7am - I get up in order to have showered before the post arrives.
Some time after 8am - City-Link miraculously manage to find my house, use the intercom system and deliver a parcel which they should have delivered more than two weeks ago.
9am - I start looking through some of my recordings from this last week (which has been completely insane, work-wise, and I'm knackered!)
9:24 - pondering breakfast. Pour cereal into a bowl, grab milk from fridge.
9:25 - phone rings, Mum. Milk back into the fridge.
9:40 - postman rings the doorbell; couple of parcels for my flatmate.
10am - I hang up phone and pour milk on my cereal. Breakfast time! Watch half an episode of Boston Legal. Denny Crane.
10:30-12:30 - skip between Boston Legal episodes and the interesting bits of This Morning. George Clooney, Honeysuckle Weeks. Not in the same interview. Honeysuckle says something about "getting laid", on breakfast telly. Brilliant.
12:30 - Seeing Tom Selleck in a couple of Boston Legal episodes has made me want to watch In & Out. Rummaging through my DVD collection I finally find it and start watching the film. Even the intro music makes me feel good. I must have seen that film about 15-20 times. "She was too old for Yentl!"
2:30 - Having watched In & Out I now want to watch The Birdcage, so I go on another hunt in my collection, only to remember after a while that my flatmate borrowed it a few weeks ago. I steal it from her room.
3:30 - I suddenly have an urge to do the dishes, and turn off The Birdcage (which, incidentally, I must have seen at least as many times as In & Out.)
3:31 - Toilet break. Remember to bring the mobile and cordless, just in case City-Link stop by just as I am on the loo.
3:33 - Some shouting outside our living room window (meaning, on street level, some ten storeys beneath us.) I look out of the window and see three teenagers/young men (hard to tell; they're hoodies) walking in the middle of the rather busy street, at least one of whom is carrying a sort of a bat which he is using to hit the others and a car which is parked by the pavement.
3:34 - My first thought is very frighteningly not to ring the police, but to film the incident in case the police need evidence afterwards. 20 seconds later, the police arrive. The one who seems to have been the worst offender is rendered immobile by a policeman's tazer gun, twice.
3:35-6:something - commotion and investigations going on. Half of the neighbourhood cordoned off.
5:20 - I call City-Link, asking for when my parcel will arrive. The girl I speak to calls the driver and can confirm that he is five minutes away, give or take a few mins due to traffic. I turn on the TV channel which shows the four security cameras covering the various entrances to this building.
6:30 - I call City-Link again, asking why it takes so long for the driver to reach me, whereupon the operator, Francesca, says that she doesn't know why I've been told that he was only five minutes away, as the item was never loaded unto a van today.
6:50 - I get off the phone after having spoken to a rather self-obsessed supervisor who basically says they have fucked up again, but that there is nothing they can do about it. The item will be sent back to the sender tomorrow.
8pm - My flatmate comes home, we go to get a bite to eat, and see blood on the pavement where the guys were fighting earlier. Classy.
8:30 onwards - Watching telly.

I have spent so much time these past six days on the phone with City-Link and the sender of the item I am waiting for, and I am very, very fed up of them. We came to the conclusion earlier tonight that City-Link have managed to deliver only ONE parcel to us since November, even though we should have had at least five delivered, and that one was today. It was confirmed to me once on Tuesday and twice yesterday that the item would definitely be delivered today, but trust City-Link to fuck up the one thing they're supposed to be good at. I have wasted so much time on them, and their sheer arrogance when dealing with me is just beyond all belief. Amazingly incompetent people.

The sender now say they have arranged for yet another re-delivery next week. I don't care anymore.

Anyway, I am going to bed; going to Norway tomorrow for a long weekend (haven't seen my family in more than a year.)

Labels: film, hank azaria, kevin kline, nathan lane, personal, TV

By the way, that incident the police were here about? Murder. Nice.

So Ali came to my door yesterday as I was playing Chrono Trigger and stood there for about ten or fifteen minutes going on and on about how amazingly cheap his electricity company was in comparison to mine. He was a smooth-talker and a fast one at that, so I never got the chance until the very end to tell him that I wasn't the only one living here and I couldn't make such a decision on my own. I was lying. He was stupid enough to show me the form I had to fill out and I thought "he'll need to come inside in order to fill all this out and my sitting room looks like a complete mess". We haven't quite unpacked yet. It's like the boxes multiply during the night. I'm also getting fed up of IKEA Edmonton (the one where they had to close down shortly after the opening because of all the commotion). It's a nice place, but it's a hassle getting there and we don't have a car so we have to order home delivery. Which is a bitch if you've forgotten something, like we did.

Something spectacular happened here yesterday, though. I got up, had a shower and when I came back to my bedroom I turned on the radio and listened to Jonathan Ross live. After more than two years of listening to his show (religiously, every Saturday) through the internet, I was finally able to listen to it on my own radio, and in the right time zone, even!

I feel I have to mention two things off the telly. Yesterday I watched Holiday Showdown on ITV2 as per usual (nothing like watching a good row while having supper), and every week those people increase my blood pressure. First of all, the producers naturally put together people who are as farthest away from each other when it comes to hobbies and interests as humanly possible. So when the chavs go on holiday with the posh, there's bound to be a lot of clashing. Now, this is very important: It doesn't matter how high-brow you think you are. One: They only pick the most extreme families for the programme. You're weird no matter what. Two: Let's face it. You can't be very high-brow since you watch ITV. Stop pretending.

The other programme I want to mention is The Girl in the Café, a new film by Richard Curtis which was shown on BBC1 last night. I thought the script was really good, but then I'm inclined to like whatever Curtis does. The comedy part of it was delivered wonderfully by the immensely talented Bill Nighy - top-billed for once, probably because they've realised he steals any scene his in anyway - and Kelly MacDonald was spot on as the slightly bewildered "girl in the café", looking worried and whispering her lines most of the time. As you may or may not know, this year's G8 summit takes place in Scotland in the beginning of July, as from what was discussed in the film it is pretty clear that Curtis is very much involved with the Live8 concerts and the whole idea behind it. It's a bit of an extension to his already well established Comic Relief in that the BBC gives him a prime time slot in order to plead for Africa. However, the day the leaders of the UK, Japan, Russia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the US want to waiver all debt, increase the aid enough for the poor African countries to actually have a real future and trade with them in a fair manner is the day when the rest of us spontaneously combust out of amazement.

On a happier and sillier note, I had a fantastic dream the other night. Apparently, I was the student vice president at some high school and was about to turn thirty (so this'll probably happen in a few years). We were planning a huge concert with people from all over the world performing traditional songs and dances, but this was all a cover-up of the real concert, which was in my honour (megalomaniac much?). My friends had put their lovely heads together and come up with a long list of my favourite performers (most of whom were actors, strangely enough, ahem...). All of them had accepted the invitation, even those who were sick. Kevin Kline was the first one out, and he had broken his ankles and hurt his back, but still he found the energy to hop around singing some song while frantically trying to find me in the audience (he had obviously only been told where I was seated, and I had moved when I found out it was a surprise birthday celebration). I want to extend my apologies to Mr. Kline right now. Unfortunately, since I live in a rather noisy neighbourhood, I woke up just as they announced the host for the evening (a certain Mr. Quast), so I don't really know who else was on the long list of performers, but I know the whole thing took place in different arenas and that even I had to have tickets for each show, one of which was the world premiere of Dogma...hmmm...

Well, I probably promised you pictures of my new place - here's about one sixth of my skyline at night:




Current track: Morrissey & Siouxsie - Interlude

Labels: bill nighy, current affairs, dreams, film, humour, kevin kline, personal, philip quast, radio, TV

It's obviously that time of year when I start publishing my Lists(TM); could be because I had a delicious supper, or just because I was getting tired of people constantly asking me which films I've got. So here is my film collection. I keep a huge database in Excel with loads more info than this, but I decided on just listing the titles here. I have kept my four categories, though: Normal, where most of my films are kept - these films are not among my favourites, but they were good enough for me to keep in my collection; Classic - older films (often in black and white), also not my absolute favourites; Must-see - newer films that I adore; Champ - classic films that I absolutely love.

Having browsed my newly updated list, I discovered that my Top Ten list of actors appearing in most films (in my collection, that is) is as follows:

William Hurt - 24 films
Alan Rickman - 18
Dustin Hoffman - 18
Geoffrey Rush - 18
John Cleese - 17
David Niven - 16
John Lithgow - 16
Sir Alec Guinness - 16
James Garner - 15
Michael Palin - 14

Further investigations left me with these additions - these are the ones that appear in ten or more films within my collection:

Christopher Walken - 12 films
Kenneth Branagh - 12
Alfred Molina - 11
Kevin Kline - 11
Bruce Willis - 10 (What? Must be the Die Hard films.)
Eric Idle - 10

The first actress appearing on the list is right beneath Eric Idle with her nine films; Emma Thompson. We need more parts for women in the film industry!

Current track: D12 - How Come

Labels: Alan Rickman, alec guinness, alfred molina, david niven, dustin hoffman, film, geoffrey rush, james garner, john lithgow, kevin kline, lists, michael palin, william hurt

Went to see a sneak preview of De-Lovely earlier today. This story about Cole Porter is filled with his songs neatly interwoven with the tale of his real-life experiences. Laughed quite a lot during the first half, but as we delved deeper into his life, especially his love life, I sort of lost the will to laugh. I started disliking this person that I've never even met. In the end I realised it was a very sad film indeed, and I loved it. Was humming to Let's Fall in Love all the way home, though.

Kevin Kline was his usual self - can I just say I must be getting very familiar with his acting skills, as I had a feeling I had seen it all before...but as I just checked his filmography and realised I've seen 21 of his films, most of them more than once because I probably own most of them, this isn't too unbelievable. Sidetrack: OMG, they're making a prequel to the Pink Panther films? It's going to be horrid! And Kevin Kline was on Parky last night? Why didn't I know this? Of course, since I don't get BBC that would probably have made me even more annoyed. I'll just look forward to seeing it in about...ten months' time. :-(

Anyway, back to the film. Lots of good actors there, for instance Kevin McNally and Jonathan Pryce, some semi-favourites of mine. Even Ashley Judd was good! I may have to start liking her. The music was brilliant and there were a lot of currently popular singers featured in the film. I'd say you'll like this film if you're 1) into musicals, and/or 2) gay and/or 3) a fan of any of the actors.

Current track: Kaizers Orchestra - Kontroll på kontinentet

Labels: film, kevin kline, musicals