Sunday Night at the Palladium Tetrafluoride Factory

The Fourteenth of April Two Thousand and Thirteen. Sunday.

Palladium Tetrafluoride (PdF4) is is a strong oxidising agent and undergoes rapid hydrolysis in moist air and is only mentioned here in order to shoehorn in a very weak pun. Although, it was interesting to note that palladium - the metal - has its own currency code (under the ISO 4217 standard that labels pounds as GBP, euros as EUR and American dollars as USD one troy ounce of palladium is represented by XPD) and that one of the chemists associated with its discovery - Richard Chenevix - was awarded the Copley Medal. I mention this because at this moment I'm listening to Gary Copley on Radio York (big bands, vocals and jazz. Not normally my thing, but doing it quite nicely at the mo). Here's Gary rocking a tank top:

Ha-ha, they've reversed that photo! His buttons do up on the wrong side, like he's wearing a blouse! Still, that tank top is fierce. Man, I wish our tank tops at work were like that. Instead they look like this:

Brrr! (Incidentally, have you ever wondered why they're called 'tank tops'? I did until I Wikied it two minutes ago. Here's why. Remember: knowledge is a bell you can't unring.

Anyway, that's not the same Gary Copley as the Dublin artist who paints pieces like this:

All of which is my way of saying that things have been pretty much the same all the time I've not been blogging. Everything bumps into everything else. The sails of the Blut Vin Windmill rotate back to their origin as they must.

I've just bought the 3rd season of my Nineteenth Telly Recommendation, Community, which they didn't have on Region 2 so I have gone and forked out for a Region 1 disc. Before watching Manchester City reach the FA Cup final I spent my Sunday watching three episodes of it including the sublime Remedial Chaos Theory which follows the characters through seven different timelines. Clever and funny.

I also watched three episodes of my Twentieth Telly Recommendation, The Mimic. It's being repeated on More 4 from next Sunday (as well as the whole series being on 4od) and I think it's worth a watch. The trailers all show Terry Mynott as the main character, Martin, doing his impressions and I thought "oh, this is all a bit obvious". But then a clip featured this exchange as Martin discusses the merits of a DVD with his friend, Jean:

‘Nah it’s got subtitles. I hate that.’
‘Subtleties Jean; it’s got subtleties.’
‘I don’t like those either.’.

That made me smile and I thought I'd try it after all. I was rewarded with a sweet and melancholy short series (it's only five episodes - give it a go) that mixes a deliberately aimless charm with some very good character work and performances.

That'll do for now. Excuse me while I get some toast before bed.

More soonliest.