The Whittling Post Digest - Issue 17

I’m very relieved to be getting back into my guitar playing, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped doing all the usual nerdy bollocks I’ve made a life of doing. I’ve just forgotten all about them in the excitement. I was all like: “Oh yeah, I used to post about other stuff, didn’t I?!”. I’m never sure whether to include a question mark when typing rhetorical questions. I don’t like to, as I’m neither requiring or expecting an answer.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to in between untangling music equipment leads and examining pedal or amp layouts.

SAUCY DOG

I’ve neglected my search for East Asian indie bands of late. Shame on me! So I fired up that related playlist somebody else made on Spotify and began browsing again. The first artist that stood out to me, and the one I gave up my search to focus on, is Saucy Dog. Hailing from Japan, home to so much culture I adore, they’re a soft rock band singing about, erm, something Japanese, so I can’t tell you. I’m gonna go ahead and assume it’s not horribly racist diatribes, as the cadences are far too gentle for that. I initially described and almost dismissed them as “bland”, but I’m slowly beginning to learn that their melodies are a lot more complex than they first seemed. Nothing has quite hooked onto my brain yet though, so I’m not going around my flat humming any of their tunes, but we’re getting there. I get the feeling they are partly inspired by Coldplay, which the song “Stand by Me”, from their third album Blue Period, will attest to. It definitely has shades of “Twisted Logic”, from Coldplay’s underrated X&Y album. Yes, I’m an early-Coldplay apologist, having given up once they started duetting with Rhianna and rapping with Jay Z. I just preferred it when they were at least pretending to be an indie rock band. I don’t know what they’re doing now. But please do check out Saucy Dog. The singer sounds like the one from Indigo la End, which wouldn’t surprise me, as that guy apparently does have multiple bands on the go. Greedy chap!

CYBERPUNK 2077

Video games are probably a better medium for cyberpunk to blossom than film, as, if you’ve actually read one of William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy novels, you’ll know they’re more character pieces that revel in minor human interactions and motivations, rather than in slick sci-fi action set pieces. Video games, with their potentially very long runtimes, provide a better framework for setting up a world and a large cast of characters. Whether Cyberpunk 2077 utilises any of cyberpunk’s prose highlights, I have yet to find out, but I have just completed a combat tutorial, so maybe not. I was somewhat baffled by the character creation portion of the game, where I had the option of customising my character’s genitalia. Will that come to play in the storyline?! Or is it purely to join in with the rise of gender politics. So now you can choose to play a woman with a penis or a man with labia. That doesn’t bother me, of course, because I like looking at naked men and women, whatever sex or gender, but it’d be annoyingly pointless if your character never actually takes off their clothes. So far so confusing. It took me months to decide which character origin to go for. I went for being a “nomad” from the wasteland, as I miss the Fallout games. Apparently you end up in the same place, but for some reason it really mattered to me. I’m not terribly far in, having only gotten to the above “virtual reality” training simulator. I used quotation marks there, as we do now have proper VR for consoles, so I thought it best to specify that it was only the faux in-story VR. So far, my barely-useable eyesight is able to navigate around the world well enough, but the onscreen text prompts, either for training or dialogue situations, require me to zoom in on the PlayStation 5, then take a picture of the screen with my phone and zoom in even more. That’s becoming quite common these days, tragically, as my condition is constantly deteriorating. I could use my Seeing AI app (that’s also on my phone), which works really well, but I’m better at taking information in through text. I really do tend to tune out when somebody’s talking. So, yes, I shall let you know how I get on once I delve further into the cyber goings on!

SAILOR MOON

I was going to make this issue an anime special, as you will soon discover. There seems to be two Sailor Moons, the one in my head that’s a dated kids cartoon from the 60s or 70s featuring a little blonde schoolgirl having space adventures, then there’s the Sailor Moon of reality, which is a 90s teen anime featuring the adventures of a blonde teenage schoolgirl with bizarrely long pigtails having Earth-based adventures. So what on Earth is the Sailor Moon in my head?! It’s clearly not the actual Sailor Moon. The real Sailor Moon boxset is a Malaysian release, but it still plays on PAL players and has an English dub and subtitles. However, I think Malaysians must write from right to left, as opposed to our left to right, as everything about the format of the boxset is aligned, erm, “wrong”. The detailed text you’d usually find on the rear of a disc case is at the front, and the discs themselves go from back to front. It took me quite awhile to figure out what the hell was going on there. Still, the first episode is charming enough, although it does fall into what I’d describe as “annoyingly squeaky anime”. Recent examples of this are One Piece and My Hero Academia, where all the characters are just shouting constantly and everything’s happening way too fast. Oh I’m so old! It’s surely anime for people suffering from ADHD, if that’s how ADHD works. It probably doesn’t. If you have any idea what the Sailor Moon of my poor memory really is, it may even be a western cartoon that just sort of looked like anime, then please let me know. My wondering is starting to drive me mad! Is it a case of the “Mandela effect”?! We shall see.

GUNBUSTER

Giggling girls piloting mecha in a near-future war with something-or-other?! Wow, when the rest of the anime industry gets wind of this, it’ll surely start a craze! Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, apparently, so let’s just move along. Actually, I find puns to be the lowest form of wit, but that’s just me. So this miniseries is an early work by the guy who created Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I’m still working my way through, and it certainly has flavours of Evangelion. I was wondering why the BBFC has rated it an 18 Certificate, as it starts off innocently enough. But then there’s a group bathing scene with full frontal and rear nudity, so that satisfied my, erm, wondering. Cough. It’s played very camp though, so an 18 seems rather extreme. Perhaps something more explicit is to come. Sigh. That the beautiful notion of people enjoying their bodies and other peoples’ bodies has become a subject of censorship troubles me to my very core. Oh well, we’re slowly moving away from religious tyranny though, so maybe in a hundred years time you’ll be able to walk down the street with everything on display. Wouldn’t that be great?! We’d all be so much happier. Erm, where was I?! Oh yeah, it seems Gunbuster is standard anime mecha action stuff, but that’s no bad thing. With this and Evangelion and Patlabor and Bubblegum Crisis on rotation, I’m soon going to be getting very confused indeed!

PATLABOR

Speaking of which! I had the boxset of films 1 and 2 many moons ago. So many moons, in fact, that it was a VHS set. I am want to believe that all my old VHSs are stinking up a landfill somewhere, along with many of my other possessions. I had entrusted them to my father, but I believe he just binned everything when he moved home back in 2010. I have asked him about it all by text, but he never replies. I’ll just assume the worst. Anyway, I’ve not seen the original series, if indeed there is one, so Mamoru “Ghost in the Shell” Oshii’s first two features are all I know. It has Oshii’s signature style of minimalist character and camera movement, which creates a uniquely sleepy tone. It also has his sedate montage sequences, meaningful silences, and prolonged philosophical monologues too. If you appreciate his Ghost in the Shell films, then Patlabor is a must! There are some odd “fish eye” moments, that I believe are not meant to be comedic. But they are. The films are essentially cyber-crime mysteries that end in giant mecha battles. It’s as wonderfully simple as that.

PHIL X

This could quite easily go into my next Analogue Noise Bunker transmission, but it’s more about the screen than sound. A good sign that I’m back into my guitar playing is my daily dose of Phil X’s old guitar demos, courtesy of Fretted Americana. I believe the latter is a premium guitar store located in Los Angeles, which I would love to pay a visit to, if it weren’t for it being located in Los Angeles. I’m gonna go ahead and assume Mr X got the job demoing vintage and rare guitars through his work as a session musician. I can just picture him popping in every day to rent an instrument, then one day the owner corners him and offers Mr X some cash to become something of a YouTube sensation. As time went along and Mr X’s career took off, to a certain degree, he clearly refused to keep popping over the road anymore, so Fretted Americana started having to drag the expensive instruments over to his studio. I stop watching them after that point. Apparently Phil has now joined some hair metal band that was big in the 80s. Who knows. Still, you don’t really need to be into guitars to enjoy his videos, as his energy is so high (viewers genuinely kept asking if he was) and enthusiasm so infectious, that I’m sure anyone in a bad mood could watch them and find their spirits lifted. I have no idea if he’s still making them, but that early period is essential stuff. As a lover of guitars, it is absolutely indispensable viewing, as he also starts giving little backstories about each model after awhile. Nourishment for the soul!

Right, I think I’ve covered enough bases for one issue. I’m sure I’ve missed something really significant, but there’s always Issues 18. Although I best not jinx it. Quick, somebody hand me a piece of wood to touch!

Ah, that’s better.

You will notice I have yet to watch the final two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but that’s mainly because I keep forgetting. And not at all because I was traumatised by the utterly bizarre third one. Yikes! I’ll get there though, I’m sure. Maybe tomorrow. Yes, maybe.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

Jim’s Analogue Noise Bunker - Transmission 9

Well, we all survived the return of my music production journal, so let us see if we can recreate that chaotic vibe from Transmission 8! I won’t have to try hard. I actually quite liked chronicling my musical adventures through the equipment I use, rather than date and time stamping each section. This way feels more, I don’t know, organic and personal.

Let us indeed rock and maybe not roll as we can damage equipment that way!

EASTWOOD AIRLINE H59

I call him “Sparkles”, because his gold foil pickups sound sparkly! I had an Eastwood guitar a few years ago and, for reasons I cannot now recall, sold it. That one had four standard single coil pickups on it, which all sounded rather toothless, but when you switched it to its Jazzmaster/Jaguar-style “rhythm” setting, it created a unique tone that I would die for. So, yes, I could really do with one of those again. The H59 was an instance of love at first sight. Quite literally. I was in my local guitar shop, Rich Tone Music, purchasing my Jazz Chorus and a rare Epiphone amp when, lo and behold, there the H59 sat in their second hand area. I had noticed it for sale on Rich Tone’s website, but it wasn’t until I was stood there, basking in its presence, that I couldn’t take my eyes of it! I nearly grabbed and paid for it right there and then, but I realised I had two fucking amps to haul back home in a taxi. So I didn’t. But I did later on that day, once I got home and recovered from taking two electrical appliances up three flights of stairs. Not a job I would recommend doing by yourself! I’m now trying to think where I’d first seen gold foil pickups, but my guitar guru did recommend them, as they have a very unique tone. A Telecaster? Hmm, maybe a Gretsch model. I’m literally thinking out loud here. Well, more like thinking through my fingers. So not literally “out loud”. Anyway, the range of tones is like a Stratocaster gone nuts. Very hard and bell like to very light and sparkly. The novelty of having a volume and tone knob for each pickup is one of the things that endeared me to the instrument. Pictures simply don’t do them justice, as they just look hideous. But in person. I mean in person. Wow, you will fall in love like I did!

NEO VENTILATOR II

Still nothing. I have found the manual online though, so I shall be taking a look at that tonight. I seem to be having bad luck with this sort of thing anyway, as I can’t even get a chorus effect out of my Jazz Chorus 22 amplifier. And that sucker has it built in! It’s times like this that I switch everything off and go for a lie down. Which is happening now. Well, one day after the previous sentence I sit waiting for some workmen from the council to arrive, so I’m brawsing the user manual to fathom this baffling pedal. So far so simple enough, just like its reader. I’m understanding most of the terminology, so fingers crossed they keep it at a noob-friendly level. I will update you further in a later transmission, no doubt. I’ve just been watching videos of proper Leslie speakers and, hot damn, I really hope this thing recreates that sound like it promises!

ROLAND JAZZ CHORUS 22

It’s actually turning out to not be as loud as it seemed when I first tried it out, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting its potential. Sure, I’m not exactly playing it at music festival volume, but I am getting a nice tone out of it at “bedroom” level. I think it’s at about 7 o’clock on the knob. It also goes really well with the above gold foil pickups, as the amp is naturally rather sparkly too. I’m still not 100% convinced I have the stereo leads connected properly, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.

GRETSCH G6199 BILLY-BO JUPTIER THUNDERBIRD

Wow, what a mouthful! Now that has to be a record for convoluted guitar names. I shall just call him “Jupiter Boy”, or something. Okay, I’ll work on the name and get back to you. I’ve wanted one of these for years and years and years, but, gosh darned it, I’ve either not had the cash or they’ve gone out of circulation/production. Then, as I was idly shopping around for alternatives to the now-tragically-closed GAK music store, I found a Thunderbird on the Anderton’s website! I’ve shopped with Anderton’s many times before, and used to watch their YouTube channel (before they tiresomely got onboard with the whole “Please like and subscribe and share!” thing, which got real old real fast), so it’s not like they’re a complete GAK replacement. Anyway, they suddenly had 1 of these in stock and 1 only. So, what does a fat homo who’s single, childless, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drive, and just quit alcohol spend his money on?! Well he buys a Gretsch G6199 Billy-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird, of course! It arrived today and… WOW! This is dream tone stuff. A beautifully boxy sound, which some may consider ugly, but I adore it. There’s something for everyone! The overall look has that Gerry Anderson/Star Trek TOS retro-vision of the future, the one with all the grilles and dials and levers, which is one of my happy places. You may count this as another reason why I wanted one. The specs layout will take some getting used to, as the bridge is higher up the body than I’m used to. Where I rest my palm to mute the strings will need to change. It also appears to have a wooden acoustic part to the bridge, which is odd. I’m sure this part has an official name, but I’ll be darned if I can remember it right now. The guitar is very light, reminding me of my Guild Bluesbird. Chambered, basically. I believe a lot of Gretsch’s are, so that’s no surprise. I do have a Double Jet, which I should really give another go. Oh and a Junior Jet, which has only one P90 at the bridge. This Junior Jet I’ve setup for slide playing, by shoving a raised nut under the strings and over the original nut. Saves having to take it to a guitar shop to get modified! I have yet to purchase a Joan Jett, but I think that’s a person and not a guitar. So I’m more than happy to welcome the Thunderbird or “Jupiter Boy” into my broader guitar family. Am I running a fucking foster home here?! Well, nobody’s paying me to do it, so I’m guessing no. I shall report on this exciting new arrival once I have done more breaking in.

ELECTRO HARMONIX SOUL PREACHER

Ah compression, so important and yet so disdainful! I didn’t realise how key compression was to the recording process until I listened back to some of my older recordings. Clean. As. A. Whistle. Then I listened to this recording I made a couple of years ago. What. A. Mess. So I sat there and asked myself: “What’s changed in my playing?! I’m a better guitarist now than I was 15-years-ago, so why do I sound so uneven on this recent track?!”. Then it hit me - compression! I was actually using it in my first recordings without realising it. I fed everything I played through the Line 6 Floor Pod Plus, which has its own inbuilt compressor. To paraphrase Meat Loaf, you can get away with an uneven performance live, but when that mic is in your face or amp grille, you’re in trouble. I came to the revelation about the Floor Pod only recently, so I shall knowingly be using a compressor during recordings from now on. But which?! Out of the two pedal varieties I have, the MXR Dyna Comp works best with me. The Electro Harmonix (henceforth “EHX”) Soul Preacher hasn’t won me over yet. No EHX pedal has actually. Their spendy Attack Decay is impenetrably complicated, to the point where I almost believe mine is simply broken. I do have the East River Drive, which I believe is fine, but you’d have to try hard to make a drive pedal tricky to figure out. Even for me. So far, this Soul Preacher is popping all over the place, hinting at loose wiring, and the compression cuts the volume far too much. I fear I’d need to whack my amp up to dangerous volumes to actually get useable sound out of it. But, let’s face it, I’m not going to be using it for casual jamming sessions, which is all I’m doing at the moment. Compression does tend to make me feel travel sick anyway, so less is more! I’ll play about with the Soul Preacher and fingers crossed won’t have to switch over to the Dyna Comp. I believe in giving things more than one chance. I’m nice like that.

Well, I think that’s all for this second of my resurrected transmissions. They’re meant to be the sound engineering equivalent of my cultural digests, but hopefully they’ll still be fun to read for those without any experience or even an interest in music production.

If I can do it, you can do it.

I’ve got plenty of ideas for things to record, so it’s just a case of refreshing my software knowledge and waiting for a day when it’s cool enough to get going. Finding yourself surrounded by electrified musical equipment when you’re as prone to perspiring as myself is a terrifying experience indeed!

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

Jim’s Analogue Noise Bunker - Transmission 8

AKA the name of my fantasy recording studio and where I post my amateur opinions and feelings regarding music equipment. I cannot stress the word “amateur” enough, so please do not expect the musings of a smug hipster YouTube playing sensation. Dictionary term. I’m not a session musician, have never been in a band, have only worked in a recording studio briefly as part of a training program, and find the whole process of sound engineering incredibly stressful. Everyone does, of course, and I believe it’s actually what finally broke up Supergrass.

When that red light goes on, your nerves tend to skyrocket.

I’m also not a practical or technical person, having once burst into tears after being asked to simply fold a piece of paper. True story. If it doesn’t involve getting drunk or masturbating or both, I am next to useless. I suppose you could describe these posts as cathartic therapy for a person who hasn’t got a clue about technology and is happy to admit it.

I haven’t written one of these in a whopping six years, with the previous transmission being found here, so please accept that fact as an excuse for such a prolonged introduction. Or reintroduction. I don’t have a great reason why I’ve not written one in so long, but it was perhaps to do with my briefly moving over to video game streaming, rather than blogging or podcasting. But writing is where my heart is. It is also where I come at with regards to playing guitar. I don’t have the playing confidence or connections to even start/join a band, let alone the interest in laboriously learning other artists’ songs. So, instead, I spend my time practicing chords and scales, which I then attempt to record and post.

Since my old guitar guru/ex-colleague finally had enough of my eccentric behaviour a couple of years ago and wisely decided to phase me out of his life (not being the only one), I’ve struggled to find interest in guitar playing in general. Not that my entire interest in the instrument rested on his ginger shoulders, but losing yet another friend did upset me deeply, so I simply couldn’t face playing anymore. No longer did I have someone to talk to about the instrument itself, the amplifiers one plays them through, and their peripheral, but completely optional, effects pedals.

Once again, in a very wearisome life of mental illness, I was completely alone.

I wish I could break up this maudlin monologue with the grand announcement that some great epiphany has befallen me, but it hasn’t really. I’ve just been slowly nudging my way back to playing for a few weeks now, suddenly noticing the guitar parts in songs I’ve been listening to and thinking: “Hmm, I wonder if I can recreate that interesting tone!”.

I always have an acoustic to hand, so it’s not like I’ve not been playing at all, but it has been rather forced, often only happening when my mind is spinning uncomfortably in the night. I am something of a lifelong insomniac, after all. Playing guitar is one of the few things that quell the tide of what I call “adrenaline seizures”. Or making a sandwich helps. To be honest, having an interest in all the bollocks that comes along for the ride when playing the electric guitar is no life for a lazy arse like myself, so the thought of having to dig back out all the leads and pedals and power packs and linking them together and humping and dumping instrument cases and amplifiers hurts my face, so I have been putting it off.

Like most chores I have to face in life, as clinical depression and work do not mix.

The key ingredient to me finally attempting to start playing electrics again arrived when I had to tidy up a bit last month. You see, the council housing people, who badger their tenants constantly, wanted to come in and look at something or another. Fuck knows what. This spring cleaning, if you will, meant I could actually get in and out of my music nook (pictured below) again, without fear of injury or being attacked by something living in there.

Which is where we come to the first item on today’s transmission…

ROLAND JAZZ CHORUS 22

The only thing I did yesterday, in terms of setting up, was to pick out an amplifier. After all, I am just taking baby-steps here. With feeling the need for a fresh start, I wanted a different model to the Fender Bassbreaker that’d been sat there, collecting dust, for two years. They’ve all been collecting dust, of course, but I’m speaking more metaphorically. As well as literally. The Bassbreaker has been staring at me longingly and asking why I’ve not been using it, so I needed that built-up guilt swept away. So out came the Roland Jazz Chorus 22! It’s an amp that’s far too loud for my needs, but dammit if it doesn’t just look so cool! Vintage cool at that, which is the best kind of cool. You’ll hear me saying such things a lot, as many of my purchases have been made because the item “looked cool”. Not enough musicians admit to that. The Jazz Chorus has only been on rotation once, and needed a microscope and tweezers to nudge the volume up a microscopic amount. Probably up to 0.000001. Not very Spinal Tap, but I am in a flat with paper-thin walls. I usually go for 5 to 10 watt amps, so this 22 watt is really pushing it and my clean antisocial behaviour record. The second reason I bought it originally was for its stereo speaker system. While I don’t have many, I do have a few stereo effects pedals that haven’t been used to their full potential yet. Even though I haven’t been playing electrics lately, I still keep an eye out for interesting looking pedals to buy, so I have a couple of “new” ones (bought a year ago and still never plugged in) that are due a road test, most notably…

NEO INSTRUMENTS VENTILATOR II

A very fancy rotary speaker simulator, the likes of which I’ve been dying for. Golly do I love the sound of a guitar played through a vintage Leslie speaker! If I lived in a bigger property, I would surely buy an original. But I don’t. I live here, therefore a pedal is the best I can and will ever do. Alas! Oh well, that’s life. I get the feeling this baby will require some user manual reading, which is always like pulling teeth. I’m very much a “plug and play” kinda gal. So, after the end of this sentence, I shall go off and try to figure out how the hell to use it before the start of the next sentence. No such luck. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. I keep pressing buttons and twiddling knobs, but to no avail! I think it’s RTFM time, which is a prospect I loath. I guess I’ll have to post an update on my next transmission.

THE RAT KING

At least, that’s what I call the box in my music nook filled with guitar leads and power leads and mic leads and AC adapters and tremolo arms and headphones and Christmas tree lights and every other pain-in-the-arse bollocks that loves to get tangled up. But I’m not stressed or anything. Fortunately, I managed to dig out enough instrument leads to connect up two stereo pedals and feed them into a stereo amplifier. This has been Day 3 of setting things up, and I’m already exhausted. Tomorrow will involve actually connecting the pedals to the amp and then, dare I say it, turning stuff on! NOTE: I have yet to finish writing the above paragraph on the Ventilator II. Think positive thoughts for me, people!

MARSHALL BLUES BREAKER PEDAL

This was another purchase made during my recent quiet phase. I have spent more money on Marshall amp emulators than a sane person reasonably should. I do not know why I do it. I’m not even a big fan of Marshall amplifiers. In face, I don’t even own one. Perhaps that’s why I have the biggest collection of Marshall emulators in the universe. Who knows. Anyway, this appears to be a vintage model, as the knobs are very flimsy and cheap. Bless. Still, I’ve gotten it to work and it sounds nice at low gain. High gain has a very scooped middle (you know, when it sounds “fizzy”), but I’ll try rolling the single tone knob back to tidy that up. Oh yeah, I’ve actually started playing! Today was the big day, and I only had half-an-hour left until the 11 pm cutoff for loud domestic noise in the United Kingdom. The switch-on wasn’t aided by playing my cheap Casino, which appears to have dodgy wiring and keeps breaking up, therefore it was difficult for me to figure out whether I had loose cables or it was the instrument malfunctioning. Sigh. Simply picking out a different guitar would have been sensible, but… you know. Effort.

So, there we have it! It’s taken me four frigging days to get things working again. I legitimately have no idea why it’s taken me this long. I have just started rehab for alcoholism, at last, so perhaps that’s been on my mind somewhat. At least I have a functioning music nook to keep me busy now and off the dreaded bottle!

As with my movie marathon posts, this has been a “living” document, in that I’ve written a bit, gone off and done something else, then come back and added more. As mentioned above, it’s been a post four days in the making, but subsequent transmissions may very well be quicker, or even longer. I’ll just write until I feel like I’ve finished. Finished what, exactly?! I have no idea about that either.

Perhaps I shall organise my thoughts and post structure better for the next transmission, or just leave it in this casual/chaotic format. What dost thou reckon?

I shall have a think.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

ARRR! A Yo-Ho-Ho and Jim’s Pirates of the Caribbean Marathon! - Part One

I’m not a violent man, being more inclined to harm myself a million times over before lashing out at the world around me, but the thought of sitting through these five dreaded symbols of modern Hollywood’s excess and tedium truly did make me want to break things.

And yet here we are.

In truth, I’ve never actually watched one of Gore Verbinski’s saga of swashbuckling daring-do. Well, I did once try to sit down to the first one, but, upon realising it was going to be a drippy romance featuring the two dullest actors cinema has ever managed to dredge up, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, I turned it off immediately. I’d actually felt conned, in a “bait and switch” sort of way, having been promised a light-hearted adventure centred around the charming Johnny Depp. But, instead, I appeared to be threatened with the torture of seemingly-endless scenes of pouting and bosom heaving from Bloom and Knightley.

So, for reasons that escape me, perhaps just journalistic curiosity or utter self-loathing, I thought I’d finally actually sit down and try the series out, so I can at least say that they’re bad and mean it. Or I could end up being completely blown away by them and rally against every single professional critic the world over in support of the films. I mean, they’ve made five of them, so there must surely be something audiences are enjoying, right?!

As has become the way with my marathon posts, this will be a “live” document, where I shall not be going back during the editing process to update my expectations and opinions, whether they change or not. Who knows what impaired mental state I will be in by the end of today, but hopefully it shall reflect in the telling.

Sigh, I can’t believe I’m about to say this…

Let us hoist anchor and set sail for adventure!

Or, most likely, boredom.

THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

“I practice with them three hours a day!”

“You need to find yourself a girl, mate.”

And to think I was all prepared to hate. I can’t remember the moment I shut this film off on my first viewing many cursed moons ago, but that feeling didn’t return today. As it turns out, the much-feared scenes of romance between Bloom and Knightley are very, very, very wisely trimmed down to the bare minimum. I assume the editor of this motion picture is a very smart individual indeed. Depp plays a bigger part than I had initially suspected, and Geoffrey Rush proves that any film is elevated by his joyful presence. Except for Frida. That film is just the fucking worst. This film’s score, not composed by, but bafflingly “produced” by, Hans Zimmer, reminded me of one of his insipid 90s action nightmares. You know, back when he was shit. I’m not joking, 30-years-ago you could check to see if Hans Zimmer had done the music for a film and you’d know to avoid it. Sorry, Hans, but it’s the truth. These days I believe he wins Oscars and whathaveyou. Beside being pummelled by the real composer’s Zimmer-esque score, Verbinski’s directing of the visuals is pretty flat, with the cinematographer trying their darnedest to compensate by adding shafts of light and glittering gold. However, the contemporary overuse of digital colour grading often flattens the images out even more, to where you feel like you’re developing cataracts. The minor plot twists and turns are more convoluted than interesting. I just stopped caring for what was going on, eventually. At a certain point, Depp and Rush have a sword fight, knowing full well that neither man can be killed. So why should we care?! They actually point this out in the dialogue, but that doesn’t forgive it. Besides our cackling pirate leads and wet love interests, the film is populated by RADA’s entire crew of finest d-stock nobodies. And Jonathan Pryce, who rallies amazingly with his natural adorability. It sadly turns out that Bloom and Knightley are, indeed, just awful, and I genuinely winced anytime one of the pair opened their gobs. But what is one expected to do? Taking all the negative points above into consideration, I still somehow managed to enjoy my 2 hours and 23 minutes watching Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. In fact, once the credits and sequel-bait had ended, I strangely found myself looking forward to reaching for the second disc. And so we bravely face the rapids of…

DEAD MAN’S CHEST

“Did we kill it?”

“No, we just made it angry!”

This one nearly broke me. So soon out of the starting gate too! I even went so far as to get up and leave the room to start making my lunch, planning never to return. Well, maybe just to switch the necessary electrical appliances off. But that’s it. What can a rational person surely say after watching a film without a plot?! I’m actually asking. Instead of a central narrative guiding light, we merely have a series of events, barely strung together by a notion. Dead Man’s Chest feels like a comma in the series, rather than a proper entry. A side quest or appendix, you might say. Let it forever be remembered that the greatest folly of mankind, besides the abandonment of hunting and gathering, genocidal religious persecution, and the invention of the open plan office, was to disguise Bill Nighy in computer-generated prosthetics. Oh how much more fun the film would have been with that lovely face of his smiling at us for 2 hours and 31 agonising minutes. This first sequel looks better, at the very least. There’s more depth to the cinematography and it feels like a lived-in world, rather than an awkward children’s pageant. I’m guessing Mr Verbinski had no great artistic desire to adapt a theme park ride into a movie back in 2003, thus becoming Disney’s director-for-hire. But, following the success of The Curse of the Black Pearl, the budget went up and so did Verbinski’s interest. And so did the stupid. Everyone returns to race about on the high seas to save Keira Knightley, for some unknown reason. I can’t think of a single one, personally. All the events end up revolving around a squid-faced monster-man-thing-whatever who wants his heart back. I think. Perhaps they explained why Nighy looks the way he does at some point, but I clearly wasn’t listening nor cared to. I oddly remembered the most about this instalment, so I’m gonna go ahead and assume it was on TV throughout the decades and I left it on in the background while doing something more mentally nourishing. The ridiculously-long sword fight between three characters then two characters then whoever has no doubt gone down in cultural history as a low point in cinema. I know nothing about the theme park ride, so maybe two animatronic pirates ride a waterwheel somewhere amongst it all, but such a physics-defying image certainly doesn’t work here. The kraken turns up. Goodness knows why. Geoffrey Rush comes back from the dead. Goodness knows why. Johnathan Pryce bothers to show up for a few pointless scenes amongst all the other pointless scenes. Goodness knows why. But it all looks great and Hans Zimmer is officially the composer of the score now, which means there’s more oomf but less charm. Maybe watch this one in half-hour shifts, as if it were a miniseries. Your time is not worth sacrificing to sit through the whole thing in one sitting. Trust me on this.

AT WORLD’S END

“Nobody move! I dropped me brain.”

After a grimly macabre opening, which I quite appreciated, this third piece of evidence in the Pirates of the Caribbean trial then moves onto a Mission: Impossible-style caper, swings by The Matrix, veers off into Lord of the Rings territory, then parks up next to Once Upon a Time in the West. Go figure. While having even less of a plot than the previous instalment, At World’s End manages to be far more engrossing and, dare I say it, fun. For a time. It is often a unique study in what happens after the damsel in distress is rescued, when she and her smug saviour have to now try and get along. In three words, they do not. Then there’s something about going to an alternate dimension to rescue Johnny Depp. Then a cabal of international pirates get together to try and fight Tom Hollander because he’s evil.  Or something. Then a woman grows to be the size of a ship’s mast and explodes into a thousand small objects. I just… I just… I just don’t know! The characters engage in many formal meetings, as if trying themselves to work out what the hell is going on in the story. Scenes just keep taking place without any impetus or meaning. At one point I cried: “What the bloody hell is going on?!” and “Just finish!”. It’s almost like the film is too scared to end. Was it meant to be the grand finale of a trilogy?! The villain has an unnecessarily elaborate death scene, so I assume he and the director are close friends. Bloom and Knightley, who’s involvement in the series should have ended two films ago, have an emotional goodbye for some reason. Again, I have no idea why. I’m guessing there was a towering stack of notes from studio executives and principal actors that the four credited writers had to consolidate into one document. A single talented writer could have made sense of it all. So, yes, stuff is happening on screen and none of it makes any sense. It’s a fascinating exercise in how not to write a movie. But, again, I was bizarrely engaged with the odd flash of colour amidst all the chaos and tedium. Geoffrey Rush is an absolute delight as always, and clearly relishes his pirate character. Depp sadly appears to be on autopilot. Bloom and Knightley are as ghastly as they are in everything. We don’t get a humanised Bill Nighy, sadly, although we do get a genuinely touching speech from Pryce lamenting how we waste our lives concerned with petty nonsense. Good for him, at least Jonathan gets to sail away with some dignity. Keith Richards’ cameo is cute. Oh and Chow Yun Fat is in there, who’s advances Knightley’s character fights off. I don’t know how she manages it, as my knickers would come flying straight off! But, apart from these minor diversions, I cannot truly describe in words how nonsensical this movie is. You really do need to experience it for yourself. Humans made this. Adult humans. Can you believe it?!

Right, that’s it for one day, folks. I simply cannot physically and mentally continue. I shall face the final two films tomorrow instead, as I genuinely fear my opinion will be negatively influenced by the cognitive meltdown I am currently having.

I was going to cheat and pretend I’d done it all in one day, but I think you poor bastards have enough to read as it is.

To be continued…

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!