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Friday, April 30, 2004
Friday, April 30, 2004
What a very dull blog this is at the moment. I apologise. Unfortunately, I have little money with which to purchase new shiny trinkets, so there's not a huge amount to talk about right now.
I've just been reminded of a t-shirt a used to have when I was about six. Had all the Mr Men on it and a huge speech bubble in the middle that contained the question "Do you like my Mr Men t-shirt?" Very pre-post-modern. I'm fairly certain that there are some photographs of me in it, rocking the late 70s/early 80s with a pretty darned cool all-natural curly afro - a curlfro, if you will (lost to the radishes of time, alas) - so I might try and dig them out to stick one up here. It'll be something to do.
Elsewhere, my addiction to Psyvariar Revision continues. A first glance suggests that it's little more than yer standard vertical scrolling shmup, but have a watch of the videos to get a better understanding of the rush. They're confusing as hell if you've not played it - I'll explain what's going on if anybody's interested. I'm worryingly proud of the fact that I currently hold the highest score record for one of the levels on two hi-score forums, too - NTSC-uk and SHMUPS. Yeah, I know. Bollocks to it - what have you achieved recently?
Actaully, don't answer that. It'll only depress me. I'm not even sure that I've spelled achieved correctly.
If you were never an arcade kid, it's a little difficult to explain the pride and grip of getting your name into this kind of thing. I was even tempted to ask for my submitted tag on those scores to go in as AJS - again, those who never did it just won't understand the appeal of having your three initials and a row of numbers flashing in front of your eyes - but big-headedness pulled me into going with what's fast become my 'real' name (in online terms, natch).
What else? Oh yeah. Plums be talking about radio over on her blog, and I was going to mention this in a comment there, but it's not all that relevant to her post. What was I going to mention? Why, the fact that I can't stop listening to Greasy Kid Stuff. If it's not the single best radio show out there, then... well, it is, so there's not any sensible way to end that sentence. Just so amazingly bright and bubbly, but never sickeningly so. Their archives are a treasure trove. Recent must-listens include the Ivor Cutler Trio doing Good Morning! How Are You? Shut Up! (April 3rd, roughly 4 minutes in), Alfred E. Newman's It's a Gas (Apr 10, 1:23:30ish), Happy Schnapps Combo's Pull My Finger (Apr 24, 1:40:00 or so), Shev Wooley's Purple Headed People Eater (Nov 22 '03, 1:01:01 or thereabouts) and Joan Jett & Paul Westerberg covering Let's Fall in Love (Apr 10 again, 36:04).
Everybody should also give a listen to the Hoosier Hot Shots and I Like Bananas (Because They Have No Bones), the transmission date of which I forget, but I'm pretty sure it's on the same show as one of those listed in that last paragraph.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:36
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
From Boson.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 14:50
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Public service announcement: The 2-disc DVD release of Once Upon a Time In the West is on sale at Amazon.co.uk for just under a tenner. Link here.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:27
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Just in case anyone's wondering, yes, I'm still here and no, I haven't moved yet. Got a fairly promising response to an application at the end of last week - I need to be here for a few days to find out if it's going anywhere.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 19:27
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Saturday, April 10, 2004
One more for that list.
- Sublime slips so far under the radar on the first read-through that the Big Reveal at the very end is far more confusing than it is surprising. I remember reading the thread on #152 before I picked the issue up and being deeply pissed at Morrison because I thought Sublime must be some old fanboy favourite villain, suddenly and inexplicably dragged into a supposedly self-contained run. John Sublime and Doctor Sublime were such incidental characters that I had absolutely no recollection of them by the time #152 rolled around. Again, that's the result of scrappy writing, imo.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 12:36
Having finished the now-traditional re-read of a Morrison comic series (well, I enver bothered doing it with The Filth, but that's because I struggled to find anything worth reading the first time around), here are some thoughts on New X Men:
- Most of the self-contained issues are rubbish. Pointless. Unnecessary. They add nothing to the run at all. They don't seem to be anything more than a sop to the fanboys who bitched about the change in direction. You want spandex? Here, have some spandex for a couple of months. Urgh.
- Murder at the Mansion is dull. The important stuff that takes place could and should have been put into a more interesting overall storyline. It's like reading an X comic from the Onslaught era, and combined with the Weapon XII storyline and those aforementioned self-contained issues, is the reason why I completely lost interest in the comic for about a year and only kep on buying it because I already knew that Morrison series are always inconsistent and held out hopes for some improvement.
- Kordey's art really is that bad.
- Van Sciver's art is much better than I originally thought.
- Morrison's writing still isn't as good as he thinks.
- E is for Extinction, Assualt on Weapon Plus and Here Comes Tomorrow are easily the best arcs in the run, and the only ones that I'm likely to want to read again in future. Just a shame that Silvestri fucked up a couple of important panels in the very last issue.
- Riot at Xavier's is decent, but far from brilliant. On that subject, either Quitely's work during that arc was rushed or the colourists and inkers weren't suited to it at all - it feels far less solid than his stuff normally does.
- Nearly every Barbelith thread about the comic was like a fucking car crash, only more painful and not as entertaining.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 03:18
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Thursday, April 08, 2004
I know I'm not exactly in a position where I can afford to be turning down job interviews, but when it's an interview for a company that specialises in "providing direct marketing solutions to business" - in other words, distributing and supporting software for creating junk mail - and a position which would see me supporting a software package for the only supplier of that package in the country - in other words, learning something which would be of no use anywhere else in the UK - I think there's a good chance that I'll do just that.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 08:52
Monday, April 05, 2004
Monday, April 05, 2004
Looking fairly certain that I'll be getting a change of scenery this weekend, which'll be interesting, if nothing else. How long that change is for all depends on whether the city and I can patch up our differences - last time we spent some time together, we had a bit of a falling out. I guess she was a pit pissed that I'd largely neglected her for a few years.
Anyway, after Saturday it'll be at least a week until I can update this thing again. Maybe longer. We'll see. I'm thinking of it more as a break to get my shit together, dude, rather than anything more significant. Such is life: low on authoritative action, high on fortuitous meandering.
Here - have some random links from my bookmarks:
onedotzero - adventures in moving image
toothpaste for dinner
Upcoming Horror Movies
Passion Pictures
Fibonacci Numebrs and the Golden Section
Twin Galaxies
Have a toothpaste for dinner image, too.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 16:36
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Ridiculously rare game pops up on eBay. Starting bid? $10,000 US to you, sir/madam.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:42
DavidLynch.com. Why was I not told?
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:09
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Mind you, I've just found all my old US-format Marvel UK comics (Death's Head, Dragon's Claws and The Sleeze Brothers) along with a big pile of Deadlines, and I've got a sneaking suspicion that I gave all the Nirvana-era Selects to my sister a while back. Huzzah!
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:39
Ooh. oo oo oo. I've just found this Microdisney fansite, which - fantastically - contains a heap of live recordings as MP3s. Unfortunately, they're mostly rubbish, rather cancelling out my excited ooing - the quality's crappy, for a start, but the main problem is that the brilliant perversion of MOR pop with scathing political commentary present on the studio recordings doesn't appear to have transfered very well to live shows. The shine's missing and it's not replaced by the tangible atmosphere of anger and rage that some of the Mansions live stuff floating around the 'Net has. Even the one Mansions track there, Only Losers Take the Bus, is seriously neutered in comparison with the album/single versions.
So most are little more than curiosities. You'll occasionally get a bit of Cathal's preaching to the audience, which is nice for those of us who were too young to get into the gigs, and there's a decent selection of covers (Coughlan's on a par with Mark E. Smith as far as cover versions go, imo), but again, the quality's poor.
Bit pissed off, btw, because I seem to have deleted all the rarer Coughlan bits and bobs that I nabbed from Audiogalaxy a couple of years ago and I can't find replacements for certain of the tracks anywhere. Oh, and I also seem to have thrown away the issue of Select that had the now-notorious U2/Mansions tour feature in it, which is a pisser as nobody's thought to put it online.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:20
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Losing the fight against mediocrity for the last few years. Fire a volley |
