There is a time in any on-going space opera type science fiction drama when they bump into aliens who claim to be God. Or Gods. Or are just generally ridiculously powerful so they act like gods. Which can only usually mean another thing. They are also really stupid. Sci-Fi gods may be able to alter the molecular nature of reality AT A FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL, but they rarely understand concepts like Love or War. Unless they are gods of love and/or war and thus it is all they understand and want everyone to fall in it… You get my drift. As does io9, who have a good jumping off list of the Dumbest Space Gods In Science Fiction.
And whilst comics are covered via the reference to Jack Kirby’s New Gods, the list happily misses out my favourite Dumb Space God: from Marvel’s Secret Wars: The Beyonder. more »
Hold on, say you, in what way is the horribly named Zits On Toast ever going to fit into a poncy edition of occasional FT food column “Cheap Food We Love”. Well Zits On Toast is what an acquaintance of mine once named what could otherwise be called poor man’s bruschetta, namely a bruschetta made with cheap crusts of sliced bread and cherry tomatoes. The name comes for the clever observation that said food stuff sported six hemispherical lumps of tomatoes, akin to boils – though boils of a very angry and tomatoey variety. Whilst I have tried to avoid this name for the food in my mind there are three salient facts that always bring it up:
a) left-over slivers of garlic, from being rubbed on the bread do add the requisite milky white counterpoint to the “boils”
b) The cherry tomatoes do “burst” in ones mouth
c) The olive oil can slightly resemble the clear plasma that follows the removal of zit juice more »
Apparently the US version of the IT Crowd may well be on hold. This is a pity because as much as I had a soft spot for the UK IT Crowd, I always thought it fluffed its concept slightly. Perhaps there was not enough demarcation of characters, it lunged into surreality without mining the rich vein of its own characters and felt it needed more time to develop. Which hopefully it still will, but i wondered how a hothoused, longer run in the US whilst maintaining the key comic central act of Richard Ayeode’s Moss. Graham Linehan, the creator fo the show, also acknowledges a few of these problems, and has some suggestions about how they can be fixed.
One place they clearly have not been fixed however is in the German version: Das iTeam.
This useful compare and contrast video shows the first episode of both IT Crowd, and Das iTeam in a shot to shot comparison. more »
US business mag Advertising Age has a column by Larry Dobrow laying into Pitchfork. Ordinarily this wouldn’t get a link, but the specific example of really awful writing they’ve chosen is by me! – my capsule review of Groove Armada ft Mutya Buena’s “Song 4 Mutya (Out Of Control)” (quoted in full at the link above).
Now, it’s not the best – or worst – review I’ve ever written and I’m not going to sit and parse the whole thing, just reply to the specific criticisms made.
i. “Just tell us whether you liked the damn song!” One small clue lies in the feature title – Pitchfork Top 100 Tracks of 2007.
ii. “At least I hope it’s an XTC nod, as the dictionary definition of “skylark” is “to run up and down the rigging of a ship in sport”. Not an XTC nod. It turns out the first definition the dictionary gives is about playing joyfully and frolicking, which is the meaning I had in mind. I expect Dobrow must have asked himself a few times why XTC chose to name a concept album about joyful frolicking after an obscure nautical term though, so I’m happy to clear that one up.
Anyway, Dobrow’s purpose in writing the article isn’t just to rubbish me! It’s to warn advertisers off Pitchfork. But as luck would have it my day job is in marketing, so I can make informed comment on that bit too. more »
Nuncle Carsmile Steve presides over an hour of the finest radio lolling with his consummate guests (they were consummated in the studio) Magbot Anderson, Eli Sessions and Kat Stevens. In this episode of theme-time radio some stuff happens, I know not what yet as I haven’t heard it yet, though there is almost certainly some sort of “And British People dance like this” material from Eli cos he’s a septic and that always seems to be the way these things shake out.
while our whirring engines prepare the latest edition of the Lollards of Pop podcast (broadcast last evening on Resonance FM 104.4), engorge your minds upon this vision of apocalypse by Minnesota artist Joseph Sinness, o readers:
There are records which could only have topped the charts in January (a phenomenon I’ve always known as the “Babylon Zoo effect”, though it far predates them). And there are records which are somehow January-ish: “Down Down” is one of them. more »
It will be no surprise to our readers that despite much food science and interest in cooking, the FreakyTrigger Cookbook is still a few years away. But it behooves me to remind contributors and anyone using a recipe on this site of the following:
CONTRIBUTORS:
No matter how slapdash your general cooking method, or indeed how drunk you are while cooking, someone out there may follow your culinary Amundsen footprints. Thus if you use terms such “a handful”, we need to know if you have big hands. Ingredients may be particularly British, so think about how you would talk about – for example – cream where single and double is a UK only affectation. A good example of the problems in translation just across the Atlantic can be gained from this brave chef in the US, taking on Sarah’s admittedly avant gardespicy chocolate cupcakes. more »
AVPR, or Alien vs Predator: Requiem was always going to be a terrible film. There was probably no way of making it any good, as a sequel to a double franchise smooshing melange of an idea already done better in a comic. The gestation of such a film is almost as complex and unlikely as the very gestation of the Alien (something which gets slightly tweaked here – as if any Alien film needs to make the exceedingly complex EVEN MORE COMPLEX). Unlike the artificial Pyramid Of Doom set-up of AVP, AVPR finally answers the fanboy cries of what would happen if the Aliens got to Earth. And it would be exactly as Sigourney Weaver always predicted – kinda boring. But then both the Aliens and Predators gave up the ability to scare beyond surprise, and a film which has dark, complex and frankly unengaging sequences of two alien creatures fighting each other is not going to emotionally grab you easily. But then the town which this epic battle ranges over is full of even more unengaging people, to be picked off. And you don’t care, not just because they have elected the most inept sheriff for their town ever seen in a film. You don’t care because there has been no attempt to give them characters beyond names and what they are wearing: and half the time what they are wearing has to do double duties. Mysterious returnee, school jock, hottie, returned soldier, obligatory female child are all dangled to die – and perhaps the biggest shock in the film is how many of them survive. Alien films have never had a survival rate like this.
It was interesting to see AVPR near Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez’s (far superior) half of Grindhouse. more »
I am not one to mock the afflicted, unless the afflicted are
a) a wonky eyed singer*
b) a one armed drummer
c) a rhombus faced popstrel
d) the blind – when the blind in question are Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder
e) actually I’m probably going to run out of letters when I get to…
z) deaf composers
There is a time in any on-going space opera type science fiction drama when they bump into aliens who claim to be God. Or Gods. Or are just generally ridiculously powerful so they act like gods. Which can only usually mean another thing. They are also really stupid. Sci-Fi gods may be able to alter the molecular nature of reality AT A FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL, but they rarely understand concepts like Love or War. Unless they are gods of love and/or war and thus it is all they understand and want everyone to fall in it… You get my drift. As does io9, who have a good jumping off list of the Dumbest Space Gods In Science Fiction.
There are records which could only have topped the charts in January (a phenomenon I’ve always known as the “Babylon Zoo effect”, though it far predates them). And there are records which are somehow January-ish: “Down Down” is one of them. 
AVPR, or Alien vs Predator: Requiem was always going to be a terrible film. There was probably no way of making it any good, as a sequel to a double franchise smooshing melange of an idea already done better in a comic. The gestation of such a film is almost as complex and unlikely as the very gestation of the Alien (something which gets slightly tweaked here – as if any Alien film needs to make the exceedingly complex EVEN MORE COMPLEX). Unlike the artificial Pyramid Of Doom set-up of AVP, AVPR finally answers the fanboy cries of what would happen if the Aliens got to Earth. And it would be exactly as Sigourney Weaver always predicted – kinda boring. But then both the Aliens and Predators gave up the ability to scare beyond surprise, and a film which has dark, complex and frankly unengaging sequences of two alien creatures fighting each other is not going to emotionally grab you easily. But then the town which this epic battle ranges over is full of even more unengaging people, to be picked off. And you don’t care, not just because they have elected the most inept sheriff for their town ever seen in a film. You don’t care because there has been no attempt to give them characters beyond names and what they are wearing: and half the time what they are wearing has to do double duties. Mysterious returnee, school jock, hottie, returned soldier, obligatory female child are all dangled to die – and perhaps the biggest shock in the film is how many of them survive. Alien films have never had a survival rate like this.