Did America get Thomas the Tank Engine voiced by Ringo Starr? It was a thinly disguised series of morality tales by some English vicar or other where Thomas usually ended up getting bricked into a tunnel for not being strong enough to make it up a hill. I know they made some travesty of a children’s film out of it, but the original ITV series tune was better than the series itself. Anyroad, if you didn’t get it, tell me if it tickles your fancy, my stateside readers… :
A couple of parties last night saved me from my French accordion evening. Even met some nice Germans. I spent a lot of the night speaking Spanish with immediate English translation and learning the occasional German word. None to beat schadenfreude nor “kartopelkopff” (phonetic), my all time favourites…
When I got home I watched part one of Steven Fry on manic depression. Looks to be a very good series that, recommended. And then Mock the Week. Jo Brand is certainly looking her age, yet that milky milky bloke (Hugh Dennis/Punt?) looks the same as 10 years ago…
Today I’ve been slaving over another ecommerce site. It’s looking as good as it ever will right now as the stock catalogue pictures of flowers and suchlike are very pretty. Unfortunately I’m going to have to replace them with 114 dubious images of which this one to the right is representative. So it’s downhill from here… I reckon they should splash out on some new pix, as it looks all too amateurish with these representations. Mind you I’ve never really been in the market for diluted dandelion droplets, so who’s to tell…
I get RSS notifications whenever anyone uploads a photo tagged with guadalajara, or taunton and various other things. I’m glad I didn’t miss this one, of the 629 which passes not far from here… Ivan’s photoblog, by the way, is at lensations.com and has some great (old school non digital) b&w shots. As I point out in the Flickr, comments, at least 629 reads the same upside down… Todo se puede en Mexico.
Yesterday: To the baratillo, James, to find a lucha libre mask for Fernando and a microwave oven. It was too hot by half, but I’m well fond of wandering round Mexican markets and can even judge which aisle to go down by casting an eye for obstacles such as women with prams, queues for birria and machete-wielding coconut salesmen. A half success of sorts. I found out there’s a lucha libre spectacular in the bull ring on Sunday that might be worth a visit, I found a microwave oven for 25 bucks, but when I tried to get back to that particular stand it had either morphed into a blenders and kitchen sink stall or been raptured up. Never mind, in the town centre they’re on sale for 45 bucks or so new. And they deliver, which is important because I had visions of being discovered passed out on the wrong side of town in the afternoon heat with a microwave on my chest. On the only day of the year I didn’t have health insurance…
DVD purchases yesterday included: El Mar Adentro (Spanish film about a bloke in a wheelchair), Zapata (Hagiography of the famous revolutionary), Sin City (seen it before (4 lulus or thereabouts), but could happily watch it again), Lucky number Sleven (mixed reviews for this gangster film) and Hostal (Tarantino’s latest outing). I’m not 100% on whether they’ll all work cos I found a 5 peso (Fiddy cent) (30 pee) DVD store with no TV to test them on, but at that price, I’ll take my chances. Sometimes I’m not convinced they’re really originals at all…
On the MP3 player at the time: Boagworld– Pragmatic Accessibility, Total Podcastrophe #11, Mark Kermode’s film reviews from Friday and CD1 of Massive Attacks’ recent Best Of. I’ve got some crappy short headphones with a cable that doesn’t quite reach my pocket. So I went round with the player stuffed under my T-Shirt on my shoulder parrot-style, affixed with the ‘gentle perspiration” of my skin. It’s a wonder it still works… Anyroad, my pedometer (pace counter thing, (pedo means fart in Spanish, cue marketing nightmare…)), racked up 22,000 steps yesterday which makes up for Saturday’s shuffling round the house and trip to the air-conditioned cinema when the heat got too much.
We also got a fan from Gigante and barbecued up a storm again in the evening. Chorizo is the new bacon. The VH1 were showing Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (4.5 Lulus). It was slightly edited, but even then was great to watch again. Such a powerful film, the kind that provokes discussion straight afterwards. If you’re not headed straight to bed… I read on the IMDB that the title is from when Anthony Burgess was in Borneo and saw Orangutans. Orang= man, Utan = of the forest. Hence clockwork man, which is what Alex ends up as when he’s reprogrammed. Seems plausible enough…
Today: Renegotiating terms @ see-nay-sco-pee-oh since I’ve finished the whole Camino Real thing. Jose’s round this avo for a briefing on how tomorrow’s photo shoot at centro nueva era’s going to happen. Life is good. Stu (click for nostaligic look at how site looked 2 years ago) complained that he couldn’t tell arse from elbow of what I’m up to from my blog. Something about cars breaking down and genteel ladies in photos… Give us a Skype and I’ll elaborate, Sr. Capstick. Him’n’Anne’re yoghurt weaving in a hippy commune in NZ right now… To each their own.
We got Thomas in the states. We actually had two different Conductors, though: Ringo and also George Carlin of all people.
You mean Rufus out of Bill and Ted was the Fat Controller? Makes perfect sense… Thanks for the comment, Chris 😀
Seem to remember that they had to rewrite some of the books as the originals have all sorts of taboo language (racist terms) in them…