We finished our re-watching of State of Play on dvd. All these years later, it's still so compelling. I never get tired of it.
Also on dvd, The Trip To Spain which I enjoyed very much.
I'm now up to episode 3 of Le Carre adaptation The Little Drummer Girl on the iPlayer.
And making my way through Gotham season 3 on dvd before diving into season 4 which I have recorded.
Small technicality - only a simple majority is required for articles of impeachment to advance out of the House of Representatives; however, as you correctly said, it requires a 2/3 supermajority in the Senate for conviction and removal of a president (or vice president) from office.
I was very sad when Brexit passed. I was still living in the UK when all that nonsense was being discussed. I wish PM Cameron had lowered the voting age to 16 for this vote, the same way the vote for Scottish Independence was lowered just for that issue - votes like this impact the young the most; they ought to have had their say. There's no way the vote would have passed had they been part of the electorate. UKIP, from their rhetoric, always struck me as a watered-down version of the BNP; Nigel Farage just seemed like a phony used-car salesman with a cheesy cheshire-cat smile. (I also don't know how someone who supposedly hates Europe so much is a MEP - that always struck me as oddly hypocritical.) All my friends in the UK were and still are devastated that the Brexit vote passed.
The final vote happens in Parliament this week, doesn't it?
Thanks for the correction about the impeachment process.
Your potted analysis of the brexit situation, and UKIP/Farage, is so concise and spot-on I have little to add (I believe the parliamentary vote is 11 December). And yes, he has happily drawn down a healthy salary as an MEP, while doing very little work and barely showing up for any business. Point this out to his acolytes and they actually, genuinely, defend him by saying that he's simply showing how corrupt and ineffective the system is. Really, I'm not kidding you. As with Trump and his disciples, I sometimes think Farage could publicly kill or maim someone in the street, and his supporters would find some way of morally contorting themselves into justifying and defending his actions.
We really have drifted into a rank situation where blustering, bullish, unsophisticated authority figures who spout divisive bile, seem to lack basic humanity and thrive on hatred of otherness, are gaining massive popularity and support. I never thought we would see such a large-scale return to this in my lifetime. As I said earlier, I am generally an optimistic person but have now reached the point of genuinely fearing that half the world is sleepwalking into fascist dictatorship.
Let's not forget that Trump counts among his friends the murderous King of Saudi Arabia and Russia's self-imposed President Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump wants to be America's dictator. He cares not one bit about our country, it's laws or its citizens. It's a scary reality, so hold on because we're in for a bumpy ride. It will get worse before it gets better. I want to be the optimist here, but after all that's happened these past two years, it's difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I too am an optimist, but largely share your forebodings for all the reasons you gave. And it'll be highly unlikely the two-thirds majority in both houses required for impeachment proceedings will be achieved.
While I'm not a US resident, I still feel very gloomy about what's happening there in context of my own country's descent into lunacy - this is a time when the last thing we should be doing is breaking ourselves away from the relative safety of a large bloc of friends. The brexiters with their demented deluded isolationist rantings are dragging us into a future in which we are a tiny island nation, a minnow waiting to be swallowed by huge sharks like the US, China and Russia. I really fear for our younger generations - how we have failed them.... Sorry to be so down!
Dave's Killer Multigrain Bread, toasted and buttered, with Marionberry Jam. Oikos blended Greek Yogurt, Banana Cream flavored. Iced Coffee.
Yours are definitely some of the more notable and descriptive breakfasts in this thread. In this one, I love the brand-name details.
By the way, Marion Berry.... sigh. I still think about her from time to time.
me today: honey nut cornflakes, brown toast with marmalade, tea.
No snow yet here in the Scottish Highlands but we're down to minus Celsius figures. Excellent! Also good is a few recent mists and fogs, with more expected tomorrow. Got to love autumn and winter. None of that namby-pamby spring/summer nonsense. I like throwing on a few layers and building the fire.
Been watching this series over the past week or so... Roger Moore and Tony Curtis.
I still think this had one of the best opening sequences ever. In about 1 minute, it told you everything you needed to know about the two lead characters. Plus it had a good theme tune.
My most recent theatre outing was Long Shadows, the first staging of an Inspector Rebus story, featuring characters from the crime novels by Ian Rankin. This wasn't an adaptation of one of them, it was a new story created by Rankin for this play and adapted by Rona Munro, known for her 'James Plays'.
In the first half I wasn't too sure about it, but it really took off in the second half which featured a gripping battle of wills between Rebus and his gangster nemesis, 'Big Ger' Cafferty, who'll be familiar to anyone who's read the novels. I'm very glad I saw it and recommend it, especially to anyone who's a fan of the books.
Very pleasing to see how off everyone's Spurs-Chelsea predictions were. Excellent!
Not being a citizen of the USA, it is not for me to say.
US citizen or not, you have every right to give an opinion.
Having looked at a range of sources it appears that the US has the highest rate of privately-owned firearms in the world - the global 2018 Small Arms Survey put US gun ownership at 120%, meaning there are more guns than people. Add to that the weak gun laws, which Trump made weaker when he reversed a law introduced by Obama making it harder for people with history of mental illness to purchase firearms - and then as mentioned above, after one of the various recent mass-shootings, he said guns weren't to blame, mental illness is. You can't make this stuff up.
Most gun deaths in the US are suicides, and most homicides are individual ones not the mass shootings, although while the US has less than 5% of the world's population, it has 31% of mass shooters.
While there are countries with higher gun-homicide rates, among developed countries the US is quite high up the list, in the top 6 I understand. The others are nations such as Brazil, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela which have various kinds of economic problems and weak institutions such as their criminal justice systems, issues the US doesn't have. What is it in the American pysche that causes such a relatively high rate of gun deaths? Those opposed to stricter gun regulation repeatedly say that guns aren't the issue, people are. Even though the broad availability of guns, and the tenacious belief in the right to bear arms, both contribute to this issue those people are in a sense correct. The guns don't discharge themselves. So in some ways Martinus you are right, whatever the constitutional issues might be, there is clearly an issue of some other kind at work here, that makes so many US citizens trigger-happy.
As to Trump's possible re-election, I do think it is unfortunately a very real likelihood. While the Dems regained some ground in the mid-terms, that is not going to be a magical solution. Dems 2020 campaigning needs to happen asap and at the moment they don't seem spoiled for choice for candidates. We even have Hillary Clinton indicating she might run again. I quite like her, but thought in 2016 she might not win - the Clinton 'brand' has outlived its shelf-life and I don't think running again will help.
The emergence of Sarah Palin 10+ years ago sowed the seeds of accepting high-profile politicians being unashamedly bullish, stupid, unsophisticated and hardline. Trump's success is the result, helped by wall-to-wall media coverage the like of which most candidates can only dream of, something that continues even now. His unfiltered aggressive undignified words and behaviour are very popular with great swathes of Middle America who are unbothered by his constant lies and self-contradiction, and his complete disregard for etiquette and the conventions of state, his staining of the office of President. With the Dems so far providing little or no realistic opposition, I foresee another 4 years of DT.
I also love Steve's version with Nik Kershaw.
I don't know this one.
I saw a snippet of a Hackett live show where they did this track with Steve Rotheray doing the solo. It ruined the song, really noodly and the complete opposite of what makes so much of Hackett's work so good ie its economy.
A favourite track from my favourite Genesis album. Very nice piano line, great controlled vocal, stirling work by PC as ever, Rutherford's usual subtle effectiveness, and particularly good stuff from Hackett at the end in one of his finest and most dramatic Genesis moments.
I really like the shifting dynamics and moods, how the feel switches between serenity and tension.
And of course it gives us one of Gabriel's daftest lines - in case you're in any doubt, the one concerning garlic and chocolate fingers.
It's a top 10 or at least top 20 Genesis song for me as all the above make it such a good example of so many of the things I love about their work. There's a maturity about this track that belies their still young age, all still early 20s.
I've never bought into this idea, perpetuated even by some of the band, that it's so hard to isolate Lamb tracks in their own right. Even Banks once said he'd have liked them to have carried on playing this one but it "wouldn't have made sense". What?! For heaven's sake I'd have loved them to have done this in later years. The idea it wouldn't have made sense doesn't make sense.
Am I right in thinking that musically this is solely or primarily a Banks composition? With Hackett contributing the solo?
Is JS still an item with Rosie Huntingdon Whitely? Lucky sod....
Well even on the more short-song albums they always managed at least one 6+ minute track.
I Have a soft spot for Jason Statham, I love his movies
I have the exact opposite feeling about him. He's one of those people whose popularity I can't fathom, but hey, he is clearly very popular so he's doing something right.
One with him in I don't mind is The Bank Job (I think it's called).
That always ticked me off too! Fortunately, someone (from the old board) supplied me with a flawless digital version of the full original.
Anyway, IY almost seems like it was made to be a B-side. I have a hard time picturing it as an album track.
Yes, not an album track. But an interesting psychedelic kaleidoscopic second half, unlike their usual stuff. I think elsewhere on this board there's a brief exchange I had with someone about the backtracked vocal on that bit, no-one seems to have ever worked it out.
At the time of 3x3 I did one side of a C90 cassette (the other side probably being Abacab) with non-album stuff going backwards in time, starting with the 3x3 and ending with IY, which made a good closer with that proper ending. Not quite flawless - all vinyl so some nice warm crackles here and there.
i read somewhere that mike and phil didn't like the long intro that tony wrote for undertow. i find hard to believe that tony couldn't do what he wanted, considering that he was a close thing to a genesis leader.
anyway, the result would have been interesting, maybe a bit similar to behind the lines, in the sense that it has quite a long intro compared to the total length of the song.
While TB had the reputation of being Mr Stubborn who forced his ideas through, I get the impression that he could be swayed by the others when he recognised they had a point. So perhaps in this case he saw the wisdom of dropping the intro.
While a long intro may have made it structurally similar to e.g. BTL, other Genesis tracks with long intros that immediately spring to mind are all quite different - Watcher, Riding The Scree, Firth, Battle, Duchess, etc. Los Endos? (well there is a tiny little bit of vocal right at the end!).
In the UK the original 7" single release of TIOA had as its b-side BTL without the 'intro', listed as Behind the Lines (part 2).
I do recall TB saying the removal of a planned intro to Undertow was the reason the track starts so suddenly with no preamble (which in fact I like), and I've heard theories about FTU being the said intro.
The common folklore says It's Yourself was supposed to be inserted in between Squonk and Mad Man Moon (which is remarkable, most non-album tracks seemed to be sorted out before they had a fixed place on their album), it makes sense Los Endos would be kind of a reprise of several songs; the intro was clearly copied and pasted from It's Yourself after It's Yourself was cut out. In its original form this part ends on the same 5 notes that begin Mad Man Moon so it makes an obvious link.
Yes it's always seemed to me IY was a finished song in its own right and they appropriated the middle bridging section for the Los Endos intro. I hadn't heard this notion about the original plan for tracklisting, but had noted the overlap between the original IY ending and the start of MMM. But it wouldn't have sat well between that and Squonk. Maybe they realised that, and that's what triggered its removal.
On my Genesis compilation, I've run IY part 1 into Los Endos, it was too obvious to resist it. I also split it for my ATOTT entry in the Rearrange a Genesis Album thread, making part 2 a standalone track which would need a title (any takers?!).
The clunky fade-out on the Archive 2 version is annoying and unnecessary. There wasn't much of the track remaining anyway, why not just let it run to its nice original conclusion?
This last week I've been seeing some great stuff in the Inverness Film Festival, 5 main features some of which not due for UK theatrical release until next year, and two programmes of very impressive short films. I'll say more in a while but am getting ready for my Glasgow/Edinburgh King Crimson double header - on a 6.50 am train, then in Dundee later in the week for a mooch around.
Tomorrow, King Crimson, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. Then the day after, King Crimson, Edinburgh Playhouse.
