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Weblog | I don't like the word blog, it's ugly. Anyway, new content happens here. (Swedish dito)

About me and the site | Twenty-something male who likes text. Obsessed with things such as books, reality, communication, and one or two tv-shows.

Archives | Things written here since... well, 2001. Some of it is good, some is utter shait.

Books | Books read, not books written. So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.

Photo | I like my camera and it likes me.

Links | Outwards, away, flee.

e-mail | J. Nicklas Andersson

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2002-02-03

A man enters an elevator. It is a tired man, but he stands tall although his gaze is sad as if he just lost everything. This is as expected as this is what he has. Once, not long ago, everything was his. Power, wealth and control. Other powerful men bowed before his will and feet, afraid for his wrath. And now everything is gone, fallen through cracks he never knew existed or brushed over in false confidence.

He push the button marked with the floor number to which he is headed, and by doing so one can see the initials W.R.H. that probably embroider his coat. If he is aware of the other man present in the elevator, he didn’t show it. W.R.H. probably ignores him, as he must possess the knowledge that this man was the catalyst to his loss. The other man however is not content to be ignored like that and extends his hand as a man greeting another.

“Mr Hearst, I’m not sure you remember who I am. My name is Orson Welles.” He then continued to invite William Randolph Hearst to the premiere of Citizen Kane but the man was dead silent all the way down.

My God, what wouldn’t I give to be in there at that moment with a camera?

(Yes, I’ve just seen RKO 281 again. Fun, despite some minor fictionalisations. If this is one of them then Mr Welles himself is guilty, but who cares? It’s a good story.)

Every bone in my body told me I shouldn’t like it, but they and parts of my brain had to surrender. I actually liked Moulin Rouge. It was as if Hunter S. Thompson had written a musical and then the distributor had stripped the finished product of every reference to drugs in the editing process. So you don’t actually see anyone indulge in a cocaine snort race, but the effects are there as they skip and dance and sings and well, dance some more. The story was a bit banal but it somehow fitted the wonderful camera-work.

And no matter what one say about the rest, the credits are stunning. The most beautiful piece of work I’ve seen in a long time, but then again I’m a sucker for everything nostalgic to the old times of any given technology. Anyway, the titles had that sort of flickering strobe light at the edges from old movies. Don’t get me started on the usage of type. It was as if someone had deviced a wet dream of credits.

I rarely listen to the radio nowadays. There was a time in my youth when it was constantly turned on, but those days are gone. The left when I made the awful discovery that they mostly played shit.

However, I can see on the look on your face that you suspected this however, there is an exception. The national government funded channels have these wonderful imaginative names of P and a number from one to four. As you’ve already guessed, quick of wits as you are, P stands for Programme. On Sundays for forty-five minutes on P2 they have a show dedicated to Jazz recorded before 1950 and it is good, solid entertainment four almost an hour. Gosh and wow.

Today I discovered that if I walk around I would cause static in varying degrees depending on where I stood and that was the only channel that is affected by this. Fun? No, not particularly. It is much more annoying that I first thought it would be.