it's never happened to me before... for years i have thought one thing. for years i have considered one thing to outweigh all other things. since i can remember, that one decision i made many years ago has been infallible, the benchmark, the defining characteristic of my personality, the yardstick that all other choices of this magnitude will be measured against.
if you've not guessed by now, this is one those points of life-changing life-change in my life. this blog rates pretty highly on the scale of importance of all the things you are likely to read this year.
yes. this entry is to do with what my favourite movie is.
i know...
i won't be offended if you take a moment or few before you read on, this is one of those times where it's okay to turn away, wipe a tear, worry about your heart-rate, eat a picnic.
books have been written about moments like this.
my favourite film has been empire records for as long as i can remember having a favourite film. there were contenders before i developed a personality or quantitive opinions, but then there was empire records and the decision was made. it had it all; comedy, tragedy, good music, liv tyler, love, desire, angst, gwar, one-liners and a story about kicking 'da man' so hard in the balls he got two more adam's apples. many times i've seen it, and never tired. it was the pinnacle.
until sunday.
hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz hot fuzz
the pegg, the wright, the frost... shaun of the dead was genius, spaced was a constant triumph, but this was on a whole new level. i don't care that most people will stare at me in wonder, or that high 'n mighty film buffs will point poignantly at godfather posters, holding schindler's list dvd's and a paperback copy of the shawshank redemption... this is the best film of all time.
okay so it doesn't offer any in-depth social commentary, there are no heartbreaking performances, it's not jaw-droppingly beautiful to look at, the script isn't soul-renchingly lyrical. but i challenge you this: find me a more entertaining two hours, more tightly packed with out-loud laughs, more willingness to suspend disbelief, a drop-kick that warrants applause, a bigger feel-good feeling than this movie, and i'll show you my perineum.
i ended up paying £39 for my ticket because i bought a load to share amongst my friends and not everyone came. i don't feel in the slightest bit cheated. which is lovely. especially for one so tight-fisted as i.
i'll leave you with this; when nick frost was asked what hot fuzz was like, he replied "it's like a cross between brokeback mountain and the bill." it made me laugh.
i liked it, alright.
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
i'm having a wii
a-ha! finally i have my new white lump of plastic with electronics in it (i've waited so long)....
hey, do you have one?
send me your wii number or whatever it's called and we can be all messagey 'n stuff.
hey, do you have one?
send me your wii number or whatever it's called and we can be all messagey 'n stuff.
Tuesday, 13 February 2007
i'm a bubble of gushing gayness
two of the nicest people in the world got engaged a couple of days ago. luckily, they thought to get engaged to eachother.
congratulations guys, you bagged a good 'un.
congratulations guys, you bagged a good 'un.
Monday, 12 February 2007
Sunday, 11 February 2007
i'm standing on a small spinning world of bittersweet irony
i used to work for an awesome company. for legal protection, let's call it Inca. i loved it at inca, i spent my time learning the trade surrounded by knowledgeable people who successfully carried out their jobs in a supportive and professional manner. inca was well-known in the industry. well known for it's high level of quality service, the honesty it dealt with it's clients and the scale of successful work it had in it's portfolio. i should also mention that it turned over very high amounts of work, made a tidy profit and was trusted by a very high level of regular customers.
we had bright purple vans. customers would say "we knew we could relax when we saw the purple van turn up the end of the street," and that sort of thing.
it was all going smoothly, until it was announced that we'd been bought out by one of our rivals. not just one of the many other companies in the industry, but our most bitter rival; a company known for it's unprofessional work practice, it's bad treatment of staff and cluelessness about the sector. we'll call it pirate AV.
needless to say, 40% of inca staff immediately left in discust. i stuck around with a few others to see how things would pan out. we'd been promised pirate AV were planning to take on the successful working practices of inca, the knowledge of the management and the dedication of the staff. i gave them the benefit of the doubt.
which was a mistake.
it was still shite. they didn't change. treating me and my inca buddies like twatting monkeys; they just carried on as they were but with a £3 million debt from buying inca.
a downward spiral of huge debts, bad management and terrible accounting sent the pirates careering down towards business hell and bankruptcy. i jumped ship well before they revealed they couldn't pay staff. i wrote the letter you can read here, and sped off to work for someone else. someone good. yeah.
that's the last i'll hear of those idiots, thought i.
until friday, when it was revealed to us that my current company (we'll call it moonshine) sealed the deal and bought out pirate AV. hah! we're collapsing the company and keeping all the equipment. hah! but i'll tell you the best news of the lot. the bit that made me laugh like a freak....
pirate AV bought inca for £3 million, the two companies combined (at the time) were then worth about £6.5 million.
my current boss just bought the lot for £150,000. that's not a typing error.
again... hah! shoe's on the other foot now, idiots.
we had bright purple vans. customers would say "we knew we could relax when we saw the purple van turn up the end of the street," and that sort of thing.
it was all going smoothly, until it was announced that we'd been bought out by one of our rivals. not just one of the many other companies in the industry, but our most bitter rival; a company known for it's unprofessional work practice, it's bad treatment of staff and cluelessness about the sector. we'll call it pirate AV.
needless to say, 40% of inca staff immediately left in discust. i stuck around with a few others to see how things would pan out. we'd been promised pirate AV were planning to take on the successful working practices of inca, the knowledge of the management and the dedication of the staff. i gave them the benefit of the doubt.
which was a mistake.
it was still shite. they didn't change. treating me and my inca buddies like twatting monkeys; they just carried on as they were but with a £3 million debt from buying inca.
a downward spiral of huge debts, bad management and terrible accounting sent the pirates careering down towards business hell and bankruptcy. i jumped ship well before they revealed they couldn't pay staff. i wrote the letter you can read here, and sped off to work for someone else. someone good. yeah.
that's the last i'll hear of those idiots, thought i.
until friday, when it was revealed to us that my current company (we'll call it moonshine) sealed the deal and bought out pirate AV. hah! we're collapsing the company and keeping all the equipment. hah! but i'll tell you the best news of the lot. the bit that made me laugh like a freak....
pirate AV bought inca for £3 million, the two companies combined (at the time) were then worth about £6.5 million.
my current boss just bought the lot for £150,000. that's not a typing error.
again... hah! shoe's on the other foot now, idiots.
i'm missing you too
nearly a year ago, i was hit by a car while riding my bike back from meeting with dick & dom about putting on a live stage-show of 'da bungalow'. it was a day that quickly went from awesome to rrrrruuuuubbish in one foul sweep of a silver mercedes.
my beautiful bike was destroyed. i loved this bike. it was my first. my first real bike that looked after me and took me galavanting up and down the country on missions of love and adventure.
i remember packing her up with ridiculous amounts of stuff on the christmas run down to my parents one year. in the freezing, blustery cold i overloaded her and expected her to carry me 2 hours down the motorway. and she did. like a queen forced to carry her own luggage across the wide-open vistas of siberia.
i remember her carrying me and my girlfriend through the night in bleak mid-winter. two hamster-like balls, barely recognisable as human perched upon her wrapped in pyjamas and coats and windcheaters and fleeces and gloves and scarves and multiple ski-socks and waterproofs and helmets and hundreds of t-shirts. desperately fighting the sub-zero temperatures as if our life depended on it. which it kinda did. by this time in our relationship she was on her way out, gearbox slowly eating itself inactive, steering losing it's bearings, engine gasping for air. but did she stop?
no, onward she fought. through the frost and darkness, fields and plains passing by looking on with hostile indifference.
she took me anywhere i wanted to go, in any conditions with no complaint. even though she was getting on a bit and slowly eroding away faster than my wallet could cope with at that time.
until an idiot in a mercedes decided to drive on us.
and so she's been sat in front of my house under a tarpaulin since last april. a pile of scrap metal, chrome slowly fading away, joints ceasing, slumping on arthiritic suspension. the insurance company had paid me off, mercedes idiot taking full blame. so there she rested, rust working it's way across her wasted engine block...
but last week a man offered me money for her. a sizeable amount of money. especially considering the insurance people had paid over and above her true value. so i shook hands and said goodbye, wishing her bon voyage as she sped off into another winter night on the back of a trailer. off to be reborn as something new.
i've had another bike since last june. a bike i love. a bike that carries me though the cold winter nights with no complaint. twice as fast as the old girl ever went, and in infinitely more comfort. but i shed a tear when the dulled chrome disappeared into the folds of night, i don't mind telling you. she was a good girl. maybe our paths will cross again. until then, get some rest, get rid of some rust and dream of those sun-bleached open roads.
my beautiful bike was destroyed. i loved this bike. it was my first. my first real bike that looked after me and took me galavanting up and down the country on missions of love and adventure.i remember packing her up with ridiculous amounts of stuff on the christmas run down to my parents one year. in the freezing, blustery cold i overloaded her and expected her to carry me 2 hours down the motorway. and she did. like a queen forced to carry her own luggage across the wide-open vistas of siberia.
i remember her carrying me and my girlfriend through the night in bleak mid-winter. two hamster-like balls, barely recognisable as human perched upon her wrapped in pyjamas and coats and windcheaters and fleeces and gloves and scarves and multiple ski-socks and waterproofs and helmets and hundreds of t-shirts. desperately fighting the sub-zero temperatures as if our life depended on it. which it kinda did. by this time in our relationship she was on her way out, gearbox slowly eating itself inactive, steering losing it's bearings, engine gasping for air. but did she stop?
no, onward she fought. through the frost and darkness, fields and plains passing by looking on with hostile indifference.
she took me anywhere i wanted to go, in any conditions with no complaint. even though she was getting on a bit and slowly eroding away faster than my wallet could cope with at that time.until an idiot in a mercedes decided to drive on us.
and so she's been sat in front of my house under a tarpaulin since last april. a pile of scrap metal, chrome slowly fading away, joints ceasing, slumping on arthiritic suspension. the insurance company had paid me off, mercedes idiot taking full blame. so there she rested, rust working it's way across her wasted engine block...
but last week a man offered me money for her. a sizeable amount of money. especially considering the insurance people had paid over and above her true value. so i shook hands and said goodbye, wishing her bon voyage as she sped off into another winter night on the back of a trailer. off to be reborn as something new.
i've had another bike since last june. a bike i love. a bike that carries me though the cold winter nights with no complaint. twice as fast as the old girl ever went, and in infinitely more comfort. but i shed a tear when the dulled chrome disappeared into the folds of night, i don't mind telling you. she was a good girl. maybe our paths will cross again. until then, get some rest, get rid of some rust and dream of those sun-bleached open roads.
Thursday, 8 February 2007
i'm opening gates
except... i built myself a PC about 3 years ago and it's never crashed, blue-screened or lost any data. ever.
and it's never caught a virus either.
and it still runs at perfectly acceptable speeds even though its got 60-gig of music and 40-gig of video on it.
and i use it for gaming (sometimes).
and i can really easily upgrade it all by myself.
and it looks pretty: brushed steel, with blue neon lights.
and it costed a quarter of the price of a mac.
and it connects with my windows powered phone so i can sit on the horrible horrible london underground and watch movies.
and mac users are all excited about running windows now, and when you suggest "i thought os-x was the best," they look a little sheepish and avoid further conversation.
and i get two mouse buttons.
the often hilarious charlie brooker makes a well-informed and unbiased judgement (sort of). and i can't help being swayed slightly by his points.
okay, so i do have apple iPods, a shuffle and an 80-gb video. but that's just because they're awesome and, yes, iTunes is infinitely better than media player.
and i've never had a mac bugger up on me during a show at work (nb. don't use hewlett packard laptops for professional level productions).
okay, i like macs.
but i still like my pc.
so shut-up.
Monday, 5 February 2007
Saturday, 3 February 2007
i'm making a list, i'm checkin' it twice
here i am, right in the middle of watching what has quickly become one of the worst films of all time. now, i'm a big fan of shit films. there are a bunch of them that while being shit, retain a certain charm.
jackie chan films fall into this category: low production values, shoddy effects, inferior storylines. but these aren't what you watch a jackie chan film for; you watch it for innovative fight scenes performed by a pensioner who's fitter than you'll ever be.
you watch adam sandler films for the silliness, smokey the bandit for the kitch value, verhoeven for the tits, space jam for the toons. a lot of the time you can find at least one endearing quality in even the most tedious of movie attempts.
titanic at least had up-to-the-minute cgi.
there are some films that are just bad. i mean truly awful. absolute disasters from opening shot to rolling credit. dodgy stories, poor acting, mistaken cinematography, badly conceived editing, pointless casting, no direction, unbelievable characters, confusing continuity and on and on.
these films need to be named and shamed. those with no redeeming features whatsoever. the list starts here, and you're welcome to offer suggestions.
i'm in the middle of suffering the jean claude van damme error 'double team' also inflicting dennis rodman in his messy performance of van damme's confusing partner. yep, this film has fallen on to my list. in fact, it did within about twenty minutes, after which i began writing
this.
so, the list (in no particular order, like the thoughts behind them):
- Double Team, inducing jean claude shitting damme. oh god, every minute worse than the one before.
- Down To You, freddy prinze junior whimpers his pathetic barbie-doll apology, overshadowing even the appearance of henry frickin' winkler!
- American Psycho 2, after the genius of christian bale's performance in the slick, brain-busting whodunit of the first american psycho work of art, some ass makes a sequel without even beginning to understand it.
seemingly without even knowing there was a book, let alone reading it.
- Wolf Creek, nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing pointless pointless pointless pointless pointless pointless.
feel free to offer your thoughts.
help me help those around us to avoid wasting our precious life minutes.
jackie chan films fall into this category: low production values, shoddy effects, inferior storylines. but these aren't what you watch a jackie chan film for; you watch it for innovative fight scenes performed by a pensioner who's fitter than you'll ever be.
you watch adam sandler films for the silliness, smokey the bandit for the kitch value, verhoeven for the tits, space jam for the toons. a lot of the time you can find at least one endearing quality in even the most tedious of movie attempts.
titanic at least had up-to-the-minute cgi.
there are some films that are just bad. i mean truly awful. absolute disasters from opening shot to rolling credit. dodgy stories, poor acting, mistaken cinematography, badly conceived editing, pointless casting, no direction, unbelievable characters, confusing continuity and on and on.
these films need to be named and shamed. those with no redeeming features whatsoever. the list starts here, and you're welcome to offer suggestions.
i'm in the middle of suffering the jean claude van damme error 'double team' also inflicting dennis rodman in his messy performance of van damme's confusing partner. yep, this film has fallen on to my list. in fact, it did within about twenty minutes, after which i began writing
this.
so, the list (in no particular order, like the thoughts behind them):
- Double Team, inducing jean claude shitting damme. oh god, every minute worse than the one before.- Down To You, freddy prinze junior whimpers his pathetic barbie-doll apology, overshadowing even the appearance of henry frickin' winkler!
- American Psycho 2, after the genius of christian bale's performance in the slick, brain-busting whodunit of the first american psycho work of art, some ass makes a sequel without even beginning to understand it.
seemingly without even knowing there was a book, let alone reading it.- Wolf Creek, nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing pointless pointless pointless pointless pointless pointless.
feel free to offer your thoughts.
help me help those around us to avoid wasting our precious life minutes.
Thursday, 1 February 2007
i'm helping you realise your own mortality
it's februaryaryary!
already a twelfth of the year has gone by.
already a twelfth of the year has gone by.
pinch, punch, first of the month and all that.
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