Author: Seb Palmer

More Turkey than Duck

We recently watched this, on Amazon Prime, paying £3.50 for the privilege. I felt robbed. I thought it might be worth watching, chiefly on account of believing Woody Allen is or was a fan. 

The Wikipedia page on the film notes that it was a bit of a disappointment at the time, commercially, and opened to mixed reviews. But, apparently, it has subsequently been reevaluated: ‘Duck Soup is now widely considered to be a masterpiece of comedy and the Marx Brothers’ finest film.’

Really!? I’m quite surprised. At just over an hour, it’s quite short. It’s certainly very slight. But it doesn’t feel short. There are segments – dreadful segments – where it decides it’s a musical, and others where it’s just a plain ol’ hokey talkie movie. 

I have to confess that I found it awfully boring. Very rarely even remotely funny. And mostly just annoyingly dated. 

It really hasn’t aged well. 

Apparently Groucho himself said, regarding the ‘significance’ of it’s alleged political satire; ‘What significance? We were just four Jews trying to get a laugh.’ That’s how it looks to me. 

It has always struck me that the best of Laurel & Hardy are the skits; attempts to ‘long-form’ their comedy into full-length films mostly come out turgid. Partly this is due to the dilution of their comedy with filler material, poor supporting acting, and the perceived need to embed the zaniness into some kind of coherent plot. 

I think all of the above are happening here. And the sense of being very underwhelmed and disappointed reminds me of reading Voltaire’s Candide.

There are some good lines. Groucho, unsurprisingly, getting practically all of them. But his relentless schtick grows wearisome. And there are even some funny physical clowning bits, mostly for Harpo. Zeppo’s straight-man role, as Rufus T Firefly’s hapless adjutant, is such that it feels like a Marx Bros trio circus outing, with Groucho, Harpo and Chico as the clowns. 

How this has ever made any lists of the ‘top 100’ or ‘best ever’ bewilders me. I note that Peter Sellers nicked a few gags: for example, he has Inspector Clouseau repeat the ‘cracking the safe/radio’ scene, for example. Ironically I prefer his version of the joke. I think it’s much better executed. 

Hitchcock coined the rather splendid term McGuffin, as a suitably intriguing yet clearly contemptuous name for the ‘engine’ of a film’s plot. The ‘plot-driver’ here, with Groucho as the aforementioned leader of Fredonia (Rutles P. Wildebeest, or summat), going to war with neighbouring Sylvania, doesn’t seem to me worthy of the slightest attention. After all, that’s what the makers of the movie accord it.

It’s all so silly and nonsensical it seems far more a vehicle for wisecracking and buffoonery than even the remotest attempt at meaningful satire. Released in 1933, when America was deep in recession and depression, and with fascism running rampant around the globe, it looks to me much more like escapist fluff than satire.

Rarely has a film I’d hoped to enjoy dragged so slowly, despite being so short, that I’ve abandoned it. Well, I bailed out of Duck Soup…

(And this despite the fact we were actually eating duck soup that very same evening!)

At last, I got this drum in situ, as part of my current drum set up. The rest of the kit is a Catalina Club Jazz four piece.

This snare is 13” x 5”, with the main body comprised of 22 Keruing staves, with White Oak pinstripes, and Pine(?) dots. There are twenty holes around the the drum, and thus no need for a vent.

The drum was finished with about 8-10 coats of clear shellac. She’s sporting a Remo CS dot batter side, and an Evans head snare side.

I played the snare, as part of a complete kit, for the first time today. On Xmas Eve, no less. And, overall, I’m pretty chuffed.

I quite like this view, from below. Here’s a wee gallery of images:

The whole kit needs a lot of attention. And I need to get ‘back in the saddle’, playing wise, as I’ve not played regularly for several years now.

It was great fun to play my first self-built snare drum in the proper full context of a drum set. There’s a way to go to getting it to a place where I’m completely satisfied – tuning, damping, snare settings, head choices, poss’ even modifying the snare bed, etc. – but it’s fab’ to have gotten this far.

And there are more drums being built, waiting in the wings. Exciting times!

My Kity 613 has terrible blade drift. So bad it renders the machine utterly useless for some of the primary things I got it for: in particular re-sawing, and cutting accurate thin veneers.

After masses of fiddling and finagling with the set-up, I temporarily achieved a very minor improvement. Maybe I just need (another!) new blade?

I had to adjust a screw to get the bed of the table flat. Initially I shimmed it with a thin slice of wood. Then I managed to adjust the nuts/bolt, to get the correct level without the shim.

The fence also needed a slight adjustment. It was out a whisker. Maybe a millimetre, at the far end? I adjusted and corrected that.

But, despite all these things, and setting up the top wheel tilt and tension, to get the blade running in the correct position; and adjusting all the guide bearings, etc, it still drifts like hell, and – when working at its best – results in a concave bowed cut.

Exasperating!

We’re away for a one night city break. Just back from Pho Norwich, where we enjoyed a Vietnamese dinner.

I brought these three new blocks of herringbone patterned plywood that I’ve created. I worked on all three at S&F, this morning.

That saw me turning ply laminate blocks into the herringbone patterns you see above. I’d have liked to cut a load of veneers, whilst there. But I ran out of time. And the blocks were still gluing when we left.

In case anyone needs any ideas for gifticles…

BOOKS

Always worth checking with me/other folk, so as to not accidentally duplicate.

I just ordered Country Church Monuments for my b’day…

This movie is about on a par with the book it’s loosely based upon. Strangely enough, I only quite recently bought this very book, amongst several Hassel and Fleming (Bond) paperbacks. Or did I? I know I certainly have this one:

I’m actually quite enjoying this film. Even though it looks and feels rather low budget (stock footage is rather clumsily mixed in, occasionally). Sure, it’s farcical in its machismo, just like Hassel’s books. But it’s also fairly unique, in all honesty.

The main cast includes a bunch of quite familiar faces – e.g; Bruce Davison, David Patrick Kelly – who, I think, acquit themselves just fine. The big guns include David Carradine, as Col. Weisshagen, and Oliver Reed, in a brief cameo.

There are several things I think make it worth watching: the mere fact that a film of a Sven Hassel book exists, at all, for starters. Then there’s the portrayal of the action inside a tank, long before Fury.

The central mission of the film – as described above in most movie ‘blurbs’ – doesn’t get started until about an hour in. And that’s some time after a rather lame-ass segment focusing on a visit to a brothel. I guess that part is in keeping with the book/rest of the movie, but it feels a bit like a distraction/waste of time.

Wheels of Terror, filmed on location in Yugoslavia, is also unusual in how it makes use of Russian materiel, for both Russian and German armour, etc. which is mildly galling to a buff like me.

Ok, this is along way from being classic. Or even very good. But, perhaps rather strangely, it’s still worth watching. There are even a couple of half decent scenes, such as the attack on the munitions base, the encounter with beaucoup de Russkis in the woods.

There’s another gratuitous nudity interlude, when they stumble on a crowd of Russo-German ex-military non-combatants, that’s borderline surreal. But perhaps such things did occasionally occur?

Another thing that grates slightly, like the Russian tanks passed off as Krauts, is the unvarnished American accents of the actors. I think some rudimentary nod towards Germanic accents would’ve been nice.

The thing is, I stuck with it. And I enjoyed it. I’ve bailed out of loads of crap modern movies. This is some slightly older crap. But it’s nowhere near as crap as a lot of modern drivel.

So, this isn’t a glowing recommendation. But on the other hand, if you like WWII movies, and perhaps even more so Eastern Front films, and better yet those from a German perspective… well, in several senses of the phrase, it’s a no-brainer!

I’m dead chuffed with these little boxes. My first was a practice/learning run. And has come out lovely. The second is a commission. And improves on the first in some ways (all edges bevelled!).

Cutting these boxes is quite hard. I think I need to learn how to do that better. And the subsequent sanding needs to be better as well.

Case #2 has been given a coat of teak oil. But nowt else. Should I varnish or shellac it? Maybe I’ll see what Walter thinks?

Which is better, I wonder: the lighter, or the darker lining? Or maybe they’re equally nice, in differing ways? Hmmm…

I’m working on a second little case, or box. This one’s come out shaped more like a cigarette packet than a card carrying case.

It’s actually a commission. My first, or possibly second? I made a mallet for our pal, Yanni, a while back. That was in response to a request. Was that a commission?

Anyway, Walter, a very nice chap at Shedders & Fixers, said he’d like a little case like my first one. He’s mentioned gifting it to his (I think?) daughter.

A significant improvement over my first one of these is the better more accurate bevelling. And the use of this on the tops and bottoms, as well as the sides. This has resulted in a much slicker look.

The two hardest parts of both this and the precious case, are the cuttting of the box(es), and the the inner-sleeve. I think I need to work out better methods for doing both off these steps.

This has kept me busy most of today. Except for a brief interlude of ‘gainful employment’. The latter took me to Cambridge. A rare occurrence. I picked Teresa up, and we visited Sam and dad, en-route home.

This is a terrific book. And I’m really enjoying reading it.

I started this review whilst still in the first third of the text. I did so because I don’t want to forget to mention some of the key concepts Ian Morris uses: eg ‘caging’ and ‘lucky latitudes’. These two are actually deeply interwoven: the caging occurs within (roughly) the lucky latitudes.

I have to be frank, and admit I don’t actually like either term (rather as I dislike Ian Kershaw’s very University-thesis sounding ‘working towards the Führer’, in his huge Hitler biog). But these descriptors do fit. So that’s got to remain a very minor (almost aesthetic?) quibble.

The broad arcs – makes one think of a sword being swiug, very apt! – of his arguments seem to me, eminently reasonable. Indeed, I remember starting to think along these lines myself, years before encountering them explicitly stated, thanks to my ongoing exposure to and interest in evolutionary theory and military history.

There’s also a prescience to what he’s talking about, as modern ‘democracies’ currently struggle with resurgent fascist tendencies, etc… [took a break, at this point]

I’m coming back to writing this review at about 70% of the way through the main body of text. It seems appropriate to resume at this point, as I want to note that the book’s subtitle ‘from primates to robots’ seemed rather odd at first. As the book starts (after the intro) in Ancient Roman times.

It’s only at this 70% point that Morris zips back, 3.8 billion years, to pre-cellular ‘blobs’, quickly sketching an entire evolutionary arc, whilst considering the balance between cooperation and conflict. This chapter – Red in Tooth Claw – introduces some mathematical ideas, inc. game theory, and is fascinating.

After a book that’s over two-thirds chronological, from Rome to post WWII, the sudden and massive jump back in time is followed by a sudden jump forward, to the Cold War, nuclear deterrence, the ‘pacifist’s dilemma’ (more game theory) and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I have to confess that this is where – particularly in the chapter Last Best Hope – certain strands of Morris’ thinking start to trouble me more than just a little… particularly in relation to the idea of America as the new and liberal/democratic ’Globocop’.

His flights of fortune-telling fantasy – as he summarises likely Sino-American conflict outcomes – strike me as scarily akin to the solemn celebrations of one of the authors and experts he quotes (I forget exactly who), prior to WWI, and Chamberlain, pre WWII, with his ‘peace in our time’! Predictions of this sort can be embarrassingly wide of the mark.

This book was written before Trump’s second disastrous destabilising term as POTUS. Someone needs to bring home to Trump that ‘Globocops… pay huge reputational costs for brutalising the innocent’, as Morris puts it.

A fascinating and thought-provoking book. Well worth reading.

A book has been published recently… pictured above. I first saw this on Amazon UK’s website. And I was intrigued.

I subsequently discovered that some of the content, or something remarkably similar, is available, free, online.

If you’re interested in seeing more, check this link out.

Here are a few samples:

It would appear that the above are night time fireworks, whilst some others (some of which are shown below) are for daytime use!

Are they not wonderful!? I find them exquisite and charming. I’d quite like the book. But with the imagery freely available… hmmm!?