Is it my imagination, or are our young folk getting stupider?

Once upon a time there was a female (allegedly) scientist who was part of the team (though to hear her psyco-fants tell it, she did it herself) which developed the first soft frozen ice cream. The process involved "doubling the amount of air in ice cream, which allowed manufacturers to use less of the actual ingredients, thereby reducing costs," according to Wikipedia. That, of course, means that even before she was screwing us financially as a politician, Maggie (the female member of the team) was helping screw us as a scientist.

But our kids haven't learnt the lesson that less can be more (ie less real, relatively healthy ingredients = more money for the fat cats).

I say this because now, it seems, at least one cosmetics company has decided to pull the wool over the faces of our ignorant, beauty at the cost of all else kids by introducing a new skin "care" product filled with 15% oxygen. For oxygen read "air". Are our kids so bloody stupid they don't see that they're now going to be paying the same amount for a product which is 15% less product than it was before, or worse yet will be paying more for the product because it's now full of a new, "beneficial" ingredient.

ARGH!

And that's not all. Kids (to me at age 61 anyone under 35 is a kid) are now shelling out good money to barbers, hairdressers and hair product companies for hair cuts, hair "styles", hair "care" products that help them have that just got out of bed look. Are the kids so thick they don't know that all they have to do to achieve that look is toget the hell out of  bed and don't touch their hair?

And even that's not all. We can surely all remember when there was only one "flavour" of Cheerios and that was oats. They were made from oats and the O at the end of Cheerios stood for oats. Then over the years came a multiplicity of Cheerios flavours, multi-grain, and others I don't recall since I didn't buy them. Now, Nestle (which produced and markets Cheerios on this side of the pond) is advertising (falsely, fraudulently, if I do say so myself) a "new cheerios, now with Oats and only Oats". Er, guys, there ain't nothing new about oat Cheerios, they were invented with only Oats.

It's really getting to the point where I most assuredly want to cry out "Stop the World, I wanna get off"

More on the Theatre Programmes

Well, I've now researched and listed almost 50 of the couple of hundred Theatre Programmes I acquired recently. Usually I can list five or six books in an hour or so. These have taken me more like an hour or so to research and list just one of these programmes. But what fun it's been. And for men and women of a certain age (like me at 61 years old) to find the debut  stage performances of those stars we knew when we were growing up.

Greer Garson, Robert Donat, Rex Harrison, Noel Coward, George Sanders, Edith Evans, Cedric Hardwicke, Denholm Elliott and Joan Hickson, are just a few of those whose earliest or very early works/performances are represented in these programmes.

If you'd like to take a look at those which are now listed, go here. And check it out on a fairly regular basis for there are still several hundred yet to be listed.

I love it when that happens!

Just a brief note:

I just finished an early dinner. Went for my tobacco and rolling machine. Grabbed a filter, opened the roller, only to find I already had a cigarette prepared from earlier.

I love it when that happens!

It's not as good when I roll a dozen or more at a time, because then there's no surprise.

It's amazing, miraculous. Words just can't express it.

It's nearly the end of the Proms Season here. I've only caught a few, but they're leaving me amazed.

A few days ago it was The Venezuelan National Youth Orchestra. What a totally spectacular performance they gave. Enthusiastic, joyful, and such talent.

Tonight it's the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink. I missed the music by Wagner but was on time to catch that by Debussy. His Three Nocturnes. The first of these, "Clouds", and the last of these and "Sirens", just struck me as so magical, so ethereal, both in their composition and perhaps more so in their playing. I almost felt as though I was flying, being carried along by the clouds.

And then I look at the size of the orchestra, and think back to all the orchestras, bands, singers I've experienced in my 61 years and I can't believe the wealth of talent. I just can't believe man is able to invent instruments to produce such. I just can't believe man capable of composing such. I can't think of any other art where there is such a wealth of such incredible talent.

Talent that takes you out of yourself and out of this world and into yourself and into the world as it should be. Beautiful. Magical. Tranquil. Exciting. Angry. There's even beauty in the ugliness sometimes portrayed and peace in the anger sometimes portrayed.

I should have such talent. But don't.

Thank the heavens there are plenty who do.

Theatre Programmes Galore

I recently acquired 200-300 theatre souvenir programmes from the 1930s through the early 2000s from theatres throughout the UK. The collection was lovingly put together by H. W. Roxburgh of Liverpool. I'm currently going through the uniquly enjoyable (well in my youth I wanted to be a stage actor, the closest I came was in school productions and in the chorus of my local Summer Stock theatre), but labour-intensive exercise of listing them all in my database and online.

Starting with some of the London ones, I almost immediately came across two fascinating and related items from the first and second seasons of London's Open Air Theatre in Regents Park.

The first is The Open Air Theatre Souvenir published by Theatre World Magazine. It's the magazine's ouvenir program for the Theatre's Second Season in 1934. The editorial matter and pix recount the success the theatre had in its first year. Included are welcoming messages from Sydney W. Carroll, "director-in-chief" and Robert Atkins, producer.

Featured are formal portraits and shots from some of the shows, including: Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Iris Hoey, Nigel Playfair, Margaretta Scott, Leslie French, Henry Hewitt, John Drinkwater, Letty Littlewood, Anna Neagle, and Jack Hawkins..

Neilson-Terry was the daughter of Julia Neilson and Fred Terry and neice of Ellen Terry, thus carrying on a theatrical family line that spanned several generations. She made her first stage appearance in 1909. She was an actress for more than 50 years.

The wonderfully-named Sir Nigel Playfair was the actor-manager of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, in the 1920s. After studying at University College, Oxford, he went on to star in the Mermaid Society's well-received 1904 London production of "The Way of the World" by William Congreve. Playfair is credited with a major influence on the BBC's 1923 wireless Shakespeares, the first produced by that organisation. He continued to work as a BBC producer for some years, and is credited with having commissioned Richard Hughes to write the world's first radio play, "Danger", in 1924. Playfair also appeared in a few motion picture films during the last years of his life. Fortnum & Mason still markets Sir Nigel's Vintage Marmalade, and there is a Nigel Playfair Avenue in London.

And then there was Jack Hawkins. an English film actor of the 1950s and 1960s. Hawkins made his London stage debut aged 12 (1922), and was appearing on Broadway in "Journey's End" by the age of 18. He appeared in several films during the 1930s but it was only after service in World War II that he begn to be a real success in the cinema in films like "Angels One Five", "The Long Arm", and "The Cruel Sea", the film that made him a star.

From the late 1950s he appeared in character roles, often in epic films like "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "Lawrence of Arabia" (playing General Edmund Allenby) and "Oh! What a Lovely War".

Other productions in that first season were: "As You Like It", the ballet "Comus", "Twelfth Night", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "The Comedy of Errors".

The second item is also from the theatre's Second Season. in 1934. The first production that year was "Romeo and Juliet" by Shakespeare.

This production starred Griffith Jones as Romeo. Jones a film, stage and television actor who went on much later to appear at The Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in over fifty productions. He was also father of actors Gemma Jones and Nicholas Jones. It also starred Sydney Bromley, a prolific English film actor. He appeared in more than sixty films and television programmes. Margaretta Scott starred as Juliet. Scott is perhaps best remembered is best remembered for playing the wealthy and eccentric widow, Mrs Pumphrey in the BBC television series, "All Creatures Great and Small".

Hubert Gregg went on to become a BBC broadcaster, and was a writer as well as stage actor. He is arguably best known for the BBC Radio 2 "oldies" shows "A Square Deal" and "Thanks For The Memory". In an earlier era he had also been a novelist, a theatre director and and a hit songwriter. However, Gregg spoke German well, and during the war worked for the BBC German service, to such good effect that Goebbels assumed he must be a German traitor.

Oh yes, and we must not forget, appearing as an extra, the Academy Award-winning actress (in "Miss Miniver"), Greer Garson. Garson had joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre two years earlier and made her stage debut in "Street Scene". This (1934) was her London debut at The Open Air Theatre. And so successful was she that in 1935 she made her first West End appearance in "Golden Arrow" opposite Laurence Olivier.

The season also included a series of Monday evening ballets and another Shakespeare classic, "The Tempest" with Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Iris Hoey, Nigel Playfair, and Hubert Gregg.

Online booksearch ratings and book buying hints

Stuart Manley of Barter Books in the UK has put up a page to rate book search sites. In addition, the page includes some very important, money-saving hints on book buying. The page is here.

Technical (non) Support

Ah for the good old days, when "tech support" meant you got to speak to a technician who knew the product inside out and backward and was educated enough to be able to explain the solution to your problem in terms even an idiot could understand.

And second best feature of that support was that it was free (no per call or per hour fee and a free 800 number to call). I'm thinking the late, lamented WordPerfect Corporation here folks. That company was so proud of its tech support plan it even advertised in the computer press and other media its monthly phone bills (in the tens of thousands of dollars if I recall correctly. And its support was free to all callers, even those with an unregistered (read begged, borrowed  or stolen) copy of the program.

Likewise, Demon (one of the UK's oldest and best Internet Service Providers) and Turnpike (Demon's superb integrated connectivity program). While no toll-free number, their techies have always (I've been a subscriber since 1994 or 5) friendly, courteous and knowledgeable. And again, no per call or per hour fee.

Because of their great tech support, not to mention their great products, I continue to happily and productively use those products.to this day.

But they are the exceptions, rather than the rule.

For example, some of my loyal readers might be wondering why there were no posts here since mid-May. Very simply because computer problems left me with no knowledge of my username or password to enable me to log on as owner of this blog.

And contacting (as I did several frustrating times) Google's tech non-support people resulted in no responses from them other than general  boilerplate language telling me to read the FAQs, all of which I'd already read to no avail.

Oh well. Enuf whinging. time to hit the gym.

Things it took me till age 61 to learn

I can't believe it took me all this time to learn (amongst other things):

1. When shaving, you can tap the narrow end of the razor against
the sink to help clear it of shaved hairs, thus giving a better shave and prolonging the life of the
razor. I used to just run it under the tap thinking that cleared most of it, but have now found it came
nowhere near clearing as much.

2. When using a pepper grinder one needs to turn the top in only
one direction ever, otherwise (ie by turning the top back and forth) the blade (for lack of the proper
term) gets dulled and it's virtually useless.

Amazing.

Went to see "The Simpsons" and now remember why I don't go to the cinema anymore

Went to see "The Simpsons" movie and now remember why I don't go to the movies. It was the first time I'd
been to the movie theatre in about six ears. The experience reminded me of the two main reasons I quit going.

1. I kept dozing through it like I always did before. (I suffer from sleep apnoea and this dozing is one of the symptoms and is the reason I no longer drive.)

2. I paid £5 ($10) to sit through a half hour of bloody TVadverts,
for cars and banks and god knows what all else. If I wanted to watch adverts I would have stayed home in front of the TV. How do they get away with that? It ought to be illegal. 

At least when watching tv you have a choice and can turn the tv off.

If I could be bothered, ie if I intended ever to go to the cinema again, I would picket the theatre.