"A very Happy Christmas to the viewers at home!"

Doctor Who is on tomorrow, the first time its ever been on a Sunday, but not the first time its ever been broadcast on Christmas Day. In 1965, there was an episode on Christmas Day. The show was well into a successful third season with William Hartnell, the original Doctor taking on the Daleks in a massive 12 part epic called The Dalek Masterplan. Rather than put the show off until the following Saturday, the BBC decided this was an ideal opportunity to break up said Dalek epic, and give the audience a Christmas episode. This episode was to be called 'The Feast of Steven'. Its a story that has go down in infamy with Doctor Who fans.

It all sounds fine on paper, until your remember that in those early days, editing was technically very difficult, not to mention prohibitively expensive, which essentially means the show was shot 'live' albeit filmed a week or so in advance. In real terms this meant that the programme was made lke a stage show, but with cameras.

Again, all sounds fine, until you throw in a cantankerous lead actor, whose ego was running rampant in one of the BBC's most successful TV shows and felt very strongly, that HE, not the Director, was in charge...

Cue the last few minutes of the episode, set in the TARDIS console room, where the Doctor, still in character, breaks that magical fourth wall, turns to the camera and says -

"And a very Merry Christmas to all you viewers at home...."

Thankfully, it is in the nature of blogging that I am constantly required to address you, my reading public, and so, without fear I can happily say -

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MARCHPANE READERS!

(And thanks to those who have contributed in one way or another, over the past few months, look forward to reading your comments in 2006...)

Mice like cheese - FACT.

I always thought it was something of myth that mice liked cheese, something for Warner Bros cartoons, lump of cheddar wedged in a trap to entice them.

We have been keeping treats and goodies stored in the back of the garage, ready for the descending Xmas hordes. The scene I surveyed on Sunday morning, when I ventured in there for a pack of crisps, was nothing short of a savoury snack holocaust. Actually, I exaggerate, 4 bags of savoury snacks had been attacked, and it has to be said, left largely intact, but due to mouse molestation, obviously rendered inedible. They were (and I'm not making this up):

1 pack of Quavers - original cheese flavour

1 pack of McVites Mini Cheddars

1 pack of Walkers Cheese and Onion flavour crisps

1 pack Cheesy Wotsits

What I want to know is, how they can smell cheese through the plastic packet?!

Marchpane Guest Spot

This Week: Ted Johns

At one in the morning of Sunday 14^th August 1938 a police sergeant at Netheravon, on Salisbury Plain, roused villagers to help search for twenty-eight year old James Emrys Gwynne Johns.

Almost seventy years later, I began a search for the same man. To me, he was Uncle Gwynne. He was born forty years and four days before me and died in the nineteen sixties. Everything I know about him is garnered from yellowing press clippings and relatives old enough to recount a tale or two.

On that particular occasion he had jumped out of an aeroplane and delayed opening his chute for 18,000 feet or 88 seconds. This particular act got him reported in the ‘Sunday Journal and Star’ in Lincoln Nebraska--the only internet record that I could find. Bizarrely, the short piece on him referred to him as a “youth”.

That jump was carried out in darkness. At the time, there were no formal records kept of achievements in what would today be called “free-fall” parachuting. That jump was claimed as the World Record and no-one challenged the claim.

The press describe him of looking more like a schoolmaster than a champion jumper, he is also said to have sustained a number of jumping injuries, including broken limbs.

One report has him sitting astride an aircraft fuselage “as if he were riding a horse” on take off as his equipment wouldn’t fit into the cockpit space!

There’s no doubt he had bottle. The record holder that he displaced for altitude jumping was a Dane - John Tranum. He had died during an ascent for a record attempt, probably as a result of oxygen starvation. Of course, everything you read in the papers, then as now, has to be taken with a pinch of salt, which leaves me wondering what Uncle Gwynne was really like. My search for information continues.

Shit your own leg off with laughter!

Shear genius.

8 Years in the making

The last time Barry came to dinner, it was 1997, eight years ago. Barry is one of my best and oldest friends.

It was with a huge sense of occaision then that we welcomed him into our home on Saturday evening, free of his shackles, a hero of sorts, an example to us all of the remarkable strength and endurance of the human spiwit. The three of us had an entertaining evening, chatting, laughing and boring Mindy to tears with short film ideas (watch out world, we're coming..).

So, all I can say is 'Nice one mate, great to have you back'.

And the food, if I may say was pretty good too.

Pre Xmas Rant - Part 2

Right, just so everyone knows, I am sick and tired to the point of sobbing, of people explaining, on telly, the radio, in newspapers, on street corners or in the office, how they 'don't like Xmas anymore, its gone too commercial'.

Really.

So, its just Xmas that's gone commercial? Its not that you've voted consistently for centre right, capitalist leaning political parties over the past 2 decades, ones that have allowed for a steady dismantling and erosion of altruistic state and a gradual domination of the nations (if not worlds) minds with a consumer society, dominated by nothing but big business trying to persuade you to buy-buy-buy, and even better, work-work-work so that you can buy-buy-buy. Work every poxy second that God sends. Gotta get on, gotta make money! But hey! Xmas is TOO COMMERCIAL!!!

That's right, because the truth is that actually, you love living in a consumerist society and you're so wrapped up rolling in your Freudian poo substitutions, that actually its YOU who has ruined xmas, by falsely believing that it is simply about spending and mass consumption to the point where you can no longer remember that, regardless of secular beliefs, Xmas is a time for family, for generosity of spirit and for giving. But yes, just 2 days of dropping out of the spectacular, wholly transitory, false, empty, illusory daily distraction of the race that is 'getting on' is WRONG!

As we all know, there is nothing even vaguely commercial about the rest of the year...

Don't want any presents for your birthday this year then I take it...?

Xmas is coming, Mindy's a bit of a prat

The decorations and tree went up yesterday, I gave my first xmas card to someone, I wrapped all my presents and Helen put on a carols CD. It must surely be coming?

Particularly looking forward this year, its gunna be a big doo. The folks are coming over from France on the 20th and will be staying almost 2 weeks. Barry is coming over on Boxing Day, Greb for xmas day and Boxing day, Grandmother for as long as we can tolerate her on Boxing day also. We have the menus planned to the nth degree! Last year we decided to do an M&S xmas, but it just wasn't the same. so this year, there will be quality home made food a plenty!

The peice de le resistance of course, 7pm xmas day, the Doctor Who Christmas Special! Woo!

Hayabusa

Is the name of a track that Rich wrote under his Digital Tekniq guise. I'm playing it now, and I'm writing about it here because its one of the best things he's ever written, a track I never tire of listening to, a track that has a real sense of inifinity to it, so infinite that it probably stretches beyond the boundaries of the universe. For godsake somebody kick his arse, lock him in his studio and tell him to right something new!!! I'm getting bored of waiting!

Pre-Xmas Rant

Before I start to recieve death threats from any christian fundamentalist nutjobs for my spelling of xmas in the following blog, I would like to draw their attention to the following entry on Wikipedia:

"Xmas (or X-mas) is an abbreviation for Christmas. It is derived from the word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, transliterated as Christos, which is Greek for Christ. Greek is the language in which the whole New Testament was written.

Originally, in "Xmas", X represented the Greek letter χ . It was pronounced with an aspirated [kh], which is the first letter of Christ's name in Greek. However, because an upper-case χ has the same shape as a Latin alphabet letter X, many people who do not know the history assume that this abbreviation is meant to "take Christ out of Christmas" as a means of secularisation or a vehicle for political correctness.

And please, don't get me started on the hushed conspiritorial 'disgusted of Peterborough' conversation currently on every street corner, office water cooler and newsagent counter in Britain, the classic "Oooh, and have you heard, you're not allowed to call it Christmas anymore, you've got to call it 'winter holidays' so you don't offend muslims, I think its disgusting etc etc..." No you don't you silly little f*cking islanders!!! "Ooooh! The foreigners are coming!! They're taking over!" We have soo much to thank the Mail for...

Lunchtime Aspergers - Part deux

So here we are again, time for some more albums from my all time top 50! Without further ado (and still in no particular order):

8. Front 242 - 05:22:09:12 Off
Its a real humdinger ladies and gentlemen. Barry played a tape of this album to death back in his room at college. It was my first exposure to the belgian electro body musicians. I liked it a lot then and its really stood the test of time - this was my first experience of F242, and I worked backwards with their previous albums, none quite match its standard, although Front by Front and Tradgedy for You come close. This one has the edge in terms of variety and sound. The production just seems to leap hugely, and we are treated to a variety of vocalists including, for a change some guest female artists. Its distorted and noisy, everything that 'industrial' should be, but its still warm, lush, melodic, moody and emotional at the same time - a rare thing. I recall when I played this album to a chum, who for the moment will remain nameless, he told me it 'sounded like someone singing through a £5 Tandy microphone'. 18 months later, him and every other daft bugger in the country went out and bought the Prodigy's Fat of the Land CD, the first track of which is a direct lift of Off's Animal track, except it isn't as good, and features copious tracks with Keith Flint seemingly singing through a £5 Tandy microphone. Apparently, this was a brave step for pop music, although those of us in the know appreciate that it is nothing of the sort. At least Liam Howlett had the decency to name check them on the sleeve, which is more than he did when he chopped up 'Hey Poor' and dumped it into a remix of Jericho. In fairness to said chum, he'd probably had a bad day...

9. The The - Dusk
The The are a band I really shouldn't like and do so entirely despite myself! Barry introduced them to me, and Lee consolidated my love for all things Matt Johnson some 10 years later. I honestly don't think he's released a bad album, but this one becomes my toppermost. Yes its bedsit music, yes its hardly cheery, but every track speaks to me in one way or another, unlike albums like Infected or Burning Blue Soul, and whats more the instrumentation and production match the clever lyrics in quality. A smoking, fuggy, 'on my own' masterpiece. Notable tracks for me are 'Slow Emotion Reply' and 'Dogs of Lust'.

10. 808 State - Ex:cel
I know Rich will agree with me on this one. One of the first CD's I ever bought and so good I can barely say anything about it!! Its possibly the most electronic and the least acoustic album I own! Its actually amazing now, considering its 'electonicness', how popular this album was at the time of is release, I can't recall its chart position, but I know it was higher than you would think. I remember I played it extensively through my 18th birthday celebrations - I have the video footage to prove it!

11. Kraftwerk - Computer World
Like Front 242, I came to Kraftwerk very late. I won't bore you with their history or status as 'all music begins with Kraftwerk' innovators. Most people know that tale, and how they pretty much created techno and all it electronicic subsets 30 years earlier than the name was invented. We all know that. This is the last of their good albums I'm sorry to say, after this point they were stuck in an impossible paradox of their own making, trying hard to sound like Kraftwerk, whilst trying to do something new. This to me is Kraftwerk at their most obvious 'godfather' stage. Sure, its slightly simplistic, some of the vocals border on naive, but the tunes are catchy and the bass lines and beats can be heard in every electronic or pop album since 1981 AND they still sound fresh! Exceptional. Think you've never heard any of their tracks? Well aside from The Model - surely their most popular single, there's always Coldplay's latest single, a reworking of Computer World.

12. Brian Eno - Apollo
Good ole Brian, its not everyone who invents a genre! There are a plethora of Eno albums out there, some brilliant, some pretty good, some that have aged, some that are still 'modern works'. This is my favourite of his 'ambient albums'. Ambient 4 On Land came close, but this is the one that does it for me. It stands out from the others, by virtue of its Texan feel. There are people who read this blog who are better able to describe what that means, but from where I'm standing, Eno and collaborators Daniel Lanois and brother Roger Eno have got it bang on. Much of this album was written for a film about the Apollo moon landings, so we are treated to a mixture of smokey southern guitar and huge, reverbarating soundscapes wonderfully evocative of travel from Houston, through the deep, empty, slightly scary void of space and back again in time for some Texmex bbq action.

Beyond Good Marketing

I've just finished playing a game on my Xbox. I don't often post on this subject, I tend to leave the gaming side to Rich. But, in this case, I feel like I am righting a wrong and playing a part in reversing a cruel injustice simply by mentioning the title of the game.

As I said, I'm no hardcore gamer, I don't read every Xbox title out there, I don't read Edge, I just like playing good games when time and budget allows. I'm fairly varied in my tastes, but anything that doesn't get a 5 star review in Official XBox won't be of interest to me, I don't have time to fanny about. Nothing much is out there at the moment, bar a couple of titles that I'll wait for and buy when the cost is down, Half Life 2 and Destroy All Humans for starters. So I decided to look back through some of the old '5 star' reviews in the back of the mag, see if I could get a bargain. One that caught my eye was:

Beyond Good and Evil.

Where the hell has this game been?! I have never heard of it before, and now I've finished it I can't understand why. What an absolute tradgedy that this didn't tear up the market. To cut a long story its vaguely speaking, a RPG, and when I say that, I mean it in the nicest way possible, with a hint of stealth game play and a myriad of mini-games. With talking beasts and children running amok, it looks like its in danger of going cutesy, but never does. This is a thoroughly believable universe, with believable characters, culture and design.

The graphics are nothing short of superb, with a real quality of design that makes it stand out from others. The sound and voice acting are again topnotch and the game play never left me wanting.

You know when you finish a book and you feel sad to leave its contained universe? That's how I felt with this game. Its a rare feeling for me to have that level of emotional investment, it does happen of course, but rarely, and to me this is a mark of a quality game. Initially I thought maybe it failed because of a lack of violence or grittiness, but I dismiss that now, hasn't hurt Mario or Sonic too much! I have to put it down to poor marketing and presumably some strong competing titles released at the same time, because nothing else can explain it to me. Apparently they were planning a trilogy, which is a reflection of Ubisofts own faith in it. What a shame it never got there!

If you want to squeeze the last few drops of quality gaming out of your now obsolete last generation console, PS2, GameCube or Xbox, I can suggest a lot worse than picking this up for a fiver. You won't regret it.

Oops, sorry!

It been a while hasn't it? Almost a fortnight, I'll set this right....