Feck, I missed a good riot....
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Feck, looks like I missed a good riot...
Dudes, much as I admire the 'love across baricades' mentality what in sweet fuck did you think would happen if you bus loads of Orange Men down to Dublin! As always Indymedia has some great reports and amazing pictures. I don't pull the 'I'm from a border county' stichk much, but I know the mooks in Dublin don't know shit about Northern loons and Northern loons don't know shit about Dublin loons. They both think they're as hard as each other and putting them in the same fucking city is madness.
Go! Go! Go!
Would love to stay up til all hours and write more but have to teach 24 unlucky/lucky* souls everything I know about Superman in less than 8 hours time and I'm just back from seeing The Go! Team at UEA. They were fucking excellent and are immediately in my top 3 gigs I've ever seen in UEA (the other two? Frank Black and the Catholics and Radio Soulwax).
In Ninja, the Go! Team have a black, female, young and beautiful version of Iggy Pop! think of that! imagine the energy and the high-kicking insanity.
*delete as applicable.
Monday, February 27, 2006
What is the worth of a man?
Well if you're Vernon Kay, the UEA ents team have inadvertently developed a formula that answers this existential poser. Last week Vernon was supposed to preside over a Pyjama Party Sleep-over style affair. I can only imagine what such events entail (and I have in great detail). Entry to this nocturnal debacle would have set you back £5, but because he cancelled the fee was only £3.50.
So a simple 'How much is Veron Kay Worth?' equation would be:
Vernon Kay=whoever went to a UEA pyjama party X £1.50.
It was probably a very tough decision, whether to watch some Norwich oiks stumble around in PJs or do some more coke off of Tess Daly's backside....probably. I don't want to give the impression that I actually go to such events, I only know about them because I have to put the bar's empty bottles into a recycling thing out the back of UEA (actually near my old 'home' Waveney Terrace) and usually grumble to myself at all the shite events and look over at the demolished parts of Waveney and gloat over surviving the 1970s prison-style environment* and the gruesome times that were had by all within.
*have been hearing this urban legend for over 13 years now, in every college I've ever attended or visited and am too old and tired to argue with the wide-eyed alarmists who tell you in all honesty that their halls were 'based on prison designs' that were not used because they did not pass 'Geneva Convention' regulations.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Bootleg toys from hell
The great Bob Byrne over at Clamnuts celebrated Valentine's day in style by discussing bootleg toys. This gave me the excuse I've been waiting for to show pics of the scariest toys ever (see below). My camera couldn't quite pick out horrific details like their bright red lipstick or 'Buzzinski's receeding ginger hairline. It was also an excuse to look up some great sites like Bootleg Toys: The Undiscovered Playthings.
I don't know what it is but I always end living near sources of insanely scary bootleg toys. Back in the day, Badbrute, oldgrom and I used to scour the dodgy discount emporia of Portrush for horrific examples of toymaking brian wrongs. There was "Spatank" that could change from a box-shaped robot to a "tank" that looked suspciously like a box-shaped robot. There was also "Troll Force". Man, whoever worked in whatever toy warehouse that spawned "Troll Force" deserves some sort of prize. Picture the scene, they've got lots of unwanted Troll dolls and loads of unwanted wrestling action figures why not take all the troll heads and put them on wrestlers' bodies...and low, Troll Force was born.
Although I have a soft spot for my "Supercop" action figure (not to be confused with Robert Cop 3), the monstrosities pictured below are prized in my collection of cheap knock-offs. What demented child slaves had to paint these things with toxic paint? Why does the Buzz doll have no space helmet? a more burning question is why he looks like a Tor Johnson in drag. These little fellas have accompanied me to every desk job I ever had, guarding it with their bizarre black eyes, which follow you around the room. I suspect they are coated with toxic paint that has slowly eaten away at my nervous system and may perhaps be the explanations for my bizarre opinions and cantankerous ways.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Magnificant Sevens...
Thankfully the sevens meme that McManus sent on has faciliated some top procrastination musings from the likes of Urban Ramblings' Royston and the Long Moths Of Boredom rather than annoyance.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Feck Valentine's Day one year on...
Has a year passed already, it doesn't seem that long ago I have a two part rant on hating St. Valentine's Day. A year has passed and my opinions remain exactly the same. I couldn't resist putting up my 'Feck Valentine's Day' alternative card design (with apologies to Evan Dorkin.).
I will be spending my St. Valentine's day with a 30 foot Cyberdemon as I try to finish Doom 3 and will probably watch some Justice League: Unlimited, Star Trek: Enterprise and Mighty Boosh episodes I procured off Limewire. I'll probably spend of the rest of the day writing, reading comics and, I don't know, spending some time with my action figures (for once, not a euphemism) and playing a bit of old-school Half-Life for the laugh on my PC, just to have every sad geek base covered. This will be puncuated by making obscene hand gestures to any couples I see walking past my window as I intend not to leave the house, or with any luck, my room, until this vile day is over.
At least I'm not alone on mid-air attack-dog killing....
Who'd have thought it but some of my dodgier answers on the 7 things meme have been shared by young Caddy Powers read his hilarious answers here. Plus his mention of the Green Lantern corps gives me an excuse to include pics like the one above. Damn Wikipedia! once you start you cans stop. A simple wee look up about the Green Lantern corps after watching Justice League episode 'Hearts and Minds' leads to looking up The Question and trying to figure out who all the different Manhunters in the DC Universe are.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Oh Tesco, I know you're trying to take over the world but you know not what you do....
My great sisters got me Tesco DVD rental for my 30th birthday! It's amazing, I can now get to see every insane film I remember from my childhood and half-arsed trailer I saw at three in the morning. So far I've rented The Suicide Girls: The First Tour, Eve of Destruction, They Might Be Giants documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns.
But there's the kicker, and how my sisters' gift just keeps on giving, Tesco email me and say 'hey, do you want to write a review of the DVD you have just received?' and I, like Jeremy in Peep Show on his wedding day, say...."Do I?"
Well yes I do, since, you, Tesco have asked, I would like to rant insanely about the obscure films that no one other than me would want. I mean it's my own fault, I requested these movies...but still I didn't make these movies, it's not entirely my fault if they are steaming piles of shit. And it is also your fault Mr Tesco to ask me to review them, is that what you want? coz that's what's gonna happen'?....
so far, my Tesco DVD reviews:
Suicide Girls: The First Tour The first tour? Let's hope it's the last...
27th January, 2006 Lorcan McGrane from Norwich I had been really looking forward to this title, so it is understandable that I was ultimately disappointed. The problem is one of projection. The Suicide Girls book and Web site projects an image of the participants as arty, sexy, hip and intellectual--one imagines them supping Absynth while reading Bataille and listing to Peaches. Seeing them in the flesh and hearing some of the idiotic things they say had my stomach churning. These aren't sexual revolutionaries these are spoilt rich Americans (all white too, although the Web site is more diverse) with too much time on their hands. Let's face it, behind every occupation like 'part-time tattooist/piercer' or 'burelesque artist', there is a rich parent back home facilitating this facile inanity--hoping some day they'll settle down. There is a difference between having a an intellecually stimulating reason for being 'alternative' and seeing someone on a Web site and thinking I want to be just like them. Although they play at lesbianism, true sexual trangression seems to not exist in the universe of the Suicide girls. Lowlights include: One of the Sucide Girls laughing as she recounts almost biting the nipple off a guy at college and him needing nine sitches: 'And the funniest thing was he never came back to college!' I'm sure he thought it was Hi-lar-ious. The Suicide Girls harassing an Indian cab driver at four in the morning saying they'd pay him ten dollars to lie naked on his cab. A game of 'truth or dare' with no truth beyond what male audiences want to hear and no dares that don't involve society-endangering public nudity. Vague Highlight: The Probot video, although this is not far removed from old Motley Crue ones. Thank feck renting this from Tesco didn't set me back the 18.99 it costs to buy! I din't realise the 'suicide' part of Suicide Girls referred to their intellect
Eve of Destruction Ah jeez, I've got to stop renting films on the basis of video covers I saw in rural Ireland when I was 15! How could one resist the story of a female scientist who creates 'Eve' a female cyborg...in her own image. 'Eve of Destruction'...do you get it yet? It's kind of like 'The Good Life', do you remember the family was called 'the Goods' was it with an 'e'? 'The Goodes' maybe it was...anyway this scientist creates a female cyborg and wouldn't know, it's powered by a nuclear device in its womb. To add insult to insanity, not only does the cyborg have nuclear bits, its brain is fried with the repressed memories and trauma of its creator. Anyway it goes on a crime spree exploding all in its wake...it's up some Hollywood action type to stop it...who ya gonna call? Well, in this case it's Gregory Hines, that famous hard-ass action hero. Suffice to say it's pretty dull. Hines is okay but his tap-dancing skills are hard to equate with saying things like 'shut up bitch!', firing big guns and hanging on that bit that goes below helicopters, you know that bit? I'd love to hang off that bit. Dutch actress Renee Soutendijk has a good stab at the dual role as wallflower scientist and sex-crazed cyborg but she does not seem to get the idiom of American action movies.
Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. I slavishly watched the trailer for this movie on the Internet before it was released, knowing in the back of my mind that it would never be released in the UK. Low and behold, it wasn't. This is an entertaining, well-researched solid documentary about alternative U.S. band They Might Be Giants. Famous in the UK for 'Birdhouse in your Soul', which, as I remember jostled for chart space with the Stone Roses' Fools' Gold and Jeff Wayne's Eve of the War. Anyway, it's good but with a few disappointments. First up: Although Harry Shearer and Micheal McKean (of Spinal Tap and much more besides fame) and Janeane Garofalo appear prominantly in the trailer, they merely read out They Might Be Giants' lyrics out rather than discussing why they like the band. Second, and maybe it's the film geek in me, every interviewee talk about the band name 'They Might be Giants' as if it's some sort of existensial riddle. These are all media-savvy intellectual Americans, don't they know it comes from that 1971 movie of the same name where George C. Scott plays a lawyer who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes.
More to come!.
Missives from the abstract mines...
Back in the day, I worked in the 'abstract mines' of Dublin for shadowy Mr. Burns types based in Harlem. They figured those there Irish would be good at the auld visual speech type stuff. Our job was summarize American consumer magazines in bit-sized abstracts to make them palatable for Yank libararies (especially in the case of Rosie, this was no mean feat! this magazine was pure gold, sure start a magazine, but appear in the background of every fucking cover even almost choking your star to do so). Anyway my old boss at this job who channels his considerable literary talent into Counago & Spaves and may or may not also know Joseph McManus , who may or may not be a member of the CIA. He sent me this meme after this fine post, how could I refuse!
Seven things I must do before I die
- Build a Robocop Chair (that’s a chair made of individual VHS copies of Robocop (original rental versions for the back and main bit, narrower sell-thru covers for the arms). Connected projects are a Robocop 2 coffee table and a Robocop 3 foot stool.
- Rip the throat out of an angry dog in mid air before it attacks me for some reason…with my bare hands…I am imagining some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario here)
- Dress up like Batman.
- Make a decent porn film (I know it’s impossible, but it would be fun trying) .
- Open a comic/film studies theme bar.
- Write a sitcom/comedy novel.
- Paint pictures of the stuff that’s actually in my head.
Seven things I cannot do:
1. Hold on to money in the vicinity of bare breasts.
2. Go to bed at a reasonable hour.
3. Drive a car.
4. Stop rewinding Kinky John speechs in my head.
5. Sleep properly: it’s either too much or too little.
6. Stop watching shite movies
7. Stop comparing everything that happens in real life to some 1980s shite movie or 1990s comedy.
Seven things that attract me to a city:
1. Its comic shops
2. Its minky lady microgoth hangouts
3. Its secondhand book shops.
4. The amount of shops that end in ‘land’ (poundland, iceland QD er land)
5. Its universities and libraries, I just can’t get enough of post apocalyptic arhcitechture.
6. Good off-licences with baskets of cheap, out-of-date beer.
7. Its porn shops.
Seven things I say:
1. like
2. aw for fucks sake
3. hello there, how’s it going.
4. good luck now see ya later
5. aawww She Hulk
6. aw man, this is such a fucking pain in cock.
7. aw cunty bollix
Seven books I like:
1. Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne.
2. The Watchmen by Alan Moore
3. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
4. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
5. At Swim two Birds by Flann O'Brien.
6. The Encyclopedia of Bizarre Sex Practices by Brenda Love.
7. The Psychotronic Video Guide by Michael Weldon
Seven movies that I’ve loved:
1.Robocop
2.Buckaroo Banzai
3. Videodrome
4. The Man in the White Suit
5. The Wicker Man
6. Get Carter
7. The Big Lebowski
(oh I’m already imagining watching them all in row)
Seven people to tag:
Dumb Riffs, Badbrute, Lauratooth, Moths of Boredom, Caddy Powers, No one you know, Ernesto.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Getting old, the big 3-0: Cock and Bull Story
I didn’t think aging and the whole turning 30 thing would affect me, but I was in the library the other day and noticed that some books I wanted were on the lowest shelf and I momentarily couldn’t be arsed to bend down and get them. I imagined my viva where someone was asking “why didn’t you quote such and such's work on…?” and I was there saying “hey! It was on the low shelf, I’m an old man, I’m not reaching down to the low shelf to get some ‘shouldn’t-have-been-published-in-the-first-place’ wank just to say prove I’m aware of it’s presence, my trousers my rip or I might fall over or something'.
The other age scare I had happened the other Friday. These days I teach and do office hours* from 9 to 5 on Fridays. So by the time I’m finished there’s no places on campus open for food and I can never eat before class--nerves and fretting, whether I'm doing well or not. So anyway, I normally go up to the sports park where's there's good food. I ended up on the loo there (see: nerves) the other week and the lights go out in the cubicle and I can’t see a thing. The logical side of me (the lights are on some sort of automatic timer) gives way to pure panic after a few minutes (…maybe the lights haven’t gone out, maybe something biological has finally keeled over in the ‘Jimmny H 3000-a-tron’ and that’s it, I’ve finally gone blind! No more Film Studies for me, I’ll have take music appreciation or something).
Luckily the lights eventually came on and I was alright to go about my business. Which was a good thing because it was the weekend I choose to celebrate my 30th (again!) I managed about three 30th birthday parties. These included Friday night madness in Grad Bar and going to see Cock and Bull Story on Saturday and more pints on Saturday and Sunday, no wonder I feared going blind. Thanks to all who put up with the charade and made an old man very happy: Labhaoise & Pete, Hannah, Lawrence, Neil & Shelley, Karl, Joe & Jen, The Belgian Monk crew and many more.
*This is where you sit in your office waiting for nonexistent students, I don’t feel bad sitting there doing nothing expect putting up my weirdo certificate and pictures of She Hulk and drinking coffee because we don’t get paid for it anyway.
Porn Fatigue: I must be getting old.
One of the delights meeting up with friends you haven’t seen in a while is continuing conversations. I don’t know what it is, but when ever me and certain dumb riffer, the conversation usually turns to bizarre subjects like “Simon Brett stories” everyone we know in Norwich has one, hey if you have a Simon Brett story, please send it in! I’m sure there’s a few we’re missing…I need the full set for my scrapbook.
Other than that and The Big Lebowski, and Spaced and Will Ferrell, the conversation often turns to ‘porn fatigue’ an affliction that I have also discussed with yon Bad Brute(….there’s been some stirrin’s in his quarters but I’m missing the brutes technoprose.)Anyway, ‘porn fatigue’ could be defined as an undue interest in everything other than the explicit sex. Things you say when you’ve got porn fatigue might include:
* That computer is sooo out of date.
* I wonder what books are on that bookshelf (turning head at 90 degrees not to observe something perverse but to see if you have any of the same books as the pornographer, unsurprisingly, yeah I do.)
* When you know far too much about a porn directors interior décor, like ‘oh…there’s Jules Jordan’s chaise longue again…. Oh he’s bought some hideous modern art mirror since the last movie I saw….and a horrible leopard couch.’ man that guy has more money than sense look at the state of his flat (I know it's populated with horny sluts but still he's making a mess of it, it'll look so unhip in ten years etc..)
* When, even though you can’t see their faces you can identify male porn stars by their catch ‘phrases’ (the latter word credits some sort of linguistic construction which these guys)
Here’s your cut out and keep guide:
Rocco: ‘You nasty girl?’ (I think it may be a fair assumption, you don’t need to ask her like 200 hundred times)
Jules Jordan: ‘There you go’ about 100 times
Erik Everhard: ‘arrrrghgh uuuuuuhhh’ etc. (hey Erik, I know you're doing unseakable things, we all know, because, like, it's being recorded but you don't have to rub it in!)
Vanishing Shite! 1970s remakes good and bad....
On New Year’s Eve I perused the listings for some fine post-pub movie and spied Vanishing Point, great I thought, what could be better that one of the finest films of the 1970s. Back when action movies didn’t need characters tortured by familial angst, or if they did, they didn't moan on and on about it, they just had a wacky gimmick like they just will not stop driving for some reason. Like Point Black, Vanishing Point is one of those action flicks with a protagonist on a simple-minded quest that bends to no logic or societal demand.
Imagine my disgust when I turn on and find not bushy haired Eliot Gould—alike Barry Newman but Viggo Mortensen. Hey, I know that’s not too bad, but I’m leading up to the real travesty…Super Soul the character so well played by Cleavon Little was played by…no wait….first up, think of some names, if you were to cast Super Soul now, who would you choose? Jamie Foxx?, Chris Rock? Chris Tucker even? All possible but the choice for hack TV-Movie director Charles Robert Carner is obvious….Jason Priestly of course, Jason fucking Priestly mangling of the most stirring lines of 1970s cinema ‘The question was not when he was gonna stop but WHO was gonna stop him’ mangled in a southern-moustachioed drawl by this teen-soap dewy-eyed retard. Don't get me started, the naked lady on the motorbike has a bikini on and instead of nihilism and explosions we get redemption and happily ever after Gladiotor-style shite.
Luckily I had a good 1970s remake to fall back on, Rockstar games’ The Warriors. It’s great although frustrating when you’re trying to do a 'burn' on some enemies 'turf' and you keep getting’ 'bopped' by the Moon Runners or something (sounds almost perverse, although in the world of Jimmny, everything does). In my occasional urge to matchmake fictional characters, I always felt DJ Super Soul from Vanishing Point and the amazing and sorely missed Lynne Thigpen as the Radio DJ in The Warriors would make a great couple.
One more fucking thing to blame Tom Cruise For!
Along with The Warriors I have recently also been consigned to bowels of hell (as if Norwich’s post-apocalyptic architecture wasn’t enough!) by playing Doom 3 on the Xbox. My recent computer game history (apart from the Alex Kid in Miracle World on the Sega Master Sytem II years) has been Doom on the PC, Half-Life on the PC and Halo on the Xbox so I do demand excellence from my first-person shooters. Doom 3 is great in parts and manages to make the funny versions of the original PC game genuinely terrifying. Anyway, I was looking up Doom on Wikipedia and came across this gem from Doom developer John Carmack:
"There is a scene in "The Color of Money" where Tom Cruse [sic] shows up at a pool hall with a custom pool cue in a case. "What do you have in there?" asks someone. "Doom." replied Cruse with a cocky grin. That, and the resulting carnage, was how I viewed us springing the game on the industry."
Christ is there no element of popular culture that gurning, possible murderer Cruise does not touch. Imagine! Doom 3 could have been called 'Sometimes you just gotta say fuck it' or 'You Complete Me' or 'Everybody Runs'.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Meeting of the blogs
Christmas was a chance to meet up with young Karl of Dumb Riffs fame, whenever we met though we always end up pulling similar faces, compare the above gurning with this from last Paddy's Day. This was in The Village, which used to Mono*, which used to be The Mean Fiddler in Dublin, which used to be a cool place to hangout but this time around it was full of twats in suits singing along to the Kaiser Chiefs (in my day it was full of people in T-shirts singing along to the Pixies). we also went to Carnivale, which used to be called Nasdaq! do Dublin club owners just flick through newspapers to come up with names?
Was good to check out my old haunts the IFI (where I once watched 17 horror films in two and a half days, a personal best/worst depending on your point of view), Forbidden Planet, Sub City, The Secret Book and Record Shop (where I purchased this fine album good job too before they burn them all). I loved seeing the new Dublin-based comics there some truly amazing works lke the demented humour of Bob Bryne who has produced a free small press yoke of genius called The Shiznit which should get seen more outside Ireland as it's amazing and gives me the warm feeling that Scrap Saturday does when I'm in this heathen land. He's got a blog too and was interviewed by SilverBulletComics, no mean feat.
*I can see why they might have changed this, at the time it had a retro hi-fi feel to it but now it just reminds one of Mono. "Missed parties. Postponed exams. Sitting out a season of team sports. And loneliness. These are a few of the ways that scourge of high school and college students known as "mono" can affect your life"...I had all the latter without contracting shit.
Bye Bye death labia: The end of a glittering catering career
By some bizarre quirk of fate, I to avoided the firing fanny that was gunning for me at my kitchen job and managed to give my notice, work it all and get my last paycheck! These may seem like given events for normal jobs but anything can happen in the wacky world of kitchen portering. Although I can't say I miss the rancid bins, 12 hour days, 6 hour stints standing with no break, getting hit with hot plates and being called a stupid Irish twat with a regularity that I can't say I was pleased with (i.e. more than once), I do miss the humour of the kitchen. In these shit jobs you do have to laugh at everything, cliched as it sounds. Whenever need for a 'butternut squash' was mentioned, I always had to say in the manner of some decrepit old man* 'oooh don't squash my butter-nuts' no I can't stop saying it to myself and giggling. You may think that kitchen's run on skill and percision but they actually run on swearing, very very sugary tea, bacon sandwiches, burning yourself repeatedly, flirting and pounding pounding techno music. I did learn to cook a bit better and daydream of having a nice kitchen and some kick-ass cooking equipment someday. I also met some of the best, most-hard-working people I've ever encountered and have new hatred for rude costumers who take the piss of waiting staff and now tip a lot more, so all in all--apart the bhroncitis and the working every single day-- not a bad time. See below for pics of our staff party, bowling and eating were involved somewhere but I mostly remember/misremember the 12 hours of drinking.
*Not much of a stretch impression wise as this is what I am.
In your face bhroncitis-kitchen-porter hell: Jimmny Lives!!
Howdy all, it's been a while but it's finally time to poke my wee head into the blogosphere. Details above (with festive photos) but in summary: I survived bhroncitis and the threats of the death labia, getting to leave my kitchen job without getting fired. Had a great Christmas and New Year and turned 30! My folks got me a laptop, which goes some way to explaining my blogging absence. All my blog stuff was on my desktop PC which seemed to get jealous from the amount of time I was spending in bed with my laptop watching and burning DVDs and listening to podcasts. So it took a while to slowly coax my old stand by desktop PC into cooperating by trying to ignore my brassy tart of of a black, sleek and fast laptop. Still feel like a cheating boyfriend when I watch Justice League: Unlimited on the laptop after all the happy hours I spent watching it on the desktop.
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