"The doctors say he'll never play golf again."

Okay, so I somewhat infamously don't have a television and therefore am only now getting around to seeing "Mad Men" which I am consuming hungrily, religiously on Netflix. It may be old news to everyone else by now but this show is absolutely fucking brilliant - great cast, gorgeously shot and designed and far far too many genius bits of writing to attempt detailing here. But I would be remiss if I didn't say that Episode 6, Season 3 - the one where the London agency heads come to New York - just blew the doors off for me the other night. I was fucking shouting and laughing, totally cathartic, at the same time. I don't believe anyone has better illustrated the cultural disconnect between the two sides of the pond than writers Matthew Weiner & Robin Veith did in this 45 minutes on AMC. Hilarious, savage, heartbreaking, unimpeachable. And highly, slyly, satisfying - like setting off the literary equivalent of an IED. Like Guy Fawkes Day for theatregeeks. Fucking awesome...

She

She just... she has the most beautiful spirit. Sometimes, I'll hear her singing softly in the next room. I'll quietly get up to go listen in the open doorway. And I'll find her propped up, chin resting in her palm, sprawled belly down across the bed, her legs scissoring the air, working on her laptop, totally unawares. She doesn't even know she's singing. I just look at her and feel my heart break in two. With gratitude for a change...

Dsylectic Ear

I've been hearing the wrong lyric at the end of Death Cab's "Stable Song", which closes out the album Plans. The melody, like much of their canon still absolutely clefts my heart in twain but Ben Gibbard's line "I won't mind" is a far more hopeful benediction than what my dyslectic ear took for "I won't know it". As said before but bears repeating - no one can touch these guys...

Pop Culture Notes - more in a series...

Procrastinating my ass off with rare television viewing this weekend. Two things to weigh in on:

1) "Schindler's List" broadcast on HBO last night, followed by "Gandhi", programming a Ben Kingsley marathon, apparently, but that's not my point. The Academy Awards are frickin' bullshit. We all know that, don't we? I submit that the year Kevin Costner and "Dances With Wolves" beat out Martin Scorsese and "Goodfellas" was the year I declared them "dead to me, man, they're dead to me!". But be that as it may and for what it's worth, Liam Neeson lost out in the Best Actor category for his performance in "Schindler's List" in 1993 to goddamn Tom Hanks in fucking "Philadelphia" and my man was robbed, I tell ya. Fuckin' robbed.

2) Caught Lian Lunson's documentary about Leonard Cohen, "I'm Your Man", the night before. Very cool, particularly in light of having just seen LC in concert at The Paramount in Oakland last month. But the film, on second viewing, is far more interesting, not surprisingly, when Cohen himself is on camera. The conceit of Lunson's doc is the juxtaposition of interviews with and footage of LC himself with a "tribute" concert in 2005 featuring other artists - Nick Cave, Anthony, Beth Orton, Jarvis Cocker and more - performing his songs. Nobody can do these tunes like Cohen himself and particularly in the case of floppy-haired, hirsute, chubbyass Rufus Wainwright, it gets annoying. In fact there is way way too much Wainwright - his sister Martha, as well his mother and aunt, The McGarrigle Sisters are featured - in both the concert and subsequently the film. They may actually rival the subject himself in terms of screen time and the contrast between Leonard Cohen's thoughtful, nuanced, exceedingly humble remarks and the self-involved, melodramatics of Rufus Wainwright with his Judy Garland schtict could hardly be more outrageously glaring. In a word, ugh. Or to deploy a term from our long ago drinking days, please please give this man his Leonard Cohen neat.

Thank you and goodnight...

Dog's life

Mild panic in San Raf today as C&S's ancient canine mysteriously went missing. Thorough search of the leafy neighbourhood ensues turning up nothing. Kids on verge of tears when the nearly deaf old coot comes ambling up the driveway of her own volition. C promptly packs her into the back of the Toyota with the younger pup, off to the park for a "proper" walkabout at the dog run. Don't ya just love a happy ending?

Welcome Back. Sorta...

Oh, my dear Blogger...

We used to have something akin to the "Duly Noted" Live Journal here at Blogger but apparently it's been disappeared into some secret cyber prison abroad. A blogging "extraordinary rendition", if you will. In any event, however sorry we may feel about it later, we're endeavouring now to detail random musings. The old Google blog was essentially a duplicate of the equally infrequently updated Live Journal one so perhaps we can reform that indifferently with us.

The news, such as it is, is that we're out in Northern California working on a new play, listening to a tremendous amount of Death Cab For Cutie and are delighted to have stumbled across Dana's "Life Like Television" blog (a reference to Life Without Buildings, we think) which we highly recommend. Rock on...