Busy week, inluding the inevitable packing up the office leading into the Big Sales Conference Organised By Me taking place while ‘some men’ moved all the stuff to the new premises. Which I have not seen yet and still have no key for. Whoops. Hmm… I am looking forward to getting in there and sorting it all out and resisted the urge to leave a gift-wrapped poo on a certain lazy liar’s desk before I left. She’s never at it so would not have noticed until Christmas even if I had done my dirty protest. I am a grown up so I thought better of this, as proven by my wearing of a suit on Thursday. No tie of course, so last year.

Unexciting things this week:

Trying to find a copy of issue 4 of Phonogram Singles Club in London and failing.

Sanding down painty lumps in the lounge walls very badly.

A lot of cardboard boxes and parcel tape. I swear I dreamt about this too.

Attempting to watch Funny People but deciding that as there were no funny, just lots of people, and its 4.3 hours running length was a bit long that it may be best to not bother. Damn, Apaptow was one of my big entertainment cheeses in his TV era and the films bug me because of this. If I wanted to watch ugly dumb potty-mouthed men bragging about pussy I would still be managing a Pizza Hut delivery unit.

Exciting things this week:

Sia leaked a song from her 2010 album!

The BNP befriended a Muslim-hating Sikh and the usual tools failed to see the irony.

Daily Mail readers love the now-no-longer-racist party. Ironies.

Patrick Wolf done made a video for that good song:

I liked the new Muse single:

The first part of that Doctor Who animation appeared and it was alright if you like that sort of thing.


I am old skool so I find the CGI-ness a bit creepy, and the characters just look stoopid when running. Animated Who can be great though, see the DVD of The Invasion for an example.

The Sarah Jane Adventures finished and it was overall a good old fun load of nonsense. Really deserves a repeat slot in a more prime time timey wimey zone though as it definitely deserves a wider audience. The first story was the weakest but there were some strong ones this year including a mad wedding episode, Floella Benjamim vs ghosts, the absurd but funny loopy northern Mona Lisa rampage and some good gungeing this week.

Roll on series 4 please. CBBC is so much better than it gets credit for (is it Ed & Oucho December yet?).

With one day to go until a certain Timelord returns to our screens I thought I’d fill some blog space by mentioning an amusing article in today’s Guardian about the political inspirations of Doctor Who monsters (yes really) and then show this picture:

Looks a bit like a classic series DVD cover design to me.

Also: Trailer

Might as well remind the world (or the dozen people who read this) about The Sarah Jane Adventures being on the BBC iPlayer )coming to a Wii near you soon!) where the latest story has the Mona Lisa running riot in an art gallery in that camp brassy northern manner that she is famous for…

Before all that I have to go to the supermarket, finish off my skirting boards (not a euphamism) and paint the lounge ceiling. It’s thrilling to be a grown-up.

Today:

Part 2 of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. Part one (yesterday) was the best episode of Doctor Who in ages (last Christmas and Easter never happened, ok?) and it’s on the funky iPlayer (it’s no chewed up Betamax of The Caves of Androzani, I love the futuristic present) so you have no excuse.

15th November:

The Waters of Mars! On a Sunday! Not live at all from Bowie Base One!

Scary… and wet.

Good news! Talk About The Passion is back after its hiatus.

It’s regenerated but does not play the spoons and is incapable of gurning… and not talking of that at all, did you see Sylvester McCoy playing a has-been kids’ TV star on Doctors (with peculiar Scottish/Generic Northern accent and magical traffic lollipop) and a has-been ventriloquist (with peculiar Scottish/Cockney accent and homosexual dummy co-star) on Casualty?

Good times for television but it’s all overlapping in my brain: Monica from Heroes turned up in Pushing Daisies in the same week that Heroes featured The Wire’s Marlo Stanfield and Bubbles as some of the new villains. We’re only up to season two of The Wire (we have a bit of a backlog) and have just seen Holly from The Office discover thirteen dead bodies at the docks. What’s next? Doctor Suresh as a pie-loving gangsta with a paper fetish? Well it wouldn’t be that far-fetched considering his current plot, would it? I am loving Heroes at the moment even though it is completely insane. I suppose that’s the extreme comicbookness of the whole thing, what with it being like one of those old crazy X-Men series crossover stories. I forsee a cull as there are maybe a few too many characters at the moment (well it is Hollyoaks with powers) but it’s fun and fun is what we need. Pushing Daisies is okay but something seems a bit off. The current episode showed improvement but it always makes me want pie, damnit. Never a taxidermist-approved dog though, although that would fit in well over at True Blood where it’s as comicbook as Heroes. There seems to be a rule of one murder and one bum shot per episode but it’s another of those very silly but entertaining shows that I recommend to the geeks.

Meanwhile, here are the rest of my non-essential Christmas List DVDs:

Inexplicably popular school inspector memoir peddler Gervais Phinn does Macaulay Culkin?

Scooby-Doo meets Batman? Hmm… now that I think about it, I wouldn’t mind this one.

Thriller? Only if he drove over the cliff. How tiresome.

Just an unfunny c**t.

Oh those poor parents. How much more milk can Disney get out of those overly-styled ‘high schoolers’? Still, at least it “works with any DVD player”!

I have other better things on my real Christmas list. Well I did, but I kept buying them.

Memo to self:

Do not Facebook-stalk the cast of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

This week I have been liking things.

I liked the American remake of Kath & Kim even though I thought I would not like it, due to awful trailers.

No Sharon, thank fuck.

I liked It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia this week as usual but maybe a little bit more because it was a bit meta with its whole “poop is funny” ending and the way they showed off the by-now-rather-good occasional characters in interlinking plots about Dee wanting to turn her life into the Sex & The City movie but having no real friends or money or men, and a plot about who pooed in the bed. Sounds juvenile? Yes of course, but unlike some other juvenile comedy it actually made me laugh because it looked like everyone involved was having fun. Even Fred Savage, who seems to direct every other episode these days.

I liked The Sarah Jane Adventures’ new girl. Maria had a tendency to be whiney and occasionally wooden but the replacement got off to a good start despite looking too old for school.

Will I misss Rubbish Mum? Probably, just a little bit.

I liked going to the pub with the old gang and some of the new gang who were going back to their own gangs.

And I liked the cheesecake so much I made it my face.

I liked the Keane album very much indeed. I did not go to posh school and have not been addicted to port or any other ‘hilarious’ things that lesser beings could moan on about. It’s simply a very good pop album, hurrah, so here’s a review:
Spiralling: Funky, synthy, fun, bouncy, pop with a 1980s Bowie tinge.
Lovers Are Losing: Epic, Keaney, heavy vibes with nice little interludey bit.
Better Than This: Ashes To Ashes noises and banjos with handclaps? What’s not to like?
You Haven’t Told Me Anything: Angsty, drum machiney and electro with a nice build up.
Perfect Symmetry: Excellent stuff. The piano returns in the song about religion not being very good when it leads to bad things. Goes a bit Killers 2/3 of the way through.
You Don’t See Me: The quiet one after the noisy ones. Like that you’d expect but that’s no bad thing.
Again & Again: Another good one for the radio.
Playing Along: I thought this was called Turn Up The Volume, for obvious reasons. Nice tune, gets a bit choiry.
Pretend That You’re Alone: The nice cheesey one?
Black Burning Heart: More pop, synths and pianos this time.
Love Is the End: The chillout one. More watery lyrics, good ending.

Oh no, I am crap at mini reviews. I could borrow N**l G******r’s and just say “shit” but I am not a tedious old has-been who tries to deflect his own shortcomings by slagging off all his rivals whenever he has anther reheated turd to flog. Meh.

It’s been a Doctor Who weekend here with the entire Trial Of A Timelord boxset being watched. It may be regarded as not a classic at all (fair comment) but the DVD is pretty damn special, with a great collection of documentaries, commentaries and clips. Not forgetting these two who created these things:

I hope Russell “Tea?” Davies brings the Vervoids back for one of the forthcoming specials. If that’s not possible how about The Garm or at a push I’d settle for The Borad.

I cannot decide whether I am excited or disturbed by these forthcoming plays:

Key2Time? Very text messagey. It has a good cast and reliable writers so it’s more a case of wait and see.

I am late to the game but this is rather fun:

Sarah Jane returns tomorrow afternoon… and I love it. It’s not just for ten year olds, and is much preferable to Torchwood in this house. No bumming. It has a Sontaran if that helps.

The forthcoming books look quite interesting too. Now they are technically for kids and I don’t actually buy them but I like the pretty covers. I did buy something similarish though:

But it’s not for me. Got to support your local bookshop even if that means early Christmas shopping.

Look what’s coming soon:

Exciting. But the information on certain shoppy sites is incorrect.

From Play.com :

“47,875 survivors in search of a home called Earth.”

The fourth and final season of the hit TV show!

Except it’s not, as only half of the season has been shown so far due to that bloody strike. This is the equivalent of those half season boxsets that Heroes and Lost come out in so it’s technically Season 4.1 or whatever you should call it. Still highly recommended and I know someone who will be very pleased to purchase it on 6th October as he hasn’t seen any of it. Not me of course, I couldn’t possibly wait that long and I shall put it on the rapidly-expanding Christmas list with this delight that Ben pointed out to me:

All 10 episodes!
The pilot!
DVD extras!

The Sarah Jane Adventures season 1 is due 10th November. Not just for 10 year olds.

What a peculiar few days…

I got asked to open a bottle of sparkling mineral water for a lady on the tube and luckily didn;t go all weak and feeble.

I booked my leaving do restaurant.

I got my Euros for the France Trip.

I laughed at the puny Daily Mail readers’ over-reacting to the Google Earth story by not reading the words and jumping to the usual mentalist conclusions.

“So where will the thieves start first?, talk about an online catalogue.”- Ken Smith, Swindon, Wilts, 10/7/2008 17:27

“Were emigrating, we’ve had enough of Brown’s Big Brother Britain. Who gave Google permission in the first place to spy. Tony and Gordon who else!” – Dee, Hampshire, England, 11/7/2008 0:41

What was that phrase used in the article? Oh yes:

So shut it.

I decided that the Google Cars were not as interesting as this car:

I ran out of things to do in the bookshop.

I still liked that new Verve song (mp3 here) with the owls and monkeys in it.

I went to London for my Exit Interview (and Forbidden Planet trip) and got rather damp, warm, pissed off and happy.

I went “hmmm…” at this picture:

I got freaked out by some proper acting in Hollyoaks followed by an appearance from the old old feem toon of yesteryear.

I was relieved that even though I am misssing the Mitchell & Webb Event on Sunday due to being in another country I have a spy there.

I gave the first two of my Starman trade paperbacks after replacing them with the super duper new Starman Omnibus Volume 1.

Mmmm, superior comicbook family crisis superhero saga!

And that’s what I did. Then I ate sixty four croissants and drank twenty three cups of coffee.

Now I am not a maths genius but this Gary Coleman wedding exclusive story’s numbers don’t appear to add up…

She’s half his age? Yes, I suppose he must be quite old now. But twice his height? He married a giant? How tall is he anyway?

From the rubbish paper: While Price is just 22 and 5ft 7in, the actor is 40 and 4ft 8in.

So she’s not 9 ft 4 in. Meh. That would have been much more fun.

Some new Sarah Jane Adventures figures are coming…

ETA 28th March. After my birthday. Meh.

Lykke Li is “the new Robyn” allegedly, but that’s just because she’s from Sweden and not completely cheesey. Her album is pretty fantastic and if you like lazy comparisons she is Robyn in a melancholy mood after someone nicked her drum machines. This live acoustic video performance of I’m Good, I’m Gone features a whole load of famous Swedes but sadly no mash. Robyn fans might recognise the lady with the short funny hair who looks a lot like Robyn. Did I mention Robyn yet?.

Here’s the single, Little Bit, to further tempt you:

Well I’m buying it. Don’t know about you lot.

My health is all odd this week: Nosebleeds, broken sleep patterns and more poos than normal. I have no idea what it means though as I am not a doctor. But I know someone who knows a man who is…

The Sarah Jane Adventures has been recomissioned. Of course it has, it’s fantastic. The marvellous Lis Sladen herself told SFX “Yes, we’re doing 24 episodes… I think we start end of March.” Geeks everywhere rejoiced.

Wednesday was Muslims, yesterday was Poles, so what’s it to be today?

Romanians! Well it is Nasty Foreigners Week at The Express after all. Do they mean this lot?

I hope that’s just the stitching of her hotpants and not, well, you know.

(Purchased) Album Of The Week: Lightspeed Champion or Cat Power? Or The Eels? They’re all special double disc editions of course, I need to listen to them again and decide but I like them all. Don’t make me choose! I may know by tomorrow, when I’ll have time to waffle (mmmm waffles) a bit about each one.

Those new Kylie remixes are leaking all over the place like an incontinent person whose urine is made of glitterballs. Which sounds painful. The Wow (click here) ones are a mixed bag and the In My Arms (click here) ones are a bit too trendy for an old git like me.

I really must watch the latest Torchwood, Jpod, Nip/Tuck, Pop On Trial and Hollyoaks, plus that Breaking Bad thing that looks highly bloggable. Maybe tomorrow, with some ironing. Such glamour.