Testing text entry

That's right, Saturday. Just want to be sure this entry is not like any others.

Testing testing.

Culture test!

The bit of Movable Type that uploads pictures seems to have stopped working. It says that the picture is uploaded, but says it is size: 0 bytes, and asks if I want this file to be a LINK. No, I want it to be a photo, you moron machine.

Anyone know what this could be about?

I was going to post some pictures of Jackie D, photo-ing food, but that will have to wait.

A bad day here at Brian's Culture Blog.

I've just had an idea for a regular series (although I promise nothing) of postings here. I love those Twin Towers, and I want to start writing about movies more often than I have so far here, so here's the plan. Every time I spot the Twin Towers in a DVD, I will pause it, photo it, and shove it up here.

Two things may happen. One, as I say, this may kick start me into writing about movies more than I have. But two, maybe a picture will start to form of how movie makers used to use those towers. What else happens when we see them? What do they seem to mean? And so on.

Click on these two clictures (a word I'm hoping you first read here) to get the full pictures.

On the left, forty seconds into Sidewalks of New York, is the Twin Towers bit of the first sighting of the character played by Edward Burns (who also auteured the entire movie). He is being interviewed by an offscreen voice about his sex life. The Twin Towers are kept in shot, or very nearly, although out of focus, throughout this interview, bits of which, alongside interviews with the other main characters, intersperse the entire movie.

Which I enjoyed. The characters are pretty enough to be pretty, but real enough to be real. Perhaps the most telling plot point concerning Burns' rather gloomy view of life in New York is that only one child features in the entire thing, namely the child that the Rosario Dawson character conceives, by mistake and without telling him, with the Edward Burns character. Rosario Dawson then leaves New York, or at any rate says that she will. New York, Burns seems to be saying, is not a place that makes children. Too expensive. Everyone too fussed about their careers. Two many New Yorkers just don’t want kids.

Stanley Tucci plays a character for whom, in both appearance and behaviour, the phrase "love rat" might have been invented. Dennis Farina plays a man whose advice about cologne proves unsound. Cologne on the balls proves you care, says he. It proves he's weird, says the lady confronted with it. Penis size also gets an airing. In general, this is a movie with a lot to say about male insecurities and confusions, as well as female resentments at what swine men are.

If you love Woody Allen's New York movies, there's a good chance you'll like this, and for the time being Mr Burns seems able to choose his romantic partners in a manner that leaves his dignity in place.

Well-known actors love being in movies of this sort, for they queue up to be in them, half a dozen at a time. They get to talk and act and create character, instead of being upstaged by special effects or having to act opposite mysterious computer animations that only get put in afterwards. They don't have to kill people, or to die, or spend any time hanging from ceilings..

On the other hand, if you find semi-realistic movies about Relationships tedious, what with today's people having it so easy and being so cosseted that they can sit around all night long discussing their Relationships, unlike their grandparents who had depressions to survive and world wars to fight, well, one of the characters says that.

And, on the right is the very first frame of New Jack City, the rest of which I have yet to see, because, having just watched Sidewalks of New York and noted the Twin Towers, this was when I got the idea for this series (although I promise nothing) of postings. I should imagine that the people in this movie get to do lots of killing of one another and have little time to think about Relationships, although I could be quite wrong.

So I went past that puddle again today, on the bus again, and guess what, I photographed two more puddles in the same place - Duke of York Square, right at the Sloane Square end of Kings Road. I spotted the third one on the way back, and thought I'd missed photo-ing it, but when I got home I found that you can just about make out that one way behind the one I photoed properly, on the way.

I'm starting to rather like these damn things. At least they are different. Different because stupid, but different.

I am going to have to take a closer look at them. Maybe there are more that I have yet to observe. Expect lots of reflections in puddles photos, although I promise nothing.

I think that these clutches of photos arranged in lots of little squares to click on work rather well. The basic post seems to load quite quickly, which means that it does not cause too much inconvenience to the non-photographically inclined, and if you are interested, from then on it's one click shopping. I like the format anyway. Even though it is rather laborious.

So, why do the photos have to be mine? They don't. I have friends who take photos, but can't be doing with all the bother of putting them up on the Internet. So, why don't I do it for them? It's a great plan. If you are a friend of mine, and you have a few Billion Monkey snaps to get off your chest and share with whatever bit of the world wants to share them, but (like me) don't want to nag the basically uninterested, get in touch?

What's the worst that could happen? I'd say no they're crap, and we'd never speak to each other again. I suppose that is a consideration to be considered. But I actually don't think this is very likely. Given the nature of Billion Monkey cameras, there's pretty much bound to be a few of your pictures that I like and consider worthy of world-wide mini-fame. Most of mine are crap, after all.

So anyway, this little rectangle of clictures (ha!) is the work of my Samizdatista colleague and fellow Londoner Johnathan Pearce. They were taken when he was on holiday in New York last September. I have quite a few more nice pictures by Johnathan, but this lot makes a convenient set. All were taken from the top of the Empires State Building, with the exception of the very first, which I am guessing was taken in the lobby at the bottom of the Empire State Building. The day was a little cloudy, and I slightly beefed up the brightness and contrast of some of them, but there was no cropping. I really like them, and I particularly like that there are lots of them, and they add up to a real portrait from on high of Manhattan.

The star of these pictures is the Chrysler Building. Note also the far distant Statue of Liberty. But what is that one with the gold, octagonal spike on the top?

Native New Yorkers, as I think I have said here before, like to photo little street scenes and shop fronts, and they forget their skyscrapers because they see them every day. But for the rest of us, the skyscrapers are definitely the thing. And yes, we non New Yorkers all miss those Twin Towers, even though we gave them scant attention until they got knocked down. Well, my kind of non New Yorker, anyway.

So, thank you Johnathan, and my apologies for taking so long to get any of these up. I promise nothing (as I always say when promising anything on a blog), but I hope that another clutch of Johnathan's America pictures will follow soon.

I only got one proper Christmas present this time around, but it was a cracker. My Kiwi friend Tim Sturm gave me a copy of Stephen Jones' book On My Knees, about the Rugby World Cup of 2003 – won by England – hurrah! This was an especially sporting choice by Tim, given what Jones has to say about the relative merits of England rugby and New Zealand rugby.

Here is how Jones describes one particularly exhausting day at the coal-face of rugby reportage, fraught with both mental and moral worries, and physical exhaustion.

The late evening kick-offs meant that I would be still hacking away in the media centre well into the early hours, with people bustling around cursing malfunctioning modem connections, barking views on the game, vainly trying to discover from the locals if any restaurants stayed open till 4 a.m. England were beautifully embarked now. They would have to walk into some kind of catastrophe not to go through to the semi-finals, and, as near as dammit, Europe was guaranteed a finalist.

It was a matter of trying to shine up the last few words; check with London that they were captioning the pictures with the names of players who were actually in them; talk to the graphics department about our representation of the Greenwood try; have our Rugby Roundup man talk us through the other events of the day in the tournament; rewrite and retouch; making sure our preview material already filed referring to the next day's games still stood up. Then, dredge for nuggets from all our columnists - Lawrence Dallaglio, Jeremy Guscott, Malcolm O'Kelly and Chris Paterson all 'wrote' ghosted columns in some or all of our editions. Guscott is highly professional in his approach and Bob Dwyer, in my experience, easily the best match analyst in the media anywhere, worked for us throughout the tournament.

Sometimes, it falls into place. Sometimes, it is a long grind. At some time, when all the maelstrom of production of the first edition had subsided back in London, when the media centre bustle gave way to tired faces and a slow sense of relief, there would then be a check with the sports editor. Are we OK, have we covered the bases, have we missed a story that our rivals are running? No, as usual.

Just before I made that call, I took another. It was from a member of the Harlequins who told me that Will Greenwood, the try-scorer, was to leave for home the next day. Carol, his wife, had been admitted to hospital with complications early in her pregnancy. It was only just over a year ago that Will and Carol had lost Freddie, their son, who had been born 18 weeks premature.

It was a story. A profoundly upsetting one for the Greenwoods but in the sense that it was bound to come out soon (due to Greenwood not appearing in the team), still a story. I rang England's media people, who went deathly quiet. They refused to confirm the story.

'I know this is true, why are you denying it?'

Their answer was that Greenwood had already been booked to fly home from Perth the day after, at three in the afternoon, and the media announcement would be made at the same time, with him safely departed. I had a sinking feeling as I apprised the hierarchy back in London. I knew they would be keen to run it. Essentially, I did not want to. I expect to be pushed hard by my sports desk. I push hard back at them. I try to be reasonably sanguine, always, if something that appears in the paper gives offence to the subject, and they are safely back at Wapping, I am in the field along with that subject. It's just tough luck. They also knew that there were many ways that the story could emerge that night and be run in any competing Sunday paper; they knew that Greenwood himself, under contract to the News of the World, may well be announcing it himself in his weekly column and that I, who knew it, would look silly for not filing it.

The exigencies of newspapers were one thing. But this was something else. Will Greenwood was not hiding a pulled hamstring; he was not hiding a positive drugs test. He was hiding, for the moment, the news that his missus was under treatment so that a second youngster was not born prematurely; and even though it was way past midnight and he would be in bed, all packed, the idea that the story might cause him inconvenience, cause him to be waylaid by hacks when his mind was elsewhere, caused me a considerable amount of unease. We ran a story, factual and unadorned.

Less than two weeks later. Greenwood was back in Australia. Carol was in excellent order and sent him back to play his part in a shot on glory. On 3 February 2004, Archie Frederick Lewis Greenwood arrived safely.

The Sunday Times reporting squad, as unimpressive a bunch at that time of day as you could find, arrived back at our hotel around three, shattered, and hoovered up a beer. I was starving. I ordered a steak sandwich from room service. I was almost too tired to eat. As it arrived, the office rang. 'The editor wants a 1,000-word feature on France. He thinks they will be England's next big game.'

France? I hadn't even seen them play. I didn't feel that 3 a.m. Perth time was quite the slot to call their media officer demanding an interview. It was something of a struggle. I put the steak sandwich down. My contact lenses were sticking to my eyes, so I was not inclined to unravel all the leads, the modems and the chargers, and to power up the laptop. I made some notes, rang the copytaker and started dictating off the top of my head. I dozed off completely at one stage and was woken after a few seconds by a tinny 'Hello, hello' on the line.

There had been nothing light about the day.

Now you people all know that I love a good puddle, but really, is there any need, in London, with London's weather, to create a puddle?

In some baking southern Italian town with two hundred days of hot sunshine every year, this would make sense. But here? Stupid, I think.

This photo was taken, as was this one of the school bus (not the yellow one – the other one), from the top of a double decker bus in the Kings Road, looking south.

Prospect Magazine has revamped its website. If I understand the rules correctly, you can read quite a few of their pieces when they first come out, for free, for a few weeks, and then you have to pay for them, either at about a quid a go, or with a £25 annual sub. Please tell me if I've got that wrong.

Prospect is, I think, very good, which is why I bother with a web operation which charges. Normally I wouldn't.

So anyway, that means that you can read this most informative piece about the Philharmonia Orchestra by their regular classical music writer, Stephen Everson.

Everson makes many telling points, of which I have picked these, for the somewhat ignoble reason that they have also mostly been made here:

It is ironic that as the quality and enthusiasm of orchestral musicians has increased, so the interest in orchestral music within the general culture has declined so markedly. "We're in a period now where the broad population of this country is totally unfamiliar with orchestral music and reluctant to enjoy anything that requires some investment of time and thought. Our world is shrinking by the day because of the overwhelming impact of popular culture. When I was a kid, although I didn't grow up in a musical family, you were always aware of orchestral music on the radio because there was the light programme, and the home service. The musical language you grew up with was the basic harmonic tonality that underpins music from the Renaissance until the present day. Now that language is almost entirely foreign because rap music and garage and house have no harmonic references at all. It's purely linear. People's experience of great music is now negligible. If you put on Dvorak's New World Symphony, over half of the audience are hearing it for the first time."

This next bit was particularly interesting to me, because I saw this coming, as I am sure did many others. Not only are public subsidies harder to come by, but corporate money is getting harder to extract, because the generation that now runs these things, both public and private, grew up with the Beatles, rather than with the Proms on the Third Programme.

This has consequences for the orchestra's ability to find commercial sponsors. When Whelton first went to the Philharmonia, he found he could raise about £800,000 a year, and spend only half a day a week doing so. "You'd go to one company and put a proposal, and there'd be a yes or a no; if it was a no there'd be another ten companies you knew were interested. Chairmen of boards and managing directors were from a generation that was passionate about music and opera. But those people have retired. In the main, the people in those positions now have no interest in high culture. First of all they're with each company a very short time, secondly they're driven entirely by adding shareholder value, and thirdly what we do is something alien to most of them … they'd prefer to take clients to a football match."

And then Everson homes in on how film music is surviving as one of the few routes from popular culture to classical music. It's not that much of it is classical music, in the sense of being great and part of the classical canon. It is that it is at least, unlike most music these days, written in the same language as classical music.

More fundamentally, it requires orchestras to rethink how they can build and maintain their audience. "Most people's only relationship with orchestral music these days is in the cinema and occasionally the television. We gave a concert of film music in the Festival Hall recently that was sold out, and in the middle of it we did the Adagietto from Mahler's 5th Symphony and the overture to Figaro. The people listened to those pieces with just the same level of concentration as they did Star Wars. They loved the emotional impact of that music – that's their starting point now. I wrote to a critic the other day who complained that we were putting the Rachmaninov 2nd piano concerto in a concert and I said look at the symphony it's with, which was Prokofiev's 5th. Now, I think that's central repertoire but 3,000 people probably heard it for the first time that night. Familiarisation is the only way to build the audience. If you can get the public from film music to, say, Pictures from an Exhibition and then to the Rachmaninov 2nd piano concerto and then on to Prokofiev's 5th, they've got one more piece in their repertoire. If we don't succeed in doing that, our audience will become narrower and narrower. When I came to the Philharmonia, it was the last season that you could do even very mainstream concerts at the Festival Hall that would be packed to the gunnels."

Prokofiev's 5th has long been a favourite of mine, ever since I was first persuaded by a record reviewer to buy the Karajan DGG version, which is still regarded as one of the best.

Everson also ruminates upon the soon-to-be undertaken revamp of the accoustics of the Royal Festival Hall, which is the performing home of the Philharmonia.

Here's a picture of the RFH, seen from the downstream of the two new Hungerford footbridges.

The Festival Hall is a place I might well go to more often if the accoustics were up to scratch.

Usually when caught short for a posting with midnight approaching, I shove up a picture, either hand done by some dead bloke, or one of mine done with my camera. But tonight, I'll give a plug for a CD, by the Yggdrasil Quartet. Funny name that: Yggdrasil. Still, I shouldn't grumble. I expect there are places in the world where "Micklethwait" raises a bit of a smirk.

Anyway, the Yggdrasil Quartet's recording of two Schubert quartets is, the bit of it I've listened to, very fine indeed.

I bought this CD because BIS have a reputation for superb recordings and all round technical excellence. I think that there is a special pleasure to be had from a really good recording of string quartet music, even if you can get used to a bad one. I was not disappointed. The CD cost me only £3, which is all part of how happy it made me. (I wouldn't dream of paying the full wack for a CD with pieces that I already have lots of CDs of.) So far I've only listened to the non-famous quartet on it, Number 10 in E flat major opus 125 no. 1.

I don't know this quartet very well. I know Death and the Maiden, the other piece on this CD, but not Number 10. And the less magnificent a piece of music is, the more important is the sound that it makes, and the sound that this piece makes in these hands is real Rolls Royce stuff.

Critics are fond of praising technically less than perfect string quartet playing to the skies and beyond. What matters to them is the music , and not the sound that it makes. With some music, I agree. But with string quartets, I really like it when the harmonies are truly harmonious to the point of heavenliness. So much of string quartetness is harmony that if harmony is done badly, that utterly spoils it.

My most favourite string quartet performance of all is the Quartetto Italiano's recording on Philips of Beethoven's Opus 132, the slow movement being a high point. This music, as composed and heard by the already deaf Beethoven, sounds perfect, absolutely perfect. And the playing of it must be absolutely perfect too. Musical but imperfect is, for me, no use at all. And the Quartetto Italiano make a sound that is as near to the sound of heaven as you will ever hear on this earth, which as far as atheist me is concerned means ever full stop.

I wouldn't put the playing of the Yggdrasil quite in this class, but it is very good. And maybe their Death and the Maiden will be even better.

More from January 2005 and earlier