Each time I add cranberry juice to the Southern Comfort I feel a little less of a member of the male species. Inadequate, that’s the word.
Lost got … lost.
Remember a TV show called Lost? It was semi-gnarly for the first eight or something episodes. And then it was like … total shite, and of course meaningless. I never saw a narrative so pointlessly meandering, and I’ve sat through Fellini’s 8½ (1963).
By the second season I wish the plane that crash-landed in the pilot episode would have blown into smithereens. Utter pish. I still to this day don’t know how it ended.
The thing jumped the shark and all that.
The Buzludzha monument.
No, that’s not a UFO or something out of Prometheus (2012); it’s the awfully baffling Buzludzha monument in Bulgaria, an admittedly futuristic remnant in the brutalist architectural style from the country’s wretched dalliance with communism. Like all pillars of the Eastern Bloc age, it reveals the hubris and folly of the state. No wonder that vast Soviet experiment went tits-up when instead of making the economics work, governments were concentrating on this nonsense. The thing, whatever it is, cost a fucking fortune.
The monument’s interior – mosaics of commie stalwarts – is closed to the public. The official line is that it’s now too dangerous to enter, but one suspects it’s frankly too embarrassing a spectacle.
It does reveal a truth, though – the lengths totalitarian states will go to awe the worker bees into submission.
Further reading:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/buzludzha-monument
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-forgotten-communist-monoliths-of-bulgaria
Davey Scatino/Robert Patrick in The Sopranos.
He’ll be forever remembered as the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), but even for such an iconic role (and underrated performance as he was genuinely more terrifying than Arnie in the 1984 belter) I can’t help but feel Robert Patrick would have been cast in way more ‘gnarly’ movies had he not gone semi-liquid in ’91.
His role as Davey Scatino in The Sopranos is the best he’s ever given; the bloke is a loser, a degenerate gambler, a failed con artist … and you believe every moment of it. Robert Patrick is versatile and not just liquid.
Halloween (1978) at 40.
Halloween (1978) is always watched on Halloween in my Gorgie palace of peculiarities. It’s tradition, much like how Jingle All The Way (1996) – the best worst Christmas movie ever – is viewed on Christmas Day with a bottle of hard liquor artfully concocted in a budget supermarket car park. It’s 40 years now that John Carpenter’s revolutionary horror has been kicking about. It has unfortunately spawned an absolute smörgåsbord of pale imitators; almost every horror in a multiplex today uses Halloween (1978) as the template. This is, however, a common theme throughout genre cinema. Die Hard (1988), for example, takes the same role for action movies (Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on a plane, etc).
The film has the creepiest atmosphere and is just masterfully shot; one gets the feeling that every single frame was storyboarded to perfection à la Hitchcock. There’s a complete lack of gore – it’s not needed, and that old cliche about imagination trumping the visceral is on full display here. And it’s that William Shatner Captain Kirk death mask. Who the hell came up with that? Michael Myers sans the mask just wouldn’t work. Mass entertainment auteur cinema, and the original ‘slasher’ if we place Psycho (1960) in the high-art basket, Halloween (1978) makes Halloween more Halloween.
Newkirkgate – the jewel of Leith.
I’m not gonna lie: that tower looks like hell. The first image which comes to mind is of tinned sardines on an Aldi shelf, or the whole budget aisle of canned fish, and not of the John West kind. Home is an island, a getaway from the loonies out in the wilderness. I don’t think anyone, in social housing or otherwise, should have to live like a sardine. Architectural abominations are omniscient in Alba.
Jurassic World: Fallen Franchise.
Jurassic Park (1993) was the Jaws (1975) of the ’90s, another Spielberg game-changer, the apogee of the ‘blockbuster’. We’re five movies into this franchise now and the apple has fallen very far from the tree. I couldn’t believe the shit I was watching in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018). The picture gave the appearance of having nine different screenwriters, and all of them penning scenes from a crèche. And it’s made a fucking fortune. And there will be another one released before the end of a decade. Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy. Dinosaurs are fairly captivating; they are getting lazy coverage in these movies.
The Wolf of West Lothian.
Livingston, West Lothian – home of shopping centres, food courts, car parks, profoundly mucky watering holes, and for some reason twinned with Grapevine, Texas.
Livingston also houses (in a cage) this most graceful arctic wolf. We exchanged this stare today. I was thinking, “What a poor bugger, locked up in Livingston.” And I’d like to wager he was thinking, “What the fuck are you looking at?”
Edinburgh life.
Alcohol and darts – this is my life and it’s ending one minute at a time.
Four days in Porto.
Back to Portugal again, but this time the heady delights of Porto instead of last year’s Algarve. Arriving in the middle of a heatwave, I sweat my tits off for the remainder of the trip; as milk was a bad choice for Ron Burgundy, so here was my predilection for trousers and sweatshirts. No matter, the situation was somewhat rectified (t-shirt donned) after a decidedly traumatising wait in a sauna of a taxi rank. It’s a lovely city replete with multi-layered sandwiches and aesthetically pleasing denizens eating the sandwiches. For the record, I didn’t eat any sandwiches. I did, however, source cheap mushroom pâté from a convenience store. Winning.
The Patrick Bateman Palace.
Phil Collins accompanied this cheeky vape in the apartment. “No smoking,” said the agent. I’d like to think I’m half-rebellious, but not full-anarchist. The place was plush, an impressively air-conditioned getaway from the sadistic Teletubbies sun.
Super Bock.
This is the de facto Portuguese national beer. In the local supermarket 24 bottles will set you back six euros. For some perspective on the matter, a warm, dirty pint in an Edinburgh boozer/hovel will cost you £4. Super, indeed.
Jumpers.
I thought this bloke was gonna chuck himself off the bridge, i.e., kill himself. I took a snap for longevity. Fortunately, he was a member of the local money-making youth, many of whom dive into the river for tourists’ shrapnel. I didn’t give him anything (because I’m stingy).
Arty-Farty pretentions.
There was a moment of sadness on this jaunt. I could have taken a simple point-and-shoot snap of an inviting building, but instead chose to shove my ersatz Liam Gallagher sunglasses in the frame in an attempt to arty-farty it up, to just be that shamelessly banal.
Ryanair.
And fuck Ryanair. Shockingly awful once again. No further comment.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 
