Stuff! Wotsits! Dubreys!

Bloody hell, I’ve not been here in ages! There are actually several contributing factors to this sad state of affairs, not least of all the fact that I’ve been trying to write a book. There has also been Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, The A Team, Burn Notice, Supernatural fan fiction, work (in the shape of private students) and of course that old chestnut, sheer plain old laziness. All I can say is that without MacSpeech I wouldn’t even be doing this update right now.

Now, let’s get on to The A Team, shall we? I loved the new film, I’m sure everybody understands that. It was bloody fantastic: lots of action, lots of humour, Bradley Cooper getting his kit off, Murdoch being Murdoch and hanging off rotor blades while singing ‘you spin me right round baby’, and all kinds of little in-jokes, cameo appearances, and just plain old bloody good fun. No, the film was absolutely fucking fantastic, and Coolest Mate and I actually went to watch it twice in the cinema. I missed the antics of that bunch of semi-lunatic reprobates so much that I went and found the original five years of The A Team. So far I’m nearly through season one, and I cannot remember the last time I had so much fun revisiting something from my childhood. I’m absolutely astounded that it’s not a shit as I remember it to be! Seriously, it’s actually real nostalgia - you watch it, expecting it to be shite, but then you’re pleasantly surprised when you find out it’s actually pretty good fun. Yeah ok, so the episodes are formulaic and mostly routine, but you do get fabulous one-liners, excellent set pieces, the biggest number of stuntmen ever on-screen at one time, and lest we forget, army jeeps that can take off at 45° flip, end-over-end and not kill anybody. Where else would you get this kind of quality entertainment in this day and age?

Which brings me to Battlestar Galactica. I’ve just watched the ‘miniseries’ (as they call it) from 2003, which actually means the two ninety-minute TV movies they made to reboot and revamp the old series. While the first ninety minutes were actually quite good, I found my attention wandering more more during the second ninety minutes. When a glitch occurred on my VCD I really could not be bothered to fix it and carry on watching the rest. In short, I abandoned it and just for comparison purposes, I got hold of the one series of the original from 1978. Guess what happens next? Yes - I actually enjoyed that more. I don’t know why but the old series just seems to have more urgency about it. The new series might have absolutely amazing Cylons and all kinds of new ideas mixed into it, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before and to be honest it didn’t really grab me. Little things like the new Baltar appearing to have been Scorpius’d by a Harvey neural clone in the form of Tricia Helfer, Starbuck now being Miss Junior Tough Chick of the Universe, and all the characters having been turned into long-suffering poster boys for dysfunction and personal angst,and I’m thinking it’s boring for me personally to watch. It’s highly probable that the actual series that came later was better, and maybe one day I’ll get round to watching it. I haven’t ruled out the possibility of watching it, it’s just that after the miniseries I really don’t know if I can be arsed.

Burn Notice was not on this Friday, but that actually gave me more time to work on my obsession of the last few months and finish my book. Now comes the actual difficult bit; finding an agent or somebody willing to read the damned thing and hopefully get it published. (And I love that, if I mention it to people, the first thing they say is ‘publish it for free on the Internet’. I’m still terribly old-fashioned and still like the idea of getting an agent, who will hopefully sell it a publisher, who in turn will actually print paper books and put them in a bookshop. That will complete my plan of actually being able to show a book to my father one day with my name printed on the spine.)

I still haven’t booked my flights to go to Atlanta in September for Dragon*Con, despite having received my yellow ticket-card things two months ago… and I haven’t even sorted out what days I’m supposed to be returning to the UK for my sister’s birthday party and general freezing-my-arse-off activities over Christmas. It’s not that I don’t want to go to the UK, it’s just that I prefer not to freeze my arse off. Case in point: it’s about 31° this evening (and it is nearly midnight, folks) and I don’t even have the air con on.

Ok, I think that’s everything I wanted to ramble on about. Oh apart from my updated, new and improved playlist that Coolest Mate helped me amend and add to so that I can write my book to it. That is pretty much it. Oh, and an apology for the gratuitous Farscape references. Oh, and and and - at some point I will be updating this blog with all the p0rn that’s been sent my way, stumbled over, created and generally enjoyed recently.

Soopytwist.

Tags:
Doctor Who ~ BSG ~ Battlestar Galactica ~ The A Team ~ Bradley Cooper ~ Supernatural ~ fan-fic ~ Burn Notice ~ Farscape ~ Dragon*Con ~ writing