Crackerwax

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Donnas!

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Great riff that don’t you think? At one point they were the only girl band in Palo Alto (don’t say I don’t love you fact fans) and peddled a high energy punk-pop sound, things changed though and most of the influences have been polished out of The Donnas now.

In the early days they sounded like The Ramones on helium, those days are now well and truly gone and what we’re left with is tight bubble gum rock of the highest quality.

Not that I’m complaining though, after all there are only so many times you can hear teenage girls shout 1-2-3-4!

Swans are bastards. Cantankerous, curvy necked, good for nothing bastards. Think of the one fact you know about swans. Think about it now. Go on.

Thinking of it? Good. Right, I bet the fact you’re thinking of is that a swan can break a man’s arm with one flap of its wing. I’m right aren’t I? Thought so. What does that tell us about swans? I’ll tell you what it tells us, it tells us that swans have built up a reputation for being hard. These feathery bastards are laughing at us!

The only person allowed to eat swan in the UK is the Queen, have you seen her munching down on a swan burger recently? No me neither. They’ve even got to the Queen! If she can’t enjoy swan kebab meat and chips who can?

The problem is that not only is the swan the vicious, beady eyed, psychopath of the avian world, it compounds that by being moody with it. The phrase ‘cob on’, meaning someone who’s in a mood, is directly related to the fact that the name for an adult male swan is Cob!

I say it’s time to act, I’ve had enough of these bastards, it’s time we brought them down a peg or two. Next time you see a swan flick it the V sign or give it a bit of verbal (‘Fuck off back to Cygnusland you fluffy white fucker!’ is one I use). They’ve got the ponds now, how long before they take the streets?

Looks like both The Long Good Friday and The Sweeney are being remade and are due for release in 2008.

Mark my words, only bad will come of this.

The Long Good Friday is the most worrying of the two. Not only is Paul W. S. Anderson attached to direct but the hole shebang has been relocated to Miami. Now give that a few moments to sink in. Miami. How the fuck is that going to work?

You’ve got a director that’s so shit he managed to fuck up Alien Vs. Predator, which if he’d actually stuck to the Dark Horse story would have been amazing, and to top it off they’ve moved the whole thing to Miami. Why?

As for The Sweeney, I’m reserving judgment on that for the moment. The big rumour is that Ray Winstone is going to be Regan and Carter might be played by Danny Dyer. This is all well and good but The Sweeney was a piece of its time, the 1970′s were integral to the stories and it just wouldn’t be The Sweeney if it were set in any other time.

Face it, The Sweeney in the eighties is The Bill, in the nineties it’s Homocide: Life On The Streets and in the noughties it’s The Shield. Unless they make this a period piece it’s fucked, at best it’s something other than The Sweeney.

Something has gone wrong with the world if someone can grow to the age of 19 and come out with something like this:

‘Is that Sun up there the same one my mum sees in Essex?’

Fuck me…

I’ve been to Singapore a couple of times. I didn’t like it much, it was way too hot for a pale Jock like me.

However the one redeeming thing about Singapore was that when it rained, it rained. This particular mind numbing piece of footage was taken from the 15th floor of the Singapore Sheraton, on a Tuesday if I recall.

In 2003, while doing a bit of web testing, I accidentally booked myself a trip to New York. That’s not a joke by the way, that’s more or less the way it happened. Click, click, click, credit card details previously stored, bingo you’re off to New York.

So anyway, I booked it on Saturday and flew out the following Thursday. It was a great few days away from the stresses of work and as I went on my own I could do exactly what I pleased. Obligatory photos follow.

[slideshow=newyork2003]

New York is a really cool city, being able to buy an MP3 player at two in the morning and then go and get a slice of pizza and a beer is just awesome! In fact it was so awesome that I got married there only four years later.

If you’ve never been, go now you won’t regret it.

Not very macho I know, but hey I never claimed to be macho. That’s the trouble when you look as overtly manly as I do, people judge you, they judge you. Damn this cruel world.

Nevertheless let’s get a countdown of the best love scenes in movies, ever!

1. True Romance
   Clarence and Alabama meet, not altogether by chance, they enjoy pie, he takes her back to the comic store he works in, shows her Spider-Man, takes her to his pad, they make love and so it begins… All of the above takes place as Charles and Eddie warble Wounded Bird and is followed by a touching conversation atop a roof. Awesome!
2. Blade Runner
   Deckard’s told Rachel she’s a robot, she’s not too happy about it, Deckard’s a robot too ‘cept he don’t know it, so in his clumsy robot way he decides to comfort her. Cue Vangelis and some dodgy fumbling. Of course it all ends well-ish, robot love is tough in 2019.
3. Out Of Sight
   George Clooney, smooth criminal that he is, manages to seduce the Fed that’s on his tail (the actually quite good J-Lo). They meet in a hotel bar, snow falling outside the window, exchange some sexually charged chat and before you know it, it’s all gone slow-mo and they’re getting undressed in a hotel room.

The reason for this list’s existence is that we happened to watch True Romance on Sky Movies tonight. That and the fact the Leprekorn says that all I do is rant, so Leprekorn this one’s for you!

Swedish eclectopop princess Stina Nordenstam released And She Closed Her Eyes in 1994, not that you’d know it but she did. It’s a neat little album and it contains this soothing groove here:

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Ambient smooth sounds, yet at the same time working in a bit of sax, how did she do it? Mark Radcliffe I recall played this to death. Those were the days though, Mark and Lard on the late shift playing brilliant alt-pop, it was like John Peel’s show but with tunes.

It was great being able to listen to the radio and know that you were going to hear new stuff, non-mainstream stuff that you knew you weren’t going to have heard anywhere else.

Having said all this some of you may have already heard this as part of the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo And Juliet, which as I recall was one of Craig Armstrong’s works. He’s good too you know?

Anyway enjoy this for now but remember to buy And She Closed Her Eyes, it’s great!

For those not in the know that’s a quote from Resident Evil 4! Told you I was a games geek.

Just in case you are new to the site, frequent bars at railway stations and drink Grolsch. Welcome!

Was browsing through my old photos tonight and look what I found!

[slideshow=kate] 

That’s the world famous eco-nazi Kate. Never happier than when she’s repacking your shopping, lecturing you on the best way to compost your vegetable peelings or otherwise complaining about your lack of awareness of the environment.

The lovely Kate can normally be found trolling around the reduced section of supermarkets looking for damaged yoghurts. This is where I ultimately see her in the future, plodding around pushing a trolley full of Whiskas being followed by the feint whiff of piss.

Given all of this you’d think we hate her! That is not the truth though, we love her very much and relish each and every stern telling off she gives us for our bad habits. We would of course love her even more if she arrived on time some times…

I recently stumbled upon an article in the Wikipedia about number stations and it reminded just how freaky they were.

Have a listen to this, it’s one of the most famous. It’s called Lincolnshire Poacher because that’s what the tune at the start is. Stick with it, it takes a couple of minutes for the numbers to start.

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How mad is that?
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Then try delicious new funions!™

In each and every bag of funions!™ there are eight delicious miniature pickled onions, bursting with vinegary goodness. An ideal snack for lunchtime, break time, anytime!

Try funions!™ today!

I’d like to thank the people at funions!™ for their very generous gift, it really was most kind, thanks guys!

Spent the best part of tonight fixing my website.

Don’t know why it was broken, but it was. Cleared all the themes out, reloaded them and eventually got it working again.

Phew!

Well it’s working again now and as an added bonus I’ve added a user tracking doo-hickey too! Get in!

How’s this for a slice of fried gold?

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The song’s off Boards Of Canada’s first proper album Music Has The Right To Children, and it’s a stonker.

I was introduced to this song by Scott Sinfield of Portal fame, an ex-housemate of mine. It came to me on MiniDisc, ah MiniDisc I miss your highly compressed 74 minutes.

Here it is, the best idea to ever hit the pre-packaged fast food market. Aimed squarely at kids, ladies and gentlemen I present to you…

funions!™

Pronounced ‘fun-yuns’, funions!™ are a tasty snack pack of eight miniature pickled onions, are sold in a resealable little package and are great value.

Cracking idea, huh?

Went to see Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix tonight. Reasonable movie with a fairly astounding magic fight at the end. Daniel Radcliffe is still a little wooden and Gary Oldman was acting (as in actual acting) fairly strangely, like he’d been had by the Hypno-Toad.

I digress.

As I sat in my seat patiently waiting for the torture to begin, a family came in. Mum, dad and two children gently strolled past to their seats right at the side of the cinema. Of course the two kids had to have maximum Potter exposure so wanted to sit in the middle of the cinema where I was.

It was then I had the thought of offering them the seats beside me. As soon as the thought formed, I panicked.

Images flooded into my mind of the dad standing up and yelling ‘Paedo’, at me at the top of his voice. He’d follow this up by repeatedly punching me in the face. Whilst he was doing this his wife would be yelling ‘Kill him!’, at the point where she was just about to pass out from the exertion of her hysteria, she would spot the sweets I’d bought.

This would renew her vigour.

‘He’s got sweets, he’s grooming our children! He’s a paedophile, kill him!’ she would yell. The rest of the cinema would then descend upon me and deliver the hoofing of a life time.

Of course after the crowd had, justifiably, beaten me to death, the police would come to my flat. There they would find:

• All the Harry Potter books
• A selection of games consoles
• A old teddy bear
• The Wizard Of Oz on DVD
• Bottles of Pepsi in the kitchen

This information would leak out to the press, with photos, and The Sun would run a full page headline ‘Suburban Kiddy Lure Hell Death Chamber’, or similar. They would run this piece over eight pages, there would be photos of me. I would look evil.

So I didn’t say anything. Sad world really isn’t it…

Don’t you love E3? Ok, it’s a little less grand this year but all the cool shit still goes down there!

Not only do we get the new Halo 3 trailer (jeans creaming optional, thank you Leprekorn) and the Killzone 2 trailer but Sony have only just gone and released details of the new and improved PSP, the PSP Slim. Get in!

They’ve reduced the size making it smaller, thinner and lighter, increased its battery life and also appear to have rounded its edges a bit more. All this and it’s still got the same size screen!

The other great thing is that now it’s slot loading! Great stuff, much better than the MiniDisc style pop up loader it has currently, it always felt flimsy to me, like it was just about to snap off.

The rumour mill has of course gone in to hyperdrive, current speculation is that it’s going to have Bluetooth and maybe even 4Gb of internal flash memory! 4Gb built in would be very nice, though I’m not certain that it’s a guarantee yet.

This redesign is of course is very good news, the original PSP is shit to play for prolonged periods of time, it did have something of the brick about it . Hopefully this redesign may have cured some of those problems. I doubt it though, my main gripe was always that fucking analogue nubbin, which was as much use as a chocolate fire guard and it doesn’t appear to have moved.

Still one can always hope. You know I’m going to get one anyway…

Rachael Bell claimed her web page was hacked into by friends who posted an invitation to a ‘trash the average-sized family house disco party’.

Define hacked Rachael?

Hacked my arse, most likely you were too dim to realise the repercussions of what you were doing when you posted your party invite to MySpace in the first place. You did this, you alone.

The fact that after the event you, and everyone you know, has to pretend that some shadowy one armed man did it, just so your mum will be able to claim on her insurance, doesn’t change anything. You posted the invite and directions and you know it.

What’s more though, seemingly, Ms Bell left this reply on the Wednesday after at 12.38.

haaa i no was’nt in any other photo’s!! ekkk well i hope u liked the party ..was fuckin wild like!!!hmmm another lol???xx

Gosh, those MySpace hackers are really thorough aren’t they. Fucking liar.

The Church Of England’s recent attack on the PlayStation 3 game Resistance: Fall Of Man is without doubt a piece of band wagon jumping of the highest order.

In a time when the media is in a frenzy, desperate to pin every evil of society on video games, the Church Of England thinks it would be a good idea to complain about the use of Manchester Cathedral as a setting in the game. In fact they went as far as to say that it was virtual desecration and that it promoted gun crime in Manchester, how they quite worked that one out is beyond me. Regardless they then proceeded to insist Sony make a ‘substantial donation’. Greedy fuckers.
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As anybody that knows me will attest, I’m massively into my games.

It all started when my dad bought me a second hand ZX Spectrum+ (proper keys and a reset button!) in the mid-eighties and snowballed from there, I’ve had practically every console ever made and love the whole scene to bits.

Currently under my telly sit a PlayStation 3, Xbox360, Wii, Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 and I don’t travel anywhere without my Nintendo DS Lite. I’m considering getting a PSP again, as they can link up with the PlayStation 3 and do all sorts of fancy stuff, but that’s a thought for another post it’s the DS aspect that’s cool.

I’ve had my interest piqued recently by DSpec, a ZX Spectrum emulator for the DS, it doesn’t work with my flash cart yet but when it does it’ll be pretty cool. Being able to play the classic games that started my love of gaming when I’m on the train, in bed or when I’m sitting have a coffee in Starbucks is going to be superb. Fantastic stuff this modern technology.

Little known L.A. band Dragster Barbie released one self-funded EP in 2000 and then promptly disappeared.

Demos, Live And Other was its title and it was a belter! The track below is the title track from said EP and it too was a complete cracker!

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Listen to it and let me know what you think.

Was watching Orange Playlist the other night, Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters was on and it was great! That is if you can bear to watch a hugely talented individual being interviewed by a thick geordie.

While I was watching Mr Shears (not his real name one suspects) mentioned his love for David Bowie, this lead to a quick montage of Bowie moments, one of which bore the following subtitle.

[singlepic=216]

Compass? Interesting concept, what happened there then? Was he concentrating on traveling North and ended up walking into something? Perhaps the magnetic field of the compass caused some kind of mutation? Or could it be that they’re just really fucking stupid and actually meant pair of compasses?

While we’re at it the phrase ‘enhanced by an unfortunate school accident’ makes no sense, for three reasons. Firstly it should read ‘unfortunate accident at school’ and secondly how can something be unfortunately enhanced, an enhancement suggests good fortune to me.

Finally the whole wonky eye business has been the basis of his look for his entire career, so it wasn’t that unfortunate anyway was it?

Former ‘glamour model’ Middlemiss clearly had a hand in this.

Could you imagine Christopher Walken ever selling you Skittles?

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Or how about poor Dennis (and for that matter Hanson!).

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I wish I could do a good Walken. Sigh.

Ok, looks like I’ve been co-opted. The stag do is now open to all my friends, ladies included. This means Kate can come, although one hopes after her last trip to Birmingham she will be better prepared for the rigours of The Lash.

Additionally the plan has once more also been revised. Slighty.

It’s Birmingham now. It’s still the 25th of August and the itinerary should hopefully go a little something like this:

• Arrive Birmingham
• Check in to a hotel (£66!)
• Go out for drinks and food
• Back to hotel, get changed into evening clothes
• Onto streets once more and to Jongleurs
• Jon gets duct taped to a lampost. In his pants

Anybody like the sound of that plan?

This is the business.

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How good is that? The answer is very good, me predicts a hit!

But I’m back now!

Just been away on a wee break and very enjoyable it was too. I will be updating the site with loads of really great photos!

In other news it looks like Kylie Minogue will be joining Doctor Who at Christmas. Oh joy. That should make it even better! For fucks sake. Read this for the facts, the title says more than I could ever hope to.

Although in further other news, I was subject to a bit of a revelation regarding Doctor Who on Saturday morning. Say no more.