comments that linked to legitimate sites, which confused me for a bit. I suppose it was done in the hope that it would confuse spam-detectors. Well, sorry to disappoint, but we don’t need to blacklist everything, you know, there is such a thing as a “delete” button, too. Anyway, after having thought about it, these attempts sort of made sense (in a twisted kind of way, but still).

But this morning I found someone calling herself (or should I say “itself”) Betsy Markum had left a comment on this entry to tell me that her (its) coworker has bought a car (I’ve okayed it, since it’s not doing any harm apart from confusing and amusing me). Why? The entry is old hat and does not mention cars. The comment does not contain any links. Does (the bing that calls itself) Betsy want me to e-mail her and say “Wow! Where do you get such cars?” or “Wow! Where do you work since you can afford to buy such cars?” (it seems a hefty price for a car, though I really have no idea of realistic car prices).

Could someone please explain?