The Rain Stick by Seamus Heaney

I heard this great poem on 'Poetry Please' on Radio 4. It's by Seamus Heaney.

  The Rain Stick   

Up-end the stick and what happens next

Is a music that you never would have known

To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe

Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales

Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes

A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

The glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,

Twice, ten, and thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again

It's a Weezer-thon! Parte the third.

Keep Fishin'

"Oh girl when I'm in love with you, keep fishin' if you feel it's true. There's nothing much that we can do to save you from yourself."

Trippin' Down the Freeway

"I told you, you'd put on weight. You went out with someone called Kevin Green."

Dope Nose (Live in Camden)

"For the times that you wanna go and bust rhymes real slow, I'll appear, slap you on the face and enjoy the show."

Hash Pipe

 I'm pretty sure this is about a transvestite prostitute onSanta Monica Boulevard. It's funny that people just sing it like a hash anthem!

It's a Weezer-thon! Parte the Second.

El Scorchio

"But that's just a stupid dream that I won't realize 'Cause I can't even look in your eyes without shaking and I ain't faking, I'll bring home the turkey if you bring home the bacon."

Buddy Holly

"What's with these homies dissin' my girl? Why do they gotta front? What did we ever do to these guys that made them violent?"

Pork and Beans

"Oakley makes the shades that transform a tool. You'd hate for the kids to think that you've lost your cool."

I'm Your Daddy (live on Letterman)

The lyrics aren't so special on this last one, but this video on Letterman kind of got me back into Weezer after I thought they'd lost it. Nice to see them having some good nerdy fun. And this version is better than the album version actually. The little girl laughing at the end's very cute.

It's a Weezer-thon! Parte the First.

I loves me some pop-rock and Weezer are the kings. Blue, Pinkerton and Maladroit (despite cries to the contrary) are their amazing albums, green, red and Raditude are good (with a few stinkers) and Make Beleive (aside from the awesome Beverly Hills), Hurley and Death to False Metal are so-so. In my humble opinion. I loved Alone 1 too and wasn't fussed with Alone 2. Am currently waiting for the weekend to purchase Alone 3. So in tribute to my overenthusiasm for Weezer, here's a few of my favourites.

Good Life (Live in Camden)

"When I look in the mirror, I can't believe what I see! Tell me who's this funky dude, looking back at me?"

No-one (Livid Festival, Australia)

"I want a girl who will laugh for no-one else. When I'm away she puts her make-up on the shelf."

 

Holiday (on the Weezer cruise)

"Let's go away for a while, you and I, to a strange and distant land."

Crybaby - I Cherish The Heartbreak More Than The Love That I Lost

Bristolian and magnificent (even though I've only heard this one song). I thought I'd heard it on BBC Radio 6 and then couldn't remember who played it, to get back and find it on the tracklisting. This back tacking was necessary, since he's really really hard to find on youtube! Anyway, I tracked him down via The Guardian newspaper before realising that I actually heard him on Clive Anderson's 'Loose Ends' show on Radio 4. Here's his website: ohcrybaby

Hugo - Movie Review

This is a review I wrote for the website of my English school -  Voss Natural 英会話, in Kobe, Japan.

Martin Scorsese was a hero of mine when I was growing up. I was never big into action movies and I was too nervous for horror, but I loved gangster movies, and similarly tough films like ‘Raging Bull’ and ‘Taxi Driver’, and Mr. Scorsese was the king. I’m sorry to say that they were very violent (and I loved it!) but there was also great emotion in that. Scorsese films could make you care about characters that were really not such nice people. His story telling was brilliant, his directing was brilliant, everything looked amazing and he was super-cool.

One extremely likeable thing about his movies was always the great feeling of family among the characters. When the characters had arguments and fights it was like a family was falling apart and it was heart-breaking. In ‘Goodfellas’, Martin Scorsese’s own mother even appears as the mother of one of the main characters. Some of his films, since around 1999, have lost that a little, but not Hugo.

This sense of family is what ‘Hugo’ does best. The story is about the lonely feeling that something is missing from your life or thinking you’re not a part of anything. Maybe you’re an orphan (someone without parents) or a person without a partner to love or maybe you’re someone who lost something that you were passionate about.

There is a strong emotional connection between the character Hugo and an old man who works in a toy shop in a train station, where Hugo lives. When the story starts, we don’t really understand this connection but we can feel that it’s important and we find out that the reason for it is linked to a mechanical man which Hugo and his father were repairing. Slowly, emotional connections form between all the main characters in the story and we even start to care about the bad characters, just like in the Scorsese movies I loved growing up. This is not one of Scorsese’s tough films however; it’s a children’s film, but it’s an emotional and intelligent film which has been lovingly made.

Everything that you see here looks beautiful and even the sound makes good use of the space in the cinema. The thing I was most pleased about, visually, was how Hugo used 3D. With lots of modern 3D films, the directors don’t think about 3D while they’re shooting. But in Hugo you can see that Martin Scorsese has put effort into making 3D a part of the film. It’s one of the few 3D films in which the effect really adds to the atmosphere and brings you closer to the story. One film review from Anrew O’Hahir, on Salon.com, said “I’ve seen the future of 3-D moviemaking, and it belongs to Martin Scorsese”. I agree. This isn’t an action movie, so there’s no explosions coming out of the screen, but the 3D is used to tell the story. For example, close up face shots bring us closer to the character and in one scene we can see specks of dust floating around in the sunlight.

Film and its history are a big theme in Hugo and everyone who knows about Martin Scorsese knows how much he loves cinema. With that in mind, Hugo is a film that he should be very proud of. Magic is another theme and Hugo is a magical, heart-warming story and a beautiful production. It’s something that can be enjoyed by both children and adults, hopefully for a long time to come.

Hugo is in cinemas in Japan now, so please go and see it while you have the chance. I loved it!

Collapse along Dover's White cliffs.

There's been a big collapse of chalk from Dover's white cliffs. Thousands of tonnes of chalk! Here's the article. Quite interesting!

Cliff collapse!

A poem by me. Penguin (Green Strawberry)

A poem for the Chi. By me!

Penguin (Green Strawberry)

My Japanese chrysanthemum,
My English rose!
Our love is a
Green strawberry.
Green strawberries will grow.

Bobby Womack - Please Forgive My Heart

I didn't know he was on XL music label. What a great label it is and a nice song. Not too electronic, just nicely simmering. Love it!