Ben Gould

Oct 01 2019

Air travel, Planes, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

The AAirpass actually exists.

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It was sold for a one-time fee of $250k in an attempt by a cash-strapped American Airlines to raise revenue without having to borrow from the banks. Unfortunately (for them), they didn’t factor in just the levels of dedication the 28 pass holders (flying addicts) would bring to the agreement. Millions have been lost in fares and taxes, and a bloke by the name of Steve Rothstein, an investment banker from Chicago, was their number one ‘abuser’.

He took more than 10,000 flights and essentially circumnavigated the globe a zillion times before AA had enough of the geezer and managed to revoke his privileges. They cited various ‘fraudulent activities’ such as his habit of cancelling reservations or letting strangers use his companion pass (extra cost $150k).

This guy is a hero. Imagine the movie. I think you’d need to insert something more than comedy into proceedings, make it all Terrence Malick with the transcendental freedom of travel (until nasty corporation breaks the contract) the main theme. Or get a meagre Ryanair version made.

Of the 28 AAirpasses purchased, 25 are still valid.

Newcastle – in search of Jack Carter.

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I was in Newcastle this week. The city is a bit of a toilet and their football fans quite possibly the most delusional on the planet. I fondly recall Michael Caine’s Jack Carter uttering the immortal line, “Listen, the only reason I came back to this crap house – was to find out who did it. And I’m not leaving until I do.” That’s Newcastle in a sentence.

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It has its wee charming attributes, though, as do most post-industrial northern dwellings. It’s Hovis advert territory but with tracksuits. I spent my time here wandering about like a wee numpty in search of locations featured in the movie. I didn’t find any, although I did locate a hostel kitchen that had no sink.

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Film, Movie, Movies, Television, TV, TV series, Uncategorized

Cobra Kai is rather AWESOME.

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Nostalgia kicked in mega-heavy with this absolutely mental show; fuck knows how it even came into being. I have seen The Karate Kid (1984) 19 times and this somehow beats it. Through the complexity of the characters (they actually have three dimensions), the subtle middle fingers (plural) to the WOKE/SJW political correctness of this age, and the sheer hilarity of some of the scenes, it’s the best show for quite some time.

I always thought Johnny Lawrence got a bad rep; 35 years later he gets the treatment he deserves.

First episode here. It’s a corker:

The Foot of the Walk (FOTW), Leith.

IMG_20190916_111419 I’m in here twice a week now in the afternoons. Unfortunately, I’m not getting plastered; I just take my wee lunch break in the dwelling and get stuck into a full fat Coca-Cola and do the Metro crossword and experience Coronation Street flashbacks. I’m surrounded by miserable loners, mostly old codgers in flat caps who speak very few words but scowl non-stop at everyone and everything. My kind of people.

Tweed jackets and bunnets are making a comeback.

Tagged Boozer, Edinburgh, Foot of the Walk, Leith, Pub, Scotland

Sep 14 2019

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Edinburgh, Leith, Photography, Travel, Uncategorized

Crawling about Leith.

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As a scion of Gorgie, it is with great reluctance that I have ventured a lot more into Leith these days, and I for a brief moment feared I had gone Full-Anthropologist. It’s not as mingin’ as I initially thought. In fact, some of it is quite lovely.

No junkies were harmed in the taking of this photograph.

Tagged Edinburgh, Gorgie, Leith, Photography, Scotland

Sep 11 2019

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Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, Tourism, Trains, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

The Waverley – never forget.

The Shangri-La.

I try to avoid my former place of work these days because the experiences – which belong to what I refer to as the East Coast Epoch 2010-2012 – were so epic. Not epic like a Wagner-infused helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now (1979), but something a little bit more transcendent – the comedy and the banter. And I’ve never seen so many fruitcakes in all my life. Public spaces involving transport are microcosms of society. People are nuts.

My fondness for The Waverley is probably nostalgia, pretending in retrospect it was more enjoyable than it was. But it’s like that with most memories; time adds gloss to the mundane. I do, however, know more about trains than any topic aside from the drug and dietary habits of Adolf Hitler. So there’s always that.

Tagged 2010s, Edinburgh, Nostalgia, Train station, Trains, Transport, Waverley

Sep 08 2019

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Crime, TV, TV series

Mindhunter is a must-see.

Mindhunter is cracking. Set within the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico when criminal psychology was in its infancy, the show’s FBI special agents interview the whole gamut of notorious serial killers in order to glean patterns of behaviour, applying this to ongoing cases. It’s got David Fincher all over it, the chap serving as executive producer and helming seven episodes.

It’s gripping stuff, as a time capsule and insight into a grisly world very few of us will thankfully ever even glimpse. Netflix addiction strikes again, though in my case generously bequeathed episodes from a questionable benefactor. I can’t help but picture the British spin-off were this to happen. In the show they remove the chains of the convicted mass murderers in order to make them feel more comfortable during questioning, to even help generate a bond for the ‘interrogation’. Imagine Scotland Yard doing that to Charles Bronson (not that he’s killed anyone).

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I also have a picture in my head of Lord Longford, absolute weirdo that he was, helping Myra Hindley escape through a window during their interview, the former wielding bolt cutters or a blowtorch, zany hair flying everywhere.

Interestingly (for me), I clocked the actor who plays Bill Tench straight away. Holt McCallany wound up in two of the best movies of the late ’90s in Three Kings (1999) and Fight Club (1999). He even initiated the whole ‘His name is Robert Paulson’ recital. I hadn’t seen him in anything else until this.

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Tagged Behavioral Science Unit, David Fincher, FBI, Mindhunter, True Crime, TV, TV series

Sep 04 2019

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Air travel, Planes, Technology, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Qantas Airways – New York to Sydney.

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19 hours nonstop from New York City to Sydney, 40 passengers and crew monitored by scientists on board to determine the effects of the mammoth endeavour. What the fuck do you do to amuse yourself on a plane for 19 hours? Halfway through my 11-hour flight to Tokyo I began to feel like a part of me had died inside, though this may have been the effect of the new Planet of the Apes movie I was watching. On those chimp movies, I don’t get all the fuss over them. Fucking drivel. If I want to see chimpanzees I can just wander around some of the rougher enclaves of Edinburgh.

A typical Dalry boozer.

This flight, however. You’re going to need climbing frames and batting cages in the cabin, or a circus show to pass the time. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive feat. Nearly 10,000 miles in just a day. Not bad at all.

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The Swarm (1978). So bad it’s good?

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Michael Caine and … killer bees. Yes, the bloke – now a global institution – from Zulu (1964), The Italian Job (1969), Get Carter (1971), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and a smorgasbord of Christopher Nolan films in a twilight career resurgence, plays a constantly-shouting macho entomologist (one of a kind) in this thoroughly ridiculous disaster movie from the director of The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). It’s entertaining because it’s shite.

The attraction with garbage like this is that it’s comforting sometimes to see lauded thespians and ‘the elite’ brought down a peg or two; I’m thinking of ‘It’s a Royal Knockout’ as the prime example, though this escapade did not involve sociopath insects … oh, wait a minute.

Anyway, I can’t get my head around how some movies have come into existence, and struggle to picture the pitch made to executives who greenlit the thing – “This is about hyper-aggressive killer bees. We want the cockney bloke from The Ipcress File (1965).” I personally find it a hoot that Caine justified the dross in an interview by declaring the wage he earned bought him a house. Fair enough.

“Will history blame me or the bees?”

What a line.

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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Inglourious Basterds – a decade on.

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Discussing Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (2019) with a friend after seeing it the other evening, I was reminded that Tarantino’s genre-bending WWII-era masterpiece is now 10 years old this month. Some critics took umbrage at QT’s depiction of a commando unit of Jewish American soldiers as Allied equivalent Otto Skorzenies, but they’re missing the point: Tarantino is more likely including such things for the purpose of annoying his detractors rather than drawing any historical comparisons. He does it because he can.

Regardless of any ethical considerations when it comes to shooting history (and re imagining it), the movie is so witty and sometimes outright hilarious. It’s pure entertainment, and of all the post-Pulp Fiction (1994) Tarantino films, his least indulgent, with no unnecessary scenes stretching out the running time. We can also christen this ‘The Christoph Waltz show’. His Hans Landa is a behemoth, a cunning, sociopathic polyglot five steps ahead of everyone else. He even makes the eating of strudel captivating.

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N.B. There is an outrageous ‘Antonio Margheriti’ connection between Basterds and Hollywood, Donnie Donowitz’s alias he adopts for Landa the same moniker as the real-life Spaghetti Western director whom DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton stars for in Hollywood.

Tagged 2009, Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Film, Hans Landa, Inglorious Basterds, Movie, Quentin Tarantino

Wanderings and … wonderings.

Author Archives: Ben Gould

The AAirpass actually exists.

Newcastle – in search of Jack Carter.

Cobra Kai is rather AWESOME.

The Foot of the Walk (FOTW), Leith.

Crawling about Leith.

The Waverley – never forget.

Mindhunter is a must-see.

Qantas Airways – New York to Sydney.

The Swarm (1978). So bad it’s good?

Inglourious Basterds – a decade on.