"I'M THE BAD GUY? HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?" If you ever go to Greece on holiday here's a surefire trip to improve your fun and its one that even the locals haven't discovered yet, get a pencil and write this down: Go back to the airport and get a ticket to somewhere else. In our case it was Amsterdam but any modern city would do. By modern I mean a place where the tap water is safe to drink, the locals don't ride their mopeds on the dust and rubble that passes for a sidewalk, the insects don't suck liquids out of you faster than a $20 whore, the taxi drivers don't do 360 degree turns in the middle of the street while listening to Phil Collins... in short, by modern I don't mean fucking Athens. Ahh Amsterdam... Already seen about 45 movies and Greece is nothing more than a bad memory. Does that sound harsh? Greece is an odd country... Athens is a fucking dump... the islands are beautiful but uniformly beautiful... you've seen one breathtaking sunset on a beach and you've seen em all... and don't talk to me about insect bites... if I joined all the small red lumpy dots on my arms and hands they'd spell 'GREECE SUCKS BIG BALLS" I think the problem is that the after the bastards founded democracy they got lazy... just sat on their arses and did fuck all while waiting for tourists to show up and throw money at them. They also seem to enjoy starving animals. So we left one of the sunny islands and made a dash for the airport and ended up somewhere we've both wanted to get to for a while. I think most people I know have already made it to Amsterdam before so i won't go on at length how cool the place is... I could talk for a while about the very plush hotel that we're in at the moment... fucking bliss with as much room service and cable as I could ask for... We managed to save a lot of money in Greece as there's fuck all to buy there so in the last few days I've loaded up on books (some out of print oddments that I found on a market stall) and I'll hit the DVDs next... Brotherhood of the Wolf ? Yes please. Just in case you think I twisted Jess' arm... well I did kind of... but she was sick of the sight of fucking ocean and sand too... ("and whale-like British and German tourists" she just reminded me)... and as this is the same girl who lived in Urban Outfitters in San Francisco I knew she wanted to shop... what are you gonna buy on a fucking island? Decided against postcards as I didn't bring anyone's address with me but I'll update the blog again in a day or two... plus I'll probably make one or two phonecalls. Mike is blogging to: the sound of American tourists: "call your mom tonight, dude"

"I WISH THEY ALL COULD BE CALIFORNIAN...." Blogging from some island somewhere in the middle of some ocean... I should really pay more attention. This place is very cool - not many tourists and beautiful weather - Jess gets to do all that swimming / sight seeing nonsense while I sit and read books about America or write... Athens - the armpit of the world - a big pile of decaying marble atop a hill with japanese tourists climbing all over it is not something to be proud of. Place is filthy, polluted and full of fucking morons... burn it to the ground and you'll make Mike a happier guy! The islands are adifferent story and I'm keeping a journal that I'll stick up somewhere when i get home. Jess is having fun apart from all the times that i point out how much nicer San Francisco is. I'm gonna burn in hell or get dumped. Hi to all back home and I'll blog again in the next couple of days. Mike is blogging to: some really bad greek pop music in a very nice quiet bar...

"GREASE IS THE WORD..." Soon be on our way to the airport. Seeing as we are going to a backward place in the world I have no idea if I'll get to blog in the next 2 weeks or not... maybe I will for the first day in Athens but after that we are island hopping so I'll just have to play it by ear... I'll have my Jornada with me so I'll keep a journal to go up somewhere on the site along with all the photos... Attack of the Clones was a lot worse than I expected... yes it was better than Episode One but not by much... fucking terrible... I'll moan more about it on my return... And I guess that's it for now... we have to leave for the airport in 30 mins and I haven't packed yet... as usual I'll send a couple of postcards to the deserving and emails to everyone else... if the plane goes down make sure someone sends a link from here to The Guardian then maybe George Lucas will learn I was thinking what an idiot he was just before we exploded. If that doesn't happen I'll be back in circulation around the 30th... Bye for now! Mike is blogging to: Surfer Rosa by The Pixies

WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT I'm blogging well away from my PC at the moment, using my old battered but much loved HP Jornada 820. A few years ago I couldn't convince myself that I needed a laptop as well as my brand new state of the art PC so I went shopping for alternatives and came away with this little guy. Two things sold me on it: the 15 hour battery life and almost full size keyboard - no pissing around with screen-pens and having to recharge every 4 hours or carry three spare batteries every where you go. This thing carries a stripped down office suite which I've stripped down even further and ditched all the extra apps that I would never use. Its now a lean word processor with full internet access, loads of memory and a voice recorder... fast and pretty tough - its been dropped countless times and thrown into backpacks around Israel, Cyprus, New York, San Francisco and, in a few short days from now, the Greek Islands... maybe I'll find out if the little fuck is water proof... the thing is nicely punked up too - sprayed black and complete with 'Transmetropolitan' smiley face. I love this guy! ...And its a bloody good job I have it as my main PC finally blew last night. The last 2 weeks have seen me jerry-rigging the thing with cannibalised parts from my other machines but the processor finally gave up the ghost sometime yesterday while we were out... I got home really late last night after seeing the wonderful Sex and Lucia (more about that later) to find my 'always on' machine most definitely 'off'. From what I can figure the third fan that I fitted popped first and then the whole thing overheated... the inside of the case resembles burnt toast and after trying to get the thing back on its feet last night and a morning wasted trying to get three separate machines to function as one I finally declared the machine lost... all my hard-drives are safe and sound so I haven't lost any data but now I have to head out onto Tottenham Court Road to secure a replacement... not too sure at the moment whether to get a brand new machine (which will be costly and full of junk I don't need) or just buy a set of innards - new motherboard, processor etc... maybe a new case... my trusty mammoth monitor is still ok so I'll probably opt for the cheaper punk option and go the Frankenstein route... biggest downside of all this is that there is no fucking way I'm gonna get Richard's new website up before we jet off on Saturday... gotta email him now and he's gonna be pissed. Happier thoughts: Sex and Lucia was astounding... the most convoluted plotting I've seen in quite a while and as the film drew towards its close I was sure the director, Julio Medem, would fuck up... but to my delight he sustained the thing right to the very end and I can't say a bad word about it. I loved Y Tu Mama Tambien but felt let down by the ending and the forced political stance but Sex and Lucia falls prey to none of that... its hard to convey the plot without giving too much away but basically it centres around a writer, Tristan Ulloa, and the love of his life Lucia (an astounding Paz Vega) - for me it was more of a study of how a writer feeds off every single thing around him than anyhting to do with Vega's character - in fact we learn very little about her apart from she likes fucking and not wearing much - but her initial introduction to the man she loves is the sweetest thing I've seen in film for years - that one scene in the bar is much better than the whole of Amelie but then i always thought that film was nothing more than the story of a sexually repressed cute girl trying to escape from her father... I'm digressing... ultimately S&L is about how the writer's past returns in an unexpected manner and indirectly forces Lucia to flee but its quite some time before we realise how well the whole thing fits together. It has quite a dark beginning but with a beautifully realised non-linear plot the audience is moved backwards and forwards and from location to location with an assured sense of control by the director... he leaves you many clues as to where things are heading but the pacing is so astute that you have to be quick to recognise them all... the cast are wonderful (especially the underused 'Pepe') and yes there's plenty of sex but that is not the be all and end all, here like Y Tu Mama Tambien, the sexual scenes are character driven and not at all gratuitous (although pretty explicit) like they would be in Hollywood - ha, the thought that Hollywood could even 'attempt' to make a film as stunningly sophisticated as this is laughable.! Which leads me to... Tonight... I'm succumbing to a mixture of despair and excitement in going to see Episode Two... I love the fact that I can get a kick out of two so different styles of film making as the film I saw yesterday and the one this evening - no matter how terrible Star Wars will be I know the little kid in me will still get a kick out of it but I do need to comment on a Guardian interview I read yesterday with George Lucas. He was asked in a roundabout way why the acting was so bad in his new movie and he had the audacity to claim that because he had styled the acting on old 1930's serials it now took a very sophisticated audience to pick up on the nuances of the movie. He went on to say that anyone who didn't see that and understand it was basically uneducated in the ways of film ('You're either with us or aginst us' huh George?) ... well Mr Lucas I thought I was an arrogant fuck when it came to movies until I read that - what a pompous inflated twat you have become. The acting in those old serials was stylised because its cast were cheap and couldn't really act... no matter there though - Buster Crabbe may have been wooden (and after all he was an Olympic swimmer not an actor) but he had charisma as did most of the leading cast in both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers - both of which quite clearly influenced the original Star Wars (but not as much as Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress did and the acting in that is superb) - the performances in The Phantom Menace were not stylised - they were just fucking poor... the dialogue in Star Wars was always ropy and even though Harrison Ford could never be considered an actor with any range he and the rest of the cast pulled those movies off simply because those three films, maligned Return of the Jedi included, had a charm that was distinctally lacking in the new movies... the new trilogy has bad actors like both the kids who play Anakin and good actors like Ewan McGregor who are hamstrung with bad lines, bad costumes and a total reinvention of everything that made the first series such a thrill... I sat through Phantom Menace stunned by the blatant racism, the dazzlingly obvious game-console inspired set pieces and the simply pathetic script... originally Lucas claimed that The Phantom Menace was for kids and that the overly harsh critics had lost their sense of wonder... why then did the plot revolve around trade sanctions and an embargo... does Lucas really think this is what 'kids' discuss in the playground?.... now he claims that Episode 2 is for a sophisticated audience but then gets pissed when asked questions resulting from having an audience that pays attention to small details - like 'how the fuck can R2D2 fly and why didn't he use that skill to great effect in Empire when he was stuck in a fucking swamp you chinless wonder? Kenobi not only doesn't recognise R2D2 in Star Wars he claims he never owned a droid... so do we see his memory get wiped along with the droids in Episode 3? If Jedi aren't supposed to enjoy fighting why all the grins on the faces of McGregor and co in the final scenes of Episode 2 and the rallying move to the dark side at the end of Episode One when Obi Wan only manages to kill Darth maul after losing his rag? Were these Jedi OD'ing on miniclorans or wthatever the fuck they were called... and why for fucks sake take an idea as pure as 'The Force' and turn it into some pseudo scientific bug... you fucking idiot!... You say you expect the new audience to now watch Empire and think 'at last he's told him he's his father' instead of 'Oh fuck! - Vader's his father!" but why then aren't we desperate to see a C3P0 reunion scene? - Vader built him after all... didn't he?... wasn't that the plan when you wrote episodes 1 - 3 as a teenager? But if that's the case what influenced you? You state clearly that Episodes 4 - 6 came about after seeing The Hidden Fortress but what gave you the idea of sanctions, a trade embargo and genetic testing back in 1974? Lucas is a fucking liar attempting to pass off a bad idea as an old idea... he made Star Wars as 'episode 4' for the simple reason that the old serials that he enjoyed so much as a kid always got better by episode four... it was where the momentum really kicked off - and that was a stunning and original idea that he deserves praise for - to kick off a movie in mid stride so to speak, but to now backtrack and claim that he always had Eps 1 - 3 in mind but it's only now that the special effects have caught up... bollocks! Great big hairy sweaty bollocks! Lucas was a genius first time round but this hackneyed series of prequels is just a rape... you money grabbing chinless fuck... sell out by all means but don't insult the people that made you rich (and continue to do so) by calling us unsophisticated... I know more about film making than you do for one simple reason... I know its not about making a fast buck at the expense of the integrity of yourself and the audience - I have more respect for MTV style movie makers like Michael Bay who make nonsense like Armageddon and Pearl Harbour because as bad as those films are they don't pretend to be anything else... they don't pretend to be 'visionaries' and start to believe their own hype as soon as their wives leave them... episodes 1 - 3 are nothing more than a very public midlife crisis... yes Jengo Fett does look very fucking cool but all he is ultimately is the sci-fi-movie equivalent of an expensive sportscar being driven by an old man with too much money and a pony tail... the only good thing is that at your age your prostate is probably about to do eveil things to you - in which case (after the tacky tribute funeral complete with John Williams music) we can get to the important business of restoring the original trilogy back to its original glory - making it look the way it did before you meddled with it you dumb fuck... the 'restored trilogy' is nothing more than a face lift for your ageing trophy wife - the real one left so now you've gotta make the one good thing left in your life look as good as the 'younger women' on the block... the stupid thing is that if you left things alone in the first place everyone would sit back and say 'yes, that trilogy may be a little old fashioned now in terms of effects but fuck it - its a classic...' what you've got now is the Mona Lisa in a see through top - cheap tacky and again insulting to the fans who actually love that series of films more than you ever could.... you corporate sell out old fuck. Ahhh - now I feel better. Am I geared up for episode 2 now tonight? You betcha... Did I also mention that some Italian guy wants to buy an old Iron Maiden record of mine for $200? Mike is ranting but smiling to: What's My Problem Today? by eighty six

"YOU CAN'T FIGHT IN HERE, THIS IS THE WAR ROOM!" How busy am I today? Very fucking busy. Richard's website steaming ahead - just got some writing work on the use of CD warning labels - most of them should say "DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY" My monitor is all blurry - Julia sent me a pack of stuff from the states which included a Spider Man 'wacky wall crawler' but the little guy has left a trail of spider juice streaked down the screen... now it looks like my PC is sexually excited... Just about caught up with my email. Who the fuck is Dr Strangelove? If you guys are gonna sign my guestbook and use your secret identities then I'm gonna get wound up. Was hoping to pop along and see Ramsey today - he's dressed as a Jedi in the store window... won't be able to make it though - as well as all the work I've taken on I've gotta go into town and get holiday provisions, then meet Jess after her final exam and go see some foreign piece of filth at one of the art houses... Will blog more when I get back - was too shattered last night - up �til 3am rewriting html... Now I need to grab potato cakes and coffee... Oh - forgot to mention that I've seen the opening of both 'Clones' and 'Spiderman' now - decided to watch no more than 10 minutes though because I want to see both on a really big screen before I pass judgement... both look ok from what I've seen but Spidey has the edge... Mike is blogging to: all sorts of weirdness sent to me by the lovely Miss America

"IRREPRESSABLE!" Well, my body clock is excellently fucked. Loads of emails today. Most asking for more pics of Rocket Mike. I'll get around to it before the holiday but I'll take the gear to Greece with me to get some location footage. Stu suggested I wear the helmet on the plane - I bet the cabin crew would love to see me step towards them wearing a big piece of cardboard on my head... "I'm not a terrorist - I'm an old fashioned super hero - go ahead and throw me out of the plane... that's the whole point." I'm about a day behind in writing back to people - sorry. Unless you've been to my guest book - a few people pointed out the automatic response that emails back to you guys was very un-Mikeish - I've sorted that out and at Doc's suggestion you can now say whatever the fuck you like on the pages - swearing is indeed fun. No real news but I did add page one of the retro-BBC2 stuff tonight so have a look and let me know what you think. Upcoming: I'm going to host some fiction written by other people. I've been asked to get something up on The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan. More Rocket Mike action shots. More retro BBC2 pages. The all new version of Ricardo's web site. Then I'm fucking off to the Greek Islands for a well-deserved rest. Mike is blogging to: What's My Problem Today? by eighty six

"I MAY NOT MAKE AN HONEST LIVING, BUT I AM 100% AMERICAN" Jess went off to do one of her exams and left with me a list of things to get done before we go off on holiday - she stressed how important this stuff was so being the perfect boyfriend that I am I spent the morning making a King of the Rocket Men costume... I was working on something new for the site regarding classic tv on BBC2 around the six pm mark from when I was a kid and started writing about the old republic serials that used to get shown all the time - Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and King of the Rocket Men. So I found a heap of photos of Flash, less on Buck and fuck all for King... this is about the best of the bunch but I'll put more up with the finished article... I'm also waiting for the BBC to get back to me but the last time I emailed them they took a bout a week to respond. So with not a lot of info to be found about one of the best shows I ever saw as a kid I racked my brains for memories... the cliff-hanger at the end of each episode where the bad guys would usually hurl the unconscious King out of a plane... the dials on his chest plate that simply said UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT FAST SLOW... but the best recollection was of me putting an old cornflakes packet on my head and running around until I hit the furniture... so in the interests of nostalgia: Once I get the piece finished I may add more Rocket Mike pics if I get enough emails asking for them... The other high point of the day was getting Doc's cd in the post, which is fucking great... I added a new guestbook seeing as the last one was a complete and utter piece of rancid shit. Please disregard any previous links to the old one. Also, because I'm too cheap to pay for all the features I'm not too sure if it will allow you to call me a cunt-knocker... try and be creative in a Chris Morris kind of way - how about calling me a bush-badger for a change? Mike is blogging to: What's My Problem Today? by eighty six

"THE CREATURE FROM THE ID" I'm tired... Quick blog before I turn in... (don't ask into what) Stu set me straight regarding my over inflated American style ego which was nice. I also called him a twat and got to point out that it was Judd Nelson staring at Molly's crotch in The Breakfast Club and not Judge Dredd... Stayed up late putting together something on old TV... Stu also moaned about the lack of new content on the site and told me to lay off with all the design jiggery pokery and get down to some more scribbling... 'write hard' indeed. So I'll try and get that finished and posted sometime after I wake up... it's gonna feature vintage Flash Gordon, The Adventure Game, Basil Rathbone and that guy who was "born in an egg on a mountain top". Damn, I'm yawning like a whore at the end of a profitable night - but without the funny taste at the back of my throat... Mike is blogging to: Surfer Rosa by The Pixies

"I'M LEAVING ON A JET PLANE..." Mike is blogging to: Stu babbling on the phone about Molly Ringwald

"IT'S A HARD WORLD FOR LITTLE THINGS" Guestbook update: "During the time of 4pm and 11pm (Eastern Time) we'll be installing a new server. You might experience an outage of 1-2 hours in the mentioned window. Please apologize any incovenience caused by this." Fair enough I suppose... Lot of interesting film clashes going on at the moment - yesterday it was Superman III with Fantastic Voyage and tonight its a hard choice between Ring 2 and Saturn 3... then again I own all those fims on video already so what the fuck am I moaning about... Best movie today without a doubt though is Night of the Hunter on Ch4 at 1.25am... fucking classic. Mike is blogging to: Seduce and Destroy by Blackmouth

"I'M SERIOUS, DEAK, YOUR MIND HAS TAKEN A WALK OFF THE MAP" Fuck-knack - my hideous free guest book doesn't seem to be working and just when it was getting interesting... if the problem doesn't fix itself I'll grab a new guestbook from elsewhere. Stu pointed out he was worried that people may find out he has geekish tendencies... hmm let me see... spent several months of his life playing Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil on the Playstation... has been using AOL non-stop for over five years... watches Blakes Seven and ST:TNG on cable... was the first to moan at me when I said Daleks were robots... mate you are a fucking geek! Got a great email from Doc telling me how he is tormenting his poor work colleagues, producing mini art work and using his left hand to steal candy from children... his band's site now has a tour diary from Scandinavia up on line as well as some robotic type sleeve design and flyers... Keeping the robotic theme I've also been asked to do more "fun things with toys and a camera" like I did on a recent post so I'll try and find room in my busy slacker schedule to do more silly crap like that... Quick plug for my old employers... Courttia Newland & Alex Wheatle will be reading from their new books 'Snakeskin' and 'East of Acre Lane� on Wednesday 22nd May at 7pm. I'd be going myself as I've met Alex a few times and he's a nice guy - should be an interesting evening - but I'm going to be stuck on a Greek island by then. Everyone seems excited by the upcoming dragon movie... Also nice to hear that a few of you are spending your hard earned money on some of my book recommendations... makes me feel like getting a job in a bookstore again. Maggie just emailed to instruct me that I should "Write hard!" - someone is obviously a closet Christian Slater fan. As much as I enjoyed Pump up the Volume I'm more of a Broken Arrow fan Mike is blogging to: Stacked Up by Senser

"KILL ME, KILL ME NOW!" Jess is tormenting me... I've been understanding with the whole lack of movies until her exams are over (although I did manage to sneak in Transformers: The Movie, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Halloweeen and Halloween II, Requiem for a Dream and Fantastic Voyage) but this music she's listening to today is just too much... fucking mexican techno or some such shit... laced with The Soundtrack of our Lives who may have been ok live but suck balls at all other times... my ears hurt. Just to keep me on my toes yesterday she started listening to Captain Beefheart... how you can go from the good Captain to this Swedish cock-rock is beyond me... no wonder people are so willing to risk life and limb crossing the border from Mexico... they are trying to escape Plastilina Mosh.... Mike is blogging to: music to watch girls drive their boyfriends fucking insane with

"YOU WANT... UH... BROWN SANDWICHES... OR GREEN SANDWICHES?" Stu's post to the Guestbook was a little harsh on the place we used to live... ok the town itself maybe could have done with the odd burst of fire but our own place was pretty cool. An odd house that had been split into two flats but right down the middle rather than one up and one down. It made for an 'interesting' if little cramped space... especially once we'd got the big TV and a couple of PCs in the place... being bachelors for most of our stay there the kitchen soon became a place to throw the remains of takeaways... pretty fucking grim. From what I remember though we had a lot of fun... rose tinted memories perhaps? I remember a stand up argument with a TV license inspector that was pretty funny and sending IMs from one side of the room to another rather than actually having a 'real' conversation. A lot of the time it was like The Odd Couple but with two Walter Matthaus... That place must have been the size of about three of the rooms here... surprised we didn't kill each other. Gotta go reply to more email and grab some coffee... Mike is blogging to: Van Halen

"CARRY ON BLOGGING" Stu has already started jumping on the Guestbook... not too sure if it's mine or his ego that he's aluding to though. We both have large ones but I think mine is slightly bigger... Mike is blogging to: Van Halen

"BE MY GUEST..." You guys say some some funny shit through my feedback form so I figured you deserve the chance to shine in public... hence the GUESTBOOK I just added to the site. There's another link to it over on the right near the feedback link and on the feedback page itself as well as the main site's index page so now you have no excuse not to tell me just how witty I am or how I shouldn't make jokes about the recently deceased... remember that what you guys write up there will be available for everyone to see... Mike is blogging to: Fantastic Voyage on Channel Four

"OK GANG, YOU KNOW THE RULES, NO HUMPING, NO LICKING, NO SNIFFING HINEYS" "My brother and I played with the electric fence... I was about to touch it with my tongue, when it really zapped my fingers and I was a little more warey of the thing!" Doc... don't lick the electric fence... that's the best advice I've given to anyone in quite a while... dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons Mike is blogging to: Everything for Free by K's Choice

"EOLIA WITH THE MULTIPLE CAPACITIES" I love new technology... after finding all that cool Star Fleet stuff up on the SFXB site I had a hunt around for more obscure Japanese shows and found a scorcher that to the best of my knowledge never played in the UK at all but was pretty big in France: San Ku Kai. It resembles Monkey in style but has robots and the space-sailing-ship from Star Fleet in it - oh and a talking monkey... anyway, I found some interesting sites but most were non-English so I hit the Google TRANSLATE button and this is what it came up with: It is at this time that Ayato unloads, nice with the impeccable Blow-dry, which returns at his place for saying hello to his/her parents. An arm on the right, an eye on the left, it discovers them wildly killed... finally... in short... it was horrible. Stressos, framed by their frightening head Kom�nor, Volcor and Furia try to give him its account when by chance, Ayato is saved of accuracy by one bent which kills your race, it is Eolia with the multiple capacities. This one entrusts to him the orders of a fabulous spaceship, it: "San Ku Ka�" Fucking genius... "impeccable Blow-dry"? Site stuff: I updated the links page and added the star fleet site (it's owner, Andy, dropped me a line - always nice to hear from fellow obsessives) and I also added something truly diabolical... Mike is blogging to: the Detroit Rock City soundtrack

"I MERELY CHEWED IN SELF-DEFENCE. I DIDN'T SWALLOW" Ok here's a movie concept for you... London reduced to rubble by big fuck-off dragons. Let me repeat that for you. BIG FUCK-OFF DRAGONS. Another figment of Mike's imagination? Another 'wouldn't it be great if...' conversation? Nope. Some visionary has taken a big pile of money and gone off and made a dragon movie... not some watered down Sean Connery dragon movie either - oh no... this one has Matthew McConaughey wielding a rather large battle axe and Christian Bale (American Psycho) being chased around the London Underground... oh and did I mention the Apache attack helicopters and tanks that go head to head with big flying lizard things? Can you sense my grin? fuck Star Wars - I want dragons now goddamnit! dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons Check out the trailer and I also posted a pic here. dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons Mike is blogging to: The Detroit Rock City soundtrack

"LISTEN! WE'RE NOT JUST DOING THIS FOR MONEY... WE'RE DOING IT FOR A SHIT LOAD OF MONEY"! Just spent the best part of an hour on the phone trying to get decent tickets to see Episode II on Friday... Jess will freak when she learns (probably by reading this) that we will be celebrating her final exam by going to see Star Wars... it's not like we should be packing or anything the night before we leave for Greece... fuck... just remembered we are supposed to be having Duncan over that night... oh well... we'll sort something out... After getting mildly excited about Episode II I've now decided that it's probably going to be really bad... here are my current fears... Vader-to-be is still getting called 'Annie' by everyone. I know it's spelt Ani but it's a fucking girl's name. Obi Wan looks a little like Bjorn Borg. Christopher Lee seems to be replaying Saruman but with a hair cut. Christopher Lee being able to act will show up the rest of the cast. Boba Fett - once the most menacing character in the original trilogy is reduced to a brat with a really bad hair cut. 'Annie' has a braid and a ponytail. Jar Jar. It still seems racist - the Jewish slave owner is back... as are the 'Japs'... The little girl from Leon would never grow up to shag such a gay looking boy-band member. Darth Vader - cool. Darth Maul - short but cool. Darth Sideous? Silly Speaking of names: Chris Lee starts off as Count Dooku but later becomes Darth Tyranus... fucking hell. Special effects all look like a Nintendo preview... Obi Wan doesn't get to bang the Princess... but does get to say dodgy lines like "Oh Annie! You'll be the death of me..." Padme Amidala sounds a bit like Rock Me Amadeus George Lucas still has no chin. Yoda isn't a puppet anymore. Chris Lee is about nine feet tall and gets to fight Yoda who is about nine inches tall and still sounds like Fozzie Bear... "Hmm. Get me a step-ladder I will..." There is a character called Kit Fisto. I think he may be a vaseline trooper... Episode One was a big piece of shit. Everything looks too high tech and not retro enough... and to this end I have designed a new weapon for Obi Wan: That one's dedicated to Stu and Mark... British through and through. Mike is blogging to: The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack

"I AM GODZILLA AND YOU ARE JAPAN!" I always thought Japan made a mistake somewhere back in the seventies... While all their pop culture has been stuffed full of gigantic robots the actual real scientists and techy developers have been miniaturising everything - and not in a cool Fantastic Voyage way either. Where are the real Transformers? Where are the real gigantic labor devices that manga and japanime have been promising me since I first saw Battle of the Planets? I've crashed every car I've ever owned and I blame the Japanese for it. If they had got their act together I'd have been in the head of a sleek metal giant rather than crashing headlong into some fuckers BMW a few years ago on the M25. Imagine the road rage if your car could pick up the other car and fling it off the motorway in a fit of spite... the reason I'm in this "Where the fuck is my giant transforming robot?" mode is two-fold: 1. I just picked up a relaunch - revamped Transformers comic and it was pretty good, and 2. I just spent the best part of the night watching episodes of Star Fleet... don't give me that 'what the fuck?' look... Mark and Phil didn't remember these guys the other day either... ring any bells now? And what about this chap? Ahh - better check out this site then - as well as loads of Star Fleet stuff you get a quick nod to The A Team, Air Wolf, Street Hawk, Brothel Fox etc... ok so I made Brothel Fox up but it has potential. I've just noticed that my blog headlines of late are all movie quotes... wonder how long I can keep that up? And before you email me - Yes Stu I know you remember Star Fleet and especially love the music that Brian May and Eddie Van Halen did in tribute to the puppets without strings show... I still think the world would be a better place with giant robots instead of ordinary dull vehicles - I mean if two rival rail companies wanted to compete for the same stretch of track we could have reports on the news of trains being flung onto platforms and bodies... erm... Mike is blogging to: Temptation by The Holly Cole Trio

"SUAVE! GODDAMN YOU'RE ONE SUAVE FUCKER!" Listening to loud music and writing about movies no one else has ever seen... eg. this morning "Fuck you... that's why" by The Smut Peddlers accompanied a piece on 'Five Minutes To Live' (1961) with Johnny Cash as a guitar picking, bank manager's wife kidnapping psycho... I also seem to be getting odd emails on the hour from people wishing to dip into the fount of knowledge that is Mike... So in response; The Breeders cd is entitled TK, Vincent Price died on October 25th 1993 (aged 82), and if you use enough lubricant it shouldn't hurt at all... Maggie sent me a couple of TV ad questions... Nike (spit) can suck my dick but I don't mind rambling on about Dennis Hopper... The ad currently showing on TV was directed by The Coen Brothers and even though it has a laid back Hopper playing chess with Christina Ricci you know that Frank Booth is bubbling somewhere under that damn white shirt; "Christina, why don't you take that shirt off. I'll fuck anything that moves!". The music is "I See the Rain" by The Marmalade but there is an alternate version with an instrumental version of "Hang On to Your Ego" by the Beach Boys knocking around too... The other Gap ads are worth a look but I'm not sure they're playing in this country yet (maybe on satellite?). One directed by Roman Coppola has four grinning actors astride bicycles in San Francisco - one of them is Scarlett Johansson from Ghost World and The Man Who Wasn't There. The Other ad by Cameron Crowe has Kate Beckinsale and Orlando Bloom (Blackhawk Down, Lord of the Rings) being chased by other Gap uniformees... none of this is a patch on Hopper of course... I saw the trailer for Roman Coppola's movie CQ and that looks like a lot of fun... Thanks for the nice email about the bots... I'll feed em another circuit board or two... Big news at the moment... Fugazi are gonna be in town next month at The Forum... wanna come and get earache? Mike is blogging to: How I loved You by The Angels of Light

"ALWAYS TWO THERE ARE... NO MORE... NO LESS. A MASTER AND AN APPRENTICE" Spent most of yesterday and a portion of tonight messing around with java script to get richard's new site looking sexier than his old one... Plus I finally got to the bottom of my recent PC problems - odd noises lead to further investigation and this is what I found: And if you thought that PC ripping guy was an evil looking fucker then check out his partner: But these were just robots... who was pulling their strings? Fucking Mini Fett... See - I told you a camera would be worth all that money and yes I have got too much time on my hands... Mike is blogging to: I Lied My Face Off by The Alkaline Trio

"NEVER APOLOGISE - IT'S A SIGN OF WEAKNESS" No time to blog yesterday... I have added a few more pages to the main site though. Me blathering on about music, a quick run down of the best way to get at online music and a lengthy list of what I'm listening to at the moment. Off into town in a little while... haven't seen a movie in ages but agreed with Jess not to drag her to the flicks until after her last exam... that kind of rocks as the evening of her last exam I get to drag her to see Episode Two just before we shoot off to the Greek Islands. How cool is that Fett tv trailer by the way "short range blaster" - fuck yeah... In fact there's a small pile of decent ads on at the moment - the new Tango one, anything sexist to do with chocolate and the Coen Brothers helmed gap ad with Dennis Hopper and Christina Ricci... On the subject of movies - the quote at the top of this blog is from John Wayne in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and I should have a decent copy of the Spiderman movie by the end of the week - so whoop de fucking whoop... Decided to sit down and do some serious thinking about this job lark too... need something I can fall into when I get back from Greece. Pulled all the shelving out of 'Duncan's' room yesterday - left a bloody big blue blotch of wall - may get it painted before he moves in or leave it for him to get all artistic over... sorted out the another of the rooms a little too... house is finally beginning to reflect our personality a little more... pretty fucked up and filled with books. Tomorrow I'm in the junction to catch up with a load of cancelled lunch type conversations - pick up some comics - grab a coffee with Frank and generally be the slacker type of scum that gets beaten up by Ben Afleck in Mall Rats... Mike is blogging to: Reign of the Golden Gorilla by Ozma

THE ONLY REAL CONTAGION IS STUPIDITY It's been a while since I got sent one of these but I thought it was worth making an example of as I know a lot of you guys out there haven't been online for quite as long as I have... Someone I used to work with passed the following message onto me - unfortunately he seems to have forwarded it on to every person in his address book: "Dear Colleagues and Friends: PLEASE READ THIS URGENT MESSAGE!!! Per Ed Brown's attached note, I found this virus on my "C" drive. DO NOTE OPEN THE FILE / RIGHT MOUSE CLICK IT AND DELETE IT . . . THEN DELETE IT FROM YOUR RECYLE BIN. Check your computer now and follow these steps. PER ED'S NOTE: Please check and verify if you have this virus. It was sent to me (accidentally) and it is said that it is passed on to everyone on my address list. It is very probable that you have it. If you do have it, contact all the people in YOUR ADDRESS BOOK because the program AUTOMATICALLY sends everyone in your address book a message with the virus. The virus' name is jdbgmgr.exe and it is not detected with McAfee nor Norton. It remains in your computer's system for 14 days before it erases all you files. To delete and eliminate it completely, please do the following immediately: 1. Go to START -- FIND --FILES OR FOLDERS 2. Under NAMED, type jdbgmgr.exe and click FIND NOW. > > > > >Make sure you are looking under Drive (C) / MY COMPUTER ******DO NOT CLICK ON IT IF IT APPEARS******** 3. If the virus appears *(the icon next to it will be a small teddy bear), the name will be jdbgmgr.exe 4. *****DO NOT OPEN IT************ Just RIGHT CLICK on it and DELETE it. It will be sent to the Recycle Bin. 5. After you see it disappear, go to the RECYCLE BIN and DELETE it from there as well. If at all possible, EMPTY the Recycle Bin under FILE." Sheesh - what a load of bollocks. The virus message is of course a hoax. The jdbgmgr.exe is a standard windows component that is found in every windows installation. It is used as the Java debugger manager in the Microsoft Java runtime engine. There is nothing malicious about this file or the teddybear icon that accompanies it. If you are running windows on a PC then you will have this file... it's supposed to be there. Anyone who has deleted the jdbgmgr.exe from their system can restore it by installing an updated version of Microsoft Virtual Machine or Internet Explorer. Seems like a silly way to spend your day though... just don't be so fucking gullible... and the next person to forward me some goofy chain letter or pyramid selling get rich quick email will have a hungry rat inserted in the nearest body cavity American Psycho style... Mike is blogging to: The Hammer Party by Big Black

MONOCHROME FROM HERE ON IN I bet you can't wait to start telling me how much you prefered the old layout... You still get the 'feedback' link to the right - just click on the hairy guy. Each individual blog still has it's own link but its now just a matter of clicking on the 'time'. So its another bank holiday: all over the country cars are being washed and the TV is full of crap movies... I'm still half asleep - supposed to be meeting up with Frank and popping in to see Mark but I'll probably have to do all that tomorrow... I've been sent a bunch of links to check out and i've got a small-shed-full of work to do... Jess has taken to revising in another room as I have Mr Cave cranked up a little loud... she wanted me to mention that unlike my good self she enjoyed 'The Hives' so much that she bought a t shirt featuring their tiny little heads... I have no problem with this at all - in fact it somehow makes sense to have tits on the front of a shirt as well as inside it Mike is blogging to: No More Shall We Part by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

IT LOOKED FINE IN THE FIRST PLACE.... Things are gonna look fucked up for the next hour - major redesign under way... Mike is blogging to: She's So Control by The SubDebs

SHORT AND HAIRY: IT HAD TO BE...
I'm Logan
What X-Men Character are You? Mike is blogging to: Everything Sux by The Descendents

INSERT WITTY COMMENT HERE I've also decided to add blog headers to each and every individual post from now on... 'god his life must be empty' - yes I can read minds too you bastards... Mike is blogging to: Read Music/Speak Spanish by Desaparecidos

THE BLOGS THEY ARE A CHANGING Just updating the blog template. Added a link to the end of each individual blog. Just allows me and others to link back to old blogs - so if I really piss someone off they can email me and say "You called me a lesbian here - what are you gonna do about it?" To which I can reply "Yes I did call you a lesbian here but a few days earlier I posted a photo here that showed you clam diving so shut the fuck up... MIKE IS BLOGGING TO: READ MUSIC/SPEAK SPANISH BY DESAPARECIDOS

HIVES? I'D RATHER WATCH THE SWARM WITH MICHAEL CAINE Ok so tonight we went to see The Hives - personally I think they should be called The Hypes but more on that later. We missed the opening act but got there in time to be annoyed by Billy Childish. Bad sound coupled with naval gazing and perhaps the worse rendition of 'Hound Dog' I've ever heard - bloody awful really. The Soundtrack of Our Lives were something else though - in fact they were the best band on the bill. Watching them was a little bit like watching the movie 'Almost Famous' - you know that its not the real thing but its kind of cool anyway... the fact that Duncan had this look of pure horror attached to his face throughout their set helped immensely. They are Swedish like The Hives and this explains a lot but I'll get onto that later. The Hives, as we were reminded constantly by the lead singer (imagine Jarvis Cocker doing Iggy Pop) are the saviours of rock n roll - in which case let me be the first to have a go at crucifying the annoying bastards. First of all I thought they were simply one of these flash in the pan acts that crop up from nowhere each year and get marketed as the next big thing - but as people keep reminding me they've been going for years and have only now reached the dizzy heights of success. Ok - if that's the case why have they only got enough songs to do a 45-minute set? Why do all the songs sound the same? Why does the lead singer spend more time talking than singing? Who told these fuckers they were good? It's definitely a Swedish thing - something somewhere has got lost in translation. Yes it was cool in the 70's for singers to introduce their band mates one at a time during a musical break in one of the songs... usually its towards the end of the gig though and not during the opening song. Play some music and we may actually care who you are, but don't stop before you've started simply to inform me that one of the people behind you is called doctor dangerous or some such bollocks. The lead singer obviously spent a lot of his youth learning the moves of a young Mick Jagger or Iggy Pop but unlike The Hives they had the music to back up the stagger. This guy just has the same terrible screeching delivery no matter what the song was - in fact he sounded like that when he spoke too - which was for most of their tiny set. I was told afterwards that his constant jabbering about how good they were was somehow ironic... I prefer to think it was just a lie. I've seen real rock music countless times and trust me this was nothing like it. No one gives a fuck if you have some blinking light bulbs and keep spelling out your band's name. The sorry thing is that the majority of the audience bought into it all. Its a fucking sad state of affairs when watered down shit like this is proclaimed to be rock music. Of course most of the audience wouldn't know real music if it anally raped them and it was kind of funny to see this large group of estate agents and hairdressers attempt to move their heads slightly to the sound of an electric guitar. The best I could say of the Hives is that they made some of the girls in the audience wriggle... So why only a 45 minute set? Too tired after playing seven or so songs? And that they left 'Hate To Say I Told You So' until right at the very end was so fucking obvious... its a 'good song' in that its the one that'll get lifted onto Now That's What I Call Music 789 or perhaps be used in a car advert and as such you'd think the band would be eager to disown it, play it early and move on to something better, something new perhaps.... for most bands I know it would be soul destroying to play a large venue like the Brixton Academy and then only have the audience come alive in the last 3 minutes for the one song that gets radio play... The Hives however seem to enjoy that - but then they would do, being nothing more than a pop band version of some much better rock music that no one in the audience would have given an ear to a few years ago - but just like fans of nu-metal or pop-punk these idiots are now being told it's ok to listen to noisier bands - a couple of weeks ago I was listening to some Bob Dylan at work and this guy came up to me and suggested I get into Linkin Park... "they're pretty extreme" he told me - yeah about as extreme as The Hives or perhaps swearing in front of your grandmother for the first time you sad fuck. Then again you did get the impression tonight that the audience would follow any band that Time Out told them were hip... a few weeks ago it would have been The Strokes, maybe a few months ago Toploader (anyone remember those idiots?) and before that the band that did that one riff for a jeans advert... in fact I guarantee that half that audience have a Babylon Zoo cd stashed away somewhere at home... fucking pathetic. Duncan and Jess enjoyed it though so maybe I was just being an old stick in the mud.... oh and that bit when they froze mid song and held their poses for 60 seconds before kicking back in to rapturous applause.... saw Therapy? do it two years ago and they were much drunker yet managed to do it with more finesse. Fuck off back to Sweden and stay there or better still get bigger and bigger, play over priced festivals and Wembley where you will never get close to a real audience again and then finally believe your own press released hype and OD while trying to impress some 15 year old groupie who can't get your small dick hard no matter how hard she sucks at its limp slug like form... I feel better now... MIKE IS BLOGGING TO: READ MUSIC/SPEAK SPANISH BY DESAPARECIDOS

Just saw the trailer for Ang Lee's The Hulk: nice San Francisco setting, nice voice over, great close up of Bruce Banner's eye during transformation then the whole side of the house explodes... not quite as good as the first Spider Man trailer but still something to get excited about. Some may think The Hulk is an odd follow up movie for Lee after Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon but from what I've read he's concentrating on the monster side of the plot as much as the heroic side... could be fucking great. The link I meant to give to Phil today was Comics2Film - great place to find out what's going on in the geeky world of superhero movies... No surprise that Halle Berry is now holding up X2 because she wants more money after winning that fucking Oscar... personally I'd just write the greedy bitch out... Storm was always a waste of space anyway. Duncan passed on a silly rumour surrounding a 'Watchmen' adaptation by Terry Pratchett, god forbid - but I'm happy to be able to quash that right now. Terry Gilliam is currently working on a 'Bad Omens' movie - based on the Terry Pratchett / Neil Gaiman novel and recently at a press conference said he'd love to have another go at getting a 'Watchmen' movie off the ground - he last tried this in 1988 but it collapsed. He is now saying it's doable but he'd want to do it as a 12 hour series rather than a single movie... can't see anyone wanting to back that then. Superheroes may be hot at the moment as far as Hollywood is concerned but I doubt they are ready for a movie that would kill the whole convention - as a faithful 'Watchmen' adaptation would have to. We just need someone with balls to have ago at 'V for Vendetta' first... Worst piece of movie news I got yesterday was from Richard telling me that the Coen Brothers intend to remake The Ladykillers - everyone knows I love the Coen�s but that movie is such a classic no one should be allowed to touch it... as for their intention to relocate it to the American deep south... the whole thing just doesn't bode well. As a change of subject, one of my photos is now up on the IndyMedia site... Mike is blogging to: The X Men soundtrack

Updated the gay page. Added some new links including a masturbation sponsorship form and a great Star Wars edit to the linkage page. Last night I reviewed the new Murakami collection and that's about it for now. On my way out but will add more later this evening... Mike is blogging to the Spiderman soundtrack - pretty sucky but I'm a geek.

It's nice having leisure time again... at the moment I'm sorting out the some 3000 songs I downloaded onto my straining hard drives and deleting the crap and burning some stuff to cd... Had a leisurely morning playing with the new website I'm building then gave Duncardo his new 'Rusty Brown' lunch box which I'm hoping bigger boys will steal from him in the next couple of days. Lunch with him and Mark then a quick whiz around Clapham before spending a little quality time back at home... The downside of all this is that Paola who got me the job in the first place probably now hates my fucking guts... it was never my intention to fuck up our friendship and I need to speak to her sooner rather than later but as she's probably been the focal point for all the crap I left behind I'm being rather cowardly at reaching for the phone. It's difficult being irresponsible when you get to my age. Jess is in exam mode - chain-reading the classics and quoting obscure lines of literature at me. Greek Islands update: The flight is booked as is our first night's accommodation in Athens... after that we just set off and do our own thing. I'm already worried about the lack of multiplex cinema complexes... there seem to be a lot of beautiful natural islands out there... you'd think by now that they'd have turned one of them into a 20 screen cinema with adjacent internet cafes and book stores. Alas from what I've seen it's all water, rocks and nature... guess I'll have to put my old classical studies head on and act like Tony Robinson on 'Time Team'. While we are out there Duncan is house sitting so don't think you can use the handy map to come over and rip off the DVD collection... you'll have to get Duncan drunk first... I finished the Murakami collection... one of the best things I�ve read this year. Beautiful writing and a giant frog: �You and I will go underground beneath the Shinjuku branch of the Tokyo Security Trust Bank to do mortal combat with Worm.� Now if only that kind of thing happened in London... Mike is blogging to Wheatus

Bit of an odd day today... Things came to a nice boil at the new job and I was forced to make it my 'old job'. I decided a long time ago that I would not simply allow people to speak to me in any manner they chose simply because they feel I owe then some kind of status. If anyone has ever had a problem with me (and there have been a few) we can usually meet on some kind of level ground and chew things out in a dignified manner. The minute someone wants to kick and shout from behind a desk and expect me to keep quiet... well that just doesn't work with me. So I quit the job and walked out of the place at 11.30 this morning. A little respect and I may have even worked out some notice period but after this morning's display the place can go fuck itself. Shame, simply because all of the people there are really nice. I've not mentioned the job much on here and that was because there wasn't much to mention - nice people, dull job and overall a rather twisted little company... no more to say on the subject really. So..... what's next? The Greek Islands I think... If you are going to be unemployed I think you should at least try it out in style... off there at the end of May. I'll find a short-term gig until then and find something more Mike-ish on my return... Best part of today - eating Mexican food with Jess (who is officially the most understanding person I've ever met) and just kicking back and reading the new Murakami... Saw some of the May Day protests but it was a rather tired affair by the time we saw it at 4ish. Not that I wanted any violence - fuck no - but the turn out was pretty low from what I could see. Paris though - that was something else... Seeing as I get to sleep in late tomorrow I'll probably stay up late tonight and get some updates done. Tomorrow I'll be in the Junction if anyone wants to catch a coffee - comics to collect and a present to drop off. Rest of the day I'll devote to Richard's new website. Now if I can just find some appropriate music... Mike is blogging to: Take This Job and Shove It by The Dead Kennedys

Duncan's birthday and I forgot his fucking present - doh! Still it wasn't a total loss as I got a lot of free crap today... The new Murakami novel 'After the Quake' which is only due out in October (thanks to Peter for that one) and a couple of Chuck Palahniuk T-shirts - one of which I will be wearing tomorrow,,, I totally forgot about the bank holiday next week which is kind of cool as I get a long weekend. May even get some of Richard's new website up and running for him. I�ve been taking my mini-pc into work and writing through lunch so I should have some new content up this weekend. Julia's grandmother died on Saturday and I just got off the phone from her. Made me think of my own gran which was a little sad but we also caught up and had a laugh or two despite the circumstances. I'm looking forward to June so we can hang with her and Kelly - should be a fun month. We are off to the Greek islands at the end of May so if you want a postcard email me your address sooner rather than later. Then Julia and Kelly arrive, a week later and Duncan moves in with us for 3 months... also hoping Stu can make it down... anyone else wanna hang out? Gotta go do a bit more work... tomorrow is the first time I'm straight home from work in ages so I should be able to get a lot more stuff done - I have a few more gayometer results to post and a little pile of new reviews... gotta concentrate on finishing Murakami in the next day... getting hold of that this early is a little like KISS tickets circa 1974 Mike is blogging to: I am the Owl by The Dead Kennedys