Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler

Food was ate last night.  Stacks of it.  Terracotta is the place - a lovely all you can eat Chinese place.  Colleagues were all invited but they couldn't make it.  So that meant the only properly sensible person there (besides K) was Steve (sadly minus Albena this time).

Me and K walked down there via the PB's place where I was gifted 2 lovely presents (many many thanks for Animal Crossing you 2 - I need a good town name to use before the end of today!).  Incidentally the love of my life and my betrothed singularly failed on 2 counts yesterday.  First no prezzy and then even no card!  Honestly!  Disgraceful.

So to the restaurant.  Phil and Camille wound up late (odd for a german) but the banter was good throughout and I think everyone had some measure of a good time.  I certainly did.

Many thanks to all for the lovely time and to K for paying for my dinner (doesn't negate the lack of prezzy tho').

Off to Bg tomorrow for 2 weeks so I'll be quiet for a bit.  I may get some time in the hol to come and post something but I woudln't expect it if I were you.

Have fun.

Grumpy people complain about "List-shows".  You know the sort of thing.  "50 Greatest ever haircuts" etc... 

I watched one of these shows last night and it was pretty good.  This one was "50 Greatest One-Hit Wonders".  What was surprising was how good many of the songs were.  The voters had generally avoided novelty songs although both versions of Axel-F were played.  The artists were some talented folk as well but for some reason they hadn't managed to get around to following up their initial hit.

Minnie Ripperton was on (Loving You - you know with the high note) and she only didn't get any further hits 'cos she died.  Richard Harris was on with "Macarthur's Park" (Someone left the cake out in the rain.  I don't think I can take it, 'cos it took so long to make it and I'll never find that recipe again); he didn't follow up 'cos he couldn't sing (damn fine actor though).  Neil Innes was on with the Bonzo's and they never had another hit because they didn't really want to. Her wot did "Hey Mickey" was on and she's now a choreographer (she did the Gap ads as well as freaky dance stuff for Talking Heads).  Him from the Buggles (Video Killed The Radio Star) is now a well respected musician/producer.  Even Jaz-Man (SpaceMan) runs a record company now.

But then we got the crappy stuff like Chesney, Shampoo and the Baha-Men etc...  Sort of letting the side down somewhat.

I had a great 3 hours re-living many moments of my youth because of this show; and somehow it's "lazy programming".  Sigh.

Have fun.

Pwned! Oh that was enjoyable.

Have fun.

Once on the show "Genius" someone came up with the rather sweet idea of stopping war by only making guns that fired puppies.  The downside to this was he started wittering about making the puppies then explode when the enemy were all doing their "aaahhhh" noises.  Well I've just seen another story about this sort of thing.

It seems the Japanese are taking to giving teddy bears at weddings.  So one mad Jap inventor has come up with a gun that fires teddy bears.  But wait, there's more.  Not only does the gun fire teddy bears.  It fires teddy bears with parachutes.  So you can shoot over the heads of the wedding party and have your gift of a bear gently float down on the breeze into the bride's hands (or in Clur's case, down her cleavage).  Can you imagine?  I'd like to see Pee nearly choke on that instead of confetti.  Or Clur squirting teddy bear straight into his face.

Have fun.

There's a "Talking Point" on the beeb about babies again.  You know the sort of thing;  "Why are Brits not having enough babies?"  and someone wrote the best typo I've seen in ages.  In full it reads

"I earn more than my parents combined income but am straddled with student debt, high rental rates and as such am not in the position to own my own house let alone raise and provide for a child."

Magic!  If that person has student debt then they deserve a good kicking for not paying attention during english lessons.

Have fun.

Saw "Napoleon Dynamite" last night.

Hmm.  I haven't seen many fillums that have been cobbled together from merely one idea for one set-piece.  In this case the writers clearly thought "I know!  Let's have a nerd dancing really well.  Now how do we set a fillum around that central scene?"

In fact the only fillum that I can think of that had less of an auspicious beginning was the Troma flick called "Mutant on the Bounty".  I'm convinced they had that title way before they'd thought of a fillum to put it on.

Bits of Napoleon were funny.  The acting was indifferent.  The love interests weren't interesting.  But the dancing was good.

Have fun.

Welcome to the mental world of the Japanese.  If you've read this for a while you'll know I of a GameCube and that there has been some interest in Nintendo's next console codenamed "Revolution".  I think this is a good name that describes what they're trying to do in changing how games are played rather than just shinying up the pictures.

So lots of interest has been garnered and secrets have been kept about exactly what the machine will be able to do.

Hard-core gamers have been turned off by the stated lack of HD graphics.  Some were turned off by the weirdness of the controller (its selling point if you ask me).  And now Nintendo have just wrecked any chance of salvaging their reputation at all.  They've just released the name of their new machine.  But it's the "Revolution".  Sadly no.  They've decided to call it; I can't bring myself to mention this now.  They've decided to call it the Nintendo "Wii" (pron Whee).

I thought it was a joke at first but it appears not.  It was Nintendo of America that announced this.  I wonder if any UK employees have told them that selling a machine that has a name which is a synonym of "urine" is not likely to go down well in the UK.  There are various comments by Nint re why they've chosen this but they really don't wash with me.

Can you imagine.  If I'd said to my mother "Can I play with my Wii now?" she'd have cuffed me round the head and fairly so.

Honestly! 

I'll probably be one of the ones that does actually buy one though.  Can't imagine the crush in the shop for this baby.  And I'll still call it the Revo.  Otherwise I'll have to walk into a shop and ask "Can I have a Wii please?" and they'll fall about laughing.

Have fun.

K's just ordered some "nutrional supplements".  Ie a waste of money when you could eat properly instead.  Anyway the stuff arrived and has come with a catalogue of further rubbish.  AND it came with a similar catalogue of "pet products".  So along with the standard "de-worming" stuff and "healthy fur and bones" tinctures there are some hysterical products in there.

I'll start with "Aggression Formula - Control aggressive pets" - seems fair enough.  But who on earth would need

"EasyTravel Solution - Pet motion sickness remedy"?  Or what about

"Grief and Pining Formula - For pet depression"? Or even

"PetCalm - Soothe anxious pets naturally"? Or my all time fave

"Performance Plus - For pet's mental clarity".

Who dreams up this pile of garbage?

Have fun.

I've just sat and watched a new Beeb panel game.  The most notable thing about it was that it was presented by Danny Wallace of "Join Me" and "Are You Dave Gorman?" fame (he was also the producer of the radio 4 "Ross Noble Goes Global" shows.  (Incidentally I would strongly recommend all of the above, and you can hear ALL of the Ross Noble shows on the site).

So a panel game?  On BBC1? At prime time?  Yes that's right and pretty much what I thought.  Corporate whore or what?

Actually I found the show amiable enough if not actually funny. Probably better than "A Question of Sport".  (I hope they use that as an advertising quote)

It's called "School's Out" and is based around the idea of being in school. 3 celebs get asked questions on school subjects.  The most memorable thing about it was that all the questions were ridiculously easy.  I even got all the english lit and history questions.  The best bit by far was watching the "French oral" exam.  This is where a real French person asks questions to the guests and marks them on their responses in French.  One was awful, one was OK and Mel Giedroc was excellent although she did answer "I am Mel Giedroc" to the question "How are you?"

I was watching this and thinking; "Could they actually do this in say Germany or France?"  Imagine a German TV star being asked questions in English.  I'd imagine they could speak quite well on all manner of topics and probably in at least 2 foreign languages.  But you should have heard the pantomime "oooohhh"s from the crowd when Mel started talking about her kids in a foreign lingo.  Anyone would think it was difficult and weird to learn another language.  Actually the difficult bit is true enough but it's only us (in western europe) who are crap at it and so never bother.

In short.  Well done, good effort but likely to improve with further application.

Have fun.

Now then just how would you advertise a poliical party?

First off you have to say what that party actually stands for, yes?  How about saying a bit about that party's record in local and national government?  What about the leader?  Is he a good guy (as there are no girly leaders)?

Well that's what I'd have thought.  But then I'm neither an advertising copywriter nor a politician.  I suppose that the marriage of politician and advert exec would be a product made in the depths of the hell of cynicism and I'd be right.

I've just had the misfortune to see the latest "Party Election Broadcast" by the Labour lot. Well here's a turn-up - they're scum.  Who'd have thought it?

Let us return to the idea of advertising yourself.  What do you think this ad told us about the Labour party?  Well the answer was "Nothing".  A bit fat zilch and a void where content should have been.

Instead of a series of benefits to voting red all we got was a CGI chameleon riding a bike.  Yes that was it.  What?!

The conceit was that the chameleon was David Cameroon, changing his ciolours to fit whomever he was speaking to.  Oh that's unusual!  A politician tailoring his message to his audience.  Never?

How on Earth do any politicians ever get off on showing that other politicians are either frugal with the truths they impart or have changed an opinion at one time or another.

TB was once a member of CND, he was a socialist, he was utterly opposed to joining the EU, he was utterly opposed to students having to pay for their education.  And I'm sure there is a catalogue of similar changes of opinion and spin in all parties.

The parties in the UK are currently engaged in trying to figure out why people aren't interested in politics.  Well der!

Just tell us about the bloody issues and what you are going to do about them please!  I really didn't want to see a sub-Pixar piece of cack that tells me a: nothing new about any politician and b: nothing about why I should vote for anyone at all.

Have fun.

[edit: Just seen the blues advert and it hit all the buttons I decried the red one for missing.  All positive stuff about "if you want to go green, vote blue!"  I don't remember seeing any part of it be negative against anyone else.  If this was a race between only 2 groups and I make my mind up on such trivialities as marketing then I'd have to vote blue.]