Thursday

Listening to: Sams's Town- The Killers, and, Skin and Bones-Foo Fighters. Not at the same time.

You know whats nice after doing dishes for half an hour on a warm muggy night? That's right, a cold beer.

If I am not quizzing with Notkate, Thursday is usually my night off to potter around at home. I am out doing stuff most other nights. I am usually alone while Fi is at choir practice. Music is often played loud while doing other things, like dishes or model making or blogging or even housework.

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Movember

As the result of a 'you should' conversation with a workmate at my 30th, I thought I'd try the Movember thing. So after 12 days of not shaving, the effect is thus:

Rather than shave around it, I just didn't shave for 12 days. I have no real love for being clean shaven. It's a hassle and quite sensitive for the first few hours thereafter. Thus, I generally beard up until I get bored with it, or have a reason to shear. And I like my beard. It is red, and different from my hair colour (this is either Irish from my mothers side, or Viking invader of north-east England from my fathers side). These days it is getting a bit of grey, which gives an air of distinguish-ness which I like.

I've had full beards before, and goatees, but never a moustache for for than 24 hours. It is almost a certainty it will be gone by next weekend (I have a wedding to attend).

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November 1990

I seldom remember what I was doing when working on this or that particular model. This one is different.

Purchased in the giant Hamleighs toy shop in London in December 1989. Other projects got in the way, but by November 1990 it was almost done. On a fine late spring evening I was working on it in the lounge, with the TV news on. The big story of the day was that a madman had taken a gun and killed a lot of people in a plce down south called Aramoana, a placename I'd previously only known as the name of one of the Picton ferries. Video from a distant hillside showed black clad police rushing toward a house, the white smoke of tear gas filling the air as the sharp sound of gunfire filled the soundtrack. A man with murdered relatives angrily told a reporter exactly what he thought of her when she asked 'how do you feel?'. The killer was shot dead by the police special tactics group, his motives never to be explained.

The model reminds me of Aramoana. It is not the only association I have with it (it is one of my fathers favourite pieces of my work for example), but it is the most significant.

I saw Duncan Sarkies' retelling of the story, 'Out of the Blue' the other night. I wasn't really sure I wanted to, if enough time has passed for a movie to be made (I'm still undecided).

To Sarkie's credit, the film is really really good, the best film I've seen in a while. The story is told sensitively and entirely without exploitation. There may be spoilers here, be warned. All the tense part of the movie is after the shooting starts. The killing, when it begins, is entirely untelegraphed, and the start of the massacre is depicted in such a matter of fact way it is genuinely surprising and shocking, even though you are expecting it at some point. Most of the deaths are thankfully off-camera, which I think adds immeasurably to the film. Controversially to some, killer Gray is humanised a little, which I think is way better than having another carbon copy psycho. This does not in any way make him sympathetic, rather it just illustrates what little is known of the man.

It's a real downer movie, no happy ending possible, and I found it quite affecting.

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Time travelling

The model is an F-14 Tomcat, the real star of the movie 'Top Gun' (as well as the mighty A-4 Skyhawk. Yes, kinda like the ones our air force used to fly). We watched it on DVD at the Spa Palace on Sunday for a laugh. Its a really fun movie if you're in the right mood. I loved it for a few years after it came out, went completely off it for a while after realising how wildly inaccurate a depiction of real-world dogfighting it is, then came back to it fairly recently. I can sit through it and point out everything wrong, and still enjoy it. The cinematography is still impressive, zero CGI, and almost no special effects. And the dialogue is actually pretty good. Having not seen the film for years, I learned things I hadn't previously picked up. The characterisation still sucks though. Apart from Goose. Goose rules. And the soundtrack is the archetypal 80's synth-rock melange. I have it on cassette somewhere.

Also the commentary is excellent. How else would you be able to pick out the real 'Viper' in the bar scene, or see a part fall off one of the aircraft during one of the dogfights? Or know that Goose's death actually happened as depicted to some poor guy? (which I had previously thought implausible. Shows how much I know).

Interestingly, every single type of plane visible (around half a dozen if you know what you are looking at) in the movie (which was filmed in 1985) apart from the 'Mig-28' have now been retired and are no longer used. The only air arm flying the Tomcat now is Iran, which I find really funny (the Iranians were sold a bunch during the Shah era, just before the revolution. Despite having no product support for 25+ years they still have some flying out of the 80 they bought).

The 'Mig-28' was fictional, and represented by F-5 Tigers, which were/are another training aircraft at the Top Gun school. So Charlie's line "we'll be using F-5's and A-4's as mig simulators" is kinda amusing in context. To me anyway.

I don't really see the supposed gay subtext (but then I usually don't), apart from maybe the volleyball scene. And why is everybody sweating, all the time?

Incidentally the model illustrates the 'variable geometry' idea I mentioned a few posts ago really well. Wings go forward plane goes slow, wings go back plane goes fast. Having moving swing wings on a model was all the rage in the 80's. Not so cool these days, because having moving parts means less detail and less accuracy. I have a more modern F-14 kit on which the wings are designed not to be movable.