Occulomency

I got another one.....

OK, some just asked:-

Does Rolf Harris appear in any of the episodes?

I tried to help out as best I could:-

Strangely enough, yes.
The Australian version of Miami Vice was quite different to the American version. Barry "Sonny" Crocker and his partner Richard "Rico" Sheepstation cruised the streets of Wagga Wagga in their Holden Maloo Ute.

The stories were also Australianised to a greater degree, much of the hard-edged drug trafficking story lines were dropped in favour of a more antipodean flavour. Stories such as "Bruce's Dutch Oven" where Sheila is torn between duty and romance when she learns that her boyfriend (Rolf Harris) is best friends with a sheep rustler (Rolf Harris) who has connections to a big-time supplier of vegimite to the local black market. Gripping stuff.

I mean, you be an idiot not to bid for this piece of Australiana.

 I think I helped....

He shakes his head and walks away....

Addendum to my earlier post, I responded with:

The DVD region code restricts the disks so you can't watch disks from one region on a different region's player. Many DVD players and disks are region free, the 1st series and 3rd series are marked as regions 2,4 & 5 and series 2 is marked as region 4 only, but the disks are in fact regions 2, 4, & 5 (I checked).

The series are all in English, although Edward James Olmos does mumble quite a lot.

Kayleigh (is it too late to say I'm sorry?) wrote back with:

that great thankyou :)

I think I'm in love.....

I need your advice about something.

Today I received a question from an E-Bayer regarding 3 series of the seminal '80s cop show Miami Vice that I have put up for auction. Now I did make the mistake of saying that I would answer any question, but I am having difficulty answering this one without appearing slightly sarcastic.

The question reads:

hi interested in your auction you say its australian i dont understand how the regions work but just like to know they all english speaking as i be happy to buy no matter what region as long as i can understand them for my own use :) hope you can help me many thanks kayleigh

Help.

I'm having an affair.

The week wears on.

You know how I quite like Diana Rigg from 1965-68.

See below:

Well, I'm thinking it's time I moved on. It's never going to work between us, I'm living in cloud cuckoo land and I know it.

I've been seeing someone behind Diana's back.

Wanda Ventham from 1965-68.

Nice.

The Verve Experience.

So, the Stone Roses have reformed.

Ticketmaster has crashed, lots of folk despirately wanting tickets to see this seminal late 80's-early '90s rock combo.

But I was there when The Verve reformed. I was excited, I paid to see them at the Nottingham Arena.

There was the slight, niggly-naggly doubt that seeing a bunch of much loved musicians who helped define the soundtrack of my early twenties who had become middle-aged, survived various chemical addictions, still harboured grudges and were probably terminally short of cash might possibly be a little past their best.

No such luck. As I wrote in this blog at the time:

"It was bloody terrible. Seriously appalling. I have always said that you can go and see any band and have a good time, and with few exceptions (Badly Drawn Boy, David Bowie), that has usually been the case.

Not this time, the sound quality was awful (and you can't blame the venue 'cos the Kaiser Chiefs sounded fantastic), and there was just no passion in it. The audience response was lukewarm at best, and we joined the steady trickle of people walking out after Ashcroft had murdered 'the drugs don't work'."

My point?

I won't be going. Some memories are better left alone.

Political Ocrrectness

Ricky Gervais bothers me.

When we were living back in Australia, I attended a short course on bullying in the workplace (like I wasn't good enough at that already). As part of this course, they showed some clips from The Office.

I had seen this show already as some kind people had shipped it over from the UK for me to watch, as they correctly assumed I'd love it, but it had not yet made it to the hallowed ground that is the ABC.

The clips they chose were the stapler in jelly gag and the wall of files between the workmates routine. Funny stuff, but the point the course wanted to make was, from one point of view, it's all good fun, from the other side, it can deeply affect the person involved. So much so in Mckenzie Crooke's case, he went on to appear in Pirates of the Carribean II (Jack Sparrow and the Crimes Against Cinema or something).

Anyway, I digress. The course said that bullying is soley in the mind of the recipient, it does not matter if the intent was humour, if the person on the receiving end feels bullied, they are being bullied. End of chat.

So, this brings me to the present. There is a bit of a twitter storm going on between Richard Herring and Ricky Gervais and his followers. Mr Gervais has used the word 'Mong' rather a lot on his feed recently, and it's been pointed out that this may be a bit offensive to persons with or involved with Down's Syndrome.

Gervais says that the word has been reclaimed and doesn't mean what it used to in the school playground of our youths.

I don't agree. How can any offensive term be reclaimed by those people who used it in a pergorative sense in the first place?

This new sitcom of his, I'm not so sure. I'm really not.

 

Farewell to the voice of Hilary Bray (KCMG)

George Baker, the second Number Two, has sadly died.

He appeared in three Bond films as different characters (including Bond's voice in OHMSS).

Of course, he is most famous for his role in the 1980 Doctor Who story 'Full Story".

He played the character of Login, who was made a Decider to replace Draith, who had died. He was recognised by Nefred as the most respected man in their society. He was troubled by his daughter being an outlaw and when the starliner was closed, he was greatly distressed. When she was returned to him, however, he pleaded her case to the other deciders and she and the other outlaws went unpunished. Login and Garif made the joint decision to fly away from Alzarius.

I went too far, didn't I?

 

 

Yellow Stockings

Newstead Abbey was wet.

Very wet.

Wetter than a haddock's bathing costume in fact.

Full of wet folk who sniffed loudly when I tried to open my wet bag of cheese & onion crisps (they were quite posh crisps).

Anyway, the play was good.

Just a note to the folks who were sitting near us:

• Hyphenated surnames: pick one name, Mrs. Washington-Brown.
• First initials: J. Stuart Wankerbottom, you are a pretentious twat.
• Families whose first names all begin with the same letter. Judy, John, Jack and Josie. This is wrong.
• People named after American cities: Madison, Cheyenne... how about Asbestos?
• Parents who get cute with the spelling of mundane names. "OK, we'll name him Ronald, but we'll spell it Ronyld". Excellent.
• People who insist upon pronouncing their mundane names in a "special" way: "That's CLOW-dia, not Claudia".

Oh yes, when the revolution comes and I am returned to power in a blaze of glory, anyone who appreciates the artistry of Cirque de Soleil will be shot, through the back of the head, with a service revolver.

They call me Mungo the Contradictory.

On June 21st 1792 a group of self-proclaimed Bards staged a ceremony, which they had entirely invented, on Primrose Hill in London, involving a stone circle made from pebbles.

They claimed that they were reviving a ritual that stretched back to the ancient Celtic nation and it's Druids.

Prior to this, there is no record of the word 'Celt' being used to describe the pre-Roman inhabitants of the British Isles.

The word 'Celt' was coined by the Greek historian Herodotus in 450BC when he described the peoples at the headwaters of the Danube, north of the Alps. The Roman name for such people was Galli ('Chicken People'), and they called the inhabitants of the British Isles 'Britanni', never Celts.

So the use of the term 'Celt' is 17th century. A Welsh linguist (Edwurd Lluyd), living in Oxford noted the broad similarities between the languages spoken in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. He called these languages 'Celtic' and the name stuck, but it is way in no way meant to describe an ethnic group of people.

The notion of a Celtic Empire of horse-loving master craftsmen, wise old Druids, harp strumming poets and long-haired warrior Kings is enitirely a product of this 'Celtic Revival' of the 18th century, and has far more to do with nationalism than any sense of historical reality.

Miserable (Les)

Radiohead have written the score for the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's latest book.

Palahniuk wrote Fight Club by the way.

His latest book, Choke, is also being adapted for the big screen.

Palahniuk said he listened to Radiohead while writing the book, and that is why it is overly long, pretentious and really a bit shite, but will earn millions due to slightly ageing hipsters who are desperate to prove they are still with it.

Had he listened to Duran Duran, it would have all been much better, of course.

Thank the Lords of Kobol that he wasn;t listening to Katie Melua and James "rhyming slang" Blunt.