Thanks, Birthdays, Comedy and The Mail.
Just a quick one today, work has been hella busy today. It seems that the nation's worst newspaper did a small feature on us over the weekend, leading to a ton of orders. I've been processing the Internet orders all morning. On the upside I get to stick my headphones in and listen to the new Coalesce album, downside, every time I enter someones details I know that they are a Daily Mail reader and I find myself wondering what they made of the Jan Moir article. Oh well.
It's Ellen's birthday today, so this morning was the presents giving event, with Rosie trying to unwrap them all before Ellen could. Frankly though, she's rubbish at it, so Ellen managed to unwrap most of them and Rosie just played with the paper.
Tonight we're off to the theatre. Well, a theatre, to go and see Simon Amstell. Despite me being a huge fan of stand up, I've not been to see any stand up outside of a festival comedy tent since I did my work experience at Jongleurs comedy club in London in the mid 90's, so I'm really excited.
Also, I've realised that if this week goes as well as recent weeks around here, I will have passed 1000 visitors by the end of this week, which is not bad since I only launched in August. It took a year and a half to reach this sort of total on the old site, and while I am under no illusions that these numbers make me a rival to any of the blogs I read, it's lovely to know that there are people out there reading. So I just wanted to say a big thank you to you for stopping by, and I'll try to keep up some semblance of quality for you.
Deafness and a Deftness of Touch
For some reason the cold that I've had for what seems like an age has spread to my ears, leaving me in a cloud of half heard phrases and general befuddlement. I can only hear what people are saying to me if I am looking at them when I say it, which is leading to some interesting conversations at work, and me missing out when people offer to make me a coffee.
Other than that not a lot to report in the world of Paul, except that Ellen and I are off to see Simon Amstell next week for her birthday, so that should be fun. Oh, and Gray from Cross Blogination is, as I type one third of the way through his marathon 48 hour tweetathon on twitter. It's pretty impressive given that he's already had two PC's die on him, but I'm really looking forward to the point tomorrow when he stops being able to form complete sentences and starts to converse in single letters and emoticons.
If you applaud his effort then by all means to do watch his progress and donate some money on his Just Giving page. He's up to nearly £500 so far and if he gets to £1000 he's going to get a tattoo. It's all for a good cause.
I don't know about you, but I'm starting to suffer a little bit of Celebrity Death fatigue. With the announcement that Stephen Gately had died from 'not in any way mysterious circumststances' the sympathetic mode of my brain is no longer able to function and goes straight to the point where I start to make jokes. When I got to work today I mentioned that it was probably the remaining Boyzone members bumping him off to increase record sales and was met with nothing more than contemptuous glares.
Of course it's very sad that someone of his age should be cut down in the prime of life, and I do respect the impact he had on the acceptance of gay rights in this country, but at the end of the day he was a singer in a truly awful band whose main accomplishment was to spawn the career of Ronan Keating. I'm just saying. And now we're going to spend the next month avoiding every single music channel, lest we bump into a Boyzone memorial marathon.
Super Rabbis
In this time of economic apocalypse and global pandemics, I can't help but wonder what life would be like if the comics I grew up with were real. Would the current insanity over American healthcare be solved by Batman? Would Superman stop global warming?
But alas, we live in a world where no such extraordinary beings exist. Or do we? Imagine my delight as I found the headline 'Airborne rabbis fight off swine flu' parading on the BBC News website. Could it be true, that these men of God have finally been rewarded by their deity for their hard work and been given the twin gifts of flight and mass inoculation?
No. It turns out that a bunch of religious fellas have taken to flying above Israel (in planes, not under their own power) and, um, praying and ringing some bells.
According to the article;
The flight's aim was "to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it," Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Aharanot newspaper.
I'm sure that will work mate, but just in case, you're stocking up on Tamiflu, right?
Griffin Vs Bale
Genius. Of all the Bale stuff out there, this is the best I've seen (heard?) so far.
Not entirely sold
News today that there may in the ether be a forthcoming Bill Hicks biopic movie delight me in the same way as mint choc chip ice cream, but the rumours that erstwhile Aussie nutbar Russell Crowe is sketched in as the lead worry me. Sure, he looks the part, as Empire rightly point out, and he has a brooding intensity that goes well with Bill's stage persona, but I just worry that he doesn't have the necessary lightness of touch that Hicks coloured his life and his act with.
Ho hum, at the very least this will bring a bit more attention to the man who I can clearly state has been more of an influence on my way of thinking than any of the mish mash of pop culture that formed my personality. I am a product of tv, music and radio, like many of my generation, but it wasn't until Bill came along that I saw the fallacy of these teachings and looked at them with eyes anew. A true original, the greatest stand up ever, and ever since my first year of Uni, when a friend whose name I can't even remember now lent me a copy of 'Rant In E Minor' more of a God than a man to me.
Today I started reading 'The Liar' by Stephen Fry. I have never read any of this books, and find I am already quite taken. Yesterday I finished Cormac Macarthy's 'No Country For Old Men,' which was majestic and depressing, with an even more downbeat ending than the film, if that's even possible.
Tess Daly
Immense thanks (or indeed props) go to Heather for pointing out the following video to me:
I haven't laughed that hard in a good long while. However, Miss Heather, I see your Fucking Hoff Style and I raise you this!
If you make it to the end of this second one the title of this post will make sense.
It seems the world of dating in the modern rock scene is more dangerous than I had thought. It seems that after I blew off the girl who so spectacularly fucked up my New Years the other night at Fibbers, she has retaliated in that most crushing of ways. She has deleted me as a Myspace friend! How ever will I cope? They'll all be laughing at me in the factory where they manufacture skin-tight jeans and MCR hoodies!
Edit: It seems that her conscience has gotten the better of her and she has undeleted me! Oh well. I'm going to go and watch a Will Smith romcom to compound my lack of taste.
Doctor Heaven
It's possibly a tad embarrassing as a self pronounced sci-fi nerd to admit that the current series of Doctor Who has passed me by without a glance, mainly because my housemates hate it and I can never be bothered to argue the point. So imagine my glee this evening apon their announcement of decampment to the local ale house to discover that BBC3 was showing four back to back episodes leading up to tommorow's end of seson finale. What I discovered was four fantastic episodes of brilliantly scripted and tremendously well executed slabs of classic sci-fi nonsense about young girls kidnapping people through the medium of crayons, Peter Kay doing his best Fat-Bastard-from-Austin-Powers impression and truckloads of Cybermen. Excellent.
I also noticed that there appears to be a new series of The Shield that has started on Five. Unfortunately I came a bit late to the party with this show, and as much as I love it, I've still yet to see season three, which has inexplicably recieved no region 2 release on DVD. If anyone has any idea when this is coming out, please let me know.
At this point I'm sure many of you would point out that I can easily download such episodes. This is true, but I'm not a fan of illegal downloads of any kind. I have never downloaded a CD in my life, mainly because a lot of the music I like is made by small bands who struggle for funds. I mean, Metallica is one thing, but if I were to keep downloading things like Today Is The Day or Bossk (whose excellent ep is currently delighting my ears) or Knut, how are these bands supposed to survive? And besides, I like my DVD shelf, all nicely lined up and pretty. It's not the same on a computer. Now I am slightly hypocritcal in some respect, because I will gleefully borrow CDs off of a friend to listen to on my MP3 player. but if I really like them, I will then go and buy them. And besides, I'm a big fan of packaging, lyric sheets, and with DVD's, special features. Maybe I'm just old fashioned that way.
Before I go, I'd like to point you in the direction of one of the funniest flash animations I've seen in years. If you don't find it raises even the slightest of chuckles, then you have no soul. And isn't it great that poking fun at Bush just never grows old? John Culshaw was interviewed on Jonathan Ross tonight, and he said that come 2008 there will be a big comedy hole where he used to be. I tend to agree.
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