Busy busy busy but good kind of busy. Last Saturday was a special occasion  where I met some of my friends with some of my other friends for the first time in Fancy London. Gawd bless the internets. Shame about the usual weekend lack of tube service plus cancelled replacement service and broken mega escalator and heatwave but a good time was had and included a lunch and beers in Chandos (I am now wishing it should be renamed Chantho’s and be run by insect people with a strange yet polite way of speaking) , the first trip in years to that vintage magazine shop in Soho (where my thrown-away past returned to haunt me, sealed in bags and priced as luxury goods), a bizarre visit to a second hand shop that mixed ladies’ shoes with 1970s annuals, the obligatory Forbidden Planet moment (Amy Pond and new Weeping Angel figures plus new Gotham Central volume) and  a gay old time being massive geeks about Doctor Who, comedy and precious things:

Yes I made a crappy montage. This relates to the Very Great Thing which was given birth to this week (not in a literal sense of course):

Oh yes, it’s issue two of Talk About The Passion: This time it’s a PDF! It’s free, like Mr Humphries and it lives here. My contribution is about Saint Etienne but there’s plenty of other good stuff inclusing a bloody big Frank Sidebottom  tribute.

I’ve been going made on Amazon  and buying far too much old 1990ish music: this week’s post included a dodgy C&C Music Factory Best Of (campest raps ever), the Seduction album (a bit ropey actually) and that old Beloved remix album that came out after their debut (marvellous). I got sick of the new Foxy Shazam album to get a UK release so bought the import and then the new James Yuill album  arrived in the post today and it is maybe even better than his debut, which is also good. Video of new single to illustate my point:

Other newish music of interest includes this new Mark Ronson track which I posted on Facebook the other week but forgot to put on here. It is bloody marvellous:

One for the mashup brigade now: it’s Reborn Identity: Jacko’s Rocket. mp3 is here.

Michael Jackson vs Goldfrapp – Jacko’s Rocket (mashup) from Reborn Identity on Vimeo.

Party Down was officially cancelled this week: meh.I need to find new shows to love. Louie looks promising, will watch the first two at the weekend. No it’s not about that gurning gaylord from the fruity dance studio (not homophobia, just fact. I am a gay myself).

I  gained one point in amusement over the irony of Littlejohn’s ridiculous moan about people on the internet (the toad hates criticism):

And finally:

*shakes fist* BARROWMAN!!!!

So…

It seems issue one of Talk About The Passion is out!

Now!

In no shops but in this website which shares its name for obvious reasons!

To buy!

From the internet!

Now!

My page about Mitchell & Webb and my paragraph about Doctor Who are just two of the splendid things you will find inside its shiny (just like my massive face)pages.

Can I stop taking photographs of myself with it in my bathroom now please?

Well… this looks rather spiffing, doesn’t it? Not just because I contributed some bits to it, know the people who created it and know that they all picked great subjects to write about …

From the blurb:

From the makers of Talk About The Passion the website comes Talk About The Passion the magazine, a new quarterly publication from your TATP pals (and them ones you much care for too) filled with the facts, articles, columns, contests, lists and various ephemera that we think is interesting and you might just too.

Issue One is priced just £3 (including p&p) and includes pieces on: Ed, Oucho And The Rise Of CBBC, 1999 remembered, Number Two Singles, the Radio Times, Godzilla’s early days, the very best of BBC Records, Charity Shop Challenge, dead rock stars, sticker books, Final Fantasy books, Mitchell and Webb, The Best Ten Horror Films Of All Time and much more as well.

To buy a copy and support potential future issues, click the button below (actually, click here to go to where the button is) and order via Google Checkout, which is like PayPal but not a load of old wank.

Want to take a peek inside first? Download an extract from Issue One now, and take a look at a small selection of the fantastic features that await you in the real thing.

You might have noticed that is has snowed. A lot. Which is different, interesting, etc. Also: Annoying if you have to go to work and cannot. But hurrah for Working From Home on the world’s slowest remote access which I believe might actually be powered by tiny mice. With asthma.

Obligatory snow photo, using my fancy new camera’s ‘Snow’ setting:

Without ‘Snow’ setting it is a little bit blue. No, not in that way.

Brrr! I fancy a nice cup of coffee…

Oh bugger. Science story in The World’s Greatest Newspaper says no!

Talk About The Passion Singles Club episode 2 is up and I enjoyed taking part, again, but I think I ruined it by sharing the anti-LOLz of this photo of Alan Carr blacked up to be the world’s poofiest Barack Obama impression, ever:

Does not compute! Delete!

Now if Alan wants lessons on how to be rather poofy in a comedy stylee then he is in luck as a certain DVD is released on 16th March:

Now this is more like it!

With Miriam Margolyes AND Michael Sheard alongside John Inman and Rula Lenska? How can I resist? I could cry tears of laughter / horror / shame…

Is Barack Obama the new Tiny Tears? What?

Mail readers have final say on the cold weather:

Don’t smell the coffee! You’ll see dead people! Read the science!

Bonus excellent trailer:

Now THAT is how to edit a Hartnell story (or two in this case) for maximum excitingness!

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.

Item! We ran out of tea bags at home for the first time ever. This should have been impossible due to the sheer addiction we have to the stuff and the amount of kitchen cupboards. Could it be a sign of deteriorating mental faculties? I hope not.

Item! You’d think that The Express might mention the terrorist attack in Pakistan on the front page. You’d be wrong as that was dedicated to something far more important to The World’s Greatest Newspaper:

Shopping! (and don’t mentions bums around Sir Cliff fans)

It’s inside though, but with a truly horrible Express slant:

Sod the dead brown people, what about the injured white British ones, eh? How utterly vile.

Item! My fellow blogger Mick Trimble is a comic book freak like myself but he actually gets to draw the bloody things. Lucky sod! November sees the release of Septic Isle, which I shall be purchasing:

From a Comics Bulletin interview that I stumbled upon while doing my rounds:

Writer Andy Winter: “What would happen if a Bond-style character stopped fighting weird secret organizations and billionaire madmen and had to deal with more realistic enemies of the state in 21st century Britain?”

Artist Mick Trimble: “Actually, I’m worried that MI5 have a file on me in real life because of the search terms I put into Google when I was researching this book! Amongst other things, I’ve researched Islamist suicide bombers, the 7/7 attacks and the MI5 building itself (which I got wrong and had to re-draw! Google is not infallible, kids!). I also looked at the neo-Nazi sites Andy mentioned and it really is sickening what’s out there, but this book had to look realistic, not fantastic, so the research had to be done. I’m just worried about the weird clicking noise my phone now makes whenever I make a call!”

Item! I haven’t mentioned Talk About The Passion for a while and really should as it is one of the few places I visit that can provide me with a few minutes of fact-based entertainment during a break from my office-based untertainment.

In the last week we’ve seen the Top 10 Zeroids Number Ones (the decade that should never be called the “noughties”), a Jimmy Hendresque quiz where cut-outs of Mr Hendrix’s face obscure other famous Jimmys that need identifying, the second half of a Mel Brooks and John Morris history, a guide to the brief trend almost 20 years ago for European dance pop acts to recruit skinny people to mime the vocals of big old divas, and a Top 10 90s Number Ones. Not bad at all and something for everyone, if they are partial to geekisms (not that there is anything wrong with that at all). One of the above was written by me but I love the site dearly like a pair of comfortable shoes or a big cake.

Item! ITV(2) have gone and done a sitcom about superheroes. This concerned me.

It stars some people from Nathan Barley. This also concerned me.

I thought I should watch it and see for myself…

Oh dear. No Heroics didn’t make me laugh at all. If you find men calling other men “homo” and women referred to as slags on numerous occasions entertaining then you might like it.

Item! Episode 2 of True Blood is much better than anything on ITV. Sookie invites Vampire Bill round for tea and while Gran is fascinated by tales of the olden days Jason gets pissed off because all of the ladies he has been shagging seem to prefer vamps and Tara gets uppity about Bill recalling the days of slavery. What a peculiar show this is, but I love it. Bonus points for the magazine headline about Angelina adopting a vampire baby. Oh those crazy writers! True Blood has already been renewed for a second season.

Item! This week’s Dan article over at Talk About The Passion is in the place. It’s Talk About The Buffalo Stance so click and read and comment please. And then click and read and comment on some of the other slightly nerdy things you will find there as written by my geek chums.

What is she like? I have no idea.

Item! The Daily Express confused me with its bragging yesterday:

The bit I am referring to is the graphic below the logo. For people who don’t have Kryptionian super vision it says ‘Still only 40p. 10p cheaper than The Daily Mail and ten times better’ which when coupled with their daily ‘World’s greatest newspaper’ quote made me wonder exactly what kind of evidence the Express needs to print anything anymore? As their headlines seem to mostly be random ‘fings iz expensive’ percentages attached to no comparable data since they got sued by The McCanns (The Daily Express’ Madeleine book got withdrawn from sale in bookshops that stocked it this week due to “legal reasons”) and Diana was proven to have died of what everyone thought she’d died of in the first place, you could almost feel sorry for them.

But oh no not me.

Item! My iPod thinks the Last Shadow Puppets album is ‘genre: Country’ for some reason, when in fact we all know it is ‘genre: Arctic Monkeys + skiffle + feem toons + twins + hype’ but it really is quite good, I am just being odd. I would say it’s for people who quite like those Arctic Monkeys but find them a bit noisy. People like me, then.

Item! The regular version is a bit too obvious-sounding so I choose this live version of Kleerup and Titiyo’s Longing For Lullabies.

I am on a Swedish pop mission at the moment, as heard in That Bookshop today when the playlist included The Knife, A Camp, Lyyke Li and Robin. But no Ace Of Base or Stakka Bo for some reason.*

Item! Nice to see the usual double standards in the gutter, sorry, tabloid press this week. If John Prescott was a woman would we ever see such insight as “He’s never been bulimic, just greedy. His approach to food mirrored his approach to life – gorging himself on houses, hotels, helicopters, limousines, first-class travel, free tickets and the typing pool. And now we’re asked to buy the idea that he’s some kind of victim, baring his soul in the hope that it might help unfortunate young women. Excuse me, I think I’m going to be sick.” that was written, in crayon from his gated community in Florida where he writes columns about how bad Britain is, by Richard Littlejohn. What a bell end. Again.

Item! Torchwood 3 is allegedly going to be a five episode miniseries only, and with a line-up of characters that will not please Daily Mail reading types. Heh.

*The reason being that they are rubbish.

Hit whore that I am, I feel the urge to plug my second article over at Talk About The Passion.

This time: Talk About The Crowded Tardis!

Quelle surprise.

Odd moments of the past few days included my attempting to inflate a blow-up Dalek but instead finding all my wind re-directed to the wrong end of my body, going for an eye test and finding the opticians had turned into a Daily Mail ‘Have Your Say’ forum made flesh (“feral kids” , “foreigners”, “…ruined this country”, and “I’m not racist but…”) , re-acquainting myself with Cardigans love after devouring the double disc new Best Of, almost falling asleep standing up after a particularly horrific first few days back at work after my holiday, enjoying the Torchwood episode written by Joe Lidster (“I’m broken!”) and not just because he wrote some of my favourite Big Finish audio plays, finishing off and starting some geeky bits and pieces for elsewhere (mostly pies and rubbish mutants) and deciding not to blog every single day just for the sake of it. What a good idea.

So what got me clicking my mouse like a loon today? Well…

It’s only the first batch of character portraits from the forthcoming Watchmen film. I had to be silly with them though.

There are more over at the official place where that sort of thing happens.