IPW

This Blog Entry Rates a 6

Let me open with a reworking of a cartoon I offered ealier in the blog. You know, the one with the fish. It may not have been very funny, I concede, and that might have been why a few comments suggested that it might work by switching the two character's languages. I wasn't sure about that, but I thought it would be interesting to try. So let's take a look shall we?

You see, now it doesn't work at all because you can't tell what the guy is saying unless you are a Frenchy Francophile Friend of Fromage. I would like to draw funny comics, and I think I have it in me to do it, but I might be too cynical. You need a bit of whimsy to do it well and since I gaffaw at whimsy...well. Actually maybe if do them all in French you won't know they aren't funny! How Whimsical! Or something. Right! Let's get on to matters closer to home.

As reported last time, Friday was Saint Patrick's Day. We celebrated by meeting some Englishmen (and women) at a non-Irish bar called the Musical Box. Not the Music Box as logic might suggest. Because it hadn't even taken the effort to slap a single shamrock in the window, the bar was empty. We arrived via another bar usually serving nothing but Italian fare that had temporarily adopted an Irish theme and therefore was packed, shoulder to drunken shoulder. It seemed to me that even the Spanish places had crudely drawn shamrocks pasted above the doors that heralded their temporary change of national affiliation. Honestly, I could have drawn a leprechaun with a stick of burnt wood on the side of a refrigerator box, served warm cans of Pabst (artfully wrapped in green construction paper) inside and made a killing that night. Shall I wax eloquent about the Irish Race and the years of oppression and abject poverty due to prejudice in this country? The irony that one of the most hated groups of minorities ever to arrive on these shores are now two hundred years later a celebrated ethnicity? No, that would be boring. I'll do it anyway. The thing is, even racism is racist, and oppressed whites generally just mix into the poplation and forget they were ever treated ill. No, once they lost the jaunty accent the Irish became Wasp-ish (technically instead of WASPs they would be WASCs: White Anglo-Saxon Catholics) and their traditions entered the American cultural logbook as our own.

Saturday was the laziest ever, we watched "Howl's Moving Castle" right when we woke up. Very decadent. AH! I forgot. I'm implementing a ratings system based on a French blogger who recently made the news. I'm copying in other words, but I'm using a different scale. He used a scale of 1-20. Dunno why. I'm using a scale of 1-11. Which you should understand. Things that are rated 11 are simply that much better than those rated 10. My fish cartoon for instance is rated 3. The reworked fish cartoon is rated 2. Points taken off in both cases for incomprehensibility. Howl's Moving Castle (one of the Oscar contenders for best animated) is rated 9 which I consider a very good rating. Very dreamlike, excellent scenery. The actual animation of faces and body movement was very Anime though, choppy to say the least. But surrounding effects moved fluidly and beautifully. Impressive. the movie that it beat out was Wallace and Grommit, Curse of the Were-Rabbit which I rate as 7. That's right, even though I like the two characters emmensely I think the story-telling was sub-par and much of cleverness of the short movies they've made has been lost. After Howl, we got even lazier and watched Love Actually which Magda bought me for our anniversary. We've seen it before and both feel it is a excellent romantic comedy. I am a sucker for that stuff, a secret we will keep just between the four of us shall we? I rate it a 9 also.

Saturday evening we watched our friend Chel play at the Knitting Factory, a ultra-hip music venue in Tribeca. She played very well, her set of songs is really outstanding, written and performed by her. While I rate Chel personally very high, I rate the show a 7, only because there seemed to be some (literal)discord amongst Chel and the very talented accompanyment she had, who had already played a very good (9) set of their own and might have been slightly distracted. By the way, I rate Chel's songs a 10 however they might be played. They are that good. (As far as music goes only Sting's 'Fields of Gold', David Gray's 'Babylon', Lauryn Hill's 'Killing Me Softly', and The Streets 'Fit But You Know It' score an 11)...(As of this writing).

Sunday saw a visit to our friend Claudine in her massive Soho loft. Coffee, pastries and good conversation in a spacious, roughly painted, textural, dimly sunlit classic sub-14th street New York space. Very enjoyable. I won't rate the experience since it might become annoying. But it would have two digits if I did. M noted that we haven't gone over to people's houses just for a coffee and a chat in some time, and that that is something she misses from back home (Poznan). It is true, mainly we meet people out at a restaurant and an afternoon in the parlour seems to be out of vogue. I hereby declare it back in vogue, and yes we will be coming over to drink your wine and eat your cheese soon.

Posted by ian at March 20, 2006 03:29 PM