Between the endless lingering shots of Danielle Bux on ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen the other night, I was struck by how, in a few year’s time, Bruce Grobelaar will look alarmingly like George Galloway MP.
Although, now I think about it, I may well mean that the other way round.
As well as the scripts for three episodes, The Wire Bible is now available online.
(I’m as yet un-evangelical about the programme, having only seen a handful of episodes; by the way, BBC, if you’re going to put a show on every night, how about putting it on at the same time so people who don’t have Sky+ [people who might have, for example, got a freeview box in line with the BBC’s suggestions that people get ready for the digital switchover] can watch it? Just a thought.)
There’s an idiot of my acquaintance who claims to be able to heal people by waving his hands around them whilst they stand up.
He tried it on me once, and confidently told me that I had some back pain, which I told him was not the case, and cheerfully asked him why he’d missed the fact I had a blinding near-migraine headache which was rendering me half-blind in one eye. Hmph. He also claims to be able to heal people over the phone, so he doesn’t even need to be in the same place as them. I don’t know if he’s genuinely deluded or lying to extract money from the unwary, but I think that on any reasonable assessment of, y’know, facts, it’s pretty clear what he’s saying isn’t true.
Mind you, I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m equating belief in such matters with idiocy – he’s an idiot in many other regards, but as that rather strays into personal stuff I needn’t share here, I won’t go into any more details; suffice to say people who know me well, and of some of the events of the past five years, will know who I’m talking about.
Anyway, as hot is matched by cold and day is twinned with night, so such idiocy is balanced by intelligence; nature, they say, abhors a vacuum, and I guess it also dislikes a prevalence of empty brains, for there are people in the world who are very happily married to the accumulation of knowledge through verifiable experimentation and the accretion of provable facts.
Such a person is Ben Goldacre.
Ben – and I’ll call him that so he doesn’t sound like a Bond villain – writes on the subject of Bad Science in various newspapers and his blog of that title, and is frequently a clear voice of sense in an area which is all too often (and, it seems, all too easily) rendered indistinct and vague by all sorts of new-agey woo-woo. If you haven’t visited his blog before, I recommend a look.
And it’s because of a recent update to his blog that I’m posting; some time ago, Ben suggested it wasn’t right that vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was taking out adverts denouncing the use of AIDS drugs in South Africa, and promoting his vitamin pills at the same time. Mr Rath took umbrage with this, and sued Ben and the paper that his comments were published in, claiming libel. The case went on for over twelve months, until Mr Rath withdrew the case – but by this time the costs involved in fighting the action were around half a million pounds. Steps are being taken to recover this money, but in the meantime, the removal of the legal action means that Ben’s free to add his chapter on Rath to his book – also called Bad Science – but in order to get the information ‘out there’ to as many people as possible, he’s also put the entire chapter on the web.
You can find it as a PDF here or, if you don’t have Adobe Reader, it’s available as an MS Word document here.
I’m ashamed to admit that, whilst I’ve always enjoyed his blog and print work (and he came over well on some TV consumer-thing I saw him in the other week), I don’t yet own a copy of Ben’s book. Methinks I should set about remedying that…
You need to have an iTunes account and be over 13 years old, but if that applies to you and you’d like to download a free copy of the episode Last Of The Time Lords, then click here.
Offer ends on Monday 20th April, and is something to do with the Radio Times, I think. I have to say, you don’t get that quality of freebie with TV Quick.
Perhaps it’s the fact that they’re both would-be lotharios, but I feel that Jay of The Inbetweeners (played by James Buckley) looks rather like a young version of Jack from On The Buses, as played by Bob Grant.
Just me, then? Ah well.
Anyway, The Inbetweeners is a horribly accurate depiction of male teenagers, and very funny as a result. Have a look at it by following the link above – all the episodes are, I think, free to download or stream from Channel 4’s 4OnDemand service, so you can see if you like it for nought pee.
However, for those of you who’ve watched the show, there’s an interesting item to be found here. It’s an interview with Matt Haley, who was lined up to be the artist on a comic continuation of the story. Yes, I know, I’d never heard of it either, but it’s an interesting tale of a nearly-was, and from the look of Matt’s art (an example of which is attached to this post), he would have been a good choice of artist.
So, worth clicking on that link, I’d say. And one day, I promise, I’ll post about why I consider Twin Peaks to be so good, and important. Maybe I should make it a whole series of posts, in fact.
Oh yes, the world is holding its breath as it waits for my ill-informed comments about a long-cancelled TV show, no question about that.
So then, join me in being slightly bemused by the forthcoming Star Trek fragrances.
Pictured are the two aimed at men, Tiberius, which will enable you to shout the word “Khan” with startling passion, and – more amusingly to my mind – Red Shirt, because (and I quote) “Tomorrow may never come”. For the ladies, and not pictured (but you can find out more about it at the link), there’s a fragrance named after a Vulcan mating ritual, which I can only hope is a bit more alluring than it sounds.
Still, as one who frequents comic shops and other purveyors of TV and Film merchandise, it’s nice to see someone’s – well, if not necessarily conceding that some hardcore Trek fans can be a bit on the whiffy side, at least addressing the possibility. And in a collectible fashion, no less.
Forget warp drives, that’s what I call progress.
Consider, if you will, the following; the first two are taken from Twin Peaks, and are spoken by Moriarty-like villain Windom Earle, and the third quote is from Rupert Giles in Buffy The Vampire Slayer:
Earle:
“…A place of almost unimaginable power, chock full of dark forces and vicious secrets. No prayers dare enter this frightful maw for sprits there care not for good deeds or priestly implications. They are likely to rip the flesh from your bones then greet you with a happy “good day”. And of the highest, these spirits in this hidden land of unmuffeled screams and broken hearts offer up a power so vast that its bearer might reorder the Earth, to his liking. Now this place is called the Black Lodge…”
[2×19]
Earle:
“…These evil sorcerers, dugpas, they call them, cultivate evil for the sake of evil and nothing else. They express themselves in darkness for darkness, without leavening motive. This ardent purity has allowed them to access a secret place of great power, where the cultivation of evil proceeds in exponential fashion. And with it, the furtherance of evil’s resulting power. These are not fairy tales, or myths. This place of power is tangible, and as such, can be found, entered, and perhaps, utilized in some fashion. The dugpas have many names for it, but chief among them is the Black Lodge…”
[2×20]
Giles:
“…The Spanish who first settled here called it ‘Boca del Infierno’. Roughly translated, ‘Hellmouth’. It’s a sort of, um, portal between this reality and the next.”
[1×2]
The Lodges in Twin Peaks owe a lot to the thinking of the Theosophists, granted, but I think it’s a fairly common idea that places can become in some way batteries for bad feelings, or centres of negativity.
I guess we’ve all known of places which somehow have a ‘bad vibe’, whether it’s a case of turning a corner in an unfamiliar area and getting a ‘bad feeling’, or the many reports of places that migrating birds avoid and the like. I suspect it’s more prevalent in fiction than reality (though tales of the Amityville House arguably straddle both those camps), but I somehow find the idea that a location can, in itself, be ‘bad’ and bring nothing but trouble for anyone who strays there, very interesting.
And if nothing else, it certainly explains the lives of the residents of Albert Square.
Today’s picture, incidentally, is by Gustave Dore, and is called The Gates Of Hell. Good artist, I think you’d agree.
It’s a few days into this year’s round of ScriptFrenzy.
You may have heard of this before – rather like a National Novel Writing Month for screenplays, the idea is to try to write 100 pages in screenplay form by the end of April. It doesn’t have to be one screenplay, and I think you can submit 100 pages out of a longer script as long as you’ve written them during April. I say ‘submit’ but it’s not as if there’s some stern judging panel or anything like that – it’s all in fun, and very much works on an honesty system, though I think you can submit your chunk of pages in a scrambled form to validate your page count. As for prizes, I think you can download certificates or icons or what have you, but I think the idea is more to feel the satisfaction of having done a healthy chunk of writing.
Anyway, is anybody out there having a go at this? I know it’s already underway, but it seems quite fun, and it could be an amusing spur for me to get on with a script which I’ve probably been thinking about for too long…
Oh, and did I mention that it’s free of charge to take part? I didn’t? Well, it is.
Free (well, you have to collect tokens) with the News Of The World last weekend: a pair of hair straighteners, as demonstrated by Nikki Sanderson, ex of Coronation Street, in the picture here.
Well, they’re saying that they’re hair straighteners, but on the basis of the picture, you’ll be getting something more like a stapler.
I can only hope Nikki doesn’t have to be anywhere in any kind of hurry, as with hair that long, and a pair of ‘straighteners’ that small, I think it’ll be a while yet before she’s ready to go out.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
