Hunter’s back in tiptop so we can finish our journey down the Lost Highway to spooky David Lynchville. Plus a long discussion of Halloween decorations and the long-awaited exercise update.
Next up: Alex power-cards his way to points with a double move that lands at Princess Mononoke.
Vaseline on the nipples before a race and NO COTTON on your body. My first 10k was on a tread mill twenty or so years ago, I was heavier and wore a baggy T-shirt, the bloody had reached my waist before I finished, boy did I look like a tool. Glad you liked the saxophone. Good point about The Straight Story and how easily avante garde artist’s ability to demonstrate classical technique, if they are truly an artist…… Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliette’ or, more to the point, John Coltrane on the album he recorded with Johnny Hartman also effortlessly demonstated this truth. My favourite sax duet of all time has to be that between Sydney Bechet and Bernard Zacharias on the seminal Paris live recording of ‘Petite Fleur’. check it out. Robert Blake was a favourite topic for Norm before he died, even tried to get him on the original and now hard to find Youtube podcast. Lost Highway was a favourite of my ex girlfriend. She was a film studies and literary criticism major from France, she let me know that the appearance of a dwarf in a film is generally a heads up that it is a dream sequence. I am surprised no one mentioned Phillip K. Dick, he is the biggest influence here as he will have been for early Cronenberg et al. It’s well worth reading the Ursula Leguin memoire where she mentions being a fan of Dick and talking to him on the phone. Whilst I love Ms Leguin she very mistakenly attributed Dick’s mental instability to hallucinagens. A grave oversight and inadvertent propagandising but in her defence, she knew him and didn’t feel the need to check. The blaming of drugs for social problems and the types of genetic diversity which are no longer easily homogenised by the steam roller of capitalism is a project which continues without interruption, Leguin was swept up in it and a young person at the time. Dick was obviously bi polar and, to me at least, obviously had the genetic predisposition to speediness and extreme interpolation and extrapolation that I have. However he was no fan of hallucinagens or of hippy culture. He took speed to work, he was incredibly prodigious, and it made him more ill, in his defence it was the US military that popularised the use of speed and the machismo of that association suited Dick. He had to work so hard because he was weird and honest men are ejected from the gravy train the moment they let the bullshitters around them know they are seen. Last thing Alex, the work that Leguin reviewed in her autobiography was ‘The Man in the HIgh Castle’ and that book might be called ‘we live in the alternate future’. For a writer of similar power who is too often overlooked Dick’s aproximate contemporary Jim Thompshon is fucking incredible, everyone knows ‘The Grifters’ and ‘The Killer Inside Me’ but ‘Savage NIght’ is truly stunning. I wonder if the title is from ‘ Verklärte Nacht by Arnold Schoenberg (trans Transfigured Night) some say it is the first atonal piece, some the last tonal one. For me it was just music, things get really simple when you really understand them. Such a shame that the process of becoming an expert weeds out those who know better so easily. But ‘The Man’ must have his dolts and flunkies to fawn on his pronouncements and present his spin as their insight. Meanwhile Dick travels through time and space and comes back with a generation’s worth of genius in every short story so that his greatest, and I DO mean greatest, fan can take a whizz on his memory to help miseducate the young for another generation or two. Tricky stuff, knowing stuff. Lynch was the funniest guest star on Louis C.K.’s show, he is also a very keen meditator. The young male actor who played the mechanic was apparently an incredible prick. Hunter had a nice time, I am glad ! We are stronger after we rest, building strength takes time, so expect to be worse for a month or so as a years rest makes for a great start but is hard to live up to if you don’t realise that strength changes day to day and hour to hour determined by the amount of glycogen available, technique, motivation and the degree of muscular degradation caused by proximate training stimulus. I’ll be off to see Mike again, sorry that every success makes me reflect on the world inequities and inflict my ire on you. YAY for having a great run Alex, company can be very motivating, great you got the headphoes off. I’m afraid to join a running club, I’ve only been beaten once in a sprint in my life but am a terrible distance runner, it’s hellish to try hard when you are fit and in the wrong sport, I’m sticking to gymnastics, how fun to shame the instructor with my Iron Cross when he is thirty years younger and ten kilos lighter ! If only I was qualified to teach something (except for music which I refuse to teach to rule).Oh, where are my manners, this was a great show, thanks guys. Ponyo is the best Gibli. save for the photo I am sending of Maggie to your email.