Reasons to be cheerful

Sorry I've not been posting for a while but I've not had much to post about, and a strange melancholia has engulfed me somewhat. I don't think Mum's death has hit me properly yet, and something big's about to go off at work, from which, fingers-crossed, I'll emerge from the other side unscathed. Hopefully.

Anyway, I don't do self pity on this blog (I do that on my other blog http://www.boohoomyhamstersjustcroaked.blogspot.com/) so I thought I'd let you know what I've been using to cheer myself:

• James May making giant Airfix kits.


• Danny Baker on the Word podcast talking about working in record shops owned by Elton John in the early 70s, King Crimson, the myth surrounding punk and its origins, working at the NME in the late 70s, Earth Wind and Fire.


• This record. I gather it's not everyone's cup o' meat but I like it.


• Mark Ellen guesting on Mark Radcliffe's show; two mates talking about nothing much but being funny and listener-inclusive.


• Seeing Adrian Edmondson and the Bad Shepherds. A good night out if you like to hear Kraftwerk's The Model played on mandolin, violin, double bass and uilleann pipes.


• Series six of Peep Show. Just keeps getting better.


• Listening to my eighteen year-old nephew order alcoholic drinks at a bar, ice creams and fish 'n' chips while on a weekend away with the bloody family. What a dork. But a funny dork.


• Armstrong and Miller.


• Reading about Sting and Trudie Styler's tantric sex-powered helicopter in the latest Viz.
• Reminding myself about when I went to a roller disco in 1982 after being served by a girl in Marks and Spencer's who was there. She fell and dropped Polo mints all over the floor for other roller discoites to grind into the wooden gymnasium floor with their wheels. That set me off, but what got me even more was the thought of me at a roller disco. Regular readers will know that I'm the world's most un-roller disco person. What was I thinking?

2008 and all that

That's 2008 then. The Bright Ambassador highlights:

• Guitar Hero 3 - how to kill weekend afternoons during a crap summer


• Dexter


• Nottingham Forest's promotion


• Mad Men


• Metallica back on form


• Charlie Brooker's print and TV tribute to Oliver Postgate


• Fleet Foxes


• The sitcom Pulling - deliciously filthy


• Word magazine's Prog edition


• Danny Baker back on 606


• Rebecca Romero


• Son of Rambow


• The rise of Christine Bleakley


• Dead Set


• Jez using a £20 note as a masturbatory visual aid on Peep Show


• The Ting Tings


• Seeing Peep Show's Isy Suttie in the flesh (pictured)


• Elbow finally getting the recognition they deserve


• Kristen Schaal in The Flight of the Conchords


• Armstrong and Miller's Timeghost podcast


• Terry Wogan leaving Eurovision - how about him leaving Radio 2?


• Watson and Oliver at Edinburgh
  

What didn't float my boat:

• Sam Allardyce not coming to Nottingham Forest


• Graham Norton joining Eurovision


• The way newspapers, especially The Sun and Daily Mail, use the slightest thing as a stick with which to beat the BBC. I'm surprised I haven't seen a headline along the lines of 'Man's disgust at getting papercut from the 1985 edition of Radio 1's Which Way Now? pack. Fat cat Beeb bosses laugh themselves unconscious at the news during the Christmas party WE paid for'.


• The film PS I Love You


• The Ting Tings


• Nottingham Forest playing like a steaming pile of poo from August onwards


• Ashes to Ashes (the telly show, not the Bowie song)


• Dirty Sexy Money - the biggest waste of talent since ELP


• The upward curve of Frankie Boyle's career


• Hole in the Wall

What to look forward to in 2009:

• Guitar Hero: Metallica Edition


• Seeing Metallica in February for the first time in sixteen years


• Anything else Metallica-related

That's me done for this year. Happy Christmas - whether you like it or not. As Geddy Lee says, with alarming regularity immediately pre-interval, I'm 'going to take a break for some brain surgery.' Things are out of my control a little work-wise in the new year, so whether I'll be back sooner rather than later is yet to be seen.

To quote Derek Batey, be good to each other. Ta-ra.

Licence to be bored

I gather there's a new James Bond film coming out. Not that you'd notice, I mean I've hardly seen any promotion done for it, have you?
I can't take Bond films seriously these days. After the first Austin Powers film it just all seem so ridiculous. But I guess that ridiculousness is the point. I was listening to Adam and Joe the other week and they had Roger Moore on. They asked him why he never seemed to take Bond seriously, he told them that how can you take it seriously, when this man, who is supposed to be a spy, is recognised in bars and casinos all over the world. And, if he doesn't want to be recognised, why does he drive around in Aston Martin DB5s and Lotus Esprits? When I see either of those cars, while I'm out and about, I always stop and say 'Cor, look at that penis extension'*.
I used to like Bond films when I was a biscuit-cruncher. My little Holy Trinity of Bonds was Goldfinger, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice. Let us, for example look at You Only Live Twice in more detail. For a start it involves a plot that sees an extinct volcano in Japan being used to launch rockets to swallow up other spacecraft. This engineering job to hollow out the volcano must have been massive. But it wasn't just hollowed out, it was also rigged up with all the gubbins needed to launch rockets, as well as a fucking monorail. And how come nobody noticed the lake in the volcano's crater was being replaced by a sliding glass cover to look like a lake? Who are all these contractors who do theses huge jobs for SPECTRE but don't tell anyone? If it was McAlpine's or Wimpey's they'd be crowing from the rooftops about this massive job they'd done in Japan. And what of planning permission? If that was in Blighty a big job like that would more than likely go to a public inquiry.
And why does he always avert some major catastrophe with 007 seconds to spare? Why can he never avert a catastrophe with a tidy fortnight to spare?
Why do we now have this new, serious Bond for the 21st century? I'm sorry, but you can't churn out twenty odd films over forty years - making huge wedges of cash - and then suddenly say 'Hmm, they were a bit silly, weren't they? This is how we think it really should be'.

Oh, and this Bond-related new release is absolutely bloody shocking.

Of course, this post has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was listening to this week's Armstrong and Miller Timeghost podcast on my walk to work today. I'm sure passers-by thought I was a bit doolally when I cracked out laughing as they were thinking up names for new Bond girls. Tits McCrikey and Flouncy Minge indeed!


*I'd just like to point out to any ladies who might be looking in that I drive one of those very small Smart cars, if you catch my drift..........

What an acting ledge

I've just found a new podcast I rather like, it's by Armstrong and Miller through The Times (available on iTunes UK, or, no doubt, via The Times website). They play two of those arseholes who often pop up on Newsnight Review, you know the type. Handwringers.
Anyway, on the first episode they were discussing Heath Ledger's 'mesmerising' performance in the new Batman film. I really can't get my head around all this 'ooh, it's fantastic' stuff, you see, to me, acting is just pretending, isn't it? Nothing more.
As a kid I used to pretend all the time. One day a pilot, the next a fireman, the day after that Ponch off of CHiPs. These acting ponces are obviously children who've never grown up.
Of course the Academy, being the sentimental bastards they are, will give Ledger the Oscar. Which brings me onto the importance of the Oscars. Or the non-importance of the Oscars. Put it this way, Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Jaime Foxx have all won Oscars. Which to me proves that those Oscars judges don't have a clue what they're talking about.
I have time for only three actors: Paddy Considine, Michael Caine and Helen Mirren. That's it.

Going back to Batman, I've seen an awful lot of it just recently while it was doing the promotional rounds. I have one health and safety point o raise: Batman is seen charging through a shopping mall with his cloak billowing behind him. Riding a bicycle or a motorcycle while wearing a cape is extremely dangerous. For a start the cloak could get wrapped around the chain and strangle Batman. Or the cloak could get wrapped around the chain and throw Batman off. Couldn't Batman's faithful old retainer, Alfred, have pointed out these H&R hiccups? Or perhaps Alfred wants him to die so he gets a big inheritance, Batman has no family, remember? No doubt he'd give all to charity. The worthy bastard.