Friday-Night Blog: Hmmm.

Well, I've got myself into this mess, now I'd better think of something to write. I could go on about the final episode of Battlestar Galactica and how it totally rocked, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about how frakkin' awesome it was, but that would risk alienating everyone who doesn't give a toss... All I can say is I hope the people who make Lost watched it and were making notes of how to not suck. We can but hope...

So, what shall I write about? I made some granola today. Yep. That's exciting and sure to get everyone commenting in their droves. Actually, it's become a bit weird now that I know people are reading this - I don't know if that means I've changed the way I write, or what I write, but it's strange to think that I'm not just blogging to the wall, so to speak. It's nice that people are reading it, but also a little bit scary.

Would quite like to see Monsters vs. Aliens. Looks almost as good as a Pixar movie, and quite funny. It'd be good to see it in 3D, but that would involve a trip to the Big Smoke (which I'd like, but at about £15 for a train ticket these days, it'd work out at quite pricey trip.

Sorry, but that's all I've got at the moment. I'll try and do better for next week. If you're watching on Facebook, please become a fan. Thank you.

Friday-Night Blog: Battlestar Galactica

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ANYONE NOT WATCHING BATTLESTAR GALACTICA AS IT IS BROADCAST. CATCH UP ALREADY!

And so, after 4 years, (possibly) the greatest sci-fi series ever seen on television comes to an end. If you're in the USA, it ends tonight, and if you're in the UK, then it ends on Tuesday. (Unless you're one of those "download it from the internet-type people...)

It seems hard to believe that a remake of a hokey late-'70s TV show could have become something more than the sum of its parts, and yet, it is now being discussed (by the Guardian newspaper at least) in the same breath as such "must-see" "adult" TV as The Wire. (as long as you can ignore the bits about robots and FTL drives, because that's just silly childish stuff isn't it?)

And so we have a show that has dealt with racism, torture, extraordinary rendition, martial law, questions of mono- and poly-theism, rape, murder, child abductions, terrorism, fate and predestination... The frakkin' UN has even convened a council to discuss the TV show! That's is how important it is. More important than wars or famine or disease.

There's a hell of a lot of questions to be answered in the final two-hour episode, and I have a feeling we won't get them all, but then we never get all the answers in life. What the frak is Starbuck? Angel? Cylon? Something else? Where is the seventh Cylon, Daniel? Will the crew ever find a home? Will Baltar do the right thing for the right reasons? What's with all the Jimi Hendrix?

I predict at least two deaths - Laura Roslin (who was barely able to stand up to join Galactica's rescue mission), and Galactica herself. The old girl's falling apart as it is, let alone having to jump into a Cylon fortress next to a black-hole. I'm also convinced that Adama will go down with his ship... Beyond that, who knows. (I'm also hoping Apollo gets his hair cut.)

It's a measure of the show's quality, that the original Battlestar Galactica was made as a TV answer to Star Wars (something George Lucas' lawyers pointed out...), and now it seems that the Great Beard himself wants to model his live-action Star Wars TV show along the same lines.

I will miss Battlestar Galactica (but not all the mumbled dialogue - I'm looking at you Olmos and McDonnell) , but this isn't the end of the road. There's a TV movie - "The Plan" out later in the year showing life on Caprica before the attack, and then we have the prequel series called Caprica set fifty years earlier, and depicting the lives of two Caprican families - the Adamas and the Greystones - the development of the Cylons... and the subsequent war...

So here's to the Galactica - she was a good ship, and we will miss her. So say we all!

Friday-Night Blog: Comic Relief

So, it's Comic Relief night tonight, so make sure you all go and give lots of money. Bizarrely, this is the first year that I actually have donated a decent sum of money (when I think I really can't afford it, but hey...) due to that "Roly-Poly DJ" heaving himself up a mountain... Curse the power of suggestion, and well done to Chris and everyone for making it up Kilimanjaro!

Comic Relief day always comes tinged with a bit of sadness for me, as it was on Comic Relief day in 2001 that I found out my sister was going to die. (Sorry if that just derailed you there...) I was sitting watching the stuff they were doing on CBBC in the afternoon, when the phone rang. It was my step-father, telling me that my sister Fiona's illness was actually terminal cancer, and that I needed to get up to Manchester straight away. He'd gone up there with my Mum the previous day to see how she was as they thought she'd got some liver infection or something. I nearly went with them that day, but hadn't for some unknown reason - work or something, or maybe telling myself it was only a bug, because serious illnesses don't just happen like that, do they?

Anyway, the phone call was like a sledgehammer to my stomach. I remember sitting crouched over the seat of the armchair, trying to comprehend, to try and talk this around - surely they could do a liver transplant or some such procedure? But no, the cancer had grown inexorably within her and had spread far beyond the liver. I don't remember much of the rest of the day.

My wife drove me up to Manchester early the next day, with me in floods of tears half the time. It was so surreal to get to the hospital and see all my family and my sister's family there. By the time we got there, Fiona was in a coma, pumped full of painkillers and drugs and being fanned to try to control the incredible heat being generated by her body. I spoke to her - I don't know if she heard, but I had to talk to her, to try and promise her things I would do in her memory.

We left a while later to try to find somewhere to stay, and while watching a John Wayne film in a hotel room, we got the phone call from her husband John to say Fiona had died. I believe that she held on long enough for me and her friends to get there, so she knew she could go in peace.

So that's why Comic Relief is a bit of a double-edged sword for me, and not just because of some of the "comedy" they put up for our entertainment...! So, go and give them money, or give some to Cancer Research if you prefer, because in my mind it's not fair that a healthy 31-year old woman who didn't smoke, rarely drank and had a six-month old son should die of cancer, when some hard-drinking, chain-smokers live into their nineties.

I haven't exactly done something funny for money there, have I?

'In support of Comic Relief, registered charity 326568 (England/Wales); SC039730 (Scotland)'

Friday-Night Blog: Watchmen

So, yep, this blog's late... No change there then, but at least I do have a valid excuse. Last night I went to see Watchmen, so that's where I was, and that's why the Friday-Night Blog is coming at you on a Saturday!

Well, I've been sitting here trying to write a clever, informative review, but it's not working. If you want that sort of thing, then go read Empire's or SFX's review, 'cos they're better at that than me! Besides, I'm trying to catch up on Heroes at the same time, so I'm a bit distracted.

The cut-to-the-chase version is that I liked it. It worked for me as a film, probably because I read the graphic novel nearly 20 years ago (I'm old!), and I'm not a huge fan (I always preferred Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) It's a long film, weighing in at two and a half hours, but it fairly bounces along. There's a lot of violence and a heck of a lot of gore, which is why the film gets its 18 certificate. And Malin Ackerman's Silk Spectre (Ieft) challenges Michelle Pfieffer's Catwoman as the comic-book geeks' fantasy fetish female... Some of the CGI work left me a little cold, as if I know it's all going to date very quickly, especially Dr Manhattan and his giant clockwork fortress. What's wrong with painting a guy blue and then making him glow? Ah well...

I'm sure I could think of other more enlightened things to say, but they ain't happening now! Go and see the film if you like your comic-book movies dark and gritty and violent!

Not much else has been going on this week. Back at work after a week's holiday, but I've got myself a new Assistant Manager, so come April, I'll be able to go out at lunchtime again! Still loving Battlestar, and enjoying reading Susan Winemaker's Concertina: The Life and Loves of a Dominatrix - lots of kinky sex and food, which seems good to me! I'm also liking the pure unadulterated geekiness at Topless Robot.

So that's it, that's my week!

The Friday-Night Blog...

...has been delayed. I went to see Watchmen last night, and I'm still trying to formulate my thoughts. Should have something by the end of the day! Promise!