You need to watch Family Guy. Really.

Lois: Peter, what did you promise me?
Peter: That I wouldn't drink at the stag party.
Lois: And what did you do?
Peter: Drank at the stag pa-- ... Whoa. I almost walked into that one.

"They kept it all incognito. They're gonna collect the body in an ice cream van."

Know where that quote's from? If not, then you need to see 'The Long Good Friday' which alternates with 'The Insider' as my favorite film at the moment. Anyway, cutting a long story short, I have recently acquired this film on (you guessed it) Blu-ray, and have to say that it shows up the big advantage of BR which a lot of reviews miss, namely the sound quality.

Despite loving the film to bits, there were always a few plot points I could never quite be bothered to concentrate on, namely why the unseen protagonists (whose identity only becomes clear later in the film) are so ticked off with Bob Hoskins' character to the point of killing a large number of people who work for him. The answer is given towards the end of the film whilst Bob is busy losing his rag and accidentally bumping off his right hand man, but when watching this film previously, I've never really been paying attention to the dialogue at this stage because you just know something bad is about to happen. Blu ray however allows the exposition to be delivered much more painlessly and clearly - so hey presto I now understand "who lit the fuse that blew Harold's world apart".

Top film. Sadly a remake is on the way...

I'll leave you with this gem:

Harold: Who's having a go at me? Can you think of anyone who might have an old score to settle or something?
Razors: Who's big enough to take you on?
Harold: Well, there were a few.
Razors: Like who?
Harold: Yeah, they're all dead.

Mikey! Mikey! Round the back, quick!

Yes yes yes, hasn't it been a long time, yada yada yada. Anyway, what I really wanted to get off my chest this week was the rerun of a certain programme on Challenge TV. Now I wouldn't want you to think I spend all weekend watching Challenge TV, but every now and again, it is good for a solid hit of nostalgia (remember the appallingly bad prizes on Bullseye? Here they are, in all their cheap and nasty glory) but they have now resurrected arguably one of the loopiest shows of the late 80s: Interceptor.

This was both an inspired and apallingly produced show all at the same time. For anyone who doesn't remember, it had 'Treasure Hunt' type tendancies except in place of Aneka Rice (;-)) it used each week two consistently dull members of the public (mistake) who were placed ten miles apart and led by Annabel Croft (mistake) towards each other. Along the way, they had to collect keys to each other's backbacks, one of which contained some cash, and get together in the space of 40 minutes using whatever means possible. However, the backpacks could be locked remotely by being hit with a laser beam, which was being carried by a complete nutter called 'The Interceptor' aka male model Sean O'Kane . Clad in black leather (cool, but must have been a bit uncomfortable in summer filming conditions) he was flown about in a black helicopter by his trusty pilot (Mikey) and did his best to shoot the backpacks from 500ft up (bit tricky) to the sound of an appallingly bad dubbed laser gun effect (mistake). He also didn't so much relish his part as chew the rotor blades off the helicopter. He was occasionally sane enough to get slightly closer to his targets using motorbikes or a black Maserati he seemed to have handy, though it was never explained how he knew where to park them, or how he was allowed to traverse the streets of some godforsaken market town at 90 mph without breaching some health and safety regs..

Cancelled quite rightly for the utterly banal aspects of the programme at the end of the first series (despite a Teletext petition you know!), you get the feeling that by the end of a couple of series and a proper shakedown, it would have become pretty good. The hint of how good it could have been that I always remember was when 'the Interceptor' got ahead of one lady contestant's route and bunged some tractor-owning farmer £20 to let him swap places and outfits. He then offered the contestant a ride and had Mikey buzz the woman to suggest he was airborne. Then he got her off the tractor, walked round the back of her and 'calmly' zapped her pack shut. £1000 down the swanny and a moment of classic TV I shall carry with me forever.

On Me Hols

We are visiting MeParents at the moment which constitutes our summer holidays. Not for us sunny climes and blue oceans you know. Oh deary me no. However, those of you with tots will appreciate that holidaying with the grandparents is in fact the best type of holiday known to mankind for the following reasons:

a) you get fed to death by Granny;
b) children. horses. 'nuff said;
c) children *love* to spend time with their grandparents, thus releasing daddy to spend some quality time with his playstation (sorry, wife);
d) I can get hold of customer services a damn sight more easily than at the Hilton;
e) Grandad's Sky Movies subscription; and
f) favourable room costs can be negotiated through bartering PC and AV technical skills.

So yes, a fine holiday so far, Be seeing you..

Bloody Car Mechanics

So this week the saga of my pride and joy's dodgy steering has come to an abrupt conclusion. For people I haven't bored rigid with this story before, about 18 months ago, our shiny new turbocharged MPV was involved in a collision which required some repairs to the front of the car, specifically the drivers side wheel arch area (still, the other car was a write off, which suited me fine in the circumstances). However, post-repairs the car seemed to pull to the left. Not much, but it was noticeable enough that I mentioned it to the coachworks firm employed to fix the car by my insurers. Nah, they said, that's road camber. Perfectly natural. So for a while, or at least until I had gone through through 4 front tyres in six months, I thought it might be my imagination, and for a further while I had the extension to worry about, so it got left. Eventually though, one of the new tyres started to wear and so I reached the point of swearing vengeance on the motor industry and that this would be fixed.

3 sets of garages and about 2 months later, no luck, so I logged onto an owner's club website and discovered something called the Hunter Wheel Alignment System. Just £30 later I was shown a nice printout showing the right front tyre had 200% more negative camber than the left front tyre. So I go back to the brand's authorised mechanics at the third garage and have what is technically known as 'a word'.

Post-word, they then proceed to redo the steering and tracking check but then tell me there's no point fixing the camber on the car. Yes it glows red on the report I got, but really, it will be a waste of money (they said). 15 minutes of online research about excessive negative camber revealed otherwise, but I was now left in the crappy position of being told by Mr Chief Mechanic that there was no point. What to do?

Years of legal experience led me to the conclusion **** it, but I had to demand they replaced the thing most likeliest to be causing the adverse reading. So they pulled out the wishbone connecting the wheel to the axle (sort of) and guess what? It was bent! Suddenly, all readings go back to normal and the car is fine.

Of course, suing anyone for all these screw-ups after all this time is highly unlikely to be successful; everyone will blame everyone else, and indeed the garage think that a nationwide chain have been putting the wrong tyres on my car for a year. The cost though is not the really annoying thing here: it's to do with the fact that for 18 months I have been trying to explain to most of the mechanics in my county that the car needed fixing, and every time I would start by saying "I'm not a mechanic, but..."

Actually, i should have just said "I AM a mechanic, so fix it sunshine and less of yer lip." Would have been cheaper...

Hasta La Vista, er, Vista

No, this isn't a post about the T2 blu-ray I was wittering about a couple of weeks ago (although it is rather good). You may recall I was in the process of fixing an old laptop for TotOne to learn to use the internet on, basic IT etc (and for Daddy to use when MeWife is allegedly 'social networking'). I had also been wrestling with reinstalling Vista on that laptop, which was itself an irreversible upgrade from Windows XP, so that once you install windows vista, something bad happens and you can't reinstall windows xp. Yeah, you can tell this is going to be a red-hot post already can't you?

Anyway, the thing was working but then kept dying after a while. So I'd curse the thing and reinstall it, but then as anyone who has 'upgraded' to Vista will know, you spend the next 4000 years downloading 300000 updates and getting any work done is secondary to installing windows vista security update eijrfioweurw4i9rulswef. And, inevitably, some of the updates didn't install properly or crashed.

And so it was at 3am earlier this week whilst tending to TotTwo that I decided to order a new hard drive and a copy of windows xp (the existing hard drive already had rather a lot of bad sectors on it anyway due to an incident involving an attempt to bash the computer into submission having gone slightly awry). Seems odd you can now get a 250GB hard drive for £40 but there you go.

48hrs later, the old laptop now works perfectly. No update problems, and it's waaaaay faster than Vista. So the moral of the story is, don't upgrade your OS to Vista, especially if the manufacturer certifies your laptop is ready for Vista. For Vista is evil. Like the water that escapes from a pipe in your kitchen, it is an uncontrollable force of destruction which must be destroyed.

By the way, to anyone who sees me in the next few weeks: my Latvian hairdresser recently misunderstood the instruction I gave her for a number 4 cut (despite me having four fingers to emphasise the four-ness of the four) and given me a number two cut. So the Klan look is not deliberate, OK?

James Cameron's Avatar

Some of my favorite films have been made by James Cameron and I imagine Aliens, Terminator and T2 are on a lot of people's groovy film lists (we'll ignore True Lies which was just, erm, odd). But has anyone else seen the plot for Mr Cameron's new film? If not, look here for a quick summary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)

This is the film, bear in mind, that he has spent umpteen years developing (according to Wiki, he wrote the first treatment in 1995) and which is due out in 2009. Now, maybe it's just me, but I got about as far as the bit about the hero "falling in love with a princess" before I had the overwhelming sensation to cry "OH GOD NO" a la Blackadder The Third..

I mean COME ON!! Didn't he get all this nonsense out of his system with Titanic?! In case you haven't noticed Jim, major blockbuster sci-fi films for the last..ooh...DECADE haven't needed some crappy love story to build a DECENT film around. At best all you need these days is Shia LaBoeuf cracking onto Megan Fox or a bit of flirty nonsense between Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow. THAT'S ALL. What gets me is that neither Aliens nor T2 were built around the sort of patronising and cringe-inducing dialogue these sorts of plots entail. And in Terminator, the love stuff was kind of integral to the plot.

You can tell me I'm overreacting, and maybe I am. Maybe the horror that was George Lucas' attempt to tell a love story in the Star Wars prequels has got me all shook up. But then I remember some of the worst bits of Titanic and I think...oooohh no.

So I don't have high hopes for this film, which is a shame. This is especially so when I read that ideas from the people doing the video-game cash in have been incorporated into the film. When the guy who gave us Aliens is taking ideas from Ubisoft, then as far as I'm concerned, it's probably going to be a pretty-but-dull washout.

Set course for the off-licence

As you know, I have been trying out Blu-Ray discs now for a little while, and I have mentioned previously how the big advantage of blu-ray is that the production values (or lack thereof) become as much of a draw as the story. A few months on, it's clear that you have to be careful with blu-ray because not all transfers are the same. They all have improved picture and sound over DVDs, but the degree of improvement over an upscaled DVD is variable. Some are technically fantastic while others are a bit average. For example, the second attempt to produce a good transfer of T2 is due out soon, and that is supposed to be up to 40 per cent better according to some (optically speaking). Some of them also have a lot of what is supposed to be 'natural film grain' (ie they flicker in an annoying fashion in the odd scene or two) So beware.

Nevertheless, even the more average transfers produce some gems. I recently acquired 'The Wrath of Khan' on blu-ray which is over 25 years old, but still knocks spots off what passes for plots, cool dialogue, arch villains and twisty plot turns in most modern films. Altogether now: KHHHAAAAAANNNNNNN....

I digress. Anyway, without watching particularly closely, courtesy of blu-ray you can see a sign on the bridge in the opening simulator sequence which quite clearly says "NO SMOKING ON THE BRIDGE AT ANY TIME". Now I don't actually recall anyone lighting up in Star Trek, but I suppose it's possible Mr Sulu had a 20-a-day habit. On the other hand, the sign doesn't say "ON THE SET" so it doesn't look like a stage direction that was accidentially left up when the cameras were running.

So, what's the answer? Apparently, it's deliberate, because Nick Meyer (the director) liked to give the ST films he did a certain 'real life' grounding (er..). Frankly though, I don't care. I just love the fact that blu-ray allows me to watch films all over again and get something new out of them, even if it's idiotic things like this.

(By the way:

- you still can't tell whether Ricardo Montalban's chest is fake. Apparently it's not, but I remain to be convinced; and

- nice to see he still gets work off the back of the film, even if it is only evidenced by a sly reference to 'the death of his beloved wife' in a recent episode of 'Family Guy' where he played a talking cow.)

Lost

Tonight the fifth series finale of Lost airs on Sky. As most readers know, I am a big fan of Lost, and whilst waiting for it to come on, I thought I would try and explain why it falls into the category of can't miss TV.

It wasn't always can't miss. The first couple of seasons and a large chunk of the third meandered along, setting up vast numbers (no pun intended) of sub-plots and characters, and for every answer given, about 10 questions were raised. It was too ambitious and too complicated. In fact, at one point in the second season, I struggled to keep going. These episodes are still worth watching, but waiting a week or so for each episode which was punctuated by waaaay too many adverts was not the best telly.

Four things happened however which combined to turn everything that had gone before into the backdrop for compulsive telly viewing. Firstly, abc studio execs finally turned round mid-way through the third season and (it seems) collectively said "what the HELL is going on?" to the writers. Secondly, the 2008 writers strike gave the production team time to pause and reflect on where this was all going, and thirdly, the production team agreed on the series ending after 6 seasons.

The main thing which saved the series however was some remarkably good casting decisions. The series started with a firm lead character (Jack) who led the survivors of a plane crash around an island. As time has gone by though, other supporting characters have come to the fore purely off the back of the actors' efforts to bring them to life. Frankly, they made Jack look a bit dull, and to their credit, everyone involved seems to have let the show develop to take this into account. For example, Ben Linus, Desmond, Sayid and Hurley are four characters without whom you can't imagine this show being as successful as it is.

All these things turned the series into a real must-watch thrill-ride from about the middle of season four onwards, but one with a fantastically complex back-drop to work from. 'The Constant' in series four drew on material from around a dozen previous episodes, resolved one major question and sets up most of the fifth series. MeWife won't remember any of that until we rewatch the entire series after the end of series 6, mind.

There are so few telly programmes these days which you can call 'must-see' AND which you'd want to watch again, and maybe that is also a reason I bang on about Lost. 24, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, Boston Legal, Doctor Who - they're all good, but not much in any of them lives on from series to series. This show on the other hand is building towards an almighty finale in about a year's time. And you don't get many of those in your telly-viewing lifetimes.

The Battle of Hastings (via the A21)

Now I quite like going to the seaside for a day out every now and again, and this Bank Holiday Monday the BBC weather site reported that a number of southern coastal towns were going to have 'sunny weather'. So off we set, not a care in the world, car packed with buckets, spades, change, snickers bars, biscuits, children, wife, etc. What could possibly go wrong?

Not for the first time, quite a lot. For a start, the BBC weather website content was clearly based on the weather from circa the ICE AGE, with cold blustry grey skies setting in about 3 hours early. However, the real PITA factor was the lack of any advance warning that the entire motorbiking population of the UK take their two-wheeled death machines to Hastings and back on the first BHM in May, hitting the A21 around 10.30am. As did we.

I kid you not, there must have been a thousand bikes on the stretch between Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells. Bonkers. A lot of them were weaving in and out of the traffic, but really the sheer volume was staggering. Kent Police's massive operational presence consisted of a couple of parked up camera vans, 2 cars and about 3 bikes spread over about 10 miles. Newsflash Kent cops: if there'd been a major accident, you guys would have been in breach of your statutory duties.

Advance warning? Well, yesterday a helpfully cryptic electronic 'THINK BIKE' sign appeared near TW. But that was it. I can tell you, I thought a lot of things today, but 'bike' wasn't on the list. A slightly more useful message might have been 'Hastings Bike Run Tomorrow - Avoid A21 10-11am' but of course, that requires someone with a brain to have programmed the board.

This is apparently a well-known event in biker circles, as an impromptu trip to a biker forum or two on my mobile informed me whilst munching my fish and chips in Bexhill-on-Sea. Quite why the police don't give a monkey's is beyond me, since the speed, volume and nuttiness of the bikers was a recipe for disaster if the weather turned nasty. We saw at least one nearly lose it. We also saw a rather odd collection of mono-eybrowed types lining the road and waving (union jacks) at the bikers as they went past. As past-times go on a BHM, I can't see the attraction unless you're hoping an accident is going to happen.

The only real advantages of this entire fiasco was that it demonstrated to my eldest once and for all why the second lesson her Daddy ever taught her was 'motorbikes are pants'.

(The first lesson I taught her, by the way, was 'pussycats don't go moo', but that's a different story..)

Building a wendy house

I don't know what's so complicated about house-building you know. MeWife and me built a wendy house for the children at the weekend. The amenities aren't great, true, but in terms of square-footage it's got to be up there with a one-bedroom flat in Pimlico. Mind you, the day-glo green walls may not be to everyone's taste.

Unexpected downsides to the construction process have unfortunately included accidentally teaching TotOne the phrase "Oh Bugger!" (Well you try being all po-faced and not giggling when it gets repeated the next day in passing). And of course there isn't exactly an erase memory button for those sorts of things.

Un-teaching them these words has its own problems, in that you wind up reinforcing the issue (and then giggling a bit more). So in the best traditions of my family motto ('anything for a quiet life'), TotOne has been told she can use the term when she's a grown up. I'm sure that will work

Britain's Got Issues

Very silly show, this “Britain’s Got Talent”, but quite funny to watch. Sort of ‘Heat’ magazine’s answer to the Dunkirk Spirit in the face of a global recession.  Tonight’s episode seemed to be dominated by large wobbly middle-aged people either stripping dancing or singing.  Or judging in one or two instances. Ho ho…ahem.

 

Tot2’s third birthday this weekend, and notably the first birthday she has had where she understands it’s her day, her presents (Ninky Nonk play tent) and her cake (Peppa Pig). Cue cheesed off and very bossy Tot1 playing us all up something rotten, but a stack of play dough and last night’s episode of ‘Primeval’ went some way to averting sibling squabbles. Weather was quite poor so we spent the day indoors, but all in all it went OK.

 

Anyway, please note I can now blog by email, so expect a few more entries over the next few months, especially since I can email from my mobile for free now. Famous last words, I know, and I certainly won’t be able to keep up with Mi Chico Latino Peelo, but might make more than one entry a month.

 

Oh, and just ordered Top Gun on Blu-ray. This film has become something of a favourite in the office in the last few months, with various people either (a) competing for the various callsigns (I seem to keep coming up as Tom Skerritt, aka Viper), or (b) reeling off preposterously overly-serious dialogue from the film.  If people aren’t starting conversations with “Gentlemen” we are all writing cheques our bodies can’t cash.

 

The Extension is Done!

Following a recent enquiry from a kindly soul into my well-being ("are you still alive then or what?"), I write to report that we have been rather busy the last few weeks getting ready to return to Chez Nook. After seven months of rented accomodation and watching my wife duff up the builders on a daily basis, the time has come.

We're all very excited, obviously, but I thought I would pass on what I have learned from this process, and it is this: rented accomodation sucks. Nothing works, the budget for maintenance is about 3 quid a year and all the neighbours think we have come straight from a bail hostel. I shall be glad to be gone from this road.

Homeward bound

A snapshot of my voyage home tonight. Listening to Norah Jones and going to pick up some calpol for tots who are under the weather with a high temperature. So this is what being a parent is all about.

"This is for Doctor Ben...." [SMACK]

There is only one story this week. Never mind the credit crunch, money munch or indeed the end of the world. For this week, one of the best children's TV shows was released on DVD and although in short supply, I have got my box set. That show is Star Fleet, and was one of the first shows we recorded on VHS tapes in our house that I kept for years until they basically wore out. I can still remember watching episode 5 having spent the day at my dad's surgery helping him insulate the piping with that polystyrene stuff. It was the first episode that I kept on tape, and being allowed to keep the tape and the rest of the episodes was a really big deal (to me, anyway). Managed to bore everyone in the house for ages watching it over and over again, but hey, I was a kid, and that was my job..

This show was adapted from a Japanese puppet show and frankly knocked Thunderbirds and Terrahawks into a cocked hat. And then stamped on it. A lot. It had plot, it had characters, it had some serious hardware and it wasn't afraid to kill off major characters in dubious circumstances: in this show, the good guys didn't always fight fair..

For those of us in our mid-thirties who had been bitten a few years earlier by the Star Wars bug, this show was required viewing on Saturday mornings circa 1982-3. There was simply nothing to touch it, and watching it now, restored and cleaned up, it's still seriously cool. Already bored the wife with it, but hey I'm a kid and that's my job. Oh no, hang on..

Play Your Cards Right

I'm getting old. I keep referring people to what I consider fairly classic quotes and lines and then get brought up short by the fact that most of the people I work with were born in the 1980s. A colleague and I were reminiscing about 'Bruce Forsyth's Play Your Cards Right' the other day (Nothing for a pair..not in this game), and then discovered that the person we were discussing it with was aged one in 1985. Ahem.

So this is what it is to get old then. And so today I find myself sat reading the Daily Telegraph (albeit online at least) while my children have just departed the lounge to eat some cream crackers and cheese. I am left listening to the soundtrack from 'High School Musical' and wondering if anyone remembers 'That's My Boy' with Mollie Sugden (edit: oh dear, yes they do..YouTube has an advert for all FIVE series on DVD..!).

Still, keeps me in business as charity pub quiz geriatric telly specialist..

The Omega Lawyer

Today I am Charlton Heston. In the next scene i shall be facing hordes of mindless zombies. But enough of the train network..

The end of civilisation as we know it.

Working from home today as no trains are running. Kids love it of course but how this much snow brings a network to its knees i dont know!

All alone in the night....with the Daily Mail....

Yes, the apocalypse is here and we're all doomed. Apparently, Gordon Brown was wrong when he said there'd be no more boom and bust. Shocking. And apparently this recession will be as deep as some other recessions we've been through and maybe not quite so bad as some others. Wow. And some nice hedge fund manager has told people not to buy sterling. Er, hang on..

Anyway, I may have only lived through 3 of these recession things, and a couple of dodgy downturns but I don't recall anyone boring for England on the subject on *quite* the same scale as all the column-writers and pundits are doing on the telly and in the papers at the moment. And I certainly don't recall reading as miserable a collection of views as have been doing the rounds in the papers the last few weeks. Honestly, if you just read the papers and watched the news, you really would think the apocalypse had come, and this time the Devil has chosen to turn up as a giant bank manager rather than Mr Stay-Puft.

Now, as stunning an admission as it may seem from someone with my mercenary tendancies, can I just say that whatever problems are here or are coming, IT'S FUNDAMENTALLY ONLY MONEY AND LIFE GOES ON. And if you step outside the front door, the world is still there. It strikes me though that some journos just want to initiate or at least wallow in misery as part of some bizarre mass hysteria. Strangely though, none of the pundits and columnists seem to be affected in the same way as the people whose lives they are writing about. Quel surpris.

So until people can write about these things a bit more constructively, I shall be getting my news from The Sun and Digital Spy websites, thank you. Might not keep me bang up to date on who has come up with the longest possible duration for the recession this week, but at least I'll have all the latest on Girls Aloud to keep me company.

AAARRGGGGGGHHHH!!!

As some of you know, I am a bit of a techie-type person but without any sort of techie-analytical type characteristics. I can't remember any physics stuff about circuits and electricity and my Commodore 64 training in how to print my name ad infinitum doesn't get me very far these days. I am however a phenomenally sore loser and hate to be beaten, least of all my some glorified calculator. So I get to the same result as someone who knows more about these things sooner or later, I just get there with a lot more swearing and gratuitous bashing of delicate circuitry. Yes, once again, I have suffered a crashed laptop, and once again I have fixed it. Took me TWO WEEKS mind, during which time I discovered that:

- following instructions didn;t fix my problem, but not following them did;
- 'Readyboost' doesn't do what it says on the tin;
- printer software suites that sit in your memory system are nasty little buggers that should be taken out and shot/uninstalled; and
- a certain well-known provider of an anti-virus program has produced an installation process that achieves more than any virus ever did.

I don't know why I expect software to work. I expect it to be produced by people who have some idea of what effects it will have when people install it. I think I assume this because as with a lot of companies, people can hide behind glitzy packaging and flashy websites. In reality though, they're probably called Dwayne, drive an old Ford Capri and smoke too many fags.