I have a confession to make.
Bridget Jones's Diary was on TV tonight.
And I watched it.
All of it.
And I kinda enjoyed it.
But that's not my confession.
It's worse than that.
I think I kinda fancied Bridget Jones.
At least I would.
If she had something to say for herself other than how shit it is not being in a relationship.
For fuck's sake woman, get a hobby!
Labels: movies
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Thursday, February 15, 2007
Wii Moany Valentine
A contender for worst blog post title of all time? I think so!
Anyway, this past week has been almost entirely mince, until about 8pm last night when it started to pick up a bit. We had a stupid, stupid weekend, which I won't go into but I suspect that we owe grovelling apologies to a number of friends we blew off, and we are probably now pariahs in this town. Since then work has been a complete bastard, a sandwich of crisp stress and fresh rage between two big slices of wholemeal overtime.
Of course, yesterday was Valentine's day, for men one of the stressiest days of the year anyway. Fortunately I managed to duck out of work at a reasonable hour. We booked a nice restaurant that we had been to before and which had always been really good. Of course, they were blaring "romantic" hits off of what I assume was one of those "Greatest Love Songs Ever" CDs - the type of thing more likely to be bought in a service station that in an actual record store - and the table was covered in rose petals, but we assumed that the high cheese factor was a necessary evil of the occasion and the service and food would be good. Dead wrong. I don't know if it was because it was a special "Valentine's menu", but it slow in coming and deeply rubbish, giving the impression that the regular owners had turned the place over to a bunch of catering students for the evening and buggered off home. Even the heart-shaped choccies that came with the bill.
But, like I said, things got better - we went to see Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright's new film Hot Fuzz, which, despite pretty much taking Shaun of the Dead, removing the references to zombie movies and replacing them with references to American cops-n-gunplay flicks, was immense fun. I haven't laughed so much ages, and never, in recent memory, in the cinema, and playing "spot the British TV comedian" is always a joy. It's not often you go to see a reasonably high-budget movie featuring the likes of Bill Bailey or Adam Buxton, and it kinda makes you hope that the transatlantic success of Shaun can be reproduced for Hot Fuzz, if just because it tickles me to think of such quixotic british-born talent (or to put it another way - a bunch of blokes whose late-night twatting about on Channel 4 I've enjoyed), getting that sort of exposure.
That said, fingers crossed that Pegg's recent Hollywood success doesn't see him exclusively trading these sodden shores and partnership with Nick Frost for sunny LA and David Schwimmer.
Ironically, Friends was always the show I contrasted Pegg/Frost/Wright's Spaced with when raving about it to people. Where Friends was about beautiful, glamorous, rich people living in New York, Spaced centered around a bunch of listless British 20-somethings who played video games, enjoyed the odd smoke, went out on the piss, and didn't really know what they wanted to do with their lives. In short, it was a sitcom about me and my friends.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not about to knock anyone else's success. I think it's great that Simon Pegg is getting offers left and right from over the pond, just so long as it doesn't stop him making the likes of Shaun and Hot Fuzz as well.
Anyway, after the film we wandered home with big grins on our faces to find a Parcelforce card through the door. I was dreading a trip out to the depot, which isn't in the handiest of places to get to if you don't have a car, but fortunately they had left it with the neighbours. My Wii had arrived! Yay! Didn't get much time to play with it though, since it was late and I had to get up the next morning, though we did enjoy setting up our Miis and fiddling with the Weather and News channels. Should have more time to play with it this weekend, I hope.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Lost Snow
While the rest of the uk is buried under three feet of snow, Glasgow, typically, has seen nary a flutter. It is bloody cold, but the clouds that normally piss rain on our heads 95% of the year have decided to take a break from precipitation today. Bah.
In lieu of doing anything useful these last couple of nights we've both been glued to the gogglebox by The Lost Room, a high-concept three-part miniseries originally on the sci-fi channel in the US, and shown on Sky here. (Though we were naughty and downloaded them to watch at our leisure. I tend to use Bittorrent as a magic video recorder that tapes things that you didn't even know you wanted to see.) To summarise, without giving too much away: a fairly enjoyable fantasy romp which, after sticking fairly rigidly to its own seemingly well-thought-out internal logic for about five hours, decides to make a bunch of extra stuff up right at the end just so it could all be closed off neatly while still leaving the possibility of a sequel/full series. Which I kinda hope doesn't happen. Even though I got quite into it, it's the sort of concept that could really be flogged to death in a Lost-stylee, constantly drip-feeding the viewer tiny tid-bits of mystery as long as the network keeps it renewed. Have a look at the Wikipedia entry to get a sense of the whole tangled tale.
Labels: television
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postWednesday, February 07, 2007
What Is This World Coming To?
Don't people know that when you make a baked potato with cheese and baked beans, you put the cheese on first!? Any deviation from this order causes the beans to insulate the potato, preventing the cheese from melting satisfactorily.
Tsk. I ask you.
Labels: food
link | 5 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, February 05, 2007
Late For Work And Useless
I didn't go to bed particularly late last night, but I was still awake and fizzing with energy with no outlet at 4am. The opposite was the case at 6.30 when the alarm went off, and was slapped into silence. Then again at 6.39, 6.48, 6.57...
It's going to take a lot of coffee to see me through the rest of today.
On a tangent... can anyone recommend a good desktop blogging tool? I used to use w.bloggar (sic), which was pretty good, but it doesn't seem to support nu-Blogger and is updated at a fairly glacial pace. Windows and/or OS X please, though if I can't find one that suits, I'm thinking of just downloading the Google-provided libraries and writing one myself in Java. So as an alternative question, what features would your perfect desktop-based blogging tool have, assuming you're not using it already?
Edit - I should probably have added the caveat that it should be free. There seems to be loads of blog editors out there that cost actual cash money, which seems daft to me for something relatively simple, used largely by hobbyists, and which simply replaces an existing interface.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
"Some songs you carry around in your pocket, like a bagel."
I've got quite a few books on the go at the moment. That's not meant to be some kind of pseudo-intellectual boast, by the way, I just read different things depending on the situation. I've always got a book in my bag to read on the train - most often something that can be digested in nice ten-page chunks. Slightly weightier tomes go beside the bed. Most importantly, however, is the bathroom read, which must be engrossing but episodic, and ideally be the sort of book that can be dipped in and out of randomly.
Currently in residence beside the bog is "Innocent When You Dream", which is a collection of interviews with Tom Waits, and which fits the bill superbly.
It is a little hard to work out which ones you have or have not read, however. Although the interviews within span the majority of his career, if you weren't familiar with the order in which his albums were released, you might have a hard time guessing when they were written, since most conform to a pretty strict template. The interviewer begins the article confessing to being a little nervous at interviewing the man, noting his tendency to pepper his conversation with flights of fancy and just plain lies. Eventually, he pulls up in a black Chevy and takes the interviewer to a greasy diner, and the act begins. Right enough, separating the "real" Tom Waits from the Waitsian persona - the grizzled curmudgeon with the poet's heart and the smoker's voice is nearly impossible. Inquiries about his wife and kids are fielded with one-line answers. He's more verbose if asked about, say, old bluesmen, but personal biographical details are more likely to veer off into some wonderful Bukowsi-esque tale of drifters and low-lifes that could easily be one of his songs.
And for that reason it's a great read. Since the character Waits plays in the public eye is far more colourful than any real man could reasonably be expected to be.
More often than not, the interview is terminated the moment the check arrives, and he gets back in that big black car and drives off, leaving the reader none the wiser but thoroughly entertained.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to spend some time with Tom...
Friday, February 02, 2007
Waking Up Is So Very Hard To Do
As Burt Bacharach once (almost) said. R's had a couple of gigs this week with one of the bands she's singing with. They're good fun, and she gets gains more confidence (and more compliments from audience members) with every show, though it has meant a couple of late nights and some major snooze-button abuse, especially this morning. A wee lie in tomorrow will be very much appreciated.
I've been tinkering with some new electronic tunes lately, but I do miss being in a proper gigging band. I've been keeping my eye on messageboards and the like, but it's slim pickings just now.
Labels: music
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