This Charming Man

hey everyone

well, after five pretty relaxing days at home it is back off to verk for me in the morning. oh yay, i can hardly wait.

on a much happier note, here's some ace pictures of James, taken by Grandma as he sat with Grandad this morning :



i have no idea how they managed to get him to pose quite so nicely, but well done!



he seems to have had a fun morning with Grandma and Grandad whilst i went to discuss some matters with my good friend The Colonel. obviously i cannot discuss my work with The Colonel here, but it was a most successful day.

over the past five days i have managed to buy yet more films that i do not know when it will find the chance to sit and watch. one of them will get watched, though - an old, b-grade (at best!) favourite called Gunmen, made early on in Denis Leary's career. i shall try to avoid spoilers, but Denis Leary's final scene in the film is one of the funniest things i have ever seen.

i have been listening to some "new" music. the term new is very debatable here. Love, sort of by The Beatles but more a remix project from George Martin, is ace - ignore the lame, bad reviews it seems to be getting. no idea of the reviews of this one, but Dylanesque by Bryan Ferry is also an album of excellence, and well worth giving a listen to. as for old favourites, thank you Manic Street Preachers for giving away the song Underdogs from your next album - it sounds OK, will give it a few more plays before i make my mind up.



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

most excellent television

the last time i was hooked on a television series was probably Twin Peaks. this one is proving to be just as addictive and brilliant :



we are only up to episode 3 on our TV here, so PLEASE do not post any spoiler messages, thank you. it is ace!!

A Very Educational Toy

hey everyone

i managed to find James a very educational toy today. well, when i say educational, it's no secret what my most favourite object in the world is, and as i am not allowed to own one myself (an unjustifed ban by my wife, my family and everyone who knows what i want to do with one), i saw no reason for James to miss out :



it is easily one of the most excellent things that i have ever seen! when you press the button it makes a highly authentic chainsaw noise (believe me, i know these things, and a plastic chain rotates inside the blade.

this far James prefers to make "brum brum brum" noises and wave it around instead of pressing the button to make the noise, but it evidentley works for him :




he has had some fun running around with it, but does tend to hold it the wrong way around, as shown in the next pic. well, James is all of 15 months old. give him time, he will soon learn the right way to hold it!!




this is quite possibly my proudest post since announcing the arrival of James. i hope you have enjoyed these pics, and further that your heart is warmed as much as mine was when i saw him trotting up and down with it, waving it in the general direction of our cats (something that Michele says i am not allowed to encourage him to do anymore).

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

yawn a web

the internet is already flooded with news and views on Spider-Man 3, but by all accounts this poster isn't supposed to be widely available. knock yourself out!

whereas no doubt i will see this film, it isn't exactly the most exciting prospect of 2007. like, for instance, Colour Me Kubrick, which i believe is finally set for a release around the world. it is already out in Australia and New Zealand, and i am delighted to report that my dear sister and family have ensured that i have my own copy of it!!

otherwise, not a lot else to tell you of. James will be 15 months old tomorrow - nice one!!

be excellent to each other!!!!

nice one Gillian!!

hey everyone

on the subject of sheep (see nice one Spiros), Gillian, Grant, Katie and an unnamed bump (unless they are serious about naming him Walter) have sent a most excellent present for James - Mr Men books!!

three of them to start him off, and he seems rather enamoured with them. not the best pictures, but he will not sit still. Mummy looks beautiful in them anyway :





thank you Gillian and gang!! whereas everything else gets thrown around and broken a bit, James appears to have taken a shine to literature. i wonder where he gets that from......

on the taking a shine note, i am delighted to say that the Fraggle Rock DVD i purchased was a wise investment. James appears to love it as much as i do, and does a class dance to the theme. sadly at this stage he is not as enamoured with the Doozers as i am, but that will come in time.

be excellent to each other!!!!

nice one Spiros

hey everyone

sorry for the lack of updates - it is tricky not being able to upload from verk thanks to the enforced changes from Blogger, but there you go.

i have also been rather ill. "throat infection" is the best we have, but basically last Thursday my tongue and throat were rather swollen and i was struggling to breathe! the doc has a mind to send me to hospital to see what exactly is going on, but in the mean time i am some rather super strength antibiotics to see if that fixes it and clears it. fingers crossed.

sadly, alas, i had to skip Spiros's birthday party as a consequence, but he sent along my birthday present anyway. here, at the request of Spiros, is a pic of me holding this present :




if you have no idea what it is i am holding well, that's probably a rather good thing. it will be quite class if the manufacturers of this thing pick up on this pic and use it as an advert or something. Spiros also got me a class keyboard with a telephone built in, which seems to work ace.

otherwise, all is well despite the medical grumble. James is very much James, which very much means the wild eyed boy running around and having fun. some more pics of him will no doubt feature here very soon!

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

Biker Time!!!

hey everyone

Michele decided that it was time to get James one of those toy bike thingies, since he seems to love making brum-brum noises at everything with wheels. it would appear that Michele was most astute in this decision :




the bike is ever so slightly on the large side for him (give it a couple of hours and he will have grown enough), but he is having fun sitting on it and pretending he is in the TT or whatever the Isle Of Man race thingie is called!!

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

Quality Reading with James

hey everyone

OK, this "new" version of Blogger makes it impossible for me to log in and update at verk anymore. That's more to do with the shortsightedness of our computer system at verk, but there you go. i will do my best to update from home, but it is quite slow!!

on to happier things, and James has decided to have a bash at this reading business. up to now he pulls down books and just messes about with them, but he seems rather intrigued by this one :




nice one son, delighted to see that you are reading some quality!!

be excellent to each other!!

Remember Me This Way

hey everyone

we had our annual shaveathon at verk today. we try and get as many people as possible to make donations and either shave or colour their hair in order to raise money for the Cancer Research and Support Societ of SA. for those who have never seen me without the beard, or do not recall what i looked like :



not a pretty picture i suppose, but it is all for a good cause!!!

be excellent to each other!!!!

Grindhouse

now this looks quite class :





Grindhouse looks like it could be fun, at least if you are in the States - it seems that the two films listed on the poster will be released as seperate entities in the rest of the world. as there are supposed to be some fun trailers in between the two films, that sounds like a bummer.

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

Scooby Doo kids ‘beat suspects into confession’

The crime fighting kids made famous by the Scooby Doo TV series secured false confessions through violence and intimidation according to new papers released this week. The claim has been made by lawyers working for the acquittal of the so-called ‘Scooby Doo 86’, the large number of ageing prisoners in jail since the 1970s who all claim they were framed by the ‘meddling kids and their dog’. They point to strikingly similar patterns in each account of their bizarre and convoluted crimes, and the fact that the only stranger the kids ever met was always the person whom they fingered at the end.

‘On screen the kids from Mystery Inc. appeared to be likeable and humorous teenagers with a strong sense of right and wrong, prepared to enter scary situations to do their bit to fight crime’ said Mike McLone, a human rights lawyer working for the campaigning prisoners. ‘In reality, Freddie and Shaggy regularly beat innocent suspects into a pulp behind the scenes, then got them to make on-screen confessions having dressed them up in a ghost costume with a removable head.’

‘All the ghostly paraphernalia supposedly employed by the master criminals to scare people away from their lair; it was all set up by these desperate attention-seeking kids,’ he added. The tactics, if true, were certainly successful, with Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby becoming household names for their astonishingly successfully run at exposing elaborate and bizarre crimes. ‘Think about it? Not once did it turn out that nothing suspicious was happening. Hundreds of innocent old men looking after slightly spooky buildings were convicted of invented crimes, just so these kids could reap all the glory.’


The kids from Mystery Inc. stepped down from crime fighting some years ago, although no official explanation was ever given for their sudden retirement. In an official statement, their lawyers said that ‘these accusations are um, being invented by Old Man Johnson, who is er, using the legend of the headless horseman to scare folks away from the disused goldmine. Yeah.’ However they refused to comment on allegations that Fred always sent Shaggy and Velma in the opposite direction because he was knocking off Daphne in the Mystery Machine.

Scooby was put to sleep when he became incontinent in 1991. Shaggy was busted for drug possession in 1998, while Velma now lives her lesbian partner in Canada.

middle aged man runs about after computer hacker

in the world of bad ideas, Die Hard 4.0 or Live Free Or Die Hard depending on which title they go with, must be very close to being the king of the world.

the plot, as far as i can gather, involves Brucie running around after computer hackers. looking for someone with a computer to try and stop them doing whatever it is doesn't exactly sound like a thrill-a-minute adrenaline rush, does it?


Die Hard was a masterpiece. Die Hard 2 : Die Harder was clumsy with some fun moments. Die Hard With A Vengeance was brilliant, despite the convoluted, changed at the last minute ending. Die Hard 4 would appear to be an announcement that all involved really do not want to make another Die Hard film but are nonetheless determined to make one anyway.

if i am wrong, an apologetic review will feature here. i would be surprised if any such review featured here.

a decent Oscar set of results horror shock?

hey everyone

OK, now that the fuss has died down, let's have a look at the Oscar results, shall we?

The biggest fuss seems to be over the triumph of The Departed, with Martin Scorsese in particular being seen as "long overdue an award". That may well be, but i grow tired of hearing he actually got it for "being Martin Scorsese" and because he was "due" for all his fine films. Nonsense - Martin Scorsese won because The Departed was probably the best film of 2006; certainly it was the best of the 5 nominated. Martin Scorsese has made very few bad films, but the greats he has made faced stiff competition at the time. He doesn't have any complaint and thus nor should anyone else.

These awards are not handed over for the sake of it - if they were, then Peter O'Toole would have won instead of Forest Whittaker, as Mr O'Toole is probably closer to not being alive to win another at some point than any of the other nominees.

Probably for the first time since Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven have the Oscars got it pretty much correct with the awards. The lack of nominations and awards for The Prestige was one disappointment - if nothing else, it was an excellent book-to-film adaptation. Undoubtedly Christopher Nolan will feature at these awards at some point, perhaps only when he makes a film that does not fly over the average intelligence of the American Audience.

The lack of awards for this Dreamgirls business at least shows that hype does not give you success. Helen Mirren? well done, but i am dubious that her portrayal is what everyone makes it - all too often, you are not convinced that you are watching Queen Elizabeth II, you are just watching Helen Mirren in a wig. Overall, though, the Oscars this year merely underlined the fact that 2006 was one of the worst years for films in living memory.
this could be all academic, though. if the Oscars are worth anything in regards of recognition, why then did Stanley Kurbick never get awarded one for his skills as a director?

ho hum, at least the Oscars present a nice conversation piece. now please, film-makers, put more effort in than you did last year!!

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