Monday 23 August 2010

Starcrazy

The countdown to Christmas began this weekend as Simon Cowell TV once again usurped the nation's Saturday evenings by bringing us the first round of X-Factor auditions and so, for the next four months, we can all look forward to tabloid headings about the surprisingly dull misdemeanours of people you weren't interested in before Cheryl Cole told them they could sing and advert after advert reminding us that we can watch Louis Walsh in HD.
The first episode didn't disappoint - England, it seems, is still full of people for whom this 'means the world', who just 'need to be given a chance' so that they can 'give mum what she deserves'. My biggest concern, however, is over those people who say that 'all they do is sing'. Apparently, they sing when they get up, they sing when they're walking around the house, they sing when they're at work and they sing when they're going to sleep. Wasn't this what ASBOs were created for, or have sections of society been given permission to perform 24-hour musicals, a little like Mark Watson's 24-hour comedy show from the Edinburgh festival a few years back? I recently passed through a village with a 'No Cold Callers' sign - perhaps this is where all the 24-hour singers are kept, joined together in a pact not to be disturbed by the world of speech out there? In fact, if they do sing all the time then how exactly did they manage to tell the judging panel their name without bursting into an operatic aria?
If the return of the X-Factor didn't make this weekend crazy enough then Premier League football decided to chip in just to make sure. Three 6-0 victories gave Colin Murray the opportunity to play Iron Maiden at the end of Match of the Day 2, while the 'papers relished the opportunity to plaster '666' over the front of celebrating Newcastle fans. Teams not involved in those three matches must have wondered just what they did wrong - did they not get the memo that we were going for a clean sweep of 6-0s? The likes of Birmingham and Wolves, we hear, had been campaigning for a weekend of 1-0s across the board, Mick McCarthy calling it 'ludicrous' to expect his team to score two months' worth of goals in a single match.
And, to top it all off, I went to a wedding this weekend in which the couple got married for the second time in two months.
Strange days indeed.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Superman Tonight

I'm sorry to have disappointed my thousands of readers yesterday (on reflection, the 'millions' referred to in the previous blog was probably a little ambitious, but surely 'thousands' is a little closer...) by failing to write anything. Strictly speaking, I did write something, I just decided that the words looked better in my novel than on this blog - basically, the theory I'm working under is that if you think the content of this blog is even mildly entertaining then you will simply be unable to contain yourselves with excitement when the novel finally comes along. And, if the blog has been a crushing disappointment since day one, then perhaps you'll join me in beginning a nationwide campaign harassing every publisher until my novel is published and you can finally enjoy something I've written?
In the meantime, superheroes...
Stemming from the work I've done on my novel in the last day or two, in which I found myself referencing Flash Gordon, Superman, Batman and Spider-Man in the space of a page, I thought I'd write a brief blog about superheroes and ask for your suggestions for the ones who never made it onto our screens.
There are so many reasons to like the 4 that I've named:

Flash Gordon
1) The song by Queen
2) The fact that he has no actual powers but still manages to defeat anyone evil
3) The best line in a film ever - 'Flash, Flash I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the earth!'
4) Brian Blessed.

Superman
1) Take your glasses off, no-one can tell you're Clark Kent. Put them back on, you're Clark again! Who needs fancy disguises?
2) Being able to fly.
3) The awful acting of 'evil superman' in Superman 3 (I think), which simply makes you love the 'good superman' more!
4) His shameless wearing of his underwear on the outside

Batman
1) Batman Begins and The Dark Knight - or, to put it another way, Christopher Nolan.
2) The Bat Cave!
3) Alicia Silverstone as Bat Girl - what was that all about?!
4) 'Kerpow!', 'Whack!' and 'Thwop!'

Spider-Man
1) Carrying off a tight-fitting suit with remarkable grace and inspiring children everywhere to don the same outfit at parties.
2) Being the only superhero in this list to have a hyphen in their name (thank you to Adam for pointing this out).
3) Being able to swing on a spider's web - they always break when I try.
4) Successfully kissing the girl while hanging upside down.

As a brief test of the readership of this blog, why don't you use the comments facility below to let us know of your favourite and why you like them? Or which superhero should have been made that never was made? Hamster-Girl? Staple-gun-man? The Hole-Puncher? The possibilities are endless...
The best ideas will find their way into the novel. Well, you never know...

Monday 16 August 2010

I can only disappoint u

I owe you two apologies this morning:
1) Despite initially averaging slightly more than one blog a day for the first five days, a weekend away left me with no choice but to fail miserably in my quest to post on a daily basis or, at least, made it quite clear that there was little point trying to emulate Mark Watson yet again by sprinting to the nearest internet cafe at five minutes to midnight or appointing a 'guest blogger' to keep my legions of fans happy while I sunned myself in Bedfordshire.
2) I have spelt 'you' without two of its letters in my title for this blog, my sense of loyalty to accuracy preventing me from correcting Mansun's spelling. (While we're on the subject of bands, a special prize goes to anyone who can name the artist behind each of the songtitles used in the blog so far, without resorting to Google, Bing or any other search engine, encyclopaedia or radio DJ.)
It has, I think, become rather fashionable recently to point out spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes in articles, billboards, shop windows, blogs by Sam Lenton, etc., but I'd still like to try and ride on this wave of popularity for the purposes of today's post. You see, there may well come a time when 'you' can be quite acceptably spelt as 'u', apostrophes can be thrown into any word containing an s and the plural of house could be street. English is always changing and if enough people keep making the same mistakes then perhaps they will eventually no longer be considered mistakes and those of us inserting our semi-colons at just the right time will be the ones who look like fools.
Whilst driving home yesterday, I noticed a sign advertising 'Egg's' and thought how odd that they would sell off the individual parts of an egg and how strange that they hadn't written 'yolk' or 'white' after 'Egg's' to clarify what was on offer. And it doesn't stop at Eggs (note the correct absence of the apostrophe!). If an item is being sold in quantities larger than one then the opportunity is there for the nation's shopkeepers to show that they have learned the simple rule of apostrophes - wherever there's an s at the end of a word, put an apostrophe, just in case. Or something like that anyway.
The worst one I have come across though, the one that I still struggle to see a reason for was when I saw the word 'was' written as 'wa's'. Perhaps the writer was actually talking about the city of Wa in Ghana but, if so, you still have to question the lack of a capital letter, as well as the contextual irrelevance of the surrounding words. No, it seems that the only viable explanation for 'wa's' is that of panic, playing it safe by putting in an apostrophe because of the tempting presence of the s.
I think you are due a third apology of the morning:
3) A week after slaughtering Monday in 30 easy steps, I am now getting on my high horse (which is impressive for someone who once chickened out of riding a pony) and telling you the same things that we all got sick and tired of hearing about when Eats, Shoots and Leaves came out a few years back, whilst now opening up my own writing to intense scrutiny as my millions of readers (ah, I love hyperbole) check through every post so far with a fine tooth comb to catch me out and class me as just as bad as the 'egg's' and 'wa's' guys. Well, I guess I will just have to take that risk while promising you a lighter and more enjoyable topic in the days ahead.

Thursday 12 August 2010

Never Forget

Unconventional man that I am, I remembered my wedding anniversary today.
When this blog is eventually turned into the riveting plot of a summer blockbuster, as we have long-established that it undoubtedly will, the actor playing me (let's stick with Edward Norton for now) will no doubt be surprised to see his script insisting that he defies all Hollywood expectations and remembers important days and dates.
I am currently reading a rather fantastic novel by Mark Watson (we still haven't had that coffee, Mark) called 'Eleven', which considers the impact of our decisions, exploring the consequences of what we don't do as much as what we do do. So, for example, one character failing to successfully step in and prevent a boy being beaten up has, many steps down the line, inadvertently led to a man who had his Blackberry stolen by a fat kid with a knife accidentally sending an abusive text to his boss because he couldn't get to grips with his replacement phone when he was trying to send a message to the woman across the room he was flirting with. Sound complicated? Strangely, it really isn't and it makes an enormous amount of sense and leads me to reflect on just how significant our action or inaction can be.
Imagine, for a moment, that I did forget my anniversary today. My wife, now irritated and angered, overlooks feeding the cat. Not just that morning but for the entire day, which leads to the cat trundling off to a neighbour's house to get some food. The next day, after hundreds of pounds have been spent on 'forgiveness gifts', we set off in search of our cat. This leads to us coming across an out-of-control dog harassing an old man, whose stick has got stuck in the grating of a drain. Ever helpful, we step in to prise the stick out of the grate, whilst my wife seeks to pacify the dog by stroking it. However, as a cat-lover and someone with no experience of dogs, she makes a fateful mistake by trying to tickle its cheek, which causes it to bite out and almost take her hand between its bloodthirsty teeth. Frightened, she staggers backwards, knocking into the old man, whose stick goes flying out of his hand and through the windscreen of a passing car. The driver, who has borrowed the car from a friend, is left devastated and pulls up around the corner to call the owner, looking for the right words to explain what has happened. The owner is trying to sleep after a party on her street kept her up all night. The phone call jolts her out of bed and she reaches, half-asleep, across the bed-side table for her mobile. Knocking a glass of water over the phone, she screams out in frustration, which is only further compounded by the message her friend leaves on the answer-phone. Taking time to dry out the phone until it is ready to be used again, the owner now misses the call from the estate agent that says she needs to up her latest offer within the next hour or risk losing out on the dream house she'd been saving up for. The estate agent, needing to secure this sale to keep his job after a last warning the previous week, keeps ringing and ringing, wondering just how he'll explain to his wife and baby of 18 months that he won't be able to provide for them anymore. The mother, meanwhile, failed to see her baby walk into the coffee table because an unknown cat had just wondered into the garden. While in hospital, having the baby checked over, she receives a call from her husband telling her that the sale fell through and that his career is finished.
And all because I forgot to buy a card.

As it is my anniversary and it would be a good idea to show a little bit of public affection for my wife, permit me to quote Mr Watson (how about table tennis?) and say that I feel so lucky to have found my wife and I don't want her to die or anything, sentimental fool that I am.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

It's a hard life

Today, a list of things that are difficult:

1) Painting a white wall white.
2) Enjoying a Steve Martin film.
3) Beating Crystal Palace away from home on Boxing Day.
4) Resisting the urge to stroke a cat's fur the wrong way.
5) Maths.
6) Knowing whether to put the washing out when the clouds are grey.
7) Putting on cuff-links.
8) Eating things at a dinner party that you can't stand.
9) Playing golf well.
10) Russian.
11) Discovering the people that are better than you at the thing you thought you were good at.
12) Drinking while laughing.
13) Sneezing while driving.
14) Using the self-service tills in Tesco.
15) Remembering your own mobile number.
16) Threading a needle.
17) Hand-washing clothes.
18) Resisting picking a scab.
19) Watching Crazy Frog, Mr Blobby and the Teletubbies get to number one in the charts.
20) Feigning interest during a longer-than-expected photo slideshow.
21) Deciding which number to end my list of 'things that are difficult' on.
22) Still getting asked for ID when buying wine at a supermarket.
23) Making decisions.
24) Wondering whether it would be clichéd to stop my list at number 26, as if I had a difficulty for every year of my life.
25) Resisting putting your own name into google every few months.
26) Ironing.
27) Moving on from your favourite number always being 27.
28) Seeing my follower count at '2' but not knowing whether there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, out there reading these words...
29) Not checking email every five minutes - or less.
30) Feeling irritated at yourself for ending on a round number rather than taking the bold step of finishing on 31.

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Slight Return

And so, at 23.20 last night, Maisie's return proved wholeheartedly that internet campaigns work. I'm sure you will agree that this was up there with Rage against the Machine's unlikely Christmas Number One, as a cat's wanderings were brought to an abrupt end by a frantic worldwide search. And, to top it all off, I actually did gain a follower from across the Atlantic who I am sure contributed invaluably to the safe return of temporarily the world's most famous feline.
I wouldn't say she's made a full return though, as the shock of falling in the pond seems to have left her a little crestfallen, clearly embarrassed at the prospect of the cat version of 'You've been Framed' showing her moment of glory to millions of giggling kittens. She has become, for a day at least, like the footballer who returns to play for their old club, promising to bring back the magic from yesteryear, building up hope and anticipation in the heart and mind of every fan, before stepping onto the pitch for their second debut and conceding a penalty within the first minute, missing an open goal in the twelfth and getting sent off for swearing in the fifteenth.
Returns are always over-hyped and so often don't deliver, which sort of makes sense when you think that really people are trying to make history repeat itself, expecting that they will get the same reaction and achieve the same success as they did the first time around. Hopefully, if David Cameron's approval ratings are sliding  over the next few years he won't spin the globe in his office, cast his eyes over the Falkland Islands and think 'mmm, well, it worked before, why not try it again?'.

Monday 9 August 2010

The Wanderer

I am, if truth be told, rather surprised by the impact this blog has had so far. No, Mr Watson still hasn't rung/texted/popped round for a coffee, nor has Sir Bob Geldof sent me through a vast sum of money for promoting The Boomtown Rats' most successful single. It seems, sadly, that my two posts so far have proved so offensive to the feline world - was it the suggestion that my cat's life might be turned into profitable Hollywood gain? - that Maisie has indeed wandered off in protest, probably writing a revenge blog of her own behind a tree somewhere, whilst I am left here refreshing the page in the hope that my follower count might hit the heady heights of two. In fact, some might say that blogging about a cat's temporary disappearance (we're assuming it's temporary anyway) is a little pointless, since my only follower is equally bemused as to our cat's whereabouts and, should someone from across the Atlantic stumble across this blog, then the chances of them being able to help in the search are slim to say the least. Unless - and in this philanthropic age you never know - this post in some way begins a worldwide 'Maisie hunt' that merely reinforces my belief that a film offer is only a phone call away, whilst millions search their gardens, garages and gazebos for the cat who, in one week (being realistic), has become the most famous feline on the planet.
Well, aren't we always being told to dream big?

(Tell me why) I don't like Mondays

Ten reasons why Monday is the worst day of the week:

1) It is the cause of arguments - which is the first day of the week, Sunday or Monday? Surely a day of the week shouldn't lead to angry outbursts, raised voices, furrowed brows and general sighing and tutting?
2) No good sporting event has started or ended on a Monday. True, Sky briefly flirted with Monday Night Football but mostly this led to a swathe of confused conversations in pubs and living rooms, which generally ran along the lines of 'Football? On a Monday? Surely not'.
3) Sunday is the day of rest and relaxation and so, coming just one day later, Monday stands in complete contrast as the nation anxiously trundles back to work, shouting through car windows at the 'idiot' who is making them run late to the place they don't even want to go to. In fact, just think of the contrast in the names - 'Sunday' contains the word 'sun' which has associations of brightness, life, happiness, summer, whilst 'Monday' contains the as-yet-unused word 'mon', which quite rightly comes up with a little red squiggle under it when you type it out.
4) There is a discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation - it is spelled 'Monday' but pronounced 'Munday'.
5) Many years ago, the new Spice Girls album came out on a Monday.
6) Every Monday, the newspapers provide a second round-up of the football scores from the weekend and millions across the country scramble through the pages in the hope that Sunday's report was inaccurate and that somehow by Monday the Football Association has declared the poor result your team achieved 'unfair' and has awarded you the victory on 'moral grounds'. At the time of typing this, this has yet to happen.
7) Nothing dramatic is likely to happen in Neighbours until at least Thursday.
8) You can't get 2-for-1 cinema tickets on a Monday. No-one thought that 'Orange Mondays' would ever catch on and so Monday now sits in envy as Wednesday reaps in the glory.
9) You can't get a take-away on a Monday. It just feels wrong.
10) Bank Holiday Mondays are always a let-down, especially when they fall in the May Half Term week and you would have had the day off anyway. 

Tomorrow, Tuesdays...

Sunday 8 August 2010

With or without you

There's something rather odd about beginning a blog when the followers count stands at '0', making it quite clear that no-one out there is planning to read these words and that, really, if anyone does stumble across this opening sentence of my very first blog then they're probably only here by accident after searching in vain for Sam Mendes, Sam West, Samuel L Jackson, or another famous name-sharer who might likewise be deciding to jot down their thoughts on the world. That's not to say that this is pointless - in fact, I quite enjoyed writing that first sentence (and this one to think of it) and I've now just offered a small prayer of thanks to every parent who decided to call their child Sam.
So, if I run with the assumption that one day someone might stumble across this page and their mouse has temporarily stopped working so they can't click the 'back' button, I'd probably better make my first words worth  reading or, at least, not too off-putting that I accidentally kick-start a Facebook campaign, or something equally anarchic.
The truth is, I'm not too sure what will be typed in the days ahead. Perhaps I should follow in the footsteps of Mark Watson (www.markwatsonthecomedian.com/web/blog/) and make some grand promise to blog every day for a decade, charting each step of my thirties? True, I would need to be thirty to make it work as effectively as Mark's blog but at least it would give me a focus. Or, maybe I should go down the sentimentality route and dedicate the page to my cat, filling you in, 'Marley and Me' style, with every unwanted scratch, bite, and disappointed look she gave me, making an internet legend of little miss Maisie, perhaps even providing Hollywood with enough material to commission 'The Miraculous Misadventures of Maisie'. I would, of course, script the film and find myself played by Edward Norton in the feature film.
Unfortunately, when it comes down to it, unless there is a wave of inspiration on its way, I think I'm going to rest on safe shores for now. And yes, I too am cringing at the extended beach metaphor but sometimes you just have to make a sandcastle and hope there isn't a boy in a striped red and white t-shirt waiting around the corner to kick it in the moment your back has turned. That never happened to me, of course - the first lie of my blogging days. Enjoy.
So, if anyone has actually read down this far then I applaud you (in my head - I couldn't be bothered to take my hands off the keyboard) and ask you to drop by again sometime to see if I gave up after this post or persevered with shameless self-promotion by plugging my novel in every other sentence and name-dropping various writers and comics that I would quite enjoy meeting/working with/having round for dinner/watching House with/playing tennis with...
Hint hint, Mr Watson.

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