Stare at the Hand

Inspired by the excellent guidance of vintagehandbag Ruth is now offering an A5 portrait to Twitter users, bloggers, web types etc - with a digital copy thrown in - for $130. That's what we're doing for the LiveJournal offer too - the big difference is, the LiveJournal version for my friends list is available forever - the Twitter/blog/Facebook version is only available until October 1st.

Anyways - even if you're not interested in the offer for yourself, please tweet the link, put it in your blog, stick it on Facebook, post it far and wide:

http://www.paintportraits.co.uk/friends/

That page contains full details of the offer we want to get out there.

We will love you for it.

I didn't think I had a vampire thing. What I mean is, I like Buffy (did I ever mention that?) but I thought that was just because under the bald, pumped up muso exterior, I'm made of nerd. Then we started watching "True Blood" and maybe I am into the whole vampire thing after all because THIS SHOW ROCKS.

It's like DBC Pierre wrote a season of Buffy, without Buffy in it. And sexy? Woah. You can't not have sex after that programme. Even though there are people getting strangled and getting their throats ripped out for 30% of it, there's the other 30% where everyone's boning.

I beginning to wish I hadn't had my canine teeth filed down.

Via Reuters:

The producers of the original Buffy movie, who exec produced the TV series, are making noises about making a Buffy movie.

YAY!

No. Hold on. Not Yay.  NOT YAY AT ALL.  Because:

"Buffy" creator Joss Whedon isn't involved and it's not set up at a studio, but director Fran Rubel Kuzui is working on a relaunch with Vertigo Entertainment, which specializes in English-language remakes of Asian films, such as "The Grudge" and "The Departed."

"The new "Buffy" film, however, would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Kuzui and Vertigo are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon".

I'm not the kind of fan-boy to get my knickers in a knot about things - but this is totally fucking stupid. It's clearly a quick buck tactic; a situation where a license-holder has seen a potentially profitable opportunity and is leaking the idea to gauge support.

They could make a good movie. They're right about the premise - it wouldn't have to be Buffy - it could be a "future Slayer"... But they'd also have to ignore the TV chronology to make that fly. At the end of the series, every potential slayer *became* a slayer...

Getting all whiny about canon is the kind of thing basement dwelling Trek gonks with one hand on their pink phase pistols do - I know. But Buffy wasn't "premise" driven - it was character driven. That was its USP - and why every SciFi franchise is now a knowing, postmodern soap opera. BtVS changed television. Full stop. END OF LINE. 

So - if you do Buffy without the TV series continuity, you might as well not do Buffy at all. Do it with the old characters, and you tap into all the good will of the fanbase. Do it without and you have to spend 90 minutes setting up the premise and establishing relationships with a bunch of new dudes. You might as well do Twilight or Blade or make up a brand new vampire franchise.

Furthermore, if you do a Buffy movie without Joss Whedon - you might as well not do Buffy at all. Whedon isn't quite the televisual Messiah that many fans make out - Firefly is just about OK and Dollhouse smells of chicken bums - but he was great for Buffy. He was responsible for Buffy's style, its meter and tone. Hell, he's responsible for how a generation of geeks speak. Ultimately, he's why it became popular.

There's another reason why it's dumb to write off the TV series continuity. The actors still want to do it. Anthony Head has been pitching the Ripper spin-off to anyone who'll listen for years. James Marsters has been itching to do Spike. Boreanaz said he'd play Angel if it was on the big screen. There have even been recent rumours that Sarah Michelle Gellar might finally be up for a return - after her post-Buffy movie career failed to go ballistic. Actually, let's just make that "failed".

Before going off "half-cocked", getting all producery about their ownership of the franchise, the Kazui's would have been better off arranging a quiet meeting with Whedon - see if he's got any ideas first. Let him sound out Gellar. Get the core team back at least. Because this premature bluster shows that the Kazui's really don't get the Buffy fanbase at all. And if they can't get the preliminaries right - how does that bode for a future movie?

And, yes, I do realise that I only post these days about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Bite me.

I fucking hate Franz Ferdinand. They stole my look:

Madonna's on the rack at Bad Music

There's a new poll on Bad Music

Run! Vote!

Over on Bad Music (UK vs US) - I'm giving Whitney Houston a right old slapping and no mistake.  You should check it out and friend us!

I'm stuck, so over at Bad Music I'm asking you to vote on who I should be nasty about next.

Just do it!

Over at http://bad-music-uk-us.livejournal.com/ I just gave Guns N' Roses a punch in the liver.

There's a new post over at Bad Music: UK vs USA - the blog where bart_calendar  and I debate who has the worst musical taste; the limeys or the yanks.

Fear it.

There can't be many people reading my blog who aren't also on the friend list of bart_calendar - but for you last few holdouts, we've just started a brand new joint blogging enterprise.

The premise is this: Bart thinks that the UK is responsible for all that sucks in popular music.  I take the position that the USA has the worst taste of, well, any other country in the entire world.

So, the batttle begins at Bad Music: UK vs USA

In the first entry Bart trashes Oasis.  I respond with a proportionate attack on Bon Jovi.

Join the debate, friend us and enjoy the snark.  We've turned it up to 11.

I try not to despair too much of people, but the Internet makes it hard.  From behind the rudimentary cloak of anonymity it affords, you see the true colours of humanity; the questionable ethics of a society that puts self-interest above... well, just about everything.

Case in point.  Ruth and I were supposed to go and see Echo and the Bunnymen this wednesday.  I ordered the tickets almost four months ago, when feeling more economically buoyant.  As the date approached though, we realised we couldn't afford the trip in terms of time or money.  It would mean a night in a hotel, train fares and two days off work.  Neither of us could manage to make the sacrifices necessary.

So - I decided to put the tickets on eBay.

If you've ever used eBay, you'll know that you are limited in the number of characters you can put in the heading of a listing.  To save space I listed the band name as "Echo & the Bunnymen".  Most search engines ignore the word "and" anyway...  Not eBay, it turns out.

The listing was close to the end of its three day run and only had one bid of 99p.  This was no where near what I had expected.  I did a search for similar pairs of tickets and found them selling for £55 and £60...  And then I noticed that my listing wasn't turning up in search results at all.  It was because I'd used "&" instead of "and" in my listing title.

By that time it was too late to cancel or edit the listing, so I could only wait and hope.  Thirty minutes later the auction ended - the tickets sold for 99p.  In trying to save the little money we have, we'd lost £60.

I wrote to the guy who had won the tickets, explaining the situation and asking that he void the auction and let me relist the tickets.  Twice.

He didn't reply. 

Instead, he waited a full day, then silently paid the 99p via PayPal - which completed the binding contract imposed on me by eBay.  I had no choice but to post him the tickets.

What a twat.

Ultimately, it's not the loss of the money that bothers me.  It's that this guy, knowing that he had acquired these tickets for nothing due to an error that cost another person £60 (about $90), still took them.  I wouldn't do that - and it saddens me that I feel I'm in a minority.

If you could travel back in time, what five bits of advice would you give your 18 year old self?  This is what I'd tell Gothic-Karl:

* Start going to the gym now.  It'll be much harder to get fit once you hit 30 and your metabolism goes mental.

* Get your hair cut short.  Seriously; that hippy shit is a major cock blocker.

* Learn to program in C.

* Treat others the way you want to be treated because, ultimately, you reap what you sow.

* Don't do mushrooms...

Dear American friends,

This post is entirely redundant as I can think of no one on my friends list who would vote Republican - and if you would, what the fuck are you doing on here?  Still, I'll say it anyway.  Over here in Europe (where people are, on the whole, cleverer, more sophisticated and better dressed than you) we are counting on you humble folks to do the right thing on November 4th.  That's right - we want Regime Change, motherfuckers. 

So, please, vote for Barack Obama.  It's what 89.3% of the rest of the world would do. How's that for a lead in the polls? And, once you've voted for him and he is President of the World (i.e. the country with the most guns), please do your best to keep him alive.

If you do that, we'll promise to start loving you again. 

Yours,

Mr. Twain (on behalf of the peoples of the European Community).

There's no answer - that "core" is now a fragmented set of disparate demographics and each of those has its own shifting allegiances.  So there.

I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight - and I was disappointed.

It wasn’t crap - I didn’t leave feeling I’d wasted my time, like I did after sitting through the new Indiana Jones movie - it just wasn’t the towering celluloid triumph just about every frothing geek reviewer over the last three months has been creaming about.

The frustrating thing about it is that all the parts are there. Caine and Oldman are brilliant and Heath Ledger is the Joker.  There’s absolutely no trace of the guy from Brokeback Mountain; not an atom of the bozo from 10 Things I Hate About You.  His was, literally, the performance of a lifetime. 

There are fine set pieces too.  In fact, a whole string of ‘em.  Exploding henchmen, fake batmen, base jumping and real stunts…

But. 

But, but, but. 

In Nolan’s desire to make The Batman real and relevant; to make a movie that erases the memory of the camp TV series and Schumacher’s abortive tenure - he sucks all the exuberance from… everything. 

Batman should be a fantastic, improbable character and Gotham a hyperreal extrapolation of urban claustrophobia.  Burton’s bi-polar stories might be too slick and leatherette for noughties taste, but he knew how to do extremes.   In making both the city and the bat ordinary, Chris Nolan robs them of dramatic impact.  Only Ledger’s malevolent clown projects the mix of menace and madness that should have been threaded throughout the narrative.  Everywhere else The Dark Knight is simply not dark enough.  It cuts away from the gore, lingers in the daylight and talks too much.

There are casting problems too - I don’t buy the laconic, plain looking Maggie Gyllenhaal as the woman Gotham’s two most eligible bachelors are head over heels with.  And Aaron Eckhart is drowning as Harvey Dent.  Drowning.

I came away with a yawning hole in my satisfaction - yearning for a shorter cut of the movie with more Joker and less daytime.  I wanted the batcave and Wayne Manor by moonlight.  In future I might even want Robin in the mix (but no Riddler or Penguin).  Most of all, I want a much darker knight to return - a mean and wounded Batman driven by vengeance rather than a sense of justice.  Justice is Superman’s job.

That, ultimately, was this movie’s biggest flaw. When Bale’s Bruce Wayne says he must reveal his identity to save Gotham, to save his loved ones from being killed, I just don’t believe him.  He’s so contained and controlled that I don’t believe he feels anything. 

Next time around - and there will certainly be a next time given The Dark Knight’s phenomenal box office - I fear we’ll just get more of the same;  Heat in a cape.  I’m not sure if I’ll bother.

Ruth's well aware that I'm an anxious traveller.  This won't matter much in a week's time, when she moves back North for good, but she told me it didn't matter anyway.  "It's a quirk," she said, "Like leaving your teabag in the the cup".  I wish I felt that too, but it means a lot that it's no big deal for her.

In fact, it means that I feel - for the first time in a couple of years - like planning trips away.  I feel itchy in my feet and find myself returning to the mental list of places I want to visit.  Paris, Berlin, Prague... a return to Amsterdam, a return to Edinburgh.  Loch Ness in Scotland.  A survival weekend in the English Lake District.

Ruth wants to drive across the States.  I managed to barter this down. LA to Vegas seems like a doable target.  Even then... quite a big deal.

Meanwhile - all suggestions welcome.  Where should a pair of beatnik muso misfits lay their hats in this crazy world?  We need good food, live music, art, beauty and comfort. Not in that order.

I generally prefer to leave the political posting to other folks. Especially when the politics in question are not British. However - Sarah Palin for GOP VP?

Gosh.  That's so transparently cynical.  I'm right aren't I? That's just to snare Hillary supporters, isn't it? You know, the dumb ones who have a hankering for any middle-aged white chick at all, rather than a black guy. I mean, that's all she has going for her.  The reports are saying she has no appreciable track record in government whatsoever. Two years as Governor of Alaska and that's it.

Alaska.

I don't get it. Well, actually, I do... and I just don't like it.

Listen, America.  You may not be the economic superpower you once were, you're always five years behind in fashion and we've no idea why your taste in music is so appalling - but you still have all the guns.  We know that means you get to decide how the world works, whether we like it or not.  So, please, don't fuck it up again.