Owner: The other side of the river URL:http://neilbeynon.wordpress.com Join Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 07:12:43 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Mishaps, writing, comedy sprinkled with opinion. Site statistics:Click here
By way of explanation 2007-10-15 18:32:52
So for the interested the above is the incident I have been referring to. Our toilet became completely blocked as Thursday and due to us having had recently had work carried out on the drain we got the same company out to sort it. The emergency plumber didn’t quite grasp the situation and did not turn up until 5 pm Friday, when he did he tried everything I had already done.
I remained calm. Even when he put the toilet in the bath, I was calm - after all he was going to put it back right? However when he said he was going to place a jet wash into the soil pipe, the pipe we had proved was already full of water, and I could just claim back for a new ceiling (a ceiling that had only gone back up that day) that I got annoyed.
Words were exchanged. And my toilet was left in my bath.
It’s back in the right place now.
I was going to be witty but to be honest I still can’t see the funny side on this one, it took four days to get a toilet working again, time during which we&r Read more:explanation
Washington DC 2007-10-14 16:50:39 I’m back - online that is - I’m nowhere near back as in London. As some of you will know and many will not life kind of got away from me from around Thursday last week until around an hour and a half ago when I flumped on to a bed in a hotel in Washington
DC.
I’m in Washington on business - a web analytics conference, actually the web analytics conference, this represents the more intellectually stimulating side of my job if the less creative. There are some real heavyweights here for this one including Avinash Kaushik and Jim Sterne.
I have flu and have lost my voice so I anticipate I’ll just be doing a lot of listening, writing down what other people say and nodding profoundly in agreement. Should be fun.
In the evenings, as I have no voice and feel like a pineapple has been shoved whole down my throat, I’m going to sip lemsip and write.
Right now I’m going to eat but if you missed any of my fiction this week my friday entry is here and my fire al
Stardust 2007-10-21 13:27:34
After months of waiting and jealously watching blogger after blogger go to see Stardust in the states it finally went on general release in the UK. Yesterday I finally got to see the movie.
And it was wonderful.
Most regular readers would expect me to say that. I am an unashamed Neil Gaiman fan but it’s not always a done deal just because Gaiman is involved. He’s done stuff I don’t think is so good: the Neverwhere TV series sucked like a Hoover in places (to be fair the BBC were at fault for that), so much so it kept me away from his books for many years. Much of his poetry is nowhere near as good as his prose work (”Crazy Hair” not withstanding) and although I love Stardust the novel it is also a noticeably earlier work than his fantastically polished Anansi Boys or even the slightly rougher American Gods.
All of which is a long winded way of trying to establish some credibility for saying the film is wonderful, go and see it. Because it is. From the Va
Saturday Kitchen 2007-10-20 11:44:48 It’s back, apologies for the missed post last week but life got in the way. This week’s recipe is another ode to soup, my scrummy roast tomato soup:
Ingredients
A load of plum tomatoes (fresh)
Some fresh basil
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Sun dried tomatoes
This recipe is so easy and so lush I hardly ever buy tinned anymore. Per two people you need enough tomatoes to completely cover a decent sized baking/roasting tray when the tomatoes are halved.
1. Chop your tomatoes in half and remove any stalks
2. Place skin side down, cut side up in the baking tray
3. Season with salt and pepper
4. Sprinkle with shredded fresh basil
5. Drizzle with olive oil
6. Place in an oven at around 180C for around 30 minutes or until the tomato skins start to wrinkle
7. Empty the tomatoes into a blender and blitz with the sun dried tomatoes
8. Bring to a simmer (if you have over cooked or misjudged the number of tomatoes just add a tin of peeled tomatoes to bulk it out)
9. Taste and season some more Read more:Saturday
, Kitchen
Friday Flash Fiction 2007-10-19 09:55:12 I’ve been a little short on time and energy this week but this is one of those little ditties I scribbled last week as my house fell apart around my ears. An experiment in optimism.
Anniversary
By Neil Beynon
The room fell silent as he rose to his feet to speak. He was still striking, six feet tall with a trim frame and hair that once had been jet-black now pure silver. In spite of his seventy years his eyes still shone bright as he gazed across the room.
“Thanks everybody for joining us for our special day. As many of you will know it’s been thirty years since Trill and I met. Thirty wonderful years during which I’ve had the best friend a man can have and seen things I would never have thought possible.
It was chance that brought us together, chance and cliché. For I met Trill on the side of the rode – her vehicle had broken down.”
The audience laughed Trill looked up at him, her green dress picking up the wet emerald of her eyes perfectly. She squeezed his hand.
“O Read more:Friday
, Flash
, Fiction
Friday Flash Fiction 2007-10-26 12:21:54 A bit rushed again this week. Not sure about it. Thought it sucked as I wrote it. Liked it on the reread and then hated it on editing it. Hope you enjoy - remember you’re free to comment.
The New Arrival
By Neil Beynon
“’Morning,” said the stranger.
The guard grunted.
“’Spect you ain’t used to much in the way of strangers out here.”
The guard mumbled something about the end of the line whilst his eyes flicked round for help.
“’Spect you noticed the gun by now, you seem frightened as a mouse.”
The guard said nothing.
“I ain’t gonna shoot you boy. I just wanna know how to get to the Vermouth Club.”
“You..”
“Speak up now boy,” said the stranger, his hand resting on his gun.
“You head straight down the high street; Vermouth is down on the last lane on the left. You can’t miss it,” said the guard.
“Thank you kindly, said the stranger. “Sal still dancing?”
“Oh yes sir,” said the guard forgetting his fear for a moment. “Every Friday
. Read more:Flash
, Fiction
Columbo Villian of the Week 2007-10-24 15:14:23 Columbo villian of the week has proven a success. Les was asked to open a Rubbish tip in Rhyl and Liza was tipped to open a refurbished fancy dress store on the Shaftesbury Avenue. I’ve been chased by a plethora of stars who it would be unkind to name here but suffice to say their calls have fallen on deaf ears, you can’t ask to appear - you have to be selected.
This week belongs to only one woman. Rachel Allen, rising star of the culinary world:
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Allen’s work she is an Irish celebrity chef who made her reputation making simple (primarily Irish) food from really well sourced ingredients. Her series Rachel’s Favourite Food is currently doing the rounds on the Beeb. So why is such a fresh faced young star moving into Columbo territory?
After all, memorable villians of the real series rarely appeared during their prime. Bill Shatner, for example, had already sat in the Captain’s chair by the time he trode the bo
Wand polishing 2007-10-23 18:00:16 Lets get something straight, Dumbledore is gay. He smokes the pink peace pipe, he prefers his gardening downhill, he plays for the other side, he likes to polish wands and various other euphemisms for prefering wizards to witches.
Only he doesn’t.
He doesn’t because he’s a fictional character. Interesting news that this is to those who read the books, does this news really warrant the international coverage it’s garnered, or for the blogosphere to be resplendant with nuanced debate from people who really should be talking about more important things. You know like say Iraq or Darfur? Or that short Russian fella who keeps waving his warheads around and offering everyone glowing sushi (hint - say no)?
I came across the topic on several mainstream news sites and superblogs and I expected, not unreasonably I felt, a series of highly crafted innuendos in the high vaunted tradition of British Camp. Instead I found grown, highly educated men and women, arguing the vali
Eleven 2007-10-30 14:41:04 Regular readers - apologies for the lack of bloggage. There have been a number of reasons for this not least of which has been that I’ve caught another cold and am currently wrapped up on the sofa with a lemsip.
Other than hacking my lungs up I’ve been busy writing the first draft of a short story that I desperately wanted to finish before I NaNoWriMo. It’s all typed up now but in going through the handwritten script I’ve realised it needs a hell of a lot of work and so it will have to wait until either my holiday or more likely December.
On the subject of NaNoWriMo I’m completely bricking it. I have nothing save a very odd starting idea and a few unrelated ideas in my head. I may be up a creek without a paddle here. Ah well such is life. All this is well and good but my mind is not really on NaNoWriMo, nor is it on my forthcoming holiday in Hong Kong. There is a far more momentous event occurring this week, tomorrow in fact.
Tomorrow marks eleven years si Read more:Eleven
And so it begins 2007-11-04 15:15:55 Well I started. Finally.
What, you ask, am I talking about? I am of course referring to National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo and after spending the first three days sat on my arse doing very little save wiping my leaking nose along with a fair bit of feeling sorry for myself I have finally begun work.
I began with the bold, and some would stay stupid, decision to shelve my original idea for NaNoWriMo on the grounds that involved a fair bit of historical research that I had failed to do in October, work getting in the way. It’s still a good idea but a bad first draft can kill an idea for me and so I’m penciling that in for early next year.
I then needed another idea, one that in essence I could run with on a minimum of research and that led me inexorably back to a project I abandoned some time ago. I have two novel ideas that have never really made it beyond the scraps of a legal pad, one from when I was fifteen and the other from when I first moved back to London. My
Friday Flash Fiction 2007-11-02 08:31:24 I struggled a little this week. Various reasons including my own incompetence. If you enjoy my weekly scribblings, and even if you don’t, you should check out some of the other FridayFlashFiction
eers: Gareth Lyn Powell, Paul Raven, Shaun Green, Gareth D. Jones, Martin McGrath, Dan Pawley and Justin Pickard.
Anyhow here is my little ditty for the offering:
Rainbow
By Neil Beynon
His chest felt tight, so tight it hurt. He’d once been stuck under a bench press, the victim of too much bravado, this felt a little like that. His knees buckled beneath him, his eyes watered and he found himself not looking up but at the carpet.
It was thick and soft beneath his knuckles. As the room span he focused on each individual piece of carpet, a pile jungle waiting for microscopic explorers to encounter. It’s funny the things you think of in a crisis.
There was a movement from the other side of the room, quiet but there; pulling him back to the present. The 10am sun filtered through the win
Columbo Villian of the Week 2007-10-31 12:14:25 I may be accused of going for the low hanging fruit here but I’ve been planning this one since I started this thing. He was very nearly the inaugural Columbo Villian of the Week. Yep that’s right it’s the Squire of Sarcasm, The Earl of Eyebrow: Angus Deayton.
Angus was the undisputed king of the sarcastic put down and political satire in the nineties; as host of “Have I got News For You” no one was safe. A cottage industry in comedy cameos in the likes of “One Foot In the Grave” cemented the former Oxford graduate as a household name.
Then, with no small sense of irony, Angus became the news when his cocaine fuelled romps with a high-class call girl (that’s a hooker to you and me) made it onto the front page of the rabid tabloid press. Angus endured a tirade of merciless ribbing from fellow “Have I got News” regulars Ian Hislop and Paul Merton on the show after the story broke but came through the other side. Indeed many thought he was home
Friday Flash Fiction 2007-11-09 01:25:11 As expected NaNoWriMo is soaking up most of my time at the moment and so this week’s flash is from the backstory of my project. I won’t say more than that for fear of jinxing myself into stopping.
Hakon’s Folly
By Neil Beynon
The body lay on the stone floor, face cast in shock and pain, eyes looking up at the ceiling even as all the eyes of the court lingered on the body’s ruined chest. The king sat heavily on the steps by the throne, his legs rubbery and uncertain.
“That’s not simply a warrior,” said the vizier, his face ashen. “That’s…”
“That’s my son,” said the king. “That’s my boy you’ve stretched out, oh gods what have I done?”
The Necromancer remained on his knees just behind the body, his bald head shining in the harsh light of the courtroom. If he felt any emotion he did not show it on his hook-nosed face.
“How did it happen?” asked the king, his face lined and pitted like dried leather.
“It was a snow beast sire,” said t Read more:Friday
, Flash
, Fiction
Hong Kong 2007-11-08 19:57:21 I’m in Hong Kong
.
I thought about blogging last night but I was just too tired and apparently asking the same questions on an endless loop, G was very amused. The hotel is great, I mean really good and our hotel room overlooks the harbour with a view that at night is just amazing - again I meant to take a picture last night but passed out before I could. I’ll post a night time one in a few hours but for now here’s what it looks like in day light:
The flight was good and it was pleasant, after my rather difficult trip back from Washington a few weeks ago, to be seated next to someone nice rather than an alpha male leg sprawler. Of course on the return leg I will be with G so I don’t have to worry about being sat next to some six foot gorilla, she of course is stuck with me - poor girl.
Today G is still working and so I get to please myself for the whole day. I’m going to go for a walk round the local area in a bit so the room elves can come and clean then
Columbo Villian of the Week 2007-11-07 08:19:20 This week’s Columbo Villian of the week is former giant of American daytime television and current investigative journalist Geraldo Rivera.
Rivera actually appeared in a TV murder mystery where he played a character so obnoxious any one of a string of women who had previously fallen for his charms could have bumped him off. It was a case, perhaps, of life imitating art and I forget who the television detective was that solved the case – in my head I have Jessica Fletcher but I can’t find the credit listing on IMDB to confirm it.
The real Rivera has a talent for sensational, over the top reporting of mainstream news that has on more than one occasion got him into trouble. Geraldo is renowned for not checking his facts such as his recent reporting of the Benoit murder-suicide. During the initial invasion of Afghanistan he made headlines by carrying a sidearm during his reports from the country in direct flouting of journalistic convention.
Rivera likes to see himself as an action
Mega Monday 2007-11-12 06:49:21
Today we shopped. Well no not really, today we looked at shops. Many, many shops. My feet have stopped speaking to me, a good thing, as they would probably just say “Ow” very loudly. Basically Hong Kong can, in many respects, be thought of as a giant shopping mall, an island paradise to the worshipers of plastic, and a designer disciple’s delight. Ok I’ll stop now.
We took the MTR into East Kowloon where Hong Kong’s newest super mall had opened called Mega Box, a great big red…well box. A 16-storey complex with just about every store imaginable, an ice rink, a cinema and enough food outlets to keep the US Army supplied globally. It was a bizarre mix of east and west, fusion is not just a cuisine here but a state of mind.
For me the real highlight was the bookstore - what can I say I’m an addict and I admit it. Everything here is sized according to the average stature of the indigenous population, for G and I - who usually feel like hobbits w Read more:Monday
Fusion Sunday 2007-11-11 01:02:55 We’ve moved hotels now. For the first few days we were in a hotel in Kowloon but now we’re on Tsing Ye Island on the Gold Coast, it’s quieter but more tourist in nature. The hotel overlooks the sea and a pair of golden dolphins - the fine art of chav not having overlooked the region it seems.
Food here is a strange mix of just about everything in a style all of its own that is called fusion. For example for breakfast there was pretty much everything on offer from cooked to cereal to fruit to rice to curry to Miso soup. There was even turnip cake.
Yesterday was a bit of a mish mash of exploring as we waited to transfer between hotels. We explored along Nathan Road and Canton Road as we looked for a tailor for G’s mum, there was a throbbing, seething mass of people lining the streets looking for the latest bargains in the plethora of designer shops.
The transfer itself was a bit arduous as the hotel room was not ready when we arrived and by this point G was very tired. The workin Read more:Sunday
Don’t trust holy men 2007-11-09 21:43:11
Day two here in Hong Kong and today we’re shifting hotels as G is now officially on holiday. We figured it would help her unwind if we switched to a different hotel - it means a change of scene and less people from her company to be sociable with.
My first day was eventful as no doubt constant readers who recall my trip to Paris could have predicted quite easily, personally I think the problem was I was primed for pigeons and gypsies not Indian Holy Men but there you go.
Anyway when last you left me I was preparing to go for a walk in order to get some air and see some of the harbour. This I duly did walking the famous Avenue of Stars. This was an unexpected delight as I didn’t know we were so close to it, there were a number of famous star’s handprints and I duly snapped the ones I like including Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat. There was also a really cool statue of Bruce Lee who was awarded the Hong Kong Star of the Century award - this was awesome and I was Read more:trust
Friday Flash Fiction 2007-11-16 11:11:41 Hmmm. Not sure on this one. Let me know.
Amber
By Neil Beynon
She gazed glassily at him through eyes that did not blink as if she were watching him watching her. Mouth pursed. He knew the expression, he doubted anyone else would.
Her words echoed in his head.
“It’s over,” she said.
“It’s not you it’s me”, should have been the next line only it wasn’t. She continued: “I just don’t feel the same way you do. You scare me.”
She had nothing to fear from him. All he wanted was to preserve what they’d had. To keep things the same.
He’d tried to argue but she’d just rested her hand gently on his upper arm.
“I’m not the person you want me to be,” she’d said, her tone thick. Her hand felt hot and dry. Pity had always come to mind as a cold feeling but the notion vanished in that moment - the desert sands of her’s erasing it for all time.
Then he pleaded.
Then she told him to fuck off.
Then he pushed her.
A little thing. Not a punch or a kick but a gentle sh Read more:Friday
, Flash
, Fiction
Night Hawk 2007-11-16 05:49:38 I’m back in the land of Black Cabs, Builder’s Tea and the Fine Art of Chav.
Our last day in Hong Kong was funny mish mash of stuff. We had a really cool gentle walk along the beach as well as a paddle in the ocean and I got far too excited about the real life shark net, designed to keep out real Great White Sharks. Of course even I could spot that a real White Shark could jump the net with ease, or that the water had a distinct absence of seals (the preferred meal) but there was a sign so it must be true.
Hong Kong airport was a breath of fresh air by comparison to well pretty much any other airport in the world, they had me at free broadband but the best steak I’ve had outside of Paris sealed the deal. The flight itself was not as good as I’d hoped; Virgin were OK but nowhere near the standards they reached in the 90s. Still it was cool flying with the night half way across the world.
I’ll be posting my Friday Flash Fiction in a few hours so keep your Read more:Night
On The Peak 2007-11-15 06:00:49
So it’s my last day in Hong Kong.
We didn’t in the end get to see the Buddha, we were both completely wiped out on Tuesday opting instead to flump around the hotel and small beach. Resolving with some determination to make the most of yesterday.
Having gorged ourselves in the breakfast buffet we rolled onto the bus into Kowloon then got the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island. The first part of the day consisted of the inevitable rush of shopping before a brief rest-bite in a coffee shop, I also wrote the first two thirds of a short story in my notebook - G was in another shop at that point.
Then we began our ascent. The Peak is the highest point on Hong Kong island and we’d been assured by many people that this was a must have experience, offering breathtaking views of the whole of Hong Kong. We decided to time it for sunset and so in the late afternoon we made our way up the winding walk from Connaught Road past St John’s Cathedral to the Peak Tram.
The tr
Columbo Villian of the Week 2007-11-14 09:35:14 This week’s Columbo Villian of the Week (note incorrect spelling of Villain is deliberate!) is star of 80s wrestling, WWE hall of famer and VH1 reality TV star Hulk Hogan AKA Terry Bollea. A soft target some might say and they’d be right but I’m on holiday and time is short.
Hogan rose to fame in the late 70s and early 80s as the face of the then WWF as its owner Vincent K McMahon (a sure fire future CVW) changed the face of wrestling from a series of cheesy regional promotions to one cheesy national promotion. It was the golden era of professional wrestling when the Real American could do no wrong dominating the entertainment world whilst telling kids to take their vitamins and say their prayers.
Everything the big guy McMahon calls Monster touched turned to gold. Movie deal followed TV deal. They didn’t even care when he started to lose his hair. And in many ways that’s where the trouble began. Hogan jumped ship from the WWE and went to WCW for more mon
Friday Flash Fiction: Kind of… 2007-11-23 17:14:59 As has become painfully clear to constant readers of this blog, and as exemplified by the woeful lack of a “Columbo Villian of the Week” on Wednesday, life has gotten on top of me. And so this week I find myself - for the first time since I started - running a little dry on ideas for FridayFlashFiction
.
So that’s it. Well not quite.
My pride will not let me lie down. Crap though the results may be. And so, with a big conspiratorial wink, this week I present the Elevator Entry:
Elevator Friday Flash Fiction
By Neil Beynon
Her shadow was long on the ground when she reached the snow kissed bank. The amber sun low on the horizon looked like it was falling off the edge of the world. The faint miasma from the near by processing plant the only blemish on the otherwise crisp November sky.
She fell through her memory to the last time she had stood there gazing over at the other side of the river. Hakon had been there then. They’d driven to the river in his gleaming Audi an Read more:hellip
Kindling a debate 2007-11-20 14:21:20
Amazon have released the Kindle reigniting the debate over the future of the book pulling in comments from many people such as John Scalzi over at Whatever and Paul Raven over at Velcro City. Meanwhile Neil Gaiman’s got in on the action, you can check out his thoughts here.
Neil makes a pretty compelling argument for the Kindle’s place in the world (for people who are mobile, people in remote locations and people who need to carry lots of books around). I remain more of a skeptic, not so much about the principle as someone is going to do it sooner or later, no my doubts are more about this device and the business model.
Sure mass storage is a great boon, I travel more these days myself and I could do without that moment of panic as to whether that fourth book is going to put me over the baggage allowance, yet it is the issue of battery life that really gets me.
I’m absent minded and busy. Between my job, my writing and trying to renovate my house I forget to charge
Columbo Villian of the Week 2007-11-28 05:30:12 Apologies for the lack of CVTW last Wednesday. It was one of those weeks.
This week we’re going for political satire, it’s a bold and some would say stupid move. Like trying to sell Northern rock – ba-boom-tshh!
In case you haven’t guessed this week’s CVTW is the Chancellor of the Exchequer: Alastair Darling (unless he’s been fired already in which case it’s the former chancellor).
Alistair is the person the previous incumbent (Gordon Brown) chose to replace him when he moved into the top job at Number 10. Economically and politically astute observers have commented that might not have been a favour as Brown’s economic chickens come home to roost.
In the last few months we’ve had a series of blunders including the time-bomb that was easy credit exploding all over Northern Rock. And, most recently, the small matter of twenty-five million people’s personal data getting lost in the post. That’s right: TWENTY-FIVE MILLION or around third of the population of the UK.
Beowulf 2007-11-27 05:30:50
Normally I post reviews within a few hours of having seen the film but I waited in the case of Beowulf. Why?
I needed time to digest it, to consider what I thought and to wonder if I should in fact wait to see it in 3D before making a decision. I still plan to see it in 3D but I thought it would be an interesting idea to post my thoughts on the 2D version and then an update when I get to the IMAX.
Mainly I decided I couldn’t wait after reading a fairly lengthy tirade by Hal Duncan on his blog. Hal is a writer who has me periodically shaking my head in awe at his frenetically fuelled prose and in bewilderment at some of his more outspoken views. The review is one of the latter occasions.
And I just can’t agree. Well not completely.
Yes I’m a Gaiman fan. And yes it’s been a while since I read the original poem. But that will not mean this review is a white wash, oh no - wait and see.
However, even in my semi-comatose-post-work-state, I could work out what Gaiman and Avery had tr
Off again. 2007-11-25 15:50:23 There hasn’t been much in the way of bloggage over the last week as the bathroom kind of took over.
Constant readers will recall that we had some fairly major house issues over the last few months and last weekend was Fix The Bathroom Weekend, it rapidly turned into Fix The Bathroom Week. It is now looking like Fix The Bathroom Month.
Let’s see, what else have I been up to?
A valiant if foolish attempt to recover my NaNoWriMo wordcount, I’m not going to finish by Friday but finish I will. I saw Beowulf, albeit in 2d - a review will be posted later in the week. And I had a story accepted - more on that in a week or so.
This week sees me jetting off again. This time for a work gig - should be fun although not anything like as warm as Washington. Looking at the schedule I’m not sure whether I’ll have much time to blog, but after last week’s debacle I’ve prepared some content for the next few days, including all the regular features.
Feel free to d
Friday Flash Fiction 2007-11-30 10:54:12 Ok. I’m angry. Really Angry. I wrote the blog and story that follows on Friday
, I posted it, I saw it live. I come home tonight from a great night out with friends to discover not only do I have no traffic from it but the damn thing is no longer up.
Now I know I posted. I know because it appeared. Albeit briefly in my facebook feed. This is the second time in as many weeks things have gone awry on here. If there’s another I’ll have to move, I simply can’t have things not going live when I post them.
So on the off chance anyone will actually read this now it’s late, here it is:
My short story “The House” will be appearing in Aphelion online from the 2nd December, also appearing in the same issue will be a story by fellow Friday FlashFiction
eer Gareth Powell.
And so this week is a linked Friday Flash - not part of the story you understand but linked. To find out how go to Aphelion sometime in December. Enjoy:
Because
By Neil Beynon
I’ve never
Columbo Villian of the Week 2007-12-05 12:58:21 This week’s columbo villian of the week is the original orange man: Robert Kilroy-Silk.
Kilroy is best known as the presenter of “Kilroy”, a daytime talk show that ran for eighteen years in the UK for reasons known to no one I can think of.
Kilroy, arguably the person responsible for Jeremy Kyle, managed to get himself fired for some very unfortunate comments he made in a newspaper about certain ethnic minorities.
Kilroy’s defence was fairly unique: He claimed it wasn’t a big deal because the views he expressed had already been published once before and no one noticed.
The BBC, unsurprisingly, fired him.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Kilroy-Silk decided that being fired for being a racist bigot uniquely qualified him for a career in European politics. He ran as an MEP for UKIP, got elected, fell out with their leader, got kicked out and formed his own party. He was later deposed as leader of his party he created.
Yes, this is a man at home with his own ego. And a family
Beowulf 3D 2007-12-15 05:42:18
Ok, now I get it.
Constant readers will recall that I saw Beowulf a few weeks ago and that I was not all that impressed. I thumped my animation bible, cursing motion capture as the work of the devil.
Which makes this kind of embarrassing because last night I saw Beowulf in 3D at the IMAX in Waterloo. This time I wasn't disappointed.
Many of the things that looked…well kind of naff in the 2d version only render with any kind of realism in the 3D format, this includes the curious pirrouets the thrown men perform during the many action sequences.
Even the eye movements - about which I was quite scathing in my review of the 2D version - are better in 3D. They still don't entirely synch up but you don't really notice it because the cutting together of shots compensates for it.
And the textures. Well if the texture artists don't win some kind of award it's a crime. That's what brings the film alive for me, in 3D the characters all have texture, depth and weight.
I guess mo
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