Trafalgar Hospital

A few days after Christmas 2006, I happened to be walking along Mortimer Street for reasons I don't rightly recollect, sober but still a little the worse for the previous night's wear. It was a pleasant afternoon by late December standards and I felt oddly euphoric after picking up a couple of books from UCL's DMS Watson Science Library pertaining to my first case essay.

Something that used to be a significant landmark thereabouts was a core chunk of the Middlesex Hospital, with which I became sadly familiar thanks to Bruce's lover Richard spending time there as a patient back in the early 1990s when the couple were holidaying in London. It's closed down now, and the site is being redeveloped into apartments and business space, no doubt at great profit to UCL, whose NHS trust absorbed the Middlesex sometime before.

In any case, I was walking past, and found myself suddenly shifted into an alternative universe because the well known building was here labelled, in seemingly permanent carved letters in the stone above the entranceway, Trafalgar Hospital. Exactly matching the style and apparent age of the old Middlesex Hospital legend I knew so well.

I boggled.

And then, after a few moments, noticed the ARRI trucks parked in the lot out front, and realised that the old place was standing in for some fictional locale on the big or small screen. Such things happen frequently in London, although rarely so seamlessly integrated with the familiar landscape.

Google was not able to provide me with any information at the time (it now lists a blog post from a few days later that seems very relevant but alas is not responding just now, so I can't properly check), and I sort of forgot about it except for a few occasions when I bored friends with the story.

Anyway, tonight we finally got around to watching David Cronenberg's grim but excellent Eastern Promises, and fairly early on creepy Armin Mueller-Stahl asks Naomi Watts something like "have you always worked at Trafalgar Hospital?"

"At last!" I cried, to Ian's initial bafflement. And, sure enough, a while later the entrance appeared, just as I remembered.

Obviously, none of this is of the slightest significance to anyone but me. But it's nice to have one of life's little mysteries solved.

Veniality

The weather has been astonishingly nice these last few days, taunting us with the possibility of summer. A fraud, probably, but too nice a one to dismiss out of hand. Only weekdays so far, as much vicious in their loveliness as giving succour -- let's see this kind of shininess on the weekend, then perhaps we'll talk -- but even so, it would be churlish to complain.

Yesterday I presented at the UCL/NIMR student seminar day, which was fun, even despite the fundamental dreariness of the medics and developmental biologists who made up a significant fraction of the delegates. The ability of these people to reduce fascinating questions to sheer soporific tedium is remarkable -- if only there were some socially valuable function to which their talent could be put, beyond boring the fuck out of innocent PhD students. My talk went okay, though it would be better if I had any bloody results at all, of any kind, on which to report. Next year, perhaps.

Tiddly pom.

And this was just one of the week's obligations. Another (this morning) was to present something to our notionally-fortnightly-but-in-practice-rather-randomly-scheduled lab meeting. I chose to discuss Shin et al's 2008 paper, Dendritic glutamate release produces autocrine activation of mGluR1 in cerebellar Purkinje cells, a slightly underachieving electrophys/pharmacology outing on self-stimulation in a certain type of central neuron. A tricky subject about which, alas, I know far too little, especially given how closely related it is to what my PhD is notionally investigating. But I guess the meeting went okay despite that.

After assorted other scholastica not worth reporting, I met up with the world-famous visiting blogger formerly known as Sin and we sat and drank fine wine from cadged Costa plastic cups in the balmy Soho Square evening; as can be clearly not observed here:

It was very nice indeed, and if I can escape from the bowels of Wormwood Scrubs in sufficient time tomorrow perhaps we may reprise the occasion. Otherwise, roll on next time...

Defenders

I don't really know why I'm finally choosing to post this now as opposed to any other time over the year or so since I first saw it, but there you go. No accounting for whatever. Be that as it may, this is a lot of fun. If you haven't seen it before, take a look. Even if you have it's probably worth revisiting.

As are several of Zimmerman's other tracks, notably Creation Science 101. It's nice to know that both protest and satire are alive and making some attempt to kick.

Religion About Snow

As if to distract from nightmares of Mayor Boris and his threatened empire of the senseless, this evening was spent at the Barbican in the company of the lovely Laurie Anderson. Homeland turns out to be her most concertesque perf for quite awhile, firmly structured as a sequence of songs, with accompanying musicians and everything, quite unlike her recent more anecdotal outings. It was also oddly folksy, in an avant-tech sort of way: Laurie taking the role of an electronica Joan Baez or something, which occasionally came over a bit faux naïf. Still, it was a fine evening, with some very brilliant, funny and powerful moments.

There certainly is.

She's on here for two more days. If you have the chance, go.

Democracy 2

It's that time again, so I'm off, somewhat gloomily, to the polling station. It'll be a dark day for the city if the Outer London anti-Ken contingent propel his gormless, cloth-eared, crypto-fascist mophead buffoon of an opponent into power. We'll be a laughingstock. But that seems almost inevitable.

Sigh.

Lodger 2

Time once again for the annual CoMPLEX beano at Cumberland Lodge, which I imagine will be the usual combination of dullish talks and fun extracurricular hanging out.

To the extent that I have an official duty, beyond mere attendance, it is to stand awhile in the neighbourhood of a poster, discussing it with anyone who wanders by and feigns interest. The thing itself is marginally more pertinent than last year's toy effort, but still pretty hand-waving and devoid of substantive content, being as I have none. It looks like this:

(Click for a larger, readable version.)

My real duty, however, is to bring a frisbee. Possibly two. Which, if you'll excuse me, I must now go and pack.

Processes

City Jitters 7

Bar-BQ

Ship's Mast

Remind me not to make flippant meteorological predictions.

The fates are listening. And no, they're not about to be fooled by a "no doubt next week we'll be suffering through deliciously warm weather that will last right through to October."

I declined to see Planet Terror and Death Proof on their separate UK releases last year, knowing that an authentic Grindhouse opportunity would eventually present itself -- and suspecting, probably rightly, that neither flick would merit viewing a second time, authenticity be buggered.

Sure enough, the occasion finally arrived last night, with a late screening of the complete bill at the Islington Vue -- exactly the sort of plastic multiplex that nailed shut the coffin of scuzzy fleapits whose ilk Tarantino and Rodriguez romanticise. It was good to finally tick this box, at least, but not an unalloyed pleasure.

RR's contribution seems much more committed to the concept, a properly hysterical go-go splatterfest full of clunking dialogue, strung out performances, scratchy jump cuts and lurid technicolor gore. It nicely walks the line between portraying the rubbishness of its source material and actually being rubbish. You can't miss how appalling -- and tedious -- those B movies were, but you're still fairly entertained in the process. You do have to wonder just how much money they had to spend to make it look so cheap, though.

QT's episode is more problematic, probably because he can't help trying to turn it into some kind of postmodern trash art. So Death Proof is not satisfied simply to be an homage to proto-road rage movies like Vanishing Point, it has to turn being so into a significant plot point. I don't think the result really meets the brief at all -- it's way too talky and self-conscious to be a proper exploitation film, and indeed Tarantino pretty much dispenses with all the grindhouse signifiers after awhile. Once he's into his nasty little two-acter, the scratches and jumps and dodgy exposure and oversaturation fall by the wayside and it's clear he's started taking this stuff seriously. He scrapes some decent action, especially courtesy of stuntwoman Zoë Bell, but the dialogue remains tin-eared and the pacing leaden and disjointed. Tarantino probably couldn't make a really bad film if he tried, but he really does seem to be trying here. I sort of enjoyed it in a queasy, where's-the-remote? sort of way, but it's pretty weak.

I was also fairly disappointed by the trailers, which mostly seemed pretty crude and witless. Edgar Wright's Don't was probably the best, but oddly also the most disappointing -- any random three minute clip of Spaced was better. I enjoyed Rob Zombie's thoroughly awful Werewolf Women of the SS more, if only because it was totally in the right crappy spirit. Eli Roth -- oh, who the fuck cares?

Still, at least Doctor Who is back...

Dans Theater

Circumstances this week brought a double viewing of the NDT1 programme at Sadler's Wells, which I didn't mind at all. Holland's flagship company has, to leading order, the best dancers in the world; I have no idea how they do, but it really does seem to be the case. These people are utterly gobsmackingly perfect, stupefying epitomes of effortless strength and grace in human form. They just boggle the mind.

Given such a resource, you can forgive choreographers for going to town. The evening's middle section -- and the running order is shockingly wrong, there can be no question but that Lightfoot/Léon's Signing Off should be the finale -- is a brazen show-off piece, putting the unflinchingly brilliant performers to the test with every casual eye-wateringly-difficult step. Anyone who has ever danced will be agog for the piece's duration. But it's not merely hard, it's also beautiful.

Signing Off is bracketed by two Jiří Kylián pieces, Wings of Wax and Tar and Feathers. The former is rather lacking in overall structure, but never less than lovely; it would take a hard heart to dislike it. The latter, well... I must say I enjoyed it a lot more on second viewing, but it is appallingly self-consciously avant garde, in a sort of naïvely old-fashioned way that makes one think, "Oh, bless." (Ian, who lacks my sentimentality in such matters, hated it with an absolute passion.) The dancers, again, are put through dizzyingly difficult paces, but it is difficult to imagine most of the audience caring.

Thursday, meanwhile, brought Les Ballets C de la B to the Purcell Room, performing choreographic newbie Lisi Estaràs's Patchagonia. Although very much in the C de la B house style -- and smoothly arranged and performed -- and altogether very entertaining -- it seemed oddly lacking in the passion and vehemence and extremity that normally characterises this Flemish ensemble. There was little in the way of blood, sweat or tears. It was likeable enough, but therein lies the problem. C de la B's stock in trade is discomfort and anguish and misery, a bringing face to face with the marginalised and disenfranchised and despairing. Patchagonia was, at best, just a bit disgruntled. On the whole, a disappointment.

Thrashing a Metaphor

One of the passing activities of that stupid course was a funding pitch sugared as a business-friendly explanation of "What's in a cell?" and how that relates to cancer. To be presented in no more than 12 minutes given less than a day's notice; said day already programmed with other stuff from morning to night.

As a result of my vehement abdication from one of those programmed tasks, I wound up largely responsible for my group's effort, which centred around a shameless but unexpectedly persuasive metaphor. A PDF, obviously, can give no real impression of my seat-of-the-pants presentation -- and, to be honest, it's pretty much a blur to me too -- but here it is even so: evidence of wanton analogy abuse. (It's nearly 14MB, so be warned.)

If all of this were actually in the service of something worthwhile, well, I'd feel a little happier about it.