Give me a break!

There are some truly evil people in this world that must must be hunted down and stopped. Robert Mugabe. Osama Bin Laden. Radovan Karadzic. Nick Griffin. Noel Edmonds.

Above all of these demonspawn, however, is the most evil man ever to draw breath upon this planet:

I've been poorly a lot lately (hence the lack of updates) and I've been stuck at home in front of the telly. And every time I put the bloody thing on, this fat pillock turns up and ruins my day. He doesn't exactly make me feel better. And there's not just one advert now. There are many. Do advertising agencies really think that an annoying advert sells the product? Well, it doesn't sell it to me. In fact, I now steadfastly refuse to use the poxy website. If you 've not seen it, this is how it goes. Two blokes are in a coffee shop, each drinking those big mugs of coffee that cost three quid. These blokes are talking about car insurance. As you do. The one topic the whole nation is talking about is car insurance. At this juncture, the wanker in the picture above leaps up and sings a mock-operatic song about the virtues of a certain price comparison website. He's then accompanied by everyone else in the coffee shop, because they've either a) been convinced by him that his price-comparison website is indeed the best way to save money on your car insurance, or b) they're all suffering from Stockholm Syndrome because Gio Compario (apparently, that's his name. No, it's not Damien. I agree, it's a terrible name. I reckon they should have called him Juan Kerr.) has kept them all hostage in a dungeon underneath the coffee shop and has told them all that it'll be their children next if they don't follow him blindly. After the song and dance, it's all topped off with a god-awful, Bruce Forsyth-quality joke. If these blokes are really that skint that they have to save forty-seven pounds fifty on insurance, why don't they stay out of them bloody rip-off coffee shops and make it at home with a jar of Gold Blend?
It's not just Go Compare either. Every other advert seems to be about insurance or price comparison websites. There's Confused.com, Churchills, Compare The Market, Direct Line, Swiftcover and so on. Where are the adverts actually advertising tangible stuff I might actually want or need?
Actually, I'm probably being unfair to the comparison websites. There are lots of adverts advertising 'tangible stuff' that are just as annoying. There's that McDonald's one with a poetry voiceover about how everyone's 'just passing by', when really it should be saying 'just passing over from coronary disease'. There's that really badly dubbed one (another bugbear of mine; dubbed adverts. Just make your advert in English! If you can't be bothered to spend the extra money on an english version, then I can't be bothered to spend my hard-earned on your poxy bathroom wipes.) about that kid who 'wants to do a poo at Paul's'. Now, if that was me, I'd happily send him off to defecate at Paul's house if his arse stinks that badly. I certainly wouldn't pander to him by buying an air-freshener that disguises the smell of the little shit's shit, just because he told me to. Like my mother used to say (when she was sober, anyway) 'I want doesn't get.' What's also odd about that advert is that the young kid is chinese, and his mother is caucasian. I understand that he might be adopted, but we're not told. And if that is the case, surely it's going to put some people off adopting. They'll watch that and think, 'I was seriously considering giving a home to a poor unfortunate orphan asian baby, but I'm not going to now, because they stink out the house every time they poo. Actually, sod it! I will adopt, but they'll have to go round to Paul's every time they need to park their breakfast.'
A more recent addition to the annoying adverts canon are those new ones for Nintendo starring Ant and Dec. The Wii adverts were crap before when they had the Redknapp family or that bloke from 'My Beautiful Launderette' who isn't Daniel Day-Lewis flogging them to us. As I said, they were crap before, but they've taken on a whole new aura of shiteness. There's a family (all card-carrying members of Equity) playing Nintendo Wii. When I say family, I mean family. There's Nan and Granddad, Mom and Dad, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and cousins, even the fucking milkman and all, probably, all sitting on the sofa playing Mario Kart. This is unrealistic for a start. That scene might happen for twenty minutes on Christmas Day, and that's only because dad wants to see if it actually works seeing he's spent so much money on the bloody thing, and they'll have fun playing on it until Nan demands they watch the Christmas edition of EastEnders (thus killing off any fun, or indeed, Christmas Spirit.)and she has to watch it on the big telly because she's 'only bought her readers'. Like I said, unrealistic. Then, they act all surprised when Ant and Dec walk in, despite the fact that they've just walked in without knocking the door or anything, and also the fact that there's a camera crew filming them playing Mario Kart. Then it ends on a cliffhanger. Ant (or is it Dec?) challenge one of the family to a race on Mario Kart, and then it stops! Who wins?! Go to the nintendo website to find out! Like I give a fuck whether or not one of the fabulous forehead twins wins his go on a video game. It's not even a good cliffhanger, they should've put an anvil on a fraying rope above Ant's (or is it Dec's) head and he has to finish his go before the anvil plummets down and smashes his giant bonce into porridge, like they did with the old Batman TV show. As cliffhangers go, it's probably up there with the following clip:

Makes you wonder how Doctor Who ever got cancelled in the first place, doesn't it?
Anyway, all this ranting has made me ill again. Poxy commercial television. I'm off for a Lemsip. Ta-ra a bit.

What I did in the school holidays, by Mick, aged 35.

Hello again! Sorry for the lack of updates, but it's been a busy few weeks, mostly taken up with work, various trips around the country and spending time with my nippers during the school holidays.

If you're interested, these are a few of the things I've been up to. If you're not, well, you can stop reading, I suppose.


Nine Inch Nails/ Jane's Addiction

Blimey, this seems like ages ago now. Those of you that read this blog regularly, or actually know me personally (that does happen, sometimes) know that I'm a big fan of Nine Inch Nails. Ever since I first saw them live way back in 1991 in a shitty little club here in Birmingham that isn't even there anymore. The American leg of this tour was called the 'NIN/JA' tour, which sounded cool. I can imagine Trent Reznor thinking 'Well, we're NIN, so we need someone with the initials JA to support us, just so we can have a cool name for our tour.' So, after Julie Andrews, and then Birmingham's own Joan Armatrading both turned him down, they asked the recently reformed again Jane's Addiction. ( I'm only kidding! I know Trent Reznor is a big fan of Jane's Addiction, even sampling Perry Farrell's screaming for 'Ringfinger', the last track on NIN's debut album Pretty Hate Machine, as well as using 'Sex Is Violent' on his soundtrack for Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.)

As I said, NIN/JA was the name of the US tour. By the time it got to th UK, it had changed its name to 'Wave Goodbye' as Trent Reznor had decided that NIN aren't going to tour anymore. So I can say now that I saw them on their first tour, and their last. I bet Trent saw me in the crowd and thought 'I'm glad Mick's here, it kinda bookends the whole touring experience for me.'

Anyway, the gig was in Manchester, at the MEN arena. The hotel me and my glamorous other half stayed in wasn't very good. Should've been, for the price, but it was awful. I'm not a big fan of Manchester anyway, I've been there four times now, and it's never impressed me. That said, each time I've been has only been a flying visit, maybe I'd enjoy it more if I stayed there a bit longer. (Did that sound diplomatic enough? Good.)

Because we left after work and drove straight up there, we missed about half an hour of Jane's Addiction, but what I did see was very good. I was slightly distracted by the vertical sweat stain that was on the back of the bassist's shorts, but the music was good. However, at one point, a couple of scary-looking women in front of us turned around and asked me if I liked it. When I said 'Yeah' they shook their heads and the scariest looking one said 'I just don't get it, me.' So, in summary, Jane's Addiction: Good, but not for everyone, especially if you resemble Morticia Addams' chubbier sister.

Looking around the stadium, I realised I was one of the oldest people there. Most of the crowd probably weren't even born when I saw them in 1991, which is a frightening thought. Anyway, when NIN came on, they were awesome. Their light show probably damaged my retinas forever (this was before the government's ban on filament bulbs) and even though this was their last ever tour, they didn't go for the standard 'greatest hits' setlist. They played songs that I'd never heard them play live before, as well as some of the old standards. It was, basically, a great night, and I'm glad I was there.

Banksy vs. Bristol Museum

My girlfriend's old friend Sarah came over from Amsterdam (She's not Dutch, she works there.) to visit and we all agreed that going to the Banksy exhibit would be good for a laugh, so we booked a night in an ibis (always fun!) and buggered off down to Bristol. This was the first time I've been to Bristol without being there for the Comics Expo. It was kinda strange not seeing any imperial stormtroopers or kids dressed as Wolverine milling about, but that was cool as I like Bristol. I've had many a fantastic time there. And, unusually for the Summer we've just had, the weather that weekend was fantastic.
We were told to expect queues, and by the time we got there on a Saturday afternoon, the queue was massive, and we were told that we were likely to be waiting for three hours, so we didn't go that afternoon. Luckily, unbeknownst to us before we got there, Bristol was holding its annual Harbour festival, which consisted of loads of boats, obviously, live shows, music and comedy and lots of barbecues and drinking. We watched some of the live show, but after watching some woman fanny around on a tightrope whilst some bloke sat by the side playing flamenco guitar, (It's supposed to be 'arty', but I call it 'bollocks'.) I thought it would be a good time to go to a pub. Then again, I always tend to think it's a good time to go to the pub. Thing is, because of the festival, all the bars were heaving, and they only served you drinks in plastic cups, which I'm not fond of.
So, after a few plastic pints (for me, anyway. The ladies had cocktails. That's because they're ladylike and posh, and I'm neither of those things!) we went for an overpriced al fresco dinner, which tasted nice, I suppose, but it was kind of ruined by the sight of a local teenage girl who was too pissed to stand up and throwing her ring up. We took this lesson about binge drinking to heart and then went for a few more plasticky pints in several of the dockside bars.
The next morning, we got up early, which isn't good if you have a hangover, had a mediocre breakfast and several coffees at the hotel , then headed up to the Bristol Museum an hour and a half before it opened. It sounded like a good plan the day before. Still, the wait was worth it. It was a fantastic exhibition. I've been to a few exhibitions before (including the ones I was a part of) and they tend to be dry affairs. Except for the ones where there were free drinks (which was the only reason I went to a few of them). Not this one. This exhibition was fun. Sick and twisted, but fun. No free drinks, but great nonetheless.

As you go in, you notice the Ronald McDonald figure stuck to the front of the museum, he's very high up, his make-up is tear-stained, and there's an empty bottle of Jack Daniels perched next to him, and it looks like he's about to jump. As you enter the exhibit, you walk past a burned-out ice-cream van, and behind it is a policeman on one of those kiddie's rides you see outside supermarkets, with distorted ice-cream van music, and the effect is eerie. Before you go into the exhibition proper, there's a painting riffing on the old Hansel and Gretel story, only it's Michael Jackson opening the door to the children. Out of respect, there was a candle burning in front of it. This set the tone for the rest of the show.

The main part of the exhibit focuses mostly on his graffiti stuff, most of which is very clever, although a lot of it is anti-police, and that gets a bit boring after the fifth image of coppers kissing each other or holding hands. The highlight of this first room was a giant painting of the House Of Commons, only the politicians have been replaced by chimps.

The second room was set out like a zoo, several cages with animatronic puppets in them, one with a caged ape painting an imagined sunset, one with chicken McNuggets hatching out of eggs, a rabbit putting make up on in front of a mirror, a Birdseye crispy fish-steak swimming around in a tank, and so on, all basically highlighting how awful the human race is to animals. Which is a fair point, but I reckon it's the animals' fault for being so damn tasty. My favourite part of this room was the cage with an aged, wretched-looking Tweety Pie in it. I could've stood there and watch that thing sigh all day.

That wasn't the end of it, either. Banksy had had a go at the rest of the museum, too, replacing pictures and exhibits with his own. So, you get what looks like a Constable, a country landscape, but this one has a car in it, with a visible bare arse in the windscreen , and it's titled 'Dogging'. It's not highbrow, but it's funny. There was another one where UFOs were attacking an old painting of a busy seaport. My favourite of these replaced paintings was this one, called 'Agency Worker':


This was a clever way of geting people to have a look around the whole museum, trying to find the bits Banksy had tampered with. There was all kinds of puerile things, including a dildo in the stalactite collection, a plate with a turd on in a cabinet full of ceramics, and one of those awful plates with a photo of kittens on it was put in a cabinet with fine china.
Anyway, we had a blast. It's the first time I've been to an art exhibition and come out laughing. I'd recommend you go, but I think it's finished now. Oh well, go to Bristol Museum anyway, it's a lovely building.


Other stuff.

I've also been on various trips around the Midlands with my offspring: Cadburyworld, West Midlands Safari Park, and Warwick Castle, which were all good fun, and I've also been down to Brighton for a wedding, but I'm knackered now. I just want a nice, relaxing stress-free weekend for a change. Oh, hang on, Villa play Blues this weekend! Aaaaaaarrrrrggghhhh!!

"Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like f**king Shaft!"

I read somewhere the other day that it's been ten years since Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out. And this got me thinking;those prequels were a load of old shit, weren't they? I was so excited, at the time, being a child of the original Star Wars generation, and the trailer got me all excited, but then I went to see it. It was shit. You think I might've been warned by the 'fix it 'til it's broke' original trilogy special editions. You might be arguing with me in your head now, but read on, and I'll prove to you the prequels were shit:

The Baddies in Episode I are a Trade Federation. Yeah, the bad guys are a corporation! Stick it to the man, multi-billionaire George Lucas!

The aliens in the trade federation talk in rubbish 'We So Velly Solly' Japanese accents. You see, all evil businessmen are Japanese! Way to reinforce stereotypes, George!!

The bad guy droids are all linked to a central computer, so why do they talk to each other? And why do they say 'Roger roger' all the bloody time?

The Gungans all talk in rubbish 'Yaaa mon' Jamaican accents. Giant rasta frogs must've sounded brilliant in the scripting stages. They're basically just spacey Uncle Toms. Way to reinforce stereotypes, George!

Having Brian Blessed as their leader must've also sounded brilliant in the planning stages. Didn't turn out that way, did it?

Jar Jar Binks. Everything he says and does. He was the first major CGI 'synthespian'. What a missed opportunity.

Watto, the owner of the Skywalker slaves, talks in a rubbish 'Oy Vey' New York Jewish accent. He's a corrupt businessman. Way to reinforce stereotypes, George!

Queen Amidala's scary voice when she addresses anyone important.

Jake Lloyd as Anakin. I can't imagine the young man who grows up to be the biggest baddest bastard in the whole universe ever said 'yippee!'

I also can't imagine that the young man who grows up to be the biggest baddest bastard in the whole universe built C-3PO, either.

I also can't imagine that the young man who grows up to be the biggest baddest bastard in the universe is called 'Annie' by his friends and family.

I used to think Jedis had some special ability that made them be able to use the Force, but no, it's because they have Midichlorians in their bloodstream. I hate the whole notion of Midichlorians. If they could make a clone army, why not clone midichlorian infested blood too and have yourself an army of thousands of soldiers with Jedi-like abilities?

Anakin didn't have a dad. He was a virgin birth, apparently. Eh?! Is it a Christ allegory? Only, in this version of the New Testament, Jesus goes bad and throttles his pregnant missus? Nope, it's those pesky Midichlorians again, fertilising poor old Shmi Skywalker. I reckon Lucas just couldn't be arsed to write about Anakin's dad, he was too busy fucking about with rasta frogs.

That two-headed alien that commentates on the podrace is one of the crappiest-designed aliens I've ever seen.

The best characters, Qui-Gon Jinn, Sebulba (Yeah, I know he's an essentially one-dimensional cartoon bully, but I think he was a fantastically designed and realised alien) and especially Darth Maul (the best thing about the prequels, in my opinion) all die in the first episode, leaving all the shit ones behind to try and hold our interest.

Darth Maul's two bladed lightsabre might've been a cool surprise, if only they'd left it out of the sodding trailer!

Ewan MacGregor's piss-poor vocal impersonation of Sir Alec Guinness.

How come all the technology on show is much more advanced than the stuff we saw in the original trilogy? This is suppose to be set before those. Also, the people in Star Wars' past were far more equal opportunities, with more women being fighter pilots, etc. I can't remember any female fighter pilots in A New Hope. That's not a criticism, though.

The casting of Hayden Christensen as Anakin for Episode II. He's possibly the worst actor in the world after that bloke who plays Nick Cotton. Not unfairly is he referred to as 'Mannequin Skywalker' in Clerks 2.

Episode II is supposed to be ten years after Episode I?! Nobody looks ten years older, except Anakin, and if it is ten years after the first one, this makes Padmé a bit of a cradle-snatcher, doesn't it? Aren't there any Jedis her own age she can fall in love with and make them turn to the Dark Side?

I liked it when we didn't know that much about Boba Fett. It made him a much cooler character. Now we know he looks like that bloke from Shortland Street and Barb Wire under his helmet.
Jango Fett was a cool character, though, but like all the best characters in the prequels, he gets killed.

The fact that the prequels were filmed in Australia, and so have lots of people that used to be in Neighbours are in it. Except for Jim Robinson, who appears in every other American movie.

Obi-Wan and his 'You're going to be the death me' jokes/predictions when talking to Anakin.

That whole sequence when C-3PO heads gets swapped with a federation droid just isn't funny.

R2-D2 can fly?! Does he forget he can do it by the time he meets up with Luke and Leia?

The whole sequence when Anakin spends time with Padmé on Naboo and tries to chat her up by saying she's not like sand, is clichéd and awful, and illustrates something that's wrong with all the prequels; the god-awful dialogue.

The same old cliché; Anakin gets to his mother the very moment before she snuffs it.

The Death Star was designed by cock-roach people? Eh?

The Clone Wars sounded cool when they were referred to in the older films, but they were a bit of a letdown when we actually got to see them.

Yoda in Episode II doesn't look anything like the Yoda from Episode I, and even though he can't walk without the aid of a stick, as soon as he gets his lightsabre out he starts whizzing about like a giant bluebottle?

In fact, Yoda's cut-and-paste way of talking gets on my tits. In the original ones it was cute, you could explain it by the fact he was very old and he's talking in a second language and he has trouble with sentence structure when he's saying what he's thinking when he's thinking it, but in the prequels, even when he makes a bloody speech he still does it. And the original muppet in Empire still has far more personality than his CGI replacement in Episodes II & III.

Sorry to dwell on him, but Yoda was mates with Chewbacca when he was younger? Did he used to babysit for Han Solo's mum and dad too?

Christopher Lee's Count Dooku is a cool character, as it's Christopher fucking Lee, but again, his character gets killed way too soon.

Padmé dies because her husband tried to force-strangle her when she's heavily pregnant, but even though she's dealing with that and the colossal pain of childbirth, she still knows exactly what to call the babies, even the one she didn't know she was carrying? And even though most Jedis can see into the future, know-one knew she was carrying twins?

I still don't know why the Emperor's face went all lumpy.

The emergence of the black-helmeted Darth Vader should have been the highlight of the prequels, seeing as that was what we were all waiting for, but instead, we got this:


NoooOOOOOooooOOOOO! It's almost Shatneresque.

If you're going to hide a baby from the biggest baddest bastard in the universe, letting him keep the name Skywalker and giving him to his stepbrother on the planet he grew up on isn't really the best plan. It worked, though, so what do I know?

And finally, in A New Hope, Obi-Wan clearly states that he doesn't remember owning a droid. That droid is R2-D2. Surely you'd remember that robot that was by your side when all the bad stuff was happening?

And so I rest my case. the Star Wars prequels were shit. They weren't all bad, the lightsabre duels were much more exciting, the podrace was cool (a bit overlong) and some of the scenes in Revenge Of The Sith (the death of the younglings; the Jedis getting wiped out; Owen and Beru getting baby Luke) pack a dramatic wallop that equals anything in the other films, but there wasn't enough of those to save it from the overall dreck.

Oh, and thanks to Tim Bisley for the title.

X Men Origins: Wiping Your Arse With Claws.

Last Saturday, my glamorous other half and I went to the pictures to see the new Wolverine movie. In the queue with us was a guy dressed as Wolverine. He had the hairstyle and the vest and some leather fingerless gloves with the claws built in. I would've called him a sad fucker but he might eviscerate me with said appendages. Why is it only comic-book movies that attract these people? (Actually, come to think of it, which I do, that's not true; people dress up as nuns when they go and see The Sound Of Music, don't they?) You don't see people turning up at, let's say, The Reader, dressed as a death camp commandant. I did once think that a load of people dressed up and acting like zombies were queing up to see Day Of The Dead, but I was mistaken, it's just what any queue at a Broad Street cinema looks like.
The film itself was okay, nothing special. They whizz through Wolvie's early life showing us snippets of what could've been a more interesting film than the one that was made. For example, they don't tell us how he got the name Logan, but they do tell us how he got his leather jacket. Some of the CGI was very shoddy, too. Despite a few interesting ideas and a standout action set-piece involving Logan fighting a helicopter, this film was generally a wasted opportunity.
However, my girlfriend thought it was great, as she's in love with Hugh Jackman, and as it is basically two hours of him running around with no shirt on, she was in movie heaven. (I've no issue with that, I do, however, have issues with Jackman's hair in this film; he no longer has that 'pointy ears' haircut that his comic book equivalent has, he's got some kind of long curtains thing going on. It just looks rubbish. I know it's supposed to be set in the seventies, but Logan has never struck me as being a fashion slave. They should've given him a pair of flares and a belted cardigan to complete the look.)

After the movie, as usual, my bladder was the size of a space hopper, so I went to the toilets, and in there was the guy dressed as Wolverine drying his hands under the hot air dryer. He still had the claws on. So, he must've had a wee with them on. That's taking a risk, if you ask me. It's a good job he didn't go for a number two. Imagine wiping yourself with those things on!

Anyway, if this movie is an indication of what the summer blockbusters are going to be like, it's going to be a dull summer.

Heather's going to see again on Monday with the girls from work. I'm obviously not the film's target audience.

Drawing, Vomiting, Woking.

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Dispirited.

Whilst in the cinema the other night, I had a flash of inspiration; I reckon I've found a way to ease the world's environmental woes with a brand new totally green energy source. If we can somehow harness the energy of Will Eisner's rapidly rotating corpse we won't need to worry about fuel price increases.
Yes, I watching Frank Miller's woeful The Spirit. It's one of the worst movies I've seen in a very long time, and I've recently watched Australia! (Not usually the type of film I go and see at the pictures, but my girlfriend, who works in PR, got us some tickets to a special preview put on by the Australian tourism board and there was free food and beer (there was one woman there putting food from the buffet into her handbag for later. How Birmingham is that?), we even got free popcorn to munch while we were watching the film, and we were given free Australia-shaped luggage tags and an Australia pen. If you've seen Out Of Africa, Gone With The Wind, The African Queen, Last Of The Mohicans, Red River, Pearl Harbour, or Walkabout I wouldn't bother. To says it's derivative and unoriginal and clichéd is an understatement.You can tell it's Australian because Bryan Brown is in it. I think he's been in every Aussie movie since about 1981. It looks pretty, though, and there's lots of shots of Hugh Jackman with his shirt off. If you like that sort of thing. My girlfriend does. I don't, makes me feel inadequate.)

Anyway, The Spirit! This is not Will Eisner's Spirit, this is most definitely Frank Miller's. I'm not the world's biggest Spirit afficionado (I can recommend Will Eisner's Dropsie Avenue trilogy, referred to in the movie, and his Comics and Sequential Art book is a comic artist's bible), but I've read it, and the movie doesn't resemble what I've read at all. It's trying to be cultish and camp and comedic, but fails miserably.
Eisner was a master visual storyteller, groundbreaking and ahead of his time in his day. The film tries to be visually interesting, but if you've seen Sin City, you've seen it already. And Sin City was a far better movie. Probably because it had a proper director (I know Miller had a co-directing credit, but you know Rodriguez was the real guy in charge.) and decent actors (Jessica Alba excluded, of course) and knew when to use its visual flourishes for maximum effect. The Spirit has the same touches, but are used so inconsistently and for no apparent reason. The acting is terrible (Samuel L. Jackson is so hammy as the villain, The Octopus, I was expecting him to grow a little curly tail at the end) there's only the slimmest of plots and the dialogue is really awful.
It's basically an excuse for Miller to film lots of Hollywood starlets with very little on, and while that's an admirable aim, I'd rather he did his perving in his own time. (I was talking to a colleague about this movie, and he said he thought it was shit, but his teenage son loved it. I can guess why!) It's politically suspect in its portrayal of women ( I know it's supposed to be noirish, but this film is very definitely set in the present day, there's mobile phones and computers and at one point a photocopier on display, doesn't really fit with the look of the film) there are references to paedophilia (not very nice for a supposed kids' movie) and dressing Sam Jackson and Scarlett Johansson up as Nazis is a bit politically suspect as well. They're just dressed like that when they're explaining their grand scheme to our tied-up hero. As if we didn't guess they are bad people by that point, Miller tries to hammer it home by making them dress up as Hitler. And the plot's Macguffins, Heracle's Blood and The Golden Fleece, are not things that should be in a movie based on Will Eisner's comic.
As you can tell, I didn't really like it. It's a bad sign when the best thing about a night out at the cinema is the trailers.

The Stuff I've Been Up To. (part one)

Apparently, sometime this week, this blog had its 10,000th visitor (well, since I started counting, anyway) so I thought I'd better put something mildly interesting on it! I've been busy the last few weeks, not updating as much as I'd like, so I thought I'd give you a brief round-up of what I've been up to. I'll leave out all the boring day job stuff that's taken up most of my time, as a post which just says 'I've been working harder than Janet Street-Porter's toothbrush' isn't very interesting. So anyway, here's part one of 'The stuff I've been up to':

Hiking weekend:

A few months ago, whilst out drinking with my dad and brothers on my birthday, we all drunkenly decided we were going to go on a big walk around Kinver Edge. My dad's other main hobby, besides drinking and passing wind, is hiking, but he hadn't gone on a walk for ages and talked me and my brothers into going with him when we were all pissed enough to say yes.

This was against my better judgement as I spent quite a big chunk of my childhood traipsing around canal towpaths behind my father. That's the thing, you see, my dad didn't really do the pretty walks, he liked walking along 'the cut' (that's what canals are called around here. You know how the Inuit are supposed to have four-hundred words for snow, because they're surrounded by it? That's a bit like us Brummies and canals; We've got a whole two words for them!) and subsequently knows how to get anywhere in the West Midlands by towpath. This isn't so bad these days, because Birmingham has been regenerated like Doctor Who, and the council has spent money cleaning up and renovating and prettifying a lot of the canals, but when I was a kid marching alongside the cut with my dad (this was the the early Eighties) it wasn't so groovy. Walking along a muddy towpath dodging overgrown nettle bushes alongside a canal full of shopping trolleys and used johnnies looking at the backs of semi-demolished empty factories in Thatcher's Britain wasn't really my idea of fun. But, my brothers and I all agreed to go on a walk with our dad because it sounded like a great idea at a quarter-past pint number seven.


Anyway, we decided to go for a walk on August Bank Holiday. That got changed as it was my brother's wedding anniversary that weekend. We didn't go to Kinver, we ended up going somewhere else in Worcestershire. (I don't want to put where we did go in case the guy that owns the B&B we stayed at happens upon this blog. You'll read why soon enough.)

My brothers, my father and I, my dad's mate and his son had a nice walk along the river Severn in the pissing rain, (it was torrential, most of the time) stopping in every pub along the way and taking the piss, swearing (mostly at the weather), talking football (mainly about how shit Birmingham City are) and swapping jokes and funny stories. My dad and his mate are very scatological in their humour; anything to do with farting and shite are incredibly amusing, so much so, every anecdote I heard from either of them during the weekend tended to be about all the amusing al-fresco shits they've had in years gone by. So, among the stories I heard were: Slices of bread being used as emergency toilet roll; bread which was subsequently eaten by a dog. I heard about the time my dad's mate accidentally shat in the hood of his cagoule, and the time he was dying for a crap but couldn't go because his wife's sister was using the bathroom, so he went and did it in a bucket in his shed, but he missed the bucket and crapped all over his lawnmower. These stories are base, not very clever, and yes, disgusting, but I love them! I also found out, from my dad's mate's son (who's a soldier) that, despite Hollywood telling us otherwise, people make a lot of noise when they've had their throats cut. Nice. We finished our walk in good humour, especially after seeing my brother Matthew go arse over tip in a muddy puddle, and avoiding the escaped cow that was running at us along the riverside.We ended up sitting outside a pub in the rain sinking a few more pints. Although hiking isn't really my idea of fun, I did enjoy it. It was a good craic, and all the other hikers we met were nice, always saying hello, and the views were great. It's just a shame, because of the rain, I had my head down for most of the walk and didn't really appreciate the scenery as much as I should have.

We headed back to our B&B to get clean and dry and to change into nicer clothes so we could head into the town centre for more drinking. My dad and his mate left us to it at about half-ten, but my dad's mate's son, my brothers and I carried on into the wee small hours. I've subsequently realised we drank something like sixteen pints that day (we started drinking very early and finished late), and we moved on to spirits at the end of the night. Staying out late was a bad idea, because we realised when we got back we couldn't get back into our digs. We weren't given a key, and we all tried phoning up our fathers but to no avail, they'd gone to bed and turned their mobiles off. Bugger. we ended up having to break in through a small open window on an upstairs floor. Let me tell you, trying to scale walls and run along rooftops like a staggering Matt Murdock when you've had sixteen pints is both difficult and, in hindsight, bloody stupid. Anyway, we got in and after me and my brother Marc stopped giggling like twats about the ridiculous situation we'd just found ourselves in, finally got some sleep.

We got back to Brum the next morning via the Severn Valley steam railway, and ended up in a city centre boozer (more drink; bloody hell! My liver was aching until at least the following Wednesday) putting the world to rights until we decided to go home and get some proper kip. All in all, a good weekend.

Something In The Air?

We live in a crazy world where advertising execs seem to think that watching a gorilla play drums instantly makes us think of chocolate. The only brown stuff I associate with gorillas is the stuff they've pulled out of their arses and fling at you at the zoo. (This is a depressingly regular event at Dudley Zoo.) I also associate that same brown stuff with the soundtrack to this advert, a thought shared by lots of other people, as YouTube is full of redubbed versions of this advert, so I thought I'd share the best ones with you all.

First up is Bonnie Tyler's ridiculous power ballad:



Next is a simple soapy idea:


Here is the great ape rocking out to Pantera's excellent Walk:


The also-excellent Nine Inch Nails get an inevitable re-dub, this works because the drummer actually IS an animal:


And I've left the best until last:


Which kinda takes us back to Dudley zoo. One thing that's always bothered me is the fact that Cadbury's make a big deal of the fact that there's a glass and a half of milk in every bar, but exactly how much is a 'glass'? What recognised system of weights and measures are they using to quantify the amount of milk used? Maybe they should change it to 'a petri dish and a half of salmonella in at least 10% of our bars'.

Batmen on drugs.

Because of the overwhelming response to the film on my last post (all of no comments! Yay! still got it!), I've been digging around YouTube and found some more versions of the 21st Century classic that's called 'Batman On Drugs'. Basically, it takes a clip from the old '6os Batman TV show (the one where he does the 'Batusi' in a Gotham Discotheque!) loops it and adds a song that I don't know the name of, but it makes me smile and it is extremely catchy, although singing it out loud makes you sound like a mental.

Anyway, here's the version I posted last time, just to refresh your jaded minds:



Here is the fantastic Heavy Metal version of the same song:


And here is the Batman Begins update, starring Christian Bale, that welsh bloke with the weird jaw thing that my friend quite fancies...


Thanks for indulging me. Back soon-Same bat-time, same bat-blog!

Changes and Shit.

This, generally, has been a tough week. I don't really want to go into it, but the result is that me and my glamorous other half are no more. She wants to be my glamorous ex-other half. Shit, ain't it?

Still, I could throw myself into my work. I'd rather throw myself into a threshing machine, but seeing as I live in the ultra-urban conurbation known as Birmingham, threshing machines aren't exactly ten-a-penny. There is Thresher's, however, where you can purchase a whole range of stuff that your sorrows can learn to swim in.

My work is shit. Literally. We had a meeting last week where all us fully-grown shop-floor employees were called up to the canteen and were told by our foreman and shop-steward that we're not to shit on the seats of the toilets. Thanks for the advice. I've told you all before about the knuckle-dragging cro-magnons I call my colleagues, and their toilet habits. Well, apparently, our cleaner has had enough and she's refused to clean up the big chunks of faeces that have inexplicably ended up stuck to the bog seat. Fair play to her. It was at this precise moment that I decided I really, really don't want to work there any longer (if it wasn't for the Jane Eyre fiasco I wouldn't have been, by now.) I've decided to re-train myself. I don't know what as, yet, but like the cleaner, I can't put up with this shit any longer.

In other news, the Arts team at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (The people I did the ArtsChampion leaflet for, last summer) got in touch with me today and told me thay want to give me another three hundred quid, as they're going to put the above image on the side of a couple of vans that they're using to promote the scheme. Though it's probably not the work I'm most proud of, it has earned me a fair bit of cash, and given me some free publicity. Thank fuck for the ArtsChampion! (despite the fact Jonni called him the ArseChampion!)

So, if you're in the sprawling Second City at any point in the future, and you see an ArtsChampions van, you now know who did the picture. For what it's worth.