Whither Rodrigo?

It's now a couple of weeks later and my neck has stabilized sufficiently in order for me to contemplate slow moshing, should the situation require it. As it's Tallulah's father's 70th birthday at the weekend I'd say the chances of the situation requiring it are sufficiently remote.

Yes, I'm spending the weekend in Bonnie Scotland (as opposed to spending the weekend in Bonnie Langford which would require some form of anaesthetic - although I'm not sure on who's part).

Have spent the past few days calming down after the emotional turmoil of a Doctor Who finale that didn't live up to expectations. It wasn't bad - I loved some bits - but Martha's departure didn't have the emotional impact of the regeneration at the end of season one or the departure of Rose at the end of season two. Turning our hero into Dobby the house elf then having him rejuvenated simply by people chanting 'Doctor' seemed a bit...well...contrived.

Still not sure what's happening with Martha next season and the news about Catherine Tate is, well, unsettling (and I like her) but I can console myself with the thought that even at it's weakest Doctor Who is better than 99% of anything else on television right now.

(and how much am I looking forward to 'Heroes'?)

Have just returned from seeing Monkey: Journey to the West, a fantastic Chinese opera by the minds behind 'Gorillaz'. A truly original and stunning piece of work (where else can you see women dressed as shrimps?). The highpoint (for me) being something I'm informed is 'silk choreography' i.e. acrobatics performed by a women suspended between two pieces of silk hung from the ceiling.

Given that the ex-front man of Blur has raised the bar with this when can we expect a similar effort from the Gallaghers? I hope to see an Inuit Ballet by Noel any day soon.

Incidentally - I seem to have a comment on my last post from a man called Rodrigo who appears to be selling teeshirts. How odd?

Fizzy grape juice

Yet again I have failed to post for a few days on the basis that, now that I am engaged, I have to spend more time with my fiance making conversation and NOT spend half the night tip-tapping away my deepest thoughts into the electronic ether. Talk about not reading the instructions - someone could have warned me about this before!

A most enjoyable weekend, although it did not go the way that I expected.

Best laid plans of attending a gig fell through as the drummer had to fly home due to family crisis. We all stayed inside instead and I continued to hit the bubbly transparent stuff that, in the past few weeks, I have come to regard as "merely expensive water".

(Champagne, not Perrier. That IS merely expensive water).

Anyway, I had rather too many ales and seemed to spend much of the night trying to avoid conversations about musical instruments (of which I know nothing beyond which end you blow in a recorder) and watching Spanglepuss' new man shake his hips to the beat in a way that came dangerously close to 'turning' me .

As a result (of the booze, and not Spanglepuss' new man's hips) my head was thumping a merry tune on Sunday morning and so I stayed in bead drinking tea and reading about the Olmecs... I'll admit that's not much of a hangover cure but it works about as well as any other that I've heard about - you can take your oysters and 'hair of the dog', I'll take a hot cup of tea and some Central American civilisations any day.

Sunday was spent travelling around looking for somewhere that was cheap to go into but served tea (this is apparently impossible in Yorkshire - the attractively bluff Yorkshire manner seems eternally married to the less attractive trait of attempting to fleece all visitors for the heinous crime of not being from Yorkshire).

Monday was spent at the Doctor Who exhibition at which Tallulah (that's Tallulah and NOT ME you understand) got very excited at seeing David Tennant's long coat and I was forced to stop playing and get out of the walk-in Dalek after a rather long line of children formed behind me waiting for a go (wasted on kids, wasted...).

At which point I feel I should include a link to a website devoted to cats that look like Hitler

http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl

Champagne with eggs

Champagne with chocolate eggs can make a violent concoction as I've learnt to my cost this Easter weekend - the chocolate eggs give me the energy while the champagne took away the inclination to do anything with said energy other than sit in Tallulah's parent's conservatory and watch her nephew indulge in an egg hunt in the garden.

Much to my dismay there _were_ actually eggs to be found in the garden, thus squandering a perfect chance to teach the child some hard life lessons in disappointment and the lies adults tell. Wasted opportunity there, I feel.

Big weekend. Much discussion was had over impending wedding and Tallulah and I now have the wedding venue and registrar booked. Suggestions of a Las Vegas Drive-In wedding and my idea for a wedding meal centred around Turkey Twizzlers met with a somewhat frosty reception from the prospective in laws, but Tallulah and I have managed to choose a venue that lets us do what we want and run the day how we want it. (This appears to be a freakishly rare concept in terms of wedding venues).

To catch up in terms of geekish news from the past few weeks - Primeval has slunk away with it's tail between it's legs like a dog that knows it's master is home because Doctor Who has returned. Hurrah!

Liking the new series so far - David Tennant has cut back on the (very occasional) pantomime lapses of the last series and new assistant Martha is a confidant and energetic replacement for Rose. The series - always more of a science fantasy rather than science fiction - seems to be blurring the line between science fiction and fantasy even further (I've been fighting the urge to point this out for over a week now, but in episode one why does no-one even try to explain why a hospital transported to the moon has electrical power and full earth gravity? - I suppose it might explain it on the commentary).

Speaking of fantasy, last night I watched the final episode of 'Life on Mars'. Can I just say that I think this was the most fitting ending for a series that I have ever seen and satisfied me in a way that the ending of Buffy, Angel and the various Star Trek series never did. All the questions were answered (although, if you look at it another way, none of them were). I'm slightly concerned about the news that the BBC are making a 1980s spin off - the show was very much a one off story that had a distinct beginning , middle and end (not necessarily in that order) and a spin off could well dilute and detract from the strength of the original.

Oh, and I got a quote from my review of 'Shadow of the Torturer' published in the latest edition of SFX. (Only a sentence though).

Looking forward to this weekend as Tallulah and I are off to see a Spanglepuss' new beau's band with Whiskey Murrell and her significant other. I've been told to bring ear plugs and I've yet to work out whether that is a good thing.....

Spring break - yeah!

Very excited today...

Firstly i'm excited because Tallulah and myself are off to Avebury tomorrow on what has become our annual using-up-of-annual-leave outing. Here's hoping that the sun shines (or at least makes an appearance) and the stones (which have stood the test of time for many thousands of years) don't fufill my nightmere scenario and choose this week to fall over, thus turning me into geek pizza.

Mmmmmm.....geek pizza.

Secondly i'm excited because the new Doctor Who teaser trailer has been released in the same week as I got free Doctor Who fridge magnets. Yes, it's only 14 seconds long (the trailer, not the magnets) but having spent the last few saturdays with only Primeval to console me I need some geeky goodness to look forward to.

Incidentally, for those of you who haven't seen it:

Stargate + Walking with Dinosaurs = Primeval

See the Who trailers here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/index.shtml

Blessed are the geek - Review of 2006

It seems as though my extended absence from the blogosphere has led to rejection from my beloved warm (but insecure) untidy audience and the usual flood of comments has slowed to a trickle, to a drip and then stopped.

It would appear that my "Idiot's guide to blogging" was correct in it's assertion that if you leave off your blog for more than a few days your loyal fans will desert you quicker than Chesney Hawkes' fans deserted their idol.

(It has been calculated - scientifically, by REAL scientists - that the shortest length of time measurable by any device is a millisecond [a thousandth of a second]. The next shortest measurable length of time was Chesney Hawkes' pop career. It would have been shorter, but a woman in Solihull was a bit tardy in winding-up the fanclub).

I'm told that the reason why such Blogs become moribund (apart from a tendancy to have a random 'go' at obscure 80s popstars) is that people get bored waiting for posts and drift off to pastures new...

In an effort to stem the tide I thought i'd do something a bit different and give you my potted review of highlights (and lowlights - assuming that there are such things as lowlights) of the year 2006....

Firstly, the highlights....

HIGHLIGHT 1. BLOGGING

I had to choose this, obviously. The opportunity to write one's hopes and dreams (as well as one's weak puns and facile observations) on the internet where they are read by precisely no-one is just too go0d to be true...

...plus, it keeps me off the streets. God knows what i'd be doing otherwise.

HIGHLIGHT 2. TOASTED CHEESE SCONES AT 'TEBAY' MOTORWAY SERVICES

Okay, I know that this is obscure - but 'Tebay' services is an important stop between Manchester and Scotland and their cheese scones taste really, really good. The coffee shop was closed when we visited there one time, and Tallulah and I nearly cried (then we found some in the restaurant and there was much joy).

PLUS if I mention them on my blog I might get some free!

Damn, just remembered I'm anonymous.

HIGHLIGHT 3. THE FILM 'THE PRESTIGE'

In a year when film quality seemed to be at an all time low (Actually, I quite like 'bad' movies so perhaps i'd better say "at an all-time mediocre") this one was a bit of a pleasant surprise. An adaptation of a Christopher Priest's novel about feuding Victorian stage magicians, it was intelligent enough to show you the plot twists relatively early on as a way of distracting you from the OTHER plot twists....

...and any film audacious enough to cast David Bowie as Nikolai Tesla (and get away with it) gets my vote.

HIGHLIGHT 4. THE CONTINUING SUCCESS OF DOCTOR WHO

What was that? - The sound of a science fiction series getting critical acclaim from 'cool' people who wouldn't even admit to watching a sci-fi show two years ago? The sound of a science fiction series being a huge ratings success? The sound of a sizeable adult audience shamelessly tuning in to what is ostensibly a kid's show?

Have I wandered into a parallel universe?

(See lowlight 4 however)

HIGHLIGHT 5. THE SONG 'MONSTER' BY 'THE AUTOMATIC'

The noughties (i.e. from 2000 onwards) have so far been remarkably short on hum-able indie anthems. This is the most recent one I can remember - and it's fiendishly got into my brain!

(Having said that it's realtively easy to get into my brain - I spent most of yesterday humming the theme tune to 'Thundercats')

All together now - "What's that coming over the hill?......Hmm Hmm Hm Hmmmmmm"

And lowlights....

LOWLIGHT 1. I-POD INSTRUCTION MANUALS

I've had to contend with two of these in the past year (neither pods were mine, sadly) and I can report IKEA finally has competition in terms of wilfully obscure instruction booklets. The I-pod were designed by a genius - the instructions were, however, written by his 5 year old son using a crayon and his own snot.

LOWLIGHT 2. THE WORLD CUP

Normally this would _not_ really be a lowlight - in the same way that Middlesborough is _not_ really a lowlight. In both cases one knows where it can be encountered and thus one can avoid it quite easily.

No, the reason why the world cup is a lowlight is that Tallulah and I had the misfortune to be in Dublin during the last week of the aforementioned sporting tournament. I foolishly thought that the fact that we were in the capital city of a country that wasn't even competing would protect us from exposure but no, it was impossible to escape it's clutches or (more importantly) sink a quiet pint of guinness.

LOWLIGHT 3. THE FILM 'NACHO LIBRE'

It's probably unfair to single this out as a lowlight because there were much worse films released during 2006.

The first reason i've picked this film is that this (unlike the aforementioned worse films) I paid money to see it, hoping for a Napolean Dynamite style minor hit.

The second reason is that it didn't even live up to my low expectations.

LOWLIGHT 4. THE LENGTH OF TIME ACTORS STAY ON DOCTOR WHO

First Christopher Ecclestone, then Billie Piper and now David Tennant - despite it's huge success no-one appears to be able to keep with the show for longer than two series.

I wouldn't mind, but they always say that "they feel it's time to move on" - at least be honest and say "It paid the bills and got me noticed but i'm leaving now as I want to be taken seriously as an actor by my pretentious friends who laugh at my sci-fi schenanigans and who won't appear in anything that doesn't involve emotional anguish, class-struggle or ruffs".

LOWLIGHT 5. CHANNEL 4 LOSING SERIES 3 OF 'LOST' TO SKY

Roughly equivalent to SKY going round to the houses of every terrestrial viewer's house and ripping the last three chapters out of all their un-read books.

Still, at least we're spared the annoying gits in the '118 118' adverts.

There we are - any suggested additions or subtractions can be offered by the magical medium of the 'comment' facility. Go on, you know you want to...