Un-On Demanding

The Seventeenth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Maundy Thursday.

Just a quick update for the lovers of irony out there (and when I say 'irony', I mean it in the same way that Alannis Morrisette does, which is to say it's not really irony but it almost sounds as if it might be and until they come up with a word that means 'near-irony' I'm going to say 'irony'. I mean, you could argue that there's nothing wrong with saying 'near-irony', but you can't really have near-irony, can you? So they need a word for that thing that would be near-irony if there was such a thing). After making a big fuss about how my viewing habits were tending toward streaming here, circumstance has conspired to return my telly-watching to something like it was when I was a boy.

Maybe it's when you reach a certain age, you start to revisit themes and ideas you'd long since abandoned. I buy most of my comics digitally now, but with a few shops having 50p boxes with titles from a year or more ago I've returned to making more eclectic purchases. Do any Manchesterfordians here remember the name of that second hand bookshop on Peter St? I used to rifle through the comic boxes there and find all manner of nonsense, from the 60s and 70s (this was in the 80s) in there. I'd buy whatever I fancied, rather than following a particular writer or artist. I feel I've recaptured some of that reckless excitement when I root through the bargain boxes now. An hour or so flicking through them all and pocketing stuff that catches your eye. At ten bob a throw you can't go wrong. The search is part of the enjoyment.

I actually had this telly!

And now I find I'm going back to those heady pre remote control days with my TV viewing. I found out that my Nineteenth Telly Recommendation, Community is having its fifth season shown on the Sony channel here in the UK. Now I don't have any access to Sky or Virgin (but if you do, tune in. They're showing older episodes at teatime and the new series is on at 10 on Thursdays) but me Mam and Dad do. And since they're not bothered about using Virgin TV Anywhere on their mobile device of choice, they've let me log on to this service so that I can watch the Sony channel and catch up with it! However, since I'm not connected to all their Tivo gubbins I can only live stream channels. In other words, I have to make sure I'm not doing anything when the programme airs and have that one and only chance to watch it. In order to fully recreate the TV watching experience of my teens I intend to make up a cup of tea during the ad break and come back too late so I miss the first two minutes of the second half. I wonder how long it will take before the novelty wears off?

I'm guessing just the one episode.

More soonliest.

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.