The Blog from a Newplanet.

Is art this is art

2012-01-30T08:46:00.003Z

A friend of mine and her husband had a very arty farty gathering at her house on Saturday. A few weeks ago she sent me a text asking whether I would be free to come to the evening's festivities, adding:

"After a daft experience at an art gallery opening in Amsterdam, I am planning a bit of nonsense where everyone brings a piece of art they've made and then we sell them to each other (pocket money prices) and donate to charity."

What a brilliant idea! Or not, as the case may be. Back in the day when I had my marketing business, we all decided we'd adorn the walls of our board room with paintings that we ourselves had painted. It was supposed to be a fun team building exercise but, very quickly, we damned the moment we ever came up with the idea.

I won't speak for everyone's efforts, but mine was certainly attrocious. I can't even paint a living room wall properly, never mind a piece of art. I'm fine with concepts - and I had a really great one in my head - but getting it down on canvas was er... problematic for me. So much so, it was never shown to anyone. In the end I ditched the whole concept completely, I painted over it with a nice (but a bit bland) pastel abstract, which used emulsion instead of acrylic or (god forbid) oils. The fact that it was painted with emulsion I still claim is the most arty thing about it. It certainly was not the image, which was simply rectangular shapes overlapping each other. An art critic would have fallen asleep before they could muster a single word to say about it.

Anyway, for Saturday night's soiree, I decided I would refrain from using a paint brush, instead opting for something I flung together in Paint Shop Pro. This is, er... an artist's impression of the actual art.

This is art, indeed. [And, indeed, is it really?] And what is art exactly? Is art this? Before the event, I described the piece as being "simple and yet profound" and hinted that I expected it to go for a high price, all the while worrying that it was so rubbish it might not fetch so much as 50p. [Which would have been a disaster since the frames cost me 8 whole pounds!]

Actually, in the end my art sold for £14. I was pretty impressed, particularly since earlier in the evening I'd snagged an abstract painting (created with real paint and a real paintbrush and everything) for £2. Actually, what was really amazing about the night is how creative everyone had been. Someone brought a fabulous paper mache sculpture. Someone else had made a puppet made from an old curtain and some lentils (not kidding). One of the pictures was of an origami dinosaur, made from an Asda turkish delight chocolate bar (also not kidding). I also ended up buying a beautiful chalk drawing of a stag on a cliff top staring up at the aurora borealis for £15.52. It's really quite something, actually.

And the whole night was a success financially, raising nearly £130 for cancer research.

2012 is K25

2012-01-09T13:10:00.000Z

Hello.

Happy New Year! How was your Christmas? Mine was lovely, thank you for asking.

Just in case you are wondering whether 2012 is going to be one hell of a year, let me tell you that the answer is YES. And that's because 2012 has actually been renamed K25 by everyone Kylie and everything Minogue. And that's because the Minoguester has been in the music business for 25 years this year. And that's because she's bloody amazing.

Kylie's creative team are so keen to celebrate this milestone that they've decided to turn this year into a brand of its very own, even going to the bother of designing a commemorative logo (see above). I'm not overly in love with it, to be honest. The diamante is rather fabulous but the K is a little too metallic and angular for my liking. It looks like a K that would stab you in the heart and leave you for dead, perhaps. And we know that Kylie isn't a mass people murderer [and no, she hasn't murdered any songs either, to any smart alecky types who are reading this].

The prospect of what is to come during K25 is much more appealing, however. To be fair, the only thing we know for sure at the moment is that there will be a new album this year. Rather appropriately, it'll be another hits album, however this time it will feature classical and/or acoustic reworkings of the classic songs. Aren't you getting just a teensy bit excited about the prospect of a classical version of Better The Devil You Know, for instance? What about Never Too Late? ::snigger:: We've already heard some snippets of her recording sessions at Abbey Road towards the end of last year and it all sounds very promising indeed. Her sneaky live set, where she performed On A Night Like This complete with a full orchestra was rather wonderful to say the least.

What's even more exciting is the prospect of some special events and live shows throughout the year. Alas, Kylie has denied rumours that she's about to perform/record a duet with Madonna [fans were agog last week when the rumours surfaced but ultimately were left disappointed] but she's yet to deny the rumour that she'll embark on an anti-tour in ~~2012~~ K25. And if you don't know what an anti-tour is, think of the Aphrodite Les Folies Tour of 2011, but in an alternative universe where the sky is green, the grass is blue, Downton Abbey is shit and I'm a millionaire. Indeed, the anti-tour should only include shows in small intimate venues, with an approximate tour budget of about 10 bucks per show, and Kylie should rightly sing a few of her songs that'd normally never have a hope in hell of being performed on one of her Greatest Hits extravaganzas. Even though tickets will be nigh on impossible to get a hold of, the fans who manage it will be certain to have the night of their lives.

Meanwhile, Kylie's Twitter page has gone all #BlastFromThePast over the past few days with Kylie and her fans sharing some of her most (and least) favourite photos from the past 25 years. It's properly hysterical. You should definitely check it out.

So Happy K25, here's to having a brilliant 12 months, whatever it decides to throw at us, Kylie events-wise or just general soap opera life events-wise. :-)

Oh, christmas tree! :-/

2011-12-05T13:01:00.000Z

Yesterday we put our Christmas tree up. We decided to get a new one this year. At 7'6" it's a foot and a half taller than the one we're used to, plus it's a little bit thinner, so it looks like our tree went on a diet and is now wearing stilletos.

Usually I enjoy putting the tree up. You know the drill... get the fire on, slap on some holiday tunes, sip a wee glass of vino or two and enjoy the festive spirit. This year was not like that.

I have a particularly lousy cold at the moment and I spent the whole day blowing my nose and feeling dreadful. There were issues with the lights - we bought 400 thinking that it would fill the whole tree, only to find that we needed to go and buy another 120 - and then when we got home they weren't even the same shade of white (despite saying on the box that they were). A bigger tree meant more branches to fix in place and as for that "Happy Holidays" garland we purchased from Pottery Barn in Florida last year, *that* was a NIGHTMARE and caused me to curse loudly at least ten times. Seriously, I have never been so stressed and grumpy putting up a Christmas tree in my life.

Still, the end result is indeed rather jolly, I think. And literally the moment we finished it, it started snowing outside, as if to say Christmas had officially begun. All over again.

The greatest entertainer ever?

2011-11-30T23:30:00.003Z

Hello world!

Spooky Octoberfest (and most of November) was officially a bust on the blogging front, thanks to a ridiculously busy month made especially ridiculous by my preparations for our workplace annual conference and then me having the audacity to go on holiday for a fortnight, right before the actual dates of the conference.

I had an utterly amazing holiday in California (with a nice trip to Nevada thrown in there for good measure) and there will probably be some updates about that during the next few weeks, as I desperately try to cling on to my memories of the trip, which are disintegrating at a thoroughly alarming pace.

However, I also have to admit that I have wasted a bit of time this month arguing on web forums. Yes, that is indeed time that could have been better spent blogging, or doing something else... anything else more productive. I know this. I try my best to avoid message boards - after all there is no such thing as real "debate" on them, only people who are so entrenched in their own point of view that they will never agree to the opposing argument, therefore rendering the discussion pointless - but every now and again, I get sucked in.

This time, it's been my turn to get inveigled in the digital spy message board and... dear lord... a discussion about whether Michael Jackson is the greatest entertainer ever.

Erk.

Let me tell you that this thread is 33 pages long. It is officially the thread that will not die. If you are reading this a year from now, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the thread is still going. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still going by the time our sun goes supernova. It's properly mental, so it is.

I should also tell you that I am not a fan of Michael Jackson. His sister more so, but even she's way down my league of favourites. I don't care if someone wants to pronounce him God, or the shittiest performer that's ever walked the Earth... that is their opinion and entirely up to them. Who am I to argue?

If only everyone felt this way. What has erupted on the thread is a rather bizarre (but nonetheless fascinating) contest to prove something which can never been proven. In one corner are the Jackson fans, spouting all the usual claims to MJ amazingdom. And in the other corner are music snobs, who for some reason have made it their lives' purpose to put Jackson fans in their place.

Now we all know that *some* of Jackson's fans are not the most well adjusted of the world's population. (And there was plenty of evidence of this on show in Los Angeles when I was there on the day the Conrad Murray verdict was announced, let me assure you). But we also know that these same fans are also pretty harmless. Vocal, certainly, but also harmless. In all instances, these people should be ignored.

But no, the war goes on and it's not been pretty. After 20 or so pages of drivel, I weighed in with a jolly call to sanity... "is Michael Jackson the greatest entertainer ever? Surely that depends on who you ask."

Needless to say, it was not well received. Surprisingly, it wasn't the Jackson fans who voiced their displeasure, but the music snobs. No, it turns out that they're so determined to prove that he is *not* the best that my argument with them quickly turned to whether or not opinions could be proven true or false [ME: they can't be proven and therefore no opinions matter, VS. THEM: they can be proven and Michael Jackson fans are bampots, therefore ours matter most, therefore Michael Jackson isn't the best.]

Yes, bugger lugs, I don't think he's the best either, but it really doesn't matter what I think, does it? Nor you, for that matter.

It's a similar argument I had with friends of mine one Christmas Day (ho ho ho), where, after a few drinks, my best mate tried to say that his opinion about Kylie had more validity than mine because I was a "superfan" and I was therefore completely biased. I honestly don't know how we didn't end up fighting that particularly very happy Christmas Day.

Since then, of course, the message board has degenerated into cheap insults and mud-slinging, people contradicting themselves every five minutes, all the while hoping to be prove themselves the biggest smart ass.

It's been kinda fun, actually. :-)

Horrorthon 2011, Part 1: Poltergeist II: The Other Side

2011-10-12T09:08:00.000+01:00

It's time for another Spooky Octoberfest. And without any further ado, here is this year's first entry in my annual Horrorthon! ::strikes zombie pose and makes groaning noise::

After the runaway success of Poltergeist, I guess it was only a matter of time until we got a sequel. The only problem is that it's an entirely new team at the helm and, adhering to a hard and fast rule of movie sequels, this means we venture off into new territories story wise, not all of which are particularly welcome or even make much sense.

That's illustrated perfectly by the film's opening credits. The first movie excelled itself by introducing a completely normal suburban setting for its credits sequence which, let's face it, was rather unusual for what was essentially a haunted house movie. In this film, on the other hand, we open with an overly long sequence featuring some native American shamen. It's a weird setting once again for what is essentially a haunted house movie and I've seen this film at least ten times and I still haven't the foggiest what it's all about.

Anyway, the film eventually ventures back to more familiar territory, which is when we find out that a year or so has passed since the events of the first film and that the Freelings are now living with Diane's elderly mother. Carol-Anne seems to have no memories of her ghostly adventures, whilst the rest of the Freelings are forced to live out the consequences of all the past calamity. Putting it bluntly, the family are flat-out broke. Now that he no longer works for the evil developer that likes to build houses on top of graveyards, Stephen is forced to sell vacuum cleaners for a living, while they duke it out with their insurance company who, naturally, aren't keen to pay out on acts of the dead.

Very quickly however, we realise that Carol-Anne is more bright and switched on than we thought. She pulls the right colour of yarn from the knitting basket without looking at it. She talks to kittens at the pet shop. Stuff like that. Carol-Anne, so it would seem, is more than a little clairvoyant.

Meanwhile, a team of researchers are digging up the earth at the site of the old house in Cuesta Verde. One of the team is none other than the magic munchkin herself, Tangina Barrons, who dutifully informs an Indian friend of hers (it's the same fellow we saw in the opening sequence and his name is Taylor) that they've found an ancient burial ground, deep underneath the cemetery which went kablooey in the first film. Could this be the real source of all the spooky shenanigans, in actual fact?

Taylor is promptly despatched to warn the Freelings that the vengeful spooks are on the loose again. And sure enough, right on cue, the music and lights show starts up again. Unfortunately, this is where the movie begins to suffer. Apart from an absolutely amazing scene later on in the film (more about that later), without the trusty knob-twiddling team at Industrial Light & Magic, the effects are a little lacklustre this time around. They're not terrible (in fact, they were nominated for an Academy Award) but you'll notice the difference sure enough.

There's no television in the Freeling household any more, so this time the horrid ghosties make contact by telephone. It would appear that their modus operandi hasn't changed much, either. This is neatly illustrated by a ridiculous scene where Robbie is attacked by his own teeth brace. Once again, the nasty spirits aren't in the least bit interested in Robbie, rather this is all a wicked diversion so they can whisk Carol-Anne off to the afterlife. Thankfully, this time their efforts are thwarted by that pesky Indian dude.

One thing in particular has changed about their MO, however, and his name is Kane. It's not explained at all well but we're led to believe that Kane is the physical embodiment of the evil spirit Tangina calls "The Beast" in the first film. You're left wondering how the heck a demon from the afterlife is able to walk amongst the living whenever he damn well pleases, in spite of being offered a rubbish explanation that he's a being which can assume many forms.

This time the Beast has taken the form of an elderly skeleton-thin preacher man from the deep south. He's not at all pretty, with paper thin translucent skin, deeply sunken eyes and at least twenty too many yellow teeth in his mouth. And it's at this point in the proceedings that the plot gets a little muddled. The Indian man thinks that they'll be saved by all sorts of macho rite of passage claptrap, while Tangina thinks the solution lies in Diane so she harangues her until she admits that she too is psychic.

All the while, Kane tries to get himself invited into the Freeling house. Kane is clearly not a vampire but somehow appears to be powerless to whisk Carol-Anne back to the spirit world until he's invited over the threshold. Cue an absolutely unforgettable scene where Kane engages in a battle of wills (and an old-fashioned shouting match) with Stephen on the doorstep to the house - a battle which he loses, incidentally.

Kane may lose the battle, but the war is certainly not over and there is more than one way to end up inside that damn house. Suddenly, what is the most briliant scene in the whole film comes along. Stephen decides to drown his sorrows by polishing off a bottle of mezcal, even downing the worm at the bottom of the bottle (I know, eww). Except... oh no... the worm is actually Kane in another form! (How did he get in the bottle, though? Oh, who cares.) Stephen is now possessed! This is not the brilliant part of this scene. In fact, there's an altogether uncomfortable sequence first during which Stephen-Kane makes unwanted sexual advances on Diane.

It's when Diane realises that Stephen isn't exactly acting like himself that things turn nasty/amazing. After Diane professes her undying love for him, Stephen begins to expel Kane from his body. You would think that it would all be done with pretty lights and loud noises, but no. Instead, he starts to retch and convulse, throwing up the most foul gunk known to man - which wouldn't be so bad if the gunk didn't grow into a slimy horrific alien demon creature before our very eyes. The creature is NOT nice - think Alien meets Hellraiser meets Predator. It blinks at us and then hobbles away, while the audience reaches for the sick bags.

We're nearing the end of the film so that means it's time for another final escape from the house routine. It's nowhere near as inventive or as memorable as in the first film - flying chainsaws anyone? - but it's still kinda fun nonetheless.

You may think that is where the movie ends. Afterwards, you might wish that is where the movie ended, but no. The family quickly realise that to vanquish Kane and his horde of followers once and for all, they'll have to do it on his own turf. So, off they troop to Cuesta Verde, all so they can go on a merry jaunt to... cue dramatic music... "The Other Side". And I am not joking when I tell you that it is dreadful. Not dreadful as in scary and horrifying. It's just really bad. It's easily and by far the worst part of the whole film, right there at the end. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Still, there is indeed a happy ending and I'm not a firm believer of movie endings spoiling everything that went before it, so the trick is to just go with it, or simply switch off ten minutes before the full running time has elapsed.

3 out of 5.

One Jem of a revival

2011-09-30T13:25:00.001+01:00

Let me tell you exactly how many people are more excited than I am about the current Jem revival we're all enjoying at the moment. It's no people.

It's true that *right now*, Jem is experiencing fame and fortune the likes of which we haven't witnessed since, er... 1985. To be honest, life is beginning to imitate art. Current events are a bit like the Glitter and Gold episode, where Jem went on hiatus for an eternity, only for the pop charts to turn to complete shit, only for her to suddenly return and triumphantly reclaim her crown as the rightful ruler of everything which glitters and all that is golden.

A whopping 26 years after her original debut, Jem could very well be on her way back to superstardom and, wait for it... toy shop shelves the world over. Rumours of a Jem comeback have been circulating for years, but the rumour mill really cranked into overdrive this summer when two amazing things happened.

The first was that the US cable network The Hub announced it would start showing the Jem cartoon show all over again. It's no surprise that Jem would find a new home on The Hub, since the channel is a joint venture between Discovery Communications and yes, you guessed it... Hasbro. What's really interesting is how this means they've been able to throw bucketfulls of cash at promoting the show, resulting in this quite frankly astounding billboard being erected in downtown Los Angeles over the summer and Jem and The Holograms (as they're calling it) becoming one of their most highly watched shows.

The second amazing thing that happened is that Shout Factory announced it would be releasing the entire series of Jem on DVD in October. (It gets a release in about 12 days, in actual fact). This marks the first time EVER that all 65 episodes have been released for us to purchase (after Rhino thoroughly botched their releases a few years back, meaning only two thirds of the show's run found its way to DVD). This is a huge deal and fans are positively wetting themselves in anticipation of the "lost" Stingers episodes finally being made available to own at last.

On top of this, the annual Jem convention is going from strength to strength. The 2011 "Jemcon" even had the nerve to take flight from the USA to the Netherlands. That didn't stop it being visited by show creator Christy Marx and being a huge success. I haven't yet been able to attend one of these events but I'd surely love to, especially with the promise of meeting any number of the names who contributed to making the show really great. All in all, interest in the Jem franchise really hasn't been so high for at least two decades. It is properly brilliant, so it is.

The icing on the cake came only very recently when, allegedly, Hasbro announced its presence at this year's New York Comic Con and would be showcasing its latest projects including, yep... Jem and The Holograms. This caused doll collectors all over the States to rush to their nearby ER with suspected coronaries, whilst speculating en route to hospital whether this meant a brand new doll line was/is in the works. Even I, who has had literally ZERO interest in the dolls over the years got all excitable at the prospect. Especially if it means there'll be a new Jem show to promote it.

Christy Marx said recently that she knows exactly how she would remake Jem should she ever be approached to do so. Her method would satisfy existing fans of the show (and boy, does this woman know her show's fan base) whilst opening up the Truly Outrageous world of Jem to a legion of new fans. However, she's swift to add that she's yet to be approached about a potential project in the works and that any current rumours amount to nothing more than that.

Even if you have just a passing interest in the Jem franchise. Keep your fingers crossed for a HUGE announcement at NY Comic Con, which kicks off in New York City on October 13th.

Countdown to Octoberfest

2011-09-20T13:43:00.000+01:00

This picture - shamelessly nicked from the X-Entertainment blog - tells me that this year's countdown to the world's scariest day has officially begun.

Halloween really is becoming more and more like Christmas every year, is it not? [Granted, with less goodwill to all men and more blood and guts.] They're both essentially one-day holidays and yet these crazy limited edition brand extensions start appearing on shop shelves MONTHS before the actual event. [I'm always amused and bemused by Christmas cakes with sell-by dates on them that are before December 25th. When were they made? Last Christmas?]

Anyway, October and December must be like sweeps months for US candy and soda manufacturers in particular. Whilst their UK counterparts have been catching on slowly but surely [I sipped on a can of Barr's Slimy Limeade the other day and Cadbury's Screme Eggs are also back] those residing stateside really do get to go Halloween and Christmas bonkers at this time of the year. I wouldn't be at all surprised if their spooky and festive stock amounted to more than half of their yearly turnover.

Last year, I was lucky enough to take a trip to the States about six weeks before Christmas. For a self-confessed brandophile like me, it was utterly glorious. There were festive products literally popping up through trap doors everywhere you looked! Perhaps my favourite were those limited edition Candy Cane Oreos that me and my boyfriend bought in Walmart "to try them out", only to end up buying about ten packets and scoffing the lot of them between us.

Anyway, fast forward nine months and suddenly - like a serial killer in a scary movie that just WILL NOT DIE - its time for Halloween Oreos to make their annual comeback. To be honest, these taste exactly the same as regular Oreos but the creme in them is ORANGE and the biscuits have "boo-riffic" (see what they did there?) pictures on them. How amazing is that? I plan to eat A LOT of them when, yes indeed, I venture across the pond again... this time for Halloween... in VEGAS!

It's true that I plan to have a pretty darned amazing Octoberfest this year. The plan is to basically just lay about and watch horror films every night, whilst I tick off the days on the calendar until it's time for us to go on holiday. This year we're doing the whole Los Angeles - San Diego - Las Vegas - Palm Springs tour and it promises to be utterly wonderful, especially since we also have a trip planned to Knott's Scary Farm during that time.

Of course, the beauty of all this is that we'll also get to watch the seasonal displays in the supermarkets change from spooky to festive literally overnight. Best of both worlds, indeed!

Parting shots

2011-09-15T13:24:00.005+01:00

Thirty years have passed since she released Kids In America and Kim Wilde has been celebrating by releasing a new album, Snapshots. In a career that's had more ups and downs than your average Bolliger & Mabillard roller coaster, it's a real treat that we're still getting new Kim Wilde albums after so long and, as I've spoken about on this blog before, it's a wonder that she can even be bothered recording them any more. Good for her, and all that stuff, eh?

Anyway, the Snapshots project is one that, on the surface, sounds like it might be shit. I remember once reading an interview with Kim in which she admitted to struggling with recording cover versions because it was difficult to find good songs that suited her voice.

The thing is, Kim's well aware of her vocal limitations. In a recent interview she even admitted to her voice being "a bit thin sometimes" but that her talent was in conveying emotions through her voice and her lyrics. I agree with the conveying emotions part completely, although I defy anyone to listen to the likes of Never Trust A Stranger and call *that* voice thin.

Anyway, if the concept behind Snapshots has you spooked, how does the finished product rate in reality? Well, if you ask me, it still might not be everyone's cup of tea but if truth be told, it is at least forty seven and a half times better than shit.

The first single from the album is a cover of Tasmin Archer's Sleeping Satellite and it is immense. The video is also amazing, in which a natural - but still very beautiful - looking 50 year old Kim is surrounded by snapshots of herself from throughout the three decades of her career. At one point, that single photograph which exists of her and Michael Jackson flashes on to the screen. For anyone who's followed Kim's career over the years, it's a poignant emotional moment and the whole video is really very memorable.

But how does the rest of the album fare? Well, if I'm being perfectly honest, it's an odd dichotomy of the sublime and the ridiculous. The songs she's chosen to cover are ecclectic to say the least. (East 17's It's Alright vs. Suede's Beautiful Ones anyone?) For every one where she makes the song her own by putting her little Kim Wilde stamp on it, there's another where she ruins it completely. Erasure's A Little Respect, for example, is admittedly godwaful, whereas her cover of Mike Oldfield's To France is nothing short of stupendous - mostly because it sounds exactly like something she would have recorded in 1984. [Seriously, it wouldn't sound out of place on the track listing to Teases & Dares, arguably her best LP of all time.]

Elsewhere, the cover of the Diana Ross classic Remember Me benefits greatly by replacing Ross's loungey soundtrack with Kim's triple-backed vocals and pumped up disco synths. On the other hand, Kim's version of It's Alright opts for a much more minimilast production than East 17's original, meaning it comes across as a bit wishy-washy.

Unsurprisingly then, the best tracks on the album are those where she doesn't have to venture too far from her own territory. Her cover of Kirsty MacColl's They Don't Know About Us suits her to a tee - as does her version of Ever Fallen In Love by the Buzzcocks. Even her duet with her husband Hal on the David Bowie song Kooks is all rather apt and sweet.

All in all, whilst Snapshots might not be as memorable as last year's triumphant return to Kim's rock-chick roots, i.e. Come Out And Play, I'm still rather pleased she's added it to her discography. Now, how about the hat-trick, and another new album for 2012 please?

6.5 out of 10.

Still can't get it out of my head

2011-09-08T15:05:00.001+01:00

Just in case you are feeling particularly young, sprightly and happy-go-lucky lucky lucky today, I am going to tell you that Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head is officially ten years old today.

Oh how time flies! A whole decade has passed since Kylie went head to head with Posh Spice, only to trounce her in the sales department. CGYOOMH romped to number one, effectively kicking off what was to become one hell of an album campaign (ultimately resulting in a million selling single, a 5x platinum LP, two Brit awards and her most impressive live tour to date, i.e. KylieFever2002). I don't want to rub it in, but which number did Mrs. Beckham's Not Such An Innocent Girl limp to in the chart lineup that same week, ten years ago? Oh, who cares!

I am happy to boast that I was one of the first 3,000 people in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD to hear it - on the opening night of the On a Night Like This Tour in Glasgow. I remember thinking the song was okay but that it probably wouldn't go to number one. Hmmm...

Anyway, what a great Kylie era that was! That also makes it ten years since Kylie's videos were full of crazy robotic dance routines. I fondly remember an interview with one of Kylie's dancers at the time. "Yay! I'm going to be in the new Kylie video!" they gushed. "Oh, wait a minute... is she going to make me wear a bucket on my head?"

As an aside, you might also like to know that the Kylie 'K' star logo, which has adorned every Minogue release ever since - as well as my back since early 2010 - is also ten years old today. Happy Birthday to whoever came up with that fab idea also. Hurrah!

Congratulations go to Kylie, Cathy Dennis and Mr. Rob Davis. May the royalties continue to keep you minted for the forseeable future.

It's not the end of the world

2011-08-23T13:55:00.003+01:00

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past week or so, you'll know that Glasgow is caught in the grip of a zombie fever epidemic at the moment. The streets right outside the train station I use to get to work each day have been transformed into, er... what's that Bruce Springsteen song again? Oh yes... the Streets of Philadelphia. It's all for Brad Pitt's new movie World War Z, an adaptation of the novel by Max Brooks.

And let me tell you, what a right old tizz it's been causing. The politics of *why* they're filming the movie here aside - is it all that surprising, though? Don't locations in other countries double for locations in other countries all the time? - the stir is all to do with how convincingly the prop guys have managed to transform Glasgow's streets into American ones.

I'm not talking about some random Glesga back street here. I'm talking about the area around George Square, one of the city centre's busiest and most well-known regions. And suddenly there are yellow traffic lights and taxi cabs. Huge trucks with US licence plates. "Don't walk" crossing signs. Last night, while I surveyed the scene on my nightly walk back through the city, I wondered how they would hide the huge banners which adorn the lamposts in George Square - only to notice that they too had been altered to look like we were in Philadelphia. [How silly of me - did I think they would CGI them out?] There are USA Today newspaper stands. Philly SWAT cars. One of the ugliest buildings on the square now has a "United States Court House" sign on the front of it. And then down the road a bit, sticking out like a sore thumb, there is a Greggs the bakers. It's properly mental, so it is.

Needless to say, I haven't seen a single zombie (yet) - nor have I witnessed Mr. Pitt and Clan-jelina - although I have heard that some pretty intense sequences are being shot in the city. It's rather amazing, actually.

Naturally, it's causing a bit of a ruckus with some of the more po-faced of Glaswegians, who seem rather put out that they won't be able to sit their arses on a park bench in the square for a fortnight. "Why can't they just f*****g film it in Philadelphia?" asked one moaning minnie on Facebook the other day. Funnily enough, they're asking the same question in Philadelphia, accusing Glasgow City Council of "gloating" about the £2million the production is allegedly bringing to the city.

Well, I don't know how much cash the council are bagging as a direct result of the Hollywood machine taking up residence, but I do know there is a real positive buzz in the city at the moment. And for a movie that's depicting the end of the world, that's pretty neat, don't you think?

Mine is not to reason why

2011-08-09T19:00:00.002+01:00

I literally can not get over this photograph. It's a woman jumping from a blazing building in the midst of the rioting and looting carnage that's been overtaking the capital and other cities across the country these past few days.

Thanks mostly to timing and me being nowhere near a news report for a couple of days, I have to admit that I was pretty ignorant about the scale of the destruction until late last night. That was when a friend of mine, who is visiting the city with her family, sent me a text to say: "Things are really bad, but we are fine. The riots are a few miles up the road and all the local shops are shut. Street lights are out too and sirens are going all over the place. We can smell the smoke."

This morning I took the time to read some of the media coverage of the trouble and, honestly, it's un-fucking-believable. If the photographs weren't in colour, you'd swear that some of them were taken during the WWII London blitz. No, these photos aren't a result of some evil Nazi party plot to take over the world. They're a result of British people whose actions surely can never be rationalised.

Well, as it happens, some of the more intellectual types among us have been trying to do exactly that, by proposing reasons "why" this is all happening in the first place. But to be honest, the reason why is unimportant to me right now. Right now I reserve the right to feel whatever the hell I feel about the subject without being forced to play devil's advocate. How about I leave all the theorising to sociologists, politicians and bloggers who don't tag their posts with labels called "Ranty McRantpants", shall I?

I know that there are underlying causes to *any* civil unrest, but in this instance, if "why" provides even a quarter of a percent of legitimacy to their actions, then you're onto plums if you think you're going to convert me to your way of thinking. The reason behind the peaceful protest which took place on Saturday - the uncertainty surrounding the death of Mark Duggan, plus everything else associated with that issue - is one thing. Senseless violence and looting is quite another. Nothing excuses that kind of behaviour. Nothing. And I hate the notion that, somehow, if I fail to understand the rioters' underlying motives for burning down the buildings in their own communities and stealing from their neighbours, I'm somehow an unforgiving, elitist, right-wing arsehole with marshmallow for brains.

For the record, it's not that I haven't tried to understand. I did try... and I just don't. Of course some of these people are "disengaged", "angry" and "unhappy" at the cards they've been dealt in life. But that's no excuse. If it was me, I like to think that I'd be one of the *other* people in my community, i.e. those that have been dealt the same cards but have a healthy sense of what is right and wrong and, therefore, chose not to wreck and endanger the lives of other people to make their frustrations known. I am also perturbed by those who are comparing the violence to uprisings in Libya, or the frickin' Stonewall riots for that matter, to prove that violence can sometimes bring about a positive solution to the problem of inequality. They're *not* the same thing, period.

No, if these rioters want change - something more meaningful than a new television set without having to pay for it - then they're going the wrong way about effecting it.

Brother, back from the dead

2011-08-04T08:02:00.004+01:00

Okay, so how many of you were *really* convinced we'd seen the last of Big Brother? Of course we bloody hadn't! To be fair, it teetered on the brink of oblivion for a while but it would appear that Channel 5 were just playing really hard to get.

And it would also appear that Channel 5 are doing their best to put their own stamp on things. Allegedly, there will be no live feed this year, something which people are royally up in arms about. I am bothered not a jot since, well... I work all day and I sleep all night. Why the heck would I need a live feed?

They've also [cue dramatic music] ditched the Daniel Eatock eye, in favour of a much more minimalist affair which is part eye, part camera lens. At first I despised it with an unearthly passion. I even took to twitter and ranted about it. "What a way to mess up a brand!" I bleated. Now, I rather like it. Funny that.

The show begins with a four-week celebrity version, allegedly. Also allegedly, they're thinking about paying Charlie Sheen 6 million pounds (so that's about what... 10 million dollars, maybe?) to stay in the new house. Oh my word, C5 will make a fortune out of me voting this man out! Other names attached include Pamela Anderson and Kerry Katona. It's going to be a car crash, for absolute certainty.

Following the Celebrity run, we'll be launching straight into the regular series, which means we'll be watching (or, indeed, not watching) Big Brother until pretty much Christmas time. And then they're thinking about doing another Celebrity show in January! It's utterly utterly bonkers!

Anyway, I absolutely love this new promo, don't you? How many ex-housemates can you name?

Thankfully, neither Jason from BB5, nor Grace from BB7 are to be seen. I was absolutely thrilled to spot Nichola from BB1 in the crowd, until someone told me it was Lisa from BB10. ::sad face:: I was not so thrilled to see Saskia from BB6, though, who now looks like she's the size of a Big Brother house. Haw haw, the silly cow.

No start date for BB yet, but the rumour mill says August 17th.

Tweetin' Wilde

2011-08-03T13:13:00.004+01:00

I am sorry but this will be the last post on The Blog from a Newplanet, since I died this morning when I discovered that Kim Wilde had sent me a tweet! This was after I showed her the picture that my anonymous commentator sent me a link to earlier this week. Anyway, this is what she had to say...

@newplanet wow,haven't seen this one,we achieved so much together : )

::dies of coronary embelism::

Amazing (x 1 million).

Anyway, here is a link to the photo. Thank you Mister Anonymous!

Throwback to the 80s

2011-08-02T13:18:00.006+01:00

As you know, I'm a Coke fellow. Seriously, Coke is it and don't you ever forget it. However, that doesn't stop me from admitting to a little Pepsi love from time to time. I especially *heart* their new Pepsi Max Cherry, which was launched in the UK last month. [Actually, Coca-Cola UK could learn a thing or two. Note to any Coke marketing peeps who might be reading this... we need Coca-Cola Cherry Zero STAT!]

As you also know, I'm a total brand nerd. Which probably explains why I have spent this lunch time browsing the Walmart.com web site, looking at products I can't even buy! That is, at least until my upcoming trip to California which is now less than three months away!

Anyway, my new favourite US Pepsi product is what they're calling Pepsi Throwback. Just look at the amazing 70s/80s retro packaging! Don't you just love it? [And are any of you surprised to learn that I still have two or three cans like this from the 80s in my collection?] Apart from that, Pepsi Throwback is made using REAL sugar - indeed another throwback to the 80s. Soda manufacturers have long since stopped using sugar to sweeten soft drinks, instead preferring to use high fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper. But, molars beware, sugar is BACK... even if it is just for a limited period.

I don't know about you, but just a look at the box is enough to take me back to my childhood and those great trips we took to the Regal Cinema in Saltcoats. My sister and I would sip sugary Pepsi through drinking straws that were approximately one millimetre wide, from glass bottles with this very design emblazoned on them. How glorious!!! This, of course, is what they're banking on. What more do you need to convince you to part with your hard-earned dollars than the promise of some fuzzy feel-good childhood memories?

Right, I am off to play with my Rubik's cube and watch E.T. on VHS.

Help me uncover, Help me warn!

2011-08-01T12:55:00.003+01:00

You would be forgiven for thinking that this is another of those dodgy rapture prophecies by American bampot Harold Camping. But you'd still be wrong. This is, in fact, just a part of the rather wonderful marketing campaign that Thorpe Park has adopted to promote its newest coaster, previously code-named LC12.

The Swarm, which opens at Thorpe Park in the Spring of 2012, is the UK's first X-wing coaster, whereby riders sit on seats that are situated on "wings" that are hanging off each side of the track. It is made by roller-coaster giants Bolliger & Mabillard and will be just the second of their "wing-walker" coaster models in the whole wide world (after Raptor, which opened this year at Gardaland in Italy). Apparently, The Swarm will have a unique "head first inverted drop" element thrown in too. It is going to be properly awesome.

The marketing campaign for the new coaster, so far, has been every bit as awesome. For months, the twitter feed @LC12net has been prophecising armageddon. "The end is coming! Help me uncover! Help me warn!" they've been saying, whilst the web site www.lc12.net has been counting down the days, hours and minutes until the reveal about what is surely going to be an extinction level event. One tweet warned us: "People are starting to run, but we ALL need to run" whilst another prophecised: "Devastation devastation devastation. The end is coming. They will attack. They will destroy. The government will not help" like a spooky Protect & Survive pamphlet from the 70s.

"Be picked up and dragged on the wings of THE SWARM as you’re left exposed and vulnerable to the extreme near misses and gut wrenching inversions as it rips through the sky on its mission of complete annihilation" says the web site, whilst the accompanying video plays scenes of carnage, terror and utter devastation. It's properly gripping stuff.

"Experience the unique head first, inverted drop from 127ft as you are flung into this merciless flight for your life. War is coming... Spring 2012."

Snapshots

2011-07-31T21:13:00.001+01:00

Kim Wilde hasn't been resting on her laurels lately. Less than twelve months after she released her eleventh studio album Come Out And Play, she's poised to release her twelfth, entitled Snapshots.

Alarm bells might start ringing when I tell you that Snapshots is a covers album. It seems that everybody is recording them these days and it's true that they're either amazing or diabolical. The new covers album by Beverley Knight is actually pretty amazing, as it happens. Remember the one by Sharleen Spiteri, on the other hand? No, neither do I.

The tracklisting of Snapshots is suppposed to be exactly that... bite sized snapshots from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s *and* 00s... songs which make up the soundtrack to Kim's life. You'll either *really* like the sound of it, or you'll be thinking right now that this is a recipe for career suicide.

The thing is, these days Kim is pretty much suiting herself when it comes to her career. Her last two albums were only released in Europe and whilst they were moderately successful, I doubt that gold bullion was being delivered to the family home in Hertfordshire afterwards. No, Kim is recording again because she's enjoying her singing career more than she probably ever did before. In the 80s and 90s, there was the pressure to sell bucketloads and to look like a stick insect. Sometimes she did and sometimes she didn't, but we now know that her career never filled her with prolonged unbridled glee. In a rather nice twist, however, nowadays the pressure isn't there any more. There is no such thing as career suicide for Kim in the 10s. If she never records another album ever again, I doubt she'll be all that bothered. If she does, it'll be because she *wants* to.

And if anyone should be afforded the luxury of recording a bunch of songs that she simply fancies singing, it's her. Out of the 40 or so singles she's released over the years, would you guess how many were cover versions? Eleven... twelve? Actually, it's four. And she kicked them right out of the park. The other thing you should know is she has quite an ecclectic taste in music herself. Which probably explains this positively barmy tracklisting...

1. It's Alright (originally performed by East 17)
2. Inbetween Days (originally performed by The Cure)
3. About You Now (originally performed by Sugababes)
4. Sleeping Satellite (originally performed by Tasmin Archer)
5. To France (originally performed by Mike Oldfield)
6. A Little Respect (originally performed by Erasure)
7. Remember Me (originally performed by Diana Ross)
8. Anyone Who Had A Heart (originally performed by Cilla Black)
9. Wonderful Life (originally performed by Black)
10. They Don't Know (originally performed by Kirsty McColl)
11. Beautiful Ones (originally performed by Suede)
12. Just What I Needed (originally performed by The Cars)
13. Ever Fallen In Love (originally performed by the Buzzcocks)
14. Kooks (originally performed by David Bowie)

Holy. heck.

Now let's be honest, has there ever been a covers album quite like this? I think not. If truth be told, you probably still either *really* like the sound of this, or you still think this is a recipe for career suicide. But I don't care, and, most importantly, neither does Kim.

Snapshots is released 26th August.

Varying degrees of amazing

2011-07-28T18:57:00.004+01:00

Here is a picture of me taken literally yesterday to prove to you that I am still alive.

I look quite happy in this photo, don't I? It helps that I am on a week of leave at the moment and, at the time this photo was taken, I was enjoying a very sunny stroll along the promenade in Largs. The dog is Ziggy, who belongs to my friend Carol. Still, if she'd looked away for too long, the dog would have been mine. He was just the coolest, un-yappiest Jack Russell I have ever known.

Anyway, yes I am still alive. That means some amazing (and unamazing) things have happened since I last blogged at any length...

My six month contract at work, which then became a 12 month contract, went permanent.

I went to see Take That in concert and it pissed down with rain for the whole show.

I went to see Cyndi Lauper in concert and she was amazing.

I went to London to see Janet Jackson at the Royal Albert Hall. She was amazing (Hooray!!!) for all of the 70 minutes (Boooo!!!) that she was actually on the stage.

Nerina Pallot and I had a twitter conversation and she read this blog and said it was "funny". Utterly utterly amazing.

Ricky Wilde and I exchanged "you are amazing" tweets on twitter. He was joking but I was serious.

I went to see Amy Grant perform to an audience of just 400 churchy types in Glasgow and cried when she sung "Oh How The Years Go By" and again during "I Will Remember You". Uh-may-zing.

I got a second sticker at fat class, which told me I'd lost a stone in about 6 weeks. Just another stone to go, then.

I won an auction for 178 Garbage Pail Kids stickers (remember them?) on eBay but was peeved when what I got in the post was a Donkey Kong Game & Watch console instead. Unamazing.

Our Sky box at home got zapped in a thunder storm. :-(

My sister had her apartment robbed and £300 stolen from her bank account - but the Police swiftly caught the fucker.

I went to see the last Harry Potter movie. I didn't cry but I did think it was amazing.

I threw out about two and a half bags of clothes which are now too big for me. A-bloody-mazing!!!

The curious case of Sarah Ure

2011-07-05T14:00:00.003+01:00

Further to my "Kylie Krazy" post a few weeks back, it's time to tell you about the curious case of Sarah Ure (aka "The Real Fan"), surely the most heinous troll I have *ever* come across on my internet travels.

The Sarah escapade happened more than eight years ago. The "kylie@rhythm.cx" mailing list doesn't even exist any more. Nevertheless, the mere mention of her name is still enough to send a chill down the spine of anyone who was silly enough to try and communicate with her.

Legend has it that by the time Sarah popped up out of nowhere, one spring afternoon in 2003, she'd already been banned for life from the Say Hey message board for generally being a nutcase and causing all sorts of troublesome nonsense. And if the following Email chain is anything to go by, I'd say that her tenure on Say Hey was nothing but a dummy run.

In fact, the whole escapade was so completely bonkers that I decided to hang on to all of her messages in the hope that, one day, I may live to document the whole sorry tale for posterity. Indeed, I still have all of her Emails sitting in my Yahoo mail box to this day.

So, without further ado, make a cup of tea, have a seat, put your feet up. This is going to take a while. It gives me great "pleasure" to tell you a story about a big bad internet troll. Her name was Sarah and she was the biggest Kylei fan in the whole wide world...

Subject: NEIL AND LIMBO - NO!
From: "Sarah U" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

i need to tell and warn all of the fans abot neil and mullo telling everybody I am not a real kylei fan I have seen Kylei many times in the person and not just on the tv screen like neils rude suggestions.

he stole some very precious tickets from me and sold them on limbo he is a thief

do not visit limbo it is for his monies and not for the real fans like us and me

it will soon be shut after my actions

a secret fan

Not people to be known for their empathy, the other fans were *not* amused...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: NEIL AND LIMBO - NO!
From: "Mitch"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

Great fan you are.

You can't even write her name right!

Or is there also another singer named: Kylei??

But Sarah would not be abated...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: NEIL AND LIMBO - NO!
From: "Sarah U" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: "Mitch", kylie@rhythm.cx

thats not right i am her biggest with all the albums and cassettes

Cassettes indeed!! Well, anyone who has all of Kylie's cassettes must surely be a real fan, don't you reckon? In any case, Robert comes forward as an early supporter...

From: "Robert"
To: "Sarah U" a_real_fan@xxx.com, kylie@rhythm.cx

Hello All
I haven't written to the list in years BUT Sarah is just an overexcited devoted Kylie fan - 100% - we should appreciate that the world is full of all different types and we should celebrate the uniqueness of all people and not become so Hot Headed over some peoples peculiarities

Rob :)

Wise words indeed. Except, proving that internet trolls will feed on every scrap of attention they're ever fed, that was all Sarah needed to truly begin her reign of terror on the mailing list, nicely signified by her metamorphosis from "Sarah U" to "Real Fan"...

Subject: RE: KYLIE: NEIL AND LIMBO - NO!
From: "Real Fan" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: "Robert", kylie@rhythm.cx

i am glad to see there is another real big fan on here that understand the world of kylei

thanks for the support

But the support doesn't last for long...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: NEIL AND LIMBO - NO!
From: "Andy"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

Ok, sorry to sound rude but I think we need to call the men in white coats on this one ...

A

Sarah's reply?

Subject: Re: KYLIE: NEIL AND LIMBO - NO!
From: "Real Fan" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: "Andy", kylie@rhythm.cx

who are you to say that to me anyway maybe the world is full of kylie pretenders anyway and not the real world fans like me and robert and cher

Bwahahahahaha.... like who???

Subject: KYLIE: Real Fand
From: "Real Fan" a_real_fan@hotmail.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

i will not have people say i am not a fan i have allof the albums on cassette and some on cd,i even collect dannys stuff becuase she is her sister - i have kisses and love and i am saving for the new one

if anyone wants to swap that would be cool, got 2 of kylie album

thanks,

But someone remembers her from Say Hey and want to say his piece...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: Real Fand
From: "Kay Lee"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

OMG!!! Didn't you have enough on Say Hey?!?!
Stop spamming this mailing list!

Or start writing more inteligent letters...

Kay Lee

Sarah jumps in to defend herself, with a cute reference to not one, but two Kylie songs from 1988 - spot them? - blimey, she *is* a real fan!! Or, checking the "From" tag, perhaps she's something else entirely?

Re: KYLIE: Real Fand
From: "Real Fanny" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: "Kay Lee", kylie@rhythm.cx

well its no secret that you didn't want me on say hey

why cant we all be fans and turn it into love or are you like neil and mullo as well

Which prompts Kay Lee to tell it like it is...

Re: KYLIE: Real Fand
From: "Kay Lee"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

Can't you write more than one or two sentences in one email?
You've written almost 10 emails during short time!
My mailbox is still full of your short letters!
Shake your head and learn how to write emails.
It's not strange that people didn't want you on Say Hey. You made them all tired.
I hope you understand.
Kay Lee

So, what's a girl to do? Sarah tries to limit the damage done and only succeeds in making more...

[ No Subject ]
From: "Real Fanny" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

hello kylie fans ...
thansk for leeting me be on this list sorry about my ravings on neil and limbo and sey hey but they were out of order in their non kylie world attitude

all i can say is that i am happy to be part of this kylie world

a bit about me ...

i am a big fan, have been since 1988 until today (and tomorrow - he, he), i also love her sister danny, and have lots of them albums on casstete and cd

some questions about kylie:

what is dannys middle name?
how old is danny?
after kisses and love what was the next album?
what year was the interview between princess di and kylie and was it on the tv screen?

c u soon, love a real fand
x

So "snoochie boochies" tries to talk some sense into the Real Fan/Fanny/Fand...

Subject: Re: the 'real fan'
From: "snoochie boochies"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

has anyone even argued that you're not a real fan yet?? no offence but it seems to me all you keep doing is defending yourself by listing all the kylie and 'danny' (by the way its dannii) stuff you have... maybe you should try just disscussing what other messages people have written instead of spamming all our inboxes with the same messages about you being a 'real fan'

just a suggestion... :)

But it royally backfires, when things reach spectacular new heights of bat-shit craziness...

Subject: Kylie Poem
From: "Real Fanny" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

mulo and Neil say no,
making money off the limbo,
there is a girl who they say is rude,
and take her off the inter-web
don't they know there is people without food
so why dont they hear what kylei said

she is on the songs
the records play they are never wrong
cher and danny and princess di agree
the girl in the chat room was never angry
and the tickets were sold for many pounds
the battle was lost but kylie was foound

Hi-frickin-larious, right? And just in case you haven't realised this is all a huge joke by now, have a gander at this...

Subject: new kylie sigle - yes!
From: "Real Fanny" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

heard today on the radio news that kylies new single is going to be released soon they eve played a preview my friend from the record company sent me the kyiel lyrics ..

So lovers live a little longer, baby
You and me, we got a chance to live twice
Lovers live a little longer, ain't that nice
Lovers live a little longer, baby
What a feeling when I hold you tight
Lovers live a little longer, yeah

But Matt is quick to jump in and point out that, surprise surprise, the news is bogus...

Subject: Re: new kylie sigle - yes!
From: "Matt"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

Funnily enough, a search using three separate search engines just now has yielded precisely zero returns referencing "Lovers Live A Little Longer" (or any variations on that theme) as a new Kylie single or, in fact, as anything even remotely related to Kylie in any way. SURPRISE!

Might I suggest that the list was travelling along quite nicely prior to Ms Fanny's arrival and will continue to do so should she depart any time soon. That's about as politely as I can put it ;-)

Matt 8^)

Never one to be deterred in letting the world know of her superior fandom, the Real Fanny lets rip...

Subject: KYLIE: i knw that they are laughong
From: "Real Fanny" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

i knw that they are laughing - ha, ha, laughing on the other side of there face if they knew how big a fan i am. i know stuff about kylie my dad is very high u and knows record company stuuf about songs and mixes not even danny and cher have so i asked if he could get a cassette of the rare songs and he said yes and ia m not going to share it becuase all you do is laugh

long live kylie
down with limbo
what until u hear the new signle ...mine

But Michael's response is simply priceless...

Re: KYLIE: i knw that they are laughong
From: "Michael"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

> my dad is very high

well we know he's not in psychiatry.

But then again, Sarah's like a terrier with a stick with this one, as she tells us a story about "seeing" Kylie on the radio...

Subject: KYLIE: NEW SINGLE
From: "Real Fanny" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

i saw kyli on the radio today and they were definitley playing her new single 'lovers live a little longer', so perhaps the laughing will stop now - ha, ha. wait until the single goes to number one for 25 weeks across the whole wide world - that would be great, even the eskimos will buy it - he, he

hopefully there will be some really cool remixes, i am sure she has got some cool stuff planned for the new album, perhaps duets with danny and chere, that would be great

By now, everyone is truly wondering just who the heck Ms. Ure *really* is. So much so, that Michael thinks he's got it sussed...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: NEW SINGLE
From: "Michael"
To: "Real Fanny", kylie@rhythm.cx

this has got to be that Michael guy...y'know the one asking about what time kylie took a bathroom break while filming the loco-motion video...he must have gotten a new identity and email and rejoined the list.

And maybe Sarah herself remembered that Michaelmoval was indeed bat-shit bonkers too and wanted to distance herself. Don't you love it when even the trolls don't want to associate with trolls?

Subject: KYLIE: i am not mad
From: "Real Fanny" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

so sme of you think i am a bit of a mad person or that i age 8, well i am not maybe mad about kliye and danny but thats it and i dont care about your laughing and all the words you are saying becasue ia m not goin away never because i am kylies biggest fan eve and i have as much right as you to be on this list

didnt you think i would see thhose emails you writted about me , this is a mailing list you know, of course i will see them, maybe you are the mad ones - he he

By now things begin to get *really* weird. Take a look at Sarah's Email address. Then look again...

Subject: KYLIE: branded new kylei song
From: "Sarah U" a_real_fan_@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

i have hope of everyone having great easter

Oh, by the way, I just saw Kylei on the radio and they were definitely playing her NEW single! I can't remember the title, but it was about 99 of something .... maybe red balloons? What a weird song! Who would ever write a song about 99 red balloons?? I wonder what happened to the 100th one. Maybe they blew too much air inside of it and it exploded. Still it's strange that they didn't have any extra balloons to replace it....

b-side is also new song "kisses of fire". it plays real good, real funky hot sexy momma disco track. "kisses of fire burning burning, i'm on the point of no returning, kisses of fire sweet devotion, caught in a landslide of emotion". it should be the a-side or maybe double a-side, or triple a-side! yes, I think even the eskimos will buy that one.

love to everyone, even those who are mean

_a_real_fan

And everyone, (I have to say, me included) falls for it, hook line and sinker...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: branded new kylei song
From: "Matt Dunn"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

Let me get this straight : the "new Kylei single" that this person claims to keep "seeing" on the radio has morphed from a cover of a 1979 ABBA track into a cover of 99 Luftballons? And a different, yet still reasonably obscure 1979 ABBA track is now the b-side? If this chick's an ABBA fan, then Voulez-Vous is clearly her favourite ABBA album.

As for the rest of what she rambled on about ... a few weeks ago someone said she was probably just an over-eager fan or a kid who probably can't spell very well. I can't comment about that, but this e-mail only proves how far away the planet she lives on is ;-)

Matt 8^)

That is, everyone except for the Real Fanny, of course...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: brandon minogue
Monday, 28 April, 2003 23:14
From: "Real Fanny" a_real_fan@xxx.com
To: a_real_fan_@xxx.com, kylie@rhythm.cx

is this some kind of fuuny

i am sarah not this person whi is tryting to pretend to be me - ha ha it all very funny isn't it!

are you neil or mullo making the fun again?

i bet you think you are so funny making it out of me.

Yes i can spell Kylie see - Kylie, Kylie, Kylie

the only joke here is you!

But still it comes and it comes...

RE: RE: KYLIE: branded new kylei song
From: "Sarah U"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

thank you to the kindness fan from italia who promises to make me a copy of new kylei cds onto tape. you are the kindness fan on this whole list I will send him the brandon demos if I get them.
the other fans who send abuse to my inbox make me very angry and sad. may be the news people tell me is not always 1000% real, and I maked mistake, but I am not the only one on kylei mailng list who is not 999% accurated why are rumors from me banned, but ok from other fans? the person who writes to me and asks for the size of my boobs is very rude and there was more disgusting things if this abuse occurs in future I will be forced to leave this list and take all my branded new news with me. I will set up a new kyeli list

But when the joke begins to wear a little thin, it's time for another poem...

Subject: KYLIE: my last ever email to rythhhm and a poem
From: "Sarah U"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

ok thats it!!

I've really had enough now. people saying I am not a real fan. people who use big words to try and confuse me. you dont' deserve me so I will go and form the bestest kylei club ever. anyone who is a kindness fan is welcome by me to me a member. we can share the good news together and always live in the happiness of kylei.here is my speicial new group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kylei/

I will say goodbye with a special poem.

it seems no time since we all started out
with dreams of what could be
so short it seems now the end is here
and we're faced with reality

now this is the end, the end of the show
the emails have stopped for good
but good friends are forever and so are the memories
which live on as we hoped they would

goodbye...and see you at Kylei's Electrical Fans group.

Oh dear bloody lord in hell, but I'll give the fake real fan her dues, she's a fan for certain, as jAy-jAyS explains...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: Fanny's poem
From: "jAy-jAyS"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

um, i couldn't really tell if you were being sarcastic about that, so if you were read on, if not, pretend you don't realise i'm an idiot for not noticing...
the poem she "wrote" was basically the poem entry by Kylie in her high school yearbook, which you may have either seen on eBay at the moment or by someone who just posted it to a list (not sure if it was this one). only the original was about her filming in a mini-series.

- jAy-jAyS

By this point, people are wise to the fake Sarah but, what's weird is, it doesn't seem to matter. The "real" Sarah has been absent for weeks by this stage in the story. In the meantime, the "Electrical Kylei fans" Yahoo group (which really has been set up) has gained about five new members. But hang tight folks, this tale is about to jump the shark, big time. As the list receives an Email message from mother Fanny...

Subject: KYLIE: A special message from Sarah's mother
From: "Sarah U"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

Good day fans of ‘Kylie Minogue’.
Through the use of CyberNanny filter software, it has come to my attention that my 13-year old daughter Sarah yesterday sent an expletive-filled e-mail to your group, involving the word, ahem, “excrement” shall we say. Further enquiries have revealed that she has been involved in several inflamed arguments on this group.
I wish to sincerely apologise for any disturbance she may have caused, and want to assure you that her e-mail privileges have been curtailed, and she won’t be bothering you any further. We are investigating the possibility of sending her for a course of counselling.
As a precaution I have also had to remove from her bedroom the remnants of some digital audio tapes that she destroyed, along with a sizeable collection of Kylie Minogue memorabilia. I have been advised that such material may be of interest to others, and it has been suggested that I offer it for sale on the eBay auction website, however I do not wish to encourage the unhealthy fandom that has bestruck my daughter, and await further advice from health professionals.
Yours cordially,
Mrs. Clarabelle Utrecht.

Hilarious as this is, Matt, ever the sensible one, throws in his two-cents...

Subject: Re: FW: KYLIE: A special message from Sarah's mother
From: "Matt Dunn"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

I don't wanna sound like a killjoy here guys, but am I the only one who thinks this has dissolved into inane stupidity? It might have been kinda funny the first few times - possibly funnier if you knew who the "original" Sarah U was - but it isn't even slightest amusing any more. Can't we just evict the real fanny and her mother from the house now?

Matt 8^)

What did he mean "if we knew who the original Sarah U was"? How on Earth did *he* know? Or maybe it was just a guess on his part since even he is still a tad confused by the whole affair...

Subject: Re: KYLIE: non kylie "how do i get out of this insane asylum"
From: "Matt Dunn"
To: kylie@rhythm.cx>

call me dumb if you will, but I still don't understand. Who is Sarah U? Who is the person writing this? Was Sarah U a real person in the first place? If so, was the whole Sarah / Real Fanny thing meant to make sense to anyone who didn't know of her outside of the list? I've been on this list for a long time now and I freely admit to not having a single clue what the hell is going on!

Matt 8^)

But at long last, all was about to be revealed. Or was it?

Subject: Re: KYLIE: non kylie "how do i get out of this insane asylum"
From: "Sarah U" a_real_fan_@xxx.com
To: kylie@rhythm.cx

hey u's

i knew that you were laughong, laughong on the inside of this insanousity house! my mummy clarabelel put me here for listenng to so much kylei and my exploded tape of rare deleted out-of-bounds super kindness unreleased kylei demos, but i have excsaped ha ha....

...ok, ok, so the joke's over, and you all know who I am. I invented the new "real fan" persona while reviewing the activity of this list over the last few months, as I become increasingly disgusted in the way we (yes, I blame myself as well) had treated Sarah/a_real_fan. Sarah never did any real harm, and yet she was practically hounded off the list, while we let the mercenary charlatans who try to sell fake recordings go by almost without a word. Not to mention the endless parade of fake tracklistings, and genuinely mischevious dodgy information. Could it be that we feel the need to attack her because she's a woman (i.e. not a gay male like most of the rest of us). Whatever... it's time to stop attacking people for their naive, enthusiastic love of Kylie, or even Kylei ;-) As Sinead O'Connor said, "fight the real enemy!"

Oh, and moderator dear, if you're going to kick someone off the list, it would be polite to at least let the person involved know that it's about to happen.

Thanks for all the off-list messages of support from those who understood what I was trying to do. I hope it gives the rest of you food for thought about the way you treat people.

Cheerio.

Holy. heck. Are you surprised to find out that this *wasn't* the last we heard from Real Fan/Fanny/Sarah U? Even after the fake had proclaimed itself a fake and, in fact, there was still the dubiety of whether or not the original Sarah persona had been a fabrication also, she still popped up on the list from time to time. Usually to remind us how boring the list had gotten since her departure.

And although a certain few claimed to know the identity of the fake Sarah - and indeed the true identity of the "real" Sarah - they never *ever* spilled the beans in public, meaning that this mystery remains exactly that to this day - a mystery.

Now, who out there knows the answer? Email me please, and let me know. I'll be happy to tell the world, right here on this blog.

Country Idol

2011-06-30T12:47:00.002+01:00

My current living arrangements (I was about to say "new" living arrangements when I realised that they've been my living arrangements for ten whole months now) mean that I have been exposed to a hell of a lot more telly in recent months than what has been "usual". I have gone from being a FOUR channel terrestrial television household, stuck in an area with no digital reception whatsoever, to a house in the countryside with Sky+, a hyperfast broadband connection and about a million US shows ready to stream through the wonders of our two, yes TWO, AppleTV boxes.

Most of the time, this has been awesome. Step up "Breaking Bad", "Castle" and "The Killing", not to mention watching duff documentaries about time travel and alien invasions on National Geographic channel (amazing). Now and again, I am subjected to "Stargate Universe" and "Fringe" (unamazing), but for the most part I am now fully immersed in watching some brilliant TV shows as and when they're actually aired - and usually months before they hit UK television screens, thanks to something very naughty which I won't admit to on here - and all of this is more than a bit cool.

One of the shows I have been introduced to - and I have to admit, been getting increasingly engrossed in - since my reintroduction to satellite TV is... American Idol.

I really know very little about American Idol history, to be honest. I know Kelly Clarkson won it. I found out that Jordin Sparks won it about three years after she actually won it. My boyfriend, on the other hand, can rhyme off the winners from the last decade in perfect season order, knows the words to every Carrie Underwood song she's ever sung and could tell me that Kara Dioguardi has a perfect singing voice and therefore can credibly critique all and sundry for their "pitch issues" if she so wants. [This was in stark contrast to me, who would jump up and down, enraged at her criticism usually making no sense whatsoever - that and her looking down her nose at Ellen Degeneres every week.]

Anyway, I was a bit concerned this year that, with the departure of Cowell, Degeneres *and* Dioguardi, the show would be rubbish. I wasn't exactly enthused about the addition of Jennifer Lopez to the judging panel and the addition of Steven Tyler just seemed so random to me that I was convinced the show would fail. Not so. This year, American Idol was AMAZING. Steven Tyler was AMAZING. Jennifer Lopez was *quite* AMAZING. Even Randy was less annoying than usual this year. His promotion to Simon Cowell's seat has certainly done him good.

This year, however, the actual talent on stage was less abundant than usual. Not that it made the show any less watchable. This year we had a very cute bloke, whose features were spoiled by some seriously wonky dance moves and a voice like how Rod Stewart's would sound if he inhaled a helium balloon the size of New York. We also had a female who looked like she moonlighted as a member of an Amazulu (ropey pop band from the 80s) tribute act. We had a fellow who looked and sounded like Gladys Knight. A dude who resembled the cookie monster from Sesame Street and who actually growled when he sang. A heavy metal rocker guy with the absolute WORST ears I have ever seen (I know I am being mean, but it has to be said.) There was also a posh bird who thought she was the next Celine Dion crossed with Mariah Carey, plus there was a Matthew Broderick lookalike who never got tired of making my blood boil by consistently escaping the boot until the quarter finals.

With rock chick and perpetual glum-glum gal Haley getting the boot right before the final, that left two of the show's strongest country singers to battle it out. On one hand we had Lauren Alaina (16yo) and on the other hand we had Scotty McCreery (17yo). Given the fact that I had already christened him as Scotty McDreary about six weeks before the final, thanks to his ridiculous mic holding shenanigans and him sounding *exactly the same* on every song he sung (regardless of what genre it was supposed to be) you know I was rooting for Alaina all the way. I even took to Twitter on the day of the final, posting "witty" slogans like "Scotty smells like Flaming Hot Cheetos" and "Scotty sings out of his botty" but, alas, it was all in vain. Lauren was well and truly robbed with this one.

I hear that the ratings for American Idol season 10 were significantly immense as usual, but it'll be interesting to see whether the US has the appetite for two huge talent shows every year, after the X-Factor USA launches in "the fall". My thoughts on the matter? Well, after my claims that Idol Season 10 would be the last ever were completely thrown on the trash heap, I think I'll be keeping schtum on the matter.

Oh, sweet rapture!

2011-05-21T09:31:00.009+01:00

I really hope you didn't stuff your diet and max your credit cards yesterday in anticipation of today's great rapture event - it's been cancelled. Yes, already it would appear that 89 year old Harold Camping's 6pm (New Zealand time) deadline for the beginning of the beginning of the end of the world (the real end wasn't actually due until October) has passed without incident.

Already people have taken to twitter, either mocking the old religious bampot or, perhaps more worryingly, actually breathing a huge sigh of relief, as if it could ever have been possible that there was an iota of truth to his insane ramblings.

Apparently, this is not the first time that Camping has predicted judgement day - he was wrong in 1994 too (blaming a miscalculation on his part for the no-show of the apocalypse) - but times have changed since then and, thanks to the internet, a network of radio stations, bucketfuls of cash and a horde of gullible no-hoper half-wits happy to spend their last days standing in the street with horribly designed placards (I mean, wouldn't you want to spend it with your family or something?) this one has been the most heavily publicised.

And it is utterly bewildering to me that people have believed it. I don't mean "I am going to worry about it a little bit in case it might be true even though it sounds ridiculous" believed it. I mean, really really believed it - spending the last however long it's been *knowing* that today they were going to ascend to heaven while the rest of us were going to spend the next five months battling the devil and generally having no fun at all, right before God/Jesus/whatever blew up the world in what would be the universe's all time biggest hissy-fit.

I wonder if they feel genuine relief today, or some disappointment that heaven still eludes them, or whether they just feel really fucking stupid. Because they should, you know.

Kylie Krazy

2011-05-09T14:00:00.001+01:00

There's one thing which can be said about the internet. It really is one of the biggest showcases for all of the world's crazies.

For as long as internet forums/mailing lists have existed, so have "trolls". Actually, I was only made aware of the coinage about a year ago when I started frequenting the IMDB message boards but, make no mistake, I've encountered these trolls ever since I got a dial-up internet connection back in 1996.

You might remember me telling you years ago that, on the Kylie mailing list, we had the lovely "Stella" (his real name was Fraser), who caused no end of trouble after he placed a bet with his mate on who would get thrown off a mailing list first. His parting shot was, "you are all sad lifeless tossers and prime examples of people nobody liked at school."

Later, "Zach Campbell", a spy from the marketing department of Kylie's own record label no less, caused complete carnage on the list, i.e. before he was outed by LiMBO webmaster Neil Rees and he subsequently vanished forever.

Who can forget "Ganoonga Gachoonga", who plagued the Say Hey message board for MONTHS, spouting supernatural claptrap and prophecising armageddon, only for Kylie to go on the telly and pronounce him her "spiritual guru".

Later, the legendary "Michaelmoval" would increase the crazy quota by the power of x by incessantly posting those frankly insane surveys to the list. You know... so that Kylie herself could answer them. Not to be outdone on the creepiness stakes either, he would usually sign off with words like, "P.S. I love U. U love me." Or worse still. "Would U please say my lines like "U're a big baby" and "U don't wear diapers"? Those R my favorite quotes."

Later still, the menace that was "Janet Andrewartha" surfaced on the list and caused havoc when, like the horrible new top dog in an episode of Prisoner Cell Block H, she purposefully bullied the entire list, spouting vile names at anyone who had the balls to try and stand up to her. What was most strange about this is that almost everyone believed it was the REAL Janet Andrewartha, the actress who played dastardly Reb Kean in Prisoner but also the rather lovely Lyn Scully in Neighbours. "The woman really disturbed me with her ravings," explained one member of the list, "so I went to the Neighbours site and I emailed a few of the actors with excerpts of her abuse. I think she was embarrassed big time because that was the end of her. She'd been booted more than twice before and she used to always come back. I'm glad I did it. I never laughed at her nastiness."

The curious case of "Sarah Ure", however, is one that reigned supreme on the mailing list for what felt like aeons. And it's so epic that it deserves a blog post of its very own. Watch this space, more bat-shit craziness is coming your way.

No more adventures

2011-04-20T14:25:00.001+01:00

You know, like most good gayers, I enjoy a bit of Who. I think I probably sit at number 5 trillion and 6 on the fan league table, if truth be told, but I like to watch the show whenever it is on and I really enjoy it. But seriously, I'd fail every Who general knowledge test you could ever set me and I try not to get too emotional about it all.

Not today though. Even if you're just a passing Who fan, I bet you feel more than a touch of sadness about the passing of Elisabeth Sladen, aka Sarah Jane Smith, who lost a private battle with cancer yesterday. She was only 63. Some of the biggest Who fans have been writing hugely emotional and beautiful eulogies, which only goes to show the impact she's made on their lives.

Any words I could write would not do her justice, so I will just say that I thought she was so very talented, not to mention beautiful, and that I will miss seeing her on our TV screens greatly.

The Hammond Version Excursion

2011-03-24T13:11:00.002Z

This week Parlophone have released a new remix on YouTube.

:: yawn ::

Wait though... it's for Kylie's should-have-been-a-single Aphrodite album track Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love). What's so mind-blazingly awesome about this is that it's a remix by Pete Hammond.

Here is what is sounds like:

:: world explodes ::

In case you don't understand the significance of this, Pete Hammond was one of PWL's legendary "Mixmasters". This was the man who mixed I Should Be So Lucky for, er... Pete's sake. But he hasn't twiddled the knobs on a Minogue tune for what is very possibly twenty years. And this remix is so much like The Sound of a Bright Young Britain you'd be forgiven for thinking it was suddenly 1989 all over again and that Kylie will be appearing on Motormouth this Saturday to promote it. Seriously, this mix wouldn't feel out of place sitting on any of her Greatest Remix Hits compilations. It is AMAZING and I am utterly in love with it.

Actually, this is something I've been looking forward to since Pete Hammond got back into the "retro remixing" game a couple of years ago, i.e. mixing up contemporary tracks and making them sound as though they dropped off the Stock Aitken Waterman Hit Factory production line more than two decades ago.

It started with Alphabeat's 'Boyfriend', giving it a makeover to resemble Bananarama's 'I Can't Help It'...

Then there was Mini Viva's 'Left My Heart In Tokyo', which gives more than a passing nod to Mel & Kim's 'Showing Out'...

That's not forgetting this frankly astounding remix of Euro star Velvet's hit 'Chemistry', remodelled on the PWL remix of Tracie Spencer's 'Symptoms of True Love'...

Or this amazing retro remix for the City Girls, which is pretty much the same mix but with different lyrics...

And what about this remix for contemporary Christian singer Plumb, which sounds *a lot* like, er... Dead or Alive?

I could go on all day, but unfortunately I have work to get back to. Instead, if you're so inclined, search on YouTube and iTunes for more Pete Hammond greatness. Oh, and send an Email to Parlophone demanding they release this new Kylie remix on iTunes, pronto. Thank you ever so.

Bank balance beware, gig season ahead

2011-03-22T14:09:00.004Z

It's now less than a week until Kylie's Aphrodite Les Folies Tour hits town!

I have taken the whole of next week off to celebrate the Minoguester's arrival in Glasgow for her three night residency in Hall 4 of the SECC and I am soooooo looking forward to it you would not believe it. [Okay, so you probably would believe it.]

Have you seen any of the tour spoilers which have found their way onto Youtube yet? How about this one, for example?

Or maybe this one?

::wets self::

The Kylie gigs are just the first of what is fast turning into a long line of concerts for the spring and summer season. It seems that *everyone* is touring at the moment. In July, for example, I have three gigs lined up - two of which are for ladies that I'd thought I'd never ever get to see live, i.e. Janet Jackson and... wait for it... Amy Grant.

Amy Grant is playing three UK gigs in July and one is at the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow. It's an unplugged set, "celebrating 30 years of memories" and it's going to be even more exciting due to the fact that I've purchased a VIP ticket, which means I get a front row seat and I also get invited to a sound-check earlier in the day, during which Amy will be briefly taking questions and chatting to fans. It is going to be brilliant (if more than a little holy).

Janet (Miss Jackson, if you're nasty) is just playing the Royal Albert Hall in London, so that means a nice trip to the English capital for a couple of days. The tickets for anything other than seats in the gods were ridiculously expensive, so we have opted to take our binoculars with us.

We finish July with our trip to Perth's scone palace for the Rewind:Scotland 80s festival, including "the Wilde family member whose first name is Kim". Also on stage with Kim will be her neice, aka "the Wilde family member whose name is Scarlett and whom you should all follow on twitter because she is an absolute riot".

Before this, I'm also lined up to see Cyndi Lauper when she plays Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall in June. There's a Bon Jovi gig I might be heading to Edinburgh for, and then there are the Enrique Iglesias and Dolly Parton gigs I'm still mulling over at the moment. Good job I'm in a job, innit?

Gotta catch 'em all over again

2011-03-18T15:58:00.005Z

If even just 0.1% of your DNA is made up of geek genes, you'll know already that the latest Pokémon games - the Black & White versions - were released in the UK for the Nintendo DS earlier this month.

Given that my own DNA is made up of approximately 93.2% geek genes, I don't mind telling you that I once became quite obsessed with Pokémon. I'm prepared to admit that, even a decade ago, I was probably a decade too old for all of that kinda stuff, especially since I actually became obsessed with it thanks to the animated series.

If you remember, it was on the telly every Saturday morning during SM:TV Live (back in the day when Ant & Dec were still presenting it) and it *was* rightly amazing. Here we had a cartoon about a boy collecting literally HUNDREDS of pet "monsters"... each of which lived inside metal contraptions the size of a tennis ball... which he then used to fight the monsters collected by others, purely for fun. In fact, I remember being properly aghast at how violent it all was. For example, think of a cute yellow mouse literally battering lumps out of its opponent until it passes out from fright, or the same mouse being able to blow someone up by sending an electric shock through their bollocks. See... told you! It was frankly bizarre, but that's also what made it utterly watchable.

Becoming obsessed with the TV show quickly led me to becoming obsessed with playing the RP-game for the Game Boy - a game clearly designed for five year olds, evidenced by the rules being so ridiculously complicated that only a five year old was able to properly understand them. The object was to catch all 150 breeds of Pokémon but, in actual fact, this was nye on impossible. In spite of me finishing the game, I don't think I managed to collect even half of them.

After that original flurry of excitement, I kinda lost touch with the franchise, as it went through its various incarnations for the various handheld consoles that Nintendo released over the years. More than a decade later, these Black & White versions are the first in the fifth generation of Pokémon games. Nowadays there are more than SIX HUNDRED species of Pokémon to be found across the entire franchise, but the good news is that, for the first time since the Red & Blue versions of a decade ago, these new games feature only species that we've never met before. But are they a patch on the much loved characters from Red & Blue? I ask you this, will they EVER be able to beat Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Geodude, Jigglypuff, Chansey, et. al?

Well, credit where it's due, they've certainly given it their best shot. A rather elaborate advertising campaign in the Metro newspaper last week - see www.pokemoneverywhere.co.uk for a glimpse of the campaign - is all it took for me to get back in the Pokémon habit. I'm not sure if they're deliberately targeting adults these days - I don't imagine kids make up a high proportion of the Metro readership demographics - but either way it worked and so far I am having a blast with my new "toy".

In case you're wondering, I chose the Water Pokémon Oshawott as my starter beast. It's a blue otter, would you believe, and is quite literally too cute for words. Three days in and my Pokédex count sits at 22 seen or caught species of Pokémon. Oh well, only about another 140 to go in that case.

Imagine... a really great blog here

2011-03-10T12:55:00.001Z

A once great(ish) town near to me has been hit hard by the recession. It's so bad that the high street only has about three shops left open on it. Seriously, if Mary Portas were to walk down its now desolate pedestrianised area, she'd weep I tell you... she'd weep remembering those halcyon days when the street was thronging with people and independent shops were popping up through trap doors. Those were brilliant times, weren't they? People didn't give a shit about whether they could actually *afford* to go shopping, nor did they worry a jot about however many thousands they owed their creditors. It was amazing.

Nowadays, a trip up the high street isn't quite so jolly. Except that the local council has come up with some amazing marketing plan to fool us all into thinking things aren't quite as bad as they seem ... and it involves us using our imagination.

That's right! At least 75% of the shop fronts on the high street are now imaginary. Where Littlewoods once stood, for example, the entire shopfront is now emblazoned with huge posters telling us to "IMAGINE... your new department store here." A little further up, where there was once a pretty bakery, it has "IMAGINE... your local coffee shop". There's one for a shoe shop. A toy shop. A burger bar, etc. They are everywhere.

I guess it's all supposed to instill hope in us that, who knows, one day this once beloved high street might not be quite as shit as it is right now. But make no mistake, when you see it, it's difficult not to feel properly depressed.

Don't get me wrong. The pretty fonts and colourful photography is better than boarded up shop fronts with King Sturge leasing signs on them. But only marginally. An empty shop is an empty shop, no matter how you dress it up. It also smacks of desperation, don't you think? "Ho ho... our high street is like a ghost town but if you *think really hard* it's not really! Don't trip over the tumbleweed. Ho ho... ::makes awkward expression::"

Anyway, today's post was inspired by me taking a look at this old blog and thinking, "oh dear". It really is beginning to look like a blogger's equivalent of that stinking old high street, isn't it? It's like how most poor neglected blogs look when they reach the end of their life cycle, just before they get hacked by spammers and every post is just a link to another porno site.

:-(

It's inspired me to do something, at long last, about my hosting situation - which is entirely to blame for the lack of graphics around the site, which has been making it look more than a bit redundant (that and the lack of posts, of course).

Hopefully not any more. Today I purchased a little hosting package from Easily.com and my grand plan for the weekend is for the blog to get its hair done and its lippy on. In the meantime, please just IMAGINE a really great blog here, would you?

Thanks awfully.

Share and share a-dislike

2011-02-11T14:23:00.001Z

At work, we share a kitchen with another business which is resident on the same floor as us. Lunch times are usually a nightmare, with a ridiculously long queue to use the microwave, everyone trying to use the kettle at once, and everybody falling over each other to get into the fridge.

The other week I had a bit of an, er... altercation with a female in the kitchen. The thing is, I'd popped over a bit earlier than usual so that I could stick a potato in the microwave. Being that bit early, the place was empty so I let the microwave zap its little energy waves into my hearty root vegetable and I returned to the office.

Four minutes later there was a knock at the door. "Is that you who is using the microwave?" a friendly chap cheerily intoned. "It's pinged!" ["Oh dear," I thought to myself, "it's going to need at least another five minutes".]

When I got back to the kitchen I was met by what could only be described as a lynch mob. "Oh!" I chuckled and smiled sweetly. "Are you all waiting patiently on me?"

"Well, we're waiting..." said the bitch. I wanted to call her a moaning faced mongoose, but instead I offered to let her intervene and use the oven ahead of me. [And then I annoyed myself all afternoon for doing so.]

Since then, I have had a bit of a terse relationship with "the others" as I have now taken to calling them. Today, however, the weirdest thing happened. When I went to the fridge to get my bottle of skimmed milk, which I'd bought over a week ago and forgotten all about, I found a note neatly tucked into the handle. I was expecting it to be a lecture about remembering sell-by dates and how forgetting them could unwittingly lead to the entire floor being poisoned and sent to an early grave. But it wasn't. No no...

"Dear fellow skimmed milk liker,

I like skimmed milk too, but I don't get through much per week. Could we team up? I'm ::lady's name:: and my E-mail address is blahblah.com on extension 123456. Phone/E-mail if you're interested.

::lady's name:: x"

Now, I know she's not asking me out on a date. I'm also not sure if the lady with a lady's name and a penchant for skimmed milk is the same lady who is impatient when waiting for microwave ovens. In all likelihood she is someone else entirely. But, man alive, she's not for gettin' any just in case! Does that make me mean? And, really, could any of you make up a story like this?

Secret shopper

2011-02-09T20:46:00.003Z

As you know, Mary Portas is back on the telly in a new series. It's her first show since she jumped ship from the BBC to Channel 4 and it's all been incredibly exciting so far. Just look at publicity stills from the new show, for example, which portray a super stylised Portas looking like a cyborg from the planet fabulous. The opening credits of the new show sees her walking through a room of exploding mannequins. It is properly amazing.

In what feels like a strange twist, however, this time she's ditching the independent shops and is targeting the high street chains instead - that's right, the very retailers she so desperately hoped we'd all avoid like the plague during the last series. It's a fundamental shift, for sure, but you can rest easy in the knowledge that, this time, she's not in it *only* to help them make even more cash. No - in these new shows, Mary's turned into the Anne Robinson Watchdog of retailing, "exposing" rubbish service wherever it may be lurking in the world. How lovely she really is, fighting for consumer rights, for absolutely nothing in return, eh?

Anyway, this all means the shows have a two-pronged approach. First she "secret shops" the big high street stores, all so she can reveal their service standards to be what they really are - le shite. Then she goes and helps just one of them [usually a bit of a no name, to be honest] to brush up their equally shabby ideas quick smart by introducing some amazing customer service initiatives that will have us flocking to their stores, like proverbial happy bunnies, and will make them billions.

There appears to be one or two flaws to this whole approach, but I have decided to suspend disbelief anyway, and that means it's still ever so entertaining. I really do have to LOL, for example, when she acts properly aghast at the ridiculously poor service the rest of us have simply grown used to. Her trip to Primark in the first episode, for example, saw her surveying the place as though she believed had been transported to some weird alien planet from another dimension. Yes love, we *know* the clothes are actually on hangers in all those trendy Soho boutiques you buy your clobber in normally, but for the rest of us this is not exactly a surprise. And, to be honest, do we *really* care that the display looks like a jumble sale and the shop assistants are as dumb as potatoes, so long as we can buy a new top for the weekend for a fiver?

Regardless of what we really think about the matter, La Portas has decided that we should all be up in arms about such an outrageous state of affairs in retailing. Every week, for example, she seems genuinely appalled that nobody pays her a blind bit of notice in most of the stores she visits. Now I don't know about you, but I *hate* being pounced on by shop assistants. In actual fact, being greeted by some cheesy wide-mouthed loon the minute I walk through the door of every shop on the high street is my idea of shopping hell.

Never mind. The mystery shopping segments are actually the most hilarious parts of the new shows. Nowadays, the Queen of Shops is so famous that she wouldn't dare walk into your average M&S without the shop assistants literally shitting a brick in their pants. So, instead she goes undercover. In the first two episodes she disguised herself as, well... your average common shopper. Complete with straw-like brown wig, chavvy clothes and an accent as broad as you like. Last week she upped the ante by walking into a mobile phone shop dressed as a granny. It was utterly amazing.

This week's show is about Estate Agents and, by the sounds of things, it's all gotten a bit fraught, according to Mary's tweet this morning. "Ugh. Had some really mean messages from a couple of estate agents who are feeling hard done by... That's the downside of speaking out..." she says.

As if she couldn't eat them for breakfast!

Welcome to the new music industry

2011-01-20T14:38:00.005Z

On Monday this week, Peter Robinson posted a rather excellent article on the Popjustice web site. Without even so much as a single reference to Bad Romance, without even so much as a whisper of "poppers o'clock" and without calling even one person a bellend, it's possibly one of the most brilliant posts which has appeared on the site in months.

Anyway, the post talks about how Sony Music is taking the lead with what is called an "on air/on sale" sales model. Basically, what this means is that - for Sony's artists at least for now - the instant you hear a song on the radio, you'll be able to download it. Okay, so chances are you'll be able to download it anyway, for nothing. But that's illegal and very very very wrong, isn't it? ::shakes head and says "yes"::

No, what I'm really talking about is that you'll be able to download it from the likes of iTunes and pay good money for it, which also means it'll be eligible to chart... within a week of its launch on the radio.

:: thinks of the implications of this, for a few seconds ::

Yay! I *hate* waiting for singles to be released, don't you? If I've heard something on the radio and I like it, I usually want to buy it immediately. Plus it also means that record companies can stop moaning on about how they're all about to go bankrupt because of illegal downloading and they can actually give us something to spend our money on, for once. This is amazing, isn't it?

Well, as it happens, Popjustice have thought about the implications of this for more than a few seconds and it very well *might* be amazing, but it very well might not be - and it has very wide reaching ramifications for the industry and how music is marketed. I won't copy their analysis - instead I will suggest you head right over to Popjustice.com and read it for yourself.

This week, of course, we've been seeing the on air/on sale model hard at work - as Britney Spears' new single gets an immediate on air/on sale release. If you ask me, the song's kinda rubbish, but that hasn't stopped it from selling copious amounts of m4a files and racing to the #1 spot in time for the chart rundown this weekend.

Amazing? For Britney, certainly. Other than that, let's just wait and see.

2011 is here (and it's going to be a belter)

2011-01-19T15:20:00.001Z

When I say that 2011 is going to be a belter, I of course don't mean it's going to be a year that literally bends you over its knee and slaps you on the arse with a leather implement. What I mean is that it's going to be really really good. [And if it takes being bent over someone's knee and being slapped on the arse with a leather implement to make it "really really good" for you then who am I to judge?]

Anyway, 2011 is a Kylie touring year and according to what appears to be the modern day three-year cycle of "year off" (rubbish and boring), "album year" (amazing and exciting) and "touring year" (very amazing and pant wettingly exciting), we can deduce straight away, without knowing even a single other thing that is going to happen, that 2011 is going to be hugely fantastic and memorable.

Kylie's tour is called Aphrodite - Les Folies Tour. I'm not too sure what "Les Folies" is all about to be honest, but I suspect it's a nod to the French music theatre Les Folies Bergère, which tells me that, after what was a pretty minimalist production for KylieX2008, the Showgirl is indeed back with a vengeance this time around.

Okay, so the tour hasn't sold out as quickly as some of her previous outings on the road, but that hasn't stopped it from promising to be the BIGGEST and MOST INSANELY AWESOME live production she's ever put on. A couple of weeks ago, the tour's Facebook and Twitter pages let loose a host of facts about the production. To be honest, most of them were pretty boring, but one visual fact they let slip was anything but.

This, dear readers, is an artist's impression of the stage - complete with umpteen thirty-feet high water jets which are a part of the show's unique water element (and promise to soak those that have paid £250 to stand in what is being called the "Splash Zone"). It looks HUGE. So huge, in fact, that I'm really not sure how they'll fit it all in to Hall 4 of the SECC, when the tour reaches Glasgow on March 28th.

One of the backing singers on Kylie's tour will be Roxanne Wilde. And, in a neat little link, would you believe that Roxanne's sister Kim is touring in 2011 too! The Come Out And Play Live Tour is touring most of Germany and the odd city around the rest of Europe, starting in February. Alas, work commitments mean I won't be able to go along. However, Kim *is* playing the Rewind Scotland 80s music festival in Perth in July - which I most definitely *will* be attending. It's been a while since I've seen Kim play live - the last time was at Culzean Castle in 2005 - so I am really looking forward to it already.

On top of this, there's no doubt that Lady Gaga is about to stomp her size fives all over the charts this year when the Born This Way album is released in May.

And on top of *this*, there's another series of Doctor Who coming our way. It begins around Easter time as usual, but this year takes a mid-series summer hiatus, returning for the finale in the autumn. That's not forgetting the new series of Torchwood - a ten episode story arc entitled 'Miracle Day', which is coming in July and sees the surviving Cardiff lot upping sticks and heading to America.

And to top it all off, my marketing super heroine, Mary Portas, is back on our screens TONIGHT in a new show 'Secret Shopper'. I'm expecting fierce fashions, fierce haircuts and fierce tempers throughout the show's entire run.

Like I say, it's going to be a belter.

Blogging vicariously through Twitter and Facebook

2010-12-29T14:27:00.003Z

Well, hello.

I thought that I would save December by proving to anyone who is still out there, checking my blog daily for any signs of life, that I am indeed still residing in the land of living persons. And proving that I still have an internet connection, here are what the past couple of months have looked like on Twitter and Facebook, thankfully with all the boring stuff edited out.

9 Nov
GS has calmed down about Kylie "fans". Wait a minute, no I haven't!!!! ::shakes fist in the air at alleged "fans":: Barry Manilow doesn't have this kinda trouble!

10 Nov
GS is delighted that he'll be able to "buy stuff" for at least an extra six months.

14 Nov
newplanet
has just been to his first US Walmart. Almost had an orgasm in the cold meds, candy and soda aisles :)

14 Nov
newplanet
A 22 hour day yesterday... you would think there would be a long lie-in this morning. No... BING... awake at 4am!

14 Nov
newplanet
has just seen an advert on telly for a vibrator. #OnlyInAmerica

14 Nov
newplanet
The most pointless TV advert so far this morning is... the Sleep Number bed. Dear oh dear... ::shakes head::

15 Nov
GS is looking like a house end in all the holiday snaps so far :(

16 Nov
GS My Skype account was hacked, umpteen calls to Egypt and Tunisia and countries which end with "stan", balance zapped to nil. No refund from Skype. Not amused!!

16 Nov
GS Harry Potter yesterday, sun worshipping at Aquatica today, Magic Kingdom for snow n Santa tonite. This holiday is officially Uh-may-zing.

17 Nov
newplanet
My love affair with Skype was intense but fleeting. Divorce imminent!

17 Nov
newplanet
It's day 5 of this holiday already!!! I just compared the weather here to back home and I wish time would just slow the hell down!

17 Nov
newplanet
I patted a dolphin today. Stupendous.

17 Nov
GS On the downside, am beginning to resemble the whales we viewed today (same size altho less cute) :-/

17 Nov
newplanet
I don't know which is better... the fact that I am sipping a Cherry Coke Zero right now, or I had 2 Vanilla Cokes with my breakfast this am.

18 Nov
newplanet
@kimwilde Have a wonderful day. Happy Happy Birthday!!! x

19 Nov
GS has caught a cold :(

19 Nov
GS is in the right place to catch a cold... am overdosing on Tylenol "severe" multi-symptom remedy and, consequently, am able to remain functioning. (Amazing)

22 Nov
GS My hatred for Justin Bieber is growing with every day I spend in America.

23 Nov
GS These Flamin' Hot Cheetos are not kidding. My face is on fire!

25 Nov
GS It's my first Thanksgiving! And I am giving thanks for the over eighty degree heat. In NOVEMBER!!!

25 Nov
newplanet
Stupify! Obliviate! Expelliarmus! Expecto Patronum! Guess who left Ollivander's with an Ivy wand today!

26 Nov
GS I had a dream about an ex boss last night and I think I will be hacked off about him all day now :(

26 Nov
GS Oh well, it's my last 24hrs in America and I am off on a Black Friday shopping spree! Florida Mall, here I come!

26 Nov
GS Good day today, including my stand up fight with the manager of the Hollister store. Cheeky moo that she was!

27 Nov
GS At MCO Gate 80 right now, listening to festive tunes :) while awaiting flight home :( in World Traveller Plus :) ... back to sub zero temperatures and snow :(((

28 Nov
newplanet
-5 degrees in London. Snow in Glasgow. Jet lagged. Working tomorrow. Pining. This sucks. :-(

28 Nov
GS Stranded in London because Glasgow Airport closed! Down with the tilt!

29 Nov
newplanet
Groan. #postholidaydepression #jetlag #snow #stillgotacold #earstillnotpopped #shootmenow

29 Nov
newplanet
Signature tune of the Florida holiday was @SaraBareilles 'King Of Anything', played on XL106.7FM approx. every ten minutes. Amazing.

29 Nov
newplanet
is still blocked by Heather Locklear. :-( How do you think I can get back in her good books?

29 Nov
newplanet
@JohnnyandJayde Back in Scotland after 2 weeks in Orlando. Spotted you Black Friday in Florida Mall too. Miss you guys already!

29 Nov
newplanet
More like newplanet, so the twitter machine would lead you to believe, are @darrenhayes and @RealMattLucas. Amazing.

29 Nov
newplanet
Talk about festive... I look like a snowman!

29 Nov
newplanet
@Sades_x You know what? I used to like her on that show. This year she is a whiny brown nosing butt kissing pain in the ass. True story.

29 Nov
GS Minogue... third time's a charm.

2 Dec
GS The tree is up, but not yet dressed. It is so lazy.

3 Dec
newplanet
A bloke on the train has just criticised Scotrail's "hyperbolic" behaviour. Idiot.

6 Dec
newplanet
Holy fucking hell! #Corrie

6 Dec
newplanet
You've got to admit, that was amazing! #Corrie

7 Dec
newplanet
After making it into work every day last week, am turning back now for a day of working from home. What fun. Down with the tilt!

11 Dec
GS isn't whipping his hair back n forth.

12 Dec
GS Matt = amazing. Rebecca = amazing. Dannii = amazing. Cheryl = unamazing.

13 Dec
newplanet
This annoying C4 show is an advert for vegetarianism if ever I saw one. #HestonsChristmasFeast :-(

15 Dec
newplanet
Well, this day feels like one of the all time worst. Virtual hugs all round xxoo

16 Dec
newplanet
And here comes the snow... but wait a minute, I *do* have places to go. Plus the cats are out! ::gulp:: #Don'tLetItSnow

16 Dec
newplanet
@SimplyCiara ::waves back:: Oh I wish I could get my blog up and running again!

16 Dec
newplanet
@jamed_tnnsgrsk Aarrghh, you evil Christmas spammer you! I hope u don't get any presents this year, and u catch a really horrible cold too!

16 Dec
newplanet
@JackelineWeitma You and your rubbish cheapo chopper too! Harumph, etc! #ChristmasSpammersSuck

17 Dec
newplanet
A dude on train is moaning that he can't drink in his local tonight because of work nights out. "I love that pub" he keeps saying. Numpty.

17 Dec
newplanet
Now someone is describing someone else as having a "superman face". Guh?

17 Dec
newplanet
@kylieminogue I think you are quite good. #UnderstatementOfTheDecade

18 Dec
newplanet
And here it comes! #LetItSnow #AKylieChristmas

21 Dec
newplanet
This train is going nowhere and seriously eating into my last minute Christmas shopping time. :-/

23 Dec
GS is bursting out of his clothes. And it's not because he's angry :(

24 Dec
newplanet
tick tock tick tock tick tock... Holidays are coming. Merry Christmas Everybody x

October got scared and ran away

2010-11-04T20:24:00.001Z

Okay, let’s try to ignore what was a completely disastrous Octoberfest, caused by me quite literally being nowhere near a computer for a month (except the one at work, of course, but I only give myself half an hour for lunch and that’s better spent, you know, eating.)

Anyway, I currently have quite a few movie reviews (each of which is about 90% written) on my iPhone, so I might yet go back and fill in the blanks of what was supposed to be this year’s Horrorthon. Or else I won’t... and you’ll just have to wait until next year.

You’ll also notice that I am still having a bit of trouble with my web graphics, thanks to an ongoing dispute with the company which hosts the web site for my (currently in hypersleep) business. Apols to everyone who is offended by how unsightly my blog looks during this period. ::apologises to self, replies with “it’s not a bother, honest”, pleads for forgiveness nevertheless, and so on::

I should tell you that it was the Deathie’s 5th annual Halloween ball at the weekend – and the trophy for the best carved jack-o-lantern went to – me!! That said, I nearly arrived at the “do” with *nothing*, after I noticed that nowhere has been selling pumpkin carving sets this year. These, of course, are must haves if you want to carve up a pumpkin design which is anything more elaborate than three triangles for the eyes and nose, plus a zig-zag for a mouth. I was most perturbed by such developments, until such times as my boyfriend had a genius brainwave and suggested that we carve the pumpkin with, er... a handheld drill.

I am happy to say that, after what was very much a joint effort, we were victorious and managed to carve up what you see below. [See... my boyfriend, apart from being super handsome (and a cheeky c**t when he wants to be) also has a very steady hand and is very clever too. Lucky me!]

I am also very excited that I am about to go on holiday. But since I am going to America, let’s call it a vacation, shall we? This time, the bf and I are off to Florida to do two weeks of theme park and water park fabulousness. Oh you just know that is going to be bloody amazing! It’s been a few years since I have been to the USA and I really love it there – although I have only ever been for a maximum of 8 nights during my past two visits, so I am really looking forward to this extended visit.

Apart from all the coastering I’ll be doing – will I ever tire of it? I think not! – I am sure I will spend lots of time oohing and aahing at foreign brands of soda and the pharmaceutical delights of American cold meds. We’re taking our iPad with us, so don’t be too surprised if I end up blogging while I am over there. On the other hand, I’m pretty certain you won’t be too surprised if I end up not bothering my behind. Oh well!

Horrorthon 2010, Part 1: Poltergeist

2010-10-03T08:36:00.008+01:00

It's October and you know as well as I do this means it's time for my annual reviewfest of all the world's best romantic comedies. Ha! Of course I am joking, it's actually time for another relentless bloodbath and scare-the-pants off you Horrorthon during another Spooky Octoberfest! Hurrah!!!

This year I thought we'd have a little theme on our Horrorthon rundown. This year, I'll be focusing on original horror/scary films and either their accompanying sequels or their remakes. Not much to choose from there then!

I thought I would start with one of my very favourite all time movies, Poltergeist. The thing with Poltergeist is that for everyone of a certain age, i.e. my age, chances are Poltergeist was their initiation to the horror genre. True, it's almost a horror film for kids, but that doesn't stop it from being a BRILLIANT movie and a veritable rollercoaster ride from start to finish.

The film opens in suburban America and instantly you notice that we're not in your archetypal haunted house scenario at all. The Freeling house ain't Amityville or even The Bates Motel, for that matter. It's a new build, for starters, a modern three or four bedroom detached affair. To be honest, it looks like the houses in all Spielberg films. Think the E.T. house meets the Close Encounters house and you've pretty much got the picture. It's kinda nice, I suppose, although it looks more dated now than some of your typical haunted mansion movie homes.

The house belongs to the Freelings, a family about as 80s middle class as you can get. There's realtor Stephen, a man with a fondness for reading books on American politics and making Donald Duck voices (well, I guess the two go hand in hand). There's wifey Diane, who very quickly asserts herself as a tough cookie and, by the sounds of things, was a bit of a tart in her day. And then there are the kids. There's Dana (the problem teenager), Robbie (the problem ten year old) and Carol-Anne (surely the biggest problem five year old the world has ever known).

Things start quietly when Carol-Anne, looking every bit like an extra from The Village of The Damned, sleepwalks downstairs in the night and, er... talks to the television set. You can tell this is way before we knew about global warming because the Freelings NEVER switch off their telly box, preferring to fall asleep on the sofa, or anywhere other than bed actually, while the TV plays nothing but static but at the same time whispers sweet nothings to Carol-Anne. She doesn't normally look like an extra from The Village of The Damned, it must be said. Most of the time she's hyper cute, as bright as a button and effervescent like Alka-Seltzer. But clearly, something is not quite right with this talking to the "TV people" thing she's got going on.

Before long, all sorts of weirdo stuff starts happening. Cutlery contorts itself into all kinds of crazy shapes. Chairs rearrange themselves. Lights flash intermittently. It's nothing too sinister (yet) so the uber-alternative, open-minded, pot-smoking Freelings just think that the whole affair is a bit of a riot and are more than happy to play along with the spooky shenanigans.

But not for long. One evening a particularly nasty storm brews. Robbie hates the scary tree which grows outside his window. And he has reason to, because well... it's alive, people. This is illustrated rather sufficiently when it crashes through Robbie's bedroom, whisks him up into its branches and... not kidding... tries to eat him. It's one of the film's most famous sequences and it's completely ludicrous. I suggest you simply suspend disbelief and go with it... you'll have much more fun if you do.

Naturally, chaos erupts inside the house and out, while the family tries to rescue Robbie from the tree's evil clutches. Except that it's all a diversion from the real prize - Carol-Anne. While the family are battling with the tree, and in a scene that must have made Industrial Light & Magic a fortune, Carol-Anne is magically sucked into her bedroom closet and whisked away to the after life.

When things calm down on the tree front - it's sucked up into a tornado and never seen again - the family are horrified to notice that Carol-Anne is missing. There is some temporary respite when they hear Carol-Anne calling for help. But relief turns to perplexed horror when they realise that her voice is nothing but spooky white noise on the television set. Gulp.

By the next scene, Stephen looks like several shades of hammered shit and we're led to believe that some time has passed and having their daughter trapped on "the other side" has not done wonders for the family's happiness rating. Diane and Stephen have decided to enlist some paranormal investigators, so it would seem. But this is not the X-files and this lot are hardly what you would call Mulder & Scully. When they arrive at the house, one of the team practically has an orgasm at the thought of one case of his where a toy truck took a day to roll across a kitchen floor. This is nothing compared to the Freeling house which has suddenly become a supernatural carnival sideshow, all lights, flashes, bangs and whistles. Five minutes later and the team leader - played wonderfully by Beatrice Straight - is shaking like a leaf and swigging a hip flask like a crazed jakey.

Things get even more crazy. The naughty spirits seem to like playing tricks on the spooky sleuths, all in an effort to scare wits out of them. And, man alive, do they ever "know what scares them". With that in mind, look out for the brilliant scene where a beef steak crawls across the kitchen worktop, spilling its guts everywhere, much to the horror of one team member who spits out a chicken leg, only to find out it's infested with maggots. [What happens next is far too big a surprise to spoil for you.]

Very quickly the team realise they're in way over their heads, so they bring in a famous psychic medium to exorcise the house. Her name is Tangina, a woman about four feet tall and four feet wide, with a bee-hive for hair and a squeaky helium voice from hell. Tangina is also a bit of a clever clogs and so she quickly explains everything. Carol-Anne is alive but stuck in limbo on "the other side" alongside several lost souls that are lost on their way to the light. Carol-Anne's life force is so strong she gives off her own illumination, which is why these pesky spooks keep mistaking her for the "real" light. Or something like that.

Thankfully, Tangina has a plan - a stroke of genius actually, if only for its sheer simplicity. Quickly realising the house sits on a site of bi-location - i.e. a way in and way out of the spirit world - the grand plan is to tie a rope around Diane then send her into the afterlife, all so she can grab Carol-Anne and bring her back to reality. Hurrah! The family will be saved!

Not so fast. Tangina also has a dire warning. A malevolent entity, which she calls "The Beast" is stuck in limbo too and it is using Carol-Anne to make sure the lost souls don't make their way to the light and their eternal salvation. By the sounds of things, the Beast is a complete bastard and won't want to give up Carol-Anne very easily, so the whole mission is thought to be more than a tad risky.

Undeterred, Diane gets ready for her trip to the other side. Things go remarkably well at first, that is until Tangina recites a spooky incantation to persuade the spooks to go into the light. Stephen mistakes Tangina's instructions and tries to yank back Diane arse for elbow. Fortunately (although rather inexplicably) Diane and Carol-Anne manage to make their getaway nevertheless, re-emerging from the other side by crashing down through the living room ceiling, wearing a beautiful cerise shade of ectoplasm no less. Tangina then sticks her chest out like a proud peacock and declares the house "clean".

Except the magic munchkin is not as clever as she thinks she is. When the film shows no signs of ending any time soon, you quickly realise that the house is about as clean as your average loo cubicle at Glastonbury and, therefore, something *big* is afoot. And, let me tell you, the film doesn't disappoint, subsequently delivering a 15 minute-long finale which will have you gawping throughout and which you will consequently remember for the rest of your days.

I won't give it all away, but at least be prepared for some evil clown action, some "dancing" on the ceiling, some exploding skeletons and one of the most unique resolutions to a haunted house you will ever see on film.

5 out of 5.

The Pope is not in Rome

2010-09-16T08:12:00.000+01:00

Indeed not. He's in Scotland, not that anyone who lives in Scotland needs reminding of the fact. Every where I look I see signs reminding me that he's "hitting town" today, and that I should expect all kinds of revolting travel chaos as as a result.

Several roads around Belahouston Park are closed today. I think the idea is to dissuade the nation from trying to drive anywhere near the site, for fear it causes the entire city to sink into the Clyde under the sheer weight of vehicles on the roads at any given moment.

It is utter madness. On the front page of the paper today there's a full page spread on how Susan Boyle is so shitting herself about meeting the Pope that she's keeling over, all over the place. Come on love, he's just an old man, and not exactly a nice one either.

I come from a staunch Protestant family, but this actually doesn't mean I'm dead set against the idea of papal visits in general. I know he's a bigger icon than Lady Gaga to billions of people around the world and I'm delighted for those are going to be properly thrilled when the very image of him burns directly onto their retinas today. But, on the other hand, I really don't know what it is about this guy - something to do with him being a contemptible old arse maybe? - which makes me want to get my "the pope is gay" placard, which I keep for emergencies, and go sit with the protesters and gun-toting lunatics.

Seriously, the last one wasn't so bad but this latest Pope is a bit of a jobby, is he not? In this day and age, when people are being sent to prison for peddling hate, it begs the question why one of the world's biggest hate spewing creeps is being given the time of day?

Kaci vs. Kaci Battaglia

2010-09-05T16:47:00.004+01:00

Does anyone remember that chirpy little pop starlet Kaci?

She had a few hits back in the golden era of power pop, i.e. those few years towards the end of the 90s and in the (very) early 00s when CD singles still ruled. The charts were also full of impossibly pretty young things who didn't give a jot about musical credibility and generally bounded around in their music videos, singing kick-ass melodies and looking like they were high on their own gorgeousness.

A lot of people look back and think that was when the arse fell out of the music business and that pop subsequently imploded thanks to a sudden and catastrophic lack of anything resembling talent. Not me though. Forget the 80s - I'll forever regard this period as the true pinnacle of superpop. It was the time of my life where I was buying the most amount of records and I have at least eight boxes of the things to prove it, as it happens.

Anyway, Kaci thoroughly deserves her place amongst the acts at the time who defined that golden era. Basically, she was the American version of Billie Piper - i.e. she was young enough to have auditioned for the S Club Juniors - with perhaps an extra dash of Jennifer Lopez thrown in there for good measure. Her biggest hit was called 'Paradise', produced by Metro no less, and it was rather lovely. A quick look on YouTube reminds me this is what the video looked like.

Aww, ain't she sweet? Don't you just want to buy her a Barbie doll for her birthday?

A couple of singles and an album followed this and then the dumper called her name with a huge big megaphone. A couple of years later, however, I picked up a promo of a single called 'Txt me' which only proved that not a lot of growing up had happened in Kaci's sweet little world. Off she disappeared into obscurity again, presumably for evermore.

...

...

Aeons pass.

...

...

Holy blinking moly, Kaci is back!!! Nowadays she has inherited her surname, I am guessing to hammer home that she's all grown up now. That is, of course, assumes that you need reminding because you missed the video to her most recent single, Crazy Possessive. Actually, for maximum effect, you should go back and watch the video for 'Paradise' again before you watch the next one and then ponder to yourself what a difference a decade makes.

Holy. heck. When I first watched this, I was aghast. I swear I must have resembled a slack-jawed gawker with special needs.

Let's get one thing straight, you heard the little madam correctly and this much is being made resolutely clear - if you call Kaci's new man again she is going to take you outside and FUCK YOU UP. This is like Olivia Newton-John's Grease transformation from Sandra Dee type bookworm to leathered-up frizzy-permed chain-smoking hussy multiplied by about a million. Isn't it awesome?

Yes. Yes it is. And expect more of the same when the album "drops" later this month. In the meantime, there's the new single 'Body Shots', which is not nearly as catchy as its predecessor but has an accompanying video which only confirms the extent to which she's been whisked away with the sex fairies, including obligatory lesbo action and everything.

Stupendous.

Back to work, Back to blog

2010-08-31T20:46:00.000+01:00

Pardon me for the ridiculously long hiatus. Isn't it always the way that as soon as you have a really great idea for your blog – and the frequency of your posts starts to creep up again to almost acceptable levels – that life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of things and ruining it all?

For the past nearly two whole months, I've been lost in a whirlwind of job interviews, job interview rejections (booooo!), job offers (yay!) and, last but not least, moving house shenanigans.

That's right! After an unbelievably long period of unemployment, I am working again. And since my new office is situated at least two hours away by train, I have decided to say my goodbyes to Troon and move a little northwards. [More on that a little later.]

Job hunting is NOT fun, as I am sure most of you will have found out at one time or another. Seriously, if you're in a job at the moment, cling on to it for dear life in fear that you might otherwise have to spend a few months in "the pool". Looking for work is a monotonous soulless chore in itself and the cycle of prospecting-interviewing-rejection-feedback is enough to turn even the strongest of men to organised religion and/or alcoholic beverages. Thankfully, I did not succumb to either on this round. But it was by a baw-hair's breadth, let me tell you.

I remember going for interviews "back in the day". It was all so simple, straightforward and civilised back then. You trotted along, shook hands, said your bit and shortly someone sent you a letter giving you good news or bad. These days, on the other hand, things are a little more complicated and a lot more devoid of manners.

To illustrate my point, a few weeks back I went to interview for a job in the marketing department of Arnold Clark. Now, normally I wouldn’t give names, but since that day Arnold Clark have become my arch enemies and, frankly, the epitome of outrageously diabolical and RUDE recruitment procedures. That is, whereby the employer begins to believe that it can forego all common decency and manners just because "it's an employers' market out there" at the moment.

No, Arnold Clark, just so you know, YOUR CANDIDATES' TIME IS JUST AS PRECIOUS AS YOURS. That means if any of them spend an afternoon travelling to your premises, all so that they can chat for an hour and a half with your Head of Marketing [aka, "genuinely nice fellow"] and your Head of Advertising [aka, "torn-faced bag"], the least you can do is tell them that they didn't get the job. In case you are wondering, that last point is especially important if they send two E-mails politely requesting feedback and then they call your office twice because you are deliberately ignoring them. In case you don’t get the irony, this in actual fact is THE WORST MARKETING CAMPAIGN EVER. Potential candidates are potential customers after all. And right now this one has never been more disinclined to purchase a car from Arnold Clark than ever before. Well done you!

Unfortunately, Arnold Clark are not alone when it comes to stunts like this. One approximately twenty year-old buerk from one company made me drive from Troon to Livingston on false pretences, only to tell me that they were "just putting out feelers to see what was available to them". I smiled sweetly but really wanted to ask him how dare he waste my time in such a flagrant fashion.

Thankfully, this particularly ranty story has a happy ending. Not all employers are bastards, so it would seem. Not least the one which has just offered me six months of paid work. Sure, it's only for six months but who knows what opportunities it might lead to. I'm just delighted to be free from the job centre for a while.

So, I'm currently in the process of moving in with my boyfriend, would you believe. The proverbial mummy’s boy and single occupier takes the plunge at last. I can hardly believe it myself. There's a fortnight or so left until I have to hand back the keys to my flat so weekends are spent moving the remainder of my junk to its new home in Langbank, which is near to Port Glasgow. [Not that I'm dissing Port Glasgow or anything, but it's a lovely cottage in the middle of the green countryside, actually.]

Last weekend, the first lot of my fish made the move and I am pleased to report that they all survived the upheaval. This is more than can be said for my bully of a sucking loach, which met its maker after I heaved clove oil and vodka in its tank. [Animal lovers don’t need to be too horrified. It’s the most humane way to kill a fish, allegedly – although I still felt like a murderer and actually cried when I did it.]

My new job still involves quite a bit of daily travelling, unfortunately. Although I have decided to make the journey by train so a nice side-effect of this is that I now have more time than ever to sit with my laptop and write in my blog. If I don't use the time enjoying some shut-eye, that is.

Until the next time sleep is not a necessity!

Come Out And Play

2010-07-03T12:16:00.001+01:00

You want to hear a sneak preview of the new Kim Wilde single, Lights Down Low, taken from the new album Come Out And Play, don't you? Well, lucky you!

:: passes out ::

Kylie LP Wars: Track 1

2010-07-01T15:16:00.003+01:00

Kylie is quite happily shouting from the rooftoops that she thinks her new LP is the best she's ever done. Well, in preparation for the album's imminent release next week, I've decided to put those claims to the test. I'm calling it Kylie LP Wars and, without a doubt, it's going to be properly amazing and it might even shock you to your very foundations.

For the next however long it takes, I'll be pitching all of Kylie's ELEVEN studio albums against each other, track by track. Since there are eleven albums, I'll be concentrating on the first eleven tracks of each record.

"But wait a minute!" I hear you cry. "Some of the albums don't have as many as eleven tracks and some have more!" How true, but that just means we're going to have to be a little inventive in the eleventh and final "wild card" round.

During each round, I'll be awarding points - from 1 point for the worst track, to 11 points for the best - to each competing LP. And after each round, I'll apply a complicated mathematical procedure known as "addition" to the points. After this 'extremely scientific' rigmarole is complete, we'll have the definitive answer to the question of what *really* is Kylie's best ever LP.

I know you're all itching to get started, so without any further ado, why don't we, er... Let's Get To It?!

I Should Be So Lucky ~ from Kylie
It's the one that started it all! It was a #1 hit for five weeks and it completely deserved to be. People like to call it nasty names like "vacuous" and "trite" but I think I Should Be So Lucky is still pretty amazing, even to this day. It's quintessentially 80s, but it still sounds great more than two decades later. [The adlibs at the end are simply wonderful.] Play it LOUD to really appreciate it. It brings down the house on every tour she plays.

Hand On Your Heart ~ from Enjoy Yourself
Kylie's third #1, Hand On Your Heart is Stock Aitken Waterman by numbers. Happy go lucky melody? Check. Sounds like an explosion in a metronome factory? Check. Lyrics of heart-wrenching tragedy? Check. Stick in a "whoah" here and there, when you can't think of a word to put in its place? Check. A second verse which makes no sense whatsoever? Check. In spite of all this, Hand On Your Heart is fun. It's as deep as a puddle, granted, but it's still heaps of fun and, all in all, it's one of Enjoy Yourself's strongest songs.

Better The Devil You Know ~ from Rhythm Of Love
Devil really needs no introduction. It wasn't her biggest hit, but it became her biggest anthem. And it's not outside the realms of possibility to assume that if it weren't for Devil, there probably wouldn't be a new Kylie album out next week. This was Minogue at the start of her infamous "SexKylie" phase. She wrestled some control at the Hit Factory, ordering Stock Aitken Waterman to remix an early demo of this track. The result is that oh-so-astounding "dugga-dugga-dugga" intro, which signified Kylie's transition from pure bubblegum pop to the fringes of early 90s acid house. It was a revelation and it was brilliant. And it still is to this day.

Word Is Out ~ from Let's Get To It
It was her first single after "Aitken" flew the SAW coop. And what a slightly more muted affair it is. I guess the idea was to present Kylie as more grown-up and sophisticated and, to a degree, it worked. On the other hand, if you prefer Kylie in three-minute bursts of sonic thrillingness mode, you might be ever so disenchanted with this one. This was reflected in the chart placing at the time - her first single not to reach the Top 10, peaking at #16 back in the summer of 1991.

Confide In Me ~ from Kylie Minogue
When Kylie left PWL and the trademark sound that went with it, everyone wondered what on Earth she would do next. But anyone who thought it would merely be "more of the same on another record label" must have ended up with egg on their face. Confide In Me saw a gargantuan leap in Minogue's credibility and quite deservedly so - it is orchestral and it is epic and it is awesome. The outstanding Brothers In Rhythm production is evident throughout the entire song and, if you listen keenly enough, you'll even hear spooky white noise throughout the song's intro. Amazing.

Too Far ~ from Impossible Princess
It's the first opening track that never became a single and, to this day, some folks are *still* complaining about that. Too Far is indeed remarkable. It sounds nothing like Kylie. She'd never recorded a song quite like it before this, nor has she since. That said, Too Far isn't exactly what you would call easy listening. On the contrary, it's grimy and it's dark and it's even somewhat chilling, juxtaposing whispery, whiny, grumbly vocals with dramatic piano and screechy ear-piercing cries for help. A triumph of Minogue's writing talents and it shows exactly what can be achieved when she is afforded complete artistic freedom.

Spinning Around ~ from Light Years
Spinning Around is a triumph of a completely different kind, however. Her first #1 for a decade, Spinning Around is even more famous for its accompanying video. But that shouldn't detract from the fact that it is utterly joyous and really rather memorable in its purely aural form. The vocals are polished to the point that they shimmer. Plus it's one of her biggest ever hits and the perfect choice for lead single from Light Years, setting the scene for what is to come over the course of the album rather beautifully.

More More More ~ from Fever
Another opening track that never became a single, More More More is jolly enough but it's merely a track designed to get you in the mood for the rest of Fever, her biggest selling LP worldwide. The first time you hear it you probably won't think much of it, but a deeper appreciation comes with repeated listens. It rattles along at a right old pace and I am kinda in love with the breathy vocals which are all over the place. Still, there are far greater tracks on this list.

Slow ~ from Body Language
Slow has a problem. It is a cool, minimalist, mid-tempo, electro-tinged masterpiece and yet, when it's competing with tracks like Devil and Confide, it just lacks a little substance, coming across as slightly listless and repetitive. It's also her poorest selling #1 single, ever. A shame really.

2 Hearts ~ from X
2 Hearts also has a problem. Widely regarded as more than a bit duff and blamed entirely for the resulting "failure" of X, it's definitely one of Kylie's most underrated singles. With that in mind, I am going to buck the trend and put my hand up and say I think 2 Hearts is brilliant. Sure, it gives a false impression as to what the rest of the album is going to sound like, but it's certainly one of Minogue's most interesting moments and it goes down a storm during the live shows.

All The Lovers ~ from Aphrodite
Yay! All The Lovers has seen Kylie reclaim her place in the UK Top 5 (#2 in the midweeks, so I hear). It's short but sweet, euphoric but dreamy. Simple yet epic. Less in-your-face than you might have imagined. More hum along and sway from side to side than jump around like a loon with your arms in the air. The video is great and it's the perfect choice for lead single from this album, sure enough.

And the points go to...
1 point goes to Let's Get To It for Word Is Out
2 points go to Fever for More More More
3 points go to Body Language for Slow
4 points go to Impossible Princess for Too Far
5 points go to Enjoy Yourself for Hand On Your Heart
6 points go to X for 2 Hearts
7 points go to Aphrodite for All The Lovers
8 points go to Kylie for I Should Be So Lucky
9 points go to Light Years for Spinning Around
10 points go to Kylie Minogue for Confide In Me
11 points go to Rhythm Of Love for Better The Devil You Know

So, it's a strong start from Rhythm Of Love whilst its follow-up, Let's Get To It, languishes in last place. But it's still very early days with everything to play for so who the heck knows how this is all going to turn out! How "exciting"! :-)

The curious case of Janice Coyne

2010-06-26T10:28:00.000+01:00

If you're from my home county of Ayrshire, chances are you'll know the name Janice Coyne. I bet you've never met her, but you probably *think* you know that she's a bit of a, well... let's just say a dirty girl.

You see, at least a decade ago, Janice Coyne graffiti was sprayed seemingly everywhere in Ayrshire. There was a wee poisonous flourish of it in and around Saltcoats for some reason. However, any bus trip across Ayrshire proved that Janice Coyne sure did get about. Practically every bus shelter on the entire route to Kilmarnock served as a reminder that Janice was a terrible lady of loose morals and was probably responsible for half of the world's calamities too, come to think of it. The slogans were short and to the point, like stabs to the ribs, designed to inflict the most amount of damage in as few characters as possible.

JANICE COYNE SLUT
JANICE COYNE TOWN BIKE
JANICE COYNE WHORE
JANICE COYNE BOOT

Some were a little more inventive, however.

JANICE COYNE WHO'S NEXT?
JANICE COYNE SPUNKBAG SLAG [you may not agree with the sentiment but you have to agree it is lovely alliteration!]
JANICE COYNE BLOWS GOATS
JANICE COYNE HAS LOVELY HAIR [okay, so I made that one up.]

I know I am making light of the situation somewhat, but please don't get me wrong. The whole thing was really awful, in actual fact. I think graffiti of any kind is odious. It reflects badly on local communities and helps bring out the worst in people, exposing humans as being the total tosswipes they really are. This was a hate campaign, pure and simple. It was shameful, it was cowardly and whoever orchestrated it was downright contemptible, if you ask me. What's fascinating though is how, more than ten years later, people still talk about it, and suddenly I am not even sure any more whether she is/was ever a real person.

The other day I came across a Facebook group - with over 200 members would you believe - asking "Does anyone know what Janice Coyne ACTUALLY DID?"

The thing is, everyone has a theory, and while there are similarities to the explanation as to what "actually happened", no two recounts are exactly the same. Most say something along the lines of it was a revenge campaign by her husband and that he ended up in jail for it. [Hurrah!] Others throw the juicy "fact" that he was an IRA sympathiser into the mix. One person claims there is Janice Coyne graffiti in Australia. Every comment on the board starts with an unconvincing "I heard...".

Janice Coyne, so it would seem, has become a bit of an urban legend.

Some even claim to know the real person. "I worked with her in a call centre," said one. "She's actually a really sound middle aged woman who had a crazy ex. I was slightly disappointed - it's like finding out that Santa wasnt real. Janice Coyne wasn't a slag."

Do I believe that this person *really* worked with Janice? Not for a second. I mean, if you were Janice, wouldn't you have changed your name by now? No, as likely as it is that this whole sorry story has some basis in truth, I prefer to think that the whole thing is made up, that the graffiti was all the work of a master prankster, who erm... coined the name by looking up names in the phonebook and picking one at random.

On the other hand, if it *is* all true, I hope Janice Coyne is now living a happy life somewhere or other. Because I heard that she changed her name to Judy Jurgenstern then she won the lottery and emigrated to the Bahamas. True story, honest.

Like waiting for a bus

2010-06-25T18:38:00.000+01:00

Job hunting is a strange old affair - nothing comes along for ages and then three opportunities come at once. I had my third interview in two days this morning and right now I feel like the greatest marketer that ever lived on marketing street in marketing land. They say that positive affirmations do wonders for one's self-esteem. I say try telling complete strangers how utterly amazing you are for a few hours a week if you need a little pick-me-up - I am on top of the world!

One of the three jobs would be very much a stop-gap, until something more appropriate comes along. The other two are pretty much dream jobs, one focusing on branding, the other focusing on advertising - and both for big names, so I am pleased there is some interest in little old me at last. That said, the job market is so unbelievably tough at the moment that I am trying not to get too excited about it. The interviewer from one company went to great lengths to let me know that she had had an overwhelming response to her job ad and this was a "screening" interview. Still, it was a fun interview which in itself is a bonus, considering some of the relentless horrorthon interviews I have had in my time.

And, regardless of how you think an interview has gone, you never really can tell for certain. Towards the end of last year I interviewed for a consultancy firm in Chelmsford in Essex. The first interview was a nightmare, where I got a proper grilling from an asshole in a suit who told me to "calm down" within five minutes and who, if I got the job, would be my boss. Needless to say it was a request which only succeeded in having the opposite effect and I left the place with my tail between my legs and thinking that if I never stepped foot in the door ever again it would be too soon. The feedback from the recruitment consultant was that "they thought you were like a breath of fresh air and want to see you again next week". I nearly didn't go but the second interview couldn't have been more different - lots of friendly joviality. And yet still no job offer at the end of it.

Getting a job seems to be becoming more and more like taking part in an X-Factor style tournament these days, with so many qualifying stages to get through before the finish line [albeit minus the Minogue, the cameras, the tantrums and Simon Cowell's rotten old face]. At this rate it won't be long before we are all going to 'Britain's Got Talent' style interviews where the interview panel get to press huge big honking buzzers whenever we get a bit too boring, are clueless or just a bit bonkers.

Actually, that sounds quite like fun!

What a difference a Mary makes

2010-06-15T08:10:00.002+01:00

When compared to the opening episode of the new series of Mary Queen of Shops, last night's show was like chalk and cheese.

This week, Mary was sent to rescue Clealls, a convenience store in Corfe Castle, Dorset. The problem was that Clealls looked like a Spar shop from hell and was virtually bursting at the seams with shelves stuffed full of every conceivable type of product in the universe. Naturally, customers were avoiding the shop like the plague and it turned out that the business was losing a horrific six Gs every single month, whilst owners Chris and Juliet readily admitted to not really having a clue what made the bumpkin local customers tick.

And after the disasterous shenanigans of last week, it has to be said that Mary was back on top form, playing the wicked witch much better than the poor misunderstood retail marketing consultant. Within five minutes, Mary was telling the pair that their shop was a shambles and was asking Juliet whether she had "completely lost the plot", not to mention reducing her to tears. If anything, Mary was even more critical than usual this week and yet both Juliet and Chris listened intently to the criticism and genuinely seemed to want change.

And what a difference it made. Mary's plan was to turn the store into an integral part of the village once again. That meant sourcing and showcasing local fresh produce, whilst Juliet and Chris got to know the locals, embraced countryside culture and would attempt to become fine upstanding cornerstones of the community. The pair took to the challenge with gusto and, ultimately, it all appeared to pay off for them. I'm not so sure it was a direct dig at Angela Maher, her arch nemesis from last week's show, but Mary was brimming with pride over the pair's efforts and nobody can argue with what seemed to be achievable with a bit of open mindedness, a little blind faith and a lot of effort.

Kim Wilde sings, looks fabulous

2010-06-14T19:56:00.005+01:00

You really have no idea how excited this one photograph has made me. Look, it's Kim Wilde, looking like a million bucks whilst in the studio recording her new album.

Okay, so she has a rather pained expression on her face, but all this means is that she's knocking out her patented power vocals on one of her new tunes. Don't act as though you don't know what I mean by her patented power vocals.

i.e.

"whooooooooaaahhhhhhhhh, Never Trust a Straaangeerrrr with yoooouurr heaaaaaaarrrttttt"

OR

"since youuuuuuu caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmee, no-one could love you more"

OR

Let's face it, loads of others.

Kim's new LP is out later this year and she's describing it as a great "rock and roll" album. No news yet as to whether it'll get a UK release, but either way it is probably going to be amazing and I am properly letting wee out in my pants just now thinking about it.

Picture shamelessly pinched from Kim Wilde's brilliant fansite www.wilde-life.com

Last ever* Big Brother

2010-06-11T00:00:00.002+01:00

I know it's so incredibly uncool to write about Big Brother these days and it's true that I've had a quiet couple of years on the BB front myself. I hardly watched any of BB9, I merely dipped in and out of BB10 and I missed this year's celebrity version entirely. But since BB11 is the last ever* I've decided to give it a proper go this year.

It remains to be seen whether this last ever* series will be anywhere near as compulsive viewing as, say, BB7 [the last truly great BB series, in my opinion], or as nefarious and infuriating as the likes of "evil" BB5 which caused my blood pressure go up to the point I needed valium before bedtime. However, you've got to hand it to Channel 4 - they've promised to send off Big Brother with a big bang and so far they're sticking to their word.

I, for one, LOVE the new carnival theme they've adopted for this last ever* series. The opening titles are the best for years, complete with scary circus mannequins that I am pretty sure I saw in an episode of Doctor Who a few weeks back.

And after a couple of years where the housemates were pretty much painting-by-numbers predictable and, ultimately, were completely forgettable types, for this last ever* series they've opted for the most interesting bunch of housemates in, well... for as long as I can remember really. In spite of their traditionally loony names [Sunshine?? Ife?? Shabby?? Caoimhe?? Govan??] which smacks of them trying too hard to be a little bit too alternative, they're all pretty much instantly likeable! [Okay, maybe not Dave - the monk who gets intoxicated on er... God and chortles like a laughing policeman.]

This year I think I might even have a bit of a weird wrong crush on fake-tanned, bouffant-blonde tory posh-git Ben [top right in the photo collage above] who is possibly the gayest straight man and biggest mincer on television at the moment. This is in stark contrast to BB years gone by when I probably would have hated him instantly with complete bile and venom, posted his picture on here with a big red cross over his face and chanted "GET HIM OUT" a million times. I really must be mellowing in my old age.

And it turns out that this last ever* BB will finish off with a champion of champions style fortnight, where all the best housemates from yesteryear get to reunite in the BB house one last time. How many shades of awesome is that going to be? [Answer: It's more than one million three hundred and six. Unless they let Jason Cowan back in, which means it'll be more than one million three hundred and six shades of pig poo.]

*aka possibly not the last ever.

The best thing about the Gaga video

2010-06-10T19:34:00.002+01:00

Is easily this fellow.

I'm just saying.

Ale-ale-jandro-ale-ale-jandro, tra la la, etc.

Portas-a-Manger

2010-06-09T11:06:00.000+01:00

Mary Portas returned to our TV screens this week for a new series of Mary Queen of Shops on BBC2. If you're a long-time follower of my blog you'll know already that I worship at the altar of Portas. She is my marketing guru and I would probably rip up a job offer from Saatchi & Saatchi to go work for her. The problem, of course, is that I wouldn't be able to string a comprehensible sentence together during any interview she was present at. In all honesty, I bloody love that woman and I think I may actually want to have her babies - which is highly unlikely given that I am a gay man and she, in actual fact, is a gay woman, but never mind.

The subject of this week's show was Angela, a belligerent miserable curmudgeon of a woman who also runs a family bakery in a posh London suburb. You see, on this new series, Mary is forsaking the fashion retailers in favour of other types of shop, such as hairdressers and, indeed, local high-street bakers. It's all because Mary is on a personal mission to fix Britain's town centres, which are beginning to look like boarded up wastelands. The idea is to get high street retailers competing with evil out-of-town supermarkets [boo, hiss] all so that towns get regenerated and communities are saved. See? In spite of her somewhat frosty ice-maiden exterior, Mary is really very lovely and is a cute and fluffy type of person deep down.

It's safe to say that Angela did not see Mary's fluffy side, neither did she love her nor want to have her babies. From the very instant Mary walked through the front door, looking like she just stepped out of an episode of Absolutely Fabulous of course, it was like handbags at dawn. Perhaps Angela had seen an episode or two of Queen of Shops and was ready for her. No way was that big bad Mary going to waltz in to her shop and tell her what to do without even saying please or thank-you. It was not a good start and it was only going to get worse.

Angela, you see, had "been in the business for 36 years and therefore knew about the trade" - a line of dialogue that she repeated every thirty seconds to every single person that she met. Unfortunately for Angela, her profits had halved in the last five of those 36 years. A fact which she blamed on everything other than her simply not selling what customers really wanted any more. Clearly, Angela didn't know all about the trade [most notably how to pronounce "focaccia"] and yet, when faced with the stark reality of the situation, she repeatedly moaned that Portas and, in fact, everyone knew nothing about, well... everything. Eventually, all dialogue was cut-off completely and, finally, the project was terminated. Angela just hadn't understood the degree to which Mary was going to make changes, she moaned. Perhaps she hadn't seen the show after all?

In fairness, Mary being met with extreme short-sightedness and the denial tactics of her clients is an overarching theme on this show so Angela is by no means "the only one". But Mary usually manages to win them over by convincing them that she simply wants to see them succeed and has their best interests at heart. This time, however, it was not to be. And it was fascinating. "My job was to make the business more profitable," said Mary afterwards. "I haven't done that. That's the exam failed."

Better luck next time, Mary.

A Cock To Uranus

2010-06-08T18:48:00.006+01:00

Oh my gay lord!

Towards the end of last year, one of the most ridiculous pop bands of the 90s, i.e. Aqua, staged an utterly underwhelming UK comeback when they released 'Back To The 80s'. I'm not sure if the single even charted in the UK, to be honest, but if it didn't then this was clearly a pop injustice of gargantuan proportions. 'Back To The 80s' might actually have been the best record they ever released. The band clearly didn't give a toss that more than a decade had passed and that music tastes had completely moved on, so they just went ahead and released a song about the 80s which sounded like something from the 90s. Naturally, this made it amazing and brilliant, as well as a huge flop here in the UK.

Well, wouldn't you just know it, another Euroband you thought you'd seen the back of forever is also staging a comeback which will either (a) tank every bit as spectacularly, sending the band members back to stacking shelves in their local supermarket, or (b) save the universe from the impending pop apocalypse, leaving us eternally grateful for sparing us a chart of endless mediocrity. [My money's on the first one.] That band is the Vengaboys.

Erk.

'Rocket To Uranus' is, quite frankly, the most bonkers and preposterous thing I have heard all week. And just like the Aqua record, it's a tune that sounds like everything they ever released more than a decade ago, only better. Because, suddenly, it *doesn't* sound like everything else in the charts right now. Just as pop is about to get sucked up its own pretentious arsehole, it's ironic that a band like Vengaboys is releasing a record about, well... arseholes. It's also somewhat reassuring to know that it's a record which isn't trying to be even remotely cool.

Amazingly, the band seems to have the same line-up of old. In a time where "current" bands like the Sugababes change their line-up every couple of weeks, this is quite an achievement. Even more amazingly, however, the video inexplicably features Perez Hilton and, uhm... Pete Burns, who spends the entire clip with a "what the heck am I doing?" expression on his face. That is, of course, before his head explodes. Honestly, I couldn't make up such an insanely ridiculous and brilliant fact. The connotation about, well... bumming won't be lost on anyone, especially when you consider the titular rocket ship looks nearly as much like a cock-n-balls as, er... a real cock-n-balls. The whole thing, as you are about to witness, is supremely absurd and amazing at the same time. Bravo.

That Sounds Duff To Me

2010-06-03T15:26:00.000+01:00

Oh no. It's time for my yearly rant-fest about the Eurovision Song Contest.

The thing is, unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple of days or you simply just don't care about Eurovision [chances are it's the second one], then you probably will know already that the United Kingdom finished LAST in last Saturday night's Grand Final. Yes, again.

Well, strictly speaking we didn't actually come *last* in the entire contest since some countries didn't even qualify for the final. But considering the UK only qualifies because the BBC flings cash at the show, it kinda makes our guaranteed place in the final a bit of a cheat, does it not? Well, as it happens, there are debates every year about whether or not the "Big 4" countries have an unfair advantage or, indeed, a disadvantage in the contest. And while Germany rightfully won the contest this year - the first "Big 4" nation to do so since, well... us - our own placing on the scoreboard surely goes to prove that it really makes no difference whatsoever. The most popular song on the night is always going to win this contest, no matter the nationality of the songwriter and whether or not it is actually any good.

Not that this year's winner wasn't good. On the contrary, it was brilliant - like many of the songs in this year's final. Only nitwits with peabrains have failed to notice that Eurovision has upped its game considerably in the past few years. Admittedly, some dog turd songs remain of course. But anyone who still claims that Eurovision is full of yodelling old birds in clogs who can't sing a note is painfully ignorant. Eurovision, for the most part, has moved on. So should you.

Alas, as much as it pains me to admit it, our problem this year is that our song was simply one of those dog turds. Granted, it probably wasn't the biggest turd of the night - step up the Serbian entry - but this is no longer an argument about whether or not we deserved to come last, it's an argument about whether or not we deserved to be in the Top 5. And the truth is we really didn't.

Let's get one thing straight - I do not blame Josh Dubovie in the slightest. His vocals and his overall delivery of the song was fine. On the other hand, even though I remain a huge fan, I partly blame Mike Stock & Pete Waterman for simply not presenting the BBC with the hit song I know they're capable of delivering. Above all else, however, I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the BBC who, in spite of last year's sterling effort, need to know that they made a complete and utter arse of it all this year.

To be fair to the BBC, they're pretty much damned if they do and damned if they don't. The problem is that the majority of folks in the UK just don't give a monkeys about Eurovision. And yet it's the same people who get all stroppy when we do abysmally. Last year, after years of proof that the British public could not televote its way out of a paper bag as far as choosing a winning Song For Europe is concerned, the BBC asked us to choose a singer instead, and automatically opted for a song written by Andrew Lloyd-Webber. It was a grand showtune, sung brilliantly by an amazing vocalist. It ended up Top 5 in the Eurovision final and yet people *still* complained in droves to the BBC beforehand. There really is no pleasing some folks.

That said, the effort made by the BBC this year is simply not good enough by nearly everyone's standards. They may have followed a similar format to last year but ultimately it was without any heart and soul, instead merely opting for a truly half-arsed national final to pick an OK singer to sing an OK song. Why did they ever think that was all that was needed to win at Eurovision?

Some people are already calling for Simon Cowell to spearhead an X-Factor-esque search for a truly amazing Song For Europe in 2011, helped out by the country's most famous songwriters and performers. Such a proposition is unlikely since the BBC would probably have to relinquish rights to ITV for that to happen and, frankly, Cowell has enough to do producing shows which make him millions. But it sure does seem like the right time to take a long hard look at how the UK, and the BBC, really regards Eurovision and to start making a proper effort to win.

What is the answer to all of this? Well, I am not really certain. But Ewan Spence, writing for industry mag The Stage's blog offers some very good ideas which make a lot of sense. You can read the article here. I hope the BBC is paying attention.

Come on Alejandro, Vogue!

2010-06-02T20:01:00.006+01:00

In other hot video news, our Lady of Gaga has released a very quick preview of her video to the third single off The Fame Monster, i.e. Alejandro. It was difficult to fathom where on Earth she would go after the complete and utter mentalism of Telephone. And by the looks of things it's an infintely more stylish, less garish, much more stripped back affair, with the hugest of huge nods to Madonna's Vogue.

Oh well, on top of how generally amazing it looks like it's going to be, I love how this video might stop Madonna's fans from having a go at Kylie for all of five minutes. Because we all know that both Kylie and Gaga copied Madonna by, you know... also having XX chromosomes and, therefore, neither should be allowed to have a career of their own, don't we?

All The Videos Don't Compare

2010-06-02T18:55:00.003+01:00

Kylie's new video premiered yesterday and what a pervy old affair it is. With more than a passing resemblance to her other pervfest, i.e. the video for Slow, the clip for All The Lovers features Kylie riding aloft on an ever increasing mountain of lovers.

You see, all it takes is for the mere sight of the soon-to-be Greek goddess of love (who, incidentally, looks approximately 20 years old in this video) for fit hunks and super babes to strip off and writhe around in an orgy that would make your granny blush (including some cheeky girl on girl/boy on boy action) while, inexplicably, a white stallion runs amock in the streets of Los Angeles.

How bloody lovely.

Melrose Impossible

2010-05-27T12:11:00.002+01:00

You've possibly heard that The CW presented its "upfronts" last week and, finally, we know for certain that Melrose Place won't be returning for a second season.

No surprise there, then. In spite of some last minute hope that the show would be saved - a VIP cast member stuck his neck out and said he still believed the show would be renewed against all the odds - in reality the writing's been on the wall ever since nobody watched the pilot and even less people bothered to watch the remainder of what was, at best, a "quite good-ish" first season.

You can't really blame the network - although some of the more, shall we say "emotionally invested" message board posters are calling for Dawn Ostroff to be chucked in the stocks and pelted with rotten fish guts - they gave it a pretty fair shot. And by simply letting the show slip off the fall schedule quietly, they've avoided the embarrassment of cancelling the show with a big fat capital C. Although the fact remains the show's still cancelled, it's a slightly more dignified exit don't you think?

Everyone has an opinion about why it didn't catch on and, if you ask me, this new Melrose Place has been a funny old affair. That's funny as in strange, not funny as in Jane's classic line from back in the original's fourth season - "It came to me like an epiphany, brown is the new black!" There were utterly magical Melrose moments dotted around the place which were touched with sheer brilliance - which hinted to me that the producers knew what they were doing taking on a show like Melrose Place - but alas, for the most part, they simply proved to me that they really hadn't done their homework.

I was all for a darker, seedier, more stylised version of Melrose Place and, to begin with, this is exactly what it was. By the second episode, one character was binging on coke and booze, not to mention sticking a knife in the shoulder of her former lover. The language was a little bit filthier too [I remember gaping when one character called another "a dick"]. It *seemed* grittier and yet more glitzy at the same time. It really was the original show's much dirtier little sister.

As the episodes went on, however, it was clear that something wasn't quite right with new Melrose after all. Where were the incessant twists and turns? What about the cliffhangers? Episode after episode would finish with smiles and hugs amongst the cast, reassuring us that everything would turn out all right in the end. And ultimately, where's the fun in that? Old Melrose Place was amazing because you genuinely feared for the characters' well-being and *no-one* could ultimately be trusted. When Kimberly promised to "get" Matt or make his life "a living hell", she damn well meant it. When Amanda tore Alison to shreds, along with the promise that she would soon "wish she'd never been born", you could bet your life savings that she was going to follow through with it. On new Melrose, the cast were so damn friendly to one another, their micro-disagreements barely lasted until the end of an episode. This, unfortunately, made some of the story arcs more than a bit of a snooze-fest.

Talking about snooze-fests, let's also talk about the proverbial "hugely talented film maker" Jonah Miller and his eternal struggle to make it big in Hollywood - surely the biggest turd of a storyline in all of Melrose Place history. Jonah would spend eighteen full episodes trying to make "Living In Reverse" - his life story told in reverse, no less - a film which sounded so completely dull and lifeless it really should have been called "Fast Forward to Painful Death". Cue lots of over-long and excruciatingly painful scenes where Jonah and his old buddies would reminisce about beer nights at film school and debate Tarantino films. Why anyone, *anywhere* thought this would make riveting viewing is beyond me.

Still, there was lots to enjoy. Of the new cast, Katie Cassidy's Ella Simms was by far the most memorable. Originally hailed as the new Amanda Woodward, the character became something else entirely. Feisty, yet sometimes vulnerable. Confident, yet sometimes plagued with insecurity. She also became one of the new show's primary sources of comic relief without ever having to make jokes about "man boobs" [in one episode, Ella breaks into the offices of WPK dressed very much like the stereotypical cat burgler - a hilarious scene, full of the ridiculous campery which made the original show so much fun].

Guest appearances from original cast members - who, let's face it, we thought we would never see again - were also a huge, but rare, thrill. The picture at the top of the page shows the awesome-but-all-too-fleeting "mini-reunion" of Jane, Jo, Michael and Amanda in the courtyard. If you blinked, though, you probably would have missed it. And it would have been even better if Sydney had been able to join them - hadn't she been murdered before the credits rolled during the pilot episode, of course.

I, for one, was all for the murder-mystery storyline but with one proviso - that the murder was going to be revealed as a fake. Sydney Andrews was a much loved character on the original show. When she was seemingly killed in a freak road accident on old Melrose, ratings nose-dived. When producers of the new show revealed they were bringing her back from the dead, it seemed preposterous but - for a show like Melrose Place - it actually made perfect sense. To kill her off a second time, on the other hand, actually *was* preposterous.

That said, it wouldn't be so preposterous if their intention was always to shock viewers to the core by bringing back Syd from the dead for a second time, now would it? No, it would have been a grand masterplan. It would have been completely mental and rightly awesome as a consequence, and it would have been one of the biggest Melrose moments in the show's history. Yet that's not how it happened. In spite of some last minute teasing in the finale, Syd was *really* dead and buried, without even so much as a proper explanation for why she faked her death the first time. In a second missed opportunity, once her killer was revealed to be Michael's wife Vanessa, they promptly offed her too. In the old show, the writers wouldn't have thought twice about keeping Vanessa alive and somehow out of jail, all so that she could go on to become the show's next psychotic super-villain.

It illustrates why, I think, this series of Melrose Place never quite took off like its predecessor. The big sister may have been cleaner and brighter and less glitzy, but she wouldn't have dared shy away from opportunities to shock us quite like these ones.

Friend Of Dorothies

2010-05-05T23:46:00.003+01:00

So the old lady of one-woman shows has finally hung up her cleaning wummin outfit and skipped off into her retirement. And dare I say that it might have come at exactly the right time too. Dorothy's farewell show was still a good laugh or two but I couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was amiss and we weren't exactly catching her at her best.

"Dorothy Paul... Once More... Again!" seemed to have much less meat on the bones than usual and, unfortunately, Dorothy was "once more... again" joined on stage by her cousin Isobel for way more minutes than I was comfortable with. Let's get one thing straight - Isobel is no Dorothy Paul. To be fair, she *knows* it - and the section of the show isn't *meant* to be a riot - but I still kept thinking to myself, "why again, Dorothy, why? Will ye no just do the Quick As Winkie sketch instead?" Oh well, never mind. I'm still a huge fan and I still have the DVDs to watch whenever I get a hankering for some comedy gold.

In other Dorothy news, I have quickly become obsessed with Over The Rainbow. For any overseas readers amongst you, it's the latest in the BBC's long line of talent shows where they search for the lead in a new musical. Think Idol meets, well... The Wizard of Oz. This time, you see, Andrew Lloyd Webber is looking for someone to play Dorothy in a new West End stage version of Oz. That means we've had week after week of impossibly perky young girlies singing their hearts out for our entertainment and, ultimately, having their hopes and dreams crushed in front of millions.

Seriously, underneath its sparkly and frivolous exterior, this show is mean and mercilous. In a spiteful little twist, for example, the unfortunate lass who gets voted off each week is forced to participate in a nasty little ritual from casting hell which involves her hanging up her ruby slippers and singing the signature tune from the show she's never going to star in. Whilst some of the girls' performances of Somewhere Over The Rainbow have been a brilliant and defiant twos-up to the judging panel, others have been a veritable car crash. Which brings me to poor Emilie and her "showstopper" from a couple of weekends ago.

Erk.

Uhm.

It's okay, you can come out from behind your hands now.

Now to put this into context, I have been a secret Emilie supporter ever since the judging panel decided she wasn't good enough to take part in the live shows but the public voted her in as a wildcard anyway. Every week she would get a proper dressing down from the judges, who would repeatedly tell her that she couldn't sing for toffee and that she had a snowball's chance in hell of ever becoming Dorothy. The most vile of the judges, of course, has been John Partridge who I find really quite loathesome and who I am pretty certain is on this show to audition for the part of the Wicked Witch of the West. On top of all this, I get the impression that Emilie wasn't the most liked amongst the girls living in the house [the face Jessica pulls at 0.34 sec in the clip above says it all really] and, all in all, I really felt sorry for her. Having to pull off an exit like this with your dignity intact must be really tough. If it was me, I would be a mess of tears and snotters. I mean, no wonder she made an arse of it.

What I am saying is that, like most of these shows, I find myself rooting for the underdog. With Emilie gone, I'm now supporting Sophie and Jenny which surely means one or both of them will be next for the chop in this weekend's double de-Dorothying.

Friends Of Dorothy

2010-04-28T11:15:00.004+01:00

Me, the bf and a couple of other pals are off to see Dorothy Paul tonight in what I hear will be her farewell show. That's right, the old girl has officially announced her retirement and this Saturday's show will be the last time she treads the boards at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow.

Well, she *is* 72, would you believe. I am sure that makes her perfectly entitled to a wee rest after more than fifty years in "the business". It frightened me this morning to think that I've been a fan of hers for already nearly (but only) twenty of them. That means there's bound to be a slightly bittersweet feel to proceedings tonight. I have no doubt it'll be a hoot, but there will also be celebration mixed with more than a hint of sadness.

Damn, I am going to miss that cleanin' wummin, moaning about her man and his industrial nausea and telling us about her pal Wilma "wi' the wan leg" (you should see what she can do with that wan leg). I'll miss the clippies, the tales of Dorothy's mother and her five sisters, the black bombers, playing Country & Western nights at Butlins, the dirty bitch with the lavvy seat stuck to her arse and not forgetting Cheryl and Avril's trip to Blackpool with "Quick as Winkie Bus Tours".

"Haw hen, it disnae say Blackpool on the front of yer Bus. It says Carntyne."
"Aye well, it says India on the tyres and we're no goin' there either, right???"

[For a wee peek at Dorothy in action, try here.]

A blog post if it kills me

2010-04-27T11:13:00.003+01:00

Apart from that little teaser about Kylie's new album, it's been more than a month since my last blog post... again. You might be thinking this means nothing has been happening in my life but if that's what you're thinking then you're wrong. Don't beat yourself up about it though. We all can't be right all of the time, can we? Anyway, this morning I woke up and said to myself that I would write a blog post if it kills me. So here we go.

Unfortunately, I am still out of work. Actually, I had a little interview on Friday which I have yet to hear back about, but for the most part, I've spent the past two or three weeks just enjoying the break and not worrying too much about the situation. I've had a kind of zen-like calm about it all, in fact. This fortnight's mantra is "the right job will come along at the right moment and probably when you least expect it". I just hope that I'm not being *too* laid back about it all and, without realising it, this is actually a very slippery slope and in a couple of weeks, my mother will find me lying behind a dumpster, drugged out my skull and reeking of piss.

I've also been yo-yo dieting this past month and what fun it's been. It all started when I stood on the bathroom scales and they confirmed the worst - that I was a big fat fatty all over again. Granted, I wasn't quite as fatty-fat-fat-fat as I was five years ago when I went crazy and lost a ton of weight, but I was getting there frighteningly quickly. So, I bit the bullet and went on Atkins.

For long and weary I have claimed that - being a self-professed sugar, bread and potato addict - I wouldn't be able to survive on Atkins. But I was wrong, of course. It was tough, but the good news is that it didn't actually affect me to the point that I became unalive from it. The first two or three days felt like weeks and I had horrendous headaches but I also lost 11 pounds of fat in a fortnight. That, by all accounts, is pretty good going.

The problem is that Atkins really isn't sustainable and when you eventually fall off the wagon, the dreaded fat comes back to haunt you. So much so that I have gained four stinking pounds this week. My net weight loss is still half a stone in three weeks so it's not really the end of the world. Although it has acted as a painful reminder that if I want to keep the weight off, the dreaded gym is going to have to be my lifelong friend.

Something else has happened since we last spoke at any length. I got inked. Yes, really. After *years and years* of deliberation, I got a tattoo! And suddenly I think to myself, what on Earth was I so scared of? Anyway, here's what it looked like after just a couple of hours.

There you go. It's not the biggest tattoo in the universe - in fact it took less than ten minutes for me to be branded for life - but, man, isn't it fun? The cool cats amongst you will of course recognise it as a tribute to Miss Minogue. It's the K-star logo from the Fever days, in case you are wondering. I had pondered for a while whether I would get the more up-to-date, more pointy version of the logo but a quick Facebook poll quickly found that we all favoured the classic K.

The pain wasn't all that bad, really. I'd heard reports that it was simply an annoying pain, as opposed to an outright "no fucking way, get that needle out of my skin NOW you bastard" pain. I had chosen to kinda disbelieve those reports but, I have to say, they were pretty accurate. For me it was like a dull scratching, not at all unbearable. But don't let anyone tell you that the outline is the most painful. One needle as opposed to ten at once is always going to be less painful, believe me.

A few hours after the inking, I sent a picture to Kylie via Twitter. The Kylester is a prolific tweeter, would you believe, even if the majority of her posts are simply about which shoes she's been wearing to the studio today. Anyway, the thing is... she tweeted me back!!

OMFG.

"Ooh nice" is all that she said but, let's face it, that is ALL SHE NEEDED TO SAY. What a thrill it was to get a little acknowledgement from the woman herself. Unfortunately, it also proved that Kylie has some of the bitchiest queeniest fans in all of universal fandom.

"What is it with all these freaks showing off their back hair and Kylie tattoos on twitter?" said one arsepiece on Say Hey, the unofficial web forum for lunatics. What followed was three pages of discussion about the disgustingness of my back hair. Really, you couldn't make it up. But I gave as good as I got, I can assure you.

"The bloke with the Kylie tattoo and the back hair is me," I explained. "Thanks to everyone who chose to make nice comments about the tattoo. What's interesting though is how the slightest bit of acknowledgement from Kylie can lead to someone being called a freak on a public forum by a complete stranger. My tattoo is now with me for life, but my back hair can be removed at a moment's notice. Which is more than I can say for some of your poisonous personalities."

:: Explodes ::

2010-04-20T12:41:00.002+01:00

I have just exploded and so has kylie.com. And no fucking wonder.

Could have tweeted this, but...

2010-03-10T11:47:00.006Z

...I miss my blog.

Guess whose new single and album I am suddenly very (x 1 million) excited about.

...

...

...

...

Give up?

It's this woman...

The Monster Ball

2010-03-08T17:47:00.011Z

I used to complain that work was getting in the way of blogging. So it's really amazing to notice how being on the unemployment line doesn't afford me much time to pay attention to my blog either, isn't it?

The truth I now acknowledge is that blogging is simply a habit - which I appear to have dropped like a bad one. In many respects, blogging is a bit like healthy eating. It's good for you - for me, at least - but it's hard getting back into it when you've gotten used to not doing it for a while. But just like healthy eating, I must try harder. I actually really enjoy the process of blogging and I like the results even more so. Which is slightly different to healthy eating, I guess. I hate the process with a passion, but the results are probably even more awesome. [Well how good would you feel if someone came up to you in the street and said, "Hey there Fatty, your blog is brilliant!" hmmm?] So here's to more regular - probably shorter as a consequence - blog posts from now on. And to me shedding a stone and a half before the summer.

Anyway, last Monday was time for Glasgow to go Ga Ga for Gaga. [Okay, that wasn't very original but you have to agree the alliteration was lovely!] She's been touring the planet for ages with this show, of course, but I'd managed to steer clear of most of the spoilers so that I'd go along and experience it first-hand.

Holy. Mother-hecking. Hell.

Several shades of stupendous is what I thought of it. You have to remember that she's in her early twenties, that it's only her second proper live show in fact, and yet the entire production was on a par with some of today's greatest, most-seasoned performers. By comparison, Madonna's first couple of shows were utterly tame and Kylie's were a complete shambles, if truth be told.

First of all, and let me assure you, Gaga can sing. As well as dance at the same time. The night passed without even so much as a sniff of the dreaded lip-synching. [For the record, Kylie has never lip-synched on tour, in spite of those horrible claims to the contrary in the early days - just thought I'd throw that in there.] Regardless of whether or not you think she'd be crazy enough to throw her hairdryer in the bath whilst she was still in it, you have to admit that she's got talent.

And a potty mouth, so it would seem. Never have I heard so much profanity since the last time I, well... saw Madonna live. Not that anyone seemed to mind, of course, since it was all meant with the best of intentions. One of my favourite moments of the night involved a very chatty Gaga reminiscing that she'd last been in Glasgow less than a year ago, supporting the Pussycat Dolls. "Holy. Fuck." she simply said, seemingly realising the fact that the Dolls surely would have to open for her nowadays.

Actually, that wouldn't be a bad idea. It might mean we would be spared the unfortunate experience of Gaga's current support act, i.e. the band they call Semi Precious Weapons.

Looking at this picture makes me *want* to love them. They look like the artwork from a Jem and The Holograms doll box. Seriously, a Hasbro logo would not look out of place on this picture. But, alas, great photography and great strap lines - I can't pay my rent but I'm fucking gorgeous - really don't stop them from being fucking attrocious. Half way through their set I felt the urge to tweet via my trusty mobile that they should actually be called Totally Precious Queens. I am not kidding. It was not pretty.

Alphabeat were much improved, however, even if their set was incredibly short. Especially since Gaga didn't grace the stage until 9.30pm and the increasingly restless audience - with more lightning on faces than at your average Harry Potter book signing - made their displeasure at having to wait so long glaringly apparent.

But she was worth the wait, make no mistake. We're talking a full two-hour long show. A truly spectacular stage set-up, the finale involving an alienesque tentacled monster the size of the stage itself. Gaga taking the piss at those "has a penis" rumours. Umpteen costume changes, some of which miraculously happened before our very eyes. And not forgetting some strange strange, frankly risque, video screen imagery, including one moment when a dark haired woman rams her fingers down her throat and vomits green paint over Gaga's lovely and pristine looking white dress. It's not difficult to believe, granted, but I can assure you that I'm really not kidding.

All in all, in spite of it being a LOUD show - my ears hurt all day next day - and there being an over-abundance of annoying drunk bints in the audience near to me, a great night was had by all.

And a meme saves February

2010-02-09T19:34:00.004Z

Thank the Lord for Facebook and to that long lost blogger Elizabeth, or else I might not have had a blog post in February. Yay for honest to goodness meme greatness, complete with obligatory missing questions and everything!

1. What's the last mistake you made?
Something pretty insignificant, I imagine, since I can't remember what it is. Put sugar in my tea instead of sweetener? No, that was deliberate.

2. Is the sun shining?
Not at the moment, since it is past dark o'clock. However, I arrived home at 5pm this evening and noticed there still was daylight. For the first time in months. The springtime cometh!

3. Can you successfully blow up and tie a balloon?
Sometimes. Blowing them up is easier than tying them. I'm not great with knots it has to be said. I was never a good boy scout, that's for sure.

4. Do you like text messaging?
I do lots of it, but it gets me exasperated sometimes. My predict-a-text is a pain in the neck. Since when is 'home' a more common word than 'good'?

5. What do you eat the most at your best friends house?
Cake and biscuits!

7. Are you wearing any make-up right now?
No, hence I am looking less fabulous at the moment than I have done in the past and am happy about. Being at least a stone heavier than I would like to be (all over again) does not help matters either, mind you.

8. What are your plans for later?
Play Mario Kart on the Wii - love it - then go to sleep - love it.

9. What is your favorite DDR song?
Uhm... ::blank expression:: clearly there is as much point to asking me this as asking me what is my favourite Slipknot song. But, then again, at least I have heard of Slipknot.

10. Is there any drama within your life?
Oh honey, when isn't there? Although I am looking forward to a much calmer, less emotionally nerve shredding 2010.

11. What is a song they need to stop playing on the radio?
Anything by Chipmunk. I know I am beginning to sound like my dad but who the hell is Chipmunk, where did he come from and why is he in our pop charts?

12. Are you happy with life right now?
Could be helped a long with a little employment, please.

13. Does anyone like you?
Oh you know me, the personification of likeability.

14. What is your current obsession?
My Apple TV box. And I should probably say my boyfriend since he'll probably be reading this. Hi honey! x

15. Do you have a dog?
No. Alas I don't have the time nor the space to look after one currently.

16. Ever been kissed under mistletoe?
Yes. Lucky me.

17. Would you ever smile at a stranger?
Why ever not? I don't grin at strangers all day every day, for fear of being locked up. But smiling, when the situation calls for it, is perfectly good manners don't you think?

18. Ever pulled your pants down in the street?
Well, I am guessing that's NOT good manners. Can't say I ever have. Not in the street, at least. ;-)

19. Do your toenails have nail polish on them?
Funnily enough, no. Honest.

20. When's the last time you wore eyeliner?
Never! Honest.

21. Last curse word you said was?
The C word. I say it more than I ever have done before, thanks to a certain someone who knows exactly who he is. It's not big and it's not cunting clever, alright?

22. Are your lips chapped?
Not at the moment, which I am pleased about.

23. Are you currently jealous?
It'll show its ugly face again one day but, right now, I am happy to say it's an emotion of mine in lock-down.

24. Do you own an iPod?
I do. Incredibly out of date, granted, all thanks to Apple's insane planned obsolescence programme, which is designed to help them take over the universe.

25. Did you have a dream last night?
I probably did but just don't remember it.

26. Are you mad at anyone?
Nope. Good job for their ribs, etc. Haha.

27. Who is the loudest person you know?
Me?

28. What's going on this weekend?
I do not know yet. Maybe a little Valentining - although not over the top mushy stuff since we're both so jaded and cynical that we've agreed that it's a money making scam by evil conglomerate card and gift manufacturing companies. 'Tis True, you know.

29. Done any spring cleaning lately?
Yes I did. I'm still kind of in the midst of it though. I am inherently lazy about it, so it has transpired.

30. Anything bothering you?
They still haven't short listed for that interview yet. Or they have and I'm not on the shortlist.

31. Do you do cheerleading?
Ha, no! I lack the hand/leg/jumping co-ordination.

32. Did you wish for anything last night on 11:11?
No, I think I was sleeping. Is this a ritual I should have been carrying out that no-one has ever told me about? Oh the wonderful wishes I could have made if only I'd known.

33. Do you drink coffee on a regular basis?
No. I don't even drink it irregularly.

34. Do you wish you were someone else?
No. I wish I was me. Only better.

35. What jewelry are you wearing?
Would you believe that I am wearing a mood ring. I bought it yesterday from a new-age hippy stand. It was so expensive that I won't tell you how much I paid for it. £2.95.

36. Funniest thing that happened last night?
I had a leg cramp? Wasn't a night for funnies, really.

38. Are you easily amused?
I laugh at anything and everything. Even the shit stuff.

39. Can you lick your elbow?
If you think I am going to fall for that old chestnut - and check to see whether I can or not - you are right. I can't.

40. Do you know this song, "we stay fly no lie you know this"?
Why yes, it's called "The We Stay Fly No Lie You Know This Song" isn't it?

Back to the land of Blog

2010-01-10T10:38:00.001Z

Well hello there! I have returned from the wilderness like the proverbial bad penny! I didn't intend to be gone so long this time (honest!) but life events conspired against me. When I say "life events", I of course mean "working more hours than usual, paired with my inherent laziness". Oh well.

As the weeks went by, I started feeling guilty about neglecting my blog. However, it would seem that I never quite felt guilty enough to fire up the laptop and actually write something for almost two whole months. This is something all bloggers do from time to time, of course - i.e. they bugger off for weeks without so much as an explanation, contemplate chucking it all in but never actually have the balls to cut the cord completely, feel bad for abandoning their faithful readership (all two of them), fail to realise that nobody could give two hoots in the first place if truth be told and finally come back and complain about it on their blogs - so it's nothing new.

This time though, as December advanced at a rate faster than the mercury has plummeted in our thermometers this winter, I started to panic that - for the first time ever - the blog would be missing a month in the archive list over there on the right hand panel. Another sign of the further decline in my once-super, now-mediocre blogging powers. To avert this disaster, I even considered cheating and posting a "bang goes the noughties" post on New Year's Eve but, in the end, even that was too much like effort.

No, December 2009 - the last month of the decade - will forever be the lost month on The Blog from a Newplanet. At least it's an accurate representation of the time, I suppose. I feel as though I have been insanely busy these past few weeks [yes, more than all the other times I've said that] and yet have achieved very little.

Why? Well, I've been telling people recently that being a self-employed consultant is a bit like being an actor. Sometimes actual work is a little, er... thin on the ground. My latest contract came to an end at the end of November so I thought I'd do what any other sane/insane [delete as appropriate] person would do. I'd go work for minimum wage. As a temp. In retail. At Christmas.

Now, to anyone who has ever worked in retail at Christmastime, even in the middle of a recession, it'll make much more sense why I've been absent since November. Christmas temping is, quite simply, stark raving mad bonkers. I've traded a two-days per week, 9-to-5 marketing management contract for what - for the most part - has been utter bedlam. Three days on. One day off. Early mornings. Late evenings. Endless gift cards and loyalty cards. Games console bundles. And queues and queues of people believing that my sole purpose for existence on the planet is to give them cash for their unwanted Christmas presents. :-/

Actually, it's been heaps of fun. I'm coming to the final few weeks of the contract so, for the time being, there are more Susan Boyle albums to sell, DVD box-sets to put out on display and joyous customers to contend with. And I better enjoy it while it lasts. Because by the end of January, I'll be ::gulp:: properly unemployed. Another new experience for me. Somehow I don't think I'll enjoy *that* quite so much.

So keeping fingers crossed that regular marketing work - and regular blogging - resume very soon.

Gaga, oh là là!

2009-11-17T10:23:00.003Z

I realise that I am about the last person on the planet to jump on board the loopy-loo Haus of Gaga spaceship which, I am 1 (plus about fifty zeros) per cent certain is currently in a weird elliptical orbit around a planet called insanity. On paper, the Gaga proposition sounds like one that I should have eagerly grasped with both hands within milliseconds. And yet it really hasn't happened that way at all.

In actual fact, it's taken me an extraordinarily long amount of time to light the fusewire as far as Lady Gaga is concerned and I really have no idea as to why. You've heard me say before that I tend to completely heart celebrities who display ever so unhinged tendencies. You know, people like Traci Lords [the somewhat crazed steely blonde ex-porn star turned legit actress and thrash techno singer], Geri Halliwell [the ex-Spice Girl turned yo-yo dieter and general all-round barmyperson] and, uhm... Susan SuBo Boyle [no explanation required]. These people terrify me and delight me in equal measures - and, if truth be told, Lady Gaga pisses on these three from a higher echelon of crazy.

With that in mind, you'll understand why the Gaga has suddenly sky-rocketed into the "Big Four" on my league table of lovely brilliance and greatness. She's single-handedly ousted Alanis Morissette into the not-so-coveted fifth place, whilst currently she's jostling with none other than Madonna for the Number 3 spot.

Let's clarify for absolute certainty as to what it is I am getting at here. If Gaga keeps this up, I could very well start loving her MORE THAN MADONNA. This, quite frankly, is a bloody big deal. [Let's face it, Kylie and Kim Wilde are simply invincible and will be completely safe in their respective positions at Number 1 and 2 for the rest of my living days, even if they never ever release another record between them.]

If Gaga keeps what up, though? Well, generally being a total mental case, as it happens. Is it just me or is Lady Gaga's apparent lack of a grip on reality all part of her appeal? I wonder if I am *supposed* to think she is a lunatic and, if so, whether or not she is actually being really very clever and sensible, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary? She may look/act as crazy as a box of frogs, but for all we know, she might always look both ways before she crosses the road, puts the chain on before she opens her front door and never leaves chip pans unattended.

I should remind you that Lady Gaga bursts into flames in her new music video. Actually, that's about the tamest part of the video which is several shades of apeshit, to be honest. She plays a futuristic sex slave and, all thanks to her ability to spontaneously combust, cremates her latest "John" so that he ends up as nothing more than a pile of bones and ashes. In one scene she wears an outfit that makes her look like a reptile. In another, which will have the folks from PETA ready to hurl the red paint the next time she's at a movie premiere, she wears a dress with a polar bear train. Well, Lady Gaga has been on the world's finely tuned megastar radar for about a year now - it's good to see her calming down a little in her music videos, don't you think?

Despite the internet exploding the instant tickets went on sale, I've managed to snare two tickets to see The Monster Ball Tour at Glasgow SECC. Oooh, you just know that she's going to appear on stage looking like something out of a horror film! Allegedly, the whole production will have a rock-pop-electro-opera feel. Gaga herself has called it a "post apocalyptic house party with an evolution theme".

Cannot wait. Sing it after me people. Rah-rah, ah-ah-ah! Rah-mah! Rah-mah-mah! Etc.

Scream Queen

2009-11-04T12:16:00.004Z

I have been re-immersing myself in one of my most guilty pleasures recently. It's called, uhm... Dallas. Now I am sure you don't need to be told that Dallas was several leagues above stupendous back in the 80s but, before you rudely interrupt by saying, "yes but it's all horribly dated now innit?", let me retort with a stroppy sounding, "NO! You better believe it is still every bit as amazing today."

For whatever reason, I decided to jump in at the start of Season 7 (Season 8 if you're watching on DVD) for my viewing adventures and, just so you know, it's completely brilliant from start to finish. Honest.

So what kinda crazy shit happens? Well ::deep breath:: Bobby goes blind for a few episodes, after being shot by raving mentalist Katherine Wentworth. Pam thinks Mark Graison is still alive and goes on a world-wide wild goose chase to find him. Miss Ellie is played by Donna Reed for the entire season and is not even nearly as terrible as I remember her being first time around. Sue-Ellen is sober for most (but not all) of the episodes, looks like a drag queen and wears shoulder pads that would have made Krystle Carrington run for her life. Jamie Ewing comes to town, nearly brings down Ewing Oil [well someone has to try, after all] and then marries Cliff Barnes. J.R. shacks up with Cliff's cast-off, Mandy Winger. And, of course, Bobby nearly marries Jenna umpteen times but never quite gets around to it, whilst Jenna's insipid daughter Charlie gets kidnapped and whines a lot. Oh and then Bobby dies.

To fully explain the magnitude of this one, I need to give you some awful horrendous backstory. Bobby and Pam were the greatest soap couple in all of the known universe but several million episodes previously, one particularly nasty-assed character from hell tried to split them up. And it worked. Viewers all over the world were then forced to mourn the passing of this great relationship for, I dunno, aeons whilst Pam buggered about with Mark and Bobby farted around with Jenna. But, make no mistake, both of these relationships were FALSE. Clearly, Bobby and Pam *needed* to be together in order to restore universal equilibrium. And by the end of this particular season, in spite of all the odds stacked against them, it looked like Pam and Bobby would finally reunite. That is, until Katherine Wentworth returned, wearing a rather fetching blonde wig, and ran Bobby over. To the point that he actually ceased to be alive.

Now I have spent most of today wondering whether there is another moment in the entire history of primetime soap which is more jaw-droppingly shocking, tragic and downright horrifying than this one. There isn't. And I don't know if Victoria Principal ever received an Emmy for her work on Dallas, but if she didn't then this next scene alone proves that this was an injustice of legendary proportions.

I read somewhere that this scene was unscripted and mostly improvised. The tears are real. The scream is frighteningly authentic. That makes it, quite simply, awesome to the extremes. Victoria Principal is one of my greatest soap heroines for very good reasons. Look at how she crawls on her hands and knees, at lightning speed, like something out of The Exorcist! I totally heart her completely.

I also read that somebody somewhere committed suicide over this scene and the resulting death of Bobby Ewing. That sounds a bit like an urban legend but, if it's true, it's more than a bit tragic. Especially since, yes of course, it turns out that this (and all of the following season of Dallas) is nothing but an elaborate dream sequence.

Nobody knew it would all be a dream at the time it was filmed, of course. Patrick Duffy was leaving the show, never to return. But when the ratings nose-dived following his exit - and Patrick never quite made it big anywhere else - the producers worked desperately to find a way to bring him back from the dead which made sense.

And let's face it, there really was no way it was ever going to make sense, was there? At the time, loads of theories were circulating as to how they would pull it off, storywise. Most of them were preposterous, involving evil twins, parallel dimensions and cryogenics, for example. Nowadays the dream season idea is almost universally ridiculed but, when you think about it, it was the simplest and most sensible solution of all. The producers, in effect, just let us know that Bobby's death didn't actually happen. And neither did anything we had witnessed for the past 30 or so weeks, either. With hindsight, and forgetting the slap in the face it undeniably gave to the audience, it is utter genius for its sheer simplicity.

I am currently mid-way through the dream season of Dallas as we speak and, damn, even knowing that it's all just a figment of Pam's overactive imagination, it's still a lot of fun. In fact, Bobby's reappearance in Pam's shower is still fifteen or so episodes away and what's weirder is somehow I can't help wishing it had all been real after all.

House Of Hell

2009-10-29T23:29:00.005Z

As well as me overdosing on cartoons devoted to pink-haired outrageous holographic songstresses and spending way too much time engrossed in trashy US soaps where shoulder-pads were larger than my sofa, something else altogether less gay took hold of my imagination back in the 80s. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world of Fighting Fantasy.

The Fighting Fantasy series of adventure gamebooks were, in fact, such a huge part of my life that I really can't believe it's taken me so long to tell you so. For years and years I was nothing short of obsessed with these books, which were an ultra violent, gory version of Harry Potter mixed with Lord of The Rings... on steroids. And the best bit was, with the trusty roll of a dice, YOU got to choose the outcome of the stories. Which, let's face it, more often than not concluded in you either snuffing it in a bloody battle with an orc or goblin, or falling victim to some hellish booby-trap which wouldn't look out of place in one of the SAW movies. Seriously, I have played umpteen of these books countless times and I don't think I have *ever* finished even one of them with my life intact. And yet, it was still heaps and heaps of fun, wasn't it?

Too right it was and - wouldn't you just know it - it still is! I'm delighted to tell you that I still have all of my FF books to this day. Complete with the legendary green zig-zag heading and everything. They are beyond the realms of awesome and I will quite probably treasure them until my dying day.

Anyway, for this year's Octoberfest I decided to dust down my copy of FF#10, i.e. House Of Hell, written by FF co-founder Steve Jackson. It's a little oddity in the series since its events take place not on Titan, the usual FF fantasy world [think of Middle-Earth and you've pretty much got the idea], nor some apocalytpic futureworld, instead opting to play out in a big bad haunted house, smack bang in the middle of what appears to be modern day Earth.

Not that it matters much, this book is every bit as horrific and violent as the others. Just take a glimpse at the cover and you'll notice that this house doesn't look at all homely. Strange horned beasts are lurking in the shadows. The trees all look as if they're going to grab you and eat you, just like the one from the movie Poltergeist. And the titular house itself really could give the Amityville house a run for its money.

I read one review of the book on mindlessones.com, which called House of Hell, "a raucous, lurid romp" and commented that, "it gleefully homaged both the cheese of Hammer horror movies and the splatter of the 1970's Italian mondo-horror." Damn right it did, and I can't really think of a better accolade.

But how the heck would I fare venturing back inside the House of Hell after all of these years? All would soon be revealed and chances are it would be downright nasty. The hideous backstory tells me that I've been out driving in horrendous weather and, for dramatic effect, I think I might have just run over a withery white-haired old gypsy man. My car has carked it in the torrents so I have no choice but to go ask for help in the horrid old scary house. So far, so not good.

Firstly I am greeted by a creepy butler and hallway paintings that strangely come to life, each of them giving me a dire warning and telling me to flee from this evil house of horrors. Oh, and they also tell me not to drink the white wine which is unhelpfully laced with tranquiliser. Completely unperturbed by this, I take the advice gladly. But it would seem that there is no escaping my fate - I am going to end up drugged sooner or later. And when it happens, I awaken to find myself bound and gagged in just one of the many creepy rooms in the house. Escape is now my only option.

But it's more difficult than you might expect. One attempt fails spectacularly when I make a run for the front door and open it, only to be faced with a shit-scary humanoid with a ram's head, pouring blood from its lips, intent on sacrficing me right there on the spot. Fleeing back inside the house, things just go from bad to worse when one of the rooms in the house turns out to be a cell, keeping three unfortunate souls prisoner - a young female, a tall skinny malnourished man and a bald mute.

My first instinct is to try and help the trio. Particularly the tall man who pleads with me to kill him to end his suffering in this hellish place. But this is evidently a very wrong move since the time I spend talking to the three of them is exactly all the time it takes for a bunch of heavies to arrive on the scene. I fight the first one to the death, with a letter opener I found in one of the rooms earlier on, and also with the mystical powers of my dice of course! It is my first and, alas, my only battle in the house since me winning the fight is a moot point. The other two heavies quickly catch me and lock me up in an adjacent cell. My fate has been sealed like the other hapless souls and I'll shortly become a human sacrifice in the horrible House of Hell.

My adventure is over.

Horrorthon '09 Part 5: Freddy vs. Jason

2009-10-28T14:58:00.000Z

I've taken a while to properly get around to reviewing Freddy vs. Jason, one of the most ludicrous and yet utterly brilliant instalments in both the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movie franchises. Let's face it, the entire concept is beyond preposterous. Jason Voorhees, the dumbstruck machete weilding undead zombie killer of Crystal Lake meets Freddy Krueger, the wise-cracking knives-for-fingers menace who kills you in your nightmares? In a battle to the finish? Really?

That's right. Freddy vs. Jason is the crossover movie to end all crossover movies. And in spite of the fact that they chose two of the most difficult slasher villains to pair together for the film, the movie's producers do a remarkably good job of it by taking this frankly ridiculous premise and actually treating it really very seriously.

For starters, much of the story canon in both franchises is dutifully preserved here. Freddy is still the infamous Springwood slasher who invades dreams and kills teenagers. Jason is still the hockey mask wearing monolithic killer from Crystal Lake who kills everyone. In a slight retcon, however, both Elm Street and Crystal Lake are suddenly placed within a fairly short travelling distance of one another. Not that the fans complained much, especially since it meant movie goers got to spend equal amounts of time in both locations for this movie. And, make no mistake, this is a fanboy movie, carefully constructed with them in mind throughout the entire running time. And it's all the better for it.

So how on Earth do these two 80s horror icons come together? Well, the story starts with Freddy who conveniently explains that the people of Springwood have finally vanquished him forever. How did they do it, exactly? Simple really. They just forgot all about him. In actual fact, it turns out that the adults of Springwood have been secretly doping up all the kids on Hypnocil, the dream suppresant drug last seen in Nightmare 3. A lack of dreams means a lack of scares and, so it turns out, a lack of supernatural dream powers for the Fredster, leaving him completely impotent and more than a bit narky.

In an effort to scare the Elm Street kids witless, and therefore build up his dream strength all over again, Freddy enlists the help of Jason Voorhees by invading Jason's undead limbo dreamstate, taking on the shape of Jason's loopy-loo mother Pamela Voorhees and ordering him to travel to Elm Street to kill kill kill the children. And it works like a charm. Before long, Jason arrives at 1428 Elm Street [yessss, the house is back!] and begins chopping up teenagers like nobody's business. Freddy gets the blame, of course, leaving the town terrified that you know who has come back, which ironically is all that the Krueger fellow needs to resume the dream carnage exactly where it all left off.

Freddy has a problem though. Jason likes killing a whole lot. So much so that he has a nasty habit of offing the hapless youngsters before Freddy can get to them. Freddy therefore decides that Jason has outlived his usefulness and *has* to go, hence he engineers a visit to Jason's dreamworld once again. Unfortunately for Jason, the hockey-masked monster has no hope against the dream powers of the bastard son of a hundred maniacs and he really takes a pummeling. Unfortunately for Freddy, Jason has the awesome power of being, well... invincible. Even if he dies in his dreams, Jason won't ever die for real.

Amongst all of this, of course, are the Elm Street children who now have *two* serial killers to contend with where they once had one, officially making Springwood the most dangerous place to be a teenager in the entire universe. Unfortunately for them, most of the gang who escape being massacred by Jason eventually get butchered by Freddy. Quickly realising that the quickest way to get rid of the two of them is to pit them against one another, the surviving Elm Street kids take a tranquilised Jason back to Crystal Lake in order to set up a battle to end all battles.

All it takes is for our movie's heroine to grab hold of Freddy and bring him out of one of her dreams for the fight to commence. And, make no mistake, the real world is Jason's domain. Devoid of his horrendous dream powers once again, Freddy has real reasons to be shitting himself, quite frankly. From here on in, the film degenerates into a rather absurd bloodbath, with Freddy and Jason duelling it out until the bitter end. It's more than a bit silly, to be honest, but that doesn't stop it being a fitting, if altogether gory conclusion to the film.

Who wins? Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?

4.5 out of 5

Horrorthon '09 Part 4: Mirrors

2009-10-20T14:16:00.010+01:00

Kiefer Sutherland has a problem. Despite the fact that he starred in loads of things before 24, you just know that for ever more he's only going to be Jack Bauer in the eyes of everyone in the universe.

With that in mind, I'm guessing that Kiefer agreed to star in this not-all-bad horror flick in an attempt to avoid being completely typecast in the future. And yet, there were a handful of scenes throughout this movie where he was acting so completely Baueresque I half expected Chloe O'Brian to call him up with a building schematic or say something awkward and catty. You can take Kiefer out of the 24, but you can't take 24 out of the Kiefer, so it would seem.

Anyway, this time ~~Jack~~ Kiefer plays Ben Carson, a recovering alcoholic who takes a new job as an overnight security guard at a condemned old abandoned department store which burned down years ago.

Er... give you the creeps much? I remember I once had a job which involved me having to check out an empty warehouse on occasion. And I *hated* it. All I had to do was go on a quick tour of the building to check it hadn't been invaded by squatters, or families of rodents, but I was totally shit-scared of the place. And yet this weird old department store is much much worse. Seriously, I would consider hooking before taking a job here.

What is more weird is that, despite the interior of the building having been barbequed, the mirrors are all remarkably pristine and sparkling. The reason for this, allegedly, is that the unfortunate soul who had the job beforehand liked to keep them scrupulously clean and polished. You should know that this is the same unfortunate soul we witnessed slicing his neck open in the movie's opening segment. Erk.

Or, should I say, the unfortunate soul whose reflection we witnessed slicing his neck open. That's right, in a neat little Elm Street-esque twist, it appears that something is not quite right™ with these horrid old shop mirrors. Putting it succinctly, whatever happens in your reflection happens to you for real. That wouldn't be a problem if you saw your reflection winning the lottery or holidaying in Barbados, of course, but since this is a horror film, what normally happens is something much more gruesome and terrifying.

First night on the job, it's inevitable that Ben starts to see all sorts of horrendous visions in the mirrors. One particularly horrible vision shows his reflection spontaneously bursting into flames. But Ben smells the smoke. He feels the pain. Naturally, however, nobody believes Ben's insane story, instead preferring to believe he's been doing the drinky-drinky motion with a bottle (or twenty) of, er... Jack. But when the evil powers of the mirrors start to multiply and begin targeting his family members [his sister meets her maker in a not very pleasant bathroom scene involving her jaw being ripped off] Ben decides it's up to him to put a stop to all the reflective horror carnage.

Before too long, we find out that the department store is hiding a dark secret [aren't they all?] this time in the shape of a psychiatric hospital hidden within its walls. And after one of the mirrors reveals the name Esseker, Ben gets to unravel the mystery, which includes er... the demonic possession of a nun. Alas, I am really not kidding.

In spite of some genuinely good scares and one or two memorably gory moments, all in all the film is a little too familiar to every other scary movie about at the moment. You won't wish for the running time to be added to your life expectancy at the end or anything like that - and it's certainly better than watching paint dry - but I can't help feeling a little disappointed by this one.

2.5 out of 5

Horrorthon '09 Part 3: The Strangers

2009-10-11T22:30:00.000+01:00

Look to your left and check out this amazing poster to promote the third film in this year's Horrorthon, the general all-round scare-fest, The Strangers. "We tell ourselves there's nothing to fear," it tries to reassure us. "But sometimes we're wrong." Erk. To get exactly what they mean, just look at the poster. Then look again.

Holy shit.

The Strangers stars Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as Kristen and James, a couple about as beautiful as you can possibly imagine. But, proving the point that unbelievable hotness doesn't always equal unbridled happiness, the film opens with the couple driving home from a wedding reception and it's immediately apparent that not all is rosy in this relationship. In fact, it is quickly revealed that Kristen has just declined his marriage proposal and, naturally, James isn't exactly feeling very delighted by such developments.

If the atmosphere in the car was unpleasant, it only gets worse when the two arrive back at their remote [uh-oh] holiday home and the pair are suddenly faced with the lovely task of redefining their relationship. Ironically, a loud knock at the door is enough to give the audience some much needed respite from the toe-curling awkwardness of the scenario.

Except, the female at the door - evidently a young blonde, but the darkness obscuring her face - is a little weird and lot creepy. She's looking for "Tamara", so it would seem. But clearly Tamara is not at home and so blondie is promptly sent on her way. However, when James decides to head out for emergency supplies of cigarettes, leaving Kristen on her lonesome in the spooky cottage in the middle of nowhere, creepy blondie decides to come back.

Fuck. And this is where the movie really begins. To begin with, the terror is all thanks to every horror cliché in the book - home alone female, loud bangs when you least expect it, strange voices coming from outside, skipping record players, well-timed smoke alarms going off, etc. - but make no mistake, it all works a treat. Let's face it, loud bangs at anyone's front door late at night are rightly terrifying. Smoke alarms scare the shit out of me even when they go off at the best of times and, there is no doubt about it, repeated late night visits from unhinged strangers would have me suitably soaking my undergarments in no time at all.

Things quickly go from bad to worse, however, when it becomes apparent that blondie is not alone and may not even be outside after all. James eventually returns from the local Supercigs store and finds a hysterical Kristen, who tells him that she is being terrorised by people inside the house. At first he's convinced she's simply transformed into an emotional basketcase during his absence, but he's quickly proven wrong when the three strangers start to show themselves.

And oh my bloody word, have you ever seen masks as shit-scary as these in your whole life? I thought not! Seriously, I would only ever advise wearing one of these masks and showing up on your neighbour's doorstep on Hallowe'en night if you wanted them to die immediately of a fatal heart attack.

From here on in, The Strangers very much reminds me of the Austrian indie shocker Funny Games, a movie I saw at a local art house cinema more than ten years ago and which terrified and bemused me in equal measures. It's true that The Strangers has the same degree of menace and sense of helplessness that Funny Games had in spades. Seriously, you just know this movie isn't going to have a happy ending. The characters are engaging enough for you to be rooting for them all the way, but you'll never escape the notion that their fates are ultimately sealed and it'll all be for nothing. It makes for altogether uncomfortable viewing.

Funny Games was also a unique film in that it constantly broke the fourth wall, blurring the boundary between fiction and reality, cruelly taunting the audience and playing with their emotions as it did so. For example, when it looks as though one of the horrid intruders has been offed by one of the besieged family members, the remaining intruder simply grabs a remote control, rewinds the action and stops it from happening in the first place. Whilst The Strangers has a simpler narrative, which is clearly bound in reality, the movie enjoys playing with the audience's emotions every bit as much. You see, for every time our heroes' escape looks certain, their attempts are thwarted by the mask-wearing trio, who appear to have no motive whatsoever for their actions.

The Strangers got mixed reviews from critics and some people complain that it's a hackneyed and altogether pointless affair but, watched in the right circumstances, I think it's a genuinely terrifying film and, at Halloween, isn't everyone entitled to one good scare?

4 out of 5.

Horrorthon '09 Part 2: The Dark

2009-10-07T11:36:00.003+01:00

Here we go. After a strong start in this year's Horrorthon, it's all about to go a little tits up. This year's second entry is The Dark, a straight to DVD "chiller". Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible film per se. I've seen worse. A lot worse, in fact. It's just that after ninety odd minutes of watching this, I can suddenly think of a hundred other things more worthy of my time. Oh well.

Anyway, The Dark takes place in the Welsh countryside. You should know that in a game of Horror Movie Top Trumps, only "America's Deep South" would beat "Virtually abandoned celtic township perched on a clifftop" in the creepy horror setting category. Indeed, the movie gets off to a rather fine start, even if it does take an extraordinarily long time to set up this genuinely creepy scenario.

You see, our movie's anti-heroine Adèlle (played by Maria Bello) has decided to bring her devil daughter Sarah all the way from America to Wales, to visit father/ex-husband James (played by Sean Bean). Things are pretty frought between mother and daughter, however. A few pointless flashbacks tell us that Adèlle is somewhat highly strung, plus has a fondness for liquor bottles and slapping her daughter around. Not that she doesn't have it coming, mind you. Make no mistake, Sarah is a teen horror of legendary proportions. A few scenes in and you'll feel like slapping her yourself.

I guess it doesn't help matters that this part of Wales is a little short on entertainment. All that's left for Sarah to do, in fact, is wander around on the shoreline aimlessly, being moody as sin. Things perk up a little, however, when we meet Welsh farmer Dafydd who quickly tells the family that the area is rank with superstition and then regales them with some legends about loony religious cult members offing themselves by jumping off that there clifftop like lemmings. Cue an absolutely brilliant scene where a herd of sheep do exactly that, which succeeds in letting us know that yes, you guessed it... something is not quite right with this little part of the Welsh coastline.

Thankfully, we don't have to suffer Sarah for much longer when the real story starts to kick off. Sarah, you see, quickly drowns after one of her aimless meandering adventures goes awry. Naturally, the family are left distraught by such developments but things just get too weird when, out of nowhere, up pops Ebrill - a Welsh youngster who quickly proclaims James her new daddy and, to all intents and purposes, is a personality bomb lying in wait to explode.

Whilst James seems to care for the lass, Adèlle is NOT amused. Remembering one of Dafydd's spooky Urban Legends about a place known as Annwyn, where one of the living is exchanged for one of the dead, Adèlle seeks to rescue Sarah from the heavenly-hellish limbo place and send Ebrill back to where she came from.

And you see, this is where the movie begins to lose its way. Before long, Adèlle is throwing herself of that clifftop, all so she can go on a merry jaunt to Annwyn and, with a bit of luck, bring herself and Sarah back safely. But very quickly the movie degenerates into not a lot of sense. In fact, all the film achieves from here on in is to deliver a few cheap scares and cause the audience a lot of head scratching.

Let's face it, any movie which aims to portray The Other Side is always bound for trouble, isn't it? They struggled with it in Poltergeist II (a movie that The Dark takes a few of its cues from) and they struggle with it here. Which is a shame, because by the time the twist ending arrives you won't understand (or care much) how it all came to be.

2 out of 5.

Whatever you do, don't fall asleep

2009-10-05T22:04:00.001+01:00

After the er... butchering that Michael Bay gave Friday the 13th earlier this year, how are things shaping up for New Line Cinema's latest "reimagining", A Nightmare on Elm Street?

Well, if this trailer is anything to go by, things are looking bloody good! If you can call the murder of innocents by the knives-for-fingers bastard son of a hundred maniacs good, that is.

A lot of people are up in arms over the recasting of Fred Krueger. That's right, Robert Englund is nowhere to be seen in this new film, the role instead going to Jackie Earle Haley who, let's face it, is enough to scare the wits out of you even when out of costume. Personally, I am all for the change, especially since it looks like it'll help inject some much needed terror into the franchise - I've had enough of the wise-cracking Freddy, haven't you? I especially dig the fact that it looks as though Freddy's face is burned so badly it's almost featureless.

The movie also stars Katie Cassidy, currently tearing up TV screens as Ella in Melrose Place of course. Whilst it looks as though she'll be awesome in this too, my eyes will nevertheless be focused squarely on Rooney Mara who'll be playing none other than Nancy Thompson in the movie. Because never mind filling Robert Englund's shoes, Heather Langenkamp's are much bigger and way more difficult to walk a mile in.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is coming in April 2010.

Horrorthon '09 Part 1: The Mist

2009-10-01T13:50:00.001+01:00

It's Octobertime and that means it's time for another Horrorthon. Give me three loud blood-curdling screams!

This year we start with a Stephen King movie adaptation, which probably means alarm bells are ringing already. You know as well as I do that, regardless of how good his books are, for every brilliant Stephen King movie there's probably two that are a great big pile of pissed-on pig doo-doo.

Thankfully, The Mist is a jolly good Stephen King movie. This might be to do with the fact that it's directed by Frank Darabont, the director of another great King adaptation, The Shawshank Redemption. It has a slight TV movie feel to it but that shouldn't put you off at all. And in spite of some ropey CGI here and there and some hammy overacting in places, The Mist is top quality horror/suspense all the way from its opening credits to its altogether sombre ending.

Some of you might be wondering whether this movie is a carbon copy of another movie with a similar name, i.e. The Fog, and I can happily tell you that the only real similarity is the titular er... misty foggy stuff. In this movie, what's lurking in that there mist is something altogether more otherworldly and downright terrifying.

This movie focuses on David Drayton who is a movie poster designer/artist. The name of the actor who plays David escapes me at the moment but he has one of those strangely familiar faces that you'll probably have seen in a hundred films but you won't be able to name a single one of them.

Anyway, after a freak storm wrecks his lakeside home, trashes his latest art piece and leaves him, his wife and his young son Billy devoid of electricity, David heads into town with Billy to stock up on provisions at the local supermarket. Alas, the entire town has had the same idea and the store is about a million times busier than your average Tesco on Christmas Eve.

What's worse is that an eerie fast-moving mist suddenly envelopes the town and, worse still, something not very nice seems to be lurking in it. Very soon, air raid sirens sound the coming of World War III and terrified, bloody-nosed townsfolk start fleeing inside the store, babbling nonsense about all sorts of unspeakable horrors. Before you know it, David, Billy and the rest of the shoppers have barricaded themselves in the store, with very little clue about the carnage going on outside amongst the dreaded mist.

Naturally, panic and chaos inside the store is quick to follow - helped along by Mrs Carmody, the town's resident bible basher and general all-round lunatic, who quickly proclaims it Judgement Day. First of all, everyone is only too happy to write off Carmody's ramblings as Phelps-like claptrap but as things go from awful to even worse, Carmody very quickly becomes the next messiah for the petrified townsfolk.

Very soon we get a better glimpse of what in holy hell is out there in the mist and, let me tell you, it isn't pretty. A later scene hints that an insane military experiment going awry is the cause of all the horror, opening doorways to other dimensions and letting all sorts of scary shit slip through. We're talking alienesque tentacled monsters the size of jumbo jets, spiders that would give your average arachnophobe nightmares for months, not to mention pteradactyl creatures which have a nasty habit of, er... breaking through glass.

Going outside really isn't thought to be much of a feasible option. And yet, staying indoors isn't thought to be very appealing either. Mentalist Carmody strengthens her insane grip on her followers, somehow convincing them that a human sacrifice is what's needed in order to save themselves from the wrath of God. Eventually, David, Billy, the movie's heroine Amanda and a pair of pensioners decide their best option is to run, so they hatch a plan to grab a gun, escape the store, find a truck, drive back to David's place, rescue his wife and live forever in peace and harmony. It all sounds easy peasy, doesn't it?

Oh you just know that this movie isn't going to have a happy ending, don't you? Surprisingly, the plan looks like it's going to work a treat - at first - what with the five of them successfully avoiding death by mutant space spiders in order to find a truck to drive home in. But the journey home only exposes the true extent of the carnage that has befallen the town. Eventually, they run out of petrol without finding any other survivors. Crestfallen, the adults accept their fates in the bullets of the handgun they've purloined, just in time for...

Holy. Heck. I've probably given too much away, but be prepared for a twist ending you'll remember for a long time coming.

3.5 out of 5.

Amanda's Back

2009-09-23T09:33:00.005+01:00

The Bitch is Back... so says The CW.

That's right, Amanda Woodward is coming back to Melrose Place and she'll be back on screens sooner than you think. This side of Christmas, would you believe. November 17th, to be exact. If my arithmetic is right, that makes it Episode 11 - two weeks before we may (or may not) see a series finale to end all finales. Could La Locklear be about to save Melrose from the axeman all over again?

"We're ecstatic to have the chance to bring Amanda Woodward back to ‘Melrose Place,’" say the show's executive producers. "Heather's involvement in the show is something we've been working on for some time as we couldn't imagine creating and producing this show without the iconic character's inclusion."

Bring it on!

Meanwhile, the new series continues to show off the fact that it's the old series' much dirtier little sister, what with Syd's coke binge and knife attack on Auggie and also with Violet already showing her first signs of crazy kimberlydom. Safe to say I am loving it already.

Viva La Locklear!

Spoilers all over the place

2009-09-13T19:59:00.002+01:00

Ashlee Simpson-Wentz hears what people think of her acting abilities, yesterday.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day about, surprise surprise, Melrose Place. The reason that original Melrose was such a roller-coaster ride for me, I concluded, was that it aired before the internet exploded, before the net truly became awash with cliff-hanger ruining spoilers. MPv1.0 was on TV way before blogging, before gossip sites, before YouTube, before Twitter. In fact, MP1 aired in the UK on satellite, meaning that it virtually went unnoticed by the media. Nobody else I knew even watched it. That in turn meant absolutely no clues as to how storylines would unfold. That - and the fact that Kimberly absolutely terrified me - was what made original Melrose Place relentlessly exciting and brilliant.

Times have changed, of course. The irony that I am now able to watch this updated version of Melrose Place, less than a week after it aired in the States, and now blog about it - all thanks to the internet - is not lost on me.

Anyway, it's been ten years since we last paid a visit to the courtyard of 4616 Melrose Place and, granted, this show feels a whole lot different to its predecessor. Well, it was bound to, wasn't it? Also don't forget that seventeen years have passed since MP1s "premeer" - yes, it *was* back in the fall of 1992 that we first met Jake, Billy, Alison, Matt, Jane, Michael and, uhm... Rhonda and Sandy. Make you feel old much?

Instantly you'll notice that new Melrose is a much slicker affair - at least visually. The apartment building is practically palacial, where it was once pretty basic. The cast hang out in a nightclub that makes Shooters look like Moes Tavern. Even the credits have a posh movie-esque feel to them. The intermittent AOR soundtrack of old has been replaced by a relentless, mega trendy pop/hip-hop-a-thon. Actually, that's one of the things about new Melrose which fans of the old show will probably take a bit of time getting used to. This time around you might have trouble discerning the dialogue from the latest tune from The Killers or Lily Allen. All in all, though, there's a slightly darker, edgier, Mullholland Drive-esque feel to proceedings.

On the other hand, some things never change. It was comforting to see some familiar faces amongst the newly found gloss and, naturally, I enjoyed Michael and Sydney's scenes most of all. I also completely digged Syd's line about Ella's "bad dye job", which is a killer retort straight out of a MPv1.0 script. Looks like new Melrose, in spite of its flashy exterior, is still delightfully trashy underneath it all.

Alas, the show's received some pretty poor ratings - just 2.3 million people watched the series premiere and already the message boards seem to be split fairly evenly between the "love it already" and "get it off the air already" camps. Most of the vitriol is reserved for Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and her admittedly ropey acting talents. Although I don't know what the fuss is all about, to be honest. Melrose was never ever full of Emmy award winning acting talent now, was it?

Oh well, the show's only been on the air for all of 40 minutes – there's everything still to play for. People would be complaining if all their questions were answered in the pilot, leaving nothing to be revealed in future episodes.

And there are plenty questions. Like *why* did Sydney fake her death all those years ago? Is she faking it now? How long will it be before Jonah and Riley's engagement is called off? What on Earth is the deal with David the, er... art thief? Why was Auggie burning blood stained overalls at the end of the episode? And how long will it be until Violet turns conniving scheming blackmailer, just like her... mother?

And just look who'll be showing her face around Melrose Place very shortly. Holy heck, it's Jane Mancini Designs! And isn't she just looking lovely? I'm so glad she's finally put all those terrible hair problems behind her, aren't you?

Most very horrible thing

2009-09-07T14:16:00.002+01:00

I've been feeling it a little cold and a tad damp in my flat recently, so I switched on the central heating for the first time in months the other day. In actual fact, I merely *tried* to switch it on, since the instant I flicked the switch, I heard a loud pop coming from the airing cupboard. The fuse had blown, allegedly. What is more certain is that I still had no heating and now had no hot water.

The good news is that it didn't take long for Scottish Gas to appear and fix the problem - even if it did involve the carpet being torn up in the living room and me being forced to move my fish tank three feet - which is more difficult than it sounds.

Anyway, I decided yesterday that a good blast of heat was exactly what the flat needed, so I turned the thermostat up, switched on the water pump and promptly went out for a Sunday afternoon drinking session. Needless to say, by the time I got back home, the whole place was like a sauna. Drier, definitely, but with an approximate total of three molecules of oxygen in the air. Windows were immediately forced open in order for me to breathe sufficiently. So much for energy conservation.

In another neat little twist - and I am not sure if this is a coincidence or not - my home has suddenly become infested with one of life's most very horrible things. Spiders.

Let's get one thing straight - me and spiders do not get along. The weird thing is that small [tiny] spiders do not scare me in the slightest. However, once they reach a certain size - say, the size of a 10p piece [okay, a 5p piece] - then I react to them with a terror normally reserved for machete weilding, mask wearing serial killers.

Last night I was forced to dispose of *three* of the damned things. I have a glass which sits at my front door, dubbed the Spider-Glass, which I use to catch them in. [What do you mean, use my hands? Are you mad?] This way, no lightning-quick spider will ever run up my arm and lay eggs in my armpit, leaving them to hatch millions of baby spiders one morning - and force me to check in to the nearest loony-bin for the rest of my life - like a freakin' Urban Legend come true.

The first of the three was a hairy looking monster that was clinging to the walls of the kitchen. This wasn't quite so bad. I don't mind the ones that are just sitting there, waiting to be found, motionless - even if you know only too well that they are like a coiled spring waiting to take off at rocket speed. The Spider-Glass usually takes care of them quite adequately.

I have a bigger problem with the scuttling variety of spider. The one that makes its appearance when you are standing peeing, for example. And then there's the other one that scares the shit out of you when it runs across the living room carpet while you're watching reruns of Dallas on the telly. I hate the ones that *know* you're after them. The ones that run away when you chase them with the Spider-Glass, ready to pounce the moment you attack with the aforementioned normally reserved for drinking utensil.

Most very horrible thing? Not half! No wonder Spiders won this category in the Smash Hits Poll ten years on the trot.

(What) Summer Over

2009-09-06T11:28:00.005+01:00

What a rubbish summer this has been all over again!

I think we had a good couple of days of sunshine, uhm... back in May, was it? Allegedly, August was the second wettest since records began - no surprise there - and here's another shocker, it's all down to global warming. This means our summers are going to be infinitely warmer from now on - hurrah! - but wetter too. Oh crud. Never mind the lives of our children's children's children's children, this is good enough reason to start reusing your Tesco carrier bags and slashing the tyres of every 4x4 you see. Do it now!

Given the fact that the supermarkets are already stocking their Halloween ranges and - I kid you not - I noticed Christmas fragrances in the air freshener aisle yesterday, I thought it was time to rain on the Sizzling Summer Special of 2009 which in all honesty was neither sizzling nor summery, nor even all that special.

Oh well - not long until Spooky Octoberfest!

Melrose all over the place

2009-08-27T13:37:00.006+01:00

It's a week and a half until the season "premeer" of the new Melrose Place and to say things are hotting up is putting it mildly.

First up, I am completely hearting the fan-art that's been popping up on the show's new Facebook pages. My favourite is the one you can see to your left. Tuesdays are a bitch, indeed. It's an altogether steamier campaign than that of the original series debut, which was back in 1992. "Leaving home. Starting life. Taking chances. It all happens here." they said. How lovely! Back then Melrose Place was still ever so wholesome. A trite little drama about a group of twenty somethings making their way in the world. In the first episode the biggest drama involved Natalie Miller moving out on Alison and stiffing her for the rent. Before long, though, Amanda was in charge, Syd was blackmailing half the cast and Kimberly was ripping off her wig and blowing the place up for pete's sake. Oh how things changed!

Anyway, YouTube has been littered with teaser campaigns for the new series - all promising stuff. Whilst, in a master stroke of inspired marketing genius, you can even meet the new apartment building's realtor, over at www.melroseplaceapts.com. One thing's for certain, the new apartment building is a much bigger and swankier 4616 Melrose Place than we've ever been used to. If Kimberly wants to blow this place up, she's going to need a few more bombs.

So what else is new? Well, we all know that Sydney is back... alive, but yet somehow dead in this new series. A few of her flashback sequences are on the net already and, make no mistake, she is FIERCE. My favourite clip so far involves a scene with new character and reported-to-be-resident-bitch-on-wheels Ella. "Should I be afraid of you?" Ella wants to know. "Just ask the people who used to live here." replies Syd. I say, bring it on!

There's no doubt about it, Ella is effectively the new Amanda. You know the type. Blonde. Wears micro-mini skirts to the office. Publicity whore. Takes no prisoners. Would tear you to shreds in a millisecond. Rhymes with witch. And to prove that times sure have changed down Melrose way it looks like there will even be some same sex kissing going on in this new series. Yes, that's right! Ella even has a sneaky bisexual twist thrown in for good measure. But I still wonder how long it will be until someone calls her a bleach blonde piece of dirt, don't you?

To all intents and purposes, David is the new Jake. All ridiculously good looks, blond hair and muscles. In early incarnations of the script, in fact, he was Jake's son. Nowadays he's the son Michael Mancini never knew he had. He's also been having a fling with Syd and, by the sounds of things, with Ella too. Awesome.

Jonah, by the looks of things, is gearing up to be the new Billy. And his girlfriend Riley is the new Alison. To hammer home the fact that he's MP's new resident all-round good guy, Jonah even looks like Billy. In spite of this, I'm guessing that it won't be long before Riley is playing kitchenware concerto in the courtyard and guzzling straight vodka as though it is Evian. You almost feel sorry for this pair already, don't you?

Then you've got Violet who, by the sounds of things, is modelling herself on, well... Sydney. To say something's not quite right about Violet is an understatement. Allegedly, Violet starts her Melrose journey being sickly sweet but soon develops her evil manipulative side. Welcome to the neighbourhood, honey.

In terms of guest stars, none other than Josie Bissett (Jane) and Daphne Zuniga (Jo) will be popping up during the course of the first season and rumours abound that Grant Show (Jake) will also be back, sooner or later.

In more exciting news, however, it looks as though La Locklear herself could already be doing an almighty U-turn since it's being reported that she's considering taking up her "Special Guest Star" mantle all over again, after all. As much as I believe this new Melrose will be a hit without her, this really is just the icing on the cake and I really hope it happens.

The blogworld according to newplanet 2004-2009

2009-08-21T14:02:00.007+01:00

On blogging, five years ago:

"I guess the "fear" is that in five years’ time I’ll look back at my very first post and cringe with complete embarrassment. This, of course, assumes that I’m not looking at this *right now* and cringing with complete embarrassment."

----

On not blogging, not five years ago:

"It's safe to say that I'm going through a "no time to scratch my arse, never mind blog about it" phase at the moment. And I don't like it. Even when everything is going tits-up around me, I normally have blogging to fall back on. It's my therapy. My constant. Without it, I might one day go completely postal and embark upon a murdering rampage."

----

On Big Brother villains:

On Jason:
"I despise Jason. In a quiet moment today I wondered if he's my most hated contestant in Big Brother history. He is."

On Jade:
"If my prayers are answered, this woman will shortly spontaneously combust on live television."

On Grace:
"Don't think for a millisecond that I am being mean. Grace is a revolting potato of a woman."

On Jodie Marsh:
"Hopeless slag-bag or not, Jodie Marsh *is* being bullied by a bunch of z-list celebrities right now. It's not big, it's not clever and it needs sortin' ouwwwt!"

On George Galloway:
"He should be killed. Evicted on Friday and killed."

On Charley:
"Charley's not safe forever, as a friend of mine reminded me this week. 'I don't want to fake evict Charley,' she said. 'I want to evict evict her.'"

----

On sickness:

"Sleep was interrupted three times by a trip to the bathroom, complete with 'delightful' vomiting and something else that shall remain nameless but sounded like me pouring water down the toilet."

"It turns out that the wonderful liquid that is Pepto-Bismol has a rather remarkable side-effect, which they don't tell you about on the bottle. I found out about it after a ceremonious trip to the bathroom, after I had a panic attack that I had been struck down with acute bowel cancer and after I took hold of my senses and typed "Pepto-Bismol side effects" into Google."

"Whilst happily cruising over the Atlantic, my lungs decided that they didn't like breathing, so for the remainder of the flight I could only manage little wasp breaths and, well... I seriously began to think it was curtains for me. Well, what else would a jet-lagged hypochondriac think?"

"I'm also pretty susceptible to colds and sore throats, which is probably a side-effect of having tonsils the size of golfballs which catch every airborne ailment known to mankind."

"For weeks I've been living in a world that has its fingers stuck in its earholes. I can't hear a damn thing, except for everything that's going on inside my body. Bedtime is usually accompanied by the thud-thud of my heartbeat or the whooshing noise of the blood swirling around in my brain. Whilst it used to be good to be reminded that I am still alive, the novelty has now completely worn off. I just want to get some sleep."

----

On marketing:

"Us marketers like to think we're clever buggers - artistic, creative and generally all-round fabulous and gorgeous."

"Sometimes I think that if I dropped dead on the pavement with my clipboard, people would still walk onto the road for fear that I'd come back to life at any moment and ask them a question."

"I love all those post-apocalyptic future type movies, don't you? What is super cool about them is that even though 99.9% of the global population has been wiped out by bird flu, the remaining pockets of civilisation can't walk two steps down the average high street without being bombarded with twenty million marketing messages."

"So far I have had questionnaires returned from "Mr Junk Mail Receiver" and others have been sending me back the rest of their unwanted leaflets ... I am guessing they don't like door drops very much and wanted to teach me a lesson. That's all very well, but the gobby ones also like to keep their names a secret - and if they don't tell me who they are then I can't do any freakin' thing about it, can I?"

"On the other hand, this blog was turning into a car saleswoman's very own advertising medium and you have to pay me good money to advertise here, honey. [Hey, that rhymes!]"

"Tonight we investigated marketing crime scenes and got to give our uppity opinions on how they could have been avoided - all in a CSI stylee, of course. With a slight [huge] amount of disbelief suspended, you might even have thought we knew what we were talking about."

"Back in my early teens, there was a huge scare about how Britain's kids were all becoming terrifyingly hyperactive. If you believed the press, it was an epidemic that was going to end up with the nation's kids in prison and their parents in the loony bin. They blamed everything ... Bad parenting ... teachers being unable to batter pupils in class anymore. Feeding kids chocolate instead of sprouts. Blue Smarties. The list was endless. I, however, have another theory. I blame marketing."

----

On being a goofy Coke nerd:

"You already know that I am a Coke-a-holic, but what you might not know is this gives me the authority to unequivocally say that Diet Coke does not taste like regular Coke at all. Don't try to tell me that if I keep drinking it I won't be able to tell the difference. I will! My idea of hell is being forced to drink Diet Coke for eternity and, hell being hell, it'd be warm Diet Coke, which is nothing short of purgatory."

"Yes - it's Pepsi Holiday Spice, which despite its crummy name could perhaps be the grooviest Pepsi ever. I mean, what's not to love about a freakin' Christmas Pepsi?"

----

On dreams:

"I *never* have sex dreams about celebrities. However, I have had some very heavy kissing dreams about celebrities, which are nice n' all, but are ultimately rather unsatisfying."

"I know I've had some ridiculously square gay dreams in my time, but last night's really takes the biscuit. Last night I dreamed I was in Scooch."

"The other night I dreamed that they'd released Cherry Coke Zero. Yes, it was a "no sugar" version of Cherry Coke for MEN. It was utterly wonderful and tasted exactly like regular Cherry Coke. I remember that the cans had pictures of cherries on them."

"Last night I dreamed that my mother had volunteered my services to appear in a local pantomime. To any smart alecky types reading this, no - I was not the pantomime dame. Much worse. I was the wicked witch."

"You've heard of fellow blogger, Ms Bees Knees, right? Of course you bloody have. She's a legend. The other night I dreamed that she murdered me. It's alright, I totally deserved it. I *dared* her to kill me. I thought she didn't have the bottle."

"In those [recurring dreams about Kim Wilde], I'm always at Kim's family home in Hertfordshire, having dinner. The thing is, her house is always a pig-sty and I can tell that she really doesn't want me there. So, I sit through the meal, while Kim and her husband grudgingly exchange pleasantries with me, and all the while I'm thinking that she really should have done the hoovering before I came over."

----

On horror:

"I don't know about you, but I've become completely desensitised to horror in movies. Butcher-knives in the guts, heads being sliced off, eyes popping out of faces and brains being turned into poisonous snake-filled globs of goo are all met with the same, yawnsome, "is that the best you can do?" from me. Nothing affects me. Nothing."

"Have any of you seen that movie Wolf Creek? It is evil. And so was this place. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. Junked cars were lying around everywhere. Crazed animals were looning around and biting each other. John and I were petrified that we would shortly be hacked to pieces by a leatherfaced chainsaw-weilding cross-dresser."

----

On SPAM:

"I'm pretty sure there are people who think SPAM is great - but they're bound to be freaks with bad breath, personality problems and an awful taste in clothes."

----

On Kim Wilde:

"If you'd told me less than three days ago that what just happened was about to happen, I would have said, "Hey - stay off the drugs, you clairvoyant freakshow!" You see, this weekend I met Kim Wilde."

"Oh, I almost forgot that Kim asked me to show you her new album cover and a video of her writhing around on a bed for three minutes to the music of her new single. 'Don't forget to say something about me looking foxy,' she said, 'and that July is a good month to plant leafy vegetables like lettuce and cabbage.'"

----

On Public Information Films:

"I was looking for one public information film… it's a live action clip, in which a ten-year-old girl (who is evidently as thick as two short planks) picks up a sparkler soon after it's gone out. The silly bitch."

"You never know, Protect and Survive might one day preserve my miserable existence on this planet. You'll be so jealous, I swear! You'll be dead and I'll be spending the rest of my days nursing third degree skin burns and feasting on irradiated raw cow meat. Hurrah!"

----

On homophobia:

"One afternoon in Stirling, me and my boyfriend were told we were "disgusting" by a gaggle of Keep The Clause campaigners. We reacted by grabbing their pamphlets and throwing them on the ground in disgust then flouncing off in mock-camp [okay, not mock] horror."

"Oh sweet homophobia, you can call it a hate crime if you like, but I'm about to glesga kiss both of you right here right now."

----

On drugs and dependency:

"Thank the lord for American drugstores. Where else can you become addicted to painkillers after ingesting one tablet? My favourite at the moment is Tylenol PM, which... wait for it... is a combined painkiller and sleeping pill! Who knew such pharmaceutical delights even existed?"

"What is most unsettling is how the assistant has given me about three hundred other skincare products to 'try out'. But I know that it's only free first time. That Clarins bitch has become my pusher. Before long, I'll be stealing from my mum's purse and selling my underwear on eBay to pay for my new addiction."

"Lately, however, I've discovered Sudafed Decongestant Nasal Spray. It, dear readers, is *the* greatest pharmaceutical invention since Penicillin. Probably. The problem is that it is highly addictive. I'm sure it tells you somewhere on the packaging that you shouldn't use it for more than 7 days, for fear of nose bleeds, cancer, sterility, impotence, death, etc - but, come on, who really pays any attention to that scare-mongering rubbish?"

"If I was one those people who get down-in-the-mouth about things, I'd already be curled up in my duvet by now, guzzling alcopops to dull the pain and eating junk food like I was Renee Zellweger preparing for another Bridget Jones movie."

"I don't smoke, but coming off full-fat Cherry Coke must be just as difficult as coming off the fags."

----

On employment:

"I was thinking there *has* to be a better way to make a living than this working hard employment lark. Then it came to me like an epiphany... I will become the greatest serial game show contestant the world has ever seen."

----

On schooling:

"I'm sure my English teacher would have called social services to investigate my warped mind, hadn't she been a half-bald member of the House Church, who admitted to us that she'd spoken in tongues on many occasions."

"At school, there was a number of things that scared the living shite out of me. Football practice, for example. The mandatory medical examination, for boys only. The Tuberculosis vaccination. My English teacher's ringworm scars. Trying to dodge the "ninja stars" that were endlessly thrown about in my Technical Drawing class."

----

On Minogue haters:

"Well, it turns out that a group of idiots are planning on "bottling Kylie offstage" as she makes her long overdue headline appearance at this year's Glastonbury festival. [Oh yeah? I hope it rains all weekend and you all come down with dysentry, you nitwit peabrain scumsuckers you!]"

"As for that clown in The Zutons, I say to him do your homework! Kylie played the "serious" festivals years before your bollocks had even dropped! Come and have another go after *you've* released nine albums and two Greatest Hits collections."

"What is it about 'The X-Factor' that makes it so watchable? It has completely nowt to do with that jumped-up, hamster-faced, Westlife-producing, Kylie-hating ratbag Louis Walsh. Do I make myself clear on that one?"

"Whilst Kylie managed to retain a modicum of dignity most of the time (even during her infamous "SexKylie" phase), Dannii would just get her tits out. She had a football face and she had thunder thighs. All of these things meant that she was the trashier of the Minogue sisters and was therefore not so worthy of my utter unflinching adulation. Oh, I was so wrong about her."

----

On Kylie concerts:

"This year I need a plan of attack. I may even have to join those buck-toothed geeks that you always see at concerts armed with their autograph books and polaroid pictures of "me and Kylie five years ago outside the Matalan in Govan." Those things are like currency to those people!"

"I'll say one thing about Kylie concerts. Some people are guaranteed to run into other people they've had sex with in the past that they thought they'd never see again."

----

On getting a tattoo:

"Is it a burning, biting, poking, ripping pain? Is it like pouring vinegar on a paper cut? Being kicked in the scrotum by a disgruntled goat? Taking a cheese grater to your genitals? Listening to an Eminem album on repeat for a week, with no toilet breaks, whilst someone sets your hair on fire and both your legs are in cramps?"

----

On responsible parenting:

"Do you want your kids to stop running riot at 3am, tearing the wallpaper off your living room walls, battering the other kids in the nursery half to death, or calling your neighbours c**ts? Well, the bad news is that it's all your fault!"

"Whenever John and I venture into town, I keep his tantrums in check by using a sticker chart. If he's been naughty at home, I just lock him in his bedroom for half an hour and ignore him. I tell you, it's the only way he'll learn who's boss."

----

On profanity:

"A friend of mine tells me that she can't read this blog at her work, since the local council's parental-firewall-whatsit says the URL contains "objectionable explicit" material (or something). I am motherfuckingly outraged by this slur on my character!"

----

On luck:

"Today... I travelled by train from Drem to Edinburgh Waverley Station. I travelled by bus from Edinburgh to Glasgow. I travelled by train from Glasgow Central Station to Kilwinning. I travelled by car from Kilwinning to Saltcoats. ...with bird shit down my back. That is fucking all I have to say."

----

On gratuitous violence:

"A couple of years ago, I was ready to commit murder. At Christmas! It got so bad that I remember threatening to rip both of Craig's arms off and beat him to death with the bloody stumps."

"Here is some information for anyone thinking about dropping their gum onto the ground. If I witness it, I will KILL YOU."

----

On heroes:

"His immediate family aside, who really cares that George Best has snuffed it? Certainly not me. Don't get me wrong. A man who used to be alive is now dead and that's not a cause for celebration. But... I get offended when the media starts to tell me that I should be mourning him because he was one of this nation's heroes. Why? Because he was a football player? Are you shitting me with this?"

----

On not loving Angels instead:

"Whenever I hear 'Angels', it makes me want to pour hydrochloric acid into my earholes to end my suffering. For the record, 'Angels' is a terrible, terrible, terrible song! The words are over-sentimental claptrap which make no sense!! The vocals are appalling!!! The whole thing is just for braindead morons who like singing bad karaoke!!!! Voting for it in a "best pop song of the universe" poll is lazy and just plain stupid!!!!! 'Angels' is terrible, alright? Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, etc."

----

On unrequited love interests:

On Pink...
"I have an on-off love affair with P!nk and, wouldn't you just know it, it's usually all to do with her hair colour. You see, when her barnet is big on pink, she's big on fun. When it's some cruddy shade of black or whatever, it's time for me to tell her to stop taking the moody pills. "Instead of making you better, they keep making you ill," I say to her, etc."

On 'The Fall Guy'...
"This evening I beheld a vision of extraordinary beauty. It was quite breathtaking. Was it in the night sky, you say? Sorry, no. Was it in the face of a newborn baby, perhaps? Uhm, nope. Was it in my bathroom mirror? Nice of you to think so, but hardly. No folks. This vision. This astonishing, wonderful, remarkable thing was just waiting to be found... in the Littlewoods Catalogue."

On Darren Hayes...
"I sometimes get the impression he might be too much of a clever so-and-so for his own good, but I also think he'd be quite fun to be around when you needed him to be. For example, if you were bored or depressed, he could sing "The Animal Song" to you and all in the world would become wonderful. In fact, if truth be told, I think I would rather enjoy kissing him on the lips."

On Patsy Gallant...
"Where have you been all my life? I mean, just look at you. Aren't you just completely fabulous? To top it all off, you're French Canadian. You're the freakin' 70s disco version of Celine Dion! Yay!"

On Patrick Wilson...
"Oh dear Lord. I might actually swoon as I am typing this. This man is beautiful! The fact that he spends the majority of the film shirtless does not help matters. Never mind bloody Kate Winslet, I was falling in love with this man myself. In one scene where he pleads with Kate to run away with him, I was *this* close to jumping out of my seat screaming, "yes, yes I will run away with you!"

On Andrew Cooper...
"Seriously though, this guy could be wearing a bin bag and you'd still want to hug and kiss the life right out of him, no?"

On Mr Tumnus, the faun...
"Oh my, isn't he just the most adorable thing in the whole of Narnia? I think I might want to eat him all up! I'm not sure how many types of pervert this makes me, but to be honest with you, I don't really care."

On you...
"I've started by adding a gallery of all you fellow blogger folks. In doing so, a couple of things have become abundantly clear. (1) You could all be auditioning for the next series of Big Brother, and (2) you are all gorgeous. I soooo want to snog every single one of you. I'm just being honest here."

"Ciara has been reading for all of five minutes and I get an award. The rest of you have been around for donkeys years and no bloody awards from you. Frankly, you suck. No, not really. I love and fancy you all. Hurrah!"

----

The Blog from a Newplanet...

...now with added ranting and raving
...goes on Butlins holidays
...is hung up on you
...has just pimped its ride
...needs to get off its lazy ass
...is almost too gay to function
...is better in beta
...is not too cool for yule
...is flying the flag for you
...would never say never
...likes to be beside the seaside
...has forgotten what sunshine is
...is finished with summer forever
...is raining
...wants to eat your brains
...puts razor blades in toffee apples
...is coming to get you
...is just back from the dead
...is three
...is in love (wooo)
...is wowwowwowwow
...travels in light years
...thinks you're cute
...will work for food
...is melting

Come join the party...

2009-08-14T15:35:00.004+01:00

...it's a celebration. And everybody wants to party with you.

There's a celebratory theme running through this dear blog this August.

In spite of the ups and downs of job hunting, which I have been "enjoying" recently, The Blog from a Newplanet has LOTS to celebrate this summer. You see, on August 3rd 2009, we turned five. That's five years of blogging. 538 posts in (roughly) 1825 days. That's almost one post every 60 hours. Who would have thought it?

And how excited was I to see the cover of Madonna's new "ultimate" Greatest Hits collection the other day? Isn't it literally just the greatest? Out in September, you probably know already that it's released in single AND double CD formats. It spans her whole career (although expect huge gaps) and, more exciting than anything else, there's a double DVD video collection to go with it.

Now there's only one thing for it. Just dance and sing, get up and do your thing.

Beyond the AME adventure

2009-08-03T11:35:00.001+01:00

Well hello again. I've been off in the wilderness, putting a business to bed, vacating an office, going on a bit of a spending spree, enjoying a fortnight of unemployment, "signing on" for the first time ever - what fun! - and going for job interviews all over the country - what fun!

Do you know what's NOT fun? Vacating an office. Surprisingly, I wasn't feeling all that sentimental about the ending of an era, i.e. losing my staff and my office in favour of working freelance from the comfort of my own home for a short while. There were no tears or other overt displays of melancholy, I can assure you. But dear God, moving offices is more stressful than you might think. We ended up delaying our check-out date for about a week, after being informed by our landlord that we should remove pretty much everything that wasn't nailed down. That was right down to the cutlery in the kitchen, the cleaning products under the sink and the loo rolls in the toilets.

Meanwhile, back at my flat, it looks like there has been an explosion at a stationery supplier's warehouse. I am having difficulty walking two or three steps without tripping over envelopes, staplers, paper clips, highlighter pens, printer paper, and the like. On the bright side, I now have a new desktop computer to play with *and* a new laptop. Actually, I salvaged two desktops and a laptop from the business, but I sold one and used the money to by myself a Nintendo Wii. I've never been much of a gamer, to be honest, but oh my bloody word, I love that Wii. Even when the Wii Fit delights in telling me that I am "overweight". Bah.

Anyways, busy times at the moment. I'm at the second interview stage for two jobs. One in Falkirk. The other in... ack... Chelmsford in Essex. It would be really nice if just one of them resulted in a job offer. I'm not suggesting for a second that either job is "in the bag" - not by a long shot - but two job offers would just involve a lot of decision making angst now, wouldn't it?

Come on in, the water's fine

2009-07-05T15:13:00.002+01:00

It's summertime once again here on The Blog from a Newplanet. I have more time on my hands to enjoy it than ever before. I say bring on the endless sunshine! I want it so hot this year that it burns my front lawn to a cinder and I never have to mow it ever again. It's okay, I have sunscreen that can withstand a supernova. If I get skin cancer this summer, it'll be from all that lying around on sunbeds I've been doing lately. Oooh, naughty.

So here's to slow walks on not polluted beaches at sunset. Overdosing on Solero ice-lollies but never getting fat. Drinking very many delicious cocktails and not vomiting in swimming pools as a direct result. Driving around with the soft-top down in my flashy new sports car*. Tanned hunks and lovelies in their skimpy beach gear showing off their bodies beautiful. Summer lovin', had me a blast.

Enjoy!

*aka driving around with the sunroof open and the windows down in my ancient Vauxhall. Oh well!

What the PWL is going on?

2009-06-26T12:28:00.000+01:00

How are you getting on with downloading what feels like the entire Stock Aitken Waterman back catalogue [but in reality is probably about 5% of it] on iTunes? Isn't it just a cash-zapping marvel of gargantuan proportions?

Seriously, have you *seen* iTunes lately? It has become a veritable smörgåsbord of deliciously delightful powerpop ditties, what with Kylie and Jason's entire PWL back catalogue being released, alongside long lost classics by the likes of Hazell Dean, Carol Hitchcock and er... The Blakeney Twins "out of TV's Neighbours".

And allegedly, this is just the tip of the iceberg, with the promise of much more to come, during the remainder of what is proving to be one heck of a year for The Sound of a Bright Young Britain. Well, it *is* Stock Aitken Waterman's silver anniversary, after all. It's only right.

For now, you can feast your ears on such gems as the Original 12" Mix of Kylie's Made In Heaven, which has been undheard of until now, as well as all the songs on all four of Kylie's PWL albums as wonderfully fun "backing track" versions. Seriously, gay pub karaoke nights are never going to be the same ever again.

Elsewhere, prepare yourself for some long-lost Jason Donovan remixes, including the brilliant No Probs Mix of When You Come Back To Me in digital sound at long last, as well as the equally rare Yuletide Sleigh List Mix of the same song, during which our Jase gets to muse, "I guess it happens all the time, the things we have to do take us miles apart when we should be together". Awww.

Pret-a-Portas

2009-06-15T15:52:00.004+01:00

Oh my, how much do I love Mary Portas?

Let me tell you it's waaaaayyyyyy much. I mean, just look at her for pete's sake. She looks like she's just stepped out of an Ab-Fab flashback sequence, where Patsy and Eddie go for a jolly jaunt down Carnaby Street, or something. She is bloody brilliant and well you know it.

The latest series of Mary Queen of Shops, i.e. Mary Queen of Charity Shops has been nothing short of completely awesome. In case you've missed it so far, this year Mary has chosen to abandon the country's run-down high-street fashion boutiques, to focus all her attention on a run-down Save The Children store in Orpington. Out goes the belligerent retail numpties who can't take a telling for fear it'll make them look really really silly and in comes the old dears who've given up half their lives to punt a shop full of crap to geriatrics.

And if you think Mary suddenly adopts an ever so go-lightly approach, given her new subjects, you have another thing coming. No, if anything, she's become even more of a tyrant this year. In one scene she balks when her near-mutinying staff ask her to say "please". Then, after she reduces volunteer manager Graham to tears, she gets a roasting from Save The Children's area manager, only to run rings around him and give him a proper showing up too. Most of the staff, therefore, know exactly what they think of our Mary - and it rhymes with "witch".

But then her bark has always been worse than her bite, has it not? This is like retail marketing bootcamp. She may act like a despicable cow sometimes, jumping on anyone's feelings with her Jimmy Choos whenever she feels like it, but - and I have said this many a time before - you never stop thinking that she only has their best interests at heart. It really is a powerful motivator.

Except that, for some, change is hard. And, of course, monumental change is what Mary is proposing. The Portas approach is two-pronged, not without its merits but not without its mountains to climb. The first prong involves convincing the nation's charity shops to junk the junk and, as a consequence the shopfloors that look like a village hall jumble sale, instead choosing to focus on selling designer garb at fairly decent prices. Of course, in order to sell fabulous stock she needs to convince people to donate it in the first place, which is problem number two. What's most enlightening is the utter bilge the UK is keen to give away to charity [trousers with no arse in them and babies nappies, anyone?] and - on the opposite end of the scale - the absolute gems that appear to be languishing in wardrobes nationwide, ultimately unworn.

Just as enlightening was when the cameras followed Mary to chez Portas to peek surreptitiously at her own potential donations. Needless to say, Mary's wardrobe was several leagues beyond fabulous, seriously giving Karen Walker's walk-in wardrobe in Will & Grace a run for its money. Remember the episode when Karen practically collapses when forced to donate clothes to the poor? Mary's much the same, as it happens. It's not that she's against the whole concept per se. It's just that she'd be mortified seeing her designer clobber in your average Oxfam store on sale for 50p. She's got a point.

Will Mary succeed? We'll find out when the final part of Mary Queen of Charity Shops airs tomorrow at 9pm on BBC2 but, given that Mary is launching her very own charity shop - complete with celebrity donations - right now as we speak, the chances look pretty good indeed.

I also see that Mary's consultancy firm is inviting job applications from creative types who think they're hard enough. I've thought about sending her my CV to look at but I know she'd look at it and just go "pah". Besides, what if I got the chance to work for her? I'd be the most star-struck employee on the payroll, incapable of giving the boss any type of report without gushing "I love you" at her. It really would not work.

My neighbour is a twat

2009-06-09T12:53:00.003+01:00

Neighbours, eh? Everybody needs good ones, so they say. Look closely at the above picture and you'll see several great ones. Holy shit, there's plain Jane super brain! Helen blinkin' Daniels! Jason-Scott Robinson-freakin' Donovan! Bouncer the dog! Plus several people whose names I forget!

There is one person who is completely absent from this photograph of great neighbours, however. That is the guy who lives upstairs from me. He really is not a great neighbour. He is, in fact, a twat.

I've lived at my current abode for nearly two and a half years and, admittedly, I still don't even know this guy's name. But I came to the conclusion pretty much within about ten minutes of moving in that he was a moron and that I should have as little to do with him as possible. I honestly do try not to make snap judgements about people based on first impressions, but there really was something lacking about this fellow. He's short and he's surly and - I am sorry - really quite ugly with it. There really was no way him and I were ever going to be the best of friends, nipping off to the pub for a few beers to talk about tits, cars and football.

Anyway, for a few months we would exchange half-pleasant hellos but that was about it. In the meantime, he repeatedly dropped his rubbish in whatever wheelie bin was closest, which annoyed me, but I thought it would be a bit petty if I were to dig my heels in about it. I would take both bins out to get collected by the friendly dustmen and sometimes he would take both back in. Taking the bins in and out was more difficult than you might think since often there would be car batteries and exhaust parts littering the pathway, thanks to his mechanic hobby/business on the side. Later I found out that the landlord had earlier complained to the council about this, calling it "anti-social behaviour".

Relations degenerated when he started banging on my ceiling when I would play music past 10pm. The thing is, I sometimes have music playing at my computer when I am working in the evening or whatever. It's *not* loud, although I imagine it would be a little annoying to hear it if you were trying to get to sleep. But 10pm is not 3am and it doesn't happen often enough to really warrant my ceiling getting done in. I hear him crashing around after midnight sometimes. I don't *know* when he's trying to sleep and, most of all, I am a really nice guy and don't mean to cause a disturbance. If you want me to turn the sound down, all you have to do is ask me equally nicely. Banging on ceilings simply confirms that you are a fucking idiot, in my book.

I should tell you that the first time it happened was after a weekend where he'd taken delivery of a new puppy - and promptly left it in by itself from 5pm Friday until 8am Saturday. It howled and yelped the whole time, of course, kept me awake all night and nearly forced me to ring the RSPCA. Grrr.

But the banging on ceiling thing is becoming more and more frequent. The other week he did it at two in the afternoon and, stupidly, I drove myself to distraction by instantly being compliant and turning the sound down! I gather that he's working shifts and, believe me, I have some sympathy when I really shouldn't give a monkeys. However, banging on my ceiling on a Saturday afternoon is just, er... bang out of order.

Naturally, there are no longer any exchanges of pleasantries when we see each other and, what's more, I wouldn't be too surprised if he's heard me moaning about him to my friends who come to visit and hear him screaming bloody murder at the dog which, which, by the way, is called er... Trixie. ::snigger::

Which leads me to the events of this week. The problem is that the lovely Trixie likes to bark whenever I come home from work and put the key in the door. This causes Mister Angry to go ballistic and to start all sorts of unpleasant shoutyness. After I overheard a particularly nasty shouting match on Sunday during which I was forced to think, "no... he surely didn't just shout out loud what I think he did", he did the same yesterday and removed any and all doubt. You see, he's started shouting this to anyone who will listen, i.e. me.

"Trixie, it's just the fucking gay boy, shut the fuck up."

Yes, read it again. Trixie, it's the gay boy. Trixie. Gay boy. Oh the irony! Seriously though, I am not pleased about this delightful little development in our relationship. Tonight, and I am god-damn serious, if he does it again, he will be getting treated to non-stop gay anthems all night long. I am talking back-to-back YMCA versus It's Raining Men versus I Am What I Am. Bring it on!

Failing that, I will just get my brother in law to beat him up and be done with it.

New Music Crack

2009-06-01T14:23:00.007+01:00

Oh it's been at least a year since I did one of these, so this should be fun. My inspiration for this one came from the absolute marvel that is BT Vision and its bountiful bank of brand new and vintage music videos which you can salivate over to your heart's content. And, if this pick of the new music crop is anything to go by, the charts haven't been as interesting as this in donkey's years.

Hot on the heels of smiley Miley Cyrus, here is the rather lovely Demi Lovato. I'd never heard of her until a couple of weeks ago, but allegedly she's the star of the movie Camp Rock [never seen it] and Disney's TV show Sonny with a Chance [never seen it]. And now she has her own album out, Don't Forget which, after a fly listen, it would seem is damn fine to boot.

Anyway, I have decided that I ADORE her and I completely love this song. And if this amazingly entertaining video is anything to go by, she's a little cooler than the rest of the Disney crowd, don't you reckon? Don't get me wrong, she's still suitably perky - I am digging the constant head shaking, hair ruffling thing she does - but I get the impression she has a bit more of a laid-back grown-up attitude. If you liked Pink's Stupid Girls video, you'll probably enjoy this too.

Out today.

And we go pretty much from one extreme to another with the debut single from Paloma Faith. Was it just me, or were you just a little frightened when you watched this one? Well, I guess that was the whole point. It seems Ms Faith is delighted for us all to know that she's a bit of a live wire, what with all that prancing about in a mirror dress, swinging from chandeliers and generally acting like she's escaped from a travelling circus. "I can be wilder than the wind," she sings, "... I'm in a whole other dimension, dancing doubles on the floor... you think I'm crazy, a little bit hazy but I'm stone cold sober". She's worth the watching, this one, certainly.

With one dash Duffy, one dash Winehouse plus two dashes PJ Harvey, I was really surprised to love this pretty much instantly.

Out 15th June.

Let's ignore the blatant disregard for proper use of apostrophes, shall we? It's the Yeah You's! I can't decide whether these guys are ripping off Alphabeat, The Feeling or Take That, but it doesn't really matter when they're making songs which are as fun and make you smile as much as this one.

As you will see, the video is also really clever, what with the live action constantly intercutting the music. And it just goes to show how hot geeks in glasses really can be, don't you think? Once again, I liked this far more than I expected I would.

Out today.

Little Boots has been simmering under the surface of pop for months now and at last she has a hit on her hands. Sure, she's like several other acts in the charts at the moment - wonderfully retro with heaps of synthy electro à la Visage - but that's not exactly a bad thing. I also so happen to love this because it sounds like something off Kim Wilde's awesome album from 1984 Teases & Dares.

And don't you just love this video? The pixie-esque Miss Boots skips daintily through America's homeless boulevard and gang central whilst they dance around like something out of Michael Jackson's Thriller. On seeing this I asked my ex, who's been whittering on about her for ages, whether she was American. I was wrong. It turns out she's from, er... Blackpool. Blimey.

Out now.

Oh flip, it's the new one from Cascada! If you're like me, you'll have spent the past few years looking down your nose at Cascada and writing them off as pap. Dance music for the Bonkers generation, they're just too cheap and nasty to be taken at all seriously. I noticed recently that someone on a message board had called them "German Chavs". Oh dear.

Well it turns out that Cascada are back with a new sound for their new single, Evacuate The Dancefloor. They are already getting a total kicking for ripping off Lady Gaga's Just Dance but that doesn't stop it easily being the best thing Cascada have ever released before. Seriously, it's light years ahead of anything they've ever done, which not only makes it rather listenable* but actually rather damn good!

Out 29th June.

All hail the Freemasons and Sophie Ellis-Bextor for saving the world of dance and pop from eternal mediocrity! The buzz continues to build surrounding Heartbreak (Make Me A Dancer) (now with brackety things), which is taken from the follow-up to the Freemasons debut LP Shakedown, i.e. the cleverly titled er... Shakedown 2.

And no wonder. This is epic, in-your-face, hyper melodic, sophisticated superdance music at its very best. And if you think this edited down version is something else, wait until you hear the 9plus minute Freemasons Full Length Club Mix, with its anthemic arms aloft section two-thirds along which, mark my words, will go off like the proverbial frog in a sock this summer.

Out 21st June.

* Okay, not the rubbish rap towards the end. Oh well.