Get well soon, Rick...

Dark, But Shining is a great blog that I've mentioned on here more than once and I should read it every day, but I don't because I'm an idiot. This means I only just found out that one if its contributors, Rick Geerling, has been in hospital:

I was released from the hospital this afternoon. I ended up there Thursday night after I was mugged and shot three times in the leg. Seriously. I'm doing good. The first two bullets went straight through my leg below the knee, but the third shattered my thigh bone...

My own attempted mugging story suddenly seems like very small potatoes. It's been quiet on Dark, But Shining for a while now, but I hope that has more to do with them all beginning to earn mega bucks from their writing in the 'real world' and not so much to so with the gunshot wounds. [Music: The Taking of Pelham 123 soundtrack]

Back in the saddle...

So yeah I'm back. And of course my tongue was firmly in cheek for that last post (although that story is perfectly adaptable as a horror flick...) so don't bother pointing out where my 'theory' doesn't quite hold water. It's much more fun to watch and note all the things that back it up anyway... Last week ended on a high which was a nice change. The day at Westminster was great as we got to go 'off tour' and snap a few shots in places we weren't strictly supposed to be.

One hell of a place and we'll be singing its praises over on Londonist in a day or two. I threw up a little something on the awfulness that is Lost up there earlier today. We also played host to a lot of cool people over the weekend which is always nice and best of all Jess' grandmother seems to be coping pretty well. Dare I suggest that now she's out of Bill's shadow there's a whole new person there to get to know? If you've been checking up on us via Flickr you'll have seen lots of kitten pics and not much else - I fear the extra strain we put on Google with all those photos of Sandwich sent them straight into the arms of China. Jess is out with her M.A. this evening leaving me with a pizza menu and a stack of horror flicks... I'll try and not to reread them as gay westerns. Promise. Just time to point you in the direction of Ben. We've been chatting for a little while now and he's certainly one of the good guys. And by that I mean he'd make a fine CAG on the last surviving Battlestar. [Music: Johnny Cash]

Invisible Monsters...

I loved Brokeback Mountain and was surprised to hear that Crash beat it at the Screen Actors Guild awards. Then again maybe the award 'best ensemble cast' didn't quite fit Brokeback. It after all being a two man show with some great supporting work, but it's a far superior movie to Crash which was problematic and predictable in places (although Matt Dillon in this and Factotum was incredible...) Anyway let's get back to the mountain. Ang Lee's film was breathtaking in both scope and look and while it's garnered enough praise to award it instant classic status, the critics are overlooking one thing. It's a love story, it's a Western, but (and bare with me here) it's a hell of a werewolf movie too. "Where was the werewolf?" one of my editors asked me a few nights ago as I put this to him over a glass of wine. "There's no werewolf...". "Exactly," I said. "Exactly". Let's go back to Spartacus for a moment. Cast your mind back to the following exchange between Crassus and Antoninus:

Do you eat oysters? When I have them, master. Do you eat snails? No, master. Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral? No, master. Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it? Yes, master. And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals. It could be argued so, master. My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters.

If you do remember that scene it's because you saw the restored version. The original cut expelled it - in fact although it was shot the sound was lost (perhaps never recorded at all) and it was left to Anthony Hopkins to voice Laurence Olivier's lines while the much older Tony Curtis repeated his own some thirty years on. Hollywood has never rested easy with onscreen tom-on-tomfoolery. The only way for a savvy director and/or writer to get something similar on screen was to hide it - not that you had to be particularly subtle as not much fuss was kicked up by Peter Lorre stroking his walking stick in front of Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. Try and watch it now without spotting the homoerotic overtones. For my sins I can't watch Brokeback Mountain without seeing similar lycanthropic undertones. But don't listen to me, here's the most important line in the film straight from the horse rider's mouth. Ladies and gentleman, Mr Ennis Del Mar:

"The bottom line is... we're around each other and this thing grabs hold of us again in the wrong place and the wrong time then we're dead."

Now you may want to read that as Ennis simply talking about the love that he feels for Jack that binds and ultimately breaks him. That's cool, if a little simplistic, because they sure do have a heap of feelings to work through over the years, but I put it to you that "this thing" up there on Brokeback is hairier than both of them put together. While the rest of the audience was crying softly over the tragic love story I was on the edge of my seat as each year the two men set off again to try and finally bring the werewolf down. Of course they never had a use for the fishing tackle... who has time to fish when you're fighting tooth and claw with a moon cursed monster? They barely had time to fuck. It's no wonder they sought solace in each others arms. Who else would understand or even believe in the thing that they were facing up there? I mean I can tell I'm already losing a few of you... So why would Ang Lee hide the 'star' of his film? Well for one thing arthouse cinema isn't known for its all embracing love of horror mythology so he obviously thought it best to squirrel away the beast and infer its presence instead. This is beautiful as never revealing the monster leaves it up to the audience's imagination rather than rendering it with soon outdated CGI (sheep are easier to animate realistically than werewolves) or putting Randy Quaid in a wolf suit. There's also the stigma of his last genre outing, Hulk, for which he was burned badly. I expect one day for him to oversee a director's cut of that film in which all visual evidence of Bruce Banner's alter ego is similarly erased. Finally the film can then reach a larger arthouse audience as simply a story about a man battling with his id. No wonder after his dalliance with monsters he preferred to keep them offscreen this time out.* Whatever the reason though it's a hell of a horror flick. Been a while since I saw two men so determined to face down the unspeakable and perhaps sacrifice themselves for an uncaring community that knows nothing of their heroism:

Ennis: It's a one-shot thing we got goin' on here. Jack: Ain't nobody's business but ours.

Maybe with time and a change in attitudes we can look forward to the liberal arthouse community allowing those of us who have a need for bloodthirsty lycanthropy in our movies to get to see our kind of action on the big screen bathed in falling moon light. Until then we're forced to sit in the dark interpreting the shadows, but when it's done as well as Brokeback I won't complain too much. * although I did hear a rumour that he asked Nick Nolte to stay overnight on the mountain to get into character. Nolte being Nolte immediately turned feral leaving Lee with no choice but to go with Randy Quaid. Nolte is still up there living on backpackers and his own urine. [Music: At the Drive In]

Inky Circus...

Been a busy week with more to come so I won't get a chance to return to norm on here until Monday I guess. Yesterday I hooked up with the girls from Inky Circus: Their combined IQ threatened to crush me like a bug until we got onto safer ground with dumb TV references. Thank god for Joss Whedon. Been a while since I did the cross-blogging meetup thing. More of that in the next couple of months I hope... Later this morning I've been invited around the Palace of Westminster and tonight I'm having a bit of a shindig - although it's 'work' related so had to put the dancing girls on hold. What I'd really like to do right now is crawl back into bed. I hate 6am. [Music: Zappa]

8 July 1915 � 21 January 2006

Still dividing my time between here and Cockfosters, but slowly getting back into the swing of things. Thanks to all for the text messages, emails and phonecalls. Much appreciated. We buried Bill on Monday. Something very final about being one of the people dropping shovelfulls of clay down onto a coffin. Time to get back to a little irrelevant blogging... [Music: Johnny Cash - American IV]

Bill...

Jess' grandfather died today. The last time we saw him he was sat up in his hospital bed, quoting Shakespeare and being stubborn with his doctor. He was a doctor himself for many years, (hell, he never stopped being a doctor from what I saw) and he was sure he knew those charts and numbers better than any of the staff in the hospital. He went past 90 a while back and I honestly would not have been surprised a jot if he'd hit a 100 before calling it a day. Even from that damn bed he was full of advice. "Pain is the great leveler," he said and as sorry as I am to see him go I'm glad he's above that shit now. Tomorrow we'll be spending the day with Jess' grandmother and I guess we'll be back to getting on come Monday. If you have the number then send me or Jess a text message. I'm sure she'd appreciate it. It's been a rough time for her and again we're in the position where we'd normally be looking around for Carol. Jess said to me earlier tonight that she can't believe that Bill's gone. His grandson Jackie, who turned ten earlier this month, can quote more Shakespeare than I could when I was studying it. Even in that simple way Bill will be around for a very long time. This was one of his favourites (excuse any mistakes as this is from memory and mine is not a patch on Bill's)

All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts...

Off to the flicks this weekend?

Shopgirl vs A Cock and Bull Story. My money's on Coogan. Hyperdrive is still not doing it for me - it needed to be more like this I think. Lost is slowly improving though... Have 11th Hour saved for the morning. Still got my fingers crossed for that one. Should be back to something like normality tomorrow after I catch up with email. [Music: off]

Chewsday...

I'm back on the coffee. Two weeks without it was quite an achievement, but seeing as I was still staying up all hours and just missing the taste I decided to cave in. Maybe I'll try the decaf stuff when I run out. The downside is that now I'm addicted to chai as well... Was out last night watching a strange mix of swordplay, kabuki and demon slaying and forgot all about Life on Mars. Homechoice saved the day by 'recording' it for me - great application for people like me who stopped paying attention to TV schedules years ago. I meant to mention the last episode of BSG over the weekend, but both the kitten and Jess proved too distracting. Every single episode has a couple of killer lines, but Edward James Olmos seems to get the best. Maybe it's just his delivery... ("see if he had time to eject...") great great stuff. I'm concerned that they really will allow Mary McDonnell's character to die - as much as I relish the thought of a presidential Baltar I'd swallow any hokey 'cure' the writers can come up with to keep her on board. Not being American I have no idea if TV Guide is still considered a big thing or if Matt Roush is a decent critic, but I do agree with him when he says:

No disrespect to Farscape or Firefly (which should be obvious if you've ever read me before), but Battlestar is hardly comparable to those more fanciful sci-fi/fantasy series.

BSG is head and shoulders better than both shows - mostly due to the gritty realism it brings to space opera. That said the contribution that Firefly's effects and feel for 'shooting in space' gave should not be overlooked. And the Baltar/6 relationship is nothing but a straight take from the Crichton/Harvey scenes from Farscape. I just realised that I still haven't seen the Farscape finale. I must have had it for over a year or so now, but still don't really want to see the thing conclude... [Music: Greenlight the Bombers]

Oh man! Look at those cavemen go...

Have you read the lyrics to a certain Bowie song recently? Pretty loaded stuff if you're already hooked on the Beeb's new show. The second episode of Life on Mars was good... not quite as good as the first one, but it played up the comedy rather well. That said the Guantanamo Bay gag fell so flat that it was stunning. I'm not mad keen on the way the events happening to the comatose Tyler have a knock on effect in 1973. I like the odd radio picking up a voice, but the lights out in the hospital* was too much as it's making the setting less real for the viewer as well as the protagonist. Besides which I prefer having multiple theories of why an event has happened (something they played to the max in say Shaun of the Dead) rather than the cut and dried answer that the writers are giving us here. And the test card girl was just silly. What next... midnight visits by a Womble? The tiny flashbacks to the small feet and woman in red rushing through the woods... not so good either. I'm guessing that three year old Sam witnessed some kind of trauma as a nipper and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the boys in blue circa 1973 sorted it out - that's why he joined the force and that's why he's stuck where he is now. Maybe. Although it wouldn't surprise me if the final revelation is Hunt being a badass in front of toddler Sam while Annie gently leads him away by the hand. We'll see. One thing that is bothering me more than anything else is the lack of racism. Let me rephrase that. I'm more bothered by the easy use of sexism, but not by the characters as much as the writers. Last night's episode had one scene with breast gags aplenty that were not out of place given the setting - watch a British TV show made in the seventies for prime time and you'll see the same and worse. BUT it's becoming obvious that the writers are more at home with this kind of thing than the racism which should be going hand in hand. Again watch an old episode of Man About The House and right along with the chesty comments you'll get a gag about 'blacking ' up (or as in the case of a recent repeat I saw a line about Pele "whiting up" - mind boggling stuff). Maybe the writers think the viewers will be more acceptable of tit jokes than jungle bunny jibes, but I guarantee that kind of shit would be flying around. I was only one year old in 1973, but by the time I was up and walking Lancashire was a xenophobe's paradise. So far we've had a lot of Carry-On style humour and a fairly typical reaction to the deaf character in last night's episode (I have a deaf uncle and he was treated much worse than that every day of his life), but it seems very 2005 to avoid the racial slurs that would have simply been seen as no big deal - part and parcel of life at the time. So far the only featured black character has managed to avoid any of this despite running the boozer frequented by the coppers. It may be he's deemed as part of their circle, but it wouldn't stop some 'friendly' gags at his expense (and I can't help wondering if his character is based on the bartender in the final episode of Quantum Leap). Not that I expect a show that goes out at 9pm on BBC1 to be Deadwood, but perhaps it says a lot that it's somehow easier to accept the regular "fanny" references than it is something deemed 'more' offensive. Perhaps deep down we're not supposed to treat sexism as as big a problem as racism? Early days yet though... * I wonder if the girl in the 1973 coma is running around in 1940 wondering where all the lava lamps have gone [Music: off]

Alex St Claire...

Just archiving this here before it disappears behind The Independent's stupid 'pay for old news' system. Alexis Clair Snouffer (Alex St Clair), guitarist: born 1941; married; died Lancaster, California c5 January 2006. Despite the fact that he retired from music in the mid-Eighties and has been concentrating on painting for the last 20 years, Captain Beefheart remains a major influence on the likes of Franz Ferdinand, The Fall, David Byrne, Kate Bush, John Lydon and a host of other groups and singers. A genuinely original and arresting performer with a growly voice, a multi-octave range and something of a reputation as a hard taskmaster, Beefheart - n� Don Van Vliet - defined alternative rock when he recorded the Safe as Milk album with the Magic Band in 1967. Alex St Clair (sometimes spelt St Claire) - real name Alex Snouffer - was one of the original guitarists with the group and helped shape their sound from their inception in 1964 via their deranged cover of Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah Diddy" single released in 1966 and on to the groundbreaking Safe as Milk. St Clair left at the end of the following year, after completing work on the Strictly Personal album, but stayed on speaking terms with Beefheart. Indeed, he rejoined the Magic Band in 1972, touring with them the following year and contributing to Unconditionally Guaranteed, their 1974 album for Richard Branson's Virgin Records. Born in 1941, Alexis Clair Snouffer grew up in Lancaster, California, and played trumpet in the Antelope Valley High School band, where he met Frank Zappa, who was on drums. By the late Fifties, both Snouffer and Zappa had moved on to guitar, were playing rhythm'n'blues covers in various bands and hanging out with their friend Don Van Vliet. Before going on to worldwide notoriety with the Mothers of Invention in the late Sixties, Zappa recorded soundtracks for a couple of B-movies. In 1963, he used the proceeds to open his own Studio Z in neighbouring Cucamonga. Snouffer frequently visited and jammed with various musicians in between odd jobs collecting money from slot machines in Lake Tahoe and playing in cover bands. Determined to create more challenging and original music, Snouffer came back to Lancaster in 1964 and recruited the guitarist Doug Moon, the bassist Jerry Handley and the drummer Paul Blakely. As Van Vliet recalled in a 1973 interview: "Alex St Clair called me - you know, the fellow who was on Safe as Milk. He had a great influence on Jimi Hendrix when he was in England. Anyway, he calls me and says: "I'm putting a group together and we're gonna play tonight. You're gonna sing, Van Vliet." He's a real Prussian, you know? I said, "Give me a minute, will you? I never sang anything. I don't know anything about music", and he says, "Tonight, you're going to sing." I must have sounded like a burro or something. And he says: "That's horrible, man." I say: "I told you." But he says: "We're gonna do it anyway, and it'll get better." Things didn't so much get better as weirder for the group now calling themselves Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band after the talented frontman considered making a film called Captain Beefheart Meets the Grunt People. Snouffer embraced the idea of using aliases and creating stage characters and took up the moniker Alex St Clair. In 1965, the freaky group appeared at Hollywood's Fourth Annual Teenage Fair and won a new Fender guitar. Bizarrely, St Clair briefly switched to drums when Blakely left and the guitarist Rich Hepner and then Jeff Cotton (Antennae Jim Semens) stepped in but, by the time they recorded their two singles for A&M - "Do Wah Diddy", produced by David Gates of Bread fame, and "Moonchild" - in 1966, John French (a.k.a. Drumbo) had joined and he was back on guitar. However, the A&M bosses Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss passed on the original version of Safe as Milk which the Magic Band had cut and the group signed to Buddah in 1967. They set about re-recording the material with Richard Perry and Bob Krasnow producing. Perry added the up-and-coming guitarist Ry Cooder - then in the Rising Sons with Taj Mahal - to the mix and the combination of his slide and St Clair's and Cotton's staccato interplay formed the perfect accompaniment to Beefheart's mighty growls on "Sure 'Nuff'n' Yes I Do" and the stomping "Electricity". But Cooder's tenure proved short-lived and his departure forced the group to cancel a planned appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival. Now married, Alex St Clair felt increasingly uncomfortable as Beefheart's approach grew ever more dictatorial. The guitarist eventually left the Magic Band at the end of 1968, after two European visits which included a showcase at the Miden music conference in Cannes filmed for French television and two John Peel sessions, as well as shows at the hip London club Middle Earth. He also played on the sessions for both Strictly Personal and Mirror Man, an album which wasn't released by Buddah until May 1971. St Clair backed Denny King on the Evil Wind is Blowing album but returned to the Magic Band at the tail-end of 1972, joining a line-up which featured the guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo, the bassist Rockette Morton and the drummer Art Tripp III. He played on the Unconditionally Guaranteed album but left again in 1974 as matters came to a head between Beefheart and the Magic Band, who left en masse. Rollo and Morton formed Mallard and signed to Virgin while Beefheart recruited a completely new Magic Band and St Clair opted to go back to the US. In the Eighties and Nineties, he had a succession of odd jobs, from bartending to gardening, and spent some time in rehab. He was found dead in his apartment earlier this month. In 1978, Beefheart recorded a song entitled "Owed T'Alex" on the Shiny Beast (Batchain Puller) album. Co-written in the Sixties with the poet Herb Bermann, the impressionistic lyrics depicted St Clair's motorbike visits to his mother in Carson City. - Pierre Perrone No prizes for guessing who I'm listening to today (and no I have no idea who Franz Ferdinand are/is...) [Music: see above]

Gun fu & broadswords...

Nothing to do with vampires in my fair city, but everything to do with upping the ante after the sublime Equilibrium. Now I know that that film wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but that's because people are idiots. Judging from the trailer Kurt Wimmer has improved on the gun kata and gone one better than all those exploding faceplates by suiting up the guys in black this time round in full body armour that makes for a satisfying SMASH whenever Milla Jovovich gets feisty. No Sean Bean and no puppy rescue, but it looks nice and stark like Equilibrium. Although even a slimmed down Christian Bale couldn't pull this look off: Now if only Wimmer would agree to helm a remake of Blakes 7... The only thing better than girls in tight leather smashing things up are large men in longships smashing things up. Check out the trailer for Beowulf & Grendel. Of course it's been done before - sort of - with The 13th Warrior (aka Eaters of the Dead), but that was very much the hair metal version. This looks more like the thrash metal version... Speaking of which... best use of Anthrax in a trailer ever? [Music: Megadeth - Rust in Peace]

I used to have smarts...

That intertextuality thing keeps coming up in my referrer logs. It's a sad reminder that too much TV and the Interweb rots your brain faster than any returning Venus probe can revive it. [Music: something loud and stupid]

Spooky...

'Overheard' in a group email I was part of today:

I'm sure we live parallel lives. It's already spooky that we're both marrying neurobiologists within a week of each other.

[Music: off]

Hyperdrive...

Hmmm bit of a mixed bag. Too much emphasis on The Office style comedy, at least two characters that are just annoying and forget the Red Dwarf comparisons - if you've ever watched Dark Star twice in a single sitting there there's no need to lose sleep over missing Hyperdrive. I'll stick with it though because the 'reboot to factory settings' scene made me laugh and there aren't enough fat beardy blokes leading the way on TV. All eyes are now on Stewart and Eleventh Hour. I bet it's not a patch on his bit in Lifeforce (or indeed the nonsense-sounding Mysterious Island). Of course all the British people really need is a new series of Quatermass. [Music: off]

Sandwich...

Jess has wanted a new kitten for ages now. I'm still very a dog guy, but with this flat and our forever-in-the-air plans it's just not fair or feasible. Both Todd and Stuart beat me to the puppy line too. Bastards. Anyway... we started looking for a kitten only a few weeks ago. We went to see one little guy, but he was way too small to be taken from his mother so we passed. We actually had an appointment to go see another litter tonight and the idea was to give one of those little guys a new home. But then Jess got an email a few nights back and asked me to take a look at the attached photo. Not the best snap in the world and I got the feeling that Jess was going to pass and stay on plan, but then I pointed out that this small blur in the photo was a little soul too and maybe deserved some more of our attention. Jess melted. One quick trip to Vauxhall and we were 'parents' again. We met Pedro and his flatmate (top chaps) and the kitten's parents (top cats - although one seemed convinced that he was a dog) and we hit it off right away. We promised to keep them updated so you can bitch all you like about the number of cat photos already on the internets, but at least we have a reason for adding to the digital fur mountain. The name 'Sandwich' was my idea... I think it suits her PS A kitten in a carrier is date bait. I never get this much female attention when carrying I Want To Fuck You tucked under my arm. UPDATE: Sandwich got the all clear from the vet and she and Merry are due to meet sometime this evening... [Music: off]

Do you always get what you want?

BSG is back (albeit via the dark web) and while I'd guessed that the Mexican standoff mid-season cliffhanger wasn't going to go anywhere, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard the line "you've got to kill her" from the mouth of the one person least likely to utter such a thing. If you're tired of shows and movies being predictable and stupid (hello Wolf Creek - yeah don't bother shooting the maniac in the head when you have the chance because it's much more fun to let him get up and chase you for the next twenty minutes - and yet you still find time to check out some home movies... silly cow deserved to have her spine severed) then BSG is the show for you. How refreshing for a character to voice what you know to be the only course of action. You usually just shrug, expecting no one to actually suggest it because they exist within the narrow parameters of TV land. I may just explode when Deadwood returns. Anyway if the above fails to wet your appetite then there's always that certain chemistry between Starbuck and Cain*. Yowsers. *if I'd been referring to the original series that would have been a radical show right there [Music: off]

Hello world...

World meet Sandwich: She's 11 weeks old and pretty much the last word in kittens... We are now a family of four. Groovy. And forget everything I said previously about Life on Mars. We just watched BSG and that's how you make television [Music: Megadeth - Peace Sells... But Who's Buying]

Life on Mars...

I tried to hate this. I don't have enough time to get through all the shows I'm already hooked into without adding to the pile, but despite the new Battlestar 1 sat on my desktop we settled ourselves down last night to see what the Beeb had been spending our money on this time out. I almost gave up five minutes in. John Simm as Sam Tyler in 2006 was just awful - he looked like a 12 year old playing dress up in a suit that was a couple of sizes too big for him. The 'drama' was heavy handed, obvious and dull with some horrible supporting moments - Archie Panjabi was so wooden as to be flammable. But then Tyler gets himself run over and things immediately picked up. Half-watching the trailers over Christmas I had wondered how they were going to pull off the dilapidated seventies landscape, but someone had a brainwave and set the thing in the North. Genius. In fact they probably had to spruce up some of the locations to get them back to their 70's sheen 2. If you didn't see Life on Mars 3 you'll be a bit lost at this point. It's the new BBC frontrunner, a blend of sci-fi and police drama from the makers of Spooks (aka MI-5) and Hustle (aka 'Robert Vaughn is still alive?') both of which I've managed to avoid. This year I'm trying to sample a little more home grown product, slightly buoyed by the dizzy heights of The Thick of It and Waking the Dead 4. So Sam Tyler's girlfriend/colleague/moron gets herself caught by a serial killer who keeps his victim alive for 24 hours. At a loss at how to proceed Tyler takes a breather from his car and is promptly knocked into the middle of last week - 1973 to be precise. Cue lots of obvious gags ("I need my mobile..." "Mobile what?") and a couple of great ones ("There was a PC console here..." "PC who?"). As luck would have it the fates have decreed that Tyler is a copper no matter how wide his collars so before you can say Ford Granada he's on a case that mirrors the one back (forward?) in 2006. The plotting is a tad hokey, but the whole concept is more good dumb fun than simply dumb and what's INTERESTING is Tyler's reaction to what has happened. Me? I'd be on the first plane to New York to catch The Getaway on a big screen, but Tyler sticks around and tries to get a handle on things. It's a well trodden path to pop someone from an earlier age into ours and play fish out of water (Time After Time being the best example as Malcolm McDowell's HG Wells chases David Warner's Jack the Ripper around seventies San Francisco) or to drop a protagonist further back where his or her knowledge of the future helps a lot, but relatively recent time travel is much more interesting. I guess that's what Quantum Leap was all about as that Sam could only jump around within his own lifetime - overall that show hedged its bets and handled even the most important issues very lightly because of the format. There's some room here for the BBC to do something a lot more interesting, but we'll see how that goes... At first Tyler is simply out of his depth and pretty much a dead ringer for Martin Freeman's Arthur Dent in the recent big budget Hitchhiker's Guide, but when he begins to interact with his new colleagues things get much better. Liz White as WPC Annie Cartright is great and although she simply believes that Tyler is suffering from a concussion she's his rock in an increasingly unsettling world as she does her best to get him to come to terms with the 'reality' of where he is 5. The real star of the thing though is Philip Glenister as DCI Gene Hunt, Tyler's new boss. That Tyler is so shocked and bewildered by Hunt's methods and behaviour just means he's never seen an episode of The Sweeney (the main touchstone for this program). I'm keen to watch Tyler try and hang onto his 21st century sensibilities while everyone around him gets the job done while eating over the evidence, slapping people around and drinking six pints before lunchtime. By the end of the first episode Tyler has already done one wrong thing for what he believes is the right reason so to see how he navigates that slippery slope should be part of the arc of the next seven episodes. I hope. Early on Tyler is reminded that he used to rely on his instincts more and he replies that that was before things got so complicated that you could get yourself sued for harassment so easily. During the 2006 interrogation scene the suspect has a lawyer, a doctor and a social worker present in direct contrast to the '70's sequence. Back then a female witness is intimidated (and perhaps worse) in a Lost & Found office with no representation at all. And that seems to be what the series is really about. Tyler has a very understandable superiority complex, but I 'm guessing that that will slowly give way to a grudging respect as he comes to realise that these Neanderthals get the job done without technology or the complications of red tape. Of course the danger there is how much you can respect someone who is a good copper, but also a racist, sexist homophobe. It's an interesting problem and I'll keep watching just to see them dance around the issues. Guessing ahead and as Tyler was three in '73 there's also a good chance for him to run into family and perhaps his toddler self - let's pray it's handled better than the Who episode 'Father's Day'. The time crossed love interests could also take us into dreary Goodnight Sweetheart territory but let's hope not. I think we're supposed to be hooked on the mystery of what exactly has happened to our hero - he himself asks aloud whether he's there to change something and later Annie points out that maybe he's here for a reason, but to hell with that. The whole reason to stay glued to the first episode (and I suspect the best part for the actors and writers) was to build up to the scene where Tyler and Hunt vault the desk at the same time on their way to rescue the girl. It was a BIG STUPID MOMENT and it made the show. Jess and I both laughed out loud and it's the best bit of TV I've seen so far this year. I have no idea what kind of legs the show has got but as everyone (in the UK at least) seems to love cop shows it could run for a while. The concept does walk a thin line between great and terrible, but bravo to the Beeb for giving it a go. With BBC2's Hyperdrive on the horizon, ITV giving us Patrick Stewart in Eleventh Hour (I wonder if he gets to "see everything" in that) and the face-lifted dinosaur of Doctor Who complete with its ominous lump Hot Rod Cow Torchwood, at the very least I'll have plenty to mouth off about over the next few months. Life on Mars was very British though. Be interesting to see what the Yanks make of it... 1 I still haven't decided if it's better to shorten it to 'Battlestar' or 'Galactica' yet. What are the hip kids calling it? Is it ok to refer to both the old and new versions as the Bee Gees? 2 Like Doctor Who I expect a lot of this was filmed in Wales as it's a BBC Wales production - they�ve dodged the problem of having to make a backwater look like the capital by playing to the strengths of Wales and the North being crap-pits. Torchwood in contrast is actually SET in Cardiff. Be interesting to see a high tech team investigate alien artifacts in a locale where the inhabitants have yet to master the can opener 3 The title comes from the David Bowie track playing on Tyler's iPod just before he hits 1973. The same song is playing on his 8-track when he 'arrives'. Nice 4 The last season of Waking the Dead funnily enough had a great episode partly set in the seventies 5 The character of Annie's ex boyfriend is much more clumsily handled and seems shoehorned in. That particular revelation would have been better handled over a couple of episodes. But I like the unintentional horror that suggests that every coma victim could be running around the North of England wearing a kipper tie. Pull those feeding tubes NOW [Music: Zappa]

Pantsu...

Almost a week offline. Well, teetering on the edge of being offline, but in reality having to spend time away from blogging and my usual haunts to concentrate on finding new ways of getting PAID in 2006. Suffice to say I'm still here - a few more rocks to sniff under and then some proper catch up posting to get on with. In the meantime... Eyes of Crystal & Tears of Kali A Bittersweet Life Iron Monkey, Wing Chun & Tai Chi Boxer R-Point Wishing Stairs And something to get your teeth into: PANTSU Gotta catch 'em all... [Music: Van Halen]

Real life is something to do...

...when you're tired of watching movies. Go grab the trailer for 5-25-77 now. It may not be up there forever. Read about it here. Careful! You're bleeding on Moonbase Alpha [Music: off]

Caffeine patch?

Not so much a resolution but rather an experiment - I'm on my third day without a drop of coffee. I figured the internal caffeine reservoir would have run dry by now and yet here I am heading towards 4am bright eyed and bushy faced... Getting things done though and I guess that's the important thing. And patching your crappy operating system. [Music: Twisted Forever - A Twisted Sister tribute album]

Waking soon...

Almost time to get my game face on. And by 'game' I mean unfashionably huge Deadwood style facial hair. Jess has one more day off which we intend to make the most of and then it's back to work for both of us. 'Work' is complicated as we both have plans in that area. I enjoyed 2005 a lot and yet here I am in the same place with a lot of water treaded. I'm like the dumb fuck from Open Water without the dumb blonde for company... No, hang on... I'm smarter than that because I don't go scuba diving. It would be nice not to be here this time next year though. So no end of year rundowns or promises for 2006. A large portion of my time will be spent dealing with the head down stuff that probably wouldn't make for the most riveting blog reading so I'll skip over that. Let's see where the Bank Holiday takes us and then we'll have something fresh on Tuesday. If 2006 sucks I'll blame you and then it'll be Hello Kitty Handguns at 20 paces... [Music: Peter Criss Solo Album]

Safe...

I spotted this over on TSiG:

It is reported that 50% of people in London are worried about security and sleep with some form of self-defence to hand, for use against intruders. The 'Safe Bedside Table' has a removable leg that acts as a club and a top that doubles as a shield for self-defence. This is for people who are willing to take on an intruder, providing an extra sense of security whilst in bed.

Fuck the bedside. They should have these in Starbucks... Jess kicked off 2006 by watching the whole of Bleak House in two sittings. As John pointed out, the Beeb made the whole thing nice and digestible in 30 minute chunks, but Jess is greedy for bonnets. I watched bits of it, but I think an over familiarity with the novel stopped me from enjoying it. Seemed pretty good though... I have a low tolerance for literary adaptations. If they can't get Judge Dredd right (and all they really had to do there was keep the helmet on) I'm not going to trust them with Dickens. As good as it was (and as hot as Gillian Anderson is) it just doesn't get any better than this:

As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes--gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

I've quoted that more than once here before, but it never gets dull right? [Music: Paul Stanley Solo Album]

New Year Resolutions...

#1 Get more sleep fuck it Happy 2006! Back in the saddle tomorrow... [Music: The Evens]