Bye for a bit...

Howdy all, will be away from broadband land for a while, going home for my sister's wedding, here she is on the left, Brianan, with my other younger sisters, Caitrin and Labhaoise (L-R), a certain gurning fool in the background.

She's marrying this fella, Paddy

By family concensus my amazing spider-man tie is *not* invited to the wedding so I ordered these fine pewter bat cufflinks from Amazon I will be an usher and am doing a reading, it has to be from the bible I think, I can't make up my own:'From Frank Miller, a letter to Batfans, year one: 'and lo the swat team ascended and the batman scowled 'neath the building surrounded by a billowing cape, and lo he declared 'I'm the best at what I do, I love being Batman' or and 'lo in Book 1 of Watchmen, Rorschach declared: "got hungry waiting. Helped myself to some beans. Hope you don't mind". Oh, I also have to cook a fryup the morning of the wedding so I'm bringing my chef's outfit and newly found cooking 'skills' as short order chef (that's it's technical term, although it's mostly glowering silently while getting bollocked for things outside of your control), I can make great onion rings though....

Spider-tie, spider-tie, does whatever a spider-tie can

Batman Cufflinks

I'll probably be also:

Congratuations Brianan and Paddy.

Dead Man's Shoes - Opening Credits

This is England - opening credits

Halo: Arms Race HD

Iron Man Comic-Con Footage

nerdgasms ahoy!

Jon Favreau talks about Iron Man @ Comic Con

Transformers: The Movie (1986) Original Trailer

Toys who "do horrible things to each other"....Orson Welles as Unicron

Going to see Transformers tomorrow, the Guardian gave it such a great review I kinda have to:

It's all part of the sensory-overload that the great man[Michael Bay] himself delicately calls "fucking the frame". And he has outdone himself this time. In Transformers, the director and the frame have protracted and meaningful relations, and it is over two hours before Mr Bay as it were pulls on his trousers and promises to call the frame some time next week.
It won't be long before these lovebirds get back together.

In readiness, while having some lunch I watched the first 30 or so minutes of Transformers: The Movie. I had two transformers while young, one that was a plane and one that was a dinobot, but wasn't as obsessed by Transformers as some of some contemporary artists and scholars and computer whizzes.

Of course, for the film geek the fact that planet-eating villian Unicron was Orson Welles' last role makes it worth the watch alone, I love these quotes describing his role, from Wikipedia:

Orson Welles was in declining health during production. Shortly before he died, he told his biographer, Barbara Leaming, that he had spent the day "playing a toy" in a movie about toys who "do horrible things to each other." Film historian Joseph McBride quotes Welles saying of his participation: "I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed."Welles' voice was apparently so weak by the time he made his recording that technicians needed to run it through a synthesizer to salvage it. The voicework for Transformers: The Movie was the last movie project he worked on, as 5 days after his final dubbing session, Welles died of a heart attack.

The sheer carnage and death of so many characters in the first 30 minutes or so of Transformer: The Movie is breathtaking also the 'hi-tech' tape/ghetto blaster type robots that shoot endless tapes out of their guts that turn into wee dogs, surely dropping something and watching Transformers must be a nightmare, as one would be afraid that one's lowly old 1980s tape deck might turn into a robotic rotweiller in the dead of night and rip your addled throat out at the drop a matrix gut energy thing....and of course a baddie who is just a big gun, who holds the gun? do all the decepticon get to hold him, bit limiting for a nemeis isn't it? Perhaps it's just my perverse mind but is there not a dodgy S&M master/slave thing going on here? Get in me guts ya wee tape!!

also:

Slate: When Orson Welles Was a Transformer

Fuckin' A man

People often ask me if I'm surprised at the amount of attention The Big Lebowski has received over the past few years. They usually seem to expect me to say "yes," but my answer is always "no". What surprises me is that it didn't do as well as I thought it would when it first came out. It was so damn funny, and the Coen brothers had just won the Academy award for Fargo - I thought people would flock to this thing. To tell you the truth, I was sort of disappointed. But now ... well ... I'm glad people are digging it, that it found its audience.

Jeff Bridges in the Guardian today.


Zen and the art of Dudeliness



From the forward from this book

There's also a BFI Modern Classic, about bloody time.

The Tom Green Show-Slutmobile

ah, the fondly remembered (by me) slutmobile...

WEIRD AL ROCKS TOM GREEN LIVE

Tom Green live, proper chat show, none of this tell us about your new film shite...

I'm a backwards man, I'm a backwards man.....

I was working down the abstract mines when Freddy Got Fingered came out and marvelled at the negative critical concesus that delevopled. Once such as concensus is created then people who've never even seen it chime in say it's one of the worst films ever, when, in fact, it's one of the best. It's also got a great supporting cast in Rip Torn, Julie Hagarty, Eddie Kay Thomas, Antony Michael Hall and Marisa Coughlan.


I always found it funny, and in comparison to some of the shite like Epic Movie that comes out these days it is positively cinematic genius. Much to my pleasure many of my friends, both academic and pub/restaurant brethern, love it and many a happy time is spent singing 'dayy would you like some sausage' and 'I found a treasure' to each other. Apart from the post-modern conceit there's not too much that separates Borat from Tom Green in terms of pushing the envelope of physical comedy, but this obvious gross-out element blinds the casual viewer to the tradition of comics like Andy Kaufman and Neil Hamburger.

For the last few weeks I have been loving Tom Green live his current nightly live chat show, direct from his living room and available on itunes and over the Web. It takes a while to get all the references, the show, with audience participation, has created it's own injokes and lingo like 'barrel roll' and unliekely performance like Tom freestyling with the Jurassic Five

Apart from his rapping and skating background, Green displays such a genuine interest in media and technology that for the media geek such a spontaneous nightly chat show is an amazing pleasure, and you can call in on Skype! but it's only live over here at like 4am, wait a minute, I like staying up until 4am! There's also the inspiration that almost anyone can created a live tv show from their bedroom and if it's good enough people will come it eventually, Clive James' Talking in the Library has a similar intimate feel with smart people just smoking drinking and talking on camera it's mesmerising instead of the stilted prescripted questions of most mainstream chat shows.

Crooked Little Book...

A lot of people ask me if I've read Kaviler and Clay, well I've tried I have this edition which is quite bulky and I can't carry it around and, mmm, the dog ate my homework, and when you're writing a PhD do don't get to read fiction, as much as I have fond memories of keeping up with likes of Coupland and Auster. I mean the only paperback I've literally read cover to cover in recent years is this great piece of literature . I think they're gonna have to release a revised edition to include her, ahem, appendix. Anyway, as good as Kaviler and Clay is (the 100 or so pages of it I've read anyway) what niggles me is the sense that Chabon gets a Pulitzer for a story inspired by Siegel and Shuster yet the real Jerry Siegel was working as a mail clerk where the secretaries almost thought his claims of co-creating Superman were the demented ravings of a senile old man. With literature's comfortable poaching of popular culture ideas for shits, giggles and prizes, (as much as is it is well-meaning and from lit-comics-geeks) it's going to be interesting to see what the reviewers are going to make of:

Warren Ellis's book Crooked Little Vein (Ellis makes up like 47 percent of the Internet as if you didn't know)

The updates about the publication of Ellis's debut novel on his site and through his mail out bad signal have been an interesting look at the differences between the comic and book industries. The way in which some comic buyers with monthly subscriptions for comics would bitch if the book wouldn't be out in time for their monthly waddle down to Bilbo's Bumhole Bonanza Bobbins megastore, like it was the first book they ever bought and they don't know how bookstores work:

I'm not in charge of shipping. I don't know when CLV will reach your country. I don't know when Amazon will send it to you. I'm getting a stupid number of questions on these topics. Listen: I'm Not The Publisher.

This is Not Comics: this book is not released on a Wednesday cycle.There is no "late." If a local supplieris telling you they don't get thebook until August, well, that's when they're getting the book, and it's nothing to do with me.

The cover is from a political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin. It has nothing to do with any band, any poster, or Skrulls.

Amazon have put up the first chapter as a pdf and it had me laughing a lot, it's very good, with elements of urban legends, film noir, X-Files-like consiracies, gonzo journalism and paronoid sleepless mania.

There's also some great hardboiled one liners from the private eye protagonist:

It was one of those unusual moments where I couldn't think of a swearword bad enough
...

And right there is where I needed a time machine, so I could go back and shoot myself

I had fears that literary critics would have the knives out for a comics writer, but I can see it being a huge hit, but not in the recently annoying 'don't tell me don't tell me' Harry Potter way, but I'd much rather see Borders open for 35 hours to sell Warren Ellis paraphanilia and people acting more like people in Ellis' writng.

Interview with Ellis at Publishers Weekly

Listener, his second novel is already delivered

P.S. People going on about Superhero themes in books and TV, rather than comics, it's like Wild Cards never happened.

Weirdest Spam message ever....hell yeah I want to make "super children."..

Subject: walking across campus,

Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:02:02 -0800

principles will help

Good afternoon. What are you up to?

I am good looking girl. Would you mind
me showing some nice pictures of me?

about creating "super children" contribute to consequently not
protected over and just play. to have looked at your

Waiting Trailer

Ryan Reynolds In Waiting..

Jimmny's post-kitchen shift movie of the week....

To encourage writing, I currently keep all my shifts at the bar until the weekend which mean three days of bar/kitchen work and not being able to think about anything smart by the time I finish my 10-5.30 Sunday shift of veg and potato prep and making roasts (there is no escape from the kitchen). Anway I try to go and see/rent some movie with nothing to do with superheroes as a break and to keep up with contemporary cinema, this how I ended up watching The Shit Wicker Man and Captshittery.

This weeks wasn't too bad: Rob McKittrick's Waiting... , official site here, which kinda does for working in kitchens/restaurants what Office Space did for working in offices. Some of the aspects of kitchen work, such as the customers that arrive 2 minutes before the end of service and the contrast bewteen mad shouting and swearing in the kitchen and the forced pleasantry of front of house is well captured. In the kitchen, my top 3 swears (in other of severity) on receiving orders are:

1. aw, ballbags
2. aw, bollocks
3. aw, cunty bollocks.

Since seeing Blade: Trinity, I kind of have a soft spot for Ryan Reynolds he's not quite weird enough looking for character roles (and here he has to act along side Luis Guzman and Chi McBride, masters of being 'that guy') but he's not quite dashing enough to be a leading man. I think he'd make a good Flash, but that project seems to have stalled a bit and he might not be in the role. It also has a cameo from Wendie Malick from Dream On fame and a good performance from Anna Faris and generally more drinking, smoking and sex the normal contemporary comedies.

Cloverfield, teaser

Simpsons Jimmny

Over at the Simpsons Movie Web site they have this pretty cool avatar generator, send in yours and I'll put them up on the site for the laugh.

See, this is what would happen if Bruce Wayne was real...

Nothing sinister going on here at all then?....

Henry Nicholas III: Hey ladies, wanna see my 'batcave'

...oh he'd be making a cave alright, it just would be for keeping leather outfits, well it would be for keeping leather outfits, just not for crimefighting:


LOS ANGELES (AP) - The co-founder of semiconductor maker Broadcom Corp., under scrutiny in a federal stock options probe, was accused seven years ago of building an underground hideaway at his estate to indulge in drugs and sex with prostitutes, according to court documents.

Full story ("Billionaire denies building secret sex lair") from the Guardian Here. To add to the life initating art scenario, and evolking another masked millionaire, The Green Hornet, the beanspiller was Nicholas' PA Kenji Kato:

Kenji Kato worked for Mr Nicholas as an assistant for seven years and alleges the tycoon ordered him to provide balloons filled with the laughing gas nitrous oxide for guests at parties held by the businessman. Guests' drinks would be spiked with powdered ecstasy pills, he alleges.

An article from a year ago: Henry Nicholas, Superhero, is strangely prescient...

Comedy Genius

thank to youtube, I now know what young bob's been on about, hooray for nerd stand up

Funny toon

Bobity Bryne's first full flash, cartoons and cross dressing...I'm pleased

flash day one

although I still have soft spot for his first opus!

Portrait of the artist as a young papier mache head...

Especially for John of Counago and Spaves a mention the Guardian's fine interview with Frank Sidebottom today here. :

What's the greatest threat to art today?

The Germans coming back and stealing it all, and then burning it.

What advice would you give a young artist just starting out?


Get some paper and pens. And forget the beret and the attic. You can do art just as well in a shed.

What work of art would you most like to own?


Peter Blake's cut-outs for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album cover. I'd line them up in my living room to look like I had loads of mates.



What's the best advice anyone ever gave you?


My mum told me to get a proper job. I ignored her.

Peter Cook - Bedazzled

THE WICKER MAN The trailer for the original film, 1973

summer is a comin in...

The Wicker Man - Comedy Trailer

Best Scenes From

not the bees! NOT THE BEES! my eyes! MY EYES!

I renaged, on two counts, one on not blogging, and two, on seeing The Wicker Man , what can Isay, I was weak, The Wicker Man is not only one of my favorite films but one of the best films of all time, so I was incurably curious about the remake. I knew that there was no way U.S. producers would allow the main character in a movie to be a virgin but making the community a matriarchy means that if you want an action hero running around and clocking people in the gob and everyone in charge is a woman then you are going to have Nicholas 'GhostRider/God I wish I remembered Leaving Las Vegas and Wild at Heart more clearly but you've obscured them with many many many shit movies that make even Vampire's Kiss look good' Cage...(that's his official name too) going around punching women in the face. He even drop kicks lovely Leelee Sobieski in the stomach, punches a women to steal her bear costume and "bike jacks" a lovely school mistress and makes his slow getaway over uneven ground in a comedic moment worthy of Father Ted.

One of the lunkheaded elements is that the bee-allergic Cage, just happens to get trapped on an island whose main industry is.....bee husbandry, in a feat of non acting Cage's character is put in a bee helmet and some CGI bees attack him and one can almost imagine Hollywood's top woman-hater Neil LeBute going , 'right there's bees attacking you, express this with 'acting' and Cage just shouts 'arggh the bees, not the bees', and he goes 'they're attacking your eyes' and Cage, quick as a whip goes, 'my eyes! not my eyes!'

Anyway, seeing the Wicker Man was like seeing your best friend pummelled in the face with a brick.

In the words of Hot Fuzz...

...this shit just got real...

Abduct Me!!

Starfire! Abduct Me!

The less interesting, suspiciously cloudlike, aliens of Norwich

Passing a newsagents today* I saw a headline that, according to the Evening News, there was a UFO sighted over Norwich today! (with one of those helpful 'artists impressions', if your gonna make an artist's impression try not to make it look like a feckin' cloud). Previous report from October 2006 here. According to John Sayer of the Norfolk UFO Society

“It seems the Norwich area is a hot spot for UFO activity - a lot aren't reported, but the city has one of the highest number of sightings.”

You know, Norwich, UFO's kinda made me think of Bill Hicks in the Flying Saucer tour a bit:
People are bringing shotguns to UFO sightings in Fife, Alabama. I asked a guy, "Why do you bring a gun to a UFO sighting?" Guy said, "Way-ul, we didn' wanna be ab-duc-ted." Dude, if I lived in Fife, Alabama, I would be on my hands and knees every night praying for abduction every day. A Greyhound! abduct me!

It also reminded me of one my previous incarnations, which occured, courtesy of Gary J Byrnes, around the time I finished my MA, (maybe it's a sign)

The EDP's newsagent headline signs often leave me baffled because they often concern the various men in shorts that kick balls while people shout at them in big rectangle, the shouty bally foot game, I think it's called, one said "No Future for Hughes at City", I thought to myself "you and me both, buster".

Big Brother, more sexist than racist, who'da thunk it.

I was thinking of Big Brother, recently, and how I watched the first few episodes but have not, as of yet, got suckered into it. Bizarrely, even though I never really watched Big Brother 2005 I was thinking about Makosi recently, you know, I don't need an excuse, I just think about Makosi quite regularly, she was anomaly in that she was an African-born contestant that did pretty well (she came third), and it made me question the racist/sexist bias of contemporary British society.

You see, I always had this trusim in my head that the black or asian women always got voted off first, but then I thought I'll go and investigate (well look on wikipedia, if you can call that investigate) and found some interesting results when analyzing which person was the first to leave the Big Brother house (don't say fuck or bugger) :





2000: Year One: Sada: Female, White



2001: Year Two: Penny: Female, White



2002: Year Three: Lynne :Female, White



2003: Year Four: Anouska: Female, White



2004: Year Five: Kitten: Female, White



2005: Year Six: Mary: Female, White





2006: Year Seven: Bonnie: Female, White.





So there you have it, Britain, not as racist as I thought, but still sexist. Wikipedia comments on this as 'Coincidentally, the first evictee of every season has been female', yeah coincidentally.

LoLJimmny

There I am, minding my own business like an idiot and see a wee post on Blogorrah after the election with an extensive link to Currychips with the neverending LoLpolz strand. What are you gonna do, I was vaguely aware of LOLcats and such although it can be funny it smacks of us all turning into people who have those "hang on in there" posters in a cubicle and saying 'just a moment' like in Office Space, on the plus side using these sites, it obviously doesn't have to be cats to I'm gonna be looking long and hard at my dodgy superhero pics and see what LOL superheroz I can come up with.

The creator of the 'Iceberg Desdemona'...and Father Ted...provides the best advice ever for aspiring sitcom writers....

If you a) know me, b) know this blog, or c) know anything, then you know Graham Linehan is up there with Flann O'Brien, and if you don't know who he is, then just go feck yourself and watch Lost and go: 'gee that guy's read a buk i tink i'll read dat buk...'

Anyway, Linehan's livejournal blog Why That's Delightful: Graham Linehan's Hompendium of Dorithies is a beautiful way to while away the hours until apocalypse, but you gotta read the marble comments, an anonymous poster has put up this great radio link for a Linehan mention of a UFO misunderstanding and this one about Invaders of the Lost Gold . Another poster "Iain" writes: I'm a writer myself and I've just been commissioned to write a sitcom for BBC2 that will be on in the early part of next year. He asked for advice and Linehan was nice enough to give this great gem:

The best opinion you can get is from Future You. Present You writes the script, you see, and has a lot of ego and pride tied up with it, and it makes it hard to see how good the script actually is. So the best thing Present You can do is to put the script in a drawer for--ooh, let's say....a month and a half (at least) for Future You to read.

Future You will realise quite quickly that the entire first half doesn't work and should be jettisoned immediately to save the quite good second half (or vice versa). Future You will read some sections and actually not have a clue what Present You was on about.

If you don't have the time to get Future You involved, then give it to about six friends. If more than three of them thinks it needs work, then it needs work. If everybody says "Yeah, great! Brilliant stuff!" then you've either written a perfect first draft (unlikely, to say the least), or it really, really stinks and they can't be bothered getting into all the reasons why.

I just hope Linehan's nipped another Roman's Empire in the bud.

RIVERDANCE RAP

Youtube Hecklefest

I was lucky on my first stand-up attempt to have no hecklers, but it is a constant worry, I suspect I would just go down and sit on a hecklers lap and start asking them about their childhood or something. Being the nerd that I am however, I typed 'hecklers' in youtube search engine and found a cavaclade fo human misery, sometimes the comics, sometimes the audience. This Pauley Shore versus Cowboy clip shows physical heckler contact is probably best to avoided-as one comment succienctly asks: WHO PAID to see Pauly SHORE?? Cowboys don't seem to dig stand-up for some reason. Although video game nerds seem more dangerous, in this punch up over a joke about finishing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game. I never though 'you've been using fucking game genie!' would be a prelude to violence.

Check out this poor unfunny bastard who tries to slag Shaq and Jamie Foxx at a roast for Emmet Smith and goes down in flames, man don't even try to take on Mo'Nique. Who in their right mind would heckle the lovely Noel Fielding, but of course someone tries and fails. (especially the amazing heckle 'how to you put your trousers on?!'). Love this Bill Clinton clip. remember when U.S. presidents could react logically and intelligently to criticism. With this clip both sides are bad as each other, it's funny though.

Didn't realise they still have those brick wall sets where it looks like they are gonna be shot, but this guy from Indiana, Jeff Oskay, does great work against these hecklers. Steve Touhy is great against this guy, fucking priceless. Some advice from comics at the Melbourne comedy festival, which is quite nice.

Toy Story meets Kurt Vonnegut?

I don't mention reelfanatic enough, it's a great blog that I have to visit sparingly because I end up spending too much time gording on stateside film news nuggets, his post on Pixar's production for the next three years makes very interesting reading, I especially love the sound of Wall-E, from Jim Hill:





The year is 2700. Planet Earth is one giant trash heap, and an incompetent corporation called Buynlarge has the contract to clean up the mess. Buynlarge sent thousands of robots, called Waste Allocation Load Lifters - Earth Class, to do the job but unfortunately they all broke down over the past 700 years. Save for one.The last robot has developed a few bugs of his own. This Wall-E became self-aware and curious about humans. He, along with his pet cockroach Spot, has amassed a bizarre collection of human artifacts including a VCR and a VHS tape of Hello Dolly!, which he watches incessantly. Wall-E toils away at his thankless (and endless) job until another robot, named Eve, suddenly arrives. Wall-E follows this new robot around like a little puppy and, when she finally leaves Earth, he finds a way to tag along. Which is where the real fun starts.

Dylan Moran on Norwegian chat show

love this, Dylan Moran Versus Norway!

Gwen Stefani - Sweet Escape

Gwen Stefani's wee harem....woooh...aaaah...

Stefani: Pretend, you're all stupid, that's right, tee hee.

Recently, I have been thinking, probably far too much, for mine, and anyone else's liking, about Gwen Stefani and her wee harem of dancing Harajuku Girls . I know, you know, we all know what proper Harajuku Girls are right? We all have the Internet and are nerds, yes? For most of Gwen Stefani's videos I don't even know there's music happening, all I can think of is what could happen between Gwen Stefani and four hot Japanese girls.

But such implication isn't good enough for yon Stefani, oh no, she has to register a site called Harajuku Lovers dot com! the cheek! are we not all harajuku lovers? Do really need Gwen Stefani to tell us how hot Japanese girls are? Apparently so, check this from a Salon article:

They shadow her wherever she goes. They're on the cover of the album, they appear behind her on the red carpet, she even dedicates a track, "Harajuku Girls," to them. In interviews, they silently vogue in the background like living props; she, meanwhile, likes to pretend that they're not real but only a figment of her imagination. ...

Stefani has taken the idea of Japanese street fashion and turned these women into modern-day geisha, contractually obligated to speak only Japanese in public, even though it's rumored they're just plain old Americans and their English is just fine.

Holy fuck Gwen sort it out, I'd rather hear these four ladies talk than hear your hollaback girl, whow!, ah!, pirate jibber jabber, Margaret Cho should have the last word on this, anyway.

P.S. I might be like a year overdue with this post, but I've been thinking about this for a long time.

ah, the auld bande dessinee

Today, my good friend and workmate, Matt O, came back from what was, by all accounts, a great time in Portugal. I have a present for ye, he says, and gives me the above comic, over here such a thing would be called a graphic novel and cost about £13, over there such a lovely thing involving nudity, fantasy and violence costs a mere euro 2.26! that's it! I'm learning Portuguese and moving over there and reading comics and maybe meeting some barbarian woman...

in heaven everything is alright

in heaven, everthing is fine...or apparently it's just 'alright' according to this youtuber...

In heaven, everything is fine.....

The dweebness abides, when you (i.e. me) go to the local library the forum and think, hmm what will I watch to enjoy myself, you know for the laugh, and I think yaay let's watch some nerdy movies about other movies.

A couple of weeks ago I watched This Film is Not Yet Rated which is a great film, but makes little sense outside the UK. You see in the UK, the censorship body is the BBFC you can ring them up if you want to and like, write to them and everything if you feel some shite zombie alien attack porn movie got and 18 when you thought it should be 15 or something. I mean when I was growing up James Ferman was never off the TV talking about about how this bosum could be in a movie but this one couldn't etc. But apparently, in the United States, they're a secretive, puritan, Christian bunch, (who'd a thunk it!) Anyway, this is a good movie pointing out the secretiveness of the MPAA and it's contradictory nature, ie you can kill what you want on screen but try fucking what you want...oooh boy! they don't like that.

Also Kirby Dick, although he's got a perfectly good documentary on his hands trys to make it into some sort of bargain-basement Columbo episode by getting a lesbian PI to try and find out who the MPAA folks are. And then, oh wow how pomo is this they send the MPAA documentary into the MPAA! I wonder what rating it got!? (well R, it says it on the box), what sort of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory shit is that? And then I had many adventures in the chocolate factory and I wrote them all down....and that is the book you've just read . But it is good, but not as amazing as...


Midnight Movies

Now we're talkin' a straightforward, lovely, well-made documentary with clips and interviews about these sort of movies, end of story no pomo bad detective work. For me it was like a blast from the past when channel four was all about late night movies, not serious pockets of humanity, check it out, would you not like to see a documentary about:

El Topo
Night of the Living Dead you can watch it here
Pink Flamingos
The Harder They Come*
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Eraserhead

Apart from El Topo, maybe, we are all prety used to seeing clips from the other movies, but whenever the first little clip of Eraserhead came up myself and my housemate more or less said oh fuck here it comes...I was thinking out loud, how could you even make a film like Eraserhead nowadays? They were right to put it at the very end of the movie, plus the dvd comes complete with public domain faves Night of The Living Dead and Reefer Madness hey they're public domain! we could remake them, like now! in Norwich! well, give us a shout if you're ever interested, it might not be movie magic, but at least it'd be fun.

*I've just pumped my ipod up with Jimmy Cliff, why? cause I love Jimmy Cliff...and I also had a one night stand once in Belfast with a lovely Japanese girl who loved Jimmy Cliff, Neon Genesis Evangelion and red wine...high five...

Where's me Skinema!!

As you may or may not know, I'm a total biter for Vice Magazine, for once the best things in life are free, all it costs is a bit of embarrassment as I wander into shops like Dogfish and Cult (a typo surely?) and pretend to be looking at shite clothes I neither like nor could ever afford before nabbing two copies of each issue of Vice, I keep one in mint condition and put the other in the bog, in ubernerd stylee. As I sleep, never six inches from my demeanted noggin is Vice: Dos and Don'ts and Vice: The Vice Guide to Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll for months now I have been attempting to complete a trinity of perversion with the holy grail of Vice books, Chris Nieratko's tome Skinema, a collection fo his ostensible porn reviews. Oh here's some alternative covers. I miss those tales of coloring in your lad green and pretending to be the Hulk or ringing numbers found on strip joint dollar bills.

I ordered this book off amazon in late February for an early May release date now those fecks are telling me it's not out until July 7-10, what! do books have different regions now aswell, like we have region 2 eyes and can't read a region 1 book till they add all the u's in humor and stuff? this Nieratko-famine is really pissing me off.

I first encountered the Hunter S. Thompson of porn reviews in Bizarre magazine, which like the total biter I am have bought from issue one, until recently, it's too expensive and there too many crappy adds and Vice is free but I digress. Some of Nieratko's Bizarre articles are here and his most recent Vice Skinema column is here. Some day my skinema will come!

Pan's Labyrinth full length trailer

Art House Audience in Shutting their Yaps for 2 Hours Shock!!

As you may or may not know, I have a huge tolerance for going to see shite movies in multiplexes, because, even with shite movies in multiplexes the chav kids will shut the fuck up if there's enough explosions, fart gags and titties in 'em.

But, fuck me, the chattering classes art house cinema crowd won't shut the fuck up! we've all read the reviews, we all know who is in the movie by looking at imdb and we know the trivia, by....looking...at the ...trivia...on imdb. But oh no, that's not good enough for these Waitrose eating fuckos, no they have to repeat loudly over the film what they read Philip French saying about the film, over the film, that your trying to fucking watch.

I sould go to the local art house all the time, I used to go almost every week to the IFI when I lived in Dublin, I love Un coeur en hiver and Daniel Auteuil movies, which always helps in enjoying Big Train, I love art house movies, I just hate loud art house audiences. They think they are better than 12 year old, popcorn-throwing chavs talking over a movie, because they are saying something they read from The Guardian rather than going 'heh boobies', but they aren't, anyone who talks over the movie is at the same level of shit boxery, end of story.

Like when I went to see The Hours (don't ask*) and some mook snorts really loudly whenever Miranda Richardson appears: 'Pfft! she doesn't look a bit like Vanessa Bell!!'. Or when I went to see For Your Consideration and a woman was asking her dolt of a husband who everyone was and he was telling here but he didn't know so he was mixing up all the actors and I was ready to wallop him!

I think my annoyance is that when someone laughs at a multiplex they genuinely think something's funny, when someone laughs at an arthouse, they want everyone else in the audience know they have gotten the obscure reference/literally allusion style joke, not they instinctively think it's funny.

However, finally, with the great Pan's Labyrinth, the art house mooks were silenced and they had to shut up and take the fantasy cinema genius without condescension. I know I should have seen it ages ago, but I missed it at its first run at the cinemas and did what to see such a movie on online or knock-off and, hooray, waited for a second cinema showing in this fine city and blubbed like a ba at its greatness. It was a beautiful movie that has more feeling in a half hour segment than all 6 hours of Spidey-3 and Piratey-3 put together.


* Look at me nose! do I get an Oscar! and lest we forget 'ooh I'm sitting on a window still in hat, whatda reckon I fall to my death in a bit? oohh the knowing/literary/AIDS allegory suspense of it all.

Update: Was checking out if the lovely Del Toro box set has come down any in price on Amazon, and found this gem of heatheness amongs glowing reviews, from a person called Bev "Likes Good Horror Films", what a werid surname, is she one of the Galway "Likes Good Horror Films"? anyway here's what she 'had' to say:

I like to multitask, check emails, scan a mag & watch a dvd, cant do that with this film, didnt realise it was in spanish with english subtitles... Very long film, some really violent bits & alot of fantisicle (if thats a word), weird, creature, narnia esk/neverland bits...Ok film if you can manage to watch to end, needs full concentration due to subtitles, but not what I expected...back up dvd only i'd say...

Peter Cook - A Life In Pieces - A Partridge In A Pear Tree

"I didn't kill him, I allowed him to die" The Genius of Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling

Ever since I got me we ippository yoke, one of the mainstays of any playlist and something I just cannot stop listening to is Christopher Morris and Peter Cook's improvised Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling interview series Why Bother? wiki entry here. Morris:

"It was a very different style of improvisation from what I'd been used to, working with people like Steve Coogan, Doon Mackichan and Rebecca Front, because those On the Hour and The Day Today things were about trying to establish a character within a situation, and Peter Cook was really doing 'knight's move' and 'double knight's move' thinking to construct jokes or ridiculous scenes flipping back on themselves, and it was amazing. I mean, I held out no great hopes that he wouldn't be a boozy old sack of lard with his hair falling out and scarcely able to get a sentence out, because he hadn't given much evidence that that wouldn't be the case. But, in fact, he stumbled in with a Safeways bag full of Kestrel lager and loads of fags and then proceeded to skip about mentally with the agility of a grasshopper. Really quite extraordinary."

From a detailed interview about it with Morris here, from the same great site: Greebling's Life in Pieces and the Sven phonecalls.

Seany Enters the Big Brother House

On behalf of Ulster, I can only apologise

Come back Spiral, all is forgiven, well not really. After work on Saturday I was flicking through channels to Big Brother and came across this bizarre Mick Hucknall-a-like loon, who proceeded to try and convince those blonde twin creatures (Twincredible! I believe they are called) that Leprechauns really exist, and they were buying it.

What 'bout ye! The Face of modern Ireland?

It's Mick Hucknall O'Clock

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Seany expertly reinterprets terrible terrorist tragedy into day-glo reality (TV)

Aye, it was me and Fionn mac Cumhaill and Pádraig Pearse and Warwick Davis and St. Patrick and we were all kicking back and drinking Guinness.

Smart Woman versus Jon Bon Jovi....he really is slippery when wet....

....If by 'slippery' you mean mental, and by 'wet' you mean questioned.....

Things Jon Bon Jovi Has ruined for the rest of us: 1. Having Superman tattoos, having a face and grabbing your crotch, thanks, you slippery when wet fucknut.

Hannah Pool is one of the few journalists that actually asks celebrities real questions beyond, 'hey tell us about your new book' etc. She actually asks them real questions, especially about feminism to the usual pop/film/tv starlet dujour with hilarious results, but nothing can compare with her encounter with an 'am I bovvered' 15-year-old, aka Jon Bon Jovi some highlights, darlin'...

Your music is often defined as soft rock or rock light. How do you feel about that?
You can call it whatever you want - it's Bon Jovi. {yes, but some might call it shite}
Is that people being snobby?
It's not for me to decide what someone's perception is, darlin', it's theirs. {darlin'?! does he know who he's talkin' to?}

[TWO questions in and he's already getting shirty, but you ain't seen nothing yet]

Do you care what reviewers think?
Is that what this interview is about?
I have a whole load of questions.
Move on.
Really?
Don't get like that.
OK. I didn't mean to upset you.
You're not upsetting me. Don't belittle yourself. If you want to talk about music, let's talk.
[take these really simple unloaded little questions he can barely even muster a civil response to:]


Is the rock industry sexist?
I don't give it much thought. I can't comment.
You must have female friends who are musicians?
I can't comment on that.
[so you simply cannot say, JBJ, if you even have a female musician friend, what in sweet feck is going on?...]

I nearly fell off my chair with this bit:

Do you carbon offset your gigs?
We do that.
Do you have to make sacrifices to do it?
You have to write a cheque. You're a lot more conscious of the amount of trucks you use and the opportunities to do things better. We wrote a cheque, we took care of our footprint and raised awareness, blah blah blah, and I've bought a hybrid.

{blah blah blah, whatever, I'm a rock star stop asking me hard questions smart woman, I've got a superman tattoo and everything and I sang 'livin' on a prayer, are you not impressed darlin'? It's like he's so convinced he is irresistable to all women ever but in Hannah Pool he's found his kryptonite, in your face Jovi, whose living on a prayer now! }

I vuw you, you little bear you....

Perhaps in a similar vein to this post, once again the military minded in America take things from demented geek fantasies and make them horrible realities. Hey, let's not try and figure out foreign policy or world politics we'll just build a robot and everything will be alright. In a world where people die of starvation for the sake of like 15 pence each or something, how much did this fuckbot cost? We'll risk soldiers, but we can't risk doctors and nurses? send a bearbot in! Not only that but some military fucko got paid to stay in an office simply to match an Achcronym with BEAR! He probably got paid more than you or I will ever see in three lifetimes!

p.s. why aren't we on Mars, and beyond yet?

p.p.s why can they only save Action Men? (G.I. Joes for our U.S. readers, if any)

FAY GRIM [R] Trailer

can't wait to relive 1990s arthouse, I do miss it so. What next 'The Little Lebowski'?

Henry Fool - Trailer

one of my favorite movies for multipleobvious reasons (writing, perversion, Parky Poser etc.) near my popped my shit when JB mentioned the sequel.

Hey, woop! anyone in from Norwich etc...Jimmny's Stand-up Debut.

In summary: 'so I'm a lonely geek and I collect comics and love science fiction and I talk to my action figures...any auld chance?...

There was a row of young ladies sitting on the floor, and two older women in front of me, so talking about Jules Jordan's Chaise Longue, Belladonna and 'Porn Fatigue' was especially difficult. The two older women really liked it though!

What the fuck am I doing was what I was thinking for most of Monday evening last. Tom Moran has been running the very successful UEA comedy night LoL @ Rose and I had vaguely mentioned doing something for the most recent showcase but delibrately didn't tell friends in case I totally bombed, doing it in a place of work was nerve wrecking enough.

This was based on a back-of-my mind hankering to try stand up for years and a recent overdosing on Bill Hicks. There seems to a trend in recent stand up of saying something outrageous (be it on sex, race, disabilitity etc.) and then kind of saying 'but I don't really mean that, I was only trying to get a laugh. I prefer the more philosophical storytelling angle, with material you really believe in. State side at least there is a lot of comedians referring to geeky subjects David Cross, Jen Dziura, Patton Oswalt and Morgan Murphy. (Not to mention Tim and Eric, but that's a whole other bag). Am slowly realising I shouldn't slag random Americans on the state of their stand-up, there is great stuff out there, but they haven't really hit over here yet. It's just we get the most sacchrine and shit American comedy, of the Everyone Loves Raymond variety.

I even looked on the Internet for advice, like that helped (gawd, it's getting like you'd forget how to do a shit without googling it first) but remined me of Tommy Tiernan's Jokerman where they all the talk was about 'F-Bombs', 'aw man don't drop an F-bomb. (is 'feck' a 'f-bomb', with a small f?) like that was the most important thing, not to swear, no matter how funny it is. Dropping real bombs on people is always ok, but it's dropping F-Bombs that's the problem? Which is more applicable in mainstream U.S. comedy, if you're trying to get a sitcom or something.

Although there's a lot talk of porn etc in my stuff, I describe it in quite a polite way (or maybe as it say in Festival anything in an Irish accent is funny?) and adapated some early blog rants Small Bags of Crap and Apocalypse Bus to Thetford so was already learned off quite extensively. The overall material ran at about 2,000 words but the summary I scribbed down just before going on was:

Norwich/Apocalypse Bus to Theford
Irish accent stuff/comic geek/hit with the ladies
films/threequels/Weapons of Ass Destruction 3
wanking/Jesus/CCTV in Heaven
beasttube/dog owners/little bags of shit.

I genuinely surprised by how positive everyone was, it seemed to go down really well. I had emailed by stuff to Tom beforehand and the advice he gave me was to cut out some Lost references, which was dead right, referring to specific shows would lose the section of the audience that's never seen it. I think being older helped, as I was talking about things I genuinely believed in and wasn't antagonistic toward the audience, and the Irish accent helped, it was a talking point to start off with, Norfolk peoples' reaction to it and such like.

It was quite an experience, you could tell who was on stage that night, as we were all nervous, pacing around and around the pub, mumbling to ourselves, but you never know what it's going to be like until it actually happens. It was definitely very exilirating, but I don't know if that's only because you feel so awful beforehand and it's a relief to sit down and see the rest of the show, although there is a residual worry as you hope everyone elses set goes well.


Running Order for prosperity for when they're all rich and famous: Pat Cathill (compare) Christian Ancliff, Lorcan McGrane, Jonathan Brittain, John Kearns, David Brain, and Tom Moran.

Tom Moran and I before the gig, I was shitting myself here, I hadn't eaten all day because of nerves and Owen B, who was celebrating his 21st and the end of his exams had put a pint in front of me for good luck, it tasted of metal and tears. Photos by Jemma T.

I have two words for you: Power Girl

A while back, bloggorah pointed out his little gem on U.S. dating site Nerve.com: Sex Advice from Irish-Americans . It seems to be an ongoing column where unlikley people are asked for sex advice. Not all Irish people are gingers though, and I would love to see some real country Irish sex advice: 'always try and slip the hand on her arse during the second slow set at Applejacks rather than the first one', 'try to shift her after dancing to 'Black Betty' at the Oasis'.

My favorite so far is the sex advice from Comic-Store Clerks

Antonia, 26 answers: I want to dress up as a sexy comic superhero and seduce my boyfriend. Any advice?If you're busty, I have two words for you: Power Girl. It's a fairly easy costume to make. A good fallback plan is the new Super Girl costume — just don't wear any underwear.

Dawkins talks atheism

Dr Laura On Fox And Friends

wow, they are really tough on Dr. Laura on Fox News: 'no black roots...if I have any they're white' ok Dr. Laura....