Hello there. :) I’m Steve, and I’ve always been a bit plain and simple really.
I don't drive, never went to uni, and have never drunk a glass of alcohol, so I guess I have yet to grow up. :)
Today however I’m an English teacher/radio ma Site statistics:Click here
Ratatouille 2007-12-21 01:59:00 Has there ever been a good movie to watch on an aircraft?Sure, you got yer crowd-pleasing safe bets – yer Transformers, yer Pirates Of The Carribeans, even yer Jurassic Parks, yet once they've been reduced down to the size of a disastrously-placed anti-macassar, somehow even they become a focus for forgiveness in order to get through the flight, rather than the breathtaking masterpieces they might otherwise be considered.Recently, despite Herschel's pressure, I utterly failed to catch Ratatouille on its theatrical release. It got something of a mixed last chance therefore when I found it airing on Cathay Pacific's inbound long-haul flights to Hong Kong this month.Struggling to make it through the dreadfully fuzzy picture and painfully distorted sound on only one channel (like I said, yo
Going Home For Christmas 2007-12-25 01:59:00 Man it was cold at Heathrow Airport.Minus three degrees – the last time I remember it being a minus was when I was a kid, watching Jack Scott play with magnets.However I was prepared. Having got through the deserted customs area, I put on me gloves, jumper and coat and headed off for the central bus station. A 285, a 490 and £2 later I was shivering my way home feeling rather good about it all.At 7:20am I crept into my house and saw two cats raise their heads at me from the sofa, before starting as if to suddenly bolt away. Seven gave my finger a good 20 seconds sniffing before deciding that I was all right after all. The other one really didn't seem to care.I woke my mum with a cup of tea – always a special moment – and so began the next two days of detox from the flight.I rang Read more:Going
, Christmas
Eat Less Pay More 2007-12-23 20:23:00 In December 1990 a group of us from church set up a charity restaurant to raise money for third world development projects throughout the run-up to Christmas:Fig. 1: The Mayor opens the restaurant, and everyone tries not to get run over.Fig. 2: Immediately, the restaurant is teeming with custom.Fig. 3: A bit of inspired publicity should help. Or scare everyone away.Fig. 4: Suddenly we're filled to capacity. (and that was just the kitchen)Fig. 5: I have no idea who this is.That was a bonkers month. Tonight, bizarrely, I got to confess to everyone at my new church in Auckland about it:
Santa sketch 2007-12-26 01:59:00 At some point either today or yesterday I had a sketch
simulcast on NewstalkZB and Radio Sport. If you'd like to hear it, you're welcome to click here. Read more:Santa
"WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC – "Weird Al" Yankovic 2007-12-26 06:00:00 I don't think I've listened to this again since I first got it, so this morning I put it on as I wrapped presents.Al's first album is something of a curiosity, lacking as it does the polish and production of his later ones. The eponymous title implies that at the time, the album's commissioning was something of a novelty, with little confidence that Al's appeal would last to any further ones. Boy, were they wrong.Just about every track is played on the accordion, but this doesn't restrict the selection of styles on offer. Already we find several – quite unconvincing – parodies such as My Bologna, Another One Rides The Bus and Ricky, (based on Mickey) which is about the old I Love Lucy TV show. "Oh Ricky,What a pity,Don't you understand?That every day's a rerun and the laughter's al Read more:Weird
DARE TO BE STUPID – "Weird Al" Yankovic 2007-12-26 08:00:00 From 1985, this CD was Weird
Al really getting into his stride. I might even be tempted to call it his heyday, but for the fact that's he's still coming out with better and better material today.As soon as you read the track listings of Like A Surgeon, Girls Just Want To Have Lunch and Hooked On Polkas you know exactly what you're in for, well until you find his original compositions mixed-in anyway, and they really could turn out to be anything.George Of The Jungle doesn't attempt to be anything other what it is – contract work for a kids' movie. Something Al rightly gets away with thanks to his now long-held "family friendly" image.Yoda is all about... well, guess.I know Darth Vader's got you quite annoyed,But remember if you kill 'im then you'll be unemployed...But my favourite trac
Frost And Pegg's Perfect Night In 2008-01-01 01:59:00 On Christmas Day I wrapped my presents, and on the 27th we finally opened them.Christmas in our house tends to be a bit out-of-sync with the rest of the world. Usually it’s my fault, but not always.Anyway, what do you do when Christmas Day’s festivities are over? Of course, you watch all the Christmas telly. Or in my case, I watch all of 2007’s telly.This is why I've just sat through the above-named cheap 90-minute filler show, in which the above two funnymen from Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz link very brief clips of TV shows from yesteryear with ever-so-slightly-longer opinions and trivia.I think one of the reasons why I like Pegg and Frost
's TV and films so much is because they put so much thought in to them. Alas, after a promising start posing as a Goodies-esque sit Read more:Perfect
, Night
The Transformers: Man Of Iron 2008-01-02 01:59:00 Inspired by writing my review of the recent movie, I decided to dig out this comicbook from my teenage years, and settle down to once again enjoy Steve Parkhouse's brief foray into the Hasbro universe.My recollections were fairly spot-on. This British-set story did indeed still look a heck of a lot like Parkhouse's Doctor Who strips of the time – Stansham might just as well be Stockbridge – but I was unprepared for quite the extent to which the story was told from the humans' points-of-view. If anything, today I was rattled by why no-one in England had seen the giant transforming robots on the international news from the states. As a kid I'd just assumed that this was set in the same England where I lived. Today however I assumed this England was on the same Earth as all the other Read more:Transformers
The Marx Brothers – A Documentary: Time Marx Is On 2008-01-06 20:00:00 This documentary has the absolute bare minimum of an actual product.What we have here are 50 minutes of clips that don't seem to even be in order, jumping around the brothers' lives regardless of what the sparce narration may have just mentioned. And some of them are just plain misleading – they were hardly the main characters in the cartoon that was referenced.Such is the level of apathy in this release, that even the DVD's title page mis-spells its own name as "Time Marxes On."What saves this production though is the sheer quality of these clips. Most of them are from TV appearances much later in the Marx Brothers
' lives, and as such offer fascinating glimpses into the professional legacies they created for themselves. The sight of a post-retirement Groucho still singing and dancing Read more:Documentary
"Weird Al" Yankovic - LIVE! - 2008-01-07 01:59:00 I wasn't sure what to expect of this. The English-speaking world's premier parodist crams so many jokes into his videos, that what could possibly be worth watching about his less-honed live performance?Oh boy, was I wrong.From the moment his parents introduce him at the start, this is adrenaline cranked-up and left on full.Al wholeheartedly throws himself into each and every number, and I mean that literally, he really throws himself all around the stage for a whole hour. The video-clips that break-up his stage show while he's negotiating quick costume-changes have sadly all been cut from this release, but without them the whole thing just never slows down for a breather.More than anything else, what comes across is his fitness. At one point he's pretending to be Madonna, dressed as a surg Read more:Weird
Doctor Who: The Dominators 2008-01-12 01:59:00 The Dominators pretty much sums up the way it used to be for Doctor
Who, and as such it's a sword that cuts both ways.On the one hand it's set on an alien planet, features no humans aside from the regular cast, has room to develop the story and characters, and contains a philosophical undercurrent that doesn't preach a pat answer. It's also fun.I also feel I have to point out that there's a complete lack of zombies in this, the Quarks being neither a race of brainwashed individuals, nor looking disturbingly humanoid.However in the Quarks we also find that other side of the sword that I mentioned......they are, quite inarguably, the worst-looking aliens that Doctor Who has ever suffered a reputation for. The scene in which Jamie bravely creeps up behind one, ties a rope around its legs an
Gratuitously GROUCHO 2008-01-14 01:59:00 It's a CD compilation of bits and pieces of Groucho's audio work through the years, with the accent on compilation. The sound quality is a bit hit and miss (some of which even I could have fixed), and it has to be said, the quality of the scripts went up and down for me too.For example, track 4 Livingston Marx, African Explorer just didn't hold together for me, but then that's swiftly followed by Dr Hackenbush which pretty much defines the vaudeville sketch genre.After all, no matter what the script, with that breakneck delivery, when you listen to Groucho meeting anyone it's hard to turn your brain off afterwards. Read more:GROUCHO
Unforgettable – John Mann 2008-01-17 01:59:00 I finally managed to complete clearing up my room today, helped out by John Mann on the Compton Cinema Organ.It's the second time I've listened to this tape since being given it for Christmas by my mum a year ago, and on both occasions it's had the same effect on me – I don't so much listen to it as just let it's constant atmosphere wash over me.I'm particularly intrigued by the way it's been recorded. This is not some perfectly crisp recording that makes you feel as though you're unrealistically inside the instrument. Instead we have the gorgeous echoey acoustics of the location, with the organ itself somewhere in the mid-distance, surely evoking a more realistic experience of hearing the performance live. In particular this had the effect of making my entire bedroom feel several deg Read more:Unforgettable
The Book Of Ezekiel 2008-01-27 01:58:00 For some reason, today's evangelists don't seem to preach out of Ezekiel very much. Surprising, when you consider that Ezekiel was something of an evangelist too. It was his job to turn the Israelites (and anyone else who happened to be listening) back to God.Yet paradoxically, in modern evangelism at least, Zeek doesn't seem to get the same press-coverage of, say, the more popular gospels, with their nice stories, of God being nice, and doing nice things. I think the reason why Ezekiel doesn't get quoted as often is because, frankly, the book's content can feel a little embarrassing. (that's a statement about my own feelings – not about the book itself)There appear to me to be four aspects to Ezekiel's testimony that make it hard to quote inoffensively to non-Christians:1. Ezekiel actua
Doctor Who: The Mind Robber 2008-01-20 15:30:00 As Doctor
Who stories go, they don't come much weirder than The Mind Robber.To escape from the lava flow that ended the last story, the Doctor takes the TARDIS out of time and space completely to a place he can only call "nowhere."Here, anything that doesn't actually exist exists, so cue literary characters, a comicbook superhero and an evil genius who transforms Jamie and Zoe into fictional characters.The Doctor too is at risk, as he can only escape this fate by failing to do whatever the master predicts in writing.It's a visual tour-de-force – particularly in the last episode – as the Doctor and the master battle-it-out by verbally narrating a fight without contradicting what either of them has already said. As with so many Doctor Whos, the final episode is also when it all falls apa
Open Theism 2008-01-27 01:59:00 About a year ago I found myself reading an account of open theism, which includes the controversial idea that, contrary to popular belief, God actually doesn't know what will happen in the future.Nonsense of course. I found myself wondering just how much further some Christians can wind themselves up, over-studying the Bible and trying so hard to read in new meanings that just aren't there to be found.I've long held that if God had wanted to say anything clearly in the Bible, then he would have been a poor communicator to have written it in a way that he knew hardly anyone was going to understand. There's a lot to be said for taking much of the Bible at simple face-value, and anyway, haven't these people read all the accounts in which God accurately predicted what later happened? Duh.Is
THE ALCHEMISTS OF SOUND 2008-01-27 21:00:00 Whenever I'm asked what sort of music I like, I'm never sure how to answer.I suppose I infer that the question requires a neat box-like answer, like "jazz." After all, everyone knows what jazz is.So I usually cite a few artists who I like – easily identifiable ones like Elvis and "Weird Al", but the truth is I know so little about music that I'm usually happy with anything.But what do I really
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