Month: May 2003
Rennes Le Chateau
On the trail of weirdness in the South of France I arrived in Rennes-le-Chateau at around 4pm on December 21st 2002. The car thermometer was reading 18 degrees - some winter's day! While driving through the nearby village of Couiza, I could see R-l-C on a hill above. Mere minutues away, I thought. In fact, it was 4km and countless hairpin bends later. And a crazy old hippy, his Fiat Uno covered in stickers, who came barelling around a corner, nearly hit me, then honked like it was my fault annd waved his fist before barrelling on. Rennes-le-Chateau just about fits on the top of a high, almost conicle hill, the slower slopes having ruined medieval keeps here an there. There's not much to the village - The Sauniere church and museum appears to be the only source of economy here, other mercantile activies having being long won by nearby...
IFSC Familiars
The duck and weird duo again Carrying on from the Odd Couple and Urban Nature, I've just been outside. The duck, and the weird duo were in place. I came by again a few minutes later, but yer man and the duck had fecked off. She's wearing wellies again.
Friends of Tara website launch
Preserve an ancient site... Friends of Tara website launch: www.friendsoftara.com Tara, in case you don't know, was the seat of the high kings of Ireland. Megalithomania website on Tara
Harry Thuillier: Photographer
"Through The Glass Darkly" now available online From Ian Thuillier: "Through The Glass Darkly", which has just become available on-line at the Harry Thuillier website - www.harrythuillier.com As you know the proceeds of Harry's first book of works are being donated to the Merchant's Quay Project, a drugs rehabilitation charity in Dublin. We thank you once again for your support in purchasing the book, and we will also keep you informed of further updates with regards exhibitions and launches Harry Thuillier on hellshaw.com Blather article on p45 about Harry
25th Hour
A word on Spike Lee's latest... Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends - Monty 25th Hour, the latest joint from director Spike Lee, is easily one of the most rounded movies I've ever seen. Starring Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin and Brian Cox, 25th Hour is the story of the last day of a man's 'life'. Monty Brogan (Norton), an Irish American drug dealer, is going to prison tomorrow. He's understandably depressed. The movie traces his movements around Manhattan as he deals with his present and his future. Did his girlfriend Naturelle rat on him to the cops? Are his best friends Jacob and Frank (Hoffman, Pepper) really his friends? Monty isn't a bad guy. Yes, he sold drugs... but he's a nice guy. People like him. The movie opens with him saving a dog from death -...
SARS: Cats From Outer Space
The virus is from space... or cats? Ok, in the news today, we have Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, who is claiming that the SARS virus came from outer space. Read the article in The Guardian. Meanwhile, a boffin in Hong Kong, Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, is claiming that SARS comes from civet cats, which are apparently a delicacy in Southern China. From Reuters. Stay tuned, we'll keep collecting the theories
The Odd Couple
More IFSC wildlife, humans this time. Just back from a coffee sortie. No sign of the IFSC Duck today. However, there's this 'odd couple' that I keep seeing hanging around by George's Dock. She's about 70, he's somewhere between 25 and 40. They're both well dressed and groomed... except in bizarre clothes. She wears mohair sweaters and a weird green tam'o'shanter. Yesterday she was in her socks, a pair of pristine green Wellington boots lying on the path beside her. This morning it was blue and red Argyle socks, and bedroom slippers. She has an old, but high quality leather handbag, and an assortment of those multi-coloured and patterned collapsible canvas shopping bags, full of stuff. He's a simpler soul. No Baggage. Black runners, baggy trousers, dark jacket. Wooly hat. He's darker, perhaps of Pakistani or Indian origin. He could be her son though, and perhaps the father was Asian....
Suicide by Cop
John, McCarthy invited death, the Barr Tribunal was told. The Barr Tribunal rolls on: THE late John Carthy's behaviour an hour before he was killed pointed to the phenomenon of "suicide by cop" where victims precipitated their own death, the Barr Tribunal heard yesterday. Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey said that while it was impossible to know definitively what was going on in John Carthy's mind, his actions indicated that he was inviting his own death. The Barr Tribunal website Irish Independent: Carthy 'invited suicide by cop', tribunal hears Blather: State of Policing
Blowing money on O’Connell St.
What the hell is going on? Dublin City Council, it seems, needed some €35m to 'do-up' O'Connell St. Now it says it needs another €25m to finish the job, a total of €60m. Are they fucking mad? Did they blow it all in Dr. Quirkey's House of Fun, or on cocktails in the Gresham? And all we have to show for it is a lot of road works and a big mettle prick. Bring back the hoor in the sewer, she had a bit of class. It's a well-timed announcement, in a week when our esteemed Lord of Finance, Bananas McCreevy, is taking the rap for gaining Ireland the dubious accolade of 'most expensive country' in the eurozone. What the jesus is going on? Article in the Irish Independent Article in the Irish Independent Blather on the 'spike': ancient irish astronauts
Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’
Last night, for the first time in years, I enjoyed the mad genius of Terry Gilliam's amazing movie... Brazil, Where hearts were entertaining June We stood beneath an amber moon And softly whispered, 'Someday soon' We kissed and clung together then Tomorrow was another day, The moonlight found us miles away With still a million things to say, I will return to old Brazil. Last night, for the first time in years, I enjoyed the mad genius of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. It's a masterful, visually stunning, and conceptually challenging piece of work, laden with black humour. With a big tip of a trilby to Orwell's 1984, Gilliam tells the tale of Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a bureaucrat in an grey, art deco steampunk world, where the computer age has taken off, but microchips have yet to be invented. Lowry works in a dull job in the Information Records department of...