Enter 2008

i would imagine that by now you have been bombarded with all sorts of good wishes for 2008 by your cellphone, your email and, on those odd "old school" occasions, by an actual person in real life conversation.

you have our good wishes all the year round, friends and family, our apologies if we are "odd" by not clogging up everyone's 'communication devices', with these sentiments at this time of year! i appreciate we are in the minority by not going overboard in celebrating, but then again every day is worth celebrating, not so?

however you chose to mark, celebrate or recognize the fall of 2007 and the rise of 2008, i can only trust that you enjoyed it, and further hope that you have a most excellent time.

remember - whatever the year, Elvis is with you. always.

KFC Breakfasts Update

hey everyone

behold, here is a branch of a KFC that is closed when it could be open serving breakfasts, a business opportunity that could, amongst other things, lure Elvis to this country (see previous posts).

now, in the interests of fairness, i have been asked to point out that whilst this KFC was closed at breakfast time, it was in fact breakfast time on Christmas Day that i took the pic, on the way to taking James to see his beloved Grandparents. it is fair for them to be closed at such a time. but then again, Elvis does not stop eating KFC just because it is Christmas, does he?

whereas The Colonel still has no breakfast menu as such, my good friend The Colonel said that in his experiences on the road KFC's are open around about breakfast time. in truth, i saw this particular KFC open at around 9am on a Sunday morning, which is a little late for breakfast but is not too bad, either. i suppose you could have a lesser, earlier breakfast at around 6 or 7, and then go and get a class bucket or something at aroun 9, 9:30?

i will of course update this site with any and all information i can find in regards of KFC breakfasts, but the outlook is none too promising. oh well, as we know, KFC does a breakfast in China, and as Elvis is in China, then the most important client that KFC has ever had is having his needs required. i will get by with just a conventional breakfast in the mean time.

be most excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a pair of scissors, a comb and three lollies......

well, despite all admiring his lovely locks, it has been long overdue that James has been in need of a haircut. and a haircut he got today, if you will to see the year out, as Mummy bravely decided to have a go at cutting it for him. here are results of her efforts, or should i rather say here are the results of her very impressive efforts!

apparently, and this can be something of a relative term with James, he was as good as gold throughout, sitting patiently whilst Mummy designed his new look. well, i suppose the three (3!) lollies that Mummy gave him to eat whilst she did it all kept him occupied enough!

Michele also cuts my hair for me every now and then, if one defines a haircut as having the clippers run over it! nothing quite so fancy as James' hairstyle for me, i doubt that it would suit me and i dare say i would need more than some lollipops to sit still and not moan & groan through it!

in answer to the question as to what has happened to the hair from this first haircut, well, Michele has kept the curl from the back that she loves to bits in a tub, and i discovered the rest in a nice, neat bag on my desk, presumably left for me to work out what to do with it. i will think of something.....


these pics, by the way, are the best of about 200 that i took of his new hairstyle. the lollies that he was busy with clearly had a reasonable level of sugar in them, as he was bouncing around all afternoon, not even stopping to put his shirt on! i appreciate that it is New Year's Eve, but James is only 2 after all, and at the moment he does not appear all that inclined to go to bed! ho hum, with some luck he will drop off shortly!

Capello Resigns

The Football Association were still reeling today after the shock resignation of the England football manager Fabio Capello after twenty four hours in the job.

Speaking through an an interpreter Mr Capello said ‘I think I’ve taken England as far as I can. It has been a roller coaster ride and I think it is important to quit while I am ahead. I wish the team all the best for the future and we part on good terms.’

FA Chief Brian Barwick admitted he was ’...a bit disappointed’ but denied that the £24m pay off was excessive. ‘We wanted a world class manager and for a few short hours that’s exactly what we had.’

Now the search is on for a new England manager who can plan England’s football future over the long-term. ‘Or at least until Tuesday – whichever is furthest away.’

The Worst 5 Films of 2007

OK, here are the five incidents of movies that i watched and, with a bitter taste in my mouth and perhaps a tear in my heart, lamented that the time spent on them was time i will never get back. they are so bad that they are possibly not worth spending the time writing about them, but then again i always try to justify my criticisms.


Grindhouse was astonishing evidence that Quentin Tarantino has lost whatever talent and ability he had to make a good film - i only hope that his partner in crime with this, Robert Rodriguez, returns to form soon. do not be conned into thinking this is cool, hip or brilliant; it is none of them. it is dull, dreary film making at its worst, lacking all imagination or ability. if the highlight is yet another "surprise" Bruce Willis cameo, you know you are on dangerous, dodgy ground.

if anyone tries to tell you that Grindhouse is good, ask them to qualify the statement. if their review involves the words "homage", "tribute" or "parody" in relation to the 60's & 70's B-Grade movies it was supposed to be inspired by, walk away. it is not this, and they are only reciting what those who blindly worship all that Tarantino does have told them to in the rather timid media promo work for this fiasco.


not content with Grindhouse, Tarantino seems keen to make sure that 2007 is his worst year ever by pointlessly having his name on one of the most pointless films ever made. i say pointless, but Hostel Part II does have one point - that is, if they all tried hard enough, all involved with Hostel "Part I" could and would make an even worse film.

Hostel Part II systematically fails to be everything that it claims it is. it does not push boundaries, as there are far more graphic films out there. it does not entertain because the pacing and editing of the film frequently leave you bored out of your mind. and it certainly does not shock or scare - you couldn't care less for any of the "victims", and their rather dull executions are too tame or just plain dull to cause any emotions to stir.


Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 is one of the most spectacular failures in cinema history. with two above average films in place and a wonderful lead character in the form of Captain Jack Sparrow, how on earth did they contrive to make this mess?

i already wrote a lengthy review on this one, feel free to browse my site for the full breakdown of where it all went wrong - reviewed in November or December 07, i think. basically, though, a Pirates film with Captain Jack all but absent, leaving you to hear a lot of Orlando Bloom whining away, is not really entertaining.


Hatchet claimed to be "old school American horror". what a great shame that the makers of this film consider the trash that was made in the 90's, such as Scream, Last Summer and Final Destination, to be "old school", as this is pretty much all that the film resembles.

i was expecting a classy, no holds barred 70's or even 80's homage work, instead i got a very dull, bland, run of the mill, seen it all before and highly tiresome "horror" movie. Robert Englund must be really hard pressed for cash is all i can say about his cameo performance at the front of it. avoid at all costs.


in some parts of the world this got released in 2006, but it qualifies for 2007 here. regardless, Apocalypto would with some ease be the very worst film released in any year that they chose to release it.

where did it go wrong with Mel? i think we are all at fault for letting his bizarre previous historical distortions, in particular Braveheart, not only slip by without harsh criticism, but also with a slap on the back and an award or two. even if you ignore the many blatant distortions of Mayan history he presents, the "reality" within the film is ridiculous - this fella managing to run solid for three days with no food or water and with the added bonus of a massive spear wound springs to mind as a prime example of what i am talking about. even if you switch off from each and every fault and flaw in the film (not an easy thing to do, so blatant they are), the story is not all that interesting, the way it is presented is dull and the whole things tends to go nowhere at all. if you are one of the many who were apparently awestruck by this film, sorry, i have no idea why and cannot comprehend any justification of it that i have read.



well, there you go! agree? disagree? do as you like!

The Top 6 Sort Of OK Films Of 2007

well, these are the films that i managed to sit through which were not all that bad, but not all that great either. i know full well one or two choices and comments here are going to upset friends and close ones, but there you go, it would be dull if we all liked and disliked the same stuff.


and on that note straight away, 300. sorry, but i found it dull. the numerous battle scenes lacked imagination, creativity or interest, and the whole computer generated backgrounds and sets looked just as lame here as they did in that Sky Captain rubbish from a while ago. everyone seems to accept that it must be brilliant on the basis that it was based on a Frank Miller "graphic novel", or comic book if you really don't feel so insecure as to have to make a grown up term for it.

i save it from being slammed as so many people i respect seem to think it's marvelous, and i must say the actors did a very good job of the below average material they were given to work with. needless to say, i really would not recommend this movie with any enthusiasm, but as so many people seem to have seen it and decided it's rather good, i suppose my view doesn't count for much with it anyway. the mythology and legend of the Spartans would make a good film anyway, i do not see why they instead opted for this mostly fabricated approach.


one would generally not expect to see an actor of Al Pacino's stature crop up in a direct to video, or direct to disc, film. he did this year however in 88 minutes.

the film is not all that bad, but is certainly average - these "race against the clock", real time things never took off when Mr Depp made the film Nick Of Time a decade ago, but were perfected on TV by Agent Jack Bauer in that 24 series. to try and make a success of the idea on the big screen again is brave, and somewhat misguided.

whereas De Niro has taken to just taking the money and giving a routine performance in any film going, Pacino at least is still very much Pacino, and his decent acting job in this makes it worth a look. i have no doubt that it will turn up on cable or satellite tv wherever you are in the world in the not too distant future. if and when it does, you could do a lot worse than stick it on to watch on a lazy afternoon when you don't feel like particularly thinking too much.


now Rowan Atkinson apparently is a rather sensitive soul, and gets upset when things that he makes are not hailed as masterpieces or are considered to be successful. if by some miracle he is reading this, fear not, i do not come to slay him. but i do not come to praise him, either.

Mr Bean's Holiday was funny in the sense of it puts a smile on your face rather than being funny in the sense of you laughing yourself silly at it all. i am not sure it ever intended to have pretensions of being a comedy classic anyway, but if it did, it sure never took the time or effort to become one.

like the original Mr Bean movie and the often overlooked Johnny English, this has enough pleasantly amusing parts to keep you entertained over the short duration of the film, but not really enough to go off and recite the best moments to your friends and insist that they all see it as soon as possible. it could have been worse and, given the built in limitations to the character, it is difficult to say how they could have made it any better. those who made this film appear to have done so as they had nothing better to do; let me reciprocate by saying that you should only see this if you have nothing better to do.


The Number 23 was a disappointment to me not so much because of all the idiot reviews giving the plot twist away, but because i had clocked the plot twist from the write up and trailers anyway. much like something along the lines of The Sixth Sense, the "surprise" is so obvious that watching the film after the first few minutes turns into a game of patience, waiting to see that you were right.

i quite like Jim. i still consider it a disgrace, and an example of why all these movie awards are pretty pointless, that he never got some serious recognition for the outstanding work he did in The Truman Show and, in particular, Man On The Moon. since those two films he would appear to have been "slumming it" to a degree, and this must have looked like a chance to move back onto the big time A list, whatever that actually is. sadly, a missed opportunity. there's always a curiosity factor with these "twist" movies, so don't let me stand in the way of you watching, but don't be all surprised when it turns out to be not much of a twist or all that clever.


Epic Movie was this year's cheap and cheerful parody film of all the big films from the 18 months around it. and that could pretty much be it for a review, really - it's cheaply made, but it certainly proved to be rather good, lighthearted entertainment of sorts.

i think this is the kind of film they make in the States just to justify the "multiplex" cinemas across the land; the kind of thing to have onscreen as people pay to sit in a room that's airconditioned for a couple of hours. there were clearly some clever and talented satirical writers involved with this one. the main problem, i guess, was that the films which it was surrounded with to parody were not all that great to begin with. making a joke about a bad or average film is one thing, making a joke film about them all is, and clearly was, tricky.


and finally, the possible king of all "sort of OK films" is Spider-Man 3. after two really good Spidey films, there was an inevitable sense that this one would be a letdown, and a letdown it was. like many third acts of trilogies, this one just gets far too busy, trying to ram each and every idea that comes up into the storyline. basically if you miss a minute or two, or even perhaps just blink in this film, you miss who's now a bad guy, who's a good guy, who exactly is who and in general what the hell is going on.

there's enough to make it worthwhile lazy viewing, however. once again Bruce Campbell returns in a most impressive cameo - this time he seems to push the boundaries of his talents by having a brief go at an accent. and, of course, the effects are really quite impressive, if not in some instances starting to look a little commonplace. you can enjoy Spidey 3 if you just manage to forget the sheer brilliance of the first two whilst you watch it - difficult, but go with the flow and it is bearable.


well, there you go. my apologies if your own personal best of the year is mentioned above, but these are the ones that i somehow doubt i will be giving a second chance to in the near future, but then again you never know.


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Top 10 Movies 2007

i understand that doing this sort of list is a bit of a cliche and something of a tired format, but for the humour value, here are my top ten films from the last year. i think my motivation for doing this was to see if there were actually an entire 10 films from the year that i liked! i was pleased to discovered that i remembered at least these ten as being well above average. i hope you agree - if you disagree, why not leave a polite comment as to why not?

here, then, in no particular order, are the ten best. although i wouldn't be too surprised if my ranting and raving of one or two makes them seem like the outstanding choices! a warning, as of course these comments may well accidentally contain SPOILERS!

Colour Me Kubrick was expected to be good fun, and turned out to be the case. the (mostly) true story of the chap who impersonated the late, great Stanley Kubrick with bizarre success (he looked nothing like him, nor knew much about him) was given a generous, loving telling in this film. John Malkovich was his excellent best in the lead role of Alan "Stanley" Conway, and the supporting cast did a wonderful job. the most notable of the support was none other than comic Jim "nick nick" Davidson, who in real life had an encounter with Mr Conway. a nice performance, Jim, hope it earns you another film job or two.

even if you are not particularly aware of the story, or not all that clued up on Kubrick, i would all the same say give Colour Me Kubrick a try. in regards of a comparison, i suppose it's not a million miles away from being a somewhat more serious version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - not as funny as that one, and not intended to be, but otherwise just as warmhearted towards those charming scoundrels that seem to be able to get away with it.


if it was not for James being around i somehow doubt that things like Shrek The Third would enter into my world, but James is very much around and so we got to see this one during the year. i rather enjoyed the first two, and this one is no less of a film. Eddie Murphy's Donkey is one of the funniest cinema character creations i have seen in a long time, and i trust that Eddie is surfing the crest of a wave on the back of his performances. i must say i find the Shrek character himself rather dull, but the surrounding characters make this wildly entertaining. and hey, who doesn't love the baby dragon-donkey things and of course the baby shrek/s???

the Shrek The Third DVD set is well worth getting - the parental advice for Shrek from some of the characters is a worthwhile inclusion for the sheer humour value, as is the excellent jukebox. sure, the jukebox might be there just to promote the other films, but you can play some great tunes thanks to it!


Sunshine is a science fiction work that sits very nicely alongside classics of the more intellectual works in the genre, notably 2001 and of course Blade Runner. a lot of people have been rather critical of it, but i suspect they might have been expecting more of an action film than it turned out to be.

the plot, briefly, involves the sun being on the verge of burnout, and man's efforts to rejuvinate it and save earth from the inevitable doom. the question it poses, on something akin to a King Lear scale, is dare man try and defy nature?

Sunshine is not a much of a thinking man's film as 2001, and nor is it a rollercoaster ride like Star Wars or Doom. i found it all rather fascinating, however, and would not hesitate in suggesting to anyone who hasn't seen that they should give it a try.


28 Weeks Later was easily the best horror film of 2007, and one of those rare cases where the sequel is better than the original. 28 Days Later was one half excellent film, one half mess. Weeks is just all excellent, i am delighted to say.

continuing on from the first film, the population of England has all but been wiped out thanks to the nasty virus that was released (rage, i think it was called?), and so the nation needs rebuilding. the virus, however, has not been quite as elminated as had been expected, and soon enough again the British Isles is home to some rather nasty, violent, quasi-zombie types.

fast, furious and astonishingly violent, this is not for everyone's tastes, but is a welcome site for those of us who are just tired of the lame, boring "shock horror" rubbish coming out of America these days.


Perfume was i think a 2006 release in some areas of the world, but it only turned up where i am this year, and thus it counts for this list, thank you. filming Suskind's outrageous novel was passed on by the likes of Kubrick and Scorsese, so i was a bit dubious to see it arrive with a relatively unknown director (Tom Tykwer) and a not too well known actor (Ben Whishaw) in the lead role. they do an excellent job, i am delighted to say.

to give a rundown of the plot would probably take up quite a bit of space, and the intewebnetwork thing can probably give you as good an explination as i could. for fellow fans of the novel, the film somehow captures the book well - it deviates a bit and misses some elements, but all the same pulls it off. difficult to explain how, really, but watch it and you will see.

a warning though, as the film contains some deeply disturbing images and is certainly not for all tastes!


are there really only going to be three Jason Bourne films? what a shame, as The Bourne Ultimatum was a masterpiece of entertainment; a brilliant, intelligent action thriller with not much in the way of peers bar the previous Bourne outings. the film of course rejects most of Ludlum's novel, a plot about Carlos The Jackal now being somewhat dated, but retains enough elements and continues the film arc with superb style.

it's pretty much because of the Bourne films that i got bored with Casino Royale, and do not see much of a future for things like the James Bond series. Bond was good, but at last the Americans have found a similar formula, and if i may dare say, improved on it. don't get me wrong, i loved the Bond films, but these ones are just the bigger, better experience.

if for some reason you have not seen any of the Bourne films, well, you know what to do......


Breach looked interesting from the start, and proved to be a fascinating film indeed. as the similar-but-different The Falcon And The Snowman is one of my all time favourite films, i had high expectations of this one, and they were pretty much met. in a non-mocking sense, it is always curious to see and learn how the new Empire, America, manages to trip itself up at the highest levels, and to try and understand why. i'm not so sure that they why element is addressed here, but all the same, it's intriguing viewing.

Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillippe are detatched in their roles, never generating any biased emotion from the audience. a no point do you feel particularly manipulated in your feelings towards them, which makes this all the more brilliant in the presentation of what happened. erm, what was it that happened? probably the biggest ever leak of information from the US Intelligence Agencies to those that would bring the US down in history, the audacity and scale of which may never be known. the film is not saturday night popcorn stuff, but it is well worth it for those of us who like a bit of intelligent cinema in our lives.


Hannibal Rising, charting the early years of Dr Hannibal Lecter and how he came to be the infamous Hannibal The Cannibal, was as an idea a completely pointless, merit-free way to generate money. enough people who clearly cared, however, were involved to make sure that lovers of the creation that is Dr Lecter were not cheated or let down.

the big name actors from the first three (or, if you look at it properly, four) Lecter outings are all gone, although for fans of English TV there are one or two familiar faces around. if you have read all of Thomas Harris' Lecter novels, then there is nothing really for you to learn about Lecter from this prequel, but there is ample to keep your interest and ensure that you do not feel disappointed with it. i would not suggest watching this before watching the others, however - consider this something of a very elongated bonus DVD feature to watch after you have seen the original films.


Hot Fuzz is one of the funniest, quirkiest and quite honestly happy films i have seen in a long time. sure, there's the odd squirmish moment with some of the OTT violence and effects, but they are all done for you to laugh along to, not to shock and scare you. it from the same guys and ladies who made the wonderful Shaun Of The Dead, so if you know and love that film you know what the deal will be here.

plot? a copper who is too good at his job in the city is forced to move to a rural, supposedly dull and quiet village to perform his police duties so that he stops making everyone else look useless. surprise surprise, however, with the best laid plans and all that good stuff...

as with the majority of films listed here, Hot Fuzz is not for all tastes. unlike some, however, it most certainly is perfect for a saturday night with popcorn, as it sort of states itself halfway through. well, watch it and see....


and finally, welcome back John McClane in the form of Die Hard 4.0, or whatever they named it in your part of the world. i really was not expecting all that much from it, and maybe thanks to that i got a wild ride of a film. i mean, i didn't really think that a plot about chasing computer hackers would be all that interesting, but then you get things like cars being fired off at helicopters and you get to reconsider.

the most interesting thing was perhaps the fact that this, more than anything, shows that Brucie is indeed an actor. you have seen him in many action films, but here his character is "different" from in all the others. watching Bruce play McClane is always a joy. good luck to him and his more "serious" parts, but this character will be the one that he is remembered for. and there's nothing wrong with that!


well, there's my ten for you to do what you will with. i think the only possible one to miss out was Rocky Balboa - impressive, but not quite as good as these ones. whether you agree or disagree with my choices, i can only hope that you saw more good films than bad over the past twelve months!!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas with Grandma and Grandad

well, Christmas got all the busier when we went to see Grandma and Grandad to celebrate the day!!

James took nice presents for Grandma and Grandad - hope you didn't fall asleep during the Peter Green DVD Grandad, and hope that Grandma won at the boardgame!!

Grandma and Grandad got James (and Mummy & Daddy!) some excellent presents, the centrepiece of which is a fantastic bouncy castle for him to perfect his jumping in!



he was a bit wary of it at first, but once Grandma and Grandad (and Marmite!) showed him just how much fun the bouncy castle is, he was soon into it!!




Grandma asked very nicely for me not to put the above picture on this site, so please just pretend that you never saw it, right.......

and Christmas is the time for Shrek, with an excellent talking Donkey!



if you grab Donkey by the nose it tells you that it will shut up, and that it will keep quiet, hence James looking like he is going to grab it!

and of course, Christmas is for sweeties, and sweeties are for James, Grandad and Marmite to share!




and finally here we are, as best as Grandad could take us, sat in the garden. it was the middle of a pillow fight, so there are many pictures of us obscured by a bigbeing thrown around! i will try and post some of them later!




on that note, one really needs to hear James say "pillow", he sounds just like Cartman out of South Park when he does!!

thank you Grandma and Grandad for a fantastic day!!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Behold! Christmas In The Colonies!

hey everyone

well, this is quite class - i am not sure if my sister has imported this from the old world, or if they had their own version of it anyway, but i can confirm that, at least since this year, Christmas is celebrated in that far flung corner that is New Zealand!!

here is the photographic evidence to substantiate the above claim. well done Gillian and Grant on this self portrait picture, it looks much better than my efforts at the zoo with James!!





and may i say how impressed i am with Katie in this picture! as the above suggests, this whole Christmas business may well be treated with some doubt in New Zealand, and they may just decide not to do it again. that being the case, grab the presents and run!! poor Daniel with Mummy, though, is this one of your presents she has swiped?





and finally, Christmas dinner, with some more deft and skillful self-portrait-type pictures being taken. although you can't see what they are eating exactly, it is obviously lamb or something sheep related. all other animals are forbidden in New Zealand, apparently. what do they do for milk?




i believe that earlier posts have clarified that they do in fact eat conventionally in New Zealand. i think.

thanks for the pics guys, it looked like you had an ace day, just like we did!!

be excellent to each other, and take the time to send a communication at random to New Zealand - remember, they are isolated from the natural, normal world and thus rather like hearing from the outside.

Christmas

hello

well, wherever you are in the world Christmas has probably been and gone - i trust you all had a peaceful, happy and pleasant day. we certainly did, and a rather a busy one too!

you can guess why ours was busy, but if not here are the pics! whereas i understand and appreciate the religious significance of Christmas, it is also a day to celebrate children. and celebrate our wonderful son we certainly did! here he is in the midst of opening presents!





of course, it would be the case that for all we got him, the dinosaur sticker books were the top present!!

and here he is with the present i (ahem) selected for James, although his Mummy is convinced i got it more for me!



it's a very ace, and very difficult to construct magnetic roller coaster set!

it was difficult to put together mainly as i decided to build it with James sat there. well, not so much sat, as standing up and deconstructing whatever it is i had just constructed!



whereas Mummy thinks i bought it with myself in mind, James loves it to bits, and guess who is sat with James right now playing with it!!!!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

zoo station

two more pics from the zoo, and two which vanity nearly prevented me from posting here!

as we were on our own (Mama gone work, as James says it), we had no one to take pics of us, so i tried to take one or two whilst he was in my arms as we were looking over at the sleeping crocodiles!



i know i am not the most photogenic guy in the world, so rather look at the handsome James in these pics!!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

James and the Zoo friends!

hey everyone

well, as per the last post, here are the promised pics!

first off, here's James with the Lion that he is allowed to get the closest too!




next up, here he is checking out what i think are called Bat-Eared Foxes. well, they are certainly not fox-eared bats!



James, much like all who see her, was rather take with this little baba lion cub! we spent quite some time watching her playing!



they do allow one to go in and play with the cub, but alas i fear James is a little bit too young for it, especially as you are warned not to make any sudden movements or noises! oh well, maybe next year, or when they next have a cub!





and here's James checking out a slightly older lion, or possibly lioness. she was just coming to say hello, but it looks like i have caught her mid-growl with the camera!!




"go drink tortoise water, tortoise!" is what James is busy telling this, the biggest of several tortoise walking around the zoo!




The Lion King and Mama Lion!! sorry that the pic is not all that great, but when you see the size of them, you are quite happy to see the bars between you and them!




Tiger sleeping! actually, we were lucky enough later for the Tiger to wake up, climb a tree, jump down and walk towards us so that James could see his majesty up close!




well, after two days of Lory Park Zoo, i think we might just have a quiet day at home tomorrow!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Zoo!

hey everyone

well, as many of you will know, i have been off verk for the last two weeks, staying at home and looking after young James.

for the most part he wants to play in the garden at home, or play with his cool toys, or just watch many different versions of Batman. his favourite, on that note, would be the most rubbish one, Batman & Robin. this seems to be the best for him as he finds Mr Freeze, a new acting depth for Arnie, to be rather funny.

anyway, i have also persuaded him that it is no bad thing to go out and about for a bit, and for the last two days we have been to visit the wonderfulLory Park Zoo, which is just over the road from where we live. it's all safe and well enclosed, so he can run around as much as he likes! and here are the pics to prove that much!







pics of some of the animals coming up soon. obviously James is not that close to most of them - not that he did not try to very much get close to the Lion and Tiger by climbing on the cages!!

Atari Baby

if one were to click here, should one be curious about the fate of Sigue Sigue Sputnik, then one will learn that they would appear to still be alive, well and a going concern, if not having released anything for a couple of years. that said, i must say i prefer to remember them as pictured here, with all the state of the art 80's technology that they had.

it's difficult not to remember the Sputniks fondly. they were a riot, arriving without a record or a record deal, yet somehow being all over the music press. when a record did turn up in the shape of Love Missile F1-11, a large number of people found the novelty to be gone and, if we are in the business of honesty, bewilderingly their success ended when they hit the charts. on one level at least. i don't know or remember enough of them to give a history as such. i do recall someone slamming them for making a record "that was the sound of someone playing space invaders". well, if that's the case, then they did it with some style and panache, at least!

they did themselves no favours in releasing a second single, 21st Century Boy, that sounded like a poor studio out-take of Love Missile, but then again knowing of the intelligence of Tony James, i dare say this was rather deliberate. a shame, as the album Flaunt It featured some better songs; revel if you will in the atmospheric joys of Atari Baby, or Massive Retaliation, a track which suggested that they were in fact rather talented under all the hype.

there will be no lengthy Frankie style tribute from me to the Sputniks, but i do miss the days of their wild, (mostly) harmless and fun ride in to the world. sadly, no band today would dare try the tricks they did - which is a shame, and explains the dull and drab state of the music world today. let's face it, the closest we have in the 21st Century to blatant self-promoters in the music world is the tiresome Arctic Monkeys - Gordon Brown being a fan of them pretty much sums up the excitement they generate. sigh, those were the days.

anyway, if you have an old Sputnik disc or record kicking around, why not give them a spin and see if you remember the days when pop stars actually wanted to be pop stars, not TV competition winners or sad burn outs before they hit 20 (boring Pete, dull Amy, et al)?

be excellent to each other, or, if you will,

there goes my love rocket red................................

The Dark Knight - James approves

hey everyone

well, quite by accident James saw the trailer for The Dark Knight - i was watching it and he came into the study to see what Dada was doing. he sort of hides a bit when The Joker is looking rather cross, but let's be honest, who doesn't?

as i do not believe that James is quite the target audience Christopher Nolan has in mind for The Dark Knight, i have instead convinced James (at last) to watch the rather splendid 1966 interpretation of the tales of Gotham's finest, Batman The Movie.

now, he's clever enough to know that this version is somewhat lacking in regards of cool, stunning and at-least-cost-something special effects compared to the current incarnation, but he does manage to watch 20 minutes or so. he, like his father (see earlier posts i think), is dazzled by the scene where Batman manages to have some Bat Shark Repellant handy on the Bat Copter when an exploding Shark tackles Batman out in the middle of the ocean. in fairness, the film is kind of all downhill after that class scene, so it's little wonder that he has me switch back to The Lion King or The Jungle Book not long after that bit.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Knight Rider's Evil Twin

it distresses me to do a second post on the subject of Knight Rider, but Spiros and his brother The Dude were most insistent that i point out that Michael Knight's evil twin in the show was called Garth. or possibly Garthe, as that is how The Hoff himself refers to him in his most splendid autobiography.

further to this, Spiros has a rather good question - if Michael Arthur Long was horribly disfigured in Episode 1 of Knight Rider, and required extensive facial reconstructive surgery in order to be, as it were, reborn as Michael Knight, exactly how is it that he has an identical (barring the goatee) twin?



i sincerely hope that this is the last post that i ever do which refers to The Hoff, his evil twins or Knight Rider.

The Dark Knight - Trailer Images

well, at last a proper trailer is out for The Dark Knight! it is awesome! you can download it either from the link in my earlier post, or you can just click here to download it.

for those who can't or don't wish to download it, here's some images from it. sorry that they are mostly of The Joker, but hey, this is the guy that we all wanna see, right?

the rocket launcher scene looks like being an early favourite of mine!!














roll on July 2008, this looks like it's going to be hard to beat as the best film of next year!!

Prison Break Season 3

right, this might contain what some of you consider to be SPOILERS, so you have been given fair warning. i doubt i will mention all that much about the plot, mind.



i have seen 7 of the 8 episodes of the third season/series of Prison Break broadcast thus far, and i must confess it is a frustrating experience. the first season was audacious and brilliant. the first half of the second series was a somewhat worthy successor. the second half of it was a preposterous, "we have made this up as we have gone along" kind of experience, with a ridiculous ending. which brings us to this third series.

i don't know how to describe it, quite frankly. there is a plot of sorts (surprise! it involves a prison break), but after 7 episodes it's kind of hard to understand, let alone explain, what the plot is. i have no idea where it is going, and quite frankly i am not sure if i care.

but yet i still keep watching the thing! why? well, i do not get quite as excited about the charms of Wentworth Miller as the lady viewers do, but the characters created such an interest in the first series that you kind of feel compelled to see how it all ends for them.

if it ever ends, i guess. i always thought a second series would be a weak idea, and the third is not making that notion go away. there are only so many times, surely, they can keep using the same ideas - if this third series is not the last, then the mind boggles as to what on earth they will conjure up for a fourth.

if i am lucky, i will when this series has finished (sometime in mid-2008, apparently) give a decent report on the end of it all. it might, however, be time to instead drag out the box set of the first series just to remember how really good that one was.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Knight Rider returns. oh dear.

this post is primarily for Spiros, but if you for some obscure reason are a Knight Rider fan, then there is something of either excitement or offence for you in this post. however, as Spiros got me a copy of the Hoff's autobiography, it is mainly intended for him.

this is the next generation of Knight Rider. i forget the chap's name, but apparently he is the son of Michael Knight, and he has taken over the family business. yes, you will no doubt be pleased to hear, Hoff will make the odd cameo appearance every now and then in this new series, playing Michael Knight. no doubt he will hand over the odd bit of parental advice, and probably having a deep, sentimental chat with the talking car.

quite frankly, outside of the cool theme, i never really got the appeal of Knight Rider/ i mean, every week it seemed that KITT and Michael were in a situation that could only be resolved by KITT driving itself to the rescue, and/or having to fire of massive rockets at the back to jump over something. ho hum, four series of it suggest that many liked it. the episode with the "evil twin Michael Knight", played by the Hoff with a goatee, was rather special i guess.


and here, for those of you who get excited about these things, is the new KITT car, called KITT 3000 i believe. KITT 3000 is the kind of thing that Spiros, or quite possibly his brother, known only as The Dude, would paint down the side of his/their car.

well, for those of you who are all excited about the idea of Knight Rider returning, i trust that you have ignored my less than complimentary comments and have found some interest in the pics!

more from Sunday

well, with the help of The Lion King distracting him on the TV, and Mama sharing a can of diet coke lemon stuff with him, i was able to get some rather decent pictures of James. here they are!!




quite the adorable, handsome young man when he takes the time to stop for the camera!




and here he is playing with one of his many, many presents from the weekend - a most excellent playdough set from Auntie Tasha, Uncle Brandon and Cousins Skyla and Jade!

he's not building anything with it as such, but is having fun rolling it about and using the stencils that came with it to make animals!





it just so happens that Mama loves playing with playdough, or plasticine as you may prefer to call it in some parts of the world. i guess the two of them will be using this quite a bit, then!




and of course there is only one way that such a busy weekend could be ended :




good night one and all, pleasant dreams................

Rainy Day Party

hey everyone

well, it's Michele & i that are at fault, i guess. after the blazing hot sun and subsequent sunburn for Saturday's party, we went and put the Gazebo up last night in anticipation of another hot day today for James' second party of the weekend, with Michele's family coming to visit.

we should have know that by doing this we would only have encouraged the rain to bucket down all day!!



as you can see in these pics, the gazebo and the crab pool look rather majestic in the rain, but the wet conditions made having a party and lunch out in the garden rather impractical! we then rushed, from about 11:30am onwards, to get an indoor party ready. everyone was supposed to arrive at around noon.....

...to top it all off, Michele's family in a very non-South African manner decided to arrive at exactly 12 noon for a change! and, instead of having one or both of us cooking, we decided to just have some rather fine Nando's chicken delivered. we were told to expect it to take an hour or so for our order to arrive, so we phoned it in around that timeframe. wouldn't you know it turned up in less than 20 minutes!!




anyway, we had a most excellent time with our improvised party arrangements, and it seems that all and sundry had a good time! here is James with his Uncle Dylan sat at the magnificent table Grandma and Grandad got him for his birthday! they look rather deep in conversation, probably discussing important developments in the world of dino toys!




and here's James unwrapping a present, with the legs of one of the sadly camera shy twins. what could the present be? dino related, perhaps?



oh yes, Dino related it indeed is! thank you Ouma and Dylan for a fantastic Dino Car device!



apparently it is "all but impossible" to roll this car toy, but the "all but" element of that statement is tested to the full by James under usual circumstances.in the background you can see Tasha, Skyla, Jade and Brandon, if you are wondering!




and, as the above pic shows, James well and truly is happy with the Dino car! the boy who lives next door often goes belting down the slope in front of our houses on his toy bike, so with some luck this week i will be able to take James out to play with him!




and above is James playing with Mama and one of the excellent presents Duncan, Linda and Robbie/Falco got him, a most excellent fruit and veg slicing toy. it's smart - there's a wooden knife, and the fruit and veg is held together with Velcro. recommended for all children!

us being indoors and the twins being rather shy meant that there were not all that many pics to choose from. sorry!!! we have had a great weekend with his parties, though, and he seems to have had an ace time!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Dark Knight - posters and a proper trailer!!

well, the promo work for The Dark Knight just keeps on getting spectacular! at last we have some official posters for the film - someone did a very good bootleg one with the eyes of The Joker on a brick wall, but as far as i am aware these are the first genuine ones.

first up is The Dark Knight himself, surveying his domain :




and then of course we have the one that everyone wants to see :




man, minimalist cool on full display!

meanwhile, a "proper" trailer is at last with us. there are very, very bad cellphone bootlegs out on the interwebnet right now, but why look at a rubbish version when you can visit the site a taste for the theatrical as of Sunday 16 December and download the high quality version??

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!

...also photographed today

well, here are two other pictures from James' birthday party earlier today!

first up is Duncan, looking about as seductive, sultry and provocative as one can with a Barney Ball, i guess.




there are people out there who the above image will actually appeal to - i wish them well with their lives, i guess!!


next up is my Dad and my brother Richard, or, going on their poses, The Don sat at the table, with his Number #2, Don Don, standing guard.



after the pictures of Barrie which featured here, it is only fair that my Dad also gets an appearance every now and then! otherwise, Richard seems to think my Frankie post was a bit excessive - well, i wanted to make it even longer!!!

be excellent to each other!!!!! pay respects to The Don and Don Don!!!!!!!!!!!!

more birthday party pics!!

hey hey again!

well, here's a few more pics, since i have the chance to put them up with James having dinner right now!!


here are James and Robbie almost playing on the swing and slide properly!! they tend to try and climb up the slide and jump down the steps!





and here's another fantastic pic of James and Robbie having fun in the crab pool device! i know there are a few pics of them playing with this, but they spent most of the party in it! notice Lyla sticking her head in to have a look at what the boys are doing!!





and finally, one of James just taking a time out to ponder on his fun day! with his looks, he will be quite the heartbreaker as time goes by, if he is not already!!





oh well, hope you enjoyed these images!! i will do my best to get some up of tomorrow's party as soon as possible! in the mean time,

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday James!!

hey everyone

well, James turned two today!! it really is true, time being relative and all that stuff from Einstein; for time seems to have flown by. no bad thing as it feels like we have a lifetime of wonderful memories already, so roll on the rest of time!





above is the closest that we could get to a family picture, James still being rather reluctant to pose for pictures as such. below is him enjoying his birthday party for today (another tomorrow!), having a bite to eat with his good friend Robbie, son of Linda and possibly of Duncan. Linda has requested that i do not refer to Robbie by the name of Falco, the preferred name for him by Duncan, on this site. so i won't' then!!




and here's James with Grandma, Lyla and the rather smart Finding Nemo birthday cake! there's quite a story behind getting the cake to the party, but i will save that for another time, i think!





Lyla, James and Robbie seen below, enjoying one of James' many birthday presents, this one being the favourite so far - it's an inflatable pool in the shape of a crab, with water jets in the crab claws!!





and here we are with them demolishing the birthday cake - as you can see, there is some sort of magic ingredient in it that Lyla really loves!!





and a last one for now, showing James and Robbie in the midst of a good idea of what to do in the pool!!





James and Robbie do get on rather well, we the parents will have to make more effort to get together on a regular basis. if Robbie and James become as good friends as myself and Duncan are, and there's a long list of scrapes believe me, then they will have done well in this world!

there are tons more pics, and we have another party with the twins tomorrow!! i will upload some more soon, but i thought i had better get a few up as soon as possible!!

in ecstacy, like the gods i saw walking in my dreams

Christmas is here once again, so let’s all have some fun,
don’t forget ten pints a night and don’t forget to come.....
......to the lads’ party, of course





the above words are, for want of a better term, the lyrics to the masterpiece unleased by Ped, Mark and Nasher on the elaborate b-side of the 12” of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s The Power Of Love. well, with it being the Christmas season, i thought that would be the best way to start off what will hopefully turn out to be my masterpiece on my most beloved band. although it could do with less convoluted sentences from here on out......

this is and this is not a history of Frankie. if you want to read more of The Spitfire Boys, Big In Japan and a certain edition of Variety reporting on Frank Sinatra making films, i suggest you return to google and start again. this being a blog, and supposedly us who write blogs are all “me, me, me” on them, this is my tale of Frankie, and claims to be nothing more but is perhaps always going to be something less......

i can with ease recall my first encounter with Frankie – a family holiday in Malta, 1983. in Malta one could by “independently produced” tapes (yes, those in the know, even back then), and something called Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, or possibly to my ten year old mind Frankie Goes To Hollywood by Relax, was on one of the tapes i got. another kid on holiday, the name of whom sadly has been lost in time, was in raptures over it, saying it was like the greatest song ever. i listened to it, and i was less than enthusiastic.

i recall glimpses of them on TV here and there. i easily remember the promo for the 83-84 New Year special of The Tube, with someone calling himself Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood appearing in it. i wondered why they had this Holly fellow and not whoever Frankie was. needless to say, i never owned a Frankie Say t-shirt.

Frankie released another record, something called Two Tribes. i wasn’t really interested, not being all that impressed with my, up to then, one and only playing of Relax. i ignored the song and its domination of the charts for quite some time. and then i saw them performing it on the now sadly gone Top Of The Pops. the decision was taken there and then to become a Frankie fan.

and that’s how i got to where i am now, some 23 years on, and still a Frankie fan. there’s not a great deal of point trying to make any sense of it, but let’s see what ramblings i can come up with.

i think the one thing that was central to my formulative years, in respect of development, knowledge and education, was the audacious double album Frankie released, Welcome To The Pleasuredome. i recall my Mum buying the set for me, and showing off certain aspects of the cover and artwork – things that did not make all that much sense to me at the time, but as she then rightly described as the band “pushing it as far as they could still get away with”. if you have the original double album, or one of the unedited CD releases, you will know exactly which parts of the artwork are being referred to here. i mean, i thought the poster of Holly & Paul in black leather clothes on my bedroom wall was just stylish, i never knew what the clothing indicated!

it’s the content and the substance of the album that did it for me, however. yes, they were at heart an explosive dance creation outfit built on a bedrock of solid rock music. but they were an intelligent one at that. on the basis of the sleevenotes as the lyrics, i learned new things to go and explore and research. they included, off the top of my head – Kubla Khan, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Che Guevara, Malcom X, Bruce Springsteen. the Frankie i love kicked open the doors to a world of learning and expanding horizons.

oh, and Norman – the words to Krisco Kisses turn out to be “thunder thunder, i love like thunder, yeah” and not what we assumed for all these years. a shame, i think our interpretation is much better.

3rd Single, 3rd Number 1 – The Power Of Love. it only stayed at Number 1 for a week, thanks to the unstoppable (and who would have wished to have stopped it?) Band Aid being released the next week. like it? well, we used it as our wedding music.....

a family holiday, i think in 1985 or 86 (whenever Karate Kid 2 was released, we watched it like 6 times at a cinema whilst there), in Portugal had me spending a day listening to the staggering 12” of Relax on repeat on the walkman. for those of you not of my generation, the walkman was what we had in the 80’s. a 0GB iPod, if you will. New Order’s Blue Monday may very well have set records for sales of the 12”, but Frankie defined what a 12” should be.


Frankie had a personality that no band at the time courted, and no band since has come close to touching. a shame, really, that’s probably got a lot to do with the sorry state of music these days. it may very well have been clever marketing and what not, but each and every Frankie was like an extended friend, big brother and/or someone that you just plain admired and were envious of. Holly was just the coolest person in the world, and for a time you got the impression that the universe revolved around him. Paul Rutherford was the second coolest, as he got to hang around with the greatest band in the world and wasn’t, to the most ardent observer, apparently expected to do or contribute much as the entrance fee. as for the lads – Ped, Nasher and Mark, well! the party animals, the have a good time all the time brigade. going out to parties and clubs appeared to be the greatest thing in the world, going on their comments and antics. just spin the b-side of Two Tribes, the curious One Feburary Friday, and tell me that you don’t want to transport yourself far away and become one of “the lads”. or the mentioned Power Of Love 12” b-side, where you are basically at a Frankie hosted party. Frankie offered a world of enlightenment and experience you could only dream of. Let your imagination conceive it, to paraphrase a remix of Pleasuredome.

a film appearance for the band, no less, in Body Double. myself and my good friend Norman sneaked a rental of the film (the age restriction well over what we should have been watching) just to see them. we were impressed with them, and the film entire.

it was with the single Welcome To The Pleasuredome that it all went a little bit wrong. 3 singles, 3 number ones and one of the biggest selling albums of all time. in retrospect, it was amazing that a 4th single from the album would sell at all, their sales being so rampant, but sell it did. but not enough. Welcome To The Pleasuredome as a 7” entered the charts at the cursed Number 4 slot. no single entering the charts at 4 had ever made it to 1. and this did not break the curse, it stalling at 2. i think it was Boris Gardner that kept them off the top – well, it was this one or Rage Hard in 86.

Frankie went away for 18 months after that – tax reasons and recording being the usual circumstances quoted. it was, and it was not ever, to be the same again on their return.

in mid-86 i stayed up until 1am to catch a glimpse of their comeback, somewhere in Montreal or Monseraat or something. they mimed two new tracks, Rage Hard and Warriors Of The Wasteland. the lads had taken over, they came back with a far harder rock, far lesser dance sound. it was still good.

Rage Hard was the comeback single. it didn’t clock the number 1 spot, again the curse of entering the chart at 4 striking. hey, i bought as many copies as i could. the video got voted the worst video of the year. Holly’s pants in it go some way to explaining why i cannot disagree with that decision.


the second album came out, Liverpool. the critics said it was “half as long but twice as good” as the illustrious debut. it didn’t need that – a great album is a great album, and Liverpool is a great album. there's not a bad track to be had.

single 6 – Warriors Of The Wasteland. i don’t think it even made the top 10. i was frustrated that Maximum Joy or Lunar Bay were not considered singles. for some reason the video was a cartoon, photos of the band cropping up here and there.

January 10 1987. Manchester G-Mex Arena. Frankie Goes To Hollywood, supported by Berlin. i was there. they opened with Warriors, and then went into one of my all time favourites, The Only Star In Heaven. Paul wore a “Frankie Say Use A Condom” t-shirt. for Lunar Bay the lights all went out and Ped played with red neon drumsticks. for War, massive flamethrowers shooted up all over the stage. nice one, thanks again, thanks forever to my Uncle Colin for taking me to see them.

single 7 – Watching The Wildlife. not bad. i bought the 7” and the 3 12”’’s released. it was not enough, i think it barely scraped into the 20’s in the chart, if that. the video was awful for it, except that the band as ever looked cool.

and then Frankie as a going concern was gone. there’s the stories of a backstage fight, but i guess it was never going to last.

the stories of Frankie are the stuff of legend. i dare not repeat some of them here, as i do my best to keep it clean for all visitors. some are safe to mention – the one where Ped was so keen to avoid a trip to the USA that he just threw himself down some stairs until something broke. the reason for wishing to skip the States? it was not as good an offer as staying home and watching the footie with his mates. then there’s the one of Mark O’Toole trashing a pub quiz machine, as it dared to suggest that his wife was the girlfriend of Howard “What Is Love Anyway” Jones. and, closer to home, the tale of how Frankie took one look at Middlesbrough and refused to play the scheduled gig there – until their ego was massaged with an official opening of the HMV store there.

i followed the solo careers as best i could – i even penned to Holly, and was delighted to get a response, and a signed copy of his excellent debut CD, Blast. Holly hit the charts for a while, but sadly soon faded away. Paul’s solo material, as hinted at in other posts, was ace – a shame it never got any widespread attention, he had some fascinating ideas going on. The lads? well, the lads kinds of did not do too much to follow, quite frankly, Frankie. there’s this whole reunion, new version thing on the go, and i wish them well.

the world is a sadder place without any musician or band being what Frankie were and are. none of the ones out there at the moment are as diverse, self-assured or just plain interesting in comparison. no band puts the effort in either – yeah, yeah, Trevor Horn was a wizard at production, but the sheer energy and gargantuan effort that went in to Two Tribes, for example, has never been touched. just go and listen to it – the 7” pop single transformed into a hugely danceable, classical work of art.





anyway, that’s why Frankie are and always will be Number 1 for me. yeah, sure, i love the Manics, the Roses, Bowie, Smiths & Scream – as astonishing as they are and have been, though, the Frankies are the ones i would take with me if i were to be marooned in the high seas or deep space. they dominate my stereo, and i sing (shout / scream) along to them, whether i have company or not. make what you will of this post, but if one person goes off from reading this and either discovers, rediscovers or re-rediscovers Frankie as a consequence, my work is done.

if you are a Frankie fan who found this article, nice one, i hope you get what i am saying. if you are one of Frankie, thank you.

to be stolen or bought.

Elvis Extreme

a rather fine interwebnet address called blender have some wonderful articles and lists about the very best and worst of music and musicians. Number 1 on their list of Rock Star excess was The King, Elvis Presley.

sadly, the site seems to be under the impression that Elvis did in fact die 30 or so years ago - odd, they seem a rather intelligent lot to fall for such a blatant falsehood. anyway, here is their tribute to one of The King's greatest moments. to date, obviously....

Snack attack
Elvis Presley
Item: Peanut butter and bacon sandwiches
Cost: $3,387.28


On the night of Feburary 1, 1976, Elvis Presley pulled off a stunt that combined three of his favorite activities — profligate spending, showing off to cops and eating repellent things. While entertaining two Colorado policemen at Graceland, he mentioned a sandwich that he had once eaten at the Colorado Gold Mine Company restaurant in Denver: a hollowed, buttered loaf, filled with peanut butter, jelly and a pound of fried bacon. The sandwich was meant to feed eight, but Presley had finished one unaided. Remarkably, one of the cops expressed an interest. Even more remarkably, Presley insisted they should head to Denver to try it, a distance of 1,000 miles. His stretch Mercedes took them to the Memphis airport, where his private jet, the Lisa Marie — upholstered in aquamarine plush in further testament to the King’s understated elegance — awaited.

Two hours later, they landed in Denver, where 22 of the $49.95 “Fool’s Gold” sandwiches on silver platters, plus a bucket of Perrier water and a case of champagne, were brought to a private hangar at the airport by the restaurateur, his wife and a waiter.

Now that is the personification of The King, is it not? generosity and peanut butter all rolled into one magnificent gesture from the great one!! i believe that i would rather like to try one of these fine sandwiches, as equally as i believe that my dear wife will not allow me to try one on health grounds. ho hum.


despite their misrepresentation of the current life status of Elvis, i do recommend that you click either of the links above to visit the site mentioned, it is class!!

whilst i have an Elvis post on the go, many thanks to those of you who have reported to me sightings of The King outside of his current home somewhere in China. see earlier posts for my evidence that he lives there. Elvis has no time for things such as Olympic gatherings, which China has coming in 2008, and has even less time for the world press and media after the distorted reporting they provided in regards of his alleged, supposed and frankly did not happen death. i am not at all surprised to get reports of him being seen driving a bus in Middlesbrough, or just hanging about in downtown Hong Kong. as soon as this running, swimming and jumping business is over, The King will head back to the Caddy Dealerships and open for Breakfast KFC's of mainland China. until then, well, who would deny The King the chance to wander around the world and see a bit of his domain? i will certainly keep an eye open for him turning up here over Christmas.


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Indy IV - The First Official Poster

i must say, seeing this old style adventure poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, i am all of a sudden interested, and possibly excited, about seeing this one....





nice one!!!

Lunch with Grandad / Birthday Cake

hey everyone

well, after the series of pictures of Barrie, it is only fair to have one of the photographer up here! the more keen eyed will have seen him in the Barrie post pictures, of course.

on Saturday Michele & I went off to do our Christmas shopping "quickly", something that turned into a five hour venture! that went well, but as James does not really like prolonged shopping adventures, he went to see Grandma and Grandad (and Marmite and the Tortoise) for the day. here he is enjoying lunch with Grandad; Heinz noodles i believe!!



and, of course, James turns 2 on Saturday 15 December!! time really does fly, and i know that is a cliche of sorts. as School finished for the year tomorrow, James has taken in a rather splendid cake so that all can celebrate his birthday a bit early today :



well done Mummy, Shrek is one of his favourites and i am sure all will enjoy this rather splendid looking cake!!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stalking Barrie

hey everyone

sorry for the lack of updates over the past week - i have been busy at verk clearing my desk as i take two weeks off to "babysit" James. for some reason Barrie is of the opinion that i in fact update this site all too often, so to give some merit to his complaints here are a series of pictures of him. the pics were taken by my Dad, who as readers of this site and the Sandton Chronicle is a rather keen photographer and reporter. thanks for the pics, and here is Barrie for all the world to see.

Barrie is infamous for not really appreciating being in photographs. here is a picture which seems to illustrate his disdain for being captured on film or, if you will, a "digital media device". he could of course be looking upset due to the fact that he has clocked that he, Barrie, "Mr Newcastle Fog On The Tyne" himself, is wearing a shirt which is rather similar (in colour scheme and stripes at least, albeit the latter the wrong way) to that worn by those (many, many fine expletives deleted) of Sunderland. one would not catch me in anything close to anything worn by Newcastle or Sunderland, but Barrie seems to be comfortable with it. go figure.


and here we have an image of the momentarily happy Barrie. this is not exactly the most common site one could glimpse in the world, so i would suggest that you should take the time to appreciate it. why the expression of merriment? who knows. it could be related to the chap in the background was someone Barrie considered most disagreeable, the joy being inspired by his departure. it could even be because he back the right pony in a race, these images being snapped at the Tab Royale, a venue of fine repute i am led to believe. fine if one likes quality food at the same time as they conduct certain fiscal affairs with a turf accountant, i presume. anyway, it is a delight to see Barrie looking happy, whatever be the inspiration for it.



oh dear, we would appear to be back to an image of the serious, no-nonsense looking Barrie. in respect of the above, perhaps the somewhat not pleasant chap had returned, or maybe a second or third pony that Barrie placed a wager on was insolent in terms of Barrie's not unrealistic expectations of it. let your mind wander freely on this one, and you decide for yourself why Barrie is doing a quasi-Mona Lisa pose, although falling somewhat on the dour fringes of interpretation of that most celebrated painting. the waiter chap lurking in the background would appear to have adopted caution in approaching the Barrie airspace, and who could blame him - an ardent Newcastle man apparently celebrating the colours of Sunderland is a man laced with potential danger, intrigue and an inherent lack of interest in hearing of specials which this establishment may wish to sell him.


if you, for some reason that i am not of a mind to even begin to contemplate, have enjoyed these insights into how Barrie spends a conventional Sunday morning, by all means drop me a line or leave a message here. i will be delighted to forward them on to my Dad, although he will read comments here himself anyway - keep the language clean, chaps. Barrie can be quite wily when the camera is out, but with enough popular support i am sure i can give another update on this fine, upstanding gentleman in the not too distant future.

be excellent to each other, but most importantly, be excellent to Barrie...........

Paul Rutherford - guess what happened next.....

well, this should hardly come as a surprise - Paul Rutherford's Oh World album is on the way to me in the form of a 2nd hand, cheap-ish CD thanks to amazon's rather smart market place section. my thanks to Shaun for his wisdom, guidance and advice in this matter.

we actually hit upon a quite class way to get this one past the wife, not that she would mind too much. it being an 18 year old Frankie related disc, i could have just slid it in the collection and said "but i have always had this album, why would i have not had a Frankie related CD?". a very good plan, but there were two major flaws in this charade.

firstly, Michele on a regular basis collects the post, so if she had picked this parcel up as and when it lands, she would obviously have been interested to know what it contained.

secondly, and this was the major flaw in the plan, Michele is a regular, and perhaps the most avid, reader of this very interwebnet site. there is every chance, then, that she will have read this ambitious plan and be having none of it!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Dark Knight - cool, very cool

well, yet more images have turned up from The Dark Knight, this time in the form of some promo pictures. as plain and basic as these may very well be, they just add to the view that this film is going to be awesome.

other than the fact that the talented Christopher Nolan directed it, one of the major plus points of Batman Begins was Christian Bale in the lead. he was most excellent in the part, and i dare say he will be again.

in this first pic, the bat outfit seems to have been refined and enhanced somewhat :




alas, poor Christian, you are not the most interesting part of The Dark Knight. regular readers of my page, and followers of this film in general, are well aware of the fact that there is one guy we really, really want to see.....





....ta-daaah! the Joker, in a much brighter image that we have seen so far. i balked at the idea of Heath Ledger playing this part, but so far it looks like possibly the most inspired piece of casting of the 21st Century.





there are all sorts of rumours and stories out there about how the Joker becomes the Joker - is it just make up, or is he deformed, as per other tellings of his tale? i will not repeat the rumours here, but will suggest that if you listen to Michael Caine in the teaser trailer carefully, it's pretty clear what he is and what he is up to.




ho hum, waiting for July 2008 for this one is going to be a major drag. oh well, with the teasing images and bits of info they keep releasing, i guess they have knocked the nail on the head in respect of marketing and building up expectation on this one!


be excellent to each other!!!! believe in Harvey Dent!!!!!!!!!!!!

James - School Concert Picture!!!

well, i should have known that with Grandma around there would always be one or two pictures of James taken! he might not have participated in the concert, but he at least wore the clothes for it, as you can see here!!

ahem, they were supposed to be yellow shorts, and the did look like shorts to me whilst we were in the shop!! i guess i guessed a little bit wrong with them!!

as i said in the earlier post, James has sadly been a bit ill this weekend, carrying a rather high temperature. it looks like once again his teeth are fighting to come through - the high temperature is accompanied by a lack of desire to eat much, not even his beloved lollies! oh well, hopefully with a lot of love and some medicine he will be feeling better real soon!

on the note of the concert, can i say how disappointing it was to see so many parents smoking and drinking alcohol at the event? i mean, i am a smoker (Marlboro, thank you), but felt no need to light up in the presence of children. i also have nothing against those who drink, myself being known to enjoy the ale once in a while. but if you are drinking at a school concert, surely you have some sort of problem? well, that's me either getting old, or sharing the view of the majority. i certainly hope it is the latter!!!!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the devil buys milk / counting doors

well, it being Sunday, i took James out as usual to go around the shops to pick up some odds and ends. as he is a bit under the weather at the moment - or rather over it, his teething giving him a bit of a temperature, he was mostly quiet as we went around, but still had some fun. Daddy certainly saw something to amuse him, although he is at a bit of a loss to explain why.

also doing some Sunday shopping was a couple dressed in black complete, featuring all sorts of tattoos attributed as images for "alternative religions" and so on, if you catch my drift. the kind of thing Ozzy Osbourne and metal bands that are not as good as Ozzy cover their records in. and there they were, normal shoppers wandering around, purchasing groceries.

well, i did warn that it is rather difficult to explain my amusement with this one, or rather the humour in the incident. it was just kind of weird to see the obvious - those in league with lucifer also require bread, milk and so forth. it's just not every day that you see them out in their uniform on a Sunday morning, i suppose.

before i start getting all sorts of threats and what not, kindly appreciate that i am not poking fun at them as such, live and let live and all that stuff for me thanks. it was just a rather unusual site for the time of day, and the concept for the title tickled my funny bone.....



there was also some amusement before we headed to the shops. our numskull neighbours, bless them, were arguing about whether their car was really a 5 door car, and if so as one claimed then where exactly was the 5th door. i suspect they do not frequent the interwebnet much, but if they do, i have managed to find a pic of their car, and by happy coincidence it gives a rather big clue as to where the 5th door is...

considering our neighbours tend to do a big massive session of singing and dancing when the power comes back on after one of the frequent power cuts, only to then seem to spend most of their time sitting around talking in the dark, the above incident would not, shall we say, be out of character for them. oh well, as i said, live and let live :)

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

tha Paul Rutherford dilemma

i was digging out my collection of CD singles for a variety of reasons when i discovered my three Paul Rutherford singles - Get Real, I Want Your Love and Oh World. all of them are classics, and i got to wondering why exactly there was never an album from the class dancer out of Frankie Goes To Hollywood. so i had a look on the interwebnet thingie, and guess what i somehow missed......


now your guess is as good as mine as to how me, a Frankie fan, didn't ever look for or find this one! oh well, at least it exists, and there does seem to be the potential to get a copy of it.

there are a number of second hand copies doing the rounds on the interwebnet, and they seem to be a pretty decent price, even including shipping. the trick is, of course, i have just blown all that i considered to be spare cash on the Twin Peaks box set.

hmn, well, quite a dilemma. i will give the three singles another spin, and then perhaps consider sleeping on the matter. i think that it should be in my collection, but then again it is not like (shock! horror!) i have all of Holly's solo material - i never upgraded the second album from him from tape to CD, at least.

there is of course a very easy answer to this problem. Paul Rutherford probably has one or two spare copies of it kicking around the house. Paul Rutherford currently lives in New Zealand (i think, that was the last i heard). my sister and her family live in New Zealand........get the hint, Gillian, invite him over!!!

be excellent to each other, and don't be surprised to learn that this album gets ordered in the near future...............

25 minutes of Hatchet

i was rather tired when i sat down to watch Hatchet, but nonetheless i was keen to watch something. i have been interested in seeing this one for a while - thanks Matt for forwarding it on to me. alas, i dare say that you have worked out from the title of this review exactly how long it kept me awake.

the poster and the promo work makes a lot of noise about it being a "good old fashioned slasher flick", it's a rather tiresome experience, to be honest. it starts off with poor old Robert Englund being dragged in for a 'cameo' of sorts - i hope they pay him well for this stuff, and quickly moves into the skin flashing world of New Orleans Mardis Gras. yawn, sigh, boring.

after 25 minutes the "killer" or whatever presumably uses the hatchet from the title, had not turned up, so i just tuned out. i doubt i will bother going back to see how it all ends, the characters were not interesting enough to warrant wondering how exactly they get dismembered.

as far as "old school american horror" goes, well, the most interesting horror films of the 21st Century have stemmed from dear old Britain - The Descent, Dog Soldiers, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later and even Shaun Of The Dead have been the best of the last 7 or so years. the only decent USA horror i can think of from the same time was Dawn Of The Dead - a remake, but a very smart and entertaining one.

unless someone can tell me that something brilliant happens in the last hour of Hatchet, as i said i will not bother going back to have a look, and i really do not suggest you bother either.

it's been 18 months since it was made, and no sequel in the pipeline. that means, as cheap as it presumably was to make, it did that badly that there was no point in making another one. a rare event in modern film making, and a big flashing warning sign about how poor it is.

Be Kind - Rewind

it pains me to say this, and i really never thought that this day would dawn - i am rather looking forward to the next Jack Black film. yeah, i know, i cannot stand him, and i think only recently i posted another slamming of the guy!

Be Kind - Rewind has a very amusing sounding plot. in short, two dudes manage to blank all the films in their video store. yeah, i know some of you will have no idea what a "video tape" is, but anyway. instead of replenishing their stock, they instead set out with a video camera and just recreate the films themselves!

i have a vague recollection of a similar story in the "real world". maybe it was an urban legend or something, i know not - there's certainly no reference to it being based on or "inspired by" a real story.

in the trailer the impression is given that Jack Black has given up on just shouting a lot and looking like he feels sorry for himself, that annoying beaten puppy grimace was not visible once. nice one, i hope so, for when he has been watchable (and that has not been often), he has just, for want of a better term, 'acted' and not shouted a great deal. it also helps that the impressive Mos Def is in the film!

one word of warning though - avoid the trailer. if we assume that this is a standard 90 minute comedy, then the trailer gives away the whole plot, a couple of twists and a possible ending for it, all in the space of 3 minutes.

i believe this one gets released in January 2008 - going on what i have seen, it's certainly worth watching out for!!

James and the School Concert : The Pictures

hey everyone

here are the pics of James at his school concert :


no, DO NOT ADJUST YOUR INTERWEBNET DEVICE. alas, James decided he was having none of the singing and dancing, and so did not join in!!

oh well, Grandma came through with us to watch, and we enjoyed watching all the other kids singing, dancing and showing off!!

when James did turn up, he stood on the side with Mummy and pointed at everyone, shouting comments, advice and directions. who knows, perhaps he is the next Kurbick or Scorsese???

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End

hey everyone

yeah, i know the film is now 7 - 8 months old, but like many of you out there we tend to wait for the DVD to be out, going to the cinema being somewhat tricky, expensive and, thanks to idiots with cellphones who think they are important, a generally unpleasant experience. and so, when James went for a nap this afternoon, we finally watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the disc arriving earlier this week.

we were kind of expecting it to be, at best, mildly entertaining with a few good one liners from Johnny Depp as the good Captain Jack Sparrow. oh dear.




the film seems to suffer greatly from the same folly as others have when they have made two sequels at the same time - the 2nd and 3rd Back To The Future films were mediocre at best, and parts 2 and 3 of the Matrix trilogy are excellent examples of very bad film making.

if you take the latter of the above, there is nothing in At World's End that is as tedious and as lame as the opening 30 minutes on a train station platform a la the 3rd Matrix film, but it gets close. everyone watching a Pirates film does so to see Jack Sparrow, and he is absent for the first 30 or so minutes. the film has so many sub-plots and different characters on the go, a number of them of no interest and generally dull, the makers appear to have forgotten that Captain Jack was why the first film was such a huge hit, and why many went back for the second. i gather this Chow Yun Fat chap is rather popular, for example, but it seems that the only reason he is in this movie is so that they could put his face and name on the poster.





it's not like it bothers to address the ending of the second film, either - i am not going to give much away here, i don't think. the "cliffhanger" with Captain Jack at the end of the second is unresolved, you just assume that it worked out for him.

the plot, as it is, doesn't really cause much excitement - the meeting of the nine pirate brethren is built up for ages, then not a lot happens in it. remember all the heavy handed political nonsense going on in Star Wars Episode I? for some reason there is an attempt to emulate it here, albeit with a failed comical spin. and of course, there is no real ending as such - the door is wide open for more, if all and sundry involved could be persuaded to return, or if they decide to cast other actors and make it on the cheap.

even the "surprise" cameo of Keith Richards is a bit flat, really. Keith shoots someone, reads from a book, fiddles with a guitar for a bit and throws his hat into the air. that's it folks - think very carefully if you only want to see the film for the great one's appearance.

i am not sure that anyone uses my reviews as a guide, and if they do this one is probably a bit late anyway. if you are curious, or want to see how it all "ends" as such, you may wish to consider renting this instead of buying it. then again, if like me you have bought the other two, you are probably going to want it on the shelf anyway, just to make up the complete set. a clever trick from Disney that is, making you feel obliged to have them all.

sadly, i have to say proceed with extreme caution and rather low expectations if you opt to approach Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End.

yo-ho, me hearties..................