Lazy Saturday

Today's soundtrack: Curtis Mayfield - Superfly

A nice lazy day today, in contrast to yesterday, when I boxed off all my outstanding chores.  So having walked the dog early on, I've been chillin', reading the paper, tinkering on t'internet and generally recharging in advance of the return to work on Monday.

One of the things I've been doing is hanging out on The Afterword site, the site that rose from the ashes of The Word website.  Regulars may recall my longstanding devotion to The Word in its many guises - magazine, podcast and website.  Sadly, falls in circulation and advertising revenue led to the demise of The Word back in July.  Unfortunately there isn't a market, apparently, for a well-written magazine covering all types of media - music, film, television, technology, and the business underpinning these media.  However of greater concern to me - and to many other people - was the associated loss of the website, where a strong, vibrant community of like-minded individuals had developed over a period of five or so years.

Fortunately, within this community are a number of people who had the drive, time and technical wherewithal  to design and launch an alternative to the Word website, and so 'The Afterword' (see what they did there?) came into being.  The intention was to mirror, as closely as possible, the original site, albeit without the ties to the magazine.  Over time, the vast majority of regular contributors have migrated across to The Afterword, and a number of new faces have also started to make a contribution.  Overall the transition has been pretty seamless, albeit with the odd hiccup and bout of navel-gazing.  If anything, the site's a better place than the old one, being run by the contributors rather than by the magazine staff.  Anyway, the link's over there - get yourself over there and registered!

With the England international last night, there's a distinct lack of footy to get worked up about this weekend.  This is not a good thing.  I have completely lost interest in the performance of the national team, to the extent that I can't be bothered watching.  And while it's nice to see a couple of the Everton lads getting the recognition they deserve, I'd rather they weren't playing and exposing themselves to injury (or the fluttery come-ons from the squad members at "bigger" clubs).  There have now been two international breaks since the season started, giving a disjointed feeling to the season and too few games being played, for my taste!  By the end of October there will only have been four league games played at home this season, and only one of those at its rightful time of three on a Saturday.  It's not good enough!

Anyway, I've been listening to the great Curtis Mayfield while writing this, and for the second day running it's a film soundtrack - this time for Superfly, one of a series of 'Blaxploitation' flicks made in the seventies.  I'm pretty sure I've never seen Superfly, but that doesn't matter - it couldn't possibly live up to the soundtrack anyway.

Curtis's voice was one of the sweetest in gospel/soul, and it remains sweet here, despite the subject matter - in fact, the contrast between the sweetness of the voice and the toughness of the lyric works incredibly well.


Here's Curtis back in 1973, performing 'Freddie's Dead'...

Day 6: Gizza job eh?

Today's soundtrack: Curtis Mayfield - Superfly

Well the prawn stirfry was delightful, although the film (Saw V) left a bit to be desired. Not really concentrating to be honest, although gave myself brownie points for spotting Chloe's husband out of 24 in the DVD menu before the film even started. Mrs W refusing to be impressed. I was convinced Mr Saw himself died in one of the earlier films, so slightly surprised to see him upright and, if not the picture of health, certainly alive. Still, it's not unusual for supposedly dead characters to reappear in later films (or even in the same film) in the 'splatter' genre, so I shouldn't be too surprised I guess.

So off to the Jobcentre this morning to go through the formalities of registration. And what a deeply dispiriting experience that was. Everyone involved was pleasant and couteous but there is a deep sense of being processed rather than being treated as an individual. And processed into a system that isn't really designed to meet my needs - finding an equivalent job to mine on the system was a challenge, as was discussing and documenting the ways in which I will be looking to find work. At least the chairs aren't bolted to the floor like they used to be back in the day. Anyway, the paperwork now disappears into the system - apparently it will take four weeks for the claim documentation to be processed, which reflects the recent surge in applications for benefit (sorry, "Jobseekers' Allowance") that are hitting the system.

In the meantime, I have to go back on Tuesday to sign on for the first time - can't wait.

And then back home to watch the Everton-Portsmouth game. And what a deeply dispiriting experience that was. No Cahill, debut for Jacobsen (finally) and a start for Saha. Average age of the bench - 19. The game started well, Everton taking the lead through a Baines free kick and then dominating possession for a decent spell. Portsmouth then came back into the game with a Crouch goal from a corner erroneously given by the referee, seeing a 'deflection' that never happened. Be that as it may, the defending from the corner was pretty poor.

Second half, Everton again started the brighter, but never really looked like scoring and eventually, the lanky streak of piss got on the end of another corner to make it 2-1. After that, we huffed and puffed but if anything, Portsmouth were the more likely scorers. Can't complain too much - Portsmouth just wanted to win more than we did, and again we failed to impose ourselves on a strong, physical team. No doubt Crouch will get the overall Man of the Match award (although I was more impressed with Glen Johnson, who seems to be turning into a class act), but for Everton it's difficult to call the best player. Pienaar played very well in patches and Baines again impressed, and Jacobsen did ok on his debut, but overall it was a lacklustre performance. Now in the unhappy position of looking for favours from Arsenal and Liverpool!

No music practice so far today, don't want to upset Mrs W unnecessarily!

Nice to listen to Curtis, and the Superfly soundtrack is probably his best work for me, standing up as an excellent soundtrack to the film and a wonderful piece of music in its own right. iTunes has selected the second disc of the set to play, which means I'm listening to instrumental versions and demos of the centrepiece songs, along with instrumental versions and elements of the film score, but not once does the standard drop below excellent.

Off to the kichen shortly, to rustle up a pasta bake, which will give me the perfect opportunity to investigate the bottle of red that I managed to pass over on Thursday night. Think I deserve it!