Dirty Dirty Martini

I like a Martini. I said so here. So crimes against the Martini weigh heavily upon my soul. And I have had two spoiled recently by poor workmanship and baffling product packaging.

Let’s start with the basics. Hancock Tower, on the day of the nuptials of Tim of this parish. A lovely, wonderful day - blisteringly sunny. We all met up on the 106th floor of said tower for a view over Chicago and a bit of dutch courage. Which wasn’t dutch, but in this case was billed as a perfect Tanquerry Martini. Ingredients looked fine, and I asked for it with an olive. And it came back with an olive and the faintest patina of condensation on the outside of the glass. Well, I thought, the room was air-conditioned. Imagine how hot it would have been otherwise. It was 34 degrees on the ground, and we were a hundred storeys closer to the sun*. … read on …

Good Guy Actor Looking For Less Obvious Twist

This Article Contains Spoilers To Two Films currently in the cinema. The particular spoiler however is surreptitiously contained also in the title to the article, and become obvious if I even mention the films names. However as twists they are both really quite obvious in their respective films so whilst you may curse me if you read on, you should also bear in mind that if the films wanted their twists to be more twisty, they would have made more effort in disguising them. The fact they don’t suggests that the fact that there is a twist is less important to the narrative structure than the impact on the characters the twist that THEY didn’t see coming has. … read on …

Stuck In A Windscreen With You

Stuck may not get a theatrical release in the UK, bearing in mind that it only popped up in one screen in New York and Chicago. Which would be a pity: not because its the best film ever, but it at least tries to do something different. A ripped from the tabloids, based on a true story tale of a hit and run gone wrong (for which read WRONGER), Stuck is most interesting when you consider the genre it exists in. It is in many ways a survival horror film, with the gender and power roles reversed.

Mena Suvari plays a pleasant enough carehome nurse promised a new promotion. So she goes out and celebrates, and has a few too many drinks and drives home. Unfortunately she hits down on his luck homeless guy Stephen Rea. But she doesn’t stop. So far, so hit and run. She can’t believe her bad luck, she refuses to believe the reality of the situation. Which is Rea is stuck in her windscreen, glass spearing internal organs but as she discovers later, still very much alive. What follows is clearly not a portrait of evil, Suvari does a who does a load of bad things but as she is the lone female we are compelled by the RULES OF THE CINEMA to slightly sympathize with her. … read on …

The All New SI Units Of Work

As a follow up to one of my favourite threads on FT (with one of the best comments sections ever), we return to the all new SI Units with a conundrum. A discussion about difficult jobs threw up two separate examples. Namely when one wants to invoke the relative simplicity of a task it is usually compared to EITHER rocket science or brain surgery. As the BIPM of the all new SI Units, we need to know.

Now both of these throw up an interesting point about units of measurement. If both are considered to be about the hardest jobs one can do, every other job will be a fraction of them. So data entry might be ten milli-”rocket sciences”, driving a bus might be a centi-”brain surgery” and moderating an online message board could range from 0.001 to 2 of either of these units depending on contributers. Having your standard unit too large or two small can cause problems in comprehension when you are talking about large quantities. … read on …

Would You Rather Be Called Toilet Cleaner?

I am probably not alone in the UK to having The Wizard Of Oz as one of my first film memories. Not at the cinema of course, but rather on television at Christmas, one of those yuletide traditions which I never questioned*. It may be where I got a fondness for musicals for, but it is absolutely where I got my fondness for supersaturated Technicolor films from. The Adventures Of Robin Hood shares a soft spot for many of the same reasons.

All of this is in some way an excuse for liking “the already decided to be a flop” Speed Racer. … read on …

Take in your copy of the Ultimate Future Shock

Foistered on an unsuspecting public like an epidemic of ebola, an occasional writer of this parish has hit the BIG TIME. Al Ewing has written a book which has been considered to be so awesome that the UK’s Flagship Sc-Fi, Fantasy, Comics and bizarre Vinyl Statue store* Forbidden Planet is having him in to sign it. The book is called “I, Zombie” - which one assumes is a taboo busting piece of erotic fiction doing for the 21st Century what Lady Chatterley’s Lover did for the 20th (ie upset a lot of people). Clearly having your name emblazoned in the window and on a sandwich board outside such a store is the definition of having MADE IT!

The novel is described thusly: “A pulse-pounding mix of horror, private-eye story and science-fiction adventure. … read on …

I Drank All Night: Bass

We had a lovely night out last night, to celebrate Carsmile Steve’s birthday*, in the Ship, a wonderful Fitzrovia tat filled boozer. We’ve been there before, and as then, and now the key thing to note is that they only have one ale on offer, and that ale is Bass. Bass is a wonderfully historic beer brand in the UK which I have not seen on a pump in the UK for almost ten years. The Red Triangle on the side or outside a pub was one of my earliest remembered pieces of branding**, and Bass were known as much, if not more, for their pub ownership than their beer. Merged, merged, and merged again, this ex-Burton brewer no longer seems to exist. The beer can still be bought abroad, it is the “British Beer” often available on draft in New York. And yet I have not seen it in the UK for ages. Owned now by InBev, the beer is now brewed in the UK by Marston’s (back in Burton-Upon-Trent) though Coors own the brand. And in the States our friends at Anheuser-Busch licence and brew it keg style. (As ever thanks to the Wiki). … read on …

The Freaky Trigger Top 100 Tracks Of All Time No. 45. The Undertones - Teenage Kicks

Of all the records this admittedly sluggish Top 100 could have stalled on for its longest period, it is odd that it was Teenage Kicks. After all everyone loves Teenage Kicks, right? Tom was toying with writing about it as an adjunct to this Pitchfork article about Peel, but the time came and went (and you can’t begrudge him, he is going great guns on Popular). A few other volunteered, to then realise that they couldn’t quite put into words what they really wanted to say about TK. And so I will attempt it, after being prompted by the reference made by Tom in this Abba - Dancing Queen article. He (rightly in my opinion) sees Teenage Kicks and Dancing Queen as being cut from the same cloth, a glorious celebration of teenaged energy and abandon. Is that why Teenage Kicks is so good though?

Well yes. That’s why it is good. Great even. But SO GOOD? That reason is John Peel. Bear in mind that as the eclectic, all over the place, music loving DJ persona that really crystalised in the 80’s, he would constantly be asked a number of questions about his musical taste. And it is odd that we all know his favourite single and favourite album and that NEVER CHANGED in almost twenty years. Trout Mask Replica, and Teenage Kicks. Which perhaps in 1982 as a pairing would have shown considerable pop/rock breadth, but by 2002 could be from the same album (indeed I am sure you can get a Peel sanctioned comp with Kicks and some Beefheart on it). … read on …

Japes From the Vine : NSFA

I had considered tagging this link Not Safe For Work, but truly it is Not Safe For Anywhere. One of my favourite parts of watching the Daily Show is when they show the ridiculous graphics and bombast of American election reporting. And then, on a night like last night, with a few council elections I have to shake my head at the nonsense that now presents itself as election coverage here. David Dimbleby has now ossified in his role as presenter, snappy, rude, not listening to anyone and making jump-cut links whenever he decides and usually when the gallery aren’t ready. I am used to that. What I am not used to yet is Jeremy Vine, who has taken over Peter Snow’s role as the man with the graphics. Snow had a way with stats, and an expansive excitement in the ways that new technology could help explain in layman’s terms how an election was progressing.

Vine is just a twat. No, sorry that’s a bit harsh. ON TWATS. Sorry, I still haven’t recovered from this bit of footage which was on at about 1am last night. … read on …

Do Polar Bears Dream Of Bickering Humans?

I don’t know why I am still watching Lost. It makes me feel terrible about my own ability to follow a narrative storyline, and how easily my buttons are pushed but the simplest of TV trickery. I have never believed that the writers have really known where the whole things was going from the beginning, though I have based this belief on the fact that the writers of 24 don’t know how their series will end - and there are only 24 episodes of those. Lost, with its endless pointless mysteries, time wasting flashbacks (and now flash forwards) and bunch of on the whole unlikeable characters should have driven me off by now. Take the Lost “numbers”. Important in series one and two, they haven’t been mentioned since, and I still can’t see a way of their quasi-mystical importance being explained. Do I think there will be anything like a satisfactory conclusion to the mess which is now taking in time travel, faking the death of hundreds of people and massive conspiracy theories? Nope. Yet I keep watching.

Of course the show trades on its mysteries, though the web of unexplained nonsense is so tangled that I believe nothing coherent will really come out of it (its at least one persons dream*). But this has been further confirmed by USA Today running a competition for viewers to submit what they think is going on to the producers to be graded. … read on …