Simon's Blog

Well I thought whilst I’m away I’d try my hand at some landscapes or cityscapes or similar. Big mistake. Every time I try to make anything in these genres I quickly realise that I have no interest in them at all. I think this is because I have spent most of my adult life creating landscape photographs and I just can’t switch between this and a more traditional artistic approach. Give me an interesting face to try and capture and I’m in heaven – a landscape makes me reach for my camera. It is crazy how we are wired but that’s what makes life so interesting.

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Now this is going to read like some snotty Brit whinging about American TV and I guess there is some truth in that but here goes anyway…

American TV is rubbish. If it is not for the erectile dysfunction or test yourself for HIV adverts it is just the inane nonsense spoken most of the time I between these adverts. In fact some of the most interesting TV is on the Christian channels because at least you feel there is some honesty there. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is to explain what happened last night when I tried to watch Goodfellas, a wonderfully gritty movie full of of rounded characters and performances – in other words a really good American movie. So I sat down and started to get back into the swing of the movie and after 10 minutes five minutes of adverts. Ok I thought perhaps they have to front load the adverts and then leave you in peace to enjoy the movie. But no that wasn’t the case. Every ten minutes along came the same set of adverts from subway, Office Depot or whatever else I can’t remember. At one point I started to actually think that the adverts were part of the movie. After this I just gave up. Just to underline the insanity I saw an advert for the latest Attenborough series Africa, which is being shown on the Discovery channel, the other day which wouldn’t have looked out of place promoting the latest WWE smack down panto. It got to a point where the other night I started watching Downton abbey on PBS, a show I really can’t stand, just to try and restore some sanity.

So the moral of this tale? Well I don’t think that there is one other than to say if you moan about the state of British TV and the BBC in particular just spend a morning watching American TV in the raw and you’ll know just how wrong you are.

That felt so good to get off of my chest.

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I bought some cheap water colour pencils yesterday with the intention of taking them away with me…when will I ever learn that you get what you pay for?!? Anyway, I thought I’d try them out on some familiar characters that might pop up on my holiday.

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