the Barbs dynamic

hi there

the post that i was going to do the other day when i wasn't going to do any but did that other thing instead, then. the so-called Spiros Card one.

Barbs, ladies and gents, or 'Babs' as a fringe yet devout Canadian element of her fanbase would appear to call her, condescended to release a technically new album during the course of 2014. i am not looking for it or linking it here, but at that time she, you might recall, granted them off the tele, Sky, a one question interview in promotion of that release.

when it comes to purchasing a new Barbs release i, as you can well imagine, immediately waited for six or so months until i saw the price drop at least twice, then bought it five or so days later.

i bought the Barbs CD Partners as the ostensibly main part of a 2 for £10, the secondary disc or if you like discs of which will be revealed later, look you see.

getting a Barbs album for £5 is a coup of note, ladies and gentlemen, is it not? Barbs lives a life in which she imagines people should be paying at least that much just to be inside a shop that sells her products, at which point one is encouraged to spend a good deal more on Barbs merchandise. off the top of my head, if i recall right £10 or thereabouts is the amount she currently charges for a plastic bag from a tour from some 20 years ago, back then when she got all giddy and animated about Bill Clinton being President and decided to, once more, be amongst her people. and we are all, dear reader, her people.

so what is the new album? a fair question, since the "one question only" approach to an interview about it allowed for little of what one would generally see as promotion or indication of content. on a somewhat superficial level, it takes its title, that being Partners, as a means of referencing the fact that the album features the Barbs doing duets. on a rather more practical level, it reveals that Barbs has a somewhat unorthodox view of what does or does not count as a duet or a partnership. probably a lasting legacy of her time doing Yentl or similar, but no matter.

a look at the CD tray insert thing? why, certainly, since you asked. it delves somewhat further into the world of the peculiar ideas that the Barbs has.

appreciating that this image is not too clear, from what you can make out of it your question no doubt is just what the hell is that which Barbs is stood next to and smiling about. in truth, i have no firm knowledge, but i can take a guess.

as far as my (considerably) better half and i can work out, the above is supposed to be some sort of bed. not any normal sort of bed that you, i or about seven billion other people would be allowed to use, or if you like lay on, of course. no, it's a special Barbs bed. the isolar casket nature of it allows the person in it to gaze exclusively at the most Barbs thing in the world whilst asleep, which is Barbs.
 

here is a lunch that i had during the week. it is actually a chicken sandwich, but yes that is a stack of bacon on it. here in England, look you see, the phrase "with bacon" does not exist, for that implies that for some reason one would purchase something that does not have bacon with it.

this is a pretty regular lunch for a chap at verk to have, i suppose. nothing grandiose, fancy or clever. this, ladies and gents, represents the problem faced with the Barbs album. beyond the fact that, if my memory serves me right in respect of her persuasions or proclivity when it comes to issues of faith, it's very unlikely that she would happily have bacon, Barbs does not "get" what other people are, and has no wish to do so. Barbs has a life which is all New York apartment Monday, private ski ranch (or whatever) in Aspen for a few days on Tuesday, a stop off in Washington to demand that whoever the President is (her people mention it in passing) "do good" on a Thursday, and then off to Malibu on a Friday for Barbs things, like having a passion for design and allowing those who she will tolerate to visit and pay homage to her.

in short, Barbs simply does not quite get or really appreciate that not everyone has the exquisite dynamics of her existence. i can, for instance and at random, understand how her uber-mega luxury production of the song What Kind Of Fool with John Legend made perfect sense to her in her surroundings, but as i listened to it whilst sat on a somewhat suspension-free and shock absorber lacking bus heading to the wonders of a petrochemical winterland one fine morning i couldn't but help feel that i was not in the correct setting to fully appreciate the song.

the world is at fault for not everyone having the Barbs life, of course, and not Barbs.

in respect of the important element of the above statement, here is an image of me "ripping" the CD to my PC, ahead of transferring it to my pod of i. and oh, don't you worry, there's a very, very good whine about Apple coming up later, kids.

beyond me listening to the album in entirely the wrong setting, or if you like locale, what's it like? exquisite, brilliant and amazing across the board, except for the bits where it is all "blergh" and "meh" and "um".

fans of the artists that Barbs theoretically duet with are in for something of a surprise. they sound different than they do on their usual, lesser records, as they have had to perform to a standard that did not displease Barbs. what happens when one displeases Barbs? i would not wish to find out.

a particular treat, and strong example of the above, is the presence of Billy Joel, doing a Billy Joel song. for once, and arguably for the first time since those halcyon days of Piano Man, he sings with an immense clarity, seemingly dropping that "let me sing this so it makes it sound like it is coming out of my arse" approach which has served him so very well for a number of decades.

a brief break from Barbs, then, to look at the other disc, or if you like discs (for it was and remains a 2CD set) purchased as part of the 2 for £10 deal. i looked at what they offered, saw a best of Fleetwood Mac set, observed that it commenced with Monday Morning, and promptly selected it..

man. i mean, wow. just how rock and roll is Lindsey Buckingham in that picture? that's how i want to look, dudes. he is awesome, the personification of how 70s rock looked at its best.

Monday Morning is awesome. every line of the song, every striking of the guitar, carries with it a sense of the fact that the band preceded it with an awful lot of cocaine. every song ever that they did for the next 3 or 4 years had the same sense, and it was awesome, man. i have said this before, and shall say it again now - going on how awesome the album Rumours is, it should be law that every band that makes an album should be locked in a studio with a mountain of cocaine and encouraged to randomly, sporadically f*** each other to make great music.

but we must leave such vices now, and return to the virtue of Barbs. inside the booklet, which is printed on very nice, shiny glossy paper that it doesn't really matter how many people died to produce, one gets to see the full, uncensored image which in an abridged way serves as the cover for the album. 

i have alluded to the possibility that the Barbs interpretation of what is a duet or partnership might in many ways differ from the conventional. 

an awful lot of this album sounds not so much as being "duets" in the traditional sense, but rather more a case of Barbs singing along to tapes that lesser musicians ("artists") have sent her and having her people record her as she wanders around, doing all them amazing Barbs things. from this project, one suspects, they simply selected the ones that Barbs sang over with the least amount of condescending tone and decided that they were the album.

there is, ladies and gentlemen, scant evidence that any of the musicians ("artists") that Barbs sang over were even in the same timezone as her when these were done, let alone the same studio. the beautiful booklet, of the most finest and lavish of shiny paper known to man or dolphin, features pictures of the non-Barbs people in the studio recording stuff that they hope, if they value life, does not displease Barbs.

i was particularly impressed with the picture of Lionel Richie, as it seems that he brought Danny DeVito into the studio with him. smart brown jacket, that.

is Partners worth getting, then? if you can get it for £5 then yes. for that money i got the "exclusive deluxe" version, which features the classic song Guilty shoved on the end. it is nice for Barbs to give us that song again, and means that you can listen to it without changing the CD.

not that i listened to the CD. i "ripped" it and eventually put it on my pod of i. i say eventually, because of course this means using an Apple product, and that is something that Apple do not like you doing, no matter how much money you throw at them for the honour and privilege of owning one of their products.

oh yes, here we go with the whine and the moan and groan section of this blog post. move along if you have no interest, dear reader.

here is a photo of iTunes. that exclamation mark is indicating that, in their wisdom, Apple have decided to do an update to iTunes which erased everything that i had on my pod of i as i attempted to put Barbs on. cheers for that.

i do get sick of this. Apple have made one - one - decent product, in the form of the iPod, or iPod "classic" as we are now supposed to call it. make no mistake, and do not get me wrong - i am absolutely thrilled and delighted for them that they have managed to convince so many people that it is "cool" and "class" to own their sh!t iPhone and their sh!t iPad. i would have no quarrel at all, except that the completely sh!t hardware in all of their other "i" products necessitates almost hourly updates to iTunes and "iOS". every now and then this seems to just completely trash whatever it is i have on my humble iPod. great, cheers for that.

"oh, you can just restore it", you say. a fair point, but why exactly is it that i should be in a position where i have to frequently restore a product? would you be impressed, dear reader, if you had a car that at random Ford or BMW or whoever made you try and put a new engine in once a month, and then hear the words "sorry, just put the old one back" when it didn't quite work.

the iPod "classic" is the only truly peerless, excellent product that Apple made. i wish there were a rival to it, as i would happily switch. i was excited when i heard that Sony were going to rejuvenate the Walkman brand; slightly less excited when they indicated the price for this would be £900. yes, one hundred short of a thousand notes.

and i know Apple do not care. i know their CEO says Apple are "all about profit, not market". they do not care about consumers, they just want the money and leave you to it, acting cool with their sh!t product instead of accepting you have paid money for sh!t. this particular bough of convincing everyone that they are buying a brilliant product when they are not shall eventually break, i suspect.

anyway, as you can clock, the pod of i is more or less back to being as it should be, and i had Barbs on and listened to it and it was good.

a picture of me holding the CD to conclude? sure, why would i not include such a thing?

what does the sticker on the CD case have on it? the artists that Barbs has ostensibly done a "partner" with saying things that they hope will not displease Barbs. highlights include that Michael Bobble (or whatever, not Bolton, Bubbly or something) fella saying "God kissed her throat", and the no-nonsense, please let me live words of John Legend; "to sing with Barbra is an honor". yes, American spelling of honour for authenticity. for Barbs there is nowhere else but America.

i will probably have a listen to that Fleetwood Mac set next week, and let my mind wander at just how rich Colombia as a nation got off the back of the band and their recording sessions in the 70s.

many thanks, as ever, for reading, and happy listening to Barbs.



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

the Spiros card

hello there

well, i had no intention at all, as in none whatsoever, to do a blog post this evening. if i had some sort of intention to do a blog post, then it probably would have been about the most recent album from Barbs, that i heard today, and what utter, utter sh!tbags Apple are, look you see, over yet another incident where their brilliant software wiped the memory of the one and only decent product they ever made.

instead, although i am somewhat tired and have the latest edition of the Viz here to read, i feel somewhat compelled, perhaps obligated, to share with you some postal merriment from the day today. Spiros, you see, arranged for a Christmas card, ostensibly for him and now for me, to be delivered today.

some of you, and not unreasonably so, might consider this to be a quite controversial and somewhat unusual thing, for we are indeed now well into the date that to many is known as January 8th, to to some known simply as "long after Christmas day". a Christmas card arriving by this measurement under usual circumstances, yes i agree, would be baffling. but this is not usual; this is Spiros.

firstly, one has to bear in mind that this is Spiros. the man operates on an entirely different calendar from the rest of us, as several employers over the years have become aware. consequentially, what day that Spiros decides is Christmas can and often does differ from the rest of us.

how is his calendar different? it just is. sure, on a simplified level, he adds or removes days associated with leap years as he sees fit, believing that the matter of an extra day being added to a year is something that he is perfectly qualified to determine for himself. also, he adds and removes days during the year as he sees fit for his own purposes. in more animated moments, he has been known - with some vigour and passion - to inform people that he simply will not tolerate a life in which he is informed of what day, month and year it is purely because "some Gregorian twat thought that it would be cool".

there's also, of course, the sensitive side of Spiros. no way would he want to issue a card to anyone that he had not carefully considered and meditated on the meaning and significance of. you or i, dear reader, are perhaps comfortable in just grabbing any old box of cards and sending them off, but that is not the artistic, and yes indeed possibly altruistic, way that Spiros does things.

you want to see inside the card? why, of course you do. here is a quick look at it, and a slightly larger version of the text shall, you may be pleased or displeased to learn, appear lower down in this very post.

a rather touching, fitting and indeed poignant message, i believe, and one that we can all agree as being of relevance now as it would have been at Christmas, or any point of any year. whether Spiros had altered the year or not.

a brief break to allow you to soak in the sentiment of the message of that card, or what bits you can read, is probably a good idea, so here for the moment is a picture of me enjoying - thoroughly so - a cup of coffee earlier today whilst at verk.

yes, indeed that is my class One Direction, or if you like and you are trendy and hip like me 1D, coffee mug. i believe it reflects my love for the band, as well as my love of things that only cost a pound. things that only cost £1 are awesome, man. except for when it is a pack of 7 "3 in one" tube things of Nestle coffee, like what i am drinking from this mug, as that coffee is truly horrid tasting. it's more of a dubious brown liquid than anything.

no, this picture is not a selfie, and no i have not bought one of these "selfie stick" things which cost £10 or something. a very good friend and colleague took this picture for me to forward on to the young cadet at verk who made the coffee for me so as to say thank you for the coffee he made. that the coffee is rubbish is not his fault at all; if anything he made it better than it was with the care and attention he lavished on making it for us and that. nice one man, if you for some reason are reading this, many thanks indeed again.

towards, then, the enlarged version of the inner workings of the card.

some of you might look at this and have some thoughts. you might, for instance, think that all Spiros did was get a card through his letterbox off of some Liberal Democrat candidate, look at it, say "f*** this and f*** him" and then simply scribble on it a bit and send it my way. on a purely superficial, yet accurate level, this is an understandable interpretation.

on a deeper, and slightly incorrect level, i would say it is few in this world that have the bold courage of Spiros to have the vision and the ability to do something like this.

i think it is wonderful that Spiros has used this pre or post Christmas period to celebrate the team of volunteers that he has, and make a fair and right reference to all that he has done thus far in regards of stopping whatever the hell it is they are doing at Heathrow. also that he enjoys standing is a stark, perhaps harsh but ultimately necessary lesson to us all about the dangers of sitting.

the thing about believing no one should be held back did, i admit, take me by surprise, as over the years there has been one or two people that he has spoke of along the lines of "yes, actually, for the greater good and because they are twats they f*****g must be held back and defined by their circumstances". it pleases me somewhat to see this new approach from him.

thank you, dear reader, for sharing with me this beautiful and somewhat poignant moment. most of all, though, thank you Spiros for the indulgence of your kindness.



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

new bus pass holder

hi there

oh yes indeedy, this post, for the most part, very much does exactly, or if you like precisely, what it says on the box. my imagination stretches just about as far as thinking that for some reason you, dear reader, has some sort of interest in or wish to see the new bus pass holder what i bought during the day today. well, look you see, it is pretty smart, i suppose, if used for a dull yet practical purpose.

yes, it was off to HMV today, as my current bus pass holder of choice, one featuring Heath Ledger as the Joker, was all torn in the middle.

i actually went to HMV last Friday to look for a new one, but they had moved the stand. all i could find was a One Direction, or if you like 1D, one, which i did indeed contemplate purchasing out of my new found, yet lifelong, love of the band. but then also i thought i would rather look around for something else.

this rather fine collage sort of thing of some of the finer moments of them that do the Batman comics is what i opted for. i had, outside of this and 1D, limited choice, in truth. if not this one, then i would have got a Guardians Of The Galaxy one. others on offer were the Terminator one what i already have, a Minecraft one, a Sex Pistols one and one for that TV show Breaking Bad, that i have not seen as it all sounds highly one dimensional. yes, yes i know, everyone keeps saying to me "no, it's brilliant, honest", but it just looks dull and limited to one narrative, which is a bit much for a 5 series TV show. i will give it a try one day, but at this stage i am not prepared to commit to a bus pass holder that celebrates it.

how is the new bus pass holder going thus far? very well, really. i am learning to love it. i mean, i did see an ace Guns N Roses Appetite For Destruction one for sale on the web that i really wanted, but my (considerably) better half reckons it would be "wasted" on me, with i having only seen them live the once and bought the records and that.

just so this blog post is not a total waste of your time, or indeed is nicely converted to being a complete waste of your time, here is an image of Nigel Havers what has been doctored to show him holding some Quavers. many thanks to the interested parties that forwarded this to me.

this of course relates to the Sprios review of 2014, which you can find on this blog, if you insist. for some reason - although i admit wisely - the thing people have taken away from his review of the year is Quavers, and have tended to ignore the rest.

yeah, i find the mention of them being cheese flavour Quavers quite strange and possibly superfluous too. is it not the case that one can in fact only get Quavers in cheese flavour? if there are others, well then so much the better i guess, but i am unaware of this being the case.

right, do that will. i sort of promise to try and find something of greater interest for the next post, peeps, but many thanks for reading this.




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

random factor

hello there

i should probably be considering heading to bed at this late an hour, to be honest, but instead i feel somewhat inspired to do one of those "random" posts that tend to attract a lot of interest. i assume that's down to the sporadic proliferation of google searches for images, but if one or two of you like my text with all these pictures then that's nice.

here we go, then, look you see, with a whole load of random images (as you are aware of them being) uploaded and appearing here in whatever order blogger felt best, although i have my suspicions that it is in fact done on an alphabetical basis.

here is an advert that i have unwisely put to the side. this is unwise as, yes regular readers are aware of this, i feel obliged to put loads and loads of text by the side of them to make it look what i deem as being "proper".

what is this advert? well, it seems to be some sort of offer of details about "alternative communities", whatever that involved back in the 70s. it seems that for the most part they wish to attract teachers to these alternative communities, which speaks of some level of conventional society being wanted in them.

i do sometimes wonder what sort of reply, if any, one would get if they wrote to addresses off of adverts from many, many years ago. quite possibly none is the answer, but one never knows. i would suspect that Dept MA4 are not still on the go in the picturesque ways of Bangor, but then again maybe they are and just do not advertise in places that i would see them. is it worth firing off a letter to this address, or any other address that i spot in these old adverts? perhaps. the letter i sent to the Viz a month ago claiming some more pencils due to spotting Jimmy Hill has yet to get a response, even though i sent an SAE and everything, so i am somewhat reluctant to experiment with replies via the postal system to any more dramatic level at this stage.

what did carpentry look like in the 80s, you ask? apparently, at least in Germany (or possibly Austria, but it's the same thing), it looked rather a lot like this.

i am not at all sure that one could get away with barefoot, open shirt carpentry in this day and age of legal liabilities and health & safety regulations. i suppose you could in the privacy of your own home, as if something went wrong you could only sue yourself for compensation. to me it looks like a way of getting some nasty splinters, so i will give it a miss.

yes, if you are wondering, carpentry is indeed the art, or if you like craft, of working with wood.

going back, somewhat briefly, to writing off to old addresses, and i wonder if it is not worth my time sending these chaps a letter. it is never, apparently, too late for one to change career, or at least investigate the possibility of doing so.

would i fancy being a computer mender? yeah, i suppose. it is pretty easy work these days. the stuff they build is not designed to have all that long a lifespan, so i would imagine the computer mender has a life of getting a busted computer off of someone, trying to turn it on, turning it off, turning it back on to see if it works better and then either giving it back to the computer owner saying "it is fixed, here is my bill" or "it cannot be repaired, please buy another, here is my bill".

well, maybe there is more to being a computer mender than that, actually. if it was all that simple, i suppose one would not have to go to a special school of electronics to learn how to do it. maybe i will write to them and see, i am not sure. i don't really fancy college or school in that Washington, in truth.

there was, many of you might recall, a big drive, or if you like push, by Australia to get people who were not presently in Australia to come and visit Australia. i am not sure why they felt the need to advertise, as surely the idea of seeing Warne, McGrath and the Waugh brothers play cricket was a pretty big pull. anyway, here is one of the adverts intended to lure visitors.

would that advert have persuaded, or indeed lured, me to go and visit Australia? not really, to be honest. i think i would have gone for the cricket anyway, if the chance had presented itself. although, that said, nine days wandering around Tasmania sounds pretty awesome, man.

as this weekend was FA Cup weekend, what better time than now to post this FA Cup matchday programme from some 40 years ago?

does it fill me with pride that Wycombe Wanderers considered a game against Middlesbrough as being the match of the decade? it fills me with nothing but pride, dear reader.  more teams, i believe, should provide us with the same level of respect and stature, for we have earned it.

since we are on a sports track, and this is the way in which the powers behind this blog hosting facility have uploaded the pictures, here's how that there Ferrari team, or if you like Team Ferrari, lined up in 1980.

i am not, in truth, all that much of a fan of watching cars go round and round in circles in the hope that one of them crashes in a class way. it is, however, quite a smart, indeed boss, thing when they change the tyres and that. those special tyre bolt guns they have are awesome.

the above is, of course, from a time when the One of Formula was better than it is now. back then it was all about getting as wrecked as you could on champagne, befriending several ladies and then driving a go-kart around a track as fast as you could. smart, that is, not like this "fitness and efficiency" rubbish they do today.

we all, i would like to think, had dreams - if not aspirations - when we were younger. some of us still have them, some of us clutch to them, some of us have got to live them, some of us have seen them simply all fade away. a dream i would like to think that i had was that one day i would have a flat or a pad that looked very much like this.

what part in particular of that pad would i like to be living like? well, i will leave that, for the most part, for you to determine, but i would draw your attention to how excellent that carpet, or big massive rug, is in accentuating the finer details of the umbrellas what the guests have.

if i was ever to live in a pad, or flat or whatever it is, like the one in the picture above, then i think i would have to take the subject of aftershave a good deal more seriously than i presently do. at this stage of my life it is not something that i trouble myself with at all, really.

i would like to think, however, that even though i strongly suspect that this smells of, and probably is indeed, p!ss, i would wear musk oil all day every day. not just any old musk oil, of course, but the Jovan kind, whatever that is.

this is probably what Ron Jeremy and maybe John Holmes wore in the 70s when they were making all them smart films. Burt Reynolds probably had a spare bottle or two of it too, now that i think.for all i know, all the people who i mentioned there that happen to still be alive might still use it today, if you can get it. what about The King, Elvis Presley? i suspect not, for He would get stuff especially made for Him, you would think. some sort of aftershave or cologne that was unique to Him.

i might well have a google thing later on, see if one can indeed still purchase musk oil by Jovan or anyone else for that matter. that said, i am not sure i am prepared to buy it. knowing that one can, if they wanted to, however would be handy information to have.

into the 90s, then, or maybe the 2000s, and a look at some sort of University in Norwich getting all upset and a little bit Australian about Nestle products.

no, i have no idea what the specifics or anything like that are of this, except that i note the voiced protest here does manage to carefully namedrop, if not advertise, several Nestle products that were apparently banned or boycotted in the University in Norwich.

my student days did not really involve any efforts to take on multinational conglomerates as such, but then again i never studied in Norwich, or wherever the above is from. i am not entirely sure that i have ever visited the place, except of course through the eyes of Alan Partridge. and her that does the cooking and owns, or used to own, the football team.

is there something for Spiros in this random post? why yes, there is indeed.

i like a bit of lamb as much as anyone else who likes lamb, although not in the same way that Spiros tends to, shall we say, enjoy lamb. i would suspect that the idea of getting a tattoo, or maybe even an interestingly located piercing, for a particularly special lamb that Spiros enjoyed would appeal to the chap.

all i know is that the sheep, or if you like lamb, in the above picture looks really scary, man. those eyes. it looks like the sheep has been downing the harder, stronger variant of sheep dip all day, and has something of the devil about them. i would not mess or interfere with that sheep, no thank you.

some classic tapes, possibly of the 8 track variety, from the 70s? sure, why not.

there are some classic albums on display there. and some that i was not aware of. like, for instance, the one by Walter Carlos, also known as Wendy Carlos, of some fame and considerable note due to doing the moog based electronica sounds of Beethoven and that for the film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange by that director whose name escapes me for the moment.

speaking of films, to end off with here's a major promotion by the TV Times for the motion picture Gold, which they broadcast on the date indicated in the year 1979.

i have peculiar memories of this film. i do not recall seeing it all the way through, but i can remember being present at a screening of it. we, as in my family and i, were on holiday somewhere, either in the late 70s or early 80s, and there was a screening of it. we were in some sort of big function room or dining hall, right, and they had the project all set up and one of them smart 8mm or 16mm projectors set up to show it. cannot remember where, i want to say Malta but i am not convinced. i think me and my siblings just ran around. i seem to recall a scene of Roger Moore stood on top of a big massive pole and being scared that he might fall off of it.

i don't think it was at school in New Marske that we saw this; i can remember my Mum & Dad being around. or maybe it was, and it was some sort of evening out thing. i know that they used to show films at that school, usually on a Friday and certainly on a projector as video was not so widespread. that's where i saw Watership Down, which was considered ace for 6 and 7 year olds.

and with that stroll down memory lane, the first random post of this year is now at a close. unless the far worse than ebola strains of manflu return and defeat me, well i would like to think that at least one more random post like this will turn up during the rest of the year.



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

on Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

hi there

wow, i did it. i managed to get to watch a movie again. finding the time to do it is tough, look you see, and to watch Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes involved ignoring the fact that i was tired and pressing ahead with attempting to view it.

i was quite keen on watching this as Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes was excellent. a review of that from me is on this blog somewhere, done 3 or 4 years ago, whenever it was released. i am pretty sure my review mentioned that "professional film critics died today", for when that one was released the press slammed the film yet real people who actually saw the film were well impressed. i still maintain that John Lithgow should have had some recognition for his excellent performance in that film.

how, then, does the sequel compare? in direct comparison, very disappointing, to be honest. Rise was brilliant as it was effectively a thriller-paced drama film, featuring a plausible premise, superb acting and just generally top level film-making. here the focus is rather more on drama-paced thriller action stuff.

which, and sorry of this is confusing, actually  works quite well for the film in its own right, or if you like if you view it in complete exclusion from the film that it is a sequel to. it endeavours to retain the intelligence and dramatics of the original film, or if you like "first prequel", but throws an awful lot of action scenes into the mix. that the film scores quite high (at time of going to press) shows that i am somewhat not wrong to have this "mixed feelings" take on the movie.

the single biggest problem, or if you will issue, i and several others have or may well have with this movie is, strangely, the Gary Oldman factor. the film was heavily promoted as being "a Gary Oldman film". the DVD cover, the posters and the trailers all said that this film should have been released as Gary Oldman In Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, starring Gary Oldman.

it would have been awesome, indeed boss, if that is how the film went, but as it turns out he is in the movie for, give or take, 20 minutes. 20 impressive minutes, granted, but still, that leaves you with 100 minutes of film that is not Gary Oldman.

in the absence of Gaz action, how do the rest of the cast perform? well, Andy Serkis is OK in his reprisal of the role of Caesar. he was truly brilliant in Rise, but is limited to OK here more or less because of the weird limitations of his character in the story. a dazzling start and a brilliant conclusion to his story arc, but he seems to wander and plays it by the numbers in between.

the "lead male", as in the human that is not Gaz that actually gets most of the screen time, is someone called Jason Clarke. i do not like speaking ill of Australian things, lest Australians get all Australian about it, but he is something of a disappointment to watch. this i put down for the most part to the fact that he is not the Gaz we were all led to believe we would mostly be watching.

i bought the DVD for £5.99 off of an amazon "lightning deal" thing, and i would say that's the spot on value for it. as for the technical quality of the DVD itself, well, as you can see here it makes good use of a dual layer disc. this is nice to see; for in the last year in was in SA all new releases i bought tended to be issued on single layer discs and featured the quality you would expect (which is to say lacking). unless you really, really want to see CGI monkeys in the highest definition possible, i cannot really see a reason to go right ahead and buy this on blu-ray. i would imagine, more than anything, it would look rather plastic in any higher definition than what we watched it.

i mentioned that the film is rather high, and somewhat heavy, on the action sequences. well, suggested it more than mentioned it. do not believe that this film features some sort of "final battle" between man and ape. there are some impressive skirmishes, but the door is open for another sequel, one which i believe shall be with us at some point in 2016. that one "might" show the end of days, as it were. perhaps that one will address how come people all become mute morons in the Planet Of The Apes universe, for this one does not.

i fear or suspect that this review gives mixed messages about whether one should watch the film or not, although i would imagine that all who have an interest have now seen it. well, that's probably because i have some mixed feelings on it. the sheer brilliance of Rise is not matched, and yet this film is not an insult to the original.

hey ho, as the first film i watched proper in 2015, it could have been a good deal worse. if you are in a "should i or shouldn't i" frame of mind about the film, i guess i would go right ahead and say "should", as ultimately the two hours spent watching it does not feel wasted.

so, if you opt to watch it, hope my advice has not let you down and happy viewing!



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

street life

hello there

well, another unplanned, or if you like spontaneously inspired, post for you to have a gander at, look you see. do i ever have a planned post? why yes, as it happens i did intend to post a review of the finally watched Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes today. i still might, let's see how we go.

in the mean time, a Sunday morning check of my mail took me off to a video link that my Dad had shared with me via someone else. was in, in the light of his dogging activities, reluctant to click on the link, fearing seeing something that might be far more appropriate for Spiros? why yes, i was. the reluctance, however, was misplaced, for it was a - by my Dad's standards - perfectly normal video.

yes, it was a video of him performing - if you like busking - in the street with a mate of his. a rather large video file, it has to be said, recorded on one of them iTunes phone thingies. which is probably why it was shown sideways on the web.

a still of a video is nice, especially as it shows off the trademark red shoes and that, but i know you all want to have a screening of the video. this was something of a challenge to do for you all, as it happens, but let's see if it works.

if the above has worked, and it's tricky to check whilst i am "upping" it, then the video should be the right way around. the video also, alas, misses out the first minute or so of the performance - the file was damaged and kept freezing, so i just trimmed it.

hopefully this plays back for you as it should, with the added bonus of sound, so that you may be able to take in the scene as far as possible. if for some reason the video does not play, or is simply not satisfactory for you, i dare say that for a nominal fee you can arrange for this band to come and perform for you at your premises, so long as you cover (generous) expenses. they are contactable, perhaps collectable, via the usual website that i think i need to go and update. 

in the mean time, then, another picture from this what can only be described as great gig.

will my Dad be regularly performing in the street and randomly sending me links to videos of it? there is every chance of this being the case, dear reader, so i will say yes maybe. yeah, go on then, if more follow i shall also put them up here for your viewing and indeed listening pleasure.

more, like that film review i mentioned possibly, as and when it does happen!




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

2014, as reviewed and interpreted by Spiros

hi there

i didn't really have any plans or intentions to post anything today, look you see, but then Spiros bombarded, or if you like beautified, my mail box thing with some news stories. i am assuming that he sent me these as being his two greatest stories of the year that has just finished, or if you like 2014. i have further presumed that his intention was for me to do a bit of a post of them here.

2014 was, in many respects, the year of hardly. there was hardly any aeroplane disasters, hardly any Ebola scares, hardly any flooding, hardly any Russian currency collapses and hardly any sabre waving off of North Korea. Spiros has, it seems, turned his back on, or perhaps spurned, any such stories in his selection of events which in many respects do not tell the story of the year.

it is difficult to know which of the two that Spiros believes was the most important story of the year, so here you go, here they are either in order or in reverse order.

i was, i must confess or if you like admit, unaware of this story above. it seems that only the Sunday Sport elected to run this rather hard hitting and indeed disturbing incident, with - as far as i am aware - the mainstream liberal media outlets all but ignoring that this happened.

in respect of the above story, i could fully understand the fury of the owner of the monkey in this case, but i am at something of a loss to understand what evidence he had to make this allegation that all of this happened. i mean, i do not want to doubt him, but how did he know that it was the supposedly dead Michael Jackson that did it?

a number of you, on the note of this, were somewhat distressed by the image of Spiros i posted towards the arse end of December. his appearance caused some debate and argument, for Spiros did not look as Greek or as Turkish as you all imagined him to. i would say that you are in the right and he is very much in the wrong for looking in a way that you did not expect. you are free, dear reader, to pretend that the image i posted saying it was Spiros is not in fact the real Spiros.

if that first story causes you to be baffled and somewhat puzzled, then wait until you get a load of the next one. it's far from pleasant, believe you me, and poses a very unusual question. 

if we leave much of the above to one side for the moment - perhaps forever - the pricing strategy in place here is what gets me. how is it that a packet of Quavers - if indeed it was a full packet - was determined as the price for his, erm, services? i mean, did he pitch that as being his pricing, or is that what someone offered him for it and he accepted?

all i know for certain is that Spiros is planning on bringing this kind of economic pricing strategy into the world of corporate finance. from what exposure i have had to the world of this, i suspect it will be a tremendous success.

so, there's 2014 according to Spiros. no doubt a review of 2015 will be available to you all, here via Spiros, around this time next year.



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

Easter, shirt and coffee

hi there

well, still here within the confines of 2015 i am, look you see. in furtherance of this, i made a most humble return to the realm of verk too today. it went rather well, really, all things considered. as i am all too aware from elements of nearly a year, a life without going off to sing hi hooooo gets very boring sometimes.

before heading to verk, i engaged in certain regular rituals of mine in the hour or so i have between the bus arriving in town and the hour of verk dawning. certain ones of these, and their relative merits, have been discussed with the relevant parties. one of them, however, was i believe well worth sharing a picture of with you all, dear readers.

yes, you are seeing what you think you are seeing. no, not the cute cat thing and all the other Christmas stuff being offered at partially reduced prices, next to it. yes, that's right - January 2nd and Easter stuff is now freely available for sale.

i know several readers of this blog, in particular ones who live somewhere what begins with a B, are avid readers of the Daily Mail and enjoy writing to that publication to point out matters like this, proclaiming if not decrying them as being symbolic of all that is wrong with the world. so, go ahead.

my view on this is that if the Easter stuff is on sale now, at what point was the Valentine's Day stuff available and what should i do now that i seem to have missed it.

what did i wear to go to verk in today? conventional clothes, really. why, what is it you wear to go about and do stuff in?

today, however, i wore a shirt that is part of my new wardrobe. hence this picture, the first selfie which i have done of the year this year. £12 was the price it was marked down to in a sale. nice one, and thanks again to my (considerably) better half for underwriting my new wardrobe.

yes, indeed you can see the hack job i did on my beard in this picture too.

also on display - not the mirror, next to it - are some of the many fine Christmas cards we received over the, well, Christmas period. of some prominence near my head is, unless i am quite mistaken, the one that we got off of Sharpie. Sharpie is class, he is. i have frequently met him, as you are aware, in W H Smith, where he is always purchasing loads and loads of class things; things that are infinitely better than what everyone else is buying and show off his outstanding taste. i am hopeful, if not optimistic, of doing a road trip with Sharpie, which will be like meeting him in W H Smith, only we will be moving and not buying stuff.

moving onwards, then, and Nash Bridges is a show that usually i don't care for. however, a night or so ago i simply could not be bothered to change the channel and so ended up watching it. how very fortunate that i did. here, have a look.

yes, that's right. by accident i saw the long overdue reunification of Crockett and Tubbs. it was awesome, man - they even played a little bit of Jan Hammer like music when Philip Michael Thomas appeared. which reminds me, i have not yet bought the class Philip Michael Thomas album; let me google.

the episode got even better, right, as Tommy Chong, out of all them Tommy Chong movies, also appeared in the show. as did Meat Loaf out of Meat Loaf.

it seems that the Philip Michael Thomas album never made it to CD. that's a shame, although one can get the vinyl for a pretty reasonable price. the one video he did was mental, had a big massive Philip Michael Thomas head floating around it in.

coffee made with whipped cream and a bit of cinnamon thrown in to compensate for no digital release of Philip Michael Thomas music? sure, why not.

is it worth starting a campaign, i wonder, to get a CD release of the Philip Michael Thomas music? i would like to think that i am not alone in thinking it is awesome music, in particular the video, man. i will have a look around for the correct postal address, but in the mean time please feel free to copy and paste the below text and send a letter of protest yourself, if you are all that bothered about it.

Dear EMI (or whoever)

Please stop being total b@stards about the music of Philip Michael Thomas and make his class music available on CD. If you could do it in such a way that it comes with a DVD of his class video where his big massive head appears to float around and sing, that would be even better. 

If you have in fact released this and I didn't notice, my apologies about the "b@stards" thing and please tell me where you can buy it off of.

anyway, i am pretty sure that's me done with this post.

i do trust and hope all is most very well with you.



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

but never leave the stream

hello there

so you made it, good, welcome to 2015. i trust that it stared off all really rather well for you and continues to be a most celebratory year. if, however, it started off poorly - should, for instance, you be one of them people who fell into a gutter and did a spew that the tabloid newspapers are full of pictures - then i express the hope that, for you, the year simply gets a good deal better, look you see.

i took something akin to a stroll around earlier today, insofar as i did in fact, or if you like as point of fact, take a stroll around earlier today. well, if i decide to take a stroll around later - unlikely, looking at the skies - then i would hardly be able to do a post with pictures about it now. if, however, your life is better as a consequence of thinking that i am capable of time travel, then by all means read this as an account of a stroll that i have yet to undertake.

the skies, or if you like sky, i mentioned earlier should be something you can see in the pictures i took on my travels, or the travel that i am going to do later and am somehow writing about now. the arrival of the new year has been one marked by some pretty strong wind and, in particular in the later elements of the day, spates of rain.

no, if that is a question you might have right now, no i did not listen to New Year's Day by U2 today. i perhaps should have, but the pod of i is presently being all charged up and that in anticipation of bus journeys soon. should, and i trust this is the case, the bus company be running as scheduled.

yes, though, it still remains the case that i believe being called a slightly chubby Bono once, many years ago, is one of the best things i have ever been called. looking like Bono is something that is better than how i believe i look in general terms, and being referred to as only slightly chubby is a far, far kinder review of me than i would be prepared to give to myself. so yeah, maybe i shall listen to some U2 as and when the pod of i is all charged up, but i suspect not that song which is of, arguably, some relevance to the day today.

i suppose for many of these pictures i should come up with some fancy text; pointing out how nature and things like streams and rivers - if for some reason you believe them to be separate from nature - care not for man made, heathen even, concepts such as dates, time and calendars. they just carry on, doing their thing until, as i suppose is fitting for nature, they come to their natural end.

instead, though, i think i will just leave the pictures to say whatever you want them to say, for those of you who have an interest in seeing them.

if you observed a semi, or perhaps partial, white footbridge in the above picture and are wondering about the provenance, or if you like origin, of the next one, i can indeed confirm that yes, it is very much the case that this next one was taken from the threshold of that very bridge.

it's a view that i thought one or two of you might quite like to see.

yeah, as you can see, i am still busy with that pouch, or if you like case, for my phone that sort of puts a purple border around at least one side of the pictures i take. it's quite a smart effect, i think some of you might well think, so i am leaving it in place for you.

a picture further on up the stream? sure, why not.

yes, i know for those of you in the know the correct term to use here is the beck, but for those not quite so familiar the word stream shall do. river is perhaps more accurate, but considering those big massive rivers they have in America, i would fear that some if not all of my American readers would get a bit baffled at me using the term here.

as i managed to get around to cleaning out a GB or so of data off of my phone, i had the capacity available to me to do some video for you. here, if you are of a mind to watch it, is a 10 second video (or thereabouts) of what we shall for now indeed call the beck doing its thing.

how is the new year for me so far? not so bad, thanks, pretty much as expected. if we leave the time travel scenario alone for now, i had a most splendid walk around earlier on, delivering a lump of coal as instructed by custom just prior to the walk that allowed me to take these images and video footage you see. whereas the winds were up and strong, there was at the least no rain as i wandered.

other than that, if you are interested - and if you are not you can skip this paragraph - i constructed some discs, did some laundry, washed some dishes, conducted a rudimentary and perfectly serviceable hacking job on my beard with some clippers and am now doing this. i have the slightest of headaches momentarily, in truth, perhaps as a consequence of considering the joys of the bus service and a return to verk after a reasonable break.

further pictures of the river/stream/beck in action? why not indeed, dear reader, why not.

have i made any of them resolutions or plans that are something of a custom for the day today? not really. if one is to do something, they should pretty much do it, i think. waiting for a certain date on the calendar to make such plans is not a factor that has ever really appealed to me, although i do greatly appreciate that many quite like the idea of such a milestone, or if you like signpost, to aim for. i would certainly not discourage them from doing that.

so no, no change in all that quitting / cutting down considerably thing in respect of smoking for me. someone has to prop up the tobacco industry, and as i am bereft, or indeed free, of all other vices, it might as well be me, look you see.

a final picture for now, then, of the beck rolling downwards with some formidable strength.

the strength of the above would, i quite agree, be better served by the presentation of it in a video, so here you go, a video that sort of more or less matches the angle of the picture above, except it is all moving and, as far as i am aware, has sound too.

and, well, there you have it. all things considered, i believe this to be a pretty decent - jolly, perhaps - first post of this year. i have no idea what the first post of previous years here were like. i can't recall them off the top of my head, and i am certainly not messing around to have a look. i think it is, more or less, 11 years now that this blog has existed, so you will forgive me for not recalling all the stuff that is on it.

yes, i have taken one of them tablet things for my head, see if that soothes it a bit. no, i am not doing a selfie, or arranging for someone to take a picture of me, to show the hack job i did on my beard. it's trimmed down, which is nice.

many thanks for reading indeed - i hope you've enjoyed the pictures and video, and i trust, as we started off this post, that all is very much splendid with you in your world right now.



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