StuffILike ❤️
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it’s a traditional Broadway-style musical…executed perfectly
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it’s mad that human beings can be so talented
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i really like the Barbican…but how much time has been spent over the years by people trying to work out the seat numbers?
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the words are very witty. Cole Porter knew what he was doing
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the updates were good too…it was neat that, given there was a Kate, and Ted, that they called the band leader ‘Steve’
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the set reminded me a little bit of Adrian Dunbar’s theatre in Hear My Song
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I was really impressed by what I later discovered is called “the chair rollover trick” link
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it was worth turning the phone off just before England’s penalties….but tbf I dont much enjoy England penalties anyway
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refereeing is more art than science, often more subjective than objective
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they need the VAR referees to be VAR specialists
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the system by which they score referees is ‘interesting’
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I still don’t really know why they do it
Finished reading: Fake Heroes by Otto English 📚
Great book.
Some of the targets are maybe a bit soft. For example, it’s no great shock to learn that John Wayne was a bit right wing, and not as rough-ty tough-ty in real life as he was on film.
Much of the book is debunking the film or Ladybird version of the heroes' lives. Those who prefer the Ladybird versions perhaps wont much like it.
Giving good epithet
This is good, particularly the bit ive put in bold.
It’s from Otto English’s “Fake Heroes - Ten False Icons and How They Altered the Course of History”
My serving suggestion would be to substitute in the name of someone more fashionable than Mother Teresa
Teresa gave good epithet and many of her quotations about love , empathy and humility dot Pinterest , Facebook and the pages of glossy magazines to this day .
Her most famous quotations include
" A life not lived for others is not a life " ,
" I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world" and "
I know I am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering ” .
Something peculiar happens to words when they are attached to the names of celebrated prophets. On their own and of themselves, many, like those above, might seem a little banal – trite even. But put a famous name like Mother Teresa’s beneath them and they are transformed into something of value
Currently reading: Fake Heroes by Otto English 📚
Peter Butterworth and the Wooden Horse
#TodayILearned that Carry On actor Peter Butterworth auditioned for a part in the 1949 film ‘The Wooden Horse’, which was about an actual wartime escape from Stalag Luft III
The wooden horse was a vaulting horse which concealed the entrance to a tunnel
Butterworth was rejected because he “didn’t look convincingly heroic or athletic enough”….despite being one of the actual vaulters in the actual prison camp a few years earlier
Via Otto English’s ‘Fake Heroes’
More here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete…
I’m enjoying Alan Carr’s Changing Ends auto-bio-pic on ITV
I think I’m right in saying that as well as having a dad who was a football manager he was also related to Willie Carr, who was famous for the immediately banned donkey kick
I’d never seen the donkey kick until I looked it up this morning, but it was explained and diagrammed in the Golden Goals sticker book, which as a kid I studied with almost religious intensity ⚽
The video of the kick is here - youtu.be/DOS8T8Ypn…
I didn’t know this Guardian series existed, but I like it 📖
Where to start with…… - www.theguardian.com/books/ser…
I like this statue of Oscar Wilde, near Charing Cross
Wilde isn’t someone who has had a huge impact on me, but I’ve always thought he’d be great to have had a night in the pub with…for me this statue, from this angle, is very much that
Recommended show: Kiss Me Kate at the Barbican, with him out of Line of Duty
I really enjoyed Kiss Me Kate at the Barbican, at the weekend. Here are some bullet points
Words I Like - Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home)
Jules Rimet, still gleaming
Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home) by Baddiel, Skinner & Lightning Seeds, The Lightning Seeds - songwhip.com/baddiel-s…
Words I like - The Limerick Rake
“Now there’s some say I’m foolish, there’s some say I’m wise, Though being fond of the women I think is no crime. Sure the son of King David, he had ten thousand wives, And his wisdom was highly regarded.”
Limerick Rake by Ronnie Drew - songwhip.com/ronnie-dr…
Very much enjoyed reading, and simultaneously listening to, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner
35 minutes well spent
Text at : poets.org/poem/rime…
And on Spotify at : open.spotify.com/show/5TBy…
Finished reading: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 📚
I like this, from Austin Kleon’s newsletter:
As the poet Donald Hall wrote in Essays After Eighty, everybody who works with their brains all day needs to lighten up a bit at night: “Before Yeats went to sleep every night he read an American Western. When Eliot was done with poetry and editing, he read a mystery book.”
Recommended TV: Avoidance
The blurb says: “Newly separated Jonathan has no home, no friends and no ambition. Can a slightly useless single dad find some much-needed backbone? Warm-hearted comedy with Romesh Ranganathan”
I say: Very funny. I cringed so hard I could have slipped a disc or something.
Recommended podcast: Origin Story
I’ve only discovered this podcast recently, but it seems very good
The blurb says
“[Lynsky and Dunt] “focus their attention on exploring a single over-used (and over-abused) word or phrase. Through a combination of historical, etymological and contextual analysis, they unmask the true meaning of our most popular misinterpreted expressions—giving listeners keen insight into the murky nature of political and societal communication.”
…but it’s an awful lot more entertaining, and usually less heavy than that
Origin Story - www.podmasters.co.uk/origin-st…
Origin Story - open.spotify.com/show/5Aog…
This is well worth a listen if you’re at all interested in football
The main things I got were:
The Audio Long Read: The impossible job – inside the world of Premier League referees
Finished reading: The Innocents by Bridget Walsh 📚
This wasn’t entirely my cup of tea, but i did enjoy it.
SPOILER ALERT - im not aure if it is a spoiler really, as its not part of the story….but the most shocking thing was in the afterword, when the author reveals that the tragedy in the story was a real event, albeit in Sunderland and not London.
Was up in London over the weekend and went to see the now not-very-new statue of George Orwell, at the BBC
I liked it very much - it reminded me of stylish comic artwork. I also liked the fact that he’s depicted ‘having a fag’
📷 photoblogging challenge #mbapr - unputdownable
Somewhat negated by the fact that I have clearly put them down on the floor for the photo, but I think this might be the only book I’ve got two copies of - Dave Marsh’s The Heart of Rock and Soul
📷 #mbapr photo-blogging challenge - hometown
I’m not 100% sure whether this is the photo I took, but if not it’s very similar.
The Giant and Hobnob show the oddness of my hometown, I think
🎙️ Podcast episode in which A.J. Jacobs tries, and largely fails,to live day without plastic
In honour of it being Saint George’s Day, this is Ralph Mctell, the ‘Streets of London’s bloke, singing what should be our national anthem 🎵🇬🇧🐲
England - Ralph Mctell