THE MEETING

A film exposing and celebrating the idiocies, vanities, perversities, duplicities and anxieties of human behaviour and interaction in a 4 hour business meeting. Entirely without sub-plot, histories or allegiance, the film showcases ten individuals' styles, mannerisms and ways of being [er, tautology] as they each play out their roles across the ever-changing, undulating landscape of group dynamics and dysfunctionality.

[heap of stuff about how not like The Office, natch]

Poster / Big Voice:

THEY SAY MEETINGS CAN TAKE ON A LIFE OF THEIR OWN... BUT THIS ONE IS GONNA TAKE YOURS

MILKMEN MAN!

17 year-old Anthony Baker was a kid like no other - for at the slightest sign of danger he could unleash five full-sized milkmen from his jacket's pockets. White-coated, milkman-hatted milkmen, graft-hardened and at once both blunt and sharp, who set about troublemakers and would-be-attackers with clinical, large-fisted efficiency; growling as they did so such catchphrase-esque epithets as "I've been up since half-three and I'm no mood for the likes of you" and "I've to be up at 3.30, so I'm in no mood for your sorts".

Danger dealt with, the milkmen would return to young Tony's jacket... but only so long as their hats were in place. [For some reason] Any milkman parted from his beaked tile would have to hang about discreetly with Tony until the object was discovered or a new hat was got from the outfitters... one hundred miles away!!

We pick up the story at such a cap-related eventuality, in "Le Chapeau Perdu!"

John (hatless milkman barred from pocket post-scuffle): Jesus Tony, you said you were going to keep a stock of them!

Tony: I know, I was going to

John: So why didn't you?

Tony: Have you any idea how much it costs just for one?

John: Christ Tony, if it's the money we can sort it...

Tony: But that's just it - you can't! You're not actual working milkmen. You don't have rounds and you don't get paid. So just keep quiet and let me figure out a way to get that hat!

BOZ MAN!

17 year-old Anthony Baker was a kid like no other... for when danger or [conditions to be decided] arose, he would transform into BOZ MAN!

Reaching into a body of work from much-loved author Charles Dickens representing all that was published under the pseudonym 'Boz', from 1833 to, broadly, 1836/37, young Tony would [actions to be decided, eg: physically leafing through one of seven paperback books selected from the small trolley at his heels] take on the character of a fictional subject therein, or [range of options to be decided] and [exact benefits and outcomes to be decided].

Well, that's all sorted then.

BEER - 6, COLD

I heard a question posed thus: "When the Polar Bear's wet, your beer is cold - what price cold beer dispense?"

BOZ!

Quietly fascinated as I am by the repeatedly accounted-for early literary life of Charles Dickens, of his Boz period, brief as it were, I am minded to think on a story, a telling of this time; a biopic, film, and a roaring musical stage production - BOZ! - including such numbers as:

She Was Only My Publisher's Daughter

That's A Whale Of A Gaol

For Illustration Purposes / Give It Your Best Shot, Seymour!

You'll Have It By Tomorrow (Magazine Day)

Bad Debt Dad

What I Love Most About My Wife Is Her Sister

Aint London Funny, But Capital Sad?

(The Meaning Of) Neat

Blacking My Character

and

Aint London Funny, But Capital Sad? [Reprise]

L O X Y

a quasi-anthropomorphic comedy about an alpha male urban fox whose years at the top and relationships are fucked up in the pursuit of inexpressible ideals... set to great music.

Ta-da!

Today someone referred a few times to that 'ta-da!' moment. Got me thinking - who was the first person to go 'ta-da!'?

Jesus?

Or God before him.

Or perhaps it was more recent than that.

The inventor of the bra.

GENERATING ANGST

A fabulous gift and a weirdly frightening task [customizedcoupland].

With eight inputs my go-to was Random, Wikipedia. And the (honest) list (snugly):

• SM UB-34
• Japanese Left Army
• DNF
• Hopewell, Connecticut
• Ludeasa River
• Homotrixa
• Solar Eclipse of April 30, 1957
• Nano-Tera

But I wanted to meld a part of me with the book; why, vainly, wouldn't I... this book about how it feels to read a book?

Hard!

And opted for a memory off [sic] Toronto; something so entirely far from the future that it would nuzzle hilariously the storylines. But it kind of slinked and whirred full circle: a squirrel in its pumpkin velodrome; and became, rested, a couplandic image after all. Perhaps.

Thanks MJ - really, a gift.

BEER - 5, JOY

Welcome.

Wherever you like.

Beneath the old photo of Brel. Ashtrays, beer bottles.

Great beer.

BEER - 4, THE PENCIL

On wait staff with ultra short-term memory loss... write it down!

BEER - 3, INNOVATION

A provocation: the greatest beer innovation of the 21st Century... good service. Really good service.

Friendly. Efficient. Sincere.

A model business.

BEER - 2, CROCODILE

Le Crocodile in the 5th. I'm a long way the oldest in the place, and the only one drinking beer. The youngsters are into thay cocktails and playing with Rubik's Cubes, playing cards and calculators. Yes, calculators. Retro turquoise Casio jobs.

Much is blogged about the bar / club. And those who choose to do so wax romantically, enchanted; hooked. A couple eloquently scoff, focussed on the Haribo 'dile.

But, enfin, it is what it is.

That's the thing about your bar; it is what it is.

CLIMATE CONTROL

In the grip of a cold snap, Paris is mad for winter sports gear. Queues out the door at Au Vieux Camper. The Damart store is hot with old ladies.

In the bar a girl orders a flaming crepe and when it arrives, theatrically, she and her friend set aside their iPhones and warm their hands in the blue licks, laughing but committed.

SPECTACLE, SORBONNE

An elderly gentleman, don-ish, takes up the table next to us (very next to us) at a bar by the Sorbonne. He has one eye and two pairs of spectacles, which he fussily and frequently swaps about.

Am ever when by the Sorbonne put in mind of the Pet Shop Boys ("Pet Shop Boys, no 'the'" as the wrinkled Nabokov-looky-likey gay father of Corrie's Gail, pedantically said) - 'Opportunities'; I studied at the Sorbonne.

A heavyweight knowledge brand.

WACKO

The French - as only they would - okay, in fairness, TF1 - are singularly ennobling Michael Jackson as 'Michael', and are concluding 'the doctor who killed the king of pop must be made to pay'.

Ja.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Saw a rotunda poster of the king yesterday; leopard skin shimmery chemise and gold jeans. The latter sans ceinture and gaping a little at the hip.

Brand of drugs.

BEER - 1, THEMES BAR

In a bar in le Marais, Mexican themed. A clip-art job, but well done. The only pression is Grolsch. Good, good Grolsch. Bang up-to-date glassware too.

Dutch beer, Mexican bar, Paris street.

PABLO, HONEY 2

The Musee Picasso is closed for major refurbishment. Parked up on the pavement by the big wooden doors is a blue Ford Transit with English plates. It's a Harry Enfield sketch, live.

PABLO, HONEY

"Picasso was out to reshape and revive the world he had been born into. He took this world seriously; then he disrupted it; then he gave it a new form."

Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

ENOVATION (I know, I know)

1. Innovation can be leaving stuff out

2. On homogenization - Plasticine starting out in bright colours but ending up 'that browny-purple'... how to avoid the purple-brown Plasticine?

3. Tomorrow Never Knows is a song that didn't exist before it went into the studio

4. Paint the target around where your arrow lands

... being my quick notes of Eno quotes, or close as I could catch them. (Brian Eno, BBC's Arena 'Another Green World' broadcast January 2010)