michael lambe's scrapbook

Just a few bits and bobs tonight:

There’s a fresh (very fresh) restaurant review up on Deep Kyoto now, for all ye who are interested in falafel (those golden balls of goodness).

And…have you heard of Tv Links? Some time ago my good friend Philippe introduced me to TV Links. It’s a curse. I’m watching TV all the time now. I’ve gotten through all of Black Books (which I love), revisited the entire Father Ted (brilliant!), and am now wading my way through Firefly and Casanova (both of which I heartily recommend). Basically, I’m catching up on all the good stuff I never got to see because I’m out HERE – adrift in Asia…

Now, I was watching Casanova last night and I was thinking: “that’s funny”. What’s funny is that the actor who played Casanova (David Tennant) now plays Doctor Who and both series also had the same writer. No, actually that’s not especially funny, what’s funny is that David Tennant seems to be playing both Casanova and Doctor Who as exactly the same person complete with all the same verbal ticks: “Ah! – Erm… Yes! – Sorry! Nice to meet you! I’m Giacomo Casanova/The Doctor. ” (Invariably folowed by inane grin). But whereas, Casanova was well-written and had Peter O’Toole in it, Doctor Who has pretty much gone to the dogs (in the writing department) ever since Eccleston left. The only thing holding it up really is David Tennant’s boyish charm… and big Scottish eyes. And well yes, the occasional good episode, because the last one “Blink” was actually quite a nice wee tale and those weeping angels were well spooky.

Anyway, enough of geekery.　Here are my all-time rock-n-roll heroes performing a classic (albeit not as good as Beretta):

It’s June, it’s getting hotter and stickier and my lolling students are melting all over their desks. “Hot” they murmer, “Sleepy… hungry…” they gasp, and that old favorite “I don’t know…” is often whimpered as their heads sink deskwards. None of this is said in English of course. No fear of that.

I’ve started growing stuff on my balcony, herbs and flowers and things. Right now I have a carnation, some chamomile, rosemary and an orange flowery thing I don’t know the name of but it took my fancy when I spotted it on the way home this afternoon. “Is it a present?” said the shop assistant. “Yes,” I said, “It’s a present for ME.”

Meanwhile, my friends have buggered off to Eigamura again today (see: http://mikeylambe.blogspot.com/2006/05/recent-larks.html) leaving me to enjoy a sunny Saturday on my tod. Well, fine. That’s no problem. Eigamura is a dreadful bore anyway. I’m going to do far more worthwhile stuff instead like erm… writing this blog and rereading Asimov’s “Prelude to Foundation” (for the first time since I was 13) or watching stuff on youtube while my brains rot out my ears. Chris Cotter was good enough to send me this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU4S2BIqoHY and I thought “That’s brilliant! What’s this Black Books thing then? I must find out!” and so I ended up watching more stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-UaOc8_J-Q&search=black%20books and this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OdCdcEuUAo&search=black%20books which was also brilliant (and brought to mind a Nigel I once knew). And then I mentioned it to my friend Rik and he said “I love Black Books! It has Bill Bailey in it!” And I said “Who’s Bill Bailey?” and I ended up watching stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U5xwIYzs9Y&search=bill%20bailey. Youtube is eating my life!

Oh, and I’ve bought a webcam and a speaker, so if you get onto Messenger you can actually SEE me and if you have the right stuff too, I can see YOU and even SPEAK with you, like I did with my good buddy Dave Rogers in Canada, the other night. Why, it’s almost as if we’re living in the 21st century. Now where’s my flying car?

School
Good day today. I’ve had a bit of trouble here and there with some students seeing what they can get away with, with the new teacher, so this morning I adopted Leilani’s “give ‘em a good bollocking” approach, and changed the seating plan around too. I’m happy to report the 3rd years are under the thumb. What a relief!

Brown Sheets Up and Down the Land
I have words to say on the new series of Doctor Who (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/). The first episode, “New Earth”, was total pants. The conclusion of the story where the Doctor says “I know a bit about medicine” and produces a miracle cure by mixing up a bunch of vari-colored intravenous drips in a bucket – what’s that?

However, last Saturday’s second episode “Tooth and Claw” was back on form. You can’t beat a good werewolf story and the humor worked better this time too. Although I’m still not sure why 19th century Scottish monks would be so proficient in kung fu, I am sure that the wonderfully grisly sounds of fangs grinding meat, gristle and bone as the wolf mauled and devoured one victim after another gave lots of tiny tots up and down the British Isles horrible nightmares. Hurrah! That’s what we want!

Now for some reason in the next episode they are bringing back the Doctor’s erstwhile companion Sarah Jane Smith and the robot “dog” K9. Why would they bother? I can clearly remember watching Doctor Who in the 70’s and thoroughly despising Sarah Jane Smith. All she ever did was get into trouble and scream and wail and whine and then scream a bit more. Maybe she and Rose Tyler could have a fight. That would be good. Rose could wipe the floor with her. But then she could wipe the floor with me too.

And I’d probably like it.

And K9. Yes lovable K9. K9 was lovable in the seventies but we were young then and it was the seventies. K9 is a robot who can’t climb stairs. Click here to see how far we’ve come: http://asimo.honda.com/inside_asimo_movies.asp

By the way, if you click on this next link and then scroll down the page to where it says “ Watch a clip from the Genesis Of A Classic documentary.” and then click on that, you can see a great clip of Tom Baker being brilliant. Click here first:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwho/2006/03/17/30405.shtml Tom Baker, by the way, hated K9. Great man.

More Links
Now, onto more important things: here are some links to blogs more interesting than mine:

This chap’s in Osaka: http://anenglishmaninosaka.blogspot.com/
This chap’s in Tokyo: http://tokyoblog.livejournal.com/

And here’s a site I thought was kind of dumb at first but after reading a bit I soon found myself hooked: http://www.unphotographable.com/

He sometimes takes actual photographs, which are quite nice too:
http://www.michaeldavidmurphy.com/port/7.shtml

And for those of you who STILL haven’t seen it, here’s that sushi video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4946101556303618610&q=sushi