Books, bits, and bobs...

...So I spend a lot of time on the train these days (3 hours a day to be more precise) and in the last 6 months of doing this epic journey every day I have fallen on a number of different ways to pass the time.

1: Stare out of the window and dream of crash landing on a deserted island populated by porn starlets.

2: Watch movies on my smart phone. I have an Orange SPV C500 for which you can get a pretty damn good divx player. Compress a movie right and you can fit it easily on 256meg memory card with extra space for a few WMA albums. I watched the entire season 1 of Dead Like me like this. The only reason I don't do this any more is I HATE the head phones that come with the SPV and I can't find any replacements.

3: Listen to mp3s on the SPV - see above.

4: Listen to mp3s on the Creative Labs Zen Xtra. I bought this just before Christmas. It's a 60 Gig mp3 player and it holds a fair chunk of my music. I also picked up some Sony 'ear bud' headphones which are a BER-ZILLION times better than those crappy SPV headphones, Creative Labs headphones - and for fucks sake - THOSE FUCKING IPOD HEAD PHONES!!! If you still use IPod headphones you should be ashamed. It just shows you know nothing about music. Change them and do yourself (and me) a favor.

5: Play games on my Nintendo DS. Regular readers will remember me picking up an import DS. Great fun - only I'm bored of all the games and I'm waiting for something new to come out.

6: Play GBA games on my DS. Fun for a while, but then Zelda Minipinibushiploppy flappy pissed me off.

7: Read a book.

Wait - yes... I said it... READ - A - BOOK.

I don't read. Well - I do and I don't. I don't read fiction. I find it really hard to follow cos of my dyslexia. Also I'm not a fan of written fiction in novel form - which is why I like screenplays. I get bored easily by the endless description and lifeless writing.

So what do I read? Well - I have a lot of books on screenwriting, learning Japanese, film making, Japanese manga that I can't actually read, architecture books, and a few biogs.

So I picked one up.

The first book I read was David Lee Roth's autobiography 'Crazy From The Heat'.



For those who don't know, Dave Lee Roth was the original singer in Van Halen and then left to make one amazing album in 'Eat em and Smile' - then a bunch of so so thing. The book is a frank re-count of various events in his life in no chronological order. I like the structure - it meant you were never sure what was coming next. Some of the chapters were spread over many pages - some were one page anecdotes. The guy has had a life, and he re-tells it without making you hate him for it. There is mention of drugs, sex, and the general excess of rock and roll life - but he assumes that you already 'get' all that and instead focuses on the moments that stand out.

The most amazing stuff in the book are the stories of the many travels he's taken throughout his life. Taking any downtime from music (and aborted film projects) to explore the world. No package holiday for Dave. It's true drop yourself in the middle of nowhere stuff.

Makes for an excellent read. I highly recommend it.

The book I'm currently reading is Lloyd Kaufman's ' All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger'



This is one funny as hell book. It's more autobiography than film studies tome - but there are some real gems hidden away in here for low budget film makers.

Tips like, shoot the sex scenes first - then if someone chickens out, you can fire them and you haven't wasted any film. There's also a great chapter on post-production.

I'm most of the way through this book and it's been one of the most entertaining books I've ever picked up. It's not for everyone, like Troma's movies, but it's honest and funny. What more can you ask.

Again - highly recommend this book to pretty much everyone except my Mum.

I have a few more books lined up. If they strike a chord, I'll let you know.

To close the first ever Medulla Corp book review blog I'd like to just say:

I WILL NEVER FUCKING READ THE DA VINCI CODE! OR ANY OTHER BOOK BY DAN BROWN!!

There was a period of time when EVERYONE on the train was reading this book. The normal paranoid silence of the commuter carriage was broken by morons reading the same book striking up puerile (did I use that word already???) conversation about that stupid book.

The only thing that pisses me off more that that, is when they had to pull those fucking white IPod headphones out of the swollen ears to start up the conversation in the first place :)

God I'm such a fascist.

Anyway - in other news. I was in HMV today I they have the new to DVD Russ Meyer films on sale for the bargain price of £9.99!!!

I picked up Vixen, Super Vixen, and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixen (my fav Russ film).







Regular readers will know of my fondness for Russ and his movies. I'll keep this bit short since I did a pretty huge blog about the great man after he died :( Go find that if you want the whole 'My life with Russ Meyer' experience.

Till next time...

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 8:20 PM 1 comments