Hottest day of the year here today. But before I get too carried away, I should perhaps think of colleagues where that maybe ain't such a good thing....
Our LA correspondent, for example, is in the middle of this right now.
He just sent us this message:
FT desert office (where I am) is threatened by huge wildfire, 1m away as one types. I have a 7,500 gal water tank and am consuming beer at alarming rate. Should be enuff to douse flames. If not: hasta la vista, babies.
#2 son and I went to Pericles yesterday at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a short walk from my apartment. Lots of death, exile, fleeing, conspiracies/backstabbing, unrequited love/lust, weeping. Typical Bard, though not one of his jollier plays.
The staging was superb, though. If anyone knows The Globe, it's built as an accurate representation of how theatres were in Shakespeare's day, so the upper gallery walls can be used to recreate, say, the rigging of a ship. The storm at sea sequence yesterday was just excellent.
Tom was particularly taken by the notion that, since theatre was to the Elizabethans what TV is to us, there was a lot of heckling/drunkenness/general misbehaving by both audience and actors.
As if that wasn't depressing - sorry, life-affirming - enough for the poor kid yesterday, I also took him here. He seemed ok with a quick trip through deadly earnest German and other modern European painters, but he had to ask: "Why do artists never smile?"
Which, when you consider everything they should be smiling about, (see recent post re DJs) is a fair point.
He could also have asked: "Why do they always dress in black?" "Isn't that just some paint splatters?", "Do people seriously pay them to do this?"...
I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to modern culture, and I'm always ready to be shocked/challenged/have my preconceptions of society trashed.
But in truth, it would be difficult to find a group of folks who are further up themselves than these guys. The least they can do is not take themselves so freakin' seriously.
Speechless. Just speechless.
Ahhh.... England!
Our LA correspondent, for example, is in the middle of this right now.
He just sent us this message:
FT desert office (where I am) is threatened by huge wildfire, 1m away as one types. I have a 7,500 gal water tank and am consuming beer at alarming rate. Should be enuff to douse flames. If not: hasta la vista, babies.
#2 son and I went to Pericles yesterday at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a short walk from my apartment. Lots of death, exile, fleeing, conspiracies/backstabbing, unrequited love/lust, weeping. Typical Bard, though not one of his jollier plays.
The staging was superb, though. If anyone knows The Globe, it's built as an accurate representation of how theatres were in Shakespeare's day, so the upper gallery walls can be used to recreate, say, the rigging of a ship. The storm at sea sequence yesterday was just excellent.
Tom was particularly taken by the notion that, since theatre was to the Elizabethans what TV is to us, there was a lot of heckling/drunkenness/general misbehaving by both audience and actors.
As if that wasn't depressing - sorry, life-affirming - enough for the poor kid yesterday, I also took him here. He seemed ok with a quick trip through deadly earnest German and other modern European painters, but he had to ask: "Why do artists never smile?"
Which, when you consider everything they should be smiling about, (see recent post re DJs) is a fair point.
He could also have asked: "Why do they always dress in black?" "Isn't that just some paint splatters?", "Do people seriously pay them to do this?"...
I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to modern culture, and I'm always ready to be shocked/challenged/have my preconceptions of society trashed.
But in truth, it would be difficult to find a group of folks who are further up themselves than these guys. The least they can do is not take themselves so freakin' seriously.
Speechless. Just speechless.
Ahhh.... England!
posted by Steve at 2:34 PM
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