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2010-03-14T10:57:00.001Z

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Shutting up now...

2009-10-23T21:56:00.001+01:00

Well, I said I'd shut up about it all when I reached £400, and I've just paid in the offline sponsor money, taking my total raised for Cancer Research UK to £427!

Thank you sooooo much to everyone who sponsored me. There are loads of you, but I'd especially like to thank those of you who don't even know me really, just my Twitterings. You restore my faith in humanity.

Any last minute sponsorship will be gratefully received at Craig Stevens's Fundraising Page for Run 10k. That's it. I'll never speak of this again. Probably...

NaNoWriMo!

2009-10-18T16:39:00.002+01:00

Eep. What have I done? No sooner have I scaled the 10k mountain than I've signed myself up for another massive challenge: National Novel Writing Month, (or NaNoWriMo, for short!)

Basically the challenge is this: in November, I have to write a novel of more than 50,000 words. Ideally it should have a plot and characters and a beginning an middle and an end, but that's mostly academic. All the organizers want is 50,000 words, and it can't be the same word 50,000 times over... And then you win. Hopefully with a semblance of a novel.

So, realistically I'm looking at churning out 2,000 words a day to be anywhere near the target. Hence why I've written three blog entries today, just to remember how to write!

If you want to follow my progress, or even have a go yourself, then become my buddy!

I done it.

2009-10-18T15:44:00.001+01:00

In case this is the only place you catch up with me, two weeks ago I Ran 10k for Cancer Research UK, at Hylands Park Chelmsford. It was a lovely sunny day, loads of people were there (about 1,400, I believe) and I did the 10k in about 1 hour 15 minutes.

Huge thanks to everyone that sponsored me. At the moment I've raised just under £400, so if you want to push me over the line, feel free. Just click on the link above! Thanks!

No More Heroes...

2009-10-18T15:37:00.000+01:00

Who are your heroes? Are they the same as they were when you were younger, or have you outgrown them? I've been pondering this myself for a while, since Michael Jackson died. Not that Jackson was ever a hero of mine...

What is a hero? To me, a hero is a person who exhibits qualities that puts them above others in any field, be it sports, music, art or writing. When I was younger I had a few heroes, people that I respected, who I felt had a talent that lifted them up to the highest heights, who became, for want of a better phrase, gods. Sadly, I now feel that most of those people have let me down.

Let's get down to specifics. Sixteen years ago, I wrote a list of "The Gods":

1. George Lucas
2. Jean Michel Jarre
3. Jim Henson
4. Green Gartside (from Scritti Politti)
5. Jim Aparo
6. Alan Grant
7. Gene Roddenberry
8. Nik Kershaw
9. Arthur C. Clarke

(Looking back, I would probably add Terry Pratchett and Madonna to that list, but didn't at the time. Poor old Nik Kershaw has "demi-God" in brackets after his name, so he wasn't obviously totally in favour at the time.)

Anyway, looking at that list now, would I still consider them heroes? By that tag, I mean that they are still as important to me as they were then, that they haven't put a creative step wrong, that they are still, well, Gods, and not mere... people. It's harsh, but there you go.

So, 1. George Lucas. Well, it was all going so well until 1999, wasn't it? His position in the pantheon looked assured, the Special Editions of the Star Wars trilogy could be seen as an indulgence, rather than a mis-step, but then Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace came out. The fall to mortality wasn't immediate, but the creeping feeling grew that the halo had slipped... (See I Blame Rick McCallum for more details!) Mortal.

2. Jean Michel Jarre. In 1992, one of my favourite Jarre albums, Chronologie had come out. In 1993 I went to see him at Wembley Stadium and I thought his reputation had been sealed, but in the intervening years, he's produced few albums of such magnificence, but has been reworking his old stuff, making little "art" albums and then the appalingly bad Téo & Téa "dance" album. I blame the fact tha he's not married to Charlotte Rampling anymore. The woman must have been a good influence which he's now sadly missing... Mortal (though fingers crossed for the future!)

3. Jim Henson. Untouchable. His sad and untimely death in 1990 meant that he could no longer prove himself fallible. (Unfortunately his death proved his mortality though...) The body of work created by him in his lifetime stands firm. His legacy, and the future worth of the Henson Organization remains to be seen. Hero.

4. Green Gartside. Just when I thought nothing would ever be heard again from Mr. Gartside, in 2006, he pulled out his best album since Cupid & Psyche '85 in the form of White Bread Black Beer, a self-produced, minimalist album of pure loveliness. Hero.

5. Jim Aparo and 6. Alan Grant. Look, I was a big comics fan in the 1990s, especially a Batman fan, so this classic artist and writer duo got included. Still like their work, but haven't read a comic in anger for nearly a decade, so I can't really say if they're still heroes. Probably. Though I'd have to veer towards Frank Miller and Alan Moore for their work on The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke respectively.

7. Gene Roddenberry. The man had a vision and a commitment to get Star Trek made and to keep it going in the '80s and '90s with Star Trek: The Next Generation. His death in 1991 didn't stop the franchise, and his legacy, as proved by the huge success of J.J. Abrams' big screen reboot Star Trek this year. Hero.

8. Nik Kershaw. OK, so he's not as big a star as he was in 1984, but Mr. Kershaw keeps putting out songs of wit and intelligence on his own label, making albums such as 2001's To Be Frank and 2006's You've Got To Laugh. Hero, just for doing what he does.

9. Arthur C. Clarke. The greatest Science-Fiction writer ever. Prescient and talented and just a fantastic writer. Hero.

And Terry Pratchett. His writing gets better and better all the time, despite a dip in the Soul Music/Hogfather years and unfortunately his Alzheimer's will probably get him before he gets a chance to make the fall from grace. Still a hero. Always a hero.

Madonna. The only woman on the list, but unfortunately now very much a mortal. Like Jackson, her heyday is well past now, but no one seems to have told her. She keeps churning out the same sub-R&B drivel, but people still seem to like it. So maybe it's just me, but she hasn't done anything good since 1998's Ray of Light (and actually, looking at the sales figures, a lot less people like it...). Mortal.

So, there you go. Most of my heroes are only still my heroes because they're dead. If I had to write such a list now, I'd definitely include Joss Whedon for his work on Buffy, Firefly/Serenity, Dr Horrible and Dollhouse and for being a funny, horribly talented genius. I'd also include John Lasseter and all the team at Pixar for neverfailing to entertain and amaze.

Funny, but all my heroes come from the creative world. No sports people and no politicians. Hmmm....

I'm running 10k for Cancer Research UK!

2009-07-06T23:17:00.000+01:00

Yes, I've decided to do something useful for a change, I'm going to Run 10k for Cancer Research UK.

OK, now you've picked yourself up off the floor and have stopped laughing, click on the link and sponsor me. If you feel like it, you could join me. It's at Hylands Park, Chemsford on 4th October 2009, but there are other runs all around the country.

I'm aiming to raise £250, but I'd actually love to raise a hell of a lot more!

So please visit my fundraising page and give me your money!

Ta!

Friday Night Blog: Michael Jackson 1958-2009

2009-06-26T20:58:00.003+01:00

And so the "King of Pop" is no longer with us. On the eve of a record-breaking and unprecedented 50-night residency at the O2 Arena, Michael Jackson died of a massive heart attack.

Now, while I agree that this is a terribly sad thing, I have to admit I'm totally bemused by the outpouring of grief for a man who, let's be honest, was more than a little bit, well, strange...

Certainly he was a man of prestigious talent and ability, but I think the emphasis is definitely on the word "was". He passed his peak nearly twenty years ago and since that time it's been all downhill. Yes, he was fantastic - the Thriller and Bad albums are solid-gold classics, and the work he did with his brothers in the Jackson Five are among Motown's greatest treasures. But that was then. In the last two decades, all we've really had are glimmers of a star that burned out long ago - a couple of greatest hits collections and an under-performing "comeback" album.

The O2 would have been the last-chance saloon for a man besieged by rumour, burdened with crippling debts, a man more infamous than famous in the last few years.

The rumours, and eventual confirmation, of his death nearly broke the internet. Google thought it was under siege as thousands of people searched for "Michael Jackson". Twitter crashed (again) and numerous gossip websites went off-line for periods. If nothing else, his death has created more interest in him than has been seen for ages.

Jackson was a man who fascinated and intriuged us all. His side-show lifestyle demonstrated an eccentricity that beggared belief - if your average person tried to live the way Jackson did then they would probably have been sectioned long ago! The man is obviously not totally to blame for the way he was - his unnatural upbringing was a major factor in this and a life lived in the public glare is bound to send you a bit weird.

I feel truly sad for the loss of one of the planet's greatest entertainers, but I'm amazed and appalled by the mass grief that has been reported in the media. I don't believe that "the music died". I can't join in the celebration of his music, because I've never bought any of it, and don't want to (especially if people are trying to get the dire "Man in the Mirror" into the charts again (come on, there are dozens of Jackson songs that are infinitely better...) The upside is that maybe, just maybe, his children have got a better chance of a "normal" childhood without the presence of their father.

If he is truly dead... (The cynical part of my brain thinks this could be an elaborate ruse to escape from his debts and his freakish lifestyle, and he's actaully on his way to a place somewhere in Saudi...)

Anyway, Mr Michael Jackson. You were a unique person, and a truly talented individual. We salute you and your loss is a thing of great sadness. Rest in peace.

Friday Night Blog: Here we go again!

2009-06-05T21:11:00.003+01:00

So, Big Brother 10 launched yesterday, with probably the most ethnically diverse bunch of freaks, I mean housemates (except they're not housemates yet...), ever assembled in the house in Elstree.

So, who have we got this year? Well, amongst others, there's Angel, a 35-year old boxer from Russia (and, gasp, she's a woman...); there's Beinazir, a Muslim Londoner of Pakistani origin; Rodrigo, a student from Brazil; Siavash, a flamboyant events organizer from Iran and Sree, a business student from India. Add to them the usual mix of gay men, glamour models, upper-class twits and you've fairly much got it all.

As I said, none of them were automatically housemates, and they have to become official housemates one way or another. Until then, they have to sleep on the floor in the lounge, and only have access to the garden. No kitchen. No bedrooms. No hot water.

Then Big Brother asked someone to go to the diary room, and Rodrigo stepped up. He was told that in order to become a housemate, he would have to convince another contestant to let him shave their eyebrows and then draw glasses and a curly moustache on them within four minutes. After the usual shouting over each other, and Rodrigo's broken English, Noirin (25, Retail Manager from Dublin), volunteered, and got herself a place as a housemate too.

What happens next is anyone's guess. And whether I keep watching is another thing. I gave up last year, but loved Celebrity Big Brother at the beginning of this year. We shall see...

For up-to-the-minute news, go to Channel4.com/BigBrother

Friday Night Blog: Knight Rider

2009-05-30T12:28:00.004+01:00

So for the last few weeks, viewers of the Sci-Fi channel have been able to catch a couple of new shows, one being Joss Whedon's Dollhouse (more on that when I've actually watched it...), and the other is the new version of Knight Rider.

Knight Rider was a major part of my childhood, watching David Hasselhoff defeating baddies and helping single mothers weekly, with the help of his super-powered Trans Am car, KITT. I loved the show, I wanted KITT (why were the toys all a little bit, well, rubbish?) and just thought it was the bees knees (along with Airwolf of course!

The original show ran for four years from 1982, eventually trailing off into a dire fourth season (Super Pursuit Mode?) before the plug was pulled. The concept flared up a few times over the years (Knight Rider 2000, Knight Rider 2010 and Team Knight Rider) but nothing really caught on.

A new pilot was made and aired last February, featuring a new car, the Knight Industries 3000 (voiced by Val Kilmer), and a new hero, the son of Michael Knight, Mike Traceur (played by Justin Bruening). David Hasselhoff appeared in a cameo, handing the torch onto his son, but looking very creaky! This went down quite well in the US, and prompted a new series to be commissioned.

Some changes were made between the pilot and the series - more action was included, a whole base for KITT was created, taking it away from the "one man can make a difference" of the original, to "one man, one woman, lots of tech people and a couple of shifty feds can make a bit of a difference". KITT was upgraded slightly, and Mike Traceur "died" because a lot of people knew who he was from his black ops days in and after Iraq, and he became, guess what? Michael Knight!

So, is it any good? Well, Bruening is a likeable lead, and is easily supported and matched by his co-star Deanna Russo, who plays Sarah Graiman, nano-technology specialist, daughter of KITT's creator, Charles Graiman (Bruce Davison), and also looks damn fine in a bikini (it's part of one of the plots, OK?!)

The plots are OK - lightweight and fun and mustn't be taken too seriously. If you compare them to some of the original series scripts, then they stand up well. Battlestar Galactica they ain't. Having all the tech people and the feds around the "KITT cave" kind of distract from the original mission. Half the time, when KITT goes wrong, then it's down to the techies to fix him - the original could have done it himself.

And as for KITT himself, well, he's now a Mustang, but he's still pretty cool. The original scanner has been replaced by a double strip, and thankfully they've replaced the "woo-woo" sound it made in the original (it was missing in the pilot). Turbo boost didn't appear in the pilot, but it does in the series. The only trouble with it now is that KITT apparently has to transform himself into "Attack Mode" to do it. This means that he has to "grow" new spoilers, wings, and a great big air intake on his bonnet, bringing horrible echoes of the aforementioned Super Pursuit Mode. With the neon lights, it looks like Westwood has pimped my KITT. It's horrible.

You see, another of KITT's gimmicks is that he's able to transform himself into other cars, using some nano-technology or something. For example, he can change colour or become a Ford F-150 pick-up truck. This is all well, if a bit implausible, but in the first episode of the series, Traceur jumps into the back of KITT in pick-up mode with another man. KITT then transforms himself around them, so that they end up in the front seats of the Mustang-KITT. Hmmm.

All in all, it's quite an enjoyable series. I've read that it gets rebooted halfway through the first series, bringing it back more to the "one man" mission, and then I think it got cancelled. Ho hum. Still, it's quite a fun hour to spend if you want to take your brain off the hook.

And as for the theme music? Desecration is the word that springs to mind...

(Thanks to The Knight Rider Archive for all the info!)

Friday Night Blog: Star Trek

2009-05-27T07:12:00.005+01:00

And so the future begins again.... J.J. Abrams, the man who brought us Lost and Cloverfield and Alias gets his hands on Paramount's crown jewels, and delivers a new Star Trek, not exactly for a new generation, as he's rebooted the original Kirk and Spock series, rather than creating a new crew.

In a time-twisting plotline that rewrites history, Abrams effectively wipes Starfleet's future history, from the moment his protagonist, the Romulan Nero, arrives from the future (around Picard's time), destroys the USS Kelvin, and kills the father of the still-being-born Jim Kirk. The future of Star Trek - all the films, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager all now exist down another leg of the trousers of time. The only thing that remains intact is the future Spock (who also travelled back to try to stop Nero) and the prequel series Enterprise.

Got that? Good.

So is it any good? Well by rebooting the series that means we have to have new actors playing the iconic roles. This is tricky, because the actors have to give us the essence of the characters, without sinking into parody.

Karl Urban gives us a brilliant McCoy, all gruff and grumpy and sarcastic, Chris Pine actually manages to feel like Kirk, while avoiding Shatner's stilted delivery, and Zachary Quinto gives a brilliant performance as Spock, once you can get over the fact that he's not still playing Sylar from Heroes. You half expect him to raise a finger to Kirk's forehead and start slicing....

The other crew members remain much as they were, generally character-less, except they all seem to be geniuses at something or other. For example, Anton Yelchin's Chekov (with his over-the-top accent - Walter Koenig's was dodgy, but this is just too much) is suddenly a transporter expert, being able to lock onto fast-falling objects. The usual Trek genius, Scotty (played by Simon Pegg with his tongue firmly in his cheek) doesn't appear until the last third of the film, so I suppose they had to find someone to fill his shoes for that scene. Uhura is the only character to have more of a developed character than she ever did in the original series, acting as a surprise love-interest for a major character.... And Zoë Saldana isn't exactly ugly, either!

There are enough nods to the original series to keep the fans happy, enough differences to make their blood boil, and probably enough to keep the non-Trekkie entertained too. The film looks brilliant, from the Enterprise's new iBridge (I like the idea that the viewscreen is also a window now, rather than just the old screen), to the more realistic, down-and-dirty engineering section, all pipes and water and steam. Looks like Abrams been watching his Firefly...!

I liked the film, but I didn't love it, but then I've never really been a fan of the original series (more of a Next Gen boy). I felt the plot, although emotionally engaging, was a little slight, and I'm pretty much sick to death of time-travel shenanigans in Star Trek, which I'd hoped we'd left behind. I'm sure there'll be more films to come, and this is a likeable, fun version of the crew to go on new voyages with.

Rendez-Vous

2009-05-16T18:03:00.003+01:00

Seriously, if you haven't heard this album, then you have no excuse not to hear it now. You can get Jean Michel Jarre's incredible 1986 album Rendez-Vous for only £3 as an MP3 download!

It's majestic, fantastic, awe-inspiring, eerie, beautiful, and wonderful. Go buy it now, and tell me what you think! (You can also get Oxygène for £3 too!)

Friday Night Blog: Credo

2009-05-15T20:00:00.001+01:00

I believe...

...that belief in God and Darwinism needn't be mutually exclusive. After all, who's to say that God didn't click his fingers, and, ta-dah!, Big Bang? Of course, the whole Adam and Eve, and dinosaur-denial thing is bollocks, so maybe we should still hunt down Creationists and make them suffer.

...that selfishness is the only sin. Iain M. Banks wrote that in one of his books, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. You only sin when you put yourself and your needs in front of evryone else's. Be nice to everybody and we'll all get along nicely.

...we're closer to living a "heathen" lifestyle than we ever have in the last 2000 years. We don't believe in God until we want something and then we'll pray like buggery. Why not call God, Odin, or Thor, or Loki, and have done with it. Plus we all then get to believe in Valhalla and when we die, we have a big party with lots of food and drink and sex. Result.

...that the more stupid you are, the louder you have to talk.

...the world would be a lot better off without people in it. Fears of Global Warming aren't about saving the planet, they're about saving our (generally) worthless arses. The planet will reset itself when we're gone, and the cockroaches will take over.

...we are all geeks. Everyone is a fanatic about something. It annoys me to be called a geek (in a disparaging way) when I know all about Star Wars or Knight Rider or whatever. Hey, you, Mr. Hardcore Football Fan! You know who scored the winning goal in the 1992 FA Cup? How many caps Steven Gerrard has for England? You do? Oh. Guess what? You're a geek!

...sometimes I touch.

...that Peppa Pig is probably the greatest body of animation work produced this century. It has a clarity, a simplicity and a soul that a lot of other children's (and adults') TV is sadly missing. A whole range of emotions can be conveyed in just a narrowing of Peppa's eyes, or a tilt of Daddy Pig's head. Genius.

...pop music is underrated and sneered at by those who think they know better. Pop is popular - of the people, by the people, for the people. That doesn't mean we have to accept the pap forced upon us by shows like The X Factor. In the eighties, pop encompassed everything from Echo and the Bunnymen through to Fields of the Nephalim, to Phil Collins and out to Samantha Fox. It was diverse and eclectic, and we didn't all have to sit in little boxes.

...that eating implements made out of wood are the work of the devil. Chip forks, lolly sticks and ice-cream spoons should all be piled up and set ablaze.

Friday-Night Blog: Adam And Joe

2009-05-01T19:53:00.006+01:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here tonight to talk to you about something very close to my heart. Over the past few months, I've been privileged to have listened to some of the funniest radio ever broadcast in the history of the world. Ever. And some of it is just silly.

Yes, I'm talking to you about Adam And Joe on BBC 6Music. You may remember Adam and Joe from their late-night Channel 4 TV show, or from those soap powder commercials they did a few years back, but don't hold that against them. You see, for the last few years, Adam "Ad" Buxton and Joe "Joe" Cornish have been doing a Saturday morning show on the digital station from 9am to midday.

But I've never heard it.

I don't have a DAB radio. I usually work on a Saturday morning. And a third reason which I can't think of at the moment, but I felt I needed one to make this work. No, I just listen to their fantastic podcast, which is available through the BBC6 Music website, or through iTunes.

The weekly podcast includes all the tasty nuggets from their radio show, such as their ground-breakingly original feature, "Text the Nation", in which our heroes set a topic and get their loyal listeners to text in ("But I'm using e-mail, is that a problem?"). Recent themes have included bad interviews or auditions, public pretending (strange things you do to cover up embarrassing events) and favourite cakes. No wait, that wasn't exactly one.

And then there's "Song Wars" ("the war of the songs, a couple of tunes by a couple of prongs"). Adam and Joe construct songs based on a theme and then leave it to the listeners to decide which one is the best. The best ones have even made it onto an album, available on iTunes.

Adam and Joe are just plain funny, the sort of people that you would want to listen to on a Saturday morning. Or a Tuesday evening. Or a Friday lunchtime. Whenever you want to listen to their podcast. Or you could Listen Again to the whole show through the website or the BBC iPlayer.

Or you could become a member of Black Squadron, the elite team of listeners who listen to the show at 9am on a Saturday morning. You'd also get to hear the music they play, which I'm lead to believe is quite good (as you'd expect from a station called 6Music...) I don't know, I only listen to the music-free podcast.

And then you will know about the power of Adam and Joe. The idiot-holes. Thank you for your attention, and good night.

"Stephen!"

Friday-Night Blog...

2009-04-25T21:16:00.003+01:00

Look, I'm out. I've got nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I've been doing stock-takes, and getting ready for my own, so my mind's been elsewhere. Not enough time to muse on the finer points of the world...

Not to mention the fact that I'm knackered. Hopefully not so knackered that the dreaded pink-eye returns. That was all kinds of suck-ass.

We went to Frankie and Bennie's last night, mostly so I could remember what my family looked like and so that we wouldn't have to cook (and wash up). I like F&B's - good food, not too expensive, but the mega-loud choruses of "Happy Birthday" can get a bit much at times... Still, JW likes it and he seems to enjoy eating there, so at least we're not wasting our money by taking him there! It's also just down the road from us, so we can walk there! Looks like they're opening a branch of Chiquitos next door too, so I may have to go there and have too many Long Island Ice Teas sometime. Anyone want to join me?

50 Questions

2009-04-24T08:59:00.002+01:00

I've been tagged and am now tagging you! Copy and paste these questions on your own "note," replacing my answers with yours, then tag 25 people to do the same thing. Remember to tag me back so I can see your answers!

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? There was an actor called Craig Stevens, I think he was in he original Dragnet TV show. Apparently my mum just liked the sound of it.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? When I had conjunctivitis a few weeks ao and got really fed up.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? It's OK.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Pastrami.

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Yep, one son.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? I think so.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM? Only if there's a 'y' in the day.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Never. Unless you were going to pay me lots of money. At least £10,000.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Nearly always.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Pistachio.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Their face.

15. RED OR PINK? Red. But pink latex. ;)

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? My ability to get distracted easily.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My sister, Fiona.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST? Couldn't be bothered to read everyone's. Just a select few!

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Um, I'm in my PJs at the moment. They're grey, if you're interested.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The Backyardigans

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Green

23. FAVORITE SMELL? Roast Chicken

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO? My son, Joseph.

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Yes, he's OK. ;)

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Tennis.

27. HAIR COLOUR? Blonde.

28. EYE COLOR? Blue.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No.

30. FAVOURITE FOOD? Roast chicken and rice.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Happy endings.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Watchmen

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Grey. I told you already.

34. SUMMER OR WINTER? Both, as long as it's sunny.

35. HUGS OR KISSES? Kisses.

36. FAVORITE DESSERT? Nigel Slater's Trifle.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Laura.

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Most other people.

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? Don't have one, I use a MacBook.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? Nothing, I was out at Harlow's stock-take all night.

42. FAVORITE SOUND(S)? Joseph's laugh.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? The Stones if pushed. Not too fussed about either, really. I prefer The Kinks.

44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Iraq when I was 8.

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? I can wobble my eyes from side to side really quickly.

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Chatham in Kent.

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK? Anyone's!

48. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR CURRENT PARTNER? Sometime in the first year of uni in Swansea.

49. IS THE CUP HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY? Depends on what's in it.

50. IF YOU COULD SIT DOWN TO DINNER WITH FIVE PEOPLE WHO WOULD YOU CHOOSE? Nigel Slater (as long as he'd cooked), Jean Michel Jarre, Jim Henson, Davina McCall, Kylie Minogue.

10 Random Songs

2009-04-19T07:20:00.004+01:00

So here's what you do. Fire up your iPod or iTunes (other music players/programs are available), and set it to Shuffle Songs from your entire library (no cheating by choosing a cool playlists). Then you have to list the first ten songs that come up, who they're by and what album they're from. No skipping! Then just write a few lines about that song - if you like it, any memories attached to it... And then post it and tag some friends!

1. "Je Sais Pas" by Céline Dion from D'eux - Great start... In my defence, it's my wife's album, but it is probably the only credible album Céline Dion's done, and this song ain't too bad. Don't feel the need to skip on...

2. "Satin Chic" By Goldfrapp from Supernature - That's a bit better! A nice glam pop song with a honky tonky piano. Not as good as some of their other stuff, but nice enough.

3. "Dream Of Me" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark from The OMD Singles - A track from a compilation album. Quite good, but not as good as the singles.

4. "Knight Rider 2000" by Jan Hammer from Drive - The very cool theme from the Knight Rider 2000 TV movie from the guy who did the Miami Vice music. Not as cool as the original Knight Rider but cool nonetheless. In a jazzy, piano bar kind of way.

5. "Snow Cherries from France" by Tori Amos from Tales of a Librarian - Tori doing her thing. Unremarkable but quite nice. (Ugh. I have a bland music library from this little selection...)

6. "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" by U2 from Achtung Baby - That's better. A great track from an excellent album. Reminds me of being in a Youth Hostel in Orange County, California, eating cheese left over from a ploughman's and chips at the English Pub down the road. This was one of the CDs left in the hostel. I listened and loved.

7. "Without You I'm Nothing" by Placebo from Without You I'm Nothing - Ah, a bit of pre-millennial angst. Nice. Goes on a bit though...

8. "Spies" by Coldplay from Parachutes - Don't know how this got on here.... Music to fall asleep to....

9. "Strange But True" by Prince (for arguments sake) from Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic - Nice little funky track from one of the purple one's less successful albums.

10. "Halloween" by Kirsty MacColl from From Croydon to Cuba... An Anthology - Ah, the sorely missed Miss MacColl. She had some great songs, and I don't remember hearing this one before.

Friday-Night Blog: Me and the Manics

2009-04-18T17:45:00.007+01:00

The handy-dandy iLike application in Facebook informed me this week that the Manic Street Preachers are playing the Roundhouse in Camden in a few weeks time, which got me thinking about the Manics... (see, it's not just thrown together, this. Literally minutes of thought go into it. OK, it's a bit late this week, but hey, I'm only human. Don't see any of you trying to write a weekly blog post... Come on then... You do it if you think it's so easy.... Sheesh. Ahem.)

So anyway, me and the Manics have a very strange relationship. I've been a fan of them since very near the beginning of their careers. I'm not saying I was there at the release of the New Art Riot EP, but, I'm sure I've liked them since Mark and Lard used to play "You Love Us" (and then hijacked it for their "We Love Us" bit on the radio). I loved their energy and their music, but bizarrely, I don't remember seeing any pictures of them for a long time, but I think I would have loved them all the more for their New Art Punk look. I loved the idea that they had the original plan of selling umpteen million copies of Generation Terrorists and then splitting up in a blaze of glory. The opening salvo of "Slash and Burn", the first track on the album, is possibly the greatest statement of intent by any band anywhere, ever. James Dean Bradfield's guitar starts off fast and furious and just gets faster and more furious. (Apparently, Richey Edwards used to dare him to play faster...)

So, time went on, and I bought their second album, Gold Against The Soul. By this time, I'd started to twig that the Manics might be a little, well, political. I don't do politics. It brings me out in a rash. And yet I loved this very intellectual, very political band. Most of the time it didn't matter, because you couldn't understand what James Dean Bradfield was singing anyway. To this day, I still don't have a clue what half the lyrics to their early albums are, I just have to hum along until I get to the bits I recognise...

And in 1994, I went to the USA, and the Manics released their last album with Richey Edwards before he disappeared, The Holy Bible. Although it didn't do too well on first release, it has since become regarded as their masterpiece. I however don't get it. It's not to say I don't like it, I just don't get it. Maybe it's because I was out of the country (the Manics weren't big in Flagstaff), but it had absolutely zero impact on me. It took me a few years to buy it (well after Everything Must Go, and possibly even after This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours) and I've never really got a handle on it. The lyrics were mostly written by Richey, and weren't exactly full of the joys of spring. Maybe it's just too much for my sunny disposition. Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of angst as much as the next guy, but songs about anorexia and whatnot are a bit too much for me.

Then the Manics released Everything Must Go and suddenly they were beloved of your Ben Sherman-wearing lad out on the piss: "We don't talk about love/We only want to get drunk", who as usual, completely miss the point.... Never mind, the album was great, and since then they haven't put a foot wrong in my opinion. I even love Lifeblood, seen by many as their nadir, before their solo work and then the "back to form" album, Send Away The Tigers. When I went to see them on their Forever Delayed Greatest Hits tour, I was totally blown away. It's probably the best gig I've been to in terms of the inspirational effect it had on me. Not that I picked up a guitar and started to write songs, that would be too much like positive action for me. But I wanted to. I couldn't believe the noise these three men made, with James tearing up his guitar and the stage, Nicky loping about like a bass-playing giraffe, and Sean creating thunder at the back. It was incredible.

The good news is that there's a new Manics album due out next month. The not-so-good news (for me) is that it's based on notes and lyrics left to the band by Richey Edwards before his disappearance. So in effect, it's The Holy Bible, Part II. Could be good. I hope it is. No doubt I'll buy it, probably on the day it comes out. I'm strange like that.

So that's me and the Manics. A strange love affair. But a wonderful one.

Friday-Night Blog: I Blame Rick McCallum...

2009-04-10T21:52:00.005+01:00

So, I was watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the 3D animated series) yesterday, which seems to be showing on Cartoon Network here in the UK, after having been isolated to Sky Movies before, and I thought it was quite good, which got me to thinking... Where did it all go wrong for the Star Wars saga?

I used to love Star Wars - no, actually that's an understatement. I used to eat, drink and breathe Star Wars. I used to watch my VHS copies of the Trilogy on an old black and white TV in my room, snatching a few minutes of Jedi while I got ready for school in the morning. I used to read and re-read all the books I had, and hunt for old second-hand copies of annuals and storybooks - this was in the dark times, before the coming of the second merchandising wave, when there was, frankly, sod all new Star Wars around!

And then, Dark Horse Comics published Star Wars: Dark Empire, in 1991; Timothy Zahn's novel Heir to the Empire was published in 1992, and the ball started rolling again. More books, more comics... And my Star Wars reflex kicked in! I bought nearly everything I could that had the Star Wars name on it, spending all my available money on it. Everything was fantastic in the Star Wars Universe. Us fan boys were happy, very happy. And then...

And then, George Lucas announced that he would be making Episodes I to III of the series, and we would get the full story - we'd see Anakin Skywalker's fall from grace, his voyage to the dark side, Obi-Wan Kenobi fighting in the Clone Wars... The anticipation was immense. And before that, we'd get new, spanky, souped-up versions of the Original Trilogy IN THE CINEMA!

And that's where I think the rot set in. George Lucas had the chance to go back and "tinker" with our beloved films. Don't get me wrong, I like most of the changes made in the films - the attack on the Death Star needed sprucing up, Cloud City's windows do open up the landscape, and the um, well, no actually most of the changes in Return of the Jedi were totally unnecessary (and they got worse when Hayden Christensen was dropped into the film on the DVD...) Most importantly, GREEDO DID NOT SHOOT FIRST.... ahem.

To help with all the work on the Special Editions, and the Prequel Trilogy, Lucas enlisted Rick McCallum, who had worked with the Great Beard on the Young Indiana Jones series. Alarm bells should have rung then, quite frankly...

And so, in 1999, we got Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. God we wanted to love that film. I watched it two and a half times (fell asleep watching it on my stag-night...). I didn't mind Jar-Jar, Jake Lloyd as young Anakin was OK, Darth Maul was pretty cool with his double-blade lightsaber, Liam Neeson was solid and Ewan McGregor was over-keen as young Obi-Wan, but there was something a bit, well, hollow in the whole enterprise. It had Star Wars on the label, but it felt like something else was on the till.

Three years later we got Episode II - Attack of the Clones and we also got the afore-mentioned Christensen. Well, to say he was wooden would be insulting to trees, but he just didn't fill the role of the nascent Dark Lord of the Sith. He was just a whiney brat who apparently didn't like sand. The romance between Anakin and Padmé was risible, and you got the feeling the Natalie Portman was trying her best, but couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to deal with her love interest...

And then, in 2005, we finally got to see Anakin become Vader. Possibly the strongest film of the prequels (save for the fact that Portman seemed to have died inside somewhere - probably when she saw her script), it still lacked... soul. We knew we should be feeling something, we knew we should love these film like we loved the original films, and we've tried to convince ourselves to love them over the last four years, but we really can't....

Where are the heroes? What kid wants to be Anakin or Obi-Wan or Padmé, like we wanted to be Luke or Han or Leia? In what way were any of the ships cooler than the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wings (or TIE Fighters, come to that?) Even Yoda's gymnastics were a little bit, well, silly, if you think about it. The over-reliance on CGI for the special effects already looks dated in some cases, whereas the model work from the Original Trilogy still stands the test of time.

So why do I blame Rick McCallum? Well, I don't think the man had the cojones to say no to George Lucas. I believe that every artist needs an editor, a critic or an executive to stand up to them and tell them when something just isn't good enough. Prince hasn't really made a consistently decent album since he parted company with Warners as he's been allowed to indulge himself - even such celebrated writes as T.S. Eliot had editors to send them back to the drawing board. I believe that Lucas needed that, and Rick McCallum wasn't the man for the job.

I've given up on the majority of Star Wars products these days. There are too many books (I gave up after the New Jedi Order series), comics and video games to buy. I'm looking forward to the live-action series due to arrive in the next few years, because I'm an optimist. I hope I get to see more of the Clone Wars TV show, but it seems to be a bit random at the moment.

I still love Star Wars, I really do. I just wish the Prequels had been so much better.

Review: "Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran" - Andy Taylor

2009-04-05T08:21:00.007+01:00

Duran Duran were probably the first band that I really loved - not just in a "oh, they make good songs" kind of way, but in a "wow, they're really great" kind of way. I loved John Taylor's funky bass playing (just listen to some of those bass lines), Nick Rhodes' cool and funky synth lines, Roger Taylor's power drumming ("Wild Boys"), and Simon Le Bon's perfect pop voice (and lyrics, which as every '80s pop band knew, shouldn't be easily understood, and if you could hear them, they shouldn't make sense) but I never really got Andy Taylor's contribution to the band. Not that the guitar parts weren't important; his acoustic work on tracks like "Save A Prayer" is fantastic, but he always seemed to me the outsider, the "rock" star who had wandered into this "pop" band, and would prefer to not be wearing the make-up and tea-towel clothes.

Andy's book, Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran confirms much of this feeling. He was the last member to be recruited to the band, having been gigging with various rock bands around Europe, and was one of the first to leave (and the only member to leave twice!) when things went a bit wonky. His story is one of antagonism with various members of the band (and management and record company) at one time or another, but what also comes across is his attempts at trying to keep everything together when the excesses of being one of the biggest bands of the '80s were taking their toll.

Andy tells his story with a great sense of humour and realism. He doesn't shy away from the problems he had with drink and drugs, but neither does he gloss over them, or even moralize about them. He talks frankly about the problems within the band and reveals why he had to leave the band in the mid-eighties, and then again after the reunion.

What has struck me is how much I now appreciate his contribution to one of my favourite bands. He reveals that his favourite Duran song is "The Reflex", (the same as mine) and also reveals the struggle the band had to get the Nile Rogers remix of the song released by the record company in the USA. The problem? It apparently sounded "too black"! The band (especially Andy) fought to get it released, and it became their biggest single of all, showing that record companies don't always know what's best.

This is the first official autobiography of Duran Duran, and as such it obviously has its shortcomings, as the band still carried on without Andy during the second half of the eighties and into the nineties. Andy understandably glosses over this time (as the book is subtitled "My Life in Duran Duran"), but he also doesn't recognize the fact that the band did quite well without him (especially the Notorious and Duran Duran - The Wedding Album albums.

Hopefully, this book will drive one of the other band members to give their side of the story. Nick Rhodes would be ideal, as he's the only member of the band to have survived from their earliest Rum Runner days all the way through to the present day. Until then we'll just have to make do with Andy Taylor's, which isn't a bad thing after all. (You could also try Steve Malins' unauthorised biography Notorious, which is also quite entertaining.)

Friday-Night Blog: Star Trek

2009-04-03T20:00:00.001+01:00

And so, the great barrel of ideas gets scraped once more, as the big screen reprise/remake/reimagining/regurgitate of Star Trek heads towards our cinema screens this spring. The idea around this version is that we get to go back to before the original TV series to see how Kirk and Spock meet, and their first mission in the Enterprise.

Now, as you might imagine, this kind of reboot has got a lot of people hot under the collar, and yes, I'm talking about the geeks here. They've got all sorts of issues with the movie, ranging from the fact that the Enterprise wasn't built on Earth, much less in a field on Iowa, that Chekov didn't join the crew until the second season....

I couldn't care less really (although why would a spaceship that doesn't have to cope with gravity be built on a planet?) My biggest issue is with the whole time-travel plot that is rumoured to be an integral part of the film. From what I can gather, the old Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) has some interaction with a younger version of himself (probably played by Heroes own mr Nice Guy Sylar, Zachary Quinto), which alters history. Now if this means that every version of Star Trek is wiped from history, then OK, that's fine, we can deal with that (especially if that means Voyager never happened...)

My concern is that this means that Kirk didn't get sucked into the Nexus (as in Star Trek: Generations) and so didn't get killed by Malcolm McDowell, and so we have to put up with even more Shatner-antics as Kirk. Although, he's not in the new film, so hopefully we'll be spared...

Friday-Night Blog: Hmmm.

2009-03-27T20:25:00.003Z

Well, I've got myself into this mess, now I'd better think of something to write. I could go on about the final episode of Battlestar Galactica and how it totally rocked, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about how frakkin' awesome it was, but that would risk alienating everyone who doesn't give a toss... All I can say is I hope the people who make Lost watched it and were making notes of how to not suck. We can but hope...

So, what shall I write about? I made some granola today. Yep. That's exciting and sure to get everyone commenting in their droves. Actually, it's become a bit weird now that I know people are reading this - I don't know if that means I've changed the way I write, or what I write, but it's strange to think that I'm not just blogging to the wall, so to speak. It's nice that people are reading it, but also a little bit scary.

Would quite like to see Monsters vs. Aliens. Looks almost as good as a Pixar movie, and quite funny. It'd be good to see it in 3D, but that would involve a trip to the Big Smoke (which I'd like, but at about £15 for a train ticket these days, it'd work out at quite pricey trip.

Sorry, but that's all I've got at the moment. I'll try and do better for next week. If you're watching on Facebook, please become a fan. Thank you.

Friday-Night Blog: Battlestar Galactica

2009-03-20T20:00:00.001Z

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ANYONE NOT WATCHING BATTLESTAR GALACTICA AS IT IS BROADCAST. CATCH UP ALREADY!

And so, after 4 years, (possibly) the greatest sci-fi series ever seen on television comes to an end. If you're in the USA, it ends tonight, and if you're in the UK, then it ends on Tuesday. (Unless you're one of those "download it from the internet-type people...)

It seems hard to believe that a remake of a hokey late-'70s TV show could have become something more than the sum of its parts, and yet, it is now being discussed (by the Guardian newspaper at least) in the same breath as such "must-see" "adult" TV as The Wire. (as long as you can ignore the bits about robots and FTL drives, because that's just silly childish stuff isn't it?)

And so we have a show that has dealt with racism, torture, extraordinary rendition, martial law, questions of mono- and poly-theism, rape, murder, child abductions, terrorism, fate and predestination... The frakkin' UN has even convened a council to discuss the TV show! That's is how important it is. More important than wars or famine or disease.

There's a hell of a lot of questions to be answered in the final two-hour episode, and I have a feeling we won't get them all, but then we never get all the answers in life. What the frak is Starbuck? Angel? Cylon? Something else? Where is the seventh Cylon, Daniel? Will the crew ever find a home? Will Baltar do the right thing for the right reasons? What's with all the Jimi Hendrix?

I predict at least two deaths - Laura Roslin (who was barely able to stand up to join Galactica's rescue mission), and Galactica herself. The old girl's falling apart as it is, let alone having to jump into a Cylon fortress next to a black-hole. I'm also convinced that Adama will go down with his ship... Beyond that, who knows. (I'm also hoping Apollo gets his hair cut.)

It's a measure of the show's quality, that the original Battlestar Galactica was made as a TV answer to Star Wars (something George Lucas' lawyers pointed out...), and now it seems that the Great Beard himself wants to model his live-action Star Wars TV show along the same lines.

I will miss Battlestar Galactica (but not all the mumbled dialogue - I'm looking at you Olmos and McDonnell) , but this isn't the end of the road. There's a TV movie - "The Plan" out later in the year showing life on Caprica before the attack, and then we have the prequel series called Caprica set fifty years earlier, and depicting the lives of two Caprican families - the Adamas and the Greystones - the development of the Cylons... and the subsequent war...

So here's to the Galactica - she was a good ship, and we will miss her. So say we all!

Friday-Night Blog: Comic Relief

2009-03-13T20:28:00.002Z

So, it's Comic Relief night tonight, so make sure you all go and give lots of money. Bizarrely, this is the first year that I actually have donated a decent sum of money (when I think I really can't afford it, but hey...) due to that "Roly-Poly DJ" heaving himself up a mountain... Curse the power of suggestion, and well done to Chris and everyone for making it up Kilimanjaro!

Comic Relief day always comes tinged with a bit of sadness for me, as it was on Comic Relief day in 2001 that I found out my sister was going to die. (Sorry if that just derailed you there...) I was sitting watching the stuff they were doing on CBBC in the afternoon, when the phone rang. It was my step-father, telling me that my sister Fiona's illness was actually terminal cancer, and that I needed to get up to Manchester straight away. He'd gone up there with my Mum the previous day to see how she was as they thought she'd got some liver infection or something. I nearly went with them that day, but hadn't for some unknown reason - work or something, or maybe telling myself it was only a bug, because serious illnesses don't just happen like that, do they?

Anyway, the phone call was like a sledgehammer to my stomach. I remember sitting crouched over the seat of the armchair, trying to comprehend, to try and talk this around - surely they could do a liver transplant or some such procedure? But no, the cancer had grown inexorably within her and had spread far beyond the liver. I don't remember much of the rest of the day.

My wife drove me up to Manchester early the next day, with me in floods of tears half the time. It was so surreal to get to the hospital and see all my family and my sister's family there. By the time we got there, Fiona was in a coma, pumped full of painkillers and drugs and being fanned to try to control the incredible heat being generated by her body. I spoke to her - I don't know if she heard, but I had to talk to her, to try and promise her things I would do in her memory.

We left a while later to try to find somewhere to stay, and while watching a John Wayne film in a hotel room, we got the phone call from her husband John to say Fiona had died. I believe that she held on long enough for me and her friends to get there, so she knew she could go in peace.

So that's why Comic Relief is a bit of a double-edged sword for me, and not just because of some of the "comedy" they put up for our entertainment...! So, go and give them money, or give some to Cancer Research if you prefer, because in my mind it's not fair that a healthy 31-year old woman who didn't smoke, rarely drank and had a six-month old son should die of cancer, when some hard-drinking, chain-smokers live into their nineties.

I haven't exactly done something funny for money there, have I?

'In support of Comic Relief, registered charity 326568 (England/Wales); SC039730 (Scotland)'

Friday-Night Blog: Watchmen

2009-03-07T21:59:00.007Z

So, yep, this blog's late... No change there then, but at least I do have a valid excuse. Last night I went to see Watchmen, so that's where I was, and that's why the Friday-Night Blog is coming at you on a Saturday!

Well, I've been sitting here trying to write a clever, informative review, but it's not working. If you want that sort of thing, then go read Empire's or SFX's review, 'cos they're better at that than me! Besides, I'm trying to catch up on Heroes at the same time, so I'm a bit distracted.

The cut-to-the-chase version is that I liked it. It worked for me as a film, probably because I read the graphic novel nearly 20 years ago (I'm old!), and I'm not a huge fan (I always preferred Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) It's a long film, weighing in at two and a half hours, but it fairly bounces along. There's a lot of violence and a heck of a lot of gore, which is why the film gets its 18 certificate. And Malin Ackerman's Silk Spectre (Ieft) challenges Michelle Pfieffer's Catwoman as the comic-book geeks' fantasy fetish female... Some of the CGI work left me a little cold, as if I know it's all going to date very quickly, especially Dr Manhattan and his giant clockwork fortress. What's wrong with painting a guy blue and then making him glow? Ah well...

I'm sure I could think of other more enlightened things to say, but they ain't happening now! Go and see the film if you like your comic-book movies dark and gritty and violent!

Not much else has been going on this week. Back at work after a week's holiday, but I've got myself a new Assistant Manager, so come April, I'll be able to go out at lunchtime again! Still loving Battlestar, and enjoying reading Susan Winemaker's Concertina: The Life and Loves of a Dominatrix - lots of kinky sex and food, which seems good to me! I'm also liking the pure unadulterated geekiness at Topless Robot.

So that's it, that's my week!

The Friday-Night Blog...

2009-03-07T07:26:00.002Z

...has been delayed. I went to see Watchmen last night, and I'm still trying to formulate my thoughts. Should have something by the end of the day! Promise!

25 Things

2009-02-27T22:47:00.005Z

So, there's this Facebook thing going around, where you have to write 25 random things about yourself and then let other people know, and then hopefully they'll do the same and so on.. I quite liked mine, so I thought I'd reproduce them here... Feel free to comment on any or all of them! (Sorry if you're a Facebook friend and have seen these before!)

1. I worry too much about what other people think of me, and hate myself for doing it.

2. I have trouble finishing things I start (so I might only get to 19 things).

3. I wish I had gone to art school, instead of doing what my Mum wanted me to do.

4. I am glad I went to Swansea to study, because I wouldn't have met my wife otherwise.

5. I love eating Ambrosia Devon Custard straight out of the carton.

6. I wish I'd travelled America more than I did, and hadn't been such a wuss.

7. I don't like it when people I think are friends suddenly decide they aren't.

8. I'm was incredibly surprised and happy that someone I only vaguely knew at work has become a friend (or at least I think they have...!)

9. I've noticed that as I've grown older, I've started to like dark chocolate a lot more (especially on digestives).

10. I'm so incredibly proud of my son.

11. I hate how life and death can be so incredibly unfair, and why bad stuff happens to good people.

12. I'm probably more addicted to Diet Coke than I would like to imagine.

13. I can get a little obsessive at times.

14. I'd love to visit Australia.

15. i want to achieve something worthwhile before I'm forty, like climbing Mount Fuji, or cycling Cuba for charity.

16. I love the Manic Street Preachers, but don't get The Holy Bible.

17. I have a fetish for women's high-heeled boots.

18. I like blackbirds.

19. I sometimes think I should be gay, but don't actually fancy men.

20. I don't understand why people would choose to use Windows (especially Vista).

21. I think women speaking in German is extremely erotic.

22. I miss my sister every day.

23. I think M*A*S*H is the greatest TV programme ever made.

24. I'd like to apologise to all the women I pursued between the ages of 16 and 22.

25. I'm sure I'll think of umpteen cleverer and funnier things to have written here as soon as I publish this!

Friday-Night Blog!

2009-02-27T22:00:00.002Z

So, as I'm doing a big (well, medium-sized... OK, small) push for this website on Facebook, I thought I should give you all something new to read. So, here it is, the first of hopefully series of Friday-Night Blogs, where I generally have a round-up of my week.

So, what;s been going on? Well, I've been off work all this week, which has been great. It's been so good just to spend time with my wife and son, instead of seeing them for a couple of hours every night. We've been to play parks twice, we've been swimming, and generally hanging out with each other.

It was my birthday on Wednesday, I turned the big 35. Genuinely chuffed to get a lot of best wishes on Facebook, and a decent amount of cards. Also got some blinking good gifts, like Doctor Who Season One on DVD (Good old Eccles-cake!), Stardust, an intriguing book called Death and the Penguin and a Cookie Monster t-shirt from my son. It's Em's birthday tomorrow, so we're off to the zoo! (Birthday cake has been baked and is cooling!)

Finally got to catch up on most of my stories on TV - two lots of Lost and Battlestar Galactica. I'm getting impatient with Lost, I just want it over and done with, especially with all the time-flipping stuff. Just tell me what the whole thing's about and let me go! Battlestar, on the other hand, is quickly running out of shows and I don't want it to end!

My current bandwagon is Twitter, with which I'm becoming quickly disillusioned. I get it, I just don't think I care what all these people are doing every minute of the day. It seems that a lot of people on there are sycophantic, working themselves up into a frenzy because they're following Stephen Fry or whoever. I'm sure it's good for all these people trying to sell you something, but I think it's crazy when you now have a Dr Pepper Twitter feed... Still, I've made a new friend on there, but I'm friends with her on Facebook, so that's OK. Hi, Claire!

Wendy Richard died, which was incredibly sad. (She'll always be Miss Brahms from Are You Being Served? to me, all those years as Pauline Fowler couldn't erase those formative memories!) Jade Goody's dying, which is even more tragic. Whatever you think of the girl, no-one deserves to lose their life in such an horrific, slow, painful way.

I'm sure there are lots of other things I could talk about, but you're probably tired of reading them now. From here on in, I'm going to keep notes in my nice new leather diary (thanks, Jonathan!), so I'll be able to keep up with my own thoughts!

Twitter

2009-02-10T16:20:00.003Z

As there seems to be a huge media thing about Twitter at the moment, I decided to join up. If there's a bandwagon, see me leap!

At the moment I'm following Graham Linehan, Phill Jupitus and a model called Apnea (who's very cute).

I'm annoyed that I can't Twitter from my mobile, like I can update my Facebook status, but there you go.

If anyone wants to follow my feed, you can find it at twitter.com/MrFraig

And it was all going so well until the punchline...

2008-11-04T12:51:00.000Z

Still, if it gets American to vote for the person who might actually change something in the USA (and the world), then why the hell not...!

Gatchaman!

2008-09-23T16:15:00.001+01:00

I am soooo excited about this. Once upon a time there was a Japanese animation called Science Ninja Team Gatchaman about 5 super-powered teenagers. Some Americans saw this, and hacked it about a bit (cutting out most of the violence and the sexual imagery and sticking in badly animated bits concerning an R2-D2 rip-off and his flying dog...) and called it Battle of the Planets, the kids show from the late '70s we all know and love. (It was also retooled into G-Force, and Eagle Riders, but that's another kettle of fish.)

Anyway, Imagi, the company behind the recent CGI Turtles movie, have been working away at a new, CGI version of Gatchaman, and here's the trailer. Don't blink, or you'll miss it. (BTW, that's Joe (Jason in BOTP)'s car, and then we glide up to see the Phoenix. Yum.)

On Imagi's website, you can also see some production shots, including one of Jun (Princess)'s booted legs and her yo-yo. No. that's not a euphemism.

If you want to learn more about the whole history of Gatchaman then get over to Home of the White Shadow for all you ever wanted to know. And boy, there's a lot...!

Liz McLarnon - Celebrity Masterchef 2008

2008-07-26T11:45:00.003+01:00

Get in, Team Liz! Congratulations to Liz, who was yesterday crowned Celebrity Masterchef 2008. It's not often I make the right call here, but I got it right this time!

Expect Atomic Kitchen, the TV show anytime now. (Can I get a credit for the programme title, please?)

Atomic Kitchen!

2008-07-19T12:22:00.003+01:00

Wow, a Sun style pun headline...

Anyway, Liz McLarnon (that's her on the left, looking very slinky), former (or current, can't remember if they've officially broken up) Atomic Kitten is doing very well indeed in the current series of Celebrity Masterchef on BBC One, despite having never cooked anything in an oven before she started on the programme. She's made it through to the final, and was said by John Torode and Gregg Wallace to have improved the most out of all the other competitors! Go Liz, go!

PS. I'm free to come over for dinner whenever you like, Liz...

Dr. Horrible' Sing-Along Blog

2008-07-16T22:22:00.001+01:00

Right, read this, and then get your ass over to Dr. Horrible to see Joss Whedon's latest meisterwerk before it's too late (Sunday July 20th, to be precise). To while away the hours while there was a writers' strike on, Joss threw together this internet only (for the time being) musical supervillan story for US! Yes, You! So get over there and watch it. Buy the T-shirt, and quit moaning!

Time's almost up!

2008-07-05T17:52:00.001+01:00

Yep, there's less than an hour to go before the final episode of Doctor Who's fourth season (except I'll have to tape it and watch it later...), and I'm getting well excited.

I had a quick hunt round the net to see if I could find out anything, but the Beeb seem to have got this locked down tighter than a tight thing on the tightest day of the week! All I could find were rumours and suppositions - like the Doctor's going to split into two and one's going off to the parallel world to be with Rose; Donna's a Time Lady; Harriet Jones is in league with the Daleks; the TARDIS will die and all manner of other weirdness. What ever happens, I'm sure it's going to be great.

I'm personally hoping for the return of Ace with a Big F'ing Gun!

RIP Stan Winston - Effects God

2008-06-17T19:55:00.001+01:00

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Film special effects pioneer dies: "Oscar-winning special effects expert Stan Winston, who created the creatures in films including Aliens and Jurassic Park, has died at the age of 62.
Winston, who also made the robots in Terminator, died at home in California surrounded by family on Sunday.
The film veteran had been battling multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer, for seven years, a representative of the Stan Winston Studio said.
He had worked with Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Tim Burton.
During his 40-year career, he became a pioneer of merging real-world effects with computer imaging.
California governor and former Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger said: 'The entertainment industry has lost a genius, and I lost one of my best friends.
'Stan's work and four Oscars speak for themselves and will live on forever.
'What will live forever in my heart is the way that Stan loved everyone and treated each of his friends like they were family.'
Winston won Oscars for his work on Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park.
He also received Oscar nominations for Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, AI, Predator and Heartbeeps."

Rest in Peace, Stan, you were a legend, and I thank you for bringing so much wonder into my life.

Oh Brother...

2008-06-06T08:12:00.002+01:00

Yep, summer's here, and that means the return of Channel 4's Big Brother. This year there are 16, yes 16, wannabees, I mean, contestants, and to be honest with you, I got fed up with watching them all traipse in after we'd had about half of them.

The surprise thing is how "normal" most of them appear to be, as if the producers have finally given up trying to shoehorn as many "diverse" (ie. irritating) people in there as they can, but it's still early days.

The first four housemates have already been given their first secret mission - the two people that are a couple (Mario and Lisa) have got to pretend they're not a couple, and Mario has to pretend he's having a relationship with Stephanie, a 19 year-old student. If they succeed, they all are saved from the public vote, but if they fail, they face the vote along with their co-conspirator, Luke.... Thyey're bound to screw it up.

Here we go again...!

BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: BB9 housemates arrive

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

2008-06-01T09:36:00.003+01:00

Yes, I finally went to the cinema again! I think the last time I went was probably to see Casino Royale, so it's been a while...

Went to see the new Indiana Jones movie - can't be arsed to type all that again - and it was... okay. I thought some of the fight and, ahem, tomb raiding sections were fun, but I did think that the whole crystal skull malarkey was a bit ridiculous. Was it me, or did the Russian bad-lady (played just this side of evil Bond-villain by Cate Blanchett) already have an alien skull, and said there were two more in Russia already? In that case, why were there already twelve skulls in the temple/spaceship at the end? (Probably should have put a spoiler warning on this..) And what the hell actually happened at the end? (Well, I know, but, what the hell?)

Still, Harrison Ford was back on form as Indy (although he's aged gracefully, he can't quite manage as much action as he used to...) and the scenes he had with Shia La Beouf (silly name...) and Karen Allen (back as Marion Ravenwood) were fantastic. It was quite obvious that they're setting it all up so that Mutt (Shia) can take over his father's mantle (oops...)

It was nice to have Indy back, but it would have been nicer to have given him a better story. (Do things stop being magnetic just because they're in a sack?)

Happy Birthday, Uncle Roo!

2008-05-10T23:51:00.001+01:00

30 today, how the years have flown by...!

Come to Sunny Harlow...

2008-05-01T08:04:00.002+01:00

AND GET YOUR BLOODY WHEEL NICKED!

I'm Hijacking My Audio...

2008-04-28T22:58:00.001+01:00

Gonna get all geeky on yo' ass now and say how much I love Audio Hijack Pro! You see, it allows you to not only hijack any audio stream on your Mac (DVDs, internet radio, anything with an audio stream really), but it's also the easiest way of recording old vinyl LPs and tapes that I've found.

I used to have to record the audio as one long file and then edit it, which took forever, but Audio Hijack Pro allows you to chuck the audio at it, it then listens out for suitable silences in the music and slices it into separate files ie. songs!

It also encodes it as either an MP3, or AAC file - whatever you want, so you don't have to encode it when you've finished. And then it chucks it into iTunes for you as well!

I had one long file with two songs in it (the silence wasn't long enough), but then I chucked it into AHP's sister program Fission, and sliced it and named the files in a couple of minutes. Brilliant. (As Danny Dog would say...)

I'm not paid by Rogue Amoeba the creators of Audio Hijack Pro and Fission, but I wholeheartedly endorse them!

I knew ITV1 shouldn't mess with these things...

2008-04-15T23:08:00.002+01:00

So, ITV1 buys the rights to screen Pushing Daisies, the new series from Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls creator, Bryan Fuller. They showed the first episode last Saturday and it pulled in a reasonably respectable 5.7m viewers. I loved the show, and look forward to seeing the rest of the series...

...except we won't get to see all of it, because ITV1 only have 8 slots to show the programme before Euro 2008 coverage starts. Therefore they've taken the decision to drop Episode 2, as they figure it was the one we could live without - after all it only shows the early life of the main character, Ned, and how he discovered his resurrection power - nothing really important, I'm sure...

I wouldn't mind, except no home nation is taking part in Euro 2008... Oh, wait, I still wouldn't care!

The Curse of Facebook

2008-04-05T11:32:00.001+01:00

That's it, I've been sucked in... Facebook has grabbed me and dragged me under. I'm even writing this blog entry in Facebook....

Must check profile, must look at friends' photos, must add applications, must... play... Pirates!

Must see if there is a Facebook addict group...

Matinée Club

2008-03-23T22:16:00.001Z

Once upon a time, there were a bad called The Modern, and I thought they were rather good, when I heard their song "Suburban Culture" which was given away by iTunes as their Single of the Week. Eighties electro-pop, very Human League, with a diva-esque front woman called Emma (who once played the young Pat Butcher...) and a bloke with an odd voice called Chi.

Time went by, the band released a couple of singles, but the album never appeared, and their website seemed frozen. "Oh well," I thought, "another great band down the dumper before they've gone anywhere..."

And then today I checked their website to find that it had disappeared altogether. So I Googled them to find out what had happened, and it turns out that they've renamed themselves Matinée Club and have a new website (except it's a lot like the old The Modern website) at www.MatinéeClub.co.uk!

Not only that, but they've finally got around to releasing their album on iTunes, called Modern Industry. It contains most of their tracks as The Modern, plus some new ones (and a cover of David Bowie's "Modern Love")

There's more to the story, which you can find at Wikipedia if you're interested, or check out their MySpace page.

Back in Business!

2008-03-06T14:29:00.003Z

The kinkyMachine is back! Yes, I've got a brand new MacBook, and I'm gonna use it (for good and possibly for naughty, but probably not for evil. That'd be wrong.)

It's soooooo cool! I mean, my old iBook (500MHz Power PC) was about 6 years old, and compared to that, this new MacBook (2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo) is like hot poo! Everything's so quick, from something simple like System Preferences, to the speed it took to import umpteen thousand photos into iPhoto (which is so much better than the older version I was using).

And the built-in Bluetooth actually works with my RAZR, so that's an added bonus.

Plus, I managed to set up a wireless network without even really trying. Still not sure how I did it...

Plus Photo Booth is a laff!

Aargh!

2008-02-02T11:01:00.001Z

Sorry everyone, but my iBook has finally died! I'm writing this at an Apple Store, so I've gotta be brief. If there are no more updates for a while, or you don't get emails from me then that's the reason. I'll try to be back ASAP!

Why can't things just work?

2008-01-18T22:04:00.000Z

Time for a Dilbert-style "Gaaa!" I got a new mobile phone for Christmas - a Motorola V3 RAZR, mainly because my old Nokia was just embarrassing, a camera phone would come in handy every now and then and because I really wanted the theme to Battle of the Planets as my ringtone. So I thought, OK this phone looks good, it does MP3 ringtones, Bob's your uncle.

So I got the phone and thought, I'll just hook it up to my iBook with a USB cable, and transfer the files across. Nope. The phone is recognized as a USB device, but doesn't mount as a volume on the desktop. iSync sort of worked - it dumped a few random phone numbers on the phone with garbled names attached, but that wasn't too much of a problem, as my address book on my iBook is so out-of-date it's got Abraham Lincoln's IM name in it. The internet basically said that wasn't going to work, so I thought I should try the Bluetooth route.

I went to Argos and bought a cheapie Bluetooth-USB adaptor and plugged it in, thinking that that wouldn't work, but the little B logo appeared in the menu bar and the Bluetooth Set-up assistant did its thing. The iBook recognized the phone, the phone recognised the iBook, they paired up like Kylie and Jason, and everything seemed to be fine. And then I tried to send a file to the phone, but apparently the iBook was "Unable to Validate Device".

Bizarrely, I can send stuff from the phone to my iBook, but not the other way around...

No one on the internet seems to know the answer. I've even tried a program called Moto4Lin, which theoretically should allow access via a USB cable, but I keep getting a "phone is busy" error message (?).

And so the only way I can work out to get stuff onto my phone is by sticking it on the 'net and then using WAP to download it - at a cost.

And hence my "Gaaa!". But it's alright, 'cos my son Joseph has decided he'd like to eat my Bluetooth dongle...

Seasons Greetings! (aka My Favourite Present)

2007-12-30T22:30:00.000Z

Hello, everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and got whatever you wanted most from Father Christmas. I had a pretty good day, got lots of lovely presents, but I think my favourite has to be the first volume of The Complete Peanuts (1950-1952), given to me by my wonderful wife!

For those of you that haven't got a scooby (and I know there are some of you out there...), "Peanuts" was the daily comic strip created and drawn by Charles M. Schultz for over 50 years, which gave the world, Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Linus and Lucy. I've always been a huge fan of these strips, and have a collection of the old paperbacks (with huge gaps), but these books are truly wonderful. Every single strip is reproduced in this gorgeous hardback book with an introduction by Garrison Keillor, an in-depth essay on Schulz's career and an interview with the (late) creator. Also included is an index to each strip, so you can find out the first time that Charlie Brown wore his famous zig-zag shirt, or the first time Snoopy had a thought-bubble.

This is a fantastic book, but one that poses a bit of a problem... How the jig am I gonna afford the rest of the collection? Hmm, I may have to publish an Amozon wishlist here!

Kylie and the Daleks!

2007-12-12T18:10:00.000Z

Not long to go now until the Christmas Doctor Who special, starring Kylie Minogue as a maid on the Titanic (last seen crashing into the TARDIS...), and to celebrate, the cover of the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine features our favourite pop princess posing in a slinky gold dress with one of Skaro's finest.

Apparently the issue (out 13th December) features a giant poster of Kylie anda Dalek too! Find out more here!

Oxygene hits 30!

2007-12-10T22:13:00.000Z

Yes, Jean Michel Jarre's groundbreaking album has reached the grand old age of thirty! One of the original hippy-trippy electronic albums hads now been kicking around for three decades, and to celebrate, Jean Michel Jarre has, um, released it again.

OK, so the new version is a totally new "master recording" recreated using the original score and original analogue synths, to create a new version. The reocrding sounds, well, exactly the same. I'm sure some of the hardcore Jarre-nerds have spotted some diferences, but to me it just sounds nice and clean (although there are a few noisy sections (original samples?))

OXYGENE Jean Michel Jarre

Phase Two Complete

2007-11-23T15:09:00.000Z

Well, that took less time than I thought! All the old DirtyPopSlut blog posts are now here, all gathered together with Music label. Other labels, such as TV and Film are available, too, and when I get a chance I'll set up an image map for the site header so you'll be able to jump straight to those sections from any page.

It's funny looking back at all the old posts how some things have changed (eg. when Britney Spear's footwear was all she had to worry about), and my, ahem, predictions for new bands all went a bit pear-shaped (Oversol split up, The Modern have kind of stalled - only The Chalets show some signs of surviving - new album out in 2008 hopefully!), and the Adam and the Ants reunion didn't really happen. Oh well.

Now I've got to decide if I'm going to bring the Craig's Place posts back into the fold.

Go back... Way back... Back into time!

2007-11-20T22:27:00.000Z

For those of you that have bothered to have a trawl through this new version of the kinkyMachine, you may come across some stuff which predates Blogger (and my iBook!) Yes, I've found the Wayback Machine at archive.org!

Rather scarily, most of my musings over the years have been collected by all the little web spiders and have been kept for posterity (if that's the right word!) I've skimmed off the choicest items and put them into blog posts as near to the correct date as possible, but feel free to have a poke around the archive. A lot of the pictures have gone, but there are still some bits and pieces floating around.

I may even get around to writing up some of the journals that i kept while i was in uni, so that'd be a bit scary to read now!

Phase One Complete

2007-11-14T22:45:00.000Z

Well, that's all the old ScreenDump posts re-integrated into the new kinkyMachine, just got to free up a week or so to get all the DirtyPopSlut ones back into the fold. And it's not easy to do when your iBook's got a broken logic board, and the only way you can see the screen is by squeezing the case to the left of the trackpad (which kills your hand after a minute), or by hooking it up to a TV, which makes type quite tricky to read.

If only Blogger would come up with a merge blogs facility...

Oh well, time for bed!

Equinoxe on the Rocks

2007-10-18T09:23:00.000+01:00

This fantastic track has been flagged up on the Jean Michel Jarre Yahoo! group recently. It's a cover version of Jean Michel's 1978 track Equinoxe 7 by a Norwegian musician called Per Kristian Risvik, and as the name implies, it rocks. The original track is a lot quieter, but still quite driven and exciting. Per Kristian's version just layers in a heavier, pounding bassline and some truly thunderous drums, giving it a more powerful, almost live feel (similar to the version found on Jarre's Houston/Lyon live CDs).

It's well worth a listen, and if you like it, check out some of Per Kristian's other work, which includes some original pieces as well as covers of the Doctor Who theme and the Super Mario jingles!

Click here to listen to Equinoxe on the Rocks

All together again

2007-10-06T22:52:00.000+01:00

So here we are, back with the new look kinkyMachine. The best posts from all my other blogs, and going forward, a whole new bunch of stuff. Basically, I just wanted a place to talk about all the good stuff in life; the best films, the best music, good food, great books, anything that tickles the taste-buds (or whatever sensory organ is appropriate...)

Stick around, it might be fun.

Happy Christmas Everybody!

2006-12-24T19:45:00.000Z

Have a great Christmas, everyone! I hope you have a lovely time, and
can be with those that you love (oh and get lots of pressies too!)

If you want to send me anything, it's not too late...

Peace.
Craig x

Oversol say... no more!

2006-12-07T09:02:00.000Z

Sad news just in from Oversol. Best to let the boys say it themselves:

To all our lovely Oversol fans,

Firstly we want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Jolly New Year!

Unfortunately in the Oversol camp, we have some sad news. Although we have had such a great time being part of Oversol and have had many laughs on the way, Tom and then Aaron felt that it was their time to move on. As for the rest of the band, we feel that it would be an impossible task to fill their amazingly talented shoes, and it has therefore resulted in the closing of a chapter in our lives too.

We want to thank you all for your amazing support, for all the CDs you bought and the gigs you sang your hearts out at! We hope you have enjoyed Oversol as much as we have. Who knows, you may see some of us venturing out in other things soon!

Love from Oversol
========================

As a token of thanks for your support over the last few years, we'd like to give you a little something to remember us by. After rooting through the Oversol archives, we've found some recordings that you may not have heard, and we thought it would be nice to share them with you. So if you visit Oversol.co.uk then you'll find 4 EPs to download - totally free of course! We're giving away 17 tracks, ranging from demos which were recorded back in 2003, to acoustic versions, to more recent recordings. It's been interesting listening back to the old stuff, and hearing how our sound changed over the years - there's certainly a variety of material there, in terms of both style and quality! Hopefully you'll find something to enjoy.

As we said in the announcement above, it's been a lot of fun. Enjoy the festive season and hopefully we'll see you again in the future.

Love from Aaron, Mogs, Nathan, Rees and Tom xx

So there you have it, the end of another great hope for the future. Who knows, maybe if more people had bought their stuff then they'd still be going, but that's life. We here at the 'Slut wish them all the best for the future - and thanks for all the free stuff!

The Great Coca-Cola/iTunes Giveaway

2006-09-05T14:26:00.000+01:00

So here's how it works. You buy a bottle of Coke, and on the back of the label is a code. You type that code into iTunes and you get a free download. So far so good, Coca-Cola sells lots of its lovely fizzy beverages and the punter gets lots of free songs. But - and here's the catch - you can only have five songs per person. So, no matter how much Coke you drink, you can only have five songs.

Now it seems to me that this is all a bit, well, screwy. If Coke had printed the codes in a few bottles, rather than every single one, then people would buy more Coke in order to find the free songs. Better still, there could have been a scale of prizes, from single downloads, to multiple downloads, up to an iPod, iMac and ten thousand free downloads. I know I'd have been buying Coke till it came out of my ears.

Oh well, maybe I should go into marketing.

Batman Begins Again

2006-08-03T20:08:00.000+01:00

SFX - The Dark Knight is go: "Nolan will indeed direct the follow-up, The Dark Knight and Christian Bale is once again slipping into the Bat suit.

This time around - as predicted at the end of Begins - he'll be facing off against the maniacal Joker. And Brokeback Mountain's Heath Ledger is the man in the frame."

Good news indeed. Thank god both Nolan and Bale have recommitted to the project - it would have been a pity to have to change once again! Cool title too. Thanks God it wasn't the same as my headline!

The Return of Scritti Politti: "White Bread, Black Beer"

2006-07-30T14:09:00.000+01:00

Ever since the release of 1999's Anomie & Bonhomie, things had been a mite quiet on the Scritti front, but then things started to happen. Green Gartside played a couple of gigs under the name Double G and The Traitorous 3 (the first time he'd ventured on stage in about 25 years), and rumours were flying around about a new album, due to be released in April on Rough Trade, the label they'd started off on, back in 1982.

And on May 29th, White Bread, Black Beer was released to the world, and to outstanding critical acclaim. A much more stripped-down affair, the album was written, produced and recorded by Green in his own home in Peckham. Gone were the hip-hop influences (intrusions?) of Anhomie & Bonhomie, to be replaced by a more acoustic (guitars!), more laid-back feel. Songs with titles like "The Boom Boom Bap" feel like they should have the verve and boisterousness of Provision's "Boom! There She Was", but it's actually a beautiful, mellow song - albeit with a trademark Scritti booming bassline.

The album has a stealth-like quality, sneaking up on you. At first listen, fans of Cupid and Psyche '85 (Best Album in the World, Ever) may not like it's subdued quality, but then the sheer beauty of Green's androgynous vocals, looped and harmonized will take hold of you, seducing you and drawing you in. Green's trademark turn of phrase is still present: "Coming with the force of an illocution", "small paper packages washed down with gin" and "You bet your Petrococadollar"

It's been a long time coming, but it was worth it. Better than Cupid and Psyche '85? Not quite, but it comes a definite second - as another reviewer said, this is the album Provision should have been, after its heralding single "Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry For Loverboy)". In short, this is a truly beautiful album, and well worth a listen. Get it here now!

Review: Superman Returns

2006-07-28T22:55:00.000+01:00

And so, after an eternity in Development Hell, the Man of Steel finally flies back onto the big screen. Nineteen years after the execrable Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, Bryan Singer manages to restore the reputation of the Last Son of Krypton in much the same way as Christopher Nolan did for Batman last year.

Singer sticks closely to Richard Donner's highly iconic and influential original movie, keeping much of John Williams' emotive score and even the style of the opening credits (also nicked for the credits for the new Doctor Who series...). The film, intended as a direct sequel to the first two movies, takes place some five years after Superman leaves Earth to search for the shattered remains of his home world. He returns (see where they got the name from?) to find that the world has moved on. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has a new fiancé and a son and is about to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for an story about why humanity no loger needs a Superman.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor (played by a wonderfully scene-stealing Kevin Spacey) has evaded prison because Superman didn't turn up for a parole hearing and has swindled a dying woman out of her estate so that he can discover the source of the Man of Steel's power and knowledge.

Brandon Routh proves to be an excellent choice in the twin roles of Superman/Clark Kent. He echoes Christopher Reeve's bumbling Clark persona, but also manages to make Superman his own. He's friendly but slightly aloof, charming and yet distant - almost alien. Much of the film's emotional core comes from his feelings of loneliness, and his feelings for Lois.

If Donner's film showed us that we could believe a man could fly, this time we believe he can fly, catch falling jet aircraft and stop gas explosions with his icy breath. The effects are excellent, and in some ways very subtle - the haze surrounding Superman's heat vision, the flames of re-entry into atmosphere, the sonic boom as he flies off at top speed. Mainly we revel in the pure joy of seeing someone fly, much in the same way we enjoy the sight of Spidey swinging through New York.

Unfortunately, it's also Singer's insistence on sticking closely to the original movie that lets it down in some ways. twenty-eight years on(!) we demand more pace from our superhero movies, with a bar of quality set by two Spider-Man films, at least three Batmans and even Singer's own pair of X-Men. Those films show that you can have emotion, have slow moments and still deliver a cracking, well-paced action movie. Superman Returns seems to have its beats in the wrong places and the story seems to fizzle out, ending not with a bang, but a whimper. There's no rousing emotional climax, no real sense of threat to the world from which only Superman can save us.

Hopefully, this won't be the last we'll see of Superman on the big screen, but any further films will have to stand on their own, rather than riding the nostalgic coat-tails of the 1978 epic. Does the world need a Superman? Probably not, but its still rather wonderful to have him around.

Superman Returns UK Website

New Star Trek Movie Teaser Poster

2006-07-28T22:38:00.001+01:00

Big screen retro-Trek, anyone? Anyone? Hello, is there anyone there? Oh, come on, it's not like it's big screen Voyager, or anything.... Hello?

StarTrek.com

Oh lordy: "Is the new Superman meant to be Jesus?"

2006-07-28T22:29:00.000+01:00

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Is the new Superman meant to be Jesus?: "Is the Superman Returns movie meant to remind us of the Bible? And if so, is it blasphemy?
Well here's the story.

An all-powerful father sends his son to Earth to save mankind by showing them the 'light'. The son is able to perform miracles. He 'dies' and is born again.
Sound familiar? It might do, it's the plot of the new movie Superman Returns. And in the blogs and internet forums there has been a maelstrom of debate on the parallels between Superman and Jesus Christ.

Superman has a long history of Judaeo-Christian symbols, but this time the film's makers have taken it to a new level.

- At one point Superman falls towards the Earth in a pose that vaguely echoes the Crucifixion.
- He is stabbed in his side with Kryptonite in an echo of the stabbing of Jesus by a Roman soldier.
- A female nurse rushes into the hospital room to find it empty just as Jesus tomb was found to be empty by female followers.

And there are Christians in the US who believe that the symbolism is now sufficiently obvious that the film can be incorporated into religious teaching."

Well, I suppose you could read it in that way, but hey, it's just a story.... Stretching it all a bit far, methinks!

Scritti Politti in Mercury Music Prize shock!

2006-07-24T22:40:00.000+01:00

D'oh! I missed this last week, and only found out about it when I went into HMV and saw their nominee display. Should help Green shift a few more copies, even if he doesn't win - and there's some stiff competition. The Arctic Monkeys are obviously favourites, but with Muse and Thom Yorke in the mix anything could happen.

"BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arctic Monkeys lead Mercury list: "The Arctic Monkeys are favourites to win the 2006 Mercury Music Prize after the shortlist was revealed in London.
Albums by Radiohead singer Thom Yorke and rock bands Muse and Editors are also up for the award for the best UK or Irish album of the past year.
The other nominated albums are by Guillemots, Sway, Richard Hawley, Hot Chip, Isobel Campbell, Scritti Politti, Zoe Rahman and Lou Rhodes.
The winner will receive a �20,000 cheque at a ceremony on 5 September."

'Right time' for Cerys' comeback

2006-07-23T09:34:00.000+01:00

She's back! Ah, the lovely Cerys Matthews (formerly of Catatonia) is back in the UK for a new tour and to promote her new album, Never Said Goodbye. If you missed her last album, Cockahoop, then I seriously recommend you find a copy, 'cos it's really rather good.

BBC NEWS | Wales | 'Right time' for Cerys' comeback

The Official Cerys Matthews Website

Adam Ant: Extra Wonderful!

2006-07-18T17:21:00.000+01:00

Unlike me to let something like this pass me by, but then I only seem to have missed it by a few days. Yes, there is new Ant material ont' web. The digital album Extra Wonderful has been released to an Ant-hungry world. So, here's the story....

In the early 1990s, Mr Ant and Mr Pirroni hoiked themselves off to Capitol Records and recorded an album called Wonderful, which, although a very good album, failed to reignite their careers. The title track was a minor hit both sides of the Atlantic, and then two further singles failed to do any significant business. And so, that was that, Aside from umpteen collections and the excellent Remasters project, there has been no new Antmusic to speak of, despite rumours and pipe-dreams. And so, we now have Extra Wonderful.

Essentially a collection of B-sides and remixes, there are a few hidden gems here. There are the B-sides to the three singles ("Wonderful", "Beautiful Dream" and "Gotta Be A Sin"), the highlight of which has to be "Phoenix". The remixes are essentially unremarkable, but there is a decent new spin on "Beautiful Dream" (though the two versions seem to be very similar).

You also get an excellent set of live tracks, ranging from "Cleopatra" to "Desparate But Not Serious" which are really rather good. I especially like their cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Physical (You're So)" (!).

So, another set of tracks for the Ant-completist. The whole lot comes in at a hefty Â£13.99, but you do get 22 tracks. Worth it? Yeah, probably. Wonder if the "missing" MCA album (recorded after Manners & Physique) will ever turn up?

Download it here:

Well, I've been busy, y'know...

2006-06-15T16:20:00.000+01:00

Sorry it's been a bit quiet here recently. I've been a bit busy this year (see Rabbits' Blog for details). And I even started writing this entry 2 months ago....

So, what's been happening, then? Well, I was going to do a review of 2005, but that kinda went out the window. In summary, I think that the best single of 2005 was "Galvanize" by the Chemical Brothers. It was a close run thing with the Ivor Novello-winning "Wires" by Athlete, but I think the Chems just clinched it with their barnstorming dance track. However, album of the year goes to Athlete for Tourist, because it's just so incredibly good. Breakthrough act of the year goes to The Chalets, not just for bringing out a stonkingly good album in Check In, but for managing to get an album out when other DPS-supported acts (such as The Modern and Oversol) still haven't managed to deliver the goods. We're still waiting, guys. Live act of the year goes to the incredible Pop Will Eat Itself. The sweaty night in January at Shepherd's Bush Empire will be remembered for a long time. The Poppies also get the Good Thing award for reforming and putting on all the concerts (bless 'em), and teasing us with the Sonic Noise-Byte. (However, they're also the winners of this year's Bad Thing, for going and splitting up again... Sigh...)

Right, well, hopefully I'll be a bit more back on track from now on!

We're on the ball...

2005-11-25T21:15:00.000Z

So, nearly 4 months after this site found out about Catwoman Copycat, SFX have printed a news article about it in the latest issue (Christmas 2005). Sheesh, get with the program, guys! ;)

SFX

Oversol - new site, new tour, new single!

2005-11-01T20:50:00.000Z

"Speed", the debut single by Oversol is released on November 28th! To celebrate, the lads are going on tour, and have unleashed a smart new website: Oversol.co.uk. You can hear a snippet of the new single, plus bits from all their previous EPs.

The song sounds great, a little like their big brothers, Athlete, but with their own spiky edge. Buy it when it's out - you know it makes sense...!

Short Story: The Unexpected Drink

2005-10-25T12:24:00.000+01:00

I wrote this a few years ago as part of a creative writing course, and I still like it. Fancy use of different voices and everything... Not sure what I'm trying to say, but there you go. I'm just writing it, you guys figure it out!

The Unexpected Drink

Seeking the Bubble

2005-10-24T18:19:00.000+01:00

Yes, you poor unfortunate souls have stumbled on to the very rare and exclusive tracks that I made many many years ago. Armed only with an Amiga 1200, a Yamaha PSR-300 and a copy of Sequencer One, I created a number of tracks (two albums worth of original material, plus a further two of cover versions). Many of these tracks were sadly lost in the great Hard Drive Crash of 1993, so these files are all that is left. I had stuck them onto a crumbling C-60, and have recently been able to convert them into MP3s for future enjoyment. The quality of the recordings isn't great, but not too bad. If I'm brave, I'll venture up into the loft to get my old Amiga, and see if I can recover any other long forgotten gems. In the meantime I hope you enjoy them!

Seeking the Bubble was my debut album, recorded sometime in the early 1990s. Heavily influenced by Jean Michel Jarre, a lot of these tracks just seemed to appear from nowhere, usually with a bass line or a drum beat to start, and then a "melody" of sorts to follow.

The artwork on the left is brand-new. I had designed a cover for an album called "Seeking the Bubble" by Jane Galvani (?) for my A-level art, which I may dig out for your amusement at some time, but I felt I needed a new cover for this website, so there it is. If you click on it, you'll get a whopping 1000x1000 pixel image to stick into iTunes to look at while you enjoy the music.

Oh, and by the way, the title come from Shakespeare's As You Like It, in Jacques "Seven Ages of Man" speech: "Then a soldier,/...Seeking the bubble reputation/Even in the cannon's mouth". I just liked the phrase, I guess. Read into it what you will...

Seeking the Bubble (4'14") The first track I wrote, and I'm still pretty proud of, even after all these years. I can't remember if I started with the bassline, or the drum track. Amiga Format had a tutorial which showed you how to recreate the Funky Drummer sample, so that was that. Some have likened it to an ice-cream van jingle, so if you feel the need for a Mr Whippy, then that's the reason.

Abracadabra (13'30") The Magnum Opus of the album, "Abracadabra" is really three tracks in one. Once upon a time, they all had different names, but I'm buggered if I can remember them now. The tricky part was working out the bridges between sections. The sequencer I was using was quite basic and didn't allow you to fade things in or out or change tempo mid-song, so it all had to be on one level. In the third section I had a really deep bass bell sound, but it seemed to be too deep and was setting up resonant frequencies! I thought I'd taken them all out, but there are still some in there near the end of the section. You have been warned!

Tributizer (3'21") The title comes from the drums in the middle eight section (about 1'35" in). I suppose I thought they sounded a bit Motown-esque, so this is my tribute to that. No I'm not sure either. Anyway, the track follows the pattern of most of my early stuff, come up with a phrase, and repeat it in different voices and in different keys. Still, it's quite jaunty and not too embarrassing!

A Wasted Life (3'12") Hmm. A slow track, and in some ways a very painful one. I think this was my first stab at a live melody line, played over the rest of the arrangement. I think I'll let you be the judge of whether or not I succeeded. And yes, I know most of it is off key. I'm sorry.

MegaKick (3'51") It's brash, it's ballsy, it's got a cool (or annoying) hi-hat going all the way through it. It's got banjos. It's got slightly phased drums (achieved by duplicating the drum track and playing it back at exactly the same time). It's got swooshy bits. It's got a silly title.

Interlude (1'36") The perfect way to end the first side of the album. "Interlude" is a nice little bit of a looped melody which builds up through most of the preset organ sounds on the old Yamaha, chucks in a few drums, and then starts to take things away again. Nice.

Touch and Move (3'23") Ah, the old Orchestra Hit, where would I (or the Pet Shop Boys) be without it? The rest of the track is quite average, which is a pity, as it was due to open the second side of the album. I think the melody was live, but I'm not sure. The quieter bits are nicer than the shouty bits.

Stranger Place (2'51") A more interesting track than it first seems. If you listen closely there's quite a quiet bell noise before each section, which I quite like. I also like the random "rah" section, starting about 1'53" which then builds up. The drums might be a little harsh at times, but overall I think the effect is quite good.

Planet Three (3'30") Probably should have developed into something more interesting after the introduction and the start of the random bassline, but it doesn't. It just keeps looping.

Hide and Seek (4'47") Having got the hang of live melodies, I progressed to writing proper songs, with words and everything. Fortunately, I know I'm not a singer, and didn't own a microphone at the time, so my voice will not be heard. The words were excruciating as well. The echo effect on the chorus nearly killed everything, as my Amiga tried to process something like 28 notes at a time, when the keyboard only had something like a 16-note polyphony. Which is why it seems to slow down a bit at times!

Inside (Your Own Mind) (5'47") Aw, it's a love song. Again, there were words and everything. It sounded really good when I converted nearly everything into the piano voice, but you've only got the multi-instrument version here. And yes, the words were as cheesy as you can imagine. It's probably a better track if you don't know the words.

Multiverse (4'35") Inspired by the concept of a multiple universe, and the fact that there seems to be a few different verses and bridges and choruses floating around the same song. I also have to warn you of multiple key changes, 'cos they're cool. One of the better tracks on the album, this probably would have been a choice for a single!

Seeking the Bubble [New Version] (3'42") After learning more about making music, I decided to revisit "Seeking the Bubble" to see what I could do with it. Out went the Funky Drummer, and in came a new drum beat, a funked up bassline, a key change or two, and even, <gasp> samples. There was even room for a new verse. And so we finish the album the way we started it - not with a whimper... and I'll leave it to Private Hudson to have the last word...

The End of an Era...

2005-10-21T09:32:00.000+01:00

Alas, as I write this, the last moments of Christian O'Connell's Breakfast Show on Xfm are playing out. It's almost as emotional as when Simon Mayo left Radio 1. Still, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Christian, Chris Smith, Roque and Brian the Idiotic Assistant for five years of making the trip to work bearable (and sometimes making me cry with laughter so much I could hardly see the road). You will be missed, my friends (even if I never did get a T-shirt...!)

The Lovely Lauren Laverne™ takes over in a week or so. I'm not saying it'll be the same, but I'll keep an open mind. At least it wasn't bloody Richard Bacon.

Pop Will Eat Itself - 04.11.05

2005-10-21T09:10:00.000+01:00

Just got this message from the PWEInation website: "we'd love to see you on the site some time in the next two weeks...... who knows what you might find?", so I go there: pweination.org If you click on the huge "04.11.05" you get taken to the forum. There's a thread under Reformation (the name given to the set of concerts at the beginning of the year), but no actual information. (and then Safari crashes for some reason!) The crafty so-and-sos are keeping us guessing...

My guess is that it's a new series of gigs rather than a new album, but here's hoping...

Um... The Chalets New Album...

2005-10-20T09:24:00.000+01:00

Sorry, I appear to have dropped the ball on this one... The Chalets new album, Check In, actually came out at the beginning of the month, and I didn't know. Forgive me? I'm going to see if I can get hold of it today in the shops, or else I'll have to get it off Amazon (hey, I'm just an old-fashioned guy who likes the shiny plastic cases...!). Anyway, you can get it off iTunes here:

I've had a quick listen to some of the samples, and it all seems chock-full of the same quality goodness of their debut single, "Feel The Machine" (which you did buy, didn't you?) I'll let you know what the whole album's like when I get it. Probably. You're still waiting to hear what I thought of Shelly Poole's Hard Time for the Dreamer (beautiful music, possibly a touch too much Radio 2), and t.A.T.u.'s Dangerous and Moving (not as good as their first one), aren't you?

t.A.T.u. - A Health Warning from CD:UK

2005-10-10T14:40:00.000+01:00

"...it's all too clear why t.A.T.u. are the most exciting pop act we've experienced for years. It's because t.A.T.u - like their motherland - are unbelievably dangerous.

And we mean that sincerely. t.A.T.u. honestly give us the impression that they could have us killed. Compare that with... say, Girls Aloud, who - at the very worst - could inveigle us into a situation where we might have to make regular payments to the Child Support Agency. Or The Pussycat Dolls, who could just about blind us with the steely glow of their over-bleached teeth. Or the Sugababes, who could possibly sulk us to sleep. None of them can do what t.A.T.u. do so effortlessly: scare us."

Bwah ha ha! Read the whole thing here: :: cduk

And while we're on the subject of everyone's favourite faux-lesbian group, I went to get the new album today, and only found it for sale in HMV (CD £10.99, CD & DVD bizarrely priced at £9.99, when their in-store computer thing said it should be £15.99). Tesco, Asda, Woolworths and WHSmith didn't even acknowledge its existence. The new Sugababes and Liberty X albums were there, but not t.A.T.u.'s. Have the girls really pissed someone off? Or is this a big conspiracy to keep cool pop out of the charts?

Stop and Smell the Serenity

2005-10-08T07:57:00.000+01:00

OK, this is a Priority One Directive. This weekend, you have to go and see Joss Whedon's new film, Serenity. You don't have to have seen the original Firefly series (but why haven't you? You can get the DVDs for about £13 if you shop around - you really won't regret it), you just have to be ready to see the best science-fiction film this year.

Did Revenge of the Sith leave you cold? War of the Worlds leave you unimpressed? Well, Serenity will make you laugh, cry, cheer and clench just about every muscle in your body.

If you liked Buffy or Angel, then you yourself a huge favour and go and give Joss Whedon's baby all the love and attention it deserves. Not many cancelled shows get to be made into a movie, but then Serenity is different.

Go and see it. You can't stop the signal...

Serenity

t.A.T.u. - UK Website

2005-10-01T11:04:00.000+01:00

Just stumbled across the new UK t.A.T.u. website at tatugirls.co.uk. So far, so Flashy (some dodgy picture editing on the main screen too), but the best thing has to be the 30 second excerpts from the new album Dangerous and Moving (crap title, I know, but at least it's not as much of a mouthful as 200km/h in the Wrong Lane...), and they sound fantastic! Roll on the 10th October!

BTW, yes, I did cave in and buy the singles... I'm so weak! The remixes aren't bad, and the new track "Divine" is pretty good, if a little unusual. And the video on the DVD is as good as ever - again, the edited version doesn't make sense.

And I hear the girls were up to their usual scampish selves on The Frank Skinner Show this week, but I missed it. Bah!

Oversol - gig and new single!

2005-09-28T06:56:00.000+01:00

"In 2004, frustrated by the limitations of their guitar-based line-up, Oversol decided to add keyboards and Rees joined, bringing a new depth and melody, and perhaps just as importantly the additional vocal harmonies that now make up a big part of their unique sound. They are attracting interest both in the UK and USA, have supported Athlete at several sold out shows, and "Speed Of Light" has picked up airplay on radio stations across the UK. To coincide with the release of Oversol's debut single, "Speed", you can see them live in London. 17TH NOVEMBER - LONDON WATER RATS" - getLive.co.uk

Cool!

How Much??!?

2005-09-25T20:50:00.000+01:00

So there I was, about to get the new t.A.T.u. single, "All About Us" (see below, or above, or whatever), when I suddenly saw the price. Okay, so you can buy the standard CD single (presumably the one that is chart-eligible) for £1.99, but if you want new tracks or remixes, then you have a choice. You can buy the DVD single, featuring the "banned" video (BTW, the edited video doesn't make sense) and a new track, or the maxi-CD single, featuring a new track and about four remixes (definitely not chart-eligible). Both of these cost £3.99 each! So, if you're a completist, that's going to cost you a tenner! For a single! It's an outrage!

Coldplay "Fix You"

2005-09-24T22:29:00.000+01:00

Shite, isn't it?

Free Shelly Poole!

2005-09-08T07:38:00.000+01:00

Hurry, hurry, hurry! For a limited time only, you can download "Totally Underwater" from Shelly Poole's album absolutely free from !

If you didn't know, Shelly used to be in Alisha's Attic with her sister Karen, and has since written songs for people like Kylie, Girls Aloud and Amy Studt. The new stuff is still definitely Alisha, but a little bit more mellow. Check it out now!

Goldfrapp: "Supernature"

2005-08-23T16:23:00.000+01:00

So here's the thing. I bought Goldfrapp's third album yesterday, on the day of release, and I was going to post a review the same day. But, as I listened to it, I was finding myself stuck for what to say. So, I didn't get around to writing a review.

Thinking about it today, I realised that while it is a lovely, beautiful album, it's also not that exciting. None of the tracks have really grabbed me, not in the way that something like "Twist" or "Strict Machine" from Black Cherry did. The opening track and recent hit single "Ooh La La" (praised in this very organ) is probably the most dynamic song of the lot, with its Glam-Rock attitude and style. That's not to say the rest of the album isn't worthwhile. "Lovely 2 CU" and "Slide In" are both good songs, but they only just keep their head above the surface.

Away from the music, it seems like someone has told Alison Goldfrapp that she really is quite a good looking girl and should have her picture taken more. I think I've seen more pictures of her to promote this album than I have for the previous two, and that can only be a good thing! And what's with all this extra DVD nonsense? I'm getting fed up with having to decide between buying the vanilla CD for under £10, or the CD/DVD/SACD multipack with extra flanges for £17. Most of the time the extras aren't worth it, so why are we made to have to choose? Bah!

I really wanted to love this album, but I think I'll have to be content with merely liking it. Supernature is a good album, and will probably grow on me, but for the moment it's only a good album. Nothing more.

Get Supernature at

The new t.A.T.u. video!

2005-08-22T12:41:00.000+01:00

Yep, these are the latest pics from the new t.A.T.u. video, "All About Us", taken from their forthcoming second album Dangerous and Moving. If you want to see the new video, then go to tatugirls.com and click on the audio/video link at the bottom of the screen.

As for the song itself, I like it. Once more, it's full of their overblown Eurovision style (never a bad thing), with more than a hint of late ABBA, especially in the chorus. Lena's voice seems to have got better and she's looking darn fine too (she's the one with the reddish hair who does most of the singing, if you didn't know). The video nicely plays on the whole t.A.T.u. mythology - Are they lesbians? Do they hate each other? - with a dramatic storyline involving Julia and a dodgy bloke, and the revelation that Lena will always be there for her. Aw bless!

Possibly not as strong and as brazen as "All The Things She Said", but I think that "All About Us" is a fine addition to the EuroPop tradition.

V Festival 2005

2005-08-22T11:44:00.000+01:00

Just to let you know, the V festival sounded great this year - well, the bits I could hear from my house. You have to concentrate a bit, and hope that the wind is in the right direction, and to roughly know who you're meant to be listening out for, but that's only a small matter. I heard Athlete playing "Beautiful" at just after 5 o'clock yesterday, and most of Scissor Sisters set last night ("Mary", "Comfortably Numb", "Return to Oz", "Filthy/Gorgeous" and some other song I didn't recognize).

Yes, I know I could have just turned on the radio, or watched it on TV, but that doesn't count, and anyway they only seemed to want to show The Ordinary Boys on the telly, and they're not particularly my tasse de thÃ©.

I hope everyone that went to Hylands (and the other place) had a great time (sorry about the rain on Friday night) and you'll come back to sunny Chelmsford again!

"Tourist" released!

2005-08-16T07:10:00.000+01:00

"Tourist" is out now on a 2-track CD, featuring a Roots Manuva remix, and also a 7" picture disc with a BBC6 Music Session of "Half Light" on the b-side. Go buy now!

Catwoman "Copycat"

2005-08-06T23:24:00.000+01:00

Just stumbled across this site for a fan film. Okay it may not be official (or even much cop) but it looks a damn site better than the Halle Berry atrocity. For a start, they've got the costume right! Catwoman 'Copycat'

You can see loads of other pictures and download a short teaser trailer - even to your mobile or PSP if you're feeling flash. My, she is flexible...!

"Ooh La La" - the brand new single from Goldfrapp

2005-08-01T23:24:00.000+01:00

Hurrah! Goldfrapp have got a new single out! "Ooh La La" from the forthcoming album Supernature is out next week, and it's rather good - a stomping glam rock number with the usual Goldfrapp electronic embellishments. And of course, Alison Goldfrapp herself looks as gorgeous as ever in the video. If everything is working correctly, you should be able to pre-order the single from Amazon by clicking in that box on the right. Go on, give it a try!

Why stuff takes me so long...

2005-08-01T17:38:00.000+01:00

You see, if I didn't get obsessed with things like trying to find pictures of Angelina Jolie in that outfit from Mr and Mrs Smith, then I'd be able to get a darn sight more done around here. Anyway, you'll no doubt be chuffed when I tell you I've found them here: Mr. and Mrs. Smith Movie news on MC Movies. The spirt of the kinkyBabes lives on!

Buy an ink cartridge for £28, or...

2005-08-01T17:35:00.000+01:00

buy an new printer for £50! Yes, I was fed up with having to shell out huge amounts for an ink cartridge for my HP printer (bought in a bit of a rush x years ago when I first got my iBook - along with my crappy scanner and Zip drive - which I never use cos I've lost one my only 250Mb disk and have password locked my other disk and can't remember the password - d'oh!)

Ahem. Anyway, I decided to buy a new printer today instead - the Canon iP2000 (if you're interested). The cartridges only cost £6 for a black and £11 for a colour (although I read a review of the printer and some bloke said he bought job lots of 10 for only £14 - bargain), so that's a saving already!

And the bonus is that it prints really good photos, so they no longer have to stay on my hard drive.

Which is nice.

Version 5.1 - or something!

2005-07-30T21:16:00.000+01:00

Right, let's try again, now that I've worked out how to host the Blog on the kinkyMachine webspace. I may have to tweak a bit more, but I'm quite happy with it for the moment. What do you think?

A Few Updates

2005-07-30T16:52:00.000+01:00

Just to follow up on a few things: The Chalets "Feel The Machine" charted at a respectable, um, well, it didn't get into the top 40, anyway. Go and download it anyway, it's brilliant.

And osymyso extracted his finger and stuck 4 new parts of 05ymy50 on his site, so hurrah and huzzah!

The Return of t.A.T.u!

2005-07-25T09:29:00.000+01:00

They're back, Back, BACK! Possibly the ultimate kinkyMachine group, (Russian teenage faux-lesbians who had the balls to sucessfully cover The Smiths "How Soon Is Now?" on their first album - what's not to love?) t.A.T.u. have announced the release of their second album, Dangerous and Moving, due 17th October.

Their official site has now also got English language pages, so you don't have to suffer the tortured translations of Babelfish or WorldLingo (although that does take the fun out of a lot of it!) So hold onto your hats for the second Russian Revolution (or is it the third...?)

You can read all about Lena and Julia's second coming at www.tatu.ru Hurrah and Huzzah!

osymyso

2005-07-08T12:32:00.000+01:00

To celebrate the release of the tenth part of 05ymy50, "Something New", I thought I should highlight the work of one of the net's greatest musicians, osymyso.

osymyso first came to my attention when I heard his "Intro-Inspection" track on XFM. The track, which lasts for over twelve minutes, features a really silly number of samples from the intros to various pop songs. It truly is a work of breathtaking ingenuity, cleverness and downright inspiration. (My favourite bit has to be the "Need You Tonight"/"Come on Eileen" segue - it's sooo funky!). It's also perfect to round off a pub pop quiz - how many tracks can you name?

The really good news is that you can get this track on osymyso's website absolutely free! Plus you can also get all his other tracks for no pence whatsoever! There's the 30-minute long "Puckish Mix" (featuring a full remix of "The Reflex" among others), the hilarious EastEnders sampling "Pat n Peg", and the touching remix of Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes" called "Fiver to Bigwig".

But the highlight has to be the 05ymy50 project. Fifty tracks will be released throughout 2005, and eventually mixed together and released on CD. "Something New" is the tenth part which has just been added (hmm... 50 tracks in 2005, and the tenth part has only just been released, and we're over halfway through the year... oh....) Anyway, the first ten parts are all really rather good. Strong electronic roots with a healthy dash of Art of Noise and some help from Simon Pegg. Fabulous.

So get yourselves to osymyso.com right now, and give yourselves some aural stimulation.

Oh yeah, did I mention that it's all free? God bless osymyso!

Athlete release "Tourist"

2005-07-08T10:31:00.000+01:00

The almighty Athlete have released a radio edit of "Tourist" as a single on . Haven't seen it in the shops, so I presume it's a download-only single. Will keep you updated...
Alternatively, you can get the whole album instead. It's really very good (though not as good as Vehicles and Animals. Why not get that too?!)

Review: Batman Begins

2005-07-04T21:37:00.000+01:00

Thank god! The ghosts of Joel Schumacher's travesties can finally be laid to rest, and even Tim Burton has been blown out of the BatCave. Sing hallelujah! They've finally managed to do a decent, nay, brilliant Batman film!

Christopher Nolan has got the tone, the cast and the whole goddamn feel of the thing absolutely spot-on. Christian Bale makes both a dark, brooding and driven Bruce Wayne, and a well cool Dark Knight, both at the same time (well, not exactly at the same time, but you know what I mean...) Heck, everything was right. It was dark and brutal and there wasn't a single sight of a day-glo Batarang or bat-credit card.

And the support cast did exactly what they were supposed to do. Liam Neeson, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman (as a textbook study of Jim Gordon) were all fantastic, and actually acting their socks off, as opposed to chewing the scenery at every opportunity. And that's not even mentioning the new Batmobile...

The best thing was that it all made sense. It was never explained before how Bruce Wayne managed to accrue all these gadgets, without arousing suspicion (even if that means ordering 10,000 bat-ears from China). But this film lays it all out, logically and sensibly.

The first in a proposed trilogy, Batman Begins feels like three films in one itself. The story keeps building and building, from Bruce Wayne's training in the far east, to the creation of Batman in Gotham, to the finale, and the set up to the next film, and the treat of a villain who leaves a certain playing card at the scene of his crimes... Bring It On!

"Feel The Machine" is Out Now!

2005-07-04T21:07:00.000+01:00

Yes, the brilliant debut single from The Chalets (see below) is out today. If you click here: you can listen to it, and download it if you want to keep it (and so you should, cos it's fab!). The b-side is great too - is that the Asda jingle or what?

If you don't want to get it from iTunes, you can go to a record emporium and get the CD for only 1.99. Bargain. What more could you ask for?

New Band Alert: Oversol

2005-06-20T16:06:00.000+01:00

I saw this band a couple of months ago when they supported Athlete at Brixton Academy, and I was really impressed by them (unlike the Morning Runner, the other support act who were quite boring, truth be told...). They've got some great tunes (2 of which you can download free from their website:oversol.co.uk) and a really energetic stage presence. I was so taken with them that I remembered their name even after the Athlete gig (which was stupendous, by the way) and managed to Google them at the earliest opportunity. They're unsigned at the moment, but as they seem to be loved by both HMV and Xfm, that may change in the very near future.

kinkyMachine v5.0

2005-06-20T11:47:00.000+01:00

Or close enough!

Yep, here it is - incomplete and still a bit shaky around the edges, but the new kinkyMachine is here. Huzzah!

Most of the sections aren't here yet, as you may have discovered, but keep checking back, as they're not far away. I just felt that if I didn't stick something new on the web soon, then I never would. So at the moment, there's this blog, one short story in the Words section (plus a dead link - sorry!), and the FAQ. And that's it.

If you miss the old site, then it's still here, but some links might not work, and it's not going to be updated, so no more kinkyBabes, I'm afraid. (Never did get to see Angelina Jolie there...)

That's half the point of the new site - I wanted it to be all my own work, so everything you see here is mine all mine. Much as I liked pinching other people's images ('cos let's be honest, I'm never going to photograph Kelly Brook in her undies - not since that restriction order anyway...), I wanted this site to be more honest. And so that's what you're going to get. All my own work, some great, some not so great. I hope you like it. And if you don't, then let me know. (The Contact page will be up soon, promise!)

Have a great day!

New Band Alert: The Modern

2005-06-17T07:43:00.000+01:00

The song "Suburban Culture" was a free download from the iTunes Music Store a few weeks back - and it's absolutely brilliant. A cool slice of early '80s electro-pop - shades of Duran Duran, The Human League and Visage (but not an actual rip off. Are you listening, Ms Osbourne?!). By clicking on the iTunes link you can hear a free sample and then buy it! Sorry, it's not free any more, but 79p is a small price to pay for such a great song. Check out their other tracks on iTunes - "Industry" is also a great tune! Also, make sure you go and have a look at their website, with its nifty Flash interface! www.the-modern.co.uk

New Band Alert: The Chalets

2005-06-16T07:31:00.000+01:00

Just seen the video for "Feel the Machine" on The Amp, and I like what I saw (and heard as well). Cheeky new-wave electro-pop, a couple of Lauren Laverne-alikes called Peepee and Pony in long socks (which can only be a good thing) and 3 blokes (called Dylan, enda and Chris, if you need to know...).

It's got a really smart Photoshop-inspired video too! Anyway, here's the link to their site: The Chalets and I predict good things for them! (hey, I was right about Athlete when they first started!)

Roisin Murphy

2005-06-16T07:27:00.000+01:00

I'm really liking Roisin Murphy's new single "If We're In Love". It's funky and sexy and cool. Bizarre, cos I couldn't stand anything she did with Moloko.