You never get remixes like this for songs from the UK.

This absolutely proves to me that Avril Lavigne is cool.



Now which is the emoticon for knowing cynicism or irony?

The curse of Thandie Newton

Hey everyone how have you been?
You've probably noticed I haven't updated this in weeks, that's because I haven't had anything to say - you see nothing interesting has happened it's all been very boring.

That was until today when I went to the cinema, where (as well as seeing a film) I also saw a trailer for Simon Pegg's new movie Run Fat Boy Run.
Now I find Simon Pegg a funny guy. I also find Dylan Moran who he is co starring with a funny guy. But the trailer looked remarkably unfunny and I couldn't work out what could ruin the comedic combination of Pegg and Moran.


And then I saw it - Thandie Newton.

Now I'm not saying that Thandie Newton is a terrible actress who can't act in films - that's just mean - I'm just saying any film she is in becomes crap. She is like the albatross from the Rime (spelt correctly) of the Ancient Mariner (you shoot her with a camera (not crossbow) and immediately your film becomes cursed).

Anyway enough of that let's look at the body of evidence to back up my theory (please bear in mind I'm only using films I've actually seen).

2006 The Pursuit of Happyness - Will Smith plays on human emotions and tries to win an Oscar.

2005/2004 ER - Yes that's right she starred in the TV show ER, infact she conveniently appeared opposite Dr Carter just as ER started to go downhill, coincidence?

2004 Crash - A film about how racism is bad and effects many different classes of society in everyday situations - Holy Shit really? I thought racism only occurred in prison on the feast of Scotchtoberfest.

2004 The Chronicles of Riddick - Pitch Black was good this was really bad, but in all fairness that was probably also down to Vin Diesel being self indulgent.

2000 Mission Impossible 2 - 1 and 3 are actually rather good. This movie is overly simplistic and clearly built around a poxy motorcycle chase, it's best described as mucky.

1994 Interview with a vampire - This didn't suck, but that's probably because the combined efforts of Brad Pitt, Christian Slater and Tom Cruise kept it afloat. Yes even Antonio Banderas half arsed acting can't ruin this.

So there we have it that's my theory. Now for once I'm not absolutely certain in my convictions instead I ask you the question:

Thandie Newton albatross of cinema or some random actress?

I stole this from popjustice.com

This is the Girl Aloud press release for their greatest hits.



It is probably one of the greatest contemporary things I have ever ever read. And supposedly it was written by Nicola (the ginger one). SO with this in mind I hereby declare this: Nicola Roberts I've always found you attractive (even though my friends claimed you looked sickly and had a fish head) but I figured we were mentally incompatible. If you did indeed write that press release we are in fact very compatible and I will actually marry you - FACT.

(Disclaimer: If on the other hand someone from the marketing department wrote that, then congratulations you have smashed the delicate illusion I envisaged around Girls Aloud and I'll never trust a televisual manufactured pop band again - ever).

Uber quick update

A) Transformers was great - an over solid 8/10 - yer it was flawed but it was really cool and visually arresting, so go see it. Oh and even if you hate the cheesey bits you'll have to admit that special effects wise it's spectacular.
B) The Simpsons movie was well plotted but just not as funny as it should have been 6/10.
C) Kate Nash' single Foundations must be absolutely blindingly brilliant as pretty much every person I've spoken to loves it (even some of my metal head friends) so well done her 8/10.
D) Turns out Waitrose Tropical fruit juice is an excellent Um Bongo substitute (it tastes exactly the same) so thus the problem was solved.

That is all.

Robot Week: The Killer 7th

Robot No.7 HK47



When George Lucas invented Star Wars all those years ago he probably didn't realise that A) Droids would be on the light and dark side of the force and B) Star Wars videogames would get so shit and find so little inspiration from the prequels they were supposed to tie in with that the best Star Wars game in years would be completely removed from the original world Lucas envisaged.

Anyway droid HK47 is a droid on the Dark side of the force who regards humans as meat bags and is a little head mental. (I'd quote it but I can' remember of the funny key lines). The point is HK47 is not humanities last hope just a random orange psycho.

Strengths: The Dark side is strong in this one.
Weaknesses: The Dark side is strong in this one.
Stuff it's been in that's great: Knights of the old Republic I and II

Robot Week: 666

This robot may not have as many weapons as Metal Gear but is still pretty terrifying. It also has less of a sense of moral decency than Bender.

Robot No.6 Paris Hilton


I'm pretty convinced Paris Hilton is a robot it would explain a lot. Like why she is so dead behind the eyes or what her actual function is in life.
Obviously being a robot is not an actual function in life, but being a sex-bot is.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories but I'm pretty sure Paris Sex-bot Hilton was sent in by some minor foreign nation to infiltrate the USA's social "elite". She was programmed to get in the pants of these tycoons young male offspring and thus manipulate (son to father to government) benefits for this foreign nation.

Strengths: She can manipulate the financially strong and mentally weak.
Weaknesses: Like Bender Paris gets her energy from alcohol.
Stuff she's been great in: Uh nothing counts as a choice, maybe.

Robot Week: 5

Robot No.5 EVA 01



It's huge, purple and green and humanities only hope (that's definitely a pattern in robots).

Strengths: It has a sonic knife for stabbing, access to giant automatic weaponry and something called an AT field which is basically a massive inbuilt shield. Also once it regenerated a limb.
Weaknesses: Although it has a battery to power it this only lasts 5 minutes, to be fully functional the Evangelion has to be plugged into the mains.
Stuff it's been in that's great: Neon Genesis Evangelion a morality tale about modern society and big robots.

Robot Week: Part 4

Moving away from the Robots in videogames thing.

Robot No.4 Bender



He's a smoking, drinking, swearing, stealing, manipulating machine that has a desire to kill all humans. But yet he does have a bizarre personal sense of moral decency.

Strengths: He can bend stuff.
Weaknesses: Alcohol provides him with the strength to work.
Stuff he's been in that's great: Futurama - probably my favourite animated comedy show. Yes I prefer it to the Simpsons it's a load of the jokes about videogames and Tron and the 80s and The Beastie Boys, it's as if Matt Groening made a show specifically for me.

Robot Week: Threes

I just posted the Probotector bit and realised due to the time I was one post down. So here we go again:

Robot No.3 Metal Gear



In the future we'll all have one of these to drive to work.

This is what Metal Gear Rex looks like in Lego form - you can see more of this guys work here


The little known Metal Gear Gander. Sorry I'm going on about this but I just think robots are neat.

(By the way: I don't know if the very definition of a robot means artificial intelligence is involved and as I'm too lazy to find out I'll just pretend it doesn't).

Metal Gear is a great big walking tank, that likes to shoot things. There are many different versions/iterations but the important things to note are A) It's bigger than you B) It has more weapons than you and C) It can't think for itself, but it probably does hate you.

Strengths: Lots of weapons (rail gun, laser, mini gun, missiles and Nuclear capable) and some form of quality radar system, Metal Gear Ray can swim.
Weaknesses: Requires someone to operate it (so may not technically be a robot). A single man with a rocket launcher can destroy it if he knows wear to shoot it. Also I'm not sure it's legs are that stable.
Stuff it's been in that's great: I very much recommend Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation (or Gamecube remake) and Metal Gear Solid on the Game boy Advance.

Robot Week: Part Deux

Robot No. 2 Probotector


The 2 gun approach is the way to help rebuild a post apocalyptic future.

America had Contra - a videogame series where a Rambo type bloke and a Schwarzenegger in Predator type bloke shot robots and aliens in the face. When it came to a European release (possibly because Germany had very strict videogame laws) Konami changed all the graphics of the Rambo guys (and some of them more human looking enemies) into Robots. So Rambo and Predator guy became robots called Probotectors and unsurprisingly they are humanities last hope in an Alien War (well at least in no.3 which is the best one).

Strengths: Probotectors carry two guns which have different firing and ammo modes depending on the power up collected. They also seem to be able to pull off excellent ending poses at the end of each mission.
Weaknesses: They get hit once and they die. If you were building humanities last hope would you really make them so on the cheap?
Stuff they've been in that's great: Probotector 1,2 on the NES and Super Probotector: Alien Rebels (or Probotector 3) on the SNES.

And so Robot Week begins

In celebration of the Transformers movie being in cinemas from Friday the 27th I have deemed this week robot week. Now this means I'll be writing a feature on a robot each day (if I can remember) for at least a week.

Now many of you have probably thought why don't you start this epic robot related extravaganza on Friday and then do it up to the day the Transformers movie is officially released. The answer is twofold: 1. I'm away for some of next week. 2. Previews for "possibly the best Michael Bay film ever" start next Tuesday.

Robot No.1 Astro boy/Megaman



Put a shirt on you'll catch a virus.


You'd be happy to if you were blue like that.

These two little guys count as one choice because it is obvious they are infact the same robot. It's just one was created in the 50s then the other one ripped off the one from the 50s in the 80s.

Strengths: Astroboy can fly, Megaman is Blue. Both have a gun in their arm. Megaman has a cool theme tune.
Weaknesses: Astroboy is plagued by weird men (that's what happens when you're a child and don't wear a shirt, and do wear shorts), Megaman relies too much on his dog.

Stuff they've been in that's great: The Astro boy TV series from 2004. Any show that features a line (that ws something like) "that robot ate the Rollercoaster and the Super Safari ride, by this time tomorrow the town will be flooded with unemployed hippobots" deserves a mention.
Megaman games are selectively good, I personally enjoy Megaman 2 , 7 and X (that's an X not a 10, there has never been a Megman 10.)

Staring into the Abyss

I've literally just reached the end of the internet it looked like this:


Or this:



Or perhaps this:


Infact when I searched "then end of internet" there were so many pages, so I was a bit confused as to which was the real one. But one of these must be... probably.

You are what you see (on Tv)

I know I've been using too many videos recently but I saw these and I just knew that you would want to see them.



This song is a Girls Aloud B-side.


I'm not going to pretend there is any hidden meaning to these two videos they are what they are, but they did keep me amused.

Also today I saw probably the 2nd best music video cameo I had ever seen. I was watching the video for Fergie (from the Black Eyed Peas) song Big Girls Don't Cry and who did I see? None other than Peter Petrelli of Heroes fame (he was playing a greasy Mexican bloke).

One day I may tell you about the greatest music video cameo I ever saw but that is a tale for another time (like when I haven't written a blog update in weeks and I need a filler).

Talking of filler, to pass some of the time I've been watching a bit more TV than usual. How in the 7 levels of hell does MTV continue to produce such vapid shit? Seriously I can watch almost anything beginning to end but Laguna Beach has shot me down time and time again. Ir's supposedly the real OC but these kids really do nothing, they sit and complain about who fancies who then cop of with each others respective partners, whilst clearly spending loads of money that has been given to them by their parents. I'm starting to think the real reason this show exists is because one of the executives who commissioned it is one of the kids parents and he was fed up with them lounging round the house:

"Here Jason, here's your own camera crew, make a show about your own life, just get out the damn house, I'm fed up with your lounging and complaining. Also if you see your mother while you're out tell her to come home soon, we're having guests over tonight and I'm gonna need a partner if we're to play the car keys in the hat game. "

40,000 signatures why won't they make another one?

Well I was hoping I could welcome you all back to this blog with an exciting story of how I met Mr Biffo (for all those who don't know he is this bloke who pretty much shaped my comedy outlook. He wrote a set of videogames pages on Teletext that I read everyday for 5 years during my "idiotic" teenagehood). He is a personal hero of mine and one day I will write an entry on here on why he is brilliant. Anyway instead of hanging out with him at a signing of his new book Confessions of a Chatroom Freak I was stuffing envelopes in a factory/warehouse type place. I won't tell you how many I did because it'll just make me sound petty - but believe me it was a fair few.

So while I was doing that one of my good chums set up a Facebook group to celebrate the beauty and all round goodness of Ellie the hot female presenter of Newsround. If you have a Facebook account I suggest you add it as one of your groups. I suggest this not just because Ellie explains the news in a simple but eloquent manner but because she deserves to be recognised as a master crafts woman. A woman whose job it is explain to children that people are dying in conflicts all around the world and to this end she does a very good job. So go search (on Facebook) Ellie Crisell (the fit one from Newsround) Appreciation Society to get involved in the cult.

If you look to the right of my posts you'll see a list of links of websites I read. Now one of them ickle computer people has suggested that a really cool new craze to start would be blog cards. The idea would be that every blog would feature a blog card that could then be saved as and collected. (Yes I am aware there would be millions). Now as I have come from the collection generation (Pogs, Go gos and Pannini sticker collections) I thought this was a bandwagon I wanted to be part of. Hence why sitting on the right hand side is a big "Blog Card".



The face of my blog card is Ryo Hazuki probably the greatest fictional character of the past 10 years, he appeared in both Shenmue games on the Dreamcast. I could go on about the importance of the character and what relevance he bears to our society and how infact he is actually a post ironic metaphor of our 21st century lifestyles, but here is what you need to know:

1)The game Shenmue cost millions and was the final nail in Sega's massive bloated coffin.
2)Once Ryo went "Looking for some sailors", he then beat the crap out of them in a bar fight.
3)He has a mysterious plaster on his face.
4)In his wardrobe are 10 sets of identical clothes and shoes.
5)What the hell was actually going on in Shenmue is a giant Xfiles esq mystery, and somewhat like the Xfiles there will probably never be a satsfactory conclusion.
This is also the reason why there is a 43,784 signature petition to make Shenmue 3 kicking round the internet.

To be honest Ryo Hazuki and Shenmue represent this blog really well. A massively ridiculous self indulgent mess that to the casual observer looks like it doesn't know where it's going and doesn't really make any logical sense, but in spite of these flaws 40,000 people want a sequel to be made - oh no wait that doesn't work as a clever comparision.

The summer starts here

So the lack of regular updates recently would suggest that the summer has started.
This doesn't however mean I've run out of things to talk about (that'll kick in about July) it instead means I've been too busy to sit down and write something.

Anyway I'm going away for a couple of days so instead of writing a load of blog updates over a series of days I will instead just dove tail a load of crap together in a quick and meaningless chunk of information for you to digest.

This is the 2nd trailer for the Transformers movie (27th July UK).


I think this movie looks absolutely amazing and more importantly they had the Transforming sound (listen to when Optimus Prime transforms) from the 80s movie. As far as I'm concerned the only way this could possibly be messed up is if the pacing was Star wars episode 2 style (leave all the action to the last half an hour and feature an embarrassing chicken run style sequence (that bit in the robot factory)). Dialogue is a complete irrelevance with this kind of movie too so theoretically (and I'm really hoping here) Michael Bay should have knocked out a really fun ridiculous movie with lots of spectacular destruction and no Armageddon style failings (oh and of course no Ben Affleck).

I WARN YOU from here on in this article is muchly sinking into the realms of videogames so if you are adverse to such things you may want to leave the rest of this article.


Still here?

Good I'll carry on then. Today I was reading in Edge about Sonic Xtreme which was going to be a 3D esq Sonic game on the Saturn, then while surfing the net (reading something completely unrelated) I came across some videos of it (in its early stages).





Then I went and found this a 3D section of Sonic Jam on the Saturn (a compilation of old Mega Drive Sonic games with a 3D world map section to swap between games).



Now my point is how come these ancient 3D Sonic games all have a working 3D camera and the new games are all feature a very broken buggy mess of a camera system. Also I hate the way the new games are set in the real world - what's wrong with patchwork brown and orange escapism?

Finally on a completely unrelated non-Sonic note if the Big Brother house this year had started full of men instead of women would the men have taken the bath out the living room and instead re plumbed it in the bathroom? Then put the fridge back in the kitchen? All in the same night of course. And then by the end of the week added a loft and balcony to the house?

That's nothing against women I'm just saying that in all likely hood the men going in would know a trade and have brought power tools as their luxury items.

It was literally the greatest thing I had ever seen, well at least the greatest thing I saw that day

I was shown this a couple of days ago.
I think I may have actually weeped a bit.

The press sensationalises everything

So I read today that an Orangutan had escaped from it's cage at a zoo in Taiwan and was wrecking up the place. It sounded really exciting with claims that "it picked up and threw a motorbike" and "ran about in a riotous fashion".
So obviously I wanted to said exciting Orangutan shenanigans and this is what I saw:



Running about!? It's moseying about at best (or strolling about at worst) and a motorcycle was thrown? More like a scooter was pushed over.

It just find it depressing that my hopes were built up, and then dashed, by someone who just obviously doesn't appreciate the comedy and excitement that a riotous monkey relative can cause.
I mean I understand that when you're reporting you have to try to make the event interesting but surely for the majority of people the single line description of Orangutan escapes cage and dosses about would have been enough to get people engaged. Then I wouldn't have been so disappointed with the relatively mundane monkey outcome (alright I know it's not a monkey but I fancied some alliteration).

Anyway I'm off to watch Dunston checks in or Every which way but loose. Now those Orangutans knew how to be funny.

2007 will be a golden age of Eastern European music

I know I've been exceedingly slow to jump on this one but the two best songs of the 2007 Eurovision song contest were:

Georgia's entry: Visionary Dream


and Russia's entry: #1


For those unable to access the videos, Visionary dream starts off sounding like the opening operatic piece of a Final Fantasy game and then spirals off into a muddled mix of synths and dance beats (which Eastern Europe likes apparently). It's a bit different and I think quite interesting.

#1 is classic Girls Aloudesq stuff. Eg. dirty bass line and cheeky vocals. Nothing to complicated really.

On a side note Popjustice.com also decided that Russia's entry #1 was the best song at the Eurovision song contest. This proves to me that my ability to make my own decisions has been eroded away due to years of Videogame abuse and I now make my decisions by pre-empting what my favourite websites are going to write.

Anyway the main point still is that neither of these songs won.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik were actually good.

Ok so I haven't updated this properly in ages.
The reason being I've been exceedingly busy, also as I wrote 10 posts in a pretty short space of time (granted they were at varying degrees of goodness) I figured I'd written enough for a while.
Anyway the point is I'm back and it's time for me to learn you something.

I now have actual proof that the 80s was the greatest decade for pop music.
The proof comes in the form of this: I have recently purchased the soundtrack to the Breakfast club and The Transformers movie. Now both albums contain the lowest common denominator pop music of the time (obviously that isn't shocking). What is shocking is that pretty much every track is amazing. (You'll have to trust me on this as it would be impossible for a mere mortal to describe how good these songs are).

So this means that if the shittest pop music (always found on film soundtracks) of the decade is superb then the best pop music of that decade must be the greatest ever made.

Now usually I would end this post with a picture of Optimus Prime looking glorious, but I've decided to take this blog in a more adult direction.



That's Hot Rod he became leader of the Autobots after Optimus Prime.
Interestingly a lot of kids were so upset that Optimus Prime died in the Transformers movie (which is why Hot Rod became leader (Ultra Magnus doesn't count)) that they locked themselves in their rooms and cried because they were so upset.

They went in as boys, but came out as men - and that is what being an adult is about - accepting death. Be it the death of a fellow human being or the death of a 10ft tall robot who transforms into a red lorry.

Will they actually perform the school musical this time?

High School Musical 2 - Seeing this promo photo proves to me we're in for a great summer.