joh

Imagine if Annie Hall had been forgotten in a Ziploc bag under your couch cushions and left there for 30 years. By the time you pulled out the bag, Alvy Singer's endearing misanthropy would have decomposed into its constituent elements of vanity and contempt, and Annie's charming naiveté would have curdled into ditzy cuteness. The New York City that once seemed like a living, breathing entity would be a desiccated and barely recognizable skeleton. In short, you wouldn't be able to get the contents of that baggie to the trash can fast enough. That's basically the experience of watching Woody Allen's latest comedy, Whatever Works. - joh

ah the beauty of records. the wonders of the work of art in the age of digital (re)production! somewhere someone is or could be listening to something you let go of long ago... - joh

Erin Gough’s Jump and i.j. oog’s the american dream will appeal to those who relish rich prose. Gough writes of ‘salt and chips air’ that is ‘thicker than pub smoke’, while oog places his seething protagonist in a derelict house in the middle of nowhere. - joh

Walked out of Waiting For Godot at the Theatre Royal last week. Nothing to do with the production. Simply my way of responding to the play's evocation of the tedium of existence. If anything, the better it's done, the more obliged you are not to return after the interval. Seeing me leave, a wonderfully polite Indian gentleman who was waiting on the pavement asked if he could have my ticket. Presumably, he does this every night. It crossed my mind that he might have only ever seen the second act of Waiting For Godot. Perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred times. And I have only ever made it through Act One. This reflects our different natures. He doesn't want to know how things begin, I don't want to know how things end. - joh