Thursday 2 April 2009

1176 Howl, Manchurian Candidate, West Wing, Yes Minister

It is always difficult returning to a place and people with whom one has had a close association after a period of time. In this instance it is six weeks and I have visited the former residential home of mother previously to provide information about her position. This morning I stayed briefly for the door of her room to be opened to collect the two crucifixes and a statue of mother and child.

I also returned home at midday, one of only a couple of other instances during the six weeks, in order to combine a roast chicken breast wrapped in bacon with cheese and roast potato Sunday lunch with Newcastle entertaining West ham and doing a wash and dry of nighties. This was also a moving occasion because the club invited the parents of a 15 year old member of the academy who has died after a long illness and who first joined when he was eleven years of age. All the academy members were present on the centre circle and in the recently evolved tradition there was a minute's applause,. Newcastle's new look team scored within a minute through a Charles N'zogbia cross and Viduka bullet head. However West Ham came back strongly and is clearly a team which will feature in the first half of the season under curbishly, perhaps the most consistent English Manager that we have. However a second piece of Charles N'zogbia created a chance for Mark Viduka which he put away, just about, but although the score is 2.1 this is unlikely to be the final. The team is a long way from being the first choice and integrated. There was a new full start for right back Habib Beye alongside other new signings Cacapa who looked nervous, Rozenhal Alan Smith and Geremy. On the bench are new men Jose Enrique and Abdoulaye Faye with Joey Barton, who could be the needed catalyst in the midfield. Damien Duff is welcome to also move to West Ham on return fitness along with other former Newcastle players, Lee Bowyer his mates, Solana, Bellamy, Scott Parker and Kieran Dyer.

Last night I concentrated on the 2004 edition of the Manchurian Candidate which was as good as the 1962 first edition. The 1962 was based on the Korean War and cold war politics surrounding the Presidential elections. It was the first political conspiratorial thriller after World War Two and unlike many films which attempt to forecast the power of states using the latest knowledge and technology it provide excellent and thought proving entertainment still. The film features Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey as two solders brainwashed by the communist as sleepers to be used in the future, because one is the son of a powerful political family led by Angela Landsbury.

The 2004 version uses the first Gulf War, the reality that international corporation now believe they are more important than individual government and the politically ambitious power hundred mother played by Meryl Streep, Denziel Washington plays the Sinatra role and interestingly a co-producer on the film is Tina Sinatra. I was entertained and found the story creditable given the assassinations and tie-ins between organised crime and international corporations and politics in the USA. The clever switch in the film was to make the name of the international company the Manchurian!

Well I have made it as the Coronation game screen now has only MS initials in the top five places and with one of these over 3000 at 3138 followed by 2932, 2928, 2925 and then the more vulnerable 2572.

I did not see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness or starving hysterically naked but I did Howl. I was reminded of the book which Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg edited and which I bought for three shillings and six pence as a Panther edition in 1960 when watching the second part of an episode of the West Wing when I returned home in low spirits these evening. Only to be raised again as Michael Palin continues his journey to our new members and would be member of the euro community.

The West Wing has provided my education of the American political literate along with Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister and which I believe are as close to reality of our two political systems as it is possible to communicate without becoming directly part of. I never tire of watching previous episodes although this time it was difficult to tune in until Toby was sitting with his poet (who friend relative I cannot remember? and she announced that she was reciting Howl which I had once attempted to learn, why is a good question because much of the images were unknown except from Hollywood but struck several chords such as talking for seventy hours continuously and one of my other favourite stanzas was reappearing on the West Coast 'investigating the FBI, in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes, sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets' The book Protest contains 10 excepts from the Beat generation, with two from Kerouac plus that from Ginsberg, and then nine from the UN with John, Wain, Kingsley Amis, Colin Wilson, John Braine, Thomas Hinde and John Osborne whose work I was more familiar, and then five essays of criticism and commentary including Norman Mailer on the White Negro, a concept I have long considered myself to be part of.( Jack Kerouac Maggie Cassidy, Lonesome Traveller, the Subterraneans, and On the Road; Norman Mailer - The Naked and the Dead and Advertisements for myself, The Beat Scene $1.95 Corinth Book 1960 original Paper Back with contributions from 46 writers. Kingsley Amis -Take a girl like you, and Jake's Thing, also read Lucky Jim, That uncertain feeling, and I want it now,; John Braine- Room at the Top, Life at the Top, Thomas Hinde Mr Nicholas; Colin Wilson God of the Labyrinth and Adrift in Soho. John Osborne Look Back in Anger).

Michael Palin produced another collection of stunning images and quirky interviews which I suspect added tourist attractions rather than provide great insight, olive oil wrestling in Bulgaria, belly dancing and camel wrestling in Turkey ending with winter lunar landscape within sight of the borders of Iran and Iraq where a German English speaking anthropologist who is living with a young Turkish girl in a modernised cave whop has a friend who advised Michael that was destined to meet a rich woman who desire him in an internet chat room after reading in the dregs of his coffee or tea cup. This was a heart warming introduction for one of those later night radio programmes during which listeners vented their spleen about how easy it was for Polish and other Euro's to enter the country, find work and accommodation and becomes eligible for health and welfare services and benefits, a subject which was also being aired on the same BBC show when I woke up. It is definitely building up election fever with allegedly some Cabinet members advising Gordon to cut and run. This would be a great mistake and Gordon if you are listening, you will lose, pay no attention to those who are no longer in touch with people who have no interest in politics. If you go now the election will fought on getting out of Europe and Iraq, the failure of the National Health Service and gun and knife crime on and by children and the run of the Northern Rock

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