News and Coos

While most tourist paraphernalia is utter rubbish, I did see one the other day that provided a valuable piece of knowledge without costing a penny. This came in the form of a t-shirt emblazoned with a cartoon picture of everybody’s favourite shaggy Scottish bovine, complete with the proper spelling of its name: the Heilan Coo. So now we know.

Enjoyed a nice day out in Edinburgh where I caught a few shows at the Fringe Festival. First up was All the Great Books – Abridged from the excellent Reduced Shakespeare Company. The first show I saw from this troupe was a few years back in London when I saw The Complete Works of Shakespeare – Abridged which sees three actors perform all of Shakespeare’s plays in just over an hour. Very clever, very madcap and very funny. Admittedly the Great Books show, which follows the same format using classic literature as its base, wasn’t quite as funny as the Shakespeare show, but this may have just been due to the fact that I already knew what kind of show to expect. Still, funny stuff and many pat yourself on the back moments when you understood some of more obscure literary jokes. And the dancing Trojan Horse scene (while recreating the Iliad) set to the Pink Panther theme was priceless.

Keeping with the “whole bunch of stuff abridged” theme, we then caught a show called Great Scots! – Scottish History in 69 Minutes. It was a one-man show where the actor played a professor who could go back in time to various points in Scottish history in order to illustrate a particular era. It was funny enough, and surprisingly informative. But it was bloody hot, as there were about 50 of us packed in an unventilated basement theatre. A case of suffering for the arts?

The last show we saw was Shakespeare’s Italian Job, which was a recreation of the 1969 Michael Caine movie but using Shakespearean characters and dialogue. It was incredibly clever, and often very funny (after observing his mate grab his girlfriends backside, a thief remarks “Aye, there’s the rub”, and suchlike). I confess that at the time some of the humour went straight over my head as I had yet to see the movie the play was recreating. But then the very next night, the BBC movie of the night was, you guessed it, the Italian Job. Ah, so that’s why they had the three Mini Coopers on stage…

I came across this excellent article in The Observer the other day. I think it describes perfectly how many people, including myself, feel about the “good” ol’ USA these days.

Rented a great film the other day – Dirty Pretty Things – which stars Audrey Tautou (from Amelie) in her first English speaking role. It is a great suspense flick about the illegal trade of human body parts in London. And it stars a hot French actress. Enough said.

After months of living with a wee 14-inch TV, we finally opened up the coffers and bought ourselves a more respectable 21-inch set. Perhaps the best feature of this new set is the retro chic that is Teletext, which can best be described as the Internet circa 1993 on your television screen and controlled by remote. This new addition to the house has also arrived just in time to be able to give The Two Towers some justice when I pick it up, as said film came out this past week in the UK. I wants it, my precious.