20th April 2009

I hate women.

 

Regards,

Marwood.

What the Hell has happened to Manics fans?!

I mean, seriously…? I’ve been keeping an eye on the forums recently for gossip about the new album, and a few days ago I was scanning through a thread on the new cover art. At some point somebody raises the subject of the cover art for previous album Send Away The Tigers - a photograph of two rather young-looking girls in somewhat skimpy outfits - and someone responds with “Yeah, I always wondered what was going on there”. I mean, what the fuck?! How can they not know everything about that image?

Here’s the thing. What I do (and have always done) with a new Manics release is this: I get it home, lock the doors, unplug the phone, close the curtains and sit there with the stereo on full blast, pouring over the sleevenotes. I soak up every bar of music, every word in the lyrics is dissected, every quotation, or political or literary reference is assessed, every square inch of those sleevenotes is examined in detail. Anything I don’t immediately understand is noted down, to be researched or mulled over later. And in the here and now, with google and wikipedia a few keystrokes away, that process has become significantly easier.

So, for instance, in order to find out ‘what is going on’ with the cover art to Send Away The Tigers any sane person would pursue the following very simple process: Step 1, spend 20 seconds skimming through the sleevenotes until you find the credit Photography © Valerie Phillips taken from the book Monika Monster First Future Woman On Mars. Step 2, spend five minutes or so on Wikipedia reading about Valerie Phillips and her work. Step 3, If you feel so inclined, visit Amazon and order the book you learnt about in Step 1. IT REALLY IS THAT FUCKING SIMPLE!

So why are people so entirely incapable of doing this? Why are people WHO ARE ACTUALLY EXPRESSING CURIOSITY so utterly lacking in motivation and intelligence that they can’t be bothered to just go and fucking find out?!?! This sort of attitude would be bad enough in any situation – honestly, I lose track of the number of times you mention an actor or whatever on a forum and get the response “Who’re they?”…um, you’re on the INTERNET you pillock!) – but these are Manics fans. We’re supposed to be the most passionate, literate, intelligent people out there. Aren’t we?

Bleh.

 

Regards,

Marwood.

Thursday 20/11/2008

I was slightly alarmed today (well ok, yesterday, I’m clealy not writing this on Thursday…and really, isn’t it depressing, the kind of mindless ephemera that I get alarmed about?) to realise that I’ve not picked up a new Doctor Who DVD since perhaps May or June. It was The Invasion of Time, if you’re interested. It just seems very odd to me as there was a time when I had a genuine hunger to fill the gaps in my collection, and having spent the last two years doing just that and devotedly picking up each new DVD on the day of release, I now lose interest. I suppose at the very least it means there are now five or six releases which I don’t own, which I suppose allows me the thrill of completing my collection a second time.

It’s part of a wider drift in my interests recently, as almost all of my collecting habits have stalled a little over the last six months, apart from Big Finish CDs (of which I now own twice as many as this time last year) and the lovely lovely lovely Character Options toys. Comics seem to have been hit particularly hard.

The collecting thing gets particularly frustrating when I realise that the things I have actually been picking up aren’t even being appreciated. I was recently lucky enough to find a copy of The Age of Chaos, a full-length Doctor Who graphic novel written by the Sixth Doctor himself, Colin Baker. It was very scarce when it was published in 1994 (for some reason in very small numbers) and I was sadly unable to find a copy at the time. I’ve dearly wanted one ever since. So of course today I realised that since FINALLY finding a copy, it has sat on a shelf in a cabinet, and that I’ve not once even bothered to flick through it or even look at it. Isn’t that awful? That something I’ve wanted for so long – FOURTEEN YEARS!!! COUNT THEM!!! – finally falls into my lap only to end up unloved and ignored is quite disgraceful, really.

Still, it’s not just me. Two months ago Jen bought a Friends boxset – all ten series, presumably more than two hundred episodes – and as far as I’m aware she’s not watched a single minute of it. Ah well.

It’s snowing pretty heavily out there today. So perhaps I should stay in and get some reading done.

 

Regards,

Marwood.

Red Dwarf IX

I’m just catching up with the month-old news that Red Dwarf is to return to production for two new half-hour episodes. These episodes will be accompanied by a ‘making of’ documentary and an anniversary clipshow. Apparently they were commissioned by the freeview channel Dave, after regular repeat runs there have managed impressive viewing figures. There seem to be very few other details available at the moment, though it is claimed that ‘all’  the regulars will be returning, and there are clear signs that if the project is successful it will lead to further instalments.

Well, I’m certainly curious to see how they turn out, and I’d love to be optimistic. This is one of my all-time favourite TV shows, and one which meant a great deal to me when I was younger (and to be fair still does), but really I’m not expecting much. In many ways the series fell apart long before it disappeared from our screens. I thought the final two series were an absolute abomination and it is difficult to imagine Doug Naylor turning things around. It might just work if he ditches much of the back-story and continuity of the final series in favour of a back-to-basics story featuring just the core cast in an isolated situation – and if he can somehow remember how to write good jokes again (which were completely absent from 7 and 8). Sadly though I wouldn’t be suprised if Naylor feels obliged to present us with a torturous continuity-riddled abortion of an episode attempting to sort out the tangled mess in which he left the story at the end of the last series – which ended some ten years ago – and which is exactly the sort of serious mistake he made with much of the final two series.

Ultimately, I do think that if Red Dwarf were ever going to save itself from the scrap heap then it needed to do so ten years ago with a fresh new series instead of endless wrangling over a movie which was never seriously going to happen and which absolutely nobody thought was a good idea.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

Regards,

Marwood.