Lists End

So time to squeeze in one more set of top tens before the year end. And the subject is... music.

Last year it was albums, gigs and singles but I haven't really bought any singles this year so it's just albums and gigs this time.

A quick scan down the list of favourite albums reveals 1) I haven't bought much music this year and 2) banjos are in but I still rate the noisy stuff:

1. Shearwater: Palo Santo
2. The Broken Family Band: Balls
3. Pearl Jam: Pearl Jam
4. The Innocence Mission: Birds Of My Neighbourhood
5. Micah P. Hinson: Micah P Hinson & The Opera Circuit
6. Seth Lakeman: Freedom Fields
7. Muse: Black Holes And Revelations
8. Four Day Hombre: Experiments In Living
9. Neil Young: Living With War
10. The Flaming Lips: At War With The Mystics

A quick scan of the gigs reveals that 1) I've only been to 9 gigs this year and 2) I really hated on of them:

1. Zappa Plays Zappa @ The Albert Hall
2. Micah P Hinson @ ULU
3. The Broken Family Band @ The Scala
4. Hope Of The States @ Koko
5. Last Man Standing @ Madame JoJos
6. Seth Lakeman @ The Scala
7. Four Day Hombre @ The Barfly
8. Hellwood @ The Mean Fiddler
9. Sun O))) @ The Islington Academy (I actually hated this gig and left but it's been the only other one I've seen this year)

What gigs and records did you like this year readers?

Tunes:Steven Moshi's Christmas Compilation

Me, Two Years and A Pair Of Running Shoes

The image on the top is from our work intranet and was taken of me in November 2004 when I joined BMC. The image on the bottom was updated in November of this year after someone couldn't find me using the original.

It's not like me to want to show anything of myself (least of all that top one which makes me grimace) but I've been pounding pavements at 6am most mornings since March of this year and I'm really quite proud of me.





Tunes: Tilly And The Wall: Bottoms of Barrels

Well It Made Me Laugh

As the man said, when marketing gets it right

The Year Endeth, The Lists Begineth

I can't sleep.

Every year my old school buddy, Erum, and I swap our top ten movies of the year in time honoured movie geek style. And so the time is upon us to perform this ancient ritual once again.

Unlike previous years I haven't kept any particular record of what I've seen in 2006 so I had to do a bit of research into what's come out. In doing that I realised that there have been a few movies that might have made it on to the list had I seen them, but for numerous reasons, none of them good, they've waylaid me somewhere along the line. For the record then here are the top ten movies I've missed this year in order of wanting to have seen them:

1. Little Miss Sunshine
2. United 93
3. Snakes On A Plane
   
4. Capote
5. Casino Royale
   
6. Volver,
   
7. The Prestige
8. Syriana,
   
9. Good Night And Good Luck
10. Clerks 2

Most years we also try to pick only movies we've seen at the cinema but if that were the case X-Men 3 would make it onto the list by default and that would be a BAD thing. So I'm having to pick in a post-modern stylee from all forms of media.

Of the 32 odd movies from this year that I've figured out I've seen 7 were sequels and 2 were remakes and one was The Break Up. That probably says more about the kind of shit I'm prepared to sit through than anything. The list is basically the movies I've enjoyed the most. What makes a movie I enjoy is a questionable blend of being either very good, very odd or very very bad. But not X-Men 3 bad or Pirates 2 bad. They share a unique badness usually associated with plagues, sores, boils and magot infested genitalia.

So here goes, the winners are:

1. Sympathy For Lady Vengeance (sheer class in every aspect)
   
2. The Proposition (as above but with facial hair and much slower)
   
3. V For Vendetta (they blow up parliament - that's a good thing)
   
4. Lucky Number Slevin (wildly entertaining hocum)
   
5. Fearless (peace and love and shit kicking)
   
6. Stranger Than Fiction (I really do like Will Ferrell in this)
   
7. A Scanner Darkly (if you've read the book)
   
8. Saw 3 (because it follows a hideous path to the bitter end)
   
9. Final Destination 3 (for the nail gun bit)
   
10. Superman Returns (but only the first two hours, the last bit resides in the disappointments pile)
    

And you can keep your complaints to yourselves or post your own lists on the comments thingy. These are my choices and therefore highly questionable in their own right. And I should know, I have a degree in this crap.

Honourable mentions go to:

1. Shortbus (for being wonderfully weird)
2. Silent Hill (for not sucking as much as I thought it would)
3. Slither (for all the glorious, gooey mess - I could also have said that about Shortbus)
   

Disappointments (i.e should have been good but were actually a bit shit) are:

1. Cache (where was the big deal huh?)
   
2. Munich (it was just DULL)
   
3. The New World (The Thin Red Line only tedious and with pantaloons)

And last but not least the worst. Not as in so bad they're good but as in so bad I'd rather eat my own vomit encrusted shit than ever have to endure them again, let alone admit to any of you lot that I've seen them in the first place. So let's carve up a crusty one:

1. Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 [whatever the bit in brackets is] (how to turn an average idea from a good movie into a stinking dungheap of mediocrity. No FUCKING EXCUSES after such a good lead in)
2. The Omen (what's with the sickly antichrist, that kid couldn't take over a paper run let alone the world, all those concerned in making it will be spending some time in hell, those who watched it already have)
3. Broken Flowers (except for the hot naked lady it was about as interesting as watching paint dry and I've become quite an authority on that subject this year)
4. X-Men 3 (wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG. HOW COULD YOU, YOU USELESS MOTHERFUCKERS????????????? YOU HAD IT ALL. YOU HAD IT ALL AND YOU WENT AND PISSED IT UP THE WALL. AAARRRRRGGHHHHHHH.....)
5. The Break Up (would have been better had it ended like War of the Roses with both of them DEAD)
6. The last half an hour of Superman Returns (so, like, stop when the movie gets REALLY FUCKING BORING)
7. Aeon Flux (I don't even think I would have enjoyed this when I was 14)
8. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (utterly loathsome self-indulgent garbage)
9. Underworld 2 (please stop making this crap, it's not big, it's not good and it's sure as fuck not clever)
10. The Hills Have Eyes (I was beginning to wish the cannibals had got to me)

Anything else was either just ok (like Deja Vu) or I just can't remember.

Night folks, and sorry about all the swearing.

Merry Christmas

From me, Clint, the angel James, the baby Lars, and the other two

Tunes: The Shins: Wincing The Night Away

Gone?

Going...

Going...

It's Been One Of Those Beautiful Winter Days

The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place

I've said it before and I'll say it again, don't fuck with mother nature.

Usually the top step lies flush with dry land - that'll be the concrete bit at the bottom of the picture. It took half an hour to get from usually to when I took the picture. That's a whole lot of water came floating past.

A few days ago I watched the mud churned murky brown water tumble and eddy around Chuffy's prow. It was mesmerising watching the power of the flow as it cascaded past, almost terrifying. I'm enjoying watching the gulls go skimming past on the surface, looking slightly confused at their unplanned progress back down towards the lock.



Tunes: Explosions In The Sky: The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place

Spooky Alien Writing

I won't bore you all with the tortuous tale of what it took to get my old hard drive put in Mook's old Powerbook - complete with spooky alien screen writing - but to cut a long story short the bastards erased my hard drive. Everything. The lot.

Fuckers.

Still, every cloud and all that, at least I have a nice clean hard drive from which to start afresh. The good news for anyone who's emailed of late and not heard back is that I'm back on email again and I'm ready to start ploughing through the 300 + messages that are currently sitting in my inbox.

Life's been a little crazy of late but in a good way.


Tunes: And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead: World's Apart