Show me the man and I'll show you the boy

I don't know what's wrong with me but I appear to be regressing into childhood (yeah, like I'd ever progressed into adulthood). I say this because two things that I previously thought were only for children, I've suddenly gained an interest in.

The first is in comics. Now I've never hid my light under a bushel as regard anything by the great DC Thompson or IPC, I'm talking about stuff like Marvel or DC. Not that I'm particularly into superhero stuff, but I watched the film version of Alan Mooore's V for Vendetta over Christmas and really enjoyed it. I love anything that portrays Britain as a totalitarian state. Especially one that has John Hurt as its leader. So I'm thinking that I may actually buy some of Alan Moore's comics. Or graphic novels as I believe we must now call them. In fact we must because I bought Ghost World from an Edinburgh branch of Borders in the summer and when walking out I set the alarms off. The guy who served me came rushing from behind the counter and said, in a loud voice, "It must be your comic, they don't always scan properly!" Great, cheers, mate, now everyone thinks I'm a) a man with the mental capacity of an eight year-old or b) some kind of comics anorak.

I've had a soft spot for Ghost World for some time now, ever since I saw the film of it a few years ago. I never realised until recently it was based on a comic, ahem, sorry, graphic novel. In case you haven't seen it it's about two intelligent late teenage girls being bored in a small town that can't contain them and the cast of weirdos they meet. I've always found the kind of people who fancy cartoon characters slightly worrying (especially my sister who fancies a character from King of the Hill called Boomhauer. A man who speaks in an indecipherable Texan drawl). But I think I fancy the two girls from Ghost World (or do I just fancy Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch who starred in the film?), and should I be worried that I fancy two 17 year-old American girls, as a 37 year-old man, that is? Never mind, I could always email Lily Allen's new squeeze and ask him I suppose...

The other thing I've got myself interested in is electronic gaming. Never appealed before until Guitar Hero, so this Christmas I treated myself to an Xbox 360. But it didn't stop at the latest incarnation of GH, no, I've gone and got something called Grand Theft Auto IV. I've started playing it and I haven't got a clue what's going on. I know you're supposed to nick cars. I've got that far, I know how to steal the cars, you just walk up to one and press the 'Y' button. But I don't know what happens once inside the car. I tend to just drive it around and avoid the 'cops'. Someone at work told me you have to follow a radar or summat. I dunno...

There's also a lot of effing 'n' jeffing on it too. You only have to walk past someone on the street and you get called a 'motherfucker' or somesuch. Apparently there's a strip club to visit somewhere in the game. No doubt, on my current fancying-cartoon-characters form, I'll end up crying myself to sleep over one of the sodding CGI strippers.

I'll keep you posted on how I get on with it. I'm hoping to get Call of Duty: World at War for my birthday. In which you can bayonet stormtroopers of the Third Reich and throw flames at soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army in the Pacific campaign. Top.

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.

What enthusiasm?

As much as I'm not overly keen on Curb Your Enthusiasm, I've found myself, over the past couple of weekends, having Larry David moments.
Take Saturday, for example. I was doing a spot of housework in my kitchen whilst listening to selections from my iPod, in particular playing a pretty mean air guitar to this. Anyhow, while in my cleansing and air-guitaring state, I must have inadvertently pumped a bottle of white Carex hand soap I keep on at the kitchen sink. True to form the postman turned up at the crack of midday to deliver a parcel which needed signing for. I could see that he couldn't make eye contact with me but seemed to be focused on my navy blue pullover. When he'd sodded off, I went back to my household chores. I then noticed a load of Carex hand soap all over the draining board, and, horror of horrors all down the front of my jumper. The postman must have thought, in my red-faced state and with a load of thick, white liquid down my front, that I'd been having a spot of 'me time. Nooooo!!! No doubt he couldn't wait to get back to the sorting office to laugh about it 'with the lads'. Ugh.

And last Sunday, I broke my own rule about not going to pubs where a TV plays to watch the big Forest v Sheep football match. I waited outside the pub for my mate to turn up (I hate going into pubs on my own). I'd bought a Q magazine from the newsagents on the way and was passing the time reading it. While waiting, this woman with a small dog on a lead approached me (The dog was one of those Greyfriars Bobby types - a Wanky Terrier I think they're called). The dog stopped and started sniffing the bottom of my jeans. The owner made no effort to call the dog off, and then it arched its back, as a dog parking its breakfast does, and started to have a shit. Now, I don't know what the dog had been eating, vindaloo by the look of if, but it had serious diarrhoea problems. The woman was then saying to the dog - the fucking dog, mark you, she forwent apologising to me - 'oooh, just a minute, let mummy get a bag'. At this point a wasp landed on my face, I started swatting with the magazine to get it off and ended up stepping in the dog toffee whilst the old bag was scrabbling in her bag to a receptacle to put the shit in. Bah! I had to do that thing where you find some grass and scrape your shoe along it to get the grass off. And then you find you need a stick to poke it out. I spent the rest of the afternoon watching people near me sniffing and looking at the bottom of their shoes. Still, it was a good match. In the second half.

Anyway, in other news, that Q magazine carries a great article by Billy Bragg about how he'd almost given up on his son showing any interest in the guitar. That was until Guitar Hero 3 of course. Now his son's forming a band. How cool is that?
Talking of guitars, this one's still in my local music shop window. When I get my Christmas bonus, a moment of madness may overcome me and I shall probably end up buying the bloody thing. It'll be like the final scene of That'll Be the Day where David Essex goes in to buy his first electric guitar.