Random!

Well, here we go again, grumpy old man time folks……I ask you “What’s more annoying than finding you have a blunt Wilkinson Sword shaver blade and no spare is to be found anywhere?  Not even in your emergency razor stash?”

What’s more annoying?  Being called ‘random’ that’s what!!  For example: ‘Mr Willoughbury and Mr Greenshaw are sharing a tipple over a game of chess.  Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Willowbury volunteers a rather witty remark having taken his opponents Queen.’; to which Greenshaw ejaculates “I say old chap, you’re so random!!!!”.

Cunty brickdust.  It’s wrong!  WRONG I SAY!

Until now I reluctantly accepted it was the latest ‘in-word’, just like the ones I enjoyed using to annoy people as a kid.  ‘Wicked’ in the 80’s, ‘Dark’ in the 90’s and now it appears, ‘random’.  Except I don’t like ‘random’, at all.  Yep, you guessed it, it’s a dirty business.

It’s clearly gone beyond being the latest incarnation of the ever-useful ‘cool’ and transformed into a phrase used after every sentence or given opportunity; and frankly, it’s become rather irritating to yours truly (hearing it gives me the kind of sensation you get when somebody drags their nails down a blackboard).

Those who know me well will vouch that I’m rather fond of taboo, slang, local phrases and eccentric colloquialisms, especially if there is some thought behind their meaning or origin, but to simply just keep using a word without it making sense is fucking annoying.

Yes I know I’m a miserable bastard but do the world a favour old chap and buy a thesaurus; thus expanding your vocabulary a bit?

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people thought the latest Hulk movie was inferior to the Iron Man blockbuster which also came out this year; personally I don’t think that is true at all.  Whilst I agree that the makers totally nailed Iron Man; I can’t help but feel that the Hulk movie is superior to it in many ways. 

It’s certainly true that I had more affection for the Hulk growing up than I did Iron Man (I only really started to appreciate Iron Man in my teens, whereas I religiously watched the Hulk t.v. as a kid), overall I felt that the Hulk movie reminded me so much of the comics I used to read than the Iron Man film did, perhaps given the latter’s focus on realism and ‘believability’?   That isn’t to say that both films didn’t have a good stab at challenging some of the worldly issues going on at the moment though (quite effectively I thought?).

I think it’s safe to say that Iron Man’s CGI and effects were in a different league to the Hulk, however, there is something decidedly reassuring about seeing a 15 foot tall green mutant not being completely CGI perfect isn’t there?  He’s not meant to blend in with the crowd.  He’s a big green mofo!  The scenes where Hulk is bouncing around on rooftops and from building to building looked awesome.  Job done. 

So why do I think Hulk is a better film?  Ultimately, what sets the Hulk apart for the other Marvel films is Edward Norton.  What a bloody inspired casting choice he was for the role of Dr. Bruce Banner; a much tormented and brooding soul living in exile, utterly petrified of what lies within himself.  Brilliant.  I sat watching the film last night and could feel myself smiling at how well he portrayed Banner, it’s such a shame that his performance will not be given the recognition it so rightly deserves, all because people thought the Hulk looked too cartoon-like. 

That said, the franchise as a whole is definately building up.  Soon they’ll do Captain America (which I expect to laugh at considering they are getting Brad Pitt for the role) and Thor (how they will make this I genuinely don’t know….?), and then we will get an Avengers movie at last, hopefully with Hulk being a founding member (yep, it’s true).   With the recent success of the ‘Civil War’ and ‘World War Hulk’ comic runs, I can only hope they decide to borrow a few ideas from those stories too rather than just the classic issues.

I enjoyed this film so much that I will definately buy it, the only slightly sour point for me was putting Stan Lee in this movie.  Why?  I LOVE Stan Lee, but does he have to be in every single Marvel comic movie?  Yes I know without him we’d not have Spider-man yadda yadda yadda, but still?  Lou Ferringo I can understand, because he voiced the Hulk in this film (and played the original), but I really hate putting people into films just for people to go “oooooh, look, it’s *insert name here*, ha ha ha, coooooool!”.

“Hulk smash tiresome cameo appearances!!!!!!”

But I Carry On – Work in progress

Phew, I’m knackered having spent the last 4 hours laying down a very, very basic idea on my Tascam multitrack recorder to show how the ‘Marvin’ riff (see the video on this post for details) fits into the original chord structure of ‘But I Carry On’.

The result = perfect fit.

I haven’t got Alex’s opinion on it yet but my personal first impression is that it doesn’t interfer with the original vocal line at all which is pretty cool to say the least (I was worried it might).  I still find it hard to believe that I came up with the ‘Marvin’ riff during a jam and the whole time it was actually an older song.  Spooky.  Anyway, I’ll have a listen in the morning to see what fresh ears can make of it.  Nothing like ’24 hour can syndrome’ to piss you off let me tell you!

All that aside, I feel pretty good having really poured some effort into some music again; depending on what Kojak says I might stick a snippet up sometime tomorrow.

Kevs work – Christmas party venue 2008

Our ‘Christmas’ party is schedule for late November this year (WHY NOVEMBER!?!) and my friend Jane has popped over a link for the venue (Muchos Kudos Jane); thought I’d post it for all and sundry to view because I’m quite excited to wear my DJ again and pretend to be 007.

So here we go, Royal Hospital Gardens – Chelsea.


MENU 


STARTER

Passion fruit cured Scottish salmon with ratte potato salad, herb salad & passion fruit dressing *** 
(Ratte….surely they don’t actually mean rat????!?!  Philistines!!!!) 

Caponata and mozzarella salad with seared rustic mediterranean vegetables, torn basil and rocket leaves (v) 
(‘Torn basil’, as opposed to ‘ripped up and owned like a biatch Basil’  So there we go, a few leaves and a bit of cheese for veggies again as usual then)

MAIN COURSE

Roasted breast of Barbary duck with an apple and pea mash, buttered bok choy & a five spice scented jus*** 
(Burberry duck for the chavs – Freshly shot with a blunderbuss whilst happily swimming around Waddon Ponds)

Jerusalem artichoke and mushroom pithiviers on savoy cabbage and crème fraiche with a celeriac Dauphinoise and a cèpe jus (v) 
(Vegetarians have been totally stiffed YET AGAIN by the looks of it.  What appears to be a fancy looking meal on paper will clearly have absolutely no stomach filling potential whatsoever when it turns up on the night, trust me.  Plus, why the hell can’t they use the word juice rather than jus?   Funnily enough though, my uncle was a celeriac, thankfully he made a full recovery)

DESSERT

Rich chocolate truffle cake with a mulled wine syrup and a compote of winter berries 
(Finally something appealing!!!  I’ll have six of these fuckers please garcon!)

 
KK MENU EVALUATION = 99.9999% chance of Kev having a kebab roll or three down the spice cafe instead.

Listening to chooons

Tonight is the second night in a row that I’ve been doing musical bits, It’s fair to say I’ve done bugger all lately.  Last night I picked up the acoustic and barely put it down, scales, chords, running through some old songs Alex and I did together (blah de blah), it was a great feeling.  Indeed, compared to fragging things mindlessly on the xbox it was heavenly; I actually felt slightly ashamed at how quickly I had forgotten such simple pleasures again.

Sitting at work today I promised myself I wouldn’t get caught up in the electronic maelstrom that is the intersnot (save for this post obviously), nor would I go on microshits box of gadget tonight.  I held true to my promise, tonight I literally just sat listening to music, both fiddling on some recordings on the Tascam when I got in, and later on I rifled through my music collection on the PC; it struck me as strange that I rarely do that anymore either.

Ten years ago you would have had a sure bet that I listened to an album per day, now, well, I get distracted by, erm, things and I think it’s about time I put my foot down because I’m starting to get immensely pissed off with myself when it gets to 1am and I’ve done fuck all with my spare time once again!!!!!.

Alex sent me an e mail in the week saying he’d like to start doing some simple acoustic guitar bits again and see if we can record anything that way until Ghandi invests in some new drums. Twang.

Turned out nice again.

Get Smart – Film Review

I used to love the original series of ‘Get Smart’ when I was a kid (it was re-run on BBC2 I think) and I was really eager to see the Steve Carell ‘remake’ (‘tribute’ would be a better word don’t you agree ratfans?) because I am a huge fan of his humour.  I almost wet myself when I recognised Terrence Stamp was in this film!……Kneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel before Zod!  Oh yes, and Masi Oka (Hiro from Heroes) is in it too.

The style of the movie perfectly fits the memories I retained of the series; perhaps that is why then that I felt a little let down by the film overall given how they managed to nail the look and feel of the original series but fell short with what I felt was a really weak script.  I imagine it to be the sort of strange deja-vu feeling a pet owner gets having cloned their favourite Cocker Spaniel ‘Blackie’ only to find it won’t hump their leg like the original did.

You could tell what they were trying to do, much like with the film ‘Johnny English’ which also fell way short of it’s true comedic potential amid the odd funny moment or two.  ‘Get Smart’ suffers from gaping and tired plotholes, a rushed storyline and too much focus on scenes which weren’t actually that funny (the bit with the sound dampning ‘cones’ is a great example of what I mean, predictable and not funny at all).  In fact, seeing this movie made me fancy watching ‘Condorman’ which would probably have been a better use of my 2 hour spy-seeking-spoof-fest; even with Michael Crawfords shit American accent.

Maybe it was just my frame of mind on a Friday night expecting the flick to be as funny as ‘Anchorman’ or satisfy my need for a good belly laugh like ‘Hot Rod’ provided in abundance?  I would say that it’s not a bad watch on a Sunday afternoon if you just fancy watching something to kill a couple of hours, just don’t expect too much from it!

That said, I’m off to grab ‘Hank and Mike’ which has been recommended to me by baldie in the hope it will make me lose control of my bladder.

Large Hadron Collider – Part two

BREAKING NEWS!!!  NEWSFLASH!!!

Following the dubious breakdown of the Large Hadron Collider, CERN (the builders) are reviewing CCTV footage following internal reports that a crack team of far right Christian fundamentalists infiltrated the compound and sabotaged it by pouring holy water (TM) on some of the transformers (Optimus Prime is expected to make a full recovery, however Starscream who’s status is said to be critical is spending a second day in intensive care). 

Eye witnesses have confirmed that the LHC first went ‘pfffffffft’, then ‘nggggggg’ and finally ‘whhoooopaaaa’ before experiencing a complete system failure.  In other words folks, it’s shagged!   

Looks like we’re all stuck with ‘god’ for the time being………..bugger.

Executive jargon & My bad

The most offensive ‘exec speak’ phrases doing the rounds in my office according to the Antikrish dictionary, revised 69th edition.

Proactive = Yoghurt?  This is a particularly stupid word; one often used by Financial Times subscribers (be honest, nobody actually reads it?) who lack genuine Business acumen.  Generally used by an individual to announce that they will use due dilligence in order to prevent the hounds of stagnation and procrastination biting them on the arse.  Common sense really?

Idea storm = What next, presentation tornados?  Appraisal hurricane?  Proposal sleet?

Guestimate = A combination of guess and estimate.  Absolutely no need to say this whatsoever, if you do I’ll scowl at you.  Hard.  Like your momma used to when you ate sweets before dinner. 

Chillaxing = Presumably a combination of the words chill and relaxation.  If you use this, you’re a silly bell-end.

My bad = As per my earlier prediction this phrase is increasingly being used by kids who watch far too much MTV or ‘Friends’.  The closest equivalent would be ‘my fault’ which of course makes perfect sense.  My bad?!?!  MY BAD?!?!?  What’s wrong with you, ya flipping ignoramus!!!  You sound like Captain Caveman!  What next, ‘Unga Bunga!’ instead of “Hello old chap”.

Going Forward = Never, EVER, EVER to be used in the presence of Kev.  It was clearly invented during an internal HR review; gotta love the way they recycle old marketing terminology and re-brand it?  “What shall we do today girls?  I know, lets invite a pointless phrase and get the masses to use it whilst we all drink Pret coffee to celebrate, hurrah!”.  God I hate buzzwords.  Until now I’ve been silently outraged whenever some exec git uses it in meetings, but it’s starting to drift into casual conversation amongst friend who are far too intelligent to get caught up using this phase (tut tut, you know who you are!).  NO!!!!!!!  IT’S A DIRTY BUSINESS!

Large Hadron Collider – The worlds largest particle accelerator

I never paid attention in physics lessons at school.  In actual fact, I bloody hated Physics, mostly due to my teacher Miss Goodman-Smith.  She was a really strange idiosyncratic weirdo that beared an uncanny resemblance to Axel Rose from Guns n Roses (and even went as far to dress up as him on Mufti Day one year, WEIRD!).  I’d often play truant or end up getting chucked out of the lesson for being rude to her following one of her trademark sarcastic remarks or mood swings.  I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as the woman, and in the unlikely event you are reading this Miss Goodman-Spliff (We called her this as we thought she was a junkie), kiss my valve.

So all things considered, it’s something of an irony that I have such an interest now in all things Stephen Hawking (Quantum physics that is, gottal love good old Mr ‘Speak ‘n Spell’); largely I have to say due to various television programmes I loved as a kid like Star Trek, Quantum leap and to a slightly lesser extent, Doctor Who; oh yes, and all the comics.  I’d like to think that I know my electrons from my protons, but the depth of theory involved with the incredibly fascinating ‘Large Hadron Collider’ experiment has seriously twisted my melon.

Even the ‘summary paragraph for plebs’ on The European Organisation for Nuclear Research’s (CERN) website made me think; pfffffft!  Observe.  “The £5 billion machine has been described as a 17-mile racetrack around which two streams of protons – building blocks of matter – run in opposite directions before smashing into one another.  Reaching 99.99 per cent of the speed of light, each beam will pack as much energy as a Eurostar train travelling at 90 mph.  The flashes from the collisions may help scientists reproduce the conditions that existed during the first moments after the Big Bang at the birth of the universe.”

You gotta love love the dogmatic bile spewed from religious cynics in reaction to the experiment, and about how it’s going to bring about the destruction of the universe (due to all the sodding about with black holes and the like apparently)?  “The apocalypse!!!  THE APOCALYPSE!!!! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE FOR DARING TO CHALLENGE AN X-thousand YEAR OLD WIVES TALE!!!!  REPENT!” I wish such people would fuck off back into the trees/caves we emerged from sometimes.

My one criticism however was the choice of location for the structure of the LHC (A 27km ‘ring’……ha ha ha!).  Why didn’t they just use the M25 motorway instead?  It’s 188km and all the boffins measuring their instruments (I say again, ha!) would have been able to stop off at greasy Joe’s layby cafe for a cup of rosy lee (tea) whilst all the particles whiz around.  Come on, you know it makes sense!

I personally would prefer to let these wonderful ladies and gents get on with their funky experiment, let them risk sub atomic annihilation at the molecular level.  I’d MUCH rather that than be spoon-fed the concept of creationism and intelligent design for another millisecond.

I mean come on, the concept of creationism is the biggest load of bollocks?

EDIT (KEV):  Just found THIS on the BBC, a Q&A session with Professor Brian Cox who works on the LHC.  I found the last two paragraphs to mirror my feelings above, albeit in a slightly more subtle way!