I once described Werner Herzog’s voice as my favourite sound (above even the melancholy chimes of distant ice-cream vans) – which of course sounds horribly pretentious, but something about his lugubrious vowel sounds which match exactly his lugubrious face gives me great joy. I’m sure anyone who heard him saying ‘That’s not an opponent’ about a plastic dustbin in Julien Donkey Boy, would agree.
Anyway nobody ever seems to ask ‘What’s your favourite documentary?’ which is a shame – because I have lots – so in the spirit of time-wasting…
Wings of Hope – Werner Herzog
My Best Fiend – Werner Herzog
Chronique d’un Ete – Jean Rouch
Ongka’s Big Moka – Disappearing World
One Day in September – Kevin Macdonald
Awake and in Pain – no idea who. It was about when the anaesthetic fails in surgery which I watched at a very impressionable age – I have no memory if it was any good, but the title stays with me almost as a motto
I can’t extract any favourites from my brain at the moment, but “Slow Glass” has to be my least favourite. It’s about a glass blower who likes to send people to sleep with his monotone Northern accent. It’s like that episode of “Ripping Yarns” about a dull Yorkshire man (without any of the later excitement).“Nanook of the North”?Does fictional documentary count?
‘Slow Glass’ – at least the title didn’t build up any false expectations. That Ripping Yarns is particularly amusing – I often find myself telling anecdotes as fascinating as the lead character.
Naming favorites <>roots<> people out. I have often been caught like this. People say things like, “What’s your favourite type of music?”I find it so unkind a question that I’ve started asking people, “What was the last thing you played on your [medium of choice]”, so people have to land with, “Actually, it’s Simply Red’s ‘Stars’, but…” and then tumble sideways by explaining how they feel about this. Then they end up concluding, “Actually, I’m much more of a John Denver man”.And there you have the real person.So: What was the last noise you heard that you would put in your noise catalog?Mine is that of a blue tit warbling away as it coaxed a peanut out of the feeder I put up last week.But I just happened to be around when that noise occurred. I’m much more of a slapping-a-side-of-beef-as-it-hangs-in-the-van man.
The last noise I heard of any note, beyond the tap of computer keys, and the general office drone was probably the canadian geese outside – who are bastards and make an appropriately bastard like noise as they victimise coots. the animal equivalent of simply red in fact
At last – a blog for twitchers. Look out for the Mistle Thrush – backyard bullies who stroll around in pairs, staking out a holly tree for their exclusive use. They scare away other birds from their supply of berries, and guard their tree-top larder for long hard winters. They mainly eat on the ground themselves, so it’s not as if they need the tree. Selfish bastards.
Wasn’t a puffin spotted in a Birmingham garden a few years ago, eyeing up the ornamental carp? My favourite food is potatoes.