Am I the only one who can't start singing one without it turning into the other?

Poll #1508793 ra ra ra ra ra ra
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

Taking Sides

Did I tell you that I went to see comedy on Tuesday? I cannot believe that my first 'cultural' activity (aside from a pint and a jacket potato in the pub beforehand, mmm, cheese and beans, WHY would people put anything else on a potato? CRAZY TIMES. The worst offender is "Cilantro", where they offer jacket potato fillings such as sour cream and guacamole. All very nice, I know, but not on jacket potatoes for goodness sake! Nachos, sure. A guacamole sandwich? A thing of delight. On a spud?! Get thee behind me)... er... was comedy.

Er, anyway, back on topic... Yes, comedy! I am not usually much of a fan, but this time I went to see the other funny comedian i.e Stewart Graham Lee. Hurrah for Mister Stew! Even though he didn't tell any jokes about The Fall (has he ever? Are The Fall a joking subject?), I still larffed like a drane. One long sketch was about his hatred of Top Gear.( Read more... )

SE Trains are still finishing early tonight, so that's the kibosh (mystery word ahoy) on the pub. I shall stay in, and your worlds will be shattered I am sure. Unless any SE-Londoners fancy a drink and discussion of snow daleks? Alternatively, Lovefilm has sent me 2 copies of "Closely Observed Trains". I hope I don't have to watch them both before I return them. The next films I am due are "Star Trek", "Whisky Galore!" and "Flight of the Conchords". Hey, that's not a film... but what else to put on the list? I am still useless at films, eh...

Query: starch syrup. What do YOU think this could be? In my context, it goes in fun-hating cakes. The internet seems to think it's anything between golden syrup, or sugar + soy sauce, or lots of long chemically sounding nameteroses. But what do YOU reckon. Should I just boil up some sugar, or use the golden syrup? Or, is it like when you dissolve potato starch to make everything taste GRATE?? Argh!

The thing is, I have THROWN AWAY my butter in a resolution for the new year to finally lose all the weight that I have been carrying around since age 17 or so. I am sure that chubbiness will soon be a THING OF THE PAST with this LIFECHANGING move. FYI, today's biscuit tally = surprise coconut biscuit, chocolate chip cookie. Soon I will be shopping in the childrens department I will be so teeny etc etc chiz.

I am exercising (my hands) by making a blanket which will use up all my random bits of wool, before my set of interchangeable needles arrives (so excited!!) and I will make jumpers all in the round without a seam - WITH ELKS ON THEM. Yes!

Here is the blanket as of a few days ago - it has a few more rounds on it now:


( And here's a picture of the whole thing )

Some people spend ages thinking of tasteful colour palettes etc but I think why not just bung it all together and think of England??

*Vanilla ♥

so i'm pretty much snowed in now for the second day running. it's quite staggeringly beautiful out there, but similiarly i'm never more glad to be in *here*

best of the year list will be up probably in a couple of weeks or so - main reason for change is that i've only just bought what i can only call the two best records of the year: "merriweather post pavillion" (finally FINALLY i get animal collective - this is easily the equal of my beloved "campfire songs" album) and "the liberty of norton folgate", probably the greatest album madness will ever come up with. quite staggeringly brilliant. i imagine they'll top my list when it's finally done

as for annoyances of the year:

richard dawkins - not that i personally have any problems with athiests, but dear god (pun intended) has there ever been a more joyless, pedantic, zealot than dawkins? i have absolutely no problems with christopher hitchens' polemics, because he's just that - a polemicist in a grand tradition. a man whose views you have no need to agree with to enjoy. dawkins however is a staggeringly self righteous man, someone who reminds me of all those fundamentalist christians of my youth in a perverse way. it's the way he seems to consider ANYONE who has a view in contrast to his own as just an idiot that gets me. the grand arrogance and pomposity of the man. the absolute thoughtlessness that anyone could think differently. i don't like christopher hitchens, but he seems the kind of bloke you'd quite amusingly come to blows with over dinner if you know what i mean. dawkins would just consider you a blithering idiot and bluster off

russell howard - staggeringly unfunny man, a sort of wet fart of comedy. man who takes a funny idea and flogs it beyond all normal lengths of humour. someone will suggest a humorous concept to him and he'll then extend it beyond all natural lifespan with comedy voices and noises and removing any genuinely funny impetus that the concept may originally have had. sarah will attest that the first time i saw the trailer for "russell howard's better world" my response was "what? has he got cancer then?" russell brand, all is forgiven

mock the week - see above. take a very funny host - dara o'briain who surely doesn't need the money THAT badly - and a sort of lazily brilliant comic in the form of frankie boyle, and an inoffensive void of humour that is hugh dennis... and then peg the village idiot and quite possibly a very real simpleton that is andy parsons and the above abomination of humour to the format. and watch the laughs... never appear

"i want to do a poo at paul's house" - you have to be british to understand this reference (an advert for air freshener), but dear god is it bad. me and sarah spend the duration of every advert when it's on suggesting differing pauls the child may want to poo at..

david cameron - gordon brown is such an utter fool of a primeminister that it could only be an even bigger tool as competitor - cameron - that could possibly push the election his way. i think it's the fact that cameron's default face looks a little like a glazed donut that does it for me. there's something unreal about him that just doesn't... work. something brittle and abnormal about the man. i worry what he'll be capable of as it's the same sort of look that blair had in his mad eyes and grimace. the look of a man staring into the abyss of madness but also desperate to be adored by everyone and anyone

james delingpole - having moved from just a slightly annoying purveyor of curmudgeounly pop reviews for "the sunday telegraph" and "the spectator" to talking head of banality and stupidity. he appeared on the hilariously bad "when boris met dave" drama documentary about johnson and cameron at eton and oxford together and somehow managed to make me feel warmly for toby young. he's basically a roper dictionary definition of an oik - a little tick of a man who desperately (and i do mean DESPERATELY - i've yet to see a man more desperate) wants to be one of the big boys. but he's just that little bit... too needy, too common, too talentless to be considered by them as anything more than a nuisance. so to make himself feel better he spends his time writing bad war novel pastiches like "coward on the beach", writing anti-obama screeds (look for the review on amazon, it's utterly wonderful - his dad has to come in and defend him!) and turning up as a talking head on stuff like "woman's hour". that last appearance was probably the real tipping point for me, when he spent the whole interview rambling on about how men just CAN'T be expected to POSSIBLY know how to BEGIN to look after children! you know the character in "bleak house" who constantly shrugs off responsibility because he is "all but a child"? that's delingpole sadly

the new adaptation of "the turn of the screw" - all you need to know is in this picture:



russell t "rusty" davies - there's a running joke on the internet forum ILXOR which has rusty chuckling to himself as he writes yet more barmy nonsense under the name "doctor who" with the phrase "this is a HOOT! A HOOT!" and that's pretty much what i've thought all along. when he came to bring the series back, my thoughts or rusty were mainly warm - mainly for ben slade from "why don't you?" and marcie from "dark season" - but then the series started. and continued. and aside from the occasional flourishes of absolute brilliance - "midnight" and "gridlock" spring to mind - there's this abiding sense of abjectly ignoring logic for moments of flashy silliness that i object to most. it's like he just thinks of half a dozen crass jokes and then half a dozen big moments of spectacle, thinks of a few silly names (the nightmare child from the most recent episode, about whom i kind of immediately thought of john barrowman) and a few references to old characters... and then cobbles it all together. the wisest thing i've read about how rusty writes, was on an internet forum which suggested that rusty is averse to handing anything in past first draft quality - because to him it will lose the immediacy and grandness of the ideas. and there's definitely a case that when you remember rusty's time in charge of "doctor who" you'll remember these big moments and... not much else. and it won't necessarily be a case of remembering them in a good way either. the lack of logic and thought gone into them and the contempt he then uses to dismiss all the naysayers (the "ming mongs") is why he's burnt as many bridges as he has... whatever else can be said for stephen moffatt, he doesn't treat internal logic with nearly as much contempt. i will definitely state now that i think a lot of what rusty did was for the good of the longevity of the series, much as i personally struggle with it. but i think if i'm going to admit that, then a whole chunk of fandom also better start rethinking how they judge JNT because certainly in his early years he rescued the series before he too descended into camp silliness. i won't miss rusty, i really won't

tim minchin - no. no. it's not funny. and neither are you

james corden - as above, but just more ubiquitous

and finally: john barrowman - i've not really bothered with the simon amstell-less "never mind the buzzcocks", partly because so many of the guest hosts annoyed me and partly because without amstell the series really seemed to be lacking a point. but i did make an exception for david tennant's inning, which was great because 1. he was very warm as a presenter which made a nice change 2. bernard cribbins was such a delight and 3. his repeated hollering of "BARROWMAN!" at any hint of a double entendre. and that, dear readers, is why the most hated man of the year in my house has been john barrowman. any hint of rudery, campness or anything lustily dimwitted and barrowman is all over it with his big showbiz smile, a silly laugh, a camp trill and the occasional whiff of constantly being about to break into a massive, schmaltzy ballad. he's just a one man show, constantly "on" and there is NOTHING i hate more than people who are constantly "on". it's like a torrent of bad smut and showbiz tackiness, a flood of idiocy and camp gurning and... oh dear god, is there anyone who can stomach the man? i mean what excuse and justification does he have for... just existing? he's a tiresome, tiresome oaf of a man who just constantly wants to milk every second of his presence on screen for all it's worth. in his mind, his life is nothing short of a one man show that's always JUST ABOUT to transfer to broadway but never will. everything he does is like a big variety act and frankly i'm fed up with it

and there you have my intolerance list for 2009! enjoy!

just a few thoughts on christmas tv: as we were watching it, "day of the triffids" seemed a bit lumpy and not quite as good as it could have been - but by the second part the pace had picked up drastically, eddie izzard had just about judged how much of the scenery to chew and whatever tinkering had been done to the novel seemed to finally be working. i make these points because if you compare them to the other things we've watched this christmas, it seems nothing short of the greatest adaptation ever made. in essence: however lumpy "triffids" may have seemed, it came across like prime dennis potter compared to the ludicrous, *ludicrous* plotting of "the end of time" - and however ripe izzard may have occasionally seemed, it at least wasn't full on ham like john simm decided to aim for as the master. "the end of time" part one was one of the single most stupid things i have ever seen, and i can only dread what rusty has in store for us with part two

but having said that, as i said above the tinkering with "triffids" seemed to be *worthwhile* in retrospect. the stress on the fuel crisis was nicely judged and i particularly liked how it tried to add drama - beefing up torrence's role - without ever damaging the novel's haunting "face it, humanity is shafted so let's sod off to the isle of wight and hope triffids never learn to swim" ending. and compared to last night's "turn of the screw" it was a masterpiece of adaption. but then again compare ANYTHING to "turn of the screw" and it would come across as a masterpiece. "the turn of the screw" is lucky in that it has a near perfect adaptation in the form of "the innocents". there was an adaptation about ten or so years ago on ITV which i remember being very harsh towards at the time - it seemed like a bad am-dram version of "the innocents" and brought nothing new to the table other than some slightly hammy acting. but dear god, even that seems like a masterpiece compared to last night's offering. absolutely diabolical - the novel is so successful because everything is hinted and just outside of the reader's grasp. why is miles expelled? does it matter? does it matter what dreadful things quint is up to? none of this matters. spell it out and you end up with that dreadful michael winner/ marlon brando prequel from the seventies. this adaptation not only spelled it out, but bludgeoned you around the head with it. cue miles actually channeling quint's dialogue, quint's face seen everywhere like some sort of demon and - in perhaps a scene aimed at making rusty's ludicrous "master race" joke from "end of time" come across as halfway normal - the most ridiculous image of 2009: miles smoking a cigar, drinking a brandy snifter and roaring with laughter as quint boffs the old governess in the background. and none of that even comes close to my biggest problem with the whole farcical enterprise: no. my biggest frustration was a rather off the cuff bit where our heroine is asked about her father. just one viewing of "the innocents" will tell you all you need to know about the naivety of the central character - she's flirted with for perhaps the first time in her life, she's saddled with children a bit too worldly for their own good, given a posh house to have the run of, has all this wild countryside around her and this back story about quint hinted at. the WHOLE POINT is that this repressed woman is suddenly faced with all this... worldliness and she goes a bit bonkers. but in this version, her father is seen as some evil spiritual soldier to give the governess a bit more independence and demonstrate some sort of... spine i suppose. but that immediately makes her less of a figure swept along by all these strange events and immediately forces her into a position of dominance

in essence, they took a tragic tale of a naive woman swept along by forces she has no control over with a wonderfully nuanced question constantly hovering over the nature of the haunting into... over ripe ham. everything was stressed, everything spelt out and... well... the whole thing was basically the best advertisement ever for renting "the innocents". staggeringly bad. in every way. i'll even slightly forgive rusty in comparison

"the common swings" is... hush my mouth!... nearly finished! nearly! my lord! ten years late but still...

hope all had a good christmas and hope you have an equally great new year