Posts by Backdrifter

  • GENESIS 2020 setlist discussion

    It's tenuous but I appreciate your thoughts and the link. I've always got the thing about the song lamenting the state of England (I'd suggest, rather than Britain - the commentator makes the common mistake of interchanging them*) but occasionally puzzled over that word. Ultimately I thought PG was indulging in creative wordplay along the same lines as Steve Miller's Joker's 'pompitous of love'.


    Until recently I thought Bob Mould had done the same in his song Ego Override in which he sings "I'm a phenom" but I've since learned that is a 'proper' word.


    (* He's also a bit harsh on Wimpey! But possibly just what he's been told. Personally I have fond memories of them. There's even still one hanging on in there in a town not far from me. I do like his analysis of the instrumental coda. It's also nice to see one of those basic late 90s/early 2000s sites).

  • RIP Thread!!

    Breast cancer survival rates have increased from about 40% in the early 1970s to nearly 90% now. So it's a sobering alert that people can still die from it - desperately sad any time but it feels more so when you think how the death rate has dwindled so much.

  • RIP Thread!!

    That is really sad news 😪

  • What's Your Weather Like?

    Quote from genesis1964

    Jealous on both counts - Really miss going to Nairn, enjoyed so many walks along the beach there....and brisket for tea sounds mouth watering:thumbup:

    Oh man, the brisket was gorgeous - slow-roasted to perfection and so richly tender it fell apart on contact with the fork. Good beer too, 6 Degrees North Saison.

  • What's Your Weather Like?

    Lovely, sunny day with some fluffy white clouds here in the Scottish Highlands. We took our first trip to the beach since lockdown was eased and we can travel more than 5 miles, so we spent 3 hours walking from Nairn west beach to Whiteness and back. At one point we saw about 12 people - pretty crowded for there!


    Now back home and pleasantly tired. About half an hour from now I'll head back out to go around the corner to a local B&B to collect my dinner - since lockdown and not taking visitors they've diversified by offering cooked dinners each Sunday. It turned out they used to run The Creel restaurant in Orkney where the food was excellent. The Sunday meals have been great so far. Today is slow-roasted brisket with hassleback potatoes and puree cauliflower. I've got a nice dark Scottish beer in. I've worked up a good appetite.

  • What TV shows have you been watching ?

    I saw the original play and was underwhelmed so didn't bother with the film, but appear to be one of the few people who didn't think it was wonderful.

    Quote from boredatwork

    For a more nuanced & interesting take on homosexuality than the makers of Dr Who could imagine, The History Boys was on BBC4 a couple of days ago. Brilliant film set in 1980s Sheffield, made about 15 years ago, but they probably couldn’t make it now for fear of offending somebody!

    Again, different perceptions - I watch Dr Who and never feel I'm having anything rammed down my throat.

  • What TV shows have you been watching ?

    Quote from foxfeeder

    Also, in a similar vein, Dr Who, though it had lost the plot somewhat anyway, has in the last couple of series or so become so "preachy" it's now completely intolerable.

    Well it was never above doing a bit of "messaging". In the Pertwee era it had storylines based on eg environmentalism, colonialism and other socio-political stuff. I'm less bothered by that kind of thing than I am about whether the show is enjoyable and for me it mostly is. After a shaky first series with Whittaker I thought the 2nd one was better. But it hasn't reattained the heights of the Tennant/Smith phase.


    As to the Fawlty Towers issue and similar, I think it's a pity we can't just accept times were different and move on, without demonising sitcoms and culling episodes. As you say, it isn't even FT that's among the worst offenders anyway. Love Thy Neighbours and its use of derogatory racial terms reflected the language of the time, sadly, but we're more enlightened on that score now - that show's main problem was just being bloody unfunny.

  • The Thread Of Complete Randomness

    Quote from thewatcher

    This time is my favourite suede song. It's also a very good smashing pumpkins song, but not my favorite.


    I hope they were smoke alarms and not carbon monoxide alarms. We bought a house last year and this random alarm lying on a table in the basement kept going off. I thought it was some faulty relic of the previous owners. I threw it out (the house was old but had been inspected. Surely everything was fine?!). Several months later we had a chimney company in to take a look at the chimneys and give us a quote for any work that might be needed to make the fireplaces functional. In the course of the inspection he ended up down in the basement where he discovered that a vent coming from either an oil fired furnace or gas fired boiler was horribly corroded and likely leaking CO into the house. It's fixed, I replaced the alarm, we're all fine... But I assume the original alarm was not broken and we 'got away with it'.


    In short, I'm clearly a dummy and I presume you are not... Also, enjoy every sandwich.

    Bloody hell, good thing the chimney technician knew his stuff. We do have CO alarms but no, it was our smoke alarms that blasted us out of bed in the small hours. It gave us a creepy idea of how unnerving it'd be to wake up to an alarm for a real fire.


    Obviously a relief it wasn't a fire but a mystery why they went off. I wondered if they were triggered by a momentary power dropout.


    One good outcome - as I struggled to get back off I decided to put some music on and chose A Map Of The Floating City by Thomas Dolby, prompted by having just read his autobiography. I hadn't heard it for years and got reacquainted with what an excellent album it is. I heard the whole thing then managed to get back to sleep!

  • What TV shows have you been watching ?

    Quote from boredatwork

    War of the Worlds on BBC a few months ago. They changed the story beyond recognition to make it all about a man trying to get a divorce from his wife so he could marry Demelza from Poldark while the Martian invasion that was the whole point of the book just happened quietly in the background. I’m sure the Edwardian divorce laws were unfair, but I rather suspect that’s not what most of the viewers tuned in to see! :/

    I certainly had some caveats about that version but it's interesting how perceptions can differ - to me it didn't feel it was all about the divorce and the invasion didn't come across to me as a quiet background thing! Blimey. Anyway, no I didn't think the adaptation was especially good. It was frustrating as I'd been eager for a period version as WOTW usually gets updated, but I thought it could've been done better. In fact, when you read the book now (as I recently did) there are all kinds of modern parallels with our current circumstances.


    I don't know what other recent TV adaptations you might have in mind but going back to the general point you made earlier, in principle I'm not against period pieces being seen through a modern lens. In some ways it's unavoidable, as the programmes are being made by people who exist now and have the morals, ethics, viewpoints etc of now.


    I believe art can't help but be seen in context of a constantly evolving present, which is why for example I'm fine with Shakespeare stage adaptations being done with modern dress and settings etc, which some people object to. But ultimately it has to work. 19th/early 20th century pieces with a modern filter are fine in theory but like anything it can't be a shotgun marriage.

  • What TV shows have you been watching ?

    Quote from genesis1964

    Almost coming to the end of Cardinal. What to watch next?

    Blimey, you made it through then. On the basis of the first episode I don't know how you did it. Keen hearing must have played a part! It obviously was compelling enough to keep you going.


    I started ep1 of The Secrets She Keeps but didn't finish it. Like ep1 of Cardinal it simply didn't engage me. I'm a bit sick of seeing dramas about middle-class white people and their travails. In this case, a middle-class white woman pregnant with her 3rd child, in a nice big house with her middle-class white husband. All it needed was for one of them to be a lawyer, but I can at least say neither were. At one point they go for lunch at the big house of her slightly disapproving wealthy mother, and the maverick rebellious sister is present. So it ticks a few trope boxes.


    The potential interest comes from a down-at-heel shopworker, also pregnant and due the same time, who appears to have some sort of fixation on the first woman. So we are meant to think, ooh where will this lead, what will she do? And is she responsible for the hateful messages appearing in the first woman's yummy-mummy blog comments? But I couldn't work up enough interest. I might at least complete the 1st ep and see what I think.


    For Downton Abbey fans, the shopworker is played by Laura Carmichael in a jarringly different sort of role and look.

  • The Thread Of Complete Randomness

    Quote from Backdrifter

    Guess which Genesis track I'm listening to right now this very moment as I write this.


    EDIT - to narrow it down: 5-man era

    We had one guess of Supper's Ready in the 2 months since I posted the above. But it wasn't. So it's really getting tense now (he desperately explained). So come on in with those guesses. Unless you don't want to.