Duncan Hotchkiss

My 4 and a 1/2 year old has wee second hand book about horses she carries everywhere. One of the pages started to come away.

‘Is that ok for the wee girl, daddy?’

‘What wee girl?’

‘The wee girl whose book it was.’

Kids movie review & film summary (1995) | Roger Ebert Early in "Kids," there is a scene where Telly and his friend Casper are walking along a Manhattan street. Telly, who is about 15 or 16, is describing his

Roger Ebert’s review of KIDS is spot on imo www.rogerebert.com/reviews/kids...

Not on MUBI but elsewhere, I watched the 1995 controversial cult film KIDS by Larry Clark. Extremely uncomfortable - repulsive even - viewing and there’s good reason it is hard to find. Major trigger warnings for sexual violence. All that is true, and also true is that it is a very good film.

Including LET THE CORPES TAN, an arthouse French crime thriller with some saucy eroticism charged through it. LOS COLONOS also great, about colonialism, race and empire in Chile - one of the lead Cunts is a Scot interestingly

Life’s been busy recently so haven’t posted much but here are a few cultural highlights:

- Rachel Cusk’s OUTLINE is brilliant
- Deborah Levy’s AUGUST BLUE also great and also set in Athens
- on the film side I’ve subscribed to MUBI and enjoyed lots of weird and wonderful stuff on there…

Friday flaneur

Looks like that young guy in the hoody has been photoshopped in

Great afternoon at the Leith San Siro earlier today.

That would’ve been around 2008 I think. The ill fated Rangers fan who mocked the Ozzy. Wonder if he ever thinks about that encounter still?

Also saw a pished belligerent Rangers fan get knocked out by a small Australian guy wearing a woolly jumper and a bunnet in the upstairs bar. Not to condone violence but it was a great - justified - moment.

Underrated venue. Seen some great shows here over the years.

Non alcs are better these days which is good. Here are my picks:

Erdinger
Guinness
Ghost Ship

Been off the bevy for a few weeks now. Still waiting for the miraculous health benefits to arrive (glowing skin, hair like Jesus etc) but it’s been a worthwhile exercise anyway and notice I’m fitter at 7s.

Looking forward to a real pint mind you.

I now get all the Rachel Cusk hype.

Giving up on graves - or maybe more so gravestones - was one of the more regrettable collective cultural decisions we’ve made imo. They’re good things to have.

- What you up to, mate?
- Nowt much just posting a critical reappraisal of the 1996 family adventure Loch Ness on that Bluesky
- …okay

Fucking great bit when he’s sitting down himself to his tea: haggis neeps and tatties

Why do we hate it? Because it’s ‘inauthentic’? Give over. Authenticity does not mean realism, and realism is artifice anyhow. It’s authentic to what it is: an OTT American fictionalisation of the western Highlands.

Watched the oft mocked 1996 family adventure Loch Ness tonight. And I hereby call for a critical reappraisal. The accents are consistently bad enough to make their own fictional world believable. The interaction between the Yank and the Scottish child is actually… well done. And the acting… decent!

My local has announced that it’s closing. Feeling a little shook still. I bloody loved that place.

The Substance. Lives up to the hype. Good fun and absolutely mental. Demi Moore excellent.

Near my bit. I like the pile up of housing styles around here: traditional sandstone tenement, post war high rises, and brick local authority built mock tenements - one of the few examples of successful inner city rehousing within Glasgow itself (rather than new schemes) in 50s/60s.

Finished Deborah Levy’s August Blue last night. Maybe my favourite of hers yet. She’s the real deal. Who doesn’t love an existential doppelgänger story fused with music?

Saw A Real Pain yesterday and really liked it. The camp visit scene was very powerful. Made it all the more baffling that someone starting chatting during it in the pictures. Jesus wept.

Brilliant John, enjoyed that

6 o’clock Sainsbury’s partick

Fraser MacDonald · Diary: Remembering Nan Shepherd The novels weren’t the point. The point of Nan Shepherd was herself. My mother described what a thrill it was to be...

‘Literary reputations always have a life of their own, but I struggle to reconcile Nan Shepherd of Cults with the cult of Nan Shepherd.’

@frasermacdonald.bsky.social on Nan Shepherd and her home village of Cults, Aberdeen:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

What a day out with some of the best folk in fair auld Scotia. Love a Scottish cup adventure.

Your pictures of Scotland: Photographs from around the country - BBC News A selection of photographs submitted to BBC Scotland News from around the country this week.

Still basking in the glory of having a photo featured here. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Fine, I enjoy that stuff, but too much of it is not good for my own actual brain, the bit that’s me. ‘Sell your labour not your soul’ I suppose, as our union banner read. I’ll make more of an effort to conserve my own brain this year. Stupid work.