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  • Monday Morning (Here Again…)

    I’m about to speed off into town again (this time to purchase a roasting tin), and I’m also attempting to get my head together. My brain is still in something of a fog after the absurd exertions of last week – while I’d love to be all action, all writing, all the time, there are simply points where my brain just waves the white flag and I have to go with it. I am, at least, being able to catch up with lots of the television I’ve missed (both British and American), and there are a couple of major missions I’ve set myself that I’m chipping away at over the next couple of weeks. On top of this, I will hopefully be doing another TV Eye update on the stuff I have seen – particularly the conceptual car-crash that is Season 3 of Heroes. I’m not certain exactly how Christmassy I am feeling right now – but then, it’s an odd and unusual time for me. I’m just going to have to wander into this new world, and see where it takes me…

  • Public Service Announcement

    Just to let you know – on Facebook, I’ve linked up with the ‘NetworkedBlogs’ application, which syndicates this blog onto the news feeds there – or, at least, it would if could get over 15 readers (I’m currently at 13). So, if you’re on Facebook, do please go to http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/crawling_from_the_wreckage/ and click on the very welcoming ‘Join this network’ button – you’ll be doing me a favour, and get to access my oddball burblings from an all new location…

  • Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard

    A quiet weekend – one I’ve been decidedly grateful for. My experience of the run-up to Christmas has, for various reasons, evolved into an operation on an almost industrial scale that naturally expands to fill whatever space is available – I finally got everything done on Friday, and after a frantic time in the dimension-warping labyrinth that is the Arndale Centre I got everything sent off – 20 minutes before the end of that postal day. Okay, I could conceivably have sorted it on Saturday, but I really didn’t want to cut it that fine, and considering I was running on only four hours sleep, it’s an understandable impulse. I did have fun sorting it all, however, and I’m hoping that what I’ve done goes down well – but while there’s the little voice at the back of my head that does want to get a positive reaction, most of me knows that this is about the giving, and that it was important to me to do Christmas right this year. Just because it’s my first Christmas for a while where I’m actually on my own, it doesn’t mean I can’t still do things right, and have a good time in the bargain.

    Shopping today – stocking up for the next three weeks, plus some official Christmas treats – and while I have indulged myself a little, I don’t have a mountain of chocolate to work through, and I think that’s probably a good thing. I’m going to have a relaxing time, catch up on some TV watching, and enjoy myself. There’s also been some DIY happening – after last weekend’s epic effort from Anna to finish her laminate floor, we’re now onto finishing the new wardrobe in my room, and have been encountering Ikea’s interesting attitude to providing screws that actually fit in the holes you’re supposed to fit them into. A slightly busted screwdriver didn’t help, so Anna has high-tailed it to B+Q, and will soon be returning to put the finishing touches on the piece, and I’ll finally have somewhere decent to hang my clothes and store more stuff.

    It’s an odd feeling to have gotten to the point where I don’t have much to do, and can legitmately take a breath – everything in the writing and publishing world has essentially shut down for the next couple of weeks, and aside from an outstanding review (of the deliriously nutty Korean film The Good The Bad The Weird), I don’t have any major work to do. I’m also basically sorted for my monthly wages until March 23rd 2009, so I can genuinely pause here – I’ve got to kick myself into gear once 2009 commences, but right now, I can simply be.

    I’m also doing better in myself. Last weekend was very, very hard, and I did feel somewhat stuck in a frame of mind that didn’t seem likely to shift – but then, I woke up on Monday morning, and suddenly everything seemed a little easier to deal with. Since then, I’ve had my ups and downs, but I’m still feeling balanced, and better, and certain that however traumatic the last year has been, I’ve made the right choice, and I’m heading in a direction that I actually want to go. Sure, I’d rather be doing it in company – but if these are the cards I’ve been dealt. I can complain, and I can moan, and I can be miserable – or I can remember that none of that is going to change the past, and concentrate on making a better future.

    And however many gloomy predictions there may be for 2009 – and there are plenty of voices shouting “Doom!” – I’m going to do my best to have an excellent year, get my life back on track, and have some serious fun into the bargain.

    That’s my plan. And I think it’ll do me for a while.

  • Flashback: Jingle All The Way…

    It’s been a rough time for me, recently. This weekend’s been quite difficult – lots of DIY related upheavals, and some of my darkest moments for quite a few weeks. I could blog about that, about how hard life feels at the moment – but I’m not going to.

    Instead, it’s time for a brief look back at a happier time, and one of the most genuinely fun afternoons I can remember spending. My friend Tris and I were always talking about working together to break into the Media, and while it never happenned (One important life lesson – if you talk about doing something more than actually doing it, it’s fairly likely that it won’t happen) we did have one brief moment of glorious collaboration. We’d done plenty of stuff separately and together- he’d helped out on legendary video project The Alchemist, while I’d co-starred in the even more legendary fan film spoof The New Airwolf: The Next Generation (the first chapter of which has notched up over 90,000 hits on Youtube, a fact that never fails to stun me…), but the only point where we truly collaborated and created something together that was neither mine nor his but by both of us – it happenned one afternoon in 1999, and involved creating truly crazed jingles for an audition tape to aid Tris’ aim of breaking into radio. Tris’ radio career never took off (in the same way as my filmmaking career hit what could politely be described as ‘a few snags’), but he did get plenty of experience, including a run on Hospital Radio where the following jingle did get some airtime. It’s only about a minute long, it was written with the track ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ by Barry Adamson as a backing, it rhymes ‘cool’ with ‘strawberry fool’ (as well as suggesting a different use for furniture polish Mr Sheen) and it never fails to makes me smile. So, if you’ve ever wanted to find out what it’d be like to hear me both singing and (believe it or not) rapping – now’s your chance… (Although if you have, consider me officially scared…)

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  • TV EYE: Flashback – Doctor Who: Season 3 (2007)

    Okay, I realise that this isn’t much of a flashback, but thanks to the recent repeats and the joys of BBC iPlayer, I was able to catch up with most of the recent repeat of New Who S1 (I missed a couple of episodes, and deliberately didn’t put myself through the Slitheen two-parter). Rather bizarrely, they seemed to sail past season two (a fact I wasn’t too sad about – despite the fabulousness of Girl in the Fireplace, I think on the whole it’s the least interesting and succesful of all four New Who seasons) and go straight for Season 3, and while there was the temptation to only watch the episodes I’d really enjoyed, I eventually decided to bite the bullet and give the whole thing a second try, managing an episode a day over the next three weeks (the repeats were only on weekdays).

    And the result? I’m still largely impressed by what I saw, although it is also a case of that effect you get when there’s an album that you really enjoy, and then you go back and listen to it again and realise that it’s actually those three classic tracks that make it as exceptional as you remember. S3 is impossible to talk about without taking into account the frankly amazing one-two-three punches of Human Nature, The Family of Blood and Blink – outside of that famed trio, however, there’s still enough that I liked to make S3 the point where I could actually allow myself to genuinely enjoy New Who, rather than throw my hands up in horror at what I was seeing.

    A quick run-down of my reactions to the episodes:

    Fear the spoilers…

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  • Nighthawks at the Diner

    Friday night. Alone again. I haven’t blogged much for a while, mainly because I’ve been busy – two major chunks of proofreading that kept me occupied for a while, as well as proving that the concept of proofreading while getting writing done isn’t completely impossible. There have been deadlines, and reviews to do, and book reports to write, and I’m in a situation where wage-wise, I’m at least relatively sorted until the last week of March 2009, which isn’t a bad situation to be in. But, melancholy has been rearing it’s ugly head again. It doesn’t help that there’s a bit of DIY-related uproar here, with Anna currently installing a laminate floor in the frontroom (a new fireplace has already been delivered and fitted), with the result that because the work isn’t finished, the only usable room in the lower floor of the house is the (rather small) kitchen. Also, because of my recent purchase of a new computer, I’m on an ultra-strict budget right now which means that my possibilities are, at the moment, pretty limited. I’ve got a certain amount of christmas preparation still to do, and plenty to occupy myself with…

    Some more personal and not particularly happy Friday night thoughts behind the cut…

  • TV EYE: Flashback – Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric (1989)

    This has been circling in my head for a month – and now it’s time to get my thoughts on this Who story from the final year of Classic Who’s 26-year run down in some sort of order. So, here they are, in a rather huge and slightly rambling exploration of Who’s latter days, and what they do (and don’t) mean to me. Fear the spoilers…

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  • Enjoy Yourself (Take Only What You Need…)

    Something cool to look at for a Monday night:

    Magic Flashlights.

    I like the song (Kids by MGMT, if you’re interested…), I like the scenery, and I like the chance to gaze slack-jawed at people doing incredible (if slightly unwise) acts of extreme sport.

  • Let Me Introduce You To My Little Friend…

    So, I have a new computer. It’s essentially a beefed-up version of my old computer, a shiny new Mac Mini with the maximum memory and hard disc it would take, and it’s certainly making life a lot easier. Things are running quicker, and the Internet is now actually possible to use – before, I was stuck with a not-tremendously-quick USB dongle, and it didn’t exactly make life easy. There are now a whole lot of possibilities available, and it’s nice just being able to do things like watch BBC iPlayer in full screen without the whole thing giving off steam. I’ve also managed to consolidate my entire music collection together, with the worrying discovery that I’ve got 49 GB of audio content on my computer, equalling nearly 37 days of solid listening.

    I’ve also been down with a brief touch of illness, and have now got another one of those weeks when I’ve got to be very, very careful to make sure that everything happens on schedule. Work, Christmas and various other things all have to happen, and I’m going to make sure they do. There’s just an awful lot of other stuff I’d like to be doing in the meantime. Anyhow, it’ll all work out in the end…

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  • Boldly Going (The New Trek Trailer)

    I’m a bit late with this, but the new trailer for the upcoming Star Trek reboot is finally online, giving us more than just a nicely shot tease of the Enterprise being constructed. The whole prequel ‘Young Kirk’ idea did originally have me rather worried, and I’m still somewhat concerned about the Time Travel element of the story, as it’s a device that can backfire and overcomplicate very easily (Yes, we’re looking at you, Heroes), but J.J. Abrams getting the gig was something that gave me confidence that we might at least get an enjoyable film. Then, the first pictures started coming out, and one of the things that pleased me most of all was the fact that they’ve actually gone for the original uniforms. Yes, there’s some redesigning here, and yes the sets themselves are bigger and more spangly, but the look of the costumes simply shrieks ‘Original Series’– and it’s exactly what I wished they’d done with Enterprise, the amazingly dull prequel that simply ended up looking like all the other Trek series. I wanted them to go retro, and with the new movie, it looks like that’s exactly what they’ve done.

    The other thing that’s really notable about the new movie is that it’s the first time since Star Trek: The Motion Picture back in 1979 that Trek has actually been treated as a blockbuster, and not as a relatively low budget production that’s really mainly for the fans. Here, Trek is getting the chance to be big, epic and genuinely widescreen (something you could never have said– frankly – about the last four Next Generation movies (Let’s face it, even First Contact was just a glorified episode)), and by the look of the trailer it could be an awful lot of fun. It’s Star Trek that actually feels grand and epic, on a tremendous scale (one of my favourite shots is Kirk on the bike, with those barely visible but actually ginormously huge sci-fi constructions lurking on the horizon). Yes, there are bits in it that feel a little OTT, and there’s no guarantee that I’m going to love what I see next May – but it does look like the dull beige-ness that had infested the franchise has been swept away, and they’ve let a bunch of filmmakers loose who simply want to tell an enjoyable story with the original series (and the Kirk/Spock/McCoy triumvurate) as their benchpole. Right now, it’s one of those trailers that simply makes me want to see the rest of the movie RIGHT NOW, and while I am mildly curious about Watchmen, I’m actually excited about Trek – and that hasn’t been true for a very, very long time…

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