Hoodia again

Back on the 5th May I wrote about Hoodia Gordonii, and the enthusiasm there is for this plant which supposedly aids in reducing weight.

I say supposedly, because the genuine product does have some qualities that will assist in weight reduction. Unfortunately everyone and his brother has got on the bandwagon and is producing hoodia, much of it of no value whatsoever.

As a result, the Hoodia Consumer Review has begun a site where you can find out which versions of hoodia are useful and which are not, as well as read up on the background to the hoodia industry and read a number of news items on it. This is a very informative site and one worth visiting if you’re thinking of purchasing some hoodia. Check out the facts before you do.

Linkless in some things

I’ve mentioned linkandblogchallenge.com before on this blog, and still find it an interesting way to increase links to my blogs, and to add links to other people’s.

There are two ways of using the site: you can either challenge another member to use a particular word or phrase in a post, and then you link to their post and they link to yours.

Or (if you weren’t confused by the above) you can set up a topic, and other people can link to that via posts on the same topic, on their blogs.

Yeah, I know I’m not explaining it well.

Suffice to say, I go back to this site often to check what’s happening, and run down the list of topics that are up for linking to. It’s surprising what’s there: lots of celebrity stuff, but virtually nothing in the religion area; a good deal on health, but not much on books and writing. Plenty on blogging (which is probably not surprising) but not much on automobiles trains and planes.

I guess I’m expecting the range of topics to be more widespread. Perhaps it depends on who writes on the site, and who doesn’t. I’ll have to add something else to the religion section, because it’s sad to see just one little post listed in there – especially since it’s mine!

Dating for Everyone

I’m beginning to think there must be a dating site for practically every known kind of person under the sun. Just came across one for Jewish singles, for example. Maybe I should start collecting dating sites as a hobby. There would certainly be a fair number to collect. It’s not that long since I wrote about the goth site, and then there was the one for interracial singles.

I guess Jewish dating has its own particular quirks, though by the look of most of the people advertised on the site you wouldn’t know they were Jewish without being told. None of the guys are wearing those long tassel things down the side of their hair, nor are they bearded. Can they really be Jews?

The Jewish personals site does give you an option to inform others of your denomination within the Jewish scene, from Orthodox to Hassidic, from Reconstructionist to Conservadox (Conservadox?). I guess that means there’s a certain seriousness about the whole thing; this ain’t no site for frivolity. I’d just like to see someone who looked Hassidic up amongst the profile pictures.

Anyway, the temptation to check out what a Conservadox is was too great. I found this informative paragraph on a blog:

Some of you might say, "Pearl, you sound as if you were Conservative all the way." To that, I'd say "No way." We always went to an Orthodox shul, the first one being a real shtiebel in a home, with a mikveh in the basement, a mechitzah separating the men from the women and even a cut-out in the flooring upstairs, so that when there was an overflow of women davening at that shtiebel on the High Holidays, the men took over the women's section, while the women davened upstairs, with the floor tile removed so that they could hear the davening below.

Get the picture?

Elephants and Cheese

Building relationships is the buzz phrase in many businesses these days. Networking is another phrase that is ‘in.’ I just found a book title on the Net called: Masters of Networking, building relationships for your pocketbook and soul.

It’s one of those sorts of halfway surreal titles that turn up all the time in the business scene, like Drop the Pink Elephant: 15 ways to say what you mean and mean what you say. (So this title says what it means?). Or there’s Who Stole My Cheese? (Which just happens to be the most overpriced essay in the history of mankind, I’d think.)

There’s hardly a business that isn’t into building relationships. Even real estate agents are in on the act. I mean, do we really build a relationship with a real estate agent? How often do we need one, for crying out loud?

I found a quote from a real estate firm that says the following: We work for you, not for the deal. Sometimes, the best real estate deal is the one that you walk away from. This attitude of putting the customer first has proven to be the most successful and the most rewarding, which is why so many of our customers come to us time after time for expert assistance.

Okay, so putting the customer first has actually proved successful. There’s an idea!

This comes from a site that sells Phoenix real estate, amongst other Arizona areas. I think they need someone to sort out their website a bit. They also recommend: Don't just take it from us; hear what our customer have to say.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anywhere on their site that told me what their customers said!

Missed some of The Missing

As so often happens with my tv watching, I came into the film, The Missing, a bit late. However the story became fairly clear as we went along, which presumably means that the script for the most part was actually well written for once.
A very intense movie, particularly in the performances of Cate Blanchett (who seems to be living on her nerves throughout) and Tommy Lee Jones, who plays Blanchett's father, a man who's 'gone Indian' at some point. Why, I'm not sure. That was something I missed.
The film a bit like an alternative version of The Searchers, but it wears its connections to that movie pretty lightly. A gang of rogue Indians, ex-US army employees, are aiming to make some quick money by kidnapping teenage girls so as to sell them across the Mexican border. They're accompanied by a couple of unpleasant white men, and a wimp of a photographer.
The leader of the group is a very nasty piece of work who’s well and truly into witchcraft. Naturally this doesn’t make him popular with the other characters.
Blanchett’s de facto husband is ambushed and killed by the gang, and his teenage daughter is kidnapped. A much younger daughter is left behind. Blanchett finds her man’s body and hears what happened from her younger (and, once she’s recovered from the shock, particularly spunky) daughter). Blanchett tries to get the local sheriff to do something, but he’s not interested. In the end she has to rely on her father, with whom she’s had virtually no relationship previously, to assist her. After considerable argy-bargy, the two learn to work together, and go off to rescue the daughter.
So much about this movie is superbly done that it overcomes any limitations in the characters or plot. The acting is uniformly of a high quality (including Val Kilmer’s cameo appearance), and Blanchett and Jones are outstanding. The photography, (Salvatore Totino) whether it’s gazing calmly on a shimmering desert or on the stark lines of Blanchett’s face, is always a pleasure to view. The music, (by James Horner) which reminded me so strongly of Howard Shore’s scores for the Lord of the Rings, eschews any ‘Western’ gallumping music and goes for eerie melodies and sad soaring songs.
And perhaps the most amazing thing is that the film is directed by Ron Howard. Yes, I know he’s regarded as one of Hollywood’s top journeymen directors, year in and year out producing movies of a high quality if not always of much emotional power. But in this movie he steps aside, almost, and lets the actors and story speak for themselves, very effectively.
Maybe the movie wouldn’t have worked without Blanchett and Jones. Both pour heart and soul into their roles, and show the ragged edge of their characters to their fullest extent. But sometimes a piece of ordinary work is transcended by the people involved, and that’s pretty much what’s happened here.

Photo of Cate Blanchett - not as she appears in the movie.

Oh dear, O J

The things you learn. Here’s someone writing about O J Simpson, the man who seems incapable of keeping out of trouble, let alone out of the news, and when I go to the IMDB.com site to see if a movie’s been made out of his life – it was just an idle thought that someone might have done it – I find that O J Simpson himself has been in the movies a number of times. As an actor.

Okay, I must have missed this at some point.

But all that aside, in view of his connections to a double homicide back in 1994, it’s strange to read a list of some of the movies or tv series he’s appeared in:

Naked Gun (three of the movies)
No Place to Hide
In the Heat of the Night
Detour to Terror
A Killing Affair
Killer Force

And if that list wasn’t odd enough on its own, there are the docos he’s been involved with:

The Life and Death of Anna Nicole (his wife, for those who don’t know)
Juiced with O J Simpson
O J Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How it Happened

Good grief.

Standardization - not!

It’s strange the things we take for granted: I’d assumed that the QWERTY keyboard layout was the standard (obviously apart from those countries that don’t use the same alphabet), but nope! Even in England there are some differences in layout, though at least here the differences relate to the #, the £, and the @ which are all in strange places.

But when I was in Luxembourg, I discovered that the alphabetical letters are swapped around as well: not enough to make things totally unfamiliar, but certainly more than enough to cause confusion when you’re typing passwords and such: the sorts of things that you take for granted, and don’t bother to check when you’re typing. Seemingly the people in Luxembourg tend to use the French keyboard – and of course those jolly French people couldn’t possibly have the same keyboard as the English. It would just not be the done thing!

You can check out some of the variations in keyboard layouts here.

Jean Vanier

One of the great graces that Jesus gave me in ’56 and since, is to realize that in the Church there must be two sorts of men – there must be those who know how to conserve those traditions that have come down to us through the ages, but there must also be those who, like Jesus, have primarily at heart the salvation of their fellows and are always trying to find new ways - human and divine – to make the message of Jesus more living. Without those who have at heart the conservation of tradition, the eager and merciful apostles (unless they are really possessed in all the details of their lives by the Holy Spirit) will risk to abandon certain essential aspects of tradition – not necessary, perhaps, for them, but necessary for the Church and souls in general: on the other hand without these apostles, those who have at heart the conservation of tradition will tend to forge a sterile religion of rites, without love, without mercy. And in the designs of Jesus these two groups will always make each other suffer.

Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche project: a way of living in community with handicapped people.

The passage is from a letter he wrote which is quoted in Kathryn Spink’s book: Jean Vanier & L’Arche, A Communion of Love, page 28, DLT edition.

Good Grief, Good Knight!

I caught some of an old film yesterday on tv: Knights of the Round Table. When I say ‘some’, I have to admit that I was watching it between doing other things, and in the end actually gave up when there was an awful death scene where humour was bandied around as though it wasn’t manly to be real at such a time.

The actors did their best with the material, and the actors were a fairly sterling bunch: Robert Taylor, Mel Ferrer, Ava Gardner, Stanley Baker, Felix Aymler to name just the A-list lot. The smaller roles were all played by stock actors familiar from many films of the period.

But it was the battle scenes that made it a laughable piece from today’s perspective. The big battle between Arthur and Mordred was so firmly based on Laurence Olivier’s wonderful battle sequence in Henry V that they might as well have used the same footage. Until it came to the two sides meeting. At that point, things fell apart badly. Nobody was really doing any fighting. Swords flashed, but they seldom hit anyone. There was quite a bit of noise, but it was all noise. And the extras. They had to be seen to be believed. Blokes dressed up in silly outfits pretending to fight, and unfortunately being caught on camera pretending – and ambling along without any real effort.

One guy’s ‘fighting’ consisted of jumping up and down in the saddle. There was no passion, no guts to the thing. When Arthur’s backup group of archers got into the story, they shot their arrows off towards the passing knights on horses, and most of the arrows fell visibly within a few yards onto the ground. One or two knights fell down dutifully off their horses, but certainly nobody was actually hit with an arrow.

And later on, Lancelot and his troop walked into a trap set by the Picts. Lancelot basically carried on talking to those around him while the extras in the background did their pretend fighting. Because he was a main character he knew he had no problem with getting hit with anything, so he didn’t really need to take care of himself. And I’m sure the guy who did all the bobbing up and down in the saddle was there in the background again, jumping up and down while fighting nobody. Incredibly one knight even thrust his sword into a passing Pict and the sword very obviously went in under the Pict’s arm and out behind him: no one has ever died of having a sword thrust under his armpit as far as I’m aware, but this Pict did.

There's a review on a site called Monster Hunter which says pretty everything else I haven't said here.

The price is right!

I’ve mentioned before how we used to sell books on the Net when I ran the bookshop, and how we never quite found the ideal software setup for making direct sales available to people via the Net. Everything had to be handled by email: the customer’s initial inquiry, the acceptance by us of the purchase, the information about when the book would be sent out, and how it would be paid for, and so on.

This was fine in one sense, in that it meant we had real contact with the customers, and they knew they were dealing with a real person. For many people that’s preferable to dealing with machinery on the Net. But equally, if we’d been expanding, we would have needed to make sales via some sort of shopping cart software, and that would have meant finding a system that was economic, would accept major credit cards online, had tech support, had a design that fitted in with our ‘look,’ and that was user-friendly. Rather like the company that’s provided me with this nice big logo!

I always look at the price of things before I look at the features. If the price isn’t right for me, nothing else much matters. In this instance, this product would have suited us down to the ground, as the price for the most basic level is still very good. Or to put it another way, what you get for the basic price is most of the software.

Strange names

Cape Fear is one of those movies that was successful first time round, and then rather odd in the remake. Okay, so what?

The only reason I said that is that I had no idea that Cape Fear was an actual place until I came across the name in a site that’s advertising real estate on the North Carolina (NC) sea coast.

Cape Fear is apparently part of the Wilmington, North Carolina area.

You have to wonder how places get their names, don’t you? On my travel site, I’ve mentioned a few of the really odd place names in Britain, and in the widget at the side there’s a link to an article I’ve written on strange British place names.

But are they any stranger than the following pieces of Wilmington NC real estate? Kure Beach (how would you pronounce it?), Topsail Beach and North Topsail Beach, Bald Head Island, Oak Island (what, only one oak?), Figure Eight Island (could it be that complex?), Burgaw, Bolivia (in the middle of North Carolina...), Calabash, Shallotte, Boiling Spring Lakes, Supply (supply of what?).

We get used to the strangest place names, and then along comes a stranger like me and thinks they’re outlandish.

Saving Your Life

Finished another book the other day, while tenting around the UK.

It’s This Book Will Save Your Life, by A M Homes. An odd book, there’s no doubt, and the saving side of it relates to a man called Richard finding his way from a life which is nothing to a life that’s worth something. The book is full of quirky characters, and even more quirky behaviour. This may be in part because it’s set in California, but not entirely. Homes has a way of making even fairly ordinary people seem extraordinary.

I’m not sure that I entirely enjoyed the book, and I found the ending came suddenly out of nowhere. (I was expecting several more pages, and then discovered they were filled with advertising for Homes’ other books.) The book doesn’t seem to move forward very fast, and there’s certainly nothing that could be called a plot. Some characters that are shown as difficult and unpleasant turn out to have a soft side, a side that’s almost unreal, and other characters are too unreal altogether.

And the book is full of loose ends – at least in my reading of it. I’d like to know a bit more about how some things turned out, but Homes leaves a lot of stuff unfinished as far as the reader is concerned. You could say that they’re ‘finished’ in literary terms, but this isn’t entirely satisfactory.

Anyway, it was worth reading generally speaking, and certainly I wanted to finish it. That’s a plus!

And there's a very good and sensible review of it by Frank Cottrell Boyce on the Guardian Unlimited site.

Louis Sachar

In our trips around op shops (charity shops) in the British Isles, we’ve come across heaps of books, but most of them are the same small group of authors, Grisham, Maeve Binchey, you name it.

Just once in a while you pick up something that’s different, and the other day I found a book by Louis Sachar. Okay, who’s he?

He’s the writer of the book, Holes - and also the screenwriter of the movie that was made from the book. He has an odd sense of the world, writes about kids and their worldview, and how they take things in their stride even though to adults they may be outlandish. Holes is a delightful story that has several interlinking threads running through it, and the movie is fairly faithful to the book (no doubt because of Sachar’s influence on the screenplay).

The book I found the other day isn’t about teenagers, as Holes is, but about kids who are more like nine or ten. It concerns a very strange young man who can’t get with the world, who’s angry at everyone and everything, and yet longs for someone to befriend him. It’s full of delightful characters, of wonderful lines, has a great sense of humour (as Holes does) and even has some extracts from another book part way through which is written by an author whose name happens to be an anagram of Louis Sachar.

The title is: There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom. If you can find a copy, read it.

Funky P Album

Just to keep up with the news on Funky P. In one of my previous posts where I mentioned this Luxembourg group, I wondered if they had any albums out. Not at theis point: there’s only an EP available. And downloads from their site. (Which I can’t download at the moment as I’m using someone else’s computer.)

Anyway, Funky P will have an album out by next summer – that’s European summer, not NZ summer, so I’m assuming it will be the middle of 2008. I’m looking forward to that. A studio recording of this band (where I can hear all the different instrumentalists as well as the singers) will be great.

The photo is of the band in a sedate mood: something they ain't when they get playing.

And there's a very good overview of the life of the band by an objective reviewer on GarageBand.com

Writing about Crowle

I’ve just been writing about Crowle, Worcestershire, on my travel blog, and in the process found a link to wartime experiences in Crowle, written by one Raymond Holt.
I’ve taken the liberty of quoting the opening paragraph:
I was born in Crowle, Worcestershire in 1933. I was six years old when World War 2 began. My Father was the village undertaker, coffin maker, carpenter and local Special Constable. My Grandfather had been the coffin maker and undertaker before my Father took over. We all lived within a hundred yards of each other in Crowle village.

Wicked

I thought, when I came across the expression, Wicked Tickets, that the promoter was speaking some kind of teen slang, since ‘wicked’ usually denotes something that’s anything but wicked. It’s more likely to be awesome or incredible or out of sight (as they used to say in the dark ages).
But in fact the use of the word ‘wicked’ in this case is perfectly sound: it relates to a fairly new musical called ‘Wicked’ which tells the backstory of the two witches from the Wizard of Oz: the one with the emerald-green skin (aka The Wicked Witch of the West) and the beautiful Glinda, who, it appears, is ambitious and very popular, and perhaps not as nice as she appears.
In brief, Wicked explores the idea that the Wicked Witch of the West, known in this version as Elphaba Thropp, was a misunderstood and victimized person whose behaviour is the result of a reaction against a false wizard's corrupt government. Her relationship with Galinda Upland, who in due course becomes Glinda the Good Witch of the North, goes through a series of struggles as they overcome the conflicts that result from their polar personalities, their opposing viewpoints, their rivalry over the same man, and finally, Elphaba's fall from grace.
Promoters are offering tickets for this musical for all sorts of places on its whistle-stop tour, but of course there would be only one city to go and see it in. Yup, Kansas City.

Songs, smiles, singers, and a snout

This is going to be one of those compendium posts, where I do a quick squiz over the HitTail results from the last week or so, or at least the ones that seem interesting to me. Douglas Lilburn’s Sing Harry turns up again. It’s good to know that this song cycle by Lilburn continues to arouse interest, especially since it’s one of the few things he wrote that I think does! (Oh, dear, the old anti-Lilburn bias coming out again.)
Another NZ composer is also on the list - at least so it seemed when I first saw the reference. But I couldn’t quite figure out what why anyone would be looking for Snout Gareth Farr. Turns out that there’s an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company with the same name, and he was played Snout in a production back in 2002. So NZ’s Gareth Farr gets a look-in rather fraudulently.
The king of whistlers, Ronnie Rinalde, is still going strong. Except that his name is Ronnie Ronalde, and I’ve managed to misspell it in one of my posts - as the searcher did.
The Indian actor, Kavi Raz, whom I mentioned the other day in relation to the movie, The Golden Bracelet, is on the list, as is the Jazz/Funk group from Luxembourg, Funky P. More about them another time, as Roosevelt Isaac (their lead singer) has emailed me a few times recently to give me some further gen on their doings.
A couple of non-NZ composers make the list: John Adams, whom I’m going to check up on more when I get back home, and Michael Tippett, who’s been a regular visitor to the HitTail search results.
An interesting search for Jobs for Opera Singers didn’t seem to take the searcher very far, but it did turn up for me a site where most opera singers are listed, but not, rather to my surprise, Elizabeth Connell, who is certainly no minor artist. It’s an interesting site, nevertheless, with info about books, opera houses, and resources for singers.
And finally, my comments about the travelling exhibition of pictures of the smiling Christ comes up. But the results Google turns up (apart from the one on this blog) are from those places that turn Jesus into all manner of beings: smiling, sad, black, yellow, you name it. The one from picturesofJesus4you.com is very American, somewhat hippy and a jolly good chap. Okay, he’s a pleasant Christ, and certainly he’s smiling, but he lacks a bit of the awe I’d expect Christ to have along with his smiles. The artist is Frances Hook, by the way.

Orlando is Blooming

I don’t know how many posts I’ve written about the idea of having an Orlando vacation rental, though when I check out the posts themselves I find there are in fact only three about having a holiday in Orlando - the fourth is about Orlando Bloom. Don’t know that Orlando would enjoy having his name associated with a vacation rental, but you never know.
If you check out Orlando (the place, not the movie star) on Google, you’ll find search results for rental holidays far outweigh search results for the movie star. That’s a bit serious. Does that mean that Orlando, however good-looking he may be, isn’t as popular an item as having a decent holiday? Apparently so.

Claire Barton onwards and upwards

Great to come across a report in the Otago Daily Times, my home city’s newspaper, about Claire Barton. Claire has been winning everything in sight lately, and last weekend added the Otago Daily Times Aria Contest to her list of honours. Her prize also included the Celebration of the Century Cup - which is something I’m unfamiliar with, and which the paper doesn‘t elaborate on.
Hollie Matheson, the rewiewer, said Claire Barton’s virtuosity and theatricality ensured Rossini’s Crude sorte and Handel’s Ombra mai fu enjoyed strong deliveries, with agility and depth throughout her vocal range.
Another old friend of mine, Brent Read, was also in the contest, though he wasn’t placed among the top three. And a third Dunedinite, Fiona Henry, also appeared.
Good to see they’re all managing to carry on without me, and good to see that these people, whom I played for when they were still youngsters, are doing so well.

Good grief!

I only noticed yesterday - for the first time since I wrote the new header to this blog - that there was a grammatical error in it. Which I've now rectified.
Shame....! For someone who prides himself on being correct about such things it was a bit of a shock to see it sitting there. The only consolation is that my proofreader hasn't noticed it either!