Some women deal with loss by hitting the hairdressers, what does a girl geek mourning the exit of her country from a football tournament do? Migrate a domain. As the great philosopher Doris Day once said “Que sera sera”. OK I left scottishlass.co.uk as the last domain to move over to the VPS. I held off doing it sooner because I could see a few hits from people looking for the Runrig Loch Lomond link and had landed on this blog. If you can read this then you should be getting served by the American VPS host. Next step close the old hosting account…and make sure they cancel the recurring billing. The whole move’s gone amazingly smoothly so far, suspiciously so. Just a few cron jobs to set up for RSS gubbins.
Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Comfort geeking…
Saturday, November 17th, 2007
Scotland vs. Italy. Good luck Scotland!
Saturday, November 17th, 2007Scotland will be a nervous wreck tonight. The whole country will be chewing its fingernails. To recap, Scotland *have* to beat Italy at home at Hampden to qualify for Euro 2008. Don’t bother phoning anyone in Scotland between 5 and 7pm – the country will be at a standstill.
Good luck Scotland! After the draw was announced no one would have given us a prayer of still being in contention at this stage so many thanks to Walter Smith for turning the team around and current manager Alex Mcleish for keeping us in with a chance. Alex has handled the whole media side of this campaign brilliantly.
We have some of the best football fans in the world in the shape of the Tartan Army they’ve been exceptional. Let’s hope the team gives the fans the chance to follow them to the bigger Euro stage.
UPDATE Scotland 1 Italy 2. Alas not to be but by Christ we gave it a go
Buy Loch Lomond by Runrig and Tartan Army for Children in Need
Friday, November 16th, 2007Come on all you Scotland fans, put the swirling saltires down for a few seconds and go to the iTunes store and buy the special Loch Lomond (Hampen Remix) EP. Rousing rendition of Runrig’s finest backed up by the silver tonsils of Scotland’s own Tartan Army – recorded at Hampden during the Ukraine match.
The direct iTunes link is
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=268083976&s=143444
Summoning the elusive muse
Sunday, January 21st, 2007I had a dream. A bit unusual really because I normally don’t remember dreams but this one had a pair of characters from a previous attempt at NaNoWriMo turning up and dutifully supplying a storyline that would have taken me over the 50K finish line (I ran out of plot/steam). Thing was it was not for 2006 but 2005. Where have these dormant characters been? Better late than never? What to do now though, dig out the documents and write it up just for the hell of it? Too late to ‘win’. Let it pass? Frustrating when you have the creativity you don’t have the time and when you have the time you don’t have the creativity. Grrr.
Ken Russell leaves Celebrity Big Brother
Sunday, January 7th, 2007Ach, good while it lasted. Haven’t watched the live feed today yet but from the chatter on the BB forums sounds like the combination of introduction of Jackiey (Jade’s mum) and the servants task is causing havoc in the house and more celebs are wanting to leave. Still there’s one advantage the early leavers from the BB house have and that is they are out and free to take part in all the spin-off shows radio and TV segments so ironically they might get a wee bit more of the telly spotlight to themselves rather than have to tag along under the shadow of the winner at the end.
Film Four screened “Women in Love” again the other night. I forgot that there’s a sequence where Glenda Jackson dances among a pack of Highland Coos. Ye canny make it up.
Bet on Ken Russell. Someone has to
Thursday, January 4th, 2007Well better put my money where my mouth is. Bless him but grand-père terrible Ken Russell has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning Celebrity Big Brother but I’m still putting a bet on him to win…as snowballs go 20-1 makes pretty good fantasy odds 
Le Guen est gaun. Au revoir
Thursday, January 4th, 2007Rangers have lost again, this time it’s only a manager and not a match, phew, well that’s a relief eh boys?
The report says “Rangers manager Paul Le Guen has left the club by mutual consent“. Aye right. Bet the air was blue.
BBC SPORT | Football | My Club | Rangers | Le Guen and Rangers part company
Ken Russell…you old devil! Celebrity Big Brother – genius in the house
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007With all the ’spoilers’ in the Sunday press about who’s going to be in the Celebrity Big Brother house I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this year. However they were wrong about several and to my great delight one of my all time heros, film director Ken Russell is in the house. Ya beauty! He’s a one-off original. I was wondering what he was up to these days as he doesn’t seem to be making episodes for the South Bank show each year like he used to. Last time I heard about him he was filming some schlocky low-budget film with a hand-held video for the internet, seemed to involve naked nuns (old habits die hard). He’s almost 80 you know. Camp as Christmas but with an eye for the ladies.
Sad that practically none of the other housemates seemed to know who he is. He’s a quite unique artist who brings the full earthiness of life and passion, flesh and blood into his films. He spent time in the sixties working for Huw Weldon on arty documentaries of composers that broke new ground and breathed new life into biographic film. And so many films with music at the core or with sumptuous soundtracks Tommy, Mahler, Aria and plenty of pop/operatic videos. So many films full-stop. Plenty of box office turkeys in latter years but for sheer bloody inventiveness always worth watching.
In the dark days of British cinema with folk whinging about lack of money he got off his bahookey and assembled a crew and shot many films around the Lake District, no matter what country they were supposed to be set in Yes they were cheap but you couldn’t fault the wild imagination. Glasgow, as far as I’m aware, still holds the dubious distinction of being a city that still bans his film “The Devils” from being screened in cinemas (for fear of igniting a religion-fueled backlash from Catholics) but strangely allows it sold in video/DVD. Watching “the devils” on video for the first time was amazing, if you can push past all the sensationalism about the sexual scenes and concentrate on the story there’s really a rather moving morality tale in there contrasting the true believers as flawed individuals with the outwardly pious but privately corrupt religious authorities, and with such startling production design from the late Derek Jarman – it looks absolutely stunning visually.
I really urge you to seek out a copy of Ken’s autobiography “A British Picture”, it is hilarious, especially his various colourful and hair-raising adventures with Oliver Reed.
What will X Factor winner Leona Lewis be doing this time next year?
Sunday, December 17th, 2006Listening to all the gushing predictions about Leona being the one who’ll ‘crack’ America and the global market, I can’t help thinking back to last year. Remember? Shayne Ward? He was going to be “The British answer to Justin Timberlake”, he burned brightly briefly then got throat problems and has been well out of the spotlight, in recent months though they are talking of a second album. If a week is a long time in politics then a year is an eternity in pop land, will he manage to get back into the market?
One of the guest boybands on the show had some sagely advice for Simon Cowell to say that he had a big responsibility to produce a good first album for Leona. Too true. Previous form has been to quickly punt out a CD to cash in on the first wave of publicity but the songs are usually largely bland and generic and not moulded to the talents of the winner. Will Young of Pop Idol fame went through the same curve but it was only by the second/third CDs that he really hit his stride.
It was a shame that in earlier rounds the Glaswegian Nikkita never really got given a meaty song that suited her soulful voice don’t think we ever got a chance to really see what she was capable of. Also think from a telly point of view it would have been a more interesting show if the group the Unconventionals hadn’t been booted out first week, they were certainly different.
I watched Leona’s progression it has to be said with a degree of sadness. She clearly has a natural talent but as the weeks went by you could see more and more vocal gymnastics being thrown into the mix, she has such a beautiful voice and really doesn’t need these gimmics. I hate the ghastly Americanisation going on where the audience will clap and cheer just because a singer sings a high note, is this competition now “Note Idol”. Low notes, soft notes count too not just the belters but these don’t seem to generate applause or appreciation. Whatever happened to lyrics, you know, communicating the emotion and meaning of the song, not just the notes? The more she went into this territory the less and less of the song was communicated. One of the strangest experiences was in a previous show watching her sing “Lady Marmalade”, pretty woman, cute as a button, note perfect but almost completely devoid of any sexiness, there seemed to be no connection between what was being sung and how it was performed, very strange. Ray her opponent was just about the polar opposite, he probably had one of the weakest singing voices but by Christ when he sang “My Way” you felt it was coming from the heart he meant every word and made you believe it. I’m sure Leona will win her share of fame and fortune and wish her well but to be a true diva takes more than good singing.
X Factor Winner, Women on Top – Part IV
Saturday, December 16th, 2006Mini Mariah/Whitney sound-a-likey Leona Lewis has won the X Factor 2006 beating cheeky chappie Liverpudian Ray. In all the madness wish someone would thank the telly host Kate Thornton. She carries the main ITV show week by week all by herself and her consumate professionalism makes it all look so smooth. Simon Cowell looks like the cat that got the cream, both his acts were in the final so he couldn’t lose, probably Christmas No. 1, another cash cow for you Simon? Totally predictably right after Kate announced that the single was available for download, visit the site and get a “Service Unavailable” on the download link. These kind of sites always go down, that initial spike in traffic must be phenomenal as millions pile from TV to computer in a matter of minutes, a few minutes later get through but page minus graphics/low bandwidth version, bet the web devs are frantic right now to get back up to flog the download Update 22:56 and graphical version back Bravo! Well done Leona and Kate and web bods in the dungeons
Update 23:13: on the post show on ITV2 Simon Cowell’s in the studio and just said “it’s the fastest download of all time – twenty thousand in five minutes”. £1.50 a throw, wow, if it kept up that astounding selling rate for a day it would be bringing in over 8.5million quid in sales, and that’s with no iTunes in sight.