Blogfest 2010 became more like Tweetmeet 2010 last night when I met some of my friends for the very first time and then met some more lovely people who were vaguely familiar in a knowing of or knowing the Twitter name of scenario. How very modern that all was!

I look unbothered, apologies, this is just my normal face.

Great stuff including a big geeky Doctor Who chat over caffeinated drinks in a noisy west end location with Mr Pop of Birmingham, taking that influential American muisic blogger bloke to Forbidden Planet for his debut visit (and spending all my paocket money on hardback deluxe graphic novels as per usual) and doing a shit guided tour of all the good places that have closed and been knocked down in the rain on the way to the restaurant. It’s easier to do a list of URLs as we are all linked by our Twitter accounts and blogs, all of which are worth following / reading / nicely stalking:

http://www.carluccios.com/caffes/market-place Lovely cheese and pumpkin tortelloni. Tiny portions!

http://twitter.com/xolondon The link that connected everybody: That man has got me into so much good music over the years.
http://xolondon.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/myfizzypop Currently addicted to That Russell T Davies ‘lovely lovely oh dear I have done no writing aarrggh’ book.
http://myfizzypop.blogspot.com/

Currently tune of my day and a very nice man who once did a music video with sock puppets and an Ellie Goulding remix:

http://twitter.com/brightlightx2
http://www.brightlightx2.com/

Special guest star music (and stuff) blogger types, all worth a browse:

http://twitter.com/phileastend
http://worrapolava.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/burntoutcar
http://www.burntoutcar.com/

http://twitter.com/roddale

http://twitter.com/richardpchapman

http://twitter.com/Poptastic
http://tmbpop.blogspot.com/

The perfect antidote to the Daily Mail wailing about meeting people off the internet being like well dangerous.

It’s time for mega Nerd Nonsense Comicon-related uber-geeky excitement round-up time!

This blog is sponsored by Jan Hankl’s Patented Flank Pat System:

Item! The Prisoner remake is ready and looks good to these eyes. It’s not spooky swirly 60s marvellous nonsense in Wales but for what it is it is good.

Item! The trailer for Dexter series 4? Oh yes!

New book on its way soon too, in that whole Earth 2 Dexterverse way.

Item! Russell T Davies has been talking about the (over) reaction to certain things what did happen in that Torchwood thing off the telly. No, not the whole giving the 10% least academic children to a freaky three-headed projectile-vomiting alien but the fourth killing off of a member of the team from the first episode:

It’s not particularly a backlash. What’s actually happening is, well, nothing really to be honest. It’s a few people posting online and getting fans upset. Which is marvelous. It just goes to prove how much they love the character and the actor. People often say, ‘Fans have got their knives out!’ They haven’t got any knives. I haven’t been stabbed. Nothing’s happened. It’s simply a few people typing. I’m glad they’re typing because they’re that involved. But if you can’t handle drama you shouldn’t watch it. Find something else. Go look at poetry. Poetry’s wonderful.

On accustations of homophobia (yeah, really):

I think you can forget about people picking up gay rights as an issue. It’s rather like children picking up nursery blocks and waving them in the air but having no idea what it entails. We’re talking about issues in my entire life here, not just one small television program. If they did research they’d go and look at the history of gay and lesbian characters that I have put on screen. They should simply grow up, do some research, and stop riding on a bandwagon that they actually don’t know anything about.

That told ‘em, Uncle Russ!

Oh… stop it.

Item! How will the delicate little Torchwood fans (do they have a group name?) cope with Caprica? Probably not well. Big Cheese Jane Espenson (remember her?) let some cats out of bags about the forthcoming Battlestar Galactica prequel:

Caprica is set in the colonies 58 years before the events that launch the BSG series (the Cylon attack). It’s the story of the events leading to the creation of the first Cylon (not the first skinjob), and the events that follow. It’s not like BSG in that it’s not a war story. It’s more serialized, with stories based in the lives of characters living in a culture that driving itself toward its own destruction.
We’ve got organized crime and religious conflict and terrorism and show business and corporate misdeeds and robots. The tone is not unlike Mad Men or Rome or Sopranos — lots of events, often dark events, but with a light enough touch to allow all the irony and denial of real life. We concentrate on two families: The Graystones and the Adamas, and the people around them.

Hmm… I do believe I might well be watching that. More nerdy shit tomorrow as my limp wrists cannot take any more typing today.

My real world life has been all boozing and schmoozing (and laughing about a forthcoming Princess Diana book that I really should be more professional about) and I learnt that afternoon drinking doesn’t completely do my head in if it is in a posh restaurant in Soho and paid for by a publisher. Sometimes I need my confidence-booster to function with new people and I can mostly keep the peculiar side of my personality under control. Bonus points for not going mad in Forbidden Planet while tipsy, I have heard of this recession thing you know. Then I went and ruined it all by buying a Wii online after The Final Pub Quiz (it goes on but the blandness is upsetting now. A robot could host that quiz with more wit and charm. Whoops). The Wii is still in a box, as are my Cyberman army but I aim to sort that out soon when I find some space (Jamie won’t let me have an extension built for my Doctor Who theme room, he is so mean)… and if I survive The Mothers Day Extravaganza tomorrow. But the Galactica finale takes preference and it is a double episode so that’s something or nothing plus the inevitable brain drain after watching it.

So here are some ‘cool things’:

Grant Morrison has done a good old interview that I read and went “yeah” to. With pretty pictures!

“When we laugh at Bizarro World, we’re laughing at ourselves and that’s the genius of the concept. So yeah, I’d say the Bizarro reality is always our world as seen through a shattered window pane. When you’ve got creatures who represent the “opposite” of human culture, they can only show us how arbitrary, pointless or ridiculous many of our own customs or thoughts are. We chose to make Bizzaro world into a kind of cosmic sewer of meaningless, nightmarish, imbecile activity in the face of looming apocalypse. Superman, with no powers, must harrow Hell and find a way home.My favorite bit is the reverse “Stars-And-Stripes,” when the Bizarro people sing: “Under land of no free, am us home cowardly.”

“Zibarro was the Morrissey Bizarro. The sensitive outsider on a world of lunatics. He was great to write.”

“Right now I’m working on the new Batman and Robin book which is out this summer. Bruce Wayne is gone so we’ll be seeing a new Batman and Robin team in action together for the first time. This is continuing the story from Batman R.I.P. and the pitch is “David Lynch directs the Batman TV show.”

Comics, eh? Whatever next?

What’s going on in Twitterworld today?

Hmmm…

What DVD do I not want the most?

Urgh. Ready for what?I dread to think. All suggestions welcome.

The new Pet Shop Boys album is in fact rather great. A couple of average songs in there but this might well be my pick:

So authentic.

Today on my half-day (as I do longer other days) I logged on to the work email at home at 7, we drove in crappy traffic to the office for 5 minutes, went to Jamie’s office for half an hour where I logged on again and had a nice cup of tea, got the train from Borehamwood (carefully avoiding the Big Brother celebrity house up the road) to St Pancras, tubed it to Green Park, walked to a posh hotel near Grosvenor Square to drop off a laptop that I had sorted out for a sales rep, walked to a bookshop near Piccadilly and did a hefty stock check, bought a nice soup and bread, spotted no famouses, walked to Forbidden Planet and bought geek things and got the tube home, only to find rather a lot of emails waiting for me. Is it any wonder my head hurts? Maybe that’s why my nose was bleeding a bit and I had shortness of breath. It’s all downhill from here, bah humbug. But with nice new things:

In happier news, the atheist ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life’ buses are here and my favourite ‘Christian’ (no not Terry) is on his hotline to heaven (just like Bananarama?) about it:

Mister Beardy Happy Face Stephen Green from Christian Voice (a tedious whiney voice that does not represent as many of its type as it believes) moaned about the message, bleating “The ASA does not just cover goods and services, it covers all advertising… It is given as a statement of fact and that means it must be capable of substantiation if it is not to break the rules. There is plenty of evidence for God, from peoples’ personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world. But there is scant evidence on the other side, so I think the advertisers are really going to struggle to show their claim is not an exaggeration or inaccurate, as the ASA code puts it.”

Green (Stephen, not Goblin) failed to provide any evidence that his friend God did exist but conveniently ignored that sort of thing.

Richard Dawkins is still annoying though. Being married to Romana version 2.0 is not enough of a reason to like him.

When I asked God for his opinion of this kerfuffle he was too busy worrying about important things, like wars and old fashioned high-energy lightbulbs.

What the hell is going on in Hollyoaks? Apart from the usual dead-eyed acting and flimsy motivations of course. I was driven to this:



And on that note… time for more lurgey drugs.

PS Just before I posted this, my lightbulb pinged and is now dead. God is not amused.

I had about 6 consecutive sleep hours last night so I am nothing like how I was yesterday, i.e. the body of a pensioner and the brain of a retarded child. Bloody insomnia is a curse, I have no idea how I managed a day at work yesterday but took the opportunity to phone some friends who just happened to work in bookshops that were on the list I made for potential signing sessions for a famous author. Hurrah for the fleshy ones!

Today is another of my odd one day holidays (I don’t want or need a whole week off before Christmas as nobody exists to cover my job but that’s fine) so I am catching up on all those little things like downloading new music (new Duke Special album sneaked past me but Amazon have it in stock, I must stop clicking there as I have purchased about 10 CDs from there in the last month) and reading comics. Currently listening to that (leaked) Britney Spears album and it could be anyone singing it. I suppose that’s what makes the Photoshopped robotic one so versatile (some decent pop songs though) … unlike this week’s new artist Val Emmich (brought to my attention by a certain musical blog) who’s much more ‘real’ and even sent me a nice hello on a certain social networking site.

It turns out he was in 30 Rock last year (as Liz Lemon’s too-young boyfriend) but he’s mostly a musician and not a robot.

Quite nice, so I bought his new album. Damn you, Amazon!

Is it wrong of me to find this funny?

Dr. Manhattan: Thong Version. Damn DC prudes!

Weirdest telly moments of the week:
Ally McBeal mucking up her chance at adopting Greggs’ (no, not the bakers, the detective) from The Wire’s unborn child on Brothers & Sisters. And the news that President Laura Roslin is going to star in Grey’s Anatomy as a surgeon with Asperger’s syndrome. What?

Not that I would watch the televisual equivalent of those Mills & Boon medial romance books.

I’ve never been much of a Trekkie but the Star Trek trailer looked quite good…

Shame about a certain Scottish accent, and I am worried that I have a man crush on the new Captain Kirk.

We are off to the Mitchell & Webb screening at that venue with the frisky security procedures and doctors’ waiting room-style bar. The squeezy beerz are on me!

Express ‘Dirty Foreigners Week’ looks like being a fortnight. Hurrah!

Those pesky migrants, eh? Crime rise not at all related to the population rise and not having enough visible police officers then… Shock horror a man who looks a bit like the Zombie George Harrison pencil sketch says he did not kidnap and kill Madeleine! He lives alone so is a ‘loner’ and for bonus Express points he is indeed a Dirty Foreigner too! This new feature could run and run so get the red type banner out immediately! In Tragic Blonde Corner it’s brunette time again with the return of everyone’s favourite accomplice to child murder: Maxine Carr! No relation to Alan, Allen and Jimmy surely? She has a baby? Who knocked her up? Or did she just say she wants to eat one? And why is it any of my business?

I’m surprised to find myself quite enjoying Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I’m up to episode 3 aka The One Where The Kids Go To School. Terminator Girl From Firefly learns not to answer in the affirmative to “does this make me look fat?” and makes a friend in a Veronica Mars style plot (with obligatory orange school buses blocking key bits of Not Real School sets), while John Connor From Heroes comes up with a rubbish idea for getting Terminator Girl From Firefly through the school metal detectors. Meanwhile, Sarah Connor From English Films gets a bit obsessed with making sure that she doesn’t get the cancer which killed her in the future timeline that they left and goes on a date with a young geek mobile phone shop manager who could be involved in the Skynet kerfuffle and makes AI that plays chess in his spare time, and the Bad Roboty Terminator borrows an English boffin to make himself some flesh so he can remove the rubbish disguise.

Good Terminator Girl From Firefly gets a makeover and Officer Danny From The Shield plays an FBI agent who gets mixed up in the bloody murdering so all in all a perfect 42 minutes of teevee.

I am such a geek.

Comic Geek Picture Number One:
I don’t buy it buy I look forward to reading this:

I am sure one of my geeks will buy it and leave it lying around.

Comic Geek Picture Number Two:
It’s New York…

… Watchmen stylee. Oh yes.

In other news, I appear to be playing a lot of Kate Nash. And after all of my complaining about her, circa Foundations, all over the internet. I am such a contrary hypocrite. Or am I? Almost Thursday so almost pub night. It may stop me being so confused what with my erratic season 1 (stop a bad future happening) / graphic novel / season 2 (stop another bad future happening) viewing pattern of Heroes, and the contrasting reading of Dearly Devoted Dexter inbetween watching episodes of series two of Dexter. Which is completely and utterly different. Almost. Like I said, such a geek.

It’s almost December. Fucking hell.

Another day, another deju vu:

And in answer to the screaming questioning headline: I don’t know. Is she? Nobody knows. Is she playing crazy golf in Barcelona? Is she a holiday rep in Italy? Is she having a cake in Germany? Is she swimming with the dolphins in Hackney? I don’t know. We don’t know. Nodoby knows. And this is not news, it’s a question that will never be answered. Go away and think about what you’ve done, Express, and don’t come back until you find some real news.

Fools.

Nip/Tuck Season 5 is ‘New Nip/Tuck’ as the plastic surgeons move their practice to Hollywood and work as consultants on shit medical plastic surgery drama Hearts And Scalpels, using ideas from past Nip/Tuck episodes. The actors in the show are rather highly-strung and shit, which is part of the fun. The show gets more popular by showing realistic surgeries… How very post-modern. Episode 1 has Oliver Platt doing a gay version of his Huff character, which was rather Nip/Tuck-y if I remember corrrectly… and Christian has infected hair plugs. What a palava!

The new vibe has kept it fresh, hurrah.

Scary teevee idea of the day, from Digital Spy:

‘Four members of the Hollyoaks cast are to perform a Marc Bolan medley at this year’s Children In Need. Gerard McCarthy, Kevin Sacre, Loui Batley and Summer Strallen – who play Kris Fisher, Jake Dean, Sarah Barnes and Summer Shaw in the Chester-based soap – are in the process of rehearsing a string of T-Rex songs including the iconic ‘Children of the Revolution’ to mark the 30th anniversary of Marc Bolan’s death. Speaking of the forthcoming performance, McCarthy told Digital Spy: “I hope viewers are looking forward to the guys and girls of Hollyoaks performing and singing live for such a good cause. “We’re honoured to be singing songs from such a great artist alongside a host of established performers such as Spice Girls, Westlife and the Sugababes.” A source commented: “The guys had their first vocal session the other day with Children In Need’s musical director. They’ll be having their first choreography session at the end of the week and everything will soon come together.” Hollyoaks Producer Bryan Kirkwood added: “Hollyoaks is always happy to lend its help to good causes and Children In Need is about the best one there is. It’s also a great opportunity to show that our cast aren’t just actors but all-round performers.” ‘

It may be charidee but c’mon now. That’s just a horrible idea.

That Comicbook Movie trailer is online. Oh yes.

Email of the day award goes to The Computer Hospital who finally found my lost sick printer that I sent them and arranged to replace it for me. So they sent me this in an email, with an attached form:

‘Please print sign and fax this back to order a new printer’

Can anybody else see why this proved rather difficult to comply with?

Things I want to do but can’t as I have a shop to run:

1. Be part of the audience for the Weakest Link recording on 9 November 2007, a “Puppet Special”, with Zippy and George, Roland Rat, Otis the Aardvark, Nobby the Sheep, Jelly and Jackson, Roly Mo, Mr Sage and Mr Onion and Nev the Bear.

2. Go to the exclusive Preview Screening of Soapington Way written by and staring HARRY HILL including a pre show introduction to the show from Harry himself. Along with Harry the cast includes: Mark Benton (Northern Lights ITV1), Liza Tarbuck (Extras BBC2), Tim Key (Comedy Shuffle BBC3), Greg Davies (if.comedy award nominee as part of We Are Klang) and many other famous faces. On Wednesday 7 November at the Coronet Cinema, Notting Hill (Notting Hill Gate Tube).

Things I don’t want to do and am glad I can’t as I have a shop to run:
1. Read this shit:

No I do not want a free shit DVD and I do not care about The Bleedin’ McCanns every bleedin’ day. Delete! Delete!
2. Clean the shower. Even with the joy that is Cillit Bang , this is no fun.

Things I have to do but don’t really want to:
1. Some more paperwork for tomorrow as the ‘kidnapped’ printer has only just been found a week after we sent it to Printer Hospital.
2. Get the washing out the machine and iron it.

Things I really want to do but can’t just yet:
1. Go to the pub on Thursday.
2. Be un-lazy enough to actually go to the cinema to see Stardust.

Things I might want to do but am too old:

1. Chan… Buy this magazine. It has Chantho on the cover! … Tho.
2. Watch more of CBBC’s comedy output. It’s so much better than the crap BBC Three churns out.

Thing(s) that got my inner comic geek going:

Comicbook film forthcoming. Can you guess what it is yet? More tomorrow…

I spent most of the day with a massive headache, as befitting a part of The Stress Week. We had a very nice night out last night with the bookshoppy types to celebrate the bookshop’s birthday and I think I ate too much Chinese food. Well it was a buffet and you have to try the taste sensations, don’t you? I now know that I still don’t like tofu no matter what is done to make it appear to be edible but I do like crispy battered beans and egg fried rice in a peanut sauce. How yummy. Then today I got given a Wispa by my husband via the Wispa People and a badge. I shall wear it with pride, next to my Stouffer badge, as I am twelve years old of course. Tomorrow is The Twice Delayed Holiday Day which will consist of sleeping, cups of tea, Nut Hut treats, Doctor Who DVDs and catching up with all the televisual treats from America like Kristin Bell’s first episode of Heroes where she plays a more electric Veronica Mars, in Ireland, with the terrible Oirish Accented actors. She speaks normal though. To be sure, to be sure…

I almost forgot to check The Daily McCann Frontpage!

They’re still there. I wonder if any of the 14 questions are “Why are you still taking up newspaper frontpages 6 months later?” or “What the hell were you thinking?” And has Keith Richards gone missing from his bed too after being left unattended? What are the chances?

In Who Cares News, Simply Red are splitting up. Well, Mick Hucknall said so. Which confused me as I thought Simply Red was just Mick Hucknall, ever since the band members all left over the years. So is he in fact an amoeba? How is he splitting up from himself? I cannot wait until 2009 to witness this scientific anomaly take place.

I wonder which of the Mick Hucknalls will have the most successful solo career? I think Mick 2 will beat Mick 1. They should make a crap reality show about this… Huck Idol?

Oh dear. I shall shut up now.