Misogynistic Academy Awards?

                                        Stephen Fry

          Seth MacFarlane

Thank you for the emails about the Oscars; I always get the same complaint about not being able to put a comment on the site and I am, as usual, at a loss for the answer. I can put a comment on my mate Jim's blog easily enough, and when they ask me who I am, or I have to sign in, I put my Gmail email address and it seems to work.

Well I got a few right didn't I? I put Joaquin Phoenix down for best actor as it was the one performance that I found hard to picture myself doing but I think the hardest one of the bunch would be by Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook; believe me, and actors may or may not back me up, it's harder to be Tom Cruise or George Clooney than any of the character actors.

Lots of critics over the years have said that Cary Grant was the greatest screen actor because he made it look so easy and I know what they mean. I really like Sean Penn but he failed miserably in The Interpretor and The Game. I also like Gary Oldman but he has to be different in each role.

A word about Daniel Day Lewis; when he does the things he has to do which enable him to give the performances he gives (with me so far?) the things he has done (before he even starts work) should be seen on the screen.

In other words when Robert de Niro put all the weight on to play Jake La Motta we could see what he had done – the same when someone learns to box (Day-Lewis did this so did de Niro), dance or even play tennis. But to spend months talking like Lincoln, being carried to the set and being spoon fed by the crew in My Left Foot, I don't see the need; what did Olivier say? Try acting! Who knows whether he said that or not? But there again, as I've said before, it could be professional jealousy on my part; but what I wouldn't like to see is a young actor starting out thinking all those things need to be done.

I don't suppose they stood for it when he was in Gandhi or The Bounty.

Anyway back to the Oscars – The Academy Awards: It doesn't mean anything. As I said before, the best actor is your particular favourite. If you don't like Daniel Day-Lewis it won't matter how many Oscars he wins you won't like him.

But the difference between the Academy Awards here in the UK (the B.A.F.T.A.s or as they have started calling them the Baftas) and the ones in Los Angeles (the Oscars) is a matter of taste.

The BAFTAs show was a lot funnier than the bits I saw of the Oscars; the difference was more literal. Stephen Fry is funnier and cleverer than the fella in Los Angeles. A lot of people don't like either of them: Fry because he's too clever and the other guy because he's . . . I don't know; why don't they like him? Not clever enough? Not funny enough? Bit of a slob?

Some people do like him but what does that say about them?

Stephen Fry is more like a modern day Oscar Wilde – nobody liked him either; well not many people. Professional jealousy again; just like me!

The BAFTAs were, at least, in good taste as opposed to the misogynistic bits that I saw in Los Angeles; We Saw Your Boobs wasn't anything whether the actresses went along with it or not but it was boring! And all the lip-syncing again!

It's not supposed to be taken seriously - it's a party; parties can't be boring!

I only hope they don't do another movie about Ted Bundy and offer the role to Daniel Day-Lewis!!

nick nacks for Dick Heads in the new year.

Something struck me the other day, in this age of social networks, smart phones, texting, tablets, voice recognition, address books in mobile phones and so on; are we losing some of the skills of our forefathers and replacing them with useless ones?

I was watching a programme on TV called QI which is introduced by Stephen Fry who is surely the busiest actor/presenter/pundit/writer etc in Britain. Someone said the other day that he was due to be on TV here in Britain over 100 times over the Christmas period – he is also on lots of radio shows, plays and quiz games and this is not to mention that he is playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night in the west end.

On QI he asked his little panel of comedians what date was the first piece of music added to an advertisement; now you may think that it must have been since the radio was invented but you'd be wrong. It was a magazine add with words and music written out for the public to read and sing for themselves and it was sometime during the 19^th Century many years before Marconi even invented the radio.

Many people could read music in those days; they had pianos in their front rooms to entertain themselves; most pubs in Britain had pianos in the bars and people – the hoy poly (the plebs) – would gather there and sing along with the pianist.

By the way 100 pubs per week are closing in Britain and going out of business – that's the downside to social networking and cheap booze in supermarkets.

Pianos in pubs was quite common right up to about 20 or 30 years ago; in my childhood I would go to people's houses and there would be a piano there too. 

Someone in the house usually played and if it was somebody really good it was always a great experience.

I sat with a pianist at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Pwllheli, Wales, one day who was a Fats Waller fan and he went through his Waller repertoire for me and a few others - my brother included; I also sat with Jools Holland at the piano in Cannes when he played a boogie for a lot of people who had gathered around. On each occasion the one word that went through my head was 'practice' – I should have practised.

I could have sat with the same two people and they could have played me a tape of Fats Waller or lent me their iPod but it wouldn't have been the same.

I'm not saying we should all be playing pianos but I know that with the advent of automation we are forgetting how to do things. People used to write to each other; they still do but they don't write properly putting pen to paper, they use emails, in fact a lot of us never put pen to paper and have literally lost the skill.

I used to be able to remember all of my friends' telephone numbers, all the phone numbers of the TV Companies in London, the casting directors there, my National Insurance Number, my wife's, my Social Security number and my wife's in the USA and now – I don't even know my wife's cell phone number; it's in my address book on my mobile phone. I still remember all the other numbers in London but these days most of the hirers and firers have moved – to Manchester!!!

The only things I have to remember now are the PINs and where the lavatory is!!

And with texting words are being cut – 'n' for 'and' and so on. Words have always been cut; if you look at a postman's badge you will see the name of the city or town where he works such as LDN for London and BM for Birmingham and so on.

It would be terrible if the shortened words and coded phrases made it to the hard copy page – such as lol (laugh out loud) as this would ruin the language. The Americans have already ruined some of the English language with their Webster's Dictionary; I mean what was the point of that? What was the point of changing the word colour to color?

Leaving words the way they were educated us and we could find out where some of the words came from. Colour came from the French word coleur which, I suppose, came from the Latin colōr – so there we are going around in circles.

But we always did go round in circles - we started electronic communcations with morse code - -.-- . ... / .-- . / -.. .. -..

But I think you know what I mean.

One of the series on TV that Stephen Fry is in, is a show called Gadget Man in which he tries various gadgets. I haven't seen it as I am bored by those kinds of shows - and cooking shows, sports programmes etc. - but it shows the lengths people go to, to not do something. If you want to play a guitar like Eric Clapton it is perfectly possible to buy the guitar hero game and stand there pretending to be a rock star – or you can practice like he did and does and play it properly.

I have no idea where Stephen Fry came from; he kind of appeared one day about 20 years or so ago in sketch comedy with a wonderful 'RP' voice which he seems to be able to do whatever he likes with; he has gone on to be an author, compare, quiz show host, actor and general bon viveur but when I see him introduce the quiz show QI with his ridiculous good evening good evening good evening good evening good evening schtick, I can see a look of uncertainty in his eyes whereas I'm sure he would be better off just saying 'good evening' – I know he is supposed to suffer from bipolar disease and I'm not getting at that. In fact I'm not getting at him at all because he manages so many things at once, has so many balls in the air that I wonder how he copes.

He made a lot of money when he wrote the stage show 'Me and My Girl' which was a huge hit on Broadway and many other places and if you follow him on Twitter – which I did for a short while – you won't be able to keep up with him. He goes from here to there and back again all the time. Sometimes in Los Angeles, where he will do a few episodes of a thing called 'Bones' then off to Berlin to a Wagner concert then back here and . . . . I saw him one day in The Farmers' Market, Los Angeles, getting some food from one of the worst food places there; maybe I should have said hello and guided him to the French place.

The next thing is new year – 2013. As with any other year I wonder if I'll get used to that number. I don't usually make any resolutions; I don't smoke, I'm not fat so there is nothing for me to cut out, but I will think about it. Maybe not moan about coffee so much or stop telling my daughters how to boil rice or maybe even look for somewhere to live permanently – the lease runs out on this cottage in November!!

Happy New Year. - Yes that man above is the famous Robert Burns who wrote these words:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wandered mony a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidled i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught

For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Facebook, Twitter and Dunbar's Number.

I hope you all had a good Christmas; I also hope you had a good Hanukkah and, if it apples to you, you are having a good Kwanzaa – which doesn't end till Saturday.

There we are that saves me saying a happy holiday which has become fashionable and a pain in the arse. The three holidays don't quite coincide like everybody having the same day to celebrate as with Thanksgiving; it's a pity they don't have Thanksgiving in the UK as it's not a religious thing and in a secular country like Britain it seems more fitting – but Christmas there is a mostly a secular holiday in any case so why bother?

It's also quite ironic that a country like Britain, who yearn for the picturesque White Christmas every year, were snowed in before Christmas but the snow disappeared on Christmas Day in most of the country.

I was looking at all the Facebook photos and videos of snow. I know we can see it on the news and other parts of the Internet but seeing it on Facebook kind if made it more personal.

A lot of people criticise Facebook and its kind of control over many people's lives and how they make friends on Facebook whom they never meet.

Well the term friend on Facebook and the saying friending is just what it is – a term. What it really means is that you are a reader; just like a follower or friend of The New York Times or The Guardian.

It's the same with Twitter; this isn't some kind of strange place to go to and find out if your friend has just used their bowels or is taking a cup of coffee – or even both at the same time and from what I've heard people do that!

I use Facebook sometimes as it's very useful to see our children's photos when we are so far apart and I use Twitter.

I use Twitter far more than Facebook as I am interested in the news. I follow The Guardian, CNN, The Huffington Post and various other people from whom I get information.

I also have this blog posted on Twitter and I can see that it pays off with lots of hits; yes I can see, from my STAT Counter where all the hits come from.

I follow Stephen Fry who has a few million followers and Miss Daisy Frost – who also follows me on Twitter and is a friend on Facebook – who is, or purports to be a junior literary agent and is a gal about town in London. I don't expect to meet any of them but I like the quick quips, the news and articles I am drawn to and do you know how long I spend on Twitter? 5 minutes a day.

But Twitter and Facebook – or the idea of them – is nothing new.

News sheets appeared on walls and trees in towns and villages of old; the court would issue circulars for the plebs to read – well now the plebs write their own news. The clever newspapers told us very cleverly what to read and now the people are writing their own news and if it says that the news is they are taking a shit so what? – it's news to their friends and my friends don't tell me that; not yet anyway.

People have maybe hundreds of friends on Facebook and an interesting thing to me is the amount of friends they have.

Movie stars have millions of friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter and the likes of you and me have far less; but those numbers are very interesting.

If you don't know what it is let me introduce you to Dunbar's Number.

Dunbar's number is the number of people that you can, realistically, keep in touch with; any more than this number would need some kind of organising; what would that number be? According to Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist who worked this out, it is between 100 and 230 but a commonly used value is 150.

Also, according to some research, numbers larger than this would need rules or even laws to maintain a stable group.

There are lesser numbers but nobody has given them a name yet but they are easy to work out; I was going to call them Sullivan numbers but won't be so egotistical and in any case I'll give them the names they have always been called later; they would be the numbers for the amount of immediate friends you can easily deal with – shall we say about 10.

These 10 friends would be your best friends – you may even have one of these as a best friend – a BFF as they are called now. Personally I have never had one best friend; always a few best friends.

Then there are your extended friends – shall we say about 20 - 30; these will be the people you may meet or work with most days of the week; people you know well enough to have a chat with if you meet them.

The next figure would be close to Dunbar's number – 120; these could be the people who work at the same place you do – the workplace whatever that may be - and whom you would just say hello to if you met them.

So we have your 10 friends, which we will now call a squad; your 30 friends, which we will call a platoon, and your 120 Dunbar number friends which we will call a company or a troop.

So these magic figures, which have always been with us as squad, platoon and company, are all military words and put together they form a battalion; 2 or more battalions form a regiment and loads of those form a whole army.

So people on Facebook can put themselves in those categories and Mark Whatshisname commands more than an army – he commands a nation.

So instead of the Marxist doctrine of workers of the world unite it's Facebook of the World – who have already united to make Facebook what it is today - a monstrance to it's founder . . . .

Of course – as I have said before 'What do I know?'

Happy New Year!

Twitter and Stephen Fry.

Well it looks like I am getting quite a few people to read my blog; the only person I have actually told about it is Jim Makichuk; he has put a link on to his site and, as you can see, I put a link to his site here; the only other person I have told is my wife, Margaret, who hasn't read any of it yet.

So I get a couple of hits per day from Jim's site but the rest come from one of the words I type and from Twitter; I'll deal with Twitter later.

I had loads of hits from all over the world (and many other places) when I mentioned dubbing Anthony Hopkins's voice the other day; I also mentioned the movie Season of the Witch which was what the supposed dubbing was for and these two things were the words or phrases that drew a lot of attention to my site.

In the Internet game these key phrases are called meta tags and they are there to attract the spiders from the search engines to your site and the more hits your site gets the busier it looks and if you get really successful you will attract banner advertising.

Look at the really successful sites and see how many pop ups or adverts they have. The IMDb attracts millions of hits per day so you can imagine how much it would be to advertise on that site – the same with other successful sites.

One little trick a lot of (small) sites use is to put text in invisible writing on their sites; if you know some meta tag that is bound to bring hits, shall we say, Britney Spears, who is the number one hit on Google, you can put her name all over your site in white on a white background when the only way you can read it is by highlighting; the spiders don't differentiate as to what colour your text is in.

You may ask what the point is and it is to attract traffic to your site. I have probably attracted a few hits by mentioning Britney Spears on here now – what I have just noticed by the way is that she doesn't spell her name in the usual way as Brittany; maybe her parents spelled it wrong as Elvis's parents did when they spelt Aaron as Aron.

The other place I mention my blog is on Twitter and that has attracted some hits too; there is a well known actor in London called Stephen Fry; he played Jeeves in 'Jeeves and Wooster' and Oscar Wilde in the movie 'Wilde.' It would be unfair to call him just an actor as the man is brilliant at all things; all things in his field, I might add: I don't know what he's like using a pneumatic drill?? He describes himself as British Actor, Writer, Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger.

He writes everything from screenplays to articles, books, plays – you name it – and if you want to see an example of his writing output look on both sites of Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/ylgbuho or http://tinyurl.com/yfdnaxq. He is a wit, a presenter and general factotum; well maybe not that, but I wouldn't be surprised, and he does a load of other things and today the followers he has on Twitter is at 851,627 – in two minutes that's gone up to 851,646 so you can see where I am going.

Each day his followers see his tweets on Twitter and his followers love him; a few weeks ago he mentioned a book and the book jumped to number one on Amazon for that day; he has also mentioned sites in the past and his mere mention has attracted so much traffic to those sites that they have crashed.

So he has a great deal of power. He knows this and is very responsible about it – thank goodness.
I'll look again at his followers – up to 851,845.

My followers on Twitter are at the grand total of 42 – pathetic isn't it; there is a long way to go.

When my followers are up to a high figure I will mention my novel and maybe it will sell a few copies; at the moment it isn't selling very well on Amazon – it's doing ok on Kindle but nothing to write home about in paperback – so I won't write home about; I'll just leave you with the (American spelling) blurb:

This is an Irish novel set in Los Angeles. It tells the story of Alfredo Hunter, a depressive Jewish/Irish playwright who is in Hollywood to make a killing in the film business. It also tells the story of the unknown narrator, who observes Alfredo's various fluctuations of mood and humor. Humor is to the fore in this novel of a building friendship between two Dubliners as they encounter the New World, with its new language and confusing mores.