Any Other Business: Part LXIII
Filed under: Talking Politics,Talking Television — Fergal Casey @ 5:01 pm
Tags: Bones, Captain Kirk, COVID-19, Eurosport, Geraint Thomas, Giro d'Italia, James T Kirk, Julian Alaphillipe, Kirk, Leo the Leak, Leo Varadkar, Level 5, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Primoz Roglic, Sicily, Simon Harris, Star Trek, Status Red, The coronavirus, The Engineer, Tour de France, Vuelta Espana
It's March, Bones, but not as we knew it, not as we knew it, not as we knew it then
Something approaching a red alert
Now is the winter of our discontent… Etc. Hours before the clock struck midnight and we entered Level 5, a return to a modified form of the panicked lockdown of March and April, news leaked that the number of coronavirus cases in schools were actually surging. But no matter, the important thing is that most people stay under house arrest for six weeks, while the schools stay open. If the numbers don't improve, we will be chided for our complacency, rather than the schools being shuttered just to see if that might make a difference. The 5 Level plan fell apart from the moment it was announced Dublin was between two of the stages. The Engineer held forth last week to me that all we needed was a simple 3 Level plan — 1) basic precautions 2) things are hotting up 3) lock it down — and simple empirical thresholds to trigger those transitions, like 14-day new cases/per 100,000 population figures applied by county. Instead we have had our own 'chaotic disaster' of illogic, inconsistency, endless leaking by Leo Varadkar and Simon Harris, and pointless back and forth. And what frustrates more than all is the insistence that the schools stay open, even though this logically consistently offends against reason when all gatherings are bad, all indoor gatherings are very bad, but schools are somehow magically grand.
I for one have this vision of —-Level 6: Apocalypse—
BUT THE SCHOOLS STAY OPEN
Trop de Grand Tours
Yesterday while watching Eurosport manfully attempt to cover the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta Espana at the same time my mind rebelled. I had slowly realised that the Giro seemed light on big names this year after Geraint Thomas was invalided out, and then when watching highlights showing Roglic pipping Alaphillipe for Liege-Bastogne-Liege I figured out that if they were there then many big names had skipped the Giro because it overlapped with the Vuelta. The Vuelta was therefore the bigger race. But watching them both in these past few days has been an unnerving experience. I have literally started to feel cold just from watching the unusual vistas: there is something karmically wrong about Grand Tour cycling in the late autumn, indeed the Vuelta is going to hurtle into November. And even when temperatures were still high in Sicily the landscapes looked autumnal, and increasingly desolate. Not exactly the mood you usually get from the sun-kissed tours. And not exactly the mood you want to imprint on yourself for six weeks of strictest lockdown either…
Any Other Business: Part LX
Filed under: Talking Movies,Talking Music,Talking Politics,Talking Television — Fergal Casey @ 5:02 pm
Tags: Bryan Fuller, Christopher McQuarrie, COVID-19, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter, Jack Crawford, Leo Varadkar, Mads Mikkelsen, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Netflix, Red Dragon, Simon Harris, Simon Pegg, The coronavirus, Tom Cruise, Twitter, Will Graham
But if it's a five stage plan, how can we have started at level 2.5 and gone on to level 3, with elements of level 4? That just doesn't track.
"I have a new plan, it involves beards and Morocco"
–So we beat on, boats all moored on the quay, hopelessly tied up for the present.
The media has curiously decided to remember the unelected and indeed rejected regime of Leo & Simon as the golden age of communications; despite the fiasco of the picnic in the park, coming after the statesman speech that said nothing, and the literal game of name that quote played for a celebrity Twitter audience.
But Dublin finds itself in an intolerable situation. The simplest task seems to stump this new cobbled together coalition of the unwanted. Why announce a plan with five levels, and simultaneously announce that Dublin is betwixt and between levels two and three? Why announce that Dublin is moving to level three, but then crucify pubs and restaurants with level four restrictions without calling those restrictions by name? Why pretend that any of this is based on science when there is no actual evidence that pubs and restaurants have been spreading disease while we all look pointedly at schools, that opened suspiciously at the right time to be responsible for the recent spike, and which will remain open – even during level five – because … science said that's that okay?
The sinister nature of classical music
Hannibal is leaving Netflix at the end of September. Good riddance, one should say. But a completist Mads Mikkelsen impulse drove me to try and crash thru the final two seasons. To no avail. 6 episodes into season 2 and its increasingly disgusting visuals I began to lose the will to live and had to abandon the drive to the Reichenbach fall. There is much to dislike about the clear enjoyment the makers take in showing human organs being turned into haute cuisine, even when it's a major character; suggesting they were talking about themselves when having Will say Hannibal eats not to honour, but because he regards humans as no different to pigs. So to Bryan Fuller et al these are not real living breathing characters, just empty sharply dressed ciphers to be pushed (agonisingly slowly) around the chessboard; in a world conveniently entirely devoid of CCTV outside the lunatic asylum. But I also began to be disheartened by the relentless yoking of classical music to Hannibal's ghoulish evil. It reminded me of a piece around 2015 that praised Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation for giving Simon Pegg's comic relief Benjy a love of classical music, when the standard operating procedure would have been to give such a detail to Sean Harris' supervillain Solomon Lane as a marker of his supervillainy, a la Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me; watching sharks eat people to the strains of Mozart. Cruise and McQuarrie went further in fact, basing an astonishing set-piece around Puccini's Turandot, and making 'Nessun Dorma' the leitmotif for Rebecca Ferguson's mysterious assassin. But why is this so damn unusual? Why is classical music so often relegated to nonsense touches like Kevin Bacon's Beethoven-loving Nazi in the cold open of X-Men: First Class? Football fans lap up 'Nessun Dorma' and 'Zadok the Priest', everybody who whistles the 'Imperial March' from Star Wars is unconsciously a fan of 'Mars, the Bringer of War' from Gustav Holst's The Planets. Why do film-makers who will often edit to a temp-track of classical music so despise that very same classical music when it comes to depicting it as a part of their characters' lives?
Any Other Business: Part LVI
Filed under: Talking Music,Talking Politics,Talking Television — Fergal Casey @ 2:56 pm
Tags: Bane, Batman, BBC 2, Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Christophe Beck, COVID-19, Crimson Tide, E4, Elbow, Gregory Porter, HSE, Hush, Jools Holland, Joss Whedon, Later...with Jools Holland, Leo Varadkar, Lithium, McCoy Tyner Trio, Newsnight, Nirvana, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Simon Harris, St Vincent, Status Captain Scarlet, Status Crimson Tide, The coronavirus, WHO, Zoom
"The new orders say we're all to wear masks now. My world is collapsing…"
Status Crimson Tide
Well, today is the first day of Status Crimson Tide. And basically everything is good to go: pubs are open with provisos, churches are open with crowd control, cinemas are open with clearances, barbers are open with bookings, galleries are open with guidance, and countrywide drives can be conducted with caution. There was meant to be Status Captain Scarlet on July 20th, and then the all clear on August 10th, but things got …accelerated. It was obvious that public compliance with social distance, especially among young people, wasn't just fraying but had completely broken down, so the government was just making official what had become obvious. I'm inclined to think that the blame can be laid largely on the government itself. Leo's little picnic was the kibosh on people inconveniencing themselves for the sake of others when the unelected and in fact rejected Taoiseach would have no such sacrifices for himself. The complete failure of voluntary mask-wearing is a corollary of this decline of moral authority. Leo and Simon Harris did photo-ops of themselves wearing masks and nobody cared. After all they had been disparaging masks for nearly four months. Were they lying then or lying now? So now we have a new law to force mask-wearing on buses, and HSE ads have begun to run on TV extolling the joys of mask-wearing: it's to protect others from you spreading the disease. NO DUH! That was obvious in March. But from March onwards all the government wanted to talk about was how masks would encourage bad behaviour and the science was uncertain. The science wasn't uncertain, the bad behaviour argument was idiotic, and the upshot is that masks are unlikely to take off here which will hurt us all in the long run in trying to get back to a functioning society.
Christophe Beck and the Buffy sound
Crashing thru Buffy on E4's late-night re-runs, almost from the first few minutes of episode of season 2 it was obvious that something had changed, and that change was confirmed when the credits rolled: Christophe Beck had entered the recording studio. If season 1 was scored in a surprisingly straightforward spooky music for horror set-ups way then season 2 was when Beck, and almost by implication the other composers working around him, realised that this series was not an out and out horror show and should be scored as such. Instead it should be set with an emphasis on melancholy and romance as well as stirring action and jump scares.
Jools and the Jazz Trance
Well, now. So Jools Holland was allowed to present Later…with Jools Holland solo again as I had wished for before Christmas, and it only took a global pandemic to stop the middle-management meddling… It was nice, if curious, to have a featured guest interviewed and curate archive performances interspersed with the odd musical guest in the curious Zoom fashion of the times. And damn if Jools didn't regale Gregory Porter, to Porter's obvious delight, with the tale of the jazz trance mentioned hereabouts last year. It was a 2010 live episode of Later…with Jools Holland and Jools was trying in his inimitably (and endearing) ramshackle way to keep the show on track for time given that Newsnight was prepping to air live too once his show stopped. And standing waiting in the shadows was a large choir ready to join Elbow, but unfortunately he'd put on the McCoy Tyner Trio just before, and all four of them had gone into a proper eyes closed working out their harmonies by feel jazz trance. The camera captured a nervous looking Jools, baffled at how to get them to stop as he couldn't make eye contact with any of the players: a moment of panic that reduced Dad and I to helpless laughter. At last one musician opened his eyes and Jools was able to flag him down. He stopped, and Jools initiated a round of applause. Only for McCoy Tyner to misinterpret this, in his jazz trance, as a groovy audience's enthusiasm, and so into another chorus, only for Jools to foil him by asserting his authority as MC to insist that this had now gone on long enough and it was time for Elbow to get a look in.
St Vincent: one more tune
I didn't want to put a cover version into the selection of 10 of her best songs the other day, but you should check out St Vincent's performance of 'Lithium' with the surviving members of Nirvana, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 because what a cover version it is.
Any Other Business: Part LI
Filed under: Talking Politics — Fergal Casey @ 1:58 pm
Tags: Bane, COVID-19, Fine Gael, George Bush Jr, HSE, Leo Varadkar, Macbeth, Mike Pence, NPHET, Regina Doherty, Simon Harris, The Atlantic, The coronavirus, WHO, William Shakespeare
"It's mandatory advisory, but it's not compulsory"
And we're back to this unloved Fine Gael gibberish again. Leo Varadkar, who'd like to remind you a few more times that he's a medical doctor, thinks the science is uncertain when it comes to masks. It is not. The Atlantic tried to disentangle the miasma of confusion and scepticism around wearing a face mask. For some baffling reason it's being led by the WHO, one hopes not simply for political reasons to avoid agreeing with Taiwan. There are two distinct concepts here that are endlessly conflated – ingress and egress. To prevent oneself getting infected you need medical-grade PPE, but to stop oneself infecting everyone else you simply need a cotton bandanna. A cotton mask will reduce virus particles emitted from your mouth by 99%, quite obviously reducing your chances of infecting anyone. "Models show that if 80% of people wear masks that are 60% effective, easily achievable with cloth, we can get to an effective R0 of less than one. That's enough to halt the spread of the disease". Sure, there are other factors at play, like social distancing and demographics, but "in every region that has adopted widespread mask-wearing, case and death rates have been reduced within a few weeks". So the science here is uncertain in the same sense that George Bush Jr used to insist the science was uncertain on global warming. But whatever, just advise people to wear masks, and then watch so many Mike Pences float about the place boasting "I'm not infected", oblivious to the fact that you can be infected after taking a test clearing you, the virus takes days to manifest, and you can be asymptomatic.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time
We are now well into the fifth week of Status Burgundy lockdown. It is clear that the 'caretaker' government is softening us up by leak after leak for an extension for another 2 weeks, and adding insult to injury by blaming it on our complacency over social distancing rather than their strategic blindness over nursing homes being an obvious locus for COVID-19. But given the hysteria over policing this Bank Holiday does anyone seriously think that we will not be in lockdown for the June Bank Holiday too? Come Friday, Varadkar and Harris will trot out and regretfully inform us that because we got complacent, and our lax social distancing (inexplicably) caused a spike in transmission in nursing homes, that we will have to do penance for another two weeks. When those two weeks are nearly up, they will appear again, and announce another two week extension to take the June Bank Holiday out of play, lest all our good work be undone by dispersal to the seaside, and make this seem like a moment of buoyant optimism – this is how we beat COVID-19, can't you see it? can't you see it? One might think simply making it mandatory that everybody wear a mask at all times might allow us out of this national house arrest of not being allowed stray further than 2km on foot. One might equally think that a government clearly rejected by the people should not be making such consequential decisions for those people, all the while calling for national unity while openly disdaining 1/4 of voters. One would apparently be wrong on both fronts.
Any Other Business: Part XLVII
Tags: Boris Johnson, COVID-19, Fine Gael, Leo Varadkar, Lockdown, Simon Coveney, Simon Harris, Social distancing, Status Red, The coronavirus
What You Waiting For?
Why aren't we already on lockdown? What are we waiting for? Surely it is time to stop pretending social distancing is going to get the job done. A lockdown is inevitable, just tell us when it's going to be! Did we need permission from the example of the British doing it, because they allegedly have top experts working on the notion of behavioural fatigue? Today we had the nonsense that Government policy is not responsive to what's Trending on Twitter, after Ministers have spent a fortnight calling out people based on videos that have been posted on Twitter. The Government will make a decision tomorrow, probably, based on the advice of the medical experts. As with so much else in the last 9 years Fine Gael hides behind someone else when they want to do something they want to do but want to pretend it's being foisted on them. It is beyond time for Status Red. This is as ludicrous as the airlines having to decide in the absence of the State making any judgement call that it was probably a bad idea to be flying in and out to Italy 4 times a day. For once stop hiding behind other people, make the call yourself Varadkar, and do it already.
Time Tunnel Revisited
Well now, this has been rewarding. After 4 episodes of The Time Tunnel I am happy that, unlike when Beauregarde Hinkelmeister-Schmitt ruined my childhood by showing me The Equaliser, Irwin Allen's sci-fi show has been entertaining damn near 30 years after watching it. A particular joy being the writers clearly revelling in the time-travel paradoxes of an episode where a character in the present watches on in horror at his ruthless behaviour in the future. And, in a demented touch involving a comet not quite hitting the earth because of the tunnel's interference, the writers both aim to be a bit trippy and insist that their time travelling is a closed loop – everything has already happened the way it happened because of their interference before they even start interfering.