Top class music

Okay, so there's a long story behind this but,.....

If you get a chance, check out this guy, Amos Lee. He is absolutely fantastic! Saw him last night (Thursday) in Glasgow and he blew me and my friends away with his set.

KnobGallery.com - Your Source for Decorative Hardware

KnobGallery.com - Your Source for Decorative Hardware

This made me laugh and at least I now know where to go for all my knob needs.

Those West Wing emails

Had I known Thomas would write at such length then I would've added more to my email. At least I think I would've,.....

Prompted by a text message from Thomas to Ali where he says he was let down by the season finale of West Wing Season 3.

From: Ali
To: Thomas

Thomas Wilson!

How on earth can you say anything even vaguely derogatory about the season finale? It was a masterpiece in programme making; just look at the individual components that are woven together. There's the showmanship between the president and challengers teams as they try to gain one up on each other over the New York event. There's the anguish and internal turmoil faced by Bartlett as he decides on a course of action over the murderous double agent. There's the building frustration of CJ who loves her agent but is unable to act on it which seems to be resolved and we see her for once experiencing a moment of joy, relief and excitement.

Just when you settle into these shared experiences *BANG* Simon's on the floor and he's not coming back. Cue music "Halleluja" (I can't spell). Shots of the assasination flow into shots of the play and CJs world crumbling around her. We go from the highs of shared joy for a character we have seen develop over three series to instant devistation and heartbreak.

Remind me again what was disappointing in that? ;)

Did you like the trio of Toby/Barlet episodes (The Two Bartlets). The two characters work really well together and I found that mini series addictive when it was shown on C4.

Have a good one

Ali

-------------------------------
From: Thomas
To: Ali

Ali....

Thanks for your lengthy email. Here's another one!

I did like the final episode but it didn't feel like a final episode. I didn't feel "Wow! I have to see the next series" at the end of it. Not like I did for the first two season finales. I admit the finale of the first season was pretty hard to top. I accept you couldn't ask for that at the end of every season and it wouldn't work if you did but what a start to the season finales! I really loved the second season finale too. I felt the season really gathered steam towards the end. It all built up around the persident's MS and then it just all kicked off. I loved the end of that season too. I really felt like I'd been through an adventure with them. It was an emotional rollercoaster and you got to see some real emotions. My main feeling at the end of both of the first two seasons was one of satisfaction and appreciation of how great the West Wing was.

I never really got that feeling at the end of this season's finale. My first problem started long before the finale. I didn't feel things were building up in the few episodes preceding the finale. They were all good episodes but where was the big event going to come from? The one that was going to captivate us like the other season's. I started to get a little sceptical. Death threats come in against CJ.... They can't kill off CJ though because I'm sure she's very nearly the most popular character. She's got a new bodyguard though and they seem to have a bit of a thing. They wouldn't just kill him off though because that would be
comparable to killing off the random crewmember on the Star Trek away team and the West Wing are better than that. Well, aparently they aren't. I know, they built up the relationship between CJ and him but I had not the slightest doubt that he was going to get killed. I thought it was going to be in the scene when they kissed. I thought CJ was going to get shot but not killed then too but that never happened. I was right about him dying though.

Okay, and then there's the president and the challengers faffing about. Okay, it was good material for an episode but I felt a bit short-changed. What really happened of any great relevance? They met and said they didn't like each other. Good for them.

The double agent thing bothered me. I was troubled by the president's decision to put the laws of the world to one side and assasinate the guy. What was it Leo said? "You have to say yes because you won." Something like that. You won and now you're president and these are the kinds of things the president has to say yes to. H'mmm.... I don't know. They certainly didn't convince me that they came to the correct decision. I know he was a "murderous double agent" but I thought they should have explored the moral implications some more. I would have liked them to explore the decision through dialogue as opposed to just watching the president um and err.

The end didn't really do that much for me. Not for a series finale. The sadness of CJ, the assasination and the play cut together was ok but it didn't do that much for me. I thought it would have been a good ending to a mini series of episodes but not to a full season of with West Wing.

Maybe I was expecting too much to happen. Maybe what I wanted to happen would have been too dramatic but I want drama! I want the season finale of one of my favourite shows to grab me and show me something I don't get (or want) from a normal episode. That sounds as if I'm dissing 'normal' episodes but I don't mean it like that. You couldn't have every episode like a finale but I also don't want the finale like a normal episode. In the first two seasons, they were very definitely different, through the build-up of pace in the preceding episodes right up to the glorious end. I didn't feel the great build-up of pace in the episodes
preceding the finale this time. I got to the last episode and I thought to myself there must be another CD because this can't be the finale. I should know it's the final episode without having to check. In the first two seasons, I knew. I didn't need to check.

I did really like the series as a whole though. Yeah, Toby and Bartlett were brilliant. There was some damn fine acting in there. I like stuff like that where you really get to see the characters portray emotion and grapple with difficult issues.

Thank you very much for bringing the West Wing into my life. Like I said earlier, it is one of my favourite shows and I loved this season as much as the others. Perhaps I should have said that in my text message but I'd just finished the finale and my feeling at that moment was disappointment because of how the season ended. Anyway, I'll stop typing now. I'm done.

Thomas.

West Wing

A few years back I visited my friends Paul and Melinda Hailey while they still lived in England. On the Sunday evening we sat in their house chilling out after the fun of the weekend and watching whatever was on the TV. Melinda was adamant that we should watch the West Wing since she is American and so is it. At the time it was mid way through Season 2 and while I had heard of it and heard it was good, I had yet to watch it.

I was amazed by this programme that was laid before my eyes. The characters were engaging, the writing like nothing I had seen on British TV for a long time and, with Melindas help, the background of the plot line was easily understood. That was all it took to get me hooked. From then until the end of the season I watched the programme religiously on a Sunday night and found myself being drawn further and further into it. When the season finale aired I was left desperately wanting to know what happened next and also what had happened in the programmes before I used to watch it.

Believe it or not, it actually took until recently to see programme 1, series 3 due to the fact I was out of the country or something when it aired on C4. It's also the case that I didn't see all of that season for various reasons. This has been rectified by the purchasing of Seasons 1,2 and 3 on DVD.

Now as it turns out my friend, Thomas, has become a fan of the programme after I lent him the DVDs of Seasons 1 and 2. Like me he has been desperately awaiting the release of Season 3 and had the same excitement about getting his hands on my copy. We both love the programme for similar reasons but we disagree about the season finale. This disagreement brought about two interesting emails which I include for historical purposes. We'll no doubt come back to the West Wing in future blogs. We'll also talk about other series that have won my heart.

Guitar

So I bought a guitar after writing that email to Joy. On the Friday of that week, I took an early afternoon finish and caught the train into Glasgow city centre. I searched out Merchant City Music whose website I had been looking at and who had been recommended to me. The store is an Aladdins cave of guitars; electric and acoustic, budget through expensive, all hang side by side. The staff, according to the website, are all musicians of varying ability and a love of music. Certainly they were very approachable and helpful guiding me through the purchase of my first guitar.

What impressed me was that they didn't try for the quick buck by trying to sell me an expensive instrument but instead pointed me towards a model which, while sounding good, didn't break the bank. It will pay off in the long run because of course when I want to purchase my first electric or my 12 string (I love the sound of the 12 string) I'll head straight there. I must also say that I loved the amount of patience they had with me while they explained the merits of different gauges of string, etc.

I've had the guitar for over a week now and I've learnt 5 chords! As suspected I haven't had a vast amount of time to practice so progress is slow. However given the pain at the ends of my fingers (on the left hand) I think I must be on my way to being able to practice for longer :) I'm using a book called Guitar for Dummies to teach myself at my own pace. I've always liked the Dummies series of books because of the way they're written with a good balance of humour and a straight forward approach to educating the reader.

'Puters

I bought a laptop over 2 years ago because, at the time, I spent a lot of time not being at home and so it made a lot of sense. At some point I must explain what I was doing instead of being at home but that's a story for another day. Now laptops are great inventions and most of the blog to date has been typed mine, however I've noticed a tendancy for them to be tempramental. It could be a variety of reasons behind this, I guess that the transportation has an effect as will the temperatures that build up as well. I'm blaming the laptop but of course it's very likely that it could be the fault of Windows XP.

Whatever the reason it still annoys me that from time to time it will seem to 'take a turn' and I'll end up either having to re-install Windows or I'll have to fix a corrupt registry. It's happened so often that I'm actually becoming very skilled at performing these tasks.

Confessions

Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It's been over a week since my last blog. I actually have lots of stuff to add to the blog and it's all sitting on the laptop just now but I've still to get around to adding it. Over the weekend I had to re-install Windows and so I didn't get time to do much else. Never mind, I'll get to work on this over the next couple of days.