Christmas In New York:

A boss Christmas. Normally I’m all Bah! Humbug about things but this year, as much as my creaking enthusiasm and innate cynicism allowed, I got slightly more into the spirit of things. The city seems to empty-out over the holidays, mostly. I’m always happy and surprised when I get the park to myself when I go running. There are times it’s possible to do this – after a storm is a good time. I’ve run around the reservoir and seen no one before now during/after a rainstorm. I highly recommended it-having Central Park to yourself is amazing. It’s one of my favourite places to go running in the world. (Along The Peak in Hong Kong is another, as is along the Bosphorous in Istanbul).

This is the Jackie O. reservoir in Central Park, made famous by the movie Marathon Man. It’s 1 1/2 miles in circumference and a great place to run.



I’ve seen countless movies too: Babel’s great, but doesn’t resolve like an American movie--but I like that. I’m the worst person to send for movies as I always like dark things—“This is a good one: it proves there’s no God and the blind orphan gets left alone to starve in a cave at the end sitting next to the worm-eaten corpse of her dead child. It's in Urdu with High-German subtitles. It’s brilliant!” while everyone else was hoping that I’d get Air Force One…..; Casino Royale is totally boss – I saw Die Another Day on TV this week and it seemed pale and camp in comparison what with it’s invisible cars and hammy John Cleese as Q. And I think Brosnan’s Bond is okay but Pierce Brosnan always seems like such a pompous tosser. Daniel craig is the Don if you ask me; The Painted Veil is good but slightly thin although I could understand most of the Chinese in it which made me feel more cleverer than I should; The Curse of The Golden Flower was similarly okay. Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat were both really good but Zhang Yimou seems to have seen Twin Towers too many times; some of the set pieces felt a bit tired and overdone. However, I could watch Gong Li peel potatoes for hours on end (and pay for it) so I wasn’t unhappy. I’ve only ever seen her be crap in one movie and even then she looked amazing and I simpered away to myself for 2 hours anyway. (I never said I was a reliable critic); Notes on a Scandal is deliciously malicious. Both Cate Blanchett and Judy Dench are amazing in this and the story is great (The book by Zoe Heller is excellent too). The bench where they sit on Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath was where I used to go to mope when I’d first moved to London and I was a bit skint. I’d sit on that bench and feel sorry for myself (which I did/do to Olympic standard) and wonder at the size and romance of London in front of me. You can see all the way down south to the hill at Greenwich from there--the whole of the city before you. Anyway, I digress, the opening shot shows suicide bridge over the Archway Road too. I don’t know how many people have jumped off that bridge – it’s not quite so romantic as jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge might be, for example. You land on a road and get squashed by a Number 43 bus going to Muswell Hill. It lacks any kind of flair, I reckon.

Finally got some writing done. Writing’s very like going to the gym for me – it takes a while to get myself motivated, then I feel a tremendous guilt of I don’t do enough of it but I feel completely exhilarated once I’ve finished for the day. Time glides past. It’s similar to playing when you’re a child and being lost so completely in something that you don’t realize really where you are or what you’re doing. Writing anything for this blog would have felt like cheating on the other writing. And it would have been, too.

This week I’ve been listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto’s film music while I’ve been writing (He wrote the outro piece used for Babel which is very simple and haunting – it’s called Bibo No Aozora. It fits the closing scene perfectly to my mind). The pianos, violins and cellos are all simply layered but very delicate and beautiful. It’s impossible for me to get tired of this music. (However right now I’m listening to Panic! At the Disco, go figure….)

I wanted to get the song Djabaram from Sakamoto’s Beauty LP but it’s not on I-tunes. It’s such an amazing song and sung by Youssou N'Dour. I’m kind of glad I can’t understand the words as it adds to the song for me.

Buying a physical CD has started to feel a little strange to me these days…can’t quite work out how that happened. Must've been after my Myspace profile logged its 5000th friend and I started riding a skateboard around Carroll Gardens while working on an animated short based on my autobiography. No, really, it's like V for Vendetta only better and I'm also recording all the music myself on garageband....I was flagging a cool lifestyle blog for a while. It kept me current with what the kids are into but it's so cool it changed its URL as its old one had become passe and know one knows what the new one is.