Awesome TV

I've said this before, and I look forward to saying it again; just when you think 24 can't possibly get anymore insane, it goes and defies your expectations again. For all it's po-faced seriousness, repetitive dialogue and exceptional plot holes it remains the finest thing on TV. Season 6, long may you reign.


I'm currently in the delighful throes of Reno 911, a take-off of Cops from Comedy Central. It's a really good show - largely improvised and painfully funny. It's introduced me to the comic talents of Kerri Kenney who plays two roles on the show and is without a doubt the funniest female comic I have seen in a very very long time. They have a movie coming out which looks a little "mah" but we'll see, the TV show is genius.


Call me a geek, call me whatever. The new Battlestar Galactica is has given sci-fi what it really needed; a bastard hard kick up the ass. I think it's best described in the words of the Peabody institute when they said: "It treats contemporary issues from an angle that really make you think about those issues…issues of race, gender, all those things are dealt with in that context... 'Battlestar' considers them in a dramatic narrative."

Damn right.

I also recently watched Crank which is, frankly, an absolutely brilliant action movie - it's ludicrious from start to finish and it knows it, which makes it all the more fun. Mike Judge's Idiocracy is a much maligned, badly treated flick which deserves recognition far beyond the release it was granted - it has some great ideas and moments of genius but the film has clearly suffered at the hands of the studios editors. Let's see... what else...? Last King of Scotland is excellent, so is Casino Royale and if you're in the mood for something gentle I can definately recommend Robert Altmans last film, A Praire Home Companion.

New Photos

There's 3 (count 'em, 3) new photo sets over at my photo blog Day of the Dave. Feel free to swing by and have a look...

16 Years Ago...

To this day, 12 January 1991, my mum died.

I was only 13 at the time and as a result, I have to confess, I don't have that many active memories of her. I mean I remember her and everything, but they're more flashes of moments, of sensations, or conversations than anything else. I don't have a full-fledged minds-eye image of her... and that was the thing I feared the most when she died, that I'd forget her. Now I'm older and have lived more years without her than with, I find that more comforting than anything else. I may not recall the sound of her voice or what she smelled like, but I do remember, very vivedly, what it was like to be with her.

I think I find that comforting because my precise memories are much more of how I was a dick to her, than of her being nice to me. My dominating memories are of how unsympathetically I reacted to hearing she had Leukemia, or of making her cry during the school holidays circa 1986, or how, critically, I chose to go swimming on the day she died, not go and see her in hospital.

I don't have guilt. I was a 13 year old boy going through a rough time and, overall, I handled it very well, but my memories naturally lean toward the negative. We had a great relationship - that much I which I am sure - and while I may have only a handful of moments that remind me of that, it's all I need.

In hindsight it's very easy to wish you had an adult mind throughout your childhood - those ex-girlfriends would be rationalised, those significant moments seized, those bullies put in their place - but the truth is you did't, and it is those experiences, good or bad that form you. When my mum died I became an adult very quickly. It established my healthy attitude towards death, it made me a stronger person and it, crucially, formed my character. I don't look upon her death as a terrible thing that happened to me anymore, I look at it as one of the many good and bad things that's happened to me during my life.

Normally I make a point of remembering this day, of taking a few minutes at 1.21pm to just sit down and raise a glass to her, but this year I forgot. It's not like I forgot forgot - I knew it was coming up, obviously - but this year it wasn't all prevailing, as it is normally. I didn't remember until late into this evenings shift. I don't feel too bad about that - it was a busy day and I was distracted - but I can't shake the inkling that forgetting this year is the start of another stage of forgetting... the kind where it slips into the back of your mind and it takes more and more to remember each time. I wouldn't like that.

This has been an unusually personal post for me. My apologies to those who found it to be cringingly embarrassing / too much information and / or a reminder of why heartfelt confessions really should be best kept in the head. I've found it quite cathartic, personally, and I never really understood the point of writing something if it wasn't going to be read. Warts n'all.

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Crossover Advertising

Next time you see that advert on TV with Ray Winstone (the one for Special K or Whole Wheat or Shredded Wheat or something) where he's talking about eating healthily and it being your choice, look in the background. As he picks up a newspaper there is a headline that says "Pommegranate is the New Blueberry" on an enormous Evening Standard posterboard.

Now look out for the new Burger King 'Angus Burger' advert and check to see which paper is delivering the all important headlines... why, it's the Evening Standard again.



Good to know that they can be relied on to deliver impartial news and not be influenced by advertising interests. Anyone spotted any more Evening Standard cameos?